Sunday, November 14, 2021

Orthodox Origen

Joseph T. Lienhard reviews Origen: On First Principles, edited and translated by John Behrat, at First Things.

"De Lubac’s book on Origen’s understanding of the Scriptures contains a sentence that marks the moment when studies of Origen took a new turn: 'See Origen at work.' De Lubac perceived that in order to understand Origen, one had to observe him in the act of exegesis rather than fix on isolated statements, because 'Origen’s real doctrine, that which results from his exegesis itself and which he formulates throughout his work, is very different from what he seems to imply in passing.' An occasional phrase of Origen’s, taken out of context, could seem suspect or unorthodox, especially in light of later doctrine; but the true Origen was to be sought in the great corpus of commentaries and homilies that has survived, because Origen was most at home when he was studying the Bible."

See:
Great Books of the Western World (first edition, 54 Vol., 1952)

"Readers who are startled to find the Bible omitted from the set will be reassured to learn that this was done only because Bibles are already widely distributed, and it was felt unnecessary to bring another, by way of this set, into homes that had several already. References to the Bible are, however, included in both the King James and the Douai versions under the appropriate topics in the Syntopicon." (The Great Conversation, by Robert M. Hutchinsmm, volume 1, p. xvii). [Syntopicon is the title of the extensive topical index to the entire set.]
Great Books of the Western World (second edition, 60 Vol., 1990)
"References to Bible, when present, are always placed first. The Bible is not included as part of the set, since there is no definitive version acceptable to everyone." Introduction to The Syntopicon (vol. 1, p. xiv),

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