The first Christian scholars were descendants of the early founders of logic, reason, medicine and science, including Euclid, Pythagoras, Democritus, Archimedes, Socrates and the Ionian Greeks. They studied at the great academy in Alexandradria and they studied the world as a whole, not only the material world, but also the relationship between nature, ethics, spirituality, medicine, music, mathematics, and human society.
Origen of Alexandrea, Arius, and Didymus taught a Christianity that was in harmony with Platonism (science and logic) and Judaism. The pagan Romans destroyed their works, creating doctrines that made science anathema. Galilleo brought science back to life, but we have not eliminated the illogical doctrines that the Romans brought into Christianity that make the religion hard to defend today on a logical basis.
Does anyone see movements in this area, to use the scientific tools we have to examine church doctrines? Or to rediscover the teaching declared anathema by that church to check the validity of the church’s claims?
I don’t know if “rediscover” is the correct term. There is a lot of scholarship on the various branches of Christianity. I don’t see why science or logic would be involved.
To me, logic and reason are products of the human mind. If you want to say that means they are part of creation you can, but I don’t view them that way. Would you say 2 + 2 = 4 is part of God’s creation? Or if A then B? Studying God’s creation tells us how He created but nothing about why.
How do you see a reflection of creation in Christianity? And which branch?
How do you determine the validity? What charism do you have to establish that the anathema you are taking about was wrong or even that the Arian interpretation of the Scripture (which became majority before the ecumenical council settled the matter) is incorrect (or even correct, for that matter. The Arians were extremely prepared and were equally hard to refute. So hard that the fathers had to come up with a non scriptural term to finally settle the matter)?
Which doctrines can be analyzed with scientific tools?
The age of the earth and the universe can be analyzed, but the literalist interpretation of Genesis was never declared to be a divinely reveled truth.
What other doctrines could be refuted with the scientific method? And how is the idea that the scientific method should invade fields that belong to metaphysics and philosophy not a pristine example of scientism?
I think you’re overlooking something rather important about Origen.
Origen was profoundly devoted to the Church, and there is no reason to believe that he ever regarded his own interpretation of Scripture as more authoritative than the apostolic faith preserved and taught by the Church.
It’s true that certain theological positions associated with Origen were condemned long after his death. But that’s precisely the point: those condemnations came centuries after he was gone and, given what Origen himself wrote about ecclesiastical authority, I think there’s very good reason to believe that he would have submitted to the Church’s judgment.
The notion that Origen would have considered himself entitled to sit in judgment over the Church’s received doctrine, rather than having his own theological conclusions judged against it, seems basically impossible to reconcile with his actual writings.
Consider what he says in De principiis, Preface, § 2: “so, seeing there are many who think they hold the opinions of Christ, and yet some of these think differently from their predecessors, yet as the teaching of the Church, transmitted in orderly succession from the apostles, and remaining in the Churches to the present day, is still preserved, that alone is to be accepted as truth which differs in no respect from ecclesiastical and apostolic tradition.”
Origen is addressing the fact that people who profess Christianity nevertheless disagree about fundamental doctrines. His answer is to appeal to the teaching of the Church, preserved through apostolic succession, as the standard against which doctrinal claims must be measured.
And he makes a closely related argument in his Commentary on Matthew, Latin Series, § 46: “But whenever they bring forward the canonical Scriptures, on which every Christian agrees and believes, they seem to say, ‘Behold, the word of truth is in the houses.’ But we ought not to believe them, nor to go out from the first and ecclesiastical tradition, nor to believe otherwise than as the churches of God have handed down to us by succession.”
Origen is commenting on Matthew 24:23–26, where Christ warns against false prophets and false messiahs.
He observes that false teachers may attempt to defend their doctrines by appealing to the very same canonical Scriptures that all Christians acknowledge.
In other words, the problem is not that heretics possess a different Bible, the problem is that they assign false meanings to the Scriptures that Christians hold in common.
And what does Origen tell Christians to do in such circumstances?
He tells them not to follow those teachers, but to remain faithful to the ecclesiastical tradition handed down through the succession of the Church.
Origen is not presenting his own interpretation of Scripture as a standard by which the Church’s received doctrine may be overturned, he is explicitly appealing to the Church’s apostolic tradition as the standard by which competing doctrinal claims are to be assessed.
In fact, this second passage was quoted by Pope Leo XIII in his 1896 encyclical Satis cognitum, devoted to the unity of the Church.
And the context in which Leo XIII invokes Origen is particularly relevant to our discussion.
In § 7, Leo XIII addresses the problem of conflicting interpretations of Scripture and their consequences for Christian unity:
“The heavenly doctrine of Christ, although for the most part committed to writing by divine inspiration, could not unite the minds of men if left to the human intellect alone. It would, for this very reason, be subject to various and contradictory interpretations. This is so, not only because of the nature of the doctrine itself and of the mysteries it involves, but also because of the divergencies of the human mind and of the disturbing element of conflicting passions. From a variety of interpretations a variety of beliefs is necessarily begotten; hence come controversies, dissensions and wranglings such as have arisen in the past, even in the first ages of the Church. Irenaeus writes of heretics as follows: ‘Admitting the sacred Scriptures they distort the interpretations’ (Lib. iii., cap. 12, n. 12). And Augustine: ‘Heresies have arisen, and certain perverse views ensnaring souls and precipitating them into the abyss only when the Scriptures, good in themselves, are not properly understood’ (In Evang. Joan., tract xviii., cap. 5, n. I). Besides Holy Writ it was absolutely necessary to insure this union of men’s minds—to effect and preserve unity of ideas—that there should be another principle. This the wisdom of God requires: for He could not have willed that the faith should be one if He did not provide means sufficient for the preservation of this unity; and this Holy Writ clearly sets forth as We shall presently point out. Assuredly the infinite power of God is not bound by anything, all things obey it as so many passive instruments. In regard to this external principle, therefore, we must inquire which one of all the means in His power Christ did actually adopt.”
Leo XIII’s reasoning is quite straightforward: if Christ commanded Christians to profess one faith, and if Scripture is susceptible to conflicting interpretations, then God must have provided a means of preserving doctrinal unity.
The Pope subsequently identifies that means in the teaching authority Christ entrusted to the apostles and their successors.
And this brings us directly back to Origen.
In § 9, Leo XIII appeals to Ephesians 4 and explains that Christian unity requires agreement in faith. He then cites Ephesians 4:11–12, in which Paul speaks of the apostles, pastors, and teachers appointed for the building up of Christ’s body.
Immediately afterward, Leo XIII invokes the testimony of the early Church Fathers, beginning with Origen.
Here is the relevant passage from Satis cognitum:
“The need of this divinely instituted means for the preservation of unity, about which we speak is urged by St. Paul in his epistle to the Ephesians. In this he first admonishes them to preserve with every care concord of minds: ‘Solicitous to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace’ (Eph. iv., 3, et seq.). And as souls cannot be perfectly united in charity unless minds agree in faith, he wishes all to hold the same faith:‘One Lord, one faith,’ and this so perfectly one as to prevent all danger of error: ‘that henceforth we be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the wickedness of men, by cunning craftiness, by which they lie in wait to deceive’ (Eph. iv., 14): and this he teaches is to be observed, not for a time only—‘but until we all meet in the unity of faith…unto the measure of the age of the fulness of Christ’ (13). But, in what has Christ placed the primary principle, and the means of preserving this unity? In that—‘He gave some Apostles—and other some pastors and doctors, for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ’ (11–12).
Wherefore, from the very earliest times the fathers and doctors of the Church have been accustomed to follow and, with one accord to defend this rule. Origen writes: ‘As often as the heretics allege the possession of the canonical scriptures, to which all Christians give unanimous assent, they seem to say: “Behold the word of truth is in the houses.” But we should believe them not and abandon not the primary and ecclesiastical tradition. We should believe not otherwise than has been handed down by the tradition of the Church of God’ (Vetus Interpretatio Commentariorum in Matt. n. 46).”
Leo XIII is discussing the very problem of doctrinal fragmentation caused by conflicting interpretations of Scripture, and he argues that the preservation of Christian unity requires an authoritative principle beyond the individual interpretation of the biblical text.
And Origen is one of the witnesses he invokes to establish that this understanding of ecclesiastical authority has roots in the earliest centuries of Christianity.
I will readily admit that Origen’s own writings make clear that he considered many questions open to theological investigation, but there is a crucial difference between exploring questions on which the Church has not established a definitive teaching and claiming the right to overturn the apostolic faith that the Church has received and preserved.
Origen’s statements strongly support that distinction.
So I think portraying Origen as someone who was hostile to the Church, or as a supposedly “dangerous” figure who would have rejected ecclesiastical correction if it conflicted with his own theological conclusions, is highly problematic, because he repeatedly affirmed the authority of the Church’s apostolic tradition as a standard of doctrinal truth, and Pope Leo XIII later cited him as a witness to the ancient Church’s rule of faith.
Origen’s own writings strongly suggest that, had the Church condemned his more controversial teachings during his lifetime, he would have readily accepted her judgment and submitted to her correction.
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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