Talk:Origen

The 1903 Catholic Encyclopedia does not report this

The inlne Citation to the Catholic Encyclopaedia (1913) had a text comment after it. I have commented out:

"— The 1903 Catholic Encyclopedia does not report this"

I did this because the citation is cited inline a multiple locations and it is not clear to which of the text in those locations this comment is supposed to refer.

The original comment was added by user:Student7 in Revision as of 12:25, 27 July 2008 and that editor is probably the best to review my edit, because the original text was:

Eusebius reported that Origen, following Matthew 19:12 literally, castrated himself. Scholars within the past century have questioned this, surmising that this may have been a rumor circulated by his detractors. The 1903 Catholic Encyclopedia does not report this.

References

NB the volume 11 of the CE that Wikisource holds was published in 1911 not 1903.

-- PBS (talk) 12:33, 29 August 2018 (UTC)

concerning about the canonization

Good morning @Katolophyromai:, I am writing this topic about Your undid of 12 January 2019 (oldid 878080417).

Regarding the new guidelines "We only need to mention something if it happened. If it did not happen, we can just not mention it. ", we can generally agree about that. But a lacking canonization is like an eception to this general rule, since it explains the official concerning of the Church, that is, even if tolerated, no Christian Church believes the Origen's doctrine is part of the Christian orthodoxy and salvation.

In a celebrative style, the article incipit ends with the following words: "Origen is a Church Father[13][14][15][16] and is widely regarded as one of the most important Christian theologians of all time. His teachings were especially influential in the east, with Athanasius of Alexandria and the three Cappadocian Fathers being among his most devoted followers."

This kind of emphatic style probably induces someone to compare Origen with St Augustin of Hippo or some other Doctor of the Church. And it is totally wrong.

Hence, the concerning about his lacking canonization seems to be relevant and making the article more NPOV. This can be done without repeating the concern of his posthomous condemnation, at least since it is well known when he and his doctrine has been claimed as heretic.Micheledisaveriosp (talk) 13:12, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

Do you have any RS to support those claims, Micheledisaveriosp?--Farang Rak Tham (Talk) 16:08, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

hi @Farang Rak Tham:, about the lacking of any canonization i have inserted the following source:

• Roger E. Olson (PhD) (1999). "6". The Story of Christian Theology: Twenty Centuries of Tradition & Reform. Doners Grove (IL): InterVasity Press. p. 98. ISBN 978-0-8308-1505-0. OCLC 40762786. Archived from the original on Jan 12, 2019. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
• This book of Henry De Lubac also seems to be a reliable source for the article.78.14.138.150 (talk) 17:33, 16 January 2019 (UTC)

@Micheledisaveriosp:, @78.14.138.150: Olson doesn't mention any condemnation or lack of canonization, as far as I understand. De Lubac discusses some controversy surrounding Origen's name, but there is not detail with regard to the damnation or lack of canonization.your edit here isn't well supported by any of the two sources you mention, and is redundant with what is already in the article.--Farang Rak Tham (Talk) 06:11, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

Please also note that writing on a talk page with a registered account, and then continue writing with an anonymous ip address can be interpreted as a form of sockpuppeting. It is better to stay registered all the time. (This is of course presuming that Michele and 78.14.138.150 are the same user, if that is not the case, than ignore this.)--Farang Rak Tham (Talk) 06:11, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

Good morning @Farang Rak Tham:, I apologize for the questioned topic, that was mine, of course. I am experiencing some Internet connection problems, maybe I didn't control if the reply was correctly signed. Normally, I sign all my contributions too. Overlooking this, there is a reference about Henry de Lubac that seems to be interesting for being integrated in the article.Micheledisaveriosp (talk) 10:32, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

Origen regarded as a "Heresiarch"?

@50.204.245.34: You recently added this passage to the last paragraph of the lead, along with a great deal of other information which was both uncited and unsupported by the information given in the body of the article:

Origen is considered to be a Heresiarch by adherents of the Ecumenical Councils due to his condemnation by five of these bodies according to the Roman Catholic reckoning and three according the the Eastern Orthodox enumeration.

I reverted this edit and you reverted my edit, suggesting Norman P. Tanner's Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils: Nicaea I to Lateran V to me in your edit summary, which you implied supports these claims you added to the article about Origen being a "Heresiarch." I do not, however, have access to that book and it is not available online, so I have no means of confirming whether it really says what you claim it says about Origen being regarded as a "Heresiarch." I will agree that, certainly, some people in ancient times regarded him as a Heresiarch and there are probably some people who still regard him as one today. Nonetheless, the statement that "Origen is considered to be a Heresiarch by adherents of the Ecumenical Councils" is clearly no longer true, if it was ever.

Even if Origen was condemned by subsequent councils after the Second Council of Constantinople (whose famous alleged condemnation of Origen, as I mention, is debated) and all the books on him somehow failed to mention this (or I somehow missed all the places where they do mention it, which is admittedly possible), it is still not accurate to say that he is "considered to be a Heresiarch by adherents of the Ecumenical Councils." I have yet to find a single scholarly source written in the modern era that calls him a "Heresiarch." Indeed, all the scholarly sources I have found written by orthodox Christian writers, both Protestant and Catholic, are favorable towards Origen, stating that later attacks on Origen's orthodoxy were either condemnations of what people influenced by Origen had claimed rather than what Origen himself had actually taught, or anachronistic judgments imposing the standards of orthodoxy of later eras onto Origen, who lived centuries prior in a very different theological environment, in which speculation was more widely tolerated.

Furthermore, it is worth pointing out that none other than Pope Benedict XVI included a sermon on Origen entitled "Origen of Alexandria: Life and Work" as part of his series of sermons Church Fathers: From Clement of Rome to Augustine delivered in 2007 in which he praises Origen as "a figure crucial to the whole development of Christian thought," "a true 'maestro,'" and "not only a brilliant theologian but also an exemplary witness of the doctrine he passed on." He concludes the sermon by urging his audience, "welcome into your hearts the teaching of this great master of the faith." I take this to mean that the Pope Emeritus himself is anathema, then? Perhaps we could say that some people regard him as a heretic, but we can certainly not say that all "adherents of the Ecumenical Councils" regard him as such. Furthermore, even if all the information you added turns out to be accurate and supported by reliable, scholarly sources, it is way too much information on the subject for the lead, which is already quite long as it is. –Katolophyromai (talk) 23:01, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

Hi @Katolophyromai:, I reply to this topic given that it is indirectly related to my previous one. I think it there exists the Papal primacy as well as a Fidei depositum needing to be preserved. If the theories of Origen were critically reviewed in recent times in order to make him a Church Father, he isn't still claimed as a saint in the Roman Catholic Church nor it seems to be started its canonization process for sainthood. This element still may have its weight on a global evaluation of the article.

About the dominant opinion for which he wasn't an Heresiarch, many people may ask themselves where it comes from. It may be useeful to remember that untill 1873 Freemasonry and Roman Catholic Church were believed to be in conflict (and enemies). Finally, the St Michael's exorcism has a meaningful prophecy relating to the "most crafty enemies" of Jesus Christ God and his Church. But it doesn't give an exact timeline to its believers in order to identify its historical actuation. Spiritism, even if true, it is only one of the many existing points of view--Micheledisaveriosp (talk)

Pronunciation

It's fairly standard to give a phonetic "spelling" of the names of people on their page. For example, /juːˈsiːbiəs/; Greek: Εὐσέβιος Eusebios. And these are contemporary pronunciations, not the way their peers knew them.

I never know whether to say 'rig' as in 'ridge' or as in plain 'rig', as in origin or Oregon.

I hate "Joe-see-fss" . . . but that's what everyone seems to call him, at least in the English-speaking world. What do Israeli and, say, Romance-language scholars call him, I wonder? Nick Barnett (talk) 15:10, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

Problem with an "Contra Hieronymum?"

The following passage from the "Views" section, under "Cosmology and Eschatology," contains what strongly seems to me an unsubstantiated claim:

"Jerome quotes Origen as having allegedly written that "after aeons and the one restoration of all things, the state of Gabriel will be the same as that of the Devil, Paul's as that of Caiaphas, that of virgins as that of prostitutes." Jerome, however, was not above deliberately altering quotations to make Origen seem more like a heretic, and Origen expressly states in his Letter to Friends in Alexandria that Satan and "those who are cast out of the kingdom of God" would be not included in the final salvation."

The source that is expressly listed for the second sentence, which is the one I take issue with, can be found here.

St. Jerome actually speaks about translation (and refutes accusations of mistranslation against him in another case) here. I really do not think we should be giving much credence to Dr. Chadwick (an evangelical Anglican, according to Wikipedia -- Origen is canonized in the Anglican communion) in regard to Jerome's moral aptitude. I think St. Jerome himself would answer more accurately in that regard: his letter indicates that any mistranslations are not willful and his translations, per classical norms, sought to render sense for sense. Ornithopolis (talk) 03:57, 7 January 2023 (UTC)