BATTLE ROYALE: Was Origen's Legacy Treated Unfairly??

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, PREPARE YOUR BALLOTS.

Few church fathers have a legacy as controversial as Origen of Alexandria. From rumors of self-mutilation, heresy, and crooked bishops, the story of Origen somehow only got more complicated in the years following his death. 

So this week, we're gonna take this controversial topic and duel it out. 

Each of our hosts has researched this topic, and will bring forth an argument about whether Origen was done dirty or not. 

And it is up to YOU, dear listener, to decide whether Thomas, John, or Taylor shall win the day. 

Send us a message below, comment on the Spotify episode, shoot us an email...whatever your heart desires. 

Let the voice of Chump Nation be heard! We love you guys. 

Buy us a coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/chumphistory

Chapters

• 0:00 Pre-show Banter
• 8:28 The Good Stuff
• 9:43 Origen Recap
• 13:53 What was the Controversy?
• 29:25 Tommy's Argument
• 39:44 John's Argument
• 46:50 Taylor's Argument
• 54:50 Taylor's Gets Mad and Shares His Real Argument (lol)

Transcript

Hey everybody, welcome to Church History for Chumps! My name is John Simon, and I'm
here with actually two special Guests today, ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to
welcome Taylor Treadway and Thomas do well. Happy to be here, John you're
You know We didn't say this last week. We were actually trying Last week was just
me and Taylor and it was kind of like a trial run Like how are the people gonna
feel if we just like nudge Tommy out the door, right? If we just - Right, if we
just send an outrage. - Yeah, we got nothing but outrage. People were very upset.
People's kids were upset, so welcome back, Thomas. I guess you'll stick around.
- Tommy, I gotta tell you this on air. A good friend of mine who's also an avid
fan of the show, he told me, he loves our show. He might be our number one fan.
If you're our number one fan, please write a fan mail to explain why you're the
number one But anyway, he's always like dude. I love the episode when you guys said
this I was dying or this is a really good point blah blah blah anyway when I saw
him he said Well, you know, no, it's good episode. It was good And I was like no
just tell me so we can learn and he goes like It just felt like something was
missing, and I was like, what do you mean, like, like John and I's un...
I always use the word unfettered. I need a new one. Uncontained insanity needs a
check. We needed an anchor. We were like a ship with no anchor just floating around
in the storm. An autistic Autistic ship
Yeah, we I Here's the thing when I noticed myself using a Middle Eastern accent for
God Something's wrong. Something's wrong. I was listening to the episode on 2x
So I'm sorry that we're not worth a full hour of your time, bro So I I'm
listening to it on 2xp and I'm listening to your cold open and when Taylor comes
in with the cockney on 2x just out of control Unintelligible
Go back and listen to that. Yeah, I think I need to yeah, that's really good So
we have been getting some fan mail, which is great. We've gotten we've got a lot
of Spotify comments, which I feel like most shows don't feel the need to really
point this out. But for me, I'm like, dude, this like makes my day. So Gavin, you
made our day. Jackson Gagney did it again, brother. John Harmson actually Thomas got
mad at John because Thomas apparently no one no longer wants any affiliation with
the see the church that really, you know, put, put, give you the support you needed
during a real trying time. But no, that's fine, Thomas, no worries, you know,
forget, forget the old Dutch. Am I right? Wow. Well, I was reading that.
Let me read you to see. It's pretty been pretty cool to see John and Thomas with
a CRC background and to see the Christian reform church go further than settlements
of the ethnically Dutch of which I was born and raised. You know what? Hey, I'll
I'll I'll take it, brother. I'll take it. And I'm really glad your five -year -old
son, who you did not name, is super enjoying the show. And I also love that you
called him trailer in your comment. Why? Everybody roasts me in the comments.
What do you guys think his son's name is? I'm going to go with Rockwell.
Rockwell. And what else? Yeah, I don't know. I feel like we're in the generation
where we're making last names, first names again. Well, hey, let me just say to our
five year old listener, the young master, Harmson, dude, we are so glad that you're
listening and enjoying the show, buddy. Yeah. Yeah. He says we're the funny guys.
And what he means is really Taylor's the funny guy. I I sure love the show,
Bluey. I just love that show. Am I right? You don't have you don't have kids on
John attended way too many gospel contextualization lectures in the day back in the
day. Now he's getting on his level. OK, we're leading to each other. If we're
talking about a man, there was a I love applesauce. Nice. Yeah. Now we're cooking.
The one time Our church made the fatal mistake of putting me in charge of the
children It was on a work day and I realized nobody nobody was actually working in
the nursery to like watch the children So I was like I will take all the children
and like find little projects for them Anyway, they get petered out and I'm like
alright guys. Let's go back to the nursery Good job picking up our five pieces of
trash or whatever they were capable of and I just learned the power of bluey in
that moment I just turned on the television and found bluey and hit play a spell
to be an iPad dad oh that's so mean okay first off I discovered the power of
bluey I for a bunch of kids I like a bunch of like three to five year olds for
like three hours finding things that were useful and some like kept them occupied.
I heard you worked them for three hours. Oh, they are. Thomas would have had them
stacking hay bales. I know had him brushing off Buttercup, the prize horse. Right.
Back in my day, we got kicked in the horse and got back up. Knock it off.
Clean it out the barn.
the clock in the stall.
Oh, man, those stalls and then you can watch Bluey. That's right. I want that
trough clean, boy. All right. That was I was just going to say that for so long.
I was your guys this Sunday. Taylor, what'd you guys look? What were the three, you
know, points that the pastor had that all started with the same letter the
video still of Taylor right now is so here I'm gonna take a picture and post it
on the Instagram he's gone he's gone he just looked like a kindly like a kindly
Grandpa frozen. He just looked really satisfied. He just looked like he was smirking
and having a good time. I think he was dying. I think that's what happened. I'm
dying and now he's gone. Where'd he go? I don't know if he can rejoin now that
we're recording. So we may have to stitch this, but we'll see. Oh, that's a good
point. Let's, uh, should we just stitch it? Let's just stitch it real We'll we'll
see where our boys at. All right. Five minutes later. Sorry about those technical
difficulties fan base, but we're back. All three of us are back, Taylor.
Hello. What do you have to say for yourself? Yeah, what was up with that, man? I
don't know, man. I actually have really good internet. So I imagine they just had
to do a little plop plop reset something. I just remember you saying, here's the
thing about Israel that he wants to say, and then you just cut out. Oh, dude,
you're in trouble. You don't want those takes.
Oh, I'm just saying the IDF seems to be doing a pretty good job.
Here's what I'm saying about IDF IDK. You know what I'm saying? I don't know.
IDGA freak.
IDGA. Oh, my gosh. Oh, that's good. All right. So, hey, enough banter,
we've spent enough time making sure Taylor's Internet is good to go. This is going
to be an interesting episode. I'm really excited about this one. So, listener, I'm
going to paint a little bit of a picture for you of how the format of this
episode is going to go. So we're calling this the Battle Royale. And so usually
what happens with an episode of Church History for Chumps is one of the three of
us will do all the research, all the heavy lifting, and then the other two will
just, I don't know, make quips and stuff. This one, we actually all went into a
topic that has a wide span of controversy surrounding it.
And we're all going to come with our own takes and our own opinions. And we're
going to start off with our opening statements, just kind of, you know, show our
swords. And then we're going to Actually, I don't want to say show our swords. That
sounds, you know, suggestive. But that's how we're going to do it all. And the
topic, the topic of today is. Was origin done dirty?
Or if you're not so familiar with the slang, was origins? Historical legacy tarnished
unfairly. So we did an episode on origin a few weeks back, you probably remember it
because I assume that you listen to all of our episodes, if not, you're missing
out. So I'll give a really quick recap on origin. So origin or origin of Alexandria
was a very significant church father. He was born in the late second century,
around the third century. His father is martyred. He's brought up in the faith.
He becomes this kind of teacher of a classical academy.
He is just like really well known and respected around the area,
specifically of Alexandria and Roman Palestine, where he's just this whiz of many
different topics, but he's also just super sharp, a very fantastic theologian.
A lot of people are going to credit him with giving the church like people kind of
weaponize origins kind of idea of typology or allegorizing but really I think the
more charitable way to look at it is origin taught the church how to see Jesus and
the foreshadowing of Jesus all over the Old Testament that's a really big thing that
he's going to contribute. He's going to write hundreds and hundreds of books, most
of which are no longer available. He's going to pen classic phrases that will
describe Christ's divine nature. He's going to write very early ideas that the Church
still holds to about the Trinity, about the hypostatic union of Christ.
He's going who, shoot, I'm spacing on another one that was really important, but I'm
forgetting it. But he was a man of good character. He was well loved, except for
by a particular bishop named Demetrius, who really just didn't seem to like him.
They kind of had a little bit of a rivalry with each other. Demetrius famously
forbade origin from being ordained as a priest because,
and this is one of the biggest rumors, that Origen had unicked himself,
basically removing his sexual organs by choice, which at that time in history was a
huge no -no, and you could not be ordained if you were yourself a eunuch.
And so he is going to be tortured quite a bit,
and like in is sixties, I believe, under the Decian persecution,
under the Emperor Deceus, and even though he's not going to die directly from those
tortures and that mistreatment, he will die within a few years of release, and he
will not be given the title of saint. What's that, Taylor? We concluded that our
friend, our comrade, was martyred I mean we did but we have no power He's not
considered by the Catholic Church a martyr the the ecumenical council of CH4C Right.
I mean all in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. All right. Well, and so it stands Saint or
can we say 10 real quick or should we wait till the end to Saint Tim. Can we
should we Saint Tim? All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. I have a Presbyterian.
And I'm going to shoot. OK, Thomas is like, I don't stand on my own authority.
Thank you. All right, respect, respect. OK, so how's it? How's this going to work,
John?
So Taylor is going to give a quick recap for us of the very,
very complicated originist controversies that are going to take place over the next
few centuries. And then I think we'll just go down the line. The three of us will
give our little opening statements as if we were speaking to the chump nation, like
the jury on the stand. And then we will, and then we'll, we'll explore. So let's
have, so like we'll each say our statements, but we won't, we won't start arguing
until after all the statements are done. Exactly. Yep. Okay. All right.
Taylor, recap. So the first thing that we need to do is understand how complicated
this discussion is. So in like the historical research world,
you have to take into so many things in account. everything from something as simple
as do or the works that we have of him translated accurately to political
motivations of the time and all of these things are so difficult to really get to
the bottom of. So I'm gonna preface this if you are somebody who's very interested
in this and has access to a library, Princeton published in 1992,
Elizabeth Clark's work called The Originals Controversy. I would recommend reading that
because she takes a very in -depth dive into all of these things,
and that will give you a very specific picture of what was actually happening.
Now, I'm not super familiar with any of the criticisms against her work, but I did
browse through it preparing for this episode and she does a good job. There's
another free resource while we're on the topic that I found really helpful.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has an entry on origin that is free that you
can read And I'd recommend that one right and so I'd recommend www .wikipedia .org
Backslash origin with an E Thank you, John tell him John sent you.
Thank you
So funny enough as we're talking about sources Wikipedia you have to be careful with
some things. But I have found in the hyper specific church history /theology world,
Wikipedia is actually like a great gold mine for overviews. Sure. Yeah,
I agree. And I think it's because when professors are bored,
they go edit Wikipedia articles. And I know that sounds funny. But one of our
librarians who's also our professor of ethics. Like, I asked him what he was up to
one day, because, you know, I don't work at work. I just wander around the
building. Anyway, I was like, what's she doing, Dr. Rob? And he's like, oh, just,
just editing her in boving, swicapedia page.
All right, that's awesome. And then we were crazy. They let the Baptists do that,
man. Now, okay, is gondic gondic. Right. I don't even have a sassy comeback.
Just shut up. Okay. So all that to say, we are going to be oversimplifying some
things. And this is a very, very difficult discussion that one section of could be
an entire person's PhD research. So that being said, it is,
I believe, the end of the fourth
Uh, where a certain bishop origin just all the bishops come after him,
right? Mm -hmm a Cyprian bishop named epiphanius of Salamis Decides that he wants to
root out all heresies and false teachings so he is on a warpath And he writes in
375 and 376, and Caradis and then the other word,
Panarion, where he is compiling lists of Origen's teachings and saying this is why
they are heretical. And what's funny is one of his means,
he says that Origen started off Orthodox, like he was fine,
but he turned into a heretic because of Greek education. Hmm.
So the liberals got to him.
Was this was a Latin guy saying that about the Greeks? Like,
is this like some some I do believe I do believe Epiphanias was Latin.
But yeah, Elizabeth Clark argues that this discussion is not east versus west.
OK, OK. So. Respect to the Clark, you know, respect to the Clark. So, OK.
He basically, though, he doesn't like Ordin's origins, kind of like eternal
subordinationism. He doesn't like the excessive allegory that you already attention to.
So just to catch listeners up, the excessive allegory is like Augustine's famous one
is when he tells the, he's writing on the parable of the,
oh my gosh, the wandering guy who gets attacked by the road. The Good Samaritan.
Yeah, the Good Samaritan, that one. I'm in seminary, I know what I'm
Good Samaritan and he just over allegorizes the whole thing, like the sun is God,
there's just a whole bunch there. Origin was the late the foundation for that.
Origin ran very fast so Augustine could walk at a medium pace as the saying goes.
And then here's something interesting, so Origin, one of the issues that Epiphanius
has is that he doesn't like Origin's kind of like speculative theology.
Yeah. And as we talked about before, yes, speculative theology can get you in
trouble, but I don't want to put all my cards on the table, but I'll just say
real quick, if you read origin, I guess it's there's a lot of speculative theology,
but it's done with the understanding, with biblical understanding, right?
So Epiphanius asked John II, the Bishop of Jerusalem, to condemn origin as a
heretic, which had never been done before. Like, it's like a posthumous condemnation,
he's dead already. Is that How do you pronounce it posthumous posthumous? I think
so. I always. Well, I thought it was posthumously. Oh,
my gosh. I don't think so. I think you're right. Oh, I think it's posthumously.
When you read words only and you never listen to these are weird, man. Yeah, that's
the thing.
So posthumously, if I'm wrong, I'm going to roast you so hard in a future episode
or if I'm right. Sorry, and you're wrong. Anyway, you don't.
named Rufanus, who's a priest in the area. He's at the Mount of Olives.
And he was ordained by John of Jerusalem. And he had been very much influenced by
Orgen's writing. He refused,
except Rufanus went and got a guy named Jerome, who also studied origin.
We all know of Jerome, who came to the Jerome, came to agree with this petition to
censor him. And so basically, long story short,
you have Epiphanius, who is wanting him to be condemned.
He doesn't like his teaching. And by the end of the fourth century,
you have Jerome, who's also anti -originist, originist,
who's also begging to have him condemned as a heretic.
And John the Seconds holding strong. And you have now a full blown campaign launched
by Epiphanius and the Thai origin camp. So then and and the in that campaign,
they're going after John the second now. Right. So because he's kind of standing
with origins legacy a little bit. Yes. Okay. Then in this campaign,
Epiphanias can convince his Jerome that John's not good and to break communion with
John.
And
century.
This movement has grown significant. And Rufanus,
though, is holding strong. OK, Rufanus is holding strong, defending. And he's an
origin fan. Yes. Yeah, he's going to do a he's going to do a whole translation of
origins works, right? That's exactly what I'm getting to. Yeah. So he did the
translation of Origins Works, except Jerome was so annoyed because he felt that this
translation was sort of sanitizing Origins writing. And so that leads us to one of
the very first things I said, which is we don't even know, like, if we have the
accurate translations of what these guys said.
So historians say that we, Jerome will go would that historians say that we're using
roofinesses because we've lost Jerome's translation that he does in response to
roofiness. So Jerome goes and translates everything. Okay,
so that's the one in the Palestine area because there's there's two there's two sort
of phases in areas that this originalist controversy starts to take place.
So it's growing, right? This is a growing movement and it reaches Egypt. And then
we have Theophilus, who we've talked about of Alexandria is originally he's he is
sympathetic to the supporters of origin and that Theophilus even preached some of
origin's teachings.
Uh, essentially this thing, I'm trying to wrap this up so we can get into the meat
of the episode, but very good, bro. Yeah. Essentially, uh, Theophilus restored
relationships with the original monks in Egypt because he was still a fan.
He stood strong and, uh, kind of the crisis comes to an end right in like three,
uh, no, not three 99. This set early 400s. Yeah. So boom,
there you go. Okay. That was a very complicated thing with a lot of people
involved. And but John Chrysostom got involved in it, too, right? Yes.
He was the patriarch of Constantinople. Yes. And weren't like like the monks that
theophilus kind of peeved, flew to they like they like ran off to John Chrysostom,
who like kept them, which is why John Chrysostom died in exile, because he was
like, you know, they reprimanded him for supporting these origins, originist monks who
were not supposed. Like I said, so many moving pieces, so many different regions,
very complex stuff. Yeah. So thanks for the recap today. And then there's another
one, which this involves the Emperor Justinian. And yes, the second originalist crisis
is way later in the 700s. It's involves as you said,
Justinian. That's when the works were burned, right? Yes. Yes. Yes. And I think
that's been he was officially pronounced as Anathema. That's when the, yes, that's
when they went back and posthumously condemned him.
Yeah. But that's in recent, in recent years at least, recent popes have cited
origins work as being beneficial for the church. So he's like back in the good
graces of the Roman Catholic Church at least these days. Yeah. It's like when you're
floating between like you haven't been condemned formally. Well, I guess that's not
even true. He was condemned formally. But maybe the fact that he was condemned by
Justinian, who is an Eastern Emperor. Well, no, because I read this.
This was a really interesting David Bentley Hart article that I read that said that
supposedly origin's views were condemned during the Second Council of Constantinople.
But modern scholars don't even think that originism was even brought up during that.
They don't know for sure if he was actually condemned. Right. It's like there were,
I think I forget what they're called, but there were like 13 false teachings that
were brought up. But now modern scholars think that they were added basically added
to the minutes of the meeting after the council had already had already adjourned.
So so like legit, like, yeah, just some backhanded kind of corrupt stuff.
But again, very messy, very complicated origin, definitely a controversial figure for
his allegorical approach to scripture. Some believe that he taught this doctrine of
subordination, which is that there's a subordinate nature between different parts of
the Trinity, which has often been a controversial idea throughout church history.
Of course, there's always the whole universal salvation thing, which I think is the
one that people grab on to the most, because that tends to provoke the most
visceral reaction. All that to say, our guy, not in good graces,
never fully sainted.
Where do we stand? We say to him earlier. Well, that was that was an official.
We nobody nobody put called into And a point of order is the problem there. So,
yeah. Darn.
So, Tommy, you've been the most silent, I think that you should pronounce first. All
right. I think you should make your address to the to the jury of the Chump
Nation. All right. Here we go. Can you guys hear me okay? Testing test.
Dude, come on. All right. Good people of the 21st century.
You are gathered.
And that's the fence feel and excites firebrands like Anabaptist Treadway.
I'm not an Anabaptist. Hey, you're not allowed to talk while I'm doing this.
Silence. Objection. Objection. The question was Athanasius Black.
Oh, wait, wait, hold on. Wrong notes. Hold on. Oh, Here we go. He has a whole bit
for this. I love it. I love it. This is good. All right, I got the right nose
now. Question. Was origin a friend or a foe to orthodoxy?
You, dear listener, you space traveler of the cosmic odyssey,
otherwise known as having a high speed internet connection, have to discern the life
of a man who defies our abilities to place him in a box. But I will beg you,
for once in your life, stop trying to make everyone happy and pick a side.
Certainly, Origen has many admirable qualities. His development of the Hexapola,
the six -columned Hebrew Old Testament, which was some have argued is the beginning
of critical scholarship of scriptural texts and absolute masterpiece 6000 pages of
scriptures side by side that equipped him to study the Old Testament unlike anyone
had before. His piety, his submission to ecclesial authority even when he disagreed
with it, and finally his lifelong desire for martyrdom and faithfulness under intense
torture. I will start by saying that Origen was certainly a Christian,
and I expect to see Origen in the Kingdom of Heaven.
However, when we did our Christological heresies series,
one of the things that we were keen to point out is just because someone is a
heretic doesn't mean they're not a Christian. One could in theory hold a heretical
view either accidentally or maybe even willfully without that necessarily,
depending on the heresy, necessarily making you not a Christian anymore.
I was listening to a podcast from, I forget the title of the podcast,
I'm sorry, but they were talking about origin and they were speaking about him
favorably and they defined a heretic this way. I thought it was a good definition.
The heretic is someone who willfully and persistently rejects an article of faith
despite the church's efforts to correct him. Now Origen was not,
even though there was some of the things that he taught or was speculating about
were challenged by his contemporaries, in many ways many of the things that he wrote
about were challenged by people who were born sometimes even centuries after he wrote
them. And so we can't necessarily define him formally as a heretic who stood against
the church council and then doubled down like we would speak of Arius, for example,
at the Council of Nicaea. His writings,
If they were written today, I think some of them would be considered heresy,
in my opinion.
But he's writing in a very early stage in church history where so much of what
he's doing, you could consider to be speculative theology because he wasn't working
with the same deck of cards that we are. He was, as far as the Scriptures are
concerned, but maybe not necessarily the long -standing tradition of the Church,
the ability to draw on other Church Fathers that maybe hadn't even been born yet.
All that being said, the thing that I want to hone in on, the one thing that I
want to focus on, is his conception of the human soul. Now,
while Origin rejected a Platonic view of transmigration or metampsychosis,
this idea that someone could move from like one body and then they die and their
soul then goes into another body or they have some sort of transfer, almost like
reincarnation where they become a different human or an animal.
He had a view that seems to be more than speculation. It seems to be like really
actually what he believed and taught was that we all were preexisting souls that
could have offended God before being placed in a body. He specifically talks about
this in I can cite his writings. I think it's in here we go give me a second
book two of his writings book two article and chapter nine article seven I believe
he's talking about Esau and Jacob and he's struggling with the idea of like how
could it be that even in the womb God loved Jacob and hated Esau.
And he, as far as I can tell, basically concludes that the reason why that must be
the case is that before Esau was conceived in his mother's womb that he had somehow
offended God in some way in a pre -existent state as a soul without a body.
He definitely is drawing on this tripartite nature of man, which is a platonic way
of viewing a person that we are made up of body, soul,
and spirit. And that's not a heretical view. I mean, there's a lot of Christians
that would hold to that view of the human person. I personally prefer a bipartite
nature of man where we just simply speak of body and soul and the term soul and
spirit, even when we see those three things broken out in Scripture and some verses
in the New Testament referred to body, soul, and spirit. Really, we're talking about
soul and spirit is different ways of talking about the same thing, which is a human
body that has been filled with the breath of God that we have been given a soul
or a spirit. I think that his view of souls pre -existing that could have maybe
even sinned in some way before having a body is contrary to the redemptive
historical scope of scripture. I think it does damage to federal theology, which is
important for understanding original sin. And it simply goes beyond what the
scriptures teach. And so I think this is, in my opinion, the final and most
important piece of evidence for the conclusion that I'll make here in a moment and
then I will yield my time to my good brothers. If Origen were alive today in
teaching these things, I think we would wonder if he got his biblical studies degree
from Brigham Young University. I think that his teaching of the soul is identical to
the way that Church of Latter -day Saints conceives of people.
I didn't have time a super drill into this idea. But there's some kind of wonky
stuff too where he, because of this view of like souls preexisting before bodies,
I think, and I don't know for sure if he actually taught this. And this is where
it gets confusing. But I read something about he was maybe speculating that Jesus
was one of those souls that pre -existed. And he was like the only soul that like
didn't deny God and so he got to be the incarnate one It's the son of God or
something like that. It's it's again, I did not find that it reminds me of It
reminds me of the Mormon doctrine of like Jesus and Satan or like brothers and then
like Satan's like the bad one And Jesus is the good one. Anyway, something to look
more into. So here's my conclusion. I'm advocating for placing origin in the penalty
box of church history. We cannot know the extent of his views, and while we
appreciate the important contributions he made to early Christian philosophy and
theology, we cannot and must not recommend his work wholesale. We can certainly use
his work and his work is very foundational for some of the things that we really
count as essential. For example, the work that he did, which helped the bishops at
Nicaea, is absolutely critical. But Origen is like chat GPT.
He can help you learn some pretty cool stuff, but if you actually use his work,
you could get into serious trouble with your professor. You'll know.
Thank you, Thomas. Yeah, thank you. That was good. All right, Taylor.
Why don't you go? Why don't you go, John? I'd be happy to. I just don't have
anything remotely that verbose to follow up with Tommy. Well, that's fine. Yeah,
that was good. That was fair.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury.
I'd like to start my time by asking a question, "Where has all the whimsy gone?
Where has all the whimsy gone?" When it's speculative theology becomes such a bad
word, I suppose in the 21st century in an age Where truth has fallen into such
subjective hands, and there is so much antagonism from one faction to another,
sometimes for pure reasons, other times out of pure tribalism.
It makes sense that we feel so protective of the truth,
so drawn and magnetized to this illusion of objective reality.
Now, don't get me wrong and don't think that I'm speaking some form of relativist
theology, my friends. I believe that the Gospel is full of the most crucial,
most unflinching, most adamantine truths you can imagine. However,
I also believe that outside of the core of truth is quite a bit of what the
Eastern Church would call mystery.
And when I think of the Gospels and Jesus speaking of God as being a father who
would not deny a child who asked him a question, who would not deny the merest,
most simple request, who would not give a snake When asked for a fish would not
give a dagger when asked for a stone I
Think of origin as a man of divine curiosities, and I think these divine curiosities
Actually gave him the ability to explore some of the most crucial concepts of
Christianity that he was The trailblazer that brought to the scope of our
understanding. Now, I have no doubt that origin was often wrong, but as we've
discussed, this was a man with 15 scribes who sat alongside him,
recording his every thought and idea. Who's to say what undeveloped,
half -baked thoughts just found their way onto the script of a sermon or message
that honestly should not have been there, but was just one of the many things he
threw at the wall seeing what would stick. I think that in exploring what it means
to be a Christian, we need to be okay with the exploration of wisdom,
with the true pursuit of what is good, and recognizing that what is bad and what
is harmful and what is errant does have a destructive quality to it. But what thing
do we enjoy that does not have some air of danger to it?
Who has ever gone on a hike and gone close to an edge before?
What parents would be like, "No, of course not. You will never ride this bicycle.
you will never go to the Grand Canyon. Why must we be so drawn away from danger
when we know that the Good Shepherd watches over us? Again, I do not believe that
origin was a man without error. What I honestly believe, and this is maybe my most
controversial take on this, is that if anyone truly failed origin, it was the church
itself. When we think about the development of theology, we think of it in the
terms of the church father whose name escapes me, who adamantly fought to receive
one of the deuterocanonical books of the Apocrypha into the scriptures. And after
fighting tooth and nail, decade after decade, he eventually realized at the end of
his life, the church has spoken. And He stood down and he allowed the authority of
the church to speak with its God -given authority. So why then was it so long after
the life of Origen that this corrective hand of discipline waited to fall? If it
were not for the church and its corrective hand to discipline and to guide the
falling away of the children of God would not Peter himself have split the church
along ethnic lines. If it were not for Paul speaking truth where there was error,
Origen's life was marred by distasteful rivalries.
With a bishop who scolded him over rumors that history has yet to affirm.
The time of the first origin crisis and controversy was stoked in another sense of
rivalry, wherein the Roman bishops who had grown significantly in the scope of their
authority were warring and rivaled against the monastic communities who largely grasped
onto Origen's ideas. Even the second Origenist crisis was predominantly the overreach
of the Emperor Justinian who opted to speak in a role that only a Church leader
should have spoken. This man has been punished by the ambivalence of the Church
during his own lifetime and the overactive hostility of the Church after his
lifetime. He is a man to whom the Church owes a great deal of respect.
And while his theological flaws are not to be taken,
are not to be believed, his legacy, his faithfulness should not be marred as a
result. The Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church were steeped in political and
systemic error when they opted not to give this man the legacy he deserves.
I seed my time.
Okay. Mr. filibuster.
All right.
I guess it's my turn isn't it mm -hmm all right I'm not I'm not stalling all right
ladies and gentlemen church history for chumps
Tommy put forth a very compelling argument that origins much like chat GPT John
Simon says, "Hey, he did some good. Where's the whimsy? Let's try to have a spirit
of grace." And I say, "I believe in the priesthood of all believers and your
ability to discern
For yourselves, what is true? I think politics came into it.
It's very clear throughout history, our historical record,
that the church, John Simon, did try to put a stopper to Origen by not ordaining
him.
So maybe there was some problematic teachings snuck in there. Maybe origin was too
thinking too big for his bridges, as one might say,
in the spirit of whimsy. But I would also say that the German heretics of the 20th
century were also being whimsical, John Simon.
And I would say, to Tommy's point,
that if one is useful in certain circumstances, but irresponsible in others,
is it still useful? Do you send your children to a school that teaches great
history, but maybe just has a sympathetic view of Hitler during World War II. No,
you don't. You say, "I don't want my child learning anything from that person."
That's why I deleted Twitter, actually.
We don't have time to get into that. So I say, "I do think Origen was problematic,
but I think it should be ended, that he wrote the first systematic theology,
arguably started textual criticism, and definitely meditated on the deep things of
God, and do not condone speculative theology. And I am not willing to play ball
with the idea that something is useful while also being horrifically wrong.
I just say,
"Leave it up to you, dear listeners." My fence feels real nice.
Leave it up to you. Read him for yourself. Discern for yourself.
Take what you can. But I don't think origin should be taught in a Sunday school
classroom.
Amen. Amen. I thought that you were going to just go, "Hey,
so, uh, so, so these guys covered it so well, I'm just going to use the rest of
my time to talk about the nine marks of a healthy church." I kind of wanted to do
that. Honestly, you guys did just knack it out of the park. I think, okay, the one
thing that I, not that I was just lying, So to speak, I think there's something to
be said for the idea of, you know, if he's really wrong in some places,
I will say this, Tommy, you threw out that like glaring accusation about that like
the tie into Mormon theology. Yeah, that was a, that was a, dude, I think you're
taking that was his whole rational beings thing, you're taking that As far as we're
interesting. Okay. His universalism is like That's a bigger problem It's okay But
it's it's the idea that God will purify all rational beings eventually That he will
draw all rational beings back to himself, which I think is a very very charitable
understanding. So I Don't add to what I said earlier I think and I want think,
and I want to do more research on it. Maybe I'll do some more research and then
drop something on our Instagram story to clear it up. But the bit about him
speculating that Jesus was like the pure soul or something like that, that wouldn't
jive with some of his other teaching on the co -eternality and the same substance
language that he uses to talk about the son and the father, that could be something
that his followers were...
in successive generations, what do they do with it? And I think when we look at
origin, that's a complex thing to consider because he has some followers that we
really like,
but then others that we would kind of bulk at. But when we look at the fact that
we don't have all of his writings, But then we do have those people using his
writings later on in church history to Propel some really weird views. I mean,
I guess that's what you get when you have a polymath basically Who has 15 scribes
sitting around him just talking all day long I also think that's just what happens
when you're such a pioneer of so many things, is that like one thing I read,
so in the Eastern Church, the Cappadocian Fathers, Greg,
Greg and Basil, they were all huge, hugely influenced by origin, and that is the
heritage of origin in the Eastern Church,
which is I also read that, uh, I forget, oh, it was that origin's idea of free
will was co -opted by Pelagius to become Pelagianism.
And so it's like, when you have, when you're saying so many fundamental foundational
things, it's like a lot of them can be just ripped apart, but I don't know if
that's necessarily the fault of the person who said it because...
Let me ask you this, Taylor. I want to go ahead and ask you. So.
He did teach.
That souls were pre -existent before bodies. And he did teach that maybe what was
going on with God hating Esau and the womb, as Paul says in Romans.
So, uh, Do you not see that as problematic for no,
here's the actual take I felt like when I came up to the stand I had to like say
something original so I was like all right. I'll just take this like You know you
want your teacher ground? Yeah What I actually hear real Taylor.
Yeah real Taylor No talking to the jury is none of your Sunday school teachers have
perfect theology None of us in here have perfect theology None of our professors or
pastors have perfect theology. We all know that. We're all willing to hold a,
there's a ecumenical fence that we're all willing to like play ball in, in the
playgrounds, so to speak. So Tommy thinks it's okay to sprinkle babies and you know,
you ain't sprinkling my baby, Tommy. I'm a dunk 'em after they profess just at
vacation Bible school. - He wouldn't be able to because the parents have to consent
to it. That's part of the infant baptism thing. - Well, and I also think that's the
person being baptized has to consent to it. But you know, anyway. - Hey, oh! - So
funny. Oh, that's good. - God waits for our consent before he saves us. That's
great. - Oh man, bear. Anyway, look, I think Orgin Origen was a creative young man.
I think that he should absolutely be lauded. I think people took his teachings and
ran with it. I think that that's why he wasn't really condemned. I think there is
something interesting that I said. I was so smart when I pointed out that the
church did try to bar him. Wasn't I, John Simon? That his main mentor was his main
mentor was like, "I, you're not going to be ordained." Maybe there was something
there. Maybe there wasn't. Maybe it was just more political moves. Maybe it was
being threatened by some young guy. But anybody that ventures out to make a
systematic theology is going to get themselves in trouble very quickly. It's very
hard to write a systematic theology. So what was our word for the day? Post
-homelessly. Post -homeless. Right.
So that would be like the equivalent. I think what happened to him was the
equivalent of somebody said, "I don't like Calvinists. They're annoying." Fair point.
Fair point. And so they went back and they were like, "Well, let's just cut this
tree down." And they went back to Calvin and read through every little line he
wrote in systematic theology and tried to rip him apart. So in our
That's not, you know, I'm sure someone is going to, if someone is going to refute
what I'm about to say, but you can't really go back in time and paying Calvin as
a heretic at the moment because of the things that we are currently holding. - Well,
that's kind of an interesting idea. - I believe, it's okay. I believe in one
objective truth. I don't, and like we will all chase the objective answers, but I
don't. I think that there's a reason Jesus did not speak on secondary and tertiary
issues very much. I think it's difficult for us to know. Tommy just made a face.
I'm sorry, Tommy, what did Jesus say about, what did Jesus say about baptizing
children?
Shut up. Children come to me. Oh, yes. And one of those was Ignatius as John Simon
and I discovered. Yeah, that's right. So, all that to say, all that to say,
I'm actually, I'll land the plane. I think we need to, if we were Catholic,
I'd be like, "No, go back in and Saint him." Like boom, come on. Just because,
yeah, he taught some fringe things. And I don't even know if his universalism isn't
real universalism in the standard of like, "Well, a Loving God could never send
anybody to hell. That's not what that's not his argument at all. Right. Mm -hmm.
Well, and I mean I made it clear at the beginning of my statement that he
certainly is a Christian So if that's the if that's your bar for what you're
calling a saint sure like He was a Christian
Saint the man Anyway, that was That was unfiltered,
Tay -Tay. There you go. That was good. Yeah. I mean, it does bring up an
interesting idea of it feels like we want to say we want to believe that all
theology is timeless because all truth is timeless. But I imagine like if you sort
through the volumes and volumes of patristic literature out there, you're going to
read something by someone who is certainly not considered a heretic that could easily
be interpreted as something that's not Orthodox today. And I think maybe it's because
language and culture changes and that makes it hard to really grasp things,
but it also might just mean that, I don't know, like, I I don't know.
It's it's tricky. So, yeah, but I mean,
nobody really knew. I mean, like one of the things that killed me about, I think
it was either the first or second. It was one of the two of them. One of the big
issues that somebody that one of the bishops had with origin was that they didn't
Uh, that he believed that God was incorporeal, which every tradition of Christian
would say right now, like they were literally mad about it because they just didn't
think so anymore, but I don't know. It's crazy stuff.
Yeah, man. Like I said, I really do think I'm very generous towards him now after
reading, especially after reading him. Uh, I'm very, very...
Well, yeah, they were on our Instagram.
I don't know, make us feel make us feel like we won something. I think that'd be
nice. Send serotonin. Yeah, what's our record time at right now?
Because I'm all probably over an hour with the 10 minutes that we started with.
Yeah. Yeah, we're like just I'm all checked up because of the DC. The discharge.
No, disconnect.
Oh, I gotcha Wake up John Simon
What are we doing next episode poly cop
We've done poly carp, dude. You did the death of poly carp. I want to hear about
his life I'm pretty sure most most of his life is just going to be, yeah, he was
a bishop, and then he was martyred. - That's the hard part about the early, early
guys, is we don't know anything about them. - Yeah. - So.
- They didn't write much back then. Well, first battle Royals in the books, boys,
how do you feel? - I don't like making a statement like we're talking to a jury. I
didn't know that was what was going to happen. - Oh, I'm sorry. I-- - It's okay.
- I feel like you'd be really good at that if you had prepared for that. - I think
Taylor round two was decent. - Yeah, I think everybody won.
I think we all won, guys. - 20 years, you suck at fencing, dude. (laughing) - Oh my
gosh. - I'm just memeing myself. Of course, I think I won. Are you kidding me?
(laughing) I've molested you All right, yeah, like the camp counselor that just all
the kids love because he's like me and everything Yeah, I I try train children for
greatness You just think give him pats on the back goldfish. I fence it when when
we need a Common a common ground, you know when we just got to be stable I'm just
I'm just trying to make sure everyone hears each other when we battle I didn't sit
on a single fence today, Bro, I came out swinging and I think the audience knows
that you asked where the whimsy was Yeah, where is it?
What's our known DMX track actually? Where my dog that's good.
Where the where where? That's good gosh dig it. All right.
Well good stuff boys Chum Nation the job is now yours and You know,
you might be listening to this and thinking like, I don't want to do that. I don't
want to have to type something. That's exactly how you sound. But here's the thing.
If we get one vote, that vote has 100 % power. So if you're that one vote
listener, you get to decide. And that means at the next episode, when the votes
have been counted, whoever the winner is, is going to be insufferable. Or should I
say, I will be insufferable. You're guaranteeing no one's going to vote for you.
Yeah, I know. I really am. But actually, that's a defense skill, because now I can
say, well, they just didn't vote for me because I acted all prideful. We need to
end with the epic rap battles of history. Who won? Gosh.
Who next? I forgot about that. You decide. You decide. That's Good all right.
Well, thanks for all the thanks for the laughs boys. We will we'll talk to you
guys real soon and Talk to you later. Bye. Bye