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Origen and the Regulae Fidei1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
Extract
It is certainly no compliment nowadays to call a man a “speculative theologian.” It was even less so in the early centuries of the Christian era. For “speculative theology” is that kind of religious thought which is relatively indifferent to the realm of history and human events and which proposes postulates and principles which are regarded as a priori, having no necessary connection with history. This viewpoint, reflected in Marcion and the Gnostics, was one of the primary issues which led to their condemnation by the early church. Yet it is by no means an exceptional view which regards Origen primarily as a “speculative theologian,” as one who scorned the simple faith of the Christians around him, and who mingled theology and philosophy together in such fashion that the truth and simplicity of the primitive Gospel were distorted and obscured. The redress of such an exaggeration would involve us deeply in the pivotal question of the relation, in Origen's thought, between theology and philosophy. Despite prolonged debate, this problem can hardly be regarded as settled. Nor does this paper propose to attempt such a settlement. Rather it will confine itself to a much less ambitious but nevertheless prior question: how do the doctrinal norms in Origen's thought compare or contrast with what we know of similar basic beliefs in the Christian thought of his own and immediately preceding periods? An answer to this ought to afford preliminary data for the determination of the broader issue noted above and might, in itself, throw some light on the sense, if any, in which Origen may justly be called a “speculative theologian.”
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- Copyright © American Society of Church History 1939
References
2 Völker, W., Das Vollkommenheitsideal des Origenes (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1931), 1–21Google Scholar, for a summary of the variety of opinion, in Origenistie research, upon this point.
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