Serious
scholars of early Christianity (I mean those who are not excessively driven by
the religious agenda) have rightly pointed out that, despite an explicit
aversion to, and repudiation of, philosophy, so prominently exhibited already in
Apostle Paul,-- the Gospel of St. John, as contrasted to the three earlier
Gospels, is clearly a philosophical effort to represent Christian theology, bearing
unmistakable links to Platonic philosophy, even to the point of borrowing its
language and basic concepts. Although the connection of St. John to philosophy
is thus firmly established, I shall not treat him as a figure of a specific
philosophical interest, due to his religious eminence and sacredness to
Christianity. The non-sacred person of Origen, however, imposes no such inhibitions,
and he may well serve us as an example of how, for better or for worse,
theology has been philosophized over the ages in an ostensible effort to make
the two compatible, and ipse facto proving that all theological attacks on
philosophy have been inconsistent and often disingenuous. Thus Christianity was
opening itself to a religion-dominated Christian philosophy, and repudiated all
those philosophers who would not allow themselves to be dominated, preferring
to keep an open mind on matters religious. Which is of course understandable,
but counterproductive, as philosophy is indeed incompatible with faith-based
creed. In other words, no matter how fascinating it is to look at religion
through the unquestionably secular prism of philosophy, the strict line
separating the two must always be kept in mind, although, as I’ve pointed out
in several places already, it is possible to treat religion philosophically, on
deliberate cross-cultural journeys.
Origen
(185-254 AD) shows us how shaky is the ground on which Christian theology and
philosophy meet, even under the best intentions of everybody concerned. He did
indeed venture far into the sea of philosophy on his ship of well-intentioned
Christianity, even earning for himself the honorific title of a Church Father. Yet had he lived later,
after Christianity was officially recognized as the religion of Rome, his views
would undoubtedly have been denounced as heretical and inimical to the
Christian Dogma. As a matter of fact, his views
were indeed denounced as such by none other than St. Jerome who, however,
prudently stopped short of denouncing the
man, treating him, according to the already established tradition as a…
venerable Church Father! If ever there was a meaning to the term “double-truth,” here is a most revealing
example.
The
four major heresies of Origen, as stated by Bertrand Russell in his History of Western Philosophy, are as follows:
1. The pre-existence
of souls, as taught by Plato.
2. That the
human nature of Christ, and not only His divine nature, existed before the Incarnation.
3. That, after
the resurrection, our bodies shall be transformed into absolutely ethereal bodies.
4. That all men,
and even devils, shall be saved at the last.
Origen’s
most curious statement supposed to bridge the gap between Greek and Christian
philosophy, and ever since becoming the principal argument of the Christians,
was made in Contra Celsum, Book I,
Chapter II, in response to Celsus’ argument to the effect that Christianity
coming from the “barbarian” Jews cannot be made sense of without the necessary
application of, and reinterpretation by, the pristine Classical Greek intellect.
So, here it is what Origen says, first asserting that any person coming to
Christianity from Greek philosophy must conclude by the rational method alone
that the Gospel is true. But there is more to it than that:
“...The Gospel has a
demonstration of its own, more divine than any established by Grecian dialectics.
And this diviner method is called by the apostle the ‘manifestation of the
Spirit and of power’; of ‘the Spirit,’ on account of the prophesies, which are
sufficient to produce faith in anyone who reads them, especially in those
things which relate to Christ; and ‘of power,’ because of the signs and wonders
which we must believe to have been performed, both on many other grounds, and
on this, that traces of them are still preserved among those who regulate their
lives by the precepts of the Gospel.”
Thus,
Origen not only insists on a full compatibility of Greek philosophy and
Christian theology, but also on their complementarity in approaching the
Christian phenomenon, with theology naturally given the upper hand.
However,
there is a serious inconsistency in Origen’s approach. On the one hand, he
seems to allow a connection between secular philosophy and divine theology. On
the other hand, he categorically separates the affairs of the Church from the
affairs of the State, advising Christians to attend to the affairs of the
Church, but to remove themselves from matters secular. This unhealthy attitude
may not have survived intact in the life and practice of the Roman Catholic
Church, but the prejudice has become ingrained, and it persists up to the
present day, not just in Roman Catholicism, but, even more pronouncedly, among
today’s American Evangelicals, who, dangerously, look at the world not in
objective secular terms, but through the heavily biased prism of their heavily
biased interpretation of the Christian religious dogma.
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