I recently began collecting IVP’s Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture series. The series collects commentary from the early church fathers relating to a given scriptural text. Currently I’m working through the volume on Romans.
It’s fascinating to see how much of the theological groundwork laid by the fathers survives today. It’s a testament both to their brilliance — they did their writing and research without decent libraries, much less computers — and also to the coherence and power of scripture, which speaks to our age just as it did to theirs.
I’ve been surprised to find that the father whose writings have struck me as the most rich and cogent is Origen. The little I knew of Origen was from some survey courses in college, in which we learned that Origen’s “allegorical” method of interpreting scripture should be avoided and that Origen was eventually condemned as a heretic.
I need to study more about Origen as a historical figure. From what I’ve been able to gather so far, what I learned in college isn’t inaccurate, but it also isn’t the whole story. In the meantime, the snippets of Origen I’m finding in the IVP series show that he possessed a unique blend of intellect, erudition, and practical pastoral instincts — in other words, he was the kind of person I most admire and aspire to become. I haven’t yet seen much of the allegorical hermeneutic for which he later became infamous, although that may be a function of the particular IVP volume I’m studying.
So here’s just one brief snippet of Origen that I found compelling. He’s commenting here on Romans 5:12-21, which speaks of the regin of death since Adam’s fall, and the deliverance from that reign in Christ:
It seems to me that Paul’s description of death and its power may be compared to the entry of a tyrant who wants to usurp the authority of the legitimate ruler and after seizing the entrance to the kingdom by the treachery of the gatekeepr then tries to get public opinion on his side. To a great extent he succeeds in this and can therefore claim that the kingdom belongs to him.It was during the rule of this tyrant that Moses, a leader chosen by the legitimate ruler, was sent to the occupied peoples in order to revoke the laws of the civil administration and teach them to follow the laws of the true king…. This leader did all he could to deliver at least some of the people from the control of sin and death, and in the end he managed to form a nation composed of those who chose to associate with him. At the command fo the king, he instituted sacrifices which were to be offered with a certain solemnity, as was only fitting, and by which their sins would be forgiven. And so at last a part of the human race began to be set free from the rule of sin and death….
I love that comparison of sin and death to a usurping pretender to the throne! Whatever you think of Origen, I highly recommend the Ancient Christian Commentary series. Nothing deepens and broadens the understanding of the faith like historical perspective.