I’m fascinated by the way Origen — a brilliant thinker, but rather dull writer — can still arouse passions after, lo, these two millennia. When I wrote my first book on the Fathers, I was probably just a little too sympathetic to the guy, who did stray into some pretty weird thinking. But, on the other hand, he also willingly underwent the most severe tortures for the sake of the faith, and he died a confessor, if not a martyr. And, really, where would we be without his literary legacy, which is rather large even after the purges of the centuries. The problem boils down to this: Origen did stray into some doctrines that the Church later condemned; but he always insisted that he wanted only to hold the faith of the Catholic Church, and he urged his readers and listeners to have the same desire. Thus, sympathetic readers have judged some of his doctrine to be aberrant, but Origen himself to be “not guilty” of heresy. Giants of the twentieth century wrote studies on him, including Danielou, de Lubac, and von Balthasar. Pope John Paul II quoted him in his encyclicals, and the Church cites his authority in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

The online literature on Origen is overwhelming. You’ll find, here and here, two good easy-to-read discussions of the particular problems presented by Origen. If you have an opinion, please do sound off.