Origen: Scholarship in the Service of the Church

The Christian Theology in Context series aims to provide students and general readers, as well as academics, with a collection of well researched yet accessible books on the most important theologians and theological movements of the Christian church from the apostolic period to the present day. The volumes are unique in setting theological thought in its full social, historical, and political context. Each attempts to show the close relationship between knowledge and social practice, rationality and cultural location.

This book is about the life and thought of Origen (c.185-254 A.D.), the most important Greek-speaking Christian theologian and Biblical scholar in antiquity. His writings included works on the text of the Bible, commentaries and sermons on most of the books of the Bible, a major defense of the Christian faith against a philosophical skeptic, and the first attempt at writing systematic theology ever made. Ronald E. Heine presents Origen's work in the context of the two urban centers where he lived-Alexandria in Egypt, and Caesarea in Palestine. Heine argues that these urban contexts and their communities of faith had a discernable impact on Origen's intellectual work.

The study begins with a description of Roman Alexandria where Origen spent the first forty-six years of his life. The remains of Origen's writings produced in Alexandria provide information about his early theological views. Heine discusses the issues of the canon and text of the Bible used by Origen and the Alexandrian Christian community and the work called the Hexapla which he produced on the text of the Septuagint. Origen's later life in Caesarea put him in contact with the city's large Jewish population. His focus shifted from his earlier Alexandrian occupation with Gnostic issues to the complex questions concerning the relationship between church and synagogue and the ultimate fate of the Jews.

Ronald E. Heine is Professor of Bible and Theology, Northwest Christian University, Eugene, Oregon.