Word: origen
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...that next to him Christ looked almost pallid. Faust's fiendish friend, Mephistopheles, is one of literature's great protagonists. It is no new thing for the Rolling Stones to conjure up Sympathy for the Devil. He had it long ago, even from so famous a church father as Origen, who speculated that Satan and his fallen angels would be saved at the end of time...
...date of Christmas was fixed in the calendar (by Pope Julius I in the middle of the 4th century), the cave or stable in Bethlehem had been an object of veneration. St. Justin Martyr mentioned the present Grotto of the Nativity as early as 155; a century later, Origen discussed the authenticity of the site (even Christianity's enemies, he said, admitted it). The manger scene-with the Wise Men from Matthew and the shepherds from Luke-is one of the oldest Christian traditions. It is also the easiest to dramatize. Canticles of the 4th, 5th and 6th centuries...
RECTORS CLASH OVER HELL, bannered the Columbia Basin News, and the air was soon thick with theology. Kinsolving was within his rights, said some: Hell-lessness had been defended by churchmen from Origen (circa 185-254) to Archbishop of Canterbury William Temple (1881-1944). But Origen's teachings were condemned as heresy by the Second Council of Constantinople (553). May's backers recalled. "Kinsolving's theology is sensationalism," said one clergyman. "He preaches on sex and questions the virgin birth. He's completely different from the rest of us in every way-he gets...
Indeed, said Jesuit John Courtney Murray, "the first church-related school [founded by Origen in the 3rd century] came into being in answer to an inner need of the human spirit as it was caught in the clashing encounter between Christianity and all the knowledge symbolized by the Alexandrian Museum. This encounter is permanently joined, for 'the Museum' is a permanent institution, and so too is the Church . . . What the human spirit endowed with Christian faith permanently needs is that these two knowledges should be related in a universe of intellectual order . . . The Christian school therefore undertakes...
...analogy is imperfect. Origen was operating on a corpse. It is possible that modern society will not be ready for conversion until it has made the cultural corpse dangerously radio-active. Perhaps Western civilization has not yet reached the condition of Alexandria. Perhaps we are living in the last days of the Republic. Today we are not quite desperate. We are ready to have just one more fling at nationalism and egotism and secularism, one more bid to create paradise on earth by harnessing the atom. After we have blown ourselves to smithereens, then we will admit defeat and begin...