Origen, to Heraclides:<\/p>\n
\u201cOur Lord and Saviour is in his relation to the Father and God of the universe not one flesh, not one spirit, but what is much higher than flesh and spirit, one God.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was Bishop Heraclides who needed setting straight, in the papyri found at Toura in Egypt, the better part of a century ago. He was having trouble with his whole conception of the Trinity. So was his congregation, we might gather, as the heresy of \u201cmodalism\u201d was hatching out, in old Alexandria.<\/p>\n
This is necessary to mention because, still today, it is Origen whose orthodoxy is suspected. This major Father of the Church, who can reasonably be said to rank with Saints Augustine and Thomas Aquinas among her greatest minds, got several things wrong in his pioneering accounts of the breadth and depth of Christian theology. But he got these things so brilliantly wrong, that paths to the right were opened.<\/p>\n
His reputation has been rising through the last century, I think because we have drifted back into the \u201cincipient heresies\u201d among the Alexandrian intellectuals, in the late second and early third centuries. Origen lights this ancient landscape, as he struggles to find what the orthodox Christian positions must be, with incredible energy and often explosive genius.<\/p>\n
Origen\u2019s own superiors were a complicating factor. Origen himself was finally run out of town, after years of discreetly correcting their more foolish utterances.<\/p>\n
The \u201cDiscussion with Heraclides\u201d is a fascinating sidelight on these controversies. Christians are struggling with the grammatical subtleties of the Logos prologue to the Gospel of John — questions of exactly what came first; of what is begotten and what unbegotten? How many Persons are there?<\/p>\n
The modal thesis (which burst out in Sabellianism) holds that the Trinity is not fully real; that Heavenly Father, Resurrected Son, and Holy Spirit are three modes of a single modal Godhead, distinct perhaps in the mind of a believer, but only in appearance. This is the world before the First Council of Nicaea, and the triumph of that later Alexandrian bishop, Athanasius the Great.<\/p>\n
It is a world in which we become aware of the equivalent of TED talks, and advertised public debates; though on a higher intellectual plane than anything we have in our media. Thanks to the interest of a wealthy sponsor, Origen is followed about by seven or more shorthand stenographers, transcribing his lectures in quick successive takes.<\/p>\n
And the \u201cDiscussion with Heraclides\u201d (copied in turn several centuries later) is a rare example of one of these transcriptions. It is not a literary dialogue; it is the thing itself. We are there, with the audience of students, professors, and high churchmen, watching Origen clean Heraclides\u2019 clock. I find this quite thrilling.<\/p>\n
We see in action Origen\u2019s almost superhuman ability to quote Scripture and other sources from memory, with exquisite aptness. We sense the almost inhuman gentleness, of a figure who is no curmudgeon nor media gladiator, but a man seeking Truth, and seeking to instill it in others. He fills me with shame for some of my own past antics, trying to \u201cscore\u201d in debates. For he is instead trying to win his opponents over.<\/p>\n
Suddenly Origen\u2019s professions of loyalty to the Church become vividly real. He had faith that the institution founded by Christ would always find its way to Truth, and if his own attempts had to be corrected, he would gladly submit. It is an aspect of the Catholic faith that is nearly lost on us today: this sense of our own smallness in the presence of something unearthly large.<\/p>\n
We still have bishops who don\u2019t get this; and men who think that doctrine is something that can be settled by themselves.<\/p>\n
But the quality of Origen\u2019s mind, which I find implicit in the quotation with which I started (one could choose from many thousand others), is worth considering in itself. He has a profound sense of what I will call \u201cthe dimensionality of things.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is a phrase I lifted from physics, back in the day. Often when I was stuck — facing some simple formula which I knew to be inconfutable on its face — I would still be puzzled. It would seem arbitrary, facile. I would \u201cvague out\u201d from thinking, this is not a law of the universe, but a mere instrument reading.<\/p>\n
Example: yes, I know, this is the speed of light, but it\u2019s not like a traffic sign. Nor is it any other sort of limitation, imposed as the consequence of other physical laws. We assume the \u201cmachine\u201d of nature, which works in absolutely predictable ways. For all we know it might change over time, and the \u201cspeed\u201d of time itself be changing, without our being able to perceive it. Rather these are artefacts of our system of mensuration. How can we get \u201cbehind\u201d them?<\/p>\n
Or better: what can we mean by saying time is the \u201cfourth dimension\u201d? It is the fourth variable in many equations, but in that case temperature might be a fifth; and so on. We choose our dimensions, and lock ourselves in, but the very \u201cdimensionality\u201d of our own universe presents a puzzle beyond the reductions and simplifications of human understanding.<\/p>\n
To more fully understand, we must go higher, and higher still, until we inevitably lose the thread. At some point we must acknowledge that the reality we want to box and wrap, as a kind of Christmas present to ourselves, is just a toy from the toy store.<\/p>\n
And at that point we may begin to appreciate the significance of Revelation. It lies necessarily beyond the ken of our little instruments, and will have to be told to us, because we can\u2019t ourselves begin to measure, or know. And even to hear what we are told requires a genius for listening, and \u201cpondering,\u201d through prayer.<\/p>\n
Beyond dimension, we must more fundamentally grasp the dimensionality of things.<\/p>\n
By David Warren, lecturer in religion and literature, St Philip’s Seminary<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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