On First Principles
Origen’s attempt, in four books, to set out Christian teaching as a connected whole: God, the rational creatures, the world, free will and the interpretation of Scripture. It was written at Alexandria and survives mostly in a Latin version made at the end of the fourth century.
Read the text at newadvent.org ↗The translator Rufinus’s prologue, in which he explains his changes (CCEL) ↗
Eusebius says that Origen wrote this work before he left Alexandria (Church History 6.24). The preface draws a line between what the apostles taught plainly, which it lists, and the questions they left open, on which Origen offers reasoned opinions. The fourth book explains his method of reading Scripture.
A reader has to know how the text has come down. The Greek original is lost apart from extracts, among them the chapters on Scripture in book 4. The whole survives only in the Latin translation made by Rufinus of Aquileia at the end of the fourth century. In his prologue Rufinus says openly that he believed Origen’s books had been tampered with by heretics, and that where he found statements about the Trinity that conflicted with what Origen says elsewhere he left them out or rewrote them to agree. What is read today is therefore Origen as a later admirer thought he should be read, and it cannot always be taken as his exact words.
Cited in
- about AD 203 to AD 254, estimated date