Tagged: Origen

We present second part in the series on relationship of Christianity and high culture of antiquity, summarized in the notion of the palaios logos. Here, by interpreting one remarkable passage from Origen's classical apologetic work Contra Celsum, we draw some distinctions in understanding of time, knowledge of future, human conscience and the relationship of God to man that are unique for Christianity. Our inquiry leads us before the specific problem - a pitfall most characteristic of our own age: human urge to posses the knowledge of the future, which will be treated in detail in the third part of the series. 

It is said that "Christianity is against human nature". Well, if you think that unspoken reason for saying this was originally: "because it prevents people of wanting to conquer and shag each other, thus at the same time deadening their more creative impulses", you would be quite wrong. The original intellectual objections to Christianity came from people who denounced Christians for rejecting the palaios logos - "the word of old" - that is, ancient metaphysical tradition and civilization built around it, and thus ushering a sort of, what we would now call, a revolutionary new beginning. In this series of essays we'll attempt to indicate not only how and why this was a fundamental misunderstanding, but how Christians who in turn unequivocally rejected the proverbial "Athens" for the sake of absolute - in fact: isolated - "Jerusalem" committed quite a congenial mistake.