10
May

The Rule of Faith

   Posted by: greg   in Christianity, Religion, Theology

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I’m studying for my Patristic and Byzantine Theology final, and I’m rereading First Principles written by Origen between 220 and 230. Here is a passage I have marked as “The Rule of Faith”.

When we find many who think they hold the doctrine of Christ, some of them differing in their beliefs from the Christians of earlier times, and yet the teaching of the church, handed down in unbroken succession from the apostles, is still preserved and continues to exist in the churches up to the present day, we maintain that that only is to believed as the truth which in no way conflicts with the tradition of the church and the apostles.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 10th, 2008 at 6:51 pm and is filed under Christianity, Religion, Theology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 comments so far

Bear
 1 

I don’t disagree w/ the quote, however, if he’s saying that consistent doctrine thru the ages signifies truth, I’d have to say that many negative beliefs have also transcended time.

I am VERY open to the idea that I don’t understand his meaning. :)

May 12th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
greg
 2 

I don’t think he’s saying consistency in general is an indicator of truth. Rather, he’s saying there is a difference between doctrines that could be traced back to apostolic times, and contradictory doctrines, such as gnosticism, that had developed later.

Interestingly, Origen was very prolific and had a very inquisitive nature. In his attempts to explain certain mysteries he sometimes said things that were later determined to be erroneous. Therefore, later generations used Origen’s own criteria to condemn some of his teachings.

May 12th, 2008 at 3:09 pm

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