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Berdyaev and Origen: A Comparison1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Matthew Spinka
Matthew Spinka
Affiliation:
The Hartford Theological Seminary Hartford, Connecticut
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Extract

Canon Raven of the University of Cambridge, in his recently published book, expressed a significant, if somewhat startling, judgment regarding the historical trend of Western theology:

The first adequate theology, still perhaps the noblest ever formulated, [was] the Logos theology of the Greek Apologists, which had its fullest expression in the Christian Platonism of Clement of Alexandria and Origen. … It is one of the tragedies of history that the work of this brilliant succession of Christian thinkers was allowed not merely to come to an end, but to fall into neglect, oblivion and condemnation. If we are to handle effectively the task of elucidating a Christian theology for the twentieth century, we must, I think, ignore all the elaborate structures of later orthodoxy, Catholic and Protestant, which for today are literally irrelevant, and return to the point at which Origen was removed.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 16 , Issue 1 , March 1947, pp. 3 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1947

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References

2 Raven, Charles B., Good News of God (New York: Harper & Brothers, n.d.), 98–99.Google Scholar Used by permission.

3 Cadiou, René, Origen: his life at Alexandria (St. Louis, Mo., 1944), v.Google Scholar

4 Butterworth, G. W., tr., Origen on the First Principles (London, 1936), 2–6.Google Scholar

5 Ibid., 19, 60, 133.

6 Nicolas, Berdyaev, Slavery and Freedom (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1944), 8–9.Google Scholar Used by permission.

7 Berdyaev, N., Filosoflya svobody (Moscow, 1911), 34.Google Scholar

8 Berdyaev, N., O dostoinstve Khristianstva i nedostoinstve Khristian (Warsaw, 1928), 21–23.Google Scholar

9 Slavery and Freedom, 13.

10 Ibid., 15.

11 Berdyaev, N., “Tri yubileya,” in Put', No. 11 (06, 1928), 82.Google Scholar

12 Nicolas, Berdyaev, Sub specie aeternitatis (St. Petersburg, 1907).Google Scholar

13 Ibid., 116.

14 Ibid., 17.

15 Ibid., 4.

16 Novoe religioznoe soznanie, vii.

17 Berdyaev, N., The End of Our Time (New York, 1935), 204.Google Scholar

18 Berdyaev, , Sub specie aeternitatis, 436, footnote 1.Google Scholar

19 Berdyaev, N., Freedom and the Spirit (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1935), xix. Used by permission.Google Scholar

20 At the Second Council of Constantinople held by Emperor Justinian in 553, Origen was condemned for holding, among other opinions, that prior to the creation of the space-time world, “all rational creatures consisted of minds, bodiless and immaterial…” Butterworth, , Origen on First Principles, 125.Google Scholar

21 Filosofiya svobody, 148.

22 Ibid., 144–48.

23 Put', No. 18 (09, 1929), 120.

24 Berdyaev, N., The Destiny of Man (New York, 1937), 47.Google Scholar

25 Freedom and the Spirit, 163; also Filosofiya svobody, 142, 145.

26 Butterworth, , Origen on First Principles, 321, 30.Google Scholar

27 Ibid., 322, 323.

28 Ibid., 77.

29 Ibid., 166.

30 Ibid., 67, 126. Plato taught the doctrine of soul's descent in Phaedrus (Jowett, B., tr., The Dialogues of Plato [New York, 1907], I, 553.)Google Scholar Origen alludes to it in Contra Celsum, IV, 40, where he says that the Christian doctrine far exceeds that of Plato.

31 Freedom and the Spirit, 22.

32 Ibid., 344.

33 Butterworth, , Origen on First Principles, 83, 239.Google Scholar

34 Filosofiya svobody, 151.

35 Freedom and the Spirit, 323.

36 Ibid., 326.

37 Ibid.

38 Filosofiya svobody (Moscow, 1911).Google Scholar

39 Smysl istorii (Berlin, 1923).Google Scholar

40 Nicolas, Berdyaev, The Meaning of History (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1936), 58.Google Scholar Used by pormission.

41 Slavery and Freedom (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1944), 89. Used by permission.Google Scholar

42 Filosofiya svobody, 150.

43 Ibid., 160.

44 Ibid., 161.

45 Filosofiya svobody, 176–77.

46 Ibid., 179; cf. Freedom and the Spirit, 344 ff; also O dostoinstve Khristianstva i nedostoinstve Khristian, 16–17.

47 Filosofiya svobody, 180.

48 Ibid., 180.

49 “The End of Renaissance,” in Slavonic Review, IV (1925), 5.Google Scholar

50 In a footnote Berdyaev asserts that German mysticism constituted the eternal principle of Protestantism.

51 Filosofiya svobody, 181.

52 Ibid., 123; cf. Freedom and the Spirit, 354–55.

53 Filosofiya svobody, 183.

54 “The End of Renaissance,” 10.

55 Freedom and the Spirit, 219.

56 “The End of Renaissance,” 12.

57 Butterworth, , Origen on the First Principles, 78, 89, 126, 209, 237ff., 244ff., 249.Google Scholar

58 Stepun, F., “Po povodu pisma N. A. Berdyaeva,” in Sovremennyya zapiski, XXIV (1925), 304ff.Google Scholar

59 Berdyaev, N., The Destiny of Man (New York, 1937).Google Scholar

60 Freedom and the Spirit, 172.

61 The Destiny of Man, 106, 377; Slavery and Freedom, 45.

62 Ibid., 25.

63 Emery, Reves, The Anatomy of Peace (New York, 1945), 76ff.Google Scholar, does it with a vengeance!

64 O dostoinstve Khristianstva i nedostoinstve Khristian, 9.

65 Butterworth, , Origen on First Principles, 52Google Scholar; cf. also 251–52.

66 The Destiny of Man, 325; also Freedom and the Spirit, 54–55.

67 Freedom and the Spirit, 324.

68 Ibid., 323.

69 Berdyaev writes about Fedorov in “Tri yubileya (Tolstoy, L., Ibsen, H., Fedorov, N.), in “Put”, No. 11, 06, 1928Google Scholar; there is an utterly unenlightening excerpt from Fedorov's work in the same magazine (No. 10, April 1928).