Monday, December 12, 2005
(12:17 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
A Christian Tradition
Jaroslav Pelikan reports that the Emperor Justininian "made the quite unsubstantiated charge that Origen 'in the very time of his martyrdom denied Christ and paid his worship to the many gods of the Greeks'" (The Christian Tradition, vol. 1, pg. 343). Since he is dealing with the Emperor who consolidated both Roman law and Christian doctrine in a way that remained determinative for the entire Byzantine period, Pelikan perhaps thought it indelicate to refer to such a statement as a "lie," even given that it seems highly unlikely that we will find evidence to "substantiate" the claim that Origen abandoned the faith to which he devoted his entire life.This is just one of the most egregious examples of a trait that is shared almost universally among the defenders of orthodoxy: a willingness, perhaps even an eagerness, to indulge in overblown rhetoric and petty slander against all opponents, real or imagined. Simply on the basis of Jesus and Paul, I have always been suspicious when people claimed that calm, measured reasonableness was a distinctively Christian trait, and now I might be willing to venture the opposite claim: a close adherence to the canons of politeness and fair-minded debate is the sure sign of a heretic. One could say that this infallible rule is what gets Origen condemned repeatedly, while Augustine's doctrines, just as speculative and idiosyncratic if not more so, get a free pass due to his excessively vituperative tone.
