On Origen

for those who are ascribing to see origen as either a church father or authority, I have a hand ful of things to say. The first thing I would like to say is that in general theologians primarily respect origen for his apologetics not for his theology. What do I mean by that? What I mean is that any soldier on any battle field plays this fine line between the good guys and the bad guys because he is fighting on enemy territo and there is this tendancy to be sucked in by the enemy and almost become an enemy your self. he who fights monsters beware lest he become a monster. in general that is the accusation against origen. He kind of "became a monster". That is really strong language, and perhaps to strong for origen. We don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water. but in general origen, he had some incredbile defenses for the christian faith. He was a really good apologist and really articulate for people who were not christians as to why they should be christians. But at the same time he seems to have compromised his theology- he kind of believed some pretty crazy things. He didn't believe the scripture was inerrant. He believed the authors of scripture made mistakes in writing it. He also believed that the trinity (father, son, and holy spirit) were a higher archy. Father, who is the highest, the son, who is the next highest, and the holy spirit, who is the lowest. The implications of that is that they are all God, but not all equal. Or something along those lines. Which, theologically, goes against some of the early creeds and sets the stage in a strange fashion for thinking about God. I haven't actually read Origen on the trinity, but I know that people are critical of that. And the thirds thing that people are critical of his theology is that he was a universalist. He believed that everyone was ultimately going to be saved and a lot of people today try to claim origen as their guy because it is historical. Which, yes it is historical but it is also heretical. people have never really considered that idea to be orthodox christianity. See, origen beliueved that hell was a resting place, but it wasn't a place that people stayed. He believed that people always ended upcoming out of hell I believe he believed in the rasnsom theory which states that satan origenally held us in bondage, but that god comes along and jesus chrsit comes along and ransoms us from satan and in the long run all humanity makes their way out of hell and so do all of the demons. And origen actually has an interesting way of coming to that conclusion (and I partially agreee with him, but not on the universalist part). He believes that we are all sons of God in a manner of speaking. We are all created in a way that makes us like God., Meaning that angles deamons and humans are all part of the same species, but parts of different sects(?) of the same species. That we have kind of grown a part, that angels have continued to be obedient to God,