"[[297]]
But during the first half of the third century came one who
exercised a still stronger influence in this direction--a great man
who, while rendering precious services, did more than any other to
fasten upon the Church a system which has been one of its heaviest
burdens for more than sixteen hundred years: this was Origen. Yet
his purpose was noble and his work based on profound thought. He
had to meet the leading philosophers of the pagan world, to reply
to their arguments against the Old Testament, and especially to
break the force of their taunts against its imputation of human
form, limitations, passions, weaknesses, and even immoralities to
the Almighty.
Starting with a mistaken translation of a verse in the book of
Proverbs, Origen presented as a basis for his main structure the
idea of a threefold sense of Scripture: the literal, the moral, and
the mystic--corresponding to the Platonic conception of the
threefold nature of man. As results of this we have such
masterpieces as his proof, from the fifth verse of chapter xxv of
Job, that the stars are living beings, and from the well-known
passage in the nineteenth chapter of St.
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