Origen for Beginners

The Condemned Genius Who Shaped Christianity Forever

Alexandria, 185 AD. A brilliant young scholar watches Roman soldiers execute his father for refusing to deny Christ. At seventeen, Origen tries to follow him to martyrdom-only his mother hides his clothes, saving his life. This frustrated death wish will haunt him for fifty years.

By eighteen, he was teaching the faith in Alexandria's streets. By thirty, he'd established Christianity's first true theological school. By fifty, he'd produced perhaps two thousand works. At seventy, he finally achieved martyrdom-broken by torture under Emperor Decius, refusing to sacrifice to Rome's gods.

Yet three centuries after his death, an ecumenical council condemned him as a heretic.

How does a man who suffered torture rather than deny Christ become branded as teaching dangerous error? How did Christianity's most prolific early writer-whose work influenced Jerome, Augustine, and countless others-end up anathematized by the church he served?

You'll discover:

• How a teenage prodigy transformed Christian education in the Roman Empire's intellectual capital
• Why his revolutionary approach to Scripture-literal, moral, and spiritual meanings-dominated interpretation for over a thousand years
• His brilliant and dangerous ideas in On First Principles (229 AD)
• How he demolished paganism's most sophisticated attack on Christianity in Contra Celsum (248 AD)
• Why the church condemned him in 553 AD yet continued using his scholarship
• How faithfulness and theological error can coexist in one extraordinary life

Written for beginners. No prior knowledge required. Technical terms explained. Complex ideas clarified.

This is not hagiography. Origen made serious mistakes. But his story reveals how Christian theology developed through brilliant minds wrestling with truth, and what it means to serve Christ faithfully even when thinking leads you astray.

The condemned genius awaits.