On First Principles

Origen, De Principiis (Peri Archon)

Origen of Alexandria

The first systematic theology. Written before there was a word for that.

Catch rate: 50 / 255
Base research: 178
Stat total: 254

Base stats

Every stat is a checkable fact about the actual book, not a designer's mood. Bars are drawn against the highest value any book reaches.

Stamina62

Contend76

Defend50

Popularity66

Total254

Why these numbers

The game's own explanation, as a reader sees it in the backpack.

Stamina 62

Middling. Most of the Greek original is lost. What survives whole is Rufinus’ Latin translation, made a hundred and fifty years later.

Contend 76

The first systematic theology anybody wrote: God, Christ, the Spirit, creation, freedom, Scripture, all in order. Enormous Contend for its size.

Defend 50

And here is the cost. Rufinus admitted he smoothed Origen’s wording as he translated, and Jerome accused him of smoothing away the parts that had got Origen condemned. Scholars still argue about what the book originally said — so a large book defends badly, because Defend measures textual certainty and not bulk.

Popularity 66

No book of the pre-Nicene church has been argued over more. Three hundred years after Origen died a council was still condemning it, and people were still copying it afterwards. A book nobody can leave alone is a book everybody has read: it usually speaks first.

Cited for this book

In On First Principles, Origen set out the rule of faith against the Marcionites, the Gnostics and others around him. He upheld the one God of both Testaments, the full humanity of Christ, the eternal Son, and one God in three persons. He did this a century before any council fixed the vocabulary.

Development

A book develops as it is read — the fragment becomes the work, the work becomes the corpus.

On First Principles→
Lv 34

Origen’s Corpus

Moves learned

By levelling up. A book that develops keeps what it knew and learns the rest on its new schedule.

Lv	Move	Type	Cat.	Pwr	Acc	PP
1	First Principles	Theology Proper	Argument	70	95%	10
1	Random Verse	Bible	Argument	10	100%	30
9	Question the Premise	Rationality	Type shift	—	—	10
17	From What Is Made	Natural Theology	Argument	62	100%	15
20	Affirm	—	Status	—	—	1
22	Steelman	Rationality	Type shift	—	—	10
26	Chapter…	Bible	Scripture	—	—	12
30	The Spiritual Sense	Allegory	Argument	64	100%	15
50	Speak Greek	History	Status	—	100%	5

The quotes behind its moves

How to read these. In Scholar’s Dream, books argue with each other. Each thing a book can do in a debate is a move, and most moves carry a real quotation — the words the book puts on the table when it uses that move.

Strong against lists the opposing books and arguments a move was written to answer. Used against one of them, it hits much harder than usual: ×2 means twice the normal force, ×4 four times. It is the game’s way of saying: this is the sentence that answers that argument. Open an entry to read why.

“As the teaching of the Church, transmitted in orderly succession from the apostles, and remaining in the Churches to the present day, is still preserved, that alone is to be accepted as truth which differs in no respect from ecclesiastical and apostolical tradition.”
Origen, De Principiis, Preface 2 (trans. Frederick Crombie, ANF 4, public domain) — Rufinus’ Latin; no Greek survives for this sentence.public domain

First Principles

Theology ProperArgument · power 70 · 95% accurate

In the gameOne God in both Testaments; a real human Jesus; the Son eternally begotten; three persons, one God — set out in order, decades before a council had to say it in Greek.

“He who pleads his cause first seems right; until another comes and questions him.”
Proverbs 18:17 (WEB).

Question the Premise

RationalityType shift

In the gameChallenge the foundation of an argument before it can be pressed. Lowers the foe’s Contend.

“No one is able to speak with certainty about God the Father, but it is possible for some knowledge of him to be gained from the visible creation and the natural feelings of the human mind. Such knowledge can then be confirmed by the Holy Scriptures.”
Origen, On First Principles (trans. Gerald Bray) — quoted under fair use.in copyright · fair use

From What Is Made

Natural TheologyArgument · power 62 · 100% accurate

In the gameCreation and conscience get you some way toward God on their own. Scripture then confirms what they could only gesture at — Origen is careful never to claim more than that.

Strong against

×2The Five Common Notionsan argument · why?

Origen says creation gives some knowledge of God, but not certainty about the Father. For that, God has to speak, as he has in Scripture and in his Son.

“For in him we live, and move, and have our being. As some of your own poets have said.”
Acts 17:28 (WEB) — Paul at the Areopagus, quoting the Athenians’ own poets back to them.

Affirm

Status

In the gamePick the part of the opponent’s case that is true and affirm it. That point can no longer be used against you, and the opponent’s Defend falls sharply. It deals no damage. Affirm something false and you have only agreed with an error.

“Let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger.”
James 1:19 (WEB).

Steelman

RationalityType shift

In the gameRestate the foe’s position in its strongest form — exposing its true weak point. Lowers the foe’s Defend. Always fair; never a bad move to use.

“For as man is said to consist of body, and soul, and spirit, so also does sacred Scripture, which has been granted by the divine bounty for the salvation of man.”
Origen, De Principiis 4.11 (trans. Frederick Crombie, ANF 4, public domain) — Rufinus’ Latin. Modern editions number the same sentence 4.2.4.public domain

“For as man consists of body, and soul, and spirit, so in the same way does Scripture, which has been arranged to be given by God for the salvation of men.”
The same sentence in Origen’s own Greek, surviving in the Philocalia (trans. Crombie, ANF 4, public domain). Crombie prints both versions side by side.public domain

The Spiritual Sense

AllegoryArgument · power 64 · 100% accurate

In the gameA passage has a body, a soul and a spirit, Origen says — and a reader who stops at the body has stopped early. The method that taught the church to read, and the one it later had to put a fence around.

Read it: Left to Be Inquired Into

The passages the Scriptorium holds on screen, word for word from a public-domain translation. Written in Greek, surviving chiefly in Rufinus’ Latin.

“As the teaching of the Church, transmitted in orderly succession from the apostles, and remaining in the Churches to the present day, is still preserved, that alone is to be accepted as truth which differs in no respect from ecclesiastical and apostolical tradition.”
Origen, De Principiis, preface 2 (trans. Crombie, ANF 4, public domain) — Rufinus’ Latin; no Greek survives for this sentence.

“…leaving, however, the grounds of their statements to be examined into by those who should deserve the excellent gifts of the Spirit…”
Origen, De Principiis, preface 3 (trans. Crombie, ANF 4, public domain, lightly modernized).

“God is incomprehensible, and incapable of being measured.”
Origen, De Principiis 1.1.5 (trans. Crombie, ANF 4, public domain).

Notes

The first systematic theology anyone wrote, and the first one to say plainly which parts are settled and which are open.

That is what the preface is for. It lists what the apostles handed down flatly and without argument — and then says, of everything else, that they left the reasons to be looked into later. Origen then spends four books looking into them.

⚑ Read the citations. Most of this book survives only in Rufinus’ Latin, and Rufinus said openly that he had smoothed out passages he thought heretics had tampered with. Jerome then produced a rival translation to prove Rufinus had softened it.

So you are reading a contested book through a translator with a stated agenda, quarrelled over by a second translator with another one. The parts where Greek survives are the ones to trust hardest.