Sin in Origens Commentary on Romans

By (author) Stephen Bagby

Publication date:

30 April 2018

Length of book:

202 pages

Publisher

Fortress Academic

Dimensions:

235x160mm
6x9"

ISBN-13: 9781978701083

Sin in Origen’s Commentary on Romans examines Origen as a critical third century voice seeking to articulate a cogent doctrine of sin, and presents his magisterial Commentary on Romans as a unique window to understanding his mature thought on the subject. It argues that Origen’s teaching on original and volitional sin demonstrates continuity with and divergence from the prevailing theological tradition. It offers a substantial, revisionist account of the thought of one of the most important thinkers in early Christianity and takes up important anthropological and soteriological questions in Origen, as presented in a key, but often neglected text, in Origen’s corpus of biblical commentary.

Acknowledgements
Abbreviations

Introduction
Chapter 1: Sin in the Second and Third Centuries
Chapter 2: Original Sin
Chapter 3: Parameters of Volitional Sin
Chapter 4: Practice of Volitional Sin

Conclusion
Bibliography

Bagby’s thesis is that Origen’s extensive (though neglected) engagement with Paul’s Epistle to the Romans forced him to develop, even alter, some of his earlier conceptions about original sin, resulting in a significant advance over his own early thoughts and the views of his predecessor Clement of Alexandria. Origen’s commentary on St. Paul thus exhibits a coherent and deeply Christian doctrine of sin that is faithful to Scripture. Bagby’s insightful study is worthy of his mentors, Ayres and Louth, and forms a nice complement to P. Beatrice’s work, The Transmission of Sin, which has recently appeared in English dress. Students of theology are now well-equipped to grasp the range of early Christian views of volitional and original sin in the centuries before Augustine.