Imagine a monster whose primary interest is to embrace philosophy and then power—Roman power, Greco-Roman power, and Greek philosophy, in other words, human power.
Origen.
You know what he loved.
The ugliest, most vile, sinister, and self-serving sin, zealously and passionately preached by everyone I know.
The worship of state, ethnicity, family, religion, but especially philosophy—for example, your blood-soaked liberal values—embedded in your “Greekdom.”
Profoundly and inexorably disgusting.
Likewise, the human clan, the family, the irredeemable evil character that the gospel itself presents as the arch-enemy of Jesus Christ.
Peter: Equally revolting and unworthy of God.
Origen, who learned Hebrew, not to teach Scripture but to increase his importance in order to undermine the Rabbis.
Alexandria: Self-involved academics and money-grubbing politicians. A marriage made in Hell. Don’t believe me? Ask your kids.
“All you need,” Fr. Paul thunders, “is to read Galatians 2 fifteen times in a row.”