Origen of Alexandria, with little doubt, possessed the most encyclopedic “biblical” mind of anyone in his day, and he provided the church with an astounding treasure of biblical scholarship. But his theological experimentation was most unsuccessful precisely when it ventured to sail beyond Scripture’s teaching, with speculation on the preexistence of the soul, and eternal worlds. The church historian Henry Chadwick famously alluded to one of Longfellow’s poems when thinking of the work of Origen.12 There was a little girl, And she had a little curl Right in the middle of her forehead. When she
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