The Gospel of John as a Generator of Great Theological Crises: Contributions for a New Reading of the Exegesis of Heracleon and Origen

Abstract

Today, Patristic Studies approach the exciting theological problems that arose in the first centuries of our era from new paradigms of analysis. In this sense, the existence of a diversity of currents in early Christianity is an indisputable fact for contemporary research, since there is no doubt that this pluriformity of positions arose from the diversity of interpretations of texts and theological notions. The classification of the various Christianities into “proto-orthodox or proto-Catholic, Judeo-Christian and Gnostic” that contemporary scholars have made is very useful for accessing a text such as Origen’s Commentary on the Gospel of John, to which we will refer on this article. But it must be further expanded, for Origen’s theology, while closer to what has come to be called proto-orthodoxy, has unique and distinctive characteristics with respect to other authors who are placed in this tradition. It was these unique characteristics that were so misunderstood by posterity and which ended up producing the condemnations of the Council of Constantinople in 553. As a foretaste of what we shall develop later, we shall call this Christianity mystical-esoteric.