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.

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Standard accounts of the history of interpretation of Paul’s Letter to the Romans often begin with St. Augustine. As Thomas P. Scheck demonstrates, however, the Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans by Origen of Alexandria (185-254 CE) was a major work of Pauline exegesis which, by means of the Latin translation preserved in the West, had a significant influence on the Christian exegetical tradition. Scheck begins by exploring Origen’s views on justification and on the intimate connection of faith and post-baptismal good works as essential to justification. He traces the enormous influence Origen’s Commentary on Romans had on later theologians in the Latin West, including the ways in which theologians often appropriated Origen’s exegesis in their own work. Scheck analyzes in particular the reception of Origen by Pelagius, Augustine, William of St. Thierry, Erasmus, Cornelius Jansen, the Anglican Bishop Richard Montagu, and the Catholic lay apologist John Heigham, as well as Martin Luther, Philip Melanchthon, and other Protestant Reformers who harshly attacked Origen’s interpretation as fatally flawed. But as Scheck shows, theologians through the post-Reformation controversies of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries studied and engaged Origen extensively, even if not always in agreement. An important work in patristics, biblical interpretation, and historical theology, Origen and the History of Justification establishes the formative role played by Origen’s Pauline exegesis, while also contributing to our understanding of the theological issues surrounding justification in the western Christian tradition.

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This important study provides the first English translation of both the surviving fragments of Origen's Commentary on Ephesians and of the complete text of Jerome's Commentary on Ephesians. The two translations are placed parallel to one another where they treat the same texts in Ephesians thus showing Jerome's extensive dependence on Origen's commentary. By using collateral texts from other works of Origen, Jerome, and Rufinus, the author is able to show Jerome's dependence on Origen in numerous passages in his commentary where the Greek text of Origen's commentary is lost. The translation is accompanied by Heine's illuminating commentary and a substantial introduction sets the works in their historical context. The book makes a significant contribution not only to scholarship on Origen and Jerome, but also to the wider question of the interpretation of scripture in the early Christian centuries.