The New Christian Rhetoric of Origen

This article explores Contra Celsum as the extant text most representative of the homiletician, philosopher, and scholar Origen’s thoughts on rhetoric, which have been underexplored. The Contra Celsum addresses several practical problems facing third-century Christianity, among them the conversion of mixed audiences, the usefulness of pagan rhetoric, and the protection and delivery of the newly canonized New Testament and its divine proofs. Origen’s conception of a separate Christian rhetoric that attempts to solve these problems predates and possibly informs the union of Christian and pagan rhetoric in Augustine’s De doctrina christiana.