The Evolution of Orthodoxy

The breadth of their learning and sheer intellectual energy led them toward ideas that later proved superfluous or actually heretical. Tertullian's interest in a Latter-day sect of prophets called the Montanists prevented him from ever being canonized. Origen's theory that souls were created before the world, together with a complex method of interpreting scripture allegorically, sent his ideological successors down all sorts of rabbit holes.