OK, I suppose I misrepresented what you has said. I'm glad you clarified it. I think the verse you quote and the statement of faith I quote from Origen are completely compatible. I stand by both, and they fit perfectly.

I dont care what Catholics did or didnt do with Origen's work in later centuries. They had no shortage of dim-witted people who misunderstood a great deal. There's alot that Origen says that he's not very certain about. But like him, I'm not afraid to ask questions, safe in the knowlege that the omniscient God has all the answers.

Origen is useful in that he brought together verses from throughout the Bible to establish clear ideas about the nature of Christian faith. He relied on the Holy Spirit for an understanding of what the Bible had to say, rather than a simple, surface reading of the text - that the Holy Spirit held for us a deeper meaning in Scripture than what any person (dull or a genius) could derive just from the simple act of reading with one's eyes. That we have to rely on the Holy Spirit to give us a true understanding of the Bible's deepest meaning - not our human senses. His pointing me to that course of understanding has given my faith great strength. An understanding that physicl things pass away, but the spiritual things last forever - that our immirtal souls are what's meant to spend eternity with God, not these frail bodies with all their dependencies on food and impulses and needs.

To sum up my response to any criticisms you have of Origen: I take him as he comes, I make use of his thoughts and ideas as far as they're edifying to my faith, and when it stops being that, he'd be the first to tell me to walk away. I dont need to find all the answers there. Nothing but Christ mediates my relationship with God.

As for the verse in Revelations: I'm a sinner; as such, I believe that my soul will experience a kind of spiritual fire as a result of the imperfections in my life, not one of physical pain and discomfort, but of spiritual regret for the empty things in my life; I know I'm forgiven for those sins through Christ, and that he bore the full pain and punishment for that for me, and that the thing I will experience will be different than that, as a sort of guilt that the human mind cant comprehend; I do not believe that verse, or any other, indicates that my sexual orientation will be the subject of emptiness or guilt, when my life is assesed in the end. On the contrary, my sexual orientation has been more than an academic matter, or a mere abstract - I fell in love with a man that strengthened my faith. My relationship witht he Holy Spirit (something your opinion can never replace or usurp) confirms this, in my soul of souls, to be true.