ORIGEN AND ORIGENISM. - Ecclesiastical writer, b. ca. 185 in Egypt, probably at Alexandria, d. 253-54 at Tyre.
I. LIFE
Born into a Christian family (or one that became Christian shortly after his birth), he lost his father Leonides, a martyr in the persecution of Septimius Severus (202). To support the family he gave lessons in grammar and shortly afterwards, at the age of 18, he was charged by Bishop Demetrius with the instruction of the catechumens. He then devoted himself entirely to the study of Scripture, to the office of catechist, and to visiting and consoling the martyrs, dedicating himself at the same time to a life of perfection and to the practice of the evangelical counsels with such ardour that he inflicted voluntary mutilation upon himself, taking too literally the word of the Lord (Mt. 19:12). Around 212 he was in Rome, "to see the most ancient Church of the Romans" (cf. Eusebius, Hist. eccl., VI, 14, 10), and there he met the presbyter Hippolytus.
Around 215 he left the teaching of beginners to his disciple Heraclas and organized for the more advanced a private didaskaleion, where the customary programme of secular studies (grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, music, astronomy, arithmetic, physics) culminating in philosophy was conceived as a preparation for the science of Christianity centred on the study of the Scriptures. To respond to the needs of his new hearers, among whom were Gnostics and philosophers, O. attended for a time the lectures of Ammonius (v.) Saccas (Eusebius, ibid., VI, 19, 6) and assiduously studied the doctrines of the Gnostics (id., ibid., VI, 19, 12), the works of Plato, Numenius, Cronius, Apollonius, Longinus, Moderatus, Nicostratus and of famous Pythagoreans and Stoics (id., ibid., VI, 19, 8). In 230, without the permission of Bishop Demetrius and although irregular on the occasion of a journey to Palestine, he was ordained priest by the bishops Alexander of Jerusalem and Theoctistus of Caesarea, his friends. Demetrius, in two synods, declared him deposed and expelled him from the community of Alexandria.
At Caesarea in Palestine he founded a school on the model of that of Alexandria, and there he had as a disciple, among others, St. Gregory the Wonderworker. He continued his scientific work, alternating it with intense popular preaching on the Scriptures; he was in correspondence with the emperor Philip the Arab and his wife Marcia Otacilia Severa, with Julius Africanus, and with Pope Fabian. Around 232 Julia Mamaea, mother of Septimius Severus, wanted him at Antioch to hear him; around 244, in Arabia, he brought back to sounder ideas Bishop Beryllus of Bostra, who held patripassian tendencies: in other such gatherings O. debated with bishops on doctrinal questions.
During the persecution of Decius, from 247 onwards, O., imprisoned, heroically confessed the faith (Eusebius, ibid., VI, 39, 5). He died shortly afterwards and received the nickname Adamantios: man of steel.
II. WORKS
O.'s literary fecundity was extraordinary. It is known that his disciple Ambrose (converted by him from Gnosticism) had placed at his disposal more than seven stenographers, who wrote at his dictation and took turns at fixed hours, as many copyists, and some calligraphers (Eusebius, ibid., VI, 23, 2). Hence O.'s work is prolix in style and abounds in repetitions. Eusebius, as St. Jerome testifies (Adv. Rufinum, II, 22), in a list that has not been preserved, enumerated more than a thousand works of O.; St. Jerome in turn gave an incomplete list of more than eight hundred items (Ep., 33, ed. Hilberg, in CSEL, 54, pp. 255-59), and although at times these are nothing but simple sermons or occasional lectures, O.'s output nevertheless remains astounding. But only a minimal part of it survives, and only partially in Greek; the rest consists of Latin translations by various authors and of varying value.
1. The Hexapla
An immense work of textual criticism intended to establish the text of the Septuagint. Fragments of it survive.
2. Exegetical works
They extend to almost all the books of Scripture and, for the most part, in three different literary forms: a) Scholia, that is, brief annotations on difficult words or passages. b) Homilies or sermons to the people. c) Commentaries, or extensive and scientific explanations. Only a small part of them survives.
3. De Principiis (Περὶ Ἀρχῶν)
The first great attempt at a general theological synthesis. O. composed it while still young (220-30) and probably conceived it as a collection of dogmatic notes to be used in teaching at the catechetical school. It is preserved only in Rufinus's translation.
4. De oratione (Περὶ Βύχῆς)
It discusses prayer in general and explains the Pater noster.
5. The Exhortation to Martyrdom (Εἰς μαρτύριον προτρεπτύσας) was addressed (ca. 235) to his friend Ambrose and to the priest Protoctetus, who were already suffering under the persecution of Maximinus Thrax.
6. Contra Celsum (Κατὰ Κέλαου)
It is the most powerful pre-Nicene apology, written (ca. 248) to refute the work Ἀλχθῆς λόγος composed ca. 170-85 by the eclectic Platonic philosopher Celsus. O. follows its text step by step.
7. In the papyri some writings of O. have recently been rediscovered (v. E. Klostermann, in Theol. Literaturzeitung, 1948, p. 47-50, and J. Scherer, Dialektos, Cairo 1949).
8. Letters
One to Gregory Thaumaturgus, the second to Julius Africanus; they are all that remains of O.'s enormous correspondence (v. Eusebius, Hist. eccl., VI, 36, 3 ff.; St. Jerome, Ep., 33, ed. Hilberg, p. 258 ff.).
III. DOCTRINAL POSITION
According to some, including ancient writers, O.'s thought is that of a Hellenistic philosopher of his time, clothed only superficially in Christian garb (most recently: E. de Faye, H. Koch); but they found no less determined opponents (most recently: Voelker, A. Lieske, Daniélou, de Lubac). To resolve the question one must insist, more than has been done so far, on O.'s programmatic declarations.
He makes a fundamental distinction between faith and further personal investigations concerning the faith (exercitium, exercitatio, γυμνασία). For O. theological work consists of both moments; in such a way that the first always remains the basis and the rule of absolute certainty, while the second has only an "ancillary," penetrating, illustrative and completive part, which he proposes as a hypothesis for arriving at a complete vision of the world on the basis of faith and of a certain human prolongation of it, both organized into a body of general systematic doctrine (cf. De princ., the entire preface). O.'s faith is that which the Church of his time demanded of the faithful. He strongly insisted on the point that the supreme rule of faith is the teaching of the Church, which does nothing but transmit unaltered the teaching of the Scriptures and of the Apostles (De princ., praef. 2; IV, 2, 2; In Mt. Comm. ser., 39; 46; In Io. Comm., 13, 16). The content of this faith is explicitly and clearly proposed by the Church ("quae per praedicationem apostolicam manifeste traduntur: definitum in ecclesiastica praedicatione": [De princ. praef., 5]). The fundamental idea is the Christian dogma: the history of the Old Testament is a preparation and as it were a first sketch of the economy of the New Testament centered on Christ and the Church, an economy which in turn flows into the divine life of each believer and has its ultimate fulfillment in the life to come.
O. concludes: beyond the literal sense of Scripture (never denied, but always presupposed; when in some case [De princ., IV, 3, 5] he seems to deny it, he in reality denies only the so-called proper literal sense of certain texts), one must seek the deeper sense (spiritual, mystical, anagogical, allegorical: the terminology varies) which refers to the higher spiritual realities, often invisible: Christ, the Church, the spiritual life of each soul, the mysterious realities of the life to come. To grasp this sense belongs to the most perfect among Christians, to those who possess gnosis, while the simpler remain at the bare letter. O. insists especially on the search for the realities of the spiritual life of each soul, with the manifest tendency to pass rapidly over the literal sense or even to presuppose it or also to disparage it. The abuse of this attitude, into which O., as a son of his time, frequently fell, begins when in the individual details of the letter, through a vague analogy of words or things, he wants to rediscover the individual details of reality. It is thus that O. rediscovers his entire system in Scripture.
Another essential instrument in O.'s investigations concerning the faith are the philosophical ideas drawn from that Middle Platonic tendency (Antiochus of Ascalon, Plutarch, Numenius, Maximus of Tyre, Albinus) begun with Posidonius of Apamea which was about to flow, at the very time of O., into the Neoplatonism of Ammonius Saccas and Plotinus. To this milieu O. owes, besides his accentuated intellectualism of markedly Greek tradition, first of all his philosophical problematic: the essential question that preoccupies him is that of the becoming of beings, of providence and of freedom; then a certain number of specific theories: strong emphasis on the transcendence of God, the theory of the second and third god, the eternity of creation, successive worlds, the necessity of intermediaries between God and the world, ideas about demons (angels), the purely medicinal nature of punishment and other minor ideas. Finally one notes the enormous importance, not only negative but also positive, that the anti-Gnostic polemic has in O.
The system to which O. arrived in his personal investigations concerning the faith concerns essentially the question of the beginning and the end of creatures and the Trinity. Into this general scheme, in which he supplies through his exercitationes what the faith of that time did not explicitly propose concerning the origin and the end of things, O. also inserts, and strives to explain, all the points of his Christian faith. One notes in particular how he brings the Most Holy Trinity into it: God, being absolutely transcendent (C. Celsum, VII, 38), does not create spirits directly, but through an intermediary: the Logos, eternally generated (De princ., IV, 4, 1) because eternally produced as first κτίσμα (ibid., I, 2, 2), through whom he creates all other things, first among all the Spirit (In Io. Comm., II, 10). The Logos is indeed God and really distinct from the Father, as faith requires (Dialektos, ed. Scherer, p. 129), but, in order to avoid the danger of modalism and the error that consists in denying the divinity of the Son, the exercitatio explains that he is not ὁ Θεός and αὐτόθεος as the Father is, but only θεός, "second God," God by participation (In Io. Comm., II, 2; Contra Cels., V, 39; De princ., I, 2, 13), not absolutely simple as the Father, but already having a certain multiplicity (In Io. Comm., I, 20). Subordinationism, which presents the three persons of the Trinity in a hierarchy of descending nature, is certainly present in O.'s exercitationes (In Io. Comm., XIII, 25; De princ., I, 3, 5; In Mt. Comm., XV, 10). The physical unity of nature between the Father and the Son, which faith obliges O. to hold, he explains as deriving from the continuous contemplation that the Son has of the Father (C. Celsum, VIII, 12; In Io. Comm., II, 2).
The other points of the Christian faith as proposed by the Church of the 3rd century are only incidentally touched upon by O.'s exercitationes. On the pre-existence of souls and the final restoration see APOCATASTASIS; INCARNATION.
In his synthetic effort, O. made a great number of definitive discoveries or essential advances decisive for all subsequent theology. First of all the very idea of a general system, conceived as a general vision of the world in the light of faith and in its prolongation; then the systematic use, for this purpose, of a general technical philosophy and the treatment of the concepts of faith also in the light of philosophy; then the sense of the unity of theological work, which has its natural fulfillment in the spiritual life of souls: they make O. the first great treatise-writer of spiritual doctrine properly so called, which he naturally did not conceive as detached from dogmatics; subsequent monasticism too owes him much. O.'s influence on later theology was decisive to such a degree that Greek theology down to the 5th-6th centuries and Latin theology down to St. Augustine exploited his legacy, correcting and developing it. He is in various ways the master of Alexandrian theology (Dionysius of Alexandria, Athanasius, Didymus), of Eusebius of Caesarea; of the three Cappadocians: St. Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa (anthropology and mysticism); he is at the origin of Antiochene biblical criticism; he is the master of Evagrius Ponticus (mysticism); of St. Hilary of Poitiers, of St. Ambrose of Milan, of Rufinus, of St. Jerome, who often copies him, even after his about-face of 395.
It is no less certain, however, that O., in his effort at general synthesis, often proposed theories that later theology proved erroneous. Indeed from the 4th century onward there spread the legend of an O. condemned while still living by the Church, indeed an apostate from the faith; in fact several of his aforementioned doctrines were later condemned by particular synods and, at the Fifth Ecumenical Council (553), his name was placed in the catalogue of heretics (Denz-U, 223).
Bibliography27 works
III. ORIGENISM
It comprises the theological doctrines defended by the partisans of O. in the disputes that took place concerning his doctrine, especially from about 375 to 553.
Before 375 his principal adversaries were Methodius of Olympus (v.), Peter of Alexandria, Eustathius of Antioch (v.) and the bishop of Arsinoe, Nepos (Refutatio allegoristarum). He was reproached with errors in trinitarian and christological matters, but especially with the doctrines of the eternity of creation, of pre-existence, of apocatastasis, and with his way of explaining: the resurrection, the thousand years of the Apocalypse, the story of the witch of Endor. But his admirers, although often with important reservations concerning the Trinity, especially after the Arian crisis, were numerous and great, among them: the martyr Pamphilus (Apology of O.), Eusebius of Caesarea, the Alexandrians: Theognostus, Pierius, St. Dionysius the Great, St. Athanasius, Didymus; the Cappadocians: St. Basil and St. Gregory Nazianzen (Philocalia), St. Gregory of Nyssa, Evagrius Ponticus; the Latins: St. Hilary, St. Ambrose, St. Jerome.
St. Epiphanius of Salamis (Panarion, Haer., 64, in about 375-77) was the intemperate and, despite his upright intentions, anti-Origenist who in 395 won over to his side
St. Jerome (v.) and kindled an unpleasant quarrel between him (letters; Contra Ioannem Jerosolymitanum: PL 23, 371 ff.; Adv. Rufinum: ibid., 415 ff.), John of Jerusalem and Rufinus (Apol. in Hieronymum: PL 21, 541 ff.). Already an admirer of O., Theophilus of Alexandria too, in 400, in order to combat, as it seems, more effectively certain monks, his enemies and followers of O., did not cease, by means of synods and letters, to point out and condemn errors and heresies in the work of the Alexandrian. A synodal letter of Theophilus to this effect was also approved by Pope Anastasius I (PL 20, 74 ff.). But the true opinions of these Origenists remain uncertain.
At the beginning of the 6th century, on the other hand, there is a group of Origenist monks, with quite precise opinions, in the New Laura in Palestine. Against them, at the request of Ephrem, bishop of Antioch, and of Peter, bishop of Jerusalem, the emperor Justinian in 543 had a Synod condemn (Mansi, IX, 488-533) the doctrines of the Origenists and O. himself in 10 anathemas (Denz-U, 203 ff.), afterwards approved also by Pope Vigilius (cf. Mansi, IX, 272 D; Liberatus, Breviarium, 23: PL 68, 1046; Cassiodorus, Institutiones: ibid., 70, 1111). In 553, but not in the ecumenical Council, Origenism was again condemned in 15 anathemas (Mansi, IX, 395 ff., better Diekamp 90 ff.), to which, it seems, Pope Vigilius, present at Constantinople, again subscribed. Finally the Fifth Council itself numbered O. among the heretics (Denz-U, 223). Shortly afterwards Origenism in the Church ceased to be a doctrine of current interest. It is certain that the doctrinal basis of the Origenists of the 6th century were opinions clearly expressed by O. (pre-existence, fall of the spirits, apokatastasis, the stars as animate beings). Other doctrines, condemned by the same synods and admitted by the Origenists of the 6th century, seem to have been only, more or less clearly, hinted at by O. (Christ who successively becomes like each celestial order; the Body of Christ formed before its union with the soul; Christ in another world will be crucified for the demons; God has created everything that he could create).
A third category of Origenist doctrines of the 6th century either are not found at all in O., or can be traced back to him only as a more or less remote consequence of certain affirmations of his, neither foreseen nor willed by him (bodies will rise again in the form of a sphere; the Monad will be alone at the end as it was at the beginning; not the Logos but the Nous of Christ was incarnated; God the Word is called Christ abusively; all material creation and bodies will at the end be annihilated; all spirits at the end will be united to God like the soul of Christ, and then the Kingdom of Christ will have an end).
Bibliography7 works
Cipriano Vagaggini