ORIGEN and ORIGENISM. – Ecclesiastical writer, born ca. 185 in Egypt, probably in Alexandria, died 253–54 at Tyre.
I. LIFE
Born into a Christian family (or one that became Christian shortly after his birth), he lost his father Leonidas, a martyr in the persecution under Septimius Severus (202). To support his family he gave lessons in grammar and, soon after, at the age of eighteen, was entrusted by Bishop Demetrius with the instruction of catechumens. At that time he devoted himself entirely to the study of Scripture, to the office of catechist, to visiting and consoling martyrs, while at the same time pursuing a life of perfection and practicing the evangelical counsels with such zeal that he inflicted upon himself voluntary mutilation, taking too literally the Lord’s word (Mt. 19:12). About 212 he went to Rome, “to see the most ancient Church of the Romans” (cf. Eusebius, Hist. eccl., VI, 14, 10), and there he met the priest Hippolytus.About 215 he left the teaching of beginners to his disciple Heraclas and organized for the more advanced a private school where the usual program of secular studies (grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, music, astronomy, arithmetic, physics) culminating in philosophy was conceived as preparation for the science of Christianity centered on the study of Scripture. To meet the needs of his new audience, among whom were Gnostics and philosophers, Origen for a time attended the lectures of Ammonius (v. SACCA) (Eusebius, ibid., VI, 19, 6) and studied assiduously the doctrines of the Gnostics (ibid., VI, 19, 12), the works of Plato, Numenius, Cronius, Apollophanes, Longinus, Moderatus, Nicostratus and the famous Pythagoreans and Stoics (ibid., VI, 19, 8). In 230, without the permission of Bishop Demetrius and irregularly during a journey in Palestine, he was ordained priest by his friends Alexander, bishop of Jerusalem, and Theoctistus, bishop of Caesarea. 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 had among his disciples Gregory the Wonderworker. He continued his scholarly work, alternating it with intense popular preaching on Scripture; he corresponded with the emperor Philip the Arab and his wife Marcia Otacilia Severa, with Julius Africanus, and with Pope Fabian. About 232 Julia Mamaea, mother of Septimius Severus, wished to hear him at Antioch; about 244 in Arabia he brought back to sounder ideas the bishop Beryllus of Bostra, who held Patripassian tendencies; in other such meetings he disputed with bishops on doctrinal questions.
During the persecution of Decius, beginning in 247, Origen, imprisoned, heroically confessed the faith (Eusebius, ibid., VI, 39, 5). He died soon after and received the nickname Adamantius: man of steel.
II. WORKS
Origen’s literary productivity was extraordinary. It is known that his disciple Ambrose (whom he had converted from Gnosticism) had placed at his disposal more than seven stenographers, who wrote under his dictation and took turns at fixed hours, as well as numerous copyists and several calligraphers (Eusebius, ibid., VI, 23, 2). Hence Origen’s work is prolix in style and abundant in repetitions. Eusebius, on the testimony of St. Jerome (Adv. Rufinum, II, 22), in an otherwise lost list enumerated more than a thousand works of Origen; 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 sometimes these are only simple sermons or occasional lectures, Origen’s output remains nonetheless staggering. But only a small part of it remains, and only partially in Greek; the rest consists of Latin translations by various authors and of varying value.1. The Hexapla
Immense work of textual criticism intended to establish the text of the Septuagint. Only fragments remain.2. Exegetical works
These extend to almost all the books of Scripture and, for the most part, in three different literary forms: a) Scholia, i.e., brief annotations on difficult words or passages. b) Homilies or sermons to the people. c) Commentaries or extensive and scholarly explanations. Only a small part remains.3. De Principiis (Περὶ Ἀρχῶν)
The first great essay of general theological synthesis. Origen composed it while still young (220–30) and probably conceived it as a collection of notes on dogma to be used in teaching catechumens. It is preserved only in Rufinus’ translation.4. De oratione (Περὶ Εὐχῆς)
Speaks of prayer in general and explains the Our Father.5. Exhortation to Martyrdom (Εἰς μαρτυρίου προπαντοῦς) was addressed (ca. 235) to his friend Ambrose and to the priest Protocetus, who were already suffering under the persecution of Maximinus the Thracian.
6. Contra Celsum (Κατὰ Κέλσου)
The most powerful pre-Nicene apology, written (ca. 248) to refute the work Ἀληθὴς λόγος composed ca. 170–85 by the eclectic Platonist philosopher Celsus. Origen follows the text step by step.7. In recent years some writings of Origen have been discovered in papyri (v. E. Klostermann, in Theol. Literaturzeitung, 1948, p. 47–50 and J. Scherer, Dialektos, Cairo 1949).
8. Letters
One to Gregory the Wonderworker, the second to Julius Africanus; these are all that remain of Origen’s enormous correspondence (v. Eusebius, Hist. eccl., VI, 36, 3 sqq; St. Jerome, Ep. 33, ed. Hilberg, p. 258 sqq).III. DOCTRINAL POSITION
According to some, even ancient ones, Origen’s thought is that of a Hellenistic philosopher of his time, merely superficially clothed in Christian garb (most recent: E. de Faye, H. Koch); but no less determined opponents have been found (most recent: Voelker, A. Lieske, Daniélou, de Lubac). To resolve the question one must insist, more than has been done hitherto, on Origen’s programmatic declarations.He makes a fundamental distinction between faith and further personal research concerning the faith (exercitium, exercitatio, γυμνασμός). For Origen theological work consists of both moments; so that the first always remains the basis and the rule of absolute certainty, while the second has only an ancillary, penetrative, illustrative, and complementary role, which he proposes as a hypothesis for arriving at a complete worldview on the basis of faith and a certain prolonged human use, both organized into a body of general systematic doctrine (cf. De princ., the entire preface). Origen’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 unchanged the teaching of Scripture and 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 (as transmitted manifestly through apostolic preaching: 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 culminates in the divine life of every world and which finds its final fulfillment in the life to come.
O. concludes: beyond the literal sense of Scripture (never denied, but always presupposed; when in some cases [De princ., IV, 3, 5] he seems to deny it, he is in reality denying only the so-called proper literal sense of certain texts), one must seek the deeper sense (spiritual, mystical, anagogical, allegorical: terminology varies) which refers to higher spiritual realities, often invisible: Christ, the Church, the spiritual life of every soul, the mysterious realities of the future life. To grasp this sense is proper to the most perfect among Christians, those who rejoice in it, while the simpler ones remain at the bare letter. O. especially insists on the search for the realities of the spiritual life of every soul, with a manifest tendency to pass quickly over the literal sense or even to suppose it or even to depreciate II. The abuse of this attitude, in which O., as a son of his time, frequently fell, begins when in individual details of the letter, through a vague analogy of words or things, he seeks to find individual details of reality. Thus it is that O. finds in Scripture his entire system.
Another essential tool in O.’s researches on faith is the philosophical ideas drawn from the Middle Platonic tendency (Antiochus of Ascalon, Plutarch, Numenius, Maximus of Tyre, Albinus), which began with Posidonius of Apamea and was at the same time developing, in O.’s day, into the Neoplatonism of Ammonius Saccas and Plotinus. To this environment, O. owes, in addition to his marked intellectualism of distinctly Greek tradition, above 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 on 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 for O.
The system to which O. arrived in his personal researches concerning faith essentially concerns the question of the beginning and end of creatures and the Trinity. In this general framework, in which he supplies through his *exercitationes* what the faith of his time did not explicitly propose regarding the origin and end of things, he also inserts, and strives to explain, all the points of his Christian faith. One should note in particular how he incorporates the Most Holy Trinity: God being absolutely transcendent (C. Celsum, VII, 38), He does not create spirits directly, but through an intermediary: the Logos, eternally generated (De princ., IV, 4, 1) because eternally produced as the first χρυσός (ibid., I, 2, 2), through whom He creates all other things, first among them 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, to avoid the danger of modalism and the error that consists in denying the divinity of the Son, the *exercitio* explains that He is not the Θεός and αὐτόθεντος like the Father, but only ὁς, and according to God, God by participation (In Io. Comm., II, 2; Contra Cels., V, 39; De princ., I, 2, 13), not absolutely simple like the Father, but already having a certain multiplicity (In Io. Comm., I, 20). The subordinationism, which presents the three Persons of the Trinity in a descending hierarchy of 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 maintain, 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 Christian faith as proposed by the Church of the 3rd century are only incidentally touched upon by O.’s *exercitationes*. For the pre-existence of souls and the final restoration V. APOCATASTASIS; REINCARNATION.
In his synthetic effort, O. made a great number of definitive discoveries or essential decisive advances for all subsequent theology. First of all, the very idea of a general system, conceived as a comprehensive vision of the world under the light of faith and in its extension; then the systematic use, for this purpose, of a general technical philosophy and the treatment of the concepts of faith also under the light of philosophy; then the sense of the unity of theological work, which has its natural fulfillment in the spiritual life of souls: these make O. the first great treatise-writer of properly spiritual doctrine, which he naturally did not conceive as detached from dogmatics; even subsequent monasticism owes much to him. The influence of O. on later theology was so decisive that Greek theology up to the 5th–6th centuries and Latin theology up to St. Augustine exploited his legacy, correcting and developing II. 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, the Nazianzen, the Nyssen (anthropology and mysticism); and at the origin of ancient 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 death in 395.
It is no less certain, however, that O., in his effort at general synthesis, often proposed theories that later theology demonstrated to be erroneous. Indeed, from the 4th century onward, the legend spread of an O. condemned even during his lifetime by the Church, indeed apostatizing from the faith; in fact, several of the aforementioned doctrines were later condemned by particular synods, and in the Fifth Ecumenical Council (553), his name was placed in the catalogue of heretics (Denz-U, 223).
III. ORIGENISM
This term comprises the theological doctrines defended by the partisans of O. in the disputes that arose around his teaching, especially from about 375 to 553.Before 375 his principal opponents were Methodius of Olympus (v.), Peter of Alexandria, Eustathius of Antioch (v.), and the bishop of Arsinoë, Nepos (Refutatio allegoristarum). He was reproached with errors in Trinitarian and Christological matters, but especially with the doctrines of the eternity of creation, pre-existence, apocatastasis, and his manner of explaining the resurrection, the thousand years of the Apocalypse, and the story of the witch of Endor. Yet his admirers, though often with important reservations regarding the Trinity—especially after the Arian crisis—were numerous and eminent, among them: the martyr Pamphilus (Apologia 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, c. 375-77) was the intemperate and, despite his upright intentions, anti-Origenist who in 395 drew Jerome (v.) into a regrettable dispute with him (letters; Contra Ioannem Hierosolymitanum: 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, in 400, in order to combat, as it seems, more effectively certain monks who were his enemies and followers of O., did not cease through 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.). Yet the true opinions of these Origenists remain uncertain.
At the beginning of the 6th century, however, there was a group of Origenist monks with very precise opinions in the New Laura in Palestine. Against them, at the instance of Ephrem, bishop of Antioch, and Peter, bishop of Jerusalem, Emperor Justinian in 543 had the doctrines of the Origenists and O. himself condemned by a synod (Mansi, IX, 488-533) in ten anathemas (Denz-U, 203 ff.), which were later also approved 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 fifteen anathemas (Mansi, IX, 305 ff., better Didaskalia 90 ff.), to which, it seems, Pope Vigilius, present in Constantinople, subscribed anew. Finally, the Fifth Council itself numbered O. among the heretics (Denz-U, 223). Soon after, Origenism ceased to be a doctrine of current interest in the Church. It is certain that the doctrinal basis of the Origenists of the 6th century were opinions clearly expressed by O. (pre-existence, the fall of spirits, apocatastasis, 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 insinuated by O. (Christ becoming successively similar to 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 created all that He could create).
A third category of Origenist doctrines of the 6th century either do not appear at all in O., or cannot be traced back to him except as a more or less distant consequence of certain of his assertions which he neither foreseen nor intended (bodies will rise again in the form of a sphere; the Monad will alone remain at the end as it was at the beginning; not the Logos but the Nous of Christ was incarnate; the divine Word is abusively called Christ; all material creation and bodies will finally be annihilated; all spirits will finally be united to God as the soul of Christ, and then the Kingdom of Christ will have an end).