ORIGENE E ORIGENISMO. — Ecclesiastical writer, born ca. 185 in Egypt, probably at Alexandria, died in 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 of Septimius Severus (202). To support the family, he gave lessons in grammar and shortly afterward, at the age of eighteen, was entrusted by Bishop Demetrius with the instruction of catechumens. He then devoted himself entirely to the study of Scripture, to the office of catechist, and to visiting and consoling the martyrs, at the same time dedicating himself to the life of perfection and to the practice of the evangelical counsels with such fervor that he inflicted voluntary mutilation upon himself, taking the Lord’s word (Mt. 19:12) too literally. 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 became acquainted with the presbyter Hippolytus.Around 215 he entrusted the instruction of beginners to his disciple Heraclas and organized a private school for the more advanced, where the customary 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 the Scriptures. To meet the needs of his new hearers, among whom were Gnostics and philosophers, O. attended for Ammonius (v.) Saccas (Eusebius, ibid., VI, 19, 6) and diligently 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 irregularly ordained on the occasion of a journey to Palestine, he was ordained a priest by his friends, Bishops Alexander of Jerusalem and Theoctistus of Caesarea. In two synods Demetrius declared him deposed and expelled him from the community of Alexandria.
At Caesarea in Palestine he founded a school modeled on that of Alexandria, and among others had St. Gregory Thaumaturgus as his disciple. He continued his scholarly work, alternating it with intense popular preaching on the Scriptures; he corresponded with the emperor Philip the Arab and his wife Marcia Otacilia Severa, with Julius Africanus, and with Pope Fabian. Around 232 Julia Mamaea, the mother of Septimius Severus, wanted him to come to Antioch to hear him; around 244, in Arabia, he brought Bishop Beryllus of Bostra, who held Patripassian tendencies, back to sounder views. At other gatherings of this kind O. debated with bishops on doctrinal questions.
During the persecution of Decius, beginning in 247, O., imprisoned, heroically confessed the faith (Eusebius, ibid., VI, 39, 5). He died shortly afterward and was given the surname Adamantius: man of steel.
II. WORKS
O.’s literary fecundity 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 an equal number of copyists and several female calligraphers (Eusebius, ibid., VI, 23, 2). Consequently, O.’s work is prolix in style and abundant in repetitions. Eusebius, as testified by s. Jerome (Adv. Rufinum, II, 22), in a list that has not been preserved, enumerated more than a thousand works by O.; s. Jerome, in turn, provided an incomplete list of more than eight hundred items (Ep., 33, ed. Hilberg, in CSEL, 54, pp. 255-59), and although these sometimes consist merely of simple sermons or occasional addresses, O.’s output nevertheless remains astonishing. Yet only a very small portion of it survives, and only partly in Greek; the remainder is found in Latin translations by various authors, of differing quality.1. The Hexapla
An immense work of textual criticism intended to establish the text of the Septuagint. Fragments of it remain.2. Exegetical works
They extend to almost all the books of Scripture and, for the most part, take 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 scholarly explanations. Only a small portion remains.3. De Principiis (Περὶ Ἀρχῶν)
The first great essay in general theological synthesis. O. composed it while still young (220–30) and probably conceived it as a collection of notes on dogmatics to be used in teaching at the didaskaleion. It survives 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 in the persecution of Maximinus the Thracian.
6. Contra Celsum (Κατὰ Κέλαου)
This is the most powerful pre-Nicene apology, written (ca. 248) to refute the work Ἀλχθῆς λόγος, composed ca. 170–85 by the eclectic Platonist philosopher Celsus. O. follows its text step by step.7. Some writings by O. have recently been discovered in the papyri (v. E. Klostermann, in Theol. Literaturzeitung, 1948, p. 47-50 and J. Scherer, Dialektos, Cairo 1949).
8. Letters
One to Gregory Thaumaturgus and the second to Julius Africanus; these are all that remains of O.’s enormous correspondence (v. Eusebius, Hist. eccl., VI, 36, 3 sg; s. Jerome, Ep., 33, ed. Hilberg, p. 258 sg).III. DOCTRINAL POSITION
According to some, including certain ancient writers, O.’s thought is that of a Hellenistic philosopher of his time, only superficially clothed in Christian garb (more recently: E. de Faye, H. Koch); but they found opponents no less decisive (more recently: Voelker, A. Lieske, Daniélou, de Lubac). To resolve the question, one must insist, more than has been done thus far, on O.’s programmatic declarations.He makes a fundamental distinction between faith and further personal investigations concerning faith (exercitium, exercitatio, γυμνασία). For O., theological work consists of both moments, so that the first always remains the basis and rule of absolute certainty, while the second has only an “ancillary,” penetrating, illustrative, and complementary role, 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 extension of it, both organized into a general systematic body of doctrine (cf. De princ., the entire preface). O.’s faith is the faith that the Church of his time required of the faithful. He strongly insisted that the supreme rule of faith is the teaching of the Church, which does nothing other than transmit unchanged the teaching of the Scriptures 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 presented by the Church (“quae per praedicationem apostolicam manifeste traduntur: definitum in ecclesiastica praedicatione”: [De princ. praef., 5]). The fundamental idea is 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 that in turn issues into the divine life of each believer and finds its ultimate fulfillment in the life to come.
O. concludes that, beyond the literal sense of Scripture (never denied, but always presupposed; when in certain 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: the terminology varies), which refers to higher spiritual realities, often invisible: Christ, the Church, the spiritual life of each soul, and the mysterious realities of the life to come. Grasping this sense belongs to the most perfect among Christians, those who possess gnosis, while the simpler remain with the bare letter. O. insists especially on the search for the realities of the spiritual life of each soul, with a manifest tendency to pass rapidly over the literal sense, or even to assume it, and at times to depreciate II. The abuse of this attitude, into which O., as a child of his age, frequently fell, begins when, in the individual details of the letter, through a vague analogy of words or things, he seeks to rediscover the individual details of reality. Thus O. finds his entire system in Scripture.
Another essential instrument in O.’s investigations concerning faith is the philosophical ideas drawn from that Middle Platonist tendency (Antiochus of Ascalon, Plutarch, Numenius, Maximus of Tyre, Albinus) that began with Posidonius of Apamea and, in O.’s own time, was about to issue into the Neoplatonism of Ammonius Saccas and Plotinus. To this milieu, in addition to his pronounced intellectualism of distinctly Greek tradition, O. owes above all his philosophical problematic: the essential question that concerns him is that of the becoming of beings, providence, and freedom; then a certain number of specific theories: a strong emphasis on God’s transcendence, the theory of the second and third god, the eternity of creation, successive worlds, the necessity of intermediaries between God and the world, ideas concerning demons (angels), the purely medicinal nature of punishment, and other minor ideas. Finally, one should note the enormous importance in O. of the anti-Gnostic polemic, not only negatively but also positively.
The system to which O. arrived in his personal investigations concerning faith essentially concerns the question of the beginning and end of creatures and the Trinity. Within this general schema, in which through his exercitationes he supplies what the faith of that time did not explicitly propose concerning the origin and end of things, O. also inserts and endeavors to explain all the points of his Christian faith. It is particularly noteworthy how he incorporates the Most Holy Trinity into it: since God is absolutely transcendent (C. Celsum, VII, 38), he does not create spirits directly, but through an intermediary: the Logos, eternally begotten (De princ., IV, 4, 1) because eternally produced as the first κτίσμα (ibid., I, 2, 2), through whom he creates all other things, first of all the Spirit (In Io. Comm., II, 10). The Logos is indeed God and really distinct from the Father, as faith requires O. to maintain (Dialektos, ed. Scherer, p. 129), but, in order to avoid the danger of modalism and the error of denying the divinity of the Son, the exercitatio explains that he is not ὁ Θεός and αὐτόθεος like the Father, 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 like the Father, but already possessing a certain multiplicity (In Io. Comm., I, 20). The subordinationism that 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 uphold, he explains as deriving from the continual 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 it was proposed by the Church of the third century are touched upon only incidentally in O.’s exercitationes. For the preexistence of souls and the final restoration V. APOCATASTATI; BRINCARNAZIONE.
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 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 in the light of philosophy; thereafter, the sense of the unity of theological work, which finds its natural fulfillment in the spiritual life of souls: these make O. the first great treatise writer on spiritual doctrine properly speaking, which he naturally did not conceive as detached from dogmatics; subsequent monasticism also owes him much. O.’s influence on later theology was so decisive that Greek theology up to the fifth and sixth centuries, and Latin theology up to s. Augustine, exploited his legacy, correcting and developing II. In various ways he is the teacher of Alexandrian theology (Dionysius of Alexandria, Athanasius, Didymus), of Eusebius of Caesarea; of the three Cappadocians: s. Basil, the Nazianzen, and the Nyssen (anthropology and mysticism); he stands at the origin of Antiochene biblical criticism; he is the teacher of Evagrius Ponticus (mysticism); of s. Hilary of Poitiers, s. Ambrose of Milan, Rufinus, and s. Jerome, who often copies him, even after his reversal in 395.
It is no less certain, however, that in his effort at a general synthesis O. often proposed theories that later theology demonstrated to be erroneous. Indeed, from the fourth century onward the legend spread of an O. condemned by the Church while still alive, indeed an apostate from the faith; in fact, several of the doctrines mentioned above 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).
III. ORIGENISM
It comprises the theological doctrines defended by O.’s partisans 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, pre-existence, and apocatastasis, and with his manner of explaining the resurrection, the thousand years of the Apocalypse, and 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 distinguished; among them were the martyr Pamphilus (Apologia di 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; and the Latins: St Hilary, St Ambrose, St Jerome.
St Epiphanius of Salamis (Panarion, Haer., 64, about 375–77) was the intemperate and, despite his upright intentions, anti-Origenist who in 395 drew over to his side
St Jerome (v.) and kindled an unfortunate dispute 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, apparently in order to combat 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 in this sense 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 sixth century, however, there was a group of Origenist monks, holding very definite opinions, in the New Laura in Palestine. Against them, at the request of Epherius, bishop of Antioch, and Peter, bishop of Jerusalem, the 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.), subsequently also approved by Pope Vigilius (cf. Mansi, IX, 272 D; Liberatus, Breviarium, 23: PL 68, 1046; Cassiodorus, Institutiones: ibid., 70, 1111). In 553, though not at the ecumenical council, Origenism was again condemned in fifteen anathemas (Mansi, IX, 395 ff.; better in Diekamp, 90 ff.), which, it seems, Pope Vigilius, present in Constantinople, again signed. Finally, the Fifth Council itself numbered O. among the heretics (Denz-U, 223). Shortly thereafter, Origenism ceased in the Church to be a doctrine of current interest. It is certain that the doctrinal basis of the Origenists of the sixth century consisted of opinions clearly expressed by O. (pre-existence, the fall of the spirits, apokatastasis, the stars as animate beings). Other doctrines, condemned by the same synods and accepted by the Origenists of the sixth century, seem to have been merely insinuated, more or less clearly, by O. (Christ progressively becoming similar to each celestial order; the Body of Christ formed before its union with the soul; Christ being crucified for the demons in another world; God having created everything that he could create).
A third category of Origenist doctrines of the sixth century is either not found at all in O. or can be related to him only as the more or less remote consequence of certain assertions of his, neither foreseen nor intended by him (the bodies of the resurrected will have 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 incarnate; the Word of God is improperly called Christ; all material creation and bodies will ultimately be annihilated; all spirits will ultimately be united to God like the soul of Christ, and then the Kingdom of Christ will come to an end).