Origen

Origen (born c. 185, probably Alexandria, Egypt—died c. 254, Tyre, Phoenicia [now Ṣūr, Lebanon]) was the most important theologian and biblical scholar of the early Greek church. His greatest work is the Hexapla, which is a synopsis of six versions of the Old Testament.

Life

Origen was born of pagan parents, according to the Neoplatonist philosopher Porphyry, but of Christian parents, according to the ecclesiastical historian Eusebius of Caesarea, whose account is probably more accurate. Eusebius stated that Origen’s father, Leonides, was martyred in the persecution of 202, so that Origen had to provide for his mother and six younger brothers. At first he lived in the house of a wealthy lady. He then earned money by teaching grammar and lived a life of strenuous asceticism. Eusebius added that he was a pupil of Clement of Alexandria, whom he succeeded as head of the Catechetical school under the authority of the bishop Demetrius. Eusebius also alleged that Origen, as a young man, castrated himself so as to work freely in instructing female catechumens; but this was not the only story told by the malicious about his extraordinary chastity, and thus it may merely have been hostile gossip. Eusebius’ account of Origen’s life, moreover, bears the embellishments of legends of saints and needs to be treated with this in mind.

According to Porphyry, Origen attended lectures given by Ammonius Saccas, the founder of Neoplatonism. A letter of Origen mentions his “teacher of philosophy,” at whose lectures he met Heraclas, who was to become his junior colleague, then his rival, and who was to end as bishop of Alexandria refusing to hold communion with him. Origen invited Heraclas to assist him with the elementary teaching at the Catechetical school, leaving himself free for advanced teaching and study. During this period (from c. 212), Origen learned Hebrew and began to compile his Hexapla.

A wealthy Christian named Ambrose, whom Origen converted from the teachings of the heretical Valentinus and to whom he dedicated many of his works, provided him with shorthand writers. A stream of treatises and commentaries began to pour from Origen’s pen. At Alexandria he wrote Miscellanies (Stromateis), On the Resurrection (Peri anastaseos), and On First Principles (De principiis). He also began his immense commentary on St. John, written to refute the commentary of the Gnostic follower of Valentinus, Heracleon. His studies were interrupted by visits to Rome (where he met the theologian Hippolytus), Arabia, Antioch, and Palestine.

Because of his reputation, Origen was much in demand as a preacher, a circumstance that provoked the disapproval of Demetrius, bishop of Alexandria, who was anxious to control this free lay teacher and especially angry when Origen was allowed to preach at Caesarea Palestinae. In about 229–230 Origen went to Greece to dispute with another follower of Valentinus, Candidus. On the way he was ordained presbyter at Caesarea. The Valentinian doctrine that salvation and damnation are predestinate, independent of volition, was defended by Candidus on the ground that Satan is beyond repentance; Origen replied that if Satan fell by will, even he can repent. Demetrius, incensed at Origen’s ordination, was appalled by such a doctrinal view and instigated a synodical condemnation, which, however, was not accepted in Greece and Palestine. Thenceforth, Origen lived at Caesarea, where he attracted many pupils. One of his most notable students was Gregory Thaumaturgus, later bishop of Neocaesarea.

From Caesarea, Origen continued his travels. In 235 the persecution of Maximinus found him in Cappadocia, from which he addressed to Ambrose his Exhortation to Martyrdom. During this period falls the “Discussion with Heracleides,” a papyrus partially transcribing a debate at a church council (probably in Arabia) where a local bishop was suspected of denying the preexistence of the divine Word and where obscure controversies raged over Christological issues and whether the soul is, in actuality, blood. During the persecution under the emperor Decius (250), Origen was imprisoned and tortured but survived to die several years later. His tomb at Tyre was held in honour, and its long survival is attested by historians of the period of the Crusades.

Writings

Origen’s main lifework was on the text of the Greek Old Testament and on the exposition of the whole Bible. The Hexapla was a synopsis of Old Testament versions: the Hebrew and a transliteration, the Septuagint (an authoritative Greek version of the Old Testament), the versions of Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion and, for the Psalms, two further translations (one being discovered by him in a jar in the Jordan Valley). The purpose of the Hexapla was to provide a secure basis for debate with rabbis to whom the Hebrew alone was authoritative.

Origen’s exegetical writings consist of commentaries (scholarly expositions for instructed Christians), homilies for mixed congregations, and scholia (detached comments on particular passages or books). All extant manuscripts of the commentary on St. John, which extended to 32 books, depend on a codex preserved in Munich containing only a few of the books. This codex and a related manuscript at Trinity College, Cambridge, are the sole witnesses for the Greek original of books 10–17 of his commentary on St. Matthew. Greek fragments of this, as of most of Origen’s exegetical works, survive in writings known as catenae (“chains”; i.e., anthologies of comments by early Church Fathers on biblical books). Commentaries on the Song of Solomon and on Romans survive in a drastically abbreviated Latin paraphrase by the Christian writer Tyrannius Rufinus (c. 365–410/411). The homilies on Genesis through the Book of Judges (except Deuteronomy) and Psalms 36–38 survive in a Latin translation by Rufinus. Jerome, the great Christian scholar (c. 347–c. 420), translated homilies on the Song of Solomon, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Luke. These Latin homilies were widely read in medieval monasteries and have a rich manuscript tradition. The Greek original of homilies on Jeremiah survives in a single manuscript in the Escorial (Spain), and that of a homily on the witch of Endor (which provoked early criticism for its thesis that Samuel really was conjured up) in a manuscript in Munich and on papyrus.

Prior to 231 Origen wrote De principiis, an ordered statement of Christian doctrine on an ambitious scale, based on the presupposition that every Christian is committed to the rule of faith laid down by the Apostles (the Creator as God of both Old and New Testaments, the incarnation of the preexistent Lord, the Holy Spirit as one of the divine triad, the freedom of rational souls, discarnate spirits, the noneternity of the world, judgment to come) but that outside this restriction the educated believer is free to speculate. Origen was writing long before the conciliar definitions of Chalcedon (451) concerning the Trinity and the Person of Christ and at a period when a far larger area of doctrine could be regarded as open for discussion and argument than was the case by 400. De principiis diverged in its speculations from later standards of orthodoxy. The original was consequently lost and can only be reconstructed from the Philocalia (an anthology compiled by Basil the Great and Gregory of Nazianzus illustrating Origen’s biblical interpretation), from Rufinus’ Latin paraphrase (which avowedly rewrites heterodox-sounding passages), and from later writers, notably Jerome and Justinian I (who quote especially compromising passages to prove Origen a heretic). The polemical anti-Origenists, however, need to be read with care since they were not above misquoting Origen and ascribing to him the words of later Origenists.

Origen’s great vindication of Christianity against pagan attack, Contra Celsum, written (probably in 248) at Ambrose’s request, survives in its entirety in one Vatican manuscript, with fragments in the Philocalia and on papyruses. Paragraph by paragraph it answers the Alēthēs logos (“The True Doctrine” or “Discourse”) of the 2nd-century anti-Christian philosopher Celsus and is therefore a principal source for the pagan intelligentsia’s view of 2nd-century Christianity as well as a classic formulation of early Christian reply. Both protagonists agree in their basic Platonic presuppositions, but beside this agreement, serious differences are argued. Celsus’ brusque dismissal of Christianity as a crude and bucolic onslaught on the religious traditions and intellectual values of classical culture provoked Origen to a sustained rejoinder in which he claimed that a philosophic mind has a right to think within a Christian framework and that the Christian faith is neither a prejudice of the unreasoning masses nor a crutch for social outcasts or nonconformists.

The tract On Prayer, preserved in one manuscript at Cambridge, was written in about 233; it expounds the Lord’s Prayer and discusses some of the philosophical problems of petition, arguing that petition can only be excluded by a determinism false to the experience of personality, while the highest prayer is an elevation of the soul beyond material things to a passive inward union with Christ, mediator between men and the Father.