4 A Controversial Legacy
4 A Controversial Legacy
DOI: 10.4324/9780203011997-4
Origen became the archetypal Christian scholar, fully engaged in prayer and in the life of the church, filled with a love for Jesus Christ and, by his learning and intelligence, earning awed respect even from those not sharing his faith. He drew deeply on every possible source – among them Jewish tradition, philology, philosophy, and the natural sciences – to aid him in his principal enterprise, interpreting Scripture. He was convinced that, by means of such study, he was drawing closer to God and helping others do so. His impact on subsequent Christian tradition was immense and is still, to a large extent, unappreciated.
Origen’s importance as the chief theoretician of allegorical interpretation has long been recognized. In four magisterial volumes on medieval exegesis, Henri de Lubac has amply documented the truth of the statement he quotes from the pioneer of modern biblical criticism, Richard Simon: “Most of the Fathers who lived after Origen scarcely did anything but copy his commentaries and other treatises on Scripture” and “even those who were most opposed to his sentiments could not keep from reading them and profiting from them.” His allegorical interpretation was popular because it enabled Christians to use the whole Bible as the church’s book; Manlio Simonetti argues that, before Origen, the Old Testament functioned for Christians as scarcely more than a quarry for proof texts. Origen’s exegesis had such a profound and lasting appeal, not just because it satisfied a need, but because it was persuasive. His spiritual interpretation was not founded on some arbitrary set of correspondences, but rather on a conviction that God’s oikonomia operates in the same way in Scripture and the natural world, in the salvation of the cosmos and in each individual soul, and in the inner and in the outer man. One can therefore make analogies from one to another of these spheres. He thus provided a way to interpret the entire Bible that was self-consistent and relevant immediately to spiritual needs. Postmodernism, by breaking with the assumptions that the interpretation of a text means the determination of a univocal authorial intention, promises the possibility of a new hearing for Origen’s spiritual interpretation.
Nonetheless, Origen’s fame as an allegorist has often distracted scholars from other aspects of his approach to the Bible. His greatness as an interpreter and his influence on subsequent Christian tradition lie even more in his precise attention to detail – akribeia, “accuracy,” is one of his favorite words – and reverence for the text itself. It is this attitude that he recommends in his Letter to Gregory (section 4), saying, “We need great application when we are reading divine things, so that we may not be precipitous in saying or understanding anything concerning them.” Such application means being attentive to what a text has to say even if that is disconcerting, as in his fifth homily on 1 Samuel below. This attitude made him, as the author of the Hexapla, the foremost textual critic in the Early Church. Manlio Simonetti and Bernhardt Neuschäfer have demonstrated this is Origen’s great, if unacknowledged, legacy to Antiochene exegesis. Thus such interpreters as Theodore and Theodoret, even though critical of Origen’s allegory, were often truer to his spirit than his successors in Alexandria.
In the sphere of doctrine, we have already noted the way Origen lays crucial foundations for the definition of doctrine of the Trinity and of the person of Christ. He also provided a way to relate divine grace to human free will that proved congenial to the Greek theological tradition, a congeniality that accounts for the preservation of many of his writings on the subject. As we have seen, Origen distinguished himself from the Platonic tradition by insisting on the necessity for God’s grace if human beings are to become like God. Origen just as firmly defended human moral responsibility, refuting philosophers and astrologers who would urge that human actions are predetermined. He made a convincing case that God’s foreknowledge does not predetermine human actions and that God’s providence fully respects human free will. This way of relating human and divine activity in a continual process of human transformation provided the chief theoretical model for the Christian ascetic tradition. It is thus the source of Gregory of Nyssa’s notion of epektasis, a continual straining toward God. Recent studies have shown how pervasive Origen’s influence was on emerging Egyptian monasticism, including Antony of Egypt. Through John Cassian, who imbibed this Origenist approach from Evagrius Ponticus, Origen’s approach to grace and free will became, even in the West, a standing alternative to Augustine’s approach, which tended to present them as mutually exclusive. We see an echo of this in the controversy over free will between Erasmus and Luther, since the former depended heavily on Origen’s Peri Archon.
In spite of his lasting and pervasive influence, Henri Crouzel has aptly applied to Origen Simeon’s phrase, “a sign which shall be spoken against” (Lk. 2:34). He has aroused both fascination and repulsion, sometimes, as in the case of Jerome, both reactions in the same person. Christian tradition has not found him easily assimilable because he put forward views, particularly on eschatology, that were unacceptable in his own time or, in the case of his doctrine of the Trinity, found so later. This unacceptability was due in part, but only in part, to misunderstanding and misattribution. That tradition has, nonetheless, found him hard to dismiss because he defended the orthodoxy of his own time and, perhaps more than any other single person, laid the foundations for the orthodoxy of subsequent generations. Acknowledged saints respected him as an authority, he was the glory of the church in his day, and he died as a confessor in the communion of the church. Manlio Simonetti has argued that Origen’s thought was the product of a unique period, early in the church’s organizational evolution, in which relatively great intellectual freedom was possible.
Origen has remained a controversial figure. As recently as 1981 Ulrich Berner could depict modern Origen scholarship as still to a large extent polarized between advocates of positions that have been argued more or less continuously since Jerome and Rufinus gave them classic expression. Some scholars upheld what Berner identified as a “systematic” interpretation. They follow Origen’s earliest detractors by arguing that he used allegorical interpretation of the Bible to read Platonism into Christianity. According to them, he treated the church’s doctrine as an episode within a larger system in which the corporeal world comes into being as a result of the fall of rational creatures from the contemplation of God and it will end when they are reunited with him. Others upheld a “non-systematic or mystical” interpretation of Origen. According to them, he was a loyal son of the church who (perhaps unadvisedly) speculated about certain doctrines later to be rejected by the consensus of the faithful. Nonetheless, by their account, his fundamental concern was mystical communion with God, a process furthered by his insights into the deeper meaning of Scripture.
Even before Jerome and Rufinus, the basic arguments pro and con begin to emerge. Our first clear literary records of controversy about Origen come from the end of the third century and the beginning of the fourth. In this period, Methodius attacked his views on the resurrection and his allegorical interpretation of Scripture. We see Methodius’s views reflected in the work of his contemporary, Eustathius of Antioch, whose favorite epithet for Origen was “dogmatist,” meaning, apparently, someone who made up his own doctrines. At the same time, Pamphilus and Eusebius of Caesarea, who had access to Origen’s library, were his defenders. Pamphilus began an Apology for Origen, part of which survives in a translation by Rufinus. Pamphilus, like Methodius, died in the so-called “Great Persecution” of 303–12, the wholesale assault on the church launched by the Emperor Diocletian. Afterwards, Eusebius completed that work and, in making Origen the hero of his Ecclesiastical History, preserved most of what we know about his life. For most of the fourth century Origen was respected despite lingering uneasiness over the issues Methodius raised. The editors of the Philocalia presented him as a Scriptural interpreter and defender of free will while leaving his views on creation and eschatology out of their anthology. Basil of Caesarea implicitly rejected Origen’s interpretation of the opening chapters of Genesis, while Diodore of Tarsus and Theodore of Mopsuestia, leaders in the emerging Antiochene school of interpretation, more openly attacked Origen’s principles of interpretation. Perhaps as a result, the word “allegory” (allêgoria) fell out of favor, being replaced by “contemplation” (theôria) even on the part of authors like Gregory of Nyssa whose “contemplation” is indistinguishable from Origen’s “allegory.”
In the last decade of the fourth century Epiphanius of Salamis launched what has come to be known as the First Origenist Controversy, attacking Origen as the source of the hated Arian heresy as well as a holder of heretical views on creation and eschatology. This was the controversy where Jerome and Rufinus became, for Latin Christianity, the spokesmen of opposing sides. In their quarrel over the translation of Peri Archon, Jerome accused Rufinus, with justification, of deliberately softening expressions offensive to contemporary standards of orthodoxy (even though he, Jerome, just as deliberately sharpened them). Exacerbated by latent tensions, particularly within Egyptian Christianity, and by personal rivalries and animosities, this controversy permanently damaged Origen’s reputation. We see its reflection in the attitude of the one early Christian writer whose achievement and influence exceeded his; Augustine never knew Origen’s works well and, in spite of initial interest and genuine affinities, grew increasingly hostile toward his ideas.
The so-called Second Origenist Controversy of the sixth century did still more damage. The Emperor Justinian revived and sharpened Epiphanius’s accusations in his Letter to Menas in 543, a condemnation seemingly upheld by the Second Council of Constantinople in 553 (ironically the tercentenary of Origen’s death as a result of torture under Decius). Justinian ordered the destruction of Origen’s books along with those of two other theologians in his tradition, Didymus the Blind and Evagrius Ponticus. Like many earlier critics, Justinian lacked not only sympathy but even genuine understanding of Origen, whose thought he knew only from snippets taken out of context from Peri Archon. It is also an open question to what extent, in both of these controversies, the views of others were actually ascribed to Origen. At the very least, views which Origen presented as results of rational investigation always open to modification were treated as absolute and unequivocal doctrinal pronouncements. Such a presentation was more characteristic of Evagrius Ponticus, who held many of Origen’s views, but put them forward without rational justification as a higher knowledge for the spiritually mature. Such a style of presentation is also more characteristic of Clement, on whom Evagrius depended as well.
Justinian’s condemnation did not carry the same weight in the Latin West as in the Greek East, so that Origen remained a respected authority in Western Christianity through the Middle Ages. The Renaissance saw a revival of interest in Origen, including critical editions of his works, along with a revival of controversies about him. His ideas had profound influence on Erasmus and other humanist reformers, but proved unattractive either to the Catholic or to the Protestant orthodoxy that emerged from the era of Reform. Generally speaking, Origen has appealed again and again to those who would prefer not to choose between infidelity and obscurantism and has just as consistently threatened those who believe that they already have answers to all important questions.