Origenism

The man: a master, a confessor, never condemned in his lifetime

Origen was born about 185 in Alexandria, directed the catechetical school of the city, then, driven out by his bishop Demetrius in 231, founded a second school at Caesarea in Palestine; tortured under the Decian persecution in 250, he died about 253 or 254 from the after-effects of his sufferings, honoured as a confessor of the faith^[6]. His output is immense — thousands of titles: scriptural commentaries, homilies, apologies — and the Church owes him a lasting debt: before the controversies, St Jerome himself acknowledged all that he owed him, even in the prologues of his own translations and commentaries^[7]. His first opponents — St Methodius, bishop and martyr in 311, who refuted his doctrine of the resurrection, or St Eustathius of Antioch, who died in exile about 337 and criticised his allegorism — fought him on precise points without making him a heresiarch^[8]. And when Alexandria organised against him, in Origen's own lifetime, not one but two councils — one banishing him, the other deposing him from the priesthood — it was for his irregular ordination at Caesarea and his quarrel with Demetrius, never on a point of doctrine^[9].

The system: hypotheses from the De principiis

The reservoir of all the condemned theses is a single book: the De principiis — in Greek Peri Archon, "On First Principles" — the first attempt at systematic theology in Christian history^[10]. Yet this book has come down to us in conditions that demand caution: the Greek original is very largely lost, and it is chiefly the Latin translation of Rufinus, in 397, that hands it on — a translation whose author himself admits to having softened the most shocking passages, while St Jerome accuses him of having falsified the master's thought^[11]. In other words, the Church judged a system known through a doubly distorting filter: the boldness of Origen, then the prudence of his translator. It is this system — as it was received, taught by the monks and finally condemned — that the word Origenism denotes: not so much the theology of Origen as the doctrines, rightly or wrongly attributed to Origen, whose novelty and danger very early called for refutation by orthodox writers^[12].

Origen's golden rule: believe only the faith of the Church

Before entering into the theses, one must hear the profession of faith that opens the De principiis itself, in Rufinus's translation. Origen lays down his guiding rule:

"Only that truth is to be believed which in no way departs from ecclesiastical and apostolic tradition." — Origen, preface to De principiis, trans. Rufinus^[13]

(Ignispedia translation from the Latin.) And he insists elsewhere: we must believe only as the Churches of God have handed down to us by succession^[14]. For him, the Catholic is recognised by this: belonging to the Church, depending on her — outside her, no salvation — while he who leaves her walks in darkness: he is a heretic^[15]. He even has his fine image: here below, we have only two lights to guide us, Christ and the Church; and the Church faithfully reflects the light received from Christ, as the moon reflects the rays of the sun^[16].

A man animated by such sentiments may have been mistaken — he is human — but his disposition of mind is essentially Catholic, and he does not deserve to be ranked among the promoters of heresy^[17]. That is exactly the judgment the Church ended by passing: condemning the theses, without making Origen a heresiarch in the sense in which Arius or Nestorius are.

Where the system comes from: an alloy of philosophy and theology

The condemned system comes down to a few hypotheses whose error and danger Origen did not see^[18]. He speculates from three materials: Scripture, Greek philosophy — above all Plato and the Stoics, discovered at the school of Ammonius Saccas — and questions no one before him had confronted head-on^[19]. The result is incoherent down to its very principles: the theory of a final restoration, for instance, flatly contradicts the theory of indefinite successive trials — and Origen himself, sensing the contradiction, shrinks from the consequences, protests against the logical conclusions and often corrects, by orthodox professions of faith, the heterodoxy of his speculations^[20]. One could easily find in his work a mass of texts contradicting these principles and ruining their conclusions^[21]. That is why the Church, when she struck, aimed at the hypotheses in themselves, worthy of censure whatever Origen may have thought at bottom^[22].

Eternal creation and the original equality of minds

First hypothesis: God allegedly created from all eternity. Origen defends energetically, against the pagan philosophers, that everything existing outside God was created by him — no uncreated matter^[23]. But he adds that it would be absurd to imagine God's nature inactive, his goodness inefficacious or his dominion without subjects: God must therefore always have created, which forces the admission of a double infinite series of worlds, before and after the present world^[24].

Second hypothesis: in the beginning, all intellectual natures were created equal and alike, God having no motive to create them otherwise^[25]. Their present differences would come only from the different use of free will: created good and happy, minds grew weary of their happiness and fell, through negligence, some more, others less^[26]. Hence the hierarchy of angels — and the four categories of created intelligences: angels, stars (supposing, as is probable, that they are animated), men and demons^[27]. And as what free will has done, free will can undo, their roles might one day be exchanged: the Trinity alone is essentially immutable in the good^[28].

Matter at the service of minds: why we have a body

Third hypothesis: matter exists only for the spiritual; if the spiritual had no need of it, it would not exist, for its finality is not in itself^[29]. Origen does not dare affirm it expressly, but it seems to him that created minds, even the most perfect, cannot do without an extremely diluted and subtle matter serving them as vehicle and means of action^[30]. Matter must therefore have been created at the same time as the spiritual — the spiritual being logically first — and it will never cease to be, because the spiritual, however perfect, will always need it^[31]. A matter open to indefinite transformations, adapted to the changing state of minds: destined for the most imperfect minds, it thickens and forms the bodies of this visible world; at the service of the higher intelligences, it shines with the brightness of the heavenly bodies and serves as garment to the angels of God and to the sons of the Resurrection^[32].

In concrete terms — the form the anathemas will remember: our gross bodies would be the punishment of grown-cold minds — fallen intelligences, hidden in flesh as in a prison. The whole Christian doctrine of the body — created good, called to the resurrection — is thus turned upside down.

The apocatastasis: when all becomes one again, even the demon

Fourth hypothesis, the most famous and the most condemned: the universality of redemption and the final restoration. Certain scriptural texts — notably the first Epistle to the Corinthians, chapter 15, verses 25 to 28, on God who will be "all in all" — seem to extend to all reasonable beings the benefit of the Redemption; Origen lets himself be led by them, along with his favourite philosophical principle, never demonstrated: the end is always like the beginning^[33]. He writes:

"We think that the goodness of God, through the mediation of Christ, will bring all creatures to one and the same end." — Origen, De principiis, I, 6, 1-3 (Ignispedia translation)^[34]

The universal restoration — apokatastasis — would necessarily follow from these principles^[35]. Taken seriously, it means that the pains of hell are not eternal, that the demons themselves will one day be restored, and that every distinction — hypostases, numbers, bodies, names — will disappear into the final unity.

Yet Origen, once again, contradicts himself in the orthodox direction: he affirms that the charity of the elect in heaven does not fail — their freedom there will be so bound that sin will be impossible^[36] — and that the reprobate will remain fixed in evil, less from inability to free themselves from it than because they will to be wicked, malice having become for them as a second nature^[37]. He even grew angry when accused of teaching the eternal salvation of the devil^[38]. A defence the Church heard — following St Athanasius, who asks that Origen's true thought not be sought in works where he argues both sides by way of intellectual exercise, and St Jerome, who distinguishes between dogmatizing and setting forth hypothetical opinions to be clarified by discussion^[39] — but without absolving the hypotheses themselves.

The Christ of the Origenists: one intelligence among others

The anathemas of 543 detail, with formidable precision, how far the system lowered Christ. The table below gives the measure of it: it is no longer only the soul or the body that is at stake, as with the other heretics of the time, but the very person of the Son.

Faced with this table, one understands that the Church saw not a school quarrel, but another religion: a Christ who is but a most faithful intelligence looks more like the first of the angels than the Only Son.

The cosmological appendages: animated stars and spherical bodies

The system finally dragged along cosmological theses which the anathemas pick up one by one: the sun, the moon and the stars would be reasonable beings, become what they are from having turned toward evil^[45]; after the resurrection, the body of the Lord would be ethereal, of spherical form, and such would be the bodies of all after the resurrection — the nature of our true bodies being destined for annihilation^[46]; the future judgment would mean the destruction of the body, the end of history being an immaterial nature, without matter, pure spirit^[47]. Each time, it is the resurrection of the flesh — an article of the Creed — that is denied in favour of a purely spiritual salvation.

Nitria against Scetis: allegorist monks and anthropomorphite monks

The first crisis broke out in the deserts of Egypt, during the second half of the fourth century^[48]. At Nitria, the monks professed an exaggerated enthusiasm for Origen; at nearby Scetis, the neighbouring brothers, by excessive reaction and morbid fear of allegorism, fell into anthropomorphism — picturing God with a human body^[49]. Two excesses face to face: on one side everything is spiritualized until the letter dissolves, on the other God himself is materialized. These doctrinal disputes gradually invaded the monasteries of Palestine, watched over by St Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis: convinced of the dangers of Origenism, he fought it in his writings — the whole of chapter 64 of his Panarion is devoted to it — and he was resolved to prevent its spread and to extirpate it completely^[50].

Jerusalem 394: Epiphanius and John answer each other from the pulpit

In 394, Epiphanius came to Jerusalem and preached vehemently there against the errors of Origen, in the presence of the bishop of the city, John, held to be an Origenist^[61]. John, in his turn, spoke against anthropomorphism — directing his discourse so clearly against Epiphanius that no one could mistake it^[62]. A second incident poisoned the quarrel: Epiphanius had raised to the priesthood Paulinian, the brother of St Jerome, in a place subject to the see of Jerusalem; John complained bitterly of this violation of his rights, and Epiphanius's answer was not such as to appease him^[63].

Jerome against Rufinus: the bitterest of breaks

Since Jerome and Rufinus settled, one at Bethlehem and the other on the Mount of Olives, they had lived in brotherly friendship: both admired, imitated and translated Origen, and were in perfect agreement with their bishop^[64]. In 392, a monk of Scetis named Aterbius came to Jerusalem and accused both of them of Origenism^[65]. Jerome, highly sensitive on orthodoxy, was deeply wounded by the insinuation; two years later, he went over to Epiphanius's camp, whose reply to John of Jerusalem he translated into Latin^[66]. Rufinus learned — no one knows how — of the existence of this translation, not intended for the public, and Jerome suspected him of having obtained it by fraud^[67]. A reconciliation came later, but it did not last. In 397, Rufinus, then at Rome, translated the De principiis into Latin and, in his preface, took up on his own account the dithyrambic praise Jerome had once addressed to the Alexandrian catechist^[68]. The solitary of Bethlehem, cruelly wounded, wrote to his friends to refute Rufinus's perfidious insinuation, denounced the errors of Origen to Pope Anastasius, tried to win the patriarch of Alexandria to the anti-Origenist cause and engaged with Rufinus in a controversy marked, on both sides, by great bitterness^[69].

Theophilus of Alexandria: the reversal that changed everything

Until 400, Theophilus of Alexandria was an acknowledged Origenist: his confidant was Isidore, a former monk of Nitria, and his friends the Tall Brothers — the accredited leaders of the Origenist party: Dioscorus, Ammonius, Eusebius and Euthymius, four brothers of tall stature, disciples of Pambo, famous throughout the desert^[70]. Theophilus had supported John of Jerusalem against Epiphanius, whose anthropomorphism he had denounced to Pope Siricius^[71]. Then, abruptly, he changed sides — no one has ever known exactly why^[72]. It is said that the monks of Scetis, displeased with his paschal letter of 399, invaded his episcopal residence and threatened him with death if he did not recant; what is certain is that he quarrelled with Isidore over money matters, and with the Tall Brothers, who blamed his avarice and worldliness^[73].

Now Isidore and the Tall Brothers had withdrawn to Constantinople, where St John Chrysostom offered them hospitality and interceded for them — without, however, admitting them to communion so long as the censures laid upon them had not been lifted^[74]. The irascible patriarch of Alexandria then settled his plan: to stifle Origenism everywhere, and under this pretext to ruin Chrysostom, whom he hated and envied^[75]. For four years, his activity was pitiless: he condemned the books of Origen at the council of Alexandria (400), expelled the monks of Nitria with an armed band, wrote to the bishops of Cyprus and Palestine to win them to his crusade, published in 401, 402 and 404 paschal letters against the doctrine of Origen, and sent Pope Anastasius a letter demanding the condemnation of Origenism^[76]. Success exceeded his hopes: the bishops of Cyprus accepted his invitation; those of Palestine, assembled at Jerusalem, condemned the errors pointed out to them — adding that they were not taught among them^[77]. Anastasius, while declaring that Origen was entirely unknown to him, condemned the propositions extracted from his books^[78]. Jerome translated into Latin even the patriarch's lucubrations — including his virulent diatribe against Chrysostom^[79].

The Oak (403): when Origenism brought down Chrysostom

Epiphanius, who had preceded Theophilus to Constantinople, treated Chrysostom there as rash and almost a heretic — until the day the truth began to dawn on him: suspecting he may have been deceived, he abruptly left the capital and died at sea before reaching Salamis^[80]. As for Theophilus, summoned by the emperor to explain his conduct toward Isidore and the Tall Brothers, he succeeded by his manoeuvres in reversing the roles: from accused, he became accuser, and summoned Chrysostom to appear before the conciliabule of the Oak — ad Quercum — where Chrysostom was condemned^[81]. As soon as Theophilus's vengeance was sated, Origenism was heard of no more: the patriarch of Alexandria went back to reading Origen, claiming one could gather the roses among the thorns, and reconciled himself with the Tall Brothers without asking them to retract^[82]. Scarcely were the personal quarrels appeased than the spectre of Origenism vanished: the necessary conclusion — the controversy was superficial, and Origen's orthodoxy was not its sole stake^[83].

The New Lavra: an Origenism with almost nothing of Origen left

In 514, heterodox doctrines of a very singular kind had already spread among the monks of Jerusalem and its surroundings^[84]. Perhaps the seeds of the dispute were sown by Stephen Bar-Sudaili, a turbulent monk expelled from Edessa, who joined to an Origenism of his own fashion views that were distinctly pantheist^[85]. Plots and intrigues lasted some thirty years: monks suspected of Origenism were in turn expelled from their monasteries, readmitted, then driven out again^[86]. Their leaders and protectors were Nonnus, who held the party together until his death in 547, Theodore Ascidas and Domitian, who had won the emperor's favour and were appointed bishops — one to the see of Ancyra in Galatia, the other to that of Caesarea in Cappadocia — while continuing to reside at court, from 537 on^[87].

Above all, the Origenists of Palestine had split into two factions anathematizing each other: the Isochristoi — "those who claim to be equal to Christ" — for whom all souls, originally equal to that of Christ, will become so again at the end of time; and the Protoktistoi — the "first-created" — more moderate, for whom Christ is the head of many brothers, the first of creatures^[88]. The two parties accused each other of heresy, and other Christians accused them both^[89]. It was the Protoktistoi who brought the matter before the emperor: through Pelagius, the pope's apocrisiarius, they called on Justinian to condemn the Isochristoi^[90].

Justinian's edict and the synod of 543: fifteen anathemas

It was in these circumstances that a report against Origenism was addressed to Justinian — by whom and on what occasion, no one knows, for the two accounts that have come down to us diverge: that of Cyril of Scythopolis in the Life of Sabas, and that of Liberatus in his Breviarium^[91]. The emperor then wrote his Liber adversus Origenem: besides an exposition of the reasons for condemning Origenism, twenty-four censurable texts drawn from the De principiis, and finally ten propositions to be anathematized^[92][93]. Justinian ordered Patriarch Mennas to gather all the bishops present in Constantinople and make them subscribe these anathemas: this was the local synod — synodos endemousa — of 543^[94]. A copy of the imperial edict was addressed to the other patriarchs, including Pope Vigilius, and all adhered to it — for Vigilius, we have the testimony of Liberatus and that of Cassiodorus^[95].

Domitian and Theodore Ascidas were expected, by refusing to condemn Origenism, to fall into disgrace: they signed whatever they were asked to sign and remained more powerful than ever^[96]. Ascidas even took his revenge: he persuaded the emperor to have Theodore of Mopsuestia condemned, held to be the sworn enemy of Origen^[97]. Justinian's new edict — which has not come down to us — led to the meeting of the fifth ecumenical council, where Theodore of Mopsuestia, Ibas and Theodoret were condemned: this was the affair of the Three Chapters^[98].

The fifteen anathemas subscribed in 543 — whose text is preserved in the acts — proceed methodically: they strike first the fabulous pre-existence of souls and the monstrous restoration that follows^[99], then each piece of the system, one after another — the bodiless creation of intelligences^[100], the animated stars^[101], the grown-cold souls hidden in gross bodies^[102], the circulation of angelic, psychic, demonic and human conditions^[103], the demiurgic Nous older than the world^[104], the compassionate Christ passing through all classes of beings^[105], the Christ who would be so only improperly^[106], the Nous that would have descended into hell in place of the Word^[107], the spherical bodies^[108], judgment as destruction of the body^[109], the reign of Christ destined to end^[110], Christ in no way different from other reasonable beings^[111] — to conclude with the apocatastasis itself:

"If anyone shall say that all reasonable beings will one day be united in one, when the hypostases as well as the numbers and the bodies shall have disappeared […] moreover, that in this pretended apocatastasis, spirits only will continue to exist, as it was in the feigned pre-existence: let him be anathema." — Fourteenth anathema against Origen (543), trans. Schaff, NPNF Second Series, vol. XIV^[112]

The fifteenth anathema finally strikes the principle itself: that the life of minds will be as at the beginning, the end and the beginning being alike, the end being the true measure of the beginning^[113].

Constantinople II (553): Origen named in canon 11

Were Origen and Origenism anathematized by the council itself? Many learned authors believe so; as many deny it; most modern authorities hesitate or answer with reservations^[114]. Relying on the most recent studies, one may hold for certain: the fifth general council was convened only for the affair of the Three Chapters — neither Origen nor Origenism was its cause^[115]; it opened on 5 May 553 despite the protests of Pope Vigilius, who, though present in Constantinople, refused to attend; in the eight conciliar sessions (5 May-2 June), whose acts we possess, only the question of the Three Chapters was treated^[116]; only the acts concerning the Three Chapters were submitted to the pope for approval — granted on 8 December 553 and then on 23 February 554^[117]. A remarkable fact: Popes Vigilius, Pelagius I (556-561), Pelagius II (579-590) and St Gregory the Great (590-604), when they treat of the fifth council, speak only of the Three Chapters, without mentioning Origenism, as if they knew nothing of its condemnation^[118].

But it must also be admitted that before the opening of the council — delayed by the pope's resistance — the bishops already gathered at Constantinople must have examined, on the emperor's orders, a form of Origenism having practically nothing in common with Origen, but held by one of the Palestinian Origenist parties^[119]. The bishops certainly subscribed the fifteen anathemas proposed by the emperor, and an avowed Origenist, Theodore of Scythopolis, was compelled to retract — but nothing proves that the pope's approval, then protesting against the convocation of the council, was sought^[120]. One easily understands how this extra-conciliar sentence could later have been taken for a decree of the ecumenical council itself^[121].

However this historians' debate stands, the council, in its eleventh anathema, names Origen among the heretics — with Arius, Eunomius, Macedonius, Apollinaris, Nestorius and Eutyches — as well as their impious writings, and all who persist in holding their opinion to the end^[122]:

"If anyone does not anathematize Arius, Eunomius, Macedonius, Apollinaris, Nestorius, Eutyches and Origen, as well as their impious writings, as also all other heretics already condemned and anathematized by the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church […] let him be anathema." — Second Council of Constantinople (553), canon 11, trans. Schaff, NPNF Second Series, vol. XIV^[123]

With this canon, Origenism officially joined the list of errors every Catholic must reject — alongside Arianism, Apollinarianism and the doctrines Monothelitism would soon condemn.

A century and a half apart, the two crises had neither the same men, nor the same stakes, nor the same outcome. The following table sums them up — and shows why only the second produced a lasting dogmatic condemnation.

The lesson of the table is clear: so long as persons agitate, doctrine waits; when persons fall silent — Theophilus sated in 404 — the spectre vanishes without any definition having decided. It took an emperor-theologian, Justinian, and an ecumenical council for the Church to have the last word.

Didymus and Evagrius: the two names carried off with Origen

The condemnation struck more than a third-century dead man. With Origen, canon 11 of 553 — and the memory of the council — associates two heirs: Didymus the Blind (c. 313-398), the great blind exegete of Alexandria who headed the catechetical school for more than half a century, and Evagrius Ponticus (346-399), the monk-writer of the Nitrian desert, master of contemplative prayer and analyst of evil thoughts^[136]. Both had taken up the boldest hypotheses — pre-existence, universal restoration — sometimes hardening them^[137]. Evagrius, dead in 399, had this strange luck: narrowly escaping the furies of the first crisis, only to be anathematized a hundred and fifty years later with the Palestinian monks who claimed his authority^[138]. Their names recall that Origenism is not the affair of a single man, but of a school: Alexandria, Palestine, the desert — three generations of readers of Origen.

The heritage kept: what the Church refused to throw away

And yet — the paradox that makes all the greatness of this dossier — the Church never threw away Origen entire. She kept the exegete to whom Jerome himself avowed his debt, even after the break^[139]. She kept the apologist of Against Celsus, the preacher of the homilies, the confessor tortured under Decius^[140]. She kept even his golden rule — believe only the faith handed down by succession in the Churches — become the very method with which she judged him^[141]. The popes themselves, as we have seen, retained from the fifth council only the affair of the Three Chapters, as if the condemnation of Origenism went without saying, noiselessly^[142]. That is the mark of the soundest condemnations: they decide without humiliating, they amputate without tearing out the root.

The judgment of the Catholic Encyclopedia — summing up a century of Catholic scholarship — deserves to be quoted in full, so well does it hold the balance this article has sought to hold:

"A man animated with such sentiments may have made mistakes, because he is human, but his disposition of mind is essentially Catholic and he does not deserve to be ranked among the promoters of heresy." — F. Prat, "Origen and Origenism", Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 11, 1911^[143]

The spiritual lesson: you do not save Christ by diminishing man

It would be easy to shelve Origenism in the museum of dogmatic curiosities. That would be to miss its lesson, which joins that of all the ancient heresies: you never protect God by paring down his creation. The Origenists thought to honour Christ by making him the most faithful of intelligences, and to save souls by promising all — even the demons — return into unity: they lost both Christ, who is no longer God, and man, who is no longer free^[144]. For if the end is necessarily as the beginning, what is the use of choosing? If all will be saved whatever happens, the cross, the judgment, hell — and freedom itself — are but shadows on the wall of a Platonic cave^[145].

The Catholic faith confesses the reverse, in the very words the anathemas aimed at: souls created with their bodies and not fallen from an earlier heaven; bodies truly resurrected, and not dissolved into ethereal spheres; a Christ true God and true man, and not first among equals; a judgment where freedom, taken seriously to the end, can say no for ever^[146]. It was to keep these four truths — and not from hatred of a great mind — that the Church pronounced, in 543 and then in 553, the terrible and merciful word: anathema^[147].

• The man behind the system: Origen (c. 185-c. 253)
• The panorama: The heresies of the early centuries
• The other errors on Christ: Arianism, Semi-Arianism, Apollinarianism, Docetism, Adoptionism, Nestorianism, Eutychianism, Monophysitism, Monothelitism
• What followed in the crises: The Nestorian crisis, The Monophysite crisis
• The other errors on God and the Spirit: Sabellianism, Modalism, Macedonianism
• Grace and freedom, the neighbouring dossier: Pelagianism, Semi-Pelagianism
• Ancient rigours and schisms: Montanism, Novatianism, Donatism (311-411), Priscillianism (370-561)
• The rival gnoses: Gnosticism, Marcionism
• The quarrel over images, three centuries later: Iconoclasm