WHO IS ORIGEN OF ALEXANDRIA? PART I
Origen Teaching the Saints. Public domain.
Vivas to those who have fail’d!
And to those whose war-vessels sank in the sea
And to those themselves who sank in the sea!
And to all generals that lost engagement, and all overcome heroes!
And the numberless unknown heroes equal to the greatest heroes known!
Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, 18.10-16.
I remember the first day that I taught Origen of Alexandria to a group of divinity students. With most of them on the path to priesthood, they were eager to soak it all up. Ask the tough questions. Get the real story, as it were.
Several had heard the rumors about the controversial theologian prior to picking up any primary source texts. “He’s a heretic.” “He employed women as scribes– that’s pretty cool.” “Didn’t he castrate himself to like… prevent himself from sinning?” Snickers and giggles ensued. Other students sat deep in thought. Some, I would even venture, were disturbed.
Legends about Origen of Alexandria abound. Of course, the amount of gossip is of no great shock to those who study antiquity. Given the variance in translations, the bias of translators and editors, and the occasional destruction of texts, it is notoriously difficult to cut to the reality of a historical legend. Origen is not unique in this regard; every witness to Alexander the Great disagrees heavily about key elements of his campaign, for example, and the synoptic gospels offer contrasting retellings of the life and death of Jesus of Nazareth.
It is with the knowledge of this difficulty that I ask us to consider the legacy of Origen of Alexandria.
Jack of all trades and master of quite a few, Origen represents the best of the ancient philosophical and theological tradition. Simultaneously known as the Father of Orthodoxy and the Father of Heresy, we have a large portion of Origen’s writings that are preserved due to his influence on the development of the trinity and hermeneutics. These writings were likely altered to fit the orthodoxy of the day, with most of his views determined “heretical” by later creedal standards. But it isn’t simply Origen’s posthumous legacy that is controversial. Origen encountered frequent rejection by the Church during his lifetime, too.
Why?
In a 2004 episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, comedian and writer Larry David notes that “[a] really good compromise is when both parties leave unsatisfied.” Origen is the locus of several really good compromises in Ancient Christianity. In exploring some of them, we can begin to distill the essence of what makes Origen one of Christianity’s most polarizing and exciting theologians.
1. The Christian Inheritance of the Greek Philosophical Tradition
Famously formulated as the question “What does Athens have to do with Jerusalem?” both modern and ancient theologians become suspiciously squirmy when tasked with discerning the importance of ancient Greek philosophy on Christian theology. Origen finds himself right in the crosshairs of this conversation. For centuries, Platonism had been one of the philosophical schools that anybody who was anybody had to contend with. A dedicated student of Platonism himself, Origen inherited several elements of Platonic philosophy: a strong sense of dualism (the belief that somewhat yucky physical matter and the very good immaterial mind are distinct substances), primacy of substances (if something is earlier, bigger, stronger, first, etc., it is hierarchically “better”), a rigorous sense that the world is ordered by logic and reason (and therefore we should be too), and a belief in the ability of the individual to share in the divine.
Co-opting Platonism gave Christianity wind under its wings to take off among the pagans in antiquity. Indeed, there exist poignant similarities between the two. Consider the following passage from the Timaeus, a late dialogue from Plato in 360 CE that heavily influenced the popular Greco-Roman view of the beginning of the cosmos:
The god wanted everything to be good and nothing to be bad so far as that was possible, so he took over all that was visible– not at rest but in discordant and disorderly motion– and brought it from a state of disorder to one of order, because he believed that order was in every way better than disorder. (1)
Sound familiar?
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good. (2)
But the similarities between Platonic dialogues and Scripture aren’t merely implicit. Origen praises Plato directly, calling “Christian Platonism”-- a genuine hybrid of Christianity and Platonism– the true heir of Platonic philosophy. Origen’s belief that the Logos was the Christ-like principle that ordered the cosmos was ripped right out of Plato's Timaeus, and his method of scriptural interpretation that privileged reason over materiality follows in the footsteps of some of his Platonic predecessors like Philo of Alexandria.
Origen’s bid for compatibility between Platonic metaphysics and the Christian Godhead is supremely attractive, but not every dog has his day. Unfortunately, Origen was too Christian for most Platonists, and too Platonic for most Christians. Origen spent the rest of his life defending his views in each circle, suffering heartily in both. Ironically, Origen lived out his final decades rejected by his Christian bishop and eventually martyred by a pagan emperor.
2. Development of the Biblical Canon & Scriptural Interpretation
In studying church history, Christians will come to the dual realization that the biblical canon as they know it is not nearly as old as they might like it to be, and that translation impacts their understanding of said canon more than they might want to admit. Consider the following famous opening line from John in the original Greek.
En arkhêi ên ho lógos, kaì ho lógos ên pròs tòn theón, kaì theòs ên ho lógos.
The most popular translation of this fragment tends to sound something like: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” And while “Word” is a fairly acceptable translation of logos (λόγος), even new Greek students know that the connotation of the word suggests something… more philosophical, actually. Reason, logic, order, law, saying, account, word, speech, mind, and cause are all possibilities. (3)
Imagine how different certain modern strands of Christianity would be if the first line of John was popularly translated as: “In the beginning was Reason, and Reason was with God, and Reason was God.” One can see how a Platonist (or even an ancient philosopher in general) could be very, very excited about this biblical text. Origen of Alexandria is no exception.
The reality is that we are constantly bound to the choices of translators. We can see this translation and interpretation difference in a contemporary context when walking through most towns in America. We might see an Episcopal Church and know that it uses the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) of the Bible, while a Baptist Church might opt for the King James Version (KJV). Origen knew this limitation; while he thought that Scripture was no doubt inspired by the Spirit, he also dove head-first into acknowledging the reality of multiple translations. In the 3rd century, Origen crafted a work called the Hexapla: a multi-column comparison of different translations of the Hebrew Bible. (4)
A fragment of Origen’s Hexapla. Public domain.
The Hexapla is brilliant. Not only does it simultaneously destabilize thinkers and cause them to doubt their own views, but it also inspires them to interrogate their reliance on the canon in their hands and the language they encounter it in. Thankfully, Origen does not leave us without a method to navigate this new feeling. In light of the variance of text translations and the genuine difficulty of knowing what to take literally vs. figuratively in Scripture, Origen tells us that there are two ways to interpret scripture: 1. The literal reading of scripture and 2. The allegorical reading of scripture. Consider the following verse.
“And Jesus went up to Jerusalem.” John 2:13
The literal reading of this verse would require us to conceive of Jerusalem as a physical, material Jerusalem– an actual place that we can point to on a map. The allegorical reading of this verse would have Jerusalem function as a spiritual archetype of sort -- a non-physical Jerusalem that represents the Kingdom of Heaven, or perhaps a divine ideal for us to strive for. In his commentary on John, Origen begins with the literal reading of the verse, saying that Jerusalem “is built on a high mountain, and there are mountains round about it, and the participation of it is to the same place, and there the tribes of the Lord went up, a testimony for Israel.” And then Origen moves to an allegorical reading, writing that there is a “city also is called Jerusalem, to which none of those upon the earth ascends, nor goes in; but every soul that possesses by nature some elevation and some acuteness to perceive the things of the mind is a citizen of that city.” (5)Notably, Origen thinks that allegorical readings are often superior, but insists that both kinds of readings are valid. Perhaps by knowing a literal Jerusalem with stone and walls, we can make better sense of the allegorical Jerusalem that we cannot see or touch. By considering the literal and the allegorical interpretations, Origen gives us tools to navigate discrepancies in Scripture. Once again, Origen’s philosophy situates itself in the middle of theological tensions.
Plato, The Timaeus, 30a. Translation from: Plato, and Donald J. Zeyl. Timaeus. Indianapolis: Hackett Pub. Co., 2000.
Genesis 1:1-4 (KJV).
Liddell, Henry George, 1811-1898. “Logos” in A Lexicon Abridged from Liddell and Scott's Greek-English Lexicon. Oxford; New York: Clarendon Press, 1984.
From left to right, we have: 1. The Hebrew text, 2. The Secunda (Hebrew transliterated into Greek characters) 3. Aquila of Sinope’s early 2nd CE Greek translation) 4. Symmachus the Ebionite’s late 2nd CE Greek translation 5. A comparison of the Septuagint with the Hebrew and 6. Yet another Greek translation, this time by Theodotion (mid 2nd CE).
