Questions about Origen
Short answers, pulled from the story.
Who was Origen of Alexandria and why is he significant?
Origen of Alexandria (born around 185 AD) was an early Christian scholar, ascetic, and theologian who wrote roughly 2,000 treatises covering textual criticism, biblical exegesis, homiletics, and theology. He founded the Christian School of Caesarea, produced the Hexapla (the first critical edition of the Hebrew Bible), and wrote Contra Celsum, one of the most influential works of early Christian apologetics. John Anthony McGuckin has described him as "the greatest genius the early church ever produced".
What was Origen's Hexapla and why was it important?
The Hexapla was a massive six-column comparative edition of the Hebrew Bible that Origen produced, placing the original Hebrew text, a Greek transliteration of the Hebrew, the Septuagint, and three other Greek translations side by side. It was the first critical edition of the Hebrew Bible and became the cornerstone of the Great Library of Caesarea. When Emperor Constantine the Great ordered fifty copies of the Bible transcribed and distributed across the empire, Eusebius used the Hexapla as the master copy for the Old Testament.
What did Origen teach about salvation and the afterlife?
Origen suggested that all human souls might eventually be purified and reunited with God in an apokatastasis, or final restoration, reasoning that divine punishment was medicinal rather than permanent. He was careful to present this as speculation rather than settled doctrine. He explicitly rejected the idea that Satan would be included in this final salvation, stating so in his Letter to Friends in Alexandria.
Why was Origen condemned as a heretic by Emperor Justinian I?
In 543, Emperor Justinian I condemned Origen as a heretic and ordered all his writings burned. The condemnation centered on teachings including the preexistence of souls, his allegorical hermeneutics, his subordinationist view of the Trinity (that the Father was superior to the Son), and his speculative arguments about universal salvation. The Second Council of Constantinople in 553 may have further anathematized him, though scholars debate whether that council condemned Origen himself or only teachings attributed to him.
What is the ransom theory of atonement and did Origen invent it?
The ransom theory of atonement holds that Christ's death on the cross was a ransom paid to Satan in exchange for humanity's liberation, and that Satan was tricked because he could not hold the sinless, incarnate Deity. Origen was the first to propose this theory in its fully developed form, although Irenaeus had previously offered a prototypical version. The theory was later expanded by Gregory of Nyssa and Rufinus of Aquileia before being criticized by Anselm of Canterbury in the eleventh century.
When were new homilies by Origen discovered and how many were found?
On the 11th of June 2012, the Bavarian State Library announced that the Italian philologist Marina Molin Pradel had discovered twenty-nine previously unknown homilies by Origen in a twelfth-century Byzantine manuscript from their collection. Professor Lorenzo Perrone of Bologna University and other experts confirmed the authenticity of the texts.