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Course 12 · Lesson 2.3

Origen: biblical scholarship, allegory and speculation

11 minute read

Lessons in this course

Course 12 outline

Module 1: The Apostolic Fathers and the Early Apologists

  1. Who the Apostolic Fathers were: Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp and the Didache
  2. Church order, worship and martyrdom in the second century
  3. Why Christians wrote apologies: charges, persecution and public defense
  4. Justin Martyr, philosophy and the Logos

Module 2: Irenaeus, Tertullian and Origen

  1. Irenaeus against the Gnostics: the rule of faith and apostolic succession
  2. Tertullian and the beginnings of Latin theology
  3. Origen: biblical scholarship, allegory and speculation
  4. Heresy and orthodoxy: the scholarly debate about early diversity

Module 3: Creeds and Councils: Nicaea to Chalcedon

  1. From baptismal confession to creed
  2. Arius, the Council of Nicaea (325) and Athanasius
  3. The Cappadocian Fathers and the Council of Constantinople (381)
  4. Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451): one Christ, two natures
  5. The seven councils and how the churches receive them

Module 4: Augustine, Chrysostom and the Desert

  1. Augustine: life, conversion and the Confessions
  2. Augustine on grace, the Pelagian controversy and the City of God
  3. John Chrysostom: preacher, pastor and critic of wealth
  4. The Desert Fathers and Mothers: Anthony, Macarius and Amma Syncletica

Module 5: The Medieval Church and Scholasticism

  1. The medieval setting: monasteries, cathedral schools and universities
  2. Anselm and the method of scholasticism
  3. Thomas Aquinas: life and the structure of the Summa Theologiae
  4. Aquinas on faith, reason, nature and grace
  5. East and West: the growing divide and the schism of 1054

Module 6: The Reformation and the Counter-Reformation

  1. Luther and the question of justification
  2. Zwingli, Calvin and the Reformed tradition
  3. The Radical Reformation and the English Reformation
  4. The Council of Trent and Catholic reform
  5. Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant readings of the Reformation

Module 7: Modern Theology and Tracing a Doctrine

  1. The Enlightenment and its challenges to inherited doctrine
  2. Schleiermacher, liberal theology and Karl Barth
  3. Vatican II, Orthodox renewal and the evangelical and Pentecostal movements
  4. How to trace a doctrine: development, change and corruption

All courses

Program / Course 12: Patristics and Historical Theology / Lesson 2.3

What you will learn

  • Describe Origen’s life and his major works, including the Hexapla and On First Principles.
  • Explain his three levels of reading Scripture and why allegory mattered to him.
  • Separate what Origen proposed tentatively from what later churches rejected.
  • Explain why the church honors his scholarship while many reject some of his ideas.

The big idea

Origen of Alexandria, who lived in the first half of the third century, was the greatest biblical scholar of the early church and one of its boldest thinkers. He compared Hebrew and Greek texts of the Old Testament, wrote commentaries and sermons on most of the Bible, and taught that Scripture has several levels of meaning. He also explored questions that the church had not yet settled, and some of his answers were later rejected. His case shows how one person can shape a tradition and also be corrected by it.

Key terms

Allegory
A way of reading a text in which the surface story points to a deeper meaning. In Christian use, an allegorical reading finds Christ, the church or the soul in an Old Testament passage.
Hexapla
A huge work by Origen that set the Hebrew text of the Old Testament and several Greek versions in parallel columns. Only fragments survive.
Catechetical school
A school in Alexandria that taught new and advancing Christians. Its history in the second and third centuries is not fully clear.
Preexistence of souls
The idea that human souls existed before their bodies. Origen explored it, and the church rejected it.
Apokatastasis
A Greek word for restoration. In this context, the idea that in the end all rational creatures might be restored to God. The church rejected it as a teaching.
Eternal generation
The teaching that the Son is begotten of the Father not at some moment but eternally. Origen helped develop it.
Anathema
A formal declaration that a teaching is rejected by the church.

Background

Origen was born around 185, probably in Alexandria in Egypt, to a Christian family. His father, Leonides, was put to death in a persecution around 202, and Origen, who was a teenager, is said to have wanted to join him. Left with a family to support, he became a teacher, and in time a head of the catechetical school in the city. Later he moved to Caesarea in Palestine, where he taught and preached until the persecution of the emperor Decius, during which he was imprisoned and tortured. He died around 253.

He was astonishingly productive. Ancient sources speak of hundreds or even thousands of works. He compiled the Hexapla, a textual work that laid the Hebrew Old Testament and several Greek translations side by side. He wrote commentaries and homilies on Scripture, a defense of the faith called Against Celsus, and a systematic work, On First Principles. Many writings survive only in part, and some only in the Latin translation of Rufinus, who is known to have edited and softened some passages.

Origen’s reputation has been argued over from his own day. A student should keep in view that he was a devoted churchman, a martyr’s son and a confessor himself, and that he was also a thinker who pushed beyond the limits others would accept.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: The scholar of the text

Origen believed that careful study of the biblical text was part of loving God. The Hexapla let him see where Greek translations differed from the Hebrew, and he marked passages to show where they did not agree. Whatever one thinks of his interpretations, the scholarly effort is remarkable. Later translators, including Jerome, learned from his work.

Step 2: The three senses of Scripture

In On First Principles, Origen argues that Scripture has a body, a soul and a spirit, like a human being. The body is the literal or historical meaning. The soul is the moral meaning, which teaches how to live. The spirit is the deeper meaning, which points to Christ and to the spiritual life. He argued that this was how Paul read the law when he wrote that the letter kills but the spirit gives life (2 Corinthians 3:6).

Origen also held that some passages are difficult or even impossible if taken literally, and that God placed such puzzles in Scripture to push readers to look deeper. Critics, ancient and modern, say that his method can let the interpreter find almost anything. Admirers reply that he usually argued from other parts of Scripture and from the rule of faith, and that he took the literal sense seriously far more often than caricatures suggest.

Step 3: Doctrines he developed

Origen taught that God is utterly spiritual, and that the Son is begotten of the Father eternally, with no time when the Son was not. This idea of eternal generation became part of the church’s teaching. He also, however, spoke of the Son as in some respects below the Father, which would later cause difficulty in the Arian dispute.

He defended human free will against fatalistic teachers, and he wrote with great love of the person of Christ and of the soul’s journey to God. His homilies on the Song of Songs shaped later Christian mysticism.

Step 4: Speculations that were rejected

Origen also explored ideas that the church rejected. He considered that souls existed before bodies and fell into them. He suggested that even the devil and the damned might be restored in the end, an idea called apokatastasis. In some passages he writes as if he offers these ideas tentatively, as questions for inquiry. He says in the preface to On First Principles that some matters are defined by the church and others are open to discussion.

In the following centuries, controversy grew. In 553, the Second Council of Constantinople condemned teachings associated with Origenism. Historians debate whether those condemned teachings accurately represent Origen himself or the later followers who developed them. His own position on several points is uncertain because of the state of the texts.

Step 5: How to read Origen

A careful student distinguishes three things: what Origen proposed as a guess, what he taught firmly as the church’s faith, and what later followers claimed in his name. On the first, many readers judge him to have gone astray. On the second, he is a reliable witness. The third is often a different matter. This habit of sorting is useful for reading any ancient thinker.

  1. What are the strengths of reading a text on several levels? What are the dangers?
  2. How can a reader tell when a passage is meant to be taken literally?
  3. Why might someone who loves the Bible also love textual scholarship?
  4. How should a church treat a teacher who offers speculations as questions?
  5. Why does it matter that some of Origen’s works survive only in a translator’s version?
  6. What is the difference between an idea being rejected and a person being condemned?

Examples

A six-column Bible

Imagine a table with the Hebrew text in the first column, a Hebrew text in Greek letters in the second, and four Greek translations next to them. A reader could see at once where the versions differed. This was Origen’s method, and it took many years.

Three readings of one passage

Origen might read the story of the crossing of the Red Sea as a historical event, as a lesson about leaving old habits, and as a picture of baptism and of Christ’s victory. Later Christian writers often followed this pattern.

A question, not a doctrine

In On First Principles, Origen writes of the fate of souls and of the end of the world in the form of questions and possibilities. Later critics sometimes quoted these passages as if they were firm claims. A careful reader notes the difference.

Different perspectives

Catholic

Catholic teaching honors Origen as a great biblical scholar and teacher, though he is not a canonized saint and the Church does not endorse his speculations. Modern Catholic theologians such as Henri de Lubac studied him with admiration, and Pope Benedict XVI spoke of him as a key figure while noting his errors.

Orthodox

Orthodox tradition honors his biblical work and his influence on the Cappadocian Fathers, who edited a collection of his writings, but it condemns the Origenist teachings on preexistence and the restoration of all. The Orthodox Church does not count him among the saints.

Protestant

Protestants admire his devotion to the text and to textual scholarship, and some follow him in finding Christ in the Old Testament. Many Reformation writers criticized allegorical reading and favored the plain historical sense, so they often view his method with caution. Some Protestants today are returning to his work as part of an interest in premodern interpretation.

Scholarly views

Scholars debate how much of the later Origenist controversy reflects Origen himself. Some argue that he was a faithful churchman whose exploratory style was misread. Others argue that his system is at odds with later orthodoxy at several points. Both groups acknowledge his importance for textual criticism and exegesis.

Why it matters

Origen shows that careful study of the Bible and bold thinking about it are old Christian habits. He also shows the cost when a thinker pushes past what the community is willing to accept. Learning to separate his lasting contributions from his rejected speculations helps students read any theologian fairly, neither dismissing a person for one mistake nor ignoring the mistake.

Common misunderstandings

Misunderstanding: Origen was a heretic and his works are worthless.

Correction: Many of his writings were used and admired by later saints, including Gregory of Nazianzus and Basil, who made a collection of selections. Parts of his teaching were rejected, but his scholarship and much of his teaching were not.

Misunderstanding: Allegory means ignoring the literal meaning.

Correction: Origen usually took the literal sense seriously and read the deeper senses in addition. He did think that some passages could not be read only literally.

Misunderstanding: Origen’s views are known with certainty.

Correction: Many of his works survive only in translations, some of which were altered. Historians must compare sources, and some of his positions are uncertain.

Misunderstanding: The Second Council of Constantinople condemned Origen by name in a clearly settled way.

Correction: The sources are debated. Historians disagree about which of the condemnations were issued at the council itself and how they relate to Origen personally.

Knowledge check

What was the Hexapla?

It was Origen’s huge comparative edition of the Old Testament, which placed the Hebrew text, a transliteration into Greek letters and several Greek translations in parallel columns. It allowed readers to see how the versions differed. Only fragments survive, but it influenced later translators such as Jerome.

What are the three senses of Scripture in Origen’s scheme?

He compared Scripture to a human being with body, soul and spirit. The body is the literal or historical sense, the soul is the moral sense and the spirit is the deeper, spiritual sense that points to Christ and the life of faith. He argued that Paul read the law in this way.

Name two ideas of Origen that the church rejected.

He considered that souls existed before their bodies, and he suggested that all rational creatures, perhaps even the devil, might be restored to God in the end. The church rejected both ideas. He often offered them as tentative questions, though his followers sometimes taught them more firmly.

Why are some of Origen’s views hard to establish?

Many of his works survive only in part, or in Latin translations such as Rufinus’s, who edited and softened some passages. Later opponents also quoted him selectively. Historians therefore compare several sources and disagree about some points.

Think it through

  1. Is there a passage of Scripture you read on more than one level? How do you decide how far to go?
  2. How should a student treat a writer who loved the church and also taught things the church later rejected?
  3. What can careful study of manuscripts and translations add to faith?
  4. Why might the church allow open questions on some topics and not on others?

Independent assignment

Reading On First Principles with care

Read the preface of On First Principles and a selection from Book 4 on the reading of Scripture. In your notebook, list (a) three points Origen presents as the church’s teaching, and (b) two points he presents as open for discussion. Then write a paragraph on how this distinction changes the way you read the rest of the work. Aim for 400 to 500 words.

Further study