OR'IGEN (Lat. Orige..ies. from Gk. 'Ilpeyivns, probably Son of Horn,.. cn Egyptian god.). also called ADAMANTIUS ( e.185-c.254) . The mo-t famous Christian writer awl teacher of the third century. He was born in Alexandria about the year 185. His parent, were Christian.. and his father, a martyr's death under Septimius Severus (202). Origen would gladly have dietI with him had he not been prevented by his mother. The boy was educated at the famous Alexandrian School, where he had Clement as his master. His remarkable abilities were early manife,t, and at the age of eighteen he was appointed to succeed Clement as head of the cateehetical school. In obedience, as he sup posed, to the command of Matthew xis. 12. Origen made himself a eunuch, and his daily life was .governed by an extreme Leaving Alexandria during the persecution tinder ('araealla (216). he traveled widely. visiting Jerusalem and Caesarea. where, at the invitation of the Bishops Alexander and I e lectured on the Scriptures, although he had not been ordained. This ealled forth a rebuke from Demetrius. Bishop of Alexandria, who summoned him to return home. For several years orig devoted himself assiduously to teaching at writing. his reputation increasing rapidly. Jerome says that he wrote more books than other men can read. and Epiphanins pl ncc tl sir total number at six thou:and. Paying anoth, r visit to Palestine in 231.
r.gen was ordained presbyter by Alexander and Theoetistu-. which aroused the bitter t of Jealousy mingled with ther inco ive, in magnify ing the suspicions of t.esy which some tained against him, ar 'two synods were held in Alexandria (231 et :el , .at which he was deposed from the priesthood id forbidden to return The churches of Palestine. Plunicia, Arabia, and Achain refused to recognize his deposition. Henceforward Origen resided in Caesarea, where lie succeeded in raising the school of that place almost to the height of fame which Alexandria had readied. During the persecution of the Em peror Decius (250 et seq.) he was imprisoned and tortured, and although he was released on the death of the Emperor, he died from the effects of his injuries about 254. being then in his seventieth yea r.
Origen was the greatest theologian and biblical scholar the Church up to that time had pro duced. Ile is sometimes called the father of the allegorical method of interpreting the Scrip tures, for although the method did not originate with him, yet he, with Clement, perfected its Christian application. and gave it a far larger currency than it had ever had before. Ile taught the principle of the three-fold sense, correspond ing to the three-fold division of man into body. soul, and spirit, which was then so common. As an exegete and student of the text, Origen (lid far greater service. In his licsaida (q.v.) lie presented the Old Testament in the original Hebrew, with a Greek transliteration, and the Greek versions of the Septuagint. Aquila, Sym machus. and Theodotion, all arranged in six parallel columns. llis exegetical work was partly in the form of homilies, on both the Old and the New Testament, and partly in that of Tonzoi, or commentaries in the stricter sense of the term, which covered a wide range. 11 is theology was presented to the world in a treatise entitled HEM 'Apxam, known to us in its completeness only in a Latin version made by Enfinus and entitled Dc Principiis. Unfortunately, Itutinus
felt called upon to alter the text wherever it seemed to him heretical, so that what we have is not a translation, hut a modified Latin ver sion. Origen's theological views are further illus trated in his long apologetic work, Against Cclsus, which is on the whole the most important Greek apology we possess.
Origen's greatest service to Christian doctrine lay in his development of the Logos Christ°ion-. In Jesus Christ we learn to know the Incarnate Word (Logos). But from this conception, through speculative thought, we rise to that of the Logos-not•Incarnate, or the Pre-existent Logos, through whom in turn we mount to God himself. the goal of all theology. To preserve the idea of I;od as absolute mid eternal, whatever is closely related to Ilim—as the Son is, and as the creation is—must be pictured to our minds sub specie ertcrnitatis, from the point of view of eternity or infinity. It is wrong to think of Christ as an emanation from God (the Gnostic doctrine), for that involves succession in time. We should rather think of Him as eternally projected. To illustrate his thought Origen used the metaphor of a torch and its light, or a mass of iron glowing with heat. In this fashion he avoided the two perils of Gnostic emanation, on the one hand, and I‘lonarchian identification, on the other. (See GNOSTICISM ; But while teach that the Son was eternally begotten, a doe trine which was perpetrated in the dogma of the Trinity, Origen also taught that the Son was subordinate to the Father in power and dignity. and this idea was later used against him, after Arianism (see Ault's) had appeared as a threatening heresy. Origen's doctrine of an eternal creation, with periodic cycles of decay and renewal for our world, was not generally accepted by the Church. Nor was his restora tionism accepted, according to which all mankind should at last return to a state of innocency and he acceptable unto God, although something like it was afterwards taught by Gregory of Nyssa in the fourth century. The school of Origen, which included Dionysius of Alexandria, Gregory Than maturgus, Eusehius of Caesarea, John of Jeru salem, Jerome (in his early period), and others, was very influential for many years, but in the fourth century it was attacked by Epi phanius, and the Origenists were thenceforward regarded as heretics and combated fiercely.
The best edition of Origen's works is that now in process of publication by the Berlin Academy in Die gricchischen christlichen ,S'ehriftstalcr dir crsten drei Jahrhunderte; Origenes Werke, vols. i. and ii.. edited by Koetsehau (Leipzig, 1899). An older edition is by Lommatzsch (25 vols., Berlin. 1S31-4S). An English translation of the most important works is given in the Antc-Niccne Fathers, vols. iv, and ix., edited by Roberts and Donaldson (New York, 1887-961. In general, consult: Ilarnaek, History of Dogma, vol. ii. (London, 1899) : Krilger, History of Early Christian Literature (New York, 1897) ; Fair weather, Origen and 0-reek Patristic Theology (ib., 1901) ; Rainy, The Ancient Catholic Church (ib., 1902).