Origen: His Life at Alexandria

353 Pages·1944·12.614 MB·English

by  René Cadiou

0RI6EN
Jdis Life at Alexandria
BY RENE GADIOU
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TRANSLATED BY JOHN A. SOUTHWELL
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NIHIL OBSTAT
Arthur J. Scanlan, S.T.D.
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IMPRIMATUR
4* Francis J. Spellman, D.D.
Archiepiscopus
New York, March 20, 1944
Copyright 1944
B. HERDER BOOK CO.
Yail-Ballou Press, Inc., Binghamton and New York
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
ORIGEN, HIS LIFE AT ALEXANDRIA, is a
translation of
la jeunesse d’origene
by Rene Cadiou, published by Gabriel
Beauchesne, Paris.
I
Preface
The purpose of this book is to give an account of the history of the
School of Alexandria during the first three decades of the third
century, the period when Origen was teaching there and was for¬
mulating its doctrine. Few great thinkers have been the occasion
of so much discussion as this man. In the history of human thought
he does not belong to Hellenism. But Greek thought and Greek
culture formed a great part of his philosophical equipment, and
their influence cannot be neglected in any study of the final stages
of the ancient civilization.
Because of the fact that on a number of occasions certain opin¬
ions of his have been formally condemned, Origen has never been
given the title of a doctor of the Church. Yet his influence on
Christian thought is comparable only with that of St. Augustine
or of St. Thomas Aquinas. The cream of his theological teaching
is found not only in the fourth-century Greek writers who were
the direct heirs of his learning or in the works of the studious St.
Jerome; it is contained also in the writings of St. Ambrose, whose
mind was attuned to the obviously practical rather than to the
speculative, and in the homilies of St. John Chrysostom, whose
education was along lines that ran counter to the spirit of Alex¬
andria.
Nor is he venerated as a saint of the Church. It is true that in
his writings he regards God and the soul as the most important of
all spiritual entities. It is equally true that in his personal life he
showed himself to be a man of heroic mold. But there were two or
three periods during his lifetime when he let himself be misled by
some rash or unchecked line of thought, a tendency of his Oriental
genius which he usually managed to keep under control. Must our
verdict be, then, that beyond everything else he was a pioneer
whose very mistakes were helpful? Some such appraisal of his errors
PREFACE
VI
would go far to explain why the Church’s condemnation of them
has always been tempered by the quality of mercy. In any case, he
made his entry on the stage of history at one of those vigorous and
disturbed moments when new ideas suddenly emerge, ideas that no
simple stroke of the pen can readily harmonize with tradition or
with the current norms of thought. With that moment of crisis we
are concerned in this book.
In studying that critical period, we must take still another ele¬
ment into consideration. That element is the Church. To her serv¬
ice Origen dedicated all the vigor of his genius. In his anxiety to
defend her he sought to enrich her with the wealth of his profound
speculations, capable as they were of attracting minds trained to
the technique of philosophical inquiry. Stronger than his scholarly
interest in his studies and mightier than his preoccupation with
the activities of his School, there was an even more powerful influ¬
ence in his life: the influence of a spiritual milieu that gave mean¬
ing and value to his researches, his controversies, his boldest flights
of speculation.
That spiritual milieu did not exert its influence merely now and
then. Its action was not confined to periods of crisis. It was not
content to meet the challenge of his teachings by invoking the
authority of a recognized formula or by pronouncing a judgment
of approval or disapproval. It acted upon him at every moment of
his life, even when it was not defining anything. The intercourse
of the members of the Christian body with one another, their likes
and their dislikes, the manner in which their anxious looks told
him whether he was reaching their hearts or arousing their opposi¬
tion, his work of defending the faith, his interest in the lists of the
new converts, the violence of the persecutions which he sometimes
bore meekly and at other times courageously challenged, every
such social experience was woven into a Christian mentality by
which even his most revolutionary theories were kept under con¬
trol. By reason of that stable mentality he was enabled, time and
again, to turn aside from utopian ideas and from the study of mere
curiosa in order to give his attention to the things that really mat¬
tered.
PREFACE
Vll
This Christian influence operates both from without and from
within, usually with gentleness and without force. Its greatest vic¬
tories are secret victories, manifested by an inner sense of harmony
as well as by the free emergence of a process of thought which testi¬
fies to the soul’s natural aspirations for truth. As soon as the Chris¬
tian philosopher perceives within himself the mental adjustment
that enables him to maintain the unity of his spiritual life even in
the strains and stresses of an intellectual crisis, he knows he is within
sight of the truth. When the peak of the crisis has been passed, a
mental clarity and a kind of joy in the possession of the truth are
the signs telling him that his soul is once again in harmony with
the spiritual atmosphere in which he normally lives.
The Church is the social body which enables the individual to
bring his religious longings into harmony with a higher discipline.
No mere examination of prima-facie evidence can give an adequate
knowledge of her influence or her activities—an attribute, by the
way, which she shares with the majority of other social bodies. She
must be studied in her raison d’etre, in the very principle of her be¬
ing; and because of that principle she must be acknowledged as
more spiritual than other social bodies and therefore more difficult
to describe. Yet there is manifold evidence to the mere fact of her
existence. As a social organism she has been the object of study by
the historians and has been recognized by other social groups; her
frontiers have been marked by those who govern her, and she has
been known and loved and even rigorously tested by her own chil¬
dren. Membership in her household is neither a necessary result
of an exercise in logic nor is it dependent on the rise and fall of an
individual’s emotions. Whether the alien inquirer acknowledges
her claims to be justified or denies them as baseless, the fact re¬
mains that the great family of her children can be distinguished
from other social groups in the world of men. Things visible to
everyone are their rule of faith and the authority which interprets it,
their worship and the ceremonies in which they participate. More
concrete and more real than any other fact in the history of Chris¬
tianity is this organized commonwealth of the Church, together
with the great body of spiritual truth which inspires it.
viii PREFACE
The history of the Church is made up of much more than the
teachings of her great thinkers or the discussions which those teach¬
ings have provoked; side by side with the doctrines there are the
less well known writings, the hymns, the ordinary everyday modes
of Christian living. Even in the biographies of the outstanding
Christian thinkers who seem to have filled the various periods in
which they lived and taught, a detailed analysis reveals the influence
of a mode of life common to all Christians. Under that influence
academic enthusiasm walks hand in hand with Christian discipline,
and philosophical study hews fast to the line of tradition.
This great outstanding fact expresses the very persistence of the
Christian religion. It is the norm for all the other historical facts,
continually present in the thoughts, the lives, and the works of
Christians. Those who conform to this Christian way of life see its
meaning clearly, and even those who desire to change it are com¬
pelled to acknowledge its power.
This fact of a Christian way of life imposes a greater obligation
on writers of religious studies than on other workers not to neglect
the social aspects of doctrine. It makes it incumbent on such writ¬
ers to take account of the traditions which a doctrine has accepted
either in whole or in part. They must study the various influences,
admitted or denied, to which the elaboration of the doctrine has
been subjected. They must know the critical works called forth by
that elaboration, and must make themselves familiar with the vari¬
ous degrees of assent given to it when it was first formulated as well
as with the general verdict of the faithful at that particular time.
Something more is demanded, however, in the study of Origen’s
life and works. Historians of every shade of opinion, in approaching
his teachings for the purpose of criticism, are always halted at the
angle of a dichotomy; consequently they have made a practice of
analyzing his works from the viewpoint of a more or less justified
antithesis. Does his doctrine belong to the East or the West? Was
he a heretic or an apologist for orthodoxy? Was he a Hellenist or a
Christian, a rationalist or a mystic? The fact that his teachings are
always carefully checked by comparison with Christian tradition,
PREFACE IX
even by historians who know little of the implications of that tra¬
dition, is a proof of the historical fact that the Church always kept
an anxious eye on the progress of the work which Origen set himself
to do. While it may be justifiable to assert that he was a rationalist,
it must be admitted that his sincere desire was to be a Christian.
It seems to us that in Origen's case this problem of discipline and
inspiration, of authority and personal freedom—a problem which
is at the very bedrock of the religious consciousness—can be ap¬
proached more accurately and more comprehensively than has
hitherto been done. Our best means was to follow the line of the
development of his theological opinions, and the task was made
easier for us because we now possess resources that were lack¬
ing to our predecessors. On the one hand, we have been able to
make use of the masterly edition of the two principal works on
which this critical study is based, the De principiis and the Com¬
mentary on the Gospel of St. John; on the other hand, we have de¬
rived great benefit from numerous monographs which, by uncover¬
ing the origins of Neoplatonism, have made known the aims and
the struggles of the philosophical period under review. Certainly,
several of the published texts are still of doubtful or uncertain au¬
thenticity, and neither the Commentary on the Psalms nor the
Commentary on Genesis has yet been subjected to a rigorous
critical examination; the actual editions of these two works fall far
short of containing all the fragments preserved by the compilers of
the Byzantine period. Besides, included in them are several passages
that must ultimately be rejected.
The historian of doctrine must impose upon himself the pre¬
liminary task of checking each of his quotations. Often the strongest
argument in favor of the authenticity of the text is to be found in
the critic's skill in recognizing the special vocabulary of the author
under review, but even in this case it is advantageous to check the
quotation by comparison with a similar passage. For this reason we
usually give a number of references, although as a matter of prin¬
ciple we avoid an accumulation of texts. In the case of an author
such as Origen, alert and skilled as he was in blending the various
PREFACE
X
shades of meaning of a word, the references are concerned mostly
with ideas that prove to be far from identical as soon as they are
read in the setting in which we found them.
Because of these and similar serious handicaps it is only fair that
the historian should enjoy some advantages. Chief among such
helps is the fact that he is protected from numerous errors by reason
of the consistency and coherence of doctrine, two qualities of Chris¬
tian teaching which were particularly in evidence during the years
when Origen ruled over the Academy of Alexandria. It was the
formative period of his life, when he was engaged in an effort to
reduce his ideas to a systematic form. As usually happens in the
case of philosophical speculations that are watered and fed by a
deeply religious life, the driving force of his mentality made its
influence felt in every minute detail of his teaching. Throughout
his whole system the ruling thought is not an effort to achieve a
logical unity of propositions formally put together. What he seems
always to aim at is a vital unity; and the student of his writings can
perceive the same principles at work in the commentary on the Bible,
in the study of the soul, in his various controversies, and in his in¬
terpretation of each of the dogmas which he sought to expound.
This character of vital unity makes a fragment of a few lines easy to
recognize when it has Origen for its author.
The task undertaken by the writer of this book is to revive some
of those studies made by Origen and, at the same time, not to lose
sight of the ruling thought which in spite of divergences and con¬
tradictions in matters of detail makes them clear and easy to under¬
stand. According to the plan followed in recent studies in the his¬
tory of Christian literature, we have felt compelled to give a literary
analysis of each of his great works. During the course of our re¬
searches, in which we were much indebted to contemporary editors
of his writings, we rarely found it possible to arrange his works ac¬
cording to their dates. The best we could do was to follow indica¬
tions given us by Origen himself and to divide his publications into
a number of groups. We are aware that the task of establishing an
inner order within each of those several groupings exposes us to
the charge of putting forth a series of hypotheses, but at least we do