Origen of Alexandria

Background

Origen (c. 185–253) was the greatest scholar of pre-Nicene Christianity: head of the Alexandrian catechetical school, later teacher at Caesarea, textual critic (the Hexapla, his six-column synopsis of the Old Testament text, is attested in Eusebius, HE VI), exegete, and the first Christian systematic theologian. Tortured in the Decian persecution, he died of its effects. His speculative theology (pre-existence of souls, universal restoration) was posthumously controversial, but his apologetic and text-critical work set the standard for centuries.

Positions held in this wiki

• Isaiah 53: Christian vs Jewish Readings — the view's most valuable early witness, because he records the opposing case from live disputation: "at a disputation held with certain Jews, who were reckoned wise men… my Jewish opponent replied, that these predictions bore reference to the whole people, regarded as one individual, and as being in a state of dispersion and suffering" (Origen, Contra Celsum I.55) — the earliest surviving record of the collective-servant reading in a Jewish voice. His referent counter-argument (the sufferer is led away "because of the iniquities of My people," hence distinct from that people) remains, per the article's assessment, the point on which the debate is still pressed.
• In Canon Formation — New Testament (What Did They Hold? table) — a third-century canon witness via Eusebius: the four gospels "the only indisputable ones in the Church of God under heaven"; on Hebrews, "who wrote the epistle, in truth, God knows" (Eusebius, HE VI.25, as cited there).

Key works in our corpus

• Contra Celsum — in corpus complete. The fullest early defense of Christianity against pagan criticism, answering Celsus point-by-point; Book I.54–56 carries the Isaiah 53 disputation.
• De Principiis — in corpus. The first Christian systematic theology; Book I argues God is "not to be thought of as being either a body or as existing in a body, but as an uncompounded intellectual nature" (Origen, De Principiis I.1) — the classical anti-corporealist doctrine relevant to Mormon Christology vs Nicene Orthodoxy.
• The Hexapla and the biblical commentaries — not in corpus (largely lost).

Principal critics

• Celsus — the second-century pagan philosopher whose True Word is reconstructed almost entirely from Origen's quotations; the structuring interlocutor of his major apologetic work.
• His anonymous Jewish disputants — recorded, with unusual fairness for the genre, in Contra Celsum I.55.
• David Friedrich Strauss — the modern critical reading treats the messianic application of Isa 53 that Origen defended as post-eventum (Isaiah 53: Christian vs Jewish Readings).
• Later ecclesiastical opponents of "Origenism" (condemnations culminating in 553) — outside this wiki's current scope.

See also

• Justin Martyr — his predecessor in the Isaiah 53 disputation tradition.
• Eusebius of Caesarea — Origen's admiring biographer (HE Book VI) and heir at Caesarea.
• Arius of Alexandria — the SEP traces a subordinationist line "descending from Origen through Arius," a contested paternity.