The completest edition of Origen's works has been published under the style, Opera omnia, quce Grace vel Latine tantiun extant et ejus nomine circumferun- tur, ex vai'iis editionibus et codicibus manu exaratis, Gallicanis, Italicis, Germanicis, et Anglicis, collecta, re- cetisita, Latine veisa, atque annotationibus illustrata, cum copiosis indicibus, vita auctoris, et multis disserta- tionibus. Opere et studio Domini Caroli Delarue, Pres- byteri et Monachi Benedictini e Congregatione S. Mauri (Paris, 17o3-59, i vols, fol.) ; but a more critical edition is that entitled, Opera omnia qum Greece vel Ijatine tantum extant. Edidit C. H. E. Loramatzsch (Berlin, 1831-48, 25 vols. 8vo). Other good editions are: Opera [Latine, studio J. Merlini] (Paris, 1512, 4 vols, fol.) ; Contra Celsum, libri viii, Ejusdem Philocalia. Gr. et Lat. cum annotationibus Gul. Spenceri (Cantab. 1658, 4to ; reprinted 1677).
Doctrines. — Ecclesiastical history, as Fabricius ob- serves, cannot furnish another instance of a man who has been so famous through good report and ill report as Origen. The quarrels and disputes which arose in the Church after his death, on account of his person and writings, seem scarcely credible to any who have not examined the history of those times. The universal Church was split into two parties; and these parties fought as furiously for and against Origen as if the Christian religion had itself been at stake. See Ori- GENiAN Controversy. Huetius has employed the second book of his Origeniana, which consists of above 200 pages in folio, in pointing out and animadverting on such dogmas of this illustrious father as are either quite inexcusable or very exceptionable. Cave {Hist. Liter. Oxon. 1740) has collected within a short compass the principal tenets which rendered him obnoxious; and thence we learn that Origen was accused of main- taining different degrees of dignity among the persons of the Holy Trinity; as that the Son was inferior to the Father, and the Holy Spirit inferior to both, in the same manner as rays emitted from the sun are infe- rior in dignity to the sun himself; that the death of Christ was advantageous, not to men only, but to an- gels, devils, nay, even to the stars and other insensible things, which he supposed to be possessed of a rational soul, and therefore to be capable of sin ; that all ration- al natures, whether devils, human souls, or any other, were created by God from eternity, and were originally pure intelligences, but afterwards, according to the va- rious use of their free will, dispersed among the various orders of angels, men, or devils; tliat angels and other supernatural beings were clothed with subtile and etlie- real bodies, which consisted of matter, although in com- parison with our grosser bodies they may be called in- corporeal and spiritual ; that the souls of all rational beings, after putting off one state, pass into another, ci- ther superior or inferior, according to their respective behavior; and that thus, by a kind of perpetual trans- migration, one and the same soul may successively, and
even often, pass through all the orders of rational be- ings; that hence the souls of men were thrust into the prison of bodies for offences committed in some former state, and that when loosed from hence they will be- come either angels or devils, as they shall have de- served ; that, however, neither the punishment of men or devils, nor the joys of the saints, shall be eternal, but that all shall return to their original state of pure in- telligences, to begin the same round again, and so on forever. Says Schaff {C/i. Hist, i, 270) : "Origen felt the whole weight of the Christological and Trinitarian question, but obscured it by his foreign speculations, and wavered between the homoouslan, or orthodox, and the subordination theories, which afterwards came into sharp conflict with each other in the Arian controversy. On the one hand he brings the Son as near as possible to the essence of the Father; not only making him the absolute personal wisdom, truth, righteousness, reason (aiJToao(pia, airoaX/y.^tta, avToSixaioavvt}, avroSvva- //If, aiiroXoyog, etc.), but also expressly predicating eternity of him, and propounding the Church dogma of the eternal generation of the Son. This generation he usually represents as proceeding from the will of the Father ; but he also conceives it as proceeding from his essence; and hence, at least in one passage, in a fragment on the P^pistle to the Hebrews, he already ap- plies the term u^wovmoQ to the Son, thus declaring him coequal in substance with the Father. This idea of eternal generation, however, has a peculiar form in him, from its close connection with his doctrine of an eter- nal creation. He can no more think of the Father without the Son, than of an almighty God without cre- ation, or of light without radiance (De Pi-indp. iv, 28 : ' Sicut lux numquam sine splendore esse potuit, ita nee Filius quidem sine Patre intelligi potest'). Hence he describes this generation not as a single, instantaneous act, but, like creation, ever going on. But on the other hand he distinguishes the essence of the Son from that of the Father; speaks of a difference of substance {irt- poTTiQ r/jc ovaiag or rou I'TTOicft/tfVoy, which the advo- cates of his orthodoxy, probably without reason, take as merely opposing the Patripassian conception of the opovffia) ; and makes the Son decidedly inferior to the Father, calling him, with reference to John i, 1, merely B'log without the article, that is, God in a relative sense (Deus de Deo), also SivTspoi; ^sog, but the Father God in the absolute sense, 6 Sreog (Deus per se), or al)r62feog, also the fountain and root of the divinity {irrjyi], piZa riJQ ^torriTog). Hencehealso taught that the Son should not be directly addressed in prayer, but the Father through the Son in the Holy Ghost. This must be limited, no doubt, to absolute worship, for he elsewhere recognises prayer to the Son and to the Holy Ghost. Yet this subordination of the Son formed a stepping - stone to Arianism, and some disciples of Origen, particularly Dionysius of Alexandria, decidedly approached that heres}'."