Origen's name was also drawn into the Arian contro- versies, and used and abused bv both parties for their own ends. The question of the orthodoxy of the great departed became in this way a vital issue of the daj-, and increased in interest with the increasing zeal for pure doctrine and the growing horror of all heresy. Upon this question three parties arose: free, progressive dis- ciples, blind adherents, and blind opponents. 1. The true, independent followers of Origen drew from his writings much instruction and quickening, without committing themselves to his words, and, advancing with the demands of the time, attained a clearer knowl- edge of the specific doctrines of Christianity than Ori- gen himself, without thereby losing esteem for his memory and his eminent services. Such men were, in the 4th century, Pamithilus, Eusebius of Ciesarea, Didy- mus of Alexandria, and in a wider sense Atlianasius, Basil the (ireat, Gregory of Nazianzum, and Gregory of Nyssa; and among the Latin fathers, Hilary, and at first Jerome, who afterwards joined the opponents. (Jregory of Nyssa, and perhaps also Didymus, even ad- hered to Origen's doctrine of the final salvation of all created intelligences. 2. The blind and slavish follow- ers, incapable of comprehending the free spirit of Ori- gen, clung to the letter, held all his immature and er- ratic views, laid greater stress on them than Origen himself, and pressed them to extremes. Such mechan- ical fidelity to a master is always apostasy from his spirit, which tended towards continual gro^vth in knowledge. To this class belonged the Egy])tian monks in the Ni- trian mountains; four in particular — Dioscurus, Ammo- nius, Eusebius, and Euthymius, who are known by the name of "the tall brethren" (ASe\ipoi ftanpoi, on account of their bodily size), and were very learned. 3. The opponents of Origen, some from ignorance, others from narrowness and want of discrimination, shunned his speculations as a source of the most dangerous lieresies, and in him condemned at the same time all free theo- logical discussion, without which no progress in knowl- edge is possible, and without which even the Nicene dogma would never have come into existence. 4''o these belonged a class of Egyptian monks in the Scetic desert, with Pachomius at their head, who, in opposi- tion to the mysticism and spiritualism of the Origenistic monks of Nitria, urged grossly sensuous views of divine things, so as to receive the name of Anthropomorpliites. Tlie Roman Church, in which Origen was scarcely known by name before the Arian disputes, shared in a general way the strong prejudice against iiim as an un- sound and dangerous writer.
The leader in the crusade against the bones of Origen was the bishop Epiphanius of Salamis (Constantia), in Cyprus (t 403), an honest, well-meaning, and by his
ORIGENIAN CONTROVERSY 435 ORIGENIAN CONTROVERSY
contemporaries hii^hly respected, but violent, coarse, contracted, and bicfoted monastic saint and heresy- hunter. He had inherited from the monks in the des- erts of Egypt an ardent hatred of Origen as an arch- heretic ; and in his Panai'ion, or chest of antidotes for eighty heresies, branded Origen as the father of Arian- ism and many other errors (IJcfi: 64). Epiphanius gave documentarj' justification for this hatred from the numer- erous writings of Origen. Not content witli this publica- tion, he also endeavored, by journeying and oral discourse, to destroy everywhere the influence of the long-departed teacher of Alexandria, and considered himself as doing God and the Church the greatest service thereby. With this object the aged bishop journeyed in 394 to Pales- tine, where Origen was still held in the highest consid- eration, especially with .John, bishop of Jerusalem, and with the learned monks Rufinus and Jerome, the former of whom was at that time in Jerusalem and the latter in Bethlehem. Epiphanius delivered a blustering ser- mon in Jerusalem, excited laughter, and vehemently demanded the condemnation of Origen. John and Ru- finus resisted ; but Jerome, who had previously consid- ered Origen the greatest Church teacher after the apos- tles, and had learned much from his exegetical writings, without adopting his doctrinal errors, yielded to a solic- itude for the fame of his own ortliodoxy, passed over to the opposition, broke off Church fellowship with John, and involved himself in a most violent literary contest with his former friend Rufinus, which belongs to the chronique scandaleuse of theology. The schism was terminated indeed by the mediation of the patriarch Theophilus in 397, but the dispute broke out afresh. Jerome condemned in Origen particularly his doctrine of pre-existence, of the final conversion of the devils and of demons, and his spiritualistic sublimation of the resurrection of the body. Rufinus, having returned to the West (398) to meet this opposition, translated sev- eral works of Origen into Latin. He proceeded with great caution, altering occasionally the text, so as not to depart too greatly from the doctrine then prevailing in the Church, and succeeded iu satisfying orthodox taste. Origen was accused by Jerome of being the origi- nator of the Arian doctrine concerning the Trinity that it should not be said that the Son could see the Father, or the Spirit the Son; but this charge was certainly most unjust. True, his Christology had in it contradic- tory elements. He, on the one hand, attributed to Christ eternity and other divine attributes which logi- cally lead to the orthodox doctrine of the identity of substance ; so that he was vindicate'l even by Athana- sius, the two Cappadocian Gregorie&, and Basil. But, on the other hand, in his zeal for the personal distinc- tions in the (Jodhead, he taught with equal clearness a separateness of essence between the Father and the Son, and the subordination of the Son, as a second or secondary God beneath the Father, and thus furnished a starting-point for the Arian heresy. The eternal generation of the Son from the will of the Father was, with Origen, the communication of a divine but sec- ondary substance, and this idea, in the liands of the less devout and profound Arius, who, with his more rigid logic, could admit no intermediate being between God and the creature, deteriorated to the notion of the pri- mal creature. But in general Arianism was much more akin to the spirit of the Antiocliian school than to that of the Alexandrian, Origen was also accused of holding the doctrine of pre-mundane existence, and regarding the body as the prison of the soul; of teaching the resurrec- tion of the corporeal body with different sexes; the un- historical signification of paradise and of the history of creation ; and the assertion of the loss of the divine im- age in man. The object of both was principally to de- fend themselves against the charge of Origenism, and to fasten it upon each other, and this not by a critical analysis and calm investigation of the teachings of Ori- gen, but by personal denunciations and miserable in- vectives (comp, the description of their conduct by