Origen: Biography of the Man of Steel

Origen was one of the first church fathers, so zealous that he was tortured for his faith, but so controversial that he was declared a heretic centuries after his death because of some of his unorthodox beliefs. His full name, Origen Adamantius, means "man of steel", a title he earned through a life of suffering.

Even today Origen is considered a giant of Christian philosophy. His 28-year-old Hexapla project was a monumental analysis of the Old Testament written in response to Jewish and Gnostic criticism. It takes its name from its six columns, compared a Jewish Old Testament, the Septuagint and four Greek versions, together with Origen's comments.

He produced hundreds of other writings, traveled and preached widely and practiced a life of spartan self-denial, even some said, castrating himself to avoid temptation. The latter act was deeply condemned by his contemporaries.

Academic brilliance at an early age
Origen was born around 185 AD near Alexandria, Egypt. In 202 AD his father Leonidas was beheaded as a Christian martyr. Young Origen also wanted to be a martyr, but his mother prevented him from going out by hiding his clothes.

Like the eldest of seven children, Origen faced a dilemma: how to support his family. He started a grammar school and supplemented that income by copying texts and educating people who wanted to become Christians.

When a wealthy convert supplied Origen to the secretaries, the young scholar advanced at a dizzying rate, keeping busy transcribing seven employees at the same time. He wrote the first systematic exposition of Christian theology, On First Principles, as well as against Celsus (Against Celsus), an apologetics considered to be one of the strongest defenses in the history of Christianity.

But the libraries alone were not enough for Origen. He traveled to the Holy Land to study and preach there. Since he had not been ordained, he was condemned by Demetrius, bishop of Alexandria. During his second visit to Palestine, Origen was ordained a priest there, who again attracted the anger of Demetrius, who thought that a man should only be ordained in his native church. Origen retired again to the Holy Land, where he was welcomed by the bishop of Caesarea and was in great demand as a teacher.

Tortured by the Romans
Origen had earned the respect of the mother of the Roman emperor Severus Alexander, although the emperor himself was not a Christian. In the fight against the German tribes in 235 AD, Alexander's troops mutinied and assassinated both him and his mother. The subsequent emperor, Maximinus I, began to persecute Christians, forcing Origen to flee to Cappadocia. After three years, Maximinus himself was assassinated, allowing Origen to return to Caesarea, where he remained until an even more brutal persecution began.

In 250 AD, the emperor Decius issued an edict throughout the empire that ordered all subjects to make a pagan sacrifice before Roman officials. When Christians challenged the government, they were punished or martyred.

Origen was imprisoned and tortured in an attempt to make him retract his faith. His legs were painfully stretched out, he was poorly fed and threatened with fire. Origen managed to survive until Decius was killed in battle in 251 AD, and was released from prison.

Unfortunately, the damage had been done. Origen's first life of self-deprivation and his injuries in prison caused his health to decline steadily. He died in 254 AD

Origen: a hero and a heretic
Origen has earned an undisputed reputation as a Bible scholar and analyst. He was a pioneer theologian who combined the logic of philosophy with the revelation of Scripture.

When the first Christians were brutally persecuted by the Roman empire, Origen was persecuted and molested, then subjected to violent abuse in an attempt to convince him to deny Jesus Christ, thus demoralizing other Christians. Instead, he bravely resisted.

Even so, some of his ideas contradicted established Christian beliefs. He thought that the Trinity was a hierarchy, with God the Father in command, then the Son, then the Holy Spirit. The orthodox belief is that the three people in one God are equal in all respects.

Furthermore, he taught that all souls were originally equal and were created before birth, so they fell into sin. They were then assigned bodies based on the degree of their sin, he said: demons, humans or angels. Christians believe that the soul is created at the moment of conception; humans are different from demons and angels.

His most serious departure was his teaching that all souls could be saved, including Satan. This led the Council of Constantinople, in 553 AD, to declare Origen a heretic.

Historians recognize Origen's passionate love for Christ and his simultaneous missteps with Greek philosophy. Unfortunately, his great work Hexapla has been destroyed. In the final judgment, Origen, like all Christians, was a person who did many right things and some wrong things.