Origen 185 AD – 253 AD

Origen of Alexandria was an early Christian theologian and biblical scholar, the most important and most controversial of the Greek Fathers of the Church. He produced the Hexapla, a monumental six-column edition of the Hebrew Bible and its translations, and his On First Principles is the earliest systematic Christian theology. Drawing on Platonism and the allegorical method of Philo, he developed daring speculations about the pre-existence of souls, free will, and the eventual restoration of all rational creatures. He died from injuries sustained under torture during the Decian persecution.

Origen was born around 185 in Alexandria, the eldest of seven children in a Christian household; his father Leonides was martyred in the persecution of 202, and the boy Origen, restrained by his mother who hid his clothes, was prevented from following him. From around 203 he was head of the Christian catechetical school of the city, supporting himself by selling his classical books and pursuing a life of extreme austerity.

His enormous output included the textual-critical Hexapla, a six-column edition of the Old Testament; the great theological treatise On First Principles (Peri Archon), the first systematic exposition of Christian doctrine; commentaries on almost all the books of scripture; the apologetic Against Celsus; the homilies preserved largely in the Latin translations of Rufinus and Jerome; and treatises on prayer and martyrdom. Around 234 a quarrel with the bishop of Alexandria forced him to settle in Caesarea Maritima, where he founded a second great school.

Origen's allegorical exegesis, his Trinitarian theology of the eternal generation of the Son, and his speculative doctrines of the preexistence of souls and the eventual restoration (apokatastasis) of all rational creatures became central reference points in the patristic tradition. Several of his bolder propositions were condemned at the Second Council of Constantinople in 553, but his exegetical and spiritual writings shaped Christian theology from the Cappadocians to the modern recovery of patristics. He died around 253 of injuries sustained under torture in the persecution of Decius.