Christianity, in Origen’s opinion, was not merely compatible with philosophy, but the ultimate expression of it. ‘No one can truly do duty to God,’ he declared, ‘who does not think like a philosopher.’
The need was urgent. The gospel proclaimed by Paul, the conviction that had animated him and all the first generation of Christians, the revelation that a crucified criminal had in some unspecified but manifest way been an aspect of the very Creator of the heavens and the earth, constituted the molten heart of Christianity. Yet it raised an obvious question. How, when Christians accorded Jesus a status that was somehow divine, could they possibly claim to worship only the single god?
Greek philosophers and Jewish scholars would relentlessly home in on this point. It was an unavoidable challenge. The solution preceded origin in its outline: the unity of God came, not in spite of Son and Spirit, but through them. One was three; Three were one. God was a Trinity.
Origen, more than anyone else, drew on philosophy in a brilliant way to create for the Church an entire science of God. The power of this achievement in a society that viewed education as an indicator of status was immense.
When Irenaeus dismissed Gnostics, it was on the basis that they believed that they ‘knew’ things that no one before them knew. Origen’s paradoxical task was to fashion a philosophy (an elitist invention) that would appeal to all people of every class and would never be mistaken for a cult (which would rarely be categorized as a philosophy).
Accordingly, early in 250, a formal decree was issued that everyone – with the sole exception of the Jews – offer up sacrifice to the gods. Disobedience was equated with treason; and the punishment for treason was death. For the first time, Christians found themselves confronted by legislation that directly obliged them to choose between their lives and their faith. Many chose to save their skins – but many did not. Among those arrested was Origen. Although put in chains and racked, he refused to recant. Spared execution, he was released after days of brutal treatment a broken man. He never recovered. A year or so later, the aged scholar was dead of the sufferings inflicted on him by his torturers.
How different it would have been, of course, had the empire itself been Christian! A remote, a fantastical possibility – and yet, just a couple of years before his arrest, Origen himself had thought to float it. ‘Should the Romans embrace the Christian faith,’ he had declared, ‘then their prayers would see them overcome their enemies; or rather, having come under the protection of God, they would have no enemies at all.’ But to believe that a Caesar might be won for Christ was indeed to believe in miracles.
There were, in the centuries that followed, two opposing perspectives on Christianity. The Donatists insisted on defying the world, the Caecilianists preferred to compromise with it. The former saw riches, in any form, as evil since no fortune is not built on the backs of widows and orphans. There was an inherent evil to money, according to them. The latter sought a way out; the rich would offer charity to the poor and would receive salvation through their acts.
There was no coin dropped into a beggar’s shriveled palm that had not ultimately been won by criminal means: lead-tipped whips, and cudgels, and branding irons. Yet if, as Pelagius argued, individual sinners could cleanse themselves of their sin, and win perfection by obedience to God’s commands, then so too could all of humanity.
Source: Dominion