SAIN T ORIG EN

by Dav id Bent l ey Hart

Oct ober 2015

A month or so ago I found myself hovering at the edges of a long, rambling,

repetitive intra-Orthodox theological debate over the question of universal salvation,

and specifically the question of whether there exists any genuine ecclesial doctrine
hostile to the idea. It is an issue that arises in Eastern Christian circles with some
frequency, for a number of reasons, some of them reaching back to the first five
centuries of the Church, some only as far back as the middle of the nineteenth century
in Russia. Not that there really is much of an argument to be had on the matter.
Orthodoxys entire dogmatic deposit resides in the canons of the seven ecumenical
councilseverything else in Orthodox tradition, be it ever so venerable, beautiful, or
spiritually nourishing, can possess at most the authority of accepted custom, licit
conjecture, or fruitful practiceand the consensus of the most conscientious and
historically literate Orthodox theologians and scholars over the past several decades
(Evdokimov, Bulgakov, Clment, Turincev, Ware, Alfeyev, to name a few) is that
universalism as such, as a permissible theologoumenon or plausible hope, has never
been condemned by the Church. Doctrine is silent on the matter. So live and let live.
But there are those who find this an intolerable state of affairs, sometimes because of
an earnest if misguided devotion to what they believe Scripture or tradition demands,
sometimes because the idea of the eternal torment of the derelict appeals to some
unpleasantly obvious emotional pathologies on their parts. And the fiercest on this
score seem to be certain converts from Evangelicalism who bristle at the thought that
Orthodox tradition might be more diverse, indeterminate, and speculatively daring
than what they signed on for. And so the argument went on, repeating a familiar
pattern. Those who were keen to defend the gates of hell against every assault of hope
cited the small handful of New Testament verses seeming to threaten everlasting
damnation; those on the other side responded that none of those pericopes, when
correctly interpreted and translated, says what the infernalists imagine, and then
cited the (far more numerous) passages proclaiming universal rescue. The eternal-
damnation party invoked various binding authorities, such as the 1583 edition of
the Synodikon; the total-reconciliation party pointed out (quite correctly) that
Orthodox dogma is the province only of the Seven Councils, not of some hoary
collection of canonical pronouncements and para-canonical opinions. The hellions
made vague appeals to holy tradition; the empyrealists (knowing that holy tradition
can mean anything from unshaven priests to crypto-gnostic superstitions about
departed souls rising through aerial tollhouses supervised by devils) were
unimpressed.

I expect my own sympathies are showing, however. In fact, I found the debate boring,
except at the one juncture where it infuriated me. It should not have done, since I
knew it was coming, but it touched upon an old sore point with me, and it was voiced
by two of the disputants. And it is the one argument that the membership of the
Hellfire Club (as I came fondly to think of that merry band) believes unassailable: Did
not the Fifth Ecumenical Council, in 553, name Origen of Alexandria (a.d. 185254) a
heretic, and condemn Origenism, and thus the very idea of universal salvation?

In point of fact, noabsolutely not.

I
t is true that something remembered by tradition as Origenism was condemned by
someone in the sixth century, and that Origen was maligned as a heretic in the process;
and it is also true that for well more than a millennium both those decisions were
associated with the Council of 553 by what was simply accepted as the official record.
But, embarrassingly, we now know, and have known for quite some time, that the
record was falsified. And this is a considerable problem not only for Orthodoxy, but for
the Catholic Church as well, inasmuch as the authority of the ecumenical councils
must in some way be intimatelyif obscurelybound to some notion of the
indefectibility of the Churchs transmission of the faith. (And, frankly, the prejudices
of ecclesial fundamentalists are as impervious to historical fact as are the naivetes of
young-earth creationists to science.)

But, really, it is the most shameful episode in the history of Christian doctrine. For one
thing, to have declared any man a heretic three centuries after dying in the peace of the
Church, in respect of doctrinal determinations not reached during his life, was a gross
violation of all legitimate canonical order; but in Origens case it was especially
loathsome. After Paul, there is no single Christian figure to whom the whole tradition
is more indebted. It was Origen who taught the Church how to read Scripture as a
living mirror of Christ, who evolved the principles of later trinitarian theology and
Christology, who majestically set the standard for Christian apologetics, who produced
the first and richest expositions of contemplative spirituality, and whosimply said
laid the foundation of the whole edifice of developed Christian thought. Moreover, he
was not only a man of extraordinary personal holiness, piety, and charity, but a martyr
as well: Brutally tortured during the Decian persecution at the age of sixty-six, he
never recovered, but slowly withered away over a period of three years. He was, in
short, among the greatest of the Church Fathers and the most illustrious of the saints,
and yet, disgracefully, official church traditionEast and Westcommemorates him
as neither.

I cannot really say what irks me more, though: that it happened or that, in fact, it
really never did. The oldest records of the council (which was convened to deal solely
with certain Antiochian theologians) make it clear that those fifteen anathemas were
never even discussed by the assembled bishops, let alone ratified, published, or
promulgated. And since the late nineteenth century various scholars have convincingly
established that neither Origen nor Origenism was ever the subject of any
condemnation pronounced by the holy fathers in 553. The best modern critical
edition of the Seven CouncilsNorman Tannerssimply omits the anathemas as
spurious interpolations.

As for where they came from, the evidence suggests they were prepared beforehand by
the vicious and insidiously stupid Emperor Justinian, who liked to play theologian,
who saw the Church as a pillar of imperial unity, and who took implacable umbrage at
dissident theologies. A decade earlier, he had sent ten similar anathemas of Origen (or
what he imagined Origen to have taught) to Patriarch Menas; and on the councils eve
he apparently submitted the fifteen anathemas of 553 to a lesser synod of bishops, in
hope of securing some kind of ecclesial approbation for them. Or they may instead
have been proposed at a synod as much as nine years before. Whatever the case, it was
only well after the Fifth Ecumenical Councils close that they were attached to its
canons, and Origens name inserted into its list of condemned heretics. In this way the
anathemas went on the books, where they remain: peremptory, garbed in
immemorial authority, and false as hell.

I
n themselves, the fifteen anathemas are an odd relic of disputes of which we can now
glimpse only the shadows. Few of them are even remotely reminiscent of Origens
actual ideas, except in almost comically distorted form, and he in fact is never named
in any of them. Perhaps some of the ideas denounced vaguely echo aspects of the
thought of Stephen bar Sudhaile (late fifth century); others have a faintly gnostic or
orphic hue; still others might have been concocted by Aristophanes and Edward Lear
during a long nights assault on a distillery; but they all emanate from schools that
have left no other historical traces. Even if the anathemas had actually been approved
by the council, they no more constitute a serious condemnation of Origen than they do
a recipe for brioche.
And I am not entirely certain why anti-universalists cling to them so pertinaciously,
since they do not even really condemn universalism as such at all. The first anathema
speaks of the idea of a monstrous restoration (apokatastasis), but only the version of
that idea that logically follows from a particular fabulous account of the souls
preexistence. And the succeeding anathemas fill in the details of the tale: an
undifferentiated substantial unity of all rational natures at the beginning and then,
identically, at the end; the spherical shape of resurrected bodies (Christs included);
christological speculations that more parody than promote Origens beliefs;
caricatures of Origens views of angels and demons; and so on.

In any event, I stopped following the debate when I was sent a link to a fatuous screed
by someconverso polemicist who not only defended the fifteen anathemas, but insisted
on praising St Justinians rebukes of Origen. Admittedly, technically he was within
his rights. East or West, all Christians are burdened with the absurdities of Christian
imperial history. But any conception of orthodoxy that obliges one to grant the title of
saint to a murderous thug like Justinian while denying it to a man as holy as Origen
is obviouslyindeed ludicrouslyself-refuting. And one does not defend tradition well
by making it appear not only atrociously unjust, but utterly ridiculous.