At first glance, to speak of Origen's spirituality seems a superfluous exercise, because spirituality is ubiquitous throughout his writings; What do we call `spirituality' in regard to Origen? Is there a history of research behind us, which explains and, if necessary, legitimates the fact that we are focusing on Origen's spirituality? In exploring the twentieth century as “a century in quest of Origen's spirituality”, I shall let our twentieth century predecessors witness the constantly shifting notion of Origenian spirituality through the prism of their studies. This is only to come to the conclusion that we have today our own notion, resulting from the previous stages of studies on Origen and challenging us with new interpretive resources.
Firstly, I wish to present a brief introduction to the scholarly and ideological context in which Origen's spirituality has been approached since the beginning of our century. In fact, my remarks shall concentrate on two of the most important aspects of my inquiries, first the editions of Origen's works during the twentieth century and second, the metamorphosis of biblical exegesis which opens a new hermeneutical horizon for the study of Origen at the end of this century. Only after these general considerations shall I venture into a critical restructuring of our present notion of Origen's spirituality in the light of specific aspects of past scholarship which I shall elaborate at the start of the second section of this essay.
A prodigious development of patristic studies characterized the twentieth century, marking on the one hand the conclusion of a learned tradition in Christianity which goes back to the age of the Fathers themselves, and, on the other, announcing a new integration of patristics in the definition of the Christian identity. Origen of Alexandria, as a kind of primordial focus of patristic studies. reflects the main stages and the most significant orientation of these studies during the century.
Due to the philological orientation of European scholarship of the nineteenth centurv. a first aspect of Origenian studies resulted in an unparalleled number of critical editions, among which the Origenes Werke, initiated by the Academy of Sciences of Berlin, just one hundred years ago in 1899, occupy a central position. Rather than considering that achievement as a mere stage of Origenian studies, located in a given period of time already belonging to the past, it is better to suggest here that this aspect represents a permanent level of scholarly investment, life-giving for all other Origenian studies and fundamental for the whole of the twentieth century. From Paul Koetschau's edition of Origen's tractate On Martyrdom and of his eight books Gegen Celsus in 1899, to the latest volume of Origenes Werke secured by Pierre Nautin in 1983 , the editorial work in the grand style never ceased in Berlin, despite the ravages of two World Wars and their catastrophic consequences. A giant in that enterprise doubtlessly was Eric Klostermann, who, in 1901, each time with Ernst Benz as co-editor, secured the third volume of Origenes Werke; in 1933, 1935 and 1941 , the tenth , eleventh and twelfth volumes, and who, assisted by L. Früchtel in 1955, added a last section to Origenes Werke XII. At over ninety years of age, the indefatigable Klostermann, in a Sitzungsbericht der deutschen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, presented a report entitled “Epilog zu Origenes' Kommentar zu Matthäus”, published posthumously .Three other main editors of Origenes Werke were Eric Preuschen in 1903, W. A. Baehrens in 1920, 1921 and 1925, and Max Rauer in 1931, with two important contributors, Ernst Benz and Ludwig Früchtel, who had assisted Klostermann in his life-long endeavor . We must pay a special tribute of gratitude to these scholars, because the Origenes Werke stimulated all the other editions of Origen published during the century, mainly after World War II, such as the two splendid Italian editions of the Commentary on John by Eugenio Corsini and of Peri Archon by Manlio Simonetti, both in 1968.
As René Cadiou prophesied in 1932 in his Introduction au systeme d' Origine: “ Les éditions récentes de l'Académie de Berlin marqueront une nouvelle époque dans la connaissance et l'interprétation de l'oeuvre”. Indeed a `nouvelle époque' started in 1943 with the launching of volumes dedicated to Origen in the newly created series Sources Chrétiennes: No less than thirty-seven volumes on works of Origen were published in the series over the past fifty-three years. These French translations, essentially based on the Berlin edition indeed inaugurated a new interpretation of Origen, original in motivation, new in style and full of significance, and importantly, still in progress. In particular, our own present focus on the spirituality of Origen is primarily due (directly or indirectly) to the interpretive strategies of Henri de Lubac and Jean Daniélou, the founders of Sources Chretiénnes. A key notion of these strategies was to consider Origen more as an expositor of scripture than as a systematic philosopher. Therefore his pastoral ministry of preaching became the main locus of scientific investigation. His doctrine was no longer confined to abstract speculation, but understood as a popular exercise in social communication through which the Alexandrian priest shared his convictions with common believers. Unexpectedly, the esoteric genius of the third century became a `star' of popularized patristics in the twentieth century.
This editorial work on Origen's legacy spilled over to the Americas with the rapid expansion of new collections of patristic texts in Washington and in New York. It was repeated with much success in different European countries, including Italy, up to the present day. Out of these endeavors, according to the founding intuition of Henri de Lubac, grew a widespread interest in Origen's biblical exegesis. The door was now open for a renewed formulation of his spirituality, as we shall see later in this presentation.
At this point, I would like to add my second preliminary consideration. A very different approach to Origen's spirituality that has characterized this century was no longer based on the textual evidence of Origen himself; rather it was based on Origen's text of reference par excellence, the sacred scriptures. If the Origenes Werke contributed to a better appreciation of Origen's writings, the exegetical movement of the twentieth century deeply conditioned the interpretation of Origen's thought. In order to evaluate the spiritual figure of Origen as an interpreter of scripture, we therefore must take into account the fact that our century enters the next millennium (in only a few weeks) as the century of a unique exegetical revolution in the history of Western Christianity. The exegetical movement of the twentieth century entails an unprecedented hermeneutical shift in the basic understanding of the Bible, a shift opening completely new perspectives for our assessment of Origen's significance as an interpreter of the Bible.
In only one or two generations over the past four decades, Christian exegesis has passed from being clerical and confessional, to become secular and inclusive. It has shifted from a self-centered specialization to cultural openness, from scholastic dogmatism to post-modern experimentation. In less simplistic phrasing it may be said that, having finally given an adequate response to the rationalistic challenges of eighteenth century Enlightenment by directly confronting the latter in inventing a whole set of `enlightened' methodologies, Christian exegesis found itself dealing with the Bible in an unheard-of way. The critical study of the Bible was detached from the basic presuppositions with which ancient exegetes had operated. A form of oral evidence, which had been shared without any hesitation by all schools of biblical interpretation in the early church, became irrelevant for the modern criticism of the Bible.
At the same time, a new awareness developed about the long and complex process through which early Christian communities reached an agreement about the biblical canon. From the beginning to the end of the twentieth century a considerable amount of scholarship successfully explored the linguistic aspects of the reception of scripture in the church: how the Septuagint served as an incentive for the composition of New Testament writings; how Greek versions of the Hebrew Bible turned into Old Latin versions; how the Bible even gave birth to new written languages and new bodies of literature in the Syriac and Armenian and other traditions, not to exclude the Latin tradition itself. Then, having apparently exhausted all creative possibilities in the scrutinizing of scripture inside the methodological frame inherited from the early twentieth century, many biblical experts started raising new questions about the very relevance of scripture in the Christian movement: what of the social implications of a reception of scripture? what of the inculturation of the Bible in the aesthetics, the metaphysics, and the politics of a given time and culture? How did early Christian generations rethink the vital categories of their religious and philosophical mind-set under the pressure of their reception of the Bible?
In short. released from the clerical confinement and the scholastic abstractness of a biblical exegesis dominated by canonized dogmatism, the study of the Bible re-integrated its natural domain - the public domain of its reception in given societies, the very matrix of its relevance as we may call the believing communities out of which the Christian Bible originated and on behalf of which it was ever transmitted or interpreted.
These observations, fragmentary as they are, on what I called the exegetical revolution of the twentieth century, were necessary before now turning to focus on the historic figure of Origen himself in the second part of my address. My contention is that the open space given to us at the theshold of a new century by the disappearance of dogmatistic superstructures, far from creating an ideological vacuum, engages us into a fascinating quest for a completely new appropriation of Origen's legacy. Instead of only adding more erudite data to the specialized study of the Alexandrian master, we are called to assume in responsible ways his own spiritual newness. I shall follow four different directions of research for a possible retrieving of Origen's spirituality as it had been considered during the twentieth century.
First, on the level of Origen's biography we would compare different biographies written on Origen since 1900, with our attention fixed on what is said in them about Origen's spirituality. Secondly, we would explore the signifi cance of the hermeneutical debate around Origen's exegesis in trying to perceive the outcome of that debate regarding the definition of Origen's spirituality. Thirdly, we would discuss the figure of Origen as a systematic thinker, also the object of a lively discussion in recent decades. Fourthly, and lastly, in the light of the century-long quest for Origen's spirituality which is behind us, we would focus on the paradigmatic figure of the Alexandrian master as a Christian believer. Let us start by briefly sketching the quest for Origen's spirituality during the twentieth century on the biographical level.
l. The Twentieth Century Biographies of Origen
In comparing the different biographies written on Origen during the twentieth century, one has to admit that the historical data of Origen's life and death are inseparable from his intellectual and spiritual biography. Here, only by way of parenthesis may I note that not a single new biography (of a monographic format) of Origen's greatest admirer among the post Nicene bishops of the fourth century. Athanasius of Alexandria, has been published since the nineteen century. For that reason alone, I would suggest, that the historical data of Athanasius' career were discussed without considering at the same time his spiritual and intellectual journey. In Origen's case, such a dissociation is simply unthinkable. Let me also suggest, in a paradoxical way, that the most modern biographer, whose influence pervades the writings of all other biographers of Origen still remains Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea, who wrote a short Origenian biography in his Church History, Book VI, around the turn of the third to the fourth century. In 1668, Pierre Daniel Huet (another, more recent bishop) was still essentially uncritical in regard to Book VI of Eusebius's Church History. In his elegant neo-Latin style, Huet offered a learned paraphrase of the Eusebian biography, hardly more documented in patristic literature or in Roman history than it was in Eusebius himself. Huet's work was several times published in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. It still served as a reference for the more controverted and conflictual biographies of Origen in the early twentieth century, such as the one by Eugène de Faye published in 1923-29, or the one which Gustave Bardy included in the Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique, vol. XI, of 1932. Even the more original presentation by Rene Cadiou in La jeunesse d'Origène. Histoire de l'École d'Alexandrie au début du IIIe siècle, Paris 1935, kept true to an unquestioned acceptance of Eusebius's biographical narrative. Cadiou was followed by Jean Daniélou, in his Origène of 1948.
That situation was going to change only in 1977 with the publication of Pierre Nautin's Origène. Sa vie et son oeuvre. a work already completed in 1967, as the author himself informs us. He does not add that it was my personal good fortune to induce him into that publication by offering him the possibility to create his own collection of monographs at Beauchesne's publishing house. Nautin convincingly succeeded (such was my impression) in demonstrating that Eusebius's report of the life of Origen in chapter VI of Church History rested on a double-leveled information, with a first level documented in written form (mainly thanks to an autobiographical apology produced by Origen in a letter transmitted by Eusebius), and with a second level of an oral tradition. It was in this second level that the sharply critical sensibility of Nautin soon detected hagiographical motifs. With the hundred page analysis of Eusebius's sources in chapter VI of Church History, it would be also worth examining more closely the short biographical summary about Origen added by Nautin as a conclusion to his work: Esquisse d'une biographie d'Origène.
Without showing in that summary any special interest in Origen's spirituality, Pierre Nautin emphasizes precise circumstances in the life of the Alexandrian which might have played a decisive role in his spiritual journey, such as the violent death of his father, of which Nautin observes: “The memory of his father was a blood link binding him to the church” (p. 414); or at a later stage in his life the teamwork with the so-called “Hebrew master” (p. 417). With a vivid and concrete conciseness Nautin overcomes the conventional paraphrase of the Eusebian narrative, still perpetuated by Daniélou and emphatically expanded in Henri Crouzel's Origène of 1995. Crouzel, named by his confrere of Boston College, Robert Daly, “the patriarch of Origenian studies in the twentieth century” , only once mentions Nautin's work, which he rejects as too hypothetical despite some “interesting intuitions”. Crouzel claims to conduct his own research “without being too much concerned about criticizing Eusebius” (p.18).
More to the point, Crouzel himself is the best illustration of the quest for Origenian spirituality in which we are interested in our comparative study of Origen's biographies. In the 1920's Eugène de Faye ignored spiritual values in Origen. In 1935, Cadiou enjoyed Origen's spirituality essentially as inherited from Clement of Alexandria, more than as Origen's own achievement. In 1948, Daniélou presented a central chapter, the longest of his Origène, under the title “Le systeme d'Origène” (pp. 207 - 286), with a small appendix of fifteen pages on “La mystique d'Origène” (pp. 287 - 301). But in Crouzel's Origène four chapters of Part III are entitled “Le Spirituel” (pp. 123 - 199). Daniélou spoke of Origen's “théologie mystique” in terms directly borrowed from his study of Gregory of Nyssa, suggesting that Origen's spirituality was foremost `biblical', and that it is best described as a theory of successive stages in the mystical ascension of the soul. On the contrary, Crouzel's notion of spirituality gained so much in extension that it included all that he had to say about Origen's anthropology, epistemology, ethics, all of Origen's biblical exegesis and the very substance of his theology. Thus it is not surprising if Crouzel could summarize in that Part iii of his late Origène his two major works from earlier years, Théologie de l'image de Dieu chez Origène of 1956, and Origène et la “connaissance mystique” of 1961. He had already proceeded in the same way in the article “Origène” of the Dictionnaire de Spiritualité, xi, coll. 933 - 961, published in 1982. In fact, Crouzel, not only established himself thereby as a leading connaisseur of the Alexandrian master, but he laid down a solid foundation for future attempts to speculate consistently on Origen's spirituality. We all are greatly indebted to Père Crouzel's life-time's work.
I conclude my observations on the level of Origen's twentieth century biographies by noting that all along this century one registers an increasing interest in Origen's spirituality.
2. On Origen's Hermeneutics
The second direction to follow for a critical retrieving of the notion of Origen's spirituality as conceived and consolidated in the past decades leads us to the hermeneutical debate around Origen's exegesis of the 1950's and 1960's. That debate spread like a bushfire all over the scholarly landscape. It would take us too long to analyze in detail the multiple aspects of the controversy. You may forgive me if I mention only data more familiar to me as I was at that time only close to the main French actors of the debate.
The 1950's were a time when the immediate dislocations of World War II were overcome in Europe and a new intellectual vitality was burgeoning in the Western world. It was the time when Rudolf Bultmann published his Theologie des Neuen Testaments in which he strongly emphasized the Lutheran understanding of Pauline thought; the time also when Karl Barth composed the most christocentric chapters of his multi-volume Kirchliche Dogmatik; and it was the time when the administration of Pope Pius XII decided to stop the adventurous “theologie nouvelle” which had for some years crystallized within the theological Faculty of French Jesuits in Lyon - Fourvière. One of the victims targeted by the encyclical Humani generis wrote me a letter using an old saying from ancient Gaul already quoted by Julius Caesar: “The sky has fallen on our heads”. One of the chief mentors of “théologie nouvelle” was Henri de Lubac, for the next several years reduced to silence in matters of contemporary theology by Cardinal Ottaviani, just like the Dominicans Cougar and Chenu, and many other intellectually active clerics.
In that dramatic context Henri de Lubac produced a real sensation with the publication of Histoire et Esprit. L'intelligence de l'Ecriture d'apres Origène. Once more, the Alexandrian genius of the third century found himself engulfed in a theological conflict confronting him with the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Not only did the properly spiritual dimension of his biblical exegesis become a central issue for a public debate, but it became an issue questioning at once the monopoly of the historical-critical method in the official teaching of Catholic exegesis and the very concept of a Neo-scholastic theology. Henri de Lubac's profound analysis intended to show that Alexandrian allegorism as assumed and christianized by Origen was less a simple borrowing from Philo or from Alexandrian interpreters of Homer, than it was an original application of Pauline hermeneutics, systematically extended to the whole of scriptural exegesis. Lubac himself, a very religious and traditional mind with a vivid openness to modernity, was a close friend of Teilhard de Chardin and Henri Blondel. While he found in Origen the ideal figure into which he could project his own spiritual values, Lubac did not discover any characteristic notion of Origenian hermeneutics. Already Huet in the seventeenth century had written extensively on typology and allegory in describing Origen's use of scripture.
What Henri de Lubac did, was to breathe into those notions the spiritual vibrancy of the Christian identity which was in crisis during the 1950's. Like Bultmann in regard to Lutheran self-understanding, Lubac gave a central and almost exclusive importance to the hermeneutics of the Apostle Paul in his understanding of Origen's allegorism. Like Karl Barth as a systematic theologian, Lubac identified christo-centrism as the fundamental structure of Origen's allegorism and of Christian thought at large. In the wake of Henri Blondel's philosophy, he presented Origen's use of allegory as a creative tool securing the inner dynamic and continuity of biblical thought through the centuries. Finally, in the light of Teilhard de Chardin's inspired cosmology, Henri de Lubac claimed that for Origen the spirit was prior to the letter in scripture, producing the letter, and giving it a future in the “noosphere” of Christian readers.
In other words, by his eloquent and richly documented exposition of the spiritual senses according to Origen, the mentor of “thèologie nouvelle” in Lyon opened indeed a new theological perspective, understanding the Alexandrian master as a “spiritual” paradigm.
The limit of Henri de Lubac's brilliant exercise in patristic hermeneutics is probably the chief reason, why Origenian spirituality still remains for us today a provocative challenge. After half a century has passed, one indeed perceives that limit as soon as one recalls the critical reception given to Lubac's Histoire et Esprit. A discussion developed, in which it became more and more clear that the experts involved had limited their observations to sheer questions of method. They discussed the implications of the so-called “senses of scripture” , the literal, allegorical, tropological, anagogical, and other senses, as if the basic presuppositions on which Origen's exegesis had been built up, were still admissible - as if they were still the matter of a common consensus among theologians. Unfortunately that was not the case. In mid-twentieth century the exegetical revolution which I evoked at the beginning of my address was already preparing the minds of biblical interpreters for a new comprehension of the Bible, no longer framed by the conventional notions of divine inspiration and divine authority inherited from patristic thought, but in post-Bultmannian terms, with a sense for cultural diversity, for multi-religious traditions and for a historically determined identity of believers. Such a problematic entailed a new type of reception of scripture in the Judeo-Christian tradition; it was readying exegetes for engaging into a radical revision of biblical hermeneutics.
Henri de Lubac, Hans Urs von Balthasar and Jean Daniélou, as highly gifted commentators of Origen's exegesis, were perfectly aware of the hermeneutical crisis of their day. More than others, they high-lighted its spiritual implications for their fellow Christians, but they never admitted that their own historical theology called for a critical retrieval of the very foundations of Christianity, and in particular of the foundational presuppositions of Origen's exegesis. As Jean Daniélou, then a cardinal, told me one day: “ Arius was condemned at Nicea in 325, we don't have to reopen his case”, meaning by it that we should not think on any actual relevance of the Arian crisis when discussing the present status of Christian thought. Thus, in France, Italy, Germany, and elsewhere, a whole generation of great patristic scholars was getting ready for the unpredictable event of the Council Vatican II, where the same ideological impasse occurred on a larger scale. and where henceforth they momentaneously became big stars. In the post-Vatican era, they all found themselves entangled in a conservative position. Origen had not inaugurated for them a long-lasting celebration of spiritual freedom, Das Fest der Freiheit, according to the beautiful title of a recent essay on Origen's ethical hermeneutics.
Let us conclude our second inquiry into the growth of understanding of Origen's spirituality during the twentieth century by acknowledging to the centre-stage role played in that process by the debate around Origenian her meneutics. Henri Crouzel, following many others, goes on repeating that one cannot dissociate Origen the thinker, or Origen the exegete, from Origen the spiritual master. A recent issue of the “Annali di Storia dell'Esegesi” included two excellent essays on Henri de Lubac's central importance even today for an appropriate study of patristic hermeneutics. Perhaps his importance for our own reception of Origen's spirituality may best be described as a proof e contrario of the challenge we must face: no longer can we avoid, as Lubac and his contemporaries did, a critical retrieving of Origen's systematic thought, if we wish to perceive the actual relevance of Origen's spirituality. And here I am inviting you to engage with me into our third viewpoint, namely to consider Origen as a systematic thinker.
3. Origen as a Systematic Thinker
Here our quest for Origen's spiritual
identity pursued along the twentieth century faces a first requirement,
which is to clarify what we really mean by “systematic”.
Such a systematic precision is the more necessary, as Henri Crouzel
conducted for several decades a personal crusade against anyone
attempting to categorize Origen as a systematic thinker. If one
notices that our senior colleague's denial of Origen as a systematician
was the denial of Origen's taking over a philosophical system
of a scholastic type from pagan culture and imposed on his Christian
teaching, one can only agree with Father Crouzel. But there was
more in Crouzel's alternative underlying his rhetorical question:
“ Origène est-il un systématique?”
, as in an article of 1959, with a decidedly negative answer
to the title-question mentioned. What the Origenian expert from
Toulouse had in mind was much more than a simple opposition between
a philosophical system and a spiritual witnessing. He had in
mind a global interpretation of Origen's theology as a message
of Christian spirituality, which was in fact the magisterial
approach of Origen so brilliantly exemplified by Crouzel's role
model and undisputed mentor, Henri de Lubac.
With that emphasis in mind, Crouzel could refuse to call Origen a “systematician” in a philosophical or scholastic sense, and at the same time integrate the whole system of Origen's theology into his definition of Origen's spirituality. In other words, the spiritual achievement of the Alexandrian was perceived in anti-scholastic terms, hence Crouzel's dilemma: Was Origen a systematician or not?
In fact the dilemma “systematic” or “non-systematic” runs throughout the century, when scholars position themselves in regard to Origen's achievement. To Eugène de Faye's presentation in 1923 of Origen as a systematician of a Neoplatonic type. Gustave Bardy responded in 1932 with a strong article focusing on Origen exclusively as an interpreter of the Bible. Walter Volker's remarkable essay, Das Vollkommenheitsideal des Origenes of 1931 also reacted against de Faye and other proponents of Origen's system, but with a notion of spiritual perfection filled with Lutheran piety and, as Urs yon Balthasar would later observe, with a complete lack of ecclesiology. Against Volker's loose collection of spiritual attitudes and themes, supposedly representing Origen's thought, Hal Koch responded almost immediately in 1932 with his book, Pronoia and Paideusis, emphasizing Stoic and Middle Platonic structures in Origen's systematic coherency. In 1949, Hans Jonas also responded to Volker with a vigorous article on Origen's mysticism, Die origenistische Spekulation and die Mystik. In 1951, Endre yon Ivanka added some complementary remarks, Zur geistesgeschichtlichen Einordnung des Origenismus; and finally, in 1966, Franz Heinrich Kettler, in a very original essay, claimed to have isolated the genuine principle of Origen's thought, Der ursprüngliche Sinn der Dogmatik des Origenes. I mention only the best-known names and titles, enough to illustrate a continuous twentieth century trend of a scholarly attempt to catch the authentic originality of Origen's intellectual achievement.
Strangely enough, these scholars always argued in terms of dilemma. As early as 1922, Jules Lebreton distinguished “Les degrés de la connaissance religieuse d'après Origène” on the basis of a distinction seen as a dilemma between “ foi populaire” and “théologie savante”. In 1923, Eugene de Faye wondered about another such dilemma in an article entitled: “Origène est-il exegete ou dogmaticien?” In 1935, Gustave Bardy concluded his presentation of Origen in La vie spirituelle d'après les Pères des trois premiers siècles with a more paradoxical statement; he said: “Origène n'est pas un intellectual; il est un croyant”, as if there should be an alternative between being a thinker and being a believer. Another dilemma already mentioned was implicit in Crouzel's title question of 1959: “Origène est-il un systématique?” Once more a similar dilemma became explicit in Erwin Früchtel's questioning title of 1982: “Origenes interpres aut dogmatistes?”, repeating de Faye's question of 1923, but ending with a very different answer, which precisely avoids the trap of a dilemma. I translate Früchtel's final statement: “Origen does not content himself with exegesis, he leads into the fundamental problematic of ecclesiastical doctrine. He achieves what allows theology to reach its proper goal, namely he produces through anagogical thinking an explanation of ecclesiastical doctrine itself out of the explanation of scripture, operating at once as a “dogmatist” and an “exegete”.
Twentieth century interpreters of Origen's accomplishment needed to break barriers between academic disciplines for creating a free space where they could deploy the resources of the Alexandrian master. Origen was not an exegete in the modern sense. neither was he a systematician in that sense; he could not be categorized as a philosopher without theology, nor as a theologian without philosophy; he was a spiritual leader, but not a mystic strictly speaking, as Gregory of Nyssa was one, according to Jean Daniélou. Having provided so many clarifications, our predecessors no longer seem to invite us to perpetuate their argumentation in form of dilemmas. We no longer have to project Origen's message against institutional and scholastic structures in the church, certainly important during the decades under consideration, but they have been deeply modified. or they even vanished during the most recent past. Our task is now to interpret Origen as a master of spirituality by concentrating our attention on what is central in his personality, his identity as a Christian believer, without projecting his message against such obsolete institutional and scholastic structures.
This leads me to a fourth and final level of critical retrieving in our quest of the twentieth century notion of Origenian spirituality, the level where the focus is on Origen as a Christian believer.
4. Origen as Christian believer
Choosing as a central theme for the present conference the spirituality of Origen is a task full of promise in the context of our society in which spiritual values remain an essential part of the cultural discourse, when in that same society the official establishment of religious institutions seems to become problematic. Everyday and world-wide, technological shifts in human communication transform our presence in the world, opening individual experience to an unprecedented amount of information. Simultaneously, we are losing many bonds with our own past for lack of time and lack of ancient languages. More and more we need an enormous investment of scholarship, as in the encyclopedic Festschrift Aufstieg and Niedergang der römischen Welt, for recapitulating our collective heritage of Western culture. We also need constant improvements in media technologies for transmitting to future generations what André Malraux called “ le musée imaginaire” of our mythical and religious foundations as a specific culture. In the actual process of retrieving cultural values through secular scholarship, televised media and electronic memory, our quest for Origen's spirituality takes on a new significance.
It is our urgent duty as historians and patristic experts to focus more precisely on what is central in Origen's spirituality, namely on his personal experience as a Christian believer. Thereby we overcome all the dilemmas of our predecessors and we approach the Alexandrian as a “spiritual systematician”. The whole literary legacy of Origen testifies to a life-long and adamant unity of his inner personality, based on unshakable faith. The whole integration of philosophical and other cultural values in his personal message testifies to a constant centrality of faith in his intellectual creativity.
Our present challenge is to catch the phenomenon of faith in Origen's spiritual journey with the hermeneutical tools now available. The doctrinal contents of Origen's teaching have been admirably described by many experts before us, and it is true that such presentations can always be improved with new insights, as has been brilliantly shown in recent research on Origen's essays On Martyrdom and On Prayer. But we still must face elementary questions of relevance: How did Origen find in Christian faith the central foundation for his spiritual awareness? what is proper to that faith, which gave Origen reason enough for refusing the seduction of Valentinianism, or the apparently coherent logic of Marcionism?
What I mean by the relevance of the Origenian experience has well been illustrated by the recent book, already mentioned, of Eberhard Schockenhoff, Zum Fest der Freiheit. Theologie des christlichen Handelns bei Origenes. If one compares the approach of theological anthropology as assumed by Origen according to Schockenhoff with the chapters on that anthropology in the different publications of Henri Crouzel - to choose only the best case - the contrast is striking. For Schockenhoff, Origen as a believing subject is central; the believer's options and presuppositions are questioned in Origen's inner behavior as a man of faith. For Crouzel, as for earlier experts, Origen as a believer remains hidden and unquestioned behind his imposing teachings. Therefore those teachings could be accommodated in their modern presentation, consciously or unconsciously, with all sorts of confessional preferences in mind. In the contemporary approach, illustrated by Schockenhoff, one dares to let the Alexandrian speak in his own right with new techniques of text analysis, and there one hears a new sound, coming from Origen's faith itself, the center of Origenian spirituality. For instance, Schockenhoff succeeds in opening a way of life for human existence based on Origen's theological exegesis of scripture, which speaks directly to the contemporary reader about Origen's focus on freedom and ethical values.
A similar example, even more explicit for our present argument, is given by J. Jose Alviar whose essay was published in Dublin 1993 under the title: Klesis. The Theology of the Christian Vocation according to Origen. Here we have an amazingly new formulation of Origenian anthropology in the light of Origen's theology of the Christian vocation to faith. By definition, Christians are called to a very special, very original form of religious faith. How did Origen pass the test to such a call? Over sixty years ago, a young Hans Urs von Balthasar offered a magnificent answer to that question with an “ Aufbau”, a “construct” of quotations from Origen's writings which he entitled Geist and Feuer . Even today it would be difficult to imagine a more knowledgeable and more elegant access to the spiritual discourse of the Alexandrian master than the one provided by Balthasar's anthology. But even in this case the proliferation of Origenian statements hides the personal crisis, the decisive options through which Origen himself matured as a believer. José Alviar focuses in less sublime terms than Balthasar on the Origenian spirituality, but he emphasizes the inner dynamic of the Christian vocation and the challenging place of Christians in the world with a constant attention to Origen's own experience.
A last example of this new aspect of Origenian studies, which I see characterized by an unusual interest for questions of relevance, when concentrating on Origen's experience of faith, is the work of Christiana Reemts, OSB, published last year in Bonn under the title Vernunftgemässer Glaube. Die Begründung des Christentums in der Schrift des Origenes gegen Celsus. Again this study concentrates on the centrality and inner logic of Christian faith in the apologetic strategy of the aging Origen. Instead of playing the role of an academic arbiter between the two religious philosophies opposing each other in Origen's treatise, a role assumed by some distinguished earlier experts, Christiana Reemts consistently explores the sole mental behavior of Origen as a believer in his literary confrontation with Celsus. For, as any student of Origen would agree, it is from the central faith of his spiritual dynamic that the Alexandrian master conceived his apology against Celsus. Surprisingly enough, for earlier experts that central source of spirituality has always remained buried under the layers of spiritual teachings which they so carefully described in retrieving Origenian doctrine.
The three examples given are not sufficient for defining the purpose and the possible extension of a future study of Origen's spirituality. At least they may open a way. The real challenge would be to combine a critical retrieving of Origen's faith-experience with an accurate perception of what such an experience means today. I remember over thirty years ago how Marguerite Harl had to engage into animated discussions with some of her students at the Sorbonne in order to assess her own spiritual attitude as someone fascinated by Origen's Peri Archon. She firmly stated that Church Fathers do not impose on those who explore their writings today a profession of Christian faith. After that sound statement which helped her puzzled students to reach a more objective motivation, Harl produced with them a structural analysis of Peri Archon, eloquently persuasive, which enriched the first Colloquium Origenianum, held at Monserrat in 1973, and - more importantly - determined the edition of Peri Archon in the series Sources Chretiennes by Henri Crouzel and Manlio Simonetti in 1978 - 1984.
At long last, this acclaimed edition put an end to the unfortunate side effects of Koetschau's edition dating from 1913. 1 do not need to comment on the issue, because all the data of the textual analysis of Peri Archon are well known. But how could I resist offering a final comment on the disposition of the text in that edition. The bi-partite division of Origen's treatise On First Principles, as adopted for the Sources Chretiennes edition in line with the research conducted by Marguerite Harl and her group, may satisfy a legitimate need for an editorial pattern which Origen would have in common with contemporary authors of handbooks. However, that division of Peri Archon into a first exposition, followed by a more detailed second exposition repeating the themes of the first exposition, projects a very questionable image of Origen, assimilated to scholastic traditions of his time. Once more, Origen's original faith experience, the true source of his inventive writing in Peri Archon, seems totally out of the consideration. When I suggested in the fifth Colloquium Origenianum, held at Boston College, that there was reason enough for reconsidering the very structure of Peri Archon as suggested by my Parisian friends, in a paper entitled “ Origen, Systematician in De Principiis”, I only earned an irritated gloss, “ Qu'entend l'auteur par "systematician"?” in the second Supplement of Henri Crouzel's Bibliographie critique d'Origène, Father Crouzel was far too concerned by his notion of a “non-systematic” Origen to pay any attention to my request. My real request was that in Peri Archon, more than in other Origenian writings, we should focus on Origen the believer, which means we should focus on how he structured himself as a believer and how he engaged in that capacity into theological discussion. It would need another paper to retrace Origen's genuine experience of Christian faith as expressed by the complex structure of Peri Archon.
In my final statement, I frankly prefer sharing with you the rich legacy of the twentieth century, highlighting the spiritual leadership of Origen, and I turn my whole attention to the future, hoping that a renewed image of Origen the believer would be soon projected, an image scholarly accurate and at the same time relevant for the twenty-first century.
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