Origen Adamantius was an scholar and an early Christian Theologian. In him the Christian Church had its first Theologian. His teaching was not merely theoretical, but was also imbued with an intense ethical power.
The etymology of his name came from the Greek name 'Origenes' meaning 'Born' and his nickname 'Adamantios' meaning 'adamant, unalterable, unbreakable, unconquerable, diamond,' because of his severe ascetic practices.
Origen was born in Alexandria to Christian parents. His mother bore 6 children after him. Origen was educated by his father, Leonides of Alexandria, who gave him a standard Hellenistic education, but also had him study the Christian Scriptures. The name of his mother is unknown. Leonides was martyred during the persecution of the Roman Emperor Septimus Severus in 202 CE. He was beheaded, and his property seized. Origen attempted to follow his father in martyrdom, but he was detained by his mother. She hid his clothes so that Origen couldn't leave the house.
The death of the father left the family of 9 impoverished. Origen, however, was taken under the protection of a woman of wealth but only for a short time. During that time the young teacher visited imprisoned Christians, attended Courts, and comforted the condemned. His fame and the number of his pupils increased rapidly, so that Bishop Demetrius of Alexandria, made him restricted to instruction in Christian doctrine only.
Demetrius was a farmer, and lived with his wife as brother and sister for 47 years until he was "chosen" a Patriarch. According to a historical collection of the Church's saints, the ailing Pope Julian had a "vision" in which he was told that his "successor" would visit him the next day with a cluster of grapes, which were out of season at that time of the year. The next day, a farmer named Demetrius found grapes and went to the Pope for his blessing, and shortly after became Pope Demetrius I, the 12th Bishop of Alexandria.
Origen sold his valuable library for a sum which netted him a daily income of 4 obols. Obols were used in his time. they were spits of copper or bronze traded by weight, 6 obols made a 'drachma' or a handful, since that was as many as the hand could grasp.
[The obolus, along with the mirror, was a symbol of new schismatic heretics in the short story "The Theologians" by Jorge Luis Borges. In the story's discussion of the circularity of time, eternity, and the transmigration of the soul through several bodies the writer uses Luke 12:59, "No one will be released from prison until he has paid the last obolus." Luke calls the coin a Lepton, a somewhat smaller denomination.]
Origen spent his time teaching throughout the day and devoting great part of the night to the study of the Bible and lived a lifestyle characterized by abstinence from worldly pleasures.
Origen, reportedly trained in the school of Clement and by his father, has long been considered essentially a Platonist with occasional traces of Stoic philosophy. He was a pronounced idealist, regarding all things as temporal and considering materialism as insignificant and indifferent. The only real and eternal things were centered in God, the pure Reason, whose Creative Powers call into being the World with matter as the necessary substratum.
Origen's theory of the creation of the universe held the hypothesis of the preexistence of souls. According to him, before the known world was created by God, He created first a great number of spiritual intelligences. At first devoted to the service to God through the contemplation of all the rules given to them as part of its nature, all of these intelligences grew in knowledge and because of it somehow their love for their Creator diminished in power lowering its level of almost all of them, the least became Angels, the most became Demons. In the middle were those whose love diminished moderately and became the human souls, eventually to be incarnated in fleshy bodies. One, however, who remained perfectly devoted to God became, through Love, one with the Word of God. The Word eventually took flesh and was born of the Virgin Mary, becoming the God-Man Jesus Christ.
The diverse conditions in which Human Beings are born depended upon what their souls did in the pre-existent state. Thus, some being poor and others wealthy, some sick and others healthy, and so forth, is actually a test for the soul and the free will by-product of souls. The material bodies that every human assumes in this World will eventually be destroyed. Origen still insisted on a bodily resurrection in which a different type of body is going to be assigned to everyone surviving the Battle between Good and Evil.
Origen was a rigid adherent of Scripture, making no statement without adducing some scriptural basis.
To him the Scriptures were divinely inspired, as was proved both by the fulfillment of Prophecy and by the immediate impression which the Scriptures made on those who read them. Since the Divine Word spoke in the Scriptures, they were an organic whole and on every occasion he had to combat the Gnostic tenet of the inferiority of the Old Testament, he defended The Word strictly with the Word.
Origen sought to discover the deeper meaning implied in the Scriptures. One of his chief methods was the translation of proper Names, which enabled him to find a deeper meaning even in every event of history, but at the same time he insisted on an exact grammatical interpretation of the text. as the basis of all.
Origen distinguished sharply between the "ideal" and the "empirical" Chuch, representing "a double Church of men and angels," or "the lower" Church and "its celestial" ideal. The "ideal" Church alone was the Church of Christ," scattered over all the earth; the other provided also a shelter for sinners.
Holding that the Church of the Word, as being in possession of the Mysteries, affords the only means of Salvation, he was indifferent to her external organization, although he spoke sometimes of the office-bearers, and of their heavy duties and responsibilities.
More important to him was the idea of the grand division between the great human multitude, capable of sensual vision only, and those who know how to comprehend the hidden meaning of the Scripture and the diverse Mysteries. The Reason, illumined by the Divine Word, is able to search the secret depths of the Divine Nature, and the Divine Word remains as the only source of Knowledge.
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