The Feast of Saint Leonidas, Father of Origen

Little is known about the Christian Martyr Saint Leonidas, except that he was beheaded by the Egyptian prefect, a man named Lactus, in 202 CE, during the reign of the Roman Emperor Septimius Severus.

We might encounter his name in his list of martyrs from that period of persecution, but not much more would have been said about him because Leonidas did not lead a noteworthy life except for the fact that he was father to one of the greatest and most well-known philosophers and theologians of the late second century…the redoubtable Origen, who in the Orthodox tradition is a regarded as a saint and counted among the mothers and fathers of the church, while among the Catholics and for the rest of the Western Church he is a controversial figure.

The controversy surrounding Origen arises  from the fact that his writings were formerly condemned during the reign of the Emperor Justinian, at the Second Council of Constantinople in 553 CE, nearly three hundred years after his death, and though he himself was not officially anathematized, all of his work was.

It was three centuries after Origen’s death, two centuries after the church had become the official religion of the Roman Empire, as the church was on its way to becoming the only sanctioned religion whose practice was permissible in the West. It was then, just as Origin’s contribution to Christian philosophy was being condemned that the Roman Catholic Church took a turn for the worse, the so-called Dark Ages ensued, and the Empire began to crumble.

Remarkably, Origen’s work remained influential. His thought continued to guide the thinking of theologians for centuries and continues to influence us in the twenty-first century.

And yet Origen is not a Catholic Saint; we do not celebrate his feast. We celebrate the feast of his father instead, giving thanks to Origin through Leonidas, for his great work.

Origen ran afoul of the church on account of his doctrine of apocatastasis, which taught, in keeping with scripture[1], that all things and beings emanate from the divine, and according to the doctrine of apocatastasis, would ultimately return to the source of its being (God) in the great reunification and reconciliation of the divine with creation.  It is the furthest and most logical extension of Christian hope that has ever been penned…according to the doctrine of apocatastasis even the devil and his angels would be reconciled with God in the end.

In the early sixth century Origen’s cosmology was perceived as being a threat to the Imperial religion, and to the increasingly popular theology of Saint Augustine of Hippo (d. 430 CE) who taught that the material universe was created ex nihilo (an absurdity)…out of nothing, thus obviating the argument for the return of the created order, including all things and being, to its divine source.  

Augustine’s theology while inherently dualistic, insofar as it describes the material order as beginning in nothingness (to be understood as a privation of the good and the material essence of evil), and allows for its continuation into eternity. In the Augustinian scheme evil continues, it is rooted in a pre-temporal reality and its scope has no limit. Furthermore, the entire system of sacramental theology that has been operative in the church since the sixth century is dependent on this absurdity.

Justinian and those who voted to condemn Origen’s work and the Second Council of Constantinople, understood that the doctrine of apocatastasis implies a theology of universal salvation. They understood how this soteriology challenges the authority of priests and bishops, and the church itself as intermediary between God and humanity. This threat to Augustine’s sacramental theology, because it undermined the authority of the church, it also undermined the authority of the first Christian Emperor. It was on these grounds and on the basis of these political considerations that Origen’s work was condemned. It was an act of unadulterated hubris on the part of the Church.

Even though Origen’s teaching caused him to fall out of favor with the hierarchy, the man himself was incredibly popular, he was among the most widely read theologians of the patristic era, his theology was seminal to that of many other theologians and philosophers, including those who penned the Nicene Creed. Origen himself could not be anathematized, but his doctrine was seen as dangerous, deemed heretical and among Catholics it was set aside.

Origen saw the doctrine of apocatastasis as the logical conclusion of the basic faith commitments held by all Christians in his time.

He was right.

These basic faith commitments are also held by most Christians today, representing a shared tradition of belief concerning the nature reality and the purpose of existence that we have never wavered from. Origen was not attempting to teach something radical or new, he was expostulating the faith he had received from his teacher Clement of Alexandria, another giant among the Ante-Nicene mothers and fathers.

Origen followed in his father’s footsteps, going to a martyr’s death c. 252 – 254 CE, his time came during the persecutions of the Roman Emperor Decius; at the age of 69 he was imprisoned, tortured and died from his injuries.

He was a philosopher and a theologian of great repute, martyred twice: first by the Roman Empire and then by the Imperial Roman Church, tortured by the former, and intellectually assassinated by the later…and he lives on.

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[1] See the introduction to John’s Gospel