Origeniana Undecima: Origen and Origenism in the History of Western Thought. Papers of the 11th International Origen Congress, Aarhus University, 26–31 August 2013. Edited by Anders-Christian Jacobsen

Abstract

The editor of this collection of 57 papers relates that a small group of participants in the 2013 congress have ‘developed a project that will continue research on the reception of Origen’s thought in Western tradition and create a theoretical and methodological basis for this research. The project will focus on how Origen’s ideas about human freedom and dignity have been received’ (p. viii). The EU is offering a grant of four million euros for this purpose. The ‘theoretical and methodological basis’ cannot be created out of thin air by consulting modern hermeneutical theorists such as Gadamer and Ricoeur. Hints might be found in the procedures adopted in recent encyclopaedic works on the historical reception of Augustine, but Origen’s influence does not have the same breadth and continuity and does not lend itself to such massive surveys. Because of his ‘suspect’ status and because he so often came into view as a source of resistance to the dominant Augustinian paradigm, Origen had a special attraction for thinkers of an independent cast of mind, such as Pelagius, Eriugena, Abelard, Pico della Mirandola, Erasmus, and Giordano Bruno, all targeted by ecclesiastical censure. The ill-fated Servetus was another who used Origen as ‘a principle of ecclesiastical contestation’ (Bernard Pouderon, p. 355). Origen’s impact thus appears in a series of dramatic episodes rather than as a settled legacy to be stewarded. Only in the mid-twentieth century, thanks chiefly to the work of French and German Jesuits, did he regain a place in orthodox discourse that he had lost since the Cappadocians.