Not Origen’s Defender, Yet You Defend Him

You say that you are not the defender or the champion of Origen. But I will at once confront you with your own book, which you spoke of in these terms in that notorious preface to your celebrated work: “I have set out the cause of this inconsistency more fully for you in the Apology that Pamphilus wrote among his treatises, adding a very short piece of my own. In it I have shown, by what seem to me clear proofs, that his works have been corrupted in many places by heretics and ill-disposed people, and especially those I am now translating, On First Principles.” [a]

The defense made by Eusebius, or, if you will have it so, by Pamphilus, was not enough for you. You had to add something from your superior wisdom and learning to supply what you thought lacking in what they had said. It would be a long business if I were to insert your whole book into this treatise, set out each paragraph, reply to each in turn, and show what faults there are in the style, what falsehoods in the statements, and what inconsistency in the very fabric of the language. So, to avoid a drawn-out discussion that I find distasteful, I will squeeze the wording into a small space and reply to the meaning alone. As soon as he leaves the harbor, he runs his ship onto a rock. He recalls the words of the Apology of the martyr Pamphilus, which, however, I have proved to be the work of Eusebius, the chief of the Arians. Of that book he had said, “I translated it into the Latin language as well as I was able and as the matter demanded.” Then he adds: “It is about this that I wish to give you a charge, Macarius, man of desires: that you may be sure that this rule of faith, which I have set out above from his books, is such as ought to be embraced and held fast. It is clearly shown that there is a catholic meaning in them all.” He took many things out of Eusebius’s book and tried to change the expressions about the Son and the Holy Spirit into a sound sense. Even so, many causes of offense are found in it, and even open blasphemies, and our friend cannot refuse to accept them, since he declares them to be catholic. Eusebius, or, if you please, Pamphilus, says in that book that the Son is the servant of the Father; that the Holy Spirit is not of one substance with the Father and the Son; that the souls of men have fallen from heaven; and that, since we have been changed from the state of angels, in the restoration of all things angels and demons and men will all be equal. He says many other things so ungodly and monstrous that it would be a crime even to repeat them. The champion of Origen and translator of Pamphilus is in a strange position. If there is so much blasphemy in the parts he has corrected, what sacrilege must there be in the parts which, as he claims, have been corrupted by heretics! What makes him hold this opinion, he says, is that a man who is neither a fool nor a madman could not have said things that contradict each other. And so that we may not suppose that Origen wrote different things at different times, and put out opposing views according to when he was writing, he has added: [b] “What are we to say when sometimes in the same place, and, so to speak, almost in the next paragraph, a sentence with the opposite meaning is found inserted? Can we believe that in the same work and the same book, and sometimes, as I have said, in the very next sentence, he could have forgotten his own words? For example, could he who had said before that we can find no passage anywhere in the Scriptures where the Holy Spirit is said to be created or made, immediately add that the Holy Spirit was made among the rest of the creatures? Or again, could he who defined the Father and the Son to be of one substance, which in Greek is called homoousion, say in the following passages that the Son was of another substance and was created, when only a little before he had declared him to be born from the nature of God the Father?” [d]