He Says I Showed Origen to Be a Heretic, Yet Condemns Me

But I must deal with you once more by quoting your own words. You say of me, in that invective of yours, that by my translation I have shown that Origen is a heretic while I am a catholic. The words are, “That is to say, I am a catholic, but the man I was translating is a heretic.” Yes, you say it; I have read it. Well, then, if, as you tell us, the result of my whole work is to show that I am a catholic and Origen a heretic, what more do you want? Is not your whole object gained if Origen is proved a heretic and I a catholic? If you bear witness that I have said this, and so have satisfied you by the whole of my work, what ground of accusation against me is left? What purpose did that invective of yours against me serve? If I proved Origen to be a heretic and myself a catholic, was I right or not? If I was, why do you hold up to blame and accusation something rightly done? But if it was not right for Origen to be called a heretic, why do you bring a charge against me on that score? What need was there for you to translate in a worse sense what I had already translated by your own principles, though in a less polished style? Above all, what need was there for you to deceive your readers, and do one thing when they expected another? They imagine that you are opposing those who defend Origen as a catholic. But the person you fight and accuse is the man who, you say, has declared him a heretic. Perhaps it was for this that you invited me to do penance, and I had misunderstood you. [a]

But I must say that I could not repent even of this, if my repentance meant that I thought everything found in his works is catholic. Whether what is not catholic is his own, or, as I think, was put in by others, God alone knows. In any case, these things, when brought to the standard of the faith and of truth, are wholly rejected by me. What, then, do you want me to say? That Origen is a heretic? That is what you say I have done, and you blame it. That he is a catholic, then? Again you make this a ground of accusation against me. Point out more clearly what you mean; perhaps there is something you can find that lies between the two. This is all the wit you have gathered from the sharpness of Alexander and Porphyry and Aristotle himself. This is what comes of all your boasting that from childhood to old age you have been versed and trained in the schools of rhetoric and philosophy: you set out intending to pass sentence on Origen as a heretic, and in the very speech in which you deliver judgment you turn on the man you are addressing and accuse him because he too has shown Origen to be a heretic.

I beg everyone to notice that in all this there is no care for the faith or for truth, no earnest thought of religion and sound judgment. There is nothing but the practiced craving for slander and for accusing the brothers, which works in his tongue; nothing but rivalry with his fellow men in his heart; nothing but malice and envy in his mind. So much is this so that, even before there was any cause of ill feeling, when I spoke of you with praise as my brother and colleague, you were still angry at my approach. Forgive me for not knowing that you were what the Greeks call akatonomastos, one whom no one dares to address by name. Still, I wonder that you should call on me to condemn the very thing you complain of me for branding as wrong.