The acts of Demetrius' council, we are informed, were forwarded to S. Pontianus, whose short pontificate of a few years spent in exile, as well as the still shorter reign of his successor, S. Anterus, which lasted only a month, was absorbed in the discharge of duties more vital to the church than the Alexandrian [pg 123] inquisition. Ere Rome took any steps in this matter, or sanctioned the proceedings by her silence, the discussion ended by the death of Demetrius, 231.
It is probable that Origen indulged in conceptions or hypotheses not altogether in accordance with Catholic doctrine; but we must keep before our minds the circumstances in which he was situated, the persons with whom he disputed, and the noble aim he had in view. The philosophy of Aristotle, whom Tertullian calls the “patriarch of heretics,” was very unpopular in Alexandria at the opening of the IIId century. The neo-Platonic system was the prevalent philosophy of the day at Alexandria. The issue of the day was, Is the religion of Christ philosophical? Can it with safety be subjected to logical rules? Does it not contradict the reasonings of Plato? To meet this issue, so important to the spread of the Gospel among the enlightened class, Origen had recourse as much as was possible to the tenets of the Platonic school for arguments. With Platonic philosophers he had his controversies; and his language, the more Platonic it was, the more power it exerted; the more he reconciled revelation with reason, in their estimation, the more entered within the pale of the church. Just as in our times able writers use the popular issues, because the most intelligible and taking, to dissipate the clouds of ignorance that bigotry has thrown around the public mind in regard to Catholicity, to show the natural compatibility of the church with all legal forms of government, her inexhaustible resources for meeting the requirements of society, and her sacred and impartial maintenance of true liberty; so, too, did Origen turn to advantage the doctrines of the schools in demonstrating the love of the church for sound philosophy, her adaptability to the sciences, and her divine mission as regenerator of the world. This tincture of Platonism pervading his early productions, combined with the mysterious figures under which Eastern nations convey sacred truths, the allegorical style, and the Discipline of the Secret, which was in active force, rendered Origen obscure, and his works susceptible of doubtful interpretation.
Though his admirers go so far as to exculpate him from every error, we are not prepared to accompany them to that distance. We are willing to concede that Origen may have advanced some erroneous opinions, but error without contumacy does not entail the sin of heresy, which is a wilful rejection of any revealed truth authoritatively proposed. “I may fall into a mistake,” says the learned S. Augustine, “but I will not be a heretic.” The fathers of the church were only men, subject to human weakness, liable to err. The doubtful and obscure speculative hypotheses of the Alexandrian's fertile imagination, then, should in no way darken the splendor of his genius or belittle his devotion to Catholic truth. F. Petau, his declared enemy, followed by Huet, who gave his learning to this controversy, refuses to believe Origen obstinate. Halloix, Charles Vincent de la Rue, Tillemont, Witasse, Ceillier, and other erudite scholars, who studied with care and impartiality this whole matter, unite in the emphatic declaration that Origen “died in the bosom of the Catholic Church.”
This is the verdict of great men [pg 124] in modern times. It was also the verdict of the century in which he lived—the IIId—as may be seen in the apology of S. Pamphilus, composed in defence of Origen's orthodoxy, and extant in the works of S. Gregory Nyssen; also in that beautiful monument of antiquity, the panegyric over Origen by S. Gregory Thaumaturgus, given in full in the works of Gerard Vossius. This verdict was confirmed in the IVth century by the catalogue of orthodox ecclesiastical writers, published by S. Gelasius, pope, among which is the name of Origen; and in the following century, in a profession of faith drawn up by Pope S. Hormisdas, and sent by Germanus, Bishop of Capua, to be signed by the Patriarch of Constantinople, the heretics condemned by the church are enumerated, but in this enumeration we can discover no allusion to the great Scripturist.
Indeed, it has always been a source of surprise to us how Origen, a fallible creature, a man like other men, unaided by any divine assistance, could have written in several thousand volumes so much truth, and so little error. There were but few Encyclical Letters, no Index, no decisions of Sacred Congregations, no Syllabus, in the days of Origen; and yet his enemies will measure the length of his definitions with theirs, compare his expressions with the theological niceties of the present, and, should a word be wanting or a synonymous one substituted, exclaim: “There is an error; Origen is a heretic!” The body of infallible definitions from popes and councils which we now possess did not exist at this early epoch; to write then orthodoxically, to justify the Christian belief in the Trinity, to explain the hypostatic union, the generation of the Son, and the procession of the Holy Ghost, to expound the Scripture and the other sublime mysteries of religion, and escape with one or two mistakes, was simply marvellous. Thus Origen, born in the true faith, reared in a religious atmosphere, educated under pious men, the intrepid defender of truth and meek retractor of error, the teacher and companion of saints, the prisoner for Christ, has impressed on his life, in golden letters, the best defence of his orthodoxy. And if the saintly Origen be distinguished from the abominable Origenians; if the allowances due to the age in which he lived be accorded him, an injustice to the works of Origen—a valuable legacy to posterity—will be removed, and the injury done to a reputation obscured by the malice of some and the misapprehension of many others will in part be repaired.[63]
Social Shams.
There is no axiom more fraught with meaning than the old Scripture promise, “The truth shall make you free.” But there is also no fact better authenticated in the civilized world of to-day than the practical nullification of this very promise. We speak as regards things human; for in spiritual matters, the home of truth is, to our belief, a fixed one, and the road to it staked out by a divine leader, that has power to find an unerring path in what otherwise seems but an ocean of shifting sand. We propose to apply this axiom to social life, and it is our complaint that it is not free. The pivot on which “society,” properly so called, turns is conventionality—a polite term for untruth.
The original Christian ideal of society was of course based on charity. It has been truly said that a perfect Christian is instinctively a finished gentleman. Courtesy is but an adaptation of charity; and the height of good-breeding (recognized as being the faculty of setting every one at his ease, and of saying the right thing at the right time to the right person) must answer to the Christian principle that to wilfully wound your neighbor in the slightest degree is a sin. But all this, call it tact or charity, as you will, is not in itself inconsistent with truth. The French have a proverb that Toute vérité n'est pas bonne à dire—“Every untruth is not necessarily expedient to all men;” but even that is not a declaration of war against the principle of truth in the main. Yet what is the reality, the thing constantly before our eyes, the fact of which no one can doubt who has ever lived beyond the strictest limits of home—nay, beyond the limits of his own mind? One in a thousand fulfils the ideal of Christian courtesy, while the other nine hundred and ninety-nine wear the regulation-mask prescribed by fashion. Some wear it of iron, so that, in the intercourse of a lifetime, you would never feel that you knew them any better than on the first day of acquaintance; some only of wire, so that the natural personality behind it is but partially hidden even from perfect strangers; some of silk, so cunningly painted that it betrays you into thinking it nature, until, by repeated experience, you discover the imposture. Again, some wear it as the women of Constantinople wear the yashmak, so filmy as only to veil, not to conceal, the features. Lord Lytton, in his romance, A Strange Story, speaks of the “three women” which exist in the single personality of every woman; this applies to men almost equally. There is, he says, the woman as she really is, the woman as she thinks herself to be, and the woman as she appears to the world—the conventional woman. This is by far the most curious product of natural history, or, more appropriately, of the history of mechanics. The human being under social manipulation is a study for philosophers. Conventional standards of human beauty, such as the compressed [pg 126] foot of the Chinese lady, or the artificially stimulated rotundity of form among the women of some of the Central African tribes, the staining of the finger-nails with henna among the Persians, etc., are as nothing and involve no deformation or suffering compared with that among the wholesale machine-products of civilized society.
Spiritual systems of penance have sometimes been impugned for aiming at subduing nature: taming the passions, restraining the expression of strong emotion, weaning the body from innocent indulgences, and so forth. But is there any more barefaced destroyer of nature than “society” as at present constituted? Are there any penances harder, any restraints stricter, than those imposed by our conventional code? The spiritual struggle with nature is voluntary, and aims at subduing our lower nature, only the more to honor the intellectual principle, and render its exercise freer from clogging and degrading influences. The conventional struggle with nature, on the contrary, is a compulsory one, into which you are thrust by others in early and unconscious childhood; it is, moreover, a deceptive one, as it tends to produce mere appearances—not to tame passion, but restrain its outward expression; not to elevate the mind, but to give it the semblance of those gifts most profitable in the social estimation of the day. It does not tend to make man supernatural, but unnatural. It takes from him even the freedom of the savage, without giving him in exchange the freedom of the Christian. It aims not at virtue, but at decorum. Its morality skips the whole of the Ten Commandments, but insists upon what facetious Englishmen sometimes call the eleventh—i.e., “Thou shalt not be found out.” It has rites and ceremonials of its own, more arbitrary than the law of the land, and, in the same breath, more lax; it has beliefs and formulas more binding outwardly than those of any religion; it has its own oracles, its own language, its own tribunals. It is a state within a state, condoning many moral delinquencies, exalting some into meritorious deeds, smoothing others over as pardonable follies. Where it is not wicked, it is inane or spiteful. Slander and gossip are its breath of life, except in the few instances where intrigue sweeps away such second-rate passe-temps.