Magister ecclesiae: Il dibattito su Origene fra III e IV secolo (review)

This book examines the reception of Origen's thought within the local cultures and changing contexts of third and fourth century Christian theology. By examining the different contexts within which Origen's thought was received, the author hopes to shed further light on why Origen's views were understood and evaluated differently by different historical figures and how institutional and theological developments within the Church ultimately led to the condemnation of Origenist thought.

The book consists of a very short preface (just under four pages) and seven chapters, of which all but the first two have previously appeared in print. (Chapter 3 is a slightly expanded, integrated version of two previously published journal articles. Chapters 4-7 are reproduced with minor revisions from the periodicals or edited collections in which they originally appeared.) This has the merit of gathering together within a single volume several important studies that may not be readily accessible to North American scholars. At the same time, the brevity of the preface and the lack of any conclusion at the end of the book limit the continuity between the specialized studies that comprise the individual chapters. The book is well indexed (219-31), a feature which allows references to particular subjects, biblical verses, passages from Origen's works, and ancient and modern authors to be readily located.

Prinzivalli's initial questions (7) are important ones: How should one understand Origen's relation to the Alexandrian tradition of which he was a part? What did Origen's critics have in common, and can these common features help us to understand why they saw Origen's thought as problematic?

Drawing upon suggestions made by Manlio Simonetti in a variety of studies over the past three decades, Prinzivalli suggests that one can profitably understand the reception and criticism of Origen's thought in terms of a conflict between two divergent theological traditions that persisted over time, the Alexandrian and the Asiatic. The Alexandrian tradition, under the influence of Platonism, understood the world in terms of a fundamental distinction between two levels (the intelligible and the corporeal) and understood human identity in terms of a soul that existed at a higher level than the body. This outlook also had implications for how the Bible was read (allegory), how the person of Christ was understood, and how the future hope of the Church was conceived (the spiritual nature of the apokatastasis).

The Asiatic tradition, because of the influence of Judaism and Stoic philosophy, had a more positive view of material existence and a unitary vision of reality, conceiving of human identity in terms of an organic union of body and soul (with each being incomplete without the other and the soul commonly conceived as consisting of very subtle matter). This approach also had implications for how the Bible was read (e.g., the literal interpretation of the first three chapters of Genesis), how the person of Christ was understood (a positive estimation of Christ's humanity with the importance of the Word's union with human flesh highlighted), and how the hope of the Church was conceived (belief in the transformation of the material order and the appearance of a millennial kingdom on earth).

Prinzivalli discusses various ways in which these two traditions interacted in the third and fourth centuries and were significantly influenced by one another yet were never able to resolve their fundamental points of disagreement. The inception of the Arian crisis gave rise to a series of polemics that radicalized the debate and led to a conscious reassertion of the Asiatic tradition by its proponents. Prinzivalli also comments on the difficulty that the Alexandrian tradition had in gaining popular reception for some of its characteristic positions and how the institutional consolidation of power created an ecclesiastical context that was increasingly unfavorable to speculative reflection. [End Page...