Origen's Influence on the Young Augustine: A Chapter in the History of Origenism (review)

Breaking with a scholarly consensus, György Heidl argues that reading Origen (in translation) facilitated Augustine's return to Catholic Christianity and fueled his anti-Manichean polemic.

In the first of two parts of the book, the author argues that the Origenist Controversy of the 390's led Augustine to omit from the Confessions a decisive encounter with Origen's works. He had alluded to that encounter in Contra Academicos 2.2.5, speaking of "libri quidam pleni . . . bonas res Arabicas ubi exhalarunt in nos, ubi illi flammula instillarunt pretiosissimi unguenti guttaspaucissimas." In a close examination of that passage and another early auto-biographical narrative, De Beata Vita 1.4, Heidl makes his case that Augustine encountered these libri pleni after an earlier encounter with books by Plotinus. Using the Confessions and City of God to interpret these cryptic early notices, Heidl argues that Simplicianus directed Augustine to Origen so that he could see how the Platonists' spiritual understanding of God applied to the Incarnation. Jerome's translation of Origen's Homilies on the Song of Songs were among these libri pleni. This is plausible because the homilies would have been accessible when Augustine was in Milan, because it makes sense to understand the "good Arabian things" as an allusion to Origen's discussion of perfumes in that book and, in particular, because the second homily describes the Incarnation as a "drop" (gutta or stilla) of the divine power. We also know from Divjak Letter 27 that Augustine's close associate Aurelius had copies of these homilies and other works by Origen as early as 390. If I understand him, Heidl argues that hearing a voice and lighting on Romans 13 while sitting under a tree made such an impact on Augustine in the famous garden experience recounted in Confessions 8 because his mind was conditioned by a passage from Origen's Commentary on the Song of Songs, which was also among the libri pleni.

Part 1 must remain speculative, but it gains plausibility from the documentation provided in Part 2, which adduces strong evidence that the early Augustine knew Origen at first hand. Heidl shows how De Genesi contra Manichaeos frequently echoes Origen word for word, often adopting positions closer to Origen than those attested in Ambrose and other putative intermediaries. Appendices show other affinities between Origen and Augustine and evidence that translations of Origen's commentaries on Genesis and Matthew would have been accessible to Augustine.

Heidl's close philological analysis calls to mind the demonstration of the literary sources of Augustine's Confessions in Pierre Courcelle's path-breaking Recherches sur les Confessions de Saint Augustin (Paris, 1950), and Part 2, at least, may turn out to be similarly definitive. This is a great achievement. Nonetheless, Heidl's work has the defects of its virtues. His book would be more accessible to the non-specialist and more convincing if in a concluding chapter he had stepped back from the evidence to ask why Origen's thought would have been attractive to Augustine and what effect, beyond the detailed similarities he demonstrates, Origen might have had on Augustine.

In his Confessions Augustine gave two reasons for his difficulty in embracing as an adult the Catholic Christianity inculcated in him as a child: 1) a failure to appreciate that the Scriptures were "a thing neither accessible to the proud nor bared to children but humble in its approach even if exalted in its outcome and veiled by mysteries" (Conf. 3.5.9), and 2) a materialistic understanding of God, corrected by reading the Platonists, that prevented him from believing in the Incarnation (5.10.20). Origen's Homilies on the Song of Songs would have addressed both of these difficulties. Furthermore, Augustine shares with Origen a highly imaginative use of biblical symbolism. In Contra Academicos his image of his slowly smoldering soul bursting into flame after being sprinkled with drops of...