Church Father · c. AD 184–253

Origen

Alexandrian scholar and ascetic, later a presbyter in Caesarea; the most prolific and philosophically ambitious theologian of the pre-Nicene church. Several of his specific positions (on the pre-existence of souls, universal restoration/apokatastasis, and the subordination of the Son) were controversial in his own lifetime and more sharply condemned by later councils (notably Constantinople II, 553) — read his arguments in their 3rd-century context rather than retrojecting later orthodoxy debates onto them. De Principiis survives complete only in Rufinus's Latin translation, which Rufinus himself says he revised to soften passages he considered later corrupted by heretics — a real, acknowledged transmission problem, not a modern suspicion.

Brief introduction from the source collection. A full library biography has not yet been prepared.