International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Smilen Markov
University of Veliko Tarnovo “Ss. Cyril and Methodius”,
Faculty of Theology, Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria;
[e-mail]
The Deconstructive Reception of Origen in Byzantine Philosophy - 
The Strategies of Maximus and Photius
Origen is a Christian thinker, apologist and exegete, whose intellectual oeuvre had a peculiar 
influence on the philosophical and theological tradition in Byzantium. He is a mediator of the 
leading metaphysical, epistemological and ethical trends in the late ancient (Hellenic) culture. And 
he is among the first to introduce these philosophical patterns in a coherent Christian speculative 
discourse. However, the history of reception of Origen’s philosophical oeuvre in Byzantium 
is seemingly a series of dissents, of conceptual exclusions. Origen’s Trinitarian theology and his 
Christology and creation theory were officially condemned on the 4
th
and on the 5
th
Ecumenical 
councils (533 and 553). Nevertheless, as early as during the 4
th
century the Great Cappadocians (e.g. 
St. Basil the Great and St. Gregory the Theologian) undertook a correction of Origen’s theology, by 
transforming his theory of creation and his concept on the causal relations among the persons of 
the Holy Trinity. Later on his heretical doctrines and conceptual fallacies were intensively criticized 
by Byzantine theologians. However, St. Maximus Confessor and St. Photius of Constantinople 
(the Great) did not merely criticize Origen, but transformed and positively developed some of his 
metaphysical and epistemological positions.
In 
De principiis 
Origen develops a special metaphysical model, in order to explain the 
occurrence of created being. According to Origen the pure intellects, although not co-eternal with 
God, abide in a dynamic repose around him, possessing all his eternal glory, as well as the other 
attributes of divine being. Willing to acquire a better ontological state, they fell out of the divine 
goodness and turned to eternal decay. In order to stop they endless degeneration, God who is both 
good and just, created the material world as a pad to stop this disastrous fall. Thus he not only 
prevented their dropping off into nothingness, but gave them chance to restore their previous state 
by the so called 
apocatastasis
. According to this scheme the existence of the world is a result of a 
consequential change of three modes of being: repose-movement-creation.
In his 
Liber Ambiguorum 
St. Maximus Confessor reverts the metaphysical premises of Origen’s 
cosmology developed in the work 
De principiis 
by postulating that divine creative act is the principle 

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of movement, and not a consequence of it. For Maximus the creative act of God is the initial cause 
of created being and of movement. Maximus implicitly criticizes Origen, but adheres to his method 
of searching a logical substantiation of the creationist metaphysics. He makes use also of Origen’s 
model of 
apocatastasis
; he applies not to the return of every created being to the state before the fall, 
but to the participation of all created natures in the Christological event. Furthermore, the Logos-
model of Maximus is a replica of Origen’s intellectualism, which implies pre-existence of souls and 
metempsychosis.
At the time of Patriarch Photius the polemic context of the reception of Origen’s doctrines 
had to a great extent faded away Nevertheless, Origen’s ideas remained a challenge for Christian 
thinking, especially as his exegesis of the Holy Scripture is concerned. In his work 
Bibliotheca 
Photius 
repeats the most important allegation against Origenism, but at the same time reproduses the mains 
ideas of Origen that are acknowledged as Orthodox. Photius critique is not simply directed towards 
Origen, but targets the tradition of “Origenists” who deem him an irrefutable theological authority.
According to Photius the main exegetical error of Origen is his false understanding of the status 
of man as an image of God. Origen interprets the biblical motif of the “image and likeness” of God 
as a stable state of human nature, whereas Photius supports the idea of a processual manifestation 
of the image through history. Photius criticizes also Origen’s strict division between gnosis and 
faith – for the patriarch these are two different discursive manifestations (ethical and conceptual) 
of divine knowledge. Referring to Origen’s understanding of the epistemological validity of natural 
and theological contemplation, developed in the biblical commentaries, Photius constructs a pecu.