Alexander Schmemann

3. The Age Of The Ecumenical Councils (50 pages)

From Schmemann's A History of the Orthodox Church

Page 28

At the beginning of the sixth century these disputes and doubts about Origen, which had never really died down among the monks, overstepped the desert boundaries and attracted the attention of wider Church circles. In 531 St. Sabas, founder of the famous monastery of Palestine, went to Constantinople to obtain government help for Palestine, which was torn by a Samaritan rebellion. He was accompanied by the monk Leontius, one of the main defenders of Origen’s theology in the monastery. In Constantinople Sabas participated in the disputes with the Monophysites. The Origenism of Leontius was exposed and Sabas was forced to part with him.

Shortly afterward another convinced Origenist, Theodore of Raïthu (a monastery on what is now the Gulf of Suez), arrived in the capital. He became intimate with Justinian and was appointed to the important see of Caesarea in Cappadocia. With such protection at court, the Origenists everywhere raised their heads. But just then there came to Palestine on other business an ecclesiastical delegation from Constantinople, which included the scholarly Roman deacon Pelagius, the pope’s representative or “apocrisiary” in the East. He could not overlook the disputes among the monks over the name of Origen. In the West Origen had long been considered a heretic, and Pelagius raised an alarm. At his insistence, Patriarch Ephraim of Antioch solemnly condemned Origenism. The disturbances arising from this condemnation finally reached Constantinople. Despite all the efforts of Theodore of Raïthu, the emperor, when he had reviewed the whole matter, issued in 543 in the form of an edict a lengthy and well-grounded condemnation of Origenism, or rather of those aspects of it, which were obviously contradictory to the doctrine of the Church. All five patriarchs signed this condemnation unconditionally, and there were still disputes only among the Palestinian monks. Despite the unusualness of a theological definition by state edict (apparently no one protested against this), Origenism, or its extreme assertions in any case, had been overcome in the mind of the Church.

 

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