Origenist crises
It dealt with ideas discussed in some of Origen's writings that some members of the church hierarchy deemed heretical.
The crisis concluded with John Chrysostom, the Patriarch of Constantinople, being removed from his position at the Synod of the Oak in 403 for harboring Origenist monks who had been banished from Alexandria.
The first Origenist crisis began in the late fourth century, coinciding with the beginning of monasticism in Palestine.
[5][6][7][8] Epiphanius's treatises portray Origen as an originally orthodox Christian who had been corrupted and turned into a heretic by the evils of "Greek education".
[6] Epiphanius particularly objected to Origen's Subordinationism, his "excessive" use of allegorical hermeneutic, and his habit of proposing ideas about the Bible "speculatively, as exercises" rather than "dogmatically".
[1] Tyrannius Rufinus, a priest at the monastery on the Mount of Olives who had been ordained by John of Jerusalem and was a longtime admirer of Origen, rejected the petition outright.
[11] He therefore heavily modified Origen's text, omitting and altering any parts that disagreed with contemporary Christian orthodoxy.
[1] Theophilus of Alexandria was sympathetic to the supporters of Origen[1] and the church historian, Sozomen, records that he had openly preached the Origenist teaching that God was incorporeal.
[13] In his Festal Letter of 399, he denounced those who believed that God had a literal, human-like body, calling them illiterate "simple ones".
[15] According to the church historian Socrates Scholasticus, in order to prevent a riot, Theophilus made a sudden about-face and began denouncing Origen.
[15][16][17][a] Theophilus labelled Origen himself as the "hydra of all heresies"[16] and persuaded Pope Anastasius I to sign the letter of the council, which primarily denounced the teachings of the Nitrian monks associated with Evagrius Ponticus.
[20] After the council officially opened, but while Pope Vigillius was still refusing to take part, Justinian presented the bishops with the problem of a text known as The Three Chapters, which attacked the Antiochene Christology.
[20] In the official text of the eleventh anathema, Origen is condemned as a Christological heretic,[20][24] but Origen's name does not appear at all in the Homonoia, the first draft of the anathemata issued by the imperial chancery,[20] nor does it appear in the version of the conciliar proceedings that was eventually signed by Pope Vigillius, a long time afterwards.
