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Origen (185-254)
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Origen, one of the greatest of the Fathers of the Church, was born, probably in Alexandria, into a devoutly Christian family. His father, Leonidas, gave him a thorough and careful Christian education.
When Origen was seventeen, a new outbreak of persecution led to the arrest of his father. Origen, an enthusiastic Christian tried to follow his father into prison and ultimately to martyrdom, but his mother, either feeling that he was too young or feeling that Christians ought not to court martyrdom, hid all of his clothing and left him naked in his room, thus preventing his martyrdom.
On his father’s death he supported his mother and six younger brothers by becoming a teacher at the Catechal School of Alexandria succeeding Clement of Alexandria who had been driven out of Alexandria by the persecution.
Where Clement had been tolerant and cerebral in his faith, Origen was ardent and austere. Early in his teaching career, he seems to have undergone voluntary castration in order to be able to teach both girls and boys without scandalizing pagan Alexandrians. His action also reveals that the Alexandrian church valued education for women and men equally, quite a radical position to take in the third century Roman Empire.
In order to become financially independent, Origen sold his library to give him a daily income of about twelve cents, on which he managed to live by keeping his needs to the barest minimum. He embraced a very ascetic Christianity, teaching all day, spending most of the night studying the Bible and sleeping very little.
Origen’s theology was rigidly Biblical, and the bulk of his writing consisted of direct Biblical exegesis. However, he was a strong proponent of the allegorical intrepretation of the Bible, and always valued spiritual interpretations over physical ones. He was one of the first theologians to argue that the petition in the Lord’s Prayer ought to read, not "Give us this day our daily bread" but "give us this day our spiritual bread." In general his treated each passage of scripture as possessing three layers of meaning -- the literal (bodily), , the moral (application) and the allegorical, or figurative (spiritual). This allegorical method of interpretation, however, allowed Origen to incorporate a good deal of Greek philosophy into his interpretation of the Bible, though most of it unconsciously.
Origen’s mystical view of God and reality has greatly influenced the shape of both the Eastern Orthodox Christian tradition and the Southern Coptic Christian tradition.
This page was based on the following sources, which you can consult for more detailed information:
http://www.csn.net/advent/cathen/11306b.htm
For his writings see: http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/
Henry Chadwick, The Early Church. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdman’s, 1968. pp 100-113.
WHC Frend, The Rise of Christianity. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984. pp 373-83.
Justo Gonzalez, The Story of Christianity. New York: Harper & Row, 1984 pp 78-81
Von Campenhausen, Hans. The Fathers of the Greek Church. New York: Pantheon Books, 1955. pp 40-56