Around the turn of the 5th century AD, Christian theologians and churchmen contested each other's orthodoxy and good repute by hurling charges of Origenism at their opponents. Although orthodoxy was more narrowly defined by that era than during Origen's lifetime in the 3rd century, his speculative, Platonizing theology was not the only issue at stake in the Origenist controversy: Origen became a code word for nontheological complaints as well. Elizabeth Clark explores the theological and extratheological implications of the dispute, using social network analysis to explain the personal alliances and enmities of its participants, and suggesting how it prefigured modern concerns with the status of representation, the social construction of the body, and praxis vis-a-vis theory. Shaped by the Trinitarian and ascetic debates, and later to influence clashes between Augustine and the Pelagians, the Origenist controversy intersected with patristic campaigns against pagan idolatry and Manichean and astrological determinism. Discussing Evagrius Ponticus, Epiphanius, Theophilus, Jerome, Shenute and Rufinus in turn, Clark concludes by showing how Augustine's theory of original sin reconstructed the Origenist theory of the soul's pre-existence and fall into the body.
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