Origen (185/6 A.D. 254/5 A.D.)
(This is an excerpt from a University Of Metaphysical Sciences course at www.umsonline.org, please feel free to visit the school website)
Origen was only seventeen when he took over as Headmaster (didaskalos) of the Christian Catechetical School at Alexandria. Origen
was native to Alexandria and is considered one of the greatest of all
Christian theologians. He was probably born in Egypt to a Christian
family. He was famous for composing a seminal work of Christian
Neoplatonism, his treatise On First Principles,
Origen lived during a turbulent period of the Christian Church.
Persecution was widespread. Little doctrinal consensus existed within
the churches. Gnosticism thrived but Origen refuted its teachings,
offering instead an alternative to this Christian system, one that was
philosophically acceptable, but didn’t have the “mythological
speculations” of the Gnostic sects. Origen took what he could use from
the pagan philosophy of his era, for he was a master of the Greek
philosophical tradition, and melded its most useful teachings to the
Christian faith. Origen composed biblical commentaries and gave sermons, but his import in the history of philosophy comes from his two works, On First Principles, and his treatise, Against Celsus.
In On First Principles Origen
establishes his doctrines. They include the Holy Trinity (based upon
standard Middle Platonic triadic emanation schemas); a pre-existence
and fall of souls; the multiple ages and transmigration of souls; and
the eventual evolution of souls to a state of perfection in relation to
the godhead. He is unique among Platonists because he introduced the
history of this young religious belief system called Christianity into
cosmological and metaphysical speculations. He believed resolutely in
the freedom of each and every soul and rejected the fatalism found in
the esoteric teachings of the mystery schools during his time.
According to Origen, God’s first creation was a collectivity of rational beings which he calls logika.
“Although Origen speaks of the logika as being created, they were not
created in time. Creation with respect to them means that they had a
beginning, but not a temporal one.” (Tripolitis 1978: 94). Further,
Origen explains that the number of these rational beings is necessarily
limited, since an infinite creation would be incomprehensible and
unworthy of God. These souls were originally created in close proximity
to God, with the intention that they should explore the divine
mysteries in a state of endless contemplation. They grew weary of this
intense contemplation, however, and lapsed, falling away from God into
an existence on their own terms, apart from the divine presence and the
wisdom to be found there. This fall was not, it must be understood, the
result of any inherent imperfection in the creatures of God. Rather, it
was the result of a misuse of the greatest gift of God to His creation:
freedom. The only rational creature who escaped the fall and remained
with God is the “soul of Christ.” This individual soul is indicative of
the intended function of all souls, i.e., to reveal the divine mystery
in unique ways, insofar as the meaning of this mystery is deposited
within them, as theandric (God-human) potentiality, to be drawn out and
revealed through co-operation with God. As Origen explains, the soul of
Christ was no different from that of any of the souls that fell away
from God, for Christ’s soul possessed the same potential for communion
with God as that of all other souls. What distinguished the soul of
Christ from all others—and what preserved Him from falling away—was His
supreme act of free choice, to remain immersed in the divinity.
What are now souls (psukh) began as minds, and through boredom or distraction grew “cold” (psukhesthai) as they moved away from the “divine warmth” (On First Principles
2.8.3). Thus departing from God, they came to be clothed in bodies, at
first of “a fine ethereal and invisible nature,” but later, as souls
fell further away from God, their bodies changed “from a fine, ethereal
and invisible body to a body of a coarser and more solid state. The
purity and subtleness of the body with which a soul is enveloped
depends upon the moral development and perfection of the soul to which
it is joined.” Origen states that there are varying degrees of
subtleness even among the celestial and spiritual bodies (Tripolitis
1978: 106). When a soul achieves salvation, according to Origen, it
ceases being a soul, and returns to a state of pure “mind” or understanding.
However, due to the fall, now “no rational spirit can ever exist
without a body” (Tripolitis 1978: 114), but the bodies of redeemed
souls are “spiritual bodies,” made of the purest fire.