Christian Thought and Culture up to 1600 (V81200)

Spring Semester 2017/2018

Lavinia Cerioni

Handout Lecture 5
Origen of Alexandria

1. Life
 Origen was born in the city of Alexandria in c.185 CE. He was raised in a Christian family
and received a complete education.
 Not long after the completion of his studies, he started working as a teacher and his fame of
Christian philosopher grew rapidly. Origen was indeed one of the most prolific writers and
theologians of the 3rd century.
 However, his teachings were quite controversial and they were not appreciated by the
ecclesiastical hierarchies as much as by his students. In particular, he had serious
disagreements with the bishop of Alexandria, who accused him of heresy. Because of the
fight with his bishop, Origen left Alexandria and moved to Caesarea, where he was welcomed
as a great theologian.
 The disagreements with his bishop prevented him from going back to Alexandria for many
years. He was able to return to his city only towards the end of his life, after the death of the
bishop. Unfortunately, in 249 CE, after a period of relative peace for Christians, the Emperor
Decius started a new persecution against Christians and Origen was imprisoned.
 He was ultimately released but he was forced to leave the city of Alexandria once more. He
died near Tyre sometime around 254 CE, probably as a result of tortures he received in
prison.

2. Main Works
Origen’s most important works are:

a. De Principiis (On the First Principles): Here, Origen aims at systematising all Christian
doctrines.
It is divided in four books:
1. BOOKS 1-2 are about God, the Trinity and the World;
2. BOOK 3 is mainly about anthropology and free will;
3. BOOK 4 is about the interpretation of the Scriptures.

b. Contra Celsum (Against Celsus): it is an apologetic writing against Celsus, a platonic

philosopher, who wrote De vero discorso, a philosophical treatise against Christians.

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 c. Commentary on the Gospel of John: this is one of the first commentaries on a biblical text,
of which Origen does a complex and detailed exegesis. Starting from the text of the Gospel,
particularly the Prologue, Origen expounded on the doctrine of the Trinity and the nature of
God.

3. God: the Trinity

Origen is the first theologian to elaborate a complex and detailed philosophy of the Christian Trinity.
This is how he described the three persons of the Trinity:

1. God, the Father: ‘Having then refuted […] every interpretation which suggests that we
should attribute to God any material characteristics, we assert that in truth, he is
incomprehensible and immeasurable. For whatever may be the knowledge which we have
been able to obtain about God, whether by perception or by reflection, we must by necessity
believe that he is far and away better than our thoughts about him.’ Origen, De Principiis I, 1,
5.
2. God, the Son (Logos): ‘The original Goodness is undoubtedly the Father; and from this is
born the Son, who is in every respect an image of the Father, and who may also without any
doubt called an “image of his goodness” […] And perhaps also the Son, while being good, is
yet not Good purely and simply. […] For there is no second goodness existing in the Son
besides that which is in the Father.’ Origen, De Principiis I, 2, 13.
3. God, the Spirit: ‘For all knowledge of the Father, when the Son reveals him, is made known
to us through the Holy Spirit. […] ’ Origen, De Principiis I, 3, 4.

Origen is the first theologian to formulate the idea of the eternal generation. The Son and the Spirit
are co-eternal with the Father because they are eternally generated by the Father. Nonetheless, this
does not mean that all three persons of the Trinity have the same dignity. Indeed, Origen has a
subordinationistic view of the Trinity (subordinationism), for he believed that the three persons of
the Trinity are organised hierarchically:

‘The […] Father […] is superior to every being that exists, […] the Son, being less
than the Father, is superior to rational creatures alone (for he is second to the
Father); the Holy Spirit is still less, and dwells within the saints alone.’ Origen, De
Principiis I, 3, 5.

In summary:

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  the Father possesses all attributes in the most perfect way possible;
 the Son possesses the same attributes of the Father only inasmuch as he partakes in the
Father’s essence, therefore he is less than the Father, but he is superior to all creatures;
 The Spirit is divine but, while the Son is generated directly by the Father, It is generated by
the Father through the Son.

4. The Creation of Humankind

o Gen. 1:27. ‘So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.’
o Gen. 2:7. ‘Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his
nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.’

Origen interpreted the two Genesis’ accounts as a double creation:

1. In the creation of Gen. 1:27 (first creation), God created logikoi (λογῐκοί), pure rational
intelligences;
2. In the creation of Gen. 2:7 (second creation), these intelligences assumed bodies.

During the first creation, which happened protologically,1 God created pure intellectual/rational
beings (logikoi), who were in God and they all shared the same closeness to God.
At some point, the logikoi became fully satisfied of the vision of God and they started to distance
themselves from God.

 How could the logikoi abandon God? Being rational intelligences, the logikoi were provided
with the faculty of free will – that is the ability of choosing between good and evil – and they
chose to move away from God. Origen uses the following words:

‘By reason of the faculty of free-will, variety and diversity had taken hold of
individual souls, so that one was attached to its author with a warmer and another
with a feebler and weaker love’. Origen, De Principiis I, 6, 3

The second creation is conceived by Origen as the moment in which the logikoi assumed a corporeal
form. The process of acquiring a body is described in the following term:

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Protology is the technical theological term for the beginning of times (even before the creation of the earth).

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 ‘All rational creatures who are incorporeal and invisible, if they become negligent,
gradually sink to a lower level and take to themselves bodies suitable to the
regions into which they descend; […] And when they reach the neighbourhood of
the earth they are enclosed in grosser bodies, and last of all are tied to human
flesh’ Origen, De Principiis I, 4, 1

The intelligent creatures are therefore hierarchically ordinated in the cosmos according to their
understanding of God: the closer one is to God, the more spiritual it will be; on the contrary, the farer
one is from God, the more material one will be. For instance, angels are closer to God than humans,
therefore they do not have a body. Therefore, according to Origen, the entire disposition of the
cosmos depends on the choice of the logikoi.

This event, known as ‘the protological fall’, has three main theological consequences:

1. Human souls are pre-existent since they exist in God before the creation of the world.
2. Since the first creation (Gen. 1, 26-27) is the one in the image of God, only human
minds/intellects resemble God.
3. The logikoi chose by their own free will to distance themselves from God and thus
originated evil.

4. The Incarnation
Among the logikoi, there was one logikos (sg.) who chose to remain close to God, this is the soul of
Jesus.
Origen says that there was one soul that ‘was clinging to God from the beginning of the creation
and ever after in a union inseparable and indissoluble, as being the soul of the wisdom and Word
of God and […] receiving him wholly […] was made with him in a pre-eminent degree one spirit
[…]. This soul, acting as a medium between God and the flesh (for it was not possible for the
nature of God to mingle with a body a part from some medium), is born, as we said, the God-
man.’ Origen, De Principiis II, 6, 3.

5. The Economy of Salvation

Origen believed that the aim of Christian life was to be reunited with God, restoring the protological
proximity with God. Indeed, in Origen’s theology protology (the beginning of time) is equal to
eschatology (the end of times).

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Origen believes that the world has been created as a pedagogical path (or a healing path) so that
humans get closer to God:

‘If the character of the ills demands it, we need the severe treatment of the knife
and a painful operation, yes, and should the disease have extended beyond the
reach of even these remedies, in the last resort the ill is burnt out by fire […] we
should realise that God is our physician, in his desire to wash away the ills of the
souls, which they have brought on themselves through a variety of sins and
crimes, makes use of penal remedies […] even to the infliction of a punishment of
fire (Hell)’. Origen, De Principiis II, 10, 6

Consequently:

‘There is a resurrection of the dead, and there is a punishment, but not everlasting.
For when the body is punished the soul is gradually purified, and so restored to its
ancient rank. For all wicked men, and for daemons, too, punishment has an end.’
Origen, De Principiis II, 10, 3

How can one progress towards God? Reading the Scriptures. There are indeed three meanings of the
Scriptures:

o Spiritual Meaning: This is the highest possible sense of the Scripture and it often coincides
with the allegorical meaning. It reveals the mystical truths contained in the sacred books
(both Old and New Testaments);
o Psychic Meaning: This is the moral interpretation of the Scriptures. It aims at the pedagogical
edification of the readers.
o Literal Meaning: This is the literal interpretation of the text. It is meant for those who are
unable to understand the deepest meaning of the text.

Thanks to the reading of the Scriptures and the coming of Christ, all human beings will eventually be
reunited with God. Following the Pauline doctrines, Origen believed in universal salvation
(apokatastasis): all rational creatures (logikoi), created at the beginning of times, will be restored to
their original closeness to God, even the Devil.