SOURCE: "The Illiberal Humanist," in Early Christian Thought and the Classical Tradition: Studies in Justin, Clement, and Origen, Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1966, pp. 66-94.

[In this essay, Chadwick reviews Origen's life and teachings, showing in what ways Origen is different from Clement, his predecessor. Throughout are discussions of Origen's thinking on revelation, gnosticism, Christian philosophy, human sexuality, and the Incarnation.]

Origen is not a figure it is easy to see in accurate perspective. This difficulty is not caused merely by the massive dimensions of his work, nor because he is especially obscure, nor even because we do not possess the full original text of his most controversial treatise. The primary reason is perhaps that some of his most characteristic themes, warmly debated during his lifetime and a stone of stumbling to many in the three hundred years following his death, have remained to this day permanently troubling questions in the history of Christian thought. It is notoriously difficult to handle him with that critical spirit which requires sympathy and impartiality from the historian.

Clement was a convert from paganism. Origen's parents were, or at least became, Christians. We have two rival and contradictory accounts of Origen's family, one from Eusebius of Caesarea and one from the inveterate enemy of Christianity, Porphyry.¹ According to Porphyry Origen was born and educated as a pagan. Eusebius says his parents were Christians and that his father, Leonides, was martyred in the persecution of 202 at Alexandria. As Eusebius is able to quote a sentence from a letter from Origen to his father exhorting him to stand firm in his hour of trial,² it may reasonably be assumed that Eusebius was at least correct in thinking they became Christians, though it is possible that they were not so at the time of Origen's birth. A large portion of what we know of Origen's life comes from the sixth book of Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History. This is not only a high climax of Eusebius's work, but also dependent on a 'Defence of Origen' complied by Eusebius and his teacher, the martyr Pamphilus. (One of the six books of this work survives in a Latin translation by Rufinus.) For Eusebius Origen is a supreme saint and hero, the realization of his highest intellectual and spiritual ideals. The life of Origen is written in a hagiographical tone, and freely uses oral tradition and gossip. But Eusebius had gone to the trouble of assembling over 100 of Origen's letters,³ several of which he quotes. Whenever Eusebius is using documents contemporary with the events he is describing, his authority is first-class. Whenever he depends on no more than hearsay and oral tradition, his authority is not higher than that of any reasonably conscientious gossip-writer. As he is careful to say when he has documentary authority, it is not hard to distinguish which parts of his life of Origen are authoritative and which should be treated with caution and reserve. For example, the notorious story that Origen castrated himself so as to be able to work more freely in instructing female catechumens⁴ may perhaps be true, since such occasional acts of extreme enthusiasm are attested in this period of the early Church.⁵ But the story is not among those for which Eusebius quotes contemporary documents. He depends on an unwritten tradition. Near the end of his life Origen wrote a commentary on St. Matthew, in which he deplores the fanaticism of exegetes who have interpreted Matthew xix. 12 literally.⁶ Epiphanius in the fourth century records the existence of a rival tradition that Origen's amazing chastity was achieved by drugs rather than by a knife.⁷ Possibly both stories were generated by no more than malicious gossip. It is certain, at least, that the extreme self-denial of Origen's life as a young teacher provoked much notice and envious comment, sharpened by the stringency of his own outspoken criticisms of the worldly compromises of clergy and laity. He lived on the minimum of sleep and food. Taking seriously the gospel counsel of poverty, he sold his books of literature and philosophy.

According to Porphyry Origen attended the lectures of Ammonius Saccas,⁸ an esoteric eclectic Platonist, with whom some eleven years later Plotinus was to study. Ammonius is a figure largely lost in the mist. The prime source of information about him is Porphyry, who says that Ammonius was the child of Christian parents but abandoned Christianity for the old religion. Ammonius's esoteric teaching moved Plotinus to desire Persian and Indian wisdom (which may suggest some sort of Neopythagoreanism, in spirit akin to that of Numenius of Apamea a generation before him). In his Life of Plotinus Porphyry mentions an Origen as one of Plotinus's fellow-students under Ammonius. It is so difficult to reconcile Porphyry's statements about this Origen with what is known of the Christian Origen that almost all scholars recognize the existence of two Origens. The Origen of the Life of Plotinus is treated by Porphyry as wholly one of the Neoplatonic circle. It is this Origen who is quoted by later pagan writers such as Eunapius, Hierocles, and especially Proclus, none of whom betrays the least awareness that these quotations might have come from a Christian writer.⁹ What the Christian Origen learnt from Ammonius is beyond identification. It is at least certain that his writings display a masterly knowledge of the debates of the Greek philosophical schools and first-hand acquaintance with the works of Plato and Chrysippus.

As a teacher Origen began by giving instruction in grammar (by which he earned enough to keep his bereaved family) and in catechetical teaching. Eusebius says that he began work as a catechist, during the persecution when the normal official instruction (under the bishop) had ceased, at the request of individual converts who desired to be prepared for baptism. Whether this was the beginning of tension with Demetrius, the bishop of Alexandria, can only be a matter for conjecture. Demetrius gave Origen his authorization when the storms of persecution died down. But in Origen's act there may have been some implicit criticism of the fact that the bishop's official teaching was not being given for a time. To a stern ascetic, episcopal 'discretion' might well appear to be moral compromise. The story of his subsequent relations with Demetrius is one of mounting tension and distrust.

Origen divided his pupils into two categories, of which he took the more advanced, while the more elementary teaching was entrusted to Heraclas, a Christian whom he had first met at the lectures of Ammonius Saccas and who was later to become bishop of Alexandria. During this period (from about 212) he learnt Hebrew from a Christian Jew and compiled his Hexapla, a vast synopsis of the various versions of the Old Testament: first the Hebrew, and a transliteration of the Hebrew into Greek characters, the purpose of which is not perfectly clear (the most likely explanation is that some churches had preserved the old synagogue practice of having the Old Testament read in Hebrew even if they did not understand it); then the standard Septuagint version, generally used by the Greek churches and regarded as authoritative, with the rival translations of Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion, while, for the Psalms, two additional translations were added, one of which Origen had discovered himself in a jar in the Jordan valley, presumably in some collection of manuscripts very like that found at Qumran. Any words in the Septuagint differing from the Hebrew he marked with an obelus, indicating doubt about their authority, while supplements to the Septuagintal text, marked with asterisks, were added from the version of Theodotion. The Hexapla was designed for use. Origen had learnt from disputations with Rabbis that it was of no value to appeal to books or to a text of which they did not recognize the authority. During the third century the different churches were becoming much more aware than they had been earlier of divergent customs among themselves in accepting certain books in their lectionary. The majority view regarded the Septuagint as authoritative and inspired, but because of the lack of complete unanimity among churches and because of the continual debate with the synagogue only the Hebrew canon could be regarded as possessing wholly certain authority. The silent implication of Origen's view is that it is not safe to appeal only to the Septuagint to establish a point of fundamental doctrine. It is a consequence of the explicit deduction drawn from this view by Jerome that in English Bibles the overplus of the Septuagint canon over the Hebrew is separately printed, under the thoroughly misleading title 'Apocrypha'.

The text and exposition of the Bible stand at the very centre of Origen's work. The main bulk of his writings consists of sermons preached to congregations (mainly at Caesarea in Palestine whither he migrated in 230-1 after his relations with Bishop Demetrius had reached breaking-point), commentaries giving a full-scale exposition of immense detail, and 'scholia' or brief notes on particular points in certain books (though, as none of the scholia has been preserved directly by the manuscript tradition, their precise character is none too clear and one can argue only from analogy). One of his early works was entitled Stromateis, but only a few fragments survive. Among other topics Origen sought in this work to translate into Platonic language some basic New Testament ideas like 'eternal life' and to show the harmony of Jesus and Plato.¹⁰ The endeavour suggests that Origen's Stromateis had at least something in common with Clement's, and perhaps he thought of himself as continuing where Clement's work had been left unfinished. On several occasions Clement announced his intention of discussing 'first priniples' (archai) and the creation of the world,¹¹ but his intention was never realized. Origen may have wished to fill the gap when he wrote his own fateful treatise 'On First Principles', consisting in the main of an elaborate refutation of gnostic dualism and determinism directed against Marcion, Valentine, and Basilides, and a pioneer attempt to lay down rules for the right interpretation of the Bible.¹² The undertaking necessitated a general statement on the fundamentals of Christian doctrine such as Clement had never produced, but it is wrong to think of Origen's 'First Principles' as a systematic Summa Theologica. It is systematic in the sense that Origen opposes to the gnostic theology a coherent and self-consistent view of Christian doctrine, but its essential character is exploratory rather than dogmatic. 'Soundings' might have been an appropriate title for it. On several occasions he reviews various possible opinions and leaves to the reader a decision about the correct view. And although the first four words are a reminiscence of Plato's Gorgias, the work is not intended to be a synthesis of Christianity and Platonism. Its primary intention is anti-gnostic polemic; and as in the fourth gospel or the epistle to the Colossians this attack partly takes the form of silent concession, endeavouring to take over any of the positive values of the system of thought Origen is opposing and incorporating them within an orthodox scheme.

A similar need to oppose Valentinian Gnosticism gave Origen the initial impetus to write his commentary on St. John, which became a vast work of thirty-two tomes, of which the medieval scribes only had the courage and energy to transcribe the greater part of nine. This was dedicated to his patron Ambrose, whom he had converted from Valentinianism, and who regretted that, while there existed learned heretical commentaries like that of Heracleon, nothing comparable existed from the orthodox side. The commentary is remarkable for some speculative flights, no doubt designed to show Ambrose that orthodoxy is not duller than heresy. Clement of Alexandria had spoken of St. John as a 'spiritual gospel' in contrast to the three Synoptists who recorded the outward facts.¹³ Origen likewise sees that the fourth evangelist's divergences from the synoptic tradition are bound up with theological rather than historical considerations: it was the purpose of the evangelists to give the truth, where possible, at once spiritually and corporeally (or outwardly), but where this was impossible, to prefer the spirit to the body, 'the true spiritual meaning being often preserved, as one might say, in the corporeal falsehood'.¹⁴ None can understand the profundity of the gospel unless he has first, with the author, leant on Jesus's breast.¹⁵ Accordingly, Origen's exposition is in search of a spiritual meaning which is not heretical and yet goes deeper than the surface meaning apparent to ordinary Church readers.

Because much of his work consists of an exposition of scripture Origen's writings bear a closer kinship than Clement's to the great allegorical commentary of Philo on the Pentateuch. 'Philo's commentaries on the Mosaic Law' (he once remarks) 'are read by judicious and intelligent men'.¹⁶ Allegorical principles were securely guaranteed by the authority of St. Paul treating as allegory the story of Hagar and Sarah (Galatians iv) or by his declaration in 2 Corinthians iii that the spirit gives life, while the letter kills. Philo had found in the Pentateuch a mass of Greek philosophy, psychology, ethics, and natural science. Origen takes the method but modifies the results, fusing Philonic allegory with the typological methods of Justin and Irenaeus, by which the Old Testament contained not moralizing generalities expressed in the obscure form of history, geography, or law, but specific foreshadowings of the concrete redemptive acts of God in Christ. Origen takes as axiomatic Philo's principle that nothing unworthy of God can be intended by the inspired writers, and that passages in the Old Testament speaking of God as changing his mind or as angry and threatening prove only that in mercy God accommodates himself to the level of mean capacities which can only think in such picture language. There is in fact a scale of apprehension, and higher minds perceive truths in the Bible that are obscure to inferior understanding. Most texts in scripture have a literal and historical meaning, but that this is not the only or primary meaning is shown by certain passages which are literally impossible, placed there by providence as evidence to guide the reader to the spiritual truth. The allegorical meaning may not be simple; and two, three, or even four concurrent levels of meaning may be found in some passages. The Song of Songs, for example, has two spiritual interpretations, one concerning Christ and the Church, another concerning the union of the Logos with the individual soul. Origen sometimes justifies this doctrine of concurrent meanings by taking the human analogy of body and soul which Philo and Clement had used before him, only modifying it in accordance with the Pauline division of man into three parts—body, soul, and spirit.¹⁷

Because revelation is an accommodation to differing levels and capacities, Christian doctrine is capable of varying statements. The higher flights are not only not understood by inferior minds but are actually suspected of being heretical, and therefore have to be treated as esoteric and mysterious. A full account it is hardly safe to commit to writing. But Origen's constant endeavour is to bring the existence of higher insights to the attention of inferior capacities and to provoke them to advance in the spiritual and moral life, so that in time they too may come to understand matters now beyond their range. Literalist exegesis of the Bible produces bizarre crudities, and simple readers of the Old Testament believe things of God that would not be credible of the most savage and unjust men.¹⁸ The diversity of mental capacity in the Church is so great as to impose intense difficulties upon a Christian teacher. He must speak without upsetting the simple, yet without starving the more intelligent.¹⁹ Origen suggests that many Christian teachers are failing in their duty to the sharper minds in their congregations. Probably, he thinks, private instruction is best suited for them—just as the Lord himself spoke in pictures and parables to 'those without', while within the house he explained everything privately to the disciples.²⁰ Likewise there is the example of St. Paul, who had indeed a higher wisdom expounded to the perfect, but was prepared to accommodate himself to the carnal Corinthians, capable only of milk, not of solid meat. To them the apostle determined to know nothing but the crucified Christ of humiliation; they were not yet worthy of the theologia gloriae.²¹

In his commentary on St. John Origen collects from scripture the titles of Christ.²² It is a consequence of the redeeming grace of Christ that he is all things to all, to each according to his need, and is therefore variously apprehended by believers. We begin by knowing Jesus as redeemer and physician, curing us of sin and passion, but we are to advance to know him under other forms and titles, as life, light, truth, and wisdom. The Logos as the mediator of God's revelation is like the steps leading up to the holy of holies in the Temple,²³ and we are gradually to ascend until we know him, not as he wills to be initially for our sakes, but as he truly is in himself. This is for Origen the principle of the Incarnation, and he finds it powerfully reinforced by the symbolic narrative of the transfiguration: to the inner circle of disciples on the mount Christ's true glory is disclosed, but to those on the plain his appearance may betray nothing of the mystery of his being. So John the Baptist was able to tell the Pharisees that 'there stands one among you whom you do not recognize' (John i. 27). Although Origen emphatically rejects the Docetic doctrine that Christ's body was not real but an optical illusion, nevertheless he found matter very congenial to his conception of the varying levels of apprehension of Christ in the strange doctrine of the apocryphal Acts of John that the physical appearance of Jesus differed in accordance with the spiritual insight of the beholder.²⁴

The doctrine of differing degrees of knowledge may be best illustrated by Origen's treatment of the primitive eschatology. The hope of the second coming of Christ is taken in a literal and material sense by simple believers. Origen does not attack their belief; it is better that they should believe the right thing in the wrong way than not believe it at all, and it is the best of which they are capable. But the Christian preacher has a responsibility to educated minds who, so Origen observes, are often distressed by this article of the creed. The spiritual, symbolic meaning of the doctrine of the second coming may be either the universal expansion of the Church throughout the world, bringing all men to the obedience of Christ, or the inward coming of Christ to the soul, when he comes not in humiliation but in glory, uniting the believer to himself in a union so intense that the believer leaves behind the limitations of this mortal state and is raised to be one spirit with the Lord.²⁵ Similarly, Biblical language about punishment for sinners by everlasting fire is understood literally by very simple believers. They do not perceive that the 'fire' of God's judgement is a purifying process which has a remedial end in view; and this is a truth that ought in general to be concealed from them since many can only be deterred from a sinful life by fear. All such Biblical language is an accommodation to them. In truth the fire of judgement has no measurable temperature. Hell is an inner disintegration of the soul, 'a lack of cohesion'.²⁶ In the Contra Celsum Origen meets the accusation of Celsus that Christian evangelists stampede people into the Church by frightening them with bogywords about God as a torturer. He concedes that simple Christians may understand scriptural language about hell in a superstitious and unworthy way. But their error is only to misunderstand the purpose of God. As to the fact they are right: 'we teach about God both what is true and what the multitude can understand, though intelligent Christians understand it in a different sense'. In one sense threats of hell are 'more false than true'. But Plato himself thinks it justifiable to tell a lie to a homicidal lunatic.²⁷

Again, the resurrection of the flesh is an article of the creed that some unreflecting Christians understand to mean the resuscitation of this physical body, with all its organs.²⁸ This belief goes with the literal expectation of the reign of Christ for a thousand years at a renewed Jerusalem.²⁹ Origen regarded as credible neither the millenarian hope of Christ's return to this earth nor the expectation of a literal resuscitation of this body. He discussed the problem in an early work 'On the Resurrection', of which only sparse fragments have been preserved, so that it is difficult to describe Origen's doctrine without being forced to rely on the onslaughts of his critics, especially Methodius and Jerome, who were certainly less than fair to him. Origen entirely agreed with the numerous pagan critics of the Christian hope as literally interpreted, for example, by Justin or Irenaeus, that no appeal might be made to divine omnipotence to justify affirmations unworthy of God. When St. Paul speaks of powers in heaven as 'bowing the knee' to the Father, we are not to suppose that angels have knees.³⁰ The risen glory of the redeemed transcends this life. The 'body' will be of a kind appropriate to a heavenly environment.

Perhaps Origen's most important statement about the nature of Christian doctrine as he understands it is contained in his preface to his work 'On First Principles'. He begins by laying down those points of doctrine which are plain and unmistakable because they are given in the rule of faith handed down faithfully in the Church from the apostles. The apostles taught certain doctrines as credenda, to be believed without discussion, for they had to provide authoritative affirmations intelligible even to the simplest and most uneducated people. But they often did not state the rational grounds underlying their authoritative affirmations; and there are several questions of some importance for theology on which they gave no clear opinion or guidance. So that there is room for investigation and inquiry on two counts. Authority is not arbitrary, and its justification is the ability to give reasons if required and if the recipient possesses the capacity to comprehend them. On the other hand, where authority has prescribed no particular view, the theologian is free to discuss the issues open to him without having to conform to a fixed rule of thought. The doctrines laid down by the rule of faith as given are the following: (a) There is one God who created the world out of nothing, the God of both Old and New Testaments, himself both just and good. (b) Jesus Christ is God's pre-existent Son, begotten before all worlds, who, without ceasing to be God, became man, born of a virgin and the Holy Spirit; he truly suffered and died, rose again, and ascended to heaven. (c) The Holy Spirit is of like rank, but it is not clearly stated in scripture whether he is uncreated or whether he belongs to the created order. What is certain is that the Holy Spirit inspired the Biblical writers. (d) The soul will be rewarded for its actions with heaven or hell, and there will be a resurrection of the dead. It is certain that free will must be affirmed. But nothing in scripture makes it clear how the soul comes to be united to the body—whether it is transmitted from the parents together with the seed that grows into the body, or whether it comes into the body from outside, or whether it is created by God or uncreated and immortal. (e) It is certain that the devil and evil angels exist. How they came to be and who they are is obscure, though most Christians (of whom Origen is one) think the devil an apostate angel. (f) It is certain that this material world was made at a definite time, and will suffer dissolution one day. But it is not clear what existed before it or what will be after it. (g) It is certain that scripture is inspired by God and has a meaning deeper than the literal sense; but the elucidation of the true inner meaning is a problem left to the expositor. (h) It is not clear beyond discussion whether God and indeed all souls are immaterial beings or whether they have some shape like that of physical bodies. And cognate questions are raised by Church teaching about guardian angels and by the question whether the sun, moon, and stars are ensouled (as the Platonists say) or not.

The presuppositions of this preliminary statement are evidently very different from those governing Irenaeus's theology. For Irenaeus heresy comes of following the itch to speculate where scripture has given no clear guidance; we must be content not to know if the word of God is not explicit, and should maintain as reverent an agnosticism in matters of high theology as we are bound to hold about the causes of bird migration or the sources of the Nile or other matters of natural philosophy which lie beyond the reach of human inquiry.³¹ Reason is confronted by a definite frontier, by the limitations of human knowledge unless it is given in the Bible manifest authority to think about those questions that transcend creaturely capacities. It is the error of the Gnostics that they claim to know what we are not meant to know. Origen is as conscious as Irenaeus of the limitations of human intellectual powers for inquiring into the transcendental world, but thinks it possible for the human mind, with the aid of grace given in answer to prayer and purity of heart, to speculate with becoming diffidence even about questions that are not explicitly set out in the apostolic rule of faith.

Origen begins by eliminating the anthropomorphic notion that God is literally light or fire or spirit in a Stoic sense of a tenuous thinking gas. God is the immaterial ground of being, the cause of all that is. To be is to participate in him who is. He is alone underived, the Monad, transcending all multiplicity, self-sufficient, and beyond the power of the human mind unaided by special grace. In one passage³² Celsus commends to the Christians a study of Plato if they want to find a reliable theologian: the Platonic school distinguishes three ways in which the knowledge of God is attainable by man, namely, the via eminentiae affirming that the highest we know is the least that may be predicated of God, the via negativa defining him in terms of what he is not, and the way of analogy, as when we say that God is to the intelligible world what the sun is to the visible and sensible world, making it possible for the eye to see the phenomenal world and indeed itself as well. Origen replies that more than rational dialectic is required for the knowledge of God: 'Human nature is not sufficient to find God unless it is helped by God who is the object of the search; and he is found by those who, after doing all that they can, admit that they need him. He shows himself to those to whom he judges it right to appear, so far as it is possible for God to be known to man and for the human soul which is still in the body to know God.' God is known by a free act of grace on his part, and he reveals himself to those who are pure in heart (so that holiness is an essential requirement, not merely dialectics) through the incarnate Logos. With this large qualification Origen would happily approve of Celsus's statement. The discussion with Celsus illustrates well the double-sided character of Origen's doctrine of God. On the one side he takes for granted the transcendentalist theology of Platonism, that God is the ground of being and even 'beyond being', in need of nothing, though the cosmos has come into being by an overflow of the divine nature which is goodness. On the other side Origen is trying to make room within this scheme for the idea of freedom in God and also in the creatures, and for the notion of a gulf between the infinite Creator and the finite creatures which, by virtue of being created, are strictly dependent and transitory except in so far as they are kept in being by the will of their Maker.

Creation is the consequence of an overflow of divine goodness, its initial object being the order of rational beings, pure spirits unencumbered with material bodies like ours. Since there can never have been a time when divine goodness and power were inactive, there is a sense in which this spiritual cosmos is eternal. If it is not eternally necessary to the being of God, it is certainly an eternal consequence of his nature. Nevertheless Origen also asserts that these rational, spiritual beings are creatures, not uncreated but dependent on the divine will for their existence. Origen is well aware that he is confronting an insoluble problem in trying to reconcile the affirmation that creation is an outflow of the divine nature with the affirmation that it is dependent on a free decision of the divine will. But the affirmation that the discarnate rational beings eternally exist as a correlate of the eternity of the Creator's goodness seems to Origen to be a necessary assertion if the immutability of God is to be upheld. It is on this same ground that he affirms that the generation of the Son is not a temporal act or a moment in a succession of events, but an eternal generation. The Father is eternally Father; there was never a time when the Son was not. Unless this assertion is made, the unchangeableness of God is prejudiced.

The Logos is the image of the Father's power—not an image of the Father so identical with the archetype that he can be said to be as much Father as the Father himself.³³ All rational beings participate in the rationality of the divine Reason who is the archetypal source of their nature, and the mediator between the Father and the creatures. The Logos is therefore God in relation to the lower order; he is God immanent.

The rational beings so created were not self-sufficient, but were turned towards God in adoration. But they came to neglect their love for God. Following an idea suggested by Philo³⁴ Origen says that they became 'sated' and so fell. By falling from the divine love they cooled and so perhaps became 'souls'³⁵—for psyche was commonly derived from psychesthai by an etymology as old as Plato and Aristotle and exploited by the Stoics who thought that as a newborn baby emerged to the cold air it gasped for its first breath and that at this point the soul first entered its body. To Origen the Pauline trichotomy of body, soul, and spirit suggested that the soul was midway between matter and spirit; it might descend to materialism, but it was called to unite with the highest element, the pneuma, and thereby to cease to be psyche³⁶ (To Origen's later critics this entire notion of spirits falling to become souls seemed very damaging, but the point is not really of central importance for Origen's own thought.)

Origen's next speculation is an adventurous step. He proposes to regard the diversity of spiritual entities, stretching downwards from the archangels through inferior angelic powers and saints to men and yet lower still to demonic powers, as constituting a hierarchy of consubstantial rational beings, which is brought about not, as many of the contemporary Platonists said, by an evolutionary process of necessary emanations from above but by free will being exercised in different ways.³⁷ The material world is created by God through the Logos by whose power the immense diversity of the hierarchy of being is controlled and so prevented from disintegration. The sensible world is created by God out of nothing, by which Origen means absolute, not merely relative, non-being. 'I cannot understand how so many eminent men have imagined matter to be uncreated.'³⁸ Origen is strongly critical of the Platonic doctrine of the eternity of the visible world. The words of Timaeus 41 that, although the cosmos is created and so in principle destructible, yet in practice by God's will it will never be destroyed, hold good according to Origen not of this phenomenal world but only of that higher world of discarnate spiritual beings, the realm of saints and angels. Origen likewise rejects the teaching of the Timaeus that while the transcendent God is the source and maker of gods derived from himself it is these inferior powers who are responsible for the material world.³⁹ This doctrine of the Timaeus had been freely accepted by Philo, and used by him as an expalanation of the problem of evil.⁴⁰ But for Origen this view was hopelessly gnostic in its implications, and he would have none of it. In arguing against Celsus he decisively rejects the view that evil inheres in matter, and underlines the point when he says that the Christian doctrine of God as creating matter does not in any way make him responsible for evil.⁴¹

Nevertheless, Origen never reaches a perfectly clear and decisive opinion on the exact status of matter in the divine purpose, even though the solution of this problem is of the highest importance both for his conception of the nature of man and for his doctrine of the destiny of the redeemed. He reviews three possibilities, but the discussion does not arrive at a decision.⁴² First, there is the view that matter is eternal and that it will suffer an eschatological transformation, in which case the resurrection body will be in form like our earthly body but glorified and radiant. Secondly, it is possible that discarnate spirits can exist without any bodies of any kind whatever, though they may need bodies for a time at a certain stage of their education on the way back to God. If so, the material order will be brought into existence as required, which may be from time to time since progress upward may not be constant and there may be occasional set-backs and manifestations of recalcitrance to the divine will. Thirdly, there is the possibility that the visible and corruptible part of the world will be entirely destroyed, but the glorious spirits in the upper spheres of the cosmos may come to have yet more glorious forms than they already possess. Origen simply submits these three views to the reader's judgement. His own sympathy lies more perhaps with either the second or third than the first.⁴³ There are places in his commentaries where he implies the third view with its implication that all created spirits are in some degree involved in corporeality; in the case of angels (he remarks) the matter of their body will not be heavy and weighed down like ours on this earth, but will be ethereal, like the astral body of which the Neoplatonists speculated; and in principle, it is implied, only the Trinity is intrinsically incorporeal, so that if we speak of angels as 'incorporeal' we mean that they are relatively incorporeal in comparison with us.⁴⁴

This way of thinking of the nature of matter is of course quite remote from our modern notions. But Origen is only giving expression to ideas which were widely assumed by a large number of his Platonizing contemporaries. The whole conception was made easier for him by the current dogma that in itself matter is without form or qualities, a common substratum, upon which various qualities may be imposed in accordance with the archetypal ideas. So the universal, which is the form or species, is imposed on qualityless matter to make each individual thing or animal what it is. To Platonists who objected to the doctrine of the resurrection of the body Origen had an unanswerable argument based precisely on his opponents' presuppositions: why should not the Creator impose a fresh form on the same common matter, so preserving continuity with the personality in this life, while making its new form appropriate to its environment?⁴⁵

Nevertheless, Origen's attitude towards matter is much less positive than Clement's. He is inclined to think that the sun, moon, and stars are ensouled by spiritual beings who, having fallen a certain distance from God, have been incarcerated in these physical bodies, to us very splendid, but a degradation so far as they are concerned, and commanded to indicate to human beings on earth the passing of time.⁴⁶ Origen will not accept the gnostic use of astrology, but St. Paul's words about the creation being subjected to futility in hope of deliverance from the bondage of corruption seemed to him to reinforce his view that all spiritual beings, now imprisoned in material bodies, yearn to ascend higher and pray for a release which they cannot be granted before the proper time. Like the apostle in prison they long to depart, but realize that to abide in the flesh is more needful to assist inferior beings.

Certainly this material world is beautiful and noble and shows evidence of its design by a beneficent Creator. But it is not comfortable and is not intended to be. Man is put here as in 'a place of affliction' to educate him to return to his Maker.⁴⁷ It would not be good for him to live in a world from which all accidents and all pain are excluded. Natural catastrophes like earthquakes, famines, and plagues may shorten life, but such disasters do not count against the goodness of God, however purposeless they may seem at the time to the sufferers. Many virtues come out of adversity.⁴⁸ Evil inheres not in the natural order, but in the resistant will of the creatures.

Clement had regarded sex and marriage as a major crux in the conflict between the Church and Gnosticism, and had emphatically asserted the goodness of the natural order as the gift of God. Origen's tone is markedly different. It is true that he rejects the strict Encratite notion that marriage is incompatible with the profession of the Christian faith, and tolerates second marriages for weaker brethren. But his ascetic mind does not think kindly of the married state. Marriage is inferior to celibacy—on the two grounds, long familiar in pagan thought and by implication (even if it is not stated in so many words) almost given canonical authority within Christianity by St. Paul in 1 Corinthians vii, that sexual intercourse is a defilement interfering with the elevation of the soul above this material world to the realm of spirit, and that one who has dedicated himself to the love of God must forgo the love of mortals. Origen protests that the sexual impulse is indeed natural and instinctive, not (as some Christians think) of diabolical prompting; but it is instinctive in the sense that anger is: sin is inextricably bound up with it.⁴⁹ So the priest who offers the Church's sacrifice must be pure.⁵⁰ In Origen's time there is no general demand for clerical celibacy as yet, and his demand is addressed to married clergy as much as to unmarried. Conjugal relations in marriage are for the purpose of procreation, and otherwise are disallowed as mere self-indulgence.⁵¹ Because there is a defilement attaching to the reproductive process, the Church baptizes infants.⁵² When in Romans v. 14 St. Paul speaks of 'sin in the likeness of Adam's transgression', the simple exegesis is that the universal sinfulness of society is due not to heredity but to environment and education. But deeper inquirers will understand the text to mean that somehow all men existed in Adam's loins and suffered expulsion from paradise with him.⁵³ All are born impure. In the Bible the only two who celebrate their birthday are Pharaoh and Herod.⁵⁴ The purity and sinlessness of Jesus, however, was ensured by the Virgin Birth.⁵⁵ Perhaps under the influence of Clement's denial of the notion, Origen reaches no decision about the Philonic and gnostic interpretation of the 'coats of skins' with which Adam and Eve were clothed after their fall: they may be bodies, but this is not certain.⁵⁶ But the entire tendency of Origen's ethic is to build on the antithesis of spirit and matter and to think of the way of moral and spiritual advance as a progressive suppression of the mind's responsiveness to the pull of the flesh. Just as in the soul's advance in the spiritual life it comes to understand the mysteries of theology in a deeper way than it did at earlier stages, so also it comes to have a deeper grasp of the nature of sin, so that actions which at the beginning were not regarded as sinful come to be seen in their true light.⁵⁷

The model for the Christian's spiritual progress is not merely the strenuous self-discipline of the prophets but supremely the incarnate Lord. Among all the rational beings originally made by God there was one which inflexibly adhered to the divine love without wavering.⁵⁸ This soul was taken to be united to the Logos in a union as inseparable as that of iron in a white-hot fire. (The illustration, it should be said, is a commonplace analogy of Stoic philosophy to describe the union of soul and body as one of complete interpenetration). Even the body which the Logos took of Mary was caught up into the union so that the divine and human united to become one Christ.⁵⁹ By this union the properties of the humanity of Christ may be ascribed to the divine Logos and vice versa.⁶⁰ The full humanity of Christ is essential for our salvation, and any part of our threefold nature of body, soul, and spirit not assumed by the Logos is not saved.⁶¹ He possessed a soul of the same substance as all other souls,⁶² and is our example as man,⁶³ but this does not mean that he is a mere man or that he is elevated to divine rank by adoption.⁶⁴ He is the pre-existent eternal Logos through whom we pray to the Father,⁶⁵ one whom we may even, with appropriate qualifications and explanations, describe as a 'second God' beside the Father.⁶⁶ For the Father and the Son are one in power and in will, but differ in their hypostasis⁶⁷—and even, as Origen also says, in their ousia, though the context makes it clear that this word is being used as virtually synonymous with hypostasis on this occasion.⁶⁸ Origen is vehemently opposed to the modalist Monarchianism which regarded Father, Son, and Spirit as adjectival names to describe the one divine substance and formally denied that God is in himself three.

The incarnate Lord is the pattern and model for the salvation of humanity. 'With Jesus human and divine nature began to be woven together, so that by sharing with divine life human nature might become divine, not only in Jesus but also in all believers.'⁶⁹ So salvation is deification. This means the annihilation not of individuality but of the gulf between finite and infinite. Nor does it mean that the believer, following Christ as example, can find his mystical way to God independently of Christ. 'Even at the very highest climax of contemplation we do not for a moment forget the incarnation.'⁷⁰ While the Incarnation is a veritable revelation of God, it is the ladder by which we are to ascend from the flesh to the spirit, from the Son of Man to the Son of God. The incarnate Lord, like the written revelation in inspired scripture, is a veil that must be penetrated.⁷¹ It is an accommodation to our present capacities in this life. The Church's present gospel will one day be superseded by that which the Seer of the Apocalypse calls the everlasting gospel, a heavenly comprehension of truth that will surpass our present understanding by at least as much as the new covenant surpasses the old.⁷² But throughout the period of this mortal life we are dependent on the sacramental, external forms of Bible and Church; secondary as they may be, they are an indispensable vehicle.⁷³

The Church is a school, making many concessions to weaker brethren, but always seeking to elevate them to higher things and a more intelligent degree of theological literacy. The Christian preacher's task is to rebuke and to encourage, above all to move to penitence.⁷⁴ Advance comes as we confess our sins to spiritual advisers, who in Origen's view are to be clergy;
but spiritual power is not always conjoined with ecclesiastical authority, though it ought to be, and the power of the keys is only truly possessed by them if their formal authority is coupled with personal holiness.⁷⁵

This process of education is not confined to this life. None is so pure that at death he is fit for the presence of God.⁷⁶ Therefore there will be purification hereafter, in which God will purge away the wood, hay, and stubble erected on the foundation laid by Christ.⁷⁷ The atonement is a long-continuing process⁷⁸ in which Christ is conquering the powers of evil assaulting the soul. Moreover, the very powers of evil themselves are not outside the reach of his care. The beings who are now devils were not created so. They were created good by nature, like all other spiritual beings, and have become evil only in will.⁷⁹ It is a gnostic doctrine that any creature of God can become so totally depraved as to become incapable of any goodness at all. 'A totally depraved being could not be censured, but only pitied as a poor unfortunate.'⁸⁰ Even the prince of darkness himself retains some vestige of a capacity to recognize truth, some remnants of freedom and some rationality. No creature of God ever passes wholly beyond the bounds of his love and judgement. Origen is emphatic that redemption is not a naturalistic process moving onward of its own motion by an inevitable density. Rebels from God remain for ever free to refuse. But the atoning work of Christ is incomplete until all are redeemed, and 'love never fails'.⁸¹ The process of redemption may take more than one 'age', but the ultimate triumph will surely be God's.⁸² Even so, freedom is inalienable from the rational being; if the spiritual creatures once suffered satiety and fell, there can be in principle no ground for denying the possibility that they may fall again. If so, there may be a series of worlds in which providence has to redeem a fallen creation and bring it back to its Maker.⁸³ Or may we affirm that at the final restoration love will be indefectible, and that those who have seen the glory of the kingdom will never taste of death?⁸⁴

Notes

1. Quoted by Eusebius, H.E. vi. 19. 7.
2. Ibid. vi. 2. 6. For a recent discussion of Eusebius's life of Origen see M. Hornschuh in Zeitschrift F. Kirchengeschichte 71 (1960), 1-25, who makes some valuable observations; but his radical scepticism of Eusebius suffers from the absence of any objective or rational criterion or principle.
3. Eus. H.E. vi. 36. 3.
4. Ibid. vi. 8.
5. I have collected some of the evidence in The Sentences of Sextus (Cambridge, 1959), pp. 110 f. Cf. also the article 'Castration' in Dict. d'arch. chr. et de liturgie.
6. Comm. in Matt. xv. 1 ff.

7. Panarion haer. 64. 3. 11-12. Epiphanius has not, of course, a hundredth part of the authority of Eusebius as an historian; it is precisely the uncritical way in which he sets down incompatible stories that imparts value to what he says, since it argues that at least he had not the intelligence to invent the drug story, which was evidently a current slander against Origen like Epiphanius's other piece of malice that Origen's migration to Caesarea was due to shame that in the persecution at Alexandria, when offered the choice between offering incense and being abused by a homosexual Ethiopian, he had instinctively preferred the former and so became apostate and excommunicate.

   Eusebius's story of the castration is sceptically regarded by K. F. Schnitzer, Origenes über die Grundlehren der Glaubenswissenschaft (Stuttgart, 1835), pp. xxxiii-xl (a very clear-headed discussion), and briefly by F. Böhringer, Die Kirche Christi und ihre Zeugen (Zürich, 1842), pp. 111 f.

8. Eus. H.E. vi. 19. 6. For a recent discussion see H. Dörrie, 'Ammonios der Lehrer Plotins', in Hermes 83 (1955), 439-77. For a very different and (I think) highly implausible view see H. Langerbeck's paper in the Journal of Hellenic Studies 77 (1957), 67-74, who thinks Ammonius Saccas some sort of Christian heretic. This is at least more likely than the wild theory that Ammonius is Dionysius the Areopagite. The most sober and cautious review of the evidence is given by E. R. Dodds in Entretiens Hardt 5 (1960), 24 ff.
9. For a collection of the fragments of the pagan Origen (at times adventurously interpreted) see K. O. Weber, Origenes der Neuplatoniker (Munich, 1962).
10. Comm. in Joh. xiii. 45. 298; Jerome, Ep. 8. 4. 3; Apol. adv. Rufin. i. 18.
11. Quis dives 26; Str. iii. 13. 1; 21. 2; iv. 2. 1; v. 140. 3; vi. 4. 2.
12. The de Principiis survives as a whole only in the paraphrastic Latin translation of Rufinus, which avowedly mitigates passages likely to offend the orthodox ears of Rufinus's contemporaries, especially in books iii-iv which Rufinus treats more cautiously than i-ii. Except for substantial excerpts on the interpretation of the Bible preserved in the Greek of the Philocalia of Basil and Gregory Nazianzen, fragments of the original text are few, and are mainly preserved by enemies of Origen like Justinian. A selection of the most damaging passages is translated by Jerome, Ep. 124. So much in Rufinus's work can be paralleled, however, in the commentaries and homilies that it is possible to have reasonable confidence about the original sense except in certain instances. The standard text of Koetschau (Leipzig, 1913) is well translated into English by G. W. Butterworth (London, 1936); but the reader should be warned (a) that Koetschau, sceptical of Rufinus's reliability, is at times uncritically credulous towards Origen's enemies, and (b) that the division of books and chapters is not Origen's. See M. Harl in Studia Patristica (ed. F. L. Cross), iii = T.U. 78 (1961), pp. 57-67.
13. Eus. H.E. vi. 14. 7.
14. Comm. in Joh. x. 5. 20.
15. Ibid. i. 4. 23.
16. Comm. in Matt. xv. 3.
17. de Princ. iv. 2. 4; Hom. in Lev. v. 1 and 5; Hom. in Num. ix. 7. Cf. Philo, V. Cont. 78; Clement, Str. vi. 132. 3. On Origen's principles of Biblical exegesis the best study is that of H. de Lubac, Histoire et Esprit (Paris, 1950); his Exégèse médiévale 1. i (Paris, 1959), pp. 198 ff., gives a masterly account of Origen's influence on later commentaries. On typology see especially J. Daniélou, Sacramentum Futuri (Paris, 1949); R. P. C. Hanson, Allegory and Event (London, 1959); R. M. Grant, The Letter and the Spirit (London, 1957).
18. de Princ. iv. 2. 1.
19. in Matt. Ser. 61.
20. See the exposition of Matt. xiii. 36 in Comm. in Matt. x. 1, c. Cels. iii. 21, and Dial. c. Heracl., 1st ed. p. 152 Scherer (the pagination of the first edition is given in the margin of the second).
21. c. Cels. ii. 66; Comm. in Joh. i. 7. 43, etc.
22. Comm. in Joh. i. 9 ff. The embryo of Origen's idea is found in Justin's contrast (Ap. ii. 6) between the nameless Father and the many names of Christ (cf. Dial. 34. 2). That conceptions of God vary according to the believer's capacity is in Philo, Mut. 19 ff.
23. Comm. in Joh. xix. 6. 38; cf. Philo, Leg. Alleg. iii. 125 f.
24. c. Cels. ii. 64; iv. 16; vi. 68, etc.
25. in Matt. Ser. 50, 56, esp. 70; Comm. in Matt. xii. 30, 32. There is a direct attack on materialistic notions of heaven in de Princ. ii. 11. 2.
26. de Princ. ii. 10. 5. Philo interprets Hades as tortures of conscience (Congr. 57).
27. c. Cels. iii. 78-79; iv. 10, 19; vi. 26, 72.

28. Ibid. v. 15ff. (Note esp. 22, 'Let no one think I am one of those who deny the Church's doctrine of resurrection; I preserve both the doctrine of the Church and the greatness of God's promise.') Especially important for Origen's position is the fragment on Psalm i preserved by Methodius, de Resurr. i. 20 ff. and by Epiphanius, Panarion hear. 64. 12; the other main texts are de Princ. ii. 10-11; iii. 6. 5-9; Comm. in Matt. xvii. 29-33. No text of Origen in either Greek original or translation contains the doctrine ascribed to him in the sixth century that resurrection bodies are spherical (the sphere being the perfect shape according to Timaeus 33 B, cf. 44 D, and also the shape of the cosmic god of the Stoics; cf. Seneca, Apocolocyntosis 8 of Claudius's rotundity resembling a Stoic god, and Ovid, Fasti vi. 271-2). But he believed that the stars have souls (since capable of sin, Job xxv. 5, cf. Comm. in Joh. i. 35. 257; Comm. in Rom. iii. 6) and spherical bodies (de Orat. 31. 3). Plotinus says that souls in heaven, despite their astral spherical bodies, recognize one another by inner character (iv. 4(28). 5. 18; cf. iii. 4(15). 6. 18 ff.). The Platonic and the Christian are fused in Dante's Paradiso xiv where the holy souls awaiting resurrection are starry spheres.

    For discussion see my remarks in Harv. Theol. Rev. 41 (1948), pp. 83-102; A.-J. Festugière in Revue des sciences philos. et théol. 43 (1959), 81-86.

29. Origen's attacks on chiliasm, though rare, are decisive: Comm. in Matt. xvii. 35; de Orat. xxvii. 13; Comm. in Cant. Cantic. prol., (p. 66 Baehrens); frag. in Methodius, de creatis 12 (p. 499 Bonwetsch); Origen, Hom. in Ps. XXXVI, 3.10 (XII. 196f. Lommatzsch).
30. de Orat. 31. 3; Comm. in Rom. ix. 41.
31. Irenaeus, adv. Haer. ii. 28. 2-3.
32. c. Cels. vii. 42 ff., well interpreted by Festugière, La Révélation d'Hermès Trismégiste iv. 119-123.
33. Comm. in Joh. xiii. 25. Note ii. 23. 149 f.: Because both Father and Son are light, some mistakenly think the ousia of the Son not distinct from the Father's (i.e. the argument Justin tries to meet in Dial. 128).
34. Philo, Heres 240; Gig. 12; Som. i. 138 f.; Opif. 168; Post. C. 145; Qu. Gen. iv. 87; Qu. Ex. ii. 40.
35. de Princ. ii. 8. 3. Cf. Philo, Som. i. 31. See Waszink's commentary on Tert. de Anima 25. 2.
36. e.g. Comm. in Joh. xxxii. 18. 218; Hom. in Luc. 36. Cf. ch. 4, n. 74. Again the idea is Philonic, e.g. Leg. Alleg. iii. 84.
37. de Princ. ii. 1. 1 f. The Platonist Albinus (in Stobaeus i. 49. 37) anticipates Origen's view, saying that souls descend by a mistaken choice, not by a natural destiny resulting from emanations. There is a polemic against this view in Hierocles, Comm. in Carmen Aureum i. 1, xi. 17-20 (Mullach, pp. 420 a, 443 a).
38. de Princ. ii. 1. 4. See also Comm. in Gen. ap. Eus. P.E. vii. 20.
39. c. Cels. iv. 54 ff.
40. Opif. 75; Conf. 179; Abr. 143; Fuga 68 ff.
41. c. Cels. iv. 66; vi. 53.
42. de Princ. ii. 2-3; iii. 6. Both Rufinus and Jerome tendentiously confuse the text. See Karl Müller in Sitzungsber. Berl. Akad. 1919, pp. 622 ff.
43. Cf., however, de Orat. 26. 6, where the first view appears.
44. Cf. Frag. in Joh. 13 (p. 495 Preuschen).
45. c. Cels. iii. 41; iv. 57; vi. 77.
46. de Princ. i. 7. 5; iii. 5. 4; Comm. in Rom. vii. 4; Hom. in Num. xxviii. 2.
47. c. Cels. vii. 50.
48. The argument is a commonplace of the Stoic theodicy, of which Origen made full use.
49. de Princ. iii. 2. 1-2; Hom. in Gen. ii. 6.
50. Hom. in Lev. iv. 6. For a striking anticipation see Philo, V. Mos. ii. 68 (Moses practised continence so as to be ready at any time to be the medium of inspired prophecy). Likewise de Spec. Leg. i. 150.
51. Hom. in Gen. iii. 6; Comm. in Matt. xiv. 1-2.
52. Hom. in Lev. viii. 3; cf. c. Cels. vii. 50; Comm. in Rom. v. 9; Hom., in Luc. 14.
53. Comm. in Rom. v. 1 and 4.
54. Hom. in Lev. viii. 3. Origen takes the idea from Philo, Ebr. 208.
55. Comm. in Matt. x. 12; xii. 4.
56. See c. Cels. iv. 40; Sel. in Gen. (VIII. 58 Lommatzsch). Clement had rejected this interpretation (Str. iii. 95). Ambrose (ep. 49. 4) accepts it. It appears also in Porphyry (de Abst. i. 31).
57. Comm. in Joh. xxxii. 2; Comm. in Matt. x. 24; Hom. in Luc. 35. The truth that petty dishonesties and drunkennesses are sins before God no less than pride and other vices is providentially not understood by ignorant believers who, not having the capacity to understand that divine punishment for sin is remedial, would lose heart if they knew: Hom. in Lev. xiv. 3; Dial. c. Heracl. 1st ed., p. 142 Scherer.
58. de Princ. ii. 6. 6.
59. c. Cels. iii. 41.
60. Comm. in Rom. i. 6; de Princ. ii. 6. 2.
61. Dial. c. Heracl., 1st ed., p. 136; Comm. in Joh. xx. 11. 86; xxxii. 18. 218 ff. Origen's argument entirely anticipates the standard Cappadocian objection to Apollinarianism as formulated especially by Gregory Nazianzen; cf. Athanasius, Tomus ad Antiochenos 7. Origen attacks those who think the Logos assumed a body, not a human soul, in de Princ. iv. 4. 4.
62. de Princ. ii. 8. 5; Hom. in Lev. xii. 5.
63. Comm. in Cant. Cantic. ii (p. 153 Baehrens).
64. c. Cels. iii. 14; iv. 32; Hom. in Iesu Nave vii. 7.
65. de Orat. xv-xvi; c. Cels. v. 4-5; viii. 26.
66. c. Cels. v. 39; vi. 61; vii. 57. Cf. de Orat. xv. 1; Comm. in Joh. ii. 2; x. 37.
67. c. Cels. viii. 12; Comm. in Matt. xvii. 14; Comm. in Joh. ii. 10; x. 37.
68. de Orat. xv. 1. See also note 33 above.
69. c. Cels. iii. 28.
70. Comm. in Joh. ii. 8.
71. For the analogy of the Bible and the Incarnation see in Matt. Ser. 27; Hom. in Exod. xii. 4; Hom. in Lev. i. 1. Cf. ch. 4, n. 13.
72. Comm. in Rom. i. 4; de Princ. ii. 8. 7; iii. 6. 8; iv. 2. 4, etc. Jerome (Ep. 124. 12), takes exception to Origen's opinion which is paralleled in Irenaeus (adv. Haer. iv. 9. 2) and Methodius (Symp. ix. 2).
73. de Orat. 5; cf. Frag. in 1 Cor. iii. 21 f., ed. Jenkins in JTS ix. 353.
74. Comm. in Rom. ix. 1.
75. de Orat. xxviii. 9 f. Origen's doctrine of penitence is extremely complex (and controversial); it is bound up with his ambivalent attitude to the clergy in general, on the one hand profoundly respectful of the office, on the other hand sternly critical of clerical conduct in practice. In Origen's thought about the Church a high sacramentalism crosses with an anti-clerical pietistic strain, and the resulting inconsistencies have led to very diverse interpretations of his words. The most dispassionate account is that of H. von Campenhausen, Kirchliches Amt und Geistliche Vollmacht pp. 287 ff.
76. Hom. in Num. xxv. 6.
77. Origen is the first to read into 1 Cor. iii. 10-15 the doctrine of an ultimate purification for all. For a good examination of the history of this exegesis see J. Gnilka, Ist I Kor. 3, 10-15 ein Schriftzeugnis für das Fegfeuer? (Düsseldorf, 1955).
78. Comm. in Joh. vi. 58. 297; Hom. in Lev. viii. 5.
79. c. Cels. iv. 65; Comm. in Joh. ii. 13. 97.
80. Comm. in Joh. xx. 28. 254.
81. Hom. in Num. xx. 3; Hom. in Lev. vii. 2; Comm. in Joh. xix. 14 and 21, etc.
82. de Orat. xxvii. 15 and many passages.
83. de Princ. i. 3. 8; Comm. in Joh. x. 42.
84. Comm. in Matt. xii. 34; Comm. in Cant. Cantic. i. (p. 103 Baehrens): once the soul attains to union with the very ousia of the Logos, it is bound by the chains of love and can never again remove, being one spirit with him. Comm. in Rom., Tura papyrus frag. (p. 208 Scherer) distinguishes the indefectibility of faith, which is certain, from that of righteousness which can be lost. (Cf. JTS N.S. x (1959), 36).