[In this essay, Chadwick generally discusses the ways in which Origen's theological and philosophical thinking as well as his principles of allegorical exposition of the Scriptures are distinct from those of his Jewish and pagan contemporaries and predecessors and how they were deeply influenced by them, showing that Origen's thought is a complex patchwork that has been controversial since the sixth century.]

Origen was born about 184-5 at Alexandria, probably of Christian parents (Porphyry and Eusebius contradict one another on this point). When he was nearly seventeen his father was martyred in the persecution of Severus in 202/3, and the event left a deep mark on Origen's mind. He always writes with an impassioned sense of belonging to a church called to fearless martyrdom and resistance to all compromise with the world which ever threatens it at least as much by the infiltration of merely nominal belief as by external attack and persecution. With this attitude there goes a strongly world-denying strain of personal detachment and ascetic self-discipline, symbolized in the story, told by Eusebius from hearsay and possibly true, that in the zeal of youth Origen took literally Matt. xix. 12 and castrated himself.¹ He lived on the minimum of food and sleep, and took seriously the gospel counsel of poverty.²

For a time he studied Greek philosophy in the lecture room of Ammonius Saccas, with whom Plotinus was later to study for eleven years. Ammonius is a mysterious figure.³ All we know of him probably comes directly or indirectly from Porphyry who describes in his life of Plotinus how Ammonius' esoteric teaching fired Plotinus with a (typically Neopythagorean) desire to investigate the antique wisdom of Persian and Indian sages. But it is a forlorn and foolish undertaking to attempt a reconstruction of Ammonius' metaphysical doctrines by looking for synoptic elements common to Origen and Plotinus. It is impossible to determine what, if anything, Origen really drew from Ammonius. What is certain is that Origen possessed an exhaustive comprehension of the debates of the Greek schools and that to his contemporaries he stood out as an intellectual prodigy. Until 231 Origen worked at Alexandria, though often travelling about on visits elsewhere. But his relations with his bishop were strained and eventually came to breaking point, so that he had to migrate to Palestinian Caesarea. He died at Tyre about 254.

Origen's work resembles Philo more closely than Clement's, mainly because, except for the two great works De principiis and Contra Celsum, its form is almost entirely a series of massive commentaries and expository sermons on the Bible. He bases himself on the principles of allegorical interpretation by which Philo had been able to discover in the Pentateuch the doctrines of Greek ethics or natural science. But Origen's evident debt to Philo must not be used to put Origen into a Philonic strait-jacket with the effect of obliterating the important differences between them. The ethical, psychological and scientific exegesis of Philo is now being combined with the typological exegesis of Justin and Irenaeus, seeking in the Old Testament for specific foreshadowings of Christian doctrine in a way that is a natural and easy extension of the argument from prophecy common in the canonical gospels and going back to the earliest Christian generation.⁴ Besides the literal and historical meaning (sometimes, but not usually, Origen denies that there is one) and the moral interpretation akin to Philo's, Origen seeks a spiritual meaning that refers to Christ's redemption and a 'mystical' sense that concerns the ascent of the individual soul to union with God and to perfection. In some places Origen tries to schematize his exegesis by boldly arguing from an analogy with St Paul's trichotomy of man's body, soul, and spririt;⁵ but in practice he may at times give four or even only two concurrent interpretations.⁶ What is impossible is that the text should only have a literal meaning. Much in the Old Testament when interpreted literally and not spiritually is unworthy of God, and this is in itself a sufficient refutation of Judaism.⁷ It is blasphemy to ascribe to God human weaknesses like wrath or changes of mind.⁸

Two differences between Origen and Philo are noteworthy in the matter of Scripture. First, controversy with rabbis and differences of opinion within the Church have made Origen hesitant about the authority and inspiration of the Septuagint. Unlike Philo and Justin he never alludes to the propagandist legends about the inspired unanimity of the translators, and, though he feels committed to maintaining the majority view of the Greek churches about the accepted status of the Septuagint, he implies that the Hebrew original is of more certain authority. He accordingly took the trouble to learn Hebrew. Secondly, he provides some positive argument for regarding the Bible as the work of the Holy Spirit, notably in De principiis IV, where his crowning point is the power of the Scriptures, as demonstrated by the mission of the Church throughout the world, to set souls on fire with faith and to transform moral life.

In Origen's attitude to philosophy there is not much, when it comes to detail, that we have not already found in Philo, Justin or Clement. Against the Gnostic exponents of total depravity Origen retorts that 'a totally depraved being could not be censured, only pitied as a poor unfortunate', and insists that in all men some elements of the divine image remain. The Logos lights every man coming into the world; all beings that are rational partake of the true light.⁹ The Gospel brings to actuality what in unbelievers is present potentially.¹⁰ The preacher possession all that seems sound and good in Hellenic culture. Origen is unmoved by the pagan accusation that he is borrowing Greek tools to rationalize a barbarian superstition.¹¹

Philosophy is a valuable preparatory discipline for revealed theology. 'Human wisdom is a means of education for the soul, divine wisdom being the ultimate end.' Philosophy is not indispensable for receiving the truth of God's revelation.¹² If it were, Christ would not have chosen fishermen.¹³ To the two (hardly compatible) pagan charges that the Christians are quite uneducated and that Christian teaching is no different from that of Plato and the Stoics, Origen answers that the proportions of educated and uneducated in the Church represent a fair cross-section of society as a whole, and that, while the study of philosophy is confined to an educated élite, the Christians have brought an acceptance of moral truth to classes of society where philosophy has never penetrated.¹⁴ If philosophy is not indispensable, yet it is a valuable tool for understanding the meaning and underlying principles of revelation.¹⁵ In the propositions of the baptismal creed the apostles laid down authoritatively and in language adapted to simple folk what is necessary in Christian belief. The grounds for their statements they left for others to investigate.¹⁶ The Bible does not discourage the pursuit of philosophy.¹⁷ Logic is of great utility in defending Christianity, though the greatest arguments establishing the truth of the Gospel are not natural but the supernatural guarantees of miracle, fulfilled prophecy and the miraculous expansion of the Church in face of powerful prejudice and governmental opposition.¹⁸ To his pupil Gregory (later to become the apostle of Pontus) Origen writes that the Christian may use philosophy as the Hebrews spoiled the Egyptians of their jewels at the Exodus.¹⁹

In much of this we are frequently reminded of Justin or Clement. But the accent and tone are different. Origen is so much more detached. The reader of Clement is sometimes inclined to suspect him of being so over-anxious to rebut the scornful charge that Christians are uneducated that he indulges in name-dropping. The Contra Celsum is wholly without trace of any inferiority complex and is an attack as much as it is a defence. Origen is not one of those apologists who derived encouragement from similarities to Christian ideas in Plato or Chrysippus.²⁰ He is completely free of the notion that there is a mystique of authority attaching to the great classical philosophers, and is without the least desire to claim the protection of their name for any statement. Nothing for Origen is true because Plato said it, though he thinks that Plato, being a clever man, said many things that are true. What Origen claims is not an affinity with this or that philosophy, but the right to think and reason from a Christian standpoint.²¹

In the Contra Celsum and elsewhere he is occasionally prickly to the point of rudeness towards the classical tradition. This is partly to be explained by the inward psychological effort that a man wholly trained within a metaphysical tradition must make in order to achieve detachment, and partly by the fact that pagan Platonists like Celsus were denying the right of Christians to think at all. The Platonism of Celsus, Porphyry, and, for that matter, Plotinus is in its feeling and temper a scholasticism bound by authority and regarding innovation and originality as synonymous with error. They would not have understood an attitude such as that expressed by Origen when he writes that 'philosophy and the Word of God are not always at loggerheads, neither are they always in harmony. For philosophy is neither in all things contrary to God's law nor is it in all respects consonant.' Origen proceeds in this passage to list some of the points of agreement and disagreement. 'Many philosophers say there is one God who created the world; some have added that God both made and rules all things by his Logos. Again, in ethics and in their account of the natural world they almost all agree with us. But they disagree when they assert that matter is co-eternal with God, when they deny that providence extends below the moon, when they imagine that the power of the stars determines our lives or that the world will never come to an end.'²²

Like Justin and Clement, Origen attacks the Stoics for their materialism, pantheism and deterministic doctrine of world-cycles.²³ He distinguishes the Christian doctrine of God's providential care from the Stoic idea of God as a material immanent force.²⁴ The Stoic doctrine of natural law and of 'universal notions' of God and conscience he accepts without the least demur.²⁵ Every man has an innate awareness of right and wrong.²⁶ The Sermon on the Mount accords with what natural consent acknowledges to be the ideal pattern in human relations.²⁷ The Mosaic law spiritually interpreted is the natural law, as Philo said, and both are identified with Christian morality.²⁸ For Origen there is no distinctively Christian ethic, but rather moral attitudes that are characteristically Christian, above all the recognition that the divine love and righteousness are the ground of this morality. The dormant soul is awakened to this realization by the Gospel.²⁹ Everyone acknowledges that a truly spiritual religion involves a rejection of polytheistic idolatry, even if he does not act upon that knowledge.³⁰ The soul of man has an intuitive longing for God; and Origen will not believe that this yearning can have been implanted in man's heart unless it is capable of being satisfied. Just as each faculty of our senses is related to a specific category of objects, so our nous is the correlate of God.³¹

Nevertheless, natural religion and natural morality are not enough. There is salvation only in Christ, and good works done before justification are of no avail.³² The soul of man is so weakened and distracted that it cannot be redeemed apart from the power and grace of God in Christ.³³ The severity of Origen's judgement on 'the good pagan' is, of course, much qualified by his denial that this life is the only chance a man has.

Origen is aware that the Christian estimate of man is in one aspect less exalted than the more aristocratic view of the Stoics with their doctrine of the wise man unmoved by disaster without or passion within, presupposing an innate strength and nobility of soul that is distinguishable from the Christian judgement that, though intended for high things, the soul is frail, bound by the fetters not so much of the body as of sin, and in need of help. Origen occasionally mentions the Stoic moral paradoxes, but with characteristic coolness does not say that he wholeheartedly approves, only that at some more suitable time he might discuss the extent to which these pagan principles accord with Christianity.³⁴ On the other hand, he makes generous use of the Stoic theodicy. The problem of evil greatly exercised the ingenuity of the Stoic philosophers in their conflict with Sceptics and Academics, and Chrysippus had created an arsenal of argument which Origen exploits. In Christianity the problem of evil was a no less serious question than it was for the Stoics in the time of Carneades. The Gnostics had thrown it into the forefront of the discussion, and had answered the problem by teaching, on the basis of some Platonic support, that evil inhered in matter. This solution was not open to Clement and Origen.³⁵ Neither, on the other hand, could the Christians happily use the Neoplatonist theodicy that evil is a privation of good. Biblical language about the devil,³⁶ if not personal experience, ensured that Christian theology must recognize evil to be a positive force, a depravatio rather than only a deprivatio. Moreover, the Christian belief in a historical revelation having the incarnation at its climax inevitably seemed to link the Christian interest with the Stoic defence of providential care not merely of the cosmos in general but of man in particular. A large part of the second and third books of Origen's De principiis is dominated by these questions in the form in which the Gnostics put them, and in the Contra Celsum Origen significantly turns for Stoic help in replying to Celsus' Platonizing argument that providence cares for the cosmos as a whole rather than for particularities and has no more concern for mankind than for dolphins.³⁷ Likewise Origen makes common cause with the Stoa in accepting the argument from design.³⁸ He sees difficulties in Scripture as analogous to those encountered in nature—of which he wisely observes that only a fool would try to find an explanation of every single detail.³⁹

Origen's attitude towards Platonism is more complicated. He sets an immediate distance between himself and Plato by sharp accusations that Plato was a pagan who, despite the high insights of dialogues such as the Republic and the Phaedo, failed to break with polytheism.⁴⁰ It is significant that the complaint is directed not against Plato's metaphysics but against his behaviour. Origen simply assumes as axiomatic the Platonic conception of the intelligible world with the sensible world as a reflection of it. For Origen the idea is fundamental to his view of revelation. Both the Bible and the Incarnation exemplify the principle that God uses earthly symbols to help us to rise to the spiritual reality that they veil.⁴¹ Furthermore, Origen's doctrine of God unreservedly accepts the traditional Platonic definitions that God is immutable, impassible, beyond time and space, without shape or colour, not needing the world, though creating it by his goodness.⁴² He assumes the truth of the late Platonic axiom that, in the hierarchy of being, what is produced must be inferior to that which produces it, an assumption which involved him in difficulties in expounding the doctrine of the Trinity,⁴³ though his Trinitarian and Christological statements are in fact vastly more 'orthodox' than his later reputation would suggest. Platonic language about the eternity of the cosmos provided him with terminology to express the eternal generation of the Son-Logos from the Father.⁴⁴ He echoes Philo's declaration that the Logos stands midway, as high priest and mediator, between the Creator and the created natures.⁴⁵ The Logos is the 'idea of ideas'.⁴⁶ And so on.

Nevertheless, there are certain points where Origen has substantial disagreements. He rejects the doctrine of the Timaeus that the Creator God made souls but delegated the making of bodies to inferior powers.⁴⁷ He will not admit that the cosmos is divine or that the stars are gods (though he believes the stars probably have souls).⁴⁸ He unambiguously teaches creation ex nihilo: creation is not out of relative but out of absolute non-being. 'I cannot understand how so many eminent men have imagined matter to be uncreated.'⁴⁹ Origen also rejects the view that matterial world will never come to an end. Plato's doctrine that, although the cosmos is created and so in principle corruptible, yet by God's will it will never in fact be destroyed, holds good in Origen's view not of the sensible world, but of the higher world, the heavenly realm of discarnate spirits, saints and angels, which should not be called the realm of ideas lest anyone suppose that it exists only in our minds as a metaphysical hypothesis.⁵⁰ All this marks a considerable modification of the Platonic scheme. Nevertheless, Origen was convinced that much of Platonism is true.

In one of his earliest works, the Stromateis (extant only in sparse fragments), he even attempted to express the fundamental ideas of Christianity wholly in Platonic language. Neither the theory of Ideas nor the doctrine of Anamnesis plays much part in the structure of Origen's thought, though there are places where he assumes these conceptions. The main problem lay in the nature and origin of the soul.

Origen teaches that souls are not unbegotten and eternal,⁵¹ but created by God, who from overflowing goodness created rational, incorporeal beings. But they neglected to love God, being overcome by 'satiety', and fell, some only a short distance, becoming angels, some a very long way, becoming devils, and some of a middle class, becoming human beings. The material world was not, as the Gnostics declared, an accidental consequence of the Fall, but was made by the goodness of God—not, however, with the intention that anyone should be too comfortable in it, but with the intention of educating humanity by the insecurity and transitoriness of existence to return to God. So in the divine plan some souls are sent down into bodies because of their failures, while others may ascend into bodies because they are showing improvement.

Origen's mythological picture of the hierarchy of being as a diversity resulting from free choices (a conception with which the Neoplatonists could not come to terms) is explicable against the Gnostic background. Origen's anxiety is to defend God from the charge of injustice and arbitrariness. In the doctrine of the soul he was faced by a choice between three possible doctrines: (a) the Creationist view that God creates each soul for each individual as conceived and born; (b) the Traducianist view that the soul is derived, like the body, from the parents; (c) the Platonic Pre-existence theory, according to which immortal and pre-existent souls temporarily reside in the body. Creationism seemed to involve God in endless fuss; Traducianism seemed to endanger the transcendence of the soul in relation to the body by making it something corporeal. Pre-existence had the merit of making a theodicy possible which answered the Gnostics' complaint against the justice and goodness of the Creator. But the final result was a mythological theory of the creation which bore at least a superficial resemblance to the theory it was intended to refute; and orthodox churchmen were disturbed by a doctrine apparently more Platonic than biblical and strongly suggesting the corollary of transmigration. On several occasions Origen disclaims the myth of transmigration as false.⁵² Yet his own system presupposes a picture of the soul's course which is strikingly similar. Probably the right solution of this problem is to be found in Origen's insistence on freedom rather than destiny as the key to the universe. In other words, he objected to the fatalistic principles underlying the doctrine of transmigration; he did not object to the idea if its foundations rested on the goodness and justice of God assigning souls to bodies in strict accordance with their merits on the basis of free choices. Because God is good, the process of redemption, which is not confined to this life on earth and does not only include the human race but angels also, will go on and on until God has won back all souls to himself, including even the devil himself who retains freedom and rationality and must therefore have still the power to respond to the wonder of divine mercy. Because freedom is essential to the very constitution of rational beings, universal restoration cannot be asserted to be a predictable end in the sense that the cosmos is moving towards it by an irresistible evolution. But only a belief in total depravity so drastic as to make redemption an act of omnipotent power rather than gracious love can justify the denial of universalist hope. God never abandons anyone. The fire of his judgement is purifying and his punishment is always remedial, even if it may be extremely severe. And because freedom is eternal, even at the summit of the process when all have been restored, it is possible (Origen speculates) that there may be another Fall, so that a series of unending cycles stretches out before the mind.

Origen is not an easy figure to assess. Other, later theologians soon came to look with misgiving upon his devaluation of history as the sphere of divine revelation. Yet his principles of allegorical exposition lived on to become an accepted tradition in medieval commentaries on Scripture. Though his doctrine of the pre-existence of souls (necessary to his theodicy) had occasional later advocates, it seemed too dangerously reminiscent of transmigration to be widely acceptable to the orthodox tradition. His universalism seemed to make redemption almost a natural cosmic process and to eliminate the element of freedom from divine grace and from human responsibility. Despite all his critics and the stormy controversy of the sixth century, culminating in Justinian's condemnation of some of the more extravagant speculations attributed to him by the Origenist monks of Palestine, much in his essential theological position became permanently at home within the Greek orthodox tradition in the revised and restated form given to it by the Cappadocian fathers, especially by Gregory of Nyssa. Widely divergent estimates of him were passed in his lifetime and throughout the patristic and medieval periods. These divergences will no doubt continue so long as there remains debate on the tenability of Christian Platonism.

Notes

1. Eus. HE VI 8; Porphyry's account in VI 19.
2. Eus. HE VI 3. 8 ff; cf. Origen, Hom. in Gen. XVI 5.
3. For a fuller discussion of Ammonius see Part III, ch. 12, pp. 196-200.
4. See C. H. Dodd, According to the Scriptures (1952), a masterly study; cf. the interesting but speculative book of B. Lindars, New Testament Apologetic (1961).
5. Princ. IV 2. 4; Hom. in Lev. V 1 and 5; Hom. in Num. IX 7.
6. See H. de Lubac, Histoire et Esprit (1950), Exégèse Médiévale I i (1959), pp. 198 ff.; J. Daniélou, Sacramentum Futuri (1949).
7. E.g. Comm. in Rom. VI 12; Hom. in Gen. VI 3; Hom. in Lev. X 1.
8. Cf. Contra Celsum IV 72; Hom. in Jerem. XVIII 6.
9. Comm. in Joh. XX 28; Hom. in Jerem. XIV 10.
10. Comm. in Rom. VIII 2.
11. Hom. in Gen. XIII 3.
12. Contra Celsum III 58; VI 13-14.
13. Contra Celsum I 62.
14. Contra Celsum I 9 f.; III 44 ff.; VI 1 ff.
15. Contra Celsum VI 14.
16. Princ. 1, praef. 3.
17. Contra Celsum VI 7 quotes texts from the Wisdom literature; note the discussion of I Cor. i in I 13 and III 47 f.
18. Contra Celsum I 2. See Gregory Thaumaturgus' account of Origen's educational method in Paneg. VII 100 ff.
19. Philocalia 13. Cf. Hom. in Gen. XIII 3 (Issac's servants may dig wells on Philistine land).
20. For the plagiarism thesis cf. Contra Celsum IV 39 (the garden of Zeus of Symp. 203 from Genesis ii-iii): did Plato hit on it by chance? or did he meet exegetes of Genesis when in Egypt?
21. Contra Celsum VII 46; 49 (disowning captious criticism); Hom. in Ex. XI 6. Justin (Dial. 6. 1) and Clement (Str. VI 66) state the principle.
22. Hom. in Gen. XVI 3; cf. Princ. I 3. 1; Contra Celsum VI 8; 47 (Plato teaches that the Creator is Son of God).
23. Contra Celsum IV 67-8; V 20; Princ. II 3. 4.
24. Contra Celsum VI 71.
25. E.g. Comm. in Joh. I 37; XIII 41; Contra Celsum III 40; VIII 52.
26. Hom. in Luc. 35 (p. 196 Rauer).
27. Comm. in Rom. III 7; cf. Contra Celsum I 4 f.
28. Comm. in Rom. VI 8; cf. Philo, Opif. 3.
29. Comm. in Rom. VIII 2.
30. Contra Celsum III 40.
31. Exh. Mart. 47; Princ. II 11. 4; Sel. in Ps. (XI, 424 Lommatzsch); cf. Comm. in Cant. Cantic. I (p. 91 Baehrens).
32. Comm. in Rom. III 9 (Tura papyrus, p. 166 Scherer); Hom. in Num. I 2; XI 7.
33. Contra Celsum IV 19; Hom. in Ps. 36, IV 1; Hom. in Ps. 37, I 4 (XII, 205; 253 Lommatzsch).
34. E.g. Comm. in Joh. II 16.
35. Contra Celsum IV 66 (decisively rejecting the view that evil inheres in matter); cf. VI 53 (we do not make God responsible for evil by saying he made matter).
36. To Celsus' remark that 'it is not easy for one who has not studied philosophy to know the origin of evils' Origen replies that it is only possible to begin if one knows (from the Bible) about the devil (IV 65). Celsus finds the idea of Satan impossible (VI 42).
37. Contra Celsum IV 74 ff.
38. Contra Celsum VIII 52; Princ. IV 1. 7; Exh. Mart. 4.
39. Princ. IV 1. 7; II 9. 4.
40. Contra Celsum III 47; VI 3-4; VII 42; 44.
41. Contra Celsum VI 68.
42. Immutable: Contra Celsum VI 62; Orat. XXIV 2; Comm. in Joh. II 17; VI 38. Impassible: Contra Celsum IV 72 (of wrath); Hom. in Num. XVI 3; XXIII 2; Princ. II 4. 4; etc. Hom. in Ezech. VI 6 accepts passibility in the sense of love and mercy. Transcendent: Contra Celsum VI 64 f. (via negativa qualified by via eminentiae); cf. VII 42 f. Needing nothing: Hom. in Gen. VIII 10, etc. Creative goodness: Princ. I 4. 3; Comm. in Joh. VI 38; cf. Princ. I 5. 3 (only the Trinity is good essentially; all else has goodness but can lose it).
43. See, for example, Comm. in Joh. XIII 25. (For contacts at this point between the thought of Origen and that of Plotinus see Part III, ch. 12, p. 199.)
44. Princ. IV 4. 1 ff.
45. Princ. II 6. 1; Contra Celsum III 34.
46. Contra Celsum VI 64.
47. Contra Celsum IV 54. (Princ. I 8. 2 attacks a Gnostic variant of this.)
48. Contra Celsum V 6-13, disowning not only Plato but Anaxagoras' notion that the stars are masses of hot metal. Origen thinks the stars spiritual beings who have fallen but a little way, are imprisoned in the stars and compelled to regulate earthly weather. He justifies prayer for fine weather on the hypothesis that the sun has free will. (It is fair to add that he regarded all this as speculative.)
49. Princ. II 1. 4; Comm. in Gen. ap. Eus. P.E. VII 20; etc.
50. Princ. II 3. 6.
51. Princ. I 3. 3. The following résumé is mainly based on the De principiis.
52. Contra Celsum V 29; Comm. in Matt. XIII I (the fullest discussion); etc. Nothing can be based on Koetschau's hypothetical reconstruction of Princ. I 8. 4.