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• Pt. 4 of 4

4.1 Origen’s Notion of Orthodoxy
4.2 Pre-Existence of Human Souls
4.3 Pre-Existence of Christ’s Soul
4.4 The Incarnation as Descent of Pre-Existing Soul into Already Formed Body
4.5 Christ’ Descent through All Heavenly Orders
4.6 That Human Bodies Will Rise in Spherical Form
4.7 Rational Souls of Celestial Bodies
4.8 Salvation of Demons
4.9 Limited Power of God in Creation
4.10 Apokatastasis
4.11 Summary of Findings

4.1 Origen’s Notion of Orthodoxy

We now have a good understanding of precisely which doctrines were condemned by the universal Church when she denounced Origen. It remains to be seen, however, precisely how much of Origenism is to be found in the writings of Origen himself, and whether he held these views as definite teachings or only tentative opinions.

The only extant complete version of Peri Archon is the Latin translation by Rufinus (De Principiis), which softened some expressions in order to bring them more in line with orthodoxy. Following this sympathetic edition gives Origen considerable benefit of the doubt, so we can hardly be accused of unfairness if we should indeed find Origenist doctrines here (using Crombie’s literalist 1885 translation of the Latin[1]).

Most of the supposed Greek fragments of Peri Archon are of doubtful authenticity. Two noteworthy exceptions are extensive citations in the Philokalia: on the freedom of the will (Philokalia, XXI, corresponding to Book III, ch. 1 in Rufinus), and on the inspiration of Divine Scripture (Philokalia I.1-27, corresponding to Book IV, ch. 1.1-23 in Rufinus). While neither of these fragments treat the disputed doctrines directly, they give evidence that Rufinus’s translation is generally reliable, though highly paraphrastic in places.

St. Jerome’s Latin translation has been lost, but some excerpts from this can be found in his letter to Avitus. (Ep. 124, AD 409/410) These excerpts mostly agree in substance with what is found in Rufinus, except for some passages that apparently imply the subordination of the Son and the Holy Spirit. None of the Origenist anathemas make mention of this subordinationism, and it is possible that St. Jerome has taken Origen too literally or without context.[2] At any rate, St. Jerome admits that, apart from changing a few blasphemous passages regarding the Son and the Holy Spirit, Rufinus did publish the rest unchanged.

In his preface, Origen articulates his understanding of the apostolic teaching, effectively giving his creed. The content of this creed strikingly parallels much of the Nicene Creed, showing how this symbol of faith was not a fourth-century invention, but a summary of what was received from earlier Christians. At the same time, Origen distinguishes apostolic teaching from those issues which the Church has left undefined or uncertain in his time.

First, there is one God, who created and arranged all things, and who, when nothing existed, called all things into being. (PA, Pref., 4) We see that creatio ex nihilo is no invention of St. Augustine, but is found even in this early witness of the apostolic faith. This is the God of the patriarchs, Moses, and the prophets, who in the last days, sent our Lord Jesus Christ to call in the first place Israel to Himself, and in the second place the Gentiles, after the unfaithfulness of the people of Israel. The God of the Old and New Testaments is one and the same.

Second, Jesus Christ was born of the Father before all creatures, and by Him all things were made. In the last times, he became a man, and was incarnate although God, and while a man remained the God which He was. His body differed from ours only in that it was born of a virgin and of the Holy Spirit. He was truly born, and did truly suffer, and… did truly die. He rose from the dead, conversed with his disciples, and was taken up.

Third, the Holy Spirit, one and the same in the Old and New Testaments, is associated in honor and dignity with the Father and the Son, but it is not clearly distinguished whether He is to be regarded as born or innate, or also as a Son of God or not. This confusion may seem strange to us, since the Gospel of John repeatedly states that Christ is the only (monogenes)[3] Son of God, but Origen was perhaps unable to articulate how the Spirit might originate from the Father without being begotten in some sense.

Further, according to Origen, the apostolic teaching is that the soul, having a substance and life of its own, shall, after its departure from the world, be rewarded according to its deserts, being destined to obtain either an inheritance of eternal life and blessedness… or to be delivered up to eternal fire and punishments… Also, there is to be a time of resurrection from the dead, when this body… shall rise in incorruption. (PA, Pref., 5)

The teaching of the Church defines that every rational soul is possessed of free-will and volition; that it has a struggle to maintain with the devil and his angels, and opposing influences, because they strive to burden it with sins; but if we live rightly and wisely, we should endeavour to shake ourselves free of a burden of that kind. This presentation of Church teaching, though orthodox, already gives a hint of the central error of Origenism, namely the reduction of salvation to one’s own efforts at self-purification by instruction and discipline.

Origen infers from the Church’s teaching on free will that we are not subject to necessity, so as to be compelled by all means, even against our will, to do either good or evil. Influences may impel us to sin or help us to salvation, but we are not forced by any necessity either to act rightly or wrongly. Here Origen is attacking astrological fatalism, and not treating the matter of divine grace, so it is unfair to characterize him as Pelagian or semi-Pelagian.

Controversially, Origen claims that the Church has made no clear teaching as to whether the soul is derived from the seed by a process of traducianism… or whether it has any other beginning; and this beginning, itself, whether it be by birth or not, or whether bestowed upon the body from without or no… When Rufinus made this same profession of ignorance in the late fourth century, St. Jerome took him to task, saying Did he who revealed the Father keep silence on the origin of souls? And are you astonished if your brethren are scandalized when you swear that you know nothing of a thing which the churches of Christ profess to know? (Contra Rufinus, II, 10)

Prior to the first Origenist controversy, however, even St. Jerome mentioned the doctrine of pre-existent souls without condemning it as heresy. Origen can hardly be blamed for positing this doctrine as mere opinion in the second century, long before the Church clarified her teaching. Nonetheless, there may be certain aspects of his theory of pre-existence that were heretical even by the standards of his day.

According to Origen, the Church teaches only that the devil and his angels, and the opposing influences exist, but what they are, or how they exist, it has not explained with sufficient angels. (PA, Pref, 6) The common opinion, however, is that the devil was an angel who fell away and induced others to fall away with him.

He says the Church also teaches that the world was made and took its beginning at a certain time, and is to be destroyed on account of its wickedness. (PA, Pref, 7) This moral interpretation of the apocalypse could be construed as regarding the corporeal world as essentially evil and to be replaced by something purely spiritual, but Origen does not make this inference. He notes that the Church has made no clear statement about what existed before this world, or what will exist after it. This provides an opening for speculative opinion on these matters.

Lastly, the Scriptures were written by the Spirit of God, and have a meaning, not such only as is apparent at first sight, but also another, which escapes the notice of most. The opinion throughout the whole Church is that the whole law is indeed spiritual; but that the spiritual meaning which the law conveys is not known to all, but to those only whom the grace of the Holy Spirit is bestowed in the word of wisdom and knowledge. (PA, Pref, 8) Origen is making a distinction not only between the literal and spiritual sense of Scripture, but between exoteric and esoteric understandings. This idea that there are hidden meanings in Scripture accessible only to a wise few has been fertile ground for heresy, starting with Gnosticism.

Anticipating objections to his speculative theology, Origen notes that in The Doctrine of Peter, the Lord says to His disciples, I am not an incorporeal (asomaton) demon. Yet this work, he says, was not composed by Peter or any other inspired person. Even if the work were authentic, the word asomaton does not convey the same meaning as is intended by Greek and Gentile authors when incorporeal nature is discussed by philosophers. It means only that Jesus did not have a body as demons have, which is naturally fine, and thin as if formed of air, but rather a solid and palpable body. The simple and ignorant call such rarefied bodies incorporeal.

Perhaps, Origen suggests, what the philosophers call asomaton is found in Scripture by another name. It is not clearly indicated in our teaching whether God Himself is corporeal in some rarefied sense, or of an altogether different nature from bodies. The same must be inquired regarding Christ, the Holy Spirit, the soul, and other rational natures.

It may seem strange that Origen even considers the possibility that God is in some sense corporeal (though he later decides against this). We must keep in mind, however, that the early Church did not take much interest in philosophical questions outside the school of Alexandria. Origen is asking a very subtle question, whether spiritual natures might have a form that is in some way analogous to that of gross bodies. He is not disputing the Christian teaching that God and other rational natures are spiritual, not gross bodies.

Lastly, Origen states that the Church teaches there are ceratin angels of God, and certain good influences, which are His servants in accomplishing the salvation of men. (PA, Pref, 10) The Church’s teaching does not clearly state when the angels were created or what their nature is. Regarding the sun, moon, and stars, whether there are living beings or without life, there is no distinct deliverance. Origen is quite right that the Church allowed for the heavenly bodies to be living beings, as might be supposed by philosophers who note that they have their own natural motion. Yet he mentions this possibility in the context of discussing angels, hinting at his own tendency to identify the two classes of beings, at least as overlapping categories.

In our discussion of the main body of Peri Archon, we will treat nine topics covered by the Origenist anathemas of 543 and 553, asking the following questions. (1) What did Origen believe? (2) Did he assert this as doctrine, or merely as speculation? (3) Was he justified in thinking that these points had not been defined by the Church?

4.2. Pre-Existence of Human Souls

The Church condemned specific doctrines about the pre-existence of human souls, without categorically denying the possibility of souls existing before natural conception. The first anathema of 543 reads:

1. Whoever says or thinks that human souls pre-existed, that is that they had previously been spirits and holy powers, but that, satiated with the vision of God, they had turned to evil, and in this way the divine love in them had grown cold, and they had therefore become souls (psuchan), and had been condemned to punishment in bodies, shall be anathema.

It is not pre-existence as such that is condemned, but the notion that humans prior to conception were moral agents, or that they were once angelic beings rather than humans. This is indeed foreign to Christianity, which holds that men are judged solely for sins committed in this world. It remains to be seen what Origen really thought of this matter.

The anathemas of 553 condemn the following doctrines held by Evagrius Ponticus:

1. If anyone advocates the mythical pre-existence of souls and the monstrous restoration (apokatastasis) which follows from it, let him be anathema.

2. If anyone says that the creation of rational beings (logikon) has arisen from merely incorporeal and immaterial spirits (noes) without number and name, so that there occurred a henad (i.e., a unity) of all of these in the likeness of being, power, and energy, as by their (like) unity with the Word of God, and (their like) knowledge of Him; but that they had become satiated with the vision of God, and had turned to that which was worse, everyone according to the nature of his inclination, and had assumed bodies, finer or grosser, and received names, whilst, among these powers there was a difference both of names and of bodies…
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4. If anyone says that spiritual beings, in whom divine love grows cold, are covered in grosser bodies like ours and called men, whilst others who reached the summit of evil had received cold and dark bodies, and are called now demons and evil spirits, let him be anathema.

5. If anyone says that, as of angels and archangels souls are made, and from souls demons and men, so from men again angels and demons come… let him be anathema.

This more elaborate anthropology is condemned on account of its pantheistic monism, more closely resembling Neoplatonism and Gnosticism than Christianity. This fiction that humanity is the result of successive degradations from henadic unity is utterly contrary to Jewish and Christian teaching about the goodness of corporeal creation. The doctrine condemned by the first anathema of 543 contains the kernel of error from which this more detailed system can be expounded. We shall see whether any of this could be gleaned from Peri Archon.

While discussing whether the celestial bodies were endowed with souls at the time of their bodily creation, Origen says:

I, for my part, suspect that the spirit was implanted in [celestial bodies] from without; but it will be worth while to prove this from Scripture: for it will seem an easy matter to make the assertion on conjectural grounds, while it is more difficult to establish it by the testimony of Scripture. Now it may be established conjecturally as follows. If the soul of a man, which is certainly inferior while it remains the soul of a man, was not formed along with his body, but is proved to have been implanted strictly from without, much more must this be the case with those living beings which are called heavenly. For, as regards man, how could the soul of him, viz., Jacob, who supplanted his brother in the womb, appear to be formed along with his body? Or how could his soul, or its images, be formed along with his body, who, while lying in his mother’s womb, was filled with the Holy Ghost? I refer to John leaping in his mother’s womb, and exulting because the voice of the salutation of Mary had come to the ears of his mother Elisabeth. How could his soul and its images be formed along with his body, who, before he was created in the womb, is said to be known to God, and was sanctified by Him before his birth? Some, perhaps, may think that God fills individuals with His Holy Spirit, and bestows upon them sanctification, not on grounds of justice and according to their deserts; but undeservedly. And how shall we escape that declaration: Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid! or this: Is there respect of persons with God? For such is the defense of those who maintain that souls come into existence with bodies. So far, then, as we can form an opinion from a comparison with the condition of man, I think it follows that we must hold the same to hold good with heavenly beings, which reason itself and scriptural authority show us to be the case with men. (PA, I, 7.4)

Origen admits that his opinion on the implantation of souls in celestial bodies is conjectural, yet he holds that reason and Scripture prove that such is the case with men. More critically, he holds that these pre-existent souls were capable of merit, inferring this from the assumption that God does not sanctify undeservedly, but solely on the basis of merit or deserts. In this, he contradicts the Apostle he cites (Gal. 2:6), for the same teaches that we are justified by God’s free grace, not as wages due. Perhaps Origen held that the pre-existent soul merited sanctification by its faith, but this still falls under the anathema of the Church.

This is not the only work in which Origen has advanced this position. He affirms the same in his Commentary on John. He argues that the spiritual sense of John 1:6 is that John was sent either from heaven or from Paradise, or from some other quarter to this place on earth. (Comm. John, II, 24) He invokes the words of Gabriel and Elizabeth as showing that John’s soul was older than his body, and subsisted by itself before it was sent on the ministry of the witness of the light. Yet this pre-existence is true of all men. For if that general doctrine of the soul is to be received, namely, that it is not sown at the same time with the body, but is before it, and is then, for various causes, clothed with flesh and blood; then the words ‘sent from God’ will not appear to be applicable to John alone. John is exceptional in that he has entered this life for a divine ministry and in the service of the salvation of mankind.

Again he argues for the pre-existence of Jacob, supposing that God’s election of him over Esau must have been based on some works done before this life. This is asserted to support the opinion that Jacob, like John, may have been angels who chose to take the bodies of men! (Ibid., II, 25)

Origen strongly affirms the pre-existence of human souls that can merit the reward of divine election. This is not a mere error in anthropology, for it is clearly linked to the supposition that election is a reward for the prior works of the elect. The more extravagant claim that the souls of men were once angels is proffered only as an opinion, and only in the cases of exceptional men. Origen’s arguments interpret Scripture on the assumption that grace or divine favor is actually a reward due to works. While the general doctrine of the soul as pre-existent may have been a common opinion in his time, we see no evidence that this was an established doctrine of the Church, nor does Origen claim such. It is merely an opinion he invokes to support his view that election is always a reward for prior works.

Origen applies his meritocratic theology to all the orders of angels and demons, claiming that each of these beings is in its particular rank as a result of his own works and movements… and not in consequence of a peculiar privilege inherent in their constitutions, but on account of merit. (PA, I, 5.3) Here he is arguing against the fatalistic notion that the demons were created evil and sinned out of necessity imposed by God in their natures. He correctly affirms that the demons are responsible for their fallen state by their sin, but then infers that the good angels are exalted according to their works, with no difference in natural qualities. Again, Origen would make everything strictly earned, as all angelic and demonic offices are derived from merit, though he expressly offers this only as his personal opinion. (PA, I, 8.4)

But the third order of rational creatures is that of those who are judged fit by God to replenish the human race, i.e., the souls of men, assumed in consequence of their moral progress into the order of angels; of whom we see some assumed into the number: those, viz., who have been made the sons of God, or the children of the resurrection, or who have abandoned the darkness, and have loved the light, and have been made children of the light; or those who, proving victorious in every struggle, and being made men of peace, have been the sons of peace, and the sons of God; or those who, mortifying their members on the earth, and, rising above not only their corporeal nature, but even the uncertain and fragile movements of the soul itself, have united themselves to the Lord, being made altogether spiritual, that they may be for ever one spirit with Him, discerning along with Him each individual thing, until they arrive at a condition of perfect spirituality, and discern all things by their perfect illumination in all holiness through the word and wisdom of God, and are themselves altogether undistinguishable by any one. (PA, I, 8.4)

Here Origen affirms that the saints may ascend to the order of angels, and perhaps even become purely spiritual. He does not declare that men are fallen angels, but it is easy to see how later Origenists might make this inference, given that pure spirituality is seen as a higher state that we might attain by merit, and all states are the result of our works.

Origen himself is ambivalent as to whether men, or even angels, can ever be fully incorporeal. As noted previously, he considered the incorporeality of angels to be compatible with the idea that they had highly rarefied bodies. At one point, he affirms that it is an attribute of the divine nature alone—i.e., of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit— to exist without any material substance, and without partaking in any degree of a bodily adjunct. (PA, I, 6.4) Later, however, he is ambivalent about whether rational creatures can be fully incorporeal:

If, then, any one could show a reason why it was possible for them to dispense wholly with bodies, it will appear to follow, that as a bodily nature, created out of nothing after intervals of time, was produced when it did not exist, so also it must cease to be when the purposes which it served had no longer an existence. (PA, II, 2.1)

If, however, it is impossible for this point to be at all maintained, viz., that any other nature than the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit can live without a body, the necessity of logical reasoning compels us to understand that rational natures were indeed created at the beginning, but that material substance was separated from them only in thought and understanding, and appears to have been formed for them, or after them, and that they never have lived nor do live without it…

…that material substance of this world, possessing a nature admitting of all possible transformations, is, when dragged down to beings of a lower order, moulded into the crasser and more solid condition of a body, so as to distinguish those visible and varying forms of the world; but when it becomes the servant of more perfect and more blessed beings, it shines in the splendour of celestial bodies, and adorns either the angels of God or the sons of the resurrection with the clothing of a spiritual body, out of all which will be filled up the diverse and varying state of the one world. (PA, II, 2.2)

Strangely, even on the assumption that all creatures need bodies, Origen insists that rational natures must have been created in the beginning. He reconciles this by considering the pre-existent souls to be separated from material substance only in thought. This formless substance, at some later point of time, is formed into a definite body, whose qualities are fitted to its recipeint. Again, solid bodies are considered to belong to lower order beings, which can lead to the later Origenist inference that our corporeal state is the result of some degradation or sin. Nonetheless, Origen himself sets a limit to such degradation, holding that no souls ever become so base as to forget their rational nature and dingity, and sink into the condition of irrational animals. (PA I, 8.4)

4.3 Pre-Existence of Christ’s Soul

The doctrine of pre-existent human souls had grave theological implications when applied to the soul of Christ. Thus we find the following anathemas, of 543:

2. If anyone says or thinks that the soul of the Lord pre-existed and was united with God the Word before the Incarnation and Conception of the Virgin, let him be anathema.

…and of 553:

6. If anyone maintains that there is a twofold race of demons, the one consisting of human souls, the other of higher, but so deeply fallen spirits, and that of the whole number of rational beings only one Spirit remained unaltered in the divine love and vision, and that this one became Christ, and King of all rational beings, and created all bodily things, the heaven and the earth, and whatever is between them; and whoever says that the world has come into existence, since it has elements in itself which are older than itself, and which consist for themselves—namely, the dry, the moist, the warm, and the cold, and the pattern according to which it (the world) is made—and that not all the holy and consubstantial Trinity, but the nous demiourgos, who is older than the world, and gave it its being, has constituted it by making it become (i.e. made it out of those elements)—let him be anathema.

The latter anathema includes many Evagrian embellishments, so we will need to discern how much of this may be found in Origen himself.

No one is disputing that the Second Person of the Most Holy Trinity, known as the Son, has existed from eternity. What is at issue is whether the created human soul of Christ existed before the Incarnation, perhaps even apart from any hypostatic union with God. In Book I of Peri Archon, Origen discusses Christ as the Wisdom and Word of God, which is to say in His Divinity. In Book II, chapter 6, he treats the Incarnation as the Wisdom of God entering the womb of a woman, which agrees with the orthodox faith that the person who is Christ as man is none other than the Second Divine Person of the Most Holy Trinity. Origen recognizes, again with orthodoxy, that the human soul of Christ is something distinct from His Divinity. He describes this soul as follows:

For since [Christ] is Himself the invisible image of the invisible God, He conveyed invisibly a share in Himself to all His rational creatures, so that each one obtained a part of Him exactly proportioned to the amount of affection with which he regarded Him. But since, agreeably to the faculty of free-will, variety and diversity characterized the individual souls, so that one was attached with a warmer love to the Author of its being, and another with a feebler and weaker regard, that soul (anima) regarding which Jesus said, No one shall take my life (animam) from me, inhering, from the beginning of the creation, and afterwards, inseparably and indissolubly in Him, as being the Wisdom and Word of God, and the Truth and the true Light, and receiving Him wholly, and passing into His light and splendour, was made with Him in a pre-eminent degree one spirit, according to the promise of the apostle to those who ought to imitate it, that he who is joined in the Lord is one spirit. This substance of a soul, then, being intermediate between God and the flesh—it being impossible for the nature of God to intermingle with a body without an intermediate instrument—the God-man is born, as we have said, that substance being the intermediary to whose nature it was not contrary to assume a body. But neither, on the other hand, was it opposed to the nature of that soul, as a rational existence, to receive God, into whom, as stated above, as into the Word, and the Wisdom, and the Truth, it had already wholly entered. And therefore deservedly is it also called, along with the flesh which it had assumed, the Son of God… (PA, II, 6.3)

Insofar as Christ is the imago Dei, all rational creatures participate in Him. Yet the Son singled out a particular soul who freely loved his Creator most warmly, and the Son rewarded that soul with a higher degree of union. Here the doctrine of pre-existing merit has monstrous theological consequences, for we must think of this soul willing and loving God even before it is in hypostatic union with Him. That is to make a person of this human soul who is at first distinct from any Divine Person, and then becomes fused as one person with the Son in reward for his greater love. Only after this union of Divinity and soul does the soul then attain a body, making the soul an intermediary of the Incarnation, on the ground that God as such cannot assume a body.

Origen affirms unambiguously:

That the perfection of his love and the sincerity of his deserved affection formed for it this inseparable union with God, so that the assumption of that soul was not accidental, or the result of a personal preference, but was conferred as the reward of its virtues, listen to the prophet addressing it thus: You have loved righteousness, and hated wickedness: therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your fellows. As a reward for its love, then, it is anointed with the oil of gladness; i.e., the soul of Christ along with the Word of God is made Christ. (PA, II, 6.4)

The soul of Christ was rewarded with divine union for its ardent love of righteousness. Its state of impeccability was attained even prior to this union, as Origen explains:

But since the power of choosing good and evil is within the reach of all, this soul which belonged to Christ elected to love righteousness, so that in proportion to the immensity of its love it clung to it unchangeably and inseparably, so that firmness of purpose, and immensity of affection, and an inextinguishable warmth of love, destroyed all susceptibility (sensum) for alteration and change; and that which formerly depended upon the will was changed by the power of long custom into nature; and so we must believe that there existed in Christ a human and rational soul, without supposing that it had any feeling or possibility of sin. (PA, II, 6.5)

Here it is advanced that a human soul, by its own power of choosing, could develop such a strong habit of righteousness that choosing or even desiring wickedness became impossible to it. Although he calls this the soul of Christ, he is speaking of its state before its union with the Word, for that union has been said to be a reward for this exceptional righteousness. Nonetheless, the union itself raises the soul of Christ above all others, giving a further reason for the impossibility of sinning:

In this way, then, that soul which, like an iron in the fire, has been perpetually placed in the Word, and perpetually in the Wisdom, and perpetually in God, is God in all that it does, feels, and understands, and therefore can be called neither convertible nor mutable, inasmuch as, being incessantly heated, it possessed immutability from its union with the Word of God.

…that soul was the vessel which contained that very ointment of whose fragrance all the worthy prophets and apostles were made partakers. As, then, the substance of an ointment is one thing and its odour another, so also Christ is one thing and His fellows another. And as the vessel itself, which contains the substance of the ointment, can by no means admit any foul smell… so, in the same way, was it impossible that Christ, being as it were the vessel itself, in which was the substance of the ointment, should receive an odour of an opposite kind… (PA, II, 6.6)

This post-union account of Christ’s impeccability is more orthodox, but even here it is assumed that the hypostatic union occurs before the Incarnation.

4.4 The Incarnation as Descent of Pre-Existing Soul into Already Formed Body

Another Origenist doctrine pertains more directly to the Incarnation itself, asserting that it occurred after the body was already formed in the womb of the Virgin. In this view, there was a time when the body of Christ did not have divinity in it. What is at issue here is not when conception occurs or when a body has sufficient form to receive a soul. Rather, it is the notion that the Incarnation is an event that is altogether distinct from the formation of the body. In the Origenist view, the Incarnation was not the formation of Christ’s body, but the later assumption of that body by a pre-existing soul already united with the Word of God. There is nothing especially carnal about the union of divinity with humanity, since that union already exists apart from the body. The specific doctrine condemned in 543 is as follows:

3. If anyone says or thinks that the body of our Lord Jesus Christ was first formed in the womb of the holy Virgin, and that afterwards there was united with it God the Word and the pre-existing soul, let him be anathema.

On this supposition, a formed body in the womb of the Virgin received the pre-existing soul and the Divine Word as though it were a vessel prepared for them. This contradicts the orthodox faith that the Incarnation is a single event where the Word became flesh, so that the body of Christ was divine from its conception.

We have seen that Origen effectively made the soul of Christ a distinct person with a moral life before the hypostatic union. The Evagrian Origenists elaborated that the name Christ properly belonged to this soul or nous (mind), and was only attributed to the Word on account of its union with this nous. This effectively denies that Christ is truly and has always been the Word of God. Thus the anathemas of 553 state:

8. If anyone does not confess that God the Word, who is of one substance with the Father and the Holy Ghost, and was incarnate and made man—one of the Trinity—is Christ in the proper sense, but (maintains) that He (the Word) was named Christ only by abuse on account of the Nous (created Spirit) which humbled itself; that this was united with God the Word and is Christ in the proper sense; and that the Word, on account of this union with this Nous is called Christ, and that He, the Nous, for that reason, is called God— whoever maintains this, let him be anathema.

9. If anyone maintains that it was not the Word of God made flesh by assumption of a flesh animated by the psuche logike and noera, who went down into Hades and again returned into heaven, but says that this was done by the so-called (by them) Nous, of whom they impiously assert that He is Christ in the proper sense, and has become so through knowledge of the Unity—let him be anathema.

We see here further disparagement of the flesh by later Origenists, considering Christ to be a nous apart from any flesh, even insisting that it was only this nous that descended into Hell and ascended to Heaven, thereby denying the carnal Resurrection. This reduces the body of Christ to a mere vessel assumed by the nous and the Word, and then discarded.

Origen himself never expressly states whether the soul of Christ and Word of God assumed a body only after it had been formed. He does not deny that the Word of God assumed a body, for indeed that was the consensus among Christians, to which he adds only the emphasis that there was also a human soul:

The Son of God, then, desiring for the salvation of the human race to appear unto men, and to sojourn among them, assumed not only a human body, as some suppose, but also a soul resembling our souls indeed in nature, but in will and power resembling Himself’ (PA, IV, 31)

Origen does not exclude the body from the human nature of Christ, nor does he see this as incompatible with divinity, for the faith teaches that the truth of both natures may be clearly shown to exist in one and the same Being. (PA, II, 6.2)

There is one place where Origen speaks of the soul assuming flesh from Mary, but only as a conjecture attributed to others:

Some, indeed, would have the following language of the apostle applied to the soul itself, as soon as it had assumed flesh from Mary, viz., Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but divested Himself (of His glory) taking upon Himself the form of a servant; since He undoubtedly restored it to the form of God by means of better examples and training, and recalled it to that fullness of which He had divested Himself. (PA, IV, 32)

Here the assumption of flesh is taken as an act of self-humiliation by the soul, as though this flesh were not something in accord with its own nature. In this view, the soul of Christ had to re-learn virtue to again ascend to that glorified state which had made it worthy of hypostatic union in the first place. This raises more theological problems than we can discuss in a short space. Suffice it to note, however, that Origen does not expressly make this opinion his own.

4.5 Christ’s Descent through All Heavenly Orders

One of the stranger doctrines attributed to the Origenists is described in the following anathema of 543:

4. If anyone says or thinks that the Word of God became like to all heavenly orders, so that for the cherubim He was a cherub, for the seraphim a seraph; in short, like all superior powers, let him be anathema.

The Evagrian version of this doctrine is condemned in 553:

7. If anyone says that Christ—of whom it is said that He appeared in the form of God, and before all times was united with God the Word, and was in these last days humbled to our humanity—did, as they say, compassionate the manifold ruin of that unity of Spirits (to which He also belonged), and in order to bring them back, passed through all orders, took different bodies and received different names, became all to all, among angels an angel, among powers a power, received among the different orders of rational beings a corresponding form, then received flesh and blood like us, and became a man for men—whoever says this, and does not confess that God the Word humbled Himself and became man, let him be anathema.

In this version, the Incarnation is just a means by which God accommodates Himself to lower orders of being. The Word of God takes on flesh like an adornment, rather than truly becoming man. Origen himself, we have seen, confessed with orthodox faith that the Word truly became man, so that one being had both divine and human natures.

Origen admits that Christ, as the Word or Wisdom of God, is in all the angels to some degree, as He is in all rational creatures. (PA, IV, 29) Yet nowhere does he say that Christ ever assumed any angelic nature in the manner in which he assumed a human soul. On the contrary, Origen notes that there is no authority in Scripture for claiming that angels even have souls, though we might say so in an analogous sense, insofar as there is rational feeling or motion in them. Indeed, he concludes, these spiritual souls (spiritus, pneuma) are more truly souls than our animal souls (anima, psyche), and it is the former we shall receive at the Resurrection. (PA, II, 8.1-2)

This speculation may have opened the door for later conjectures that Christ could have assumed the states of all the angelic ranks. After all, if the purest form of human soul is identical with an angelic spiritus or nous, and the soul of Christ was originally in the most perfect state, then its self-humiliation to the status of mere anima may have entailed a degradation through all the intermediate angelic ranks. Although Origen may have created the theoretical architecture that made such a conjecture plausible, there is no evidence in Peri Archon that he ever made such a conjecture himself.

4.6. That Human Bodies Will Rise in Spherical Form

As we have noted, Origen believes that the resurrected saints will have spiritual natures instead of animal souls. He comments on 1 Cor. 15:44: it is sown an animal body, and arises a spiritual body, pointing out that in the resurrection of the just there will be nothing of an animal nature. (PA, II, 8.2) Combined with what he has said earlier about the bodies of angelic spirits, it may be that the resurrected saints have only such rarefied bodies, and not true flesh at all. Thus we find this anathema of 543:

5. If anyone says or thinks that, at the resurrection, human bodies will rise in spherical form and unlike our present form, let him be anathema.

Neoplatonists supposed that the most perfect bodies were spherical, but what is essential here is the denial that our resurrected bodies are similar to our present form, for that effectively denies the resurrection of the body. To be sure, the resurrected bodies of the saints will be incorruptible, glorified and full of untold powers. They will be subject to the spirit rather than sin, but they will still be true flesh, just as Christ proved by signs that His resurrected Body was true flesh.

10. If anyone maintains that the body of the Lord, after the resurrection, is ethereal and spherical in form, and that the other resurrection bodies will be so also, and that after Christ laid aside His true body—and so with all other men—the corporal nature passes into nothing, let him be anathema.

11. If anyone says that the future judgment brings the annihilation of the body, and that the end of the story is the immaterial phusis, and that in future there will be nothing material, but only mere spirit, let him be anathema.

Origen, however, emphatically held to the Church’s creed that our bodies truly will rise again. He answers heretics thus:

What is that which died? Was it not a body? It is of the body, then, that there will be a resurrection. Let them next tell us if they think that we are to make use of bodies or not. I think that when the Apostle Paul says, that it is sown a natural body, it will arise a spiritual body, they cannot deny that it is a body which arises, or that in the resurrection we are to make use of bodies. What then? If it is certain that we are to make use of bodies, and if the bodies which have fallen are declared to rise again (for only that which before has fallen can be properly said to rise again), it can be a matter of doubt to no one that they rise again, in order that we may be clothed with them a second time at the resurrection. The one thing is closely connected with the other. For if bodies rise again, they undoubtedly rise to be coverings for us; and if it is necessary for us to be invested with bodies, as it is certainly necessary, we ought to be invested with no other than our own. (PA, II, 10.1)

These bodies are spiritual in the sense of casting away corruption and laying aside mortality. That is to say, they are animal bodies that acquire the qualities of a spiritual body, having the glory and power of the latter instead of the indignity of corruptibility and sinful passions, so that it is capable of inhabiting the heavens. (PA, II, 10.3)

Origen expressly denies that the resurrected bodies will have any shape other than that proper to human nature. The very notion of body requires that it is fashioned according to some shape, so we shall ask them if they can point out and describe to us the shape of a spiritual body; a thing which they can by no means do. (PA, II, 10.2) Thus the Neoplatonist error of taking spiritual bodies literally, thereby denying a genuine bodily resurrection, cannot be attributed to Origen.

4.7 Rational Souls of Celestial Bodies

The idea that the sun, moon, stars and heavenly spheres have rational souls is not a peculiarity of the Origenists, but reflects a more general belief in the ancient world. This belief was not purely grounded in pagan religion, but also found support in philosophy, as the sublimity of the celestial bodies, their regularity of locomotion and apparent incorruptibility were considered evidence of rationality and life. While such a belief may seem obviously incompatible with monotheism, in fact there are numerous Scriptures which describe the hosts of angels in terms of celestial bodies, and seem to affirm the rationality of these creatures, describing them in anthropomorphic terms.

While the Church has long tolerated the opinion that the heavenly bodies are guided by angels in their motions, the position that these sensible bodies are, in themselves, rational creatures, has been condemned, first in 543:

6. If anyone says that the heaven, the sun, the moon, the stars, and the waters that are above the heavens, have souls, and are reasonable beings, let him be anathema.

This anathema of 553 condemns an Evagrian elaboration:

3. If anyone says that the sun, the moon, and the stars belong to that henad of rational beings, and through their turning to the worse have become what they are, let him be anathema.

In the Evagrian system, all noes were once united as a henad, without distinction in number. Through sin, some separated from the henad, and were degraded to lower states according to the degree of their evil. Those who became the visible heavenly bodies were degraded enough to receive corporeality, albeit in its most exalted form.

Origen opens chapter 7 of Book I by stating that he will now treat the nature of rational beings according to our dogmatic belief, i.e., in agreement with the creed of the Church. All souls and all rational natures, whether holy or wicked, were formed or created, and all these, according to their proper nature, are incorporeal; but although incorporeal, they were nevertheless created… (PA, I, 7.1) There is nothing wrong with applying this statement even to human souls, for although the soul is the form of the human body, soul as such is incorporeal, so in that sense its proper nature is incorporeal.

Soon, however, Origen expands on these words of the Apostle: For in him were all things created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones, or dominations, or principalities, or powers. (1 Col. 1:16) He infers that that the thrones, dominions, principalities or powers must include both the visible and invisible, i.e., the corporeal as well as incorporeal. On this basis, he inquires whether the sun, moon and stars might be considered corporeal principalities, since they govern day and night.

Opposing the opinion that the celestial bodies are unchangeable, Origen cites Job 25:5 as appearing to suggest that the stars are capable of sin: The stars also are not clean in Your sight. He thus feels justified in inquiring whether it is allowable to suppose that they are living and rational beings; then, in the next place, whether their souls came into existence at the same time with their bodies, or seem to be anterior to them… He admits this inquiry may seem to be somewhat bold, so he is no longer citing the received dogma of the Church. (PA, I, 7.3)

We think, then, that they may be designated as living beings, for this reason, that they are said to receive commandments from God, which is ordinarily the case only with rational beings. ‘I have given a commandment to all the stars,’ says the Lord. This is clearly given as mere opinion, with the further justification: And seeing that the stars move with such order and regularity, that their movements never appear to be at any time subject to derangement, would it not be the height of folly to say that so orderly an observance of method and plan could be carried out or accomplished by irrational beings? (PA, I, 7.3)

He proceeds to the question of whether the celestial bodies were endowed with a soul at the time of their creation, or whether their spirit was implanted in them, not at the creation of their bodies, but from without, after they had been already made. I, for my part, suspect that the spirit was implanted in them from without. This may be established first on conjectural grounds: If the soul of a man, which is certainly inferior while it remains the soul of a man, was not formed along with his body, but is proved to have been implanted strictly from without, much more must this be the case with those living beings which are called heavenly. (PA, I, 7.4) Here he gives his examples of Jacob and John the Baptist, already discussed, and the analogy with celestial bodies gives evidence that he believed such human souls to be implanted after the formation of the body, and likely would have thought the same of Christ. The false doctrine of implantation of pre-existent human souls is now used to infer the same for the celestial beings.

Origen purports to find reference in Scripture to this strange doctrine:

And not only we, but the creation itself groans together, and is in pain until now. And hence we have to inquire what are the groanings, and what are the pains. Let us see then, in the first place, what is the vanity to which the creature is subject. I apprehend that it is nothing else than the body; for although the body of the stars is ethereal, it is nevertheless material. Whence also Solomon appears to characterize the whole of corporeal nature as a kind of burden which enfeebles the vigour of the soul in the following language: Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher; all is vanity. I have looked, and seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity. To this vanity, then, is the creature subject, that creature especially which, being assuredly the greatest in this world, holds also a distinguished principality of labour, i.e., the sun, and moon, and stars, are said to be subject to vanity, because they are clothed with bodies, and set apart to the office of giving light to the human race. And this creature, he remarks, was subjected to vanity not willingly. For it did not undertake a voluntary service to vanity, but because it was the will of Him who made it subject, and because of the promise of the Subjector to those who were reduced to this unwilling obedience, that when the ministry of their great work was performed, they were to be freed from this bondage of corruption and vanity when the time of the glorious redemption of God’s children should have arrived. (PA, I, 7.5)

Origen does not overtly say that the corporeality of celestial beings is a punishment for sin, though he does treat it as a burden or labor imposed on them for a time. He does, however, say elsewhere that, by slothfulness and neglect, some fall away from the blessedness of angels, and become influences, principalities, powers, thrones or dominions. These are not irrevocably fallen, but may be restored by good principles to their original happiness. (PA, I, 6.2) Since the heavenly bodies are identified as among those fallen to such ranks, their state is evidently to be considered a consequence of such neglect or sloth.

4.8 Salvation of Demons

Origen’s notion of a final restoration or apokatastasis supposedly included the eventual salvation even of all demons, contrary to the dogma of the Church that their punishment is eternal. Thus we find this anathema of 543:

7. If anyone says or thinks that Christ the Lord in a future time will be crucified for demons as He was for men, let him be anathema.

…and this from 553:

12. If anyone says that the heavenly powers and all men and the devil and evil spirits unite themselves with the Word of God in precisely the same manner as does that Nous whom they call Christ, and who bears the form of God, and, as they say, humbled Himself; and whoever maintains that the kingdom of Christ will have an end—let him be anathema.

This amplifies the doctrine with the Evagrian notion that the henad will be restored, so that all spirits become one, risen to that same exalted state as the nous of Christ.

Origen, however, recognized that some beings had sunk to such depth that, far from deserving instruction in salutary principles, they…

…continue, on the contrary, in a state of enmity and opposition to those who are receiving this instruction and teaching. And hence it is that the whole of this mortal life is full of struggles and trials, caused by the opposition and enmity of those who fell from a better condition without at all looking back, and who are called the devil and his angels, and the other orders of evil, which the apostle classed among the opposing powers. But whether any of these orders who act under the government of the devil, and obey his wicked commands, will in a future world be converted to righteousness because of their possessing the faculty of freedom of will, or whether persistent and inveterate wickedness may be changed by the power of habit into nature, is a result which you yourself, reader, may approve of, if neither in these present worlds which are seen and temporal, nor in those which are unseen and are eternal, that portion is to differ wholly from the final unity and fitness of things. (PA, I, 6.3)

At first, Origen characterizes the demons as having fallen without at all looking back, suggesting an irrevocable commitment to evil. Nonetheless, he allows both possibilities: first, that the freedom of the will may enable them to someday convert to righteousness; second, that their persistent ill use of that will may convert habit into an irrevocable nature. The only thing he insists upon is that their final fate will agree with the final unity and fitness of things.

Since Origen leaves the salvation of demons as an open question, it is not certain that they should be included in the intent of the following passage:

But in the meantime, both in those temporal worlds which are seen, as well as in those eternal worlds which are invisible, all those beings are arranged, according to a regular plan, in the order and degree of their merits; so that some of them in the first, others in the second, some even in the last times, after having undergone heavier and severer punishments, endured for a lengthened period, and for many ages, so to speak, improved by this stern method of training, and restored at first by the instruction of the angels, and subsequently by the powers of a higher grade, and thus advancing through each stage to a better condition, reach even to that which is invisible and eternal, having travelled through, by a kind of training, every single office of the heavenly powers. From which, I think, this will appear to follow as an inference, that every rational nature may, in passing from one order to another, go through each to all, and advance from all to each, while made the subject of various degrees of proficiency and failure according to its own actions and endeavours, put forth in the enjoyment of its power of freedom of will. (PA, I, 6.3)

Whatever we may think of this ascent through heavenly offices, it applies only to those who are capable and willing to receive instruction, such as the powers, principalities, etc. Whether this applies even to the demons is left open by Origen.

4.9 Limited Power of God in Creation

The following anathema applies not to an actual doctrine of the Origenists, but to the logical consequence of one of their doctrines.

8. If anyone says or thinks that the power of God is limited, and that He created as much as He was able to compass, let him be anathema.

If God’s power is unlimited, per the Catholic faith, then it follows that He could always have created more than He actually did create. Thus the Origenist belief that He created all possible noes is incompatible with the Catholic faith, insofar as it implies a limitation in the divine power of creation. Origen himself, however, never taught that God created all possible spirits.

An anathema of 553 condemns an Origenist belief that the power of Christ is limited:

13. If anyone says that Christ (that Nous) is not at all different from the other rational beings, and that neither in substance, nor in respect of knowledge, nor in power and energy, exceeds all others, but that all will stand at the right hand of God, like the so-called (by them) Christ, let him be anathema.

Origen repeatedly indicates that Christ as the Word of God is of the divine nature, equal in power and deeds to the Father. (e.g., PA I, 2.12; Philokalia XXIII, 2) Nonetheless, he also asserts that the soul of Christ is no different in nature from other rational beings, though it was greater in merit. This in itself would not be heretical, for the human soul of Christ is truly human in nature, not some other class of soul. The problem is that Origen supposes this soul had an existence before the hypostatic union, so that there was a Christ who had no properly divine power (except insofar as all rational creatures may partake of the divine). From this error, compounded with the notion that the end of time will resemble the beginning, one might infer the late Origenist doctrine condemned in the anathema.

4.10 Apokatastasis

The idea that God, at the Last Judgment, will restore order to creation, elevating creatures to their original blessedness, is not in itself heterodox, and in fact finds copious support in the Scriptures and in the teaching of the Fathers, especially those of the East. The Origenists, however, insisted on a close identity between the states of creation at the beginning and end of time, leading to some bizarre consequences, especially given their peculiar doctrines of the pre-existent states of men, angels and Christ.

9. If anyone says or thinks that the punishment of demons and of impious men is only temporary, and will one day have an end, and that a restoration (apokatastasis) will take place, let him be anathema.

This doctrine, anathematized in 543, would make the restoration extend even to the elevation of the worst sinners and demons to their original blessedness. This denies the Church’s belief in the possibility of eternal punishment, an alternative that Christ repeatedly emphasized. God restores order by punishing unrepentant sinners, not by compelling them to reject sin. Origen, we have seen, believed that the freedom of will persisted through all time. For him the question was only whether the habit of willing evil might become a second nature, making it impossible for a creature to choose good. At no point does he consider the possibility of an irrevocable will by the creature, or an irrevocable judgment by its Creator. Thus he misconstrues the nature of this restoration, so that it is something altogether separate and different from what Christians have called the Last Judgment. In his view, the Last Judgment would really be temporary, followed by a long period of learning and ascending through the angelic orders, until blessedness is restored by the efforts of creatures.

14. If anyone maintains that one day all rational beings will again form a unit, when the individuals and the numbers are removed with the bodies; and that the destruction of the worlds and the laying aside of the bodies will follow upon the knowledge of rational things, and that the abandonment of names and an identity of knowledge and person will result; further, at the fabled apokatastasis only spirits alone will remain, as it was in the reigned pre-existence—let him be anathema.

15. If anyone says that the life of spirits will then be like the earlier life when they had not yet descended and fallen, so that the beginning and the end will be like each other, and the end the measure for the beginning, let him be anathema.

The Evagrian version, condemned in 553, expands on Origenism by making creatures ascend to a henad or unity, thereby abolishing their individuality and their bodies. Origen himself never went to this extreme of denying the eternity of the body or abolishing the individuality of creatures. Still, there are elements in his thought that incline to such a conclusion.

Origen first discusses the apokatastasis in Book I, chapter 6 of Peri Archon. At the start of chapter 7, he takes care to say that all in the previous section was by intelligent inference, not dogmatic definition. Thus we should keep in mind that this is asserted speculatively, and Origen does not pretend that this was the received teaching of the Church. He anticipates that readers might find his speculations on this subtle topic to be vain and superfluous, even heretical and opposed to the faith of the Church, but urges that a perfect and instructed understanding is needed to follow him. He presents these subjects in the manner rather of an investigation and discussion, than in that of a fixed and certain decision. (PA, I, 6.1)

Origen starts out with the perfectly orthodox view: The end of the world, then, and the final consummation, will take place when every one shall be subjected to punishment for his sins; a time which God alone knows, when He will bestow on each one what he deserves. He adds: We think, indeed, that the goodness of God, through His Christ, may recall all His creatures to one end, even His enemies being conquered and subdued. This idea that even the enemies of God will be made subject to divine order is not unique to Origen, but is common among the Greek Fathers and has support in Holy Scripture. Indeed, the Apostle teaches that all things will be made subject to Christ. Yet Origen goes further, and interprets:

What, then, is this putting under by which all things must be made subject to Christ? I am of opinion that it is this very subjection by which we also wish to be subject to Him, by which the apostles also were subject, and all the saints who have been followers of Christ. For the name subjection, by which we are subject to Christ, indicates that the salvation which proceeds from Him belongs to His subjects, agreeably to the declaration of David, Shall not my soul be subject unto God? From Him comes my salvation. (PA, I, 6.1)

From this identity of salvation with subjection to Christ, Origen infers that even the enemies of Christ, being his subjects, will partake of salvation. As Origen’s own anticipation of being accused of heresy confirms, universal salvation was not a dogma of the Church. He recognizes this, but urges that there is some deeper, more subtle teaching in Scripture, hinting that Divine Goodness is so great that it even extends to enemies, consonant with the teaching of Christ. Now this is an especially striking doctrine to be found in Origen, who allows for no undeserved grace or favor. Thus he must show at some point how this is to be harmonized with justice.

The many differences and varieties among things arose from one beginning, and so they will be recalled to one end, which is like the beginning, namely the enjoyment of blessedness by paticipating in holiness and wisdom, and in divinity itself. As goodness is essential only to the Holy Trinity, it is accidental and perishable in everything else, and creatures may fall away from such participation through slothful neglect. Thus all creatures were arranged, each according the dieversity of his conduct, among the different orders in heaven, earth, and under the earth. Those who remained as in the beginning had the rank of angels, while others fell to those of influences, principalities, powers, thrones and dominions. But those who have been removed from their primal state of blessedness have not been removed irrecoverably, but have been placed under the rule of those holy and blessed orders which we have described; and by availing themselves of the aid of these, and being remoulded by salutary principles and discipline, they may recover themselves, and be restored to their condition of happiness. (PA, I, 6.2) Here Origen is only speaking of the heavenly orders.

From all which I am of opinion, so far as I can see, that this order of the human race has been appointed in order that in the future world, or in ages to come, when there shall be the new heavens and new earth, spoken of by Isaiah, it may be restored to that unity promised by the Lord Jesus… That they may be one, even as We are one; I in them, and You in Me, that they may be made perfect in one. (PA, I, 6.2) Origen here does not further specify what is meant by unity, nor does he indicate whether any human is excluded from this restoration.

As remarked previously, Origen left it an open question as to whether the demons will be saved. In any event, many creatures will ascend through the heavenly offices, being improved by the stern training of severe punishment, even in the last times. They are restored at first by the instructions of angels, and subsequently by the powers of a higher grade. (PA, I, 6.3) This optimistic view of restoration is in tension with Origen’s insistence that these advances are subject to degrees of proficiency and failure according to the exercise of free will. The restoration occurs not solely by divine action, in the form of imposing salutary punishments, but also by creatures freely choosing to accept instruction and acquire greater powers to participate in holiness.

This restoration will transform the temporal or material world as well, but will not destroy it: For if the heavens are to be changed, assuredly that which is changed does not perish, and if the fashion of the world passes away, it is by no means an annihilation or destruction of their material substance that is shown to take place, but a kind of change of quality and transformation of appearance. (PA, I, 6.4) This applies in particular to the resurrected bodies of the saints:

And if any one imagine that at the end material, i.e., bodily, nature will be entirely destroyed, he cannot in any respect meet my view, how beings so numerous and powerful are able to live and to exist without bodies, since it is an attribute of the divine nature alone…i.e., of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit…to exist without any material substance, and without partaking in any degree of a bodily adjunct. Another, perhaps, may say that in the end every bodily substance will be so pure and refined as to be like the æther, and of a celestial purity and clearness. How things will be, however, is known with certainty to God alone, and to those who are His friends through Christ and the Holy Spirit. (PA, I, 6.4)

Here Origen’s belief that even angels have rarefied bodies serves as a defense against denials of a carnal resurrection. If Divinity alone can subsist without any attachment to a body, it follows that all rational creatures, including humans, must have bodies in order to exercise their powers. These may be purified bodies, but Origen disavows any definite knowledge of what they will be like, and will later deny that our bodies will be aethereal.

In the third book of Peri Archon, Origen returns to the theme of the final consummation. The highest good or the end of all blessings is to become as like God as possible. This is attested not only by philosophers, but by Holy Scripture. He interprets Genesis 1:26-27 to mean:

…that man received the dignity of God’s image at his first creation; but that the perfection of his likeness has been reserved for the consummation—namely, he might acquire it for himself by the exercise of his own diligence in the imitation of God, the possibility of attaining to perfection being granted him at the beginning through the dignity of the divine image, and the perfect realization of the divine likeness being reached in the end by the fulfilment of the (necessary) works. (PA, III, 6.1)

Origen would attribute theosis to human works, though it is made possible in the first place by man being created in the imago Dei. Further, he holds that these results are brought about by the Lord’s intercession, as shown by His prayer in John 17:21 that we shall all be one just as the Father and Son are one.

In which the divine likeness itself already appears to advance, if we may so express ourselves, and from being merely similar, to become the same, because undoubtedly in the consummation or end God is all and in all. And with reference to this, it is made a question by some whether the nature of bodily matter, although cleansed and purified, and rendered altogether spiritual, does not seem either to offer an obstruction towards attaining the dignity of the (divine) likeness, or to the property of unity, because neither can a corporeal nature appear capable of any resemblance to a divine nature which is certainly incorporeal; nor can it be truly and deservedly designated one with it… (PA, III, 6.1)

Christ’s prayer suggests that our future likeness to God will not be a mere similarity, but a mysterious sameness or unity with God. Some may object that any bodily nature, no matter how purified, is incompatible with likeness to God, much less unity with the divine nature. Origen, however, opposes this position, and clarifies:

Since, then, it is promised that in the end God will be all and in all, we are not, as is fitting, to suppose that animals, either sheep or other cattle, come to that end, lest it should be implied that God dwelt even in animals… and so, too, with pieces of wood or stones, lest it should be said that God is in these also. So, again, nothing that is wicked must be supposed to attain to that end, lest, while God is said to be in all things, He may also be said to be in a vessel of wickedness. For if we now assert that God is everywhere and in all things, on the ground that nothing can be empty of God, we nevertheless do not say that He is now all things in those in whom He is. (PA, III, 3.6.2)

Purely irrational natures are incapable of union with God; they may have God in them, but they cannot be made fully God-like. Thus Origen infers that they will not be present at the final consummation. This does not, however, prevent rational creatures, namely humans, from having bodies:

I am of opinion that the expression, by which God is said to be all in all, means that He is all in each individual person. Now He will be all in each individual in this way: when all which any rational understanding, cleansed from the dregs of every sort of vice, and with every cloud of wickedness completely swept away, can either feel, or understand, or think, will be wholly God; and when it will no longer behold or retain anything else than God, but when God will be the measure and standard of all its movements… (PA, III, 6.3)

When God is the sole object of the thoughts and acts of a rational creature, God is all in him. Such a creature has no knowledge of evil, nor even a desire for such knowledge, so he is restored to the original condition of rational nature, when it had no need to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Some are of the opinion that this blessedness would be impeded by the intermixture of any material substance. But Origen has already denied this opinion, and does so again.

We ought not, however, to doubt that the nature of this present body of ours may, by the will of God, who made it what it is, be raised to those qualities of refinement, and purity, and splendour (which characterize the body referred to), according as the condition of things requires, and the deserts of our rational nature shall demand… (PA, III, 6.4)

Nonetheless, he infers from the final unity of all things that there is no longer any diversity in the species or varieties of matter: But when things have begun to hasten to that consummation that all may be one, as the Father is one with the Son, it may be understood as a rational inference, that where all are one, there will no longer be any diversity. (PA, III, 6.4)

Death will be destroyed not in the sense of becoming non-existent, but by ceasing to be an enemy, it ceases to be death. Nothing made for existence can cease to be. For this reason also will they admit of change and variety, so as to be placed, according to their merits, either in a better or worse position; but no destruction of substance can befall those things which were created by God for the purpose of permanent existence. The flesh is not destroyed, only changed by death into dust, and it will be restored to life, changed a second time according to the merits of the indwelling soul, advance to the glory of a spiritual body…(PA, III, 6.5)

The re-establishment of likeness to God is not sudden, but gradual:

And this result must be understood as being brought about, not suddenly, but slowly and gradually, seeing that the process of amendment and correction will take place imperceptibly in the individual instances during the lapse of countless and unmeasured ages, some outstripping others, and tending by a swifter course towards perfection, while others again follow close at hand, and some again a long way behind; and thus, through the numerous and uncounted orders of progressive beings who are being reconciled to God from a state of enmity, the last enemy is finally reached, who is called death, so that he also may be destroyed, and no longer be an enemy. (PA, III, 6.6)

This logic would seem to extend to all enemies of God, including demons. The Last Judgment is followed by aeons of self-improvement by instruction and salutary pains. The body benefits from the improvement of the soul:

We are to hold that this very body which now, on account of its service to the soul, is styled an animal body, will, by means of a certain progress, when the soul, united to God, shall have been made one spirit with Him (the body even then ministering, as it were, to the spirit), attain to a spiritual condition and quality, especially since, as we have often pointed out, bodily nature was so formed by the Creator, as to pass easily into whatever condition he should wish, or the nature of the case demand. (PA, III, 6.6)

The body may acquire whatever quality or condition God wishes, but in the end there will no longer be diverse species of bodies, as all will be raised to the highest quality or condition. This highest quality is the capability to receive the truest, everlasting law. Just as the law of Moses prepared men for the more perfect principles of Christ:

…so also another earth, which receives into it all the saints, may first imbue and mould them by the institutions of the true and everlasting law, that they may more easily gain possession of those perfect institutions of heaven, to which nothing can be added; in which there will be, of a truth, that Gospel which is called everlasting, and that Testament, ever new, which shall never grow old. (PA, III, 6.8)

Here it would seem that the everlasting covenant is something different from the Gospel already revealed, or else a more perfect revelation of the Gospel. The transformed earth enables bodies to become capable of receiving this institution.

In this way, accordingly, we are to suppose that at the consummation and restoration of all things, those who make a gradual advance, and who ascend (in the scale of improvement), will arrive in due measure and order at that land, and at that training which is contained in it, where they may be prepared for those better institutions to which no addition can be made.

After ages of self-improvement, the saints finally arrive at the new earth and the training it offers, under the instruction of the Master:

He will Himself instruct those who are capable of receiving Him in respect of His being wisdom, reigning in them until He has subjected them to the Father, who has subdued all things to Himself, i.e., that when they shall have been made capable of receiving God, God may be to them all in all. Then accordingly, as a necessary consequence, bodily nature will obtain that highest condition to which nothing more can be added. (PA, III, 6.9)

It is at this point that all bodies are of one kind. Origen, however, declares that this body is not made of some fifth element (i.e., aether), but rather of the four elements we know, which is to say, real matter.

4.11 Summary of Findings

Among all the Origenist doctrines anathematized by the Church, only a handful were held by Origen himself. First, he held that human souls were pre-existent as moral agents capable of merit. Second, the soul of Christ pre-existed and obtained merit prior to its hypostatic union with God, and this union was prior to the Incarnation. Third, the sun, moon, and stars have rational souls, and attained their present state through their own moral failing. Fourth, that the divine punishment of demons may be only temporary, followed by their salvation. Fifth, that the Last Judgment and its punishments are followed by long periods of improvement and ascent through instruction, so that the restoration of creation takes place ages later. Origen does not pretend that any of these doctrines were taught by the Church, but he does invoke Scriptural authority for the first three. The fourth he regards as an open question, while the fifth is expressly advanced only as a speculative opinion.

Pre-existence of the soul per se is not obviously contrary to the faith. Indeed, orthodox Christians speak of God infusing the soul into the body, and Scripture teaches that God has known and loved our souls before we were conceived (Jeremiah 1:5), giving rise to the idea that there is some eternal storehouse of souls from which He draws and imparts life. What is foreign to Christianity is the notion that these souls, prior to conception, have an active moral life, committing meritorious acts and sins. Origen conceived this fiction because he believed that God could not bestow favors gratuitously without violating justice, so any favors at birth must be a reward for our deeds before birth. Likewise, any degraded state must be the result of our prior negligence or sin. While the Church indeed had not defined what occurs before this life, this was hardly a license to construct any theory whatsoever. The apostolic churches had already condemned the fantastic theories of pre-existence held by the Gnostics. The idea that every misfortune of birth must be a penalty for one’s personal sins is denied by Christ Himself. (John 9:1-3) The idea that God cannot bestow a gratuitous favor without violating justice is unique to Origen among early Christians, and contrary to the tenor of the New Testament, which repeatedly emphasizes God’s superabundant grace and mercy. Without pretending to judge formal heresy, we may find that he was highly imprudent in his speculation, even by the standards of his time.

This theory of pre-existence, when applied to the soul of Christ, leads to more serious errors, including the splitting of Christ into two persons before the hypostatic union, and making this union of divinity and humanity something altogether distinct from the Incarnation. These would have been recognized as foreign doctrines even in Origen’s time, as his own confession of the Church’s faith in Peri Archon indicates. Christ was born of the Father before all ages, and became man. The same who was eternally begotten also became man. This should have alerted Origen to a serious problem with his speculation. The heretical followers of Ptolemy and Colorbasus held that the Savior was produced by Christ and the Holy Spirit, and on that acccount he too was called Christ. (Adversus Haereses I, 12, 4) Origen is perplexingly unclear about the personhood of Christ with respect to the human soul and the Word before the hypostatic union, so he may not have realized this heretical implication. He certainly, however, made the hypostatic union prior to the Incarnation, so the Word became human without being made flesh. His speculation about the soul of Christ is less excusable, as it comes into conflict with established Christological doctrines, which were taught by the Church well before Nicaea, as Origen himself attests.

That the stars have rational souls might only be an error in philosophy, but Origen also affirms that they were fallen from an angelic state. This implies a claim about angels and their moral life, again informed by the idea that every lower state must be a consequence of past demerit. He needs to resort to this explanation, however, only because of his assumption that the visible celestial bodies have rational souls. This coupling of philosophical error with an insistence on strict commutative justice yields this materially heretical result, which is again derivative of the first error that souls are penalized for deeds of their prior existence.

Origen considered it an open question whether even the demons might be eventually saved, though this comes into conflict with the Church’s teaching that they are subject to everlasting fire, as attested by St. Irenaeus. (Adv. Haer., IV, 40) Origen himself recognized his opinion would be perceived as heretical by many in his day, but he thought he was giving a deeper insight into the greatness of divine goodness. His error depends on his insistence that the perpetual freedom of the will precludes irrevocable commitments to sin or irrevocable divine judgments.

This leads to his peculiar account of apokatastasis. What is materially heretical is not the suggestion that all men might be saved, or that all may ascend to union with God. The central error is that there is no finality to the Last Judgment and its punishments, so that men may continue to earn merit for aeons, ascending the heavens as their due reward for their efforts. Yet the Church, following Christ, teaches that there is no opportunity for earning merit after death, and certainly not after the end of this world. Night is coming when no one can work. (John 9:4) Origen offers his peculiar opinion only as conjecture, and indeed the difficulty of interpreting the Apocalypse of St. John led to diverse speculations among early Christians, so he is not unique in his imaginativeness.

After the condemnation of Origenist versions of apokatastasis, Latin Catholics became hostile to any assertion of theosis for the human race or even the possibility of universal salvation for men, though these opinions were held by perfectly orthodox Greek Fathers. In fact, Catholic faith requires us to believe only that (1) the devil and his fallen angels are eternally condemned and (2) that God will condemn men to eternal punishment if they do not repent of their sins before death. Yet the Church teaches that the invincibly ignorant are not culpable for their sins, even if unrepentant, and that the judgment of the internal forum is known only to God. Thus it is theoretically possible—though humanly speaking, highly improbable—for all men to be saved. God desires for all men to be saved, so Christians should hope for this, and it would be irrational to hope for that which is absolutely impossible. We have no way of knowing which particular men will be saved or condemned, so we are to treat all men on earth with the dignity of a son of God, since as long as they live they might be saved, as far as we know.

The common motivation behind Origen’s errors is his conviction that sanctification of a creature is always a reward for that creature’s prior meritorious acts. He correctly adduces many Scriptures indicating that we are rewarded for our acts. St. Irenaeus likewise teaches that we receive an eternal reward for our suffering. (Adv. Haer.) Yet, as the early Scholastics would clarify centuries later, we have only congruous merit, not condign merit, for this divinely bestowed reward. That is to say, our works are not good enough to earn Heaven in the sense of strict commutative justice or as wages due. Rather, God has decided that such meritorious acts should be rewarded with Heaven, something far greater in worth than our deeds. All divine rewards are gratuitous, as God cannot owe a creature anything.

It should not be thought that Origen believed in salvation by works alone or that free will had no need of divine assistance. Indeed, in Peri Archon, he says that, in the matter of our salvation, what is done by God is infinitely greater than what is done by ourselves and therefore, I think, is it said that it is not of him that wills, nor of him that runs, but of God that shows mercy. (PA, III, 1.18 [Gk]) It is only by Divine Providence that seeds fall on rocky ground, and God alone knows the medicine that each person needs to recognize his own defects and submit to the training that removes faults and instructs in wisdom. (PA, III, 1.15) Thus all of the self-improvement described by Origen in Peri Archon presupposes this merciful divine action. Nor is this divine aid strictly earned, for God bestowed the grace of His benefits even upon the unworthy and the unbelieving, that every mouth might indeed be shut, and that the mind of man might know that all the deficiency was on its own part, and none on that of God. (PA, III, 1.17) Thus undeserved grace precedes our free choice to submit to training in virtue. Both grace and free will are necessary.

Moreover, the greater part of our salvation is due to divine grace, not human effort. We have several excerpts to this effect in the Philokalia: our perfecting is not brought about if we do nothing at all, though it is not completed by us, but God effects the greater part of it. (21.18) And certainly in the saving of our souls what God gives is immensely more than what comes from our own ability (21.18)

Origen asserts free will not to limit divine power, but to condemn the moral fatalism of heretics. Our power of willing freely comes from God, but we choose how to use it: God does not cause to will good or will evil, for we have free will, but what is of God is willing and acting in general. God gives us the faculty, which we use for good or bad purposes. (21.19)

The power we have does not compel us to advance in goodness apart from the knowledge of God, nor does the knowledge of God compel us to advance unless we also contribute to the good result; for neither does our power apart from the knowledge of God, and the full use of what is in a worthy sense our power, make a man to be unto honour or unto dishonour; nor does God’s power alone fashion a man unto honour or dishonour unless He have our choice, inclining to the better or the worse, as a sort of raw material out of which to make the difference. (21.23)

God and man cooperate to create a vessel of honor or dishonor. The exact mode of this cooperation is the occasion of countless controversies on grace and free will. Suffice it to say that for Origen this cooperation is necessary, however it occurs.

With all this testimony on the role of undeserved grace, why does Origen object to the idea that God could bestow favor on one person more than another, without reference to prior meritorious acts? He admits that God has bestowed undeserved grace upon all men for their salvation; it would seem he objects only to this being bestowed unequally without merit, as that would be an arbitrary regard for persons. Yet surely it was on account of no prior merit that the Blessed Virgin was chosen for the singular privilege of becoming the Temple of the Lord. On this peculiar point of ethics, that the distribution of graces must have no regard for persons, Origen appears to hang the necessity of his entire edifice of pre-existent merit.

A consequence of this system, making the end like the beginning, is that full restoration to union with God is attained only by performing meritorious deeds (though preceded by grace) even after the Last Judgment. This would make salvation, even the restoration of the world, earned by our freely willed deeds. In fact, salvation is a gratuitous reward for our congruous merits. Salvation is earned not by us but by the condign merits of Christ. Although Origen cannot be faulted for his ignorance of this distinction in types of merit, he ought to have seen how his system effectively reduced the role of Christ from Redeemer to an instructor or trainer.

While it is certain that Origen did indeed hold some materially heretical opinions, it is far less certain that he was aware of any contradiction between his opinions and the doctrine of the Church, much less that he would have held to them had he been made so aware. Thus it seems highly unlikely that he would have been convicted of formal heresy had such a distinction been recognized in the sixth century. At any rate, it is outside our competence to make a judgment of formal heresy. The errors of Origen, though real and serious, need not detract from his general body of work and personal character, which have been rightly acclaimed by many in the Church, including saints, long after the anathemas of 553. Nonetheless, the anathemas stand, if only to guard against those who invoke the reputation of Origen in support of these heresies, as if he were an early witness to their authenticity as Christian doctrine. On the contrary, Origen himself repeatedly attests that these peculiar views were his own opinions and interpretations of Scripture, not something he had received from his teachers or the general doctrine of the Church.

Notes

[1] Origen. De Principiis. Frederick Crombie, trans. In: Ante-Nicene Fathers, eds. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, A. Cleveland Coxe, v.4 (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1885), pp.239-384.

[2] For a defense of Origen against the charge of subordinationism, see:

Cash, Billy. Origen’s Trinitarian Theology (Western Seminary, 2010).

Crouzel, Henri. Origen: The Life and Thought of the First Great Theologian (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1989).

[3] Modern linguists have pointed out that the Greek monogenes, unlike the Latin unigenitus, does not explicitly mean "only-begotten," but rather "only one of its kind" or "one and only." Still, in the context of sonship, monogenes logically implies being the only begotten, since being a true son means being begotten.

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