Amy Eisele Allison Finley 2P Origen

Amy Eisele Allison Finley 2P Origen - Transcript

Origen
185 254 AD



Origen lived during a turbulent period of the Roman Empire when the barbarian invasions were sweeping across Europe threatening the stability of the Roman Empire His was also a time of periodic persecution against Christians notably during the reigns of the Emperors Severus Maximin and Decius so that Origen s life began and ended with persecution

QuickTime and a decompressor are needed to see this picture

Early Life


His family was devoutly Christian and likely highly educated for his father who died a martyr made sure that Origen was schooled not only in biblical studies but in Hellenistic education as well Origen was only seventeen when he took over as Headmaster of the Christian Catechetical School at Alexandria He became interested in Greek philosophy quite early in his life studying for a while under Ammonius Saccas the teacher of Plotinus It is probably around this time that he began composing On First Principles As he became ever more devoted to the Christian faith he sold his library abandoning any contact with pagan Greek wisdom though he would eventually return to secular studies



Education


His thought is informed by his Greek philosophical education specifically that of the Middle Platonic tradition notably the works of the Jewish Platonist Philo of Alexandria and the Neopythagorean philosopher Numenius of Apamea Another extremely important part of Origen s intellectual heritage is the concept of apokatastasis or restoration of all things This term first appears as a philosophical concept in the writings of the Stoics In Origen s time Christianity as a religion had not yet developed a system of theology as a basis of orthodoxy therefore in addition to a wide variety of opinions regarding the faith there were also various sects each claiming to possess the truth of the Christian faith





Philosophical System
Origen was the first systematic theologian and philosopher of the Christian Church who found much of his value in Hellenic philosophy While Origen s opposition to Gnosticism precluded any doctrinal influence he saw in Gnosticism for it was precisely by virtue of their elaborate and self consistent systems that the Gnostics were successful in gaining adherents Since there were no non Gnostic Christian theological systems in his day it was up to Origen to formulate one This was the program of his treatise On First Principles





Philosophical Themes



The Trinity Souls and their Fall Multiple Ages Metempsychosis and the Restoration of All

The Trinity
He begins his treatise On First Principles by establishing in typical Platonic fashion a divine hierarchical triad but instead of calling these principles by typical Platonic terms like monad dyad and world soul he calls them Father Christ and Holy Spirit though he does describe these principles using Platonic language The first of these principles the Father is a perfect unity complete unto Himself and without body a purely spiritual mind



Souls and their Fall


What are now souls began as minds and through boredom or distraction grew cold as they moved away from the divine warmth Thus departing from God they came to be clothed in bodies at first of a fine ethereal and invisible nature but later as souls fell further away from God their bodies changed from a fine ethereal and invisible body to a body of a coarser and more solid state Origen states that there are varying degrees of subtleness even among the celestial and spiritual When a soul achieves salvation according to Origen it ceases being a soul and returns to a state of pure mind or understanding



Multiple Ages Metempsychosis and the Restoration of All


Origen did not believe in the eternal suffering of sinners in hell For him all souls including the devil himself will eventually achieve salvation even if it takes innumerable ages to do so for Origen believed that God s love is so powerful as to soften even the hardest heart and that the human intellect being the image of God will never freely choose oblivion over proximity to God The restoration of all beings is the most important concept in Origen s philosophy and the touchstone by which he judges all other theories His concept of universal restoration is based on equally strong Scriptural and Hellenistic philosophical grounds and is not original as it can be traced back to Heraclitus who stated that the beginning and end are common Origen s strength resided in his philosophical ability to use reason and dialectic in support of humane doctrines not in the ability to use scripture in support of dogmatical and anti humanistic arguments Origen imagined salvation not in terms of the saved rejoicing in heaven and the damned suffering in hell but as a reunion of all souls with God





Important Themes
Free Will Education and History Eternal Motion of Souls



Free Will
Origen recognized freedom only in reason in rationality which is precisely the ability to recognize and embrace the good which is for him God Origen firmly believed that the knowledge of the good is Itself enough to remove all taint of sin and ignorance from souls A freedom to embrace evil would have made no sense to Origen who as a Platonist identified evil with enslavement and goodness with freedom The soul who has seen the good he argued will not fall into ignorance again for the good is inspiring and worthy of eternal contemplation





Education and History


Origen may rightfully be called the first philosopher of history like Hegel he understood history as a process involving the participation of persons in grand events leading to an eventual culmination or end of history Origen did not understand the end of history as the final stage of a grand revelation of God but rather as the culmination of a human divine process in which the image and likeness of God is re united with its source and model God Himself Origen insists undermine the free will of His creatures rather God will over the course of numerous ages if need be educate souls little by little leading them eventually by virtue of their own growing responsiveness back to Himself where they will glory in the uncovering of the infinite mysteries of the eternal godhead





Eternal Motion of Souls


A common motif in Platonism during before and after Origen s time is salvific stasis or the idea that the soul will achieve complete rest and staticity when it finally ascends to a contemplation of the good In Origen s own time Plotinus developed his notion of an about face of the soul resulting in an instant union of the soul with its divine principle understood as an idealized changeless form of contemplation allowing for no dynamism or personal development Origen managed to maintain the transcendentality of God on the one hand and the dynamic persistence of souls in being on the other He did this by defining souls not by virtue of their intellectual content but rather by their ability to engage in a finite manner with the infinite God This engagement is constitutive of the soul s existence and guarantees its uniqueness Each soul engages uniquely with God in contemplating divine mysteries according to its innate ability and this engagement persists for all eternity for the mysteries of the godhead are inexhaustible as is the enthusiastic application of the souls intellectual ability





Importance in History of Philosophy


Hellenistic Philosophy Christianity

Hellenistic Philosophy


Origen s debt to Hellenistic Greek philosophy is quite obvious his influence on the development of later pagan philosophy is at least from the perspective of most contemporary scholarship His trinitarian doctrine for example consisted of a gradation of influence beginning with the Father whose influence was of the most general universal kind binding together all things the influence of the Son extended strictly to sentient beings the Holy Spirit s influence extended only to the elect or saints who had already achieved salvation For Origen the pre existent souls through their fall gave rise to a history over which both the Father and the Son came to preside while the Holy Spirit only enters into human reality to effect a salvific reorientation toward God that is already the result of an achieved history The Holy Spirit then may be understood as the final cause the preparatory causes of which are the Father and Son the mutual begetters of history The pagan philosopher Iamblichus reversed this Origenian notion claiming that the influence of the divine became stronger and more concentrated the further it penetrated into created reality extending in its pure power even to stones and plants In this sense the Holy Spirit limited as it is to interaction with the saints alone gives way to the universal power of the Father which extends to the furthest reaches of reality







Christianity


Origen s ideas most notably those in the treatise On First Principles gave rise to a movement in the Christian Church known as Origenism From the third through the sixth centuries this movement was quite influential especially among the monastics and was given articulate if excessively codified form by the theologian Evagrius Ponticus It is to be noted that the spirit of philosophical inquiry exemplified by Origen was largely absent from the movement bearing his name A far more creative use of Origen s concepts and themes was made by Gregory of Nyssa who adopted Origen s doctrine of apokatastasis or restoration of all things He was an inspiration to the Renaissance Humanists and more recently to certain Existentialist Christian theologians notably Nicolas Berdyaev whose insistence on the absolute autonomy and nobility of the person in the face of all objectifying reality is an echo across the ages of the humanism of Origen Berdyaev himself admits Origen s influence on his thought and insists that the doctrine of hell and the eternal suffering of sinners is not compatible with authentic Christianity











Origen was an innovator in an era when innovation for Christians was a luxury ill afforded He drew upon pagan philosophy in an effort to elucidate the Christian faith in a manner acceptable to intellectuals and he succeeded in converting many gifted pagan students of philosophy to his faith He was also a great humanist who believed that all creatures will eventually achieve salvation including the devil himself Origen did not embrace the dualism of Gnosticism nor that of the more primitive expressions of the Christian faith still extant in his day



He took Christianity to a higher level finding in it a key to the perfection of the intellect or mind which is what all souls are in their pure form The restoration of all souls to a purely intellectual existence was Origen s faith and his philosophy was based upon such a faith In this he is an heir to Socrates and Plato but he also brought a new conception into philosophy that of the creative aspect of the soul as realized in history the culmination of which is salvation after which follows an eternal delving into the deep mysteries of God