Quick Answer
Origen of Alexandria (c.185-c.253) was Christianity's first systematic philosopher. He wrote De Principiis, the first comprehensive Christian theology, the Hexapla (a six-column parallel Old Testament), and developed the doctrine of apokatastasis (universal restoration). Condemned posthumously in 553, he profoundly shaped all subsequent Christian mysticism through his theories of spiritual senses, pre-existence of souls, and three-level Scripture interpretation.
Key Takeaways
- First systematic Christian theology: De Principiis (~220 CE) organised all of Christian doctrine into a philosophical system for the first time, drawing heavily on Platonism without reducing Christianity to it.
- Three senses of Scripture: Literal (body), moral (soul), spiritual (spirit). Not all Scripture has a useful literal sense; the deeper meaning is the point. This hermeneutic shaped all medieval biblical interpretation.
- Apokatastasis: All rational beings, including eventually the devil, will be restored to God. This doctrine, condemned in 553, has been quietly influential throughout Christian mysticism.
- Pre-existence of souls: Souls existed as pure intellects before embodiment, fell through cooling in their love for God, and are in the process of returning. Structurally parallel to Steiner's account of the soul between death and rebirth.
- Rudolf Steiner's assessment: Origen was the figure who attempted to preserve genuine Greek philosophical depth within Christianity. Steiner regarded the condemnation of Origen's pre-existence doctrine as a narrowing of Christian spiritual vision with lasting consequences.
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Life in Alexandria: Father's Martyrdom and the Catechetical School
Origen was born around 185 CE in Alexandria, almost certainly to Christian parents, most likely of Greek or Hellenised Egyptian background. Alexandria was then the intellectual capital of the ancient world: home to the great Library, a thriving Jewish philosophical tradition (Philo had died there a century before Origen's birth), Neoplatonic philosophy, Gnostic schools of every variety, and a growing Christian community that was engaged with all of them.
When Origen was about seventeen or eighteen, the Emperor Septimius Severus issued a rescript banning conversion to Christianity and Judaism. The resulting persecution struck Alexandria in 202-203 CE. Origen's father Leonides was arrested and condemned to death. According to the church historian Eusebius, the young Origen wanted to offer himself to the authorities and be martyred alongside his father. His mother, Eusebius tells us, hid his clothes to prevent him leaving the house. Origen sent his father a letter urging him to hold firm and not allow concern for his family to make him apostatise. Leonides was beheaded. The family's property was confiscated.
Origen was left, at approximately eighteen, as the head of a household with no income. He supported himself by teaching Greek grammar and, shortly afterward, was invited to lead the Catechetical School of Alexandria, where Christians received instruction before baptism. He was probably not yet twenty when he took on this role, which had previously been held by the theologian Clement of Alexandria.
Alexandria as Spiritual Crucible
To understand Origen, you have to understand Alexandria. It was a city where Platonic philosophy, Jewish mysticism, Gnostic speculation, and nascent Christian theology were in constant, generative, sometimes violent contact. Philo Judaeus had already demonstrated that Jewish Scripture could be read through a Platonic lens without betraying either tradition. The Gnostics were doing something similar but with a strongly dualistic bent: matter was evil, the creator God was inferior or demonic, and salvation meant escape from the material world. Origen was responding to this entire environment. His life's work was to show that Christianity could be philosophically rigorous, could take Platonism seriously, could produce a genuinely systematic vision of reality, and could do all of this without collapsing into Gnostic dualism or abandoning the central Christian affirmations about creation, incarnation, and resurrection.
The Hexapla: The Greatest Work of Ancient Biblical Scholarship
Around 240 CE, working in Caesarea Maritima (where he had moved after a conflict with the Bishop of Alexandria), Origen completed one of the most extraordinary works of scholarship in the ancient world: the Hexapla. The title means "sixfold," and it describes a parallel-column edition of the entire Old Testament.
| Column | Content | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hebrew text in Hebrew characters | The authoritative base text |
| 2 | Hebrew text transliterated into Greek letters | Allowed Greek-speaking scholars to hear Hebrew sounds |
| 3 | Aquila's Greek translation | Very literal, word-for-word rendering of the Hebrew |
| 4 | Symmachus's Greek translation | More literary, aimed at natural Greek style |
| 5 | The Septuagint (LXX) with critical marks | The standard Christian translation; Origen marked additions and omissions |
| 6 | Theodotion's Greek translation | A revision of the LXX toward the Hebrew |
The Hexapla ran to approximately 50 volumes and was never copied in full because of its sheer size. It was kept in the library at Caesarea, where Jerome consulted it in the fourth century and Eusebius of Caesarea drew from it extensively. Origen's critical marks in column 5, using the obelus (to mark material in the LXX not in the Hebrew) and the asterisk (to mark material in the Hebrew not in the LXX), were a major contribution to textual criticism and influenced all subsequent scholarly work on the Old Testament text.
What is significant about the Hexapla beyond its scholarly achievement is what it reveals about Origen's approach to Scripture. He was not content to work with a received text. He wanted to know what the text actually said, in all its versions and variations. This was the same intellectual rigour he applied to the text's meaning.
De Principiis: The First Systematic Christian Theology
Around 220 CE, when Origen was in his mid-thirties and still teaching in Alexandria, he composed De Principiis (On First Principles). It was the first systematic Christian theology: an attempt to organise all the major questions of Christian doctrine and philosophy into a single, coherent account.
The work is organised in four books:
Book I treats God and the divine nature: the Trinity, the Father as the incomprehensible source beyond all categories, the Son (Logos) as the image of the Father through whom creation comes into being, and the Holy Spirit. Origen's Trinitarian theology is subordinationist: the Son is "second" to the Father in a way that would later be condemned by the Council of Nicaea (325 CE), though Origen's subordinationism was philosophical (about the order of divine persons) rather than ontological (about their degree of divinity).
Book II treats the rational creatures: their pre-existence as pure intellects (nous), their fall through satiety and cooling in their love for God, and the creation of the physical world as both consequence of the fall and arena for restoration.
Book III treats human freedom, cosmic history, and the mechanics of salvation. Origen's defence of free will against any form of determinism is one of the most sophisticated in ancient philosophy.
Book IV treats Scripture: why it is to be trusted, how it is to be interpreted, and the three-level method that would define Christian biblical hermeneutics for the next millennium.
The Problem of Rufinus's Translation
The original Greek of De Principiis is largely lost. We have it primarily in the Latin translation made by Rufinus of Aquileia around 397 CE. Rufinus was an admirer of Origen who believed that many of the controversial passages in the original had been corrupted by heretics. He therefore smoothed over or reworded some of the more provocative propositions in his translation. Jerome, who initially admired Origen and then turned sharply against him, produced a more literal translation of some passages to show what Origen had "really" said. Neither translation is fully reliable for the most contested passages. The result is that textual questions hang over the most important parts of Origen's theology.
Pre-Existence of Souls and the Fall into Bodies
Among the most distinctive and controversial of Origen's teachings is his account of the soul's origin and condition. In the beginning, he argues, God created a finite number of rational beings (nous, intellects or minds). These pure intellects existed in a state of warm, loving contemplation of God. But as Origen reflects on the nature of created beings, he observes that anything created can change. It is not God, and therefore it is not absolutely stable. Over time, some of these pure intellects cooled in their love. The Greek word for cooling (psychesthai) is the root of the word for soul (psyche). In cooling, the intellects became souls, and in becoming souls, they required embodiment.
The physical world, in Origen's account, is not a mistake or an evil (contra the Gnostics). It is the arena provided by God's Providence for the souls that have fallen to work their way back through their own free choices. Angels are intellects that cooled only slightly and thus inhabit the celestial spheres. Human beings are intellects that cooled more significantly and thus inhabit physical bodies on Earth. Demons are intellects that cooled to the extreme. The cosmic hierarchy, from angels through humans to demons, reflects the degree of cooling, the degree of alienation from the divine warmth.
The Fall as Cooling: A Profound Metaphor
Origen's image of the fall as cooling rather than disobedience or catastrophe is philosophically elegant. It removes the arbitrary quality that many find troubling in standard accounts of the Fall: why would a being in perfect union with God suddenly choose to rebel? The cooling metaphor suggests something more subtle: the nature of created being includes the possibility of gradual drifting. Just as a fire, if not continually fed, naturally diminishes, so a created love, if not actively sustained, naturally dims. The Fall is not a dramatic rebellion but a slow, almost imperceptible withdrawal, which is precisely why the restoration is slow and requires multiple ages. This has genuine resonance with the Anthroposophical account of the Fall of consciousness through the Luciferic temptation: not a single catastrophic choice but a gradual process with long consequences.
Apokatastasis: The Restoration of All Things
Origen's doctrine of apokatastasis, the restoration of all things to their divine origin, follows logically from his account of the Fall. If souls fell through cooling, and if God's Providence is the cosmos-encompassing process by which they are restored, then the logical end of the process is the restoration of all rational beings to their original state of warm union with the divine. Including, eventually, the devil.
This position made Origen's later critics deeply uncomfortable. Eternal punishment seemed to them a necessary element of divine justice. Origen's response was characteristically philosophical: eternity, properly understood, is not endless linear time. The "eternal fire" of Scripture is not a punitive sentence of unlimited duration but a purifying process whose duration is proportional to the degree of cooling. When the purification is complete, the fire has done its work.
Origen was also careful to present apokatastasis as a speculative hypothesis rather than a dogmatic assertion. He was genuinely uncertain whether it was true. He raised it as a philosophical consequence of his other commitments, noted the scriptural passages that seemed to support it, and acknowledged that he could be wrong. This intellectual honesty was not sufficient to protect him from condemnation posthumously.
The debate about apokatastasis never fully closed. In the twentieth century, several significant theologians have argued for a version of universal salvation: Karl Barth's universal election in Church Dogmatics, Hans Urs von Balthasar's argument in Dare We Hope That All Men Be Saved?, and David Bentley Hart's recent translation of the New Testament accompanied by a strong argument that apokatastasis is the genuine teaching of the New Testament, not a heretical intrusion. In each case, the shadow of Origen is present in the background, even when his name is not invoked.
The Three Senses of Scripture and the Spiritual Life
Origen's contribution to biblical interpretation was as significant as his systematic theology. In Book IV of De Principiis and throughout his homilies and commentaries, he developed and applied a three-level hermeneutic that became the foundation of medieval exegesis.
The three senses correspond to the three parts of the human being: body, soul, and spirit.
The somatic or literal sense is what the text says on the surface: the historical narrative, the specific commandments, the concrete descriptions. For Origen, this level is genuine and should not be ignored. But it is not always profitable taken on its own. Some passages in Scripture, read literally, seem absurd, immoral, or physically impossible. This is not a failure of Scripture but a signal that the literal sense is not where the weight of meaning lies.
The psychic or moral sense draws out the ethical implications for the reader's life and community. Most of Scripture has this level of meaning. The stories of the patriarchs are not just history. They are templates for how the soul navigates its own struggles with temptation, weakness, and growth.
The pneumatic or spiritual sense reveals the hidden divine realities that the literal narrative encodes. The Song of Songs, read literally, is an erotic poem. Read spiritually, it describes the soul's passionate love for the divine Logos and the stages of their union. Origen's Commentary on the Song of Songs, which survives in substantial fragments, established the tradition of bridal mysticism that would run through the entire Christian contemplative tradition.
Spiritual Senses: Seeing with the Soul's Eyes
One of Origen's most generative and underappreciated contributions to the mystical tradition is his doctrine of the spiritual senses. Human beings have five physical senses: sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell. Origen argued that the soul has corresponding inner faculties that perceive spiritual realities, faculties that are native to the soul's nature but require cultivation through prayer, fasting, study, and moral purification to function clearly.
The spiritual eye sees divine things. The spiritual ear hears the voice of God and the harmonies of the spiritual world. The spiritual palate tastes the wisdom of God, which is compared in Proverbs to sweet honey. The spiritual touch grasps the divine Logos. The spiritual smell senses the fragrance of divine virtue.
This doctrine became central to the entire contemplative tradition. Evagrius Ponticus (346-399 CE), the most influential theorist of early Christian monastic contemplation, was a direct disciple of Origenist theology and developed the doctrine of spiritual senses into a detailed account of the stages of contemplative prayer. Gregory of Nyssa (330-395 CE), in his Life of Moses and Commentary on the Song of Songs, developed the mystical ascent through precisely these Origenist categories. The entire tradition of what is called apophatic mysticism in the Christian East, the approach to God through progressive unknowing, has its philosophical roots in Origen's account of the soul's inner faculties and their gradual purification.
Spiritual Senses and Anthroposophical Imagination
In our exploration of Origen's spiritual senses alongside Steiner's account of higher knowledge, the structural parallel is striking. Steiner describes the development of Imagination, Inspiration, and Intuition as the cultivation of cognitive faculties that are latent in every human being but require specific spiritual training to function. Imagination corresponds to the development of a supersensible visual capacity; Inspiration to a supersensible hearing; Intuition to a supersensible touch or union with the spiritual reality being known. Origen's three-level spiritual senses and Steiner's three higher knowledge modes are not identical systems, but they are recognising the same territory: the existence of spiritual perception as a genuine extension of human cognitive capacity, not a suspension of it.
Persecution Under Decius and Origen's Death
In 250 CE, Emperor Decius issued an edict requiring all inhabitants of the Roman Empire to sacrifice to the Roman gods and obtain a certificate (libellus) proving they had done so. The edict was not specifically aimed at Christians but functioned as a systematic persecution because Christians refused to comply. Decius's persecution was the first empire-wide attempt to suppress Christianity.
Origen, by this time around sixty-five years old and one of the most famous Christian scholars in the world, was a particular target. He was arrested in Caesarea and imprisoned. The tortures he was subjected to were recorded in some detail by Eusebius: stretching on the rack, iron collars, confinement in a dark cell, his feet spread to the fourth hole in the stocks. The torturers were instructed not to kill him, apparently hoping to break his spirit and achieve a high-profile apostasy. They did not succeed.
Decius died in battle against the Goths in June 251, and the persecution ended. Origen was released but badly broken by the torture. He died around 253-254, probably in Tyre, from the effects of the imprisonment and physical damage he had sustained. He had gotten what he had sought as a teenager standing in his house with no clothes, about to run out to join his father in martyrdom: suffering for what he believed, even if not the final death.
Condemnation in 553 and the Origenist Controversy
Origen died in approximately 253 CE. He was condemned as a heretic approximately 300 years later, at the Second Council of Constantinople in 553 CE. The gap between his death and his condemnation tells us something important about how complex and genuinely brilliant his thought was: it took three centuries of debate among people who admired him to conclude that he had crossed a line.
The Origenist controversies were complex and took place in multiple phases. In the late fourth century, a dispute broke out between Jerome and Rufinus about whether Origen should be considered orthodox. Jerome, who had once effusively praised Origen, turned sharply against him and translated the more controversial passages to show what he had "really" said. In the early sixth century, Justinian I issued an edict against Origenism in 543, listing specific condemned propositions.
The fifteen anathemas formally adopted at the Second Council of Constantinople in 553 included:
The pre-existence of souls and their fall into bodies. The ultimate equality of all rational beings at the restoration (apokatastasis). The claim that the resurrection body would be a spherical body of ethereal fire rather than the earthly body. The salvation of the devil. The multiplicity of cosmic ages in which souls could fall and be restored repeatedly.
Were the Condemned Propositions Really Origen's?
Modern scholars, including Henri Crouzel (whose 1989 biography remains the standard work on Origen), have argued that many of the propositions condemned in 553 do not accurately represent Origen's own positions but rather those of sixth-century Palestinian Origenist monks who had systematised and hardened Origen's tentative speculations into dogmatic positions. Origen consistently presented his most speculative claims as exploratory hypotheses, not theological certainties. His condemnation, on this reading, was partly a condemnation of ideas that had been attributed to him rather than ones he actually held. The Catholic Church has never formally rehabilitated Origen, but many Catholic theologians treat him with considerable respect.
Origen's Legacy in the Mystical Tradition
Despite his condemnation, Origen's influence on the Christian mystical tradition was vast and impossible to eradicate simply by burning his books. The influence flowed through several main channels.
Evagrius Ponticus (346-399 CE) was the most direct Origenist. His Praktikos, Gnostikos, and Kephalaia Gnostika form the first systematic account of the contemplative life and monastic practice, built on Origenist foundations. Evagrius was himself condemned at the Second Council of Constantinople, and his works survived partly by being attributed to other authors (the Philokalia, the great Orthodox anthology of spiritual texts, contains Evagrian material attributed to Nilus of Ancyra).
Gregory of Nyssa (330-395 CE) was the greatest theologian of the Cappadocian Fathers and a deep Origenist, though he was careful to modify Origen's most controversial positions. His account of the mystical ascent in the Life of Moses, his Commentary on the Song of Songs, and his treatise On the Soul and the Resurrection all bear deep Origenist marks. His concept of epektasis, the soul's eternal progressive movement into the divine infinity, is a transformation of Origen's pre-existence doctrine into a forward-looking mystical theology.
The author known as Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (probably writing around 500 CE) synthesised Origenist mystical theology with later Neoplatonism (Proclus in particular) to produce the most influential mystical theology in medieval Christianity. His Divine Names, Mystical Theology, and Celestial Hierarchy became the foundation on which Thomas Aquinas, Meister Eckhart, the author of the Cloud of Unknowing, and countless others built.
Rudolf Steiner and Origen's Cosmic Christianity
Rudolf Steiner references Origen at several significant points in his lectures and writings. In GA 18 (Riddles of Philosophy), Steiner identifies Origen as the figure who most seriously attempted to integrate genuine philosophical depth with Christian theology, as opposed to the stream of early Christianity that was suspicious of Greek philosophy and sought to separate faith from reason.
More specifically, Steiner draws attention to Origen's pre-existence of souls and its parallels with his own account of the soul's life between death and rebirth. In Anthroposophical teaching, the soul does not spring into existence at physical birth. It descends from the spiritual world, through the planetary spheres, gradually taking on the sheaths that will allow it to incarnate. Between death and the next birth, it returns through a corresponding ascent. This is structurally, though not identically, parallel to Origen's account of the fall of the intellects from divine warmth into embodied existence and their gradual restoration.
Steiner also discusses the significance of the condemnation of Origen's pre-existence doctrine at the Second Council of Constantinople in 553. In his view, this condemnation removed from official Christian teaching a dimension of understanding that was genuinely accurate, namely the understanding that the human soul has a history before its earthly birth, and replaced it with an account in which the soul comes into existence only at physical conception or birth. This narrowing had lasting consequences for the Christian understanding of the human being's spiritual nature and dignity.
The Karma and Reincarnation Question in Origen
In our exploration of Origen's texts alongside Steiner's account of repeated earth lives, a careful distinction is necessary. Origen taught the pre-existence of souls (they existed before this earthly life) and apokatastasis (all will be restored). He also appears in some texts to have entertained the possibility of multiple embodiments across multiple cosmic ages. What he did not clearly teach was the specific form of reincarnation that Steiner describes: the same individual ego incarnating repeatedly on Earth in successive lifetimes as part of a karmic development. Origen's multiple cosmic ages are more like waves of creation and restoration, not personal biographical repetition. The conceptual family resemblance is real, but the specific doctrine is different. Steiner was aware of this distinction and careful about it.
Origen's cosmic Christology, his understanding of Christ not merely as the historical Jesus but as the eternal divine Logos who is the principle of all rational being in the cosmos, also resonates with Steiner's Christ-conception. For both Origen and Steiner, the Christ-event is not primarily a legal transaction (atonement for sin) but a cosmic event: the entry of the divine Logos into earthly evolution, transforming what it means to be human and initiating the long process of the restoration of rational being to its divine ground.
Frequently Asked Questions
Origen: On First Principles, Reader's Edition (Oxford Early Christian Texts) by Behr, John
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What is Origen of Alexandria known for?
Origen of Alexandria (c.185-c.253) is known as the first systematic philosopher of Christianity. He wrote De Principiis, the first comprehensive Christian theology, created the Hexapla (a six-column parallel Old Testament for critical study), and developed the doctrine of apokatastasis (universal restoration). He is also known for his three-level Scripture hermeneutic (literal, moral, spiritual) and his doctrine of spiritual senses. Though condemned as a heretic posthumously in 553, he shaped the entire Eastern Christian mystical tradition and remains one of the most influential thinkers in Christian history.
What is apokatastasis and did Origen teach it?
Apokatastasis (from the Greek for "restoration") is the doctrine that all rational beings, including eventually the devil, will be restored to God at the end of cosmic history. Origen taught a version of this, arguing that because God is the source and end of all things, rational freedom can never be permanently destroyed. All rational creatures must eventually, through however many cosmic ages it takes, return to their divine origin. The doctrine was condemned at the Second Council of Constantinople in 553, nearly three centuries after Origen's death.
What is the Hexapla?
The Hexapla was Origen's six-column parallel Old Testament, completed around 240 CE. The columns placed side by side: Hebrew text in Hebrew, Hebrew transliterated into Greek, Aquila's Greek translation, Symmachus's Greek translation, the Septuagint with Origen's critical marks, and Theodotion's translation. Running to approximately 50 volumes, it was one of the greatest works of ancient textual scholarship. The original was kept in Caesarea's library and was consulted by Jerome and Eusebius but never copied in full.
Did Origen believe in reincarnation?
Origen taught the pre-existence of souls: all rational souls existed as pure intellects before embodiment, fell into bodies through cooling in their love for God. Whether he taught multiple successive incarnations (reincarnation proper) is debated. Some texts suggest this; others resist it. The propositions condemned in 553 included the pre-existence and fall of souls. Structurally, Origen's account parallels Steiner's description of the soul's life between death and rebirth, though the specific mechanisms differ.
What are the three senses of Scripture according to Origen?
Origen taught that Scripture has three levels corresponding to the body, soul, and spirit of the human being. The literal (somatic) sense is the surface narrative. The moral (psychic) sense draws out ethical implications for the reader's life. The spiritual (pneumatic) sense reveals the divine realities symbolically encoded in the text. Origen argued that not all Scripture has a profitable literal sense, and in those cases the deeper meaning is the point. This hermeneutic shaped all subsequent medieval biblical interpretation.
Why was Origen condemned as a heretic?
Origen was condemned posthumously, not during his lifetime. Justinian I issued an edict against Origenism in 543, and the Second Council of Constantinople in 553 condemned specific propositions including pre-existence of souls, apokatastasis, the spherical resurrection body, and the salvation of the devil. Modern scholars, notably Henri Crouzel, argue that some condemned propositions misrepresent Origen's actual positions, which he presented as speculative hypotheses rather than dogmatic assertions. The Catholic Church has never formally rehabilitated him.
What is Origen's influence on Christian mysticism?
Origen's influence on Christian mysticism is vast. His doctrine of spiritual senses became a cornerstone of the contemplative tradition. His Commentary on the Song of Songs established bridal mysticism. Evagrius Ponticus, the first great theorist of contemplative prayer, was a direct Origenist. Gregory of Nyssa's mystical theology is deeply Origenist. Pseudo-Dionysius's synthesis of Origenism with Neoplatonism became the foundation for medieval mystical theology from Aquinas to Eckhart to John of the Cross.
What did Rudolf Steiner say about Origen?
In GA 18 (Riddles of Philosophy), Steiner identifies Origen as the key figure who attempted to create genuine Christian philosophy by taking Greek thought seriously rather than rejecting it. Steiner notes structural parallels between Origen's pre-existence of souls and his own account of the soul's life between death and rebirth. He regarded the condemnation of Origen's pre-existence doctrine in 553 as a significant narrowing of Christian spiritual vision with long-lasting consequences for the Church's understanding of the human being's spiritual nature.
What is De Principiis and why does it matter?
De Principiis (On First Principles, c.220 CE) is the first systematic Christian theology. In four books, Origen addressed: God and the Trinity; rational creatures and their fall; the world as arena of restoration; and the interpretation of Scripture. It was the first attempt to organise all of Christian doctrine into a coherent philosophical system. The original Greek is largely lost; we have it mainly in Rufinus's Latin translation, which smoothed over some controversial passages. Scholars use fragments preserved by Jerome and other critics to reconstruct Origen's more provocative positions.
How did Origen die?
During the Decian persecution (250-251 CE), Origen was imprisoned in Caesarea and tortured systematically, including being stretched on the rack and confined with his feet in stocks. The torturers were ordered to keep him alive, apparently hoping to force a public apostasy. Origen refused to recant. When Decius died in battle in June 251, the persecution ended and Origen was released. He died around 253-254, almost certainly from the lasting physical damage of the torture he had endured.
The Living Text and the Seeking Soul
Origen spent his life insisting that the text points beyond itself, that every literal surface conceals a moral depth which in turn conceals a spiritual reality, and that the purpose of reading is not to accumulate information but to become more fully what you already are at the deepest level of your nature. He said this in Alexandria in the third century. He said it in a world that tortured him for it. The text he was reading has changed forms many times since. The seeking has not.
Sources & References
- Crouzel, H. (1989). Origen. Trans. A.S. Worrall. Harper and Row.
- Origen. (c.220/1973). On First Principles. Trans. G.W. Butterworth. Peter Smith.
- Origen. (c.240/1957). Commentary on the Song of Songs. Trans. R.P. Lawson. Newman Press.
- McGuckin, J.A. (2004). The Westminster Handbook to Origen. Westminster John Knox Press.
- Trigg, J.W. (1983). Origen: The Bible and Philosophy in the Third-Century Church. John Knox Press.
- Steiner, R. (1914/1973). Riddles of Philosophy (GA 18). Anthroposophic Press.
- Balthasar, H.U. von (1984). Dare We Hope That All Men Be Saved? Ignatius Press.
- Scott, A. (1991). Origen and the Life of the Stars. Clarendon Press.