existence of souls is another inference from the immutability of God, although Origen also deduced it from the nature of the soul, which as a spiritual potency must be eternal. From this follows the necessity for the created spirit, after apostasy, error and sin, to return always to its origin in God.
The actual sinfulness of all men Origen was able to explain by the theological hypothesis of pre-existence and the premundane fall of each individual soul. He holds that freedom is the inalien able prerogative of the finite spirit ; and this is the second point that distinguishes his theology from the heretical Gnosticism. The system unfolds itself like a drama, of which the successive stages are as follows: the transcendental fall, the creation of the material world, inaugurating the history of punishment and redemption, the clothing of fallen souls in flesh, the dominion of sin, evil and the demons on earth, the appearing of the Logos, His union with a pure human soul, His esoteric preaching of salvation, and His death in the flesh, then the imparting of the Spirit, and the ulti mate restoration of all things. The doctrine of the restoration appeared necessary because the spirit, in spite of its inherent freedom, cannot lose its true nature, and because the final purposes of God cannot be foiled. The end, however, is only relative, for spirits are continually falling, and God remains through eternity the creator of the world. Moreover the end is not conceived as a transfiguration of the world, but as a liberation of the spirit from its unnatural union with the sensual.
The old Christian eschatology is set aside; no one has dealt such deadly blows to Chiliasm and Christian apocalypticism as Origen. It need hardly be said that he spiritualized the church doctrine of the resurrection of the flesh. But, while in all these doctrines he appears in the character of a Platonic philosopher, traces of rational criticism are not wanting. Where his funda mental conception admits of it, he tries to solve historical prob lems by historical methods. Even in the christology, where he is treating of the historical Christ, he entertains critical considera tions; hence it is not altogether without reason that in after times he was suspected of "Ebionitic" views of the Person of Christ.
Although the theology of Origen exerted a considerable influence as a whole in the two following centuries, it certainly lost nothing by the circumstance that several important propositions were capable of being torn from their original setting and placed in new connections. It is in fact one of the peculiarities of this theology, which professed to be at once churchly and philosophical, that most of its formulae could be interpreted and appreciated in utramque portent. By arbitrary divisions and rearrangements the doctrinal statements of this "science of could be made to serve the most diverse dogmatic tendencies. This is seen
especially in the doctrine of the Logos. On the basis of his idea of God Origen was obliged to insist in the strongest manner on the personality, the eternity (eternal generation) and the essen tial divinity of the Logos'. On the other hand, when he turned to consider the origin of the Logos he did not hesitate to speak of Him as a Krtawa, and to include Him amongst the rest of God's spiritual creatures. A Kria,ua, which is at the same time T4) ee.i3, was no contradiction to him, simply because he held the immutability, the pure knowledge and the blessedness which constituted the divine nature to be communicable attributes.
In later times both the orthodox and the Arians appealed to his teaching, both with a certain plausibility; but the inference of Arius, that an imparted divinity must be divinity in the second degree, Origen did not draw. With respect to other doctrines also, such as those of the Holy Spirit and the incarnation of Christ, etc., Origen prepared the way for the later dogmas. The technical terms round which such bitter controversies raged in the 4th and 5th centuries are often found in Origen lying peacefully side by side. But this is just where his epoch-making importance lies, that all the later parties in the church learned from him. And this is true not only of the dogmatic parties; solitary monks and ambitious priests, hard-headed critical exegetes, allegorists, mys tics, all found something congenial in his writings. The only man who tried to shake off the theological influence of Origen was I"Oommunis substantiae est fib cum patre ; aroppoca enim 6/...oba &oc videtur, i.e., unius substantiae cum illo corpore ex quo est liroppota." Marcellus of Ancyra, who produced no lasting effect on theology. The attacks on Origen, which had begun in his lifetime, did not cease for centuries, and only subsided during the time of the fierce Arian controversy. It was not so much the relation between pistis and gnosis—faith and defined by Origen that gave offence, but rather isolated propositions, such as his doctrines of the pre-existence of souls, of the soul and body of Christ, of the resurrection of the flesh, of the final restoration, and of the plurality of worlds. Even in the 3rd century view of the Trinity and of the Person of Christ was called in question, and that from various points of view. It was not till the 5th century, however, that objections of this kind became frequent. In the 4th century Pamphilus, Eusebius of Caesarea, Athanasius, the Cappadocians, Didymus and Rufinus were on the side of Origen against the attacks of Methodius and many others. But, when the zeal of Epiphanius was kindled against him, when Jerome, alarmed about his own reputation, and in defiance of his past attitude, turned against his once honoured teacher, and Theophilus, patriarch of Alexandria, found it prudent, for political reasons to condemn his authority received a shock from which it never recovered.