Become Like the Angels

Conclusion

[265] Conclusion This concluding section will assess, briefly, the individual conclusions of each chapter, followed by a general conclusion. A subsequent appendix will address how Origen’s anthropology influenced the later Greek patristic tradition. The first three chapters treated Origen’s responses to Middle Platonic speculations on the soul—the questions regarding its division , its relation to the body, and whether or not one could speak of “two souls” in Origen’s theology. Chapter 1 concluded that Origen rejects tripartite soul division, but does seem to allow for some modified form of soul bipartition, while insisting on a primordial unity for the soul. The soul, for Origen, is only conceptually divisible inasmuch as it possesses a “tension” between higher and lower powers, its spiritual vocation and its fleshly condition. This division is not so much ontological as it is ascetic and spiritual, reflecting the moral crisis within the soul. Chapter 2 affirmed Origen’s positive view of matter, while allowing that matter can become an “occasion” of evil indirectly, inasmuch as man’s free will uses it for evil purposes. This view is essentially Middle Platonic, although it is less dualistic and gives a greater primacy to human freedom, in light of Christian revelation. Chapter 3 proposed that Origen accepts a “two-level” or “hierarchical” dualism, in which a higher and lower soul are in tension , but the lower soul is not evil in principle. This is less of an ontological division than a moral polarity, although it is not without [266] Conclusion ontological implications. While Origen draws upon Middle Platonic language in this respect, his essential framework is fundamentally Christian. The fourth and fifth chapters discussed Origen’s view of the higher and lower souls, respectively. Origen accepts the Platonic identification of the higher soul with “mind” or rationality. He enriches this concept, however, by associating the mind with the divine Logos incarnated in Christ, along with the biblical images of the “heart” and the “image of God.” These associations allow Origen to incorporate the rational functions of the Platonic mind into the broader schema of the Christian moral and spiritual life. In this framework, the higher soul finds itself in an ontic and dynamic relationship with the Triune God. Middle Platonists had difficulty integrating the “higher soul,” which carries out cognitive functions, and the “lower soul,” which carries out vital functions. Yet Origen approaches the question not as an exclusively philosophical but also as a theological problem, in light of man’s creation in God’s image and His reincorporation into the divine Logos. Thus he relates the two by positing that they are one and the same principle at different levels of moral functioning, thereby incorporating the question of the soul into the larger context of the moral and spiritual life, and at the same time relating the task of the soul to the exemplary life lived by the divine soul of Jesus himself. The final three chapters placed Origen’s anthropology in the context of his view of the divine economy of salvation: the preexistence , fall, and destiny of rational souls. While Origen borrows vocabulary and concepts from Middle Platonic speculation on a preexistent state, his doctrine of this state is framed primarily by the theological concepts of God and creation, divine providence and justice, and the Trinity. For Origen, the preexistent state was not Plato’s supracosmic world of Ideas, nor the Middle Platonic realm of eternal, disembodied divinities, but the prehistory of the Bride of Christ, the creation of a Trinitarian God through his own providential Wisdom. Origen’s belief about the “descent” of souls picks up important themes from the Middle Platonic tradition (e.g., that the [267] Conclusion soul “merits” its present embodiment by a freely committed fault in the preexistent state), and yet Origen views the descent of souls in the context of salvation history, which unfolds not according to rigid , quasi-mechanistic laws of dualistic ontology, but rather according to the providential plan of a loving God to secure the redemption of each of his individual creatures, a plan culminating in the descent of the preeminent soul of Christ. Origen’s eschatology draws upon themes from Middle Platonism (e.g., the soul’s immortality and goal of “likeness to God”), and yet—due to his Christology and his positive view of the material creation—Origen’s views revolve around the Christian doctrines of freedom, divine love, and grace...