The first part of this monograph discusses the metaphysics of the Trinity in Origen, the second his understanding of salvation. As the author explains in a prefatory observation, these topics were inseparable for Origen, who was not acquainted with the post-Nicene practice of distinguishing the immanent from the economic Trinity (p. 15). Taking each person in turn, Bruns finds that aseity is ascribed to the Father alone, and that the Son possesses his divine attributes only by derivation. The Spirit, through whom their creative love is manifest in the world, is coeternal with the Son and the Father, but Origen seems to waver between an ontological and an economic subordination of the two dependent persons to the first. In his soteriology, which envisages a gathering of the elect by the Holy Spirit through the Son into the eternal presence of God the Father, he makes a closer approximation to Nicene orthodoxy. Bruns concludes that his shortcomings arise from the theological immaturity of the age in which he was writing: it was natural, when the wolves in the fold were Gnostics and Sabellians, that this ‘Vordenker des spätern kirchamtlichen Trinitätsgalubens’ (p. 309) should regard the salvific working of the Trinity as a mere epilogue to its creative action, in which the Son and Spirit serve as instruments to the Father. A historian trained in any other discipline will want to know why Origen should be subjected to any judgement, even a charitable one, according to standards that were only defined a century after his death (if even then). Such critics will find it regrettable, if inevitable, that Bruns is prevented by his confessional premises from imagining a Christian, let alone a biblical, source for any doctrine which he believes to be contrary to Nicene teaching. Origen's subordinationism is perfunctorily ascribed to his reading of Plato, and even a constructive or critical reading of Plato is never contemplated. When Origen speaks of God ‘beyond being and thought’ at Contra Celsum vii.38, it is only the echo of Plato's ‘Good beyond being’ that interests Bruns, not the additional words, which in Origen's text are the prelude to a sharp critique of all philosophy (p. 44). It is even more regrettable that a thesis of this length should fail to canvass the points that demand the most rigorous scrutiny: if it were true, for example, that Origen treats hypostasis and ousia as synonyms (p. 120), how could he say in his Commentary on Hebrews that the Son is ‘from the hypostasis of the Father’ (Pamphilus, Apology 98–104), yet deny that the Son is from the Father's ousia in his Commentary on John? How can it suffice to cite two scholars who disagree as to whether Origen applied the term homoousios to the Son, without examining the arguments of either (p. 120)? As a doctoral dissertation, this book meets the requisite standard of competence; as a published work it lacks the originality that would set it apart in an overcrowded field.