Alfons Fürst of Münster University has published standard studies of Jerome and Augustine, but Origen's theological legacy in the church is a major focus of his research. This volume contains eight papers presented at the sixth Colloquium on the History of Origen's Reception. It focuses on Origen's theological and philosophical legacy in seventeenth-century England and Europe. Fürst contributes the opening chapter on Origen's doctrine of freedom, Pre-existence, and Apokatastasis. His thesis is that freedom and self-agency lie at the core of Origen's explanation of the world and of human life. As for Origen's conjectures about the possible final restoration of all rational creatures, this was peripheral to his system of thought and not really knowable. After mentioning Pico and Erasmus, Fürst discusses the reception of Origen among the Cambridge Platonists Ralph Cudworth and Johann Wilhelm Peterson.

The second chapter by Christian Hengstermann rehearses the thesis of the volume, that for Origen, without libertarian free will, there would be neither good and evil nor a just deity meting out reward and punishment according to our desserts. With great competence, he then treats Cudworth's reception of Origen (Treatise of Freewill, 1678). Cudworth was the philosophical arch-foe of Thomas Hobbes. In my view, these two initial chapters are the crown jewels of the volume.

In the remaining chapters, Ryan Haecker treats Cudworth, David Leech covers Henry More, Marilyn A. Lewis discusses Dutch Arminians, Karen Felter deals with gender issues regarding Anne Conway, and Andrea Bianchi treats Jean Le Clerc (d. 1736) and Cudworth once again. The final chapter by Elisa Bellucci treats Johann Wilhelm Petersen's Apokatastasis doctrine (1698).