Introduction
The Hellenization of Christianity is a long-standing and notoriously contentious historiographical construct in early Christian studies.Footnote 1 While it has been deployed in surprisingly fluid ways, most scholars associate the thesis with Adolf von Harnack, for whom it acquired a decidedly critical valence. The “Hellenic spirit”—a concept Harnack usually left undefined—constituted a threat to the undogmatic gospel of Jesus.Footnote 2 Whenever this adversarial Hellenic spirit triumphed, as it inevitably did, it corroded an authentic living Christianity into an institutionalized, dogmatic religion.Footnote 3 For many others, both before and after Harnack, the Hellenization of Christianity has signaled a similar narrative of decline. The teachings and way of life that marked an authentic Christianity often stood in a disjunctive relationship with Greco-Roman culture, especially its philosophies. The influence of the latter precipitated a debasement of Christianity, the ossification of its teachings, or more seriously, the infiltration of heresy.Footnote 4
Origen's doctrine of pre-existent souls—that human souls originally flourished in a discarnate state prior to a transgression that led to their subsequent embodiment—has often been considered a spectacularly embarrassing episode in the Hellenization of Christianity.Footnote 5 Rather than espouse the biblical view of the soul's relationship to the body, Origen opted for the conflicting view of Plato, the authoritative Greek philosopher throughout much of late antiquity. This critical interpretation of Origen's account of pre-existence has circulated widely in the modern literature, but it is important to underscore that it also has a long lineage. Already several of Origen's late antique detractors leveled the charge of excessive Hellenism against his teaching of the soul, perhaps none more forcibly than his chief ecclesiastical prosecutor, Justinian. In the spring of 553, the Byzantine emperor wrote the following of Origen's account of pre-existent souls:
So Pythagoras, Plato, Plotinus and their followers, who agreed that souls are immortal, declared that they exist prior to bodies and that there is a great company of souls, of which those that transgress descend into bodies. . .. But the church, following the divine scriptures, affirms that the soul is created together with the body, not first one and the other later, according to the insanity of Origen.Footnote 6
For Justinian, Origen's doctrine of pre-existent souls expressed a worrisome Hellenic perversion of Christianity. Rather than follow ostensibly clear biblical teaching about the simultaneous origin of the soul and body (evidence that Justinian never provided in this letter), Origen was lured to the Greek philosophers who taught that souls existed before their bodies, only to suffer embodiment as the result of some prior transgression. Justinian wrote the aforementioned lines in the weeks immediately preceding the convocation of what many today regard as the fifth ecumenical council, at which Origen was posthumously pronounced a heretic of the Christian church. Origen's condemnation is inextricably linked to the Hellenization of Christianity thesis. Footnote 7
Origen still lives under the long shadow cast by Justinian. His doctrine of pre-existence has been widely regarded even by some of his most sympathetic readers as illustrative of a worrisome Platonism that overrode a biblical message with which it was ostensibly incompatible. According to Jean Daniélou, Origen's account of pre-existence reveals how “the influence of philosophy had a seriously distorting effect on Christian tradition.”Footnote 8 In particular, “These ideas [concerning pre-existence] derive from a Platonist ontology incompatible with the Christian revelation.”Footnote 9 Henri Crouzel, arguably Origen's greatest defender in the twentieth century, lamented that pre-existence was one of “the most vulnerable parts of Origen's thought” since it “comes from Platonism,” often striking the reader as “[m]ythical.”Footnote 10 For readers like these, Origen's version of pre-existence is the regrettable expression of a Hellenization that signifies a rare lapse in the theologian's otherwise sound judgment.
In recent years a related trend among Origen's sympathizers has emerged, associated most clearly with the work of Mark Edwards and Panayiotis Tzamalikos. Both of these authors depart from the literature in their insistence contra mundum that Origen never taught this doctrine. Yet it is difficult not to conclude that this perplexing denial is motivated at least in part because they too share the conviction that the doctrine of pre-existent souls is an index of the Hellenization of Christianity thesis. For Edwards, the Bible and Platonic philosophy were warring traditions, where the latter, including its doctrine of pre-existence, was “estranged from the thought of catholic Christendom.”Footnote 11 Tzamalikos writes similarly. He repeatedly distances Origen from Plato and claims that “to ascribe to Origen a Platonic notion about pre-existing personal incorporeal rational creatures, which received a body, is just a simplistic and misleading solution, which garbles his real doctrine.”Footnote 12 In both these writers the Hellenization of Christianity thesis arguably achieves its greatest influence: it contributes to a radical reconstruction of Origen's thought. To exonerate him from the charge of Hellenization that most of his readers have leveled against him, including those who secured his condemnation as a heretic of the Christian church, these scholars deny what nearly every reader since antiquity has maintained, that Origen did, in fact, teach the pre-existence of souls. Of course, by freeing Origen from the clutches of the Hellenization of Christianity thesis in this way, both Edwards and Tzamalikos reinscribe the assumption shared by detractors and supporters alike: that his version of pre-existence (or what has been ascribed to him) is, in fact, lamentably typical of a caustic Platonism.
But is this doctrine—which I hold Origen to have taught—the quintessential illustration of the Hellenization of Christianity thesis? It is an aggravated version of the Harnackian thesis that I have in mind in this essay, where the misuse of philosophy eventually yields heresy, as Justinian (and others) have asserted. Proponents of such a thesis rarely acknowledge, however, that Origen himself had a very similar construal of heresy. There are a number of passages where he frames heresy as the adoption of philosophical teachings that conflict with otherwise clear scriptural testimonies, especially those incorporated into the church's rule of faith.Footnote 13 Thus, the previous question can be raised more pointedly: when Origen advanced his doctrine of pre-existence, did he unwittingly fall prey to his own construct of heresy by advocating a philosophical position that patently conflicted with clear biblical teaching? My argument will unfold in three stages. I will first foreground my analysis of Origen by contextualizing the theory of pre-existence in late antiquity: in particular, I will identify its competitors, the textual sources that transmitted these varying theories, and their orthodox or heretical status within ecclesiastical circles. Second, I will provide an extended outline of his account of pre-existence, identifying the problem that animated it and the purposes to which it was ultimately put. Finally, I will turn to the theory of pre-existence in Plato's Phaedrus. In book four of Against Celsus, Origen alludes to Plato's version of this teaching, and indicates his own “superior” relationship to it:
And the statement that the man who was cast out of the garden with the woman was clothed with “coats of skins” (Gen 3:21), which God made for those who had sinned on account of the transgression of mankind, has a certain secret and mysterious meaning, superior to the Platonic doctrine of the descent of the soul [ὑπὲρ τὴν κατὰ Πλάτωνα κάθοδον τῆς ψυχῆς] which loses its wings and is carried hither “until it finds some firm resting-place.”Footnote 14
A comparative analysis with Phaedrus will suggest how Origen thought his view was better than Plato's and why the conventional epithet “Platonic” fails to capture his version of this doctrine.Footnote 15 In the end, while Origen's account of pre-existence had undeniable Hellenic roots, it will be my contention that it is not the paradigmatic instance of the pejorative Hellenization of Christianity thesis associated with Harnack and others. Indeed, on a number of points this thesis invites us to draw conclusions that directly contradict how Origen framed this doctrine.
Contextualizing Pre-Existence in Late Antiquity
Origen (ca. 185–254 C.E.) was a prolific writer with unusually wide-ranging expertise in Greek philosophy. In both Alexandria, where he spent his formative years, as well as later in Caesarea Maritima, he taught curricula that included philosophical texts.Footnote 16 Many of his writings reflect a profound integration of philosophical themes into his own reflections on God, the cosmos, and humanity. He was certainly attentive to the debates about the nature of the soul as they were raised in contemporary philosophical schools.Footnote 17 In his Commentary on the Song of Songs he hears in the words, “Unless thou know thyself, O fair one among women” (1:8), an anticipation of the Delphic maxim, “Know thyself.” Solomon is addressing these words to the soul, figured by a woman, and making “the height of spiritual health and blessedness to consist in the knowledge and understanding of oneself.”Footnote 18 But what sort of knowledge ought the soul to have of itself? Origen provides his readers with a long list of disputed philosophical themes on this topic. One of the problems that he highlights concerns the long-standing disputes about the soul among philosophers and physicians in classical and postclassical antiquity, namely, “how it was made”:
whether, as some opine, its substance is contained in the bodily seed and originates together with the first beginning of the body; or whether it is introduced from the outside into the womb of a woman, and there united, as a perfect thing, to the body already prepared and formed for it. And, if this be the case, whether it comes as a new creation that has only just been made when the body is seen to have been formed. . . or whether we should think that, having been created some time earlier, it comes for some reason to assume a body.Footnote 19
In these lines Origen highlights three basic views on the circumstances surrounding the soul's origin: either 1) it originates from the paternal seed (“traducianism”), or 2) it is created by God, in which case it is either 2a) created by God at the time that the embryo's body is formed (“creationism”) or 2b) some time before this body is formed (“pre-existence,” i.e., the soul exists before it is embodied). Only the first and last views appear to have garnered much of Origen's attention.Footnote 20
The first position, that the soul's substance resides in the paternal seed, was widespread by Origen's day. It was first articulated by Aristotle,Footnote 21 endorsed by a number of later philosophers and physicians,Footnote 22 and among early Christians already clearly espoused by Tertullian.Footnote 23 At On First Principles 3.4.2, Origen discusses this position at length, noting that some people maintain that we have a “lower soul,” that is, a soul “produced from the bodily seed at the same time with the body [ex corporali eam semine simul adserunt cum corpore seminari].”Footnote 24 Since this soul cannot live apart from the body, proponents of this view maintain that it is frequently called “flesh” in Scripture. Traducianist verses included those passages where the “flesh” was spoken of as an active, conscious agent, like, “The flesh wars against the spirit” (Gal 5:17), “the wisdom of the flesh” (Rom 8:7), and “You see your calling, brethren, how that not many among you are wise after the flesh” (1 Cor 1:26).Footnote 25
In the passage from the Commentary on the Song of Songs cited above, Origen lumps the second and third views together: they share the view that the soul is created by God outside the womb. According to one version of this theory, the soul is a “new creation,” i.e., it is “just made” when the body is formed (a position unhelpfully labeled as “creationism” in the literature, since the pre-existent theory also posits God as creator of the soul). Origen rarely discusses this view, and there appear to be few clear precedents to him in early Christian literature on this position.Footnote 26 The other view that Origen favors, “pre-existence,” holds that the soul was “created some time earlier” than its body. This theory also enjoyed a broad reception in his day. In his recent study of pre-existence in western thought, Terryl Givens contends that pre-existence had multiple points of origin and demonstrates its ubiquity in both Semitic and Greek antiquity.Footnote 27 Origen certainly thought it well-attested. Early in his career, commenting on the verse, “There was a man sent from God, whose name was John” (John 1:6), he writes:
John's soul, being older than his body [πρεσβυτέραν. . . τοῦ σώματος] and subsisting prior [πρότερον] to it, was sent to the ministry of testimony concerning the light. . .. Now if the general theory concerning the soul [ὁ καθόλου περὶ ψυχῆς λόγος] prevails, that is, that it has not been sown with the body but exists before it [πρὸ αὐτοῦ] and for various reasons is clothed with flesh and blood, the expression “sent by God” will no longer seem to be exceptional when it is used of John.Footnote 28
Several times in Against Celsus, which was written toward the end of his life, Origen specifically alludes to Plato's account of pre-existence in Phaedrus while discussing his own account of the doctrine.Footnote 29 But he also knew this to be a Jewish doctrine: versions of pre-existence surface in Philo's writings, at least one of which Origen knew,Footnote 30 as well as in a fragment of a first century CE Jewish document, Prayer of Joseph, which Origen transmits.Footnote 31 There was precedent in earlier Christian circles.Footnote 32 Furthermore, there were a number of scriptural passages that Origen thought suggested pre-existence. John the Baptist, filled with the Holy Spirit and leaping for joy in Elizabeth's womb at the voice of Mary (Luke 1:41, 44), pointed to a degree of moral favor and heightened intellectual activity in the womb that seemed best explained by John's soul pre-existing his embryo. Origen also wondered how Jeremiah could have been known by God “before he was fashioned in the womb” (Jer 1:5). The passages in Scripture about God's preference for Jacob over Esau were particularly striking (Gen 25:22–26; Mal 1:2–3; Rom 9:14), since if God was not unjust, there had to be a reason prior to Rebecca's womb that explained why Jacob was allowed to supplant Esau there.Footnote 33
Origen was, then, aware of the various positions on the soul's embodiment and of the cultural breadth of texts that expressed these views. But what was the church's stance on this issue in his day—a church that was as interested in pursuing orthodoxy and rejecting heresy as Justinian's church was in the sixth century? In the opening lines of his preface to On First Principles, Origen presents “a definite line and unmistakable rule,” i.e., a set of teachings that have been “handed down in unbroken succession from the apostles” that will serve as a guide for interpreting the Christian Scriptures properly.Footnote 34 He proceeds to list these teachings, which include several assertions about the soul—that, for instance, it has “a substance and life of its own, will be rewarded according to its deserts after its departure from this world,” and what would turn out to be a crucial Origenian concern, “that every rational soul is possessed of free will and choice.”Footnote 35
However, Origen continues, the apostles did not announce everything clearly. After listing what was openly stated about the soul in the rule of faith, he explains what was left vague:
In regard to the soul, whether it takes its rise from the transference of the seed (ex seminis traduce), in such a way that the principle or substance of the soul may be regarded as inherent in the seminal particles of the body itself; or whether it has some other beginning, and whether this beginning is begotten or unbegotten, or at any rate whether it is imparted to the body from without or no; all this is not very clearly defined in the teaching.Footnote 36
As Origen saw it (and as already indicated above), scriptural evidence on the issue of the soul's relation to the body was ambiguous. The task that he set for himself in On First Principles, then, was to explore as correctly as he could what was left unclear in Scripture, what he called the “grounds” or the “how or why” behind otherwise clear scriptural assertions.Footnote 37 This was a tentative enterprise, and scholars have aptly termed this simultaneously speculative and cautious tendency in his writings, “une théologie en recherche.”Footnote 38 Origen often spoke hesitantly about his own particular views on the soul, qualifying the pre-existent position that he favored with a “perhaps,” “it appears,” or “whether it is not possible,” and even on some occasions encouraging his readers to decide for themselves which view of the soul to adopt.Footnote 39
At this point, we arrive at three important conclusions that forecast our answer to the question of whether Origen's doctrine of pre-existence was emblematic of the critical Hellenization of Christianity thesis. First, it is erroneous to present this teaching within a dichotomous Hellenistic/philosophical-versus-Jewish/scriptural framework, as if pre-existence were simultaneously philosophical and anti-biblical, and the competing views on embodiment were biblical and not philosophical. As we have seen, the two main theories on the soul's embodiment both had precedent in the philosophical literature. Thus, regardless of the view Origen espoused—traducianism or pre-existence—he would ultimately have allied himself with some philosopher, philosophical text or philosophical tradition. Moreover, these two theories cannot be exclusively relegated to the sphere of Greek philosophy. Biblical writers admittedly addressed the topic of the soul's embodiment sporadically and allusively, but it would be hard to contend that they provided transparent guidance about how the soul became embodied, let alone that they consistently advocated for a message that conflicted with pre-existence as it was held by Greek philosophers. A number of passages could reasonably be read as espousing the views expressed by either of the aforementioned theories. As Givens has put it, we are dealing with “hopelessly complicated lines of cultural transmission” where the positions available to Origen, including pre-existence, resonated with philosophical and scriptural antecedents.Footnote 40 Pre-existence, then, certainly did not illustrate a Greek teaching antagonistic to scriptural or Jewish thought.
Second, Origen did not entertain pre-existence in the way that Harnack suggested. He was not subject to such a monolithic and dominant intellectual culture that the view he espoused on the soul was the only view to which he had been exposed. Yet Harnack spoke easily of the singular “spirit of the time,”Footnote 41 and of how “the moral and religious views and ideals dominant in the world of Greek culture could not but insinuate themselves into the communities consisting of Gentiles.”Footnote 42 Statements like these obfuscate the plurality of competing views within Greek philosophical and medicinal culture on a theme like embodiment with which Origen, as we have seen, was aware. Moreover, statements like these give the impression that early Christian theologians were so completely influenced by philosophy that they did not (and perhaps could not) interact with it critically. Yet Origen openly debated the respective strengths and weaknesses of the various theories of embodiment in his day, often expressed reserve about the theory he preferred, and as we will see, substantially modified what he found in Plato (and others). He was not forced into his views by a “dominant” culture, but rather worked out his positions deliberately.Footnote 43 Nor can we overlook how poorly Origen's decidedly undogmatic pronouncements on pre-existence comport with Harnack's thesis. He described the Hellenization of Christianity as the emergence of “dogmas,” i.e., imperious teachings promulgated by the church as the condition for salvation.Footnote 44 It is quite misleading to present pre-existence as a Harnackian “dogma” if we mean by that term an authoritarian teaching to which assent was required as a precondition for salvation. Origen never presented his theory of pre-existence as such. In our parlance, it was more a “theory” than a “dogma.”
Both of these observations cast serious doubt on the applicability of the Hellenization of Christianity thesis to Origen's doctrine of pre-existence. If this doctrine did not conflict with clear biblical teaching and was not taken over wholesale from philosophy, it is not clear how pre-existence conforms to the standard of heresy either as it is enshrined in the Hellenization of Christianity thesis or embraced by Origen himself. And this raises the third point. If this doctrine was not heretical for Origen, what was its status in the ecclesiastical circles of his day? It appears that the theory of pre-existence did not register as heretical or orthodox because it was not specifically addressed in the church's rule of faith.Footnote 45 Where the rule was unclear—such as on this very issue of the soul's embodiment—it was not heretical to adopt any number of views, provided, of course, that they did not conflict with other clear statements in the rule about the soul or any other topic.Footnote 46 Thus, according to Origen's own configuration of orthodoxy and heresy, pre-existence registered as a doctrinal adiaphoron. Footnote 47
In the next two sections, I will deepen the case against the Hellenization of Christianity thesis. The doctrine of pre-existence rarely existed in theoretical abstraction, but was embedded in a protological narrative with a distinctive setting, a rich cast of characters, and a plot marked both by crisis and denouement. As we will see, this narrative was calculated to support the church's rule of faith as well as criticize Plato's competing narrative—precisely the opposite of what the proponents of the Hellenization of Christianity thesis have urged us to conclude.
The Origenian Account of Pre-Existent Souls
A. The Problem: Inequality among God's Creatures
How, then, did Origen go about navigating this murky topic of the soul's embodiment? Several years ago, Jean Daniélou argued that the “starting-point” for Origen's speculations about the pre-existent world of souls was his “empirical realization of the inequality existing in the conditions of created spirits [i.e., rational beings].”Footnote 48 In On First Principles Origen repeatedly makes the uneasy observation that there is a bewildering diversity of creatures who inhabit our world. There is diversity among “supercelestial” beings (i.e., the sun, moon, stars, and planets), among the “invisible powers” (i.e., good and wicked angels) and also among the “dumb animals, birds and creatures that live in water.” But the diversity that is particularly striking (and worrisome) occurs in the case of us “earthly” creatures. He writes:
[A]mong men, there are no small differences, for some are barbarians, others Greeks, and of the barbarians some are wilder and fiercer, whereas others are more gentle. Some moreover, employ laws of the highest excellence, others poorer and ruder ones, while others follow inhuman and savage customs rather than laws. Some men are from the very moment of their birth in a humble position, brought up in subjection and slavery, placed under lords and princes and tyrants; whereas others are brought up with more freedom and under more rational influences. Some have healthy bodies, others from their earliest years are invalids; some are defective in sight, others in hearing and speech; some are born in such a condition, others lose the use of one faculty or another soon after birth or else suffer a like misfortunate when fully grown. But what purpose is there in my unfolding and enumerating the tragic tale of human miseries, from which some are free while others are involved in them, when every man can weigh and ponder over all these matters for himself?Footnote 49
This sort of diversity—where creatures are marked by inequality from birth—becomes especially problematic for Christians, Origen continues, since they maintain that all things were made through Christ (see esp. John 1:3; Col 1:17; Ps 103[104]:24). If Christ is not simply God's Word and Wisdom, but also his Righteousness, “it will undoubtedly follow,” Origen writes, that “in the things which were made there was nothing unrighteous, nothing accidental, but all will be shown to be such as the principle of equity and righteousness demands.”Footnote 50
How can one reconcile the belief in one God who is both just and good, and who creates all things through his similarly just and good Logos, when we see in the universe things patently not good or just? Among self-professing Christians, Origen continues, there are some who do not attempt to make this reconciliation. They do not deny the problematic diversity in this world, but rather direct pointed questions at Origen's concept of God:
But when we say that the world is arranged in this variety, in which as we have explained above it was made by God, the God whom we call good and righteous and absolutely fair, the following objection is wont to be raised by many, and particularly by those who come from the schools of Marcion, Valentinus and Basilides. . .. They ask what reason there could be supposing that the Creator lacks neither the will to desire what is good and perfect nor the power to produce it, that when creating rational creatures, that is, beings of whose existence he himself is the cause, he should make some of higher rank and others of second and third and many still lower and less worthy degrees?Footnote 51
These “Gnostics,” as we usually call them today, note that some have a “happier lot” than others from birth, such as Isaac over Ishmael or Jacob over Esau.Footnote 52 And then there are the advantages of being born among the Hebrews, where one is instructed in the divine law, or among the Greeks, where one benefits from wisdom. Such a start in life is far superior to being born “among the Ethiopians, whose custom is to feed on human flesh, others among the Scythians, where parricide is practiced as if sanctioned by law, or among the Taurians, where strangers are offered in sacrifice.”Footnote 53
How, then, do these Gnostics escape Origen's problem in the face of undeniable diversity and inequality in the universe? As he presents it, they offer an unacceptable alternative:
If then, they ask us, this great diversity and these various and different conditions of birth, in which certainly the power of free-will has no place—for a man does not choose for himself either where or in what nation or what state of life he shall be born,—if, they say, all this is not caused by a diversity in the natures of souls, that is, a soul with an evil nature is destined for an evil nation and a good one for a good nation, what alternative is there but to suppose that it is the result of accident or chance?Footnote 54
In other words, if we acknowledge disparity among creatures and recognize that our capacity to choose plays no role in our station in life, there are only two options: the latter, that the universe is the “result of accident or chance,” a position neither Origen nor his opponents seriously consider, or the former, that there is a “diversity in the natures of souls.” As Origen understood this teaching, his opponents entertained a belief in two Gods, the good God of Jesus, and the severe God associated with the Old Testament. The good God was responsible for creating souls with good natures and assigning them to a good station in life where they maintained their good status. The lesser God created souls with evil natures and determined them to an evil station in life, where they too continued in their evil ways.Footnote 55 In this manner, then, the existential problem of diversity was addressed by his opponents: two Gods, one just and the other unjust, accounted for the inequalities in the cosmos.
B. The Solution: Pre-Existence as TheodicyFootnote 56
This Gnostic argument is instructive for the light it sheds on Origen's priorities. He cannot accept the “accident or chance” solution, since it threatens his view of a God who has created the cosmos and is providentially active within it. Nor does he accept the “diverse natures” solution, since according to the church's rule of faith, there can only be one supreme God, the creator of the universe and Father of Jesus, who is ultimately accountable for these natures.Footnote 57 Moreover, these Gnostic “diverse natures” are not capable of choice, and this too violates the church's rule of faith.Footnote 58 How, then, does Origen solve his initial conundrum, reconciling the patent inequalities in the universe with the belief in one God, creator of all things, who is both good and just? He begins his counterargument as follows:
We have frequently shown in the preceding chapters [of On First Principles], by declarations which we were able to quote from the divine scriptures, that God the Creator of the universe is both good and just and omnipotent. Now when “in the beginning” [Gen 1:1] he created what he wished to create, that is rational beings, he had no other reason for creating them except himself, that is, his goodness. As therefore he himself, in whom was neither variation nor change nor lack of power, was the cause of all that was to be created, he created all his creatures equal and alike, for the simple reason that there was in him no cause that could give rise to variety and diversity.Footnote 59
This is the first step in Origen's response: God is not responsible, at least directly so, for the variety in the cosmos since God has created a world of rational creatures who are equal and alike. Elsewhere Origen fills out his portrait of these creatures. Crucial for his argument is that these beings were endowed with the capacity to make decisions for which they were ultimately responsible:
But since these rational creatures. . . were endowed with the power of free will (arbitrii liberi facultate), it was this freedom which induced each one by his own voluntary choice either to make progress through the imitation of God or to deteriorate through negligence. This, as we have said before, was the cause of the diversity among rational creatures, a cause that takes its origin not from the will or judgment of the Creator, but from the decision of the creature's own freedom (non ex conditoris voluntate vel iudicio originem trahens sed propriae libertatis arbitrio).Footnote 60
Here Origen takes the second step in his argument, quickly alluding to the moral crucible from which emerged the diversity of rational beings. At several junctures in On First Principles he offers quick snapshots of this primordial drama that invariably begins with rational minds (discarnate, equal and alike, and possessing free will) engaged in some sort of contemplative activity directed toward their Creator.Footnote 61 But then these rational creatures, due only to their free will, faltered in this activity. Origen provides a pathology of the soul: these minds “are not rightly and worthily directed,” they withdrew from God because of “sloth and weariness of taking trouble to preserve the good,” there was a “disregard and neglect of better things,”Footnote 62 they were “careless and indifferent,”Footnote 63 “disturbed and drawn away from that state of goodness,”Footnote 64 etc. These fallen rational creatures, Origen insists, did not depart from their original state equally, but rather their collective fall exhibited “the greatest diversity, corresponding to the movements of the mind and will, so that one recedes but slightly, another more seriously, to lower things.”Footnote 65 There emerged, as he saw it, three broad genera of rational beings: the good angels (who fell the least, though even within this group there were varying degrees of fall), human souls (who fell more, though again not equally), and wicked angels (who fell the furthest, the most evil among these being Lucifer).Footnote 66 Jesus's soul is the notable exception to this narrative of decline.Footnote 67
Origen conceived of God's second creative act as a response to this primordial sin which introduced diversity among rational creatures. “From this source [i.e. the primordial fall],” he writes, “it appears, the Creator of all things obtained certain seeds and causes of variety and diversity, in order that, according to the diversity of minds, that is, of rational beings. . . he might create a world that was various and diverse.”Footnote 68 Origen envisioned far more than simply a creative act in which the visible cosmos, including bodies, was brought into existence. It was also an act that showcased God's justice in response to original sin. Fallen creatures, especially humans who are the focus of Origen's argument, are embodied and providentially located in diverse situations on earth that justly corresponded to the varying degree of their primordial falls:
For this reason the Creator will not appear to have been unjust when, according to the above principles, he placed everyone in a position proportionate to his merit; nor will the happiness or unhappiness of anyone's birth, or any condition whatever that may fall to his lot, be supposed to be due to chance; nor will it be believed that there are different creators or souls that are diverse by nature.Footnote 69
Thus, Origen brings his argument against his Gnostic opponents to a close. The cosmos and its diversity are not an expression of an evil demiurge, as they maintained, nor the result of an accident, but rather a divinely created order that demonstrated God's justice in response to the primordial sin.
In this section I have offered a quick sketch of Origen's protology that begins with the Father's eternal relationship with his Son and ends with the creation of the visible world through this Son. It is within this larger protological narrative that Origen situates his account of pre-existence. As noted in the previous section of this essay, he acknowledged that the Scriptures and church's rule did not unambiguously teach pre-existence. So wherein lay the attractiveness of this esoteric doctrine? It certainly funded the exegesis of otherwise puzzling scriptural passages that seemed to intimate that souls existed before their bodies. However, I have highlighted here what I suspect was the more pressing motive behind Origen's account of the soul's embodiment: in the face of the troublingly disparate conditions in which people begin their lives, and the conclusions that Gnostics drew from this problem, pre-existence was the centerpiece of a protological narrative that buttressed the church's view of the goodness and justice of the one God.Footnote 70 Put otherwise, pre-existence functioned both as a defense of the first article in the church's rule of faith and as a challenge to those Gnostics who denied it—it simultaneously established orthodoxy and critiqued heresy. This observation advances the larger argument of this essay since it further underscores how deeply misleading the Hellenization of Christianity framework is for deciphering Origen's doctrine of pre-existence. From his perspective, this doctrine with undeniable Greek roots did not corrode orthodox Christianity as the proponents of this thesis have contended, but rather precisely the opposite: it was deployed to help defend it.
Pre-Existence in Plato's Phaedrus
In this final section I turn to Plato's account of the soul's pre-existence in Phaedrus and Origen's relationship to it. In Origen against Plato, Mark Edwards pushes scholars to offer fine-grained descriptions of how early Christian intellectuals interacted with philosophical texts: to say that they “used” them, were “dependent” upon them, or “synthesized” them is, in the end, to say very little. Edwards rightly notes that while the assertion that pre-existence is “Platonic” has been made tirelessly in the literature, it is usually accompanied by little commentary, as if this were a self-evident claim.Footnote 71 Edwards trenchantly argues that to call Origen “Platonic” on this or other issues is at best vague, and at worst, entirely wrong. Where Plato and Origen used similar vocabulary or reached similar conclusions, this did not necessarily mean that the former was the “ancestor” of the latter. Plato might only have been an “antecedent,” and a number of additional factors (other sources, intelligent reflection, a similar climate, etc.), and not direct dependence on Plato, often explained the same conclusions reached by these two otherwise disparate figures. Edwards also notes that even when it can be demonstrated that Origen had used Plato, similar views often betrayed deeper differences: they deduced their views from different premises, offered diverging supportive arguments, wrestled with different problems and audiences, and sometimes endowed these views with different functions in their respective thought-systems. And then, of course, is the knotty issue of nomenclature: how much of Plato, and what parts of Plato, did Origen need to adopt in order for him to acquire the epithet, “Platonic”?Footnote 72
When it comes to Origen's doctrine of pre-existence, however, Edwards denies that he actually taught it, and Edwards claims Origen's real teaching on the soul's embodiment was “against” Plato. I largely disagree with this assessment because I hold Edwards's reconstruction of Origen's doctrine of pre-existence as problematic.Footnote 73 Nevertheless, the underlying point stands: a more precise description of Origen's relationship to Plato is required on this issue. Three times Origen alludes to the following passage in Phaedrus where Plato, through Socrates, offers one of the clearest accounts of the discarnate soul and its descent into corporeality:
A complete soul—which is to say, one that is winged—journeys on high and controls the whole world, but one that has lost its wings is carried along until it seizes upon something solid, and it takes up residence there. The earthly body of which it takes control seems to move itself, but that is the effect of the soul, and the whole unit of soul and body conjoined is called a “living creature,” and also “mortal” (246b–c).Footnote 74
As we saw in the introduction, Origen boldly claims that his version is “superior” to Plato's (Cels. 4.40), thereby suggesting more than a passing awareness with this dialogue.Footnote 75 Yet he does not explain how it is better. In this section I will identify the key features of Plato's account of pre-existent souls and their subsequent embodiment, highlight important similarities and differences between this account and Origen's teaching, and finally, propose a more helpful moniker for Origen's doctrine of pre-existence than the customary designation, “Platonic.”
A. Phaedrus (246a–249c)
Origen alludes to Socrates's celebrated simile, in which the soul's structure is likened to “an organic whole made up of a charioteer and his team of horses” (246a).Footnote 76 “Now, while the horses and charioteers of gods are always thoroughly good,” Socrates continues, “those of everyone else are a mixture.” In our case, the driver is in charge of two horses: one “is thoroughly noble and good, while the other is thoroughly the opposite” (246a–b). A few lines later Socrates resumes his image of the charioteer, contrasting the effortless movements of the gods’ chariots in heaven to our own chaotic course. The gods move swiftly up a steep hill in heaven to its ridge, upon which they gaze upon what is beyond heaven, “true being.” “True being has no colour or form; it is intangible, and visible only to intelligence, the soul's guide. True being is the province of everything that counts as true knowledge. So since the mind of god is nourished by intelligence and pure knowledge (as is the mind of every soul which is concerned to receive its proper food), it is pleased to be at last in a position to see true being” (247c–d). In the immediately following lines, Socrates identifies justice, self-control and knowledge as the forms that are observed (247d–e).
Whereas the gods fly up the mountain, Socrates continues, “other chariots find it hard, because the troublesome horse weighs them down. Any charioteer who has trained this horse imperfectly finds that it pulls him down towards the earth and holds him back, and this is the point at which a soul faces the worst suffering and the hardest struggle” (247b). Here Plato has Socrates refer to the fall of discarnate souls into bodies on the earth. What precipitates this fall is the limited success these souls had in contemplating the forms. Those “that have closely followed a god” had the most success, though they too were “disturbed by their horses” (248a). Others struggled more because of their “horses” or the “incompetence of the charioteers,” and so “many have their wings severely damaged” (248a–b). In the immediately surrounding lines there are a few other descriptions of this fall. Socrates says that “badness and evil and so on cause them [i.e., the wings] to shrink and perish” (246e). He also says that souls “which fall behind and lose their vision of the truth, and are for some unfortunate reason or another weighted down by being filled with forgetfulness and weakness, lose their wings thanks to this burden and fall to earth” (248c).
Socrates then turns to the “decree of destiny” that judges the varied descent of these souls into bodies. Those that catch a glimpse of the forms are not put in a body, whereas those that fail to see them (or at least, fail to see as much), undergo their first incarnation as a man. Those that saw the most will be planted in men who will become philosophers, and Socrates continues through his graded ranks of professions, from best to last: after philosophers, come lawful kings, statesmen or financiers, trainers who love exercise or doctors, prophets or priests, poets, manual laborers, sophists or demagogues, and finally, tyrants (248c–248e). Finally, Socrates discusses the long cyclical period of re-incarnation by which souls can return to the place from which they fell. There is brief mention here in Phaedrus of the doctrine of learning as recollection, which underscores how Plato envisioned the soul's pre-embodied activity. “This is recollection of the things which our souls once saw during their journey as companions to a god, when they saw beyond the things we now say ‘exist’ and poked their heads up into true reality” (249c).Footnote 77
B. Similarities, Differences and Labels
There are undeniable similarities between the accounts of pre-existence in Phaedrus and what we find in Origen. For both Plato and Origen:
• souls originally exist in a bodiless state;
• the activity of these souls is the contemplation of something loftier;Footnote 78
• this contemplative activity is associated with the imitation of a god;Footnote 79
• distraction is one of the reasons given for the fall;
• the fall occurs in degrees;
• embodiment is a result;
• the fall is the source of hierarchy or differentiation in this world.
While these similarities are striking, a comparative reading also reveals that Origen did not simply duplicate the account of pre-existence that he found in Phaedrus. In the list that follows, I highlight only those differences that appear to have been motivated by Origen's prior commitment to the church's rule of faith.Footnote 80
• For Plato, discarnate souls, prior to their fall and embodiment, are described as both good and bad (the mixed team of horses, and the incompetent charioteer). Origen, on the other hand, asserts that prior to their fall they were “created equal and alike” and had “the good in them.”Footnote 81 Origen's position expresses the first article in the rule of faith, i.e., that there is one God who is both good and just. To assert that rational creatures were tainted before their fall would impugn the character or competence of their Creator.Footnote 82
• For Plato, souls contemplate impersonal forms, whereas Origen not only explicitly rejects the theory of forms,Footnote 83 he also asserts that souls contemplate their Maker, who is sometimes identified as the Father, and at other times, the Son. This too reflects the first and second articles in the rule of faith that assert the Father's creation of all things through his Son.Footnote 84
• For Plato, the traditional gods are exemplars for our souls. Origen obviously does not subscribe to the Greek pantheon as it conflicts with the first article in the rule that asserts that God is one. Rather, the exemplar for prelapsarian rational creatures is the unwavering soul of Jesus. Moreover, Jesus's soul did not start out with the advantage over other souls as Plato's gods did (who had two horses of good stock). His soul was endowed, as with every other soul, with the capacity of choice, corresponding to the fourth article in the church's rule. It was also important that his soul was in no way privileged over other rational creatures, lest the Creator be charged with partiality, thereby again comporting with the first article in the church's rule.Footnote 85
• For Plato, a number of causes are listed for the fall of souls, but striking is the claim that this takes place “by some accident [καί τινι συντυχίᾳ]” (248c). For Origen, there are a number of descriptions of this fall, but he explicitly rejects the “accident” explanation since it directly conflicts with his notion that God is providentially involved in the cosmos and that humans are responsible for their own downfall.Footnote 86 The latter point conflicts with the fourth article in the church's rule on the soul, which asserts that every rational soul has free will and choice and is justly held accountable by God for its actions.
• For Plato, the “law of Destiny” metes out justice for fallen souls. For Origen, it is God who administers justice. This conforms to articles one and four in the church's rule, both of which attribute righteous judgment to God.
In light of these similarities and differences, how should we portray the relationship between Origen's doctrine of pre-existence and Plato's? The customary approach in the scholarship is to describe Origen's doctrine as “dependent” upon Plato, “influenced” by him, or simply, “Platonic.” Such nomenclature correctly highlights that Origen primarily engaged Plato's account of the soul's relationship to the body, and not, say, the versions regnant among Aristotelians and Stoics, and that there are undeniable continuities between Origen and Plato on this issue. But I would contend that this nomenclature nevertheless misleads. Pre-existence—the conviction that souls exist in a discarnate state before they become embodied—rarely existed in propositional abstraction, but was embedded within complex narratives that invariably differed from intellectual to intellectual. To speak of Origen's version of pre-existence as “Platonic” obscures not only the diversity among late antique Platonists, Plato included, on this issue,Footnote 87 it also obscures the extent to which Origen self-consciously diverged from Plato. Indeed, “Platonic” misleadingly heightens Plato's authority for Origen. Unlike other Platonists, Origen wrote commentaries not on Plato's writings, but on the Christian Scriptures. Nor did he self-identify as a Platonist, but as a “man of the church.”Footnote 88 This is where his fundamental loyalty lay, and as we have seen in this section, it was the church's rule of faith that provided the crucial yardstick for critiquing and re-writing the narrative in which Plato had located his doctrine of pre-existence.
If it is unhelpful to label Origen's version of pre-existence as “Platonist,” it should be equally clear that it was not “anti-Platonist.” This designation falls into precisely the opposite trap of underestimating the continuities between these two figures, and the degree to which Origen admired Plato's philosophy. To be a “man of the church” clearly did not imply a disjunctive relationship with Plato. In my estimation, terms like “revision” or “emendation” capture the dynamic of Origen's encounter with Plato on this issue more precisely: while some elements of the version of pre-existence in Phaedrus were unquestionably upheld by Origen, a number of significant changes were made to bring Plato's narrative into conformity with the church's rule of faith and bequeath it with functions—interpreting puzzling scriptural passages and serving as a defense of the church's first article—that were obviously absent from Plato's Phaedrus. From Origen's perspective, his revision was undoubtedly a correction, and it is likely for this reason that he boldly claimed in Against Celsus that his version of pre-existence was “superior” to Plato's. Origen's version of pre-existence was neither “Platonic” nor “anti-Platonic,” but rather a “Christianized Platonism.”Footnote 89 Yet again, then, the Hellenization of Christianity thesis offers us unreliable guidance. It would have us believe that Plato was an unchecked force that breached the walls of orthodoxy. But this section demonstrates the reverse: it was the church's rule, the criterion for orthodoxy in Origen's day, that was the measure of Plato's Phaedrus.
Conclusion
In this essay I have challenged one of the long-standing convictions in the reception history of Origen, embraced not only by his detractors, but also by sympathizers: that his doctrine of pre-existence is emblematic of the Hellenization of Christianity thesis. I have argued that this assertion is misguided because it reconstructs this doctrine, its sources and its relationship to orthodoxy and heresy in ways that conflict with, and often contradict, the historical evidence. According to the aggravated version of the Hellenization of Christianity thesis, a teaching becomes heretical when it fulfills two conditions: it is simultaneously resistant to clear scriptural testimony and uncritically dependent upon Platonic philosophy. But as we have seen, neither condition applies to Origen's account of pre-existence. This doctrine was not anti-biblical, and in fact, there are a number of biblical passages that appear to assume this teaching. Nor was this doctrine obsequiously Platonic. Indeed, whereas the thesis encourages us to see Plato as the transformer of Christianity, it would be more accurate to consider Origen's version of pre-existence as yet another episode in the larger phenomenon of the “Christianization of Hellenism,” where it was Plato who was remodeled according to the standards of Christian orthodoxy in the third century. And so, according to the terms set by this thesis, Origen's doctrine of pre-existence is not heretical. But as we have seen, an even stronger critique can be leveled against applying the Hellenization of Christianity thesis to Origen's version of pre-existence. It turns out that pre-existence was crucial to the project of a mainstream third-century orthodoxy, for it simultaneously defended the church's rule of faith and criticized Origen's Gnostic opponents—precisely the opposite conclusion that proponents of the thesis have encouraged us to conclude. So long as pre-existence is considered illustrative of the Hellenization of Christianity thesis, its role in the construction of orthodoxy is overlooked.
