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Some principles of Origen's theology. [Thread]
Christian theology is a layered account of spiritual pilgrimage: the pilgrimage through time of a holy community, and the pilgrimage of the soul towards eternity.
Those are not two pilgrimages but one.
This pilgrimage is motivated by desire. Human beings have an innate yearning for the beauty of God. Through that yearning we reach out beyond ourselves, beyond all time and space, towards eternal Love.
We are all on a continuum of love and lovelessness. We are always either inching towards God in love or drifting away as our love grows cold. Nobody can love so much as to have already arrived; nobody can love so little as to be finally and irreparably lost.
(At this point Origen’s theology could be integrated with a more pessimistic Augustinian anthropology: our innate yearning for God is both our best feature and the source of all our misery; we cannot move towards God through an effort of will, since will is the main problem.)
There is no dualistic split within the human race, whether at the beginning (by the creation of two classes of people) or at the end (by the salvation of some and the damnation of others). All derive from a common unity & will finally share in the common fire and delight of Love
Evil is not part of creation. Nor is it a positive spiritual entity that opposes God. It is a privation, a shadow, a lapse in goodness, in which the creature bends itself away from Love and attaches itself to lesser goods
Fate, determinism, or anything that annihilates personal freedom is rejected. Without a doctrine of personal freedom, the privation theory of evil would be impossible. The goodness of creatures would be compromised and the Christian metaphysical system would collapse
Body and soul are not absolutely divided but exist on a spiritual continuum. The soul can become “fleshly” as its love grows cold and it drifts away from God. The body can become “spiritual” as attachment to God increases.
The goal of our pilgrimage is the divinisation of the soul and the spiritualisation of the body. This is not to deny that the future life will be embodied, but only to deny that our present experience is a reliable guide to what it means to enjoy wholeness of life.
All creatures have an innate kinship with God since the Loogs contains within itself an outline of all creatures. The Logos adapts and accommodates itself to every creature, patiently and lovingly revealing to each one the truth of its source and destiny in the Love of God.
Salvation is primarily a matter of revelation. By an infinitely patient divine pedagogy, the Son of God leads each soul through a lifelong (and longer-than-life) curriculum in Love.
Again, there is room for integration with Augustinianism at this point: why would our education in Love take so long unless our capacity for love were fundamentally disordered and in need not only of re-training but also healing?
The Christian community is just as much a school, a community of learning, as it is a cultic or sacramental community.
There is a distinction, but not a division, between beginners and the spiritually advanced. Both are on the same continuum of spiritual progress. The beginners are exhorted to become the advanced, and the advanced are warned against regressing
All who are, today, making progress in growth towards Love may be described as the spiritually “perfect,” since they are walking in the way of perfection.
The main spiritual business of the Christian life is the reading and study of scripture. Scriptural exegesis is the instrument by which the Logos heals the soul, unmasks its fantasies, and trains it in the practice of the love of God.
In this life, a deeper grasp of the meaning of scripture is not only the cause of spiritual progress but also its main reward.
The spiritual meaning of any passage of scripture lies in its relationship to the overall message of scripture: the good news of Jesus, God’s Son and our Saviour, the Logos made flesh. It is only in relation to Jesus that the Bible finds its unity, coherence, and truthfulness
Platonism: the history of Israel is a typological revelation of eternal things. Christianised Platonism: the fact that history can reveal eternal things shows the dignity of history. The fact that material things can reveal spiritual things shows the dignity of matter
The divinisation of the self doesn't destroy the ego through a merging of the self with the divine. Rather it involves the continual exercise of personal freedom. It is the free and loving union of the creature with the creator without abolishing the distinction between them.
If divinisation is a union between the finite and the infinite, there can be no end point to the process. It is not perfection so much as perfecting. It is unceasing progress in growth and transformation. There is no limit to how much of God the soul can contain.
Every advance in Love is an advance towards the infinite. The pilgrim soul travels deeper into Love, for endless ages, without ever reaching a final destination or without ever being able to say: “Enough.”
[End of thread.] I can't remember if I've ever tweeted this stuff before but I just found it among some old notes & thought I would share it here.
