211
See also: Physical and mental discipline 112–13 ■ Man as a manifestation of
God 188 ■ The ultimate reward for the righteous 279
CHRISTIANITY
of God’s unchanging nature.
Since God cannot change, the
relationship he has with humans
cannot end once their bodies
disintegrate. Therefore there must
be a part of the human that does
not die, and this is the soul. A
typical Platonist, Origen thought
the soul was far more important
than the body, which was a
distraction from a spiritual life.
Hell and heaven
Origen’s teaching shaped the
popular Christian understanding
of salvation from that moment on.
Unlike the Platonists, the writers of
the Hebrew Bible had not separated
the soul from the body. If there was
going to be any life after death at
all, then a person’s body would
need to be raised from the dead
to go along with its soul. Jesus’s
bodily resurrection from the dead
According to Origen, the soul is
the part of us that returns to God after
death. Artists found this hard to convey
without giving the soul, and indeed God,
a human appearance; this 16th-century
panel shows St. Paul and the Trinity.
Origen
Origen was born to Christian
parents in Alexandria, North
Africa, in around 185 CE. When
Origen was 17, his father was
martyred, and Origen took
up a life of disciplined study,
becoming a respected thinker
both inside and outside the
Church. The bishop of
Alexandria appointed him
head of the catechetical
school, instructing new
Christian converts before their
baptism. After a dispute with
the bishop, Origen moved to
Caesarea in Palestine, where
his writings included an
eight-volume defense of
Christianity against one of its
critics, the philosopher Celsus.
Around 250 CE, Origen
was tortured by the Roman
authorities in an attempt to
make him renounce his faith.
Origen refused, and was
released. However, he died a
few years later, in 254 CE, most
likely as a result of injuries
sustained while he was being
persecuted for his faith.Key worksc.220 De Principiis (First
Principles): the first systematic
rendition of Christian theology
248 On Prayer; On Martyrdom;
Against Celsusshowed that this was possible for
those who believed in him. However,
after Origen, less emphasis was
placed on bodily resurrection, and
much Christian teaching focused
exclusively on the state of the soul
before death and its fate after
death. The souls of those who had
rejected God were considered to
be spiritually dead, and would live
out their immortality in hell.
However, the souls of those who
had embraced Jesus’s message
would ascend to a state of
perfection with God in heaven.A modern perspective
Recent Christian thinkers have
suggested that Origen relied too
heavily on Platonism. A growing
movement in Christian theology
rejects dualism (the separation
of body and soul), teaching instead
that the life of the soul after death is
possible only if God also resurrects a
person’s body. Another widespread
belief today is that of conditional
immortality: immortality is only
given to those who have believed
in Jesus, and not to everyone. ■...the soul, having a
substance and life of
its own, shall, after its
departure from the world,
be rewarded according
to its deserts.
Origen