The Work
De Principiis (On First Principles) was written approximately 220-230 CE in Caesarea Maritima, Palestine, after Origen moved there from Alexandria following a conflict with Bishop Demetrius of Alexandria. It is the first systematic Christian theology - the first sustained attempt to organize the teachings of Christianity into a coherent philosophical and theological system, addressing every major topic of Christian belief in a logical order.
The original Greek text is almost entirely lost. We possess the work primarily through a Latin translation made by Rufinus of Aquileia around 398 CE, which Rufinus acknowledged he had softened in places where Origen's views seemed problematic. Fragments of the original Greek are preserved in Origen's Philocalia, a collection of extracts compiled by Basil the Great and Gregory of Nazianzus in the fourth century. Jerome made a more literal (and more critical) Latin translation of some sections. The reconstruction of Origen's actual views requires careful comparison of these sources.
The work is organized in four books: Book 1 addresses God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit; Book 2 addresses creation, the fall, and the world; Book 3 addresses free will and moral struggle; Book 4 addresses the interpretation of Scripture.
Biblical Engagement
Proverbs 22:20-21 (in the Septuagint version: 'Do thou describe these things in a threefold way, in counsel and knowledge, to answer words of truth to those who question thee') is Origen's primary biblical justification for his threefold method of scriptural interpretation - the most influential hermeneutical proposal in the history of Christian exegesis. Origen reads 'threefold' as referring to three senses in which Scripture can and should be understood: the literal (bodily) sense, the moral (soul) sense, and the allegorical (spiritual) sense. This threefold hermeneutic became the basis for the medieval fourfold sense (literal, allegorical, moral, anagogical) and shaped Christian biblical interpretation for a millennium.
Acts 3:21 ('Whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began') provides the primary biblical basis for Origen's most controversial doctrine: apokatastasis, the restoration of all things to God. Origen argued that God's creative and redemptive purpose is the return of all rational creatures - including, ultimately, the devil himself - to their origin in God. This doctrine, which implies universal salvation, was condemned at the Fifth Ecumenical Council (Constantinople II, 553 CE), but the condemnation was posthumous (Origen died around 254 CE) and did not prevent his enormous ongoing influence.
1 Corinthians 15:28 ('And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all') is the New Testament counterpart to Acts 3:21 in Origen's apokatastasis argument. 'God all in all' (ta panta en pasin) is the eschatological state toward which all creation moves: a universal inclusion in God that preserves individual rational existence while dissolving the separation from God that constitutes evil.
John 1:1 ('In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God') is the basis of Origen's Christology. Origen's interpretation of the Logos is among the most sophisticated pre-Nicene engagements with John's Prologue. He argues that the Logos is the eternal generated Son of the Father - distinct from the Father, subordinate to the Father in certain respects (making Origen's Christology technically 'subordinationist,' which became controversial at Nicaea), yet genuinely divine and the mediator of all creation. His reading of John 1:1 distinguished between 'God' (ho theos, with the article, referring to the Father) and 'divine' (theos, without the article, referring to the Son) in a way that anticipates the debates that would culminate at Nicaea in 325 CE.
Book 4's discussion of scriptural interpretation engages extensively with the Pauline letters (especially Romans, Galatians, and 1 Corinthians) as examples of allegorical interpretation in the New Testament itself. Origen argues that Paul's reading of the Hebrew Bible in Galatians 4 (the allegory of Hagar and Sarah as the two covenants) demonstrates that allegorical interpretation is not a Hellenistic imposition on Scripture but part of the biblical hermeneutical tradition itself.
Author & Context
Origen Adamantius was born approximately 185 CE, probably in Alexandria, Egypt. His father Leonidas was martyred under the emperor Septimius Severus in 202 CE, and Origen is reported to have urged his father toward martyrdom and to have been restrained from following him only by his mother hiding his clothes. He became head of the Catechetical School of Alexandria in his late teens and led it until his conflict with Bishop Demetrius around 231 CE, after which he settled in Caesarea Maritima. He was tortured under the emperor Decius in 249-251 CE and died of his wounds approximately 254 CE.
Alexandria in Origen's time was the intellectual capital of the Roman Empire - the home of the greatest library in the ancient world, the center of Neoplatonist philosophy (Origen's contemporary Plotinus was also active in Alexandria), and the meeting point of Jewish, Christian, Greek, and Egyptian intellectual traditions. Origen's synthesis of Christian theology with Platonic philosophy was not a corruption of Christianity but a genuine attempt to demonstrate that Christianity was intellectually serious and could engage the best philosophy of the age on its own terms.
Origen was the most prolific writer of antiquity: Jerome estimated his works at two thousand volumes. Alongside De Principiis, his most important works are the Hexapla (a six-column comparison of different Greek translations of the Hebrew Bible - the most ambitious work of biblical scholarship in antiquity), the Contra Celsum (a response to a pagan philosopher's attack on Christianity), and his extensive biblical commentaries and homilies on virtually every book of the Bible.
Structure and Argument
Book 1 addresses the divine nature: God is absolutely simple, incorporeal, and incomprehensible; the Son (Logos/Wisdom) is the eternal, generated image of the Father; the Holy Spirit is also divine and is the source of holiness in all rational creatures. This trinitarian framework is the first systematic account of the immanent Trinity in Christian literature.
Book 2 addresses cosmology: God created spiritual beings (logika) in the beginning; these beings were all equal and free; through varying degrees of cooling of their original ardor for God, they fell into different conditions - the highest became angels, the middling became human souls, the lowest became demons. The present material world is a remedial creation designed for the education and restoration of fallen souls.
Book 3 addresses free will: rational creatures are genuinely free and responsible for their moral choices; the soul's progress toward or away from God is a real moral journey, not a predetermined path; God's education of souls continues through multiple ages until all are restored.
Book 4 addresses Scripture: the Bible has three senses corresponding to the three aspects of the human person - body, soul, and spirit. Some passages have only spiritual meaning with no literal referent; all passages have spiritual meaning. The spiritual interpretation unlocks the hidden wisdom embedded in the apparently historical or legal material of the Old Testament.
Critical Reception and Condemnation
Origen's influence in his own lifetime and in the century following his death was enormous. Athanasius of Alexandria, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa all drew extensively on his work. But several of his positions attracted sustained criticism: his subordinationist Christology was superseded by the Nicene formula; his pre-existence of souls was rejected by Augustine; his universalism was condemned in 553 CE.
The Origenist controversy erupted repeatedly in the fourth and fifth centuries - Epiphanius of Salamis, Jerome, and Theophilus of Alexandria attacked his legacy, while Rufinus and Palladius defended it. The condemnation at Constantinople II listed fifteen anathemas against 'Origenism,' though the question of whether the council's target was Origen himself or a later 'Origenism' (the doctrine of Evagrius Ponticus and others who developed Origen's ideas) remains debated.
Theological Significance
Despite the condemnations, Origen's influence on the Christian tradition is incalculable. His allegorical method of biblical interpretation, his trinitarian theology, his understanding of spiritual ascent, and his vision of divine pedagogy are woven into the fabric of Christian thought at every level. The great Alexandrian theology that culminated in Athanasius's defense of Nicene orthodoxy was built on Origen's foundations. The Eastern monastic tradition, through Evagrius Ponticus and the Philokalia tradition, preserves Origenian categories. The Western mystical tradition, through Ambrose, Augustine, and Gregory the Great, carries Origen's allegorical legacy.
Legacy
De Principiis remains the indispensable starting point for understanding the development of Christian systematic theology and biblical hermeneutics. Every subsequent systematic theologian - from Augustine to Aquinas to Barth - works within or against the framework Origen established. His apokatastasis doctrine has been revived in the twentieth century by Hans Urs von Balthasar, Karl Barth (in modified form), and David Bentley Hart.
Reading Alongside Scripture
Readers should study Proverbs 22:20-21 (the threefold reading), 1 Corinthians 15:20-28 (the resurrection and God becoming all in all), John 1:1-18 (the Logos theology that Origen systematized), Romans 8:18-25 (the creation waiting for liberation), Acts 3:19-21 (the restoration of all things), and Galatians 4:21-31 (Paul's own allegorical interpretation as Origen's precedent).
Further Reading
- Henri Crouzel, Origen (1989) - the standard modern scholarly biography and theological survey, presenting Origen's thought in its full complexity and resisting the reductionisms of both his admirers and his critics. - John Behr, ed. and trans., Origen: On First Principles (2 vols., 2017) - the best modern critical edition and translation, drawing on all available sources and providing extensive scholarly apparatus. - Andrew Louth, The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition (1981) - Chapter 3 provides an excellent account of Origen's mystical theology and its relationship to Platonic philosophy, situating De Principiis in the broader tradition of Christian spirituality.