Looking on the light: some remarks on the imagery of light in the first chapter of the Peri Archon

XXII SOME REMARKS ON THE IMAGERY OF LIGHT IN THE FIRST CHAPTER OF THE PERI ARCHON This essay is an attempt to address a general question, that of Origen's relation to the Greek philosophical tradition, by concentrating on one particular issue, which I hope will prove adequately illustrative. As we all know, the battle has long raged between partisans of Origen the systematic philosopher, such as Adolf von Harnack, Eugène de Faye, Hal Koch and Hans Jonas, and those who see him as essentially an exegete of scripture and Christian apologist, such as Walther Vélker, Henri de Lubac, Henri Crouzel, or Marguerite Harl. To a certain extent one's attitude is conditioned by how far one concentrates on a text such as the Peri Archon, or rather on the Homilies and such works as the Exhortation to Martyrdom and the treatise On Prayer, but these emphases are themselves plainly conditioned by the overt or covert prejudices of the authorities concerned, in their anxiety to maintain either the originality and philosophical standing of Origen or alternatively, if not his orthodoxy, at least his essential Christianity. Part of the problem, I think, has been that the alternatives are stated too starkly. Either Origen is presented as a Platonist with a superficial

XXII veneer of Christianity, or he is not to be a systematic philosopher at all. The the Peri Archon, and see how his use of Platonic imagery and doctrine may truth may rather be that he is indeed a philosopher, but one who, rather than be seen to support my thesis.2 217 adopting Platonism or the doctrine of any other Hellenic school, has forged a On the vexed question of the nature of the Peri Archon, on which system of his own out of the Christian scriptures and tradition, to which he much has been written in recent years,3 I must say thatI am inclined to view lays Platonism tribute-for concepts and formulations which he finds useful, without surrendering to the Greeks any principle whatever.! I would suggest that Origen's relation to primitive Christianity is somewhat analogous to that of Plotinus to Plato and earlier Platonism. He draws his inspiration from the tradition, and genuinely aspires to be faithful to it, but his genius drives him 2Origen's use of light imagery in general is comprehensively examinedin a thesis by M. Martinez-Pastor, Teologia de la luz en Origènes (Comillas, 1962), but Martinez does not address himself to the particular problem that concerns me here, See also H. Crouzel, Origéne et la ‘Connaissance mystique' (Paris/Bruges, 1961), pp. 130-154, for a good account of the uses to which Origen puts theimagery of light. to the creation of a new system, built upon what he has inherited. In a word, 3Cf. B. Steidle, "Neue Untersuchungen zu Origenes” mepl ‘Apyav’, Origen only wishes to be a Christian, as does Plotinus to be a Platonist, but ZNW 40 (1942), 236-243; M. Harl, “Recherches sur le repí ‘Apyüv' d'Origéne en vue d'une nouvelle édition: la division en chapitres," Studia Patristica 3 (= TU 78; Berlin, 1961), pp. 57-67; H. Crouzel, Intro. to Origène Traité des Principes, Tome 1 (SC 252), pp. 15-22. The precise meaning of dpxal intended by Origenin this context has been the object of some uncertainty (Cf. Crouzel's discussion op. cit. pp. 12-15, and "Qu'a voulu faire Origène en composant le Traité des Principes?," BLE 76 (1975), pp. 161-186, and 241-260). It seems probable to me that he sees himself as meaning what any Platonic philosopher would mean by this, viz. a discussion of the three acknowledged "first principles", God, Idea(s), Matter, together with topics arising out of those, and that is the subject-matter of the first section of the work (to II.3), mutatis mutandis (e.g. for "Ideas", we have “rational beings", for Matter, the World). How well the title fits the other portions of the work is more problematic (a reference back to the discussion of free will in III.1 in the Comm. in Rom. (VII.15, PG XIV 1145A) as a separate libellus would seem to indicate that Origen thought of the work rather as a collection of essays). Some light may be thrown on what particular connotation Origen attaches to the term dpyal by his remarks at Comm. in Joh. X111.46, 302, where he presents the dpyal of any science or art as what the first discoverer, or "sower", lays down, to be developed further and brought to completion (réAos) by later generations ("reapers")--all this by way of exegesis of John 4:36. This "dynamic" concept of the dpyal of a science imports another dimension, I think, into the traditionally static philosophical meanings of the term, as immutable basic principles, or ultimate principles if we persist in calling Plotinus, in recognition of his achievement, a Neoplatonist, then we must denominate Origen a ‘Neochristian’. What I want to do in this paper is to consider one dominant image of which Origen makes much use in:his discussion of the nature of God in =: 1We may recall that, as hetells it himself (ap. Eusebius HE VI.19, 12-13), Origen only began to attend the lectures of "the teacher of philosophy” (sc. Ammonius Saccas) when he himself was already an established, if precocious, teacher of-Christian doctrine. He went to Ammonius, not to be converted to Platonism, but rather to pick up useful technical information; to aid in hisapostolate to the Alexandrian intelligentsia, a number of whom, such as Heraclas and his brother Plutarch, he actually lured away from Ammonius. This he could not have done, I submit, without a system to offer. The system need not be worked out in every detail, nor even free of contradictions, but one cannot reasonably deny, I think, that it is there: Without going into details, I see it as involving, above all, the concept of a cosmic process of procession (or 'fall') and return, involving the pre-existence of souls and, inevitably, some form of reincarnation and sequence of worlds (though I doubt that Origen ever quite made up his mind on these questions), All other aspects of his thought seem to me to be conditioned by this grand conception, which is itself the product of his concern with the problem of God's providence and our free will. To that extent I remain sympathetic to Hal Koch, in Pronoia und Paideusis (Berlin and Leipzig, 1932), and even to Hans Jonas. of reality. Certainly Origen is to some extent "transposing" the traditional Platonic meaning of the term, as Crouzel suggests; the connotation "principles of the Christian faith" is superimposed on the basic meaning "first principles of reality." Cf. also De Princ. 4, 1.7, where dpy# significantly glossed by orotyelwots.

XXII XXII LOUKINU ON THE LIGHT 219 the work as an attempt by Origen to state a reasoned Christian position on point I find rather interesting, and it is that which I wish to start from, since I the topic of dpyal, or ‘first principles’, arising out of his attendance at the think that it serves as a good instance of Origen's complex relationship to lectures of Ammonius Saccas. -I am led to this view, not just by a contemporary Hellenic® philosophy. consideration of the-subject matter; but by looking at the very way in which "These men,” says Origen, "will have it that fire and spirit are body the work starts out. Origen begins abruptly, not with a positive statement of and nothing else. But I would ask them what they have to say about this God's nature, but with an answer to.an accusation, plainly from a Platonic passage of Scripture: ‘God is light,’ as John says in his epistle (1 John 1:5), source, that Christians regard |God as. having a corporeal nature. In ‘and in him is no darkness.’ " combating this accusation he has to: face a series of passages of Scripture which seem to attribute to God material substance or characteristics.6 For instance, Moses.Saysat, Deut. 4:24: "Our Godis a consuming fire",? and Jesus saystodthe: Samaritan woman at John 4:24: "Godis spirit The point of adducing this passage about light is presumably that, in later Platonism, light is agreed to be incorporeal. But this is, strangely enough, not a point which Origen cares to make explicitly. Instead, he goes on: (reúna), and those who worship him must ‘worshipin spirit andin truth". Now Origen's general’line of. defense is plainly that such passages must be He is that light, surely, which lightens the whole understanding of taken figuratively,but that is not.the firstLis that he makes. This first those who are capable of receiving truth, as it is written in the Thirty-fifth Psalm, ‘In thy light shall we see light For what other Se 1 light of God can we speak of in which a man sees light, except 4As one would expect in aà statement of First Principles. On the immateriality of God, Cf. Aetius, Placita 1.1, 31 (p. 304 Diels, Dox.Gr.), Apuleius, De Plat. 1.5, 190-1; Numenius, Fr. 3 des Places. (Albinusin Did. ch. 10 asserts, certainly, God's.Jimsteraliy, ‘but only at the end of his discussion). Za capì Be N 5In the Preface, nes he begins, rather defensively, by identifying himself with Moses, who preferred,in the words of the author of Hebrews (11:24-26), "the abused state.(évañoués) of Christ to the treasure-houses of the Egyptians", these latter-being Àthe much-vaunted doctrines of contemporary philosophy... God's spiritual power (öövayıs) which when it lightens a man causes him either to see clearly the truth of all things or to know God himself, who is called the truth? (trans. Butterworth). Origen here has slipped unobtrusively from making one point to making another. The original purpose of introducing the example of light, to counter the references to fire and to nveûua, has been passed over in favour 6These passagesmay. well ‘eaebeen ‘adduced by anti-Christian polemicists, (and even.by Ammonius, whom Porphyry, at least, maintained of an argument which applies to all three epithets equally, that they are not to be taken literally but metaphorically. to have started as a Christian himself), though here Origen only says that they might do so (scio quoniam: des 7He also desorilicahim deckas "a jealous God", but Origen leaves that asidein the present context. 81 use "Hellenic" here instead of the commonly-used term “pagan,” which I find objectionable.

XXII XXII 220 221 Why should Origen make such an apparently inconsequential move? Thus it is that in Alexander's De Anima we find, first, at pp. 42, 19- I wish to propose two-reasons;: both of which illustrate his complex 43, 11 Bruns, a straightforward paraphrase of Ar. De An. III.7, but then, at relationship to contemporary Platonism. The first is that, while he was well aware of contemporary Platonic doctrine on the incorporeality of light, he did not necessarily accept it himself:-the second is that he also has very much in mind the Sun Simile of Republic. VI:(507a-509c), which certainly since Alexander of Aphrodisias had been brought into conjunction with Aristotle's doctrines of the Active: Intellect. in. De Anima MI.S and of the Unmoved Mover in Metaphysics XII,-and:had-thus:been incorporated in a coordinated —enmtdeiLvOieni 88, 26-89, 6, the use of the analogy of light to illustrate the principle that "whatever is eminently some kind of being imparts this kind of being to everything which is less eminently the same kind of being," to quote Philip Merlan's formulation.1% The Active Intellect, being precminently intelligible, imparts intelligibility to the "material" intellect (that is, the immanent human intellect), which becomes intelligible by intelligising the Proper objects of intellect, the forms in matter. Similarly, light, being Peripatetic and Platonist doctrine.of:God as Pure Activity (¿vépyeta) and as preeminently visible, is the cause of the visibility of everything visible, as the noetic analogue of the Sun, bestowing both intelligibility and existence well as of the seeing ability of the eyes. This comparison of Alexander's plainly owes much to the Sun on all things, as well as knowledge on rational souls. First of all, the Simile of the Republic, and it in turn can be seen to have had considerable incorporeality of light.. This ;is-not-a-Platonic doctrine--neither in the influence on Plotinus' view of the status of light in such passages as Enn. Republic nor in the Timaeus is light presented as something incorporeal--but IV.5, 6-7, II.1,7 and 1.6,3.11 The evidence of Origen would seem to indicate it is at least derivable from Aristotle;-who, in De Anima 11.7, declares light that this identification of light as dowarov, against the indications of to be "the actuality of the transparent:qua transparent."9 Aristotle simply Plato's doctrine in the Timaeus, goes back to Middle Platonism, perhaps to wants to make the:point that light is.not a substance of any kind, but a Numenius, or at least to Ammonius Saccas. Let us explore each: of: these points in turn. condition of a substance (countering the doctrine of Empedocles), but for later For a Platonist, Aristotle's doctrine as presented in De An. II.7 is Aristotelians and Platonists this incorporeality of light became something rather special, being connected with its preeminent role in the operation of not satisfactory, since Aristotle declares light not to be a body, not for the purpose of exalting it, but simply to deprive it of any independent existence. the sense of sight, the most‘honourable’ of the senses (cf. Plato, Tim. 45B- Quite a different connotation can be put upon this bodilessness of light if one D), and then being used: as an: analogy for: the role of the Good (or in Alexander's theory, Nous) in the activation of the human intellect in its cognising of True Being. : 10In Monopsychism, Mysticism, Metaconsciousness (The Hague, 19692), p. 39. 11See A. H. Armstrong, The Architecture of the Intelligible 9148b9-10: ¿ds Sé. darıv 1 Toérou évépyeva, Tod Stagavois D dtagavés. Universe in the Philosophy of Plotinus (Cambridge, 1940; repr. Hakkert, 1967), pp. 54-57; F. M. Schroeder, "Light and the Active Intellect in Alexander and Plotinus," Hermes 112 (1984), pp. 239-245.

chooses to take this, as does Alexander, and later Piotinus, as indicating that to receive more light than we have said, about the brightness and light is pure Form without an admixture of matter. In Alexander this is splendour of the sun, shall we not have to tell actually only implied in-the comparison of light with the Active Intellect, splendour of the sun is unspeakably and immeasurably better and but in Plotinus it is quite explicit 12 For Plotinus, ordinary, physical light more glorious than all this light he can see? is, by reason of its freedom from-admixture with body, the noblest element in the material universe. ~~ - I Now as I say, Origen. seems-to recognize the existence of this doctrine of light, but he is-fiot prepared to approve it. When it comes to employing the similes ‘of the Sun and the-Cave of the Republic, however, he has no such hesitation; although he employs. them in a suitably disguised form. At De Princ, I. 1.5, we find the following:13 him that the Here, and in what follows, the influence of the Simile of the Cave is palpable enough, I think,!> but there is another element here also, which is not present in Plato's image. Plato stresses the shock and discomfort of being brought from one's comfortable viewing of the shadows on the wall cast by the fire, first to the realization that the fire is only a fire, and the figures only cardboard cutouts, and then to a view of the outside world dominated by the sun, but the end result is that one can view the sun, one ‘Having then refuted; to the best of our ability, every interpretation which: suggésts that weshould attribute to God any material characteristics; we ‘assert that he is in truth incomprehensible and immeasurable.t4 Forwhatever may be the knowledge which we have been ablé io obtain about God, whether by perception or reflection, we must of. nécessity believe that he is far and away better than our thöughis’about him. For if we see a man who can scarcely look at a glimmer'or the light of the smallest lamp, and if we wish to teach such’ 4 orné; whose eyesight is not strong enough 12E.g. Enn. 1 6, 7, 17-18: light is doduaroy rai Adyos Kai does attain to a knowledge of the Good. For Origen, God is of such a nature as "the human mind, however pure or clear to the very utmost that mind may be, cannot gaze at or behold” (ibid.). Now this is very much a part of the Christian doctrine of the “invisibility” of God, but it finds an echo also in a passage of Numenius' dialogue On the Good (Fr. 2, des Places), a work which Origen certainly knew (since he quotes from it in the Contra Celsum),!® to the effect that we can gain the notion of anything bodily from comparison with things of a similar nature, but in the case of the Good, "no object present to us nor any 15Though long since formalized in Middle Platonic tradition, the Sun Simile is given by Albinus in Did. ch. 10 as prime example of the "way 131 use Butterworth's translation, unless otherwise noted. 14Incomprehensibilis here translates dxardAnnros- inaestimabilis may render drrepífierpos, anepithet, which, though Greek, is only found in Apuleius’ De Plat. ch. 5, but dötefrfrnros or drepidproros are also possibilities. => SI of analogy", while of the "way of dvaywyr" (via eminentiae), of which the Cave is certainly an instance, he actually gives Diotima's speech in the Symposium as the example. Origen uses the comparison of the light of a lamp with the light of the sun elsewhere, at Comm. in Joh. 11.120-121 and C.Cels. V IL 161.15; IV.51.

XXII LOOKING ON THE LIGHT sensible object similar to it. gives‘us:any. means of grasping its nature.” the Good, whereas in Origen one does not, at least in this life,1? In fact, However, Numenius is actually leading:up biere to his lively description of the mystical vision of the Good, which he.compares with a little fishingboat which by close attention: one can justpick out bobbing between the waves. Origen gives no such promise of a mystical vision in this life. The important thing is, though,that’ Numenius seems here to be giving an interpretation of the: negative:aspect of:‘the’‘Sun Simile--after all, Socrates does emphasize at the:outset, in506.CE, that he cannot give an account of the Good itself, but only ia'series of images. the Cave Simile, though: sufficiently altered ás to make identification less ee Origen has here subtly blended the imagery of the Cave with the later Stoic argument for the existence of God from the contemplation of his works (cf. Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Mathematicos IX.75-87), which suits him rather better, especially as St. Paul himself had referred to it at Rom. 1:20: "Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made.” But for Origen the force of this argument, in relation to the Cave Simile, is that we can get no further than inference from God's In the very next section: E1 6);"Origen seems to make further use of than obvious: © 225 ven manifestations and effects to His nature; we cannot know Him as He is. Origen certainly approves of the central images of the Republic, as we can see from Contra Celsum VII.45-6, where he first quotes Celsus But it will not appear outof place.if.to make the matter clearer still we use yet another illustration. “Sometimes our eyes cannot look making use of the Sun and the Line, and then says, "We are careful not to raise objections to good teachings, even if the authors are outside the faith," but he is not committed to the full implications of the doctrine behind them, upon the light itself, that iis, theactual sun, but when we see the nor does he feel constrained from modifying them with other doctrines of brightness and rays ‘of‘thesun as:‘they pour into our windows, for own. For instance, in the next chapter of BookI (2, 7) dealing with the Son example, or ‘into: any ‘small openings for light, we are able to infer from these how. eaeis.thesource:and the foundation of physical : si 51 This seems to owe something to Rep. VII.515e-516b, where the prisoner, newly freed from the Cave; cannot. yet:look:upon the sun or bear the sunlight: “he would finditpainful tobethus dragged out, and would chafe at it, and when he came outinto the:light, his eyes would be filled with its beam so that he would notbe:able10:see‘even one-of the things which we call real," and a gradual process. of habituation is required. The difference, of course, is, once again, thatin Plato one does come eventually to a vision of his or Logos, he identifies the process of habituation(ouvrjdera) mentioned in Rep. VII.516 a with the activity of the Logos (who is, after all, "light from light"): 18 . for it is through his brightness that the nature of the light itself is known and experienced. This brightness falls softly and gently on 17 There seems almost an explicit contradiction of Rep. VII.516B, aúróv xaé’ abrdv ev Ti aúrod yupa Stvar’ dv karıdeivin 1.1, 6: mens nostra ipsum per se ipsum deum sicut est non potest intueri. Splendor ex luce (presumably translating dravyacua durs) a phrase inspired by Wisdom of Solomon 7:26 and Hebrews

NALI 226 doctrine of the nature and the knowability of God. He is influenced not only the tender and weak eyes of:mortal man and little by little trains and by his knowledge of the speculations of such Pythagoreanising Platonists as accustoms (adsuescens) them:to bear the light in its clearness; and Moderatus and Numenius, and also possibly of the more "main-line" when it has-removed-from them all that darkens and obstructs their Platonist Albinus, but also by his acquaintance with the works of Philo, who vision, . . it renders them capable of enduring the glory of the was himself influenced by contemporary Platonism. light, becoming in this respect even a kind of mediator (ueo£Tns, 1 The consensus that appears to have been reached by 200 A.D. or so was that God was both Tim. 2:5) between men and the light. absolute Unity (uovds, els, Ev) but also an Intellect--an Intellect, however, which is to be distinguished from a second, active, demiurgic intellect or it seems as if, through:Christ, we are enabled to see the Father, Here, indeed, Adyos (Moderatus, Numenius and Albinus favour a second voús, Philo, in the spirit of the imagery of the Cave, but in fact which would be fully Plutarch and Atticus a Adyos”), by being “static” (Num. Fr. 15 des Places) as Origen is allowing himself to be carried away slightly. This impression is opposed to "in motion", a fount and first principle of voids, or, more vaguely severely qualified in-what follows (sects. 8-10), particularly by the striking "something higher" (dvwrépa) than voös (Albinus, Didaskalikos, ch. 10). image of the immense statue, which: is too big for us to view, and the Such an entity can be known, if at all, only in some rather special miniature statue which is.its-faithful copy, which we can see, and which way. gives us a true image (elkcv, similitudo), but still only an image, of what we cannot see, 1? discovering the nature of God and the impossibility of communicating it to ae the general public gave much stimulus to negative theology of various kinds In all this we cannot, unfortunately, be sure that Rufinus is not in later umes, but it was not until the second part of the Parmenides was indulging in a certain degree of censorship:and’" laundering” of the text (as he given a metaphysical interpretation, from the lst century A.D. on, that the certainly is seen to be doing in the:few. places where the original is available problem of how the First Principle could be cognised became an acute one for to us), but Origen seems to be struggling with the problem of how far God is Platonists. knowable or unknowable, and to what extent Christ is the means to that knowledge, and Platonic imagery is both a help and a hindrance to him in this. This is not quite the whole story, however. Origen gives ample indication, in ch. 1 of the Peri Archon, that he is aware of the considerable development that had taken place over the previous centuries in the Platonic Plato's famous dictum at Timaeus 28c about the difficulty of — —— At the end of the first hypothesis (142A), we reach the conclusion about the One that "it cannot have a name or be spoken of, nor can there by any knowledge or perception or opinion of it. It is not named or spoken of, not an object of opinion or knowledge, not perceived by any creature.” If it is to be cognised at all, then, it cannot be by any ‘normal’ cognitive process, such as alo@nois, Sóta, or émoriun. It will require a 19This is very much in the spirit of Origen's view of Christ as the distinct supra-noetic faculty, termed poetically by the Chaldaean Oracles (Fr. "image of the invisible-God" (Col. 1:15)--one of Origen's favorite texts (119 1.1DP) "the flower of the mind" (dvdos vod), recognized by Plotinus as the citations listed in Biblia Patristica 3). :

XXII 229 voús in a state of sober intoxication: (Enn. II 5, 9; VI 7, 35), and also the human soul or mind, while still in the body, could achieve the equivalent, perhaps by Numeniusiin his eloquent description of the vision of the Goodin in Platonic terms, of looking directly at the sun. Fr. 2 (mentioned above). KK e Ae Origen, however, does not seem to have arrived at a formula for this special faculty. In his exhaustive.study of Origen’s terminology and doctrine of the modes and levels-of knowledge (Origène et la ‘connaissance mystique’),20 despite the promising title (which he does, admittedly, enclose in inverted commas), Henri Crouzel cannotcome up with any clear reference to a direct vision of God himself in:this life. The term which best expresses the sort of direct intellectual contact,envisaged by Origen for the beatific vision to be enjoyed by. the: saints:after death is mpooßoArf,2! but the significant thing: here iis:thatthis sarie term is: used by Plotinus, along with rendsand maforthe sortofsupranoetic contact whichis attainable mystical experience (Crouzel. ananban case for his having had This has been, I fear, a rather superficial study, based only on one particular series of connected passages in one work (though a major one), of a very prolific and many-sided thinker, but, such as it is, it serves to bear out Crouzel's characterization of Origen as a "transformer" of Platonism, rather than a crypto-Platonist of any sort. One could, obviously, pursue this theme much further, in various directions. One direction that occurs to me is the paradoxical presentation of God as "darkness" (oxdros) in the Commentary on John (11.172), arising out of the exegesis of John 1:5, where precisely God is, after all, declared to be “light shining in darkness". By way of going one better, it would almost seem, than the traditional Platonic image of God as light and standing it on its head, but also in order to explain certain some, quoting in particular his.first.Homily on the Song of Songs (sec. troublesome passages of the Old Testament, such as Exodus 19:9, 16, and 7),2 but the fact remains, I think,thatfon 20:21, where God is described as enveloped in a thick cloud, and Psalm gi reasons he denied that 18:11: "He made darkness his covering around him, his canopy thick clouds TRENTO, 1968, PP.“496-508, dark with water” (passages which, it seems, Gnostics such as Marcion had 21Interesting passages. are Frage,In Joh, XIII (GCS, IV p. 495), fastened on to support their argument that Jahweh was an evil Demiurge), xarà mpoopodny vorjoets,Exh. ad:Mart.. XII, where the "friends of God" Origen presents this "darkness" and “cloudiness” as a symbol of God's dloeı Kai TH Fis dAnbelas” wed Met; P . Euch. XXV, 26 voús unknowability to the human intellect; in himself, of course, he remains mpoofdhet Toïs PORTÉE. SII Light.24 will enjoy direct knowledge:“ee .elbei, ‘TpooBddovres To Tov vonreiv 22E.G. Enn. ms, 10, 33recoge.V1.7, 35, 21 émBoAr; V.3, But this is just by way of coda to my main theme. It seems 10, 42 éradr. 23 Ovigene. pp. > 162-4; Euer ‘though, as Patricia Cox points out to me, Origen. may.‚after allonly.-be.talking about the frustrating Suitable that a discussion of Origen's use of light imagery should end, paradoxically, with a discussion of God as darkness. My main purpose has experience of having at one moment a-vision of the spiritual meaning of a certain text, onlyto Jose LE: = à redreflection. 24Cf, Crouzel, Origène et la ‘connaissance mystique’, pp. 91-95.

XXII been to suggest that Origen, while:making extensive use of Platonic images and formulations, is never enslaved by these, but subordinates them always to his own independent purposes. In view of that I would like to substitute for the misleading notion. of Origen the Neoplatonist what I hope is the more accurate picture ofOrigen as "Neochristian",