Body, sin, and society in Origen of Alexandria

Abstract

This essay explores Origen's perception of God's purposes with the human body and asks how this perception influenced his views about how Christians should interact with the non-Christian world. It argues that, according to Origen, God had provided those spirits who dropped to the level of humanity after the fall with bodies of flesh and blood not only in order to help them towards spiritual improvement and salvation, but also in order to make sure that these spirits would remain wicked for as long as it would take for them to truly come to appreciate the horrors of sin – and thereby to never wish to return to it after their salvation. Furthermore it suggests that this understanding of the soteriological function of sin induced Origen to argue that Christians should interact as little as possible with the non-Christian world and allow that world to remain evil.