Can Origen Help Us Understand Adam?

Abstract

AbstractThis paper examines Origen's views of “Adam” and considers whether aspects of Origen's views might prove helpful in contemporary debates about Adam and original sin. The question “who was Adam” presents difficult issues for Christian theology. In response to these concerns, many contemporary theologians suggest that “Eastern” traditions, which are less connected to the “Western”/Augustinian view of original sin, can more easily manage these tensions. These gestures towards “Eastern” thought are helpful in the sense that they do highlight the “mythic” dimensions of the Biblical creation narratives and the irreducibly social construction of human identity. They tend, however, towards broad generalizations that often do not account for the more nuanced and complex philosophical matrix that informed many of the Eastern Church Fathers as they thought about creation, humanity, and the Fall. In this regard, Origen is an interesting figure to study because of the historic anathemas against his supposedly aberrant neo‐Platonic views about the pre‐existence of souls. Origen did indeed draw heavily on Platonism, but his views about Adam and the Fall were far more subtle than is often supposed. Elements of Origen's views could be useful to a contemporary Christian theology of Adam and original sin.