Origen and the Stoic View of Time

Abstract

I. One of the striking features of Origen's Contra Celsum is his awareness of Stoic philosophy. The debate about the extent of his dependence on this usually concentrates on the area of ethics as well as his quasi-Stoic theory of recurrent worlds. 1 Yet one aspect of his thought overlooked by scholars is his concept of time, which is a key to his entire philosophy and theology. Crucial cosmological, anthropological, moral, and eschatological ideas as well as Origen's attitude to death are all intimately related to the way in which time is perceived and given meaning. Indeed, the notion of time constitutes the core of any entire philosophy. Hence, the way thinkers conceive of time derives from their overall view of reality, their fundamental philosophical premises, their notion of being, and their metlhods aind dialectics. Yet there is also mutual influence: not only does any philosophy presuppose a certain conception of time, but also any given view of time determines the nature of a general philosophical attitude: how to live, the purpose of life, how to face death, the basis of hope, the concept of God, a Weltanschauung and destiny, if any, the question of creation, and all the secular implications that the notion of creation involves-all these are notions bound to the concept of time. The questions about time which Origen had to face may initially seem simple, but they are not, for the philosophical tradition had not produced any consensus. It is no accident that although the questions related to space resulted in agreement for lengthy periods, the problem of time has always been highly controversial. On looking, for example, at the question of the reality of time, one sees that since the period of the Eleatic philosophers discussions placed very much in doubt the real existence of time. Aristotle's syllogisms also reinforced this.2 To the Stoics time was just a something between being and non-being.3 But to the Gnostics, time had