On First Principles (De Principiis) · 19 of 25

Book III, Chapter I

ON THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL.

1. Some such opinions, we believe, ought to be entertained regarding the divine promises, when we direct our understanding to the contemplation of that eternal and infinite ‘world, and gaze on its ineffable joy and blessedness. But as

Context

The treatise on free will that opens here is the longest single argument in Peri Archon, and the most consequential — it sets the foundation for the entire Christian doctrine of moral responsibility against the determinisms (astrological, Stoic, Gnostic) that pressed in on the third century from every side. Notice that Origen pivots into it from his eschatology. The soul that will ascend through the spheres can only do so because it really does choose. If the cosmos were determined, the upward path would be a story God told himself, not a journey any soul actually undertook. Free will is the metaphysical condition for the whole drama of salvation he has been describing.On Origen's free-will argument and its targets, Henri Crouzel, Origen, ch 11; on third-century determinisms, R.W. Sharples, Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics, ch 4.

1 The whole of this chapter has been preserved in the original Greek, which is literally translated in corresponding portions on each page, 80 that the differences between Origen’s own words and the amplifications and alterations of the paraphrase of Rufinus may be at once patent to the reader.

' TRANSLATION FROM THE GREEK. ——@——_.