There was still a large margin of unsolved difficulties. The hypothesis of the freedom of the will, as it had hitherto been stated, assumed that all beings who possessed it were equal in both their circumstances and their natural aptitudes. It took no account of the enormous difference between one man and another in respect of either the external advantages or disadvantages of their lives, or the strength and weakness of their characters. The difficulty was strongly felt by more than one school of Christian philosophers, the more so because it applied, not only to the diversities among mankind, but also to the larger differences between mankind as a whole and the celestial beings who rose in their sublime gradations above it.
“Very many persons, especially those who come from the school of Marcion and Valentinus and Basilides, object to us that it is inconsistent with the justice of God in making the world to assign to some creatures an abode in the heavens, and not merely a better abode, but also a loftier and more honourable position; to grant to some principality, to others powers, to others dominations; to confer upon some the noblest seats of the heavenly tribunals, to cause others to shine out with brighter rays, and to flash forth the brilliance of a star; to give to some the glory of the sun, and to others the glory of the moon, and to others the glory of the stars; to make one star differ from another star in glory.... In the second place, they object to us about terrestrial beings that a happier lot of birth has come to some men than to others; one man, for example, is begotten by Abraham and born according to promise; another is the son of Isaac and Rebekah, and, supplanting his brother even in the womb, is said even before he is born to be beloved of God. One man is born among the Hebrews, among whom he finds the learning of the divine law; another among the Greeks, themselves also wise and men of no small learning; another among the Ethiopians, who are cannibals; another among the Scythians, with whom parricide is legal; another among the Taurians, who offer their guests in sacrifice.
“They consequently argue thus: If this great diversity of circumstances, this varied and different condition of birth—a matter in which free-will has no place—is not caused by a diversity in the nature of the souls themselves, a soul of an evil nature being destined for an evil nation, and a soul of a good nature for a good one, what other conclusion can be drawn than that all this is the result of chance and accident? And if that conclusion be admitted, it will no longer be credible either that the world was made by God or that it is governed by His providence: and consequently neither will the judgment of God upon every man’s doings seem a thing to be looked for.”[437]
It is to this phase of the controversy that the ethical theology of Origen is relative. In that theology, Stoicism and Neo-Platonism are blended into a complete theodicy: nor has a more logical superstructure ever been reared on the basis of philosophical theism.
It is necessary to show the coherence of his view as a whole, and it is advisable, in doing so, to use chiefly his own words:[438]
“There was but one beginning of all things, as there will be but a single end. The diversities of existence which have sprung from a single beginning will be absorbed in a single end.[439] The causes of those diversities lie in the diverse things themselves.[440] They were created absolutely equal; for, on the one hand, God had no reason in Himself for causing inequalities;[441] and, on the other hand, being absolutely impartial, He could not give to one being an advantage which He did not give to another.[442] They were also, by a similar necessity, created with the capacity of being diverse; for spotless purity is of the essence of none save God; in all created beings it must be accidental, and consequently liable to lapse.[443] The lapse, when it takes place, is voluntary; for every being endowed with reason has the power of exercising it, and this power is free;[444] it is excited by external causes, but not coerced by them.[445] For to lay the fault on external causes and put it away from ourselves by declaring that we are like logs or stones, dragged by forces that act upon them from without, is neither true nor reasonable. Every created rational being is thus capable of both good and evil; consequently of praise and blame; consequently also of happiness and misery; of the former if it chooses holiness and clings to it, of the latter if by sloth and negligence it swerves into wickedness and ruin.[446] The lapse, when it has taken place, is not only voluntary but also various in degree. Some beings, though possessed of free-will, never lapsed: they form the order of angels. Some lapsed but slightly, and form in their varying degrees the orders of ‘thrones, dominations, princedoms, virtues, powers.’ Some lapsed lower, but not irrecoverably, and form the race of men.[447] Some lapsed to such a depth of unworthiness and wickedness as to be opposing powers; they are the devil and his angels.[448] In the temporal world which is seen, as well as in the eternal worlds which are unseen, all beings are arranged according to their merits; their place has been determined by their own conduct.[449]
“The present inequalities of circumstance and character are thus not wholly explicable within the sphere of the present life. But this world is not the only world. Every soul has existed from the beginning; it has therefore passed through some worlds already, and will pass through others before it reaches the final consummation. It comes into this world strengthened by the victories or weakened by the defeats of its previous life. Its place in this world as a vessel appointed to honour or to dishonour is determined by its previous merits or demerits. Its work in this world determines its place in the world which is to follow this.[450]
“All this takes place with the knowledge and under the oversight of God. It is an indication of His ineffable wisdom that the diversities of natures for which created beings are themselves responsible are wrought together into the harmony of the world.[451] It is an indication not only of His wisdom but of His goodness that, while no creature is coerced into acting rightly, yet when it lapses it meets with evils and punishments. All punishments are remedial. God calls what are termed evils into existence to convert and purify those whom reason and admonition fail to change. He is thus the great Physician of souls.[452] The process of cure, acting as it does simply through free-will, takes in some cases an almost illimitable time. For God is long-suffering, and to some souls, as to some bodies, a rapid cure is not beneficial. But in the end all souls will be thoroughly purged.[453] All that any reasonable soul, cleansed of the dregs of all vices, and with every cloud of wickedness completely wiped away, can either feel or understand or think, will be wholly God: it will no longer either see or contain anything else but God: God will be the mode and measure of its every movement: and so God will be ‘all.’ Nor will there be any longer any distinction between good and evil, because evil will nowhere exist; for God is all things, and in Him no evil inheres. So, then, when the end has been brought back to the beginning, that state of things will be restored which the rational creation had when it had no need to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; all sense of wickedness will have been taken away; He who alone is the one good God becomes to the soul ‘all,’ and that not in some souls but ‘in all.’ There will be no longer death, nor the sting of death, nor any evil anywhere, but God will be ‘all in all.’”[454]
Of this great theodicy, only part has been generally accepted. The Greek conceptions which underlie it, and which preceded it, have survived, but in other forms. Free-will, final causes, probation, have had a later history in which Greece has had no share. The doctrine of free-will has remained in name, but it has been so mingled on the one hand with theories of human depravity, and on the other with theories of divine grace, that the original current of thought is lost in the marshes into which it has descended. The doctrine of final causes has been pressed to an almost excessive degree as proving the existence and the providence of God; but His government of the human race has been often viewed rather as the blundering towards an ultimate failure than as a complete vindication of His purpose of creation. The Christian world has acquiesced in the conception of life as a probation; but while some of its sections have conceived of this life as the only probation, and others have admitted a probation in a life to come, none have admitted into the recognized body of their teaching Origen’s sublime conception of an infinite stairway of worlds, with its perpetual ascent and descent of souls, ending at last in the union of all souls with God.