Thursday, September 13, 2018

How does the issue of both divine and human (in)corporeality provide structure to Origen’s argument in On First Principles?

In the seminal Christian work On First Principles, Origen outlines the cosmological order and its creation. What makes On First Principles unique is that Origen believes in the duality of mortal beings. Specifically, Origen opined that humans were both corporeal and incorporeal.
The corporeal part of a human is the physical body, and the incorporeal part is the soul. In Origen's view, humans were designed to be integrated with the larger cosmological order. Origen believed that humans are literally made up of stars, a physical part of the universe, which is true on an elemental level. For example, humans and all living things on Earth are composed of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus, and sulfur. These are the same elements that stars are composed of.
In On First Principles, Origen's understanding of duality between the divine and incorporeal—the soul, heaven, and so on—and the logical and corporeal is what forms the basis of his thesis. Origen's interpretation of the Bible, in particular the Old Testament, is what makes On First Principles unique among other theological works at the time; the separation, as well as the harmony, of the divine and the corporeal is a pillar of Christian philosophy.
https://academic.oup.com/jts/article-abstract/43/1/23/1663877?redirectedFrom=PDF

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