ABSTRACT

This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book finds that in Origen's time the thought of Platonists was almost always characterized, and thus estranged from the thought of catholic Christendom, by the following premises. The premises are that objects in the present world are fleeting, and susceptible of a definition only because they participate in, or imitate, eternal Forms which do not dwell immanently in material particulars, but in incorporeal and timeless realm. Origen was generally believed in late antiquity to have entertained all five of these opinions, every one of which is a Christian heresy. The majority of scholars in the modern age have upheld this verdict, based though it is on the strength of vague and unsupported depositions. Origen's is an autonomous philosophy, designed to answer, not to flatter, the teaching of the schools.