ABSTRACT
Origen is the first Christian metaphysician to work out a comprehensive doctrine of the cosmic Christ. Drawing on Platonist speculations about the world soul and Old Testament wisdom literature, Origen views Christ as the apogee of “God’s motion,” which is the first category of his metaphysical system. As well as being supreme rest or contemplation of all intelligible principles and forms, the Father, moved by pity, undergoes motion or economic action for the sake of fallen humankind. He calls into being an empirical world that serves as a symbol of his creative goodness both in its parts and as a whole. As the archetypal paradigm of all of rational creation, Christ is both the transcendent principle and the immanent form of the visible world. Prearranging all of his creatures’ voluntary motions in his primordial nature of the timeless vision of all kinds and species, as well as of all individuals, his consequent nature is that of a gradual recapitulation of all the accountable self-movers in a renewed participation in his own fullness of creative goodness and intellect. To this end, he undergoes multiple incarnations at all levels of his cosmic nature until all of its parts have been restored.
