ABSTRACT
The first section of this chapter considers evidence of Origenism and anti-Origenism in two Christian commentators on Greek philosophy, Nemesius and Chalcidius. Its principal subjects are two disciples of Origen, Evagrius and Didymus, who are frequently said, like their master, to have fused the traditional doctrines of the church with a Platonic protology and eschatology. In examining this claim, the present chapter offers a general review of scholarship on the “fall of souls” in Christian thought; it will also consider the use of the Stoic anatomy of the passions in Origenistic literature, with particular attention to the notions of apatheia and propatheia (“passionlessness” and “pre-passion”).
