We have seen that Origen was so afraid of allowing Christianity to be confused with paganism that he called people to a martyr's death, and he himself was ready to accept it. We have seen that Origen offered his missionary constructions as partial hypotheses. We have seen that Origen clearly indicated that he drew the material for these hypotheses from an extra-Christian environment.

Since both Plato and the Midrash, from which Origen took his basic cosmogonic and psychogonic ideas, are by no means Christian sources, it is natural that, comparing Origen's teaching on the pre-existence of souls and on the plurality of worlds with the apostolic tradition, church theologians entered into polemics with Origen century after century.

But precisely because Origen sharply opposed the occultists and gnostics, and expressed his ideas, which placed him on the border of "falsely named gnosis", as his own private assumptions, but not as the faith of the apostles and the whole Church, Origen was never officially accused of heresy during his lifetime.

Origen has only one mystery. There is one thesis that, according to Origen, should not be communicated to ordinary believers: this mystery is that God is love... The fact that God wants to save everyone should not be said too early and too loudly. That all rational beings will be purified and will one day be saved is an esoteric teaching; it is enough for an ordinary person to know that the sinner is punished... Just as we do not really get angry with two-year-olds, although we speak to them strictly, so according to Origen, the biblical threats of eternal torment should not be taken too literally (see Discourses on Jeremiah 18:6). "We make menacing grimaces to children, not because we really feel that way, but because we understand the reasonableness of that behavior. In the same way, God says that He is angry in order to convert you, but in fact He is not in anger" (Ibid.). "We deceive children by scaring them into becoming obedient. We frighten them with deceptive words adapted to childhood... We are all children for God, we need children's upbringing. That is why God deceives us out of pity for us" (Ibid., 18, 15).

This secret teaching of Origen can be ignored. But, as it turned out, what Origen hid from his parishioners is not "occult" at all. He did not conceal his secret captivity to Buddhism or Hermeticism, but the fact that the Gospel proclamation that God is love meant to Origen that God is only love (see Discourses on Ezekiel 1:2; Discourses on Numbers 16:3). Theosophists, on the other hand, have the opposite secret: their deity essentially loves no one, for it is only an inexorably automatic law of karma...

C) THE BOOK "ON THE ELEMENTS"

Origen is a writer who tries to build a system. He calculates each of his steps much ahead. Its main purpose is clear: to protect the Church and its Bible. But he prefers to build his defensive lines on the distant approaches to his shrine, that is, on the territory of the enemy, on the territory of paganism. He is inclined to take some judgments of pagan philosophy and unfold them so that they become his advanced defensive lines. In this way, Origen fights first of all with the opponent who most closely looked at the Church and most actively opposed it. The name of this vanguard of paganism in its opposition to Christianity is Gnosticism. And we remember that Origen from his youth treated Gnosticism without the slightest liking.

The fundamental belief of the Gnostics was that the God revealed in the Old Testament, the Creator God, is a God of evil, ignorance, and injustice. The Christian Origen, accordingly, was faced with the task of theodicy. It was necessary to justify the goodness of the Creator in the eyes of occulting intellectuals and thereby defend the spiritual authority of the entire Bible.

The Gnostics thought that it was shameful to be the Creator of a world like ours. Therefore, they tried to create a model of a Deity who would not be involved in our world at all. The creator god revealed in the Bible is a lower deity, but above him rises a multi-level hierarchy of higher spirits, in the name of one of whom Christ came. Biblical theology is carefully and consistently reversed here. If for the prophets and apostles the sign of false gods is precisely that they did not create the world of man, then for the Gnostics it is this calling card of Yahweh that serves as a bad recommendation: the true God would not humiliate himself by creating a material universe... For Origen, this is blasphemy: "Is it possible to think about God without thinking about Him as the Creator? Piety, in the eyes of Origen, allows only a negative answer to be given."295 If we think of God as a Creator, then it is all too easy to get lost in the Gnostic myth of a God who is not a creator, a God who has nothing to do with our world.

Origen stands up for the apostolic gospel: in Christ "He from Whom are all things, and to Whom are all things" has been revealed. The Son is always with the Father, and in a common creative act They created our world. Moreover, creativity is so inherent in God, so not alien to Him, that no matter how many worlds there are, they all have as their cause the biblical Father and the Gospel Son.

The Gospel thesis about the Trinity, "of Whom all things" Origen wants to defend philosophically. Some Gnostic schools were ready to recognize Christ as the Lord of the world. But other worlds have other Lords... The idea that the Absolute Source of all existence, the One from Whom all things began, could come to people and could sacrifice Himself "for us and ours for salvation" seemed absurd to them. Origen needs to prove that no matter how many worlds philosophical thought assumes, the Star of Bethlehem pointed to the Creator of them all.

Thus, Origen begins a polemic with the Gnostics. Naturally, he makes use of the set of theological arguments that were present in the Christian thought of his time. But the fact is that the church thought of Origen's time had not yet learned to pose the question of what the eternal relationship in the Trinity is. The habit of seeing in the Persons of the Godhead only various manifestations, functions of the One God was still too great. Therefore, the Logos was thought of not so much as the eternal Thought and Love of the Father, but as the instrument with the help of which the Father creates the world. Christian thought was occupied not so much with the elucidation of the mystery of intra-Trinitarian relations as with the clarification of what relation the Logos had to the non-divine world. In the course of the Arian discussions, it was still necessary to find an answer to the question of the relation of God's creative will to the existence of God Himself. But it had already been firmly assimilated that "all things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made" (John 1:3) — through the Word, which was in the beginning.

The world could not have come into existence without the Logos. Logos is needed to create the world. These are the two theses from which Origen's thought proceeds. And to them polemical necessity adds a third: the Son is the eternal, beginningless God. But how can we prove the co-eternity of the Logos with the eternal Deity, if the Logos is only an instrument for the creation of our world? God is eternal, but is the world eternal? Origen answers about the world in an Orthodox way: our world is not eternal, it arose in history. But if the world is not eternal, then the Cause of its existence is also non-eternal, that is, the Logos is not eternal? After all, if the world is not eternal, then the Son was not always the Logos of the world. And, therefore, without the world, the existence of the Son has no explanation and justification. God does not do unnecessary things. If the world did not exist and the Son is the condition of the world's existence, then it is logical to conclude that the Son is not Eternal either. In such a case, an impassable abyss is placed between God the Father and the Son: the Son arises in time and is subject to time, the Son is only a creature, but not God. Then the Gnostics are right: it was not God who came to people, but a certain cosmic spirit... This conclusion does not suit Origen. But how to explain the opposite? If God does not perform unnecessary actions, and if the Logos is needed only for the creation of the world, but the Logos is still co-existent with the Father, then the Father has always had a need for creation. If the Logos has always existed, then God has always been the Creator.