Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Rankin, David

Titel

The nature of post-death existence in Origen and the Letter to Rheginos

Ist Teil von

• The Early Church and the Afterlife, 2018, p.111-126

Auflage

1

Ort / Verlag

Routledge

Erscheinungsjahr

2018

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• During the intermediate stage between death and resurrection, Origen is clear that the soul is both conscious and active. What seems to be ambivalence on his part about the nature of the resurrection body derives from his challenges to both Celsus’ claim that the idea of the resurrection of the body is absurd and the literalist materialism of many ordinary Christians. That he maintains a commitment to a bodily as opposed to a so-called spiritual resurrection is, however, clear. Origen endorses the resurrection body as the same as that from the previous life, yet one transformed and appropriate to the environment, fit for purpose, one might say. While the Letter to Rheginos might appear superficially to suggest that the resurrection of the dead is spiritual – in line with Gnostic thought generally and much of the Letter itself – it is also possible that the author at certain points, despite making it clear that the essence of the authentic self is the mind, envisaged a form of embodied existence for the resurrected person. Given that much of the letter is clearly a dealing with 1 Corinthians 15, such a representation would be consistent with that chapter. During the intermediate stage between death and resurrection, Origen is clear that the soul is both conscious and active. What seems to be ambivalence on his part about the nature of the resurrection body derives from his challenges to both Celsus' claim that the idea of the resurrection of the body is absurd and the literalist materialism of many ordinary Christians. In both the De Principiis and the Contra Celsum, Origen struggles to deal with both what he sees as the misrepresentations of his mainly pagan opponents - who accuse Christians of being credulous, foolish and simple-minded - and many ordinary Christians - who accept a literalist, materialist view of the resurrection of the body. The precise meanings of seemingly significant parts of the Letter to Rheginos are notoriously unclear. Those who regard the work as a relatively straightforward Gnostic work from second or third century simply read it as docetic, anti-materialist, spiritualising piece that they assume it to be.