History and culture February 19, 2022 Updated: September 16, 2026 15 min read THY-REALITY

Origen: On First Principles under Scrutiny: Original Teaching, Rufinus’ Translation, and Behr’s Reconstruction

What did Origen actually teach in Peri Archōn, how much survives in Greek, what did Rufinus change, and why does John Behr read the work differently from the older Butterworth translation?

On First Principles (Peri Archōn, Latin De Principiis) is one of the most important and at the same time most difficult texts of early Christianity. Origen of Alexandria wrote it around 220–230 as an attempt to construct an ordered framework, from apostolic teaching, Scripture, and rational inquiry, for questions about God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, creation, free will, soul, body, evil, resurrection, and the end of all things.

Yet the modern reader does not possess a straightforward translation of a surviving Greek original. Most of the Greek Peri Archōn is lost. The complete work is known chiefly through Rufinus' late-fourth-century Latin translation, while portions of Greek survive in the Philocalia and in later, often polemical testimonia from Jerome, Justinian, and others.

John Behr therefore makes an important editorial choice in his modern edition: rather than inserting later anti-Origenist fragments into Rufinus as though they were automatically the 'real' Origen, he translates Rufinus' surviving continuous text as a whole and treats problematic fragments separately. The 2019 Reader's Edition is an accessible distillation of his larger 2017 critical project.

This article therefore asks not only what Origen taught, but also what the surviving evidence allows us to attribute securely to Origen, what belongs to Rufinus, what derives from later polemic, and what depends on modern reconstruction. For a work that shaped centuries of debate about 'Origenism,' transmission history is part of the argument itself.

What are we reading: edition, textual tradition and structure

Which edition are we auditing? The user-specified volume is Origen: On First Principles — A Reader's Edition, translated and edited by John Behr, Oxford University Press, 2019, ISBN 9780198845317. Bibliographic records describe it as an approximately 448-page reader's edition. It is an accessible distillation of Behr's two-volume 2017 Origen: On First Principles project in Oxford Early Christian Texts.

This is not a reprint of the older Butterworth translation. Behr retranslates Rufinus' Latin text within a different text-critical framework. The same Origen passage can therefore look materially different in Behr from popular online quotations derived from Butterworth or older patristic collections.

Layer	Date	What survives
Origen's Greek Peri Archōn	c. 220–230	Original work; mostly lost.
Greek extracts in the Philocalia	4th century / earlier material	Important direct controls, especially on free will and Scripture.
Rufinus' Latin De Principiis	c. 398	The only surviving continuous version of all four books; the translator acknowledges editorial intervention.
Jerome, Justinian, and other fragments	4th–6th centuries	Partly quotations and partly polemical transmission; important but not a neutral replacement for the lost Greek manuscript.
Behr's edition	2017 / 2019	Modern reconstruction privileging Rufinus' continuous text while treating fragments as control witnesses.

Five layers that must be separated This table governs the entire article. Whenever someone says 'Origen says X,' the next question should be: in which textual witness?

What is *On First Principles*? The work is often called the first major attempt at Christian systematic theology. That is a useful shorthand if it is not read too modernly. Origen is not writing a later conciliar textbook of dogma. In the preface he distinguishes points of apostolic and ecclesiastical proclamation that he regards as clearly handed down from questions whose reasons, consequences, and coherence learned Christians still need to investigate.

The book is therefore partly confession, partly exegesis, and partly philosophical-theological hypothesis. That distinction is crucial: a speculative proposal in De Principiis is not automatically identical with a dogma Origen required every Christian to affirm.

Behr's structure: two cycles rather than four disconnected books Behr's interpretation emphasizes that the four books are not a random sequence of topics but two large cycles. The first moves from God and rational beings through creation toward humanity and the end; the second revisits related questions with greater emphasis on salvation history, free will, and the reading of Scripture. Behr often describes these dimensions as theology and economy.

Book I. God, Christ, Holy Spirit, rational natures, the end Methodological note: The most 'first-principle' ontological questions.

Book II. world, beings, humanity, soul, resurrection, judgment Methodological note: Cosmology and salvific order.

Book III. free will, temptations, history of rational beings Methodological note: A strong response to determinism and theories of fixed natures.

Book IV. inspiration and interpretation of Scripture; final recapitulation Methodological note: Explains the hermeneutic without which earlier books should not be read too literally.

The structure is an interpretive question, not a physical fact of the manuscript. Behr's model is influential and useful, but remains a modern reading of the work's organization.

A page of the fifteenth-century Greek manuscript Grec 945 containing Origen’s Contra Celsum. — A page from **BnF Grec 945**, a fifteenth-century manuscript of Origen’s *Contra Celsum*. This is **not** a manuscript of *On First Principles / De Principiis*; here it documents the much later manuscript transmission through which Origen’s Greek works survive. The textual situation of *On First Principles* is more difficult because the complete Greek text is lost. Image: Bibliothèque nationale de France / Wikimedia Commons Public domain / Public Domain Mark 1.0

God, Son and Holy Spirit before Nicaea

Origen writes almost a century before the Council of Nicaea in 325. He speaks of the eternal God, the divine Logos/Son, and the Holy Spirit, but uses vocabulary before the later standardization of ousia, hypostasis, and 'one substance.' It is therefore hazardous to translate every passage immediately into the later binary of 'orthodox versus Arian.'

His works contain both very high Christology and hierarchical language about Father, Son, and Spirit. The problem is intensified because Trinitarian wording is precisely one area where Rufinus admits that he sought to remove or soften formulations he regarded as inconsistent with Origen's more orthodox statements elsewhere.

The safe formulation is therefore neither 'Origen was Nicene' nor 'Origen was an Arian before Arius,' but: Origen was a major pre-Nicene theologian whose language later became material for several sides of subsequent controversies.

Rational beings, freedom, prehistory and the body

Rational beings, free will, and why the world is unequal One of Origen's most characteristic ideas is that God is good and just and that rational beings are not created as naturally good or evil castes. He tries to explain differences among angels, humans, and demonic powers through free will, progress, negligence, and God's pedagogical providence.

This also opposed teachings that divided humanity into immutable spiritual classes. Yet Origen's solution creates its own serious problems: in De Principiis he can explain present inequalities of people, places, and life conditions as consequences of prior moral choices by rational beings. A modern reader must therefore distinguish his universalism of original creation from the troubling consequences he draws from it for historical inequality.

Did Origen teach the 'pre-existence of souls'? This is one of the most contested questions. The older summary says: souls first existed as pure minds, cooled in their love of God, fell, and received bodies. Origen's system certainly contains a powerful idea of a pre-cosmic or supra-temporal history of rational beings, their differentiated departure from God, and a link between moral condition and cosmic station.

Behr, however, warns that the phrase 'pre-existence of souls' may too quickly assume the very temporal sequence Origen is struggling to think through the distinction between eternity and time. Rufinus, Jerome's quotations, and later Origenist systems do not always produce the same picture either. The candidate therefore uses more exact language: Origen speculates about the state and history of rational beings before or beyond the present embodied order; the precise metaphysics of that 'before' remains interpretively contested.

The body is not simply a prison Origen is deeply shaped by Greek philosophical culture, but he should not be reduced to the slogan 'Christian Plato.' In De Principiis the material world is not the work of an evil god. It is created by the same good Creator, and materiality can function pedagogically, medicinally, and providentially according to the condition of rational beings.

Nor does he understand resurrection as a simple abandonment of embodiment. He discusses continuity of identity through bodily transformation and uses Paul's language of a 'spiritual body.' This is not modern materialism, but neither is it a straightforward Gnostic escape from matter.

Sun, Moon and stars: rational beings or bodies?

Of particular interest for THY-REALITY is Origen's discussion of celestial bodies. In Books I and II he seriously considers whether the Sun, Moon, and stars are living or rational beings, because Scripture speaks of them as receiving commands and because their motions display ordered regularity. At the same time he presents the argument as inquiry rather than as clearly transmitted ecclesiastical dogma.

This is an important historical example of cosmic personification within early Christianity. It is not evidence that Origen endorsed natal astrology. His strong emphasis on free will stands in tension with astrological fatalism; 'the stars are rational' and 'the stars determine human destiny' are different claims.

Origen’s hermeneutics: without it the work is easily misread

Book IV explains why Origen can simultaneously defend the divine inspiration of Scripture and reject literal readings of some passages. Scripture has, for him, a bodily or historical level, a psychic-moral level, and a spiritual sense, although not every passage contains all levels in the same way.

His famous Genesis examples function as intentional 'stumbling blocks' in the letter that drive the reader toward a deeper sense: the garden, God walking, and certain chronological or narrative impossibilities. Origen is not saying that everything in the Bible is allegory. He is saying that rigid literalism can sometimes miss the purpose of inspired text.

Evil, the end and return: three of the most disputed themes

Evil, the devil, and freedom Origen rejects the idea that God created any being evil by nature. The devil and demonic powers are rational beings whose evil results from will and habituation. This lets him hold divine goodness and creation together with the reality of evil.

From this comes the question later readers repeatedly press: if evil is acquired and rational will is not created as an evil substance, is its final healing also possible? Rufinus' text leaves the answer open in some places, while later opponents attribute more decisive universalist conclusions to Origen.

Apokatastasis: 'God all in all' Origen repeatedly reflects on an end in which God will be 'all in all' (1 Cor 15:28) and creation reaches an order in which evil does not have the final word. Apokatastasis is therefore rightly central to discussion of his theology. But whether this means the necessary and exceptionless salvation of every individual rational being, including the devil, is not textually as simple as popular summaries often suggest.

Some modern scholars read Origen as a strong advocate of universal restoration; others stress his commitment to free will, the hypothetical mode of some passages, and uncertainty in the transmission. A safe statement is: Origen's theology has a powerful universal-restorative orientation; the exact scope and necessity of the final outcome remain seriously disputed in scholarship.

Reincarnation, transmigration, and 'souls in new bodies' The word 'reincarnation' is a particularly dangerous shorthand for Origen. In his system a rational being can persist through different conditions, embodiment can change, present station is linked to moral history, and there are successive ages. To a modern reader this can sound like transmigration of souls.

Yet Origen explicitly argues against various pagan and Gnostic accounts of souls, and his resurrection scheme is not simply Pythagorean metempsychosis in which the same soul serially inhabits human or animal bodies. The article therefore does not use the sentence 'Origen taught reincarnation' without qualification. It is more accurate to describe the concrete cosmology first and only then compare similarities and differences with reincarnation systems.

How the text reached us: Rufinus, controversy and modern editions

Rufinus: preserver of the text and editor at once Without Rufinus we would probably not possess the complete On First Principles today. At the same time Rufinus openly states in his preface that where wording seemed to contradict Origen's teaching elsewhere — especially on the Trinity — he omitted or rendered some formulations according to what he regarded as Origen's true position.

Rufinus should therefore be treated neither as a perfectly transparent window nor as a forger whose text has no value. Modern scholarship, after a period of severe distrust, has substantially rehabilitated his reliability while retaining caution in precisely those places where he acknowledges intervention.

Jerome and polemic: an opponent is also a source Jerome, in his conflict with Rufinus, supplied his own translations or citations of troubling passages and attributed to Origen teachings that later became central charges against Origenism. These fragments are valuable because they may preserve Greek wording softened or absent in Rufinus.

But Jerome is not a neutral stenographer. He writes in a heated personal and ecclesio-political controversy. Every fragment therefore requires a double test: is it genuinely a direct quotation from Origen, and can it be restored to its original context? A polemical source can be historically valuable, but its hostility is neither automatic proof nor automatic grounds for dismissal.

Koetschau and Butterworth: why the older English text is methodologically difficult Paul Koetschau's 1913 edition deeply distrusted Rufinus. Where he believed Rufinus had concealed Origen's real doctrine, he inserted Greek or later Origenist fragments into the main reconstruction. G. W. Butterworth translated this edition into English in 1936, so for decades the standard English On First Principles could give readers the impression that these inserted passages were simply alternative pieces of the same original text.

Ronnie Rombs argued in 2007 that the lost Greek original cannot be securely reconstructed in this way and that Rufinus, for all his limitations, remains the only continuous textual base. Behr extends this correction: problematic Koetschau fragments are removed from the main flow and are not allowed silently to become 'Origen's own words.'

What Behr changes — and what he cannot solve Rufinus. suspect and often secondary Behr's correction: primary continuous witness What remains open: how much he actually changed in disputed passages

Greek polemical fragments. often inserted into the main text Behr's correction: separated and evaluated by provenance What remains open: whether a given fragment genuinely preserves Origen's original

'pre-existence'. read as a simple temporal biography of the soul Behr's correction: focus on the problem of eternity and time What remains open: how far Origen assumes a pre-cosmic sequence

structure of the work. four topics/books Behr's correction: two cycles: theology and economy What remains open: whether that scheme fully explains composition

Origen's orthodoxy. measured mainly by later condemnations Behr's correction: read in pre-Nicene context What remains open: real tensions and speculations remain

Behr therefore does not 'prove that Origen was always orthodox.' He changes the burden of proof: later accusations may not simply be inserted backward into the lost Greek text without textual control.

The sixth century: what was actually condemned?

Origen's legacy became the subject of repeated controversies long after his death. In 543 Emperor Justinian participated in the condemnation of a set of Origenist theses; in 553 the Second Council of Constantinople condemned certain persons and teachings, and a set of fifteen anti-Origenist anathemas is traditionally associated with the same controversy.

Precision is required. Scholars debate the formal status and exact relationship of those fifteen anathemas to the official conciliar acts. Moreover, sixth-century 'Origenism' is not necessarily identical with Origen's own third-century thought. The sentence 'the Church in 553 condemned exactly everything Origen personally taught' therefore outruns the evidence.

The opposite extreme is no better: it is not fair to say that all condemned ideas were late inventions with no roots in Origen. Themes involving rational beings, pre-cosmic history, final restoration, and embodiment do have genuine parallels in his corpus. The questions concern scope, formulation, and development.

Which popular claims survive scrutiny?

Popular claim	Assessment	More precise formulation
Origen was the first systematic Christian theologian.	Substantially defensible, with qualification	He is the earliest surviving major attempt at ordered Christian theology, but not a modern dogmatics manual.
Origen taught the pre-existence of souls.	Partly / terminologically disputed	He teaches a prior history of rational beings; Behr warns that 'pre-existence' can over-temporalize the scheme.
Origen taught reincarnation.	Too crude	His cosmology allows different conditions and forms of embodiment, but it is not simple Pythagorean metempsychosis.
Origen taught universal salvation.	A strong but disputed interpretation	His eschatology is strongly restorative; the necessity of salvation for every rational being remains debated.
Origen taught that stars are living rational beings.	Textually well supported as speculation	He seriously considers it, but not as a clearly delivered apostolic dogma and not as endorsement of astrological fatalism.
Rufinus forged Origen.	Misleading	Rufinus admits editorial intervention but is also the best continuous witness and has been partly rehabilitated in modern scholarship.
Behr restored the lost Greek original.	False	Behr offers a more disciplined edition of the surviving textual tradition; he cannot conjure the lost Greek original back into existence.

How to use the book and the first condition of reading it

How should THY-REALITY use this book? For THY-REALITY, Behr's reader's edition is an excellent modern entry edition, but it is not the final word on every philological controversy. At key passages it is prudent to check Behr's larger edition, surviving Greek fragments, Rufinus' Latin, and Origen's broader corpus.

1. Identify the witness. Are we reading Rufinus, a Greek fragment, Jerome's quotation, or a later Origenist thesis?

2. Identify the claim level. Does Origen teach something as apostolic proclamation, argue it as a probable explanation, or offer it as an open question?

3. Check conceptual chronology. Are we using fourth- to sixth-century terminology for an early-third-century author?

4. Compare other Origen works. Does the same doctrine appear where we have better Greek control?

5. Separate Origen from Origenism. Does the evidence concern Origen, Evagrius, later monks, or a polemical caricature?

6. Only then interpret. Theological or philosophical conclusions should follow textual audit, not precede it.

Conclusion: a book on 'first principles' requires a first principle of reading On First Principles is valuable precisely because it shows Christianity before many later dogmatic terms had hardened. Origen attempts to think one good God, free will, a rational cosmos, Christ, Scripture, and the final meaning of creation within a single intellectual architecture. Some elements became foundations for later theology; others became targets of severe condemnation.

Yet the book in our hands is also a history of loss, translation, and polemic. The greatest error is therefore to quote 'Origen' without first asking which Origen text we actually possess. Behr's edition matters not because it resolves every dispute, but because it forces textual discipline back between the original author and the later image of that author.