Origen (c. 182–251 CE) enters the depth-psychology corpus as a figure of remarkable theological ambivalence and psychological fertility. Jung engages him primarily as the originator of the privatio boni doctrine—the proposition that evil is merely a diminution of good—and diagnoses this move as psychologically catastrophic, arguing in Aion that it deprives evil of ontological substance and thereby distorts the Christian image of wholeness. Simultaneously, Jung treats Origen’s synthesis of Greek philosophy, Gnosticism, and Christian ideas in Psychological Types as a rare instance of harmonious interpenetration between two worldviews, an exemplary act of psychological tolerance. Beyond Jung, Origen commands sustained attention in the Stoic-patristic tradition: Sorabji traces how Origen transformed the Stoic concept of first movements (propatheiai) into bad thoughts, seeding a Christian discourse on temptation that runs through Evagrius to the desert Fathers and ultimately to Augustine. Dihle examines Origen’s dual recourse to Stoic and Platonic frameworks to negotiate human freedom, divine providence, and punishment across multiple incarnations. Armstrong presents him as a pivotal figure in Hellenistic Christology. Across these engagements, Origen represents the critical node at which classical philosophical psychology and emergent Christian interiority fuse—and, for Jung, also the point at which that fusion first goes definitively wrong.
through the doctrine of the privatio boni first propounded by Origen, evil was characterized as a mere diminution of good and thus deprived of substance.
Jung identifies Origen’s privatio boni as the theological move that fatally excluded evil from the Christian image of wholeness, with consequences for the Self-symbol of Christ.
, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, 1951thesis
In Origen the two worlds of Greek philosophy and Gnosis on the one hand, and Christian ideas on the other, interpenetrate in a peaceful and harmonious whole.
Jung reads Origen’s synthetic theology—uniting Neoplatonism, Gnosis, and Christianity—as a model of psychological tolerance and philosophical integration, distinguishing him sharply from Tertullian.
, Psychological Types, 1921thesis
Origen (182—251) employed the concept of the Trinity in his writings and gave it considerable thought, concerning himself more particularly with its internal economy… ‘The Son, being less than the Father, is superior to rational creatures alone.’
Jung documents Origen’s subordinationist trinitarianism as an early, explicitly hierarchical formulation of trinitarian power-relations, directly relevant to Jung’s own psychological reading of the Trinity.
, Psychology and Religion: West and East, 1958thesis
I shall now turn to the way in which the concept of first movements was transformed by Christian thinkers, and how it was applied to a Christian debate on whether moderation or eradication of emotion was the proper ideal.
Sorabji positions Origen as the decisive mediator who converted the Stoic doctrine of propatheiai (first movements) into a Christian theology of temptation-as-bad-thought.
, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 2000thesis
Talk of thoughts in this context also becomes standard after Origen. Antony speaks of demons or devils producing thoughts (logismoi). Origen’s conflation of first movements with thoughts added to the unclarity over whether those undergoing first movements are experiencing emotion.
Sorabji analyzes Origen’s conflation of first movements with logismoi as generating lasting ambiguity in Christian moral psychology about the voluntary status of involuntary emotional stirrings.
, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 2000thesis
There are indeed two wills in us, says Origen, but they are the higher will of our spirit and the lower will of our soul.
Origen resolves the Pauline tension between flesh and spirit by positing two distinct wills within a single soul, resisting Valentinian two-soul dualism while still acknowledging interior moral conflict.
, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 2000supporting
God acts like the physician who reinforces the power of illness in order to bring about the salutary crisis in the process of healing. Both explanations are drawn from Stoic philosophy… Another argument which Origen uses in these chapters is taken from Platonic sources.
Dihle demonstrates that Origen’s theodicy—employing both Stoic and Platonic frameworks—construes evil and punishment as providential instruments of education and purification across multiple incarnations.
, The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity, 1982supporting
Origen (in ep. ad Rom. comm. 2.9.3…) speaks of the divine pneuma… Origen and his followers clearly understood the gift of pneuma as an additional and supernatural endowment.
Dihle traces Origen’s doctrine of the divine pneuma as a supranatural supplement to the soul, which enables moral communication with God and distinguishes his position from the naturalistic Stoic conscience.
, The Theory of Will in Classical Antiquity, 1982supporting
Origen is, perhaps, best known for his self-castration… it may have been an attempt to demonstrate his doctrine of the indeterminacy of the human condition, which the soul must soon transcend.
Armstrong situates Origen’s radical bodily act within his theological anthropology: gender, as an apparently immutable category, is spiritually transcended in the eschatological process of divinization.
, A History of God, 1993supporting
Origen knows that from the soil of his soul rises up a ‘thick wood’ which must first be burned; as a result he cannot envisage his end without trembling.
Hausherr documents Origen’s personal identification with a universal sense of sin, expressed in a confessional register that anticipates the patristic tradition of compunction (penthos).
, Penthos: The Doctrine of Compunction in the Christian East, 1944supporting
both adopted the ideal of apatheia, freedom from emotion. This was something not possible for humans before the resurrection of Christ. It requires God’s grace.
Sorabji distinguishes Origen’s eschatological apatheia—conditioned on grace and resurrection—from the Stoic sage’s purely rational tranquility, marking a structural difference in the two traditions’ emotional ideals.
, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation, 2000supporting
Philosophumena; or, The Refutation of All Heresies. (Formerly attributed to Origen but now to Hippolytus.)
A bibliographic note in Jung’s reference apparatus records the longstanding misattribution of the Philosophumena to Origen, now corrected to Hippolytus.
, Psychology and Religion: West and East, 1958aside
Cf. amudra used of the quasi-passions by Origen, SVF 3.477.
A footnote observes Origen’s use of the Stoic term for quasi-passions, situating him within the technical vocabulary of Chrysippean moral psychology.
, Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism, 1985aside