who attended Plotinus’s school in Rome, as we will see in Chapter 4. Scholars have discussed the similarities and differences between these philosophers on the question of the triadic nature of their hypostatic/emanational visions of the highest orders of the cosmos in great detail.7 Hence, it is not necessary to repeat these discussions here. However, the attempts of these third-century Platonists to identify, locate, and define spirits mediating between human souls and the highest gods has received far less scholarly attention.
Origen’s Concerning Daemons
We begin with Origen. It is unfortunate that we do not have his Concerning Daemons (sometimes translated as On Spirits). The closest we get to this work is via some Porphyrian fragments included in Proclus’s Commentary on the Timaeus, as well as certain passages in On Abstinence. The difficulty with the fragments in Proclus, in addition to the usual problems associated with fragmentary works, is that in them Porphyry tells us that he has combined the views of Numenius and Origen in order to formulate his own taxonomic schema. Hans Lewy, who thought that the Origen in question was a Neoplatonic philosopher distinct from the Christian theologian, was confident that he could distinguish between the ideas of Numenius and those of Origen adopted by Porphyry. The passage from the Timaeus under consideration in the sections of Proclus’s commentary in which we find Porphyry’s account concerns the battle between Athens and Atlantis.8 This battle was the subject of numerous Platonic interpretations. According to Lewy, Numenius “identified the Atlantics with the psychical passions, by which the irrational (hylic) soul is dominated.”9 Therefore, Numenius was not the source of Porphyry’s thinking on different classes of daemons, which is how Porphyry interprets the battle between the two ancient cities. Thus, Porphyry takes his view from Origen that this war was the “combat of a class of demons ‘who were better and stronger in number’ with another class of demons ‘who were worse, but superior in strength.’”10 And as Ilaria Ramelli has recently pointed out, it is typical of Origen to allegorize cosmological descriptions in reference, not to physical realities, but to spirits. For instance, she notes that Origen interprets the upper and lower waters of Genesis along the same lines as Athens and Atlantis, namely as good and evil spirits.11 We will discuss Porphyry’s spiritual taxonomy in On Abstinence in more detail shortly, but if his views there, which he says derive from “some Platonists,” indeed stem from Origen’s Concerning Daemons and/or That the King Is the Only Creator, we can get some sense of Origen’s teachings on cosmic hierarchy, at least in terms of how he classified those beings inhabiting the space between earth and the moon. Although we will discuss these classifications in more detail when we turn to Porphyry directly, it seems that Origen divided good daemons into three species. The first group are guardians of animals and plants who also govern climate and weather, the second govern humans and impart to them knowledge of various arts and sciences, and the third are messengers of the gods in the Platonic sense.12 We do not hear about other supralunary beings, for example, angels or the fixed stars, in this context. However, we can turn to other works by Origen to fill in these cosmic gaps. Furthermore, in Origen’s time there was still a great deal of flexibility and ambiguity regarding terminology with reference to spiritual taxa.13
The argument that these views stem from Origen raises a number of rather obvious difficulties for those who affirm a single Origen. The most pressing of these difficulties is that we must figure out how Origen’s ideas in Concerning Daemons relate to his taxonomic discourses in other works, in particular in his On First Principles, where daemons are classed as more or less evil and obstructive, those beings that fell farthest from their initial unity with their Creator. The other difficulty is that Origen seems to have, at some point, interpreted Platonic texts, such as the Timaeus, without fundamentally challenging their polytheistic framework. The fact that, at some point, he entertained the idea that not all daemons were evil, that some were, in fact, divine messengers, calls for further reflection. This requires us to think further about Origen’s teaching activities and his philosophical interactions with Porphyry (and Longinus, who was another student). If, as Elizabeth Depalma Digeser argues, Porphyry went to study philosophy with Origen, as did a number of other non-Christians, it is likely that Origen was presenting himself as a teacher of philosophy, giving lectures on core texts in the ancient philosophical canon, commenting on them, interpreting them, and so forth.
The best place to look when searching for a text that brings the two Origens together, Origen the teacher of philosophy and Origen the Christian theologian and scriptural commentator, is in Origen’s Contra Celsum, a work written to a Middle Platonic non-Christian polytheist. As Ramelli points out, it is in this work that Origen refers to Homer more than thirty times, many of his references being entirely positive.14 Furthermore, given the fact that even within Plato, terminology regarding intermediate spirits is sometimes ambiguous, it should come as no surprise that across Origen’s works we encounter imprecision and context-specific usage of names and terms referring to spirits that aid or obstruct humans in their quest to achieve salvation. If Porphyry is using Origen’s Concerning Daemons in his own Commentary on the Timaeus, it may well be that Plato’s use of the term “daemon,” for instance, in the Symposium, is at the basis of Origen’s treatise. Porphyry himself uses terminology for intermediate spirits in very context-specific, inconsistent ways.15 In other words, the fact that Origen may have propounded views on daemons that appear to differ from what he says elsewhere about them does not necessarily involve him in self-contradiction. Rather, he was likely commenting on the various meanings of the term in Plato’s works, an activity one could reasonably expect from a teacher of philosophy, Christian or otherwise.16
Spiritual Taxonomy in Origen’s On First Principles
Origen makes his most explicit statements concerning cosmic order in On First Principles.17 Likely written sometime between 218 and 225, when Origen was still in Alexandria, On First Principles was an experimental work, one of the first sustained attempts at a systematic Christian theology, and one that addressed issues of cosmology and cosmogony, soteriology, Christology, theodicy, and, of course, what I have been calling spiritual taxonomy.18 Origen himself describes his purpose in On First Principles as an attempt to construct a “single body of doctrine,” discovering the truth about particular points that Christ and the apostles left obscure or unexplained and doing so using “clear and cogent arguments.”19 One of the main questions left unelaborated in scripture concerned intermediate spiritual beings, good and evil angels, as well as the devil himself. Origen notes, “the Church teaching lays it down that these beings exist, but what they are or how they exist it has not explained very clearly.”20 Origen makes the claim that the apostles left certain doctrines unelaborated in order to “supply the more diligent of those who came after them such as should prove to be lovers of wisdom, with an exercise on which to display the fruit of their ability.”21 Origen obviously considered himself to be one of those who were uniquely qualified to participate in this exegetical project, one of those “who train themselves to become worthy and capable of receiving wisdom.”22 Part of what initially incited Origen to address these particular questions was the emergence of “conflicting opinions” among those professing belief in Christ, “not only on small and trivial questions, but also on some that are great and important.”23 Given his view that much of Christian doctrine remained unelaborated in scripture, it is not surprising that such conflicts developed.
One of these conflicts emerged around the views of a group of early Christian thinkers who, like Origen, came to be labeled “heretics,” writers such as Marcion, Valentinus, and Basilides.24 According to Origen, these thinkers held the view that human souls were “in their natures diverse” and hence had different origins and different opportunities for salvation.25 Origen developed his taxonomic framework, in part, in response to this view, a view that, for our purposes, bears relevant similarities to that of Porphyry on the question of universal salvation.26 Furthermore, the debate between Origen and these other Christians bears interesting
