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The Soul of Jesus in the Land of the Dead: Origen on the Harrowing of Hell

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 January 2026

Charles Augustine Rivera
Charles Augustine Rivera*
Affiliation:
Wake Forest University School of Divinity; riverac@wfu.edu
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Abstract

This article offers an account of Origen’s understanding of Jesus’s descent into Hades, drawing on the full breadth of his corpus. I argue that Origen develops two themes in his writing on the descent. First, the descent completes the defeat of the devil, which began when Jesus offered himself as a ransom for humankind. Second, Origen understands the descent into Hades as the final stage of the savior’s revelatory descent through all the different realms of the cosmos. In both cases Origen’s characteristic conception of the soul of Jesus plays an essential part. Thus, Origen argues that it is the perfect virtue of Jesus’s soul and not the divine power of the Son of God that destroys the devil’s power. Likewise, Origen’s understanding of a rational mind’s ability to take on different bodily forms underlies his idea of the savior’s descent through different realms of the cosmos.

Keywords

Origendescent into Hadeschristologysoteriologyatonement

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Harvard Theological Review , Volume 118 , Issue 4 , October 2025 , pp. 735 - 753
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This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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© The Author(s), 2026. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the President and Fellows of Harvard College

Introduction

Although it is affirmed by Christians of many different confessions that Jesus descended into Hades, there is no shortage of disagreement on the theological significance of this event. Among contemporary theologians, one might tentatively identify two major streams in accounts of the descent.Footnote 1 For some, the descent is closely connected with that understanding of Christ’s saving work that Gustaf Aulén influentially dubbed the Christus Victor model: Christ descends into Hades to defeat the devil and liberate those under his domination.Footnote 2 A second stream, however, sees in the descent a moment of Christ’s utmost alienation from God the Father.Footnote 3 Of these two streams, the first may be helpfully associated with the customary English term for the descent, “the harrowing of hell,” which derives from the archaic “harrow,” meaning to despoil or plunder.Footnote 4 The second stream, by contrast, we might link to the traditional rendering of the phrase descendit ad inferos from the Apostles’ and Athanasian Creeds as “he descended into hell,” which suggests Christ’s entrance into the place of ultimate separation from God.Footnote 5 For many theologians of either stream, the descent into Hades indicates the truly universal reach of Christ’s saving work: “The descent of Christ into hell means that there is no realm anywhere in the universe, including the domain of death and the devil, where anyone can go to be cut off from the saving power of God.”Footnote 6

As one of the earliest theologians to offer sustained reflection on Jesus’s descent into Hades, Origen of Alexandria is of significant interest both to these contemporary theological discussions and to more historically minded investigations of the place of the descent in early Christianity.Footnote 7 In this article, I will draw together a wide array of texts from throughout Origen’s corpus to reveal two fundamental themes in his conception of the descent.Footnote 8 First, Origen sees the descent as the moment which clinches Jesus’s swindling of the devil: having offered himself as a ransom for the human race and submitted to the humiliation of the cross, Jesus’s true nature is revealed in his death and descent to Hades, resulting in the overthrow of the devil’s power. Second, Origen understands the descent into Hades as part of Jesus’s mission to bring the gospel and the knowledge of God to all rational minds: Jesus descends to Hades, in other words, to preach to the dead.

Each of these two distinct themes offers a culmination of distinct “plots” within the larger story of salvation. Jesus’s overthrow of the power of death and the devil offers the triumphant climax to his encounters with the hostile spiritual powers throughout his earthly ministry, from his temptation in the desert to his crucifixion. Similarly, his descent to preach to those who exist as souls without bodies (the dead) is the final stage of the savior’s traversal of all the realms of the cosmos, in which he reveals the divine Word to rational minds by sharing in all their different states of existence: he becomes an angel among those above in their glorious bodies, an enfleshed soul among those who dwell on earth, and, finally, a soul without a body among the dead in Hades. Although these distinct themes are not unique to Origen, they are tied together by a thread characteristic of his theology: rich reflection on the importance of the soul of Jesus. It is the soul of Jesus, Origen argues, that the devil demanded in ransom (cf. Ps 16:10, Matt 20:28) and the soul of Jesus that descended into Hades to meet all other disembodied souls in their mode of existence.Footnote 9 And, as it is Jesus’s soul which descends, so it is his soul which triumphs over the powers of hell and brings the light of divine Wisdom into the darkest corners of the world.

In what follows, I will address these two distinct themes in turn, exploring first the theme of the ransom and then that of the proclamation to the dead. I will conclude the essay by addressing the question of how Origen does or does not harmonize these distinct motifs.

Ransom for Many

Origen’s atonement theology has long been associated with the “ransom theory,” in which Jesus’s death redeems humanity from Satan’s power.Footnote 10 Because such reflection on atonement theology traditionally focuses on different conceptions of the meaning of the crucifixion, the connection between Origen’s concept of the ransom and his understanding of the descent into Hades has often gone unnoticed; by the same token, accounts of Origen’s teaching on the descent have generally left relevant passages untreated because they more directly pertain to the idea of the ransom.Footnote 11 These two concepts, however, are intimately connected in Origen’s theology: it is Jesus’s descent into Hades which renders Jesus’s death on the cross a triumph over the devil’s power.

Origen derives the idea that Jesus has ransomed or redeemed humankind from a variety of scriptural sources, such as Rom 3:24, Matt 20:28, and 1 Pet 1:19. Origen observes that the somewhat allusive language of ransom in these passages implies a situation where people are taken captive or enslaved and another pays a price to their captor or enslaver in order to free them.Footnote 12 While this same scriptural language is clear that Jesus is the one who pays the ransom and human beings are the ones redeemed, it leaves the last figure, the captor, unspecified. This prompts a simple question: Ransomed from whom? For Origen, the clear answer is the devil, to whose power human beings have put themselves in thrall by living lives of sin.Footnote 13

The theme of humankind’s slavery to the hostile powers appears throughout Origen’s works and is not unrelated to the idea that these wicked spiritual forces have been given power over the cosmos to serve as instruments of chastisement.Footnote 14 Origen understands human beings to enslave themselves to these hostile powers through the exercise of their free will: by choosing to follow the desires of the flesh, they obey sin and the demons, and thus become their slaves.Footnote 15 At some points, Origen will speak of human beings as selling themselves into slavery to the devil, with sin serving as the devil’s coin by which he purchases us. Thus, perversely, human beings do not sell themselves into the sad estate of servitude in exchange for anything worthwhile, but only for those very vices that trap them in their condition of immiseration: murder, adultery, greed, and the rest.Footnote 16 The devil pays humanity in company scrip.

Jesus, however, seeks to ransom humankind out of this captivity because we do not properly belong to the devil but to God.Footnote 17 In one of his homilies Origen imagines a dramatic negotiation between Jesus and the devil:

For we were under the power of enemies and the enemy was the devil and his angels. They had taken us captive and did not intend to free us without ransoms. And the Savior had no intention of overpowering the devil nor of defrauding those who had captured us, but he says to the devil, “I wish to ransom the captives you have taken: what do you want to get for a ransom, to give me those you have taken captive?” And he answered, “I want to get your blood. Pour out your blood and die. And if you die, when your blood has been poured out, I have my ransoms, I give up those you want to get.” My Lord and my Savior, the Lover of Humankind and the Christ, poured out his blood and bought us “with his precious blood” (1 Pet 1:19).Footnote 18

This passage, alive with homiletic energy, lays out a number of ideas key to Origen’s understanding of this ransom Jesus pays for humankind. The first is that Jesus does not intend to take humankind back from Satan’s power by force. This provides the underlying reason of why he would be negotiating with the devil to begin with.Footnote 19 The second is that the ransom Jesus pays is his own death, here connected with New Testament language of his buying us “with his precious blood” (1 Pet 1:19). Finally, the price of Jesus’s blood comes as a demand from the devil. The terse, asyndetic dialogue which Origen uses here for the devil’s demand brings out the underlying idea: it is his arrogant, heedless greed which causes the devil to make this demand, his character as the archetypal bloodthirsty man, the murderer from the beginning (John 8:44).

It is not this blood price itself, however, which frees humanity from the demonic thrall. Jesus’s offer of his own life as a ransom is but a first step which enables the true moment of liberation in his descent into Hades. The devil is utterly oblivious of Jesus’s gambit: as he gleefully puts Jesus to death, the devil, even more than his human instruments, does not know what he is doing (Luke 23:34), which is why Paul could assert that if he had, he would not have “crucified the Lord of Glory” (1 Cor 2:8). In keeping with other passages where Origen describes the devil as intending to subject Jesus to a slavery like that of the rest of Adam’s posterity,Footnote 20 it may even be that Origen imagines the devil, in his arrogance, had no intention of keeping up his end of the bargain, adding another layer of delicious irony to the fact that it is actually Jesus who is tricking him.Footnote 21

Yet how is it that Jesus’s surrender of himself to death effects this liberation? As he continues his homily, Origen describes for his congregation how it all came apart for the devil. In the very instant of Jesus’s death, when he triumphantly grasped the bloody prize he had demanded, the devil was undone. Origen the preacher invites his congregation to envision the scene:

How long was the Enemy arrogant? I dare to say for a single moment: at the same instant the Savior departed, the devil seized something without a soul—the body without a soul, and him hunting down the devil and his angels, whom he could not take in hand while he was wearing the body.Footnote 22 See him with me as he goes, see him descending into Hades and, once he has descended into Hades, see those whom he was to bind there and after their binding see him in Hades free among the dead and going up from there alone, saying “I have become as a man without help, free among the dead” (Ps 88:5). So all of them he bound fast and he went up, free among the dead.Footnote 23

Jesus’s descent into Hades, the realm of the dead, provides the dramatic reversal which renders his death on the cross a triumphant swindling of the forces of evil rather than a tragic and bittersweet exchange of one life for the lives of many. To his surprise, the devil is left holding a soulless body while Jesus himself, or rather the soul of Jesus, has hastened into the devil’s domain, where he can overwhelm and imprison the hostile spiritual powers and return from their realm as the one who is free from their domination.

Although this passage makes clear the significance of Jesus’s descent in effecting the liberation of humankind, it offers only a suggestion of the precise mechanics of his triumph. The language of binding recalls Jesus’s parable of the binding of the strong man (Matt 12:29), a connection Origen makes explicit in an account of the descent into Hades found in the Commentary on Romans. There Origen describes Jesus “going undercover” as a human being so that he can overthrow his enemy from within, since his goal is not to destroy his kingdom but to liberate those held in his thrall. Following the elements of the story in the parable, Origen writes that Jesus first binds the strong devil through his death on the cross, then enters his house, Hades, and carries off his possessions, human souls.Footnote 24 Nevertheless, even this fuller expansion of the language of binding does not explain precisely how Jesus was able to overcome the hostile powers.

For a more technical explanation of this logic, one must turn to other texts. In his commentary on Matt 20:28, “the Son of Man came … to give his soul as a ransom for many,” a central verse for the idea of the ransom, Origen argues that the devil was actually incapable of keeping the soul of Jesus in his power.Footnote 25 In demanding Jesus’s blood and death, the devil meant to trap him in the realm of Hades as he had trapped all the rest of the posterity of Adam, but the success of Jesus’s scheme lay in the fact that death, the ruler of Hades, proved incapable of mastering his soul (i.e., as the master of a slave; κυριεύω):

[The Evil One] had power over us until the soul of Jesus was given to him as our ransom. Yet he was deceived, clearly imagining that he could master it and not seeing that it does not tolerate the torture of his possessing it. Therefore Death, thinking that it had mastered him, no longer masters the one who becomes the only “free among the dead” (Psalm 88:5) and the one stronger than death’s authority, so much stronger that all those held under the power of death who wished to follow him could go free.Footnote 26

Origen explains here that the authority of death and the devil could not dominate the soul of Jesus because he, unlike the rest of humanity, would not tolerate the torture of their possessing him. Implied in Origen’s exegesis is his concept, described above, that human beings are enslaved to the devil because of their own choice to lead lives of vice and sin: the devil’s domination of humanity is not a matter of brute force, but of enticement and manipulation. Thus, because Jesus would not choose to embrace the degradation of submitting to the devil’s rule, the devil was utterly powerless to reduce him to slavery.

A similar understanding of the victory of Christ over the devil is found in the Commentary on the Song of Songs. In offering an interpretation of why the bridegroom is said to “look in through the nets” (Song 2:9), Origen connects these nets with the snares by which the devil tempts humankind. Because Jesus entered our human life, Origen writes, he too encountered these snares, but because he, unlike other human beings, was wholly without sin, they did not entrap him. Instead, he ripped and trampled them, and now looks upon the bride through them, inspiring her to arise and break free of them for herself to join him. It is this freedom from the snares of sin, Origen continues, which rendered Jesus alone “free among the dead” (Ps 88:5), empowering him to defeat the one who had power over death and bring forth his captives.Footnote 27

Here again it is Christ’s moral perfection that undoes the devil’s power since his power lies only in enticing and catching people in the entanglements of sin. In this way it is Jesus’s status as a human being among other human beings which anchors Origen’s idea of the ransom. Physically, substantially, constitutionally, Jesus is exactly like all the other dead of Hades in being a soul stripped of the body, but among these dead he is the only one who is free, because morally and spiritually he is altogether unlike them in his perfect obedience to God, his unceasing contemplation of the Father, his unerring choice of the good, his indissoluble union with the eternal Son. Jesus overcomes the devil not with literal violence and compulsion, but with the moral strength of perfect human virtue, entirely refusing the slavery of sin and vice which the rest of humanity in its folly finds too enticing to forgo.

Furthermore, it is his conviction of the triumph of Jesus’s human virtue which leads Origen to insist that it is Jesus’s soul that descends to Hades, a topic that occupies the remainder of his comment on Matt 20:28.Footnote 28 Although at first glance this might appear merely a pedantic insistence on following the wording of Matt 20:28 and Ps 16:10, which speak of Jesus’s soul, not his body or spirit, Origen perceives important theological implications in the scriptural diction. In particular, Origen appears to have in mind other Christian teachers who asserted that Jesus was able to bind the devil and overcome death in virtue of his power as the divine Word and Son of God. In Origen’s estimation these teachers think they are praising Christ by emphasizing his divinity, while, in actuality, their blurring of the distinction between his humanity and divinity results in an incoherent theology of the ransom and the descent into Hades.

There are a number of different reasons why Origen finds it incoherent to assert that the divine Son descended into Hades and overcame the hostile powers by dint of his divinity. In the first place, he considers it a logical impossibility that the divine Son, in whom all things were created, including the hostile spiritual powers, could be in any sense handed over to the devil.Footnote 29 The divine, after all, is by nature not contained in place.Footnote 30 By contrast, it is obviously possible for a human soul to be handed over to death and the devil. Although Origen does not mention it in this passage, the idea that the divine Son was given as a ransom would also violate the basic idea that the hostile powers were ignorant of what was actually happening when they were “crucifying the Lord of Glory.”Footnote 31 For Origen, the logic implied by scripture’s ransom language must center the human Jesus, the soul of Jesus, as the one who accomplishes the saving work.

Origen anticipates that his critics might assert that, in emphasizing the soul of Jesus, he has himself made a significant theological error in the other direction: effecting a separation between humanity and divinity in Christ. In response to this imagined objection, Origen reiterates his position that he considers Jesus, body and soul, to be one whole (ἓν ὅλον) with the firstborn of creation, the divine Word. By this he means that he is united to an even greater degree than “the one who clings to the Lord is one spirit with him” (1 Cor 6:17), that is, to an even greater degree than a normal holy and righteous person.Footnote 32 This language of “clinging” reminds us that, for Origen, the creaturely excellence, perfection, and righteousness of Jesus’s soul is both the ground and product of complete unity with the divine Son: the soul of Jesus alone among all rational minds never wavers in cleaving to the Word of God and through this unwavering act of contemplation he is conformed to the likeness of the divine Son such that he could never cease to be one with him.Footnote 33 It is, thus, not Origen, but rather his opponents who have assumed a division between humanity and divinity in Christ. In Origen’s view, by asserting that he triumphed over the devil as the divine Son they have implied that he is incapable of such a triumph as a human being, that the man Jesus is not one with the eternal Word, imbued with all divine power and splendor. By contrast Origen considers the Lord’s humanity itself, the soul of Jesus, to be full of the glory of divinity, just as the heated iron is full of fire.Footnote 34

Origen’s understanding of the divinity of the human soul of Jesus allows us to return to the language from the Homilies on the Psalms and propose an elaboration of Origen’s reasoning. In the passage treated above, Origen emphasized the separation of Jesus’s soul from his body in his descent to Hades. This is again not merely a pedantic insistence on the particularities of biblical language nor an inference from the basic principle that death is the separation of soul and body, but an indication of how it is that Jesus could “bind the strong man” in his descent to Hades. The soul of Jesus, as described above, is utterly imbued with divine life and glory beyond all other creatures. His human body, on the other hand, the “likeness of sinful flesh” (Rom 8:3) which he took on, does not display that divine glory. This body, possessing all the shortcomings and susceptibilities of our own, served to limit the display of Jesus’s divine glory, which is precisely why he was able to suffer and die on the cross.Footnote 35 When Jesus is stripped of this body in death, the divine glory of his soul is no longer hidden behind its limitations. Thus, in the homily we find Origen stating that “[Jesus] could not take [the devil and his angels] in hand while he was wearing the body,”Footnote 36 implying that, once the limitation of “the likeness of sinful flesh” had been removed, he very much could take them in hand and bind them.Footnote 37

It appears then that, for Origen, Jesus’s freedom among the dead is not just a freedom from demonic domination, but a crippling of evil’s very power to dominate at all. As Origen noted in the Commentary on the Song of Songs, Jesus does not merely escape the nets of the devil but tramples and rends them. Nevertheless, despite this language of binding and trampling, here too Origen envisions Christ’s triumph as a victory of virtue, not violent power. As Christ displays the ultimate impotence of the devil in the face of obedience to God, he limits, breaks, and binds the hold of the devil over those who will choose to follow on that same path of virtue, now that Jesus has shown the way.Footnote 38 It is for this reason that Jesus’s victory over death and the devil did not result in the immediate cessation of their hold over the world, as it would have were it something more like a literal binding. Rather, only when the bride too has escaped the nets and joined her beloved will that final victory be won. Then, when in Christ all rational minds will have submitted themselves to the Father with Jesus’s own obedience, death, the last enemy, will truly be destroyed, having been evacuated of all his power once there are no longer any willing to submit themselves to servitude.Footnote 39 And so God will be all in all (1 Cor 15:25–28).

The Descent of the Universal Teacher

The arrival of the savior’s perfect soul in the land of the bodiless stands also at the heart of Origen’s second great theme of the descent: Jesus’s preaching to the dead. This idea of the descent to Hades as a preaching mission stands as part of the larger story of the savior’s descent through the realms of the cosmos. As the savior descends through each realm his body takes on the form of those who dwell there. The limitation of Jesus’s earthly body and Jesus’s bodiless existence among the dead are to be understood within this larger story, of which his preaching in Hades is the final chapter.

It would be easy to misconstrue this concept of the body as a limitation to Jesus’s soul. Despite reflexive characterizations of Origen as denigrating the body, he does not consider materiality and bodies per se to be impediments to the flourishing of the soul or even to the display of divine glory.Footnote 40 This is clearly stated throughout his works, from his soteriology of divinizationFootnote 41 to his understanding of the transfigurationFootnote 42 to his descriptions of Jesus’s resurrection and ascension, in which the entrance of human flesh into heaven forms a key moment.Footnote 43 The limitation Jesus shook off in descending to Hades does not arise from his mere possession of a body, but the particular sort of body he possessed: a “likeness of sinful flesh” (Rom 8:3), a body like the bodies which we human beings wear in this present world as a form of pedagogical punishment for our sins.Footnote 44 Body per se is in fact quite capable of displaying divine glory, but the form of body that Jesus put on in the incarnation was not.

That this limitation is a particular characteristic of Jesus’s fleshly body is underlined by Origen’s assertion that, in keeping with the broader story of cosmic descent, Jesus had put on an angelic body before he put on this body like ours.Footnote 45 This idea has long been one of Origen’s more controversial, often mentioned in the accusations of his later detractors.Footnote 46 For Origen, however, this idea does not mean that Jesus was never truly a human being or an angel, as it would in metaphysical systems in which “human being” and “angel” are distinct and mutually exclusive substances. For Origen, human being and angel are simply different bodily forms taken by rational minds, reflecting the fundamental changeability inherent to matter.Footnote 47 In other words, Jesus’s angelic body is not a different body from his human body, at least not any more than his transfigured body is a different body from the body that hung on the cross, or his adult body is a different body from the body he had as a child.Footnote 48 In his sojourning as an angel among the angels, his angelic body shone with his divine glory; in his sojourning among us, however, his body matched the frailty of our own and hid his divine glory from the prince of this world.

According to Origen, the savior took on these different bodily forms for a pedagogical purpose: he was descending to preach the gospel to all the different realms of the cosmos inhabited by rational minds. He became an angel to angels “in heaven” and then, in his incarnation, he became a human being to human beings “on earth,” and, finally, at the last stage of this descent, he became a soul without a body in order to preach the gospel to those who dwell “under the earth” (cf. Phil 2:10).Footnote 49 Although the concept of the descent to Hades as a victory over the power of the devil, the “binding of the strong man,” would become much more prominent in later Christian traditions, this concept of a preaching mission, “proclamation to the spirits in prison” (1 Pet 3:19), occupies an equally important place in Origen’s theology.

The basic outline of the descent to Hades as a preaching mission can be found in a brief aside in Against Celsus. Celsus has mockingly suggested that Christians will claim Jesus went to Hades to convince people of his message, having failed so miserably to gain adherents on earth. Origen responds that Christians do in fact believe this,Footnote 50 holding that, just as Jesus converted some while he was in the body, so also, when he became a soul apart from a body, he preached and converted those who were in that state.Footnote 51 Here Origen expresses the fundamental principle underlying his concept of the descent as a preaching mission: those in need of the gospel message are in different states, some as souls in bodies and some as souls apart from bodies, but Jesus brings his saving message to all of them.

Origen describes the descent into Hades as a parallel to the incarnation elsewhere in non-polemical contexts as well. Thus, in considering the mysterious meaning of John the Baptist’s statement to Jesus that he is “unworthy to untie his sandals” (Matt 3:11), Origen writes that the incarnation and the descent to Hades are these two sandals, which only the truly worthy can untie or explain; it is by descending into both realms that Jesus is “Lord of both the dead and the living” (Rom 14:9).Footnote 52 Origen is aware that the sandal of Hades is not as well attested in scripture as the sandal of incarnation and quotes here the two passages that he most commonly attests as proofs: “You will not leave my soul in Hades” (Ps 16:10, quoted by Peter at Acts 2:27) and Jesus’s journey to preach to the imprisoned spirits (1 Pet 3:18–20). It should perhaps come as no surprise that Origen sees the descent into Hades as a mission of bringing the gospel message, like the incarnation, since that is precisely how the more detailed of these two passages (1 Pet 3:18–20) describes it.Footnote 53

This parallel between the descent to Hades and the incarnation also implies further parallels for Origen. The first is that the prophets who foretold Jesus’s coming on earth also foretold his coming in Hades. This idea is developed at length in the homily on the witch of Endor (Homily on 1 Samuel 28), where Origen must address the question of why Samuel was in Hades such that the woman of Endor could summon him up.Footnote 54 Origen reasons that if Jesus, who is greater than the prophets, descended to Hades (he again adduces Ps 16:10), then there is no problem in saying that the prophets themselves descended there as well. Indeed, just as the prophets, from Samuel down through John the Baptist, preceded Jesus’s coming in the flesh and prepared the way for his ministry on earth, so also, Origen argues, they prepared the way for his descent into Hades as well, “for those who have need of Christ have need of the prophets.”Footnote 55 In descending to the place of the dead, Origen describes both Christ and the prophets as physicians who spend time among the sick even as they themselves are healthy.Footnote 56

There is, however, a more significant parallel for Origen: just as Jesus brought the gospel to the embodied souls on earth and to the disembodied souls in Hades, so he also descended, prior to the incarnation, to bring the gospel to the angelic powers in heaven. The Homilies on the Psalms provide a number of passages expounding the idea, some of which parallel Jesus’s angelic sojourn with his descent to Hades. For example, in interpreting Ps 78:24, “Man did eat the bread of angels,” Origen connects the verse with Jesus’s statement that he is the living bread which comes down from heaven (John 6:51), asserting that the Word, as the true nourishment of rational creatures, became bread for all those who are below God, the bread of angels as well as the bread of human beings, the bread even of those who are beneath the earth.Footnote 57 Indeed, Origen would likely consider this idea of a descent of the Word into the realm of the angels as implied in the principle that “all places have need of the sojourning of Christ Jesus,” which justifies the descent into Hades.Footnote 58

Origen offers a similar exegesis of Ps 16:10, the verse that serves as a touchstone for Christ’s descent into Hades throughout his works. Here Origen reiterates the distinction that Christ descended to earth as a composite of body and soul in order to be like the inhabitants of earth, but only his soul descended to Hades, since the denizens of the underworld are naked souls, bereft of the body.Footnote 59 This distinction of the manner in which Christ descended to earth and to Hades then prompts Origen to connect it with his prior descent to the realms of the angels and other spiritual powers, in which he conjectures that Jesus might have appeared in the glory that he showed to his disciples on the mountain of transfiguration.Footnote 60 The idea again is that Christ descended to Hades only as a soul in accord with the principle that he appears to all the rational inhabitants of different realms of the cosmos in accord with their nature.

For Origen, the descent to Hades is thus the final, concluding stage of the descent of the divine Word in Jesus to all portions of the rational creation. This is especially clear in passages where Origen’s focus is not so much on the descent to Hades per se but on this broader idea of the Word’s universal pedagogy. Thus, when Origen interprets the saying that Jesus is “the first and the last” (Rev 22:13) in the Commentary on John, he understands it in terms of this universal pedagogical descent of the savior through all the ranks of rational creatures, taking on each of their forms, from first to last.Footnote 61 In this descent, Origen writes, the savior has truly fulfilled Paul’s idea of “becoming all things to all people” (1 Cor 9:22): “Clearly he has become human to humans and angel to angels.”Footnote 62 Although Origen can only speculate on who the beings of the first rank are,Footnote 63 he is more confident that the last rank is that of the dead, appealing to the by-now familiar passages from the Psalms that Jesus was “free among the dead” (Ps 88:5) and that his soul was not left in Hades (Ps 16:10). Jesus became dead for the dead, descending to Hades as a soul without a body, just as he had before come to earth as soul and body, and before that descended through the realms of the spiritual powers as an angel to the angels. In his final descent to Hades Jesus thus completes his revelation of the divine Word to all the rational beings of the universe.Footnote 64

Conclusion

I have shown how, throughout his works, two themes characterize Origen’s understanding of the descent into Hades: Jesus’s binding of death and the devil’s power and his proclamation of the gospel to the dead. These narratives in turn correlate to two broader stories: the binding completes the story of Jesus’s confrontation with hostile spiritual powers in general and the story of the cross in particular, while the proclamation to the dead brings to conclusion the story of the savior’s descent through all the realms of the universe. In both themes, Origen’s understanding of scriptural language concerning the soul of Jesus forms an interpretive key, placing the savior’s creaturely identity, an embodied rational mind entirely united to the divine Son, at the heart of the saving work for which he descends to Hades.

Although both themes, the binding of demonic power and the proclamation to the dead, occur throughout Origen’s works, it is to be noted that they remain clearly distinct. Indeed, the two themes are rarely, if ever, treated in conjunction. Thus, for example, although the narrative in the parable of the binding of the strong man (Matt 12:29) might imply a connection between the plundering of his house and the proclamation to the dead, Origen does not argue for such an interpretation.Footnote 65 Similarly, although one might argue that in Origen’s theology the story of the descent of the savior to reveal the divine Word to all the cosmos is the larger narrative of which his encounter with the hostile powers in earth and Hades forms but a subordinate part, Origen himself does not offer such a framing. When he speaks of the cosmic descent of the savior, the descent into Hades is a matter of preaching; when he speaks of binding death and the devil, the descent completes the story of the cross.

Origen’s lack of an integrated account of these two themes of the descent could be explained as a matter of his historical moment. Both themes are abundantly attested in Christian texts prior to Origen’s day but are rarely found together prior to him.Footnote 66 On this account, Origen’s writings merely reflect the broader lack of clarity among early Christians on how the different traditions around Jesus’s descent into Hades fit together. Indeed, this was long ago Adolf von Harnack’s broader interpretation of Origen’s atonement theology: for Harnack, this aspect of Origen’s theology exemplifies his conservative impulse, holding on to all the disparate elements of received tradition without systematizing them.Footnote 67

For later texts that would exercise significant influence over Christian tradition, the natural way to synthesize these themes was by means of narrative sequence. Such narrative integration involves arranging disparate elements into a single story and sequence, by contrast with the kind of theoretical systematization Harnack found absent in Origen, which would identify a central essential idea as a principle for organizing and interpreting the disparate elements. Thus, in the Gospel of Nicodemus, which came to offer the classic account of the descent in Latin Christianity, Jesus first binds death and the devil and then proceeds to deliver a brief sermon to the inhabitants of Hades, thus combining distinct aspects or imaginations of the descent into a single coherent narrative.Footnote 68 Such narrative integration of disparate elements is common in Origen, by contrast with theoretical systematization, which is quite rare in his works.Footnote 69 It thus remains somewhat puzzling that he does not perform such harmonization with the descent into Hades. Indeed, the rare moments where he moves toward such harmonization are left incomplete or even potentially contradictory. Thus, in the Commentary on Matthew, Origen seeks to account for Jesus’s promise to the good thief, “this day you will be with me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43, italics added), by speculating that Jesus was in Paradise on the very day of the passion and subsequently descended from there to Hades, but does not continue on to set in sequence the events of the descent.Footnote 70 One would indeed very much like to hear Origen offer such an expansion, as this narrative does not seem to cohere with his statements elsewhere that Jesus descended into Hades immediately at the moment of his death.Footnote 71

Nevertheless, although Origen does not offer an integrated single narrative of the descent into Hades, this should not be taken to suggest that Origen was simply an omnivorous and uncritical assembler of previous traditions, as Harnack supposed. In exploring his treatment of the binding of demonic power, I have shown how Origen explicitly rejects certain ways of understanding the descent, such as the idea that Jesus paid his ransom to God or that it was the divine Son and not the soul of Jesus which made the descent. Similarly, his concept that Jesus bound the devil by his perfect virtue and obedience to God seems to show an implicit awareness and rejection of understandings which held that Jesus overpowered and bound the devil in a manner involving violent force.Footnote 72 In addition, Origen’s account of Jesus’s preaching to the dead is somewhat distinct in situating it within a larger story of the savior’s descent through the cosmos.Footnote 73 Most importantly, however, I have shown how Origen’s characteristic understandings of Jesus’s body and soul provide him an indispensable framework for interpreting both major themes of the descent into Hades.

In these respects, Origen’s account of the descent into Hades offers not only an invaluable window onto the interpretive and theological possibilities available to Christians in the third century, but also a promising resource for contemporary Christian theological reflection. Origen offers a vision of Christ’s victory over the devil which anticipates contemporary reservations about positing a literal violence underlying scripture’s language of binding and triumph. Similarly, Origen’s story of Christ’s descent through all the realms of the cosmos offers a way of conceiving of Christ’s assumption of the entirety of creaturely experience which need not assume that utter separation from God defines any realm of that experience. Origen’s Jesus is never other than one with the Word of God, and it is nothing more nor less than the appearance of such a one that harrows hell.

Footnotes

*

I wish to express my gratitude to Christopher West and the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this essay. I am likewise indebted to the diligent labors of my research assistants Rebecca Gordon and Devin Withrow.

The following are the editions of Origen’s works referenced in the article. I have used the following editions from the GCS series: Against Celsus in Origenes I: Die Schrift vom Martyrium, Buch I–IV gegen Celsus (ed. Paul Koetschau; GCS 2; Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs’sche Buchhandlung, 1899) and Origenes II: Buch V–VIII gegen Celsus, Die Schrift vom Gebet (ed. Paul Koetschau; GCS 3; Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs’sche Buchhandlung, 1899); Commentary on John in Origenes IV: Der Johanneskommentar (ed. Erwin Preuschen; GCS 10; Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs’sche Buchhandlung, 1903); Commentary on the Song of Songs, in Origenes VIII: Homilien zu Samuel I, zum Hohelied und zu den Propheten, Kommentar zum Hohelied; In Rufins und Hieronymus’ Übersetzungen (ed. W.A. Baehrens; GCS 33; Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs’sche Buchhandlung, 1925); Commentary on Matthew, in Origenes XII: Matthäuserklärung; Die Griechische erhaltenen Tomoi (ed. Erich Klostermann; GCS 40; Leipzig: J. C. Hinirchs’sche Buchhandlung, 1935); Homilies on the Psalms, in Origenes XIII: Die neuen Psalmenhomilien; Eine kritische Edition des Codex Monacensis Graecus 314 (ed. Lorenzo Perrone; GCS n. s. 19; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2015). I have used the following editions from the Sources Chrétiennes series: Homilies on Joshua, in Origène: Homélies sur Josué (ed. Annie Jaubert; SC 71; Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1960); Homilies on Leviticus, in Origène: Homélies sur le Lévitique (ed. Marcel Borret; SC 286–87; Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1981); Homilies on Exodus, in Origène: Homélies sur l’Exode (ed. Marcel Borret; SC 321; Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1985); Homilies on Samuel in Origène: Homélies sur Samuel (ed. Pierre Nautin and Marie Thérèse Nautin; SC 328; Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1986); Homilies on Numbers, the text of Baehrens in Origène: Homélies sur les Nombres I: Homélies I–X (ed. Louis Doutreleau; SC 415; Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1996); Origène: Homélies sur les Nombres II: Homélies XI–XIX (ed. Louis Doutreleau; SC 442; Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1999); Origène: Homélies sur les Nombres III: Homélies XX–XXVIII (ed. Louis Doutreleau; SC 461; Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2001). I have also used these other editions: Commentary on Ephesians, in J.A.F. Gregg, “The Commentary of Origen upon the Epistle to the Ephesians,” The Journal of Theological Studies 3.10–12 (1902), 233–44, 398–420, and 554–76; Commentary on Romans in Origenes Römerbriefkommentar (ed. Theresia Heither; Fontes Christiani [FC] 2; Freiburg: Herder, 1990–1999); On First Principles, in Origen: On First Principles (ed. John Behr; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). All translations are my own.

References

1 For a survey of some contemporary theological ground offering a slightly different taxonomy than mine, see Rodney Howsare, “Christ’s Descent into Hell,” in T&T Clark Companion to Atonement (ed. Adam Johnson; London: Bloomsbury, 2017) 257–75.

2 Gustaf Aulén himself refers to the descent only sparingly: see e.g., Christus Victor: An Historical Study of the Three Main Types of the Idea of the Atonement (New York: Macmillan, 1931) 109. For an articulation of this approach as the inheritance of Orthodox tradition, see Hilarion Alfeyev, Christ the Conqueror of Hell: The Descent into Hades from an Orthodox Perspective (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2009). For an appreciation from a different ecclesial quarter, see Milton Gatch, “The Harrowing of Hell: A Liberation Motif in Medieval Theology and Devotional Literature,” Union Seminary Quarterly Review 36 (1981) 75–88.

3 Although this interpretation received classical expression in the work of John Calvin, it has in recent decades garnered interest beyond the world of Reformed theology due to its transplantation into Roman Catholic soil in the work of Hans Urs von Balthasar. For Calvin’s interpretation, see Institutes of the Christian Religion 2.16.8–11. For von Balthasar, see Mysterium Paschale: The Mystery of Easter (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1990) 148–88, as well as Alyssa Pitstick, Light in Darkness: Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Catholic Doctrine of Christ’s Descent into Hell (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007).

4 Oxford English Dictionary, “harrow (v.2), sense a,” https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/5974150879.

5 The phrase “descent into hell” will be found more commonly in theological scholarship, while in literary- and art-historical scholarship the phrase “harrowing of hell” is preferred, especially when dealing with materials from England. In this article I will predominantly use the phrase “descent into Hades” as a closer translation of Origen’s own writings, as well as his scriptural antecedents. This phrase also avoids the implications of these other terms suggested here, which can be misleading in Origen’s case.

6 Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2015) 461. Rutledge’s lengthy treatment of the descent (ibid., 395–461) incorporates both streams I identify here (which she terms “Christus Victor” and “substitution”). For a similar appeal to the universalistic implications of the descent, see Alfeyev, Christ the Conqueror of Hell, 213–18.

7 For the descent into Hades in early Christian literature more generally, see the classic surveys of John MacCulloch, The Harrowing of Hell: A Comparative Study of an Early Christian Doctrine (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1930) and Alois Grillmeier, “Der Gottessohn im Totenreich: Soteriologische und christologische Motivierung der Descensuslehre in der älteren christlichen Überlieferung,” Zeitschrift für Katholische Theologie 71 (1949) 1–53; Gary Anderson, “The Resurrection of Adam and Eve,” in In Dominico Eloquio/In Lordly Eloquence: Essays on Patristic Exegesis in Honour of Robert Louis Wilken (ed. Paul Blowers et al., Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002) 3–34; Paul Blowers, Drama of the Divine Economy: Creator and Creation in Early Christian Theology and Piety (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012) 263–73; Jonathan Knight, “The Descent into Hell: Its Origin and First Development,” JTS 72.1 (2021) 155–91.

8 The wide range of sources I engage corrects an inadequacy in previous surveys of the descent to Hades in Origen. The most fundamental reason for this inadequacy is the recent discovery of the new collection of Homilies on the Psalms, which contains many important passages on the topic. However, even allowing for this new discovery, the available surveys treat only a handful of the many mentions of the descent in his previously available works. Although I cannot promise that I have detected or will engage with every single mention within Origen’s vast corpus, the present essay will thus serve, regardless of the reader’s evaluation of my analysis, as a more expansive reference point than other surveys such as Michel Fédou, La sagesse et le monde. Essai sur la chistologie d’Origène (Paris: Desclée, 1995) 218–24, Jared Wicks, “Christ’s Saving Descent to the Dead: Early Witnesses from Ignatius of Antioch to Origen,” Pro Ecclesia 17.3 (2008) 281–309, at 302–7, and Alfeyev, Christ the Conqueror of Hell, 48–51. Although not organized as a distinct section, many of Origen’s mentions of the descent into Hades may be found in Manlio Simonetti, “La morte di Gesù in Origene,” in Studi sulla cristologia del II e III secolo (Rome: Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, 1993) 145–82.

9 In his classic study, Grillmeier already noted Origen’s clear emphasis on Jesus’s soul as accomplishing the works of the descent, but only as a brief prologue to the more detailed debates on the topic beginning in the 4th century (“Der Gottessohn im Totenreich,” 35).

10 The strong association of Origen in particular and early Patristic theology more generally with the “ransom theory” of the atonement is at least as old as F. C. Baur, Die christliche Lehre von der Versöhnung (Tübingen: C.F. Osiander, 1838) 23–67 (detailed discussion of Origen, 43–67). Gustaf Aulén’s inclusion of Origen in his survey of Patristic ransom theology no doubt solidified this association for later generations (Christus Victor, 38, 49, 51). A similar role may be attributed to the characterization of J. N. D. Kelly: Early Christian Doctrines (5th ed.; New York: Harper Collins, 1978) 184–87. For recent examples of the continuing relevance of this view of Origen, see Colin Gunton, The Actuality of Atonement (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1989) 55, 66; Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2015) 267–68 n. 26; Joshua McNall, The Mosaic of Atonement: An Integrated Approach to Christ’s Work (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2019) 196–97; Oliver Crisp, Approaching the Atonement: The Reconciling Work of Christ (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2020) 50. It should be noted that although Origen is strongly associated with the “ransom theory,” Gregory of Nyssa tends to be its most commonly cited patristic exemplar.

11 So, for example, Commentary on Matthew 16.8, which will be a key passage in the argument of this article, is one of the passages most commonly cited in discussions of Origen’s “ransom theory.” Nevertheless, despite being oft-cited in these other contexts, it does not appear in the surveys of Origen’s views on the descent in Alfeyev, Christ the Conqueror of Hell, 48–51, or Wicks, “Christ’s Saving Descent to the Dead,” 302–7.

12 Commentary on Romans 3.7.14 (FC 2/2:110) and Commentary on Ephesians 1:7 (Gregg, 238–39).

13 Origen does show awareness of other identifications of the captor from whom we are ransomed. Thus, in the Homilies on Exodus he asserts that “heretics” understood Jesus to be purchasing us from the malevolent Creator, a likely reference to a Marcionite understanding (Origen explicitly connects this understanding with Marcion at Against Celsus 6.53): Homilies on Exodus 6.9 (SC 321:192). For this aspect of Marcionite theology see Han Drijvers, “Christ as Warrior and Merchant: Aspects of Marcion’s Christology,” Studia Patristica 21 (1989) 73–85, and Judith Lieu, Marcion and the Making of a Heretic: God and Scripture in the Second Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015) 380–86. It is also possible to read Origen’s comment that the ransom was “certainly not paid to God!” (Commentary on Matthew 16.8) as an implicit acknowledgement that some Christians within his community did think that it was paid to God himself. If this is so, Origen’s dismissive tone seems to indicate that he would associate such an interpretation with simple-minded Christians, whose ignorance he elsewhere describes as being untroubled by ascribing wicked things to God (e.g., On First Principles 4.2.1). From Origen’s perspective there could hardly be a better example of such simple-minded theology than casting God in the role of cosmic captor and enslaver, a role which even the heretics recognize requires a figure of consummate evil.

14 For this idea see Commentary on Romans 1.16.3–4 (FC 2/1:136–40), Contra Celsum 4.72 and 8.31 (GCS 2:341–42, 3:246–47), and especially Homilies on Numbers 13.7 (SC 442:146–50).

15 See the detailed discussion in Commentary on Romans 6.1–5 (FC 2/3:191–226).

16 Homilies on Exodus 6.9 (SC 321:194).

17 Homilies on Exodus 6.9 (SC 321:192). The idea that Jesus ransoms humankind from the devil has long been critiqued for holding that the devil thus has some “right” to hold humanity (the locus classicus is Anselm of Canterbury, Why the God-Man 1.7). Origen, by contrast, here asserts that the very reason God intended to ransom us was that we did not in fact belong to the devil by rights, in explicit contrast to the Marcionite account where humankind is conceived of as belonging to the demonic Creator. For a discussion of these ideas bringing Origen’s ransom theology into conversation with contemporary critiques of ransom theology in general, see Daniel Waldow, “From Whom Was Humanity Saved? The Ransom Soteriology of Origen’s Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans,” IJST 21.3 (2019) 265–89 (for the matter of “the devil’s rights” in Origen, see esp. 269–71).

18 Homily 1 on Psalm 73, section 5 (GCS n. s. 19:230–31).

19 The idea that Jesus does not wish to defraud (πλεονεκτέω) the devil might seem to jar with the ultimate outcome of the story, where the devil is unable to keep Jesus in his power as he thought he would. However, Origen has in mind here outright cheating or stealing (as implied by the other verb βιάζομαι [overpower, compel by force]) and not Jesus merely allowing the devil an opportunity to fail to do due diligence.

20 E.g., Commentary on Matthew 13.8 (GCS 40:202).

21 A condensed parallel to this passage from the new Homilies on the Psalms may be found at Commentary on Romans 2.13.29 (FC 2/1:292–94). This latter passage occurs in Origen’s long excursus on circumcision as part of an explanation of how the blood of circumcision symbolizes the blood Christ offers as ransom for humanity.

22 My translation of this sentence preserves an anacoluthon in the Greek. Origen utilizes the device to evoke the confusion of the devil.

23 Homily 1 on Psalm 73, section 6 (GCS n. s. 19:233).

24 Commentary on Romans 5.10.10–12 (FC 2/3:176–80). In the Homilies on Leviticus, Origen further adds that Jesus then consigned the defeated demonic powers themselves to hell. This is symbolized by the scapegoat, a symbol of the devil, which is led into the wilderness by “the prepared man” (Lev 16:21), a symbol of Jesus: Homilies on Leviticus 9.5.4 (SC 287:90).

25 Because of its more technical quality, this passage from the Commentary on Matthew has enjoyed a prominent place in the history of interpretation and is often cited as Origen’s definitive expression of the “ransom theory.”

26 Commentary on Matthew 16.8 (GCS 40:498–99).

27 Commentary on the Song of Songs 3 (GCS 33:221–23).

28 Commentary on Matthew 16.8 (GCS 40:499–501). For other passages where Origen emphasizes that it is Jesus’s soul which descended to Hades, see Commentary on Matthew, series 138, Commentary on John 19.102–103, Commentary on Romans 1.5.2, and Dialogue with Heraclides 7–8.

29 Commentary on Matthew 16.8 (GCS 40:500–501). There is a similar discussion at Commentary on John 28.157–159.

30 See e.g., On First Principles 1.1.6.

31 So, for example, in Homilies on Luke 6.5 Origen notes that, during the temptation in the wilderness, Jesus keeps the devil in ignorance by never actually acknowledging that he is the Son of God.

32 Commentary on Matthew 16.8 (GCS 40:500–501).

33 On First Principles 2.6.3–5 (Behr, 2:206–10). Accounts of the significance of the soul of Jesus for Origen’s christology tend to take On First Principles 2.6 as their starting point. For introductory treatments, see John Behr, The Way to Nicaea (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001) 199–200, and Christopher Beeley, The Unity of Christ: Continuity and Conflict in Patristic Tradition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012) 34–36. For more detailed explorations, see Fédou, La sagesse et le monde, 153–63, and Mark Therrien, Cross and Creation: A Theological Introduction to Origen of Alexandria (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2022) 223–59.

34 The metaphor is from On First Principles 2.6.6 (Behr, 2:210–12).

35 For this idea see Commentary on Romans 6.12.4 (FC 2/3:296).

36 Homily 1 on Psalm 73, section 6 (GCS n. s. 19:233).

37 In a somewhat related vein, Behr argues that, for Origen, it is only on the cross that Jesus himself gains as a human being the divinity of the Son of God. See Behr, Origen: On First Principles (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017) lxvi–lxxx. This idea is also central to the account of Origen’s theology given in Therrien, Cross and Creation.

38 See, for example, the rhapsodic, scripture-soaked peroration of On the Passover 47–49.

39 Homilies on Joshua 8.4 (SC 71:224–28).

40 For Origen’s positive evaluation of the body, see Alfons Fürst, “Matter and Body in Origen’s Christian Platonism,” in Origeniana Duodecima: Origen’s Legacy in the Holy Land—A Tale of Three Cities; Jerusalem, Caesarea and Bethlehem (ed. Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony et al.; Leuven: Peeters, 2019) 573–88.

41 See, for example, the explicit assertion that the body is divinized at Homily on Psalm 81, section 1.

42 See Origen’s exegesis at Commentary on Matthew 12.36–39, as well as Arthur Urbano, “Jesus’s Dazzling Garments: Origen’s Exegesis of the Transfiguration in the Commentary on Matthew,” in The Garb of Being: Embodiment and the Pursuit of Holiness (ed. Georgia Frank, Susan Holman, and Andrew Jacobs; New York: Fordham University Press, 2020) 35–56.

43 According to Origen, the entrance of human flesh into heaven left the angels wonderstruck, a moment he often connects with Isa 63:1: “Who is this coming up from Edom, from Bozrah with clothing of scarlet?” See Homily 2 on Psalm 15, section 8, Homilies on Judges 7.2, Commentary on John 6.288, and Commentary on Matthew 16.19.

44 See the oft-cited account of On First Principles 2.9. For some recent treatments of this idea, see Mark Scott, Journey Back to God: Origen on the Problem of Evil (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012) 74–100, and Matthijs den Dulk, “Origen of Alexandria and the History of Racism as a Theological Problem,” JTS 71:1 (2020) 164–95. Anders-Christian Jacobsen provides a helpful account of the pedagogical function of the body but errs in asserting that Origen thinks rational beings will eventually exist without bodies: “The nature, function, and destiny of the human body—Origen’s interpretation of 1 Cor 15,” Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum 23.1 (2019) 36–52. This idea, long controversial in and of itself, is inextricably entangled with Origen’s equally (in)famous teaching on the preexistence of souls. Scholarship on this topic remains much vexed. For some distinct views, see Marguerite Harl, “La préexistence des âmes dans l’oeuvre d’Origène,” in Origeniana Quarta (ed. Lothar Lies; Innsbruck: Tyrolia, 1987) 238–58; Mark Edwards, Origen against Plato (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002) 87–122; and Peter Martens, “Embodiment, Heresy, and the Hellenization of Christianity: The Descent of the Soul in Plato and Origen,” HTR 108.4 (2015) 594–620.

45 A particularly straightforward expression of this idea may be found at Homily 1 on Psalm 15, section 4 (GCS n. s. 19:79–80).

46 For some of these controversies, see Joseph Trigg, “The Angel of Great Counsel: Christ and the Angelic Hierarchy in Origen’s Theology,” JTS 42.1 (1991) 35–51.

47 See On First Principles 4.4.8 and Commentary on Romans 1.18 for Origen on the inherent changeability of matter. Origen famously states that only the persons of the Trinity are truly immaterial (On First Principles 2.2.2). See also Panayiotis Tzamalikos, Origen: Cosmology and Ontology of Time (Leiden: Brill, 2006) 113–16, and Charles Stang, “Origen’s Theology of Fire and the Early Monks of Egypt,” Modern Theology 38.2 (2022) 338–62.

48 This point is underscored by Origen’s understanding that even within the incarnation itself Jesus’s body changed shape many times, not just at the transfiguration, to appear differently to different people. See John McGuckin, “The Changing Forms of Jesus,” in Lothar Lies, Origeniana Quarta (Innsbruck: Tyrolia, 1987) 215–22, and Corine Milad, “Incarnation and Transfiguration: Origen’s Theology of Descent,” Journal of Theological Interpretation 12.2 (2018) 200–216, at (esp. 207–9).

49 See Commentary on John 1.209–220, discussed below. Origen reflects here not merely the language of Philippians 2, but also the broader concept of a tripartite cosmos. See Adela Yarbro Collins, Cosmology and Eschatology in Jewish and Christian Apocalypticism (Leiden: Brill, 1996).

50 It is unclear whether Celsus was aware of and specifically mocking this concept of Jesus’s preaching in Hades or whether his supposition that Christians might believe Jesus convinced the inhabitants of Hades is intended as an absurd hypothetical underscoring of how few converts he made on earth.

51 Against Celsus 2.43 (GCS 2:166).

52 Commentary on John 6.173–178 (GCS 10:143–44).

53 Indeed, Origen will often describe the descent as a preaching mission largely by citation and paraphrase of this passage from 1 Peter. See e.g., Commentary on Matthew, series 132.

54 Homily on 1 Samuel 28, sections 1–5 (SC 328:172–86). In these opening sections, Origen rejects the view that the woman of Endor conjures an apparition which is not actually Samuel.

55 Homily on 1 Samuel 28, sections 6–8 (SC 328:186–200, quoted text at 194).

56 Homily on 1 Samuel 28, section 8 (SC 328:198–200).

57 Homily 4 on Psalm 77, section 10 (GCS n. s. 19:404–405). See also Homilies on Genesis 15.5, where the descent to Hades is connected with Jesus’s accompanying humanity throughout all its struggles in this world.

58 Homily 1 on Psalm 15, section 2 (GCS n. s. 19:76).

59 Homily 2 on Psalm 15, section 8 (GCS n. s. 19:108–109).

60 Homily 2 on Psalm 15, section 8 (GCS n. s. 19:109).

61 Commentary on John 1.209–220 (GCS 10:38–39).

62 Commentary on John 1.217 (GCS 10:38).

63 Origen tentatively identifies the first rank with those whom scripture calls “gods,” but considers other possibilities. Commentary on John 1.212–216 (GCS 10:38).

64 See also in this connection the discussion of Jesus’s descent to Hades and ascent to heaven at Commentary on John 19.130–145 (GCS 10:321–23). My account here of Origen’s conception of the descent into Hades is in line with the general thrust of received scholarly accounts about his larger pedagogical schema of salvation, even as it offers an important correction by highlighting the importance of the descent into Hades. Consider, for example, the clear and paradigmatic formulation of Torjesen: “According to Origen the distance between God and the world is an ontologically graded distance. Origen understands the incarnation as a kenosis in which Christ traverses the ontological distance between God and the human soul. Therefore the incarnation as the taking on of flesh is only the last specific event or moment in a long descent.” Karen Jo Torjesen, “Pedagogical Soteriology from Clement to Origen,” in Origeniana Quarta (ed. Lothar Lies; Innsbruck: Tyrolia, 1987) 370–78, at 374 (emphasis added).

65 See e.g. Commentary on Romans 5.10.10–12 and Commentary on the Song of Songs 3, both discussed above.

66 See Knight, “The Descent into Hell.”

67 Adolf von Harnack, History of Dogma (trans. Neil Buchanan; Boston: Little, Brown, 1905) 2:367 n. 771.

68 Gospel of Nicodemus 16–19. As in Origen, the Gospel of Nicodemus also has Jesus’s arrival foretold by John the Baptist and various other prophets all the way back to Adam and Seth.

69 For examples of Origen performing narrative integration, see his writing on the ascension at Commentary on John 6.287–292 and the attempt at weaving together the different parables concerning masters and slaves at Commentary on Matthew 14.6–13.

70 Commentary on Matthew 12.3 (GCS 40:72–73).

71 E.g., Homily 1 on Psalm 73, section 6, discussed above. It is notable that Ronald Heine has argued that the Commentary on Matthew and the Homilies on the Psalms belong to the same period of Origen’s life (The Commentary of Origen on the Gospel of St. Matthew [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018] 24–28).

72 Origen, for example, does not include the detail of Christ breaking down the bars or gates of hell, often connected with the gates of Ps 24:7–10. Origen connects these verses not with the descent into Hades but with Christ’s ascension into heaven: see e.g., Commentary on John 6.288. For a survey of the early sources of this motif of the “bars of Sheol,” see Robert Murray, Symbols of Church and Kingdom: A Study in Early Syriac Tradition, Revised Edition (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2004) 324–29.

73 Origen forms a notable contrast here with Clement of Alexandria, who includes his long discussion of the preaching in Hades within a larger discussion of the revelation of the truth to both Jews and non-Jews, rather than different realms of the cosmos (Stromateis 6.6). Origen’s framing is similar, however, to that of The Ascension of Isaiah, although they differ in important particulars: see Knight, “The Descent into Hell,” 167–73.