The Heresies in Origen’s Books

We must consider the fact, which comes first, and so reach in due order the inference, which comes after. Now among the many bad things Origen wrote, I find these to be the most clearly heretical: that the Son of God is a creature; that the Holy Spirit is a servant; that there are countless worlds, following one another through eternal ages; that angels have been turned into human souls; that the soul of the Savior existed before it was born of Mary, and that it is this soul which, “being in the form of God, did not think it robbery to be equal with God, but emptied itself and took the form of a servant”; that the resurrection of our bodies will be such that we will not have the same members, since when the functions of the members cease they will become useless; and that our bodies themselves will become airy and spirit-like, and will gradually vanish and disperse into thin air and into nothing; that in the restoration of all things, when the fullness of forgiveness has been reached, the Cherubim and Seraphim, Thrones, Principalities, Dominions, Virtues, Powers, Archangels and Angels, the devil, the demons, and the souls of men, whether Christians, Jews or pagans, will be of one condition and rank; and that when they have come to their true form and weight, and the new army of the whole race, returning from the exile of the world, presents a mass of rational creatures with all their dregs left behind, then a new world will begin from a new origin, with other bodies in which the souls that fall from heaven will be clothed; so that we may have to fear that we who are now men may afterward be born women, and that one who is now a virgin may then chance to be a prostitute. These are the things I point out as heresies in the books of Origen. It is for you to point out in which of his books you have found them contradicted. [a]