He Condemns as Pagan Views He Holds Himself

But now let us look at the other points he finds fault with. He says that the doctrines in question are of pagan origin, but in this judgment he condemns himself. He calls these doctrines pagan, yet he himself works them into his own writings. Here he makes a mistake. Still, we ought to hold out a hand to him and not press him too hard. It is only because he soars so far above the world on the wings of his eloquence, and is carried along on the full tide of invective and abuse, that he forgets himself and his reason loses its footing. Do not be so rash, my brother, as to condemn yourself needlessly. Neither you nor Origen should be set down at once among the pagans if, as you have said yourself, you wrote these things to defend the justice of God and to answer those who say that everything is moved by chance or by fate. That is, if it was from a wish to show that God’s providence, which governs all things, is just, that you said that each soul acquired the causes of inequality through the passions and feelings of the former life it had in heaven. Or again, if you said that it is in keeping with the character of the Trinity, which is good and simple and unchangeable, that every creature should in the end of all things be restored to the state in which it was first created; and that this must come after a long punishment, lasting as long as all the ages, which God inflicts on each creature in the spirit not of one who is angry but of one who corrects, since he is not one to mark iniquity strictly; and that, since his purpose, like a physician’s, is to heal men, he will set a limit to their punishment. Whether you spoke truly in this, let God judge. In any case such views seem to me to contain little impiety toward God and nothing of paganism at all, especially if they were put forward with the desire and intention of finding some way in which the justice of God might be defended. [a]