Mark E. THERRIEN.  Cross and Creation: A Theological Introduction to Origen of Alexandria.  Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 2022.  pp. xxii+303.  $34.95 pb.  ISBN 9780813235301.  Reviewed by Christopher DENNY, St. John’s University, Queens, NY  11439.

Therrien sets his work within the context of disputes that have roiled interpretations of Origen for the past century.  While Origenian controversies are not the primary theme, throughout Therrien indicates in footnotes where his reading of Origen differs from those of previous scholars.  This is not a dogmatic appraisal of Origen that criticizes him in comparison to later conciliar theology; Therrien has sufficient historical sensitivity to avoid proceeding down that well-trod path.  “Cross” and “creation” are the organizing principles for the book’s eight chapters, and the author rejects the inadequate Harnackian paradigm that sets “Greek intellectualism” (8) in opposition to biblical revelation. 

On First Principles and Origen’s commentary on John’s gospel constitute the primary texts under examination.  The first three chapters focus upon God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit, with Therrien demonstrating that Scripture regulates Origen’s appropriation of Platonism throughout.  There is nuance in Origen’s understanding of corporeality, designed to overcome a radically apophatic Valentinian dualism of body and spirit.  This same nuanced theology is found in Origen’s exposition of God’s simultaneous immanence and transcendence.  For Origen, “creation is not principally a matter of ‘when,’ but rather of ‘in what’” (78-79).  A dominant theme here is that the Holy Spirit’s activity enables creation to reach its eschatological consummation.

Chapters Four and Five move to topics of eschatology and the soul.  Therrien argues that previous scholarship’s metaphysical reductionism regarding Origen’s protology (e.g. his heterodox speculation about the pre-existence of human souls) has obscured Origen’s focus on the church as God’s locus of restoration: “For Origen, following Paul, it is the ecclesial body that is the ultimate beneficiary of the Resurrection” (103).  Per Therrien, Origen’s claim that we must become incorporeal should be interpreted morally and not metaphysically; human bodies will endure at the eschaton.  Therrien notes how unsettled and ambiguous Christian ideas of the soul were in the third century, largely because the Pauline corpus itself was imprecise in its terminology. 

The final three chapters on the world, the cross, and deification reemphasize Therrien’s contention that Origen did not view corporeality as a decline from a preexistent world of human souls.  “This fallen condition consists not in having bodies per se, but rather in becoming engrossed in the bodily condition” (167).  Therrien makes a case that it is interpreters of Origen, the so-called “metaphysical reductionists,” and not Origen himself who are in fact guilty of subordinating the work of Christ and his cross to Platonic philosophy in their judgments of Origen’s orthodoxy.  Origen’s use of the term of “eternal Gospel” notwithstanding, Therrien holds that “Origen’s theology of deification is derived from his theology of the Cross, because for him to take the Cross is to be deified” (184).  Origen’s commentary on John’s gospel defines Christ at the Lamb of God (Jn 1:29) whose flesh ascends into heaven bearing the wounds of the crucifixion, ushering in what Origen calls “the new fact of history” (191).  In his assumption of human weakness, the incarnate Word provides the paradigm of humanity at the service of deification through the paradoxical power of love.  This glorification in death “is the first step in a process that will transform all who will belong to him, not apart from Jesus . . . but precisely through the mediation of Jesus” (255). 

In the epilogue, Therrien states the goal of Cross and Creation has been to reverse an interpretation of Origen as a world-denying ascetic in favor of a reading that understands Origen’s exhortations to martyrdom as a call to participate in the cross and glorification of Christ.  The book’s subtitle as a theological introduction to Origen disguises an ambitious attempt to reposition Origen within the mainstream of not just patristic theology but contemporary Christology as well.  Its success hinges in large part on Therrien’s contention that earlier editions of Origen’s surviving corpus conflated Origen’s genuine writings with spurious additions in a misleading textual tradition dating back to Rufinus himself.  Many of the passages that the “metaphysical reductionists” use rely upon texts that Therrien and other recent textual critics judge as inauthentic.  Additionally, Therrien’s contention that Origen’s position on embodiment and the soul can be interpreted in a manner more congenial to orthodox theology is certainly plausible but necessarily inconclusive as well, given both the gaps in Origen’s surviving oeuvre and the comparatively imprecise terminology available to him in the pre-Nicene period.  Caveats aside, however, this is an excellent book, a rare introductory text at the same time accessible to advanced undergraduates and profitable for long-time specialists.  Copious notes support claims without making the work verbose, and an ample bibliography helps readers pursue inquiries into further research as desired.  If Therrien’s portrait of Origen is correct, the authentic theology of Greek antiquity’s most learned biblical theologian has been lost to view for centuries and deserves urgent reappraisal.  Highly recommended.