Origen’s Account of Paideia in His Creation Cosmology and its Contemporary Ecological Merit

According to Origen (c. 185-253), a Christian Platonist of the early church, creation is a location of paideia — the place in which the fallen soul, through education and development, can return to their original immaterial existence through the Logos. By inscribing the material world with the function of paideia, Origen betrays a moral, rather than scientific, interest in the examination of nature. I will draw on Origen’s structure of relation between the natural world and human person, and the Platonic principles that undergird it, to elucidate the function of paideia in view of the soul’s journey of return into God. I will conclude on a contemporary ecological note to suggest that Origen offers a non-exploitative and anthropocentric image of the relationship between the human person and the cosmos, making him an ideal candidate for a theological and theoretical consideration of contemporary ecological reform.