which His acts were the symbols.[123]" It is not that he denies or
doubts the truth of the Gospel history, but he feels that events which
only happened once can be of no importance, and regards the life,
death, and resurrection of Christ as only one manifestation of an
universal law, which was really enacted, not in this fleeting world
of shadows, but in the eternal counsels of the Most High. He
considers that those who are thoroughly convinced of the universal
truths revealed by the Incarnation and Atonement, need trouble
themselves no more about their particular manifestations in time.

Origen, like the Neoplatonists, says that God is above or beyond
Being; but he is sounder than Clement on this point, for he attributes
self-consciousness[124] and reason to God, who therefore does not
require the Second Person in order to come to Himself. Also, since God
is not wholly above reason, He can be approached by reason, and not
only by ecstatic vision.

The Second Person of the Trinity is called by Origen, as by Clement,
"the Idea of Ideas." He is the spiritual activity of God, the
World-Principle, the One who is the basis of the manifold. Human souls
have fallen through sin from their union with the Logos, who became
incarnate in order to restore them to the state which they have lost.

Everything spiritual is indestructible; and therefore every spirit
must at last return to the Good. For the Good alone exists; evil has
no existence, no substance. This is a doctrine which we shall meet
with again. Man, he expressly asserts, cannot be consubstantial with
God, for man can change, while God is immutable. He does not see,
apparently, that, from the point of view of the Platonist, his
universalism makes man's freedom to change an illusion, as belonging