Origen, Plato and the Afterlife

What is it about?

This paper argues that at First Principle 2.3.6 Origen is responding to Gnostics who had used a certain reading of Plato to justify their belief that the paradise to which the elect go after death will be an incorporeal state. It examines (1) the use of the words phantasia and idea in commentary on Plato's Phaedo; (2) the evidence for Origen's knowledge of Platonic commentary; (3) the evidence which allegedly shows that he too believed in an incorporeal paradise; and (4) the evidence for Gnostic interest in Plato's eschatology in the third century.

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