of pity; otherwise he made
use of all the ideas about Christ that had been formed in the course of
two hundred years. This becomes more and more manifest the more we
penetrate into the details of this Christology. We cannot, however,
attribute to Origen a doctrine of two natures, but rather the notion of
two subjects that become gradually amalgamated with each other, although
the expression "two natures" is not quite foreign to Origen.[794] The
Logos retains his human nature eternally,[795] but only in the same
sense in which we preserve our nature after the resurrection.

The significance which this Christological attempt possessed for its
time consists first in its complexity, secondly in the energetic
endeavour to give an adequate conception of Christ's _humanity_, that
is, of the moral freedom pertaining to him as a creature. This effort
was indeed obliged to content itself with a meagre result: but we are
only justified in measuring Origen's Christology by that of the
Valentinians and Basilidians, that is, by the scientific one that had
preceded it. The most important advance lies in the fact that Origen set
forth a scientific Christology in which he was able to find so much
scope for the humanity of Christ. Whilst within the framework of the
scientific Christologies this humanity had hitherto been conceived as
something indifferent or merely apparent, Origen made the first attempt
to incorporate it with the various speculations without prejudice to the
Logos, God in nature and person. No Greek philosopher probably heeded
what Irenaeus set forth respecting Christ as the second Adam, the
_recapitulatur generis humani_; whereas Origen's speculation could not
be overlooked. In this case the Gnosis really adopted the idea of the
incarnation, and at the same time tried to demonstrate the conception of
the God-man from the notions of unity of will and love. In the treatise
against Celsus, moreover, Origen went the reverse way to work and
undertook to show, and this not merely by help of the proof from
prophecy, that the predicate deity applied to the historical
Christ.[796] But Origen's conception of Christ's person as a model (for
the Gnostic) and his repudiation of all magical theories of redemption
ultimately explain why he did not, like Tertullian, set forth a doctrine
of two natures, but sought to show that in Christ's case a human subject
with his will and feelings became completely merged in the Deity. No
doubt h