e can say that the union of the divine and human natures had its
beginning in Christ, but here he virtually means that this beginning is
continued in the sense of souls imitating the example of Christ. What is
called the real redemption supposed to be given in him is certainly
mediated in the Psychic through his _work_, but the _person_ of Christ
which cannot be known to any but the perfect man is by no means
identified with that real redemption, but appears as a free moral
personality, inwardly blended with the Deity, a personality which cannot
mechanically transfer the content of its essence, though it can indeed
exercise the strongest impression on mind and heart. To Origen the
highest value of Christ's person lies in the fact that the Deity has
here condescended to reveal to us the whole fulness of his essence, in
the person of a man, as well as in the fact that a man is given to us
who shows that the human spirit is capable of becoming entirely God's.
At bottom there is nothing obscure and mystical here; the whole process
takes place in the will and in the feelings through knowledge.[797]

This is sufficient to settle the nature of what is called personal
attainment of salvation. Freedom precedes and supporting grace follows.
As in Christ's case his human soul gradually united itself with the
Logos in proportion as it voluntarily subjected its will to God, so also
every man receives grace according to his progress. Though Clement and
Origen did not yet recommend actual exercises according to definite
rules, their description of the gradations by which the soul rises to
God already resembles that of the Neoplatonists, except that they
decidedly begin with faith as the first stage. Faith is the first step
and is our own work.[798] Then follows the religious contemplation of
visible things, and from this the soul advances, as on the steps of a
ladder, to the contemplation of the _substantiae rationabiles_, the
Logos, the knowable essence of God, and the whole fulness of the
Deity.[799] She retraces her steps upwards along the path she formerly
passed over as a fallen spirit. But, when left to her own resources, she
herself is everywhere weak and powerless; she requires at every stage
the divine grace, that is, enlightenment.[800] Thus a union of grace and
freedom takes place within the sphere of the latter, till the
"contemplative life" is reached, that joyous ascetic contemplativeness,
in which the Logos is the friend