ect of the form given to it, revelation always
appears as a problem that theology has to solve. What is revealed is
therefore either to be taken as immediate authority (by the believer) or
as a soluble problem. One thing, accordingly, it is not, namely,
something in itself evident and intelligible.]

[Footnote 706: See Nitzsch, Dogmengeschichte, p. 136.]

[Footnote 707: To Origen the problem of evil was one of the most
important; see Book III. of [Greek: peri archon] and c. Cels. VI. 53-59.
He is convinced (1) that the world is not the work of a second, hostile
God; (2) that virtues and the works arising from them are alone good in
the proper sense of the word, and that nothing but the opposite of these
is bad; (3) that evil in the proper sense of the word is only evil will
(see c. Cels. IV. 66: VI. 54). Accordingly he makes a very decided
distinction between that which is bad and evils. As for the latter he
admits that they partly originate from God, in which case they are
designed as means of training and punishment. But he saw that this
conception is insufficient, both in view of individual passages of Holy
Scripture and of natural experience. There are evils in the world that
can be understood neither as the result of sin nor as means of training.
Here then his relative, rational view of things comes in, even with
respect to the power of God. There are evils which are a necessary
consequence of carrying out even the best intentions (c. Cels. VI. 53:
[Greek: ta kaka ek parakoloutheseos gegenetai tes pros ta proegoumena]):
"Evils, in the strict sense, are not created by God; yet some, though
but few in comparison with the great, well-ordered whole of the world,
have of necessity adhered to the objects realised; as the carpenter who
executes the plan of a building does not manage without chips and
similar rubbish, or as architects cannot be made responsible for the
dirty heaps of broken stones and filth one sees at the sites of
buildings;" (l.c., c. 55). Celsus also might have written in this
strain. The religious, absolute view is here replaced by a rational, and
the world is therefore not the best absolutely, but the best possible.
See the Theodicy in [Greek: peri archon] III. 17-22. (Here, and also in
other parts, Origen's Theodicy reminds us of that of Leibnitz; see
Denis, l.c., p. 626 sq. The two great thinkers have a very great deal in
common, because their philosophy was not of a radical kind, but an
attempt to