pletely and without disturbing
elements.[725] Omniscience has also its corresponding limits; this is
specially proved from the freedom of spirits bestowed by God himself.
God has indeed the capacity of foreknowledge, but he knows transactions
beforehand because they happen; they do not happen because he knows
them.[726] That the divine purpose should be realised in the end
necessarily follows from the nature of the created spirit itself, apart
from the supporting activity of God. Like Irenaeus and Tertullian Origen
very carefully discussed the attributes of goodness and justice in God
in opposition to the Marcionites.[727] But his exposition is different.
In his eyes goodness and justice are not two opposite attributes, which
can and must exist in God side by side; but as virtues they are to him
identical. God rewards in justice and punishes in kindness. That it
should go well with all, no matter how they conduct themselves, would be
no kindness; but it is kindness when God punishes to improve, deter, and
prevent. Passions, anger, and the like do not exist in God, nor any
plurality of virtues; but, as the Perfect One, he is all kindness. In
other places, however, Origen did not content himself with this
presentation. In opposition to the Marcionites, who declared Christ and
the Father of Christ to be good, and the creator of the world to be
just, he argued that, on the contrary, God (the foundation of the world)
is good, but that the Logos-Christ, in so far as he is the pedagogus, is
just.[728]

From the perfect goodness of God Origen infers that he reveals or
communicates himself, from his immutability that he _always_ reveals
himself. The eternal or never beginning communication of perfection to
other beings is a postulate of the concept "God". But, along with the
whole fraternity of those professing the same philosophy, Origen assumed
that the One, in becoming the Manifold and acting in the interests of
the Manifold, can only effect his purpose by divesting himself of
absolute apathy and once more assuming a form in which he can act, that
is, procuring for himself an adequate organ--_the Logos_. The content of
Origen's teaching about this Logos was not essentially different from
that of Philo and was therefore quite as contradictory; only in his case
everything is more sharply defined and the hypostasis of the Logos (in
opposition to the Monarchians) more clearly and precisely stated.[729]
Nevertheless the personal i