Note 776 — Chapter VI
Neil Buchanan translation
Footnote 776:
(return)
The doctrine of man's threefold constitution is also found in Clement. See Pædag. III. 1. 1; Strom V. 14. 94: VI. 16. 134. (quite in the manner of Plato). Origen, who has given evidence of it in all his main writings, sometimes calls the rational part spirit, sometimes ψυχη λογικη, and at other times distinguishes two parts in the one soul. Of course he also professes to derive his psychology from the Holy Scriptures. The chief peculiarity of his speculation consists in his assumption that the human spirit, as a fallen one, became as it were a soul, and can develop from that condition partly into a spirit as before and partly into the flesh (see περι αρχων III. 4. 1 sq.: II. 8. 1-5). By his doctrine of the preëxistence of souls Origen excluded both the creation and traducian hypotheses of the origin of the soul.