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Origen in Paradise: A Response to Peter Martens

Abstract This article is a response to Peter Martens, “Origen’s Doctrine of Pre-Existence and the Opening Chapters of Genesis,” ZAC 16 (2012): 516–549, in which he argues that Origen imagines the primitive state of human beings to be strictly incorporeal. Following the structure of Marten’s argument, it will be argued (a) that while Origen rejects anthropomorphic elements in the narrative of the creation of Eden, he does not deny its existence as a place in the world; (b) that Origen sometimes means by the fall of “rational beings” the fall of angels rather than human beings; (c) that the doctrine that “the end is like the beginning” ought to entail that humans had bodies in the beginning, as they will at the end; (d) that passages said by Martens to speak of a church that antedates the world are open to a different interpretation; and (e) that Origen does not say unequivocally that “coats of skin” at Genesis 3:21 represent bodies.