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The Eleventh Lesson: The Ancient Wisdom.1093
says: “It is found not to be unrighteous that even in womb Jacob supplanted
his brother, if we feel that he was worthily beloved by God, according to
the deserts of his previous life, so as to deserve to be preferred before
his brother.” Origen adds, “This must be carefully applied to the case of
all other creatures, because, as we formerly remarked, the righteousness of
the Creator ought to appear in everything.” And again, “The inequality of
circumstances preserves the justice of a retribution according to merit.”
Annie Besant (to whom we are indebted for a number of these quotations),
says, concerning this position of Origen: “Thus we find this doctrine made
the defense of the justice of God. If a soul can be made good, then to make a
soul evil is to a God of justice and love impossible. It cannot be done. There
is no justification for it, and the moment you recognize that men are born
criminal, you are either forced into the blasphemous position that a perfect
and loving God creates a ruined soul and then punishes it for being what He
has made it, or else that He is dealing with growing, developing creatures
whom He is training for ultimate blessedness, and if in any life a man is born
wicked and evil, it is because he has done amiss and must reap in sorrow the
results of evil in order that he may learn wisdom and turn to good.”
Origen also considers the story of Pharaoh, of whom the Biblical writers
say that “his heart was hardened by God.” Origen declares that the hardening
of the heart was caused by God so that Pharaoh would more readily learn
the effect of evil, so that in his future incarnations he might profit by his
bitter experience. He says: “Sometimes it does not lead to good results for
a man to be cured too quickly, especially if the disease, being shut up in
the inner parts of the body, rage with greater fierceness. The growth of the
soul must be understood as being brought about not suddenly, but slowly
and gradually, seeing that the process of amendment and correction will
take place imperceptibly in the individual instances, during the lapse of
countless and unmeasured ages, some outstripping others, and tending by
a swifter course towards perfection, while others, again, follow close at hand,
and some, again, a long way behind.”