Origen proposed that all rational creatures — including human souls — existed as pure intellects before embodiment, fell from their original union with God through weariness or negligence, and were assigned to different orders of existence (angels, humans, demons) according to the degree of their fall. This account allowed him to explain the diversity of human conditions as just consequences of pre-cosmic choices rather than arbitrary divine fiat. The Fifth Ecumenical Council (553 AD) condemned Origenist doctrines, including pre-existence of souls and apokatastasis (universal restoration), under pressure from Emperor Justinian, though scholars debate whether the condemned positions accurately represent Origen's own carefully hedged views.
The systematic presentation of the fall of rational creatures and their distribution into different orders of existence — Origen presents this as hypothesis rather than doctrine, but later readers took it as his definitive view.
Condemnation of pre-existence of souls and apokatastasis — though whether Origen himself held these positions in the condemned form, or whether they were developments by later Origenists, remains a live scholarly debate.
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