Unlike many later Christians, Origen refuses to attribute the sufferings of the innocent simply to “God’s will,” for, he says, “not everything that happens happens according to God’s will, or according to divine providence.” Some things, he says, are “accidental by-products” of the works of providence; others occur when human beings—and, for that matter, supernatural beings as well—violate the divinely ordered administration of the universe and intentionally inflict harm. Many instances of human evil, as well as certain seemingly gratuitous natural catastrophes, like floods, volcanoes, and
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