The City of God and the Cities of Men according to Origen

The essay focuses on the criterion adopted by Origen to interpret the city of Jerusalem and the other cities mentioned in the Bible. We saw the first interpretation of the heavenly Jerusalem as a place of instruction for souls after death. Then we saw that Jerusalem is identified with the spiritual condition of the soul. The locations of rational creatures, such as Tyre, Sidon, and the other cities in the region around Jerusalem, create a celestial topography through which we can also consider, as Origen has led us to do, the totality of their various spiritual conditions. Speaking of Jerusalem in relation to the earthly Church, therefore, has a double-edged significance depending on how much or little it conforms itself to the heavenly Jerusalem. Only the earthly Church that is conformed to the heavenly Jerusalem is the image of it.