Annotation CCIV

”I came not of myself, but he sent me.” — John 8:42

Whether the soul of Christ was in heaven before [it was] in the flesh.

Origen, in the 20th tome of the commentaries on John, so interprets this passage as to intimate that the soul of Christ was first blessed in heaven, and then sent by the Father into the womb of Mary, that thence it might assume flesh. His words are these: “Nor is the disputation concerning the soul to be passed over in this place. For perhaps the soul of the Son, when it was in its perfection, was in God, and in [His] fullness; and, having set out thence, by this very [fact] that it was sent by the Father, it assumed a body from Mary. But other souls are not so perfected by God — that is, they are not sent, nor permitted, by the will of God.”