Pre-existence of souls: were rational creatures made equal before the world, and did they fall into bodies?

Origen, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

The position in brief

The hypothesis answers a question the alternative cannot: why creatures of one Creator begin in such unequal conditions. If souls were made equal and free, their present differences follow from what they did, and God is not arbitrary.123

Sources

  1. And if that be admitted, then it will be no longer believed that the world was made by God, or administered by His providence; and as a consequence, a judgment of God upon the deeds of each individual will appear a thing not to be looked for. In which matter, indeed, what is clearly the truth of things is the privilege of Him alone to know who searches all things, even the deep things of God. 6.
    The Writings of Origen Vol 1
  2. On which account the Creator will neither appear to be unjust in distributing (for the causes already mentioned) to every one according to his merits; nor will the happiness or unhappiness of each one's birth, or whatever be the condition that falls to his lot, be deemed accidental; nor will different creators, or souls of different natures, be believed to exist. 7.
    The Writings of Origen Vol 1
  3. These, then, are the things which we are to believe were created by God in the beginning, i.e. before all things. And this, we think, is indicated even in that beginning which Moses has introduced in terms somewhat ambiguous, when he says, "In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth." For it is certain that the firmament is not spoken of, nor the dry land, but that heaven and earth from which this…
    The Writings of Origen Vol 1

Where the argument is made

  • On First Principles I.7–8, II.8–9, III.5
  • the fragments in Jerome's letter to Avitus

How the argument was received

The most Platonic-sounding of the doctrines and the one most exposed to the transmission problem.