In this chapter I argue for a reassessment of current academic opinion regarding the theme of the spiritual senses in the writings of Origen of Alexandria (c. 185–c. 254). Specifically, John Dillon has claimed that it is exclusively in Origen's late works that one finds a ‘proper’ doctrine of the spiritual senses (the crucial features of which will be discussed below). Dillon argues that Origen's early works, by contrast, evince only a metaphorical use of the language of sensation. The early Origen, according to this reading, is not actually describing the perception of spiritual realities, as is typically thought. Instead, in his early writings Origen uses terms such as ‘seeing’ and ‘hearing’ in a figurative manner to describe ‘understanding’, placing no particular value on the sensory dimension to the terms.

In contrast to this assessment, however, I argue here that unexamined aspects of Origen's early writings in fact demonstrate noteworthy continuities between his early and late uses of sensory language. In particular, portions of Origen's early scriptural commentaries and De principiis show that his ‘doctrine of the spiritual senses’ emerges much earlier than has been recently supposed. At a more fundamental level, however, I argue for a revision of the very interpretive apparatus that has been used to classify Origen's uses of sensory language in the modern period, and I suggest that the hermeneutical tools developed in the interest of providing conceptual clarity must be further sharpened for the profitable examination of Origen's texts.