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[Origen] (By: Joseph Wilson Trigg) [published: November, 1998]
This volume presents a comprehensive and accessible insight into Origen's life and writings. An introduction analyzes the principal influences that formed him as a Christian and as a thinker, his emergence as a mature theologian at Alexandria, his work in Caesarea and his controversial legacy. Fresh translations of a representative selection of Origen's writings, including some never previously available in print, show how Origen provided a lasting framework for Christian theology by finding through study of the Bible a coherent understanding of God's saving plan.
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First published August 27, 1998
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February 20, 2024
Before the Trinity, there was Origen in 225 AD using reason, logic and harmonizing various books of the Bible and demonstrating that there was not a triune God. The Bible had not yet been canonized nevertheless he cites various books of what men would latter choose to create what they would call a Canonized Bible and they claimed the book to be inspired by God and authoritative based on their authority as self-appointed arbitrators of Truth.
The Book of John is prominently featured by Origen, and as one reads the NT one can understand why since it is clearly a culmination of all the other books of the Bible (except for Revelations) and ultimately creates a transcendental figure with Gnostic wisdom in the character of a super-hero called Jesus.
Origen harmonizes the logos into a separate being beyond reason and relies on Psalms, Proverbs, Paul’s letters (especially Romans and Corinthians) and Revelations. An early church father and one who wanted nothing more than to be a martyr in his youth has a different Christology than what was to become.
Origen also seemed to have a punishment for an afterlife and gives us freewill in order that God can condemn us after death with a non-Calvinistic take on salvation. I say this because I’ve read multiple times that Origen was a universalist, but it is not obvious from these readings. Perhaps after a long purging of our tortured souls of some sort he would be, but from these readings it is not possible to say and my feelings are he is not a universalist.
After Jesus died on the cross, he spent the next three days in hades arguing over the bones of Moses, and Origen relates a story in the OT about Samuel and explains what that story meant and how the holy spirit reveals it, quite interesting.
There is a Philo of Alexander vibe to how Origen explains his truths. I’ve read the complete works of Philo; I don’t recommend it. Origen would say the Samaritan woman at the well had five husbands and that corresponds to our five senses, that is the kind of thing Philo would often do. Origen is probably worth reading in total, but this sample of his writings in this book seems sufficient for me.
Origen believes Angels, demons and Satan are real and he thinks effeminate men are sinful just for existing. He lived in a very superstitious time and can’t see the light beyond his fantastic myths he has embraced. Within his myths there is no coequal substance of three within one as almost all churches today would believe (exceptions: Jehovah Witnesses, Quakers, Mormons, but Larson’s ‘Book of Cults’ places them as a cult, at least the 1980s version of that book did).
Marcion of Sinope comes before Origen and negates the OT God completely, Origen brings him back but makes Him different than Jesus in substance, soon the Church will go one step further and make Jesus, God, and the Holy Spirit one in substance and with the same essence. The OT translators do us a disservice when they harmonize the name of God (or Lord) for the various appellations within the different text written over various times.
Christians seldom read these kinds of books and most ignore how their dogma developed over time and became contingently harmonized by humans re-interpreting various mediations beyond the context of the time-period. Origen is harmonizing various inconsistent books into what would become one super-book and at times fabricates connections to the OT with his new harmonized gospel, even at one time he elaborates what gospel really means and harmonizes that into his theology.
The Book of John is prominently featured by Origen, and as one reads the NT one can understand why since it is clearly a culmination of all the other books of the Bible (except for Revelations) and ultimately creates a transcendental figure with Gnostic wisdom in the character of a super-hero called Jesus.
Origen harmonizes the logos into a separate being beyond reason and relies on Psalms, Proverbs, Paul’s letters (especially Romans and Corinthians) and Revelations. An early church father and one who wanted nothing more than to be a martyr in his youth has a different Christology than what was to become.
Origen also seemed to have a punishment for an afterlife and gives us freewill in order that God can condemn us after death with a non-Calvinistic take on salvation. I say this because I’ve read multiple times that Origen was a universalist, but it is not obvious from these readings. Perhaps after a long purging of our tortured souls of some sort he would be, but from these readings it is not possible to say and my feelings are he is not a universalist.
After Jesus died on the cross, he spent the next three days in hades arguing over the bones of Moses, and Origen relates a story in the OT about Samuel and explains what that story meant and how the holy spirit reveals it, quite interesting.
There is a Philo of Alexander vibe to how Origen explains his truths. I’ve read the complete works of Philo; I don’t recommend it. Origen would say the Samaritan woman at the well had five husbands and that corresponds to our five senses, that is the kind of thing Philo would often do. Origen is probably worth reading in total, but this sample of his writings in this book seems sufficient for me.
Origen believes Angels, demons and Satan are real and he thinks effeminate men are sinful just for existing. He lived in a very superstitious time and can’t see the light beyond his fantastic myths he has embraced. Within his myths there is no coequal substance of three within one as almost all churches today would believe (exceptions: Jehovah Witnesses, Quakers, Mormons, but Larson’s ‘Book of Cults’ places them as a cult, at least the 1980s version of that book did).
Marcion of Sinope comes before Origen and negates the OT God completely, Origen brings him back but makes Him different than Jesus in substance, soon the Church will go one step further and make Jesus, God, and the Holy Spirit one in substance and with the same essence. The OT translators do us a disservice when they harmonize the name of God (or Lord) for the various appellations within the different text written over various times.
Christians seldom read these kinds of books and most ignore how their dogma developed over time and became contingently harmonized by humans re-interpreting various mediations beyond the context of the time-period. Origen is harmonizing various inconsistent books into what would become one super-book and at times fabricates connections to the OT with his new harmonized gospel, even at one time he elaborates what gospel really means and harmonizes that into his theology.
December 25, 2022
Despite his controversial legacy, Origen was the most important Christian thinker between the Apostles and Augustine. He was the first true biblical exegete; the first to expound the faith, and the scriptures in which it is rooted, in a systematic and comprehensive way. His method of cross-referencing scriptural texts with thematic or imagistic similarities for the purpose of discerning their “elevated” Christological meanings became the paradigm for virtually all subsequent theology. He played an instrumental role in developing the Christian understanding of the Holy Trinity, and exerted a profound influence on many of the greatest figures of the early Church, including Saint Athanasius and the Cappadocian Fathers. During his own lifetime he became something of a celebrity, lecturing widely throughout the eastern Mediterranean and even tutoring one Julia Avita Mamaea—the mother of the emperor Severus Alexander—at Antioch. A genuine confessor of the faith, and arguably a martyr, Origen was brutally tortured during the Decian persecution of 250, dying shortly thereafter. Denounced as a heretic centuries after his death for teachings he likely never espoused, Origen is, if one may be so bold, a rejected cornerstone of Christian thought. Thankfully, his surviving works are being gradually rediscovered, and one retains some hope that after a fifteen-hundred-year hiatus, the Adamantine might finally be getting some of the recognition he deserves.
The selections in this volume include fragments of Origen’s Commentaries on Psalms 1-25, Lamentations, and Genesis; the entire first book, as well as selections from the thirteenth and thirty-second books, of his Commentary on John; Homily 12 on Jeremiah; Homilies 19 and 20 on Luke; Homily 5 on 1 Samuel; and the Letter to Gregory. Together, they provide a stimulating display of Origen’s mastery of scripture and his synthesizing genius.
Even in the third century, many readers found parts of the Bible obscure, difficult, and disturbing. “[It] is unanimously agreed by all who even moderately understand the divine discourses”, Origen says at the beginning of his commentary on the Psalms, “that they are filled with riddles, parables, dark sayings, and various other forms of obscurity hard for human nature to comprehend.”
Referring to an analogy made by “the Hebrew,” an unknown Jewish scholar in Alexandria, Origen likened the whole of scripture to a large house with many rooms. The door of each room is locked, and by each locked door is a key—but not the key corresponding to that door. The key before each door—which is to say, the “interpretative principle” of each biblical text—can only “unlock” one of the others. No text is self-interpreting; the obscurities of one scripture may only be illuminated in the light of the others. This, Origen suggests, may be in part what it means to interpret “spiritual things by means of spiritual things” (1 Cor. 2:13).
And even if one were to possess a full and accurate understanding of the letter of scripture, the deeper spiritual meaning can only be received as a grace of the living presence of Christ Himself, Who is, as it were, the apocalyptic skeleton key of scripture; the Logos, the supreme Reason, through Whom not only all of scripture, but all of reality may be understood. Thus in Book 13 of his Commentary on John, Origen interprets the “spring of Jacob” on which Jesus converses with the Samaritan woman to be the whole of scripture itself, a healthy but transient source of sustenance from which “one must ascend to Jesus, so that we may be graciously given the spring of water leaping to eternal life.” (Jn 4:14) Referencing John 21—“I do not think that the world itself could contain the books written…”—as well as the inexpressible things Paul heard in paradise (2 Cor. 12:4), Origen surmises that “in relation to knowledge as a whole, the Scriptures as a whole are to be understood as most meager elements and the briefest introductions, even when they are understood entirely accurately.” The letter of scripture is valuable insofar as it attests to the living Word of God Who reflects, as in a spotless mirror, the radiance of divine wisdom.
But what exactly is the Word of God? What does it mean to say that Jesus is the uncreated Logos? Origen addresses this question brilliantly in the first book of his Commentary on John, the bulk of which is dedicated to the first clause of the first sentence of the Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word”. He notes that “Word” is just one of many titles given to Christ, both in the Gospel of John and throughout scripture, and so he arrives at an explanation of this first title only after surveying the others.
Christ is light: the “light of the world,” the “light of men,” the “true light,” and the “light of the nations,” illuminating the “intelligible world” and serving as the “guiding principle” of rational beings, much as the sun illuminates the “sensible world”:
“The sun is the light of the sensible world and, in turn, it is not appropriate for the moon and the stars to be designated by the same term. . . . Because they enlighten the things on earth, they are not the true light, but the Savior is the light of the intelligible world, illuminating those beings that are rational and endowed with a guiding principle, so that their minds may see the things proper for them to see…he can be said to be the sun that is the maker of the great day of the Lord (Rev. 16:14). With regard to that day he says to those who participate in his light: ‘Work while it is day, for the night comes when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world’ (Jn 9:4-5).”
He also endows His bride, the Church, with his light, so that the saints may serve as a derivative light equivalent to the moon and stars, keeping vigil over the world until the “sun” comes around again:
“Yet he said to his disciples: ‘You are the light of the world’ (Mt. 5:14) and ‘Let your light so shine before men’ (Mt. 5:16). We understand the bride, the church, and the disciples to be in a position analogous to the moon and the stars. In each case they possess their own proper light acquired from the true sun in order to enlighten those who cannot construct in themselves a source of light.”
Christ is life and resurrection:
“[B]ecause he makes possible the expulsion of all death and because he produces growth, he is properly called ‘life,’ and because those who have really received him are raised again, he is called ‘resurrection’ (Jn 1:25).”
Christ is truth because He receives knowledge of all things from the Father, and imparts this knowledge to those who seek Him:
“The only-begotten is called ‘truth’ because he understands everything about the universe according to the will of the Father with a reason of complete clarity, and in as much as he is truth, transmits it to each according to his worthiness.”
As the true human prototype, the model of life in wisdom, the firstborn from the dead, and the bridge to Paradise, Christ is the Way:
“But the walk in wisdom, also involving practical activity, of those who are saved in him—a walk which they make by following commentaries on the truth in the divine discourse and by acting in accordance with true justice—enables us to understand how he is the ‘way’ (Jn 14:6), on which way one ought not to take anything, either purse or cloak, and on which it is unnecessary to hold a staff or to have sandals tied on one’s feet (see Mt. 10:10).”
Since one ascends to the Father only through the Son, Christ is the Door:
“And since one cannot come to be in the Father without having first ascended from below to the divinity of the Son, from which one can be led to the paternal blessedness, the Savior is presented as ‘door’ (see Jn 10:7).”
As the benevolent guide and guardian of all souls inclined toward the good, Christ is the Good Shepherd:
“Since he is a lover of humanity, accepting the impulses of souls inclined in any way toward improvement—even if they do not hasten toward the Word, but are like cattle, having a nature that is tame and gentle even if incapable of discursive thought—he becomes the ‘shepherd’ (Jn 10:11), ‘for God preserves men and beasts’ ([Ps. 36:6])…”
Because Christ gives each what he needs on the path to theosis—chastisement for the unregenerate, instruction for those turning towards the good in repentance, and companionship for those attaining to the likeness of Himself—Christ is Master (or Lord), Teacher, and Friend:
“[Christ] is the teacher and tutor of those who are exerting themselves in piety and a slavemaster of those who ‘have the spirit of slavery to fear’ (Rom. 8:15). But for those who are making progress, hastening toward wisdom and becoming worthy of it—since ‘the slave does not know what his master wishes’ (Jn 15:15)—he does not remain master but has become a friend. He himself teaches this, even though those listening to him were still slaves. He says: ‘You refer to me as teacher and master and you do well, for I am’ (Jn 13:13), but ‘I no longer call you slaves, for the slave does not know what is the desire of his master, but I say that you are friends’ (Jn 15:15) because you have remained steadfast ‘with me in all my trials’ (Lk. 22:28). Therefore those living by fear—fearing that God takes revenge on those who are not good slaves, as we read in Malachi, ‘If I am the Lord, where is my fear?’ (Mal. 1:6)—are slaves of the master who is called their Savior.”
Since Christ is our propitiation, working to restore all things to the Father (1 Cor. 15), Who through Him reconciles all things to Himself through the blood of the cross (Col. 1:19-20), Christ is the Great High Priest:
“And indeed by his justice the Savior prepares all things to receive for themselves at the end the goodness of the Father. In this he uses favorable opportunities, his word, order, chastisements, and what can be called spiritual healing remedies. . . . He is therefore a ‘great high priest,’ since he has restored all things to the Father’s kingdom, arranging to fill up the defects in each generate being so that they can receive the paternal glory.”
And since He perfects all things by supplying their spiritual needs and destroying the sin and death that separate them from God, Christ is—moreso than Paul—All Things to All: not only a man for all men, but an angel for all angels:
“Therefore the Savior, in a more divine manner than Paul, has become ‘all things to all’ so that ‘he might gain’ or perfect ‘all’ (see 1 Cor. 9:22), and clearly he has become a man for men and an angel for angels. No believer doubts his having become a man. We are convinced that he became an angel on observing the appearances and words of angels, when he appears with the power of angels in certain places in Scripture when angels are speaking, as in ‘An angel of the Lord appeared in the fire of a bush of flame and said “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob”’ (Ex. 3:2). And also Isaiah said, ‘His name shall be called “Angel of Great Counsel”’ (Isa. 9:6). The Savior is therefore ‘first and last’ not because he is the extremes with nothing in between, but in order to show that he has become all things.”
Christ is the Son of David because, like David, He is the true king of Israel, deposing the prince of this world to whom humanity had submitted against the will of God:
“Yet again he is doubtless addressed as ‘David’ because he takes over the kingdom from a king whom the children of Israel had caused to reign over them—since they had established him in power without God’s involvement and without paying attention to God (see Hos. 8:4)—fighting the Lord’s battles [1 Sam. 8], he prepared peace for his son, a people.”
Finally, as each of Christ's other titles discloses His activities, so the title “Word” (Logos) signifies His role as the salvific Reason embedded within all things, rescuing rational beings, all of whom participate in Him insofar as they are rational, from the darkness of ignorance and delusion which characterizes the fallen state of creation:
“Moreover, just as by the activity of illuminating the world, of which he is the light, he is entitled ‘light of the world’ (Jn 9:5), and because he enables those who genuinely belong to him to discard death, rising again to life, he is called ‘resurrection’ (Jn 11:25)—and ‘shepherd,’ ‘teacher,’ ‘king,’ ‘chosen arrow,’ and ‘servant’ in accordance with other activities, and in addition ‘intercessor,’ ‘propitiation,’ and ‘mercy-seat’—so also he is called ‘word [logos],’ because he rescues us from all irrationality [alogon] and confirms in truth rational creatures [logikoi] who do everything, even eating and drinking (see 1 Cor. 10:31), to the glory of God, accomplishing by means of reason [logos] life’s ordinary activities as well as its more perfect ones. . . . [A]ll men somehow participate in him, in so far as he is reason.”
Though Christ, in His earthly, visible life, was one man, living in a particular place and time, He is also the image (eikona) of God in every man: the proto-image, the visible icon of the invisible Father, in the light of Whose divinity is reflected the image of God—the Christ-self—in every person. Just as all are “Adam” in their illusory multiplicity, so are all Christ, the “original” human being, in the true eternal oneness of their nature. As such, Christ is “no respecter of persons” (Acts 10:34), showing no disdain or favoritism on account of worldly station, but recognizes Himself even in the lowly, as Origen touchingly explains in Book 13, when discussing the meeting between Jesus and the Samaritan woman:
“Besides, at the verbal level, here we also learn from [Christ] that he is gentle and humble of heart (see Mt. 11:29), for he does not disdain to discuss such matters with a woman who is a water-carrier, who on account of her great poverty must leave the town and labor in order to draw water. For even the disciples marvel when they come, because they have already contemplated the magnitude of the divinity in him, marveling that such a great person would speak with a woman. But we, under the impulse of boasting and disdain, scorn those who are inferior, forgetting that ‘Let us make man according to our image, and according to our likeness’ (Gen. 1:26) applies to each human being. Not remembering the one who fashioned us in the womb (see Jer. 1:5) and fashioned one by one the hearts of all men ([Ps. 33:15]) and who attends to all their deeds, we do not know that he is the God of the humble, the helper of the lowliest, the protector of the weak, the shelter of the hopeless, and the savior of the rejected (see Jdt 9:11).”
Also of interest is Origen’s understanding of divine punishment, described in Homily 12 on Jeremiah in the context of various scriptural statements regarding different kinds of “wine” each will be made to drink according to his works (Jer. 13:12-17, Jer. 32:15-16, Deut. 32:32-3, Prov. 9:5, Ps. 75:8, 1 Cor. 10:16):
“Imagine that the one group, being total strangers to piety and totally unconcerned with themselves, but living heedlessly, are drinking the unmixed wine in the passage from Jeremiah. However, the other group, not entirely renegades and sinners but unworthy of the cup of the new testament—sometimes doing beneficial deeds but at other times the opposite—are drinking a mixture of unmixed wine. . . . If you allow me to speak so daringly, let the cup of your good deeds be in God’s right hand and let the cup of your sins be in God’s left hand. You cannot drink only from the cup of good things, since you have not done good deeds only, nor can you drink only from the cup of sins, since you have done some useful things, therefore he ‘has poured from the one into the other.’ According to the proportion of your deeds, you will have poured out for you wrath and punishment, so that the mixture of punishment may either be more watered down or more sharp and obnoxious. . . . But if you are entirely good and admirable, you say, ‘I shall take the cup of salvation, and I shall call upon the name of the Lord’ ([Ps. 116:13]).”
But whatever “mixture” of grace and wrath one receives, it is always imparted by God for the purpose of healing and restoration—never out of some gratuitous desire to harm us:
“Understand that something similar occurs with regard to each of us. There is a certain church of the firstborn registered in heaven (see Heb. 12:23), where Mount Zion and the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God, are located (see Heb. 12:22). The blessed will be gathered there to be together, but the sinners will receive an additional punishment of not being with others. . . . You, a sinner, must taste something very bitter, being under God’s careful management, so that, having been corrected, you may be saved. Just as you do not punish a servant or a slave whom you punish simply out of a desire to torture, but so that, by means of his distress, he may change, so God also punishes, by making them suffer distress, those who have been changed by reason and have not been healed.”
Interestingly enough, Origen goes on to cite the “eternal fire” described in Matthew 25: but whatever he took the word aionios to mean, he did not seem to understand it to mean “never-ending”, since he refers to the passage in the middle of a discussion about the remedial nature of divine wrath:
“For this reason eternal fire is prepared (see Mt. 18:8 and 25:41), for this reason Gehenna (See Mt. 18:9, 23:33) has been made ready, for this reason there is a certain outer darkness (see Mt. 18:12). These are necessary, not just for the one punished, but, even more, for the community.”
[Review continues in comments]
The selections in this volume include fragments of Origen’s Commentaries on Psalms 1-25, Lamentations, and Genesis; the entire first book, as well as selections from the thirteenth and thirty-second books, of his Commentary on John; Homily 12 on Jeremiah; Homilies 19 and 20 on Luke; Homily 5 on 1 Samuel; and the Letter to Gregory. Together, they provide a stimulating display of Origen’s mastery of scripture and his synthesizing genius.
Even in the third century, many readers found parts of the Bible obscure, difficult, and disturbing. “[It] is unanimously agreed by all who even moderately understand the divine discourses”, Origen says at the beginning of his commentary on the Psalms, “that they are filled with riddles, parables, dark sayings, and various other forms of obscurity hard for human nature to comprehend.”
Referring to an analogy made by “the Hebrew,” an unknown Jewish scholar in Alexandria, Origen likened the whole of scripture to a large house with many rooms. The door of each room is locked, and by each locked door is a key—but not the key corresponding to that door. The key before each door—which is to say, the “interpretative principle” of each biblical text—can only “unlock” one of the others. No text is self-interpreting; the obscurities of one scripture may only be illuminated in the light of the others. This, Origen suggests, may be in part what it means to interpret “spiritual things by means of spiritual things” (1 Cor. 2:13).
And even if one were to possess a full and accurate understanding of the letter of scripture, the deeper spiritual meaning can only be received as a grace of the living presence of Christ Himself, Who is, as it were, the apocalyptic skeleton key of scripture; the Logos, the supreme Reason, through Whom not only all of scripture, but all of reality may be understood. Thus in Book 13 of his Commentary on John, Origen interprets the “spring of Jacob” on which Jesus converses with the Samaritan woman to be the whole of scripture itself, a healthy but transient source of sustenance from which “one must ascend to Jesus, so that we may be graciously given the spring of water leaping to eternal life.” (Jn 4:14) Referencing John 21—“I do not think that the world itself could contain the books written…”—as well as the inexpressible things Paul heard in paradise (2 Cor. 12:4), Origen surmises that “in relation to knowledge as a whole, the Scriptures as a whole are to be understood as most meager elements and the briefest introductions, even when they are understood entirely accurately.” The letter of scripture is valuable insofar as it attests to the living Word of God Who reflects, as in a spotless mirror, the radiance of divine wisdom.
But what exactly is the Word of God? What does it mean to say that Jesus is the uncreated Logos? Origen addresses this question brilliantly in the first book of his Commentary on John, the bulk of which is dedicated to the first clause of the first sentence of the Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word”. He notes that “Word” is just one of many titles given to Christ, both in the Gospel of John and throughout scripture, and so he arrives at an explanation of this first title only after surveying the others.
Christ is light: the “light of the world,” the “light of men,” the “true light,” and the “light of the nations,” illuminating the “intelligible world” and serving as the “guiding principle” of rational beings, much as the sun illuminates the “sensible world”:
“The sun is the light of the sensible world and, in turn, it is not appropriate for the moon and the stars to be designated by the same term. . . . Because they enlighten the things on earth, they are not the true light, but the Savior is the light of the intelligible world, illuminating those beings that are rational and endowed with a guiding principle, so that their minds may see the things proper for them to see…he can be said to be the sun that is the maker of the great day of the Lord (Rev. 16:14). With regard to that day he says to those who participate in his light: ‘Work while it is day, for the night comes when no one can work. While I am in the world, I am the light of the world’ (Jn 9:4-5).”
He also endows His bride, the Church, with his light, so that the saints may serve as a derivative light equivalent to the moon and stars, keeping vigil over the world until the “sun” comes around again:
“Yet he said to his disciples: ‘You are the light of the world’ (Mt. 5:14) and ‘Let your light so shine before men’ (Mt. 5:16). We understand the bride, the church, and the disciples to be in a position analogous to the moon and the stars. In each case they possess their own proper light acquired from the true sun in order to enlighten those who cannot construct in themselves a source of light.”
Christ is life and resurrection:
“[B]ecause he makes possible the expulsion of all death and because he produces growth, he is properly called ‘life,’ and because those who have really received him are raised again, he is called ‘resurrection’ (Jn 1:25).”
Christ is truth because He receives knowledge of all things from the Father, and imparts this knowledge to those who seek Him:
“The only-begotten is called ‘truth’ because he understands everything about the universe according to the will of the Father with a reason of complete clarity, and in as much as he is truth, transmits it to each according to his worthiness.”
As the true human prototype, the model of life in wisdom, the firstborn from the dead, and the bridge to Paradise, Christ is the Way:
“But the walk in wisdom, also involving practical activity, of those who are saved in him—a walk which they make by following commentaries on the truth in the divine discourse and by acting in accordance with true justice—enables us to understand how he is the ‘way’ (Jn 14:6), on which way one ought not to take anything, either purse or cloak, and on which it is unnecessary to hold a staff or to have sandals tied on one’s feet (see Mt. 10:10).”
Since one ascends to the Father only through the Son, Christ is the Door:
“And since one cannot come to be in the Father without having first ascended from below to the divinity of the Son, from which one can be led to the paternal blessedness, the Savior is presented as ‘door’ (see Jn 10:7).”
As the benevolent guide and guardian of all souls inclined toward the good, Christ is the Good Shepherd:
“Since he is a lover of humanity, accepting the impulses of souls inclined in any way toward improvement—even if they do not hasten toward the Word, but are like cattle, having a nature that is tame and gentle even if incapable of discursive thought—he becomes the ‘shepherd’ (Jn 10:11), ‘for God preserves men and beasts’ ([Ps. 36:6])…”
Because Christ gives each what he needs on the path to theosis—chastisement for the unregenerate, instruction for those turning towards the good in repentance, and companionship for those attaining to the likeness of Himself—Christ is Master (or Lord), Teacher, and Friend:
“[Christ] is the teacher and tutor of those who are exerting themselves in piety and a slavemaster of those who ‘have the spirit of slavery to fear’ (Rom. 8:15). But for those who are making progress, hastening toward wisdom and becoming worthy of it—since ‘the slave does not know what his master wishes’ (Jn 15:15)—he does not remain master but has become a friend. He himself teaches this, even though those listening to him were still slaves. He says: ‘You refer to me as teacher and master and you do well, for I am’ (Jn 13:13), but ‘I no longer call you slaves, for the slave does not know what is the desire of his master, but I say that you are friends’ (Jn 15:15) because you have remained steadfast ‘with me in all my trials’ (Lk. 22:28). Therefore those living by fear—fearing that God takes revenge on those who are not good slaves, as we read in Malachi, ‘If I am the Lord, where is my fear?’ (Mal. 1:6)—are slaves of the master who is called their Savior.”
Since Christ is our propitiation, working to restore all things to the Father (1 Cor. 15), Who through Him reconciles all things to Himself through the blood of the cross (Col. 1:19-20), Christ is the Great High Priest:
“And indeed by his justice the Savior prepares all things to receive for themselves at the end the goodness of the Father. In this he uses favorable opportunities, his word, order, chastisements, and what can be called spiritual healing remedies. . . . He is therefore a ‘great high priest,’ since he has restored all things to the Father’s kingdom, arranging to fill up the defects in each generate being so that they can receive the paternal glory.”
And since He perfects all things by supplying their spiritual needs and destroying the sin and death that separate them from God, Christ is—moreso than Paul—All Things to All: not only a man for all men, but an angel for all angels:
“Therefore the Savior, in a more divine manner than Paul, has become ‘all things to all’ so that ‘he might gain’ or perfect ‘all’ (see 1 Cor. 9:22), and clearly he has become a man for men and an angel for angels. No believer doubts his having become a man. We are convinced that he became an angel on observing the appearances and words of angels, when he appears with the power of angels in certain places in Scripture when angels are speaking, as in ‘An angel of the Lord appeared in the fire of a bush of flame and said “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob”’ (Ex. 3:2). And also Isaiah said, ‘His name shall be called “Angel of Great Counsel”’ (Isa. 9:6). The Savior is therefore ‘first and last’ not because he is the extremes with nothing in between, but in order to show that he has become all things.”
Christ is the Son of David because, like David, He is the true king of Israel, deposing the prince of this world to whom humanity had submitted against the will of God:
“Yet again he is doubtless addressed as ‘David’ because he takes over the kingdom from a king whom the children of Israel had caused to reign over them—since they had established him in power without God’s involvement and without paying attention to God (see Hos. 8:4)—fighting the Lord’s battles [1 Sam. 8], he prepared peace for his son, a people.”
Finally, as each of Christ's other titles discloses His activities, so the title “Word” (Logos) signifies His role as the salvific Reason embedded within all things, rescuing rational beings, all of whom participate in Him insofar as they are rational, from the darkness of ignorance and delusion which characterizes the fallen state of creation:
“Moreover, just as by the activity of illuminating the world, of which he is the light, he is entitled ‘light of the world’ (Jn 9:5), and because he enables those who genuinely belong to him to discard death, rising again to life, he is called ‘resurrection’ (Jn 11:25)—and ‘shepherd,’ ‘teacher,’ ‘king,’ ‘chosen arrow,’ and ‘servant’ in accordance with other activities, and in addition ‘intercessor,’ ‘propitiation,’ and ‘mercy-seat’—so also he is called ‘word [logos],’ because he rescues us from all irrationality [alogon] and confirms in truth rational creatures [logikoi] who do everything, even eating and drinking (see 1 Cor. 10:31), to the glory of God, accomplishing by means of reason [logos] life’s ordinary activities as well as its more perfect ones. . . . [A]ll men somehow participate in him, in so far as he is reason.”
Though Christ, in His earthly, visible life, was one man, living in a particular place and time, He is also the image (eikona) of God in every man: the proto-image, the visible icon of the invisible Father, in the light of Whose divinity is reflected the image of God—the Christ-self—in every person. Just as all are “Adam” in their illusory multiplicity, so are all Christ, the “original” human being, in the true eternal oneness of their nature. As such, Christ is “no respecter of persons” (Acts 10:34), showing no disdain or favoritism on account of worldly station, but recognizes Himself even in the lowly, as Origen touchingly explains in Book 13, when discussing the meeting between Jesus and the Samaritan woman:
“Besides, at the verbal level, here we also learn from [Christ] that he is gentle and humble of heart (see Mt. 11:29), for he does not disdain to discuss such matters with a woman who is a water-carrier, who on account of her great poverty must leave the town and labor in order to draw water. For even the disciples marvel when they come, because they have already contemplated the magnitude of the divinity in him, marveling that such a great person would speak with a woman. But we, under the impulse of boasting and disdain, scorn those who are inferior, forgetting that ‘Let us make man according to our image, and according to our likeness’ (Gen. 1:26) applies to each human being. Not remembering the one who fashioned us in the womb (see Jer. 1:5) and fashioned one by one the hearts of all men ([Ps. 33:15]) and who attends to all their deeds, we do not know that he is the God of the humble, the helper of the lowliest, the protector of the weak, the shelter of the hopeless, and the savior of the rejected (see Jdt 9:11).”
Also of interest is Origen’s understanding of divine punishment, described in Homily 12 on Jeremiah in the context of various scriptural statements regarding different kinds of “wine” each will be made to drink according to his works (Jer. 13:12-17, Jer. 32:15-16, Deut. 32:32-3, Prov. 9:5, Ps. 75:8, 1 Cor. 10:16):
“Imagine that the one group, being total strangers to piety and totally unconcerned with themselves, but living heedlessly, are drinking the unmixed wine in the passage from Jeremiah. However, the other group, not entirely renegades and sinners but unworthy of the cup of the new testament—sometimes doing beneficial deeds but at other times the opposite—are drinking a mixture of unmixed wine. . . . If you allow me to speak so daringly, let the cup of your good deeds be in God’s right hand and let the cup of your sins be in God’s left hand. You cannot drink only from the cup of good things, since you have not done good deeds only, nor can you drink only from the cup of sins, since you have done some useful things, therefore he ‘has poured from the one into the other.’ According to the proportion of your deeds, you will have poured out for you wrath and punishment, so that the mixture of punishment may either be more watered down or more sharp and obnoxious. . . . But if you are entirely good and admirable, you say, ‘I shall take the cup of salvation, and I shall call upon the name of the Lord’ ([Ps. 116:13]).”
But whatever “mixture” of grace and wrath one receives, it is always imparted by God for the purpose of healing and restoration—never out of some gratuitous desire to harm us:
“Understand that something similar occurs with regard to each of us. There is a certain church of the firstborn registered in heaven (see Heb. 12:23), where Mount Zion and the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God, are located (see Heb. 12:22). The blessed will be gathered there to be together, but the sinners will receive an additional punishment of not being with others. . . . You, a sinner, must taste something very bitter, being under God’s careful management, so that, having been corrected, you may be saved. Just as you do not punish a servant or a slave whom you punish simply out of a desire to torture, but so that, by means of his distress, he may change, so God also punishes, by making them suffer distress, those who have been changed by reason and have not been healed.”
Interestingly enough, Origen goes on to cite the “eternal fire” described in Matthew 25: but whatever he took the word aionios to mean, he did not seem to understand it to mean “never-ending”, since he refers to the passage in the middle of a discussion about the remedial nature of divine wrath:
“For this reason eternal fire is prepared (see Mt. 18:8 and 25:41), for this reason Gehenna (See Mt. 18:9, 23:33) has been made ready, for this reason there is a certain outer darkness (see Mt. 18:12). These are necessary, not just for the one punished, but, even more, for the community.”
[Review continues in comments]
August 31, 2025
I keep coming back to the early church fathers. Origen is one who seemed particularly interesting to me. I had heard him referenced, learned that he has been both praised and condemned, and I even had read a few of his writings in the Philokalia. But this was my first deep dive on him. Now I like him less.
Certain aspects of the early church have always felt right to me. The emphasis on service, community, love, ethical behavior and embracing the poor and downtrodden are all wonderful. Who could take issue with those things? But I was never much interested in the belief that the end times were near, and I have never been drawn to martyrdom or salvation through suffering. Then as the church became more established there was more organization and hierarchy, more rules and more theology. At this point it begins to really turn me off. Unfortunately, Origen appears just at the point where all of this is happening. He clashes with the Gnostics, objecting to their idea that the god of the Hebrews was different from the god of the Christians. I agree with him that that seemed like a dumb idea. He studied Jewish scholars and Plato and found ways to bring their ideas and methods into Christian theology. That probably needed to be done. But for all of his learning, he spent way too much time spinning on stuff about which I could care less and about which Christians of the next few hundred years fought viciously. Who cares whether people will be physically resurrected or only spiritually resurrected at the Second Coming? Who cares what the exact relationship is among the members of the Holy Trinity? Let it be a mystery. The thing that I perhaps most disliked about Origen was his elitism, the idea that only the select few could understand the deep mysteries of scripture. Everything that matters is right there in your face. This is the church of the poor and oppressed. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to understand what matters. And if you get so distracted by your rocket science that you start thinking that you are somehow superior to the simple people, then you have been led astray.
Certain aspects of the early church have always felt right to me. The emphasis on service, community, love, ethical behavior and embracing the poor and downtrodden are all wonderful. Who could take issue with those things? But I was never much interested in the belief that the end times were near, and I have never been drawn to martyrdom or salvation through suffering. Then as the church became more established there was more organization and hierarchy, more rules and more theology. At this point it begins to really turn me off. Unfortunately, Origen appears just at the point where all of this is happening. He clashes with the Gnostics, objecting to their idea that the god of the Hebrews was different from the god of the Christians. I agree with him that that seemed like a dumb idea. He studied Jewish scholars and Plato and found ways to bring their ideas and methods into Christian theology. That probably needed to be done. But for all of his learning, he spent way too much time spinning on stuff about which I could care less and about which Christians of the next few hundred years fought viciously. Who cares whether people will be physically resurrected or only spiritually resurrected at the Second Coming? Who cares what the exact relationship is among the members of the Holy Trinity? Let it be a mystery. The thing that I perhaps most disliked about Origen was his elitism, the idea that only the select few could understand the deep mysteries of scripture. Everything that matters is right there in your face. This is the church of the poor and oppressed. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to understand what matters. And if you get so distracted by your rocket science that you start thinking that you are somehow superior to the simple people, then you have been led astray.
July 1, 2024
Fascinating history, if you're into apologetics, and the history of some of the greatest thinkers therein, and of course the history of the doctrinal fathers and philosophers of the Catholic Church.
February 8, 2016
A wide and in depth study of the great theologian which provides a good context. Lacking in parts of cited examples. It is nevertheless a massive work which pieces together a man from the fragments of the pyre.
September 25, 2010
an interesting, if a bit dry, book on this mostly unacknowledged church father.
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September 2, 2013an excellent overview on the life of Origen along with selections from some of his writing.
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April 25, 2014Read intro and bits
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