Pre-Nicene Christianity
Fr. John Behr
Final Paper
J. Anthony Cook
January 14, 2005
Theological Calculus
In all the history of the Christian Church, it is difficult to find a more controversial figure than Origen of Alexandria. He has justly been known as both a standard of Orthodoxy and a precursor of Arius, as both an ecclesiastical rebel and a pillar of the Church. That he clearly and even frequently articulated doctrines utterly opposed to sound teaching cannot be denied, yet few thinkers throughout Christian history have a larger or more esteemed body of defenders. Even after the �final� condemnation of his doctrines and writings in 553, his influence upon Christian doctrine is palpable. To use the words of a more modern advocate, Hans Urs von Balthasar: �There is no thinker in the Church who is so invisibly all-present as Origen� (von Balthasar 2). From this fact, standing unquestioned against the whole great storm of controversy surrounding him, one is forced to conclude that in some sense, the Alexandrian must exemplify the ideal in Christian theology, regardless of the final conclusions on the question of his orthodoxy.
Let us begin, then, with the controversy, which surrounds him not only from without, but from within. For Origen is controversial not only in that his teachings are frequently challenged by others, but also in that he so frequently appears to contradict himself. The doctrines attributed to him or to his followers are highly disparate, as Elizabeth Clark points out: �I was indeed tempted to title the book Origenisms in order to convey that there is neither a stable personal identity that can be definitely labeled Origen nor a uniform set of doctrines that can be called Origenism� (Clark 6).
Therefore the efforts to rehabilitate him have fertile soil in which to grow. The reality of his extant corpus and of the Origenist controversies of later centuries make it easy for his defenders to claim (with at least a degree of legitimacy) either that the heresies called by his name cannot be found in his works, or that, if they can, they were merely speculation, not dogmatic statements. For example, while it cannot be denied that Origen asserted the certainty of even the devil�s ultimate salvation in On First Principles, he himself is said to have denied teaching such a thing in a letter, stating that �only a madman could have done so� (as cited by Butterworth in the introduction to his translation of On First Principles, p. xxxix). Butterworth further explains his essential defense of the work, namely, that Origen composed it as a piece of philosophical speculation with a Christian theme, for use within the catechetical school:
�When working out a speculative theology, as in the First Principles, an author must be allowed freedom to indicate, not dogmatically but suggestively for discussion, where his principles appear to lead�.Origen may quite justly have claimed this protection, especially if it be the case, as he is said to have asserted in his letter to Fabian of Rome, that the First Principles was published in the beginning by Ambrose without his knowledge� (Butterworth xli).
The arguments and defenses raised by other Origen advocates run along similar lines.
But the roster of those advocates, or at least of his admirers, reads almost like a Who�s Who list of Christian theology through the ages. And, while the specifics of their defense or admiration are intriguing, far more so is the mere fact of their existence; one is left perplexed that so many who consider themselves fully Orthodox in doctrine have undertaken to defend Origen. It leads one to conclude that, for all his faults, Origen exemplifies something profound about the proper pursuit of Christian theology, perhaps in that he managed to juggle, with a fair degree of success, two apparently contradictory elements of the Christian Faith which have all too often become polarized in subsequent centuries. For Christian theology is founded on a paradox of two simultaneous truths: that God is Infinite, Immutable, Indefinable and Perfectly Other, and that truly, He became Flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His Glory, as of the Only Begotten Son of God. Origen�s popularity with the great Church Fathers, to my mind, stems from his singular ability to speak confidently and definitely about God without ever compromising the essential indefinability of the Godhead.
First it must be stated that this characteristic of Origen�s writing is inextricably rooted in his understanding of the incarnate Christ, and of the nature of Scripture with respect to Christ, an understanding which itself begins with the essential realization that Christ is truly God, truly infinite and truly uncircumscribable. Following upon this is an identification of Scripture with the Incarnate Christ Himself. This is evident throughout Origen�s work, as in this passage, wherein he demands the same reverence for Scripture as is given to the Eucharistic Host.
�Accustomed as you are to attend the divine mysteries, you know how carefully you receive the body of the Lord and reverently make sure that no particle drops to the ground, lest anything of the consecrated gift be lost�. But if you exercise such concern in taking care of his body�and indeed with every right�how can you think it a less crime to neglect the WORD of God than his body?� (von Balthasar 263).
Implied in this identification is the realization that words about God, and most particularly Scripture itself, partake in the uncircumscribability of the Godhead. One cannot finally and completely plumb the depths of Scripture, just as one can never plumb the depths of God Himself. As Robert Daly says in the forward to his translation of Origen: Spirit and Fire,
�Jesus Christ the WORD incarnate, is central to Origen�s concept of Scripture�because for him, the WORD was incarnated not only in the flesh of the historical Jesus, but also in the very words of scripture. This is what Origen has in mind when he says that the meaning of all scripture, of the Old as well as of the New Testament, is Jesus Christ� (von Balthasar xiii).
If Christ is incarnated in the �very words of Scripture,� then those words have taken on a meaning greater than can ever be grasped by the mind of man. If understanding is to be attained, it must be mystically, in the intimacy of a spiritual love, not by means of the rational faculties. John Behr points this out in his book The Way to Nicaea:
�The difference [to Origen] between seeing Jesus as an ordinary man and contemplating him transfigured in divine glory is that of merely reading the words of Scripture, expressed in the common idiom, and understanding their divine content� (Behr 180).
Hence Origen approaches Scripture not merely as an exegete and grammateus, but as a mystic, acutely conscious that in it he approaches God Himself. Therefore he claims for himself as an exegete the words of Isaiah come face to face with the Lord �sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up� (Isaiah 6:2).
�I pray that the Seraph be sent to me as well, and taking a coal with tongs may cleanse my lips... But I fear that by running after evil I have soiled my feat...Who then cleanses me? Who washes my feat? O Jesus, come, I have soiled feet. Become a slave on my account, put your water in a basin, come, wash my feat� (Is. 6.2 [264.12-27]). ( as quoted by Daniel Sheerin, in Kannengieser and Petersen, pg. 212).
It is from this acute awareness of the incarnatory nature of Scripture that Origen�s unique approach is born. This approach underlies everything he does (including even On First Principles), and is simultaneously that which is most valuable about his work, and that which most confuses critics and advocates alike. It is the indispensable foundation of any study of Origen, as von Balthasar says:
�There is first, occupying a broad range in his thought, his insight into the essence of scripture as the great sacrament of the real presence of the divine WORD in the world. Only the person who understands what this presence means for Origen will also find some access to what today is often with such utter shallowness and superficiality written off as �allegorizing�� (von Balthasar 10).
Thus having established Origen�s modus operandi, as it were, we can examine the manner in which he perceived its application. Pursuant to this, Patricia Cox Miller provides a valuable quote from his first Homily on Exodus:
�I think each word of divine scripture is like a seed whose nature is to multiply diffusely.... Its increase is proportionate to the diligent labor of the skillful farmer or the fertility of the earth.� (Kannengiesser and Petersen, pg. 167-8).
In On First Principles, he elaborated further on this theme:
�One must therefore pourtray [sic] the meaning of the sacred writings in a threefold way upon one�s own soul, so that the simple man may be edified by what we may call the flesh of the scripture, this name being given to the obvious interpretation; while the man who has made some progress may be edified by its soul, as it were; and the man who is perfect and like those mentioned by the apostle: �We speak wisdom among the perfect; yet a wisdom not of this world, nor of the rulers of this world, which are coming to nought; but we speak God�s wisdom in a mystery, even the wisdom that hath been hidden, which God foreordained before the worlds unto our glory��this man may be edified by the spiritual law, which has �a shadow of the good things to come�. For just as man consists of body, soul and spirit, so in the same way does the scripture, which has been prepared by God to be given for man�s salvation� (First Principles 4.2.4).
Joseph Trigg clarifies what is meant here:
�His intent was not to say that each passage has precisely three meanings, but that Scripture meets the needs of rational creatures at different levels of progress. Some passages, indeed, have no bodily sense, even though all have a spiritual sense. This is because God�s Logos has, in fact, so �planned� the Scriptures as to include �snares, obstacles, and� even �impossibilities� to force the intelligent interpreter to get beyond the obvious sense of the text� (Trigg 33).
The logical conclusions of this approach produced the inconsistencies which so greatly plague those who seek to determine what Origen really believed, once all the philosophizing was stripped away. For Origen was not interested in abstractions, as Behr points out.
�Origen�s contemplation of Christ does not proceed by analyzing the constituent parts of his being. Rather, it develops by looking at how Christ is described in Scripture, where a single subject is spoken of in both divine and human terms... Moreover, although these �natures� can be differentiated conceptually, in Christ they exist together: �if it thinks of God, it sees a man; if it thinks of a man, it beholds one returning from the dead.�� (Behr 198).
Hence the short answer to the question is that Origen believed in Jesus Christ, Incarnate, Crucified, and Risen, truly God and truly Man, Uncircumscribable yet Circumscribed, eternally united with the Father and the Spirit yet the very foundation and life of all Creation. Even the critics cannot complain of this. The problem is the long answer, dealing with all the implications of the above: e.g., that this Jesus Christ is not an abstraction or a Platonic form, but a True Person, and hence that knowledge of Him is a matter of maturity and growth, developing, as it were, from glory to glory in the man or woman of Faith�statements which, if true, mean that what seems unassailably true to the neophyte Christian will not necessarily remain so as he grows in Christ, even as what a child knows of its mother or father at the age of two will not remain �true� when that child is twenty. Indeed, it is a philosophical truth that �every stage of maturity in existence has its corresponding stage of truth� (von Balthasar 17).
But to this philosophical truth corresponds the theological one that the WORD of God in its incarnation adapts itself to each of these stages of existence and thus becomes all to all. That a kind of truth-relativism can come from this, that in the adventure of its divine metamorphoses the WORD can go astray and �lie,� Origen was already accused of this by Celsus. But the fact of this existential relativism of truth is, as such, not to be denied, not even the esotericism of truth that follows from it. But Origen correctly emphasizes that the WORD, the personal, absolute and sole truth, does not become a liar by its adaptation to different stages of maturity. Otherwise childhood and the age of youth would be lies as such because they are not adulthood. Otherwise �milk� would be poisonous because it is not �solid food.� Or, as Origen once said in a paradoxical and Hegelian way: because something is not true does not automatically mean that it is false. For there is a third possibility: to be an indicator or analogy pointing to the truth.� (von Balthasar 17).
It is this principle which guided Origen�s theologizing, and most particularly his evangelistic work. Even as Christ has become �all in all� for us, just as Paul was made all things to all people, that he might by any means save some, so too did Origen go out into the highways and byways, seeking those who might be saved.
Henri Crouzel has pointed out the peculiarities of Origen�s �school� at Antioch, of which Gregory Thaumaturgus speaks in his Address to Origen, noting that the programme of study �leaves out almost everything peculiar to Christianity and only reproduces the doctrines that can be enunciated in philosophical terms� (Crouzel 27). This is particularly strange, he notes, since Origen is known for his devotion to the name of Jesus and his dogmatic insistence upon the importance of the Incarnation. He goes on to explain:
�Following A. Knauber we think that the school of Caesarea was more a kind of missionary school, aimed at young pagans who were showing an interest in Christianity but were not yet ready, necessarily, to ask for baptism: Origen was thus introducing these to Christian doctrine through a course in philosophy, mainly inspired by Middle Platonism, of which he offered them a Christian version. If his students later asked to become Christians, they had then to receive catecheticial [sic] teaching in the strict sense� (Crouzel 27-8).
Hence Origen undertook not simply to indoctrinate his disciples in the specifics of the Faith, but to lead them from the mindset in which they had been raised to the point at which they might more perfectly understand the coming of Christ into the world, developing the intellect, instincts, temperament and very heart of a Hellenistic Roman citizen of the third century into those of a fully, deeply and devotedly Christian Man.
An awareness of this proclivity in Origen helps illumine his entire corpus. It is no wonder that it contains so many apparent contradictions, no wonder that, as Scott says, �Origen had very little interest in the internal consistency of his propositions� (Scott 121). He knew that Scripture defied definition. In the Sacred Text, he met the Bridegroom of the Church, as he said in his Homily on the Song of Songs:
�The bride beholds the Bridegroom; and He, as soon as she has seen Him, goes away. He does this frequently throughout the Song; and that is something nobody can understand who has not suffered it himself. God is my witness that I have often perceived the Bridegroom drawing near me and being most intensely present with me; then suddenly He has withdrawn and I could not find Him, though I sought to do so. I long, therefore, for Him to come again, and sometimes He does so. Then, when He has appeared and I lay hold of Him, He slips away once more; and, when He has so slipped away, my search for Him begins anew� (Song of Songs 1.7, as quoted by Miller in Kannengieser and Petersen, pg. 174).
Theology for him was an intensely mystical experience. Hence, perhaps, what he wrote of Scripture and of God is analogous to the process in integral calculus of calculating the area beneath a curve defined by a certain function. The student is shown how one may superimpose rectangles of a constant width onto the curve in order to estimate the area�and as the width of those rectangles decreases, the true solution is approached. Origen is aware that anything he might say about God is no more accurate than those rectangles, and as a result he makes no effort to define the absolute truth about God. To quote Patricia Cox Miller:
�Origen wrote in the Philocalia that if ��the world is unable to contain the books that would be written� [Jn. 21:25] concerning the divinity of Jesus, it is not because of the number of books but because of the greatness of the realities which can�t be said in human language.� Ironically, Origen uses words in order to say that he can�t use words!� (Miller in Kannengieser and Petersen, pg. 174-5).
Hence there is no Theological Calculus whereby God may be explained�and if it is possible to know Him, it is only through the life of prayer, in the mystical vision.
It is in this awareness that Origen�s ultimate value is found. His understanding of the reality of God is the same as that of the apophatic theologians who followed him centuries later. His work remains valuable precisely because in the final analysis, it is, and claims to be, only an indication of the deeper Truth that is Jesus Christ. His final defense may be put in the words of T.S. Eliot:
That was a way of putting it�not very satisfactory:
A periphrastic study in a worn-out poetical fashion,
Leaving one still with the intolerable wrestle
With words and meanings. (Four Quartets 25)
Works Cited
von Balthasar, Hans Urs. Origen: Spirit and Fire. Trans Robert J. Daly, S.J.
Washington, D.C. The Catholic University of America Press, 1984.
Behr, John. The Way to Nicaea. Crestwood, New York: St. Vladimir�s Seminary
Press, 2001.
Butterworth, B.W., trans. Origen: On First Principles. Introduction by Henri De
Lubac. Gloucester, Mass. Peter Smith, 1973.
Clark, Elizabeth A. The Origenist Controversy. Princeton, New Jersey. Princeton University Press, 1992.
Crouzel, Henri. Origen. Trans. A.S. Worrall. San Francisco. Harper & Row, 1989.
Eliot, T.S. Four Quartets. San Diego/New York. Harcourt, Inc., 1971, orig. 1943.
Kannengiesser, Charles and William L. Petersen, eds. Origen of Alexandria: His
World and His Legacy. Notre Dame, Indiana. University of Notre Dame Press,
1988.
Scott, Alan. Origen and the Life of the Stars. Oxford. Clarendon Press, 1991.
Trigg, Joseph W. Origen. London and New York. Routledge, 1998.
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