Apology for Origen preface

(It is) to be known … the preface, the Apology of Pamphilus, and … (the one) asserting what is contrary to the faith. Letters convey the words and the sense; if they could also show the faces of those who speak, no one could fall into error about the person of the teacher. For this too must be guarded against: a certain Ampullianus, a heresiarch from Bithynia, who taught in the Church of God after Origen, fell into such a heresy as to say that all the guilty, together with the devil and the demons, are cooked in Gehenna until, made pure, they can come out of it unstained, so as to be restored again to the Creator, as before, free of their guilt. When he was refuted by the Church, he began to bring forward books of Origen which he himself had corrupted, and to say: "See, Origen thought so, especially in the four books On First Principles." But whoever is of sound mind and has bright eyes of the mind sees that these evils have been added to Origen's works, and recognizes them as one sees white patches, or patches of any other colour, sewn onto a scarlet coverlet. That this is so the holy martyr Pamphilus teaches, who before he attained the crown of martyrdom held the episcopal chair blamelessly and ministered sound doctrine to the peoples of God. He published an Apology and shut out everything that ignorant Catholics falsely say about Origen, showing that the things found blameworthy in his works are not Origen's but belong to those whom he himself had overcome, and that other things, which are wholly perverse, belong to two other heretics, who had Origen's name but neither his faith nor his conscience.

Rufinus's preface to the Apology of St Pamphilus for Origen, to Macarius. Macarius, O man of desires, moved by love of the truth, you lay on me a task which will bring you … the benefit of the truth once known; but I do not doubt that it will earn me the greatest offence of those who think themselves injured by anyone who does not think something bad of Origen. And although you have asked not for my opinion of him but for that of the holy martyr Pamphilus, and have requested that his book, which he is said to have written in Greek for Origen, be translated into Latin for you, I do not doubt that there will be some who will think themselves injured in this too, if we say anything for him, even in another's words. These too, however, we beg to do nothing with a presumptuous or prejudiced mind; but, since we shall come to the judgment of God, let them not shun knowing what is true, lest perhaps they sin in ignorance; and, considering that to wound the consciences of the weaker brothers with false accusations is to sin against Christ, let them therefore not lend their ear to accusers, nor learn another's faith from someone else, especially when there is opportunity to test it face to face, and the confession of each one's own mouth shows what and how he believes. For it is written: "With the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation"; and: "By his own words each one will be justified, and by his own words he will be condemned." How Origen thought about the several heads of the holy Scriptures, then, the tenor of this little book will show. As for the things found in him that contradict one another, we will explain the cause in a brief addition at the end. We, for our part, hold as it has been handed down to us by the holy fathers: that the holy Trinity is coeternal, of one nature and substance, and of one power; and that the Son of God in the last time was made man and suffered for our sins, and in the very flesh in which he suffered rose from the dead, by which he also gave the hope of resurrection to the human race. And we speak of the resurrection of the flesh not by some sleight of hand, as some slanderously allege; but we believe that this very flesh in which we now live will rise again; not one in place of another, nor do we speak of any body other than that of this flesh. If, then, we say that the body will rise, we say it according to the Apostle, for he used this word; and if we say flesh, we confess it according to the tradition of the creed. For it is a foolish invention of slander to think that the human body is something other than flesh. Whether, then, what will rise is called flesh according to the common faith, or body according to the Apostle, it must be believed as the Apostle defined it: that what will rise will rise in power and in glory, incorruptible and a spiritual body; for corruption will not inherit incorruption. These prerogatives of the future body or flesh being kept, the resurrection of the flesh is to be believed wholly and completely, so that the same nature of the flesh is preserved and the glory of the incorruptible and spiritual body is not diminished. For so it is written. These things are preached in Jerusalem, in the Church of God, by its holy priest John; these things we too say and hold with him. If anyone believes or teaches anything besides these, or thinks that we believe otherwise than we have set out, let him be anathema. This, then, is the statement of our faith … if we give an account of this our faith according to … abstaining from every kind of evil; and if … of God. Amen.

The Apology of Pamphilus for Origen. … that, since the understanding of Origen has so escaped you, you too should think of him what some others also (think), who, either through their own lack of skill, by which they are unable to behold the depth of his meaning, or through perversity of mind, are eager not only to find fault with his sayings but also to take up hostile enmity against those who read them. They pursue this so stubbornly that they think such readers deserve no pardon at all, not even the pardon they are accustomed to grant, for example, to those who run through the books of the secular Greeks, or sometimes even of heretics, out of a desire to inquire and to know. They think that the skill of testing a discourse should be granted to themselves alone, so that, if anything has been said well by anyone, they know how to keep it and know how to abstain from every kind of evil; but for those who read Origen's books they think that commandment wholly excluded by which we are bidden to become approved money-changers, knowing how to hold fast what is good and to abstain from every kind of evil. Instead, if anyone is merely seen to read his books, he is at once drenched by them with the infamy of heretics. In short, they hold enmities with many men of honourable life and religious purpose, in whom they find no fault at all, for this reason alone: if they see that their zeal for the books of the man we have mentioned is rather keen. They also invent, more invidiously, that he and his sayings are held by these people in the place of the holy apostles or prophets. But I am not certain whether they toss these things about only from a wish to slander, or whether they have perhaps sometimes heard something of the kind from some simpler people who love the man with too eager an affection. We, however, see that he often speaks with great fear of God and with all humility, when he asks pardon for the things that occur to his mind as he discusses with excessive inquiry and much searching of the Scriptures. When he expounds them he often adds and professes that he does not pronounce these things as a definitive judgment, nor close them as settled doctrine, but inquires as far as he can and examines the sense of the Scriptures, without professing that he has grasped it wholly and perfectly; saying rather that about very many things he is conjecturing, and that he is not certain that he has attained in all things what is perfect and whole. Sometimes too we find him professing that he is at a loss about many things, in which he raises the points that come into question but does not add their solutions; with all humility and truthfulness he is not ashamed to confess that the matter is not clear to him. We have heard him also often weave in this, which today not even these most unskilled of all his detractors disdain to say: that if anyone has spoken or expounded better about the passages he discussed, one should listen to the one who has spoken more rightly rather than to himself. We have also observed that he sometimes gives different expositions of the same passage; and with all reverence, as one who knows that he is speaking about the holy Scriptures, after setting out many things that occurred to him, he bids those who read to test each thing he has said and to hold what the prudent reader judges more correct. Clearly he too knew that not all the things he had raised or discussed should be held as approved or fixed, since many mysteries are believed to be hidden and stored away in the holy Scriptures. Finally, if we attend more closely to the declaration he made, wholly and as a catholic, about all his treatises in the preface to the books he wrote on Genesis, we shall easily recognize his whole mind from it.

Origen: "Unless we were altogether lazy and idle, (we would venture) even to approach the inquiry, since our Lord and Saviour calls us to it; otherwise we would surely have drawn back our foot, considering how far we are from that greatness of spiritual understanding by which the mind ought to investigate such great matters."

Pamphilus: And a little later he says:

Origen: "But if in the discussion something deep occurs to anyone, it should indeed be spoken of, but not with full assertion. For that belongs either to a rash man, one who has lost the sense of human weakness and forgotten himself, or else to perfect men, who know confidently that they have learned from the Lord Jesus himself, that is, from the Word of truth, and from the very Wisdom through whom all things were made; or to those who entered the whirlwind and the darkness where God himself is, and received the divine answers from heaven, into which even Moses scarcely entered, and so was able to understand or utter such things. But we, for this alone, that we believe, although in a modest measure, in the Lord Jesus, and glory in being his disciples, yet do not dare to say that we have received from him, face to face, an understanding of the things related in the divine books; which, I am sure, not even the world itself could contain, because of the power and majesty of their meanings. Therefore we do not dare to pronounce on what we say, as the apostles could. But we give thanks in this: that while many do not know their own lack of skill, and with all intensity, as it seems to them, proclaim their disordered and unruly notions, sometimes even silly and fabulous ones, as if they were the truest assertion, we, concerning great things and things above us, are not ignorant of our ignorance."

Pamphilus: Since, then, we hear him say these things about himself, and assert what he says with such a mind and wish, we wonder that some have advanced so far in rashness as to allege, of one who judges himself with such humility, that his sayings or books are held by others in place of the discourses of the apostles or the sayings of the prophets, or that he himself is compared by anyone with prophets or apostles. That he was endowed with the honour of the presbyterate in the Church, led a most abstinent and truly philosophical life, kept the pure discipline of religion, and devoted himself beyond others to the word of God and to teaching, no one doubts, from the most certain indications of his labour and study that have come down to us, and especially through the homilies he delivered almost daily in the Church without preparation, which shorthand writers took down and handed on as a record for posterity. It followed, then, from all these testimonies to his labours and studies, that such a man should be embraced; that one should neither, from zeal for his defence, give him more merit than measure demands, nor again, from the vice of detraction, readily condemn him and rashly pronounce him alien to the Church's doctrine. For the divine word, foreseeing both these precipices, forbade them, saying: "There shall not be in you a greater measure and a lesser measure; for both are an abomination in the sight of the Lord." To give to each as is fitting is the proper mark of justice. Therefore a whole measure and an equal weight is acceptable before God, not one that belies the truth, by which either more is given to things than their merits demand, or what is owed to their merits is taken away. How much more rightly these detractors would act if, without any prejudice of mind and with all scrupulous regard for the truth, which we are commanded to show with love to all our neighbours, they understood that he too is one of the neighbours to whom we owe love by the commandment, and took up and read his books with the indulgence that he himself asks in his prefaces, wherever they found something deserving of indulgence. As it is, on the contrary, you may see them sparing me neither curses nor reproaches, and deterring from the reading of his books those who, according to the command of our Lord and Saviour, are zealous to understand the Scriptures, affirming that any other silly works, even ones that will profit nothing, ought to be read rather than his commentaries. In this they often meet with something ridiculous. For, so that their contentious presumption, or more truly their … madness, may be shown more plainly, it often happens, by chance or sometimes on purpose, that something of his is read in the hearing of the detractors from a codex without a title, as if it were by another writer. This pleases, is praised, and is held in all admiration as long as the name has not been given. But as soon as the things that pleased are known to be Origen's, at once they displease, at once they are said to be heretical; and the things that a little before were extolled to the heavens are plunged down to the underworld by the same voices and the same tongue. Besides, one also finds that his accusers are sometimes people who do not even know Greek; others are wholly unskilled; some, even if they seem to have some skill, are not found to have had the zeal to give attention to his books; or, if they happened to read them, they were not of such learning as to grasp the depth of his meaning, so as to notice the things he is accustomed to discuss from different points of view according to the passages and occasions. You may find many who, if you ask them in which books or in which passages the things they criticize were said, confess that they do not know the things they assert and have never read them, but have heard others say so. From this their judgment will seem to anyone full of absurdity, since they judge and condemn things that they could not even first learn and know. Others again have been seized by the disease of a new frenzy and the plague of unheard-of madness. Although so many of his volumes are filled with every kind of usefulness and instruction, and the passages by which the less skilled, or more truly the malevolent, might seem to themselves to be offended are quite rare and perhaps very few, they pass over and neglect all the things which even they admit to be catholic and suited to the edification of the soul and to instruction in knowledge, and they draw no profit from what they can and should; but they learn by heart with the utmost zeal only those things that serve slander. So those who perhaps never learned anything good commit to memory above all what they themselves say is not good, so that, of course, by bringing these things out more readily, they may be better practised at contriving slanders. There is also another kind of men, foul indeed and base as regards honesty of character, but fiercer in slander and more hideous in accusation, whom the Greeks call phagoloidoroi, those who revile the one whose bread they have eaten. They gave the greatest zeal and quite intent attention to his books, so that they used him as a teacher in everything and gave themselves over to him as his special disciples; but when they came to the point of preferring to be called teachers rather than disciples, and began to court the applause of hearers, then, if any of the hearers happened to murmur that the things being praised were Origen's, lest they should yield to their teacher either in praise or in the verdict of blame, they at once protest that Origen is foreign to them and affirm that they have nothing in common with his teaching. They do not hesitate shamelessly to call him anathema, and do not spare to heap curses on him, not fearing even the apostolic word which shows that revilers will not inherit the kingdom of God. And the malice of those we have spoken of has advanced so far that some have even dared to write against him, and in published pamphlets to disparage the man who was a teacher of the Church for so many years, who grew old in the catholic Church, who fought so constantly and so bravely against the heresies that were then attacking the Church that he overturned all the foundations of their diabolical contrivance. They respect neither the labour of his studies, nor of his continence, nor of his teaching, nor of his humility, which among all his other virtues holds the greatest grace; certainly they do not consider that he was honoured in the Church with the dignity of the presbyterate. If all these things cannot suffice to restrain their tongue and check their speech, they should at least have considered how much matter for laughter they give to the pagans, and how much to the heretics, when these see those whom they thought assertors and defenders of Christian doctrine now refuted and confuted by their own people, and rejoice that one whom they themselves could not overcome by hostile attack is now assailed as in a civil war. Since, then, very many of the simpler brothers are injured by the people mentioned above, not only regarding those who think ill of him but also regarding those who, out of zeal for knowledge and for understanding the Scriptures, look into his writings too among other books, so that even you yourselves have come into doubt whether perhaps credit should be given, either for their number or for their authority, to the slanderers in the things spread about everywhere without any scruple, it has seemed good to us, first, to heal your suspicion, and at the same time, on the occasion you give, to refute the slanders of all who disparage him. It seemed more right to us to proceed in such a way that we prepare his defence not with our own words and assertions but from his own statements, by which he himself testifies in his own words that the things these men object are foreign to him, that is, everything that is preached contrary to the catholic faith. For if we wished to assert these things in our own words, it might perhaps seem suspicious, as if out of love for him we had concealed anything he thought wrongly. But when we use the words of the very man who is accused, and defend him against all the objections of the accusers with his own words, not with our assertion, what occasion for accusation can still be left, at least to those who are always driven not by zeal for the truth but by a kind of lust for blaming? And since the discussion now concerns one who has indeed died among men, what should count more strongly and firmly with all judges on behalf of the dead than the dead man's letters and writings? Beginning, then, to show by the evidence of his writings what he thought on each point, we will gather testimonies above all from the books his accusers most attack, that is, those he wrote privately, at leisure and in quiet; for these, they assert, most disagree with the preaching of the Church; and above all from the books he entitled On First Principles, in which very many things are accused by the slanderers. From these very books, then, we will bring forward what exposition of the faith he used at the beginning; and then, from what he thought here and there, in these books or in others, we will show that he kept the apostolic preaching. Here, then, is the reading we promised from the first book of On First Principles.