Apology for Origen 6.1–8.1

Origen (continued): "This Word at the end of the ages became man, Jesus Christ; but before this manifest coming in the flesh he was indeed the mediator of men, but was not yet a man. Yet even then he was the mediator between God and men; hence the law, which was given through angels, is said not to have been given without the hands of the mediator himself, so that the law might be holy, and the commandment holy and just and good, and all these might be sanctified by Christ."

Pamphilus: I think that with these three testimonies the slander on this point too has been refuted. If anyone is offended because he said that the Saviour also took a soul, I think nothing more need be answered on this, except that Origen is not the author of this opinion: holy Scripture itself testifies to it, the Lord and Saviour himself saying, 'No one takes my soul from me'; and, 'My soul is sorrowful even to death'; and, 'Now my soul is troubled'; and many things like these are found in the holy Scriptures. It remains to answer the accusation by which they slander him as turning all Scripture into allegory. From the very books which his detractors attack most, that is, from the fourth book On First Principles, we will show that he does not deny that the things related in the Scriptures were also done according to the letter. …

(Origen:) "… were also fulfilled in a way perceptible to the senses, or that its precepts should not be kept according to the letter, the answer must be that we plainly judge that the truth of the history must be kept in very many things. For who could deny that Abraham was buried in the double cave at Hebron, and Isaac and Jacob too, and each of their wives? Or who doubts that Shechem was given as a portion to Joseph? Or that Jerusalem is the chief city of Judea, in which the temple of God was built by Solomon? And countless other things. For the things that are true according to the history are far more than those that contain a bare spiritual sense. Again, who would not affirm that this commandment, 'Honour your father and your mother, that it may be well with you', is sufficient without any spiritual interpretation, and necessary for those who keep it, especially since Paul too, repeating it in the same words, confirmed the commandment itself? And what need is there to speak of the sayings, 'You shall not commit adultery, you shall not kill, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness', and the rest of this kind? As for the commandments given in the Gospel, it cannot even be doubted that they are to be kept according to the letter, as when he says, 'But I say to you, do not swear at all'; and when he says, 'Whoever looks at a woman to desire her has already committed adultery with her in his heart'; and the things commanded by the apostle Paul, 'Admonish the unruly, comfort the faint-hearted, support the weak, be patient with all'; and very many others." …

"… who had entered the ark with him. Likewise of Abraham: that he merited God's testimony, and that, when he was under the oak of Mamre, he received as guests three men, of whom one was the Lord. He believes too of Isaac how he was born, how he was offered by his father, and how he merited to hear the answers of God; and of Jacob, that his name was changed and he was named Israel by God; and of Moses, that he served God through signs and wonders. He believes too that Joshua son of Nun, heard by God, made the sun stand still over Gibeon and the moon over the valley of Aijalon. And what is to be said of the faithful judges and of the things related as done through them; or, in the books of Kingdoms, of Samuel, that he asked God for rain at the time of harvest and received it; and of David, whom the Lord took from the flocks to rule Jacob his servant and Israel his inheritance; and of Nathan, that he prophesied; and of Gad too; and of Solomon, that the Lord appeared to him in a vision; and of Elijah, that he was taken up into heaven by ascent, after doing all the signs and wonders that are written; and of Elisha, that he raised not only the son of the Shunammite but also a dead man thrown onto his bones? Every one of the faithful, then, must believe also all that is written of Hezekiah, that in his days the shadow of the sun went back. Our faith, then, is first of all in our Lord Jesus Christ, and next also in all the holy patriarchs, prophets, and apostles of Christ, in the order we have stated above."

Pamphilus: Let this be enough said as proof of his catholic faith, and of how he thought about the history of the Scriptures itself. And since among the other charges they bring against him they set down as one of the greatest that he denies the future resurrection of the dead, which is plainly preached in the churches as something that will be, … from what he wrote on the resurrection, and from his other various volumes, we will prove how catholic his thought was in this part too.

First response to the seventh charge.

Origen: "For how does it not seem absurd that this body, which bore scars for Christ, and together with the soul endured the cruel tortures of persecutions, and suffered besides the punishments of prisons, chains, and scourges, was tormented by fire and cut by the sword, and also underwent the bloody bites of beasts, the gibbet of the cross, and various kinds of punishment, should be cheated of the rewards of such great contests? For if the soul alone is crowned, which did not contend alone, and the vessel of its body, which served it with great labour, obtains no rewards for the contest and the victory, how does it not seem contrary to all reason that, when the flesh resists natural vices and inborn lust for Christ's sake, and keeps virginity with enormous labour (a labour of continence that is certainly either greater for the body than for the soul, or at least equal for both), at the time of rewards the one should be rejected as unworthy and the other come to the crown? Such a thing would undoubtedly accuse God either of some injustice or of inability."

Pamphilus: Beginning with these assertions on the resurrection of the dead, he used the clearest proofs throughout the whole course of his volume. In the second book on the same subject, having said beforehand that he was speaking as if to Gentiles, he declared his opinion in this way:

Origen: "We say that after the corruption of the world the very same men will exist, though not in the same state, nor in the same passions. For they will not again come from the union of man and woman; but, for example, the principle that holds together the substance of Paul (I mean now the bodily Paul) remains preserved; and when God wills, according to what has been said, through the mystery of the trumpets, at the last trumpet, to make the dead rise, by that very substantial principle, which remains preserved, they are raised from the dead from the dust of the earth, from all the places in which that principle of bodily substance remained in the bodies themselves; and these bodies, having fallen into the earth, are raised again by God's will. And I think that the Apostle, wishing to assert this, spoke as he did in the first Epistle to the Corinthians, after his assertion of the resurrection of the dead. For when he had set before himself the objections that others could raise about the resurrection of the dead, he says: 'But someone says, How are the dead raised? With what body do they come? Fool, what you sow is not made alive unless it first dies; and what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare grain, say of wheat or of some other kind. But God gives it a body' as he willed. For when he had plainly shown that the dead rise, and it was certain that our Saviour rose with the very body he had taken from Mary, but it was not clear enough how the others would rise or what kind of body they would have, he compares the resurrection to seeds sown in the earth, for instance a grain of wheat, which decays when it has fallen into the earth; but the power of the principle planted in its inner marrow takes to itself the earth lying around it, the moisture of the water, and the surrounding temperateness of the air, and, receiving sufficient kindling of warmth, rises by divine power into the body of the stalk or the ear. And this is what he says: 'What you sow is not made alive unless it first dies; and what you sow is not the body that is to be' … show this. And the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ himself declares it too, who is called the firstborn from the dead."

Pamphilus: After this, having discussed some things more fully in between, he added this too:

Origen: "For just as every rational soul has more than those that are said to provide only for growth, or nourishment, or motion, so the principle that is in the human body has much more than that which is in other bodies, in that even when the human body has decayed it can subsist again, preserved and kept by the power of God until the time of its resurrection. And that it is restored wherever it may be, that is, from every place in which it has lain, John says thus in his Revelation: 'And the sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and the underworld gave up their dead that were in them.' Perhaps, as I think, 'sea' here is said for every moist element, 'the underworld' for the air, and 'death' for the earth. For since these have a kind of kinship with one another, Scripture calls our body the dust of death, or earth, or the body of death. Indeed, as each one's preparation has been in this life, so will his resurrection be. Whoever has lived more blessedly here, his body will shine with a more divine splendour in the resurrection, and a fitting dwelling in the places of the blessed will be given him. But to one who has spent in wickedness the time of the present life granted to him, such a body will be given as can only suffice and endure in punishments. And I think that the apostle Paul, wishing to show this difference, says: 'One flesh is of beasts, another of birds, another of fish', and the rest that the Apostle listed. But just as it must not be thought that the sinner will receive the body of beasts, or of birds, or of fish, so those who rise in glory must not hope to receive that of the sun, or moon, or stars; these things must be understood as said by the Apostle by way of example, to indicate that some, according to their merits, will be more honoured and more glorious and will obtain more blessed dwellings, while the state of others, because of the wickedness of their deeds, will be most unworthy and abject, so as to deserve comparison even with dumb animals."

Pamphilus: We have drawn these few things as testimony from the many, indeed countless, things he set out in this sense in the very books he wrote On the Resurrection. It does not seem absurd, for fuller satisfaction, to add a few statements in agreement with these from his other books too. In the twenty-eighth book on the prophet Isaiah, then, writing on the passage in which it is said, 'The dead will be raised, and those who are in the tombs will rise', he … thus:

Origen: "It is better, then, to say that we shall all rise, so that the ungodly come to that place where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, and where the righteous will receive, each in his own order, according to the merit of his good deeds, when the body of their humiliation will be transformed to be conformed to the body of Christ's glory: that what was sown in corruption will rise in incorruption, what was sown in dishonour will rise in glory, what was sown in weakness will rise in power, namely at the time of the resurrection; and what was sown a natural body will rise a spiritual body. Although, then, all rise, and each rises in his own order, yet because of the saying of John in his Revelation, 'Blessed is he who has a part in the first resurrection; over him the second death has no power', we must consider whether perhaps the whole account of the resurrection can be divided into two parts, that is, into the righteous who are to be saved and the sinners who are to be punished: so that one, that of the good, is called the first, and the other, that of the wretched, is called the second; the first in all things pure, joyful, full of all gladness, the other wholly sad, wholly full of grief, and worthy of the deeds and life of those who in the present life despised God's commandments, and, neglecting the fear of his judgment, gave themselves over to the working of all uncleanness and greed, and did not try to prepare themselves to resist the adversary and the powers hostile and inimical to the human race. The tombs of the dead in this place, as in many others, must be taken according to the more certain sense of Scripture, not only as those that seem to be built for laying human bodies, or cut in rocks, or dug in the earth, but as every place in which a human body lies, whole or in some part. Even if it happens that one body is scattered through many places, it will not be absurd to call all the places in which some part of the body lies the tombs of that body. For if we do not take it so, those who were never committed to burial nor laid in tombs, but died either in shipwrecks or in some deserted places so that they could not be buried, will not seem to be counted among those who are said to be raised by divine power from their tombs. That is certainly very absurd."

Pamphilus: In the same book, with some things in between, he also says:

Origen: "When Paul writes that 'as star differs from star in glory, so will it be with the resurrection of the dead', and says, 'It is sown in corruption, it rises in incorruption', and the rest of this kind, he plainly writes these things of the body alone. For the soul is not sown in corruption, or in weakness, or in dishonour. In short, he plainly added to all these and says, 'It is sown a natural body', so that no one might think it is the soul that is sown in corruption, or in dishonour, or in … to remain also in the future, though changed very greatly for the better and more glorious. For the soul, dwelling in bodily places, must use such bodies as are suited to the places in which it lives. And just as, for example, if it were required of us to live or stay in the waters of the sea, it would doubtless seem necessary, because of the kind of dwelling, to have such a state and composition of body as the animals have that live in the waters, so now, since a dwelling in the heavens is promised, it follows that the qualities of bodies too must be adapted to the glory of the places. Yet this former form will not be done away for that reason, though its change has made it more glorious. For just as the form of the Lord Jesus himself, or of Moses or Elijah, was not different in the transfiguration from what it had been before the transfiguration, so the form of the saints will not be different, even if it becomes much more glorious." …

Origen: "The Lord Jesus Christ says these things, whose flesh first rested in hope. For he was crucified, made the firstborn from the dead; and after the resurrection, taken up into heaven, he carried his earthly body with him, so that the heavenly powers were terrified and astonished at seeing flesh ascending into heaven. For of Elijah it is written that he was taken up as it were into heaven, and of Enoch that he was translated; yet it is not said that either ascended into heaven. Let whoever wishes take offence at our words: I assert with all confidence that as Christ is the firstborn from the dead, so he was the first to carry flesh up to heaven. Indeed, the heavenly powers are terrified by the very novelty, because they now saw what they had never seen before, flesh ascended into heaven; and therefore they say: 'Who is this who comes from Edom', that is, from the earth-born? 'The redness of his garments is from Bozrah.' For they saw in his body the marks of the wounds from Bozrah, that is, in the flesh he had taken."

Origen: "These things (are said) because of the saying, 'My flesh will rest in hope.' In what hope? Not only that it rises from the dead (for that is little), but it rests in this hope, that it has been taken up into heaven."

Pamphilus: What could anyone say more plainly and clearly about the resurrection of the flesh than this, in which he declared that it will not only rise from the dead but also, if any flesh has merited it, be taken up into the heavens, following, that is, him who, made the firstborn from the dead, first carried the nature of flesh into heaven? Let us hear, however, what he thought when expounding the verse of the eighteenth psalm, 'In the sun he has set his tabernacle.'

Origen: "What is it that he said, 'In the sun he has set his tabernacle'? Some said that our Saviour, ascending from earth to heaven and taking his body with him, came as far as the circle that is called the zone of the sun, and there, they say, set the tabernacle of his body, since it was not possible for it to go further. But these people think so because they will not accept allegory in divine Scripture, and therefore, slaves to the bare history, they compose fables and fictions of this kind. We, however, pray the almighty God that he may deign to hear us and to open to us the secrets of spiritual understanding. What we understand in this place, 'In the sun he has set his tabernacle', is this. I ask what the tabernacle of Christ is, and what the dwelling is in which the tabernacle of Christ is placed. The dwelling of Christ's tabernacle is said to be the sun; the tabernacle of Christ I understand to be the Church. And what other sun should I understand than that true light which enlightens every man coming into this world? I see that sun himself, of whom it is said, 'For those who fear the name of the Lord the Sun of righteousness will rise, and healing is in his wings.' In the sun, then, he has set his tabernacle; that is, in the Sun of righteousness he has placed his Church. For the Church is placed in that sun which makes an eternal day, as it is said, 'The Lord will be your eternal light, and God your glory.'"

Pamphilus: Let those too be ashamed who did not hesitate to invent this fiction about him as well, saying that he says the body or flesh of Christ was carried up as far as the sun and left there. For he refutes this, said by others, as not rightly said. But his detractors have shown that they could not understand even this: which things he refutes as wrongly said by others, and which he himself confirms. Then let those too blunt their shamelessness who say that he confesses that the body rises but denies the flesh. Let them stop their curses at last, seeing that he places the flesh of the Word of God, together with God the Word himself, in heaven, where the Word ascended. To these things he joins what concerns the punishments of sinners, and we too join it next to what was said above, since this was the order set out in the list of charges.

… Response to the seventh charge. On the punishments of sinners. (From the second book On First Principles.)

Origen: "I think that, just as in the body an excess of food, and a harmful quality and quantity of food, produce fevers, and fevers of different kinds or durations, according to the measure in which the accumulated intemperance supplies material and kindling for fevers (and this quality of material, gathered from different kinds of intemperance, becomes the cause of a sharper or a longer illness), so the soul, when it has gathered within itself a multitude of evil works and an abundance of sins, will at the fitting time have all that gathering of evils stirred up to punishment and set aflame for penalties: when the mind itself, or the conscience, taking back into its memory by divine power all the things whose signs and forms it imprinted on itself when it sinned, will see set out before its eyes a kind of history of its crimes, of each of the deeds it had done foully or shamefully, or had even committed impiously. Then conscience itself is driven and pricked by its own goads, and becomes its own accuser and witness. And I think that the apostle Paul too thought so, when he says, 'their thoughts accusing or else excusing one another, on the day when God will judge the secrets of men, according to my gospel, through Jesus Christ.'"

Pamphilus: And in what follows he again writes of the punishments of sinners in this way:

Origen: "There are many things hidden from us, which are known only to him who is the physician of our souls. For if, for the health of the body, because of the ills we have gathered through food and drink, we sometimes need the treatment of a harsher and more biting medicine, and sometimes, if the kind of ill demands it, we need the rigour of the knife and the harshness of cutting, and if the measure of the disease has gone beyond even these, fire finally burns out the ill that has been contracted, how much more must we understand that God our physician, wishing to wash away the ills of our souls, which they had gathered from the diversity of sins and crimes, uses penal treatments of this kind, and even brings the punishment of fire on those who have lost the health of the soul?"

Pamphilus: Again, after a little, he added this too:

Origen: "That the punishment said to be inflicted through fire is most necessary, Isaiah teaches. Of Israel he says: 'The Lord will wash away the filth of the sons and daughters of Zion, and will purge the blood from their midst by a spirit of judgment and a spirit of burning'; and of the Chaldeans he says: 'You have coals of fire; you shall sit on them; these will be a help to you.' And elsewhere he says: 'The Lord will sanctify them in burning fire.' And in the prophet Malachi he says: 'The Lord, sitting, will smelt his people like gold and silver; he will smelt and purge them, and will pour out the purified sons of Judah.'"

Pamphilus: These, then, are from the books On First Principles. Countless testimonies to this assertion are scattered through all his books, which we omit for brevity, mentioning only those which, on the sixth psalm, on this very …

(Origen:) "… of the time of punishments, because if they are a little more severe, they at once bring on a swift end of life too. In short, many, if the occasion demands, give up their soul in the very tortures for the confession of piety; but others, already at the very entrance to the crown, deny the faith which they had resolved to confess unto death. And they suffer this not through any weakening of their resolve, but overcome by the excessive and unbearable force of pain. If, then, in this present life the pains of punishment are so unbearable, what must we think will happen then, when the soul will no longer use a thicker garment but will receive it made spiritual by the resurrection, and will surely feel the force of pain the more keenly, the finer the garment is? For I think that, as great as the difference is in this age between being beaten naked and being beaten clothed, as regards feeling the torment (because blows torment a naked body more keenly than a clothed one), so great will be the difference of pain when the human body, having laid aside this garment of thickness, begins to endure torments as if naked."

Pamphilus: I think that these few testimonies brought forward from his books are enough to repel the slander of this charge too, since it is plain that countless such testimonies are contained here and there in his books. Now we will reply in our own words to what they object against him concerning the soul, that is, that he says it was made and exists before the body. He knew that this doctrine about the soul is not held openly or plainly in the Church's preaching; so wherever the word of Scripture suggested to him some occasion, or rather some hint, for discussion, he discussed and examined what occurred to his mind and set it out for readers to judge and test, not defining his opinion as plain doctrine or by the authority of the Scriptures, and often adding this too: "If, however, the discussion we have held about the soul seems to have, or is shown to have, any consistency." In short, in so many and such diverse books of his, no book written specifically On the Soul is found anywhere, as he has On Martyrdom, or On Prayer, or On the Resurrection. He never published a book written specifically on the soul at all; but in various places, as we said above, he discussed the opinions that occurred to him on occasions given by the Scriptures. This ought rather to be a sign of his very great reverence and fear in divine doctrines: that a man of such understanding and such prudence, who was a teacher of the Church and whose sayings were written down in such numbers, did not dare to take on himself the authority to publish a book specifically On the Soul. Without doubt this caution of his shows that he dared to confirm nothing on this matter as plain doctrine. In short, in the book he writes on the Apostle's Epistle to Titus, describing the heretic and mentioning the soul, he says this: