Fathers of the Church
2 primary works • 12 total works
Book 71
Book 83
In 2012 Dr. Marina Marin Pradel, an archivist at the Bayerische Stattsbibliotek in Munich, discovered that a thick 12th-century Byzantine manuscript, Codex Monacensis Graecus 314, contained twenty-nine of Origen's Homilies on the Psalms, hitherto considered lost. Lorenzo Perrone of the University of Bologna, an internationally respected scholar of Origen, vouched for the identification and immediately began work on the scholarly edition that appeared in 2015 as the thirteenth volume of Origen's works in the distinguished Griechische Christlichen Schrifsteller series. In an introductory essay Perrone provided proof that the homilies are genuine and demonstrated that they are, astonishingly, his last known work. Live transcripts, these collection homilies constitute our largest collection of actual Christian preaching from the pre-Constantinian period.
In these homilies, the final expression of his mature thought, Origen displays, more fully than elsewhere, his understanding of the church and of deification as the goal of Christian life. They also give precious insights into his understanding of the incarnation and of human nature. They are the earliest example of early Christian interpretation of the Psalms, works at the heart of Christian spirituality. Historians of biblical interpretation will find in them the largest body of Old Testament interpretation surviving in his own words, not filtered through ancient translations into Latin that often failed to convey his intense philological acumen. Among other things, they give us new insights into the life of a third-century Greco-Roman metropolis, into Christian/Jewish relations, and into Christian worship.
This translation, using the GCS as its basis, seeks to convey, as faithfully as possible, Origen's own categories of thought. An introduction and notes relate the homilies to the theology and principles of interpretation in Origen's larger work and to that work's intellectual context and legacy.
In these homilies, the final expression of his mature thought, Origen displays, more fully than elsewhere, his understanding of the church and of deification as the goal of Christian life. They also give precious insights into his understanding of the incarnation and of human nature. They are the earliest example of early Christian interpretation of the Psalms, works at the heart of Christian spirituality. Historians of biblical interpretation will find in them the largest body of Old Testament interpretation surviving in his own words, not filtered through ancient translations into Latin that often failed to convey his intense philological acumen. Among other things, they give us new insights into the life of a third-century Greco-Roman metropolis, into Christian/Jewish relations, and into Christian worship.
This translation, using the GCS as its basis, seeks to convey, as faithfully as possible, Origen's own categories of thought. An introduction and notes relate the homilies to the theology and principles of interpretation in Origen's larger work and to that work's intellectual context and legacy.
This volume completes the first English translation of Rufinus's Latin version of Origen of Alexandria's Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans and contains Origen's detailed exegesis of Romans 6:12-16:27. Origen's much neglected Commentary, which stands out in splendid isolation at the fountainhead of Greek and Latin exegesis, is now completely accessible to English readers.
In Books 6-10 Origen carries through to completion his programme, begun in Books 1-5, of defending human freedom and of opposing the natural predestinarian doctrine of the sects founded by the Gnostic heretics Marcion, Valentinus, and Basilides. These schools relied heavily on texts from Paul, interpreted in isolation from the rest of Scripture, not only to deny free will but to support the doctrine that salvation is determined by the nature one receives at birth, whether good or evil. In contrast Origen clarifies passages in Romans by citations from Paul's other letters, from the Gospels, and from the Old Testament. He attempts to construct a coherent and unified ""biblical theology."" Origen views human beings as chosen or rejected by God deservedly; everyone has it within his own power whether he becomes a servant of God or of sin, a vessel of wrath or of mercy.
Whether one sympathises with Origen's interpretations or finds them infuriating, it is difficult not to admire his concordance-like mind at work as he tackles the apostle Paul's greatest epistle. Readers will find interesting and thought-provoking discussions of all the important theological themes and terms of Romans: faith, hope, love, works, justification, election, law, Israel, Gentiles, Church, sin, death, flesh, body, glory, etc. The importance of these discussions is magnified by the fact that they stand alone in their detail and breadth and stem from the Church's most important theologian of the third century. Moreover, because Origen's work was productive in subsequent centuries in Rufinus's Latin translation, the Commentary is of outstanding importance for the history of New Testament exegesis.
In Books 6-10 Origen carries through to completion his programme, begun in Books 1-5, of defending human freedom and of opposing the natural predestinarian doctrine of the sects founded by the Gnostic heretics Marcion, Valentinus, and Basilides. These schools relied heavily on texts from Paul, interpreted in isolation from the rest of Scripture, not only to deny free will but to support the doctrine that salvation is determined by the nature one receives at birth, whether good or evil. In contrast Origen clarifies passages in Romans by citations from Paul's other letters, from the Gospels, and from the Old Testament. He attempts to construct a coherent and unified ""biblical theology."" Origen views human beings as chosen or rejected by God deservedly; everyone has it within his own power whether he becomes a servant of God or of sin, a vessel of wrath or of mercy.
Whether one sympathises with Origen's interpretations or finds them infuriating, it is difficult not to admire his concordance-like mind at work as he tackles the apostle Paul's greatest epistle. Readers will find interesting and thought-provoking discussions of all the important theological themes and terms of Romans: faith, hope, love, works, justification, election, law, Israel, Gentiles, Church, sin, death, flesh, body, glory, etc. The importance of these discussions is magnified by the fact that they stand alone in their detail and breadth and stem from the Church's most important theologian of the third century. Moreover, because Origen's work was productive in subsequent centuries in Rufinus's Latin translation, the Commentary is of outstanding importance for the history of New Testament exegesis.
v. 94
Origen of Alexandria (born circa AD 185) is one of the most influential of the Church fathers, and ranks among the most prolific writers and teachers in the history of the Church. He preached on most of the bible, and his homilies influenced Christian writers and theologians for centuries after his death. Origen's approach to the Bible was to analyse passages word by word, and this is reflected in his homilies, which regularly begin with a literal reading of the text. For Origen, the key to the meaning of a word in the Bible is often the use of the same word elsewhere in Scripture. He assumed that each word had a meaning that is both profound and relevant to the reader, for the Holy Spirit is never trite and what the Holy Spirit says must always touch the listener. There are 39 of Origen's homilies on the Gospel of Luke which survive in Jerome's Latin translation. Here, they are translated into English for the first time, along with a selection of more significant fragments of his commentaries on Luke. The first 39 homilies treat chapters one through four of Luke's Gospel; the remaining six treat passages from the 10th to the 20th chapters.
Origen preached these homilies in Caesarea, perhaps around the year 234 or 240, to a congregation of catechumens and faithful. Most of the homilies are short, discussing, on the average, about six verses of the Gospel, and would have lasted between eight and twelve minutes. Origen's homilies are the only extant patristic writing on Luke's Gospel before Ambrose's "Exposition on Luke", written circa 390. Homilies 1 to 20 also constitute the only extant commentary from the pre-Nicene Church on either Infancy Narrative.
Origen preached these homilies in Caesarea, perhaps around the year 234 or 240, to a congregation of catechumens and faithful. Most of the homilies are short, discussing, on the average, about six verses of the Gospel, and would have lasted between eight and twelve minutes. Origen's homilies are the only extant patristic writing on Luke's Gospel before Ambrose's "Exposition on Luke", written circa 390. Homilies 1 to 20 also constitute the only extant commentary from the pre-Nicene Church on either Infancy Narrative.
In his General Audience of May 2, 2007, Pope Benedict XVI praised Origen for his 'primordial role' in the history of lectio divina, the prayerful reading of Scripture. He explained that Origen approaches Scripture reading not as 'mere study' but as the pathway to knowing Christ and 'falling in love with him'. Origen's nine extant homilies on Judges exemplify this approach. In them, Origen calls his audience to participate in a loving relationship with Christ through interaction with Scripture. Delivered sometime between 238 and 248, these homilies expound on themes extracted from Judges 2-7. Some of the homilies focus generally on God's redemption of Israel through judges after each cycle of sin, enslavement, and repentance, while others stress that victory belongs to God alone through events such as the defeat of the Midianites by Gideon's meager army of 300 men, Gideon's test with the fleece, and the murder of the Philistine general Sisera by the woman Jael. The homilies brim with hope in Christ's ultimate victory over sin and death, a hope that is specific to the individual believer but accessible only within the Church. Origen applies his allegorical method of Scriptural interpretation to these passages, sometimes drawing faith-enriching meaning from the literal (somatic) sense as well as from one or both of the two figurative (psychic and pneumatic) senses. Using both allegory and typology, Origen shows his audience God's abundant mercy and grace, the power of Scripture to assist in the battle against sin and the promotion of virtue, and the church leader's duty to walk his flock through the transforming terrain of Scripture toward likeness to and union with Christ. Largely because of early controversies over Origen's legacy, these homilies are extant only in Rufinus' fourth-century Latin translation, but his ability to capture Origen's meaning and spirit is well documented. This is the first-ever English translation of Origen's homilies on Judges.
This is a translation of the complete homilies of Origen of Alexandria on the the book of Joshua. With the saga of the Israelites entering and possessing their promised land, Origen unfolds the story of the Christian life from baptism to resurrection. He exhorts his hearers to persevere in their own struggles to overcome the enemies of their souls and obtain their own inheritence. As he exhorted, others wrote down his words, words he had asked the people to pray for and the Spirit to supply. Most of the original writings in Greek were lost during the centuries when Origen was offically defamed. What we have today is the Latin translation by Rufinus, the basis of the translations in this volume. In the introduction Bruce discusses and affirms the reliability of the Latin text, and briefly looks at Origen's minstry, his concept of the nature of Scripture and his method of interpretation.
v. 97
Souls existing before their bodies, witches summoning dead prophets from the underworld, the return of the damned - and the Devil himself - to God in the end, and many other theological speculations surprise the reader of Origen's "Homilies on Jeremiah and I Kings 28". Some of these very theses of the third-century priest from Alexandria, Egypt, were condemned in the Second Council of Constantinople. But plumbing the mystical depths of the Prophecy of Jeremiah is the central point of the homilies. Presented in this volume are the remains of 22 homilies and a collection of fragments delivered by Origen around AD240. The original texts of the homilies on Jeremiah have not come down to us completely: two of the homilies survive only in a Latin translation of St. Jerome. The homily on I Kings 28, while not a part of the homilies on Jeremiah, deals with the Witch of Endor and has been added to this volume in virtue of its own inherent interest. In this collection, Origen seeks understanding of the significance of the hostility of the Chosen People towards the Prophet Jeremiah before their captivity in Babylon.
Origen in many ways identified with the great prophet and thought of Jeremiah as a type for Christ in the Hebrew Scriptures. Origen realized that Jeremiah came at a crucial time in the history of Israel, the time of captivity, and he views this event and the events around it as pregnant with meaning for the people of his time. Watching a master grapple with admittedly difficult, obscure texts and give them compelling, forceful delivery must have impressed Origen's congregation. Readers will find it no less engaging to read his homilies now and experience some of that exhilaration of hearing a true expert highlight every subtlety of the pericope and make plain what once was obscure.
Origen in many ways identified with the great prophet and thought of Jeremiah as a type for Christ in the Hebrew Scriptures. Origen realized that Jeremiah came at a crucial time in the history of Israel, the time of captivity, and he views this event and the events around it as pregnant with meaning for the people of his time. Watching a master grapple with admittedly difficult, obscure texts and give them compelling, forceful delivery must have impressed Origen's congregation. Readers will find it no less engaging to read his homilies now and experience some of that exhilaration of hearing a true expert highlight every subtlety of the pericope and make plain what once was obscure.
v. 103
Origen of Alexandria's "Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans" is the oldest extant commentary on Romans. This volume presents a translation of the commentary from Latin. Origen's exegesis predates the controversy between Augustine and Pelagius by 170 years and opposes Gnostic interpretations of Paul which is one of its important characteristics. Above all Origen defends the Church against the "doctrine of natures" - the belief that all human beings are born with unalterable natures, either good or evil, and thus bound for either salvation or damnation, and that their conduct in life cannot alter their destiny. He refutes this teaching, showing that freedom of will abides in rational beings. Provoked by Marcion's repudiation of the Old Testament, Origen emphasizes the harmony between Gospel and Law. He highlights as one of Paul's main themes in Romans the transfer of religion from Judaism to Christianity, from the letter to the spirit, in terms both of salvation history and of the transformation of the individual. Origen claims that the key to unlocking Romans is understanding Paul's use of homonyms with divergent meanings.
Orosius wrote the first Christian Universal History, "Historiarum adversus paganos libri septem." It has been thought to be a supplement to the "City of God," "Civitate Dei," especially the third book, in which St. Augustine attempts to prove that the Roman Empire suffered as many disasters before as after Christianity was received. It was a common argument among the pagans that the abandonment of the worship of their deities had led to the general break-up of the Roman Empire and all its attendant evils. St. Augustine was annoyed by the persistence of this argument and hoped that a history of all the known people of antiquity, with the fundamental idea in mind that God determines the destinies of nations, would put an end to that pagan thinking.
St. Augustine called upon his young friend Orosius to do this work. Added interest is attached to Orosius' History by reason of his think link with St. Augustine. The great St. Augustine, in his declining years, requested the youthful and far less gifted Orosius to perform a most important task.
From the point of view of the modern historian and his scientific method, Orosius' work does not rate very high. The work completed in 418 shows sign of haste. In addition to Holy Scripture and the chronicle of Eusebius revised by St. Jerome, Orosius used Livy, Eutropius, Caesar, Suetonius, Florus, and Justin as sources. All the calamities suffered by the various peoples are described often with annoying monotony. Yet the work is valuable as history, containing as it does contemporary information on the period after 278 A.D. It was used widely during the Middle Ages, and the existence today of nearly 200 manuscript copies is evidence of its past popularity.
This volume contains what remains of Books 13-32 of Origen's Commentary on the Gospel according to John, and thus completes the publication of the first full English translation of this work that stands as the beginning of Christian scriptural exegesis. Ronald Heine introduces his translation with a discussion of the times and circumstances within which the commentary was composed. He also provides a survey of the major theological questions with which the commentary is concerned. These include Origen's thought on the nature of God, the person and work of Christ, his relation to the Father and to the created order, his teaching on the Holy Spirit, the Resurrection, and eschatology, and his ideas on the devil.
Beginning with the conversation between Christ and the Samaritan woman at the well and ending with Christ's discourse to his disciples at the Last Supper, the commentary displays Origen's attention to the literal meaning of the passages but moves beyond them to try to grasp their spiritual significance, providing us with the opportunity to examine Origen's mystical thought. Origen also refutes the Gnostic reading of the Gospel presented by Heracleon, but this polemic is subordinate to his own investigation of the theological, philosophical, historical, and etymological questions raised by the Gospel.
Because it treats many of the same passages of the Gospel of St. John for which St. Augustine provides a commentary in The Fathers of the Church, volume 88, this volume provides a worthy companion to it and invites a comparison of the thoughts of these two great exegetes upon what both regarded as the greatest of the Gospels.
Beginning with the conversation between Christ and the Samaritan woman at the well and ending with Christ's discourse to his disciples at the Last Supper, the commentary displays Origen's attention to the literal meaning of the passages but moves beyond them to try to grasp their spiritual significance, providing us with the opportunity to examine Origen's mystical thought. Origen also refutes the Gnostic reading of the Gospel presented by Heracleon, but this polemic is subordinate to his own investigation of the theological, philosophical, historical, and etymological questions raised by the Gospel.
Because it treats many of the same passages of the Gospel of St. John for which St. Augustine provides a commentary in The Fathers of the Church, volume 88, this volume provides a worthy companion to it and invites a comparison of the thoughts of these two great exegetes upon what both regarded as the greatest of the Gospels.
Hans Urs von Balthasar places Origen of Alexandria "in rank . . . beside Augustine and Thomas" in "importance for the history of Christian thought," explaining that his "brilliance" has captivated theologians throughout history (Spirit and Fire, 1984, 1). This brilliance shines forth in his nine extant homilies on Isaiah, in which he employs his theology of the Trinity and Christ to exhort his audience to play their crucial role in salvation history.
Origen reads Isaiah's vision of the Lord and two seraphim in Isaiah 6 allegorically as representing the Trinity, and this theme runs throughout the nine homilies. His representation of the seraphim as the Son and Holy Spirit around the throne of the Father brought early accusations that Origen was a proto-Arian subordinationist, followed by a pointed condemnation by Emperor Justinian in 553. These homilies, originally delivered between 245 and 248, are extant only in a fourth-century Latin translation. Though St. Jerome, likely because of these controversies, does not identify himself as the Latin translator, the evidence overwhelmingly points to his pen, and his reliability in conveying Origen's authentic meaning is well documented.
If one sets aside the questionable charges of subordinationism, these homilies, expounding on passages from Judges 6-10, come alive with Origen's legacy of presenting Christ as the central figure of the soul's ascent to God. Reading allegorically the two seraphim to be Jesus and the Holy Spirit around the Father's throne, Origen draws a picture of the Trinity as a tightly knit whole in which the Son and the Holy Spirit eternally sing the Trisagion ("Holy, holy, holy") to each other and the Father about the divine truths of God's nature, allowing the part of their song that conveys the "middle things" of salvation history to be heard by creation. The "second seraph" is the Son, or Jesus, who descends holding a hot coal, or Scripture, from the altar of the throne, with which he cleanses Isaiah's lips, or the believer's soul. Origen employs his signature exegetical method of allegory and typology through the lens of the threefold meaning of Scripture to emphasize to his hearers that Christ is the deliverer, the content, and the reward of the healing Word. He repeatedly assures them that those who submit to Scripture will enter into salvation history's cycle of cleansing from sin, growth in virtue, and ever-deepening knowledge of God. As a result, they will become like Christ and thus will be prepared to join the Trinity for all eternity at the heavenly wedding feast.
Origen reads Isaiah's vision of the Lord and two seraphim in Isaiah 6 allegorically as representing the Trinity, and this theme runs throughout the nine homilies. His representation of the seraphim as the Son and Holy Spirit around the throne of the Father brought early accusations that Origen was a proto-Arian subordinationist, followed by a pointed condemnation by Emperor Justinian in 553. These homilies, originally delivered between 245 and 248, are extant only in a fourth-century Latin translation. Though St. Jerome, likely because of these controversies, does not identify himself as the Latin translator, the evidence overwhelmingly points to his pen, and his reliability in conveying Origen's authentic meaning is well documented.
If one sets aside the questionable charges of subordinationism, these homilies, expounding on passages from Judges 6-10, come alive with Origen's legacy of presenting Christ as the central figure of the soul's ascent to God. Reading allegorically the two seraphim to be Jesus and the Holy Spirit around the Father's throne, Origen draws a picture of the Trinity as a tightly knit whole in which the Son and the Holy Spirit eternally sing the Trisagion ("Holy, holy, holy") to each other and the Father about the divine truths of God's nature, allowing the part of their song that conveys the "middle things" of salvation history to be heard by creation. The "second seraph" is the Son, or Jesus, who descends holding a hot coal, or Scripture, from the altar of the throne, with which he cleanses Isaiah's lips, or the believer's soul. Origen employs his signature exegetical method of allegory and typology through the lens of the threefold meaning of Scripture to emphasize to his hearers that Christ is the deliverer, the content, and the reward of the healing Word. He repeatedly assures them that those who submit to Scripture will enter into salvation history's cycle of cleansing from sin, growth in virtue, and ever-deepening knowledge of God. As a result, they will become like Christ and thus will be prepared to join the Trinity for all eternity at the heavenly wedding feast.