The following excerpts come from:
Origen,
Commentary on the Gospel According to John Books 13-32 (trans. Ronald E.
Heine; The Fathers of the Church 89; Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University
of America Press, 1993)
Book
13:
God
is spirit and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth. (John
4:24)
God’s Essence
(123) Many have produced lengthy discussions
of God and his essence. Some have even said that he has a bodily nature which
is composed of fine particles and is like ether. Others have said that he is
incorporeal and is of a different essence which transcends bodies in dignity
and power. For this reason it is worthwhile for us to see if we have resources
from the divine Scriptures to say something about God’s essence.
(124) In this passage it is stated as
if his essence were spirit, for it says, “God is spirit.” But in the law, it is
stated as if his essence were fire, for it is written, “Our God is a consuming
fire.” In John, however, it is stated as if he were light, for John says, “God
is light, and there is no darkness in him.”
(125) If, then, we should listen to
these words literally, making no inquiry behind the letter, we would have to
say that God is a body. Now, most people are incapable of knowing what absurd
things we encounter when we say this, for few have had an understanding
concerning the nature of bodies, and especially of bodies fitted out by reason
and providence. And yet they assert as a general definition that the body that
provides has the same essence as those that have been provided. The body that
provides is perfect, but nevertheless it resembles that which had been provided.
Those who wish God to be a body accept the absurd conclusions that present themselves
to their argument because they are incapable of opposing those arguments that
reason clearly presents.
(126) But I make the following remarks
as a refutation of those who say there is a fifth nature of bodies in addition to
the [four] elements.
(127) If every material body has a nature
that is without quality in its characteristic disposition, and is mutable and
subject to variation and change in general, and contains whatever qualities the
Creator may wish to bestow on it, God too, if he is material, must be mutable
and subject to variation and change.
(128) Those who hold this view are not
ashamed to say that since God is a body he is also subject to corruption, but
they say his body is spiritual and like ether, especially in the reasoning
capacity of his soul. Furthermore, they say that although God is subject to corruption
he is not corrupted, because no one exists who might corrupt him.
(129) But because we do not see the
consequence if we attribute a body to God when we say, even on the basis of
Scripture, that he is some such body as spirit, or consuming fire, or light,
unless we accept the conclusions that necessarily follow these assertions, we
will disgrace ourselves as foolish and contradicting the obvious. For every
fire is subject to extinction because it needs fuel, and every spirit, even if
we take the spirit to be simple, because it is a body, admits of change to what
is coarser in its own nature.
(130) In these matters, then, we must
either accept so many absurd and blasphemous things about God in preserving the
literal meanings, or, as we also do in many other cases, examine and inquire
what can be meant when it is said that God is spirit, or fire, or light.
(131) First we must say that just as when
we find it written that God has eyes, eyelids, ears, hands, arms, feet, and
even wings, we change what is written into allegory, despising those who bestow
on God a form resembling men, and we do this with good reason, so also must we
act consistently with our practice in the case of the names mentioned above.
Now, this is clear indeed from the following assertion that seems more drastic
to us. “For God is light,” according to John, “and there is no darkness in him.”
(pp. 93-95)
In
the footnote for no. 124, we read that:
In paragraphs 123-30, Origen is
polemicizing generally against the Stoics, and those in the Church, such as
Tertullian (Prax. 7) who held a Stoic view of God. This is quote
explicit in his arguments in Cels. 6.70-71 and 1.21. Cf. also princ.
1.1.1-9. The Stoics spoke of God as ether (Cicero, N.D. I.14-15), and
also as fire (Eusebius, p.e. 15.16, quoting Porphyry). Hey had taken the
concept of ether from Aristotle, his fifth element which was the divine element,
and used it for the celestial fire (See A. A. Long and D. N. Sedley, The
Hellenistic Philosophers I [Cambridge: University Press, 1987], 286-87).
(Ibid., 93 n. 123)
Book
13:
How God is Spirit
(140) It seems to me that something
similar to this is also meant by the statement “God is spirit.” For since we
are made alive by the spirit, so far as ordinary life, and what we usually mean
by the term life, is concerned when the spirit that is in us draws what is
called, in the literal sense, the breath of life, I suppose it has been
understood from this that God who brings us to the true life, is called spirit.
In the Scriptures, the spirit is said to make alive. It is clear that this “making
alive” refers not to ordinary life, but to what which is more divine. For the
letter also kills and produces death, but it is not death in the sense of the separation
of the soul from the body, but death in the sense of the separation of the soul
from God, and from the Lord himself and from the Holy Spirit.
(141) And perhaps [if] we assume that
the person who is deprived of the divine Spirit becomes earthly, but when he has
made himself fit to receive the divine Spirit and has received it, he will be recreated,
and [when he has been renewed] he will be saved, we will also understand the
spirit better in this way in the following statements. “You will take away
their spirit and they will fail,” and “You will send forth your Spirit and they
will be created, and you will renew the face of the earth.”
(142) Now, it would be the same also
if we take the statement, “He breathed into his face the breath of life and man
became a living soul,” in this way, so that we understand the infusion, and the
breath of life, and the life of the soul in a spiritual sense.
(143) And we must suppose that the
statement, “I will dwell in them and walk in them, and I will be their God, and
they shall be my people,” has been written because the previously mentioned power
entrusts itself to the abode in the soul, If I may put it this way, once it has
found the soul of the saint to be a fit dwelling place, as it were.
(144) We need more training, however,
that, having been perfected and [having] our senses exercised [in accordance with]
what the Apostle says, we might become capable of discerning things good and
evil, and true and false, and capable of perceiving things that belong to the
spiritual order, that we may be able more attentively and in a way more worthy
of God to understand how God is light and ire and spirit, so far as this is
humanly possible.
(145) In the Third Book of Kings, the
Spirit of the Lord, who came to Elias, makes the following suggestions concerning
God: “For he said, You shall go out tomorrow and stand before the Lord on the
mountain: behold, the Lord will pass by and a great and strong wind destroying mountains
and crushing rocks before the Lord. The Lord is not in the wind (but in others
we find: “in the spirit of the Lord”). After the wind, an earthquake; the Lord
is not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake, a fire; the Lord is not in
the fire, and after the fire, the sound of a gentle breeze.” Perhaps, indeed,
these words reveal how many must experience the fire of the direct apprehension
of the Lord. This would not be the right time to explain these matters.
(146) But who could more properly
speak to us about who God is than the Son? “For no one has known the Father except
the Son.” We too aspire to know how God is spirit as the Son reveals it, and to
worship God in the spirit that gives life and not in the letter that kills. We want
to honor God in truth and no longer in types, shadows, and examples, even as
the angels do not serve God in examples and shadow of heavenly realities, but
in realities that belong to the spiritual and heavenly order, having a high
priest of the order of Melchisedech as leader of the saving worship for those
who need both the mystical and secret contemplation.
(147) On the statement, “God is spirit,”
Heracleon comments “For his divine nature is undefiled, and pure, and
invisible.”
(148) I doubt, however, that these
words come from Heracelon since he says in addition how God is spirit when he intends
to explain the statement, “those who worship must worship in spirit and in
truth.” His words are: “[This statement is] worthy of one who is worshipped in
a spiritual manner, and not in a fleshy manner. For those who are of the same
nature with the Father are themselves also spirit, and worship in truth and not
in error, as also the Apostle teaches when he says that such worship is rational
service.
(149) But let us consider if it is not
exceedingly impious to say that those who worship God in spirit are of the same
substance with his unbegotten and all-blessed nature. Heracleon himself said previously
that those natures had fallen away when he said the Samaritan woman, who is
of a spiritual nature, had committed fornication.
(150) Now they do not see that everything
[which is of the same substance is] also capable of the same things. And if the
spiritual nature, which is of the same substance [with the divine nature], was
capable of committing fornication, it is dangerous even to imagine [how many]
unholy, godless, and impious things follow for the doctrine of God so far as
they are concerned. (pp. 97-100)
Book
13:
The Pre-eminence of the Father
(151) But we are obedient to the Savior,
who says, “The Father who sent me is greater than I,” and who, for this reason,
did not permit himself to accept the title “good” when it was offered to him, although
it was perfectly legitimate and true. Instead, he graciously offered it up to
the Father, and rebuked the one who wished to praise the Son excessively. This
is why we say the Savior and the Holy Spirit transcend all created beings, not
by comparison, but by their exceeding pre-eminence. The Father exceeds the
Savior as much (or even more) as the Savior himself and the Holy Spirit exceed
the rest. And by “the rest” I do not mean ordinary beings, for how great is the
praise ascribed to him who transcends throne, dominions, principalities, powers,
and every name that is named not only in this world but also in that which is
to come? And in addition to these [what must we] also of holy angels, spirits,
and just souls?
(152) But although the Savior
transcends in his essence, rank, power, divinity (for the Word is living), and
wisdom, beings that are so great and of such antiquity, nevertheless, he is not
comparable with the Father in any way.
(153) For he is an image of the
goodness and brightness, not of God, but of God’s glory and of his eternal
light; and he is a vapor, not of the Father, but of his power; and he is a pure
emanation of God’s almighty glory, and an unspotted mirror of his activity. It
is through this mirror that Paul and Peter and their contemporaries see God,
because he says, “he who has seen me has seen the father who sent me.” (p. 100)
Book
20:
(70) And the Lord who appeared to
Abraham will appear to us, and he will promise to give the land around the high
oak to the spiritual seed of our soul.
(71) Now it is also the duty of him
who has understood the command, “Do the works of Abraham,” to build an altar to
the Lord who appears to us, too, where the high oak is, and afterwards to
depart from the place of the high oak toward the mountain. The mountain is east
of Bethel, which means “house of God.” There he will pitch his tent with Bethel
to the west and Hai to the east. Hai means “feasts.”
(72) And, as such a person advances he
will later build a second altar to the Lord, when he is now able also to call
upon the name of the Lord. And next, the one who will be a child of Abraham
will depart from there, when he has somehow become more suited for command and
understands for how many wars he must prepare himself and he will encamp in the
wilderness.
(73) After these things, he will
experience a trial of famine in the land and will go down into Egypt to sojourn
there, that the famine which prevails upon the land may not also prevail again
him. And he will go down into Egypt with his beautiful wife, having made certain
agreements with her, sot that the Egyptians may treat him well because of her,
and he may acquire in Egypt “sheep, and cattle, and asses, and menservants, and
maidservants, and mules, and camels.”
(74) It would be the task of a wise
man, capable of skillfully plumbing the depths even of Scripture, to speak of
each of these matters, by examining every story related to Abraham in general,
and the entirety of the things written about him, “which things are
allegorical,” [which] we, as spiritual persons, shall attempt to perform spiritually.
(75) But consider if our examination of
the matters related to this passage does not prove that to become a child of
Abraham is the part of a wise man who has also been adorned with every virtue.
(76) For why must we speak of the
amount of wisdom needed to understand the works of Abraham, and of the amount
of power needed to perform them? And what sort of wisdom or power do we need,
except Christ, who is “the power of God and the wisdom of God?”
(77) What has been written, therefore,
is, “If you are children of Abraham, do the works of Abraham,” but subsequently
you might say, in addition, If you are children of Isaac, do the works of
Isaac, and likewise of Jacob, and of each of the holy fathers.
(78) On the contrary, however, each person
who sins is generically a child of the devil, since everyone “who commits sin
has been born of the devil.” But in addition, more specifically, he is a child
as well either of Cain, or Cham, or Chanaan, or Phareo, or Nabuchodonosor, or
some other impious person.
(79) Consequently, you will say that
each person will go to his own fathers when he is delivered from this life, for
we must consider that at the time of departure it is said, not only to Abraham,
but to all men, “But you will go to your fathers.” “With peace,” however, is
not said to all men at this time, but only to the saints and the words, “having
been maintained to a good old age,” are addressed to those who have been
perfected and have enjoyed a long spiritual life, since “understanding for men
is grey hairs,” and “old age is a crown of boasting,” and the spiritual grey
hairs that adorn them are a glory to truly godly elders.
. . .
The Children of Abraham Do the Works of Abraham
(123) But because the statement, “You
do the works of your father,” is added to the works about Abraham, when nothing
has intervened, we ask whether this has been recorded because of the first
command that was given to Abraham.
(124) Now, the first divine word to
him is as follows, “God forth from your land, and from our kindred, and from
your father’s house, and depart into the land that I will show you.”
(125) Therefore, Abraham went forth from
his father’s house, the very thing that those who are reproved for having
incorrectly said, “Abraham is our father” have not done.
(126) For if the children of Abraham
do the works of Abraham, and the first of these works is to go forth from his
own land, and from his own kindred, and from his own father’s house, and to
depart into the land that God shows him, then this is why those to whom this
word is addressed are reproved as not being children of Abraham, for it is
clear that they are reproached because they have not gone forth out of their
father’s house, since they still belong to the wicked father and still do the
works of that father.
(127) Now that we have made these
remarks on this saying, I think we have clearly refuted those who think they
can prove from this source that some are sons of the devil as a result of creation.
(pp. 221-23, 232)
Book
32:
(396) We say, however, at the literal
level, that perhaps before he departed into the so-called heart of the earth,
he restored the one who said to him, “Remember me when you come in your
kingdom,” to the paradise of God. But at the profound level, we not that everywhere
in Scripture the term “today” also applies to the entire present age, as it does
in the words, “This word was spread among the Jews until today<” and “He is
the father of the Moabites until today,” and, “Today if you hear his voice, and
stand not aloof from the Lord.” (p. 416)
