Tuesday, June 13, 2023

Processional Justification in Origen, Homily 9 on Jeremiah

In homily 9 on Jeremiah, Origen tied processional justification with a Christological issue, viz., the eternal generation of the Son by the Father:

 

(4) They have turned back to the wrongdoings of their forefathers. I was saying that the Devil also was our first father before God became our Father—if indeed the Devil is not also our father now. We will support this form the Catholic Epistle of John in which it is written, Everyone who does sin is begotten of the Devil. If everyone who sins is begotten of the Devil, just as many times as we sin we are begotten of the Devil. Thus he is miserable who is always born from the Devil, just as again he who is begotten by God is always blessed. For I will not say that the righteous man is begotten just once by God, but that he is always begotten in each good act in which God begets the righteous man. If then I set before you, with respect to the Savior, that the Father has not begotten the Son and then severed him from his generation, but always begets him, I will also present something similar for the righteous man.

 

(5) But let us consider who is our Savior: a reflection of glory. The reflection of glory has not been begotten just once and no longer begotten. But just as the light is an agent of reflection, in such a way the reflection of the glory of God is begotten. Our Savior is the wisdom of God. But the wisdom is the reflection of everlasting light. If then the Savior is always begotten—because of this he also says, Before the hills he begets me, (and not, “Before all the hills he has begotten me,” but Before all the hills he begets me)—and the Savior is always begotten by the Father, and likewise also if you have the spirit of adoption, God always begets you in him according to each work, according to each thought. And may one so begotten always be a begotten son of God in Christ Jesus, to whom is the glory and the power for the ages of ages. Amen. (Origen, Homilies on Jeremiah and 1 Kings 28 [trans. John Clark Smith; The Fathers of the Church 97; Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1998], 92-93, emphasis in bold added)