(3) After these things, then, Isaac dug a third well and “called the
name of that place Breadth saying:
Now the Lord has given us room and has increased us on the earth.”
For truly now Isaac is given room and his name is increased on all the
earth since he has fulfilled for us the knowledge of the Trinity. For then “God
was known” only “in Judea” and his name was named in Israel, but now “their
sound has gone forth into all the earth, and their words into the ends of the
world.” For the servants of Isaac going throughout the whole world have dug
wells and have shown “the living water” to all, “baptizing all the nations in
the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” For “the earth
is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.”
But also each of us who serves the word of God digs wells and seeks
“living water,” from which he may renew his hearers. If, therefore, I too shall
begin to discuss the words of the ancients and to seek in them a spiritual
meaning, if I shall have attempted to remove the veil of the Law and to show
that the things which have been written are “allegorical,” I am, indeed,
digging wells. But immediately the friends of the letter will stir up malicious
charges against me and will lie in ambush for me. They will contrive
hostilities immediately and persecutions, denying that the truth can stand
except upon earth.
But if we are servants of Isaac, let us love “wells of living water”
and springs. Let us withdraw from those who are contentious and contrive
malicious charges and leave them in the earth which they love. But let us never
cease digging “wells of living water.” And by discussing now indeed things that
are old, and again things that are new let us become like that scribe in the
Gospel, of whom the Lord said: “He brings forth from his treasures new things
and old.”
But also if anyone who has a secular education should now hear me
preaching, he is perhaps saying: “The things you are saying belong to us, and
is the learning of our science. This very eloquence with which you discuss and
teach is ours.” And, like some Philistine, he stirs up quarrels with me saying:
“You dug a well in my soil.” And he will seem right to himself to lay claim to
those things which are of his own land.
But I shall respond to these things that all the earth has waters, but
he who is a Philistine and “minds earthly things” does not know how to find
water in all the earth. He does not know how to find rational understanding and
the image of God in every soul. He does not know how to discover that there can
be faith, piety, and religion in everything. What does it benefit you to have
learning and not know how to use it? What do you benefit to have a word and not
know how to speak?
This is particularly the work of the servants of Isaac, who dig “wells
of living water” in every land, that is they proclaim “the word of God” to
every soul and find fruit. Indeed do you wish to see how many wells one servant
of Isaac dug in the land of foreigners? Behold Paul, who “replenished the
Gospel of God from Jerusalem round about as far as to Illyricum.” But for each
of those wells he suffered the persecutions of the Philistines. Hear him saying
himself: “How many things happened to me at Iconium, at Lystra,” how many at
Ephesus? How many times was he beaten; how many times was he stoned; how many
times did he fight with beasts? But he endured until he might go out to “the
breadth,” that is until he might establish Churches in the breadth of the whole
earth.
So, therefore, the wells which Abraham dug, that is the Scriptures of
the Old Testament, have been filled with earth by the Philistines, or evil
teachers, Scribes and Pharisees, or even hostile powers; and their veins have
been stopped up lest they provide a drink for these who are of Abraham. For
that people cannot drink from the Scriptures, but suffers a “thirst for the
word of God,” until Isaac should come and open them that his servants may
drink. Thanks, therefore, to Christ, the son of Abraham—of whom it is written:
“The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of
Abraham”—who has come and opened the wells for us. For he opened them for those
men who said: “Was not our heart burning in us when he opened to us the
Scriptures?” He opened, therefore, these wells and “called them,” the text
says, “as his father Abraham had called them.” For he did not change the names
of the wells.
And it is astonishing that Moses is called Moses even among us and
each of the prophets is addressed by his own name. For Christ did not change
the names in them, but the understanding. And he changes it there that now
later we might not pay attention “to Jewish fables” and “endless genealogies,”
because “they turn their hearing away from the truth indeed, but are turned to
fables.”
He opened, therefore, the wells and taught us, that we might not seek
God in some one place, but might know that “sacrifice is offered to his name in
every land.” For it is now that time “when the true worshippers worship the
Father” neither in Jerusalem nor on mount Garizim, “but in spirit and truth.”
God, therefore, dwells neither in a place nor in a land, but he dwells in the
heart. And if you are seeking the place of God, a pure heart is his place. For
he says that he will dwell in this place when he says through the prophet:
“ ‘I will dwell in them and walk in them; and they shall be my people and
I will be their God,’ says the Lord.”
Consider, therefore, that perhaps even in the soul of each of us there
is “a well of living water,” there is a kind of heavenly perception and latent
image of God, and the Philistines, that is hostile powers, have filled this
well with earth. With what kind of earth? With carnal perceptions and earthly
thoughts, and for that reason “we have borne the image of the earthly.” At that
time, therefore, when we were bearing “the image of the earthly,” the
Philistines filled our wells. But now, since our Isaac has come, let us receive
his advent and dig our wells. Let us cast the earth from them. Let us purge
them from all filth and from all muddy and earthly thoughts and let us discover
in them that “living water” which the Lord mentions: “He who believes in me,
from within him shall flow rivers of living water.” Behold how great the Lord’s
liberality is: the Philistines filled our wells and hindered our small and
trifling veins of water, and in place of these, springs and rivers are restored
to us. (Origen, Homilies on Genesis 13.3, in Homilies on Genesis
and Exodus [trans. Ronald E. Heine; The Fathers of the Church 71; Washington,
D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1982], 188-92)
