believer; the mystical illuminates features in the whole work of Redemption (Hom. in Lev. i. §§ 4 f., ii. § 4; de Princ. iv. 12, 13, 22). There is then manifold instruction for all believers in the precise statement, the definition of practical duties, the revelation of the divine plan, which the teacher must endeavour to bring out in his examination of the text. Origen steadily kept this object in view.
It is easy to point out serious errors in detail in his interpretation of Scripture. On these there is no need to dwell. His main defect and the real source of his minor faults was his lack of true historic feeling. For him prophecy ceased to have any vital connexion with the trials and struggles of a people of God; and psalms (e.g. Ps. l.) were no longer the voice of a believer's deepest personal experience. In this Origen presents, though in a modified form, many of the characteristic defects of Rabbinic interpretation. He may have been directly influenced by the masters of Jewish exegesis. Just as they claimed for Abraham the complete fulfilment of the Law, and made the patriarchs perfect types of legal righteousness, Origen refused to see in the Pentateuch any signs of inferior religious knowledge or attainment. He deemed the patriarchs and prophets as wise by God's gifts as the apostles (in Joh. vi. 3); and the deepest mysteries of Christian revelation could be directly illustrated from their lives and words (ib. ii. 28), though sometimes he seems to feel the difficulties of this position (ib. xiii. 46; cf. c. Cels. vii. 4 ff.).
While this grave defect is distinctly acknowledged, it must be remembered that Origen had a special work to do, and did it. In his time powerful schools of Christian speculation disparaged the O.T. or rejected it. Christian masters had not yet been able to vindicate it from the Jews and for themselves. This task Origen accomplished. From his day the O.T. has been a part of our Christian heritage, and he fixed rightly the general spirit in which it is to be received. The O.T., he says, is always new to Christians who understand and expound it spiritually and in an evangelic sense, new not in time but in interpretation (Hom. in Num. ix. § 4; cf. c. Cels. ii. 4). If in pressing this he was led to exaggeration, the error may be pardoned in regard to the greatness of the service.
His method was fixed and consistent. He systematized what was before tentative and inconstant (cf. Redepenning, de Princ. pp. 56 f.). He laid down, once for all, broad outlines of interpretation; and mystical meanings were not arbitrarily devised to meet particular emergencies. The influence of his views is a sufficient testimony to their power. It is not too much to say that the medieval interpretation of Scripture in the West was inspired by Origen; and through secondary channels these medieval comments have passed into our own literature.
He was indeed right in principle. "He felt that there was something more than a mere form in the Bible; he felt that 'the words of God' must have an eternal significance, for all that comes into relation with God is eternal; he felt that there is a true development and a real growth in the elements of divine revelation, if not in divine communication, yet in human apprehension; he felt the power and the glory of the spirit of Scripture bursting forth from every part." No labour was too great to bestow upon the text in which priceless treasures were enshrined; no hope too lofty for the interpreter to cherish.
ORIGEN AS A THEOLOGIAN.—Origen was essentially the theologian of an age of transition. His writings present principles, ruling ideas, tendencies, but are not fitted to supply materials for a system of formulated dogmas, after the type of later confessions. Every endeavour to arrange his opinions according to the schemes of the 16th cent. can only issue in a misunderstanding of their general scope and proportion. The whole structure of his treatise On First Principles, e.g., presents a connected view of his intellectual apprehension of Christianity, widely different from medieval and modern expositions of the faith. Starting from a clear and deeply interesting exposition of what were acknowledged to be the doctrines held generally by the church, corresponding in the main with the Apostles' Creed (de Princ. Praef.), Origen endeavours to determine, by the help of Scripture and reason, subjects yet unexplored. But his inquiries and results cannot be judged fairly when taken out of their connexion with contemporary thought. The book contains very little technical teaching. It is silent as to the sacraments; it gives no theory of the atonement, no discussion of justification; yet deals with problems of thought and life which lie behind these subjects.
Origen found himself face to face with powerful schools which, within and without the church, maintained antagonistic views on man, the world, and God, in their extremest forms. There was the false realism, which found expression in Montanism; the false idealism, which spread widely in the many forms of Gnosticism. Here the Creator was degraded into a secondary place; there God Himself was lost in His works. Some represented men as inherently good or bad from their birth; others swept away moral distinctions of action. Origen sought to maintain two great truths: the unity of all creation, as answering to the thought of a Creator infinitely good and infinitely just; and the power of moral determination in rational beings. The treatment and apprehension of these truths are modified by the actual fact of sin. The power of moral determination has issued in present disorder; the divine unity of creation has to be realized hereafter.
(1) Finite Beings, Creation, Man, Spirits.—Origen endeavours to pass from the outward to the inward, from the temporal to the eternal. He thinks that we shall best realize the fact of creation, according to our present powers, by supposing a vast succession of orders, one springing out of another (de Princ. ii. 1, 3). The present order, which began and will end in time, must be one only in the succession of corresponding orders (ib. iii. 5, 3). "In the beginning," then, he writes, "when God created what He was pleased to create, that is rational natures, He had no other cause of creation beside Himself, that is His own goodness" (ib. ii. 9, 6; cf. iv. 35). This
