Of course, neither of these parties, when extremely developed, could lay any claim to Christianity. But the world of that day had in it Ebionites and Gnostics of every degree and every changing hue of error. They were not unrepresented in the very bosom of the Church. Pious Christians might be found who, strong in filial feeling to their Jewish great-grandfathers, would see in the records of the old covenant nothing but a most interesting family history, with delightfully long pedigrees and a great deal of strong language about the glory and dignity of the descendants of Israel. On the other hand, equally pious Christians, and among them a great majority, perhaps, of the Gentile converts, would consider it an extravagant compliment to read in the house of God the sayings and doings of such a very unworthy set of people as the Hebrews. And the remarkable fact would be, that both these sets of worthy Christians would begin with the same fundamental error, though arriving at precisely opposite conclusions. That the Old Testament had a literal meaning, and no other was the starting-point of both Ebionite and Gnostic The former concluded, "therefore let us honor it, for we are a divine race;" the latter, "therefore let us reject it, for what are the Jews to us?"
It would not require many sentences to prove, if our object in these notes were proof of any sort, that Origen's leading idea in his Scripture exposition is to look for the mystical sense. His very name is a synonym for allegory, and he is perhaps as often blamed for it as praised. But even blame, when outspoken and honest, is better than feeble excuse; and and unfortunately not a few of the great Alexandrian's critics have undertaken to excuse him for having such a leaning to allegory. The Neo-Platonists, they say, dealt largely in myths, and allegorized everything; somebody allegorized Homer just about that time. Now Origen was a Platonist. We might answer, that Origen was above all a Christian, and knew but very little of Plato till he was thirty years old; and that the Greek allegories [{495}] were invented by a more decorous generation for the purpose of veiling the grossness of the popular mythology; whereas the Christian allegory, as introduced by St Paul, or indeed by our Blessed Saviour, was a spiritual and mysterious application of real facts. Others, again, offer the excuse that Philo had allegorized very much, and Origen admired Philo. This is saying that allegory was very usual at Alexandria, as we have said ourselves when speaking of St. Clement. But it is not saying why allegory was kept up so warmly in the school of the Catechisms, or what was the radical cause that made its being kept up there a necessity for the well-being of the Church. This we have endeavored to state in the foregoing remarks.
When Origen, then, announces his grand principle of Scripture commentary, in the fourth book of the De Principiis, we may be excused if we see in it the statement of an important canon, whereby to understand much that he has written. He says, "Wherefore, to those who are convinced that the sacred books are not the utterances of man, but were written and made over to us by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, by the will of God the Father of all through Jesus Christ, we will endeavor to point out how they are to read them, keeping the rules of the divine and apostolic Church of Jesus Christ." This is the key-note of all his exposition, and derives its significance from the state of opinions among those for whom he wrote; and a dispassionate application of it to such passages as seem questionable or gratuitous in his writings, will explain many a difficulty, and show how clearly he apprehended the work he had to do. If the Old Testament be really the word of the Holy Ghost, as, he says, all true Christians believe, then nothing in it can be trivial, nothing useless, nothing false. This he insists upon over and over again. And, descending more to particulars, he states these three celebrated rules of interpretation, which may be called, with their development, his contribution to Scripture exposition. They are so plainly aimed at Ebionites and Gnostics, that we need merely to state them to show the connection.
His first rule regards the old Law. The Law, he says, being abrogated by Jesus Christ, the precepts and ordinances that are purely legal are no longer to be taken and acted up to literally, but only in their mystical sense. This seems rudimentary and evident nowadays; but at that period it greatly needed to be clearly stated and enforced.
His second rule is about the history and prophecy relating to Jew or Gentile that is found in the Old Testament. The Ebionite who kissed the Pentateuch, and the Gnostic who tore it up, were both foolish because both ignorant. These historic and prophetic details were undoubtedly true in their letter; but their chief use to the Christian Church, and the main object the Holy Spirit had in giving them to us, was the mystical meaning that lies hidden under the letter. Thus the earthly Pharaoh, the earthly Jerusalem, Babylon, or Egypt, are chiefly of importance to the Church from the fact that they are the allegories of heavenly truths.
Origen's third canon of scriptural exposition is this: "Whatever in holy Scripture seems trivial, useless, or false," (the Gnostics could not or would not see that parabolic narratives are most unjustly called false,) "is by no means to be rejected, but its presence in the divine record is to be explained by the fact that the divine Author had a deeper and more important meaning in it than appears from the letter. Such portions, therefore, must be taken and applied in a spiritual and mystical sense, in which sense chiefly they were dictated by Almighty God."
These three rules look simple now; they were all-important and not so simple then. It was by means of them, [{496}] and in the spirit which they indicate, that the great catechist led his hearers by the hand through the flowery paths of God's word, and in his own easy, simple, earnest style, so different from that of the rhetoricians, showed them the true use of the Old Testament. We hope it is not a fanciful idea, but it has struck us that, the difference of circumstances considered, there are few writers so like each other in their handling of holy Scripture as Origen and St. John of the Cross. Both treat of deep truths, and in a phraseology that sounds uncommon--the one because his hearers were intellectual Greeks, the other because he is professedly treating of the very highest points of the spiritual life. Both use holy Scripture in a fashion that is absolutely startling to those who are accustomed to rationalistic Protestantism, or to what may be called the domestic wife-and-children interpretation of the Evangelicals. Both bring forward, in the most unhesitating manner, the mystic sense of the inspired words to prove or illustrate their point, and both mix up with their more abstruse disquisitions a large amount of practical matter in the very plainest words. From communion with both of them we rise full of a new sense of the presence and nearness of the Spirit of God, and of reverence for the minutest details of his Word. Finally, both the Greek father and the Spanish mystic interpret the ceremonial prescriptions, the history, the allusions to physical nature, and the incidents of domestic life that occur in the Old Testament, as if all these, however important in their letter, had a far deeper and more interesting signification addressed to the spiritual sense of the spiritual Christian.
To illustrate Origen's principles of Scripture interpretation by extracts from his works would exceed our present limits, however interesting and satisfactory the task might be. Neither have we space to notice his celebrated division of the meaning of the text into literal, mystical, and moral, a division he was the first to insist upon formally. To answer the objections of critics against both his principles and his alleged practice would also be a distinct task of great length. We must content ourselves with having briefly sketched and indicated his spirit. There are grave theological controversies too, as is well known, connected with his name; and on these we have had no thought of entering. The purpose of this and the preceding articles has not been dogmatical, but rather biographical. We have attempted to set forth on the one hand the personal character of this great man; on the other, the external circumstances by which that character was influenced, and through which it exercised influence on others.