Advent with Origen
Week 2: Fire, sword and light.
At Christmas time two-thousand years ago the Word became flesh and changed history forever. But Origen of Alexandria asked a shocking question: “What profit is it for me if the Word has dwelt in the world and [not in me]?”[1] He loved the Word and knew Christ’s transformative power, but he was right. If Christ is not “born again” in each one of us, his Incarnation two-thousand years ago bears no fruit for us personally. Origen knew that the same Logos who was in the beginning with God and came to dwell in the world comes to dwell in each soul at baptism. This Logos works within the soul, converting her from the world’s allurements, educating and enlightening her, and bringing her into a spousal union with God himself. Later theologians would call this mystical theology and label these three stages as the “purgative, illuminative and unitive” stages of the spiritual life. Origen initiated this spiritual language that would influence the mystical tradition of the Church for centuries to come. [2]
When a soul allows God to dwell in her, he first removes evil and obstacles that can keep her from God. This is the purgative stage, the topic for this meditation. Origen describes this beginning of the soul’s journey with vivid imagery, namely fire, sword, and light. The Logos acts as all three within the soul.
For fire, Origen supplies an extra-biblical saying of Jesus: “Whoever draws near to me, draws near to fire.”[3] While historians finally discovered that this quotation came from the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas,[4] Origen distanced himself from this “gospel” and “all but the four canonical Gospels.”[5] Some scholars say it is likely that Christ did say these words.[6] In any case, the sentiment is beautiful and true, for “God is consuming fire” (Dt. 4:24). He burns away all that is not of him in the soul, and those who draw near to him are purified but not burned. Throughout his works Origen identifies this flammable straw as evil thoughts, shameful deeds, longing after sin, sinful works, vices, and unruly passions.[7] The fire of God’s Word consumes these things “as gold is tested by fire” (1 Pet. 1:7). It purifies the soul and paves the way for her to love God above all else.
The Word is also “living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword” (Heb. 4:11). Connecting this to fire, de Lubac comments that for Origen, the two symbols of the Logos—fire and the sword—are two symbols of the same divine love.[8] Jesus did not “come to bring peace, but the sword” (Mt. 10:34), and He brings this combative sword to the soul He loves when He attacks the corruption of sin.[9] Indeed, this is loving because God longs for souls to flourish and dwell with Him. Lies bring misery, but the Word comes as Wisdom and Truth to release souls from these lies that fetter their freedom.[10]
In his Homilies on Joshua, Origen elaborates on this sword and battle imagery for the Logos. Here he sees the warrior Joshua (“Jesus” in Greek) as a type of Christ Jesus, who would overthrow evil forever. The main battlefield for the true Logos is inside every baptized person. Origen paints the imagery: the city of malice, the “proud walls of sin,” are the evil edifices.[11] And it is always Jesus who overcomes evil to establish peace. Considering the enemy’s horses that God instructs Joshua to hamstring, or disable (Josh. 11:6), Origen notes that it is harder to hamstring (disable) our own passions. He mourns that by “lust, petulance or pride, and fickleness . . . the unhappy soul . . . is borne and carried into great dangers . . . contrary to our reasoning.”[12] Luckily, God himself gives the sword and bridle to subdue these “haughty necks,” and the sword is the Word of God. This is a mighty sword that is able to pull down “the diabolical structures that the Devil has built in the human soul.”[13] Recognizing that some find the Old Testament injunction to “strike with the edge of the sword until not one of them is left” severe (cf. Josh 8:22), Origen turns to a spiritual interpretation: “We ought not to leave any of those demons deeply within, whose dwelling place is chaos and who rule in the abyss.”[14] After slaying them, individuals can still give demons life by continuing to sin. But God wants the demons annihilated so that his followers may sin no more.
By claiming the Old Testament battles as symbolic Christian victories, Origen set the stage for future spirituality. De Lubac claims that “it is to Origen that we owe [the] name ‘spiritual combat’” for a pattern of asceticism, spiritual growth, and daily battles.[15] Further, the import of these victories, accomplished by the Word within each soul, benefits the whole Church. Origen trumpets, “The Church will conquer the enemy common to everyone.”[16] When Christ wins a battle for one soul, this victory has “worldwide dimensions” by sharing the conquest within the treasury of the Church.[17]
Annihilating the enemy within one soul is only possible because of Christ’s Paschal Mystery. Origen proposes a unique image that the devil was crucified with Christ on the cross. Connecting the cross to the tree of “knowledge of good and evil” (Gen. 2:9), he states that “both the good Christ and the evil devil hung, the evil that it might perish but the good that it might live by power.”[18] So Christ defeats and crucifies the devil when He brings life through His tree. Having defeated all evil on the cross, Christ perpetuates His redemptive drama through history when each soul allows Him to drive the demonic powers out of his or her midst. Origen explains, “His taking away sin is still going on” in each individual.[19] Crouzel concludes that Origen is “the theologian par excellence of free will: each one must freely associate himself with [Christ’s] triumph.”[20] This acceptance of Christ’s triumph connects us with Origen’s question which opened this reflection. Christ’s first coming avails a soul not at all if she herself does not freely accept Him. Only her personal assimilation of Christ’s victory allows Him to conquer evil in her flesh.
Moving from the battle to the light, we note that Christ’s victory also drives out spiritual darkness. When Christ bore our sins on the cross, He “took upon Himself” our darkness “that by His power He might destroy our death and remove the darkness which is in our soul.”[21] Origen masterfully weaves this redemptive theme together with John’s Prologue: the Logos came into the world as light in the darkness, “and the darkness could not overtake it” (Jn. 1:5). He imagines the darkness pursuing the light when the powers of evil attacked Christ in His Passion and when they plot against “the sons of light” to “drive light away from men.”[22] But darkness has no chance against the Light of Christ. It is too slow for the sharp and swift Logos, and if it does catch up, it finds a snare. For when darkness comes “near the light, [it is] brought to an end.”[23] Thus, the Logos accomplishes all purgation that the soul needs to advance towards illumination and union with Him.
Does Christ’s coming profit me for salvation? Let us bravely invite him to dwell within us this Advent season. Let him come in power and victory—with fire, sword, and light—to drive out every stain of sin and conquer any demons of temptation that we have allowed to coexist within. Nothing opposed to Christ can survive in the soul when she opens her heart to the victory that He has already won.
[1] Origen, Homilies on Jeremiah, trans. John Clark Smith, in The Fathers of the Church, vol. 97, ed. Thomas P. Halton, et al. (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University Press, 1998), IX.1.2; cf. Origen, Homilies on Genesis, trans. Ronald E. Heine, in The Fathers of the Church, vol. 71, ed. Hermigild Dressler, O.F.M., et al. (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University Press, 1981), III.7.
[2] Henri Crouzel, Origen, trans. A.S. Worrall (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1989), 121, 43; Jean Daniélou, Origen, trans. Walter Mitchell (London: Sheed and Ward, 1955), 305.
[3] Origen, Homilies on Joshua, trans. Barbara J. Bruce, in The Fathers of the Church, vol. 105, ed. Cynthia White (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University, 2002), IV:3.
[4] Thomas P. Halton et al. add a note about this quote: “The discovery of papyri near Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in 1945 finally determined the source for this saying: the Gospel of Thomas. In Homilies on Jeremiah XX:3, Origen gave the full quotation but questioned its authority. . . In Homilies on Luke 1, Origen condemned the Gospel of Thomas, but he evidently felt that saying had a ring of authenticity.” Footnote in Homilies on Joshua, 56 (n30).
[5] “The Church has four Gospels. Heretics have many. . . . One gospel called According to Thomas. . . . But in all these questions we approve of nothing but what the Church approves of, namely only four canonical Gospels.” Origen, Homilies on Luke, trans. Joseph T. Lienhard, S.J., in The Fathers of the Church, vol. 94, ed. Thomas P. Halton, et al. (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University Press, 1996), I.2.
[6] See footnote in Homilies on Joshua, 56 (n30), citing Joachim Jeremias, Unknown Sayings of Jesus, trans. Reginald H. Fuller (London: SPCK, 1957), 54-56; and Robert M. Grant and David Nowel Freedman, The Secret Sayings of Jesus (Garden City: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1960), 91.
[7] Origen, On First Principles (Peri Archon), trans. G.W. Butterworth (Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press, 2013), I.1.2; Origen, Homilies on Ezekiel 1.3 qtd. in Hans Urs von Balthasar, Origen, Spirit and Fire: A Thematic Anthology of His Writings, trans. Robert J. Daly (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1984), #901.
[8] Henri de Lubac, History and Spirit: The Understanding of Scripture According to Origen, trans Anne Englund Nash (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2007), 270.
[9] Origen, Contra Celsum, trans. Henry Chadwick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), III.68.
[10] Origen, Commentary on the Gospel of John, trans. Roberts-Donaldson (Ante-Nicene Fathers), accessed May 6, 2021, http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/origen.html. II.4.
[11] Origen, Homilies on Joshua V.2.
[12] Ibid., XV.3.
[13] Ibid., XIII.4.
[14] Ibid., VIII.7.
[15] de Lubac, 214.
[19] Origen, Commentary on the Gospel of John I.37.
[20] Crouzel, 195.
[21] Origen, Commentary on the Gospel of John II.21.
[22] Ibid., II.22.
[23] Ibid.
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