Reflecting and Responding
Origen of Alexandria
The Quest for Perpetual Communion with God
If we examine the Scriptures we will find . . . that there are forty-two stages in the departure of the children of Israel from Egypt; and, further, the coming of our Lord into this world is traced through forty-two generations.
COMMENTARY ON THE SONG OF SONGS
ONE OF THE EARLIEST PEOPLE TO EXEMPLIFY the right ordering of our love for God is Origen of Alexandria (185-254). Early in his life Origen established himself as a man of virtue, and he grew into a theologian of consequence who wrote on everything from first principles to hermeneutics to faith in God. His use of Scripture and advances in biblical hermeneutics were original and legendary. Combining the philosophy of Philo and the rabbinical exegesis of Hillel with his own Christian faith in God, Origen led a fresh advance of the Alexandrian school of biblical exegesis.
Origen left no question unanswered and was a tireless apologist for the Christian faith. He faced numerous challenges, including two theological investigations and a falling out with church authorities, but he persevered in making one of the most original and creative contributions in all of Christian spirituality.
Origen worked continuously to uncover the ordering principle of all reality. In this quest he identified the ultimate goal of human life as intimate and continual communion with God. It is not our will that should dominate life but our will participating with God’s will in doing God’s will on earth.
Forty-Two Stages
Throughout his writings Origen communicates a clear and compelling desire that Christians begin the process of ascent. He saw the spiritual life as progressing in stages, a perspective evident throughout his writings but especially strong in three important works: On Prayer, Commentary on the Song of Songs, and Homily 27 on Numbers.
In one telling scriptural interpretation, he compares the forty-two camps of the children of Israel in the wilderness (Num 33) with the forty-two stations we experience on our way to intimacy with God. Just as the children of Israel struggled to make their way to the Promised Land, we must strive to know God if we are to progress in our spiritual life and recognize the unfolding of our eternal destiny. “These are the stages,” Numbers 33:1 begins, “by which the Israelites went out of the land of Egypt.” Origen weaves this historical account together with christological meaning, noting that in Matthew 1:1-18, the coming of our Lord and Savior is traced through forty-two generations.
These stages, Origen says, also represent the soul’s journey from earth to heaven. As we move from one stage to the next, we gain understanding and cultivate new virtues that strengthen us for the rest of the journey. Each stage also involves certain temptations. Yielding to these temptations disorients us from the path, but conquering them takes us ever closer to God.
Origen highlights what we learn at each stage. For example, in the Egyptian wilderness of our life with God, we need knowledge of God’s law, steadfast faith and the fruits of works well pleasing to God. We need the virtue that’s cultivated by destroying pride, lust, unbridled desire and folly—this is what enables us to get out of Egypt.
Every virtue is acquired through training and hard work. And virtues lead us eventually to Helim, where twelve springs of water and seventy palm trees provide refreshment (Num 33:9-11). Origen’s point is that if we endure temptation and cultivate virtue, we will enter pleasant places. But the end of the journey and the perfection of all things does not lie in these delights. The soul’s arrival at Helim indicates a level of spiritual maturity that can discern the meaning of various spirits. By this point it has mastered avarice, pride, anger, boasting, fear, inconstancy and timidity, and it recognizes that daily life is simply a stage for expressing its various spiritual states.
When we finally arrive at our end, we can then turn around and encourage those coming after us, much as Plato advocates in his allegory of the cave. When we have finished our journey and successfully negotiated all its temptations, we are ready for the final passage from earth to heaven. At this point we approach the river of God and enter the stream of his wisdom.
Ultimately, the forty-two stages identify how to begin, how to make progress and how to complete our life with God. They teach us a way to pattern our own spiritual life.
Three Levels
Although no summary can provide a complete account of how an individual thinks, general patterns emerge that assist us in our understanding. In completing his approach to God, Origen uses the neo-Platonic structure of the three levels to demonstrate how every aspect of our life with God is interrelated. As a result, he offers one of the earliest forms of the right ordering of our loves in order to know God.
Table 1.1. Origen’s Ordering
Level
I
II
III
Order
Body
Soul
Spirit
Book of the Bible
Proverbs
Ecclesiastes
Song of Solomon
Principle of Judgment
Ethics
Physics
Apatheia
Goal
Purgation
Illumination
Union
Kind of Life
Active
Active-Contemplative
Contemplative
On the lowest level, we find God through our five senses. Our focus is the body, and the book of Scripture that orients us here is Proverbs. We read Scripture literally and historically at this level, and we receive moral knowledge that produces ethical understanding if we are committed to a deeper life with God.
On the second level, we find God through Scripture. The type of knowledge we receive is enlightened knowledge, and the human faculty that captures this knowledge is the soul, which includes the capacities found in our memory, intelligence and will. The key book of Scripture at this level is Ecclesiastes. Our reading is guided by grammatical interpretation, and our understanding is based on the natural sciences. As we study physical processes, we gain insight into the ways of God. The life that results is one of enlightenment based on a combination of active love and contemplative reflection.
On the highest level, we find God through perpetual communion with him. The knowledge we receive here is “celestial knowledge,” which we attain through the faculty of the spirit. Song of Solomon read on the spiritual level is of greatest importance, and our learning is guided by philosophy. Our spiritual goal is to attain “apatheia,” a passionless state completely absorbed in the Trinity and no longer controlled by desire. The goal at this level is to enter into union with God through contemplation, and the life that results is one of pure love and active charity.
When we order our lives properly, Origen tells us, our soul develops a proper love of God as we move from the tangible realities of the physical universe to the intangible realities of the spiritual realm. The greatest challenge we face is not lack of belief but the enormous gravity of our egocentric desires. The weight of these desires creates a force on human nature that is virtually impossible to escape. The only means of rescue is found in turning to God, beginning to imitate Christ and starting to progress from the lowest level of reality to the ultimate reality of perpetual divine communion.
Origen’s farthest-reaching influence is the way he illustrates how our destiny is tied to the power of our desire. Unlike later Greek-influenced Christian thinkers, he does not see the life of faith as one of strict contemplation of the mysteries of God. For Origen, Christian faith begins and ends with our imitation of Jesus and the contemplation of God that results from this imitation. By imitating Christ, we ascend to a higher level than seeking to satisfy our temporal desires. But temporal desires are seductive. If we are not freed of their gravity, the divine love that should rule us becomes disordered and we attempt to attain it in ways that do not honor God.
Origen also emphasizes a forgotten truth: we need each other. The community of faith strengthens and sustains our life commitments. Origen teaches that the mystical quest is always rooted to the life and teachings of the church. The church is not a tether that shackles the believer, but rather the body and bride of Christ living in dynamic relationship with the prevailing culture.
This flies in the face of contemporary spirituality, in which the dominant path in the twenty-first century is individualistic. Origen asserts that although faith always begins in us, it grows and develops through interaction with a broader community. There are no “community-less” Christians. Whether we find it in a group of two or three or a worldwide ministry of millions, we need a community to nurture and sustain us.
REFLECTING AND RESPONDING
Origen intrigues me endlessly. His learning was so very creative; one of the first efforts at a systematic theology was his de principiis. His literary output was enormous. While many of his works are lost to us, what we do have is sufficient to make us realize that he was a master of the written word. His popularity as a teacher and preacher was legendary; Mamaea, the mother of Emperor Alexander Severus, summoned him to Antioch to instruct her. And more.
Origin reminds me that we are never finished in the spiritual life. This life with God is always growing, always deepening, always thickening. How critical this is for the contemporary scene. Today, with few exceptions, we have no serious theology of spiritual growth. Many people are obsessively focused on heaven when they die, and most have simply given up on any substantial character formation into Christlikeness. But here is someone who keeps telling us that there is more: more love, more power, more insight, more joy, more peace. We can grow. We can learn. We can make progress forward. In short, Origen is inviting us into an ongoing, breathless experience of God’s expansive—and ever-expanding—love.
I also note—and this is what I really love about Origen—his emphasis on intimate and continual communion with God. Here is someone way back in the third century telling me that the ultimate goal of life is to fall in love with Jesus over and over again. Nothing is more important. Nothing is more central. Nothing is more critical.
The key question in all of this, of course, is, How? How do we grow? How do we enter an intimate, ongoing communion with God? The answer is simple: with practice. We undertake experiments of everyday life in which we are learning to be with God. And the stuff of our day-to-day experience is the place where these experiments go on. This with-God life takes no time, yet it occupies all our time. When we go to work, we go to work with-God. At work we are learning how to bless those who curse us, how to weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice, how our very presence can be a joy to others. And the experiments are numerous and varied: “Today, Lord, teach me somehow to bless every person I meet. Show me the preciousness of each individual. Fill my mind with creative new ideas and show me how to break the horns of cruel dilemmas.” The same is true for times at home with family and time with neighbors and friends. You get the idea, I am sure.
Dear Lord, in these next days would you help us learn from Origen about the right ordering of love? We live on the order of the body so much of the time. It isn’t the distortions of human sexuality so much. No, for us it’s the ease with which we view others based upon superficialities that have little to do with who they truly are. Or how much we worry about the way we come across to people. In our best moments, Lord, we really do want to live more fully on Origen’s third level, the level of spirit.
May divine love become more real to us today . . . and every day. May we want to experience divine love more. May we want to seek out divine love more. May we want to love you more. Please, Lord, transform our “wanting.” We would like to grow in love with you as well as fall in love with you. Show us the way. Amen.