We may presume that the editors of the Philocalia preserved this letter because it affirmed the value of the Greek intellectual tradition – and of Greek philosophy in particular – while subordinating it to the Bible and cautioning against its misuse. The striking interpretation of Exodus which Origen used to make this point was to have a great history. Mediated by Augustine in his hermeneutical treatise On Christian Doctrine, “despoiling the Egyptians” would provide medieval theologians with a rationale for intellectual openness. The recipient is traditionally identified as Gregory Thaumaturgus, also identified as the author of the Address to Origen. If so, the letter must have been written during the 240s. At any rate, the discussion of persons going down to Egypt from Palestine makes it seem likely that it is from Origen’s Caesarean period. Origen makes an uncharacteristic error in section 3 (see n. 3).
The translation is from Grégoire le Thaumaturge, Remerciement á Origène suivi de La Lettre d’Origène à Grégoire, ed. and tr. by Henri Crouzel = SC 148, Paris, Cerf, 1969, pp. 186–94.
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When and to whom the learning that comes from philosophy is useful for the interpretation of Holy Scripture, according to Scriptural testimony.
Greetings in God, my most estimable and venerable son Gregory, from Origen.
As you know, an innate capacity for understanding can, with disciplined practice, achieve as far as possible what one may call its purpose, the thing for which the exercise is intended. Your natural ability can, therefore, make you an accomplished Roman lawyer or a Greek philosopher of one of the reputable schools. Nonetheless, I have desired that with all the power of your innate ability you would apply yourself, ultimately, to Christianity. I have, for this reason, prayed that you would accept effectively those things from the philosophy of the Greeks that can serve as a general education or introduction for Christianity and those things from geometry and astronomy that are useful for the interpretation of the Holy Scriptures. For just as the servants of philosophers say concerning geometry, music, grammar, rhetoric and geometry that they are adjuncts to philosophy, we say this very thing about philosophy itself with regard to Christianity.
And indeed Scripture hints at this principle in Exodus, where, with God himself the person speaking, the children of Israel are told to ask their neighbors and cohabitants for vessels of silver and gold and for clothing (Ex. 11:2 and 12:35). Having in this way despoiled the Egyptians, they may find material among the things they have received for the preparation of divine worship. For, from the spoil taken from the Egyptians the children of Israel prepared the appurtenances of the holy of holies, the ark with its covering, the cherubim, the mercy-seat, and the golden vessel in which was stored the manna, the bread of angels. These articles appear to have been made from the finest of the Egyptians’ gold. From gold of second quality they made the wide solid gold candelabrum, close to the interior veil; and the golden table, on which was placed the bread of offering; and between them the golden incense altar. They used any gold of third or fourth quality, if available, for the construction of the holy vessels. The silver of the Egyptians became other things. For, while sojourning in Egypt, the children of Israel had an abundant quantity of such precious materials for the worship of God to show for their experience there. From the clothing of the Egyptians it seems that they had such things as they needed for what Scripture describes as embroidered works. Assisted by God’s wisdom, tailors stitched the articles of clothing together to serve as veils and tapestries for the interior and exterior.
Why did I need to make this time-consuming digression, demonstrating that things taken from the Egyptians were useful to the children of Israel, things which the Egyptians themselves did not use appropriately, but the Hebrews, through the wisdom of God, used for divine worship?
Scripture recognizes, nonetheless, that there was a bad outcome for some who descended from the land of the children of Israel into Egypt, hinting that there will be a bad outcome for some who dwell among the Egyptians, that is, among the learned disciplines of the world, after being nurtured in God’s law and Israelite worship of him. Thus Hadad the Idumaean did not fabricate idols in the land of Israel until, after fleeing the wise Solomon, he descended into Egypt and became a part of Pharaoh’s household by marrying his wife’s sister, so that he brought forth and reared children among the children of Pharaoh. Therefore, when he went back up into the land of Israel, he did so in such a way as to tear asunder the people of God and have them say to the golden calf, “These are your gods, O Israel, which led you up out of the land of Egypt” (Ex. 32:4 and 8; 1 Kings 12:28). I could speak from knowledge gained by experience that few are those who have taken anything useful from Egypt and have come out from there and have prepared objects for the worship of God, but many have followed the example of Hadad the Idumaean. These are those who have used some Greek ingenuity to beget heretical ideas and have, so to speak, prepared golden calves in Bethel, which means “house of God.” It seems to me that through these things the Word hints that they have set up their own idol beside the Scriptures, where the Word of God dwells, so that they are symbolically referred to as Bethel. The Word says that another idol was set up in Dan. Dan is in the frontier district, close to the regions of the gentiles, as is evident from the book of Joshua the son of Nun (Jos. 19:47). Thus certain idols are close to gentile districts, the very ones which the brothers of Hadad constructed, as we have explained.
You, then, my lord and son, apply yourself to the reading of the divine Scriptures, but do apply yourself. We need great application when we are reading divine things, so that we may not be precipitous in saying or understanding anything concerning them. Also, applying yourself to divine reading with the intention to believe and to please God, knock at what is closed in it, and it will be opened to you by the doorkeeper, concerning whom Jesus said, “To him the doorkeeper opens” (Jn 10:3). As you apply yourself to divine reading, seek correctly and with unshakable faith in God the sense of the divine Scriptures hidden from the many. Do not be content with knocking and seeking, for prayer is most necessary for understanding divine matters. It was to exhort us to this very thing that the Savior did not only say, “Knock, and it shall be opened to you” and “Seek, and you shall find,” but also, “Ask, and it shall be given to you” (Mt. 7:7; Lk. 11:9). I have dared to say these things out of my fatherly love for you. If my boldness was good or not, God alone would know, and his Christ, and he who participates in the Spirit of God and in the Spirit of Christ. May you be such a participant, and may you always grow in such participation, so that you may not only say, “We have become participants with Christ” (Heb. 3:14), but, “We have become participants with God.”
