In dealing with one of many enigmatic passages in John, Origen develops a subtle understanding of glory. Here he recognizes that the Bible uses the Greek word for glory, doxa, in a distinctive way. This means that a piece of his mental furniture, the Platonic differentiation between doxa, understood as “opinion,” and epistêmê, understood as rationally founded “science,” is not helpful for interpretation. By tracing the word’s usage in the Septuagint, he retrieves the notion of glory implied in the Hebrew word, kabod. This glory is the actual presence of God. In such glory we, like Moses, participate by the personal transformation that occurs through the contemplation of God. This process demonstrates how, far from applying philosophical categories foreign to the text, Origen lets the text speak to him so as to modify the assumptions he brings to it. In addition, in his discussion of divinization and his recognition of the inadequacy of human language, Origen addresses topics that were elaborated in the following century by the Cappadocians and remain central to the Greek theological tradition.
The translation is from Origène, Commentaire sur S. Jean, vol. 5, ed. Cécile Blanc = SC 385, Paris, Cerf, 1992, pp. 324–44.
Text
Therefore after [Judas’s] departure, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will immediately glorify him” (Jn 13:31–2).
XXV After the glories due to signs and wonders and the glory of the transfiguration, the beginning of the Son of Man’s glorification was Judas’s departure, once Satan had entered into him, from the place where Jesus was. 319 That is why the Lord said: “Now the Son of Man has been glorified.” In addition, the Savior said: “If I be lifted up from the earth, I shall draw all to me” (Jn 12:32), to signify “by what sort of death he was to glorify God” (Jn 21:19); indeed, even in dying, he glorified God.
Therefore, at the beginning of the plan that would culminate in Jesus’ death, namely when Judas, after the morsel of bread, had departed to plot against Jesus, he said: “Now the Son of Man has been glorified.” 321 In addition, since the Messiah could not be glorified without the Father’s being glorified in him, “and God had been glorified in him” is linked to “now the Son of Man has been glorified.”
Nonetheless, the glory of the death on behalf of humankind does not belong to the only-begotten Word, Wisdom, and Truth which, by nature, cannot die, or to any of the other diviner aspects of Jesus. It belongs rather to the man who was the Son of Man, born of the seed of David according to the flesh (see Rom. 1:3). 323 For the same reason that, earlier, he said: “Now you seek to kill me, a man who has spoken the truth to you” (Jn 8:40), he says, in the passage we are now examining, “Now the Son of Man has been glorified.” 324 This is the one who, I suppose, God also highly exalted, the one who “became obedient to death, even death on a cross” (Phil. 2:8–9). The Word who was in the beginning with God, the Word who was God (Jn 1:1), could not be further exalted.
The exaltation of the Son of Man, which occurred when he glorified God in his own death, is this: he was no longer anything but the Word, that is, utterly identical with it. 326 If indeed “he who joins himself to the Lord is one spirit” (1 Cor. 6:17), so that it is no longer possible to say with regard to him and the Spirit “They are two,” how much more reason do we have to say that the humanity of Jesus has become one with the Word – so that he has been exalted who “did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped” (Phil. 2:6) – while the Word has remained in its own exalted place or has been restored to it, when God the Word, being a man, is back “with God” (see Jn 1:1)? 327 In the death of Jesus, glorifying God, have been accomplished the words “Having despoiled the principalities and powers, he has made them a public spectacle, having triumphed over them on the tree” (Col. 2:15) and “Having reconciled through the blood of his cross what is on earth and what is in heaven” (Col. 1:20) * * * In all this, in fact, the Son of Man was glorified, and God was glorified in him.
XXVI Since the one who has been glorified has been glorified by someone, in the words “Now the Son of Man has been glorified” you search for the one by whom he was glorified, and the same goes for “and God has been glorified in him.” 329 For the sake of terminological clarity, let us first attend carefully to the words “Now the Son of Man has been glorified”; second to “and God has been glorified in him”; third to the statement linked to them, “If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself”; and fourth to “and will immediately glorify him.”330 Unless one should say that this last phrase should be considered as part of the conclusion of the conditional proposition, so that the conditional proposition would begin with “God has been glorified in him” and conclude with “God will also glorify him in himself and will immediately glorify him.”
We must necessarily attend to the word “glory,” which is not used neutrally here as among some Greeks, who define “glory” as praise accorded by the many. The word clearly has a different meaning in this passage in Exodus: 331 “And the glory of the Lord filled the tent. And Moses could not enter the tent of witness, because the cloud had overshadowed it and the tent was filled with the glory of the Lord” (Ex. 40:34–5). 332 In Third Kingdoms [ = 1 Kings] also we have the following description: “And it happened as the priest left the sanctuary, that the cloud filled the house of the Lord, 333 and the priests could not stand at their service before the cloud, because the glory of the Lord filled the house” (1 Kings 8:10–11). 334 Also, in relation to Moses’ glory it says in Exodus:
As Moses came down from the mountain and the two tablets of the covenant were in Moses’s hands, as he was coming down from the mountain Moses did not know that the appearance of the skin of his face had been glorified as he was speaking with him. And Aaron and all the children of Israel saw Moses, and the appearance of the skin of his face was glorified, and they were afraid to come near him.
(Ex. 34:29–30)
XXVII This meaning of “glory” is clear in the Gospel according to Luke when it says:
And it came to pass while he was praying the appearance of his face was altered, and his clothing was changed to dazzling white. And, see, two men were conversing with him, who were Moses and Elijah. Appearing in glory, they spoke of the departure he was about to accomplish in Jerusalem.
(Lk. 9:29–31)
See also how Paul employs “glory,” when he says, for instance:
If the ministry of death, graven in letters on stones, took place in glory, so that the children of Israel could not bear to fix their attention on Moses’s face because of the exceeding glory of his face, even though that glory was temporary, how shall the ministry of the Spirit not be in glory? If indeed there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, how much more will the ministry of justification exceed in glory? Indeed what was glorified then was not glorified as far as regards the exceeding glory; if indeed what is temporary was manifested by glory, how much more will that which is permanent be manifested by glory?
(2 Cor. 3:7–11)
and where he says:
All of us, with unveiled face reflect the glory of the Lord; we are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord.
(2 Cor. 3:18)
Shortly thereafter he says :
If our gospel is hidden, it is hidden from those who are being destroyed, in whom the god of this world has blinded the intelligence of unbelievers, so that the enlightenment of the gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, may not radiate to them.
(2 Cor. 4:3–4)
Again, a little farther down, he says:
Because it is the God who said “Let light shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts for the illumination of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
(2 Cor. 4:6)
The interpretation of the gospel text before us does not now require a precise interpretation of each of these passages. Suffice it to say that to the extent that, following a bodily interpretation, a more divine manifestation occurred in the tent and in the temple when they were completed and in the face of Moses when he was conversing with the divine nature, to that same extent, following an elevated interpretation, one might refer to things that are known accurately concerning God, things that are contemplated by a mind rendered capable by extreme purity, as “a vision of the glory of God.” The mind that has been purified and has surpassed all material things, so as to be certain of the contemplation of God, is divinized by those things that it contemplates. 339 It must be said that this is what it means for the face to be glorified of one who contemplates God, converses with him, and passes time with him in such contemplation, so that when it is said figuratively that Moses’s face was glorified, it means that his mind was divinized.
Accordingly, also, the Apostle said: “All of us, with unveiled face reflect the glory of the Lord; we are transformed into the same image.” 341 Just as the brightness of the nocturnal luminary is dimmed at the rising of the sun, so is the glory on Moses by that in Christ. 342 Indeed the superiority in Christ, who, knowing the Father, was glorified by him, bore no comparison with the things known by Moses that glorified the face of his soul. 343 Therefore it is said that the glory of Moses is temporary in comparison to the exceeding glory of Christ.
XXVIII After dealing with the passages cited as briefly as possible, let us proceed to “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him.” 345 Knowing the Father, then, he is glorified by that very knowledge, which is the greatest good and one that he brings to a perfect knowledge, that by which the Son knows the Father. 346 I suppose that, because he knows himself, something not far from knowing the Father, he is glorified by this knowledge of himself, 347 Whether the knowledge of the universe completes the magnitude of his glory, since he knows hidden things as well as things that are openly seen, you may investigate if this is what it means for him to be wisdom-in-itself or if, in the case of the so-called Son-in-himself of Man, glorification comes from being united to wisdom. Nonetheless all this glory, by which the Son of Man has been glorified, is a glorification bestowed by the Father as a gift. 348 There are many things that contribute to the whole glory of the man, but the one par excellence is God, who is not simply glorified by being known by the Son, but is glorified in the Son. 349 Concerning this matter, even if it is daring and beyond our abilities for us to scrutinize such a saying, we must nonetheless dare to suggest a potential topic for investigation. 350 I seek to know if it is possible for God to be glorified in some way besides being glorified, as I have explained, in the Son. Is God glorified to a greater extent in himself, because, in gazing on himself, he is pleased with an unspeakable satisfaction, contentment, and joy at his knowledge of himself and contemplation of himself – greater than contemplation in the Son, as one must understand and say such things about God – as he takes pleasure and rejoices in himself? 351 I employ these terms not as if they could properly be applied to God, but for lack of what might be termed unspeakable words (see 2 Cor. 12:4), which he alone can, along with his only-begotten Son, speak or think about himself in the proper sense.
Since we have come to the topic of God’s glorification in Christ, we should investigate as a corollary how he would be glorified in the Holy Spirit and in all those beings in whom the glory of the Lord has appeared or will appear. 353 In this regard I suppose that the Son is the radiance of the whole glory of God, according to what Paul said: “Being the radiance of his glory” (Heb. 1:3), but that partial radiances in anticipation of this radiance of the whole glory come to the rest of the rational creation, but I do not think than any being can contain the entire radiance of God’s glory except his Son. 354 Now therefore, since the plan involving the passion of the Son of Man on behalf of all did not take place apart from God (see Heb. 2:9), “therefore God has highly exalted him” (Phil. 2:9). It says not only that “the Son of Man has been glorified,” but “indeed God has been glorified in him” and thus one could explain this passage.
It is written: “No one has known the Son, except the Father” (Mt. 11:27) and it is said: “Blessed are you, Simon bar Jonah, for flesh and blood have not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven” (Mt. 16:17). 356 Therefore, in so far as the Son is not known by the world – “He was in the world, and the world was made by him, but the world did not know him” (Jn 1:10) – he has not yet been glorified in the world, and his not being glorified in the world does not discredit the one who has not been glorified, but it discredits the world that does not glorify him. 357 When the heavenly Father revealed the knowledge of Jesus to those from the world to whom he did reveal it, the Son of Man was glorified in those who knew him (see Jn 17:10) and by the glory by which he was glorified in those who knew him, he procured glory for those who knew him, those indeed who with unveiled face reflect the glory of the Lord, and are transformed into the same image (see 2 Cor. 3:18).
XXIX 358 See “from” what “glory” and “to” what “glory” (2 Cor. 3:18), from the glory of the one who was glorified to the glory of those glorifying. 359 This is why, when Jesus came to the plan at the conclusion of which he was going to rise upon the world and, once known, to be glorified in the glory of those who were glorifying him, he said: “Now the Son of Man has been glorified,” and since “No one knows the Father except the Son, and him to whom the Son reveals him” (Mt. 11:27), and since the Son was coming by plan to reveal the Father, therefore, “and God has been glorified in him”. Compare “and God has been glorified in him” to “He who has seen me has seen the Father who sent me” (Jn 14:9, 12:49). The Father who begot him is contemplated in the Word, who is God (Jn 1:1) and the image of the invisible God (see Col. 1:15), since he who beholds the image of the invisible God is immediately able to behold the prototype of the image of God.
Still one may thus comprehend more clearly what is expressed in this place: just as, through certain persons, God’s name is blasphemed among the gentiles (see Rom. 2:24; Isa. 52:5; and Ez. 36:20), so, through the saints, among whom men see the most brilliant good works, the name of the Father who is in heaven (see Mt. 5:16) is glorified. 361 In whom, then, has this name been so glorified as in Jesus, since he did not commit sin nor was guile found in his mouth (see 1 Pet. 2:22), nor did he know sin (1 Cor. 5:21)? 362 Therefore, being such, the Son has been glorified, and the Father has been glorified in him. 363 But if God has been glorified in him, the Father will give him in return something greater than what the Son of Man has achieved, greater indeed for the one who has glorified God – for the lesser glorifying the one far greater, as in “The Father who sent me is greater than me” (Jn 14:28) – namely the glorification of the Son of Man in God, the lesser in the greater. 364 For the glory that is in the Son when the Father glorifies him far exceeds that in the Father when the Father is glorified in the Son. 365 And it was fitting that the greater, responding to the glory with which the Son had glorified him, should graciously allow the Son to glorify him in himself, so that the Son might be glorified in God. And since such a great thing should not keep waiting – I speak of the Son’s being glorified in God – he added “and will immediately glorify him.”
We are not ignorant that these observations are far inferior to the implications of the subject being examined – when God reveals himself and his word is present to manifest the glory of God – and the Father who bestows the knowledge of the whole glory of God on him on whom he can bestow it. 367 Thus, as briefly as possible, and in a manner far beneath the value of the words, we still confess our thanks to God, even for these expositions, which are far better than we deserve.
