Origen on the heterodox

[Peter Kirby]

Origen's specificity on such points is consistent with the idea that he had read the Antitheses, which would be a powerful source of arguments regarding "the god of the law and the prophets," important to Marcionites but also useful to other biblical demiurgists.

Origen (77.9.1, p. 399):

Whenever you sin, God is estranged from you. But if you change, he says, “I have regretted concerning this people, saying that it is no longer rightfully under Saul, but now to be reigned over by David.” And such a consideration accounts for, “I have changed my mind about anointing Saul as king.” Never make the assumption, then, when you notice the ascription of human mental disturbance to God, that God is truly subject to mental disturbance.

The footnote here:

1 Sm 15.35. In Princ. 4.2.1 Origen mentions this as a text that heretics cite in order to discredit the God of the Old Testament.

[Peter Kirby]

Origen (67.1.4, p. Homilies on the Psalms p. 146) uses the same word (sunagōgē) found on the inscription in Syria regarding the Marcionites:

There are two principal gatherings, that of the devil on the one hand and that of God on the other, and it is impossible for both of these gatherings to be gathered together. When the gathering of the devil is gathered, understand the gathering either of the hostile powers or of the heterodox, concerning whom it is said, “I have hated the gathering of evildoers.”

Marcionites aren't singled out here, and we can't be sure that he isn't conforming this usage to the scriptural references.

[Peter Kirby]

When Origen uses the phrase "good God" (agathos theos) in these homilies, it's as a criticism of Marcionites, either implicit or explicit.

Homilies on the Psalms 77.2.4, p. 309:

Furthermore, our Lord Jesus, proclaimed ahead of time by the prophets, is the Christ Jesus of the Creator of heaven and earth, but not of some higher and good god.

77.2.6, p. 313:

All right, look at what they say: “The creator is savage, the creator is inhumane, there is another, higher, good god.”

77.7.4, p. 370:

The work of the good God was to give to the blight the fruit of the Egyptians, so that the fruit of the Egyptians might be destroyed. But God did not give the fruit of the Hebrews to the blight, but when they sin and produce bad fruit, “what was left by the caterpillar the grasshopper ate, and what was left by the grasshopper the wingless locust ate, what was left by the wingless locust the blight consumed.”

77.7.7, p. 375:

Since we have spoken about a good God and we have intended to rectify things, we also intend to demonstrate that “He sent out to them wrath of his anger, anger and wrath and affliction, a dispatch by means of evil angels” is consistent with those things that we have been promised.

The Antitheses probably used the language of a higher and good God. Two of these references are specific enough to suggest that the Antitheses referenced Deuteronomy 28:17 and Psalm 78:49. But it's also possible that these references derive from later debate.

[Peter Kirby]

To meet the challenge of Marcionite interpretation of the OT god's so-called "wrath," Origen (Homilies on the Psalms 75.7, pp. 234-235) provides a different interpretation (a temporary μῆνίς, translated rage):

“From then”—from a mountain—“is your wrath”; from then, not from today, begins your wrath, but the wrath lasts from when we sin, and the so-called wrath of God (ἡ λεγομένη ὀργὴ τοῦ θεοῦ) is a rage (μῆνίς) that lasts for a season. Scripture says: “He will not be angry to the end, nor will he rage for an age.” For if there were no rage, how do we pay back today’s sin after years, when judgment occurs, either in two hundred or in three hundred years? And how is it that what they sinned many generations ago, they will repay after a thousand years? There is something, then, analogous to the so-called “wrath of God” (τῇ λεγομένῃ “ὀργῇ τοῦ θεοῦ”) and analogous to the so-called “anger” (τῷ λεγομένῳ “θυμῷ τοῦ θεοῦ”) and, clearly enough, to his “rage” (“μῆνις” αὐτοῦ); it is a good thing, to the extent possible, to quench it with good deeds and stop it with actions that come from a change of heart.

[Peter Kirby]

The interpretation of God's wrath as a "mental disturbance" (pathos) bothered Origen (Homilies on the Psalms 77.5.3, pp. 343-344):

Let someone who is capable of it scrutinize together what is written about the wrath of God in the first book of Supplements and in the second book of Kingdoms, so that he may find what is the wrath of God, which was also recorded in Exodus, that God sent out. No one “sends out” a mental disturbance in his own soul. But if there is any “sent out wrath” it is something of God’s that is not a mental disturbance but, by contrast, something that can be sent out. And you will seek what this wrath is, “sent out wrath,” concerning which it is said by the Apostle to those able to understand: “we are [were -PK] by nature children of wrath like the rest.”12 Accordingly, this wrath, ascending over them, “killed among their fat ones.”13 It did not say that it killed the people or killed many of the people, as some suppose who do not understand “fat ones” and have turned it into “he killed among their multitudes,” but “he killed among their fat ones.”

First, I want to persuade the hearer that the copy that says: “killed among their multitudes” is mistaken. First, because the rest of the editions have no word equivalent to “multitudes,” but have instead, “their sleek ones,” and the Hebrew itself has it so. Moreover, if it had been written “among their multitudes,” it would not be possible for it to be understood with the text “six hundred thousand” went out of the land of Egypt and “three thousand fifty.”14 Clearly, then, if he had killed “among their multitudes,” fewer would have been left. Accordingly, it is not “among their multitudes,” but “among their fat ones,” and he necessarily added “among their fat ones.” Perhaps the people did not sin this sin, “they desired a desire in the desert,”15 but some sinned, either the majority or a minority, while some, perhaps, did not sin. As many, then, as sinned, became fat from the flesh by taking part in the sin. Therefore, it is written, “he killed,” not “among their slender ones,” not “among their thin ones,” but “among their fat ones,” namely those who bore the traces of what they desired in the flesh.

Most versions of the Septuagint (and some Bibles) agree with Origen's text critical conclusion here.

So why did Origen mention the copy that says “killed among their multitudes”?

Origen just mentioned again his dispute with those who see God's wrath as being a "mental disturbance in his own soul."

Origen mentions here that:

It did not say that it killed the people or killed many of the people, as some suppose who do not understand “fat ones” and have turned it into “he killed among their multitudes,”

They "do not understand," according to Origen, and they don't know that "the Hebrew itself has it so."

The way Origen writes about it, he is probably thinking of a written text expounding on the OT god's anger and wrath.

The Antitheses is a plausible source, then, for these remarks on Psalm 77:31.

Origen also quotes Ephesians 2:3 again in this context, probably a Marcionite proof text.

[Peter Kirby]

Origen again on the same theme of the so-called "wrath" of God (Homilies on the Psalms 77.9.1, p. 399)

Thus he himself is also without wrath (ἀόργητός), for an inner disturbance (πάθος) does not attach to God. But when you commit many sins, you enkindle for yourself a wrath called “wrath of God.” (ὀργὴν λεγομένην “ὀργὴν θεοῦ”) When God is provoked to wrath, he speaks logoi of one provoked to wrath, for a father, provoked to wrath, can pronounce logoi to a son, as if from wrath, without undergoing any inner disturbance, so he might direct an infant, so that he might discipline the child; but, if we require threatening logoi, cannot God, without wrath, speak logoi of one provoked to wrath? Thus God never undergoes a change of heart, and his gracious gifts and all his actions are without regret, but when he is having a change of heart, the change of heart that has been recorded is yours.

[Peter Kirby]

When Origen uses the phrase "good God" (agathos theos) in these homilies, it's as a criticism of Marcionites, either implicit or explicit.

Another example (Homilies on the Psalms 74.3, p. 224):

And in our argument, in keeping with “the earth melted, and all who dwell on it,” we have interpreted “he humbles this one and raises up this one.” He humbles this one, the thinking of the flesh and the flesh:28 “I wear out the body and enslave it.”29 He raises this one: the soul and spirit. The opposite, the soul of sinners, has been humbled by sin, but the other is raised up, that of the just, who are fasting, laboring, staying awake, putting to death the [bodily] parts on earth. The body has been humbled, but the soul is always renewed according to the inner human be- ing,30 and the mind is raised “in the renewal of the mind.”31 The good32 God, then, humbles this one and raises up this one.

The footnote says:

Origen probably identifies God as “good” here to show that he has answered possible Marcionite charges that the God of the Old Testament is arbitrary.

Psalm 75:7 then - "For God is the judge; he puts down one, and raises up another" - would have been quoted to illustrate the arbitrariness of the "judge" god of the law and the prophets.

[Peter Kirby]

Origen recalls a discussion with "adherents of Marcion," where he says that they relied on what is written as a proof of God the Father (and probably excludes Marcionites from the sects that prove their ideas "from the law or from the prophets"). Origen basically proposes that the orderliness of creation argues for a good creator, which means that there's no need to interpret the Gospel as teaching a higher god. The plural of 'apostles' and 'gospels' here can be attributed to a move from the general ("every sect") to later speaking about adherents of Marcion. The 'letters' here encompasses the study of grammar and all writing.

Homilies on the Psalms 77.1.1, p. 290.

The letters provide a pretext for much death to make its way into souls.16 Every sect takes impious notions from the letters and they suppose that they are proving them from the Gospels, from the apostles, or, in the case of some sects, from the law or from the prophets. I do not say this to criticize the Scriptures, but in the wish that the faith I was talking about should come to rely not so much on Scripture as on a demonstration more splendid than the Scriptures: heaven, earth, and the things in them. In a discussion with the adherents of Marcion,17 I remember saying: “You have two options—to rely on Scripture, as you say, about the Father, or to rely on the cosmos and by its order about their creator18—which should you do? For even if Scripture did not encompass all these things,19 would it not be reasonable, for one going to the cosmos and seeing its order, to have relied on its creator, rather than making such assumptions about God as you do?” And it is truly possible to say, it seems to me, that it must impress the seeker as a more splendid demonstration compared to an inferior one. It is a more splendid demonstration to see the sky, stars, sun, moon, fixed stars, earth and the animals on earth, the human being their king, endowed with such skills, and to be amazed at the one who has made these and to accept the herald of such teaching, Jesus Christ our Lord.

[Peter Kirby]

In parallel to a well-known passage of Irenaeus where Polycarp supposedly called Marcion the firstborn of Satan:

Homilies on the Psalms 77.7.7, pp. 376-377

The first brought to birth in a teaching alien to salvation is the firstborn of that teaching, having been given birth by the devil. For example, not all the Marcionites are firstborn, but among them Marcion is the firstborn. And not all the Valentinians are firstborn, but Valentinus, the father of that disgusting knowledge, was the firstborn. Thus in each case the one who was first given birth in a teaching, to whom the evil one gave birth, is found to be analogous to a firstborn of the Egyptians.

Valentinus is said to be the father of a gnōsis (ὁ πατὴρ τῆς γνώσεως ἐκείνης τῆς μοχθηρᾶς), but that word is not used in association with Marcion here.

[mbuckley3]

Homily 1 on Ezekiel
••••••••••••••••••••••••••


A) God's goodness and lack of anger are stressed :

"Therefore God, who is forbearing and generous and loving toward the human race, determined to temper with kind visitation the penalties whereby he punishes sinners...In fact, as you perceive, God scourges like a father, but he spares - not only Israel, but also the Egyptians, even though they are foreign to him - because of his own gentleness. And it is clear that the work of the good God is being done on their behalf, when Joseph goes down to Egypt, when Pharoah is warned by dreams, when the chief cup-bearer points out an interpreter, when the interpreter discusses what Pharaoh saw, and thus the scarcity of the subsequent famine is overcome by the collection of grain at the time of plenty. From all this, it is very clear that the immoderate anger which heretics criticise in the Creator does not exist." (1.1,2)


B) Jesus' baptism (in Lukan wording) is used - with Paul's assistance - to combine the NT and the OT as a single witness to one God :

"If, however, you wish to hear Ezekiel the 'son of man' making his proclamation in the midst of the captivity - and that man was a type of Christ - he says, 'And it happened in the thirtieth year..the heavens were opened.' Thus, by the river Chebar, when he was thirty years old, Ezekiel saw the heavens opened. And the Lord Jesus Christ, 'when he began, was about thirty years old', by the river Jordan, and 'the heavens were opened' for him. And all through his prophecy, Ezekiel is addressed as 'Son of Man'.

"But who is so properly the Son of Man as my Lord Jesus Christ is ? Let the heretics who mock his nativity as mere appearance answer me this question : Why is Christ called the Son of Man ? I assert that he was a son of man...And it would follow logically for those who take away his nativity also to take away his passion, and say frankly, 'Jesus was not crucified'. As it is, however, you confess the cross, and you do not blush to 'proclaim him crucified - a stumbling block to the Jews, and foolishness to the Gentiles'; and yet you do blush to confess his birth, which is less a stumbling block than his passion or his death ? Surely it is less of a stumbling block that Jesus was born than that he died ? Or if the Christian faith is not afraid of a stumbling block, why are you, who have already confessed greater things, afraid to say lesser things ?...

"Not without reason, then, does Ezekiel prophesy in the thirtieth year, since his name too is a figure of Christ. For 'Ezekiel' is translated as 'ruling power of God'. It is also written that he was the son of Buzi, which is translated as 'scorn'. Now, no one except Christ Jesus is the 'ruling power of God'..If you were to go to the heretics, and hear them despising the Creator, disregarding him completely, and furthermore even making accusations against him, you will see that our Lord Jesus Christ is truly the Son of a most scorned Creator, in terms of their opinion.

"But if anyone resists, and is unwilling to accept my expositions as <the meaning of> the prophecy, I would ask him why it was written that it was in the thirtieth year of Ezekiel's life that the heavens were opened, and that he saw those visions which are contained in his book. Of what use is the number of years to me ? Only this : that I should learn that the heavens were laid open both for the Saviour and for the prophet in the thirtieth year, and that, by 'comparing spiritual things with spiritual things', I should recognise that all the things that have been written are discourses of the same God." (4.1-3)