Episodes 32 & 33 More on Origen and His System

Sorry for the delay in getting out the shownotes. The perils of running a blog with my schedule.

You know where you can find Episode 32 on Origen and his view of angels and John the Baptist; and Episode 33 on Origen’s system.

Episode 32 Notes.

Angels and the Churches.

The angels all offer the firstfruits of their Churches. These are the angels John seems to be speaking to in the Apocalypse. There are also other angels outside, in every nation, bringing people to the faith. Think for a moment. Imagine a city where there are no Christians as yet by birth. If someone goes there and begins to give instruction and strives to give people a new outlook and bring them to the faith, he becomes the prince and bishop of the people he has taught. In the same way, the holy angels will one day be the princes of the people they have gathered in the various nations, the people whose progress they have secured by their labours and their ministry.

St. John the Forerunner as an Angel

As we are talking about John and trying to see the significance of his apostleship, it will not be out of place for me to state my own opinion about him. In one of the prophets we read the words: ‘ Behold, I am sending before thee that angel of mine, who is to prepare thy way for thy coming’ [Matt. x. 11, etc.; cf. Mai. iii. i]. We may well ask whether this is not one of the holy angels sent as a forerunner in our Savior’s service. If Christ, the firstborn of every creature [Col. i. 15], took flesh for love of men, it is not surprising that some of the angels should want to be like him and do as he did; it is not strange that they should delight in taking a body like his to honour his graciousness to them. And the fact that John leaped for joy while he was still in his mother’s womb [Luke i. 44] is most striking. It surely proves the existence in him of something more than ordinary human nature.

Episode 33

The Happy Man

To teach the grey earth like a child, To bid the heavens repent, I only ask from Fate the gift Of one man well content.

Him will I find: though when in vain I search the feast and mart, The fading flowers of liberty, The painted masks of art.

I only find him at the last, On one old hill where nod Golgotha’s ghastly trinity- Three persons and one god.

The Logos and the Logikoi

The Lord said: ‘My Father, who sent me, is greater than I am’ [cf. John xiv. 28, etc.]. He refused to let himself be called good in the strict, true or proper sense of the word [Mark x. 18]; with due submissiveness he referred the attribute to the Father and rebuked the man who would have given too much honour to the Son. Obedience, then, requires us too to say that if the Saviour and the Spirit transcend all creatures not in degree but in kind, they are in turn transcended by the Father as much as, or more than, they themselves transcend all other creatures, even the highest. There is no need to point out what glory we owe the Son because he is above everything: above thrones, dominions, princedoms and powers, above every name that is known, not in this world only but in the world to come [cf. Col. i. 16; Eph. i. 21], above the holy angels and the spirits and souls of the just. And yet, superior though he is to all these exalted creatures in essence, dignity, power, wisdom and divi¬ nity (for he is the Logos made Man), he is nothing in com¬ parison with the Father. He is only the image of God’s goodness [Wisd. vii. 26]. He is not the radiance of God himself but the radiance ofGod’s splendour and eternal light [Heb. i. 3]; not the fragrance of the Father himself but the fragrance of the Father’s power. He is a pure outpouring of the Father’s splendour and omnipotence. He is an untarnished mirror, reflecting whatever the Father does, the mirror in which Peter and Paul and others like them see God, for, as he says: ‘Whoever has seen me has seen the Father’ [John xiv. 9].

Eternal Creation

It would be absurd to suppose that God found himself in want of things he ought to have had and that he went and seized them. If there never was a time when he was not all-powerful, there must always have been creatures for him to exercise his omnipotence upon. Thus there must always have been beings under his rule and governance.