Fewer Broken Pieces

Note: This is excerpted from a paper I wrote called “Ancient Expositor” on Origen’s view and use of scripture. I conclude that while his “spiritual exegesis” does include some hermeneutical principles which Evangelicals find unacceptable (such as allegory), it has much in common with current practice in Evangelical scholarship. This passage deals with a persistent controversy:For Origen, the greatest indication of a deeper meaning for any given passage is an implausible narrative meaning. So in cases where he considers that meaning unlikely or impossible, he searches for the hidden truth. In some cases he admits that it remains a mystery, but in others he crafts a broad interpretation based on his perception of those deeper meanings.

As his first example Origen draws from the beginning of the scriptures: the creation story. With regard to the first three days of creation he is incredulous that “’evening’ and ‘morning’ are named, without a sun, without a moon, and without stars, and even in the case of the first day without a heaven.” Those times periods are meaningless without celestial bodies, so Origen thought certain that the six days of creation represented some deeper figure.

Origen also takes issue with a literal interpretation of the trees in Eden. He objects to the concept of God “like some farmer” planted one tree from which someone could eat “with corporeal teeth and gain life” and another from which someone could eat “and receive knowledge of ‘good and evil.’” The reality of such trees is preposterous to Origen.

The anthropomorphisms of God strolling in the garden and turning his face against Cain are also not acceptable as literal to Origen, since God is without body and since Cain could never hope to flee from the omnipresent God in any case.

Those who would hold to a literal meaning in this statement are called “foolish” and “simple” by Origen. He notes that more examples are not needed because

. . . it is quite easy for everyone who wishes to collect from the holy Scriptures things that are written as though they were really done, but cannot be believed to have happened appropriately and reasonably according to the narrative meaning.

For Origen this battery is just a representative sample of those passages which must have a deeper meaning because their plainer meaning is not possible.

I have quite enjoyed reading Origen so far. Here is quote concerning the church’s adoption of the Jewish scriptures into its canon:

If therefore all Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable, we ought to believe it is profitable even if we do not recognize the profit.