ORIGEN’S EPISTLE TO GREGORY
By what means and to whom the disciplines of philosophy are useful for the interpretation of the Holy Scriptures, demonstrated with the testimony of Scripture.
A 1. Origen to his best and most reverend son Gregory, greeting in God. A disposition well-formed by nature for understanding, as you know well, if it receives exercise, can produce a work that leads to the attainable end—if I may so call it—of the thing one wishes to practice. Your talent, therefore, can make you a complete Roman jurist, or a Greek philosopher of any of the sects that are considered reputable. But I would wish you to apply the whole force of your talent primarily to Christianity, and, toward this end, I would have wished that you take from the philosophy of the Greeks those encyclical studies or preparatory lessons that can lead toward Christianity, and from geometry and astronomy those things which will be useful for the instruction of the Holy Scriptures, so that what the disciples of the philosophers say about geometry and music, grammar and rhetoric and astronomy, as assistants to philosophy, we might also say about philosophy itself in relation to Christianity.
B 2. And perhaps something like this is hinted at in what is written in Exodus in the person of God, where the children of Israel are commanded to ask their neighbors and those who dwell with them for vessels of silver and gold, and garments, so that by spoiling the Egyptians they might find material for the preparation of those things which pertain to divine worship. For from those things which the children of Israel abstracted from the Egyptians, was constructed C what was gathered in the holy of holies.
D “A man worthy of praise, who along with the knowledge of divine things has also learned external disciplines,” says Theodoret in Book III of *Haereticarum Fabularum*, chapter 2. He wrote an *Apologeticum* for the Christians, which he presented to the Emperor Marcus Antoninus the second, known by the name Verus: likewise five books *Against the Gentiles*, and two *On Truth*, and against the Cataphrygians or Montanists. Concerning whom, see Jerome in his *Catalogue*, Photius in his *Bibliotheca*, col. 14, and Theodoret in the place cited above. Trithemius wishes him to have flourished around the year of the Lord 165; Eusebius, however, in his *Chronicle* translated into Latin by Jerome, assigns to him the year of Christ 172. But the death of Maximinus, after which Huetius decided that this letter of Origen was written, falls in the year of Christ 238, and thus a space of years intervenes. It is necessary, therefore, either that Apollinarius lived a long life and reached nearly one hundred years, if he is the one whom Origen greets here, or else that another Apollinarius must be sought by us. Hardly, however, will you find another bishop known by this name in those times. But the episcopate of this Apollinarius, whoever he may have been, is indicated by the name “pope.” For in ancient times all bishops were saluted as popes. Thus Athanasius in Epiphanius, *Hares. 68*; Epiphanius, in Jerome’s *Apology against Rufinus*; Augustine in the same at the end of his epistle to Augustine; John, patriarch of Alexandria, by Sophronius, patriarch of Jerusalem, *Epigramm.* 1, ch. 1, page 104; Lupus by Sidonius Apollinaris, *Epist.* book VIII, page 272; likewise Noverius, Principius, Prosper, Euphronius, Ambrose, etc., are honored with this name in the same book VIII and IX. And “pope” is a term of endearment for a father, as Hesychius explains.
(15) Gregory. He is the holy Gregory who, later, because of the gift of miracles in which he excelled, was called Thaumaturgus and was bishop of Neocaesarea. His panegyric of thanksgiving *to Origen* you have at the beginning of this volume. Concerning this most celebrated man, consult, if you have the time, Eusebius, *Historia eccles.* book VI, chapter 30; Jerome, *De scriptoribus eccles.* number 65.
FRAGMENTA
A it is clear from those things recorded in the book of Joshua. They are, therefore, near the borders of the Gentiles, some of the fabrications which those of Adad have fashioned, as we have explained, brethren.
3. You, therefore, my son, pay special attention to the reading of the divine Scriptures, and be attentive; for we need much attentiveness reading the divine things, so that we may not say anything rashly, or think it about God, and may attend to the reading of the divine things with faith and with the anticipated opinion that what is pleasing to God is in them. Knock upon that which is closed in them, and it will be opened to you by the doorkeeper, of whom Jesus says: "To this one the B doorkeeper opens." And pay attention to the divine reading, seeking rightly and with firm faith in God that which is hidden from many in the mind of the divine letters. But it is not enough for you to knock and to seek. For prayer is most especially necessary also for understanding divine things, to which the Savior exhorts, not only saying: "Knock, and it will be opened to you," and also: "Seek, and you will find," but also: "Ask, and it will be given to you." Whether I have dared this out of my fatherly love, God knows, and Christ himself, and he who is a partaker of the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ. I pray that you may always increase such participation, so that you may not only say: "We have been made partakers of Christ," but also: "partakers of God."
NOTICE TO THE BOOKS ON THE RESURRECTION.
Eusebius, *Hist. eccl.* book VI, chapter 24, among the works which he narrates that Origen composed at Alexandria, recounts two books *On the Resurrection*. They were written before the books *On First Principles* (*De principiis*), for in book X of *On First Principles*, chapter 10, he praises them in these words: "Concerning which (namely, the Resurrection), in those other books on the Resurrection which we have written, we have discussed more fully, and have shown what seemed to us *sufficient*. But we do not think it absurd now to repeat them." Jerome, in a certain book which is quoted by Rufinus in the *Second Apology against Jerome*, while drawing up a catalogue of Origen's books, argues not only that he wrote books *On the Resurrection*, but two other dialogues *On the Resurrection*. Since someone could say that Origen wrote four books *On the Resurrection*, for that reason perhaps the same Jerome (Epistle 38, otherwise 61), when citing the book *Ecclesiastical Hierarchy* of Dionysius, chapter 7, possesses excellent fragments from this dialogue *On the Resurrection* in the testimony of Jerome in the book *De scriptoribus eccl.*, and in the scholia to the book *Ecclesiastical Hierarchy* of Dionysius, chapter 7. From this *Dialogue* of Methodius, you have excellent fragments in Epiphanius in the *Heresy of the Origenists*, and in Photius in the *Bibliotheca*. They were written even upon the inquiry against Origen and Hammones the Adrianopolitan, books of which nothing survives today. Huetius in his *Origeniana*, book II, question 9, enumerates other writers, if credit is to be given, and to various and diametrically opposed accusations of being guilty of the resurrection Origen necessarily was. Finally, he adds that the books *On the Resurrection* were seen by Jerome, who, in Epistle 41, otherwise 65, exclaims: "Who would believe that he himself voluntarily desired an infamous work?" However, Pamphilus the martyr in his *Apology* for Origen, in addition to the testimonies which he brought forth from his commentaries, both on the Prophet Isaiah, and in the Psalms 15 and 18, so that he might show that he felt in a very catholic way about the resurrection, sent ahead also a book of his, the first and the second *On the Resurrection*, a few passages which in every way correspond to sound faith today. The holy martyr could add what is found in his writings *On the Resurrection*... [alt-version omitted]
FROM THE FIRST BOOK OF ORIGEN ON THE RESURRECTION (17).
For how does it not seem absurd, that this body which Christ bore around with scars, and (17) This fragment was taken from the *Apology* for Origen by Pamphilus.