But who would not be instructed toward compassion and goodness, when he understands that even those things in the Law which are thought by some to be grievous—I speak of punishments, battles, the destruction of nations, and threats against peoples through the prophets—are remedies rather than penalties? A For the Lord will not be angry forever. When these things are opened to us, we shall have a more reasonable faith, and temperance will accompany our corrected morals, followed by continence and chastity; and after all these things, the Law will begin to exist for us.
ON THE BOOKS OF FIRST PRINCIPLES
ADMONITION.
A 1. Eusebius, in Book VI of his *Ecclesiastical History*, chapter 24, while reviewing which works Origen composed at Alexandria, enumerates the books *On First Principles* among others with these words: *Moreover, he also wrote the books On First Principles before his departure from Alexandria.* We know, therefore, only this: that they were written before the year of Christ 231, when he left Alexandria to take up residence in Caesarea of Palestine. The Greek text of these books has long since perished, and very few Greek fragments remain, which you will find below in their proper places, appended to Rufinus's translation. Photius, who happened to read these four books in Greek, briefly explains their contents in codex VIII of his *Bibliotheca* with these words: B *Four books of Origen's On First Principles were read. The first of these deals with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; in this book he writes many blasphemies, saying that the Son was made by the Father, and the Spirit by the Son; and that the Father extends through all things that exist, the Son only through those endowed with reason, and the Spirit only through those who have been saved. He also says other most absurd things full of impiety: he prattles about the transmigration of souls, that the stars are animate, and other things similar to these. In the first book, he discourses fabulously about the Father, and, as he calls him, about Christ and the Holy Spirit; furthermore, about rational natures. The second book is about the world and the creatures in it; furthermore, that there is one God of the Law and the Prophets; that the God of the Old and New Testaments is the same; about the incarnation of the Savior; that the same Spirit was in Moses and the other prophets and holy apostles; in addition, about the soul, the resurrection, punishments, and rewards. The third book is about free will; how the devil and the opposing powers, according to the doctrine of the Scriptures, war against the human race; that the world is created and subject to corruption, having had a beginning in time. The fourth book is about the end; that the Scriptures are divine; and finally, how the Scriptures ought to be read and understood.*
2. Furthermore, of all Origen's works, there was none that brought upon him greater odium for crimes than this *On First Principles*, as is evident even from this testimony of Photius. Pamphilus the martyr openly C confesses this in his *Apology for Origen*, where he says: "Beginning, therefore, to show by the evidence of his own writings what he thought about each subject, we shall gather testimonies especially from those books which his accusers most vehemently criminate, that is, those which he wrote in secret during a time of peace and quiet: for they assert that these differ most from ecclesiastical preaching: from these books especially, which he titled, in which very many things are accused by his calumniators." How much this work displeased Marcellus of Ancyra, Eusebius teaches in the first book against the same Marcellus, chapter 4, where he brings forward these words of his: *And yet, if the truth must be told about Origen, it is proper to say this: that having just departed from philosophical studies, and choosing to occupy himself with divine words, before he had attained an accurate understanding of the Scriptures, because of the abundance and ambition of his secular education, he began to write sooner than he ought, and was led astray by philosophical arguments, and wrote some things not correctly. It is clear: for still mindful of the dogmas of Plato, and of the difference of principles in him, he wrote a book On First Principles, and gave this title to the work. A very great proof of this is that he did not derive the beginning of his words or the title of the book from anywhere else than from the words spoken by Plato. For he begins thus: 'Those who believe and those who are believed.' You would find this statement, spoken in this way, in Plato's Gorgias.* But Eusebius contends that this judgment of Marcellus is unjust D in these words: *Neither, if it were carried, would it have brought reproach upon Origen for saying: 'Those who believe or are believed,' and for connecting immediately thereafter that grace and truth came through Jesus Christ, and that Christ is the truth, according to what was said by him: 'I am the truth.' For what communion could there ever be with Plato in these things? Nothing of Plato's.*
Πλάτωνος περὶ ἀρχῶν μνημονεύεται βιβλίον, οὐδὲ Ὠριγένης ὁμοίως περὶ ἀρχῶν ἐδόξασε Πλάτωνι, ὁ μίαν μόνην τὴν ἀγέννητον, καὶ ἀναρχον, καὶ ἐπέκεινα τῶν ὅλων εἰδὼς ἀρχὴν, ταύτην τε εἶναι Πατέρα ἑνὸς μονογενους Υἱοῦ, δι’ οὗ τὰ πάντα γέγονε. A *Let that which is conceded to be so not bring a calumny upon Origen, since he immediately added the words: "To those who believe, and in whom they believe," that grace and truth have come through Jesus Christ, and that Christ is the truth, according to what was said by Him: I am the truth.* For what communion could Plato ever have with these things? No book is recorded as having been written by Plato on Principles. Nor did Origen think about Principles as Plato did, who, while recognizing a single principle, unbegotten, without beginning, and beyond all things, established it to be the Father of one only-begotten Son, by whom all things were made. See, moreover, what Marcellus argues in these books, and what Eusebius replies in the same place, page 21. It would be tedious were I to enumerate how many errors Methodius, Eustathius, Theophilus, Epiphanius, Jerome, and others have claimed to see in them. Of Jerome’s works, it is especially worth reading Epistle 38 (alias 61), Epistle 40 (alias 64), the three books *Against Rufinus*, and Epistle 94 (alias 69) to Avitus, in which he teaches what must be avoided in the books *De Principiis*; likewise, the letter of Emperor Justinian to Menas, Patriarch of Constantinople. Conversely, Didymus, in the short commentaries or brief scholia published on these books, defended Origen as holding orthodox views everywhere, and as thinking differently from the Arians, as attested by Jerome in Epistle 41 (alias 65), and at the end of Book II *Against Rufinus*. B Rufinus, however, abandoned this method of excusing and defending Origen; he did not deny that many things in the books *De Principiis* were contrary to the Catholic faith regarding the Trinity, but he contended that they had been inserted by heretics and malevolent men. But see how he is refuted in the notes to his booklet *On the Adulteration of the Books of Origen*, just as he is by the ancient author of the *Apology* concerning which Photius speaks in codex 117.
3. In the year of Christ 398, following the exhortation of Macarius, a noble Roman, and at his prayers, Rufinus had translated into Latin the apologetic book of the martyr Pamphilus for Origen, and he set out to interpret these books *De Principiis* as well. He worked with such fervor that, after the days of Lent had passed, he had already completed the first two books, urged on, of course, by Macarius, who was living in his neighborhood at that time. But when, a few days after Easter, Macarius changed his residence to a remote part of the city, and from there could visit him less frequently to urge him on, Rufinus proceeded more slowly with the rest of the work, so that by the end of this year, he had not yet put the finishing touches to it. C When the work was finally completed, he attached this preface which still survives, and from which the seedbed of discord and the huge fire that arose between him and Jerome were born—a matter discussed at length in *Origeniana*, Book I, chapter 4, section 1. I wish to note here, above all, what is in this preface: Rufinus asserts, 1st, that if he found something in these books contrary to what had been piously defined by Origen in other places regarding the Trinity, he omitted it as adulterated and foreign, or corrected it according to that rule he had frequently found affirmed by Origen himself; that is, he reduced it to a Catholic sense by removing some things and adding others from elsewhere. 2nd, where Origen had written more obscurely, he added things he had read more clearly in his other books so that the passage might become more manifest; yet he stated nothing of his own, but restored to Origen sentiments that were his own, though expressed elsewhere. From this it is clear enough that Rufinus's interpretation is neither faithful nor accurate. "He added," says Jerome in Book I *Against Rufinus*, "things that were not there, asserting they were argued by the same Origen in other places. Which, unless he points out the very places from which he says he translated them, he cannot prove." Moreover, when Jerome had read copies of this translation and compared them with the Greek, "he immediately observed," as he notes in the same book, "that what Origen had said impiously about the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and which Roman ears could not bear, had been changed by the interpreter for the better; D but the other dogmas—concerning the ruin of the angels, the fall of souls, the deceits regarding the resurrection, the world or the inter-mundane spaces of Epicurus, the restitution of all things to an equal state, and much worse things than these, which it would be long to repeat—he had either translated as he found them in the Greek, or, from the commentaries of Didymus, who is Origen's most open defender, he had placed them there in exaggerated and firmer terms." Rufinus therefore errs in asserting that he said nothing of his own in translating, but merely restored to Origen what was his own, though said elsewhere, when Jerome testifies that he inserted many things from Didymus into his own version. The same Jerome says in Book II *Against Rufinus*: "In the first book of *De Principiis*, where Origen with sacrilegious tongue blasphemed that the Son does not see the Father, you even provide reasons as if from the person of him who wrote, and you interpret the *scholion* of Didymus, in which he labors in vain to defend someone else's work, which Origen indeed said well, but we, simple men and Ennian captives, are unable to understand either his wisdom or yours as you interpret it."
4. In the year of Christ 599 [sic—error for 409], Jerome, having been made certain both by the letters of his friends Pammachius and Oceanus and by his own eyes that the books *De Principiis* had been translated fraudulently by Rufinus, and that the reader had not been sufficiently warned what he ought especially to guard against in them, fearing, moreover, that due to the scattered praises with which he had been adorned in Rufinus’s preface, he might be thought to favor Origen’s errors, he undertook another version of this work in accordance with the fidelity of the Greek text. "I, however," he says in Book I *Against Rufinus*, "expressed in the books *De Principiis* what was in the Greek: not so that the reader might believe what I was translating, but so that he might not believe those things you had translated before. My work had a double utility, in that the heretical author is revealed, and the faithless interpreter is exposed. And lest anyone think that I agree with what I translated, I fortified the necessity of the interpretation with a preface, and taught what the reader should not believe. The former translation contains praise of the author; the second, blame. The former invites the reader to believe; the latter moves him not to believe. There, even I, against my will, am assumed to be a praiser of Origen; here, I so far do not praise him whom I translate that I am forced to accuse the one who praises him. The same thing was not done with the same intent; or rather, one journey had diverse outcomes." When this interpretation was first completed and sent to Pammachius, the saintly doctor himself describes its condition in Epistle 94 (alias 59) to Avitus, written in the year 409. "About ten years ago," he says, "the holy man Pammachius sent me some sheets which contained the translated volumes—or rather, the corrupted volumes—of Origen's *De Principiis*, urgently requesting that the translation preserve the Greek truth in Latin, and that, whether the author of the work said well or ill, he who wrote might be known in the Roman tongue without the protection of an interpreter. I did as he wished, and sent him the books; when he had read them, he shrank in horror; and he shut them in his desk, lest, if published, they should wound the minds of many. Being asked by a certain brother, who had a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge, to hand them over to be read—as if he would return them at once—because of the shortness of time, he could not suspect the fraud. He who received them to be read, using stenographers, transcribed the whole work, and much faster than he had promised, he returned the codex, and with the same rashness, and—to speak more lightly—stupidity, he trusted to another what he had secretly stolen. And because it is difficult for large books arguing on mystical matters to preserve the abbreviations of notes, especially when they are dictated secretly and quickly, everything in them is so confused that they lack both order in most places and sense." For this reason, he sent to Avitus the very exemplar which he had long ago translated himself, and which had been handed to no one else, which had been perversely edited by the aforementioned brother, but...
[Avitus warns what must be especially avoided in these books, saying that you must know that there is very much in them to be detested, and that, according to the word of the Lord, one must walk among scorpions. Presently he brings forward from each book those passages that were most obnoxious to reproach. You will find these appended in their appropriate places to the interpretation of Rufinus. Moreover, the complete interpretation of Jerome has long since perished through the injury of time.]
PROLOGUE OF RUFINIUS THE PRESBYTER TO THE BOOKS ON FIRST PRINCIPLES BY ORIGEN THE PRESBYTER
I know that very many of the brethren, provoked by a desire for the knowledge of the Scriptures, have requested of certain men skilled in Greek letters that they make Origen accessible to Roman ears and bestow him upon Latin readers. Among these, our brother and colleague, having been entreated by Bishop Damasus, when he had translated from Greek into Latin two homilies on the Song of Songs, prefaced that work with such ornate and magnificent language that he stirred in everyone a desire to read and most avidly inquire into Origen, saying that that which was said of his soul was fitting: "The king has brought me into his chamber,"—asserting that, whereas he surpasses all others in his other books, in the Song of Songs he has even surpassed himself. Indeed, in that very preface, he promises that he will bestow upon Roman ears both those books on the Song of Songs and very many other works of Origen. But he, as I see it, taking pleasure in his own style, pursues a matter of greater glory, that he might be a father of the Word rather than an interpreter. We, therefore, follow the task begun and approved by him, yet we cannot adorn the sayings of so great a man with equal powers of eloquence; whence I fear that it may fall out through my failing that the man whom he deservedly approves as a teacher of the Church in knowledge and wisdom, should appear, through the poverty of our speech, to be far inferior. I, often considering this, held my peace, and did not consent to the brethren who frequently entreated me in this matter; but your strength, most faithful brother Macarius, is such that even lack of skill cannot resist it. Wherefore, lest I should suffer you to be a persistent taskmaster, I have yielded, even against my intention, yet upon this condition and in this order, that as much as possible I shall follow in translating the rule of my predecessors, and especially of that man of whom we have made mention above: who, when he had translated into Latin more than seventy of Origen’s books, which he called homiletic, as well as some of his writings on the Epistles to the Apostles; and in which, although some stumbling blocks are found in the Greek, he so refined and purged everything in translating that a Latin reader finds nothing in them that disagrees with our faith. This man, therefore, we also follow in as far as we can—if not with the powers of eloquence, then at least with the rules of discipline—observing, of course, lest those things...
which are found in the books of Origen to be at variance and contrary to themselves, we should put forward. The cause of this diversity I have explained more fully to you in the *Apologeticus* which Pamphilus wrote on behalf of the books of Origen himself, in a very short appended booklet, in which I have shown by clear proofs, as I think, that his books have been corrupted in very many places by heretics and malevolent men, and especially those which you now require me to translate, that is, *On Principles*, which may be called either *De principiis* or *De principatibus* A, which are indeed otherwise both most obscure and most difficult. For he discourses there on such matters as the philosophers in all their ages, having spent their efforts, could find nothing. This man of ours, however, has done what he could, so that he might convert the faith of the Creator and the reasoning of his creatures, which they had dragged off to impiety, back to piety. If, therefore, we find in his books anything contrary to that which he himself had defined piously as to the Trinity in other places, we have either omitted this as adulterated and alien, or we have set it forth according to that rule which we frequently find him affirming. If, indeed, as if speaking to those already experienced and knowledgeable, he has set forth something more obscurely while wishing to pass over it briefly, we, so that the passage might be clearer, have added those things which we had read more openly in his other books, being studious of explanation; we have said nothing B of our own, but have rendered back to him what was his. This, however, I have warned of in the preface, so that calumniators might not again [D, top of col. 114] think they have found material for accusing. But let them see what perverse and contentious men do. For us meanwhile, such a labor—if, however, God helps through your prayers—has been undertaken not that we might close the mouths of the calumniators (which cannot be done, although perhaps even this God will do), but that we might provide material for those who wish to advance in the knowledge of things. Truly, I adjure and convene any man C who is about to transcribe or read these books, in the sight of God the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, by the faith of the future kingdom, by the mystery of the resurrection from the dead, by that eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels (may he not possess that place in eternal inheritance where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, and where their fire shall not be extinguished, and their worm shall not die), that he add nothing to Scripture, that he take nothing away, that he insert nothing, that he change nothing, but that he compare it with the exemplars from which he has written, and that he amend it according to the letter, and distinguish it, and that he not possess an unamended or undistinguished codex; lest the difficulty of the meanings—if the codex be not distinguished—generate greater obscurities for the readers.
Note on the adjuration
(41) "Truly, I adjure," etc. Irenaeus had subjoined a similar formula of adjuration at the end of his book *On the Ogdoad*, in these words: "I adjure you, who shall transcribe this book, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by his glorious advent, in which he comes to judge the living and the dead, that you compare what you shall have transcribed, and correct it toward this exemplar from which you have transcribed, carefully; and that you shall likewise transcribe this oath. And you shall place it in the copy." "I adjure you who shall have transcribed this book, by our Lord Jesus Christ, and by his glorious advent, in which he is to judge the living and the dead; that you compare what you have transcribed, and diligently amend it according to the exemplar from which you have transcribed: and that you likewise transcribe this adjuration, and insert it into your codex." Eusebius, referring to this formula, in book V, ch. 20 of his *Ecclesiastical History*, calls it a "most gracious note," and adds: "And these things have been useful when said by him and recorded by us, so that we may always have those ancient and—without controversy—most holy men before our eyes as a most beautiful example of exact diligence." So indeed did this please Eusebius, that he also attached a similar adjuration to his own books, such as is read even today at the beginning of the *Chronicle* translated by Jerome, which more ancient codices exhibit in larger letters.