is granted to him who asked to be remembered in the kingdom of God, to make him, in the present age, before the age to come, be with Him in the A kingdom of God. But let this be said as a digression in the middle of what was previously mentioned. But for the disciples desiring to follow Jesus, not as the simpler sort might suppose, corporally, but as that saying signifies: "Whoever does not take up his cross and follow after me, is not worthy to be my disciple," the Lord now says: "Where I go, you cannot come now." For if they wished to follow the Word and confess Him without being scandalized in Him, they were not yet able to do so: "For the Spirit was not yet, because Jesus was not yet glorified. And no one can say, 'Jesus is Lord,' except in the Holy Spirit." The Word goes away on His own journeys, and he who follows the Word follows Him; but he cannot follow who is not yet prepared strictly according to Him, so as to walk B in the footprints of the Word leading to His own Father those who do everything so that they might be able to follow Him and walk after Him, until they say in a manner worthy of the Word to Christ: "My soul has followed after Thee." Having received a sufficient description of the thirty-second volume of the commentaries on the Gospel according to John, we shall end the discourse here.
There are missing the thirty-third volume, and the thirty-fourth, and the thirty-fifth, and the thirty-sixth, and the thirty-seventh, and the thirty-eighth, and the thirty-ninth.
FROM THE HOMILIES OF ORIGEN ON THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES
C From the fourth homily on the Acts. "It was necessary that the Scripture be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit foretold by the mouth of David concerning Judas."
in the Psalm concerning Judas it is written. Someone might perhaps say that the Holy Spirit does not speak; for clearly the words are the Savior's, saying: "God, do not pass over my praise; for the mouth of the sinner, and the mouth of the deceitful one, has been opened against me," and what follows, up to the words: "and let another take his office." A How, then, if it is the Savior who says these things, does Peter say: "It was necessary that the Scripture should be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit spoke beforehand through the mouth of David"? Perhaps, then, what we are taught here is of this nature. The Holy Spirit fashions persons in the prophets; and if He has introduced the person of God, it is not God who is speaking, but the Holy Spirit speaks out of the person of God; and if He has introduced Christ, it is not Christ who is speaking, but the Holy Spirit speaks out of the person of Christ. Thus, even if He fashions the prophet, or that people, or this people, or whatever person He introduces, it is the Holy Spirit who fashions all those persons.
OF RUFINUS THE PRESBYTER TO HERACLIUS
Preface to the Explanation by Origen on the Epistle of Paul to the Romans
You compel me, Brother Heraclius, to spread my sails upon the deep—me who wish, carried in a small boat, to graze the shore of a tranquil coast and gather tiny minnows from the pools of the Greeks—and, having abandoned the work which I was engaged in—the translating of the Homilies of the aged Adamantius—you persuade me to explain with my own voice his fifteen volumes in which he discussed the Epistle of Paul to the Romans. In these, while he follows the sense of the Apostle, B he is carried off into such a deep sea that there is immense fear for one following him there, lest he be overwhelmed by the magnitude of the thoughts, as if by the immensity of the waves. Then, furthermore, you do not see that my spirit is too weak to fill his trumpet of such magnificent oratory. But above all difficulties is the fact that the books themselves have been interpolated. For in the libraries of almost everyone, some of the volumes from the body itself are missing (by what chance, it is truly uncertain); and to fill these in, and to provide an unbroken sequence in the Latin work, is not of my talent, but, as you believe who demand these things of me, perhaps it is of a divine gift. You add, moreover, so that nothing may be lacking to my labors, that I should abbreviate this whole body of fifteen volumes—which the Greek language has produced to nearly forty thousand lines or more—and compress them, if it is possible, to half their length. These are harsh commands indeed, and seem to be laid upon me by one who is unwilling to know the weight of this work. Yet I shall set about it, if perhaps by your prayers, things which seem impossible to me as a man may, with the Lord breathing upon them, become possible. But now, if you agree, let us hear Origen himself, as to how he directs the preface of the work he has undertaken.
ORIGEN'S PREFACE TO THE COMMENTARY ON THE EPISTLE OF SAINT PAUL TO THE ROMANS
A That the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans is thought to be more difficult to understand than his others, appears to me to be for two reasons. One is that he uses expressions that are sometimes confused and less explicit; the other is that he raises many questions in it, especially those upon which heretics are accustomed to rely to argue that the cause of each person’s actions should not be referred to free choice, but to the diversity of nature; and from a few of the sayings of this Epistle they attempt to overturn the sense of the whole Scripture, which teaches the freedom of will granted by God to man. For this reason, praying first to God, who teaches man knowledge, and who gives through the Spirit the word of wisdom, and who illuminates every man coming into this world, that he may deign to make us worthy to understand the parables, and dark sayings, and the statements of the wise, and riddles, so then we shall reach the beginning of the explanation of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, prefixing these things which are accustomed to be observed by the studious, that it appears the Apostle was more perfect in this Epistle than in the others. For when he wrote the first to the Corinthians, he was indeed making great progress; yet he speaks of himself somewhat as if he were wavering, when he says: "But I buffet my body, and bring it into subjection, lest perhaps when I have preached to others, I myself should become a castaway." And writing to the Philippians B he shows that there was still something in him less than that perfection which he later attained, when he says that he is being conformed to the death of Christ, if by any means he might attain unto the resurrection which is from the dead. For he would not say "if by any means" if the matter seemed indubitable to him even then. But even in what follows in the same Epistle he shows this same thing, when he says: "Not that I have already attained, or am already perfect; but I follow after, if I may by any means apprehend, in which I am also apprehended by Christ. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended." And if anyone thinks this was said out of humility, let him see in what follows how great things he relates concerning his progress, when he says: "One thing however, forgetting the things that are behind, and stretching forth myself to those that are before, I press towards the mark, to the prize of the supernal vocation of God in Christ Jesus;" and after this he says: "Whosoever therefore are perfect, let us be thus minded." In which he shows that there is a double perfection: one, which is in the completion of virtues, according to which he says that he is not perfect; and another, when someone so progresses that he cannot fall, nor look back, according to which he was saying: "Whosoever therefore are perfect, let us be thus minded." How then will it be taught that he was more perfect when he wrote the second to the Corinthians than the first? From these things without doubt which are written in it, when he says: "We suffer tribulation, but are not distressed; we are straitened, but not destitute; we suffer persecution, but are not forsaken; we are cast down, but we do not perish; always bearing about in our body the death of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be made manifest in our body." He, therefore, who was always bearing about the death of Jesus in his own body, surely never in it did the flesh lust against the spirit, but was subject to him, as being mortified to the likeness of the death of Christ. But if someone says to us that these things do not seem probable, because not much time elapsed between the first Epistle and the second, he can also know more evidently from this, that in the first Epistle he cast out him who had been polluted by the crime of incest, and delivered him to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit might be saved in the day of the Lord, while in the second he calls him back and associates him with the members of the Church. Which he certainly would not have done if he had not seen in him worthy fruits of repentance in the process of time, and that the flesh had already received the destruction which the Apostle had decreed, being dead, that is to say, to sin and vices, so that thus at last it might live to God. Since, therefore, there was so much time in which the incestuous sinner recovered the salvation of the spirit through the praiseworthy destruction of the flesh, how is it not to be thought that the Apostle attained what is perfect with a much faster course? But while that was his progress in those C writings: how much more sublime and eminent he is writing to the Romans, let us gather from the words of the Epistle itself, in which he says: "Who shall separate us from the charity of Christ? Shall tribulation, or
anguish, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written: For thy sake we are put to death all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. But in all these things we overcome, because of him that hath loved us. For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor might, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the charity of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." A "I speak the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost." Does it appear to you that he spoke with the same sublimity of mind when he said: "I chastise my body, and bring it into subjection, lest perhaps when I have preached to others, I myself should become a castaway," as he does here when he says: "because in all these things we overcome"; and: "For I am certain that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities," and the rest of what he described, "shall be able to separate us from the charity of God?" Having therefore, so far as we were able, conceived his meaning in this Epistle, we shall also make this observation, not without reason: that he seems to be writing this Epistle from Corinth, which is shown by several indications, but most clearly from the fact that he says: "I commend to you Phoebe, our sister, who is in the ministry of the church, which is in Cenchrae." For Cenchrae is said to be a place near Corinth, or rather the very port of Corinth. And from this, therefore, it appears it was written from Corinth, and also from the fact that he says: "Gaius, my host, saluteth you." Concerning which Gaius, he writes to the Corinthians, remembering him and saying: B "I give thanks to my God, that I baptized none of you but Crispus and Gaius." A similar indication is given later where he says: "Erastus, the treasurer of the city, saluteth you." Concerning which Erastus, writing his second Epistle to Timothy, he said: "Erastus remained at Corinth." From all of which it seems most certain that the evidence points to it being written from Corinth.
That, indeed, does not a little contribute to the difficulty of understanding: that many things concerning the Law of Moses are interwoven in this same Epistle—concerning the calling of the nations, concerning Israel according to the flesh, and concerning Israel which is not according to the flesh, concerning circumcision of the flesh and of the heart, concerning a spiritual law and the law of the letter, concerning the law of the flesh and the law of the members, concerning the law of the mind and the law of sin, concerning the inner and outer man: things which, even if listed singly, would be sufficient; for in these the substance of the Epistle seems to be contained. Now, therefore, as the Lord deigns to open the way for us, let us proceed as quickly as possible to the explanation of the work itself. C
The first question that seems to arise for us concerns the name of Paul himself, why he who is called Saul in the Acts of the Apostles, is now called Paul. We find in the divine Scriptures that the names of certain ancients were changed, as when Abram was called Abraham, Sarai was called Sarah, and Jacob was called Israel. In the Gospels, also, Simon was called Peter, and the sons of Zebedee were named sons of thunder. But we read that these were done by the command of God; yet we nowhere find such a thing done in the case of Paul. Concerning this matter, it has seemed to some that the Apostle took for himself the name of the proconsul Paulus, whom he had brought to the faith of Christ in Cyprus, just as kings are accustomed to be named after those they have conquered—for example, the Parthians after the Parthians, and the Goths after the Goths—so too the Apostle, having subjugated Paulus, was called Paul. While we do not think this should be altogether discarded, yet because no such custom is discovered in the divine Scriptures, let us rather seek for an explanation from those things which are set before us in examples. We find, therefore, in the Scriptures that some used two, others even three names: as Solomon, who was also called Jedidiah; Zedekiah, who was the same as Joachim; Uzziah, who was also Azariah; and you will find very many others called by two names in the books of Kings or Judges. But not even the Gospels reject this same custom. For Matthew himself relates of himself that when Jesus was passing by, He found a certain man sitting at the custom-house, Matthew by name. Luke, however, says of the same man that when Jesus was passing by, He saw a certain publican by the name of Levi, and said to him: "Follow me." But also the same Matthew, in the catalog of the apostles, says after many others: Matthew the publican, and James of Alphaeus, and Lebbaeus, and Simon the Cananaean. Mark, however, reports it thus: Matthew the publican, and Thomas, and James of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus. D This same man, whom Matthew called Lebbaeus, Mark set down as Thaddaeus. Luke, however, set it down thus: Matthew, Thomas, James, and Judas of James. Therefore, the same man whom Matthew called Lebbaeus, and Mark