In the Beginning was the Word

Those who know me have heard me say this many, many times …. : “Origen is brilliant!”

(90) It is not only the Greeks who say that the designation “beginning” means many things. For, indeed, if anyone should observe this title, collecting its occurrences from every source, and should wish, by careful examination, to understand its application in each passage of the Scriptures, he will discover many meanings of the expression even in the word of God.

Origen is about to set out on an elaborate exegesis of the words from St. John’s Gospel: “In the beginning was the word” with particular emphasis on the word “beginning.” He makes it clear that Scripture itself – and not just the Greeks – attribute many different meanings to the word beginning. The focus here will be not the Greeks, but rather “the word of God” iow the Scriptures.

(91) One meaning involves change, and this belongs, as it were to a way and length which is revealed by the Scripture: “The beginning of a good way is to do justice (Prov. 16, 7 LXX).” For since a “good way” is very great, we must understand that the practical, which is presented by the phrase “to do justice,” relates to the initial matters, and the contemplative to those that follow. I think its stopping point and goal is in the so-called restoration because no one is left as an enemy then, if indeed the statement is true, “For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. And the last enemy to be defeated is death (1 Cor. 15, 25-26).”

The “good way” for Origen signifies what Evagrius would refer to as gnostike or theolgike the contemplative knowledge of God. Such knowledge of God is the result of “doing justice” which is what Evagrius would refer to as praktike and origen also refers to as “the practical” here. The “beginning of a good way” – that is the beginning of contemplative knowledge of God – is in living rightly iow “to do justice.” One begins to know God by living in a godly manner. The “stopping point” of this “beginning” is “the restoration” or “apokatastasis.” With this term Origen indicates the unity of the creature with God in Christ according to the words of the Apostle Paul that God would be “all in all” (1 Cor. 15, 28) which forms the conclusion to the train of the Apostles thought that Origen began to quote at vs. 25 above. The “beginning” of this unity with God – this contemplative knowledge of God – is “to do justice” to live rightly. Contemplation is not a withdrawal from this world – it is a right living in this world so that our higher faculties may be purified to receive the knowledge of God. The last enemy to be defeated has to be death, for death is the state of separation from God which Christ has overcome, the same Christ will overcome death in us. Action, grace and contemplation are not opposites but rather elements forming one whole. A movement as it were, with a beginning, a middle, and an end – but one movement nonetheless!

(92)For at that time those who have come to God because of the Word which is with him, will have the contemplation of God as their only activity, that, having been accurately formed in the knowledge of the Father, they may all thus become a son, since now the Son alone has known the Father.

In these last words Origen calls to mind the passages from the Gospel where Jesus declares that only the Son knows the Father and that it is the Son who reveals (or exegetes) Him. Our lives, here and now, are either Christ-like or not. If Christ-like we are being formed in the knowledge of the Father (contemplative knowledge and unity with Him) and shaped accurately so that we may become “a son” in the same manner as “the Son.” Our son-ship is modeled after that of Christ and it is He who is the Word to which we must come. The ambiguity between “word” as Scripture and “Word” as Christ is deliberate for the Word is among us in the flesh of the man Jesus and in the flesh of the pages of Scripture!

(93) For if someone should carefully examine when it is that those shall know the Father to whom the Son who has known the Father reveals him, and should see that the one who sees now sees “through a mirror and indistinctly (1 Cor. 13, 12)” not yet having known ‘as he ought to know (1 Cor. 8, 2),” he would be correct to say that no one has known the Father even if he be an apostle or prophet, but that it will occur whenever they become one as [the] Son and the Father are one.

Origen again emphasizes that he is speaking of  a process here. A process which will last our lifetimes and will only be complete when “I shall know as I am known” which is when the I shall be one as the Father and Son are one. The knowledge of the Father depenes (for us) on the Son who is the Father’s Word which we encounter in “the word” (Scriptures). Iow our reading and especially hearing of the Scriptures (in Church) is an essential part of our “living rightly” and of our “achieving the “good way” which – as should now be clear – is to be understood as “knowledge of the Father.” At the moment, living on this side of the Second Coming, where we “know in part,” this knowledge is unattainable but it will be given us in the future restoration.

(94) But if anyone should think that we have digressed by explaining one meaning of “beginning” and making these remarks, we must show that the “digression” was necessary and useful for that which lies ahead. For if “beginning” has to do with change and a way and length, and “the beginning of a good way is to do justice,” it is possible to know that every good way has “doing justice” as a “beginning” in some manner, and after the beginning, contemplation, and in what manner it has contemplation.

The “good way” is contemplation to which the “beginning” is “to do justice, to live rightly.

The way Origen has taken us through a journey of Scripture – sometimes by allusion and sometimes by quotation – is teaching us the importance of such a scriptural journey and at the same time starts us on this journey. This is the genius of Origen, and this is why I think he is brilliant and one of the greatest teachers of Scripture to have ever walked this planet. Contemplation – as Origen conceives of it – takes place by saturating the mind with Scripture because Scripture is the stuff of which the knowledge of God is made. No one can know the Father but through His Word, as Jesus Himself says: “No one comes to the Father but through Me (John 14, 6) !

+ Fr. Gregory