The homilies of Origen, one of the Church’s earliest and most seminal theologians, give a window into the tone of early Christian exegesis. Peering into that window can help open the eyes of 21st century expositors to the Church’s historical tradition of creative, exciting, and compelling exegesis. I want to give a brief and cursory consideration of Origen’s Bible reading from his first homily on Genesis with an eye to how we, conservative Reformed and evangelical interpreters of Scripture, can learn from his approach. This is neither meant to be a critical interaction, nor a blanket endorsement, but rather an appraisal that sifts through the at-times unhelpful and bizarre to find what might be helpful in our present context.a
Beginning in Christ
The first words of Origen’s first homily on Genesis address, appropriately, the opening verse of Scripture: “In the beginning God made heaven and earth.” How does Origen exposit Genesis 1.1?
What is the beginning of all things except our Lord and “Savior of all,” Jesus Christ “the firstborn of every creature”? In this beginning, therefore, that is, in his Word, “God made heaven and earth” as the evangelist John also says in the beginning of his Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word… “
Homily 1.1
Origen’s comments on this verse reflect his hermeneutical presupposition, that the Christian reader does not come to Scripture prima facie, but rather we always read and hear the text in and through Christ. Henri de Lubac, a 20th century Catholic ressourcement theologian strongly influenced by Origen, puts it well: “For a Christian to understand the Bible means to understand it in the light of the Gospel.” (Catholicism, p. 178) God has definitively revealed Himself in the person of His Son, and there is now no going behind that.
Our conservative evangelical tendency is to look for the grammatical-historical interpretation of the text as the primary meaning, and to (maybe) go from there to types, to how the text foreshadows Christ or the life of the Church. Origen shows us, in the pattern of patristic exegesis, that for the Christian the Christological is the primary meaning of the text. Our task when reading the Old Testament is not to find or pick out what things might be pointing to Christ; Jesus has already solved that for us. All of Scripture is fulfilled in Him, in His life, death, and resurrection, and in the continuing life of His body, the Church.
(more…)- Full disclosure: I am not an Origen scholar, nor am I a scholar of patristic exegesis more broadly. In fact, I’m rather new to Origen. I write this aware of my ignorance (it has to count for something when one is not ignorant of one’s ignorance, right?) of the philosophical discussions at play. Yet, this ignorance and lack of expertise notwithstanding, there are basic patterns and principles of exegesis shown by Origen that can be highly illuminating and instructive for us. (back)
