Joseph Trigg's introduction explains the original context of Hanson's work on Origen's exegesis and how his work looks in the light of subsequent developments in Origen scholarship and in biblical interpretation...
moreJoseph Trigg's introduction explains the original context of Hanson's work on Origen's exegesis and how his work looks in the light of subsequent developments in Origen scholarship and in biblical interpretation
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Self-Interpretation of Scripture,
February 4th, 2021
NT interprets OT was what Martin Luther had in mind when he referred to Scripture as 'its own interpreter.' "For Origen this use of the Christian Bible as a whole is what distinguishes the Church from heresy;one Bible means one God. The organic unity of the Bible as a whole is guaranteed, and thus the ultimate compatibility of every passage with every other is grounded for Origen in his belief that the same Spirit inspired all the biblical authors and that the Bible as a whole is the embodiment of the divine Logos in human speech. Because the divine Logos embodied in Scripture is alsothe rational order of the cosmos as well as the rationality that enlightens our understanding, Origen's use of the Bible to interpret itself does not exclude the use as well of information not contained in the Bible. ...self-interpretation of Scripture, when it is not used as a pretext to ignore traditional readings or to avoid critical issues, still has a compelling appeal."--Joseph Trigg# Incisive entry
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A Newly Recovered Treasure of Christian Thought and Spirituality
October 18th, 2019
This is a major find, even if some homilies are known to us in a Latin version. The note in the Clavis Patrum Graecorum (vol 1, pg 149), which assigns the reference # 1426 to this work of Origen’s on the Psalms, only lists the smallest of fragments and Catena excerpts previously extant. This may well be the earliest major Christian treatment of the Psalms now extant. The title says “Homilies on the Psalter, by an uncertain author, up to Psalm 81 as the end.” Joseph Trigg who,"displays a genius as an interpreter for bringing drama and imagery into direct engagement with the biblical text," provided the most stunning account on a biblical text I have ever encountered since I adored his consecrated life as a small kid. It is hard to be squeezed between J. Trigg and L. Perrone, even with Origen's Homily in hand, where Asaph renders Job 1:6; "the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, borrowing the Egyptian Pantheon. Avid contemplation is warranted in reading these pages
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Being and Becoming God, in Origen's Homilies on the Psalms
January 30th, 2020
"For someone made an acquaintance with Origen a while ago, reading the homilies is like meeting up again an old friend. He is still the same guy, impatient with stupidity, opening up conversations rather than closing them down, achieving remarkable consistency by unpredictable means. I find nothing in the homilies to modify the judgment of M. Harl that one finds the principal ideas of Peri Archon all the way through Origen's oeuvre, even to his last works."-J. Trigg#
Read: "You are the body of Christ"--when he prays and says "Protect me, lord", in praying for you is speaking of himself. For you are his body, you are a member of him, unless you want to be separated from him. The savior is composite for your sake. You are composite, have a body inferior in being to your soul and in nature to your spirit. But my Savior is composite for the sake of the church as his body, concerning which, when he prays, as for one needing protection, he says, "Protect me, Lord". Christ Nature is revealed?
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Origen Man of the Church
October 20th, 2019
Strangely, some scholars had suggested that there is little ecclesiology visible in Origenes Adamanteus. Re-examining Origen’s ecclesiology, on the nature and life of the Christian congregation, the church is one major keys to Origen's thought system of Christian Theology, he masterfully crafted. "Visualising the Church as the pre-existent core of all creation, the heart of all redemption theology, his conception is universal in scope and life-affirming. The intellectual background of Origen’s ground-breaking attempt at systematic correlation of Christian doctrine with its biblical heritage is reviewed alongside his immediate milieu, another active context of thought." Origen emerged as par excellence a 'Salvation theologian of resistance', in a persecuted community church of Martyrs. While wrestling with the fundamental question of the One and the Many, of finding the one reality that lies behind all things in the universe. I'l not spoil the pristine article, as I must contemplate on
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God's Marvelous Oikonomia: Address Attributed to Gregory Thaumaturgus
Reflections of Origen's Understanding of Divine and Human Pedagogy
October 27th, 2019
Divine Pedagogy; the way God reveals himself to us. The process begins with God intervening in human history: he engages us in the midst of our lived experience. The Incarnation- the birth of Jesus-is the ultimate example of God engaging us in divine pedagogy; "In Sacred Scripture, ...the marvelous condescension of eternal wisdom is clearly shown, that we may learn the gentle kindness of God, which words cannot express, and how far He has gone in adapting His language with thoughtful concern for our weak human nature." -- Dei Verbum. That Origen adopted Divine Pedagogy as his masterful contemplative guide. The way Origen is caught up in reaching Christ in his address to Gregory, "May you too be a partaker and ever increase the participation, there you may say not only, 'We have become partakers of Christ':Heb 3:14, but also,'We have become partakers of God," a statement of perichoretic participation? This reveals to us the Divine economy. Few adored Origen, rarely analysed as J. Trigg!
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The Heritage of Origen,
Knowing God in the Theological Orations of Gregory of Nazianzus
December 15th, 2019
Trigg's analysis is penetrating like the two edged sword of Apollos' in Hebrews! "Ultimately, though, the Theological Orations are persuasive because in them Gregory himself exercised oikonomia in more than a rhetorical sense: he invites us into a dynamic process of spiritual transformation in which, little by little, we begin to perceive the ultimate mystery of God. In doing so he carries on and receives into the Christian tradition the heritage of Origen. Origen's heritage is not just this vision of continual change or the concept of human participation in the divine oikonomia, it is an open-ended way of thinking, a process of continual questioning and rational debate. Origen could thus have a profound effect on Gregory of Nazianzus even as Gregory differentiated himself fro Origen's cosmology. Origen's concern with the student who wrote the address was not to have him parrot his teacher, but to have him think for himself. that is why he deliberately hid his views at times." Amazing
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Introduction to R. P. C. Hanson's "Allegory and Event"
October 20th, 2019
In his splendid introduction, the eminent reviewer invited all the great Origen experts to portray they became in his intellectual brotherhood. "Origen, De Lubac argued, spiritualizes the whole Scripture for the use of the Christian soul, without taking away anything from history ..."an effort to seize the spirit in history" or to assure the passage from history to spirit. Such a spiritual exegesis depends on history: "Every symbolic construction, with its interiorizations, its spiritual digressions, does not evacuate the narrative. It is not even different to it, as Philo's allegorism could be.It is built, in principle, on its basis. Thus, far from distorting the Christian message, Origen's "extraordinary aptitude for spiritualizing every thing is even more evangelical than Alexandrian." Mesmerizing insight, that added to the great Patristic Bishop, a wealth of writings of the Novelle Theologie' three theologians. Tanks to (St.) H. Newman for his toil to expose the amazing allegory.
