We often depict Origen as a speculative, metaphysically preoccupied theologian with a penchant for heterodoxy. His down-to-earth text critical work on the Bible often gets less attention, unfortunately. While editing my forthcoming (God-willing) monograph, I’ve had to look again at one of his commentaries explaining the problem of apocryphal writings.
What particularly caught my attention is how Origen posits an important break with the apostles and what we today might generically call the “patristic” era.
It is, however, troublesome and well removed from our purported project if we now want to ask how in the divine scriptures there may be mentioning of many books that no reading of which has been handed on to us at all. But certainly not among the Jews do we find the use of such readings. Either it pleased the Holy Spirit to remove them from the mainstream because they were containing some things above human understanding, or, because in these writings (called “apocrypha”) there are found many things corrupt and contrary to true faith, it did not please the elders that they be given recognition (locum), nor that they be admitted for authority.
The sole surviving witness to this passage is a somewhat bumpy Latin translation.
Origen is addressing the problem of why canonical writings sometimes quote noncanonical literature in a way that seems to imply their authority (e.g., 1 Cor. 2:9, Jude 14). He thinks there are two explanations. Either the Holy Spirit providentially concealed their esoteric content from public view and/or their bad contents alarmed “the elders” (maiores; would that we had his Greek here) who prevented their institutionalization.
He continues:
It’s above us to pronounce on such things. Still, it is obvious that many (apocryphal) excerpts were lifted either by the apostles or by the evangelists and included in the New Testament. (These are passages) that we never read in the writings we hold canonical but are found in apocrypha and shown to have been lifted from them. But it is certainly not the case that recognition should be given to apocrypha. For “the eternal boundaries must not be moved, which our fathers have established” (Prov. 22:28). For it was possible that the apostles and evangelists, filled with the Holy Spirit, knew what could be taken from those writings and what truly needed to be refused. For us, however, it is not far from danger to presume such a thing, since for us there is not such an abundance of the Spirit.[1]
Why is this interesting?
Well, Origen may have been the greatest intellect in all of ancient Christianity. Were anyone qualified to make a judgment call about the authority or trustworthiness of noncanonical books, it would have been him. Yet, he suggests that’s not a good idea, at least as far as normalizing these writings for the wider church.
So forasmuch as Origen is often remembered as a theological maverick, what he prescribes here is starkly conservative. Some scholarship has a tendency to overplay Origen’s apocryphal enthusiasm while missing the sharp institutional strictures and warnings he placed around these writings. (My book aims to tackle some of that.)
Second, I’m also intrigued by how he describes the oracular declension or rupture with the apostolic era vis-à-vis pneumatic discernment/inspiration. Because the writers of the NT had a unique oracular position, they were able to assess and sort what apocryphal material was worthy of inclusion in the canonical writings, on behalf of a general ecclesiastical readership. But that dispensation has passed, it would seem.
To my mind, this all suggests that the apostolic office and its authority were not comprehensively passed down to the apostles’ successors or the institutional church generally.
Operosum est autem et procul ab opere proposito, si velimus nunc requirere, quam multorum librorum commemoratio fiat in scripturis divinis, quorum lectio nobis nulla omnino est tradita. Sed neque apud Iudaeos quidem haberi usum huiusmodi reperimus lectionum, quas sive pro eo, quod aliqua supra humanam intelligentiam continebant, placuit sancto Spiritui auferri de medio, sive quod scripturis his, quae appellantur apocryphae pro eo, quod multa in iis corrupta et contra fidem veram inveniuntur, dari maioribus non placuit locum nec admitti ad auctoritatem. Supra nos est pronuntiare de talibus. Illud tamen palam est multa vel ab Apostolis vel ab evangelistis exempla esse prolata et Novo Testamento inserta, quae in his scripturis, quae canonicas habemus, numquam legimus, in apocryphis tamen inveniuntur et evidenter ex ipsis ostenduntur assumpta. Sed nec sic quidem locus apocryphis dandus est; ‘non’ enim ‘transferendi sunt termini aeterni, quos statuerunt patres’ nostri. Potuit enim fieri, ut Apostoli vel evangelistae sancto spiritu repleti sciverint, quid adsumendum esset ex illis scripturis, quid vero refutandum; nobis autem non est absque periculo aliquid tale praesumere, quibus non est tanta spiritus abundantia. W. A. Baehrens, ed., Origenes Werke VIII: Homilien zu Samuel I, zum Hohelied und zu den Propheten, GCS 33 (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1925), 87. ↑