Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| On the End or Consummation.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter
VI.—On the End or Consummation.
1. An end or consummation would seem to be an
indication of the perfection and completion of things. And this
reminds us here, that if there be any one imbued with a desire of
reading and understanding subjects of such difficulty and importance,
he ought to bring to the effort a perfect and instructed understanding,
lest perhaps, if he has had no experience in questions of this kind,
they may appear to him as vain and superfluous; or if his mind be full
of preconceptions and prejudices on other points, he may judge these to
be heretical and opposed to the faith of the Church, yielding in so
doing not so much to the convictions of reason as to the dogmatism of
prejudice. These subjects, indeed, are treated by us with great
solicitude and caution, in the manner rather of an investigation and
discussion, than in that of fixed and certain decision. For we
have pointed out in the preceding pages those questions which must be
set forth in clear dogmatic propositions, as I think has been done to
the best of my ability when speaking of the Trinity. But on the
present occasion our exercise is to be conducted, as we best may, in
the style of a disputation rather than of strict definition.
The end of the world, then, and the final
consummation, will take place when every one shall be subjected to
punishment for his sins; a time which God alone knows, when He will
bestow on each one what he deserves. We think, indeed, that the
goodness of God, through His Christ, may recall all His creatures to
one end, even His enemies being conquered and subdued. For thus
says holy Scripture, “The Lord said to My
Lord, Sit Thou at My right hand, until I make Thine enemies Thy
footstool.”2037
And if the
meaning of the prophet’s language here be less clear, we may
ascertain it from the Apostle Paul, who speaks more openly, thus:
“For Christ must reign until He has put all enemies under His
feet.”2038
But if even
that unreserved declaration of the apostle do not sufficiently inform
us what is meant by “enemies being placed under His feet,”
listen to what he says in the following words, “For all things
must be put under Him.” What, then, is this “putting
under” by which all things must be made subject to Christ?
I am of opinion that it is this very subjection by which we also wish
to be subject to Him, by which the apostles also were subject, and all
the saints who have been followers of Christ. For the name
“subjection,” by which we are subject to Christ, indicates
that the salvation which proceeds from Him belongs to His subjects,
agreeably to the declaration of David, “Shall not my soul be
subject unto God? From Him cometh my salvation.”2039
2. Seeing, then, that such is the end, when all
enemies will be subdued to Christ, when death—the last
enemy—shall be destroyed, and when the kingdom shall be delivered
up by Christ (to whom all things are subject) to God the Father; let
us, I say, from such an end as this, contemplate the beginnings of
things. For the end is always like the beginning: and,
therefore, as there is one end to all things, so ought we to understand
that there was one beginning; and as there is one end to many things,
so there spring from one beginning many differences and varieties,
which again, through the goodness of God, and by subjection to Christ,
and through the unity of the Holy Spirit, are recalled to one end,
which is like unto the beginning: all those, viz., who, bending
the knee at the name of Jesus, make known by so doing their subjection
to Him: and these are they who are in heaven, on earth, and under
the earth: by which three classes the whole universe of things is
pointed out, those, viz., who from that one beginning were arranged,
each according to the diversity of his conduct, among the different
orders, in accordance with their desert; for there was no goodness in
them by essential being, as in God and His Christ, and in the Holy
Spirit. For in the Trinity alone, which is the author of all
things, does goodness exist in virtue of essential being; while others
possess it as an accidental and perishable quality, and only then enjoy
blessedness, when they participate in holiness and wisdom, and in
divinity itself. But if they neglect and despise such
participation, then is each one, by fault of his own slothfulness,
made, one more rapidly, another more slowly, one in a greater, another
in a less degree, the cause of his own downfall. And since, as we
have remarked, the lapse by which an individual falls away from his
position is characterized by great diversity, according to the movements of
the mind and will, one man falling with greater ease, another with more
difficulty, into a lower condition; in this is to be seen the just
judgment of the providence of God, that it should happen to every one
according to the diversity of his conduct, in proportion to the desert
of his declension and defection. Certain of those, indeed, who
remained in that beginning which we have described as resembling the
end which is to come, obtained, in the ordering and arrangement of the
world, the rank of angels; others that of influences, others of
principalities, others of powers, that they may exercise power over
those who need to have power upon their head. Others, again,
received the rank of thrones, having the office of judging or ruling
those who require this; others dominion, doubtless, over slaves; all of
which are conferred by Divine Providence in just and impartial judgment
according to their merits, and to the progress which they had made in
the participation and imitation of God. But those who have been
removed from their primal state of blessedness have not been removed
irrecoverably, but have been placed under the rule of those holy and
blessed orders which we have described; and by availing themselves of
the aid of these, and being remoulded by salutary principles and
discipline, they may recover themselves, and be restored to their
condition of happiness. From all which I am of opinion, so far as
I can see, that this order of the human race has been appointed in
order that in the future world, or in ages to come, when there shall be
the new heavens and new earth, spoken of by Isaiah, it may be restored
to that unity promised by the Lord Jesus in His prayer to God the
Father on behalf of His disciples: “I do not pray for these
alone, but for all who shall believe on Me through their word:
that they all may be one, as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee,
that they also may be one in Us;”2040
and again, when He says: “That they may be one, even as We
are one; I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be made perfect in
one.”2041
And this is
further confirmed by the language of the Apostle Paul:
“Until we all come in the unity of the faith to a perfect man, to
the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.”2042
And in keeping with this is the
declaration of the same apostle, when he exhorts us, who even in the
present life are placed in the Church, in which is the form of that
kingdom which is to come, to this same similitude of unity:
“That ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions
among you; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind
and in the same judgment.”2043
3. It is to be borne in mind, however, that
certain beings who fell away from that one beginning of which we have
spoken, have sunk to such a depth of unworthiness and wickedness as to
be deemed altogether undeserving of that training and instruction by
which the human race, while in the flesh, are trained and instructed
with the assistance of the heavenly powers; and continue, on the
contrary, in a state of enmity and opposition to those who are
receiving this instruction and teaching. And hence it is that the
whole of this mortal life is full of struggles and trials, caused by
the opposition and enmity of those who fell from a better condition
without at all looking back, and who are called the devil and his
angels, and the other orders of evil, which the apostle classed among
the opposing powers. But whether any of these orders who act
under the government of the devil, and obey his wicked commands, will
in a future world be converted to righteousness because of their
possessing the faculty of freedom of will, or whether persistent and
inveterate wickedness may be changed by the power of habit into nature,
is a result which you yourself, reader, may approve of, if neither in
these present worlds which are seen and temporal, nor in those which
are unseen and are eternal, that portion is to differ wholly from the
final unity and fitness of things. But in the meantime, both in
those temporal worlds which are seen, as well as in those eternal
worlds which are invisible, all those beings are arranged, according to
a regular plan, in the order and degree of their merits; so that some
of them in the first, others in the second, some even in the last
times, after having undergone heavier and severer punishments, endured
for a lengthened period, and for many ages, so to speak, improved by
this stern method of training, and restored at first by the instruction
of the angels, and subsequently by the powers of a higher grade, and
thus advancing through each stage to a better condition, reach even to
that which is invisible and eternal, having travelled through, by a
kind of training, every single office of the heavenly powers.
From which, I think, this will appear to follow as an inference, that
every rational nature may, in passing from one order to another, go
through each to all, and advance from all to each, while made the
subject of various degrees of proficiency and failure according to its
own actions and endeavours, put forth in the enjoyment of its power of
freedom of will.
4. But
since Paul says that certain things are visible and temporal, and
others besides these invisible and eternal, we proceed to inquire how
those things which are seen are temporal—whether because there
will be nothing at all after them in all those periods of the coming
world, in which that dispersion and separation from the one beginning
is undergoing a process of restoration to one and the same end and
likeness; or because, while the form of those things which are seen
passes away, their essential nature is subject to no corruption.
And Paul seems to confirm the latter view, when he says, “For the
fashion of this world passeth away.”2044
David also appears to assert the same
in the words, “The heavens shall perish, but Thou shalt endure;
and they all shall wax old as a garment, and Thou shalt change them
like a vesture, and like a vestment they shall be
changed.”2045
For if the
heavens are to be changed, assuredly that which is changed does not
perish, and if the fashion of the world passes away, it is by no means
an annihilation or destruction of their material substance that is
shown to take place, but a kind of change of quality and transformation
of appearance. Isaiah also, in declaring prophetically that there
will be a new heaven and a new earth, undoubtedly suggests a similar
view. For this renewal of heaven and earth, and this
transmutation of the form of the present world, and this changing of
the heavens will undoubtedly be prepared for those who are walking
along that way which we have pointed out above, and are tending to that
goal of happiness to which, it is said, even enemies themselves are to
be subjected, and in which God is said to be “all and in
all.” And if any one imagine that at the end material,
i.e., bodily, nature will be entirely destroyed, he cannot in any
respect meet my view, how beings so numerous and powerful are able to
live and to exist without bodies, since it is an attribute of the
divine nature alone—i.e., of the Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit—to exist without any material substance, and without
partaking in any degree of a bodily adjunct. Another, perhaps,
may say that in the end every bodily substance will be so pure and
refined as to be like the æther, and of a celestial purity and
clearness. How things will be, however, is known with certainty
to God alone, and to those who are His friends through Christ and the
Holy Spirit.2046
| 2046 [The language
used by Origen in this and the preceding chapter affords a remarkable
illustration of that occasional extravagance in statements of facts and
opinions, as well as of those strange imaginings and wild speculations
as to the meaning of Holy Scripture, which brought upon him
subsequently grave charges of error and heretical pravity. See
Neander’s History of the Christian Religion and Church during
the First Three Centuries (Rose’s translation), vol. ii. p.
217 et seqq., and Hagenbach’s History of Doctrines, vol.
i. p. 102 et seqq. See also Prefatory Note to Origen’s
Works, supra, p. 235. S.] | E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
