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| The Case of Divine Matters. Only God and His Prophets are to Be Heard in These. The Prophets and Their Auditors are Acted on by the Same Afflatus. Origen's Excellence in the Interpretation of Scripture.
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Argument XV.—The
Case of Divine Matters. Only God and His Prophets are to Be Heard
in These. The Prophets and Their Auditors are Acted on by the
Same Afflatus. Origen’s Excellence in the Interpretation of
Scripture.
With respect to these human teachers, indeed, he
counselled us to attach ourselves to none of them, not even though they
were attested as most wise by all men, but to devote ourselves to God
alone, and to the prophets. And he himself became the interpreter
of the prophets247
to us, and
explained whatsoever was dark or enigmatical in them. For there
are many things of that kind in the sacred words; and whether it be
that God is pleased to hold communication with men in such a way as
that the divine word may not enter all naked and uncovered into an
unworthy soul, such as many are, or whether it be, that while every
divine oracle is in its own nature most clear and perspicuous, it seems
obscure and dark to us, who have apostatized from God, and have lost
the faculty of hearing through time and age, I cannot tell. But
however the case may stand, if it be that there are some words really
enigmatical, he explained all such, and set them in the light, as being
himself a skilled and most discerning hearer of God; or if it be that
none of them are really obscure in their own nature, they were also not
unintelligible to him, who alone of all men of the present time with
whom I have myself been acquainted, or of whom I have heard by the
report of others, has so deeply studied the clear and luminous oracles
of God, as to be able at once to receive their meaning into his own
mind, and to convey it to others. For that Leader of all men, who
inspires248
God’s dear
prophets, and suggests all their prophecies and their mystic and
heavenly words, has honoured this man as He would a friend, and has
constituted him an expositor of these same oracles; and things of which
He only gave a hint by others, He made matters of full instruction by
this man’s instrumentality; and in things which He, who is worthy
of all trust, either enjoined in regal fashion, or simply enunciated,
He imparted to this man the gift of investigating and unfolding and
explaining them: so that, if there chanced to be any one of
obtuse and incredulous mind, or one again thirsting for instruction, he
might learn from this man, and in some manner be constrained to
understand and to decide for belief, and to follow God. These
things, moreover, as I judge, he gives forth only and truly by
participation in the Divine Spirit: for there is need of the same
power for those who prophesy and for those who hear the prophets; and
no one can rightly hear a prophet, unless the same Spirit who
prophesies bestows on him the capacity of apprehending His words.
And this principle is expressed indeed in the Holy Scriptures
themselves, when it is said that only He who shutteth openeth, and no
other one whatever;249
and what is
shut is opened when the word of inspiration explains mysteries.
Now that greatest gift this man has received from God, and that noblest
of all endowments he has had bestowed upon him from heaven, that he
should be an interpreter of the oracles of God to men,250
and that he might understand the words of
God, even as if God spake them to him, and that he might recount them
to men in such wise as that they may hear them with
intelligence.251
| 251 The text
gives ὡς
ἀκούσωσιν with
Voss. and Bengel. The Paris editor gives ἀκούουσιν. | Therefore to
us there was no forbidden subject of speech;252
for there was no matter of knowledge hidden
or inaccessible to us, but we had it in our power to learn every kind
of discourse, both foreign253
and Greek, both spiritual and political, both divine and human; and we
were permitted with all freedom to go round the whole circle of
knowledge, and investigate it, and satisfy ourselves with all kinds of
doctrines, and enjoy the sweets of intellect. And whether it was
some ancient system of truth, or whether it was something one might
otherwise name that was before us, we had in him an apparatus and a
power at once admirable and full of the most beautiful views. And
to speak in brief, he was truly a paradise to us after the similitude
of the paradise of God, wherein we were not set indeed to till the soil
beneath us, or to make ourselves gross with bodily nurture,254
| 254
σωματοτροφεῖν
παχυνομένους. | but only to increase the acquisitions of
mind with all gladness and enjoyment,—planting, so to speak, some
fair growths ourselves, or having them planted in us by the Author of
all things.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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