I find it really interesting that the great 3rd c. Christian exegete Origen, who was deemed a heretic a long ways after his death, every once in a while just kind of offhandedly refers in his extent writings to his ideas that were eventually deemed heretical, like the idea that eventually the Devil would be reconciled to God.
For example, I came across this today in Origen's "Treatise on Prayer" (XXVII.15; Classics of Western Spirituality 1979, trans. Rowan A. Greer), which appears at the end of a long section in which Origen examines the meaning of "Give us this day our daily bread" from the versions of the Lord's Prayer in Matthew and Luke:
By comparing two verses from the Apostle [Paul] I have often been perplexed as to how this is the "end of the ages" in which Jesus "has appeared once for all... to put away sin," if there are to be ages succeeding this one. Here are the two verses. In Hebrews, "But now He has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself" (Heb. 9:26). And in Ephesians, "That in the coming ages He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us" (Eph. 2:7). If I may hazard a guess at so great a puzzle, I think that just as the end of the year is the last month after which the beginning of another month takes place, so perhaps when many ages have been accomplished as, so to speak, a year of ages, the end is the present age, after which certain ages to come will take place, whose beginning is the age to come. And in those ages to come God will show the riches "of His grace in kindness," since the worst sinner, who has blasphemed the Holy Spirit and been ruled by sin from beginning to end in the whole of this present age, will afterwards in the age to come be brought into order, I know not how.
I once came across a similar passage to this in some other writing of Origen's, and it was just as striking. You get the sense that he pored over these verses as revelations of deep mysteries and came to the inevitable conclusion that the Devil would be reconciled, though it was a deeper mystery how, and he would never know -- at least not yet.
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3 comments:
Somewhere, in the writings of Church Father Saint of Nyssa, you will find a passage fairly much like what you found in Origen. The idea advanced is that if the Devil and the fallen angels were not reconciled with God at the "end," the victory of Christ would not be complete. This idea was condemned as heretical by the Church, but it continues to have believers down to our own day.
If you find the St Gregory of Nyssa quote, I would be happy to have the reference. Thanks and blessings,
Father Paul
The way in which he treats both passages as part of one whole piece is in itself moving, though, I know, unremarkable.
What exactly is an "age" according to Origen?
I think for Origen an age is a long period of divine time, with the biggest turning point of all time being the incarnation of Christ, which began the process completed after his crucifixion where the veil was taken off of the Scriptures and God's will began to be known pretty fully.
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