But believes in presiding angels.
Yet Origen’s notion of the spiritual world rather closely resembles that of Celsus, for he is ready to ascribe to angels or other good invisible beings much the same functions which Celsus attributed to demons. He does not, for example, dispute the theory that different parts of the earth and of nature are assigned to different spirits. Instead he “ventures to lay down some considerations of a profounder kind, conveying a mystical and secret view respecting the original distribution of the various quarters of the earth among different superintending spirits.”[1964]He quotes the Septuagint version of Deuteronomy, “When the most High divided the nations.... He set the bounds of the people according to the number of the angels of God.”[1965]He narrates how after Babel, men “were conducted by those angelswho imprinted on each his native language to the different parts of the earth according to their deserts.”[1966]He concludes by saying, “These remarks are to be understood as being made by us with a concealed meaning,”[1967]but there seems little doubt as to his substantial agreement with the view of Celsus. Indeed, later when Celsus asserts that Christians cannot eat, drink, or breathe without being indebted to demons, Origen responds, “We indeed also maintain ... the agency and control of certain beings whom we may call invisible husbandmen and guardians; ... but we deny that those invisible agents are demons.”[1968]
In his fourteenth homily on Numbers, as extant in Rufinus’s translation,[1969]Origen again speaks of presiding angels in these words. “And what is so pleasant, what is so magnificent as the work of the sun or moon by whom the world is illuminated? Yet there is work in the world itself too for angels who are over beasts and for angels who preside over earthly armies. There is work for angels who preside over the nativity of animals, of seedlings, of plantations, and many other growths. And again there is work for angels who preside over holy works, who teach the comprehension of eternal light and the knowledge of God’s secrets and the science of divine things.” How this passage might be used to encourage a belief in magic is made evident by the paraphrase of it inThe Occult Philosophyof Henry Cornelius Agrippa,[1970]written in 1510 at the close of the middle ages. He represents Origen as saying, “There is work in the world itself for angels who preside over earthly armies, kingdoms, provinces, men, beasts, the nativity and growth of animals, shoots, plants, and other things, giving that virtue which they say is in things from their occult property.”
In the treatiseDe Principiis,[1971]Origen states that particular offices are assigned to individual angels, as curing diseases to Raphael, and the conduct of wars to Gabriel. This notion he perhaps derived from theBook of Enochwhich,however, he states in hisReply to Celsusis not accepted by the churches as divinely inspired.[1972]He further declares on the authority of passages in the New Testament that to one angel the Church of the Ephesians was entrusted; to another, that of Smyrna; that Peter had his angel and Paul his,—nay that “every one of the little ones of the Church” has his angel who daily beholds the face of God.[1973]
A law of spiritual gravitation.
Origen advances a further theory concerning spirits, which may be described as a sort of law of spiritual gravitation. It is that when souls are pure and “not weighted down with sin as with a weight of lead,” they ascend on high where other pure and ethereal bodies and spirits dwell, “leaving here below their grosser bodies along with their impurities.” Polluted souls, on the contrary, have to stay close to earth where they wander about sepulchers as ghosts and apparitions.[1974]Origen therefore infers that pagan gods “who are attached for entire ages to particular dwellings and places” on earth, are wicked and polluted spirits. Origen of course will not admit that Christians or Jews bow down even to angels; such worship they reserve for God alone.[1975]
Attitude of Celsus toward astrology.
Both Celsus and Origen closely associate with the world of invisible spirits, whether these be angels or demons, the visible heavenly bodies, and thus lead us from magic, which Origen makes so dependent upon demons, to the kindred subject of astrology, the pseudo-science of the stars. Celsus had censured the Jews and by implication the Christians for worshiping heaven and the angels, and even apparitions produced by sorcery and enchantment, and yet at the same time neglecting what in his opinion formed the holiest and most powerful part of the heaven, namely, the fixed stars and the planets, “who prophesy to everyone so distinctly, through whom all productiveness results, the most conspicuous of supernal heralds, real heavenly angels.”[1976]This shows that Celsus was much more favorably inclined toward astrologythan toward magic and less sceptical concerning its validity. Origen also represents Celsus—and furthermore the Stoics, Platonists, and Pythagoreans—as believing in the theory of themagnus annus, according to which, when the celestial bodies all return to their original positions after the lapse of some thousands of years, history will begin to repeat itself and the same events will occur and the same persons live over again.[1977]Origen also complains that Celsus regards as a divinely-inspired nation the Chaldeans, who were the founders of “deceitful genethlialogy,”[1978]as well as the Magi whom Celsus elsewhere identified with the Chaldeans or astrologers, but whom Origen as we have seen regards rather as the founders of magic.
Attitude of Origen toward astrology.
Origen is opposed both to this art of casting horoscopes and determining the entire life of the individual from his nativity, and to the theory of themagnus annus,[1979]because he is convinced that to admit their truth is to annihilate free-will. But he is far from having freed himself fundamentally from the astrological attitude toward the stars; indeed he still shows vestiges of the old pagan tendency to worship them as divinities. He is convinced that the celestial bodies are not mere fiery masses, as Anaxagoras teaches.[1980]The body of a star is material, it is true, but also ethereal. But furthermore Origen is inclined to agree, both in theDe principiis[1981]and in theContra Celsum,[1982]that the stars are rational beings (λογικὰ καί σπουδαῖα—the latter word had already been applied to them by Philo Judaeus) possessed of free-will and “illuminated with the light of knowledge by that wisdom which is the reflection of everlasting light.” He interprets a passage in Deuteronomy[1983]to mean that the stars have in general been assigned by God to all the nations beneath the heaven, but asserts that from this system of astral satrapies God’s chosen people were exempted. Heis willing to admit that the stars foretell many things, and puts especial faith in comets as omens.[1984]He states that they have appeared on the eve of dynastic changes, great wars, and other disasters, and inclines also to agree with Chaeremon the Stoic that they may come as signs of future good, as in the case of the star announcing the birth of Christ.[1985]But while Origen will grant reasoning faculties and a certain amount of prophetic power to the stars, he refuses to permit worship of them. Rather he is persuaded “that the sun himself and moon and stars pray to the supreme God through his only begotten Son.”[1986]
Pierre Daniel Huet (1630-1721), the learned bishop of Avranches and editor of Origen, in his commentaries upon Origen[1987]cites other works, commentaries on Matthew, the Psalms, the Epistle to the Romans, and Ezekiel, in which Origen again states that the stars are reasoning beings, honor God, praise and pray to Him, and even that they are capable of sin, a point upon which he agrees with theBook of Enochand Bardesanes but not with Philo Judaeus. Nicephorus[1988]states that Origen was condemned in the fifth synod for his error concerning the stars being animated. Sometimes, however, Huet points out, Origen leaves it an open question whether the heavenly bodies are animated or not.[1989]Huet also asserts that in his own time such great men as Tycho Brahe and Kepler have defended the view that the stars are animated beings.
Further discussion in hisCommentary on Genesis.
In a fragment from Origen’sCommentary on Genesispreserved by Eusebius we have a further discussion of the stars and astrology.[1990]Here he represents even Christians as troubled by the doctrine that the stars control human affairs absolutely. This theory he attacks as destructive to all morality, as rendering prayer to God of no avail, and as subjecting even such events as the birth of Christ andthe conversion of each individual to Christianity to fatal necessity. Like Philo Judaeus Origen holds that the stars are merely signs instituted by God, not causes of the future, and quotes passages from the Old Testament in support of his view; like theBook of Enochhe holds that men were instructed in the interpretation of the stars’ significations by the fallen angels. He argues at length that divine foreknowledge does not impose necessity. While, however, God instituted the stars as signs of the future, He intended that only the angels should be able to read them, and deemed it best for mankind to remain in ignorance of the future. “For it is a much greater task than lies within human power to learn truly from the motion of the stars what each person will do and suffer.”[1991]The evil spirits have, however, taught men the art of astrology, but Origen believes that it is so difficult and requires such superhuman accuracy that the predictions of astrologers are more likely to be wrong than right. His tone toward astrology is thus distinctly more unfavorable here than in theReply to Celsus. In arguing that the stars are merely signs, Origen asks why men admit that the flight of birds and condition of entrails in augury and liver-divination are only signs and yet insist that the stars are causes of future events.[1992]The answer, of course, is simple enough: all nature is under the control of the stars which alike produce the events signified and the action of the birds or condition of the liver signifying them. But the question is notable because it was also put by Plotinus a little later in the same century.
Problems of the waters above the firmament and of one or more heavens.
In explaining the Book of Genesis Origen said that celestial and infernal virtues were represented by the waters above and below the firmament respectively. This figurative interpretation gave offence to many later Christian writers, although some of them were ready to interpret the waters above as celestial virtues, but not to take the waters below as signifying evil spirits.[1993]Concerning the question of aplurality of heavens Origen says in theReply to Celsus, “The Scriptures which are current in the Churches of God do not speak of seven heavens or of any definite number at all, but they do appear to teach the existence of heavens, whether that means the spheres of those bodies which the Greeks call planets or something more mysterious.”[1994]
Augury, dreams, and prophecy.
Of other pagan methods of divination than astrology Origen disapproved and classed them, as we have seen, as the work of demons. He was impressed by the weight of testimony to the validity of augury,[1995]although he states that it has been disputed whether there is any such art, but he attributed the truth of the predictions to demons acting through the animals and pointed out that the Mosaic law forbade augury[1996]and classified as unclean the animals commonly employed in divination. The true God, he held, would not employ irrational animals at all to reveal the future, nor even any chance human being, but only the purest of prophetic souls. Origen would appear for the moment to have forgotten Balaam’s ass! Moreover, he himself accepted other channels of foreknowledge than holy prophecy, and believed that dreams often were of value in this respect. When Celsus, criticizing the Scriptural story of the flight into Egypt, stated that an angel descended from heaven to warn Joseph and Mary of the danger threatening the Christ child, Origen retorted that the angelic warning came rather in a dream—an occurrence which seemed in no way marvelous to him, since “in many other cases it has happened that a dream has shown persons the proper course of action.”[1997]Origen grants that all men desire to ascertain the future and argues that the Jews must have had divine prophets, or, since they were forbidden by the Mosaic law to consult “observers of times and diviners,” they would havehad no means of satisfying this universal human craving. It was to slake this popular curiosity concerning the future, Origen thinks, that the Hebrew seers sometimes predicted things of no religious significance or other lasting importance.[1998]Once Origen alludes to physiognomy, saying, “If there be any truth in the doctrine of the physiognomists, whether Zopyrus or Loxus or Polemon.”[1999]
Animals and gems.
The allusions to natural science in theReply to Celsusare not numerous. There are a few passages where animals or gems are mentioned. The remarks concerning animals mention the usual favorites and embody familiar notions which we either have already met or shall meet again and again. Celsus speaks[2000]of the knowledge of poisons and medicines possessed by animals, of predictions by birds, of assemblies held by other animals, of the fidelity with which elephants observe oaths, of the filial affection of the stork, and of the Arabian bird, the phoenix.[2001]Origen implies the belief that the weasel conceives through its mouth when he says, “Observe, moreover, to what pitch of wickedness the demons proceed, so that they even assume the bodies of weasels in order to reveal the future.”[2002]Origen also adduces the marvelous methods of generation of several kinds of animals in support of the virgin birth of Jesus.[2003]Origen’s allusions to gems can scarcely be classified as natural science. He contends that Plato’s statement that our precious stones are a reflection of gems in that better land is taken from Isaiah’s description of the city of God.[2004]In another passage Origen again quotes Isaiah regarding the walls, foundations, battlements, and gates of various precious stones, but states that he cannot stop to examine their spiritual meaning at present.[2005]In one of his homilies on the Book of Numbers Origen displays a favorable attitude towards medical and pharmaceutical investigation, saying,“For if there is any science from God, what will be more from Him than the science of health, in which too the virtues of herbs and the diverse properties of juices are determined.”[2006]
Origen later accused of countenancing magic.
Origen’s belief that the stars were rational beings continued to be held by the sect called Origenists and also by the heretic Priscillian and his followers in the later fourth century. Priscillian, as we have seen, was accused of magic and executed in 385. But we are surprised to find Theophilus of Alexandria, who attacked some of Origen’s views as heretical and persuaded Pope Anastasius to do the same, accusing Origen in a letter written in 405 and translated into Latin by Jerome, of having defended magic.[2007]Theophilus states that Origen has written in one of his treatises, “The magic art seems to me a name for something which does not exist”—a bold and admirable assertion, but one which, as we have seen, the Epicurean Celsus would have been much more likely to make than the Christian Origen—“but if it does, it is not the name of an evil work.” Theophilus cannot understand how Origen, who vaunts himself a Christian, can thus make himself a protector of Elymas the magician who opposed the apostles and of Jamnes and Mambres who resisted Moses. Huet, the learned seventeenth century editor of Origen, knew of no such passage in his extant works as that which Theophilus professes to quote.[2008]