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John A. Mcguckin, Origen of Alexandria and Conscience STATE OF AFFAIRS © 2020 The Wheel. May be distributed for noncommercial use. www.wheeljournal.com Origen of Alexandria and Conscience John A. McGuckin The Church’s first serious, and argu- the mystical profundity of the original This article is extract- ably greatest, exegete of Scripture messengers who served as vehicles of ed from the forthcom- who could claim a solid philosophi- the Logos, and also in the measure of ing Oxford Companion on Conscience. cal education was Origen of Alexan- the spiritual profundity of the reader dria (185–254). His theory of exegesis who approaches them for insight. In approached the Scripture more as of short, there was a steep hierarchy of a body of oracular literature than as value in Scripture.1 the product of any coherent historical evolution of traditions. He taught that To begin with, all the Old Testament the divine Wisdom, or Logos, of God had to be read in the light of, and sub- had presented Scriptures across the servient to, the New (Origen was the ages as a treasure that could only be first to introduce this distinction of Old unlocked once one had the proper key and New Covenants). But moreover, to understanding. It was not, in other certain writers weighed more than oth- words, internally logically coherent or ers, and they were, as it were (using a self-explanatory in any of its messag- notion borrowed from Rabbi Akiba) es. Truth was hidden and clues were “the first fruits of the first fruits.” This given by the Logos to be recognized by meant, for Origen, that the two great- the spiritually refined. For those who est authorities in all Scripture were the 1 See John A. are not spiritually mature, the literal two prophetic seers, John and Paul. Af- McGuckin, The Westminster Handbook word often led them astray because ter them came the Book of Psalms (seen to Origen of Alex- they were either unwilling or unable to by Origen as heavily filled with direct, andria (Louisville: lift their minds on high. But for those non-historical utterances by the eternal Westminster John who were attuned to the deeper mean- Logos); then Isaiah, the synoptic Gos- Knox Press, 2004) ings hidden in the texts by the Divine pels, and the Apostolic epistles; then and Seeing the Glory, vol. 1 (Crestwood: Logos, it was clear that all things were the other New Testament writings; and SVS Press, 2017). meant to lead up away from matter finally the remainder of the Old Testa- and flesh towards an increasing purity ment. This strict hierarchy of interpre- 2 Many writers who of heart that allowed one the possibili- tive lenses means that Pauline litera- disdained Origen’s ty of communion with the Logos, who ture assumed a very strong dominance exegetical theories (such as Theophi- hid himself from the crass and the fool- on Origen’s exegesis. Given that Ori- lus of Alexandria, ish (Alogoi). Origen taught consistently gen’s biblical approach was so heavily Jerome, Theodore that Scripture thus had to be read not used in the Greek Christian world after Mopsuestia, and historically and sequentially (as if it him, both by his friends and enemies, John Chrysostom) were a slow linear development) but it meant that the Pauline doctrine on have been shown to have used him exten- eschatologically—out of time—and in any major topic was pushed to the fore sively and quietly, the realisation that its hidden oracular in Christian theological reflection ever even when castigat- truths were given in accordance with after.2 After Origen, conscience among ing him explicitly. The Wheel 21/22 | Spring/Summer 2020 19 © 2020 The Wheel. the Christians once more assumes the May be distributed for resonances of Paul’s mystical teaching noncommercial use. riveted to the wider Greek tradition of www.wheeljournal.com epistemological awareness. In short: the moral sense became the most acute form of human consciousness, and a border point, a liminal space, where refined consciousness logos( ) merged into divine awareness (nous). Already, for some of the more philo- sophically advanced Greek Christians of the second century onwards, synei- desis in the human being was preemi- nently understood as the “awareness” or consciousness of God and divine Origen of Alexan- 3 dria. Icon by Eileen things. For Clement of Alexandria, McGuckin, The Icon this awareness is one of the preeminent Studio, http://www. energies (dynameis) of the soul.4 It is the sgtt.org/NewIcon force which, from the soul’s knowl- Studio/. edge of the exemplar of divine things, gives the moral compass to a believer’s life.5 Clement calls it the best and stron- but even though the Church purged gest foundation of the correct life.6 pre-existence ontology from standard doctrine, it took to heart this theo- However, it was Origen who real- logical sense of moral conscience as a ly elucidated the disconnected ideas mystical apprehension of the divine present in Paul and who transformed presence. The idea would rise to great the whole notion into a deeply mysti- precedence in later tradition, particu- cal approach. For Origen, conscience larly moved on by the monastic move- was first and foremost a matter of acute ment and its deep interest in the scru- awareness: wisdom (gnosis). It was the tiny of the inner mind and its motives. reflected energy in a human being of Origen marked a radical return to close 3 Methodios of the Supreme Wisdom of God (Logos). It Olympus, Frag- aroused within a human the realisation attention to the text of Paul. Like the ment 10 on Job, in that each one was an eternal soul. Mor- Apostle, he approached the notion of Patrologia Graeca, ed. al conscience, therefore, was ultimately conscience from a mystical perspec- J.-P. Migne (Paris, the mystical sense of a remembered tive: a matter of the sensing of the in- 1857–86) [hereafter dwelling power of the grace of God. PG] 18:408a. identity (the soul’s original, eternal bliss with God) in communion with The Logos is, for Origen, the source of 4 Clement of Alexan- the Logos before the lapse to time and the cosmos’s whole structure and inner dria, Stromata 7.7, PG space. This lifted the moral imperative meaning and dynamic—especially of 9:453a; Clement of to ontological status: being ethical was the “likeness” to God himself (homoio- Alexandria, Excerpts sis from Theodotos 27, PG not just a return to good behaviors, but ), which the Logos, as the supreme 9:673a. more so to the springs of immortal be- divine Image (eikon) in the Cosmos ing. Origen here was trying to merge himself, has personally located in the 5 Clement, Stromata aspects of late Platonic epistemology human soul, especially rooting it in its 7.8, PG 9:472a. with Christian eschatology. He would higher dynamics of consciousness. For 6 Clement, Stromata get into hot water for this view, both Origen, this close relation of “the im- 1.1, PG 8:692b. in his lifetime and posthumously; age and the likeness” (divine Logos and 20 human spiritual syneidesis) fulfills the and Syriac monastic traditions of the text in Genesis that defines the original following millennium. creation of humankind: “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness” The Byzantine monastic fathers partic- (Gen. 1:26). Using Platonic cosmology ularly took up Origen’s themes, and in where it suits, Origen explains that this John Climacus’s Ladder of Divine Ascent, consciousness of God is synonymous an early seventh century book that has with the entrance into all wisdom (gno- been used (from its inception to the sis) since the soul (the individual con- present day) as a training manual for sidered as a spiritual consciousness) is monks, syneidesis is not merely the mor- atemporal, and indeed the knowledge al consciousness of good and evil, but of God is a remembrance of a time primarily the sense of divine indwell- before time, when all souls enjoyed a ing presence that must be nurtured and deep ontological union with the Divine developed as a spiritual faculty in the Logos, which now (in the fallen materi- soul, since it will then provide the full al condition) the lapsed soul struggles direction of a life well lived.7 This is the to rediscover. The return to this former, guarding (phylaxis) of the heart, which pre-earthly glory (apokatastasis) is driv- becomes one of the dominant themes en, in earth’s moral training ground, in later spiritual writing. The means of by increasingly wise recollection of this guarding of the heart are the relat- the glory (doxa), and by the force of ed attitudes of nepsis (focused aware- divine eros which transfigures the soul ness) and prosoche (attentiveness). The through love. For Origen, here follow- later Christian writers who continued ing Paul to a larger degree than Plato, Origen’s tradition, such as Gregory of this ascentive love is the force (dyna- Nazianzus (c. 329–90), Gregory of Nys- mis) which makes moral effort, and sa (c. 335–94), and Maximus the Con- the ascetical endeavour that underlies fessor (c. 580–662), and the later Byzan- it (virtue as habitus), synonymous with tine monastics who read them closely, mystical communion with the Logos. also continued to stress the ascentive For Origen, conscience is therefore an power of divine eros that made the soul epistemological factor, as it was with of the believer like the lover in the Song Plato; but more than in Plato or any of of Songs, always seeking restlessly for the later Neo-Platonists, the ascentive its Beloved, and shaping all its moral force is divine eros leading to commu- and intellectual energies for the goal nion.
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