SOURCE: "Origen," in The Origins of the Christian Mystical Tradition: From Plato to Denys. Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1981, pp. 52-74.

[In this essay, Louth examines the degree to which Platonism permeates Origen's theology, showing how Origen helped found the tradition of intellectual mysticism received by the Eastern Church and, more broadly, the whole of the Christian mystical tradition, having provided a framework within which mystical theology could develop.]

With Origen we begin to discuss specifically Christian mystical theology. So far we have discussed the Platonic background to such theology, and in doing that we may seem to have prejudged the issue as to whether Christian mystical theology has, in fact, a Platonic background at all. However, the idea that Christian mystical theology is nothing but Platonism is a charge often made, and we shall not advance our understanding of this problem by ignoring it. Even without discussing the Fathers, we have seen that this 'Platonic background' is complicated. It is not pure Plato. What we have found in Philo and Plotinus has other philosophical debts than those to Plato. Middle Platonism, of which Philo, as we have seen, can be regarded as an example, and neo-Platonism are indebted to Aristotle and the Stoics for some of their emphases. But it is not by chance that they are called 'Platonist': Plato is their acknowledged master.

The influence of Middle Platonism on the Fathers is perhaps more considerable than might at first sight appear likely. Plato and Plotinus are essentially interesting for their own sakes: both were great philosophers. Philo was not, nor were the rest of the so-called Middle Platonists. Rather we find with them a kind of 'accepted wisdom', a way of looking at things which was customary in the early Patristic period and, just for that reason, was influential in the Fathers. How this influence operated, we shall see in what follows.

But even before we come to the Fathers, we have seen something more than the wisdom of pagan philosophy: with Philo we find the influence of the God of the Old Testament, of a God who created man and cares for him and chose Israel to be His people and revealed Himself in His dealings with them. Philo's concern is to show that pagan philosophy could discover nothing not already, for the Jew, a matter of revelation—and the revelation of God, moreover, not simply of the divine. This strand assumes even greater importance in the Christian Fathers. Whatever the influence of Platonism, they were concerned with God and not with the divine. Philo's idea of a God who speaks, who declares Himself, is given a sharper edge and more immediacy when, with the Fathers, he becomes the God who speaks and declares Himself in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. To know God is to accept that revelation, to participate in God's self-communication thus made known. So for most of the Fathers (with only rare exceptions) the 'mystical life' is the ultimate flowering of the life of baptism, the life we receive when we share in Christ's death and risen life by being baptized in water and the Holy Spirit.

When we begin to examine Origen's understanding of the soul's ascent to God this is the first point to emerge: the ascent begins, or is made possible, by what God has done for us in Christ and made effective in us by baptism. The mystical life is the working-out, the realizing, of Christ's union with the soul effected in baptism, and is a communion, a dialogue between Christ and the soul. Though this is often expressed in language drawn from Plato, when such language is used (as it is in Origen), what these Platonic-sounding concepts mean is very different from what Plato or Plotinus intended. Origen is talking about the life of the baptized Christian within the Church; Plato and Plotinus about the search for ultimate truth by an intellectual élite, either in the company of other like-minded souls, or as 'the alone to the Alone'.

Origen was deeply indebted to Platonism. As we shall see, his theology is permeated through and through by Platonic ways of thought. But his attitude to philosophy is not at all simple.¹ He studied under the philosopher, Ammonius Saccas, who was also Plotinus' master, but he studied as a Christian. He was not a convert from philosophy like Justin Martyr or Clement of Alexandria, and he had none of their welcoming attitude towards philosophy which, for him, was simply a useful study for the Christian theologian as a training in dialectic, and something he justifies by the example of the Israelites' 'spoiling of the Egyptians' at the Exodus.² According to a pupil of Origen, Gregory Thaumaturgus, this was Origen's great gift; his capacity to press wisdom into the service of the one Lord wherever it might be found:

This greatest gift has our friend accepted from God, this goodly portion from heaven, to be the interpreter of God's words to men, to understand the things of God as God's utterances, and to set them forth to men as men hear. Therefore there was nothing unutterable to us, for there was nothing inaccessible. We were privileged to learn every word, Barbarian or Hellenic, mystic or published, divine or human, traversing them all with the fullest freedom, and exploring them, bearing off from all and enjoying the riches of the soul … In a word, this was indeed our Paradise, imitating that great Paradise of God, wherein we needed not to till the earth below, not to minister to the body and grow gross, but only to increase the acquisitions of our souls, like some fair plants engrafting themselves, or rather engrafted in us by the Cause of all.³.

But Origen's real concern was with the interpretation of Scripture. This was the repository of all wisdom and all truth and, as we shall see, the interpretation of Scripture lies at the very heart of his mystical theology. It was certainly the heart of his life's work: most of his writings consist of exposition of Scripture.

It was, then, as an interpreter of the Bible that Origen exercised his greatest influence on later theologians; here was a wealth of reflection on Scripture that could not be ignored and, as the ground of his mystical theology, was to be deeply pervasive in its influence. For him the Song of Songs was the book on the summit of the mystical life, the union of the soul with God. This judgement Origen bequeathed to later theology, along with many of the themes he draws out in his interpretation of the Song, in particular, the idea of the three stages of the mystical life—the three ways later called purificatory, illuminative, and unitive—and the notion of the soul's spiritual senses.

Let us begin by looking at his use of the Song of Songs. Origen's Commentary and Homilies on the Song⁴ are not the earliest examples of the genre; there is a commentary, extant only in translation, by Hippolytus, and there is no doubt that Origen made use of this earlier work. However, in Hippolytus' commentary we find an ecclesiological interpretation dominant; that is, the relationship between the Bridegroom and the Bride is interpreted as referring to the relationship between Christ and the Church. The background to that is probably rabbinic interpretation, which saw the Song as expressing the relationship between God and Israel. The interpretation in terms of Christ and the individual soul occurs only occasionally in Hippolytus. With Origen the relationship of the soul to Christ (not that this is isolated from the theme of the relationship of the Church to Christ) becomes more prominent: there is a mystical, as well as an ecclesiological interpretation.

How does Origen justify this use of the Song of Songs? In the Old Testament, there are, he says at the beginning of the first Homily on the Song, seven songs, and the Song of Songs is the seventh and the most sublime. Before we can sing this song we must have progressed through the singing of the other six. Origen speaks of the progression through the six songs to the Song of Songs itself thus:

You must come out of Egypt and, when the land of Egypt lies behind you, you must cross the Red Sea if you are to sing the first song, saying: Let us sing unto the Lord, for He is gloriously magnified [Song of Moses: Exod. 15]. But though you have uttered this first song, you are still a long way from the Song of Songs. Pursue your spiritual journey through the wilderness until you come to the well which the kings dug so that there you may sing the second song [Numbers 21:17-20]. After that, come to the threshold of the holy land that, standing on the bank of Jordan, you may sing another song of Moses, saying: Hear, O heaven, and I will speak, and let the earth give ear to the words of my mouth [Deut. 32]. Again, you must fight under Joshua and possess the holy land as your inheritance; and a bee must prophesy for you and judge you—Deborah, you understand, means 'bee'—in order that you may take that song also on your lips, which is found in the Book of Judges [Judges 5: the Song of Deborah]. Mount up hence to the Book of Kings, and come to the song of David, when he fled out of the hand of all his enemies and out of the hand of Saul, and said: The Lord is my stay and my strength and my refuge and my saviour. [2 Sam. 22:2-end: the Song of David]. You must go on next to Isaiah, so that with him you may say: I will sing to the Beloved the song of my vineyard [Isa. 5]. And when you have been through all the songs, then set your course for greater heights, so that as a fair soul with her spouse you may sing this Song of Songs too.

(Hom. I. 1: GCS, 27 f)

It is not necessary here to draw out Origen's meaning in any detail⁵, it will be sufficient for us to note three points: first, the ascent of the soul to God begins with her 'coming out of Egypt and crossing the Red Sea', that is, with her conversion and baptism. For, as we have already mentioned, the mystical ascent for Origen begins in baptism and is a deepening and bringing to fruition of baptismal grace. Secondly, the way of the soul lies through deserts, and battles, while the soul finds sustenance in wells. And in all this the soul discovers that God is powerful and brings her to victory through His grace. Aridity, moral struggle, consolations: all these are sufficiently familiar in the spiritual life, as also victory through God's grace—though not apart from human effort. Such is the way Origen sees. In the absence, however, of any specific commentary by Origen, I think it would be hazardous to develop a detailed account of the soul's ascent to God from this passage. (In the prologue to the Commentary Origen suggests a similar approach with a slightly different list of songs.) And, thirdly, note the songs themselves. At every stage of the Christian life the soul sings: it is full of joy. This is characteristic of Origen's spirituality, which knows nothing of the cloud, the dark night, found in the mysticism of others. His is a mysticism of light. It is optimistic—although balanced by a profound recognition of the necessity of grace. The Song of Songs is the song, then, the joyful song, of the summit of the spiritual life. As Origen puts it in his Commentary:

The soul is not made one with the Word of God and joined with Him until such time as all the winter of her personal disorders and the storm of her vices has passed so that she no longer vacillates and is carried about with every kind of doctrine. When, therefore, all these things have gone out of the soul, and the tempest of desires has fled from her, then the flowers of the virtues can begin to burgeon in her … Then also will she hear 'the voice of the turtle-dove', which surely denotes that wisdom which the steward of the Word speaks among the perfect, the deep wisdom of God which is hidden in mystery.

(Comm. on the Song III (IV). 14: GCS 224)

That is one way in which Origen arrives at his understanding of the Song of Songs as being about the soul's intimate converse with God at the summit of the spiritual life. As far as I know, such a justification is peculiar to Origen. However, also in the Commentary, he suggests another way of arriving at this understanding of the Song which is more important, both as laying down a way of mapping out the ascent of the soul to God for later mystics, and also as giving commentaries on the Song of Songs a more specific context.

In the Prologue to the Commentary Origen remarks on the fact that philosophers divide their subject into three categories: ethics, physics, and enoptics⁶ (enoptics means, roughly, metaphysics). The origin of some such division is Stoic, though Origen is actually referring to the sort of division found among Middle Platonists. He explains:

That study is called moral (ethike) which inculcates a seemly manner of life and gives a grounding in habits that incline to virtue. The study called natural (physike) is that in which the nature of each single thing is considered; so that nothing in life may be done which is contrary to nature, but everything is assigned to the uses for which the Creator brought it into being. The study called inspective (enoptike) is that by which we go beyond things seen and contemplate somewhat of things divine and heavenly, beholding them with the mind alone, for they are beyond the range of bodily sight.

(GCS, 75)

Origen then goes on to apply this distinction to the three protocanonical books of Wisdom ascribed to Solomon: Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs.

Wishing therefore to distinguish one from another these three branches of learning, which we called general just now, that is, the moral, the natural, and the inspective, and to differentiate between then, Solomon issued them in three books, arranged in their proper order. First, in Proverbs, he taught the moral science, putting rules for living into the form of short and pithy maxims, as was fitting. Secondly, he covered the science known as natural in Ecclesiastes. In this, by discussing at length the things of nature, and by distinguishing the useless and vain from the profitable and essential, he counsels us to forsake vanity, and cultivate things useful and upright. The inspective science likewise he has propounded in this little book that we have now in hand, that is, the Song of Songs. In this he instils into the soul the love of things divine and heavenly, using for this purpose the figure of the Bride and Bridegroom, and teaches us that communion with God must be attained by the paths of charity and love.

(GCS, 76)

So we have ethics assigned to Proverbs, physics assigned to Ecclesiastes, and enoptics assigned to the Song. There are three stages that the soul must pass through progressively: first, learning virtue (ethike,) next, adopting a right attitude to natural things (physike,) then ascending to contemplation of God (enoptike.) That Origen means a progression is clear when he says, for instance:

If then a man has completed his course in the first subject, as taught in Proverbs, by amending his behaviour and keeping the commandments, and thereafter, having seen how empty is the world and realized the brittleness of transitory things, has come to renounce the world and all that is therein, he will follow on from that point to contemplate and to desire 'the things that are not seen', and 'that are eternal'. To attain to these, however, we need God's mercy; so that, having beheld the beauty of the Word of God, we may be kindled with a saving love for Him, and He Himself may deign to love the soul, whose longings for Himself He has perceived.

(GCS, 79)

The idea of the successiveness of the stages is often emphasized. For instance, speaking of Jesus as going before us through these stages, he says: 'We should speak of Him first as a beginner in Proverbs; then as advancing in Ecclesiastes; and lastly as more perfect in the Song of Songs.' We clearly have here the beginning of the idea of the three ways of the mystical life, and very nearly the later, familiar language of the way of purification (Origen's ethike,) the way of illumination (physike) and the way of union (enoptike.)

We have then a threefold division of the soul's ascent. The first, ethics, is concerned with the formation of the virtues. On this there is not much to comment, partly because Origen is here very Platonist and does not say anything we have not already come across, but partly too, because Origen himself does not dwell much on it. As Marguerite Harl remarks, 'Origen is an optimist for whom the struggle against the passions is a preliminary stage in one's interior development, to be passed through quickly.'⁷

Of natural contemplation we need to say a little more. It is clear from the passages already noted that for Origen this means basically not contemplation of the wonder of God in creation but a perception of the transience of the world and a desire to pass beyond it. However, we do sometimes find a more positive understanding of physike:

Since, then, it is impossible for a man living in the flesh to know anything of matters hidden and invisible unless he has apprehended some image and likeness thereto among things visible, I think that He who made all things in wisdom so created all the species of visible things upon earth that He placed in them some teaching and knowledge of things invisible and heavenly whereby the human mind might mount to spiritual understanding and seek the grounds of things in heaven; so that, taught by God's wisdom, it might say: The things that are hid and that are manifest have I learned.

(Comm. on the Song III. 12: GCS, 209 f.)

This positive understanding of natural contemplation is more developed in the Commentary on John, where Origen discusses the idea that there are logoi, principles, implanted in the created order that can lead man to a conception of God's eternal wisdom:

if anyone is capable of conceiving by thought an incorporeal existence, formed by all sorts of ideas, which embraces the principles of the universe, an existence living and, as it were, animated, he will know the Wisdom of God who is above every creature and who truly says of himself: God created me as the beginning of his ways for his works.

(Comm. on John I. xxxiv: GCS, 43)

So much for the first two ways. Origen's understanding of ethics and natural contemplation is deeply Platonic: the aim of these two ways is to subdue the body to the soul and then to free the soul from the body. Only when freed from the body can the soul enter on the way of enoptike, contemplation of God Himself, and on this way the soul passes beyond what it can achieve by its own efforts: it can only pass to this way, characterized by love, by reliance on God's mercy.⁸ This is stated explicity in the Commentary on the Song of Songs when, discussing the reference to 'mid-day' in the Song, Origen remarks:

With regard to the time of vision, then, he 'sits at midday' who puts himself at leisure in order to see God. That is why Abraham is said to sit, not inside the tent but outside, at the door of the tent. For a man's mind also is out of doors and outside of the body, if it be far removed from carnal thoughts and desires; and therefore God visits him who is placed outside all these.

(II. 4: GCS 140)

This also suggests that enoptike is properly something the soul can look forward to after death. Released from the body by death, the soul becomes mind, and is free to contemplate invisible reality: the realm of the Platonic Forms. Sometimes Origen gives expression to this in a very explicit way, for instance in De Principiis:

And so the rational being, growing at each successive stage, not as it grew when in this life in the flesh or body and in the soul, but increasing in mind and intelligence, advances as a mind already perfect to perfect knowledge, no longer hindered by its former carnal senses, but developing in intellectual power, ever approaching the pure and gazing 'face to face', if I may so speak, on the causes of things.

(II. xi. 7: GCS 191 f.)

Behind this Platonic distinction between mind and soul, nous and psyche, lies Origen's whole understanding of the world of spiritual beings and their destiny. Originally all spiritual beings, logikoi, were minds, equal to one another, all contemplating the Father through the Word. Most of these minds (all except the future mind of Christ) grew tired of this state of bliss and fell. In falling their ardour cooled and they became souls (psyche, supposedly derived from psychesthai, to cool). As souls, they dwell in bodies which, as it were, arrest their fall and provide them with the opportunity to ascend again to contemplation of God by working themselves free from their bodies and becoming minds, noes, again. As nous, the spiritual being can contemplate the Ideas and realize its kinship with this realm.⁹ It is clear that this whole pattern is basically Platonist. In particular, for Origen the 'real' world is the realm of spiritual, non-material beings: the drama of Fall and Redemption belongs essentially to this spiritual realm. Such a pre-supposition consorts ill with faith in the Incarnate Word, the Word incarnate in a physical, material world. We shall soon see that this is a source of trouble for Origen.

But though this is Platonist, we must qualify. The notion of the world of the Forms has undergone a change since Plato. In some Middle Platonists, Albinus for example, the Forms or Ideas are the thoughts of God, that is, they are the objects of God's thought; we come, as it were, within the divine mind when we contemplate them. They are not ultimate in themselves, as in Plato, but the eternal thoughts of the eternal and ultimate God. With Origen this takes the precise form of absorbing the world of the Ideas into the Logos. So Hans Urs von Balthasar can say: 'The world of the Ideas is absorbed in the unity of Christ. Their multiplicity is transformed into the richness of the aspects of the concrete Unity [which is Christ].'¹⁰ The effect of this ought to make Origen's doctrine of contemplation more Christocentric or, at least, Word-centred, than would a merely Platonist theory. We must examine to what extent this is true.

That Origen's doctrine of contemplation is centred on the Word is easily seen. In the passage quoted earlier from the Commentary on the Song of Songs about enoptike it is said that the soul 'having beheld the beauty of the Word of God may be kindled with a saving love for him': such language is characteristic of Origen. But is it Word-centred or Christ-centred? Is this Word simply the eternal Word, or is it the Word made flesh? How much does the distinctively Christian doctrine of the Incarnation affect Origen's Platonist doctrine of contemplation?

In his writings on the Song of Songs we find plenty of evidence that the Incarnation is important for Origen. Take this passage from the second Homily on the Song of Songs:

After this the Bridegroom says: I am the flower of the field and the lily of the valleys. For my sake, who was in the valley, he came down to the valley; and coming to the valley, he became the lily of the valleys in place of the tree of life that was planted in the paradise of God, and was made the flower of the whole field, that is, of the whole world and the entire earth. For what else can so truly be the flower of the world as is the name of Christ?

(II. G: GCS, 49 f.)

Or, in another passage from the same homily, commenting on the passage where the Bridegroom is said to be 'behind our wall, looking out through the windows, becoming visible through the nets', we read:

The Bridegroom then appears through the nets: Jesus has made a way for you, he has come down to earth and subjected himself to the nets of the world. Seeing a great throng of mankind entangled in the nets, seeing that nobody except himself could sunder them, he came to the nets when he assumed a human body that was held in the snares of the hostile powers. He broke those nets asunder for you, and you say: 'Behold, he is at the back, behind our wall, looking out through the windows, become visible through the nets.'

(II. 12: GCS, 58)

In the Commentary, in addition to this interpretation, the nets are made to refer to temptations that Jesus suffered 'before he could enter into union and alliance with his Church' (III. 13: GCS, 222). Another passage which yields an interpretation that involves the Incarnation is that where the Bride asks the Bridegroom: 'In the shelter of the rock by the outwork shew me thy face, and let me hear thy voice.' The rock is readily taken to refer to Christ (see I Cor. 10:4), and Origen says: 'Having therefore availed herself of the covering of this rock, the soul comes safely to the place on the outwork, that is, to the contemplation of things incorporeal and eternal.' Origen goes on:

Like to these is the saying of God to Moses: Lo, I have set thee in a cleft of the rock, and thou shalt see my back parts. That rock which is Christ is therefore not completely closed, but has clefts. But the cleft in the rock is he who reveals God to men and makes Him known to them; for no-one knoweth the Father save the Son. So no-one sees the back parts of God, that is to say, the things that are come to pass in the latter times, unless he be placed in the cleft of the rock, that is to say, when he is taught them by Christ's own revealing.

(Comm. on the Song IV. 15: GCS, 231)

All these passages, in different ways, see the coming of Christ in the Incarnation as that to which the soul responds in its ascent to God. So, per Christum is strongly affirmed. Before we ask, how strongly? let us simply ask, how? How is the soul in its ascent to God coming to God through Christ? A full answer to that would have several strands. For instance, the idea that man is created after the image of God obviously has a part to play here, since, for Origen, the image of God is the Word himself, man being made after the fashion of the Word which became flesh. But what seems to be the dominant strand is hinted at in that last quotation about Christ as the rock in the cleft of which we can see God's back parts. God's back parts are here taken to mean (very unusually) prophecies about the last times. These can only be understood through Christ's revealing, which suggests that Christ is being seen as the key to the understanding of Scripture, where these prophecies are contained. If we think back to Philo we shall not, perhaps, be surprised to see this idea emerging here. As with Philo, the understanding of Scripture is the medium of union with the Word. Commenting on the passage: 'Behold, here he cometh leaping upon the mountains, skipping over the hills,' Origen says:

Now if at any time a soul who is constrained by love for the Word of God is in the thick of an argument about some passage—and everyone knows from his own experience how when one gets into a tight corner like this one gets shut up in the straits of propositions and enquiries—if at such a time some riddles or obscure sayings of the Law or the Prophets hang in the soul, and if then she should chance to perceive him to be present, and from afar should catch the sound of his voice, forthwith she is uplifted. And when he has begun more and more to draw near to her senses and to illuminate the things that are obscure, then she sees him 'leaping upon the mountains and the hills'; that is to say, he then suggests to her interpretations of a high and lofty sort, so that this soul can rightly say: 'Behold, he cometh leaping upon the mountains, skipping over the hills.'

(Comm. on the Song III. 11: GCS 202)

Understanding Scripture is not for Origen simply an academic exercise but a religious experience. The meaning found in Scripture is received from the Word, and the experience of discovering the meaning of Scripture is often expressed in 'mystical' language; he speaks of a 'sudden awakening', of inspiration, and of illumination. It seems to me that a large part of the content of enoptike is the discovery of 'spiritual', 'theological' meanings in Scripture through allegory. In this engagement with Scripture, Origen enters more and more deeply into communion with God—and leads others into this communion (something we learn from Gregory Thaumaturgus' Address to Origen.)¹¹

It is quite clear, then, that Origen's mysticism is centred on the Word, and that the Word is apprehended in Scripture. And insofar as Scripture contains the record of the Incarnation, and also prophetic witness to, and apostolic commentary on it, to that extent Origen clearly holds that contemplation of God is possible (in practice, not simply theoretically) only per Christum.

But how strongly, how ultimately, does Origen hold to this per Christum? Let us start again with a passage from the Commentary on the Song. Discussing what is meant by the 'shadow of the apple tree' (Cant. 2:3), Origen says:

We must now come to the shadow of the apple tree, and, although one may avail oneself of another shadow, it seems that every soul, as long as she is in this present life, must needs have a shadow, by reason, I think, of that heat of the sun which, when it has arisen, immediately withers and destroys the seed that is not deeply rooted. The shadow of the Law indeed afforded but slight protection from this heat; but the shadow of Christ, under which we now live among the Gentiles, that is to say, the faith of his Incarnation, affords complete protection from it and extinguishes it. For he who used to burn up those who walked in the shadow of the Law was seen to fall as lightning from heaven at the time of the Passion of Christ. Yet the period of this shadow too is to be fulfilled at the end of the age; because, as we have said, after the consummation of the age we shall behold no longer through a glass and in a riddle, but face to face.

(Comm. on the Song III. 5: GCS, 183)

The period of the shadow, namely, of faith in the Incarnation is temporary; it will pass away and then we shall see face to face. This idea is often found in Origen. In the Homily on Exodus he speaks of those 'who do not need to receive the Word of God according to the "it is made flesh", but according to the "Wisdom hidden in a mystery'" (XII. 4: GCS, 267) That way of putting it is characteristic: one of the passages quoted earlier about the summit of the soul's ascent spoke of 'that wisdom which the Word dispenses among the perfect, the deep wisdom of God which is hidden in mystery (Comm. IV. 14). So the soul, it seems, passes beyond faith in the Incarnation in its ascent to God. The Incarnation is only a stage. It would seem that Origen's Platonist presuppositions here are proof against the impact of the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation: the Incarnation is not really central, but simply a preliminary stage. That is evident in the Commentary on John, where Origen says: 'Christ said, I am the door. What then must we say of Wisdom, which God created as the beginning of his ways, for his works, in which her Father rejoices, delighting in her manifold intelligible beauty which is seen only by the eyes of the mind, and which arouses a heavenly love which perceives the divine beauty?' (I. ix: GCS, 14). At one place, however, in the Commentary on John this insistence that the Incarnation will be surpassed is tempered, though still substantially affirmed. Commenting on the mantle covered with blood that the Word wears in the Apocalypse, Origen says:

But he is not naked, the Word that John sees on the horse: he is wearing a robe covered with blood, since the Word made flesh, dying because he was made flesh, because of his blood which was poured on the ground when the soldier pierced his side, bears the marks of his passion. For, if we one day attain to a more elevated and more sublime contemplation of the Word and the Truth, without doubt we shall not entirely forget that we have been led there by his coming in our body.

(II. viii: GCS, 62)

We might conclude by saying that Origen's mysticism centred on Christ is ultimately transcended by a mysticism centred on the eternal Word.¹²

We have now seen something of the way in which Origen's Platonist presuppositions qualify and determine his understanding of enoptike. But what of the nature of enoptike itself? As we have seen, it is by means of love and reliance on God's mercy that the soul enters on this third and highest stage of her mystical ascent. Both these ideas—love, and the soul's reliance on something other than herself—are found in Plato, so there is a fundamental harmony between Plato and Origen here. But we shall see that Origen goes far beyond Plato in his development of these ideas.

Taking up Plato's distinction made in Symposium 180 E between common love and heavenly love (eros pandemos and ouranios,) Origen develops from it a similar distinction, in the Prologue to the Commentary on the Song, between the inner, spiritual man, formed in the image and likeness of God, and the outer, material man, formed of the slime of the earth:

It follows that, just as there is one love, known as carnal and also known as Cupid [i.e. Eros] by the poets, according to which the lover sows in the flesh; so also there is another, a spiritual love, by which the inner man who loves sows in the spirit … And the soul is moved by heavenly love and longing when, having clearly beheld the beauty and fairness of the Word of God, it falls deeply in love with his loveliness and receives from the Word himself a certain dart and wound of love … If then a man can so extend his thinking so to ponder and consider the beauty and grace of all the things that have been created in the Word, the very charm of them will so smite him, the grandeur of their brightness will so pierce him as with a chosen dart—as says the Prophet (Isaiah 49:2)—that he will suffer from the dart himself a saving wound and will be kindled with the blessed fire of his love.

(Comm. on the Song, Prologue: GCS, 66 f.)

Origen goes on to discuss the words for love, agape and eros, and argues that there is no real difference between them, except that eros can be misunderstood (in a carnal way), and so Scripture, as a rule, uses agape as being safer. The love that Origen is interested in as far as enoptike is concerned is a pure, spiritual longing for that which is invisible; and the two previous stages, ethics and natural contemplation, can be seen as purifying this love. Origen speaks eloquently of the soul's passionate longing for the Word of God, as when explaining the wound of love:

If there is anyone anywhere who has at some time burned with this faithful love of the Word of God; if there is anyone who has received the sweet wounds of him who is the chosen dart, as the prophet says; if there is anyone who has been pierced with the loveworthy spear of his knowledge, so that he yearns and longs for him by day and by night, can speak of nought but him, would hear of nought but him, can think of nothing else, and is disposed to no desire nor longing nor yet hope, except for him alone—if such there be, that soul then says in truth: 'I have been wounded by love.'

(Comm on the Song, III. 8: GCS, 194)

This is the spiritual love of the inner man as opposed to the carnal love of the outer man, and Origen develops the contrast between them in his teaching that, as the outer man has five senses, so has the inner man five spiritual senses. This doctrine of the five spiritual senses has, it seems, its source in Origen and has great influence thereafter on later mysticism. In an article,¹³ Karl Rahner discusses its beginnings in Origen and gives a list of the important passages concerning it.¹⁴ Briefly, this is Rahner's conclusion: Origen sees the biblical foundation for the five spiritual senses in Proverbs 2:5, where his text reads: 'And you will find a divine sense'; and in Hebrews 5:14 in the reference to the 'perfect who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern good and evil', which, Origen goes on to point out, the bodily senses cannot do. Not all men have these spiritual senses. Some have none, and some have only one or two. It is vice that hinders the operation of these spiritual senses, and two things are necessary if one is to regain them: grace and practice. The Word is the cause of the right use of these senses, for he gives light to the eyes of the soul. The spiritual senses are awakened by grace, and by grace the Word is poured out into our senses. It is also the case that the spiritual senses become effective to the extent that the bodily senses are deadened. The spiritual senses belong properly to the nous rather than the soul (which, as we have seen, is fallen for Origen), although his language is by no means consistent on this point. It can be argued that the spiritual senses are not spiritual counterparts of the bodily senses, but are, rather, different figurative expressions for nous. In De Principiis, for example, Origen speaks of the 'powers of the soul' (I.i.9), which would support such an interpretation. (It must be pointed out, though, that not all references to spiritual senses in Origen's works suggest such a developed theory. Often they appear to be no more than an exegetical device, a way of interpreting such passages as that from the psalm: 'O taste and see how gracious the Lord is.' Obviously it is not bodily taste and sight that is in question, so there must be spiritual taste and sight.)

But what does it mean to talk of such spiritual senses? From Rahner we can see that it is a way of expounding the soul's experience of enoptike, contemplation of God. It is, as he puts it, 'the psychology of the doctrine of theologia conceived as the highest degree of the spiritual life' (though theologia is Evagrius' term, not Origen's). And there seem to be two elements in Origen's doctrine of the spiritual senses. As Rahner points out, and as can be verified by many of Origen's references to spiritual senses, they enable one to discern between good and evil, and are an expression of a kind of delicate spiritual sensitivity the soul learns under the influence of grace in enoptike, so that the soul no longer simply avoids breaking God's commandments, but has a feel for God's will, a kind of 'sixth sense' or insight (which is what 'enoptike' would seem to mean: in-sight). 'For that soul only is perfect who has her sense of smell so pure and purged that it can catch the fragrance of the spikenard and myrrh and cypress that proceed from the Word of God, and can inhale the grace of the divine odour' (Comm. on the Song II.11: GCS, 172). The spiritual senses are a faculty which, as Balthasar puts it, 'can be developed and improved to an infinite delicacy and precision, so as to report to the soul more and more unerringly what is the will of God in every situation'.¹⁵ The other element in the doctrine of the spiritual senses is that it seems to be a way of representing the richness and variety of the soul's experience of God in contemplation: to speak in terms simply of vision or knowledge would be to give too 'flat' an impression of this experience. Both these elements are brought out in the following passage:

And perhaps, as the Apostle says, for those who have their senses exercised to the discerning of good and evil, Christ becomes each of these things in turn, to suit the several senses of the soul. He is called the true sight, therefore, that the soul's eyes may have something to lighten them. He is the Word, so that her ears may have something to hear. Again, he is the Bread of Life so that the soul's palate may have something to taste. And in the same way he is called spikenard or ointment, that the soul's sense of smell may apprehend the fragrance of the Word. For the same reason he is also said to be able to be felt and handled, and is called the Word made flesh so that the hand of the interior soul may touch concerning Word of Life. But all these things are the One, Same Word of God, who adapts himself to the sundry tempers of prayer according to these several guises, and so leaves none of the soul's faculties empty of his grace.

(Comm. on the Song II. 9:GCS, 167 f.)

The other strand in Origen's understanding of the soul's experience of this highest stage of her ascent is his emphasis on God's mercy. This, we have noted, links up with Plato's idea that at the summit of the mystic ascent the soul passes beyond what it can achieve by its own efforts. The final vision appears suddenly, exaiphnes, and this implies, as we saw in our first chapter,¹⁶ both that the soul can do nothing to elicit this final theoria, and also that in this final vision the soul is immediately present to the Supreme Beauty. With Origen these two strands are developed in accordance with the modification of his Platonism that we have already noticed. The realm of the Ideas has become the divine Logos in all the diversity of its mani-festations. So, kinship with the Ideas becomes union with Christ the Logos. We have in Origen something that is more like personal encounter than what we find in Plato. And even though, as we have seen, Origen remains too much of a Platonist to allow any final significance to the Incarnation of the Word—it is only a stage—yet the fact that the Word is thought of as meeting men as the Incarnate One (despite the qualifications with which Origen hedges this idea¹⁷) transforms his understanding of the Word. From being a principle mediating between the One and the many, the Word becomes a person mediating between God and the realm of spiritual beings. Even if the Word that Origen meets in his engagement with Scripture is, in some way, beyond the Incarnate Lord, his encounter with the Word is none the less a personal encounter.

Plato's idea that the soul attains the final vision exaiphnes is placed by Origen in a different, and much more fruitful, context, and thus transformed. We have seen something of what this means in the way Origen speaks of the sudden disclosures of the Word as he wrestles with Scripture. More generally, we can say that Plato's bare assertion about the suddenness and immediacy of the vision appears in Origen as the idea of the soul's dereliction and sense of abandonment by God, an abandonment which is suddenly relieved by the coming of the Word. One passage in the first Homily on the Song is particularly interesting, as it bears witness to Origen's own experience of dereliction:

The Bride then beholds the Bridegroom; and he, as soon as she has seen him, goes away. He does this frequently throughout the Song; and that is something nobody can understand who has not suffered it himself. God is my witness that I have often perceived the Bridegroom drawing near me and being most intensely present with me; then suddenly he has withdrawn and I could not find him, though I sought to do so. I long therefore for him to come again, and sometimes he does so. Then when he has appeared and I lay hold of him, he slips away once more. And when he has so slipped away my search for him begins anew. So does he act with me repeatedly, until in truth I hold him and go up, 'leaning on my Nephew's arm'.

(I. 7: GCS, 39)

Whether this is a 'mystical' experience of dereliction is not quite clear. Passages very similar to this occur elsewhere which quite clearly refer to Origen's experience as an exegete when sometimes he cannot see what a text means and is, in that sense, in difficulty; or when, on the contrary, the meaning 'just comes to him' (cf. Comm. III. 11, quoted above …). I am unhappy about regarding these passages as directly mystical, as it seems to me quite likely that Origen is clothing in 'mystical' language an experience that is not directly an experience of God at all: namely, the experience one has when the meaning of something suddenly 'comes to one' (as we say, without any mystical metaphor). Even so, if we are to take Origen seriously, this is more than a figure of speech, for he sees his engagement with Scripture as an engagement with God. I suspect that these passages have a spectrum of meaning that ranges from the sort of thing I have mentioned to something which is a genuinely mystical experience of God. Certainly he can speak of these experiences in a way which makes it difficult not to regard the experience as mystical, and as Origen's own. For instance, in the Comm. on the Song, III. 13: '[The Word] does not always stay with her, however, for that for human nature is not possible: He may visit her from time to time, indeed, and yet from time to time she may be forsaken too by Him, that she may long for Him the more' (GCS, 218).

Origen understands this experience as the union of the mind with the Logos, and only indirectly as contemplation of God. In its union with the Logos through contemplation, the soul shares in the Word's contemplation of God. From this flow a number of consequences that are characteristic of Origen's doctrine of contemplation. The soul's contemplation of the Logos is natural; in contemplation of the Logos the soul regains its proper state. Origen speaks neither of ecstasy, nor of any ultimate unknowability of God or darkness in God. It is possible that Origen dislikes the idea of ecstasy because of the misuse of this idea among the Montanists.¹⁸ Whatever the reason, he develops a doctrine of contemplation where the soul does not pass beyond itself. According to his understanding, the soul does not have to do with a God who is ultimately unknowable. Darkness is only a phase we pass through: it is not ultimate as in Philo, Gregory of Nyssa, or Denys the Areopagite. Partly he sees this darkness as due to our lack of effort. If we strive to know God, the darkness will vanish. But he sometimes speaks of a more ultimate darkness which is the mystery in which God is enveloped. Of this he says in the Commentary on John:

If one reflects that the richness of what there is in God to contemplate and know is incomprehensible to human nature and perhaps to all beings which are born, apart from Christ and the Spirit, one will understand how God is enveloped in darkness, for no one can formulate any conception rich enough to do Him justice. It is then in darkness that He has made His hiding-place; He has made it thus because no one can know all concerning Him who is infinite.

(II. xxviii: GCS, 85)

But he says a few lines later:

In a manner more paradoxical, I would say also of the darkness taken in a good sense that it hastens towards light, seizing it and becoming light because, not being known, darkness changes its value for him who now does not see, in such a way that, after instruction, he declares that the darkness which was in him has become light once it has become known.

Origen seems reluctant to entertain the notion of the ultimate unknowability of God. And unlike Philo and Gregory of Nyssa, for instance, for whom God is unknowable, Origen quite readily talks about 'knowing God' or 'seeing God'. Only rarely does he raise the question of the implications of God's infinity, while in De Principiis (II. iv, 1; IV. iv. 8) he definitely seems unhappy with such an idea.

What does Origen mean by 'knowing God', by contemplation of God? It is clear from the Commentary on John (XIX. iv) that Origen is aware that the biblical usage of 'know' means more than intellectual recognition. And he makes use of this in his explanation of what is meant by 'knowing God'. Knowing God is being known by God, and that means that God is united to those who know him, and gives them a share in his divinity. So, knowing God means divinization, theopoiesis. Knowing God is having the image of God, which we are, reformed after the likeness: the image is perfected so that we are like God. And contemplation is the means of this, for contemplation is, for Origen, a transforming vision. Speaking of the transfiguration of Moses' face when he went into the tabernacle, he says:

According to the literal meaning, something more divine than the manifestation that happened in the tabernacle and the temple was brought into effect in the face of Moses, who consorted with the divine nature. According to the spiritual meaning, those things which are known clearly about God and which are beheld by a mind made worthy by exceeding purity, are said to be the glory of God which is seen. So the mind, purified and passing beyond everything material, so that it perfects its contemplation of God, is made divine in what it contemplates.

(Comm. on John XXXII. xxvii: GCS, 472)

However, this idea of transforming contemplation is also applied to the Word himself, who, Origen says, would not remain divine (theos—without an article) unless he 'remained in unbroken contemplation of the Fatherly depths' (Comm. on John II. ii: GCS, 55). So we have a view of the world which is in some respects reminiscent of that of Plotinus. There is the ultimate God, ho theos, the One, the Father. There is the Word, who derives his divinity from contemplation of the Father (both the contemplation and the divinity that results from this being, in this case, indefectible). And then there is the realm of spiritual beings, the logikoi, who, through contemplation of the Word (and through him of God), are divinized.

We can see Origen as a founder of the tradition of intellectualist mysticism that was developed and bequeathed to the Eastern Church by Evagrius. In this tradition, contemplative union is the union of the nous the highest point of the soul, with God through a transforming vision. And in such union the nous finds its true nature; it does not pass out of itself into the other; there is no ecstasy. Also the God with whom the soul is united is not unknowable. Consequently darkness is a stage which is left behind in the soul's ascent: there is no ultimate darkness in God. We have a mysticism of light. Origen, however, is not simply the precursor of one tradition, but of the whole of the Christian mystical tradition. Even if, as we shall see, later mystical theology developed emphases which are quite different from those we find in Origen, nevertheless they develop within the framework provided by him.

Notes

1. See the sharply contrasting accounts in H. Koch, Pronoia and Paideusis: Studien über Origenes und sein Verhältnis zum Platonismus (Berlin and Leipzig, 1932) and H. Crouzel, Origène et la philosophie (Paris, 1962).
2. See Origen's letter to Gregory Thaumaturgus (PG XI. 88-92) and his Homilies on Joshua. (GCS, VII. 286-463).
3. Address on Origen, XV (PG X. 1096 AB). Metcalfe's trans. (London, 1920), 82 f.
4. Origen has left us both a commentary (on Cant. 1:1-2:15milies (on Cant. l:l-12a and 1:12b-2:14). The latter are more popular in tone and in them the ecclesiological interpretation is more prominent. All quotations are from R. P. Lawson's translation, published in Ancient Christian Writers XXVI (London, 1957) with very valuable annotations. There is also an edition, with translation, of the homilies only, by O. Rousseau (Sources Chrétiennes XXXVII, 2nd edn. Paris, 1966). Neither the homilies nor the commentary survive in the original Greek: the homilies are preserved in Jerome's Latin, and the commentary in Rufinus' Latin. I have given the page references to the edition in Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller.
5. Such a drawing-out can be found in the introduction to the Sources Chrétiennes edition of the homilies.
6. These terms are derived from the Greek words given with their Latin equivalents (philosophia moralis, naturalis, inspectiva) in the Latin version of the Commentary(GCS, 75, 11. 7-9). There is not absolute certainty, about them: see H. Crouzel, Origène et la <<Connaissance mystique>> (Paris, 1961), 50 f, esp. 51 nn. 1 and 2, and Baehrens in GCS, ad loc.
7. Origène et la fonction révélatrice du Verbe incarné (Paris, 1958), 321.
8. See the passage from the Prologue to the Commentary on the Song, quoted above, p. 58 f.
9. For all this see De Principiis, esp. I.v and II.viii; and also J. Daniélou, Origène (Paris, 1948), 207-18.
10. Parole et Mystère chez Origène (Paris, 1957), 122, n. 26.
11. On Origen's understanding of Scripture, see H. de Lubac, Histoire et esprit: I'intelligence de I'écriture d'après Origène (Paris, 1950), and also C. W. Macleod, 'Allegory and Mysticism', Journal of Theological Studies XXII (1971), 362-79.
12. For further discussion of the importance of the Incarnation in Origen's theology, see Harl, 191-218, and Koch, 62-78.
13. 'Le Début d'une doctrine des cinq sens spirituals chez Origène', Revue d'ascétique et de mystique XIII (April 1932), 113-45: now available in an English translation in Theological Investigations XVI (London, 1979), 81-103.
14. To which must be added Conversation with Heraclides 16 ff., discovered since Rahner wrote the article.
15. Origenes: Geist und Feuer (2nd edn. Salzburg, 1950), 307, quoted by Lawson in the notes to his translation of the Commentary and Homilies, 340, note 221. The whole note is of great interest.
16. See above, 14.
17. See above, n. 12.
18. So Daniélou, Origène, 296.