“The end,” said Origen, “is always like the beginning.” St. Paul said it this way, “in Him and through Him and to Him are all things.”
In Matthew Gaetano’s last post he quoted Francis Oakley’s comment on the dissonance between the “God of the philosophers” and the “God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” Following “the trail blazed by Philo of Alexandria and later broadened by the Greek church fathers,” Augustine achieved, so Oakley, an uncomfortable synthesis between these two Gods. But how much of this actually begun with Augustine?
Without much comment, I thought it might interest some of our readers to see what the most important of early Greek theologians had to say in this matter, how he, in Oakley’s words, went about broadening the trail blazed by Philo:
For indeed, if this can be logically said, what other cause could we imagine for this great diversity of the cosmos (mundi), except the diversity and variety of motions and lapses of those who from that unity and concord of the beginning, in which those originally created by God, fell off, and from that state of goodness disturbed and distracted, incited hence by various motions and desires of their souls, drew away that single and undivided good of their nature for the diversity of their intention into varies kinds (qualitates) of purposes (mentes).
But God, by the ineffable art of his own wisdom, by transfiguring, that is, and reworking whatever comes to pass into something useful and into the common advantage of all, is calling back these very creatures, which separated themselves from Him in so great a variety of souls (animorum), into some single harmonious work and pursuit, so that they, despite the diversity of separate souls, nevertheless bring about the fullness and perfection of a single cosmos, and so that the variety of purposes (mentes) itself should tend to [the] single end of perfection. For there is but one Power (virtus), which binds and holds the entire diversity of the cosmos together…
On First Principles II.1.1-2 Translations mine.
Origen goes on to explain God’s work as father in providentially governing the diverse parts back to their unity before coming to scriptural justifications of this view, which adds a few scriptures to Romans 11:36 for our consideration.
This (unity of God’s purpose in the manifold quality of the World, as Soul in Body) I suppose we can also be shown from Holy Scripture by that which was said by the Prophet (Jer. 23:24) : “Do I not fill heaven and earth, says the Lord?”[i] and again (Isaiah 66:1) “Heaven is my dwelling place (sedes), but earth is my footstool”; and what the Saviour said (Matthew 5:34), when he said one ought not swear “either by heaven, for it is God’s dwelling place (sedes) or by earth, for it is his footstool.” But also that which Paul said when conversing with the Athenians, saying that “in him we live, and move, and have our being.” How indeed can we live (vivimus) in God, and be in motion (movemur), and have our being, except in that he binds together the universe by his own power and contains the cosmos?… How therefore God as Father of all fills the entire cosmos with the fullness of his power and hold it together, on the basis of these things which we have just adduced, I don’t suppose anyone will have a hard time assenting (to our explanation).”
On First Principles II.1.3
It is perhaps worth noting that in the rest of this chapter he rejects the “inborn matter” (ingenita materia) of the philosophers, i.e., matter which eternally exists by its own innate power or essence, something Oakley seemed to think a necessary counterpart of the God of the philosophers. For Origen, God’s transcendance, immanence in cosmic ordering, and independence of matter are all of a piece. How much of this can Augustine really be credited with?
Elsewhere, Origen said – and I now return to the quote with which we begun – “For the end is always like the beginning: and thus even as there is one end of all things, so also it is proper that one beginning of all things be understood.” (On First Principles I.6.2)
[i] These exact scriptures are either quoted verbatim or alluded to in Confessions 1.2.2f.
I don’t think that it in any way affects the substance of your post, but I thought that I’d mention that Oakley does mention Origen in this context:
“In doing so, Augustine attempted to close the way to any further Christian flirtation with the Greek notion of the eternity of the world such as that indulged in by the Alexandrian theologian Origen two centuries earlier. At the same time, by agreeing with Philo, the Neoplatonists, and many of his Christian predecessors that the creative act was indeed an intelligent one guided by forms, archetypes, or ideas of the Platonic mold, but ideas now situated in the divine mind itself as a sort of creative blueprint, he responded to the Greek concern to vindicate philosophically the order and intelligibility of the universe. By virtue of his authority, then, he secured for the doctrine of the divine ideas an enduring place in later Christian philosophy” (46-47).
Thanks for the follow up. It seemes that the accusation here lies in “flirtation…indulged in.” And while I could imagine certain other positions, which seem to some to imply an eternal world etc., Origen’s express words (from the paragraphs following those quoted above) are these, “And it is a marvel to me how these (philosophers who believe in the eternity of matter) blame those who deny either God as maker or else his providential governance of the universe, and argue that their opinion is impious, since they believe that so great a work as this world could subsist without a maker or a governor (provisore); since in fact they themselves would also incur a similar accusation of impiety, saying that mater is inborn matter, coeternal with an inborn God”
I’m not sure how this sentence leaves any room for “flirtation,” since it is clearly marked off as “impious” and “blameworthy” and, more interesting still, a heresy as serious as denying the Creator or his Providence.
Yet I’m no expert in the Origenistic corpus and I could imagine him saying something in a different direction elsewhere (though the fragment from Genesis commentary in the Praeparatio follows these lines); more likely, I suppose Oakley may here refer to other beliefs (preexistence of the soul? matter enduring forever after being made?) which to him imply this view or “flirtation” with it.
I do like that Oakley adds the phrase “By virtue of [Augustine’] authority” – and yet this is not authority that he had while alive.
[…] Hebrew in the late-380s after settling in Bethlehem. Jerome was inspired by the Jewish thinker, Philo of Alexandria. He also was imitating Origen (d. c. 253) in “add[ing] the meaning of the words […]
[…] those by Joshua Shaw, have touched on the major first-century Jewish thinker, Philo of Alexandria (here, here, here, and here). As we deal here with the long Augustinian tradition, it is fitting that we […]