On Prayer

Origen, tr. Oulton, 1954

But when “the Father” of the saints is said to be “in heaven,” we are not to suppose that…

But when “the Father” of the saints is said to be “in heaven,” we are not to suppose that he is circumscribed in bodily fashion¹ and dwells “in heaven”²; otherwise, if the heaven contained him, God would be found less than, because contained by, the heaven: but we must believe that by the ineffable power of his Godhead all things are contained and held together by him. And, speaking generally, sayings which taken literally are supposed by simple folk to assert that God is in a place, must instead be understood in a manner that befit grand and spiritual conceptions of God. Such are the following in the [Gospel] according to John: “Now before the feast of the passover, Jesus knowing that his hour was come that he should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end”³; and, a little further on, “knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he came forth from God, and goeth unto God”⁴; and later on, “Ye heard how I said to you, I go away, and I come unto you. If ye loved me, ye would have rejoiced, because I go unto the Father”⁵; and again, later on, “But now I go unto him that sent me; and none of you asketh me, whither goest thou?”⁶ If these words are to be taken in a local sense, it is obvious that we must do the same with: “Jesus answered and said unto them,⁷ If a man love me, he will keep my word: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.”⁸

These sayings do not conceive of a local departure of the Father and the Son to him who loves the word of Jesus, nor are they to be taken in a local sense. But the Word of God, condescending for our sakes and being “humbled,”⁹ as concerning his own dignity, when he is among men, is said to “depart out of this world to the Father,”¹⁰ in order that we also may behold him there in his perfection, returning again to his own “fulness,”¹¹ after the emptiness wherewith he “emptied himself”¹² when he was with us: where also we, using him as our guide, being “made full,”¹³ shall be delivered from all emptiness. Let the Word of God, therefore, depart to “him that sent him,”¹⁴ quitting the world, and let him “go unto the Father.”¹⁵ And as for that passage at the end of the Gospel according to John, “Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended unto the Father,”¹⁶ let us seek to conceive of it in a mystical sense: the ascent of the Son “unto the Father,”¹⁵ when conceived of by us with holy insight in a manner befitting Deity, is an ascent of the mind rather than of the body.

I think it necessary¹⁷ to consider carefully these sayings in connection with the words “Our Father which art in heaven,”¹⁸ in order to remove a mean conception of God held by those who consider that he is locally “in heaven,” and to prevent anyone from saying that God is in a place after the manner of a body (from which it follows that he is a body)—a tenet which leads to most impious opinions,¹⁹ namely, to suppose that he is divisible, material, corruptible. For every body is divisible, material, corruptible. Else, let them tell us that instead of indulging in vain imaginings they claim to conceive clearly how its nature can be other than material. Since, however, before the bodily sojourn of Christ many of the Scriptures²⁰ seem to say that God was in a place after a bodily manner, it does not appear to me to be inappropriate to quote a few passages from them also, in order to take away all doubtfulness²¹ from those whose peculiarity it is, so far as they can, to confine God who is over all in a small and limited space. And, first, in Genesis, Adam and Eve, he says, “heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the afternoon in the garden: and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the face of the Lord God in the midst of the trees of the garden.”²² We shall ask those who are unwilling to enter into the treasures of the passage, and indeed do not even make a beginning by “knocking at” their “door,”²³ if they can maintain that the Lord God who “filleth heaven and earth,”²⁴ who (as they suppose) uses in bodily fashion “heaven” as his “throne” and “the earth” as “the footstool of his feet,”²⁵ is bounded by a place so small in comparison with the whole heaven and earth, that what they suppose is a bodily garden²⁶ is not completely filled by God, but is so much larger than he, that it contains him as he “walks, a sound” being heard from the treading of his feet.²⁷ And it is still more absurd, according to them, that Adam and Eve, in awe of God because of their transgression, should hide themselves “from the presence of the Lord God in the midst of the trees of the garden.”²⁷ For it is not even said that they so wished to hide themselves, but that in very truth “they were hidden.”²⁸ And how, according to them, can God ask Adam, saying, “Where art thou?”²⁹

We have treated these matters at length in our commentaries on Genesis.³⁰ However, so that we may not now pass over in complete silence so important a problem, it will be sufficient to call to mind the saying of God in Deuteronomy³¹:³² “I will dwell in them, and walk in them.”³³ His “walking” in the saints is of the same kind as his “walking” in the garden, every sinner hiding himself from the presence of God³⁴³⁵ and avoiding his visitation and shunning open speech with him. So also “Cain went out from the presence of God, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden.”³⁶ As, therefore, he dwells in the saints, so also in heaven,³⁷ whether in every saint “bearing the image of the heavenly,”³⁸ or in Christ, in whom are all the “lights”³⁹ and “stars”⁴⁰ of heaven “who are being saved,”⁴¹ or else he dwells⁴² there because of the saints in heaven, in accordance with⁴³ the saying: “Unto thee did I lift up mine eyes, who dwellest in the heaven.”⁴⁴ And the passage in Ecclesiastes, “Be not hasty to utter any thing before God: for God is in heaven above, and thou upon earth below,”⁴⁵ makes a deliberate distinction between those who are still in “the body of humiliation,”⁴⁶ on the one hand, and the angels and holy powers who are uplifted by the aid of the Word,⁴⁷⁴⁸ or Christ himself, on the other. For it is not inappropriate that he is properly the “throne” of the Father, allegorically called heaven, while his Church, given the name of “earth,”⁴⁹ is “the footstool of his feet.”⁵⁰

So we have added from the Old Testament also a few sayings which are considered to show that God is in a place, in order that we may persuade the reader by every means “according to the power” given unto “us”⁵¹ to understand the divine Scripture in a loftier and more spiritual sense, whenever it seems to teach that God is in a place. And it was fitting to examine these passages in connection with the words: “Our Father which art in heaven”⁵²—words which separate the essence of God from all created things. For to those who do not partake [of his essence] there appertains a certain divine glory and power, and—so to speak—an effluence of his deity.⁵³

Notes

XXIII, 1. we are not to suppose that he is circumscribed in bodily fashion] Cf. section 3; and for other early statements of the immensity of God, see Hermas, Shepherd, Mand. 1; Clement of Alexandria, Strom., VII, 35; Novatian, De Trinitate, XII.
Matt. 6:9.
John 13:1.
John 13:3.
John 14:28.
John 16:5.
XXIII, 1. “Jesus answered and said unto them”] John 14:23. This is an unique reading. All other textual authorities read “said unto him” (i.e., unto Judas, not Iscariot, in reply to his question).
John 14:23.
Phil. 2:8.
John 13:1.
Col. 1:19; 2:9.
Phil. 2:7.
Col. 2:10.
John 16:5.
John 14:12, 28.
John 20:17.
The text lacks this word.
Matt. 6:9.
XXIII, 3. a tenet which leads to most impious opinions] Both here and elsewhere Origen vehemently rejects the notion that God has a body. He deals with this opinion in the first chapter of the De Principiis and also in In Joh., XIII, 21–25; contra Celsum, III, 75; VI 70, 71; VIII, 49; In Gen., I, 13; as well as in this passage. It is not hard to understand how such a notion was absolutely opposed to Origen’s philosophy. But the vigour with which he attacks it suggests, what is indeed a fact, that he is opposing actual persons who held it. These were of two classes. There were the simple-minded, matter-of-fact Christians who interpreted everything in the Scriptures literally, and when they read in them that God was in a place, or that he had hands or arms, or that he was a consuming fire, they pictured him as corporeal in his nature. The Origenistic conception of God was one of the chief causes of conflict between the Greek and the literalistic Coptic monks in Egypt in the fourth century. See O. Chadwick, John Cassian, 15 ff. On the other hand, there were the Stoics, who were in part materialists, and conceived of a material force inherent in things. The followers of Zeno and Chrysippus, for example, and their idea that God has a body, are explicitly refuted in contra Celsum, VIII, 49. See de Faye, III, 27 ff. (See also Introduction, pp. 193 f.)
Lit. “writings.”
περισπάσμον, “distraction.”
Gen. 3:8.
Luke 13:25.
Jer. 23:24.
Matt. 5:34, 35.
XXIII, 3. what they suppose is a bodily garden] Origen similarly allegorizes the Garden of Eden in De Princ., IV, 2 fin. (cf. Philocalia, 24 f.); contra Celsum, IV, 39.
Gen. 3:8.
XXIII, 3. they were hidden] Gen. 3:8, according to the LXX. The Hebrew has “hid themselves.”
Gen. 3:9.
XXIII, 4. We have treated these matters at length in our commentaries on Genesis] See Introduction, p. 181, and Koetschau, I, lxxvi, who holds that the exegesis of Gen. 3:8, 9, can hardly have stood earlier than in the ninth book of the Commentaries on Genesis. Eusebius (H.E., VI, 24:2) says that the first eight books were written at Alexandria. It follows, therefore, that the later books were written after the removal to Caesarea (231 or 232), and the composition of the De Oratione must be placed subsequently to that date.
See note.
XXIII, 4. Deuteronomy] A slip on the part of Origen. “I will dwell in them, and walk [in them]” is from II Cor. 6:16, where Paul seems to be referring confusedly to several Old Testament passages. “I will walk in you” occurs in Lev. 26:12; “the Lord thy God will walk in thy camp” in Deut. 23:14. Origen again quotes “I will dwell and walk in them,” but this time without giving a reference, in In Matt., X, 15 (C.B., XL, 20).
II Cor. 6:16: cf. Lev. 26:12; Deut. 23:14.
Text emended: cf. Gen. 3:8.
XXIII, 4. every sinner hiding himself from the face of God] This emendation of the Anonymous, with ref. to Gen. 3:8, is supported by In Jerem. hom., XVI, 4 (C.B., VI, 136): “Wicked men hide themselves from the face of God.”
Gen. 4:16.
XXIII, 4. As he dwells in the saints, so also in heaven] Cf. Clement of Alexandria, Eel. Proph., 52 (C.B., XVII, 151): “The Lord is properly called the heavens, next those who were first created, after them the holy men who lived before the Law, such as the patriarchs, then the apostles also.”
I Cor. 15:49.
Phil. 2:15.
Dan. 12:3; Rev. 1:20.
Acts 2:47; I Cor. 1:18; II Cor. 2:15.
XXIII, 4. or else he dwells, etc.] The text is doubtful. T reads “or else he dwells because of the saints according to the saying: ‘Unto thee, etc.’”; Bentley, “or else because the saints dwell in heaven. Now the saying: ‘Unto thee, etc.’”; the Anonymous followed by Koetschau, “or else he dwells there because of the saints in heaven, in accordance with the saying: ‘Unto thee, etc.’” (i.e., inserting the words “there” and “in accordance with”). Koetschau points out that the quotation “Unto thee, etc.” goes with what precedes and not with what follows.
Text emended.
Ps. 123:1.
Eccl. 5:2.
Phil. 3:21.
Adopting an emendation of Koetschau.
XXIII, 4. by the aid of the Word] T has “by the aid and the Word.”
XXIII, 4. Christ . . . heaven . . . his Church . . . earth] For these identifications, see further XXVI, 3.
Matt. 5:34, 35.
Eph. 3:20.
Matt. 6:9.
Cf. Wisdom of Solomon 7:25.