Origen of Alexandria on the Kenosis of the Lord 

(in: Kenosis: The Self-Emptying of   Christ in Scripture and Theology.

edd. P. T.Nimmo and K.L. Johnson. Eerdmans. Michigan. 2022.  pp. 77-96. )

John A. McGuckin  

    Origen of Alexandria (c. 186-255) was, by turns, a classical Grammarian, Rhetorician, and Commentator (in the style of the Great Library at Alexandria 1). In short, he was a master of semantics and leader (as well as founder) of a new school in the Sophistic sense of that concept; one that outlasted him for several centuries until, by the fifth century, a great deal of his original vision had become common currency in the church. Origen excelled in a wide range of semantic and expositional skills to such an extent that no less than the most educated Christian of Antiquity, that most consummate rhetorician Gregory of Nazianzus, called him the ‘Whetstone that keeps us sharp.’ 2  Moderns tend to call him a theologian and exegete, thus fitting him more understandably (from our point of view) into the  post fourth-century ecclesiastical world, to which he certainly did not belong. While he unquestionably was a  major foundational force in the making of that later Christian intellectuality, it had many aspects which would have puzzled him. In turn, the later Christian ages adopted a great deal of his insights but in such a way that more or less dismantled several of the fundamental structures of his intellectual architecture: leaving  him ‘piecemeal’ as a theorist, and then often criticising the supposed incoherence of his views. 

    Certainly by the later sixth century, Christianity had so far departed from Origen’s own native environment of Late Antique Hellenistic Paideia, that  the Church itself could barely understand (or tolerate) him, and he himself might well have been appalled at the ‘closure of the mind’ he would have witnessed in regard to theological reflection and dogmatic teaching. It was, in fact, against his own intellectual legacy, that of a man who had adopted as his axiom Opou Logos Agei 3, that the forces of those who wished for much more ‘closure’ in Christian  intellectual horizons mustered themselves.4

    In studies composed before the great revival of close interest in Origen’s writings (a new feature of scholarship beginning at the turn of the twentieth century and  assuming an increased pace from the  1960’s onwards) he had often been caricatured both as suffering from a massive ‘Platonizing’ habit, and of taking little care for the  literal and obvious meaning of the biblical text on which he was commenting. Both presuppositions have been shown to be so removed from the facts of what he has to say, that they raise the suspicion that such observations were made on the basis of  something other than an attentive reading of his text. The problem here, of course, was not simply a tired reliance on textbooks to supply clichés of judgment, but more so the great lacunae in our knowledge about what was really going on in the world of Late Antique philosophical schools: the precise extent  of eclecticism in the philosophical hermeneutics of the age and the degrees of, and rhythms within, the principle of ‘fidelity to the school’ of the  various Diadochoi; those  Sophists from the age of Numenius, Ammonius, Plotinus and Origen to the time of Proclus, an age of immense creativity and adaptation as well as hermeneutical ‘school rules’ that were observed with allegiance, but only within certain prescribed ranges. 

    This terra incognita in relation to the  traditions of Antique philosophy  in the later Hellenistic period has also yielded to great advances in modern times because of detailed work by many classicists now turning their attention to the  ‘Late Antique’ period and, as a result, much more is now known about Origen and the living intellectual context of his times. Origen’s  scholarly agenda, then, is certainly not to use a Platonic lens woodenly when scrutinizing the  scriptural text. It is now clear, as Mark Edwards has ably shown 5 (and as Plotinus’ own disciple Porphyry argued at the time), that Origen is one of the dedicated opponents of Platonism. 

    Though he has been caricatured by some as one who simply imposes his imagination on top of a text regardless,6 Origen consistently and carefully approaches the body of scripture as a set of sacred oracles that contain secret knowledge set within them in various levels of hiddenness, as appropriate to the degree of spiritual advancement in virtue and wisdom 7 on the part of the commentator. For him, the biblical corpus is one coherent totality, not to be interpreted in terms of atomistic linear historical developments (various books emanating from different authors and  various historical conditions) but one overarching schema delivered to Jewish and Christian seers 8 of varying levels of acuity, for the sake of the enlightenment, and thus salvation, of a people (all the souls on earth) who had fallen away from the truth of their metaphysical origins and goals to the extent that they had departed from the  integral knowledge of God. 

    For Origen, the single author of the  ‘revelatory text’ (the mystery embedded in the  historical words) was the Divine Word or Logos of God 9, the earthly author was by definition the saintly prophetic figure (chief among them the Apostles, King David, the great prophets and so on) who all served as significant media of the divine message in so far as they were ‘inspired’ by the  illumination the Logos afforded them. There is, therefore a profoundly varied set of valances across the scriptures - with some of the texts being clearer and more important vehicles of the revelation of the Logos and others  more obscure and of lesser portent.  

    The dynamic of scripture is a chief element in the overall greater scheme of creation and restoration. Origen understands the Logos as the active Agent of Creation, fundamentally a hierarchical process of communion of life 10 which was willed by the Supreme and Transcendent Father, but effected through the agency of the Logos who, because of this, was given the salvific mission of returning all the lapsed souls to union with God the Father through his own High Priestly work 11. The creation of the corpus of scripture is only one factor (albeit an important one) in a broad plan of salvific work that begins in the creation of Spiritual Intelligences (Noes) 12 reaches its mid-point in the Incarnation of the Divine Logos who embodies himself for a salvific ministry to (fallen) Souls (Psychai) on earth, and will finally attain its Apex in the return of the Universe to divine harmony, when God will once more be ‘all in all’  13 (the Apokatastasis). 14

    While many parts of scripture have a simpler moral-instructional purpose, or can serve to give guidance on prayer, it is this overarching story of eschatological salvation which is the deep narrative, as it were; a mystery which is not available or immediately apparent to all. For Origen, it is a pattern and an explicatory key to the totality of scripture 15 and is characterized constantly by the quality of being wholly Logocentric. The passion of the Logos for the salvation of the world that he made in his own image is, therefore, the inner dynamic  not only of history, but of all being. This ‘movement’ or kinesis is why Origen posits mystical union as the flow-direction of all Christian theology, and why he is rightly known as the ‘father of Christian mysticism’, as in his Commentary on the Song of Songs where he brings this schema openly to the fore.  I have begun with this rapid summation of Origen’s macro-arguments because his doctrine of the Word’s Kenosis, is entirely set within this matrix of ideas, and is typical of all his approach to exegesis.

    The hymnal unit in which the reference to the Kenosis appears 16 is one of those deep ocean trenches of scripture which no simple swimmer can hope to exhaust. But it has been widely agreed that it is a pre-Pauline hymnic unit which the Apostle quotes as a familiar confession to his  audience of believers, possibly in AD. 61, and which he uses to sketch out a theology of the Passion and Glorification of the Lord.  In Phil 2.5, he tells us it is to illustrate a phronema that he uses it.

    Kenos, throughout the New Testament signifies and empty or useless thing 17. The short-hand calque ‘Kenosis’ is the Anglicized summation of the idea we find at a cardinal point in the hymn which uses juxtaposed antitheses to project its stresses. The noun is not used in the  New Testament text for the concept there is decidedly an action, a dynamis, not a state (stasis). Similarly there is no reference to the word kenosis anywhere in the writings of Origen. The phrase at issue really is the verbal form used at Phil.2.7: eauton ekenosen, and it derives from the verb  Kenóo: namely, ‘to deprive of possession or content.’ As Oepke has demonstrated  18 in this sense it appears only once in the whole of the New Testament; a striking hapax legomenon at this juncture.  

    The verbal form of the ‘deprivation/dispossession’ should not, Oepke argues be taken (as is often the case) as a referent simply to the personal subject (eauton-himself) stated earlier (namely: ‘He who was in the form of God’, Phil. 2.6), but (in order to sustain the  clear parallelism operative here of loss and gain, honour and shame), should be received rather  as a referent to the ‘omitted object’, namely,  tou  einai isa theo: ‘the [state of] being equal to God.’  It is this which the subject deprives himself of, not ‘himself’ as such, which would do violence to the sense of the verb. In short, ‘dispossession’ would be a better rendering than ‘emptying’.

    Origen makes an exegetical reference to this passage no less than two hundred and eleven times in his extant works 19. This number would probably have been a lot higher if we had all the works surviving. Even for Origen, voluminous commentator that he was, this is a very high incidence and shows the text was important to him. 

    As part of his general theory of relative degrees of revelation contained in scripture, Origen posits that some of the  inspired writers were better than others in conveying the secrets the Logos of God communicated to them. The ‘prime’ seers of God whose writings open up the deepest revelations within scripture are listed in this order: John the evangelist and Paul the Apostle, then the Psalms of David, then the (Apostolic) Synoptic Gospels, then the rest of the  scriptures especially Isaiah, the other Apostolic writings, the Song of Songs and the remaining prophets. Pauline and Johannine theology are, therefore, the primary highways of Origen’s entry into scriptural meaning, and form the lenses through which he tends to approach most other questions. For Origen, Paul is not merely an insightful theologian, but the inspired seer who was lifted up into the heavens to receive secret initiation from the Divine Word 20: initiation which makes him privy (just as the Beloved disciple was privy to secrets since he reclined on the breast of the Logos incarnate 21) to mysteries beyond  the capacity of an earthly mind to know otherwise.

    It follows then, that Origen does not accept the Philippians hymn as an extraneous element which Paul quotes, but rather a mystery which Paul has witnessed and conveys to the church on his own Apostolic authority. The massive amount of reference to the Hymn suggests from the outset that Origen actually sees the text as a quintessence of the Pauline theology. Let us see, as  briefly as we can, the import of his general remarks about the passage. I shall here restrict myself to consideration of Origen’s Commentary on Matthew’s Gospel, and his references in On First Principles : a dossier of texts which more or less gives us his habitual usage of the Kenotic hymn.

    While On First Principles is a relatively early work, concerned with setting out the parameters of the Apostolic Tradition and where it requires clarification, Origen’s Commentary on Matthew is one of his later and most mature works. Sadly a great deal of the latter has been lost, not least the first nine books, up to Matthew 13.36.  However Pamphilus of Caesarea’s Apology for Origen 22 preserves an early fragment, and other pieces are found in the Series of Commentaries on Matthew (Mat. Com. Ser.) as collated from  other ancient authorial sources. 

    Pamphilus wrote to defend Origen against later accusations that he underestimated the  divine honour and eternity of the Son of God. That argument would reach a crescendo during the  Nicene crisis and was the core issue in the controversy surrounding Origen’s reputation in the later fourth century Church. Pamphilus insisted that Origen did not teach the creaturely status of the Son of God 23, and never inferred that he was non-Eternal. Later, leading Nicenes such as Athanasius, Gregory Nazianzen, Basil, and Gregory of Nyssa among them would concur; although Arius seems to have leaned on Origen to deduce the contrary in his own dogmatics. In any case, long before the Nicene crisis 24 , this is how Origen approaches the Philippians Kenotic hymn when he discusses the Genealogy in the very opening of Matthew’s Gospel:

If, when Christ Jesus ‘was in the form of God He did not think it robbery to be equal to God, but dispossessed Himself, taking the form of a servant, made in the likeness of a human being, found as a human being, humbling Himself He became obedient to death even the death of a cross’, then there is no doubt that His birth was not that of one who did not previously exist commencing to exist, as is taken to be the case of the birth of human beings. Rather, He who existed previously and ‘was in the form of God’ came that He might also receive the ‘form of a servant’. Therefore, as He said: ‘What is born of the flesh is flesh’; meaning, what is born of her who said ‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me in accordance with your word’,  this is the ‘form of a servant’, which is certainly flesh. 25 

In this instance Phil 2.6-8 (used to elucidate Matthew’s Genealogy passage) is itself commented on by means of Jn.1.1; Jn. 3.6; and Lk.1.38. The credal element in 1 Tim.3.16 also bears on the same sense as Origen reads here.  

    This practice of the citation of the New Testament text along with paraphrastic forms of it, and a creative mélange of associated passages 26 , is typical of Origen and thereby becomes constitutive of a very long chain of pre-Modern Christian commentators. Here the Johannine Prologue is not cited explicitly but certainly is, allusively. As here, the eternal or divine Arche of the Logos becomes a very common ‘associated text’ in many other Origenian passages dealing with the Philippians hymn. We can sense the Johannine echo, as it were, because of the way that Origen is dealing with the  question of Jesus’ ‘origins’ (arche/ archai) and how Matthew deals with them (the genealogy text). It is Origen’s constant habit to answer one biblical question by reference to another biblical answer (like the Rabbis of old): and nowhere, for him, is more significant to illustrate the true ‘origin’ of the Son of God than the Johannine Prologue which deals with ultimate beginning (‘Within the beginning (arche) was the Word’). 

    In the Catena fragments of the Commentary on Matthew another of Origen’s remarks on Matthew’s Genealogy (Mt. 1.18) has been preserved. Here he begins by noting the distinction in what Matthew says about the ‘book of generation’  and the ‘birth of Jesus Christ’. What is the difference between birth and generation he asks? An idea is intangible and invisible he argues, but once it is written in a book and given tangible form, it can be both seen and touched: 

And in the same way, the Logos of God who is devoid of flesh and body, being neither seen nor describable in his deity, is both seen and described when He is made flesh. It is because He was made flesh, therefore, that there is also a  ‘book of his generation.’ 27

This time he clearly reads the beginning of Matthew through the lens of the beginning (initium) of both The Gospel of John (‘And the Word became flesh’ 28), and First Epistle of John: (‘That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life— the life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare to you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us. 29) Having set the Johannine context by the reading of these three apostolic Initia he then goes on, as in our previous fragment, to take up the Pauline Apostolic witness by means of the Philippians hymn. This time we note how he also correlates it with Paul’s remarks about the First Adam. He certainly notices the very  heavy ‘Adamic’ inferences present in the Philippians Hymn – how the First Adam arrogated to himself a divine honour not his own, and fell from grace because of it; while the Second Adam humbly did not arrogate a false honour, and was exalted for it. Paul clearly held the idea of the Adamic antitheses very dear. If this has not escaped Origen, it often seems to have done so for  many later commentators. Origen says:

Generation and birth are different things. 30 Generation refers to the initial formation by God, while birth is the taking up of the sentence of death by virtue of the passage from the one to the other. Moreover, generation is possessed of incorruptibility and blamelessness, while birth is liable to death and is prone to sin. Accordingly, He who had received the sinlessness of generation by His nature as Lord, did not [need to] assume incorruptibility in addition. And although He had assumed birth’s liability to death  He did not additionally assume its sinfulness as well, but bore the First Adam without diminution, with the attributes relative to both [states]. In the case of Christ, therefore, generation was not an advance from non-existence to existence, but rather the movement from being ‘in the form of God’  to taking up the ‘form of a slave’. 31

Origen understands the entire motive of the advent of the Word to history as pedagogical. I have avoided using the term ‘Incarnation of the Word’ at this instance, for his own Christological explanation of the advent of the Word to earth involved the mediating role of the Great Soul Jesus, who, being one in spirit with the Eternal and Divine Word, himself assumed flesh in order to live on earth as Jesus of Nazareth, and thereby served as the subjective medium for the Divine Word’s personal advent to history. In such a way Origen carefully avoided the concept that the Eternal Word ‘personally’ (that is, hypostatically) ‘changed into’ a fleshly condition or ‘personally became flesh’. It was a nicety that the following generation of patristic theologians (that is, Dionysios, Alexander and - most famously - Athanasius, of Alexandria), all corrected him on: rendering the Logos the personal (Hypostatic) subject of the Incarnate experience and eliminating Origen’s theory of the mediating Great Soul Jesus. Even so, Origen sees the whole purpose of the advent of the Word to Earth as a re-education of fallen souls: a consistent attempt to  raise them up from ignorance and darkness so as to enlighten them morally and mystically (especially about their own psychic origins) and prepare them for their destiny of ascent to union with God. This is the heart and soul of the dynamic of salvation instigated by the Logos of God: and prepared from ancient times by the Word’s own creation of the body of sacred scripture that will set out and chart this process of return that culminates in his own advent to his chosen people.

    Three times in the Matthew Commentary Origen uses the Philippians hymn of Kenosis to illustrate this humble descent of the Word to save fallen souls. The first instance is in the Matthew Commentary Book 11 chapter 17. (32) Here Origen is commenting on the  approach of the Canaanite woman who asked Jesus for help in liberating her possessed daughter 33. He writes: 

Now someone may well ask the meaning of this phrase – “It is not possible to take the loaf of the children and throw it to the little dogs”.  

So, he begins with the literal meaning and agrees that in a normal household there would be no desire to feed dogs bread since (a) loaves were beautiful things unfit for such a use and (b) they were  expensive and thus too rare to be so used. But, he goes on,  why is Jesus giving such an answer to the woman’s spiritual request? Could it be that his own spiritual power, like the rare loaves, was limited in capacity in his earthly state and had to be given only parsimoniously?   Was this because, he asks out loud: ‘He who had emptied himself out to assume the form of a slave, had brought with him a limited power related to the capacity of earthly things?’ Origen refers the reader at this point to the incident of the  haemorrhagic woman who touched Jesus, causing him to say: ‘I know that power has gone out from me.’ 34  From this Origen concludes that there is clearly a sense that this power / dynamis is related to particular events in the ministry – what a later theological era would describe as ‘economic’ dynamis.     But he then presses on (as he habitually does after introducing what is basically an aporia an open ‘seminar question’ in the text  -‘Was the power limited?’) to what he  himself considers the  deeper and more correct answer: that the real question is not whether the power of the Lord was limited but rather why do children and  little dogs receive different economies (of salvation)? And his response to this is that salvation and illumination are given according to  the human being’s spiritual receptivity. This is his overarching pedagogic theory of salvation. Children of God can receive the grace of God; but those who are dogs (a symbol of irrational recklessness) have hindered their own receptivity to the life God offers. However, when the  Syrophoenician woman (presumed to be a ‘dog’ by not being an Israelite  - symbol of the family) demonstrates her immense inherent spiritual faith, she thereby proves her capacity to receive the bread of children. In this, Origen concludes, she is the model for such who are like her and who: ‘will obtain the kind reply of Jesus, who says to such a person: Great is your faith.’

    The second time Origen refers to the Kenosis hymn as a symbol of humble soteriology in the Matthew  Commentary is in Book 13, chapter 10. (35)  He is here commenting on the incident where Jesus’ disciples have been asked whether they are going to pay the poll tax.36  This gives rise to the  aporia set before the disciples by Jesus: Who pays taxes to the ‘kings of the land’: sons or foreigners? Origen moves on to consider how foreigners in a strange land are not only not admitted to sonship, but are often even reduced to slavery, as was the case for the Israelites in Egypt ‘forcibly reduced to slavery.’ 37 This triggers his use of Philippians:

It was for the sake of those who are slaves (like the slavery of those Hebrews) that the Son of God assumed only ‘the form of a slave’ 38 since He performed no servile work of clay. But because He had that ‘form of a slave’ He paid the customs duty and the poll tax no differently than that paid by His disciples, for the same stater sufficed, namely a single coin given for Jesus as well as his disciples.

His point here is  a precise one: namely that assuming the ‘form of a slave’ does not mean that the Son of God, as Lord of all, actually became a slave. Again, in a later generation, such as is evidenced in the  way Gregory of Nazianzus deals with the issues in the Theological Orations (39), the language  of ‘oikonomia’ 40 would be fitted to this  question: namely that in the earthly ministry the assumption of human life and its limitations was an economy of one who was the Lord, assuming the status of a slave, in order to work for the freedom of slaves so as to make them sons.  

    In Origen’s mind, the importation of  extraneous systematic terms (such as ‘soteriological economy’) is not as preferable as making the point by a paralleled scriptural allusion; and in this case he concludes his argument by noting that the overall point of the passage is an ironic one (just as it began with an ironic aporia question): that although Jesus does decide to pay the tax to Caesar (which Origen takes as a symbol of the ‘Ruler of this Aeon’ who ‘has  nothing in the Son of God’ 41) he makes it clear that Christ does not  ‘indebt himself’ by using or touching anything that bears Caesar’s image – and so instructs Peter to retrieve a coin  from a fish in the sea. Origen ends by saying: ‘He did not  assume a coin, or procure it, or obtain it, or ever make it his own possession, so that never might the  image of Caesar exist alongside the ‘image of the invisible God.’ 42

    The third reference to Philippians’ Kenosis humility in the Matthew Commentary is given at Book 15 chapter 7  (43) where Origen is discussing why Jesus allowed children to approach him despite the harsher attitude of the disciples 44. He wished to teach his adult followers, Origen says: ‘To condescend for the benefit of children, so that they might become children to the children in order to gain the children.’ 45 He then lifts out the logion of Jesus: ‘For to such as these belongs the Kingdom of Heaven’ 46 and  then connects the Philippians text that: ‘Although He was in the form of God, He did not count equality with God a thing to exploit, but became a child.’ At this point Origen reminds his readers how Herod had ordered for a search to be made for this child and how the  Nativity angel also referred to him as a child. He concludes: ‘Jesus, therefore, not only in the historical sense, but also in the figurative, ‘humbled himself as a child.’ This switches the narrative of the children coming to Jesus back to the more potent text about the children in the earlier section of Matthew’s Gospel 48 where Jesus says that the ‘greatest in the Kingdom’ is the one who is like the humble child. For Origen this, of course, is the reference to Jesus himself who in his very humility (the form of a slave) is revealed as the Lord. The rapid switching of symbols in the text might  obscure for us moderns what was for Origen a definite and obvious textual link between the  ‘child passages’ and the  Philippians’ symbol of the  servant: for in Greek the term for child (Pais) is, we remind ourselves, the same cipher as for ‘servant’ (morphe doulou).  

    These three episodes set what is for Origen a typical response to the humility of the Lord in his earthly ministry – his divinely pedagogic approach, stooping down to the weakness of those he wishes to teach and save. This is what would be called in a later, more systematic, age the Christological language of the Incarnate Economy, but which in Origen (writing before the Arian controversy has  raised the question to a high pitch) is resolved, by preference, out of the whole cloth of a web of scriptural allusions tied together by shared referents.

    On two occasions in his Matthew Commentary, Origen refers to the Transfiguration narrative 49 as one of his scriptural contexts for illuminating the Philippians’ Christology. The first is a long and reflective passage in Com Mat. Book 12 chapter 37, which opens in this way: 50

Here is a point to investigate: When He was transfigured in front of those He took up into the high mountain did He appear to them ‘in the form of God’ in which He existed long ago, just as He appeared to those who stood below in the ‘form of a slave’. For those who had followed Him ‘into the high mountain’ ‘after six days had passed’ 51 He certainly did not have this servile form, but rather the form of God. 

Origen makes, in this whole passage, the basic point that God appears only to those who have the spiritual receptivity to see, and to them in accordance with the degree of their ‘elevation’,  that is spiritual initiation. The three chosen disciples are the symbols of advanced believers, whom Jesus is able to lead up on high to a better Sinai than that known by Moses, one in which the form of God does not pass by behind, but is revealed to them face to face, and which makes their faces also shine with light (for which  Sinaitic reference he prefers to use the reference of the Pauline theme as at Ephesians 5.8) to show that it is moral purity which makes the believer radiant in the sight of God and men: ‘When He is made manifest He will shine on these [‘sons of the day’]  not simply as the sun shines, but rather as revealing Himself to them as the Sun of Righteousness.’  Here, at the very end of the passage Origen brings out into the open the deeply eschatological nature of his thinking on the Kenosis hymn  in relation to the Transfiguration event. He has noticed very strongly the manner in which the evangelists preface the Gospel narrative with the phrase ‘after six days’.  In Matthew the word ‘later’ refers back to the occasion of the two logia: ‘For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done.Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.’ 52 So Origen takes as his cue that the eschatological motif of the glorious coming of the Lord inspires both the Kenosis hymn (outlining the cosmic scheme of the Lord’s salvation, and his katabasis and anabasis in the process of achieving it); and also the Transfiguration narrative, which he interprets as an anticipation (before the purified disciples) of the final manifestation of the glory; that Apokatastasis when all creation will be pulled into the glory of the Redeemer.53  The ‘After six days’ has thus suggested not only that  the event happened, historically, a week after he had spoken about the coming of the Son of Man, but that he had symbolically  manifested this (the radiance of the Glorious Son) as an eschatological event of the ‘Seventh’; namely as the symbol of that last Aeon of the seven-staged creation.

    When Origen  is commenting on the  approach to Jesus by the father of the epileptic demoniac 54 in  the Matthew Commentary book 13 chapter 3, (55) he returns to the parallelism of the Kenosis hymn and the Transfiguration narrative to underline that the katabasis and anabasis is fundamentally a movement of the divine Logos to the world for the sake of a sacrificial pedagogy which demands that the incarnate teacher adopt the humility of those to whom he wishes to communicate salvation. It is this parallelism Origen makes which, perhaps more than any other writer of the early period, nails into the history of exegesis the interpretation that the ‘form of a slave’ and the ‘form of God’ refer to the  humanity and divinity of the Logos:

A man approached Him, falling on his knees before him and saying: ‘Lord be merciful to my son for he is epileptic and suffers badly’ …..  Well, people who are suffering, or are the family of those suffering are not ‘on the mountain’, but are part of ‘the crowd’. Just so, for the sake of the people He himself descended to His human ministry from the high mountain of divinity, as it were, just as He had climbed the high mountain and had there transformed Himself into his glory, for the sake of his chosen disciples who knew Him. He had previously descended to the lowliness of His humanity for the sake of those who did not know Him. Once He became known to them he led them up to the knowledge of His divinity so that they might say, along with the Apostle, ‘And if we have known Christ according to the flesh, we do not know Him in this way now.’  56 This is why He descended to the crowd so that He might be of benefit to those who were unable to ascend on high because of their infirmities. If He had not come to the crowd with his chosen disciples, the man could not have approached Him, falling on his knees and saying: ‘Lord be merciful to my son.’

        

Allowing for very obvious differences in the meaning of the term today, the Peri Archon of Origen, or On First Principles, is, compared to his Gospel commentaries, predominantly a work of systematic theology. It is also an early work (begun circa 220). In it Origen sets out to expound the  structure of the Apostolic Tradition that undergirds the early catholic faith. He does this for three reasons; first to underline the boundaries that separate catholicity from the gnostic traditions which were making claims to speak for educated Christian attitudes in the Alexandria of his day 57 ; secondly to demonstrate what were those areas of faith that had not yet been clarified by the wider Christian culture, and could thus stand some expert commentary and enquiry (often by means of aporia or open questions); and thirdly to show the Christian intellectual tradition to good effect in the character of a school of philosophy (with himself as the Magister Scholae) deserving of serious student attention. The text has been ably redacted and re-translated recently by John Behr 58. There are about half a dozen times Origen refers to the  Philippians Kenosis hymn in this seminal work.

    Coming at the question of the relationship of the Word  (theos Logos) to the Father (Autotheos) Origen rivets the hymn’s slavery-glory antitheses to the katabasis and anabasis themes of the Fourth Gospel, to render them into ontological markers of being. As usual he approaches major questions of exegetical enquiry by going to the two primary carriers of the Apostolic tradition – John and Paul. Here the opening phrases of the Johannine Prologue are very much behind his mind, but he explicitly begins by referring to Paul’s resolution of the problem he wishes to illustrate, and he notes how Paul describes the Son as the  figure of the substance of God (figura est substantiae vel subsistentiae dei) equating this with the ‘splendour of glory’ 59 and ‘the fullness of deity’: 60

In order that we may more fully understand how the Son is the ‘figure of the substance’ or subsistence of God, let us use an example…..61  so that we can see that when the Son, ‘who was in the form of God, emptied Himself’, He intended to demonstrate by this very emptying ‘the fullness of deity’. 62

This paradox of emptying to demonstrate fullness reaches its explication at the end of section 1.2.8. when he explicitly returns to the  Johannine text:

By emptying Himself of equality with the Father and showing us the way we might know Him, He thus becomes the ‘express figure of His  substance’ 63 and we who were unable to look upon the glory of the Pure Light while it dwelt in the  magnitude of His divinity, might now (since for our sake he becomes ‘the splendour’ 64), find the way to look upon the divine light by gazing upon the splendour…. The Son of God, though placed in the very small confines of the human body, demonstrated that the immense and invisible greatness of God the Father was in Him through the similarity of His works and power. It is, as He said to his  disciples: ‘Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father’, and ‘I and the Father are One’; alongside which we should understand the similar saying 65: ‘The Father is in Me and I in the Father.’66

This equation of the  humility and glory with the Incarnational descent is stated even more abruptly in the Praefatio 4, to the Peri Archon: ‘In these last times emptying Himself out he became human, and was incarnate; though being God, when He was made human He remained what He was, namely God.’ 67

    The poetic beauty of the antitheses of glory and humility captured by the Philippians hymn, are not lost on Origen, as can be seen later in the Peri Archon 2.6.1, when he sketches out the  significance of the Incarnation for cosmic redemption:

After considering such great things as these concerning the nature of the Son of God, we stand in the stupefaction of most exalted amazement that such a being, pre-eminent above all others should have ‘emptied Himself out’ of His state of majesty so as to be made man and dwell among human  beings 68 , as it is witnessed by that ‘grace poured out upon His lips’ 69, and just as the heavenly Father bore witness to Him 70, and as is confirmed by the various signs and wonders and mighty deeds that He accomplished.  71

Later in the Peri Archon when Origen is speaking about the  final consummation of things when God will be all in all, he returns to the  text of the Philippians hymn to underscore, once again, his vision of the entirety of the salvific order as being a movement of the pedagogue Logos, teaching creation to ascend to its lost vision of God. The humility of the Pedagogue who stoops down to meet his ignorant charges is, Origen explains, the manner in which the Logos ontologically and morally exemplified total obedience in his own person, by his humble kenosis:

The Only Begotten Son of God, who was the Word and Wisdom of the Father, even when He was with the Father ‘in that glory He had before the world was’72, ‘emptied Himself, and taking the form of a slave became obedient even to death’ 73 in order that He might teach obedience to those who could not obtain salvation other than through obedience….. And since He had come to restore the discipline  not only of ruling and reigning, but also that of obeying, as we have said,  he first fulfilled in Himself what he desired to be fulfilled in others and became obedient to the Father, not only to the point of death on the cross, but also in the consummation of the age, by means of embracing within Himself all those whom he subjects to the Father, and who thus come to salvation through Him. 74

As was Origen’s custom generally, he often considers  many possible avenues of thought – not all of which he is willing to adopt. It is in the course of his reflections on the pedagogic  force of the  kenosis that at one time he reflects on the opinions of ‘some’ of his predecessors – he does not stipulate who they were but one suspects some unnamed gnostic sages from Alexandria. The passage has been preserved at the end of the Peri Archon in the context of his thoughts on the Anakephalaiosis, or Recapitulation which is implicit in the Final Restitutory Age (Apokatastasis): 75

Some indeed want even that statement of the Apostle’s (that is, ‘Who was in the form of God did not think it robbery to be equal to God but emptied Himself taking the form of a slave’) to be referred to the soul itself, when it first assumed a body from Mary: since He most certainly restored to it the form of God by means of better examples [of behaviour] and better teachings and recalled it to that fullness of which He had emptied Himself.   76

After his death this was one of those ‘controversial statements’ that were stored up by his enemies as proof  that he was a heretic. Jerome quotes this passage in the most damaging (and careless) way he can manage: 

I reckon among the many bad things Origen said these to be especially heretical….. that the soul of the Saviour existed before it was born of Mary, and it was this which was ‘in the form of God and did not think it robbery to be equal to God but emptied  itself taking the form of a slave.’ 77

And in this guise it became one of the Anathemata of the Council of 553 aimed against the Origenists (though largely attacking the teachings of Evagrius of Pontus). 78

    In conclusion, therefore, from Origen’s exegetical use of the Philippians hymn we can see something of the richly imaginative mindset of one of the early church’s greatest theologians. Two macro ideas undergird it all – his belief that scripture is a mystical totality within which John and Paul are the deepest interpreters; and his vision that all the Logos’ works are dynameis/powers of a humble pedagogy of salvation. By so riveting together the vision of Paul and John, Origen is the commentator par excellence who makes the Christian tradition read the Kenosis hymn as primarily a tale of the Incarnation of the divine involving a change of staseis: what in a later generation would soon be nuanced as stages in a doctrine of two natures.

NOTES

 1.Further see J.A. McGuckin, ‘Origen as Literary Critic in the Alexandrian Tradition.’ in : L. Perrone. (ed) Origeniana Octava. Peeters, Leuven. 2003. pp.121-135; Idem, ‘Structural Design & Apologetic Intent in Origen’s  Commentary on John.’ in: Origeniana Sexta, [Origen and the Bible ]  (Edd. G. Dorival & A. Le Boulluec) Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium, CXVIII,  [Leuven Univ. Press ],  Peeters, 

Leuven, 1995,  pp.441 – 457; also Idem. ‘The Life of Origen’, and ‘The Scholarly Works of Origen’, in J.A. McGuckin (ed), The Westminster Handbook to Origen, Louisville, KY, 2004. pp. 1-44; See also in Origeniana Sexta, (op. cit.), G. Bostock, ‘Origen’s Exegesis of the Kenosis Hymn.’ Leuven, 1995, pp.531-547.

 2. Alluding to Prov. 27.17. The citation is recorded in the Suidae Lexicon. (ed. A. Adler. Teubner, Berlin, 5 vols. 1928-1938: vol.3. p. 691).

 3. ‘[Let us go] wheresoever the Logos leads’. The pun is deliberate – Logos as signifying both ‘Divine Word’ and also the scholarly spur of  ‘enquiring reason’.

 4. The controversy against his speculation began in his own lifetime with the issuing of the  treatise Peri Archon (c.225) and  came to a second pitch in what is now known as the First Origenistic Controversy in the time of Theophilus of Alexandria (c. 385-412), and reached a third pitch in the mid sixth century, the so-called Second Origenistic controversy, culminating in Justinian’s court securing synodical condemnations (553) against aspects of his teaching and that of Evagrius of Pontus (c.345-399), one of his most ardent disciples.

 5. M.J. Edwards, Origen Against Plato, Ashgate, Farnworth, 2002, (Routledge, London 2017).

 6. RPC Hanson’s treatment of him in Allegory and Event, John Knox Press, Richmond 1959 ( repr. 2002), was typical of this old-school approach, but it has been overshadowed by Karen Torjesen’s seminal and very exact study of his exegetical process: Hermeneutical Procedure and Theological Method in Origen’s Exegesis, De Gruyter, Berlin and New York, 1986.

 7. The issue being that as one advances in virtue one gains in the capacity of wisdom.

 8. He does not rule out that the Greek philosophers were sometimes possessed of wisdom, which he sees as a divine permeation of truth in the cosmos.

 9. For a fuller exposition of Origen’s sophisticated exegetical theory and praxis see: K. Torjesen (above), also, E.A. Dively-Lauro, The Soul and Spirit of Scripture within Origen’s Exegesis. Brill, Leiden,  Boston, 2005; J.A. McGuckin, ‘The Exegetical Metaphysic of Origen of Alexandria’, in M. Baker & M. Mourachian (edd).  What is the Bible? The Patristic Doctrine of Scripture. Fortress Press. Minneapolis. 2016. pp. 3-20; also Idem, ‘Exegesis and Metaphysics in Origen’s Biblical Philosophy’,  in: J.A. McGuckin.  Seeing the Glory (Collected Studies vol 2). St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, New York. 2017. pp. 159-174.

 10. This too had multiple valencies but the apex of this sharing of life flowed out from the Trinity to the angels and the noetic consciousness rooted in humanity.

 11. Both pre-history, within history, and post-history. He is ultimately a profoundly eschatological thinker in the  antique Christian sense of eschatology. See J.A. McGuckin. Origen’s Eschatology, in R Heine and K Torjesen (edd). The Oxford Companion to Origen, OUP, Oxford. Forthcoming 2021.

 12. The angels are the remnants of this order of being.

 13. 1 Cor. 15.28.

 14. Origen, Peri Archon, 3.5.7; ibid. 2.3.7; Commentary on Romans, 8.9; Homilies on Joshua, 1.16.91.

 15. The very ‘why’ of the Church’s adoption of the ‘Old Covenant’ to illuminate the ‘New’ (terms Origen first introduced to Christianity as part of his explication of the totality argument,  refuting Marcion in the process.

 16. Phil. 2. 5-11.

 17. See 1 Cor. 15.14.

 18. A.  Oepke. ‘Kenóo’, in G. Kittel (et al. edd.) tr. G.W. Bromiley, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 1965, pp. 661-662.

 19. J. Allenbach (et al. edd.) Biblia Patristica vol. 3. Editions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. Paris. 1980. pp. 432-433.

 20. 2 Cor. 12.3.

 21. Jn. 13.23.

22.  c. 240-309. Leading theologian of Origen’s schola and library in Caesarea Maritima, and  mentor of Eusebius who after his teacher’s martyrdom himself became bishop and head of the Origenian school there. 

 23. His several references to the subordination of the Word to the Supreme Father were, by the end of the third century, suggestive of being read in that way.

 24. Which can be read in many ways as a crisis about the reception of Origen’s dogmatic synthesis.

 25. Pamphilus. Apology for Origen. 5, in: R Heine. (ed) The Commentary of Origen on the Gospel of Matthew, vol. 1. OUP, Oxford, 2018, pp. 320-321. (henceforward ‘Heine, vol.1’)

 26. As with the procedure of the Commentators of the Great Library of Alexandria (on the classical canon) this issue of elucidation of the text ‘by reference to the canonical text’ was established hermeneutical procedure. The rules of association (which texts ought to be considered together) was determined by common thematic treatment or shared word usage. A more superficial example is the way Origen deals with Jesus’ entry to Jerusalem (where the foal of an ass plays a cardinal role) with other examples in the Bible where that animal also appears. Dragging in  Balaam’s ass has often appeared risible to  modern historicist critics (although it overlooks the way the original evangelist proceeds the same way, in principle, by associating Jesus’ donkey with that of the peaceful Messiah of Zechariah 9.9). Here there is a thematical allusion suggested to John 1 (the Arche of the divine Logos) because of the evangelist Matthew’s reference to ‘origins’ in his genealogy. 

 27. Catena Fragm. 11 on Matt. Com. Heine. vol. 1. p.325.

 28. Jn. 1.14.

 29. 1 Jn. 1.1-2.

 30. This had been a hot question among the Gnostic commentators, as Origen well knew. See R. Heine. ‘Origen’s Alexandrian commentary on Genesis.’ in: L. Perrone, (ed.)  Origenia Octava, vol. 1. Peeters, Leuven, 2003, p. 68.

 31. Catena Fragment 11 on Origen’s Commentary on Matthew. 1.18; Heine,  vol.1. p. 325.

 32. Heine, vol. 1. pp. 84-85.

 33. Mt. 15.25-26.

 34. Lk. 8.46.

 35. Heine. vol. 1., pp.138-139.

 36. Mt. 17.24.

 37. Exod.1.13.

 38. Phil. 2.7.

 39. Gregory Nazianzen, Orations 27-31, composed in 379-380, with close awareness of the need to update Origen’s Christological terms.

 40. The distinction of what was kat’ousian or kat’oikonomian: ontologically intrinsic or utilitarianly  appropriate (essential or contingent characteristics).

 41. Jn. 14.30.

 42. Coloss. 1.15;  Heine, vol. 1, p. 139.

 43. Heine vol. 1, p. 197.

 44. Mt. 19.13.

 45. 1 Cor.9.22.

 46. Mt.19.14.

 47. Mt. 2.8-9,13.

 48. Mt. 18.4.

 49. Mk. 9. 1-8; Mt. 17. 1-8; Lk. 9. 28-36; 1 Peter 1. 16-18.

50. Heine, vol.1. p. 120.

 51. Mt. 17.1.

 52. Mt. 16. 27-28.

 53. See also the similar approach in Series Com. Mt. 50. Heine, vol. 2. pp. 625-626.

 54. Mt. 17. 14-15

 55. Heine, vol. 2. p. 402.

 56. 2 Cor. 5.16. 

 57. Origen would turn his attention next to making a magisterial corrective commentary on the Gospel of John, that takes  Heracleon’s example into account.

 58. J Behr, (ed). Origen on First Principles. vols 1-2.(Oxford Early Christian Texts), Oxford University Press. 2017. Henceforth: Behr 1 or 2. with page refs.

 59. Peri Archon. 1.2.7-  1.2.8. Behr. 1. pp. 50-52.  (in loco citing Heb. 1.3).

 60. Colossians 2.9.

 61.  He applies (with reservations), the example of a person unable to appreciate the  significance of a monumental sculpture because of its vast size  - but who can appreciate its beauty when a smaller model is shown to him.

 62. Peri Archon 1.2.8. Behr. 1.  p.52.

 63. Heb. 1.3b.

 64. Heb.1.3a.

 65. Jn. 14.9; 10.30; 10.38; c.f. Origen, Commentary on John, 20.153-159.

 66. Peri Archon. 1.2.8. Behr, 1. pp. 52-54.

 67. Peri Archon, Praef. 4. Behr, 1, p. 14.

 68. Jn. 1.14.

 69. Ps. 44.3.; c.f. Origen, Selecta in Psalmos, 44.3. (P.G. 12. 1428-1429).

70. Mt.3.17.

 71. Peri Archon 2.6.1. Behr, 2. p. 202.

 72.  Jn. 17.5.

 73. Phil. 2. 7-8.

 74. Peri Archon, 3.5.6.  Behr. 2. p.434.

 75. Further see F. W. Norris, ‘Apokatastasis’ in J.A. McGuckin (ed). The Westminster Handbook to Origen. WJK Press, Louisville, KY. 2004.  pp. 59-62; also H. Ramelli, A Larger Hope: Christian Universalism from Christian Beginnings to Julian of Norwich.  Cascade Books, Eugene OR. 2019. pp. 41-63.

 76. Peri Archon. 4.4.5. Behr. 2. p. 570.

 77. Jerome. Against Rufinus. 46. 6f. c.f. Behr. 2. p. 619.

 78. Anathemata 7 of the Council of Constantinople II (553), c.f. Behr. 2. p. 618.

 

 

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