Origen's Commentary on the Gospel of John.
Origen’s Commentary on the Gospel of John.
2. The 144,000 Sealed in the Apocalypse are Converts to Christ from the Gentile World.
4. The Study of the Gospels is the First Fruits Offered by These Priests of Christianity.
5. All Scripture is Gospel But the Gospels are Distinguished Above Other Scriptures.
7. What Good Things are Announced in the Gospels.
8. How the Gospels Cause the Other Books of Scripture Also to Be Gospel.
9. The Somatic and the Spiritual Gospel.
10. How Jesus Himself is the Gospel.
11. Jesus is All Good Things Hence the Gospel is Manifold.
12. The Gospel Contains the Ill Deeds Also Which Were Done to Jesus.
13. The Angels Also are Evangelists.
14. The Old Testament, Typified by John, is the Beginning of the Gospel.
16. Meaning of “Beginning.” (1) in Space.
17. (2) in Time. The Beginning of Creation.
20. (5) of Elements and What is Formed from Them.
21. (6) of Design and Execution.
24. Christ as Light How He, and How His Disciples are the Light of the World.
25. Christ as the Resurrection.
29. Christ as the Door and as the Shepherd.
30. Christ as Anointed (Christ) and as King.
31. Christ as Teacher and Master.
33. Christ the True Vine, and as Bread.
34. Christ as the First and the Last He is Also What Lies Between These.
35. Christ as the Living and the Dead.
37. Christ as a Servant, as the Lamb of God, and as the Man Whom John Did Not Know.
38. Christ as Paraclete, as Propitiation, and as the Power of God.
39. Christ as Wisdom and Sanctification and Redemption.
40. Christ as Righteousness As the Demiurge, the Agent of the Good God, and as High-Priest.
41. Christ as the Rod, the Flower, the Stone.
42. Of the Various Ways in Which Christ is the Logos.
2. In What Way the Logos is God. Errors to Be Avoided on This Question.
3. Various Relations of the Logos to Men.
4. That the Logos is One, Not Many. Of the Word, Faithful and True, and of His White Horse.
5. He (This One) Was in the Beginning with God.
6. How the Word is the Maker of All Things, and Even the Holy Spirit Was Made Through Him.
7. Of Things Not Made Through the Logos.
8. Heracleon’s View that the Logos is Not the Agent of Creation.
9. That the Logos Present in Us is Not Responsible for Our Sins.
11. How No One is Righteous or Can Truly Be Said to Live in Comparison with God.
12. Is the Saviour All that He Is, to All?
13. How the Life in the Logos Comes After the Beginning.
15. Heracleon’s View that the Lord Brought Life Only to the Spiritual. Refutation of This.
16. The Life May Be the Light of Others Besides.
17. The Higher Powers are Men And Christ is Their Light Also.
18. How God Also is Light, But in a Different Way And How Life Came Before Light.
19. The Life Here Spoken of is the Higher Life, that of Reason.
20. Different Kinds of Light And of Darkness.
21. Christ is Not, Like God, Quite Free from Darkness: Since He Bore Our Sins.
22. How the Darkness Failed to Overtake the Light.
23. There is a Divine Darkness Which is Not Evil, and Which Ultimately Becomes Light.
24. John the Baptist Was Sent. From Where? His Soul Was Sent from a Higher Region.
26. John is Voice, Jesus is Speech. Relation of These Two to Each Other.
27. Significance of the Names of John and of His Parents.
28. The Prophets Bore Witness to Christ and Foretold Many Things Concerning Him.
30. How John Was a Witness of Christ, and Specially of “The Light.”
2. How Scripture Warns Us Against Making Many Books.
2. How the Prophets and Holy Men of the Old Testament Knew the Things of Christ.
4. John Denies that He is Elijah or “The” Prophet. Yet He Was “A” Prophet.
5. There Were Two Embassies to John the Baptist The Different Characters of These.
6. Messianic Discussion with John the Baptist.
8. John is a Prophet, But Not the Prophet.
10. Of the Voice John the Baptist is.
11. Of the Way of the Lord, How It is Narrow, and How Jesus is the Way.
12. Heracleon’s View of the Voice, and of John the Baptist.
13. John I. 24, 25. Of the Baptism of John, that of Elijah, and that of Christ.
16. Comparison of John’s Testimony to Jesus in the Different Gospels.
17. Of the Testimony of John to Jesus in Matthew’s Gospel,
18. Of the Testimony in Mark. What is Meant by the Saviour’s Shoes and by Untying His Shoe-Latchets.
19. Luke and John Suggest that One May Loose the Shoe-Latchets of the Logos Without Stooping Down.
20. The Difference Between Not Being “Sufficient” And Not Being “Worthy.”
21. The Fourth Gospel Speaks of Only One Shoe, the Others of Both. The Significance of This.
22. How the Word Stands in the Midst of Men Without Being Known of Them.
23. Heracleon’s View of This Utterance of John the Baptist, and Interpretation of the Shoe of Jesus.
25. Jordan Means “Their Going Down.” Spiritual Meanings and Application of This.
27. Of Elijah and Elisha Crossing the Jordan.
28. Naaman the Syrian and the Jordan. No Other Stream Has the Same Healing Power.
29. The River of Egypt and Its Dragon, Contrasted with the Jordan.
30. Of What John Learned from Jesus When Mary Visited Elisabeth in the Hill Country.
31. Of the Conversation Between John and Jesus at the Baptism, Recorded by Matthew Only.
33. A Lamb Was Offered at the Morning and Evening Sacrifice. Significance of This.
34. The Morning and Evening Sacrifices of the Saint in His Life of Thought.
35. Jesus is a Lamb in Respect of His Human Nature.
3. What We are to Think of the Discrepancies Between the Different Gospels.
7. Why His Brothers are Not Called to the Wedding And Why He Abides at Capernaum Not Many Days.
10. Significance of Capernaum.
12. Of the Heavenly Festivals, of Which Those on Earth are Typical.
13. Spiritual Meaning of the Passover.
15. Discrepancy of the Gospel Narratives Connected with the Cleansing of the Temple.
19. Various Views of Heracleon on Purging of the Temple.
25. Further Spiritualizing of Solomon’s Temple-Building.
27. Of the Belief the Disciples Afterwards Attained in the Words of Jesus.
28. The Difference Between Believing in the Name of Jesus and Believing in Jesus Himself.
29. About What Beings Jesus Needed Testimony.
30. How Jesus Knew the Powers, Better or Worse, Which Reside in Man.
34. Christ as the First and the Last; He is Also What Lies Between These.
Further, we have to ask in what sense He is called in the Apocalypse the First and the Last, and how, in His character as the First, He is not the same as the Alpha and the beginning, while in His character as the Last He is not the same as the Omega and the end. It appears to me, then, that the reasonable beings which exist are characterized by many forms, and that some of them are the first, some the second, some the third, and so on to the last. To pronounce exactly, however, which is the first, what kind of a being the second is, which may truly be designated third, and to carry this out to the end of the series, this is not a task for man, but transcends our nature. We shall yet venture, such as we are, to stand still a little at this point, and to make some observations on the matter. There are some gods of whom God is god, as we hear in prophecy,156 Ps. cxxxvi. 2. “Thank ye the God of gods,” and157 Ps. l. 1. “The God of gods hath spoken, and called the earth.” Now God, according to the Gospel,158 Matt. xx. 2. “is not the God of the dead but of the living.” Those gods, then, are living of whom God is god. The Apostle, too, writing to the Corinthians, says:159 1 Cor. viii. 5. “As there are gods many and lords many,” and so we have spoken of these gods as really existing. Now there are, besides the gods of whom God is god, certain others, who are called thrones, and others called dominions, lordships, also, and powers in addition to these. The phrase,160 Ephes. i. 21. “above every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come,” leads us to believe that there are yet others besides these which are less familiar to us; one kind of these the Hebrews called Sabai, from which Sabaoth was formed, who is their ruler, and is none other than God. Add to all these the reasonable being who is mortal, man. Now the God of all things made first in honour some race of reasonable beings; this I consider to be those who are called gods, and the second order, let us say, for the present, are the thrones, and the third, undoubtedly, the dominions. And thus we come down in order to the last reasonable race, which, perhaps, cannot be any other than man. The Saviour accordingly became, in a diviner way than Paul, all things to all, that He might either gain all or perfect them; it is clear that to men He became a man, and to the angels an angel. As for His becoming man no believer has any doubt, but as to His becoming an angel, we shall find reason for believing it was so, if we observe carefully the appearances and the words of the angels, in some of which the powers of the angels seem to belong to Him. In several passages angels speak in such a way as to suggest this, as when161 Exod. iii. 2, 6. “the angel of the Lord appeared in a flame of fire. And he said, I am the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob.” But Isaiah also says:162 Isa. ix. 6. “His name is called Angel of Great Counsel.” The Saviour, then, is the first and the last, not that He is not what lies between, but the extremities are named to show that He became all things. Consider, however, whether the last is man, or the things said to be under the earth, of which are the demons, all of them or some. We must ask, too, about those things which the Saviour became which He speaks of through the prophet David,163 Ps. lxxxviii. 4, 5. “And I became as a man without any to help him, free among the dead.” His birth from the Virgin and His life so admirably lived showed Him to be more than man, and it was the same among the dead. He was the only free person there, and His soul was not left in hell. Thus, then, He is the first and the last. Again, if there be letters of God, as such there are, by reading which the saints may say they have read what is written on the tablets of heaven, these letters, by which heavenly things are to be read, are the notions, divided into small parts, into Α and so on to Ω, the Son of God. Again, He is the beginning and the end, but He is this not in all His aspects equally. For He is the beginning, as the Proverbs teach us, inasmuch as He is wisdom; it is written: “The Lord founded Me in the beginning of His ways, for His works.” In the respect of His being the Logos He is not the beginning. “The Word was in the beginning.” Thus in His aspects one comes first and is the beginning, and there is a second after the beginning, and a third, and so on to the end, as if He had said, I am the beginning. inasmuch as I am wisdom, and the second, perhaps, inasmuch as I am invisible, and the third in that I am life, for “what was made was life in Him.” One who was qualified to examine and to discern the sense of Scripture might, no doubt, find many members of the series; I cannot say if he could find them all. “The beginning and the end” is a phrase we usually apply to a thing that is a completed unity; the beginning of a house is its foundation and the end the parapet. We cannot but think of this figure, since Christ is the stone which is the head of the corner, to the great unity of the body of the saved. For Christ the only-begotten Son is all and in all, He is as the beginning in the man He assumed, He is present as the end in the last of the saints, and He is also in those between, or else He is present as the beginning in Adam, as the end in His life on earth, according to the saying: “The last Adam was made a quickening spirit.” This saying harmonizes well with the interpretation we have given of the first and the last.