Learning the Language of Scripture: Origen, Wisdom, and the Logic of Interpretation 2020056548, 9789004448537, 9789004448544

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Learning the Language of Scripture

Studies in Systematic Theology Edited by Jim Fodor (St. Bonaventure University, NY, USA) Susannah Ticciati (King’s College London, UK) Editorial Board Trond Skard Dokka (University of Oslo, Norway) Junius Johnson (Baylor University, USA) Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen (Fuller Theological Seminary, USA) Rachel Muers (University of Leeds, UK) Eugene Rogers (The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, USA) Katherine Sonderegger (Virginia Theological Seminary, USA)

VOLUME 24

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/sist

Learning the Language of Scripture Origen, Wisdom, and the Logic of Interpretation By

Mark Randall James

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Portions of the following chapters are re-used with kind permission by the publisher: Chapters 3 and 6: ‘The Beginning of Wisdom: On the Postliberal Interpretation of Scripture.’ Modern Theology 33 no. 1 (2017): 9–33.” Chapter 4: ‘Ochs on Vagueness and Inquiry.’ In: Signs of Salvation: A Festschrift for Peter Ochs, edited by Mark Randall James and Randi Rashkover (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2020). Cover illustration: Origen on the windows of Ridly Hall chapel. Photograph and copyright Steven Day. Used with kind permission from the photographer. The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2020056548

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 1876-1518 ISBN 978-90-04-44853-7 (paperback) ISBN 978-90-04-44854-4 (e-book) Copyright 2021 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Requests for re-use and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill NV via brill.com or copyright.com. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

To my parents, who taught me to love wisdom

∵

Contents Acknowledgements xi Abbreviations xiii Introduction 1 1 The Problem of Hermeneutic Arbitrariness 1 1.1 The Return to Scripture 1 1.2 Theological Interpretation and Arbitrariness 3 2 Origen and Arbitrariness 8 2.1 Origen as Systematic Theologian 12 2.2 Origen as Man of the Church 13 2.3 Origen as Charismatic Intellectual 16 3 Method: Descriptive Logic 18 4 Learning the Language of Scripture 22 1 Origen and Stoic Logic 27 1 Stoic Philosophy of Language 30 1.1 Logic 31 1.2 Meaning 36 1.3 The Correctness of Names 40 2 Origen on Language and Logic 45 2.1 The Correctness of Names 46 2.1.1 Natural Names 47 2.1.2 Effective Names 53 2.2 Meaning 60 2.3 Logic 66 3 Conclusion 72 2 From Lexis to Logos 73 1 The Pedagogy of the Logos 77 1.1 Lexis and Logos 77 1.2 Torjesen and the Scriptural Pedagogy of the Logos 81 2 Elements of the Movement from Lexis to Logos 87 2.1 Lexis 87 2.2 Kata Lexin 91 2.3 Rules of Usage 98 2.4 Linguistic Intuitions 103 2.5 Logos 107 3 Conclusion 111

viii 3 The Pragmatics of Scriptural Utterances 113 1 Deixis 116 1.1 Ancient and Contemporary Theories of Deixis 116 1.2 Place Deixis 119 1.3 Person Deixis 125 2 Implicature 128 2.1 Ancient Implicature 129 2.2 Conversational Implicature 131 2.3 Scriptural Implicature 133 2.4 Allegory and the Maxim of Quality 138 2.5 Order (τάξις) and the Maxim of Manner 145 3 Conclusion 152 4 The Grammar of Scriptural Language 154 1 Inquiry and Vagueness 157 1.1 Analogy and Inquiry 157 1.2 Vagueness and Wisdom 166 2 Habits of Scripture 169 2.1 The Logic of Scriptural Habits 173 2.2 Scripture, World, and Interpreter 177 2.2.1 Habits of the World 178 2.2.2 Habits of Inquiry 183 2.3 Implicit Habits of Scripture 186 3 Invention 191 3.1 Rhetorical Invention 191 3.2 Analogy and Invention 196 3.3 Invention of New Words 200 3.4 Invention of New Sentences 204 4 Conclusion 207 5 The Deification of Discourse 209 1 Bold Speech 212 1.1 The Boldness of Scripture 214 1.2 Boldness in Uttering Scriptural Sentences 218 1.3 Boldness in Formulating New Sentences 221 2 Parrhesia and Deification 227 2.1 Parrhesia 227 2.2 Commanding God 231 2.3 Imitating Christ 240 3 Conclusion 243

Contents

Contents

6 Origenism as Pragmatism: A Sketch of a Sapiential Hermeneutic 244 1 Wisdom 246 1.1 Wisdom and Pragmatism 246 1.2 Linguistic Rationality 250 1.3 Learning a Skill 251 1.4 Wisdom and Common Sense 253 2 Scripture and Philosophy 256 2.1 Tradition and Scripture 256 2.2 Learning the Language of Scripture 260 2.3 Interpretation and Crisis 263 3 Sapiential Interpretation 267 3.1 The Problem of Writing 267 3.2 Literal Interpretation (Kata Lexin) 270 3.3 Sapiential Interpretation 273 3.3.1 The Verbal Condition 274 3.3.2 Performative Interpretation 276 3.3.3 Explicative Interpretation 281 3.3.4 Logical Interpretation 286 4 Towards a Sapiential Theology of Scripture 291 Works Cited 295 Index of Citations 317 Index of Names and Subjects 330

ix

Acknowledgements I wish to express my gratitude to the many friends, colleagues, and family members who have helped bring this book into being. I take full responsibility, of course, for all errors and shortcomings. I am especially grateful to Peter Ochs, my Doktorvater, for supervising the dissertation from which this book emerged and in the process, shaping me into a philosopher. His influence is implicit on every page of this book. I would also like to think Robin Young for mentoring me as a student of patristics and for reading numerous drafts of this book. Joseph Trigg has also offered insightful comments on nearly every page of this book. This book would not exist without their wisdom and insight. Randi Rashkover, Deborah Barer, and Susannah Ticciati have also read and commented on nearly every page of this book. Steven Kepnes, Ashleigh Elser, Rebecca Rine, James Lawrence, and Abie Hamouai also commented on substantial portions of it. This book owes much to their thoughtful suggestions. My participation in a number of reading groups has helped form my instincts and served as an incubator for thought. Thank you to Elizabeth Shanks Alexander and the other members of her rabbinic reading groups for teaching me to think scripturally and legally. Reading the Homilies on the Psalms with Robin Young and Joseph Trigg significantly deepened my understanding of Origen. From years of “Wittgenmorgen” with Paul Gleason and Joe Lenow and of reading Hegel with Randi Rashkover, my “Hegel Havruta,” I have gained not only insights into language and logic that made this book possible, but also true philosophical friendship, “quasi fomitibus flagrare animos et ex pluribus unum facere.” The same is true of my time in the Scripture, Interpretation, and Practice (SIP) program at UVA, which is a community of inquiry because it is a community of friends. I am grateful to so many others who have sharpened my thinking. There are too many to name, but the list includes Nicholas Adams, Ben Barer, Larry Bouchard, Ben Boyd, Julia Cummiskey, Rebecca Epstein-Levi, Nauman Faizi, Kelly Figueora-Ray, Jim Fodor, Georgia Frank, Harry Gamble, Kevin Hart, Mark Hopper, Paul Jones, Judith Kovacs, Cassie Meyer, Reuben Shanks, Karl Shuve, Bethany and Stephen Slater, Michael Thompson, Daniel Weiss, and Simeon Zahl. I am grateful to Lorenzo Perrone for providing an advance copy of his edition of Origen’s Homilies on the Psalms, without which this book would not have been possible. I am also grateful to Colgate University for offering me

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a visiting professorship in Spring 2020, which gave me the time and space I needed to finish this book. I am grateful for the support of my family, both the Randall and James clans. My parents in particular, Kent and Jani James, have shaped the person and the scholar I am in too many ways to express. They have set an example of that love for God enacted as love of wisdom that I find in Origen. Above all, my wife Christina Randall-James has given of herself, in more ways than I am sure I recognize, to ensure that this portion of our “family project” became a reality. I am grateful for her faithfulness, her strength, and her wisdom.

Abbreviations AH Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses. AM Sextus Empiricus, Adversos Mathematicos. CC Origen, Contra Celsum. CJ Origen, Commentarii in Iohannem. CM Origen, Commentarii in Matthaeum. CP Charles Peirce, Collected Papers of Charles Peirce. CR Origen, Commentarii in Epistulam ad Romanos. CCt Origen, Commentarii in Canticum. Dial Origen, Dialogus cum Heracleida DK Diels-Kranz, ed., Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. DL Diogenes Laertius, Vitae Philosophorum. EM Origen, Exhortatio ad martyrium. EpAfr Origen, Epistula ad Africanum. HE Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiastica. HomEx Origen, Homiliae in Exodum. HomEz Origen, Homiliae in Ezechielem. HomGen Origen, Homiliae in Genesim. HomJer Origen, Homiliae in Ieremiam. HomPs Origen, Homiliae in Psalmos. IO Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria. FragEph Origen, Fragmenta in Epistula ad Ephesianos. FragJer Origen, Fragmenta in Ieremiam FragJob Origen, Fragmenta in Iob. FragLam Origen, Fragmenta in Lamentaciones FragLk Origen, Fragmenta in Lucam. FragPs Origen, Fragmenta in Psalmos. FragRm Origen, Fragmenta in Epistula ad Romanos LL Varro, De Lingua Latina. LS Long and Sedley, eds., The Hellenistic Philosophers. LSJ Liddel, Scott, and Jones, eds., A Greek-English Lexicon. LXX Rahlfs, ed., Septuaginta. NA-27 Nestle-Aland, ed., Novum Testamentum Graecae, 27th edn. NE Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea. PA Origen, De Principiis. PG Migne, J. P., ed., Patrologiae Cursus Completus. Series Graeca. PH Sextus Empricus, Pyrrhoniae hypotyposes. PH Galen, De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis.

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Abbreviations

Pitra J. B. Pitra, ed. Analecta sacra spicilegio Solesmensi parata. Sch. Scholium (-a). Sch. DThr. Scholia in Dionysii Thracis Artem Grammaticam. Sch. Hom. Scholia in Homerum. SelGen Origen, Selecta in Genesim. Sel Job Origen, Selecta in Job. Sorabji Richard Sorabji, ed., The Philosophy of the Commentators 200–600 AD. ST Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae. SVF J. von Arnim, ed., Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta. UP Galen, De usu partium.

Introduction 1

The Problem of Hermeneutic Arbitrariness

1.1 The Return to Scripture A diverse range of theologians and scholars have in recent decades grown increasingly dissatisfied with the modern disciplinary divide between historical text scholarship and constructive theology.1 Emboldened by the profound scriptural theologies of twentieth century giants like Karl Barth and Henri de Lubac, a new movement of “theological interpreters of scripture” has sought to recover a pre-modern way of doing theology in which, as de Lubac said, “theological science and the explication of scripture cannot but be one and the same thing.”2 They seek to recover not only an overarching theological vision of scripture’s role in the divine economy, but also exegetical judgment and the various technical skills that enable it. “Theology has lost its competence in exegesis,”3 says Rusty Reno. An urgent theological task is to return to past masters of theological interpretation, not only as resources for our thinking but as teachers and trainers of our practice. Returning to scripture must include returning to pre-modern exemplars of scriptural interpretation.4 The theological interpretation of scripture is a young movement that has arisen in response to a perceived crisis.5 Consequently, there is a good deal more consensus about the problems to which theological interpretation is

1 A succinct account of the causes and consequences of this divide can be found in Stephen Fowl, ed., The Theological Interpretation of Scripture (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1997), xii–xvi. 2 Henri de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis, Volume 1: The Four Senses of Scripture, trans. Mark Sebanc (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 27. 3 R. R. Reno, “Series Preface,” in Ephraim Radner, Leviticus (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2008), 13. 4 Henri de Lubac’s study of Origen was a forerunner of this return to pre-modern exegetes (Henri de Lubac, History and Spirit, trans. Anne Englund Nash (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2007)). See also David Steinmetz, “The Superiority of Pre-Critical Exegesis,” in Fowl, Theological Interpretation, 26–38. 5 Some foundational works in theological interpretation include Werner Jeanrond, Theological Hermeneutics: Development and Significance (London: Macmillan, 1991); Kevin Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in This Text?: The Bible, The Reader, and The Morality of Literary Knowledge (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1998); Francis Watson, Text, Church, and World: Biblical Inter­ pretation in Theological Perspective (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994); and Stephen Fowl, Engaging Scripture (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997).

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004448544_002

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responding than there is about the best solutions.6 However, undoubtedly one of the most difficult of these problems is a lingering arbitrariness that afflicts modern reading and interpretation of scripture. Theological interpreters have identified interpretive arbitrariness on several fronts. First, they have called attention to the arbitrariness of the disciplinary divide between theology and the various critical methods of biblical study that dominate the modern academy. Historical biblical scholars have frequently represented their own critical methods as the only legitimate way to determine the meaning of the scriptural texts. Theological interpreters argue that this claim lacks warrant, and hence that it arbitrarily forecloses the possibility of reading scripture in ways that take seriously the traditional theological concerns of religious readers. When institutionalized in the Western academy, the arbitrariness of this assumption manifests itself in the unjustified exclusion of interpreters who would use and develop other viable ways of reading. In order to identify the limits of historical criticism and explicate the intelligibility of traditional reading practices, theological interpreters have drawn on a range of post-modern movements and philosophies, such as the German tradition of philosophical hermeneutics,7 Derridean post-structuralism,8 and the pragmatism of Charles Peirce.9 Theological interpretation has thrived in the more pluralistic academic environment these critiques have helped create. Sometimes, however, these various post-modern theories have intensified anxiety about interpretive arbitrariness by giving the impression that arbitrariness is an inexorable feature of all interpretation. While an earlier generation of theologians could—for better or worse—take for granted a relatively stable consensus about canons of proper interpretation, now we are more likely to experience a fragmented conflict of interpretations. Today’s theologians not only dispute what this or that text means; we also hear them asking whether texts have any determinate meaning at all. This worry takes slightly different forms depending on which post-modern theory is to the fore. For James K. A. Smith, the problem is the lack of hermeneutic “control” that seems 6 My account here follows the introductions to theological interpretation in Fowl, Theological Interpretation, and Kevin Vanhoozer, ed., with Craig G. Bartholomew, Daniel J. Treier, and N. T. Wright, Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2005). 7 For an example of this approach, see Jeanrond, Theological Hermeneutics. 8 For an example of this approach, see James K. A. Smith, The Fall of Interpretation: Philosophical Foundations for a Creational Hermeneutic, 2nd edn. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012). 9 For an example of this approach, see Peter Ochs, ed., The Return to Scripture in Judaism and Christianity (New York: Paulist Press, 1993), 3–54; Peter Ochs, Peirce, Pragmatism, and the Logic of Scripture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Peter Ochs, Another Reformation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), 8–16.

Introduction

3

to follow from the “indeterminacy” of texts on post-structuralist accounts.10 For Robert Jenson, the problem is that “critical theories” that purport to discover what is really going on beneath the textual appearances ultimately lead to a self-defeating subjectivism.11 Kevin Vanhoozer’s Is There a Meaning in This Text? reflects the anxiety about arbitrariness in an especially acute form, examining an exceptionally wide range of hermeneutic theories that seem to undo the author, the book, and the reader, threatening interpretive “anarchy.”12 Probably post-modern theories would not loom so large if they did not dovetail with certain common sense assumptions about interpretation widely held in the universities and religious communities of the liberal West. Stephen Fowl’s list of relativist slogans encountered by teachers and preachers still resonates: “Nobody’s interpretation is better than anyone else’s; everyone has a right to his/her own interpretation; it is rude and not inclusive to fail to accept someone’s interpretation as true for that person.”13 In many circles, however, this relativism has arguably given way to a politicization of interpretation in which communities implicitly or explicitly control the results of interpretation according to their own communal doctrines and ethical norms. In these environments, anxiety about the arbitrariness of interpretation among theologians committed to the need for a return to scripture has only increased. 1.2 Theological Interpretation and Arbitrariness In response to the arbitrary dogmatism of historical criticism on the one hand and the arbitrary relativism of post-modernity on the other, theological interpreters frequently frame theological interpretation as a kind of via media. It avoids, according to David Steinmetz, “the Scylla of extreme subjectivism, on the one hand, and the Charybdis of historical positivism, on the other.”14 The boundaries of the Christian tradition constitute, for Todd Billings, “the spacious yet specified place of wrestling with, chewing on, and performing scripture.”15 Theological interpreters have usually understood that the intelligibility of their enterprise depends, however, on showing that their own rules of scriptural interpretation are not arbitrary.

10 Smith, Fall of Interpretation, 199–221. Cf. Fowl, Engaging Scripture, 40–56 and Vanhoozer, Is there a Meaning, 126–140. 11 Robert Jenson, Canon and Creed (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010): 79–88. 12 Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning, xi. 13 Fowl, Engaging Scripture, 40. 14 Steinmetz, “Pre-Critical Exegesis,” 37. 15 J. Todd Billings, The Word of God for the People of God: An Entryway to the Theological Interpretation of Scripture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), xiii.

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Introduction

It was a commonplace in the early church that “scripture interprets scripture,” and many theological interpreters have proceeded in accordance with this slogan. In some vague sense, this slogan suggests, non-arbitrary rules of scripture would have to be rules that emerge from the scriptures themselves. The paradigmatic instance of this is the regula fidei, the “rule of faith” which for many early Christians provided a summary of the Biblical narrative as a guide to reading the scriptures. Originally a pattern of oral teaching freely reformulated by second and third century Christians as it suited their specific purpose, the rule of faith came to provide the basic structure of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan creed as well. Most Christian theological interpreters argue that the rule of faith and/or the creeds should play some kind of normative role in theological interpretation. Yet they also insist that these rules are by no means imposed on scripture, but rather are themselves derived from scripture. In his Introducing Theological Interpretation, for example, Donald Treier says: Yet the plurality of potential interpretations did not entail the equal legitimacy of all the various claims, as if the church simply appealed to tradition because the Bible was defenseless … the Rule not only defines and defends parameters for proper interpretation but also derives from scripture itself. While the “literal sense” of the Bible is not simply or completely transparent, the words of the text restrain and guide the churchly reader, ultimately telling the story of the Triune God.16 The rule of faith governs the interpretation of those scriptures from which it is taken. Thus scripture interprets scripture. It is not easy to explain how or in what sense this might be possible, however. Without a clear understanding of how one might draw rules of interpretation from scripture, theological interpreters are themselves vulnerable to the charge of arbitrariness, in the manner of other communities who simply impose their own commitments and understandings onto the text of scripture. Not surprisingly, this is often what historical text scholars take theological interpreters to be doing. John Barton, who has engaged fairly sympathetically with theological interpreters, nevertheless concludes in the end that their appeals to tradition amount to dogmatism: “One cannot establish what the Bible means if one insists on reading it as necessarily conforming to what one

16 Daniel Treier, Introducing Theological Interpretation of Scripture (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2008), 59.

Introduction

5

already believes to be true—which is what a theological reading amounts to.”17 Barton is only renewing an old line of attack. It is a deep impulse of historical biblical scholarship to attack the dogmatism of appeals to traditional authority, and not necessarily from a posture that is skeptical of faith or theology. In a programmatic and oft-cited essay calling for interpreters to read the Bible “like any other book,” Benjamin Jowett begins by calling attention to the fruitless interpretive debates between different Christian denominations. It is a strange, though familiar fact, that great differences of opinion exist respecting the Interpretation of Scripture. All Christians receive the Old and New Testament as sacred writings, but they are not agreed about the meaning which they attribute to them. The book itself remains as at the first; the commentators seem rather to reflect the changing atmosphere of the world or of the Church. Different individuals or bodies of Christians have a different point of view, to which their interpretation is narrowed or made to conform. It is assumed, as natural and necessary, that the same words will present one idea to the mind of the Protestant, another to the Roman Catholic; one meaning to the German, another to the English interpreter …18 Although theological interpreters have frequently used him as a foil,19 Jowett understands himself as a theological reader of “scripture” and the “sacred writings.” What troubles him is the common assumption that it is “natural and necessary” that the meaning of a text will be “narrowed or made to conform” to the teachings of a particular interpretive tradition. To the extent that this is so, the

17 John Barton, The Nature of Biblical Criticism (Louisville, Westminster John Knox Press, 2007), 164. He is following in the venerable tradition of James Barr, especially his Holy Scripture: Canon, Authority, Criticism (Oxford: Clarenden Press, 1983). 18 Benjamin Jowett, “On the Interpretation of Scripture,” in Benjamin Jowett, Essays and Reviews (London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1861): 330–433, esp. 330. 19 Vanhoozer, for example, characterizes Jowett as saying that, “only readers who suspend belief in the text (i.e., who refuse to follow its perlocutions) are qualified to attend to it,” which hardly does justice to Jowett’s concern with the Bible’s authoritative function as scripture (Is There a Meaning, 378). Rusty Reno answers Jowett with a string of rhetorical questions: “Are readers naturally perceptive? Do we have an unblemished, reliable aptitude for the divine? Have we no need for disciplines of vision?” (“Series Preface,” 11). This criticism is especially unfair, as Jowett is not calling for a return to some kind of natural and immediate perception, but rather to the difficult and counter-cultural labor of historical critical inquiry. Steinmetz, “The Superiority of Pre-Critical Exegesis,” is more evenhanded, and his criticism of Jowett’s theory of meaning hits the mark.

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Introduction

scriptures cannot serve their proper function as critical norm of the church’s life and faith. We may find worrisome signs of this arbitrariness in a range of theological interpreters. In his introduction to the Dictionary of Theological Interpretation, for example, Kevin Vanhoozer offers what he takes to be a consensus account of theological interpretation. He begins by saying what theological interpretation is not; and the first thing he rejects is that theological interpretation engages in the dogmatically confessional reading criticized by Jowett. Theological interpretation of the Bible is not an imposition of a theological system or confessional grid onto the biblical text. By theological interpretation, we do not intend to urge readers to return to a time when one’s interpretation was largely dominated by one’s particular confessional theology (e.g., Lutheran, Reformed, Roman Catholic, et al.). While it may be true that exegesis without theological presuppositions is not possible, it is not part of the dictionary’s remit to take sides with a specific confessional or denominational tradition. (On the other hand, we do affirm the ecumenical consensus of the church down through the ages and across confessional lines that the Bible should be read as a unity and as narrative testimony to the identities and actions of God and of Jesus Christ.)20 The fact that Vanhoozer deals with this objection first is a sign of his anxiety that theological interpretation might be understood in just these terms. But his defense of theological interpretation here provides plenty of fodder for a version of Jowett’s worry. While Vanhoozer excludes the imposition of particular theologies or confessional grids onto scripture, he immediately adds that “on the other hand … the Bible should be read” in line with the ecumenical teaching of the church, presumably in accordance with the ecumenical creeds. What is the force of this “should”? By introducing this claim here, he gives the strong impression that the creeds do play for theological interpreters precisely the controlling role that confessional theologies should not, that of imposing a grid (however broad) onto the scriptural text. One may raise similar concerns about the way some theological interpreters have defended the use of allegory. Situating himself within what he calls the “return to allegory” school, Jason Byassee offers the powerful argument that the very tenuousness of allegory makes it especially appropriate as an

20

Vanhoozer, ed., Dictionary, 19.

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exegetical method for Gentiles.21 In its plain sense, most of the Old Testament addresses the Jewish people; only by way of allegory, he argues, can it be read as a text speaking to Gentiles as well. Paradoxically, however, this method is especially appropriate to the tenuous status of Christian Gentiles as a people grafted in to Israel: “As we only belong to Israel tenuously, ‘against our nature,’ it is appropriate to read Israel’s texts tenuously, ‘against the letter.’”22 He is anxious, however, to show that the tenuousness of allegory does not mean that its use is arbitrary. He does so by pointing to the normative function of the rule of faith: “allegory must conform with the doctrine according to the literal telling of the biblical story in the regula fidei.”23 Byassee sees his approach as exemplified by Augustine, who avoids arbitrariness in his allegorizing by recognizing, that scripture is a unified book with a common skopos articulated in the regula fidei and then in the church’s creeds, and that the purpose now of reading scripture is not to find out what it says as though unaware, but rather to see anew truth already held in delightful new ways.24 For Byassee, theological interpreters should use allegory to enhance the church’s language and its grasp of the beauty and mystery of the truth to which it is committed. But Christians learn nothing from allegory that they did not already know—nothing, that is, not already articulated in the literal sense of scripture as governed by the rule of faith.25 If we then recall that for Byassee, much of the Old Testament can only be read by Christians allegorically, it is difficult to see how allegory does not come to function as an arbitrary principle for replacing the literal meaning of awkward texts with the content of the rule of faith. With these examples, we have come full circle. If theological interpreters are right to worry that historical critical scholarship excludes certain traditional ways of reading without reason, it is less clear that they have succeeded in 21

Jason Byassee, Praise Seeking Understanding: Reading the Psalms with Augustine (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007). 22 Ibid., 50. 23 Ibid. 24 Ibid., 114. 25 Understandably, it follows that “Augustine himself is often tedious reading on the psalms … There is often a difficulty with ancient Christian figurative exegesis: knowing in advance that any interpretation must match the regula fidei, must illuminate the figure of Christ, can indeed serve as a sort of imaginative straight-jacket …” (Ibid., 132). While Byassee responds that this failure should be seen as a failure to be sufficiently beautiful, I do not think this adequately deals with the problem of tediousness, not least because beauty is not as easily separated from intellectual discovery as Byassee’s account requires.

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Introduction

proposing ways of reading that do not suffer from their own forms of arbitrariness. One question to ask in returning to past masters of theological interpretation is whether they have something to teach us about how to correct our contemporary tendency towards arbitrariness. 2

Origen and Arbitrariness

Learning the Language of Scripture: Origen, Wisdom, and the Logic of Inter­ pretation turns to Origen as a compelling model of the non-arbitrary interpretation of scripture. In certain respects he is an obvious choice as a teacher of theological interpretation. He is the father of Christian Biblical scholarship and the first to write what we might want to call a systematic theology. If his provocative thought has always made him a “sign that will be contradicted,”26 no one can question the brilliance or the piety of the man who earned the nickname “Adamantius,” man of steel. He has been called a “complete exegete” for the abandon with which he threw himself into the study of scripture.27 Over and over again in the history of the church, saints and scholars have drawn on Origen to renew scriptural interpretation in their own time.28 This has continued into the modern period, especially through his contribution to the Catholic ressourcement movement.29 Henri de Lubac in particular identified Origen as the fountainhead of traditional Catholic exegesis. Beginning with History and Spirit, his study of Origen’s exegesis, and then continuing in his massive Medieval Exegesis, de Lubac argued that Origen’s pursuit of an allegorical sense of scripture—the “spiritual sense,” as de Lubac preferred to call it—could be made intelligible within a broader Catholic theological framework as a transformative practice integral to spiritual life. By way of de Lubac, Origen has had a significant influence on contemporary theological interpreters of scripture. More recently, patristic scholars like Karen Jo Torjesen and 26 To borrow an apt designation from Henri Crouzel, Origen, trans. Henry Worrall (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989), xi. Cf. Joseph Trigg, “Introduction,” in R. P. C. Hanson, Allegory and Event (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002), iii. 27 Bertrand de Margerie, An Introduction to the History of Exegesis, vol. 1: The Greek Fathers, trans. Lenord Maluf (Petersham: St. Bede’s, 1993), 113. 28 For a brief summary of this history, see Joseph Wilson Trigg, Origen: The Bible and Philosophy in the Third-century Church (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1983, 244–58. 29 Besides the works of Henri de Lubac already cited, see Jean Daniélou, Origen, trans. Walter Mitchell (London: Sheen and Ward, Ltd., 1955); Hans Urs von Balthasar, “Le mysterion d’Origène,” Recherches de science religieuse 26 (1936): 513–62; 27 (1937): 38–64; Hans Urs von Balthasar, ed., Origen: Spirit and Fire, trans. Robert J. Daly, S. J. (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1984).

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David Dawson have offered compelling accounts of Origen’s exegesis that have found receptive ears among theologians.30 Origen’s problems are also reminiscent of our own. The church in his day was in the midst of a severe hermeneutic crisis provoked by the challenges of Marcion and the various gnostic groups to the church’s received ways of reading scripture. Origen devoted his life to teaching his own communities how to return to scriptures they found increasingly alien. Few theologians have been as concerned as Origen with drawing rules about how to read scripture from scripture itself, and with doing so in a way that avoids arbitrariness. What we seek to learn, Origen purports to know. Yet despite all this, Origen would not seem to be a very promising resource for one simple reason: he is widely regarded as one of the most arbitrary exegetes in the Christian tradition! He is closely identified with the use of allegory, a method of reading that modern readers have often found distasteful if not outright dishonest.31 The fact that he uses allegory to derive heterodox proposals with no apparent basis in the plain sense of scripture, such as the preexistence of souls or the ultimate restoration of all things, seems strong proof of the fundamental arbitrariness of allegory as a method. Moreover, his most famous attempt to formulate rules governing his use of allegory—the doctrine that scripture has three senses corresponding to the body, soul, and spirit of a person—has seemed to many like an extrinsic derivation of an interpretive principle from a dubiously Christian anthropology. In any case, the better part of his exegesis does not seem to conform to the tripartite structure of this theory, further underscoring its apparent arbitrariness.32 In the face of this evidence, many patristic scholars and theologians have concluded in no uncertain terms that Origen’s exegesis is fundamentally arbitrary. In his classic Allegory and Event, R. P. C. Hanson is particularly scathing: In an effort to distinguish objectively between three different senses of scripture he only succeeded in reaching a position where all distinctions were dissolved in a “spiritual” sense which was in fact nothing but Origen’s arbitrary fancy as to what doctrine any given text ought to 30

Karen Jo Torjesen, Hermeneutical Procedure and Theological Method in Origen’s Exegesis (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1985); David Dawson, Christian Figural Reading and the Fashioning of Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002). 31 On the modern “revulsion” to allegory, see Andrew Louth, Discerning the Mystery: An Essay on the Nature of Theology (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983), 96–131. 32 For a summary of modern scholarship on the three senses, see Olga Nesterova, “Les interprétations modernes de la doctrine origéienne des ‘trois sens’ de l’Écriture; Pour un examen critique,” Adamantius 11 (2005): 184–210.

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contain … [T]o maintain that all passages must yield, when allegorized or treated in any way any scholar likes to suggest, a “spiritual” sense having direct relevance to Christian doctrine, and that many passages must not be taken in their literal sense because their literal sense, though not nonsense, is improper or irrelevant to Christian doctrine or in some way contains statements that ought not to be in the Bible—these are suggestions which it is exegetical suicide to entertain. The best intentions in the world cannot redeem the expositor who adopts these principles.33 Despite important advances in our understanding of Origen’s exegesis since Hanson, no scholar has adequately shown that Origen’s exegesis does not suffer from an underlying arbitrariness.34 Nevertheless, this objection to my appeal to Origen has matters exactly backwards. Origen’s appearance of arbitrariness is precisely what makes him a promising source for correcting our own arbitrariness. The reason for this has to do with the way we go about making judgments that something is arbitrary. To say that something is arbitrary is to deny its rationality by denying that an appropriate rule governs it. There are at least two ways in which exegesis might be arbitrary. First, one might deny that there is any rule at all operative in one’s exegesis; one lacks controls or criteria altogether. Second, one might deny that some set of rules are adequate for the task of interpreting scripture; one’s rules are inappropriate to their object. In the latter case, what one lacks is a higher-order rule with respect to which one can justify the appropriateness of given hermeneutic rules to their object. It is primarily this second sort of arbitrariness with which I am concerned. Theological appeals to norms like the rule of faith may permit exegesis to be consistent or regular; nevertheless, they may fail to account for the appropriateness of applying this rule to that text. Although I speak of “hermeneutic rules,” arbitrariness is not an intrinsically hermeneutic issue. Rather, it is a logical issue. The judgment that some 33 R. P. C. Hanson, Allegory and Event (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002), 257–58. 34 The best recent discussion of Origen’s arbitrariness can be found in Elizabeth Ann Dively Lauro, The Soul and Spirit of Scripture within Origen’s Exegesis (Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2005), focusing on the charge that Origen applies his theory of three senses inconsistently. She distinguishes two ways Origen’s method might be called arbitrary. First, it may be “subjective” in that it is “not adequately focused on the text itself” (12). Second, it may be “inconsistent” in that it is “variable within and between his theory and practice” (12). She demonstrates persuasively that Origen’s theory and practice are much more consistent with one another than is frequently believed. However, she does not try to address the question of whether his practice is adequate in any sense to the text itself.

Introduction

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interpretive practice is arbitrary is a universal negative judgment. It means that no possible rule would make that practice intelligible in the relevant respect.35 We all know the difficulty of proving a negative. When a scholar judges that Origen’s procedures are arbitrary, she commits herself to denying that any possible rule could make his procedures intelligible. Testing such a claim requires relating the textual products of Origen’s exegetical practice, on the one hand, to those possible procedural rules that she is able to imagine, on the other. The judgment that Origen’s exegesis is arbitrary is only as reliable as one is able to imagine possible rules. If Origen appears arbitrary to modern readers, then, this has at least two possible explanations. First, Origen’s exegesis is in fact arbitrary. Second, those to whom he appears arbitrary have not yet imagined the possible rule governing his exegesis. The first possibility cannot be discounted. Yet Origen’s express commitment to reading scripture according to rules and according to reason has always made this an unsatisfying option. For those readers who share my sense that our own rules of interpretation are afflicted by arbitrariness and in need of correction, the hypothesis that Origen is arbitrary should appear even less satisfying. We have, after all, gone in search of interpretive rules because we have become aware that there is some rule we do not yet know. Perhaps the rule we need to imagine is the same rule that might help us understand Origen’s procedures. If, conversely, we could show that the appearance of arbitrariness in Origen’s exegesis is false, that his exegesis has an underlying logic after all, then ipso facto we would have imagined a new rule of interpretation in the present—perhaps the very rule we are seeking. The concrete empirical task of the patristic scholar, working out the as-yet unintelligible logic of Origen’s exegesis, may thus at the same time be a theological act of imagining a new possible rationality for the present. This is why Origen’s appearance of arbitrariness is what makes him a promising source for healing our own arbitrariness. Since the rules by which modern readers have tested Origen’s rationality have by necessity been those rules available to modern readers—either rules actually operative in our own practices or rules that we have been able to imagine as possible—scholarly interpretations of Origen have a tendency to correlate with the hermeneutic possibilities we consider viable in the present. For this reason, the range of scholarly attempts to make sense of Origen’s exegesis provide a useful mirror of our own logical imagination. 35 This can be reformulated to make its universal quantity more evident: if a hermeneutic practice is arbitrary, then any possible rule is not one that would make that practice intelligible.

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Introduction

Following Ulrich Berner, we may distinguish two competing scholarly conceptions of Origen.36 First, some regard Origen as basically a systematic theologian who uses allegory to read his philosophical convictions into the text. This approach corresponds to the modern logic that sharply separates exegesis from theology. Second, some treat Origen as basically a loyal churchman whose exegesis, if sometimes over-bold, was ultimately bounded by ecclesial tradition and integral to the spiritual formation of the Christian. This approach corresponds to those theological interpreters who appeal to traditional norms as a bulwark against arbitrariness. Let us consider these approaches at slightly greater length. 2.1 Origen as Systematic Theologian A clear and hermeneutically illuminating example of the interpretation of Origen as a systematic theologian is Eugene de Faye in his Origen and His Work.37 De Faye was one of the first scholars to see clearly the Middle Platonic context of Origen’s thought, rather than interpreting him through the lens of neo-Platonism. When considering Origen’s vast exegetical output, De Faye asks about what he calls the “dominating feature” of Origen’s mind, which he poses as a binary choice: “As a theologian, is he an exegete or a dogmatist?”38 What de Faye means by an “exegete” is clearly a reader on the model of a historical text scholar, one who seeks the “historical meaning” of the Scriptural text, that is, “the thought of the sacred author, his real feelings or particular opinions.”39 Judged against this standard, de Faye argues that although Origen aimed at being an exegete, “this is appearance rather than reality. Origen is essentially a Christian thinker or dogmatist,” that is, a systematic philosophical theologian with a mystical bent.40 Origen arrives at his systematic positions through philosophical argument, and then uses allegorical interpretation to read his own independently determined views into the scriptural text. Scriptural 36

See Ulrich Berner, Origenes (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1981), which develops this framework from a short essay by Crouzel. Berner distinguishes a “systematic” interpretation of Origen from a “mystical” or “non-systematic” interpretation. The former includes scholars like F. C. Bauer, Bigg, von Harnack, de Faye, Koch, Nygren, and Hanson. The latter includes scholars like Bardy, Völker, de Lubac, and Crouzel, to which I would add Peter Martens. Berner also distinguishes scholars who attempt a mediating view, such as Cardiou, Daniélou, and Harl. Berner’s conclusion that scholars ought to “consider Origen at his work” is the driving aim of the present study (99). 37 Eugene de Faye, Origen and His Work, trans. Fred Rothwell (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1926). 38 Ibid., 36. 39 Ibid., 37. 40 Ibid.

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interpretation is eisegesis that permits him to claim divine authority for his own position. In effect, the scriptures serve him admirably for illustrating his theology, while providing him with the divine authority which he cannot ignore. It must be recognised that Origen is a Christian philosopher who imagines he is explaining the scriptures, whereas he is really exploiting them on behalf of his own dogmatic teaching. His commentaries tell us something of his theology, but nothing of the religion of Israel, nothing of the character or function of prophecy.41 De Faye can apparently imagine no legitimate exegetical procedure besides that which explicates the text in terms of the thought of its author. Since Origen’s exegesis is clearly not doing that, he concludes that it must be arbitrary. De Faye presupposes something like the divide between historical exegesis and systematic theology against which theological interpreters have rightfully been reacting. Faye’s approach to Origen has grown increasingly out of favor, in part due to the same academic trends that have fostered the rise of theological interpretation. 2.2 Origen as Man of the Church A second and more compelling alternative is represent by Henri de Lubac’s History and Spirit, a work which, as we have seen, has provided a powerful model for more recent theological interpreters. De Lubac offers the classic exposition of Origen’s exegesis as a spiritual practice bounded by tradition. Unlike de Faye, he is confident that Origen’s spiritual exegesis has an intelligible rationale, one that is authentically Christian and from reflecting on which contemporary interpreters of scripture stand to gain much. For de Lubac, the basic logic of allegorical exegesis is the discovery of the New Testament in the Old. He argues that Origen’s exegesis should be understood as an attempt to imitate the same exegetical practice as the New Testament authors and to reflect on the same Christian mystery preserved in the church’s rule of faith. If Origen has certain speculative excesses, they are subordinate to his deep commitment to Christian teaching and his allegiance to the church. Origen is a “man of the church,”42 “completely ecclesiastical,”43 a man who combines his 41 42 43

Ibid., 38. The phrase of course is Origen’s (HomJos 9.8), but de Lubac used it as a slogan for what he saw as Origen’s loyalty and submission to the church (History and Spirit, 50). Ibid., 60.

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famous piety with a “a very lively concern for orthodoxy.”44 Ultimately spiritual exegesis is a transformative practice by which the Christian is increasingly conformed to Christ embodied in scripture. De Lubac’s superior ability to reconstruct the logic of Origen’s exegesis owes something to his more dynamic account of the relation between his own historical scholarship and theology than that presupposed by de Faye. De Lubac calls attention to the need for the scholar to reanimate the living thought of an ancient author in a way that ceases to be strictly “objective.” It is possible, without taking particular precautions, to make a “historical contribution” to the history of a rite or an institution, indeed, with a few reservations, to that of an idea or a dogma. It is enough to apply the customary rules. But when a spiritual synthesis, lived and reflected within a great intellect, is at issue, what gross or subtle distortions occur in reconstructions produced by an “objective” or “strictly historical” method! … To reach the heart of a vigorous thought, nothing is as inadequate as a certain pretension to pure objectivity. If we want to have any chance of understanding it, even as a mere historian, it is necessary, whether we like it or not, to explain to ourselves what we read; it is necessary to translate, to interpret … Thought is not rediscovered in the same way as a fact is reconstructed.45 The scholar’s ability to engage in this active reanimation of an ancient thinker is greatly aided by the fact that she participates in the same tradition and is touched by the same living realities. This work fits into a tradition that touches us ourselves … Living the same faith as Origen, members of the same Church, afloat so to speak, in the same stream of tradition, it would be pointless for us to wish to behave like outside observers in everything concerning him.46 For de Lubac, as for Origen on his account, interpretation requires the reader not only to look at the text in itself, but also to come to know the same reality as the author, aided by a tradition that makes this reality available to past and present readers alike.

44 45 46

Ibid., 68. Ibid., 12–13. Ibid., 13.

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Nevertheless, while de Lubac argues that tradition controls Origen’s arbitrariness and keeps it within the bounds of orthodoxy, he is forced to admit that Origen’s procedures remain arbitrary, at least insofar as their cognitive content is concerned. De Lubac straightforwardly acknowledges that the exegetical principle of reading the New Testament into the Old amounts to a form of eisegesis. But the creative virtuosity of which he gives proof and which, in most cases, can seem to us as gratuitous as it is personal, is always exercised, in a more or less direct way, at the service of the same profound intuition, of the same great, fundamental truth received from tradition and perpetually deepened. Once again, if this idea seems perhaps banal to us today and its orchestration monotonous, it is because we have been living for seventeen centuries on the definitive expression that he was able to forge of it. Undoubtedly, too, it could be said that there is a vicious circle in this process. For it is in virtue of a doctrine already constituted on the relations between the two Testaments that the Old is the subject of an extremely subtle spiritual interpretation, and yet it is in this spiritual interpretation of the texts of the Old Testament that this doctrine is apparently discovered. It is not, so to speak, an aspect of the sacred text Origen is considering that suggests to him the idea that in reality he already has and that he projects in his reading.47 Because of this, even for de Lubac, Origen’s exegetical procedures remain arbitrary. The details of Origenian exegesis, taken one by one, withdrawn from the living synthesis they illustrate much more than they construct, can often appear to us as so many fantasies, to some degree ingenious or evocative, but without profit for solid knowledge. The processes of which they are the fruit are themselves often full of arbitrariness, and an arbitrariness that we cannot fail to find very foreign.48 In short, de Lubac has not shown that Origen’s exegetical procedures as such avoid arbitrariness, only that Origen’s procedural arbitrariness can be managed when it is kept within the bounds of ecclesial tradition, and that even arbitrary spiritual exegesis may serve edifying functions. 47 48

Ibid., 195–96, emphasis added. Ibid., 427, emphasis added.

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Introduction

2.3 Origen as Charismatic Intellectual The most promising approaches to Origen’s exegesis do not fall straightforwardly into either of the two categories above. Berner identifies various “mediating” approaches, exemplified by scholars like René Cadiou,49 Jean Daniélou,50 and Marguerite Harl,51 to which list I would add more recent scholars like Joseph Trigg,52 Frances Young,53 and David Dawson,54 among others. My account of Origen develops one such mediating approach. My work takes up several key aspects of this mediating work. First, Origen’s posture is fundamentally that of a learner.55 Both de Faye and de Lubac present Origen as one who approaches the text with fundamental matters already settled, whether through philosophy or traditional authority. The dynamism of Origen’s intellectual activity needs to be taken more seriously than these pictures allows. As Hal Koch has shown, the dynamic pedagogy of the Word is one of the central organizing theme’s of Origen’s theology. Origen develops a “pedagogical idealism” in which the creation in general and the scriptures in particular are, by virtue of the Logos immanent within them, oriented towards the progressive formation of wisdom in rational creatures. Karen Jo Torjesen has shown in detail how Origen’s scriptural exegesis is organized around stages of learning within this pedagogy of the Word.56 Following Joseph Trigg, we must also recognize that Origen’s learning is a genuine process of inquiry. Trigg reminds us that Origen followed the results of his inquiry even as it set him against the increasingly monarchal bishop of Alexandria, and even as it led him to reinterpret and expand upon the rule of faith. Origen saw his own interpretive labor as an attempt to acquire the same wisdom and insight possessed by the apostles.57 Consequently, his inquiry requires the same inspiring Spirit that spoke to the saints. He is a “charismatic intellectual” because his authority in the Christian community derived not from ecclesial institutions but rather from this inspired insight, rooted in moral discipline, and validated to 49 See René Cadiou, La Jeunesse d’Origène, histoire de l’école d’Alexandrie au début du iiie siècle (Paris: Beauchesne, 1935). 50 See Daniélou, Origen, and many other works. 51 See Marguerite Harl, Origène et la fonction révélatrice du Verbe incarné (Paris: Éd. du Seuil, 1958), and the works cited throughout this book. 52 See Trigg, The Bible and Philosophy, and the other works cited throughout this book. 53 See Frances M. Young, Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 54 See Dawson, Christian Figural Reading. 55 Joseph Trigg reminded me in conversation that the New Testament term μαθητής, traditionally rendered “disciple,” is more accurately translated “learner.” 56 Torjesen, Hermeneutical Procedure. 57 Trigg, Bible and Philosophy, 143.

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the community “in terms of intellectual gifts acquired through open-minded and disciplined study.”58 One difficulty facing those who would make sense of Origen’s exegesis is to understand the procedural implications of the kind of inspired rationality that Origen believes drives his inquiry. Second, notwithstanding his philosophical ambitions, his deep spirituality, and a certain fidelity to Christian tradition, Origen’s approach to scripture is very much that of a text scholar. This has been an organizing theme of Marguerite Harl’s work. She presents Origen as a researcher and a professor with the temperament of a scholar, displayed in his careful use of technical terminology, his cautious attention to textual detail, and his fundamental orientation towards investigation and discovery.59 He is not only a philosopher or a theologian but also a grammarian. Origen’s extensive familiarity with pagan grammatical scholarship has since been documented in detail by Bernard Neuschäfer in his Origenes als Philologe.60 Neuschäfer shows Origen at work using intelligible literary procedures in a careful and non-arbitrary way. Since Frances Young’s The Bible and the Formation of Christian Culture, it has become clear that these literary procedures need to be situated within a broader context of cultural formation. Early Christians came to draw on the Bible as a classic analogous to the works of Homer, seeking not only to elucidate its meaning but to imitate its language and to form a Christian culture after its pattern. Origen was a pioneer in this process. One of the most important fruits of this line of research is to show that questions about interpretation arise, for Origen, within a broader concern for questions about language. Marguerite Harl has shown that Origen frequently draws conclusions about the “semantic habits of the Bible,” its characteristic patterns of speech such as simplicity, ambiguity, and obscurity.61 Young’s discussion of the Bible as a classic suggests that Origen regards scripture’s habits of speech not simply as puzzles to solve but as patterns to imitate. The notion of Origen as a scholar seeking to pattern his own speech after that of scripture is central to my account of Origen’s exegesis. As the title of this book indicates, I argue that the notion of learning lan­ guage provides a powerful vantage point from which to grasp the logic of 58

Joseph Trigg, “The Charismatic Intellectual: Origen’s Understanding of Religious Leader­ ship,” Church History vol. 50, no. 1 (Mar. 1981): 5–19, esp. 19. 59 Harl, Origène, 364–65. 60 Bernard Neuschäfer, Origenes als Philologe (Basel: Friedrich Reinhardt Verlag, 1987). Some of this material has been summarized in English by Peter Martens, Origen and Scripture: The Contours of the Exegetical Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 41–68. 61 Marguerite Harl, “Origène et la sémantique du langage biblique,” Vigiliae Christiane 26, no. 3 (Oct. 1972): 161–187, esp. 175–77.

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Origen’s exegetical procedures. The Origen that emerges is one whose dynamic thought and spiritual life, as de Lubac saw, cannot be separated from exegesis in the church. But if Origen is a “man of the church,” he sees the church not so much as a community committed to a particular orthodoxy as a school of learners, a community of inquiry in pursuit of wisdom. Origen is indeed a bold and speculative philosopher, just as de Faye recognized. But his philosophical thought operates through his exegesis rather than arising independently of it. The picture of Origen as a charismatic intellectual learning the wise language of scripture allows us to take up the strengths of these classic poles of Origen scholarship while taking Origen’s exegesis far more seriously than either has been able to do. 3

Method: Descriptive Logic

My study focuses on a single body of texts, twenty-nine recently discovered homilies of Origen on the Psalms. In April 2012, the original Greek text of these homilies was discovered by Marina Molin Pradel in Codex Monacensis Graecus 314, a manuscript that had long been held in Munich.62 They have now been edited and published by Lorenzo Perrone,63 although the bulk of my research was based on a provisional transcription of the manuscript that Perrone graciously provided me. Joseph Trigg is currently preparing an English translation. Origen’s authorship of the homilies has been firmly established by Lorenzo Perrone.64 These homilies were most likely delivered near the end of his life and constitute what Perrone has aptly called a “quintessence” of

62 For an account of Cod. Graec. 314, see M. Molin Pradel, “Novità origeniane dalla Staatsbibliothek di Monaco di Baviera: il Cod. graec. 314,” Adamantius 18 (2012): 16–40. 63 Lorenzo Perrone, ed., with Marina Molin Pradel, Emmanuela Prinzivalli, and Antonio Cacciari, Die neue Psalmenhomilien. Eine kritische Edition des Codex monacensis Graecus 314 (Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2015). 64 For a thorough discussion of Origen’s authorship, see Lorenzo Perrone, “Origenes rediuiuus: la découverte des Homélies sur les Psaumes dans le Cod. Gr. 314 de Munich,” Revue d’Etudes Augustiniennes et Patristiques 59, no. 1 (2013): 55–93. Perrone considers both external and internal arguments for Origen’s authorship. External evidence consists of Jerome’s Letter 33, which offers a list of Origen’s homilies on the Psalms that largely corresponds to those in Cod. Graec. 314; the four Latin homilies on Ps 36 translated by Rufinus; a long fragment from Origen’s second homily on Ps 15 preserved in Pamphilus’ Apology for Origen; and a number of parallels in the catenae on the Psalms. Perrone then turns to internal evidence: the literary style, the historical and doctrinal background, and the personality of the preacher.

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Origen’s exegesis.65 The rediscovery of these lost homilies is one of the most exciting events in recent patristic scholarship, providing a rare opportunity to take a fresh look at Origen’s exegetical practice in light of hitherto unexamined texts. The primary task of this work is to describe basic rules of reasoning operative in Origen’s exegetical procedures in his Homilies on the Psalms and to display their non-arbitrariness. To do so, I adopt a method of logical inquiry developed by the scriptural pragmatist philosopher Peter Ochs. No contemporary thinker has seen more clearly than Peter Ochs the extent to which the problems facing scriptural communities are problems of reasoning that require recourse to logic to repair.66 The kind of “logic” to which Ochs appeals is not, however, “a modern, foundational science of how scholars in general ought to reason.”67 Rather, Ochsian logic is a mode of philosophical inquiry that describes existing, regional practices of reasoning and offers proposals about how to repair them if necessary. A “logician” of this sort might, for example, examine the rules of reasoning operative in the Anglo-American legal system, identify particular rules that tend to generate false convictions, and propose ways those rules might be corrected. The influence of Ochs’ “logic of scripture” is pervasive on my work, which may be read as an attempt to imagine an “Origenist pragmatism” analogous to what Ochs calls “rabbinic pragmatism.”68 The method I apply in interpreting Origen is a version of the descriptive logic that Ochs uses in his own analysis of contemporary post-critical Jewish and Christian interpreters of scripture. Like an ethnographer, I have attempted to become a participant-observer of an intriguing practice … As a philosophic ethnographer, I assumed that it would be possible and useful to identify this practice by describing what Peirce would call its logica utens, or embedded rules of operation.69 65 Lorenzo Perrone, “The Find of the Munich Codex,” in Origeniana Undecima, AndersChristian Jacobsen, ed. (Leuven: Peeters, 2016), 201–234, esp. 228. 66 I follow Ochs’ discussion in Return to Scripture, 37–43. For more technical discussions, see Logic of Scripture, 246–325 and Another Reformation, 8–16. I have also been influenced by a number of other philosophers who have taken up questions about the logics operative in Jewish and Christian practices in dialogue with Ochs’ work, especially Randi Rashkover, Nature and Norm (forthcoming); and Nicholas Adams, Eclipse of Grace: Divine and Human Action in Hegel (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013). 67 Ochs, Return to Scripture, 41. 68 On rabbinic pragmatism, see Logic of Scripture, 290–305. On the logic of scripture more generally, see ibid., 316–325. 69 Ochs, Return to Scripture, 41.

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When applied to an ancient text, we must speak of “history” rather than ethnography, but the goal is the same: to become a participant-observer in a strange practice in order to describe its implicit rules of operation. It is because Origen’s practice is strange that one must approach it as an outside observer, taking up certain textual products of his practice and trying to reconstruct the rules by which they were produced. It is because our interest in this practice is logical that one must approach it is a participant, for one cannot reconstruct normative rules without in some real or imagined way participating in their operation. In the same way, one cannot understand the activity that produced a mathematical text without oneself participating in mathematical reasoning, and one cannot understand the logic of a legal decision without oneself working through the legal procedures by which it was decided. In applying this method to Origen, I have found a useful model in the work of several rabbinic scholars, especially Stephen Fraade’s work on the rabbinic commentary Sifre Deuteronomy.70 Stephen Fraade characterizes rabbinic texts as “the literary face of an otherwise oral circulatory system of study and teaching by whose illocutionary force disciples became sages …”71 Texts of this sort demand of their implied readers a certain sort of participation within the ongoing communal discourse and formation of communities of rabbinic sages. They anticipate readers who are themselves rabbinic students, which means, students who are expected to engage actively with the text by reasoning in a particular way. For the modern historian to take seriously the oral milieu of a text like Sifre Deuteronomy requires her to assume, as it were, the role of a rabbinic student. Doing so is a dialogical process with consequences for the practices of modern scholarship, as Ochs himself observes about Fraade: “His method is to find within these [rabbinic] texts a mode of inquiry that, when reappropriated within the context of modern scholarship, would enable that scholarship to reclaim the dimension of textual meaning it had lost.” My aim is similar: to seek a mode of inquiry in Origen that will enable modern readers to reclaim or newly imagine ways of thinking that have been lost. I do so by seeking the operative logic underlying Origen’s writings. Since they proceed from a purportedly rational process, the scholarly reader must reanimate this work by adopting, at least in imagination, the posture of his students. We must seek, as de Lubac said, “to reproduce within ourselves the movement 70 Stephen Fraade, From Tradition to Commentary: Torah and Its Interpretation in the Midrash Sifre to Deuteronomy (New York: SUNY Press, 1993). I am also indebted to the analyses of rabbinic oral performances of mishnaic texts in Elizabeth Shanks Alexander, Transmitting Mishnah: The Shaping Influence of Oral Tradition (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 71 Fraade, From Tradition to Commentary, 19.

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of the spirit that once made [his texts] come alive.”72 To do so is to return the written text to its origin in orality. When reading Origen in contrast to the rabbis, however, one must make allowances for the fact that his individual personality and authorial voice are far more marked than that of any rabbi in classical rabbinic texts. Although his work too takes place within a religious community, he often stands to a great extent over and against this community as its teacher and critic. For this reason, instead of speaking, with Fraade, of an “oral circulatory system” of rabbinic discussion, I will speak instead of Origen’s individual capacity for reasoning and the “linguistic competence” he displays in his speech. The goal of this inquiry is thus to propose rules of reasoning or interpretation that, had they been operative in Origen’s exegetical practice, would have led him to speak the words of the texts under consideration. As I have already suggested, the primary difficulty facing modern readers of Origen is one of logical imagination. How will we imagine previously unknown rules operative in Origen’s practice?73 In this book I draw on three basic sources in order to help imagine possible rules. First, Origen offers a great deal of second-order commentary on his own practice. He often explicitly discusses his own exegesis or use of language. Moreover, he frequently marks exegetical categories or operations with relatively consistent terminology. Without assuming in advance that Origen has a perfect self-understanding of his own procedures, I assume that Origen is prima facie likely to be a reliable guide to the rules of his own procedures. Second, I also examine other cognate practices of reasoning and inquiry in hopes of identifying rules analogous to those operative in Origen’s practice. Often these are ancient practices of inquiry and reasoning available to Origen: logicians, grammarians, scientists, rabbis, and others.74 At other times, I draw on modern theory as a source of possible rules, especially contemporary linguistics75 and Peter Ochs’ scriptural pragmatism.76 In either case, something analogous to the rules of reasoning discovered in these practices may also be operative in Origen’s as well. Third, we should not discount the role of creative insight and intuition in conceiving new rules. Of 72 73 74

75 76

De Lubac, History and Spirit, 14. The activity of seeking hitherto unknown rules to account for observable phenomena is what Peter Ochs calls, following Charles Peirce, “abduction.” I shall discuss this process at greater length below, 157–66. Sometimes it is possible to show historical influence as well; for example, Origen draws explicitly on Stoic linguistics and explicitly offers Greek empirical science as an analogy to his own exegesis. For my purposes, however, it is not necessary to show historical influence: rules analogous to those we identify in these cognate practices may be operative in Origen, whatever the historical relation between his practice and theirs. See especially the discussions below of deixis (116–19) and implicature (128–33). See especially the discussion of vagueness below, 166–69.

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course, whatever their source, the final test is whether the hypothesized rules actually account for Origen’s textual products. 4

Learning the Language of Scripture

Learning the Language of Scripture argues that Origen’s exegesis in the Homilies on the Psalms becomes intelligible once we understand its proper aim. As an interpreter of scripture, Origen is not only interested in texts and their multiple meanings. Rather, he approaches the texts of scripture as exemplifying a broader capacity for proper speech. The goal of interpretation is to acquire the capacity to speak according to the example of the scriptures, which I refer to as “learning the language of scripture.” The goal of Origen’s exegesis is not so much understanding the meaning of particular texts as it is the acquisition of linguistic competence. A “competence” is a capacity for successful action in the world. As a capacity for action, a competence displays itself in the finite actions one actually performs, but it includes as well all those actions that would have been possible for one to perform, which constitute an infinite set. “Linguistic competence” refers to one’s capacity to use language. The linguistic competence underlying the scriptures would be that infinite capacity for using language of which the scriptural texts are exemplary instances. The basic rule of Origen’s exegesis is that the reader should reconstruct the linguistic competence by which the scriptures were produced and conform her own linguistic usage to this pattern. This task has a definite logical character. It requires the exegete to reason from a finite set of actual utterances (the written texts of scripture) to an infinite set of possible utterances (the language of scripture). This activity is expansive, a constant movement from the finite region of the actual to the vast space of the possible. Yet it is by no means arbitrary, as we can see in a preliminary way by observing analogous cases in which we acquire competences. One gains an infinite capacity to play an instrument, for example, through observing and practicing a finite set of exercises and songs. Something similar takes place in the acquisition of ordinary linguistic competence: a child learns to speak by observing the finite utterances of the speakers around her. Indeed, perhaps the closest analogy to the logic of Origen’s exegesis is that of the linguist reconstructing the competence of ordinary speakers of a language by observing its use. In each of these cases, one takes for granted certain actual performances one regards as basically trustworthy, from which one tries to learn how to produce other possible performances of one’s own.

Introduction

23

Origen’s exegesis is different from the work of a linguist, however, in one crucial respect. The norms of ordinary usage reconstructed by the modern linguist are the conventional norms of particular speaking communities. Origen, by contrast, is interested in a deeper sense of linguistic competence that exhibits rationality or wisdom. By “wisdom” I refer to what we might call a global competence for action in the world, an “art of living” according to ultimate standards of success. This definition is formal. What exactly these standards are is a matter that individuals and communities who pursue wisdom debate. “Wisdom” is vague as it pertains to content. Speech too is an action, and so the global competence of wisdom includes the capacity to speak rightly. It is in this sense that Origen aims to reconstruct the “linguistic competence” of scripture: not the authors’ merely conventional capacity to speak Hebrew or Greek, but the underlying capacity to speak wisely that he takes the scriptures to exemplify. In learning the language of scripture, Origen seeks to acquire wisdom. The fundamental dynamic of Origen’s exegesis, then, is what I label the movement “from lexis to logos,” from the finite words of scripture to the infinite underlying capacity for wise speech they exhibit. If one wants to call exegesis whose ultimate aim is wisdom “philosophy,” Origen would not object. Nor can we forget that the competence and wisdom underlying the scriptures are, Origen argues, nothing other than Jesus Christ, God’s Word and Wisdom made flesh. For this reason, to become wise is nothing less than to conform word and deed to Christ, to acquire the divine rationality of the Logos. In arguing that Origen’s procedures can be understood in terms of his pursuit of wisdom, I mean to downplay the significance of another possible organizing category, namely, the picture of Origen’s exegesis as a movement from literal to allegorical senses. To be sure, more often than not, Origen believes that learning to speak the language of scripture involves learning to hear texts allegorically and to speak in extended metaphors oneself. But in my view, allegory is a derivative rather than a basic principle of Origen’s exegesis. That is, Origen’s decision to use allegory as a procedure is intelligible in terms of more basic procedures of learning a language. This book shows that Origen had good reason to use allegory; it is not, at least in Origen’s case, an arbitrary procedure. However, understanding why allegory need not be arbitrary does not entail that it is beyond criticism. Rather, it makes it possible to criticize Origen’s use of allegory more effectively by offering criticism on his own terms. To be frank, I do not believe allegory remains viable in anything like the general way Origen used it. If there are good reasons to use allegory, there are often better reasons not to do so. This book is perhaps unusual in that while it clearly belongs to the

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Introduction

genre of “apologies for Origen,” it offer a defense that is consistent with significant skepticism about allegory. The primary aim of this work is to make definite the claim that Origen’s exegesis is the activity of learning the language of scripture by showing how it operates exegetically. In Chapter 1, I lay the groundwork for this task by sketching Origen’s operative philosophy of language. Origen argues that to account for the linguistic practices of scripture and the Christian community, one must suppose that the ultimate norms of language are norms of rationality and wisdom, not merely linguistic conventions. He explicates this view by drawing on Stoic philosophy of language. For Stoic philosophers, language is “natural” in the sense that the norms of conventional discourse are subject to deeper norms of rationality and harmony with the natural world. The Stoic sage can be defined as an expert in speech, one who “always says what is true and fitting.” This, I suggest, is an apt formal description of the linguistic competence Origen identifies as underlying the texts of scripture. In Chapter 2, I offer an overview of Origen’s exegesis as a movement from lexis to logos, from the words of scripture to the underlying rational competence they embody. On this view, interpretation begins prior to the literal sense, with the practice of memorizing the words (lexis) of scripture as a necessary condition for being able to use them wisely. Similarly, the fruit of exegesis is more than spiritual understanding: it is the whole internalized capacity to perform scriptural language appropriately, in its literal and non-literal uses— ultimately, the conformity of one’s rational discourse to the divine Logos. In Chapters 3 through 5, the core of this work, I describe some of the most important rules of Origen’s exegesis as different aspects of the task of learning the language of scripture. In Chapter 3, I show that Origen characteristically treats scriptural texts as a script—words to be spoken. Since the meaning and function of words depends, however, on the context in which they are used, Origen tends to approach scriptural texts with an interest in pragmatic questions about the possible contexts in which they may be used. Who may say these words? On what occasion? With respect to what? Answering these pragmatic questions requires not only knowledge of conventional language but also a knowledge of the contexts in which speech may be required and the wise judgment to discern which words should be said on which occasions. In Chapter 4, I show how Origen reconstructs the underlying rules of scriptural discourse. I focus on what Origen calls “habits of scripture,” patterns of scriptural language inferred by induction. As wise habits of speaking, habits of scripture are ipso facto habits to be imitated by the interpreter. My primary concern is to analyze how Origen reasons from text to habit. I show that he characteristically formulates these habits in a vague way that provide guidance

Introduction

25

in future cases without determining the meaning of any particular text. The logic of habits depends on the reader’s generally reliable intuitive capacity to make case by case judgments about the meaning or function of particular texts. Grasping the habits of scripture also enables Origen to formulate new words of scriptural language whose content goes beyond what any text of scripture explicitly says. Origen must do so, I argue, as part of the task of reconstructing scripture’s linguistic competence, which governs not only the actual texts of scripture but an infinite number of other possible sentences of scripture-like speech. In Chapter 5, I situate these exegetical procedures in the context of Origen’s account of the characteristic parrhesia (“freedom to speak”) and boldness of the wise disciple. Bold speech is that which the hearer perceives as potentially scandalous or false. For Origen, the divine and inspired discourse of scripture must be bold because to train readers in wisdom requires correcting their linguistic intuitions. The more advanced one is in wisdom, the more bold one’s own speech ought also to become. Bold discourse is thus for Origen a necessary consequence of his own pursuit of wisdom in imitation of the scriptural authors. Origen does not shrink from the inference that wise speech must be inspired and even divine speech, just like the language of the scriptural texts. In short, the logic of Origen’s procedures requires him to engage in the kind of bold speculation for which he is famous. Learning the language of scripture leads ultimately, on Origen’s view, to the deification of one’s discourse. In a concluding Chapter 6, I sketch some theological implications of my study of Origen for contemporary Christian scriptural interpretation. I argue that Origen’s basic procedures remain viable and plausible as an account of what it might look like in our own context to practice scriptural interpretation without arbitrariness as a pursuit of wisdom. I suggest that a contemporary Origenism should be a form of scriptural pragmatism that puts the formation of wise Christian linguistic competence logically prior to doctrinal formulations and theological constructions. I then articulate a doctrine of appropri­ ateness, which defines scripture’s conformity to the norms of wisdom: every sentence of scripture may be used in an appropriate context, with an appropriate function, according to the appropriate rational norms. What I call sapi­ ential interpretation is inquiry into the appropriate contexts, functions, and rational norms of the words of scripture. Finally, I should observe that my own method of reconstructing the logic of Origen’s exegesis closely parallels the method of interpreting scripture that I attribute to Origen. This is all to the good, for if my thesis is correct, the question Origen asks of scripture is not unlike the question I ask of Origen. He too assumes that correcting the church’s reasoning requires him to reconstruct

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Introduction

the wisdom of a text, i.e. the underlying rules by which the words of that text came about. He too discovers these rules, first and foremost, by trying to attend to second-order clues given in the scriptures themselves; second, by seeking analogues in Greek thinking; and third, by forming his own intuitions as a reasoner. The boldness of scripture is a sign that scriptural wisdom is beyond his own present linguistic intuitions, just as Origen’s apparent arbitrariness is a sign that he may operate according to rules we do not yet understand. He too must observe, but also participate in, the wisdom he seeks. There are good logical reasons why Origen exhorts the readers of John’s gospel to “become another John” to understand it.77 So too we, as it were, must become another Origen to understand Origen. 77 CJ. 1.4.23.

Chapter 1

Origen and Stoic Logic This study argues that Origen’s exegesis is best understood as an attempt to learn the language of scripture—to hear and to speak according to the linguistic practices the Christian scriptures exemplify. The significance of this claim, however, depends a great deal on the sort of thing one takes language to be, on what we would call one’s philosophy of language. Origen was aware of the lively ancient philosophical debates about language in his day, and he took pains to situate his own account of language in the context of these debates. To prepare for investigating his exegesis, this chapter sketches Origen’s philosophy of language. I argue that Origen’s philosophy of language was broadly Stoic.1 For the Stoics, learning to speak correctly is inseparable from developing wisdom. 1 This chapter adds to a growing scholarly awareness of the influence of Stoic thought on Origen’s scriptural philosophy. Early church fathers drew widely on Stoic ideas (cf. Michel Spanneut, Le Stoïcisme des Pères de l’Église, de Clément de Rome à Clément d’Alexandrie (Patristica Sorbonensia 1; Paris, Le Seuil, 1957)), and the dominant Middle Platonism of the same period was often highly Stoic-inflected, as documented by John Dillon, The Middle Platonists: a Study of Platonism, 80 BC to AD 220 (London: Duckworth, 1977). That Origen is much closer to the Middle Platonists than the emerging neo-Platonism articulated by his contemporary, Plotinus, has been demonstrated in studies by Hall Koch, Pronoia und Paideusis: Studien über Origenes und sein Verhältnis zum Platonismus (AKG 22; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1932) and Robert Berchman, From Philo to Origen: Middle Platonism in Transition (Chico: Scholars Press, 1984). Koch observes many elements of Stoic influence on Origen, including his terminology, his theodicy, his ethics, and his all-important doctrines of the Logos and of Providence, though he nevertheless concludes “dass es im tiefsten Sinne keine wirkliche geistige Verwandtschaft zwischen Zenon und Chrysipp einersits and dem grossen Kirchenlehrer anderseits gibt” (Koch, Pronoia und Paideusis, 225). Berchman identifies many Stoic ideas integrated into Origen’s epistemology and logic. A growing number of studies have examined Stoic influence in particular areas, such as Henry Chadwick, “Origen, Celsus, and the Stoa,” The Journal of Theological Studies 48, no. 189/190 (January/April 1947): 34–49 and Panayiotis Tzamalikos, “Origen and the Stoic View of Time,” Journal of the History of Ideas 52, no. 4 (Oct–Dec 1991): 535–561. To identify Stoic aspects of Origen’s thought is not to deny that he is also a “Platonist” of a sort, especially given the eclectic character of philosophizing in his day. Where issues around scripture and language are concerned, Stoic influence is even better established. The best introduction to both, in my view, is Marguerite Harl’s introduction and notes to the Philocalia in Origen, Marguerite Harl, and N. R. M. de Lange, Philocalie, 1–20: Sur Les Écritures (Paris: Cerf, 1983). She discusses, among other things, Origen’s use of the Stoic doctrine of Providence as an analogy for the inspiration of the scriptures (60–74), his use of the Stoic theory of meaning (275–9), and their theory of the correctness of names

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004448544_003

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According to Origen’s contemporary, the Peripatetic commentator Alexander of Aphrodosias, Ἀλλ’ οἱ μὲν ἀπὸ τῆς Στοᾶς ὁριζόμενοι τὴν διαλεκτικὴν ἐπιστήμην τοῦ εὖ λέγειν, τὸ δὲ εὖ λέγειν ἐν τῷ τὰ ἀληθῆ καὶ τὰ προσήκοντα λέγειν εἶναι τιθέμενοι, τοῦτο δὲ ἴδιον ἡγούμενοι τοῦ φιλοσόφου κατὰ τῆς τελειοτάτης φιλοσοφίας φέρουσιν αὐτό· καὶ διὰ τοῦτο μόνος ὁ σοφὸς κατ’ αὐτοὺς διαλεκτικός.

The Stoics, who define dialectic as the science of speaking well, take speaking well to consist in saying what is true and what is fitting, and they regard this as a distinguishing characteristic of the philosopher, using [the term “dialectic”] of philosophy at its highest. For this reason, only the sage is a dialectician on their view.2

The highest aspiration of the Stoic philosopher is not to get behind or outside of language, but rather to cultivate the facility to use it well. As we shall see, everything one might conceivably do with language is part of the province of the sage, from science and formal logic to poetry and rhetoric. In every way, what the sage says should be “true and fitting.” Yet by the same token, the Stoics could not simply take up conventional language as given. The kind of linguistic correctness to which the sage aspires is neither conformity to the conventions of proper Greek and Latin nor the eloquence of the orators. Rather, Stoics aspired to use language according to a deeper harmony with nature, which might require the sage to sit lightly to grammatical norms, even to correct them. Learning to speak well does not mean abandoning natural language, but it may mean changing it or using it in odd ways. Origen brings this conception of wisdom to bear on the interpretation of scripture. Origen too does not aspire to the linguistic purity or cultural sophistication that were the aims of the grammarians, nor to some Christian analogue.3 Rather, he desires to be a sage, always to say what is true and fitting. (447–57). The basically Stoic character of his use of Hellenistic grammar has been discussed by Neuschäfer, Origenes als Philologe, 216–18 and Catherine Chin, “Origen and Christian Naming: Textual Exhaustion and the Boundaries of Gentility in Commentary on John 1,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 14, no. 4 (Winter 2006), 407–436. On Origen’s use of Stoic logic, see Ronald E. Heine, “Stoic logic as handmaid to exegesis and theology in Origen’s commentary on the Gospel of John,” The Journal of Theological Studies 44, no. 1 (1993): 90–117. 2 Alexander, On Aristotle’s Topics 1.8–14 = LS 31D = SVF 2.124; trans. LS. 3 In the background is Catherine Chin’s claim that “[Origen’s] project is not an attempt, however, to define Christian “orthodoxy.” It is instead an impulse toward the same kind of cultural competence that ancient grammarians attempt to impart” (“Christian Naming,” 430). While I think Catherine Chin is right to call attention to the fact that Origen’s exegesis is oriented towards the formation of a kind of linguistic competence rather than with the determination

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This Stoic definition is formal: it does not specify the content of wise speech. It functions rather as a regulative ideal, an advance sketch of what conditions would have to be satisfied to identify someone as wise. The Stoics had a Socratic caution about claiming to actually possess wisdom. For Origen, however, there was indeed a sage who possessed all wisdom: Jesus Christ, the embodied Wisdom and Logos of God. To the Stoic formal account of wise speech Origen added what he took to be its material content, the words of Jesus and his imitators recorded in the scriptures. These particular words are true and fitting—if only one knew what they meant and how to use them. Origen’s exegesis is an attempt to conform to the image of Christ by learning how to use the language of scripture. I want to be clear from the outset about one thing I am not saying in labeling Origen’s philosophy of language “Stoic.” I do not mean to say that Origen brings Stoic assumptions about language to bear on the Scriptural text a priori, as though he had deduced his hermeneutical procedures from Stoic premises. Rather, Origen’s arguments for Stoic linguistic theory tend to be regressive (or even, transcendental). He asks the question, “what theory best accounts for the linguistic phenomena one finds in scripture?” and develops an answer by drawing on Stoic thought. Stoic theory helps Origen make intelligible those Christian habits of speech exemplified by scripture.4 A theory developed in this way helps Origen adjudicate certain specific hermeneutic questions, but it also presupposes that many linguistic phenomena in scripture can be discerned by linguistic intuition, without appeal to theory. Origen invokes theory in media res to resolve particular exegetical problems. Even his famous theory of scripture’s three senses comes at the end of his scriptural systematic theology rather than the beginning.5 My decision nevertheless to begin with philosophy was made primarily on pedagogical grounds. I presume that most modern readers are inclined towards the conventionalism that Origen so sharply rejects, and that our assumptions about language pose a substantial obstacle to making Origen’s treatment of language intelligible, just as, on his view, conventionalist assumptions about language make scriptural linguistic practice unintelligible. This chapter proceeds in two steps. In part I, I sketch core elements of Stoic linguistic philosophy that are particularly important for understanding Origen. I examine their conception of “logic” as a science of language governed of orthodoxy, she is wrong to frame this competence as analogous to that of the grammarians, a reading which does not do justice to the philosophical character of Origen’s exegesis and its orientation towards wisdom. 4 This logical claim about the structure of his argument does not contradict the empirical claim that his view of scripture may in fact have been influenced by Hellenistic thought. 5 PA 4.1–3.

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Chapter 1

by reason, which enabled them to find wisdom in non-technical discourses like conversation and even poetry (1.1). I examine their theory of meaning as a relational entity mediating between utterances and the world (1.2). Finally, I outline their theory that names are subject to natural standards of correctness (1.3). In part II, I examine the same issues in Origen in reverse order. (This chapter therefore has a chiastic structure). I begin by examining at length Origen’s account of the correctness of scriptural names, which takes up and develops the Stoic theory in light of scripture’s usage of names (2.1). I then look at Origen’s use of the Stoic theory of meaning to account for the presence of solecisms (ungrammatical sentences) in scripture (2.2). Finally, as the chapter comes full circle, I show how Origen appeals to a Stoic conception of “logic” to explain how the language of scripture can express wisdom despite its ambiguities and irregularities (2.3). 1

Stoic Philosophy of Language

The Stoa developed in many ways the most sophisticated philosophical approach to language developed in the ancient world, and much of their work was appropriated by Middle Platonists as well.6 But for complex reasons Stoicism went into decline in the third century CE and never really recovered. The future lay with a neo-Platonic synthesis of Plato and Aristotle, a tradition which, through figures like Porphyry and Augustine, continues to have an enormous influence on contemporary linguistic thought. The more eclectic Middle Platonic environment that provided the context for Origen’s thought would soon disappear, and with it a sympathy for Stoic philosophy of language. The consequent neglect of Stoicism may have been one of the reasons Origen’s exegesis proved such a stumbling block to later generations of ancient readers, to say nothing of modern ones. One of the consequences of the decline of Stoicism is that the work of the great early Stoics like Zeno and Chrysippus exists only in fragments and the testimony of later authors, many of whom are hostile witnesses. Determining the details of Stoic positions on various issues often requires a good deal of reconstructive detective work, and I lean heavily on the reconstructions of 6 Scholarly interest in Stoic logic and philosophy of language has been growing in recent years. Some of the more important works include Jacques Brunschwig, ed., Les Stoïcens et leur Logique, 2nd edn. (Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 2006); Catherine Atherton, The Stoics on Ambiguity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); Michael Frede, “The Stoic notion of lekton,” in Language, ed. Stephen Everson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); A. A. Long, ed., Problems in Stoicism (London: Athlone Press, 1996).

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Michael Frede and A. A. Long. For the purpose of illuminating Origen’s exegesis, however, the problem is mitigated somewhat, since many of the most important witnesses to Stoic thought are near contemporaries of Origen: Sextus Empiricus, Diogenes Laertius, Plutarch, Galen, Alexander of Aphrodisias, and others. While it is difficult to work out from these witnesses, say, Chrysippus’ particular contributions to the development of Stoic logic, their discussions bear directly on the kind of Stoicism available to Origen. 1.1 Logic The Stoics aspired to bring the whole form and content of their speech into conformity with wisdom. They approached language as the activity of expressing λόγος, “reason” or “rational discourse,” and studied language in the context of a philosophical discipline they called “logic” (ἡ λογικὴ) whose object was λόγος itself. In Michael Frede’s apt formulation, “one might say that logic for [the Stoics] is the doctrine of what somebody says who is guided by reason.”7 Stoic logic is thus concerned with the speech of the sage, that regulative ideal of embodied wisdom around which Stoic thought was oriented. According to Long, “As the ideal reference of all human excellences, the wise man in Stoicism fulfills many of the functions of Platonic forms.”8 But while Platonic forms (and Aristotelian essences) are unchanging structures, built on the model of abstractive thought, the Stoic sage is a concrete individual, immersed in the dynamism and flux of the natural world. If the Stoic sage aspires to possess a fixed character, this fixity was itself conceived in dynamic terms as an active harmony with the world.9 In a famous formulation that probably goes back to Carneades, the sage “lives in harmony with nature.”10 This account of the sage imparts a basic dynamism to their philosophy of language as well.11 They understood wisdom and truth as habits of the embodied sage displayed in the sage’s capacity for wise performances in specific 7

Michael Frede, “The Origins of Traditional Grammar,” in Michael Frede, Essays in Ancient Philosophy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 338–362, esp. 343. 8 A. A. Long, “Dialectic and the Stoic Sage,” in A. A. Long, Stoic Studies (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996): 85–106, esp. 87. 9 In the Heraclitean view of the Stoics, in Marcia Colish’s formulation, “process is a sign of vitality, not a sign of incompletely realized being” (The Stoic Tradition from Antiquity to the Middle Ages: 1. Stoicism in Classical Latin Literature (New York: Brill, 1990), 25). Cf. SVF 2.463–81, 485–7, 584. 10 Thus Strabo Geography 2.76.11–12 = SVF 1.179 = LS 63B. See also Plutarch, On Common Notions, 1060e8; DL 7.89; and Epictetus Discourses 1.6.15, 3.1.25, 3.16.15, et al. See A. A. Long, “Carneades and the Stoic Telos,” Phronesis 12, no. 1 (1967): 59–90. 11 Cf. Long, “Dialectic,” 94. The dynamism of Origen’s thought is also well-known.

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contexts, requiring the exercise of practical reason (φρόνησις).12 For example, they argued that “truth” is neither the correspondence of sentences or thoughts with the world, nor is it a collection of propositions to which the sage assents. Rather, it is the dynamic capacity of the sage to utter true propositions on every occasion. This conception underlies their claim that the “true” is a quality of incorporeal propositions while “truth” is a corporeal possession of the sage. Λέγεται διαφέρειν τῆς ἀληθείας τὸ ἀληθὲς τριχῶς, οὐσίᾳ συστάσει δυνάμει· οὐσίᾳ μέν, ἐπεὶ τὸ μὲν ἀληθὲς ἀσώματόν ἐστιν (ἀξίωμα γάρ ἐστι καὶ λεκτόν), ἡ δὲ ἀλήθεια σῶμα (ἔστι γὰρ ἐπιστήμη πάντων ἀληθῶν ἀποφαντική, ἡ δὲ ἐπιστήμη πὼς ἔχον ἡγεμονικὸν … συστάσει δέ, ἐπεὶ τὸ μὲν ἀληθὲς ἁπλοῦν τί ἐστιν, οἷον ἐγὼ διαλέγομαι, ἡ δὲ ἀλήθεια ἀπὸ πολλῶν ἀληθῶν γνώσεων συνίσταται· δυνάμει δέ, ἐπεὶ ἡ μὲν ἀλήθεια ἐπιστήμης ἔχεται, τὸ δὲ ἀληθὲς οὐ πάντως. διόπερ τὴν μὲν ἀλήθειαν ἐν μόνῳ σπουδαίῳ φασὶν εἶναι, τὸ δὲ ἀληθὲς καὶ ἐν φαύλῳ· ἐνδέχεται γὰρ τὸν φαῦλον ἀληθές τι εἰπεῖν.

True is said [by the Stoics] to differ from truth in three ways, substance, structure, and function. In substance, since what is true is incorporeal, for it is a proposition and sayable; but truth is a body, for it is scientific knowledge capable of stating everything true; and scientific knowledge is the commanding-faculty disposed in a certain way … In structure, since what is true is something simple, e.g. “I am conversing,” but truth consists of the knowledge of many true things. In function, since truth pertains to scientific knowledge but what is true does not do so at all. Hence they say that truth is only in a virtuous man, but what is true is also in an inferior man; for the inferior man can say something true.13

Since the Stoics argued that a proposition could change its truth value,14 this capacity to speak truly must be a highly context-specific one, an ability to say the right thing at the right time. The Stoics did not give up on correspondence altogether, but they argued that only a mode of activity can properly correspond to a world in flux. Stoic logic, the science of this capacity for wise speech, was traditionally divided into two parts concerned with different aspects of speech: “dialectic” and “rhetoric.” Diogenes Laertius reports what were probably very early 12

Cf. Cicero, De finibus 3.3 and SVF 3.766. On Aristotle’s influence on Stoicism, see A. A. Long, “Aristotle’s Legacy to Stoic Ethics,” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 15 (1968): 72–85. 13 PH 2.81–3 = LS 33P. 14 Cf. DL 7.65.

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definitions of these sub-disciplines. “Rhetoric” is “the science of speaking well in regard to continuous discourses,” while “dialectic” is “the science of correct discussion in regard to discourses conducted by question and answer.”15 Of the two, dialectic was the focus of their logic, as arguably of their whole philosophy. The Stoic logician Chrysippus was especially famous for his contributions in this sphere, so that it was a proverbial saying that “if the gods had dialectic, they would use that of Chrysippus.”16 In the background was the towering figure of Socrates, whose pursuit of wisdom through ordinary language discussion the early Stoics sought to renew. For the Stoics, then, “the sage is always a dialectician,”17 the significance of which appears best by contrast with Aristotle’s position. According to Aristotle, dialectic does not produce knowledge because it reasons merely from “opinion.”18 While the dialectical examination of ordinary language is instrumentally useful for the philosopher, the ambiguities, vagueness, and conventionality of ordinary language make it an unreliable medium for philosophical discourse or the expression of wisdom. Rather, the Peripatetic philosopher seeks clear concepts, which Aristotle understands as mental entities independent of language. Aristotle tends to take the clarity of geometry as his model of rationality, so that science should take the form of a system of general propositions developed by deduction from clear and axiomatic premises.19 For the Stoic sage, by contrast, wisdom took the paradigmatic form of reliable skill in reasoned conversation. Since dialectical argumentation is a linguistic practice, the Stoic sage had to be an expert in natural language as well. Early Stoics inherited from the so-called “Dialecticians” an analytical interest in the kinds of sophisms to which the ambiguities and anomalies of natural language may give rise. As Stoicism developed, their early interest in dialectical question and answer evolved into a broader concern with language in all its possible uses. It was probably Chrysippus who made “dialectic” a science of signification, dividing it into a part concerned with “utterances,” i.e. material linguistic signifiers, and another concerned with “things signified,” i.e. everything one may use language to express. Diogenes’ summary of what dialectic contains shows how broad a discipline it had become:

15 DL 7.41–4 = LS 31A.4–5. Alexander’s definition of dialectic as a science of “speaking well” does not contradict this; see Long, “Dialectic,” 86–87. 16 DL 7.180. 17 DL 7.83 = SVF 2.130 = LS 31C. 18 Topics 100a29. 19 Post. An. 71b8–33, NE 1140b31–1141a8.

34 … καὶ τὸν μὲν τῶν σημαινομένων εἴς τε τὸν περὶ τῶν φαντασιῶν τόπον καὶ τῶν ἐκ τούτων ὑφισταμένων λεκτῶν ἀξιωμάτων καὶ αὐτοτελῶν καὶ κατ­η­ γορημάτων καὶ τῶν ὁμοίων ὀρθῶν καὶ ὑπτίων καὶ γενῶν καὶ εἰδῶν, ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ λόγων καὶ τρόπων καὶ συλλογισ­ μῶν καὶ τῶν παρὰ τὴν φωνὴν καὶ τὰ πράγματα σοφισμάτων … Εἶναι δὲ τῆς διαλεκτικῆς ἴδιον τόπον καὶ τὸν προειρημένον περὶ αὐτῆς τῆς φωνῆς, ἐν ᾧ δείκνυται ἡ ἐγγράμματος φωνὴ καὶ τίνα τὰ τοῦ λόγου μέρη, καὶ περὶ σολοικισμοῦ καὶ βαρβαρισμοῦ καὶ ποιημάτων καὶ ἀμφιβολιῶν καὶ περὶ ἐμμελοῦς φωνῆς καὶ περὶ μουσικῆς καὶ περὶ ὅρων κατά τινας καὶ διαιρέσεων καὶ λέξεων.

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[The topic] of significations [is divided] into the topics of impressions and derivatively subsistent sayables— propositions, complete sayables, pred­ icates and similar actives and passives, genera and species, along with also arguments, argument modes and syllogisms, and sophisms which depend on utterance and on states of affairs … Dialectic also includes the specific topic of actual utterance, mentioned above, which sets out articulated speech and what the parts of language are, dealing also with solecisms and barbarisms, poetry, ambiguity, euphony, music, and according to some Stoics, definitions, divisions and expression.20

On this conception, dialectic includes what we would call formal logic and philosophy of science. It also, however, came to encompass the topics that would become the traditional subject matter of grammar, such as “the parts of language,” “solecisms and barbarism,” and even “poetry.”21 No possible use of language was excluded. Since recent Origen scholarship has called attention to his training in ancient grammatical methods, it is worth dwelling on the significance of placing the concerns of grammar within the broader sphere of logic, as the Stoics did. This move implies that the rules of grammatical correctness (“Hellenicity” and “Latinity”) analyzed by the grammarians must themselves be subordinated to deeper rational norms of correctness. To underscore this point, the Stoic text scholar Crates rejected the term “grammarian” altogether as a label for his scholarly activity in favor of the term “critic.” “Grammar” is merely a “servant” of criticism, he said, for without logic it can only produce empirical

20 DL 7.43–44 = LS 31A7, 9; trans. LS, edited. 21 Cf. Sextus, AM 1.92–93; Frede, “Traditional Grammar,” 353–8.

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knowledge of the particulars of conventional language: glossing rare words, establishing accents for texts, and the like.22 The “critic,” by contrast, must possess “experience in all of logical science.” If the Stoics submitted even poetry to rational criticism, this is because they came to view poetry as a possible vehicle for the expression of wisdom.23 Strabo, for example, criticizes the view of the “philologist” Eratosthenes that poetry is merely for pleasure, as well as the view that poetry may serve as a propaedeutic to wisdom. Rather, good poetry is full of wisdom, for “only the sage is a poet.”24 This view led the Stoics to seek philosophical wisdom by interpreting poetic texts, Homer above all, which they often understood as speaking philosophical truths veiled by allegory.25 But their interest in poetry was not primarily in the content of classical texts. Rather, as Michael Frede has argued, they were primarily interested in poetry “to construct or reconstruct the language the wise man would use.”26 Since the poet had a famous “license” to use otherwise grammatically incorrect forms, the implication is that the wise might at times criticize conventional forms of speech in the interests of reason. For example, Varro argued:

22 AM 1.79, and cf. his student Tauriscus’ division of “criticism” into the logical, empirical, and historical parts (AM 1.7.248). This division is plainly drawn along epistemological lines, on which see further below. 23 On the Stoics and poetry see Phillip De Lacy, “Stoic Views of Poetry,” American Journal of Philology, 69 (1948): 245–63; Claude Imbert, “Stoic Logic and Alexandrian Poetics,” in Schofield, Burnyeat, and Barnes, eds., Doubt and Dogmatism: Studies in Hellenistic Epistemology (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), 182–216; Emily Batinski, “Seneca’s Response to Stoic Hermeneutics,” Mnemosyne, fourth series, 46:1 (Feb. 1993): 69–77; and G. R. Boys-Stones, “The Stoics’ Two Types of Allegory,” in Metaphor, Allegory, and the Classical Tradition: Ancient Thought and Modern Revisions, ed. G. R. Boys-Stones (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 189–216. Boys-Stones traces the development of a shift in the Stoic understanding of poetry and hence of allegory. Earlier Stoics believed the original humans lived in a golden age of conformity to nature in which philosophy was unnecessary. Early poetry contained wisdom accessible by allegory, but these early Stoics did not view poetry as intentionally philosophical products. Beginning with Posidonius, later Stoics rejected the notion of a golden age, and consequently came to treat poetic wisdom as intentionally philosophical and allegorical. 24 Strabo, Geography 1.2.3. 25 Already Porphyry argued that Origen appropriated Stoic allegory in his own exegesis (HE 6.19.8). Origen knows some of Chrysippus’ allegorical interpretations of Homer and criticizes him by name (CC 6.48). 26 Frede, “Traditional Grammar,” 357.

36 Quas novas verbi declinationes ratione introductas respuet forum, his boni poetae, maxime scaenici, consuetudine subigere aures populi debent, quod poetae multum possunt in hoc: propter eos quaedam verba in declinatione melius, quedam deterius dicuntur. Consuetudo loquendi est in motu: itaque solent fieri et meliora deteriora et deteriora meliora; verba perperam dicta apud antiquos aliquos propter poetas non modo nunc dicuntur recte, sed etiam quae ratione dicta sunt tum, nunc perperam dicuntur.

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Those new inflectional forms that are introduced by reason but are rejected by the forum, these the good poets, especially the dramatists, ought to force upon the ears of the people and accustom them to them. For the poets have great power in this: they are responsible for the fact that certain words are now spoken with better inflections, and others with worse. The usage of speech is [always] in motion: this is why better words sometimes become worse, and worse words become better; words spoken wrongly by some of the ancients are on account of the poets influence now spoken correctly, and on the other hand some that were then spoken according to reason, are now spoken wrongly.27

In a similar vein, Chrysippus (a logician, not a poet) was remembered for trying to correct the speech of the Athenians on rational grounds.28 But if the sage submits conventional language to rational criticism and correction, this is not because he seeks to escape language but rather, as it were, to stretch or expand its rational capacity. Origen, as we shall see, sees the language of scripture as accomplishing something similar. 1.2 Meaning The most distinctive Stoic contribution to the philosophy of language, their doctrine of the “sayable” (λέκτον, lekton), is an attempt to articulate how rationality (λόγος) is immanent in the use of language as it is in the whole dynamic cosmos. According to Sextus Empiricus,

27 LL 9.17; cf. 9.5. 28 Galen, De diff. puls. 10 = SVF 2.24; AM 8.125–6; Cicero, De fato 8.15; qtd. Frede, “Traditional Grammar,” 357.

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Ἦν δὲ καὶ ἄλλη τις παρὰ τούτοις διά­στασις, καθ’ ἣν οἱ μὲν περὶ τῷ σημαι­νομένῳ τὸ ἀληθές τε καὶ ψεῦδος ὑπεστήσαντο, οἱ δὲ περὶ τῇ φωνῇ, οἱ δὲ περὶ τῇ κινήσει τῆς διανοίας. καὶ δὴ τῆς μὲν πρώτης δόξης προεστήκασιν οἱ ἀπὸ τῆς Στοᾶς, τρία φάμενοι συζυγεῖν ἀλλήλοις, τό τε σημαινόμενον καὶ τὸ σημαῖνον καὶ τὸ τυγχάνον, ὧν σημαῖνον μὲν εἶναι τὴν φωνήν, οἷον τὴν Δίων, σημαινόμενον δὲ αὐτὸ τὸ πρᾶγμα τὸ ὑπ’αὐτῆς δηλούμενον καὶ οὗ ἡμεῖς μὲν ἀντιλαμβανόμεθα τῇ ἡμετέρᾳ παρυφισταμένου διανοίᾳ, οἱ δὲ βάρβαροι οὐκ ἐπαΐουσι καίπερ τῆς φωνῆς ἀκούοντες, τυγχάνον δὲ τὸ ἐκτὸς ὑποκείμενον, ὥσπερ αὐτὸς ὁ Δίων. τούτων δὲ δύο μὲν εἶναι σώματα, καθάπερ τὴν φωνὴν καὶ τὸ τυγχάνον, ἓν δὲ ἀσώματον, ὥσπερ τὸ σημαινόμενον πρᾶγμα, καὶ λεκτόν, ὅπερ ἀληθές τε γίνεται ἢ ψεῦδος.

There was another disagreement among philosophers [concerning what is the bearer of truth]: some took the sphere of what is true and false to be “the signified”, others “utterance,” and others “the process that constitutes thought.” The Stoics defended the first opinion, saying that three things are linked together, “the signified,” “the signifier,” and “the namebearer.” The signifier is an utterance, for instance “Dion”; the signified is the actual state of affairs revealed by an utterance, and which we apprehend as it subsists in accordance with our thought, whereas it is not understood by those whose language is different although they hear the utterance; the name-bearer is the external object, for instance, Dion himself. Of these, two are bodies—the utterance and the name-bearer; but one is incorporeal—the state of affairs signified and sayable, which is true or false.29

The Stoics identified the “sense” (σημαινόμενον) of an utterance with what they called the “sayable” (λεκτόν), which they distinguished from utterances, concepts, and things. Sextus describes the λεκτόν as an immaterial entity “linking together” two corporeal entities, the “signifier” or “utterance” and the “namebearer” or “external object.” If the λεκτόν is neither the signifier, nor the concept, nor the thing in the world, what then is it? Sextus is struggling to describe the λεκτόν as a relational entity mediating between two terms: linguistic utterances and the world. Viewed from the side of language, the λεκτόν is some “sayable” linguistic content that “subsists in accordance with thought,” which it does in a languagespecific manner. It is not a thought, but rather the repeatable and shareable linguistic content of a thought. From this vantage point, the λεκτόν is a semantic

29 AM 8.11–12 = LS 33B = SVF 166, trans. LS.

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concept, close to what Frege called the “sense” of an expression.30 On the other hand, viewed from the side of the world, the λεκτόν is some intelligible aspect of the world capable of being expressed in language: facts, but also the functions of various speech acts. The λεκτόν is identically something grasped in thought and something that may obtain in the world. There is no ontological gap between language and world: the same logos is capable of being realized in both.31 Once again a contrast with Aristotle is illuminating. For Aristotle, utterances, thoughts, and things are sufficient elements to account for the meaning of sentences. His followers clearly and firmly rejected the need to interject the Stoic lekton.32 Aristotle’s basic model of language is expressed most succinctly in De Interpretatione: Ἔστι μὲν οὖν τὰ ἐν τῇ φωνῇ τῶν ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ παθημάτων σύμβολα, καὶ τὰ γραφόμενα τῶν ἐν τῇ φωνῇ. καὶ ὥσπερ οὐδὲ γράμματα πᾶσι τὰ αὐτά, οὐδὲ φωναὶ αἱ αὐταί· ὧν μέντοι ταῦτα σημεῖα πρώτων, ταὐτὰ πᾶσι παθήματα τῆς ψυχῆς, καὶ ὧν ταῦτα ὁμοιώματα πράγματα ἤδη ταὐτά.

Thus spoken [words] are symbols of affections of the soul, and written [words] are symbols of spoken words. And just as letters are not the same for all, neither are utterances; but the affections of the soul, of which things of which they are direct signs, are the same for all, and so are the things of which [affections of the soul] are likenesses.33

On this view, human communities establish arbitrary correlations between spoken sounds (φωναὶ) and mental affections. These “affections of the soul” are mental entities that exist in the mind. The meanings of words or sentences are, on this view, mental entities with which words are conventionally correlated, 30

Gottlieb Frege, “Sense and Reference,” Philosophical Review 57, no. 3 (May 1948): 209–230. “Sense” was offered as a translation for lekton by Benson Mates, Stoic Logic (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1953), among others. Michael Frede criticizes this view, in Frede, “The Stoic notion of a lekton,” arguing that “fact” is a better translation. In my view, “sense” and “fact” as translations of lekton are two sides of the same coin, since the intention of the Stoic view is precisely to identify linguistic and ontological structures. 31 Thus Long and Sedley, for example, say, “the Stoics can be interpreted as filling a gap in [Aristotle’s] most celebrated doctrine of meaning. Identify “meanings” with thoughts simpliciter, and you leave it unclear how your and my distinct acts of thinking can be the same meaning. By distinguishing rational impressions from sayables while at the same time connecting them together through the concept of subsistence, the Stoics have shown that the meaning of a thought is something which is transferrable, through language, across minds” (LS 201). 32 See, for example, Ammonius, On Aristotle’s De interpretatione 17.24–8 = LS 33N. 33 De interpretatione 16a.

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of which the most important subset are thoughts/concepts (νοήματα). But while the relation between names and thoughts is arbitrary and conventional, these mental affections are “likenesses” of real things (πράγματα), by virtue of which thoughts are not conventional but natural, “the same for all.” The semantic content of an utterance—its sense—is a mental reality standing between words and things. These respective theories have implications for the correspondence that obtains between language, thought, and world, implications that become especially manifest in the respective speech-act theories developed in the Aristotelian and Stoic traditions. According to D. M. Schenkeveld, To Aristotle the relation between language and thought is mainly a one-to-one relationship, in the sense that spoken words are symbols of thought and represent exactly what one thinks. It is true that Aristotle is aware of ambivalence of language, and the distinctions of ὁμώνυμα and συνώνυμα, which is of great import in Topics and Soph. Elench., points to this awareness, but in his few remarks on σχήματα λέξεως he never exploits this awareness … To the Stoics, however, the lekta were not the wordings of thought, but the action and things thought which are expressed in sentences. This means that these sentences are not identical with the lekta, whereas the Peripatetic λόγοι are sentences. These asomatic lekta do not seem to have an unchangeable way of expression. For the external signs of the various lekta (the sentences) may have the same verbal mood (ἔστω, ὑποκείσθω), but represent different lekta.34 Consequently, Aristotelians distinguished types of speech act that corresponded directly to the grammatical form of the sentence: ἀποφαντικός (assertion), corresponding to the indicative mood; εὐκτικός (wish), corresponding to the optative mood; προστακτικός (command), corresponding to the imperative mood; ἐρωτηματικός (question), corresponding to the interrogative mood; and κλητικός (address), corresponding to the vocative.35 The correspondence between verbal expression and meaning is very close. The mature Stoic theory, by contrast, articulated at least ten different speech acts bearing no direct correspondence to grammatical mood: assertoric, interrogative, question, dubitative, imperative, swearing, imprecative, addressing, hypothetical, and quasi-decision. All of these speech acts are lekta. The list also shows that the λεκτόν is not narrowly the “sense” of an utterance but something more like 34 D. M. Schenkeveld, “Stoic and Peripatetic kinds of speech act and the distinction of grammatical moods,” Mnemosyne 37 (1984): 291–353, esp. 324–25. 35 Schenkeveld, “Speech act,” 295–96.

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“the final function of the sentence in its situation,” including what we would call its illocutionary force.36 While Aristotelians tended to interpret speech-acts in terms of their effect on the minds of their hearers (if not expressing a truth, then bringing about doubt, calling to attention, etc.), Stoic speech acts are activities in the world which have a reality independent of what any language user thinks about it. Since the function of a sentence is a relation between an utterance and pragmatic features of the context in which it is uttered, the interpreter of a sentence must take both into account. It is precisely because the function of an utterance also depends on its context that the structure of an utterance’s content—i.e. of its corresponding λεκτόν—is not necessarily isomorphic with the utterance. It follows that the significance of a sentence cannot be determined without considering how it might be used. For this reason, Stoic studies of ambiguity tended to begin with an actual utterance and then map out the possible lekta that could be construed from that utterance in relation to various contexts of utterance.37 Meaning on the Stoic view is not merely a matter of correspondence. 1.3 The Correctness of Names Similar impulses characterized the Stoic approach to the famous question explored in Plato’s Cratylus of whether names are “by nature” or “by convention.” In a passage to which we shall return, Origen himself offers a summary of this debate which provides important testimony to the Stoic view. Λόγος βαθὺς καὶ ἀπόρρητος, ὁ περὶ φύσεως ὀνομάτων· πότερον, ὡς οἴεται Ἀριστοτέλης, θέσει εἰσὶ τὰ ὀνόματα ἤ, ὡς νομίζουσιν οἱ ἀπὸ τῆς Στοᾶς, φύσει, μιμουμένων τῶν πρώτων φωνῶν τὰ πράγματα, καθ’ ὧν τὰ ὀνόματα, καθὸ καὶ στοιχεῖά τινα τῆς ἐτυμολογίας εἰσάγουσιν, ἤ, ὡς διδάσκει Ἐπίκουρος, ἑτέρως ἢ ὡς οἴονται οἱ ἀπὸ τῆς Στοᾶς, φύσει ἐστὶ τὰ ὀνόματα, ἀπορρηξάντων τῶν πρώτων ἀνθρώπων τινὰς φωνὰς κατὰ τῶν πραγμάτων.

The subject of the nature of names is a deep and mysterious matter. The question is whether, as Aristotle thinks, names are by imposition; or, as the Stoics think, by nature, in that the first utterances are imitations of the things, to which the names correspond, for which reason they introduce certain principles of etymology; or, as Epicurus teaches (differently from what the Stoics think), names are by nature, in that the first humans burst out with certain sounds corresponding to things.38

36 Ibid., 326. 37 Galen, De capt. 4.106.16–18 = SVF 2.153; DL 7.62; qtd. Schenkeveld, “Speech act,” 325. 38 CC 1.24.

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The debate about the nature of names was complicated by basic ambiguities in the key terms, of which many ancient commentators were already aware.39 There was, on the one hand, the question of the origin of words: do they arise through some intentional agency (human or divine), or are they the result of some non-intentional process? On the former thesis, names arise “by imposition,” on the latter, “by nature.” On the other hand, there is the question of the standard of correctness by which words should be judged: are they somehow appropriate to the things named, or are names unconstrained by any standard independent of naming conventions themselves? On the former view, names are subject to a “natural” standard of correctness, while on the latter they are merely “conventional.” Our concern is primarily with this second issue of correctness. The positions Origen ascribes to Aristotle and the Stoics look like summaries of the positions defended in Plato’s Cratylus by Hermogenes (the conventionalist character) and Socrates, respectively. I have already discussed Aristotle’s conventionalism in the context of his theory of meaning. Since he believes names are the product of human agency and subject to no natural standard of correctness, he believes names are “by convention” in both of the above senses. This conventionalism about names is rooted in his assumption that the naturalness of language would consist in a one-to-one correspondence between language and world. This is why he assumes that if names were by nature, they would be the same for all, and infers that they must instead be conventional. This ideal of a one-to-one correspondence between words and names was given more expansive treatment in a standard collection of four objections to the naturalness of names attributed to the pre-Socratic philosopher Democritus. While Aristotle argued from the differences between languages, Democritus argues from the irregularity within a single language. Ὁ δὲ θέσει λέγων τὰ ὀνόματα διὰ τεσ­σάρων ἐπιχειρημάτων τοῦτο κατεσκεύαζεν· ἐκ τῆς ὁμωνυμίας· τὰ γὰρ διάφορα πράγματα τῶι αὐτῶι καλοῦν­ ται ὀνόματι· οὐκ ἄρα φύσει τὸ ὄνομα· καὶ ἐκ τῆς πολυωνυμίας· εἰ γὰρ τὰ διάφορα ὀνόματα ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτὸ καὶ

39

[Democritus] who said that names are due to imposition formulated this idea in four arguments. First, from homonymy: different things are called by the same name; therefore, the name is not natural. Second, from polyonymy: for if different names apply to one and the

See James Allen, “The Stoics on the origin of language and the foundations of etymology” in Dorothy Frede and Brad Inwood, eds., Language and Learning: Philosophy of Language in the Hellenistic Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005): 14–35, esp. 18–21. He cites Proclus, Commentary on the Cratylus 7.18–20; Ammonius, On Aristotle’s De Interpretatione 34.20; Stephanus, On Aristotle’s De Interpretatione 9.7–10, 13, and CC 1.24.

42 ἓν πρᾶγμα ἐφαρμόσουσιν, καὶ ἐπάλληλα, ὅπερ ἀδύνατον· τρίτον ἐκ τῆς τῶν ὀνομάτων μεταθέσεως. διὰ τί γὰρ τὸν Ἀριστοκλέα μὲν Πλάτωνα, τὸν δὲ Τύρταμον Θεόφραστον μετωνομάσαμεν, εἰ φύσει τὰ ὀνόματα; ἐκ δὲ τῆς τῶν ὁμοίων ἐλλείψεως· διὰ τί ἀπὸ μὲν τῆς φρονήσεως λέγομεν φρονεῖν, ἀπὸ δὲ τῆς δικαιοσύνης οὐκέτι παρονομάζομεν;

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same thing, they apply to one another as well, which is impossible. Third, from the changing of names: if names are natural, why did we change the name of Aristocles to Plato and that of Tyrtamus to Theophrastus? Fourth, from the deficiency of similar [derivative] terms: why from “thought” do we say “to think,” but from “justice” we do not also derive a verb?40

Homonymy, polyonymy, and name-changing in particular disrupt the ideal of a one-to-one correspondence of words and things.41 The same ideal of correspondence, however, governs the Socratic naturalist position explored in the Cratylus and defended as a doctrine by many Platonists. As articulated by later commentators, this view asserts that names are “by imposition” in that they originate in the intentional activity of namegivers (human or divine). But they are “by nature” in that these name-givers, possessing wisdom, were able to choose names that revealed the nature of things by imitating them. Etymology allows Socrates to account for elements of non-correspondence by appeal to a historical narrative: ancient users of language were wiser than those in the present, who have, we might say, fallen into conventionality. Whatever natural correctness names possess must be a result of the wisdom of an original name-giver, who had to have knowledge of things prior to choosing a name for them. Even if names are subject to a natural standard of correctness, then, any knowledge one acquires by reflection on language is logically posterior to pre- or extra-linguistic knowledge, and it is the latter that the philosopher ought ultimately to seek. In short, Aristotelian conventionalists and Platonic naturalists tended to agree that correspondence is the single standard of linguistic correctness, disagreeing only about whether this standard is or should be realized in the structure of names themselves. The view Origen attributes to the Stoics— “the first utterances are imitations of the things to which the names correspond, for which reason they introduce certain principles of etymology”—is in fact an apt summary of this Platonic view, sketched in the Cratylus. 40 Democritus fr. 26 DK = Sorabji 7(c)1, trans. Sorabji. 41 Democritus’ fourth argument, from the irregularity of word-derivations, shows that on his view, in a natural language the relations between words would have to be isomorphic with the corresponding relations in the world.

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As a summary of Stoicism, however, it is misleading. James Allen has shown that the Stoic theory of names in fact called into question key assumptions of the Socratic position in the Cratylus. Socrates maintains that to have a chance of succeeding an account [of names] must satisfy two requirements ([Cratylus] 422cd): (a) There must be a single standard of correctness for all words, both the primary words and those whose meaning is explained by the words from which they are derived. (b) This standard must be such that, by conforming to it, names indicate or reveal the things whose names they are. To this end, though not without hesitation, Socrates puts forward his mimetic account of word composition.42 The Stoics, by contrast, do not assume that there is one standard of linguistic correctness, nor do they assume that there is one function names must perform. Rather, they developed a theory of names that sought to accommodate a variety of ways a name might be naturally appropriate to what it names. Stoic philosophers and linguists tended to approach language by beginning with the conventional meaning of a word and then asking, in an open-ended way, why this particular word has the meaning it does. As formulated most explicitly in Augustine’s De dialectica, Stoic etymologists came to articulate three principles of natural correctness: similarity, opposition, and proximity.43 “Similarity” refers to a wide variety of mimetic relations that expand on those sketched in the Cratylus. There is a similarity in sono, such as onomatopoeia: tinnitus sounds like the clash of bronze, hinnitus, like the neighing of horses. There is similarity by synaesthesia:44 mel sounds sweet, as honey tastes; crux has a harsh sound, as a cross is painful.45 These mimetic principles, Augustine says, provide the basic elements from which other words are formed,46 and so 42 43

Allen, “Origin of language,” 30–31. See the discussion in Allen, “Origin of language,” 32–4, and A. A. Long, “Stoic linguistics, Plato’s Cratylus, and Augustine’s De dialectica,” in Language and Learning: Philosophy of Language in the Hellenistic Age, eds. Dorothy Frede and Brad Inwood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005): 36–55, esp.37–38. 44 De dialectica 10.1–3. 45 De dialectica 10.3–9. Varro also argues that some names correspond to their object by virtue of synaesthesia: “Some syllables are harsh, others smooth … harsh ones include trux, crux, trans; smooth ones lana, luna” (Varro, fr. 113G, qtd. Long, “Stoic linguistics,” 134). 46 De dialectica 10.9–11; 11.13–14. Another principle of similarity, which Allen calls “similarity in re,” “allows a word to be transferred—either with or without phonetic alteration—to an item that resembles the item to which it was first applies ([De dialectica] 10.10–13)

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to this extent mimesis retains a certain priority in accounting for the function of names. But the principles of “opposition” and “proximity” are non-mimetic relations between names and things. “Opposition” is the contrary of a mimetic correspondence, by which a word signifies the opposite of what it seems to imitate. For example, Latin bellum, “war”, is derived from bella, “beautiful”, because war is not beautiful. By the principle of “proximity,” the meaning of words can arise metonymically by virtue of some real connection between name and thing. Augustine gives as an example of proximity the word vincula, “bonds”, which he derives from vis, “power”, because bonds bring about a powerful effect. In this case, it is the causal relation between what vis signifies (power) and what vincula signifies (bonds) that accounts for the derivation of the latter from the former. Similarly, the Stoic theologian Cornutus, whom Origen may have read,47 traces the name of “Pluto,” the god of the underworld, to πλούτος, “wealth,” because all things, being corruptible, are his property.48 He is not like wealth; rather, to name him “wealth” is to name him metonymically by his real relation to wealth. In an observation that anticipates Origen’s theory of names, some Stoics also argued that a name might be correct by virtue of the effects one brings about in speaking it. Cornutus sometimes offers etymologies of the names of Greek gods in terms of the performative power of their name.49 He proposes that the name of Ares, God of war, is derived from the word ἄρσαι, “to be pleasing or fitting.” This name, he supposes, was given not because Ares is pleasing, but so that “those who addressed him thus would mollify him.”50 The name is (Allen, “Origin of language,” 17). Crura (legs) is derived from crux (cross) because both things are long. Another principle of word-formation (not mentioned by Augustine) also operates by similarity, namely, what Allen calls “compressed definition” (Allen, “Origin of language,” 33). For example, the Stoics derived καρδία from κράτησις (dominion) and κυρεία (authority) because the heart is the ruling part of the soul (Galen, PHP 206.13–15). We already find something similar in the Cratylus: Socrates derives ἀνθρωπος from the phrase “ἀναθρων ὁ ὀπωπε,” “one who observes closely what he has seen” (Cratylus 399c). 47 According to Porphyry in HE 6.19.8. 48 Compendium 5.5.7–9, qtd. David Dawson, Allegorical Readers and Cultural Revision in Ancient Alexandria (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 33. 49 Although it should be noted that Cornutus tends to identify these as etymologies “by opposition,” on the grounds that what the name asserts is the opposite of the truth. 50 Compendium 21.41.2–3, qtd. Dawson, Allegorical Readers, 29; see also the interpretation of Hades by contradiction in Compendium. 5.5.4–7, qtd. Dawson 33. This kind of analysis anticipates both Origen’s theory of names, discussed below, and the argument that names are natural because of their theurgic power that we find in neo-Platonists like Iamblichus, drawing on traditions about the power of names in Hermetic texts and the Chaldean

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correct not because it signifies the nature of its object, but rather because of its reliable perlocutionary effect: by virtue of its meaning it may be used effectively in relation to the god.51 In sum, the Stoic theory of names is distinctive for abandoning the idea of a single standard of correctness. Instead, they recognized a variety of nonmimetic natural relations between words and things. It has sometimes been argued that there is a tension within Stoic linguistic theory between their nonmimetic theory of sentence meaning and their mimetic theory of names.52 The truth is that these theories are closely aligned. In both cases, the Stoics sought to show how mimetic and structural elements of linguistic expressions may be brought into a variety of meaningful relations with the world. Mimesis is an element of meaning and intelligibility, but on its own it cannot account for the many things rational beings use language to do. 2

Origen on Language and Logic

For Origen, the truest sages are not Zeno or Chrysippus, but those saints who spoke the words of Christian scripture, and above all, Christ himself. Origen assumes that Christians should imitate their wisdom by continuing their scriptural linguistic practices. But some Christians practices were called into question by many both within and without the church, and Origen draws on Stoic philosophy of language to help make these practices intelligible. If Origen’s thinking about language has a strongly Stoic cast, this is not because he starts with Stoic assumptions. Rather, his reasoning begins with Christian linguistic practices whose existence he takes for granted and from which his reasoning begins. He usually appeals to Stoicism in media res to address questions that arise in the context of exegesis or specific challenges to Christian practice raised by their opponents.

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Oracles. Cf. John Dillon, “The Magical Power of Names in Origen and Later Platonism,” in R. Hanson and H. Crougee, eds., Origeniana Tertia (Rome, 1985): 203–16. It seems to have been an Epicurean insight that a causal relation could be a natural one. On their view, names were originally an immediate causal response to stimuli, analogous to laughter or sneezing (LS 19A–B). They, however, argued that this is the only natural relation. The Stoics, by admitting a variety of such relations, were able to integrate names of this sort into a much more expansive theory of names. They also come to see that names may be causes as well as effects of things. Thus e.g. A. C. Lloyd, “Grammar and Metaphysics in the Stoa,” in Problems in Stoicism, ed. A. A. Long (London: 1971), 58–74; Dawson, Allegorical Readers, 31–5.

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In each of the following examples, Origen addresses the wisdom of a specific feature of scriptural language: its insistence that particular proper names are correct, especially the divine name (2.1); its ungrammatical constructions (2.2); and its difficult or cryptic language (2.3). Implicit in these practices, Origen argues, is a philosophy of language not unlike Stoic naturalism, one in which speaking correctly requires not only knowledge of linguistic conventions but also and ultimately wisdom. Yet he does not take up Stoicism unchanged. Rather, in each case showing that Christians speak well requires expanding or altering the Stoic theory in some of its details. A distinctive philosophy of language emerges, for Origen, from the study of scripture itself, one which bears upon the interpretation of scripture and the ongoing speech of Christians. 2.1 The Correctness of Names We saw that unlike some Platonists, Stoic philosophers defended the view that names are “by nature” in the sense that names are naturally appropriate to things, though in a variety of possible ways. Origen explicitly endorses this view and uses it to make sense of specific ways in which scripture uses names, especially its implication that certain names are correct.53 Because he assumes that there are many possible ways a name may be correct, his exegesis adopts the posture of the Stoic philosopher, investigating in each case what particular natural relation obtains. In his discussion of the name of God, this investigation leads Origen to propose another possible “natural” relation between names and things, namely, that names may be effective in relation to the things they name. I begin with two preliminary examples that show the range of scriptural uses of names that Origen identifies and which he finds Stoic philosophy helpful for explicating. In the first example, Origen discusses the scriptural habit of giving etymologies for words, exemplified by the etymology of the Hebrew word ‫“( אׁשה‬woman”) in Gen 2:23. In the second example, Origen observes the scriptural habit of changing the name of human beings. I then examine at 53

For discussions of names in Origen, see R. P. C. Hanson, Allegory and Event (Richmond: John Knox Press, 1959), 205–7; Dillon, “Magical Power;” Origene, Esortazione al Martirio, intro., trans., and ed. Celestino Noce (Rome: Urbaniana University Press, 1985), 182–4; Neuschäfer, Origenes als Philologe, 140–55; Naomi Janowitz, “Theories of Divine Names in Origen and Pseudo-Dionysius,” History of Religions 30, no. 4 (May 1991): 359–372; Robbert M. van den Berg, “Does it Matter to Call God Zeus? Origen, Contra Celsum I.24–5 Against the Greek Intellectual on Divine Names,” in The Revelation of the Name YHWH to Moses, ed. George H. van Kooten (Boston: Brill, 2006): 169–86; and Chin, “Origen and Christian Naming.”

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length Origen’s defense of Christian martyrs for refusing to call on God using pagan names like “Zeus.” In each case, Origen draws on Stoic terminology and theory to show that using names in these ways is appropriate to things. 2.1.1 Natural Names In his Letter to Africanus, Origen appeals to Stoic etymology in the course of an interpretation of Gen 2:23, which offers an etymology of the Hebrew word ‫אׁשה‬ (“woman”). He does so in response to a letter from Africanus questioning the authenticity of the Greek portions of Daniel. Africanus had pointed out that the story of Daniel and Susannah turns on a Greek wordplay, inferring that this portion of the story could not have been written in Hebrew. Origen responds that the translators could have discovered a way of expressing an originally Hebrew wordplay in an analogous Greek expression. He observes that on some occasions translators have done something similar with scriptural etymologies, in support of which Origen discusses the etymology of ‫“( אׁשה‬woman”). … καὶ ἐν ταῖς ἡμετέραις γραφαῖς κεῖνταί τινες οἱονεὶ ἐτυμολογίαι αἵτινες παρὰ μὲν Ἑβραίοις οἰκείως ἔχουσι, παρὰ δὲ ἡμῖν οὐχ ὁμοίως. Οὐδὲν οὖν θαυμαστὸν, ᾠκονομηκέναι τοὺς ἑρμηνεύσαντας τὰ περὶ τὴν Σωσάνναν ἀνευρεῖν ἤτοι σύμφωνον τὸ ἑβραϊκὸν—οὐ γὰρ πείθομαι—ἢ ἀνάλογον τῷ συμφωνοῦντι ἐν τῷ ἑβραϊκῷ ὄνομά τι παρώνυμον. Πῶς δὲ ἐν τῇ ἡμετέρᾳ Γραφῇ κεῖται τὸ τοιοῦτον, παραστήσομεν. Φησὶν ὁ Ἀδὰμ ἐπὶ τῇ γυναικὶ οἰκοδομηθείσῃ ὑπὸ τοῦ Θεοῦ ἐκ τῆς πλευρᾶς τοῦ ἀνδρός· Αὕτη κληθήσεται γυνὴ, ὅτι ἐκ τοῦ ἀνδρὸς αὐτῆς ἐλήφθη. Φασὶ δὲ οἱ Ἑβραῖοι ἐσσὰ μὲν καλεῖσθαι τὴν γυναῖκα· δηλοῦσθαι δὲ ἀπὸ τῆς λέξεως τὸ ἔλαβον, ὡς δῆλον ἐκ τοῦ· Χῶς ἰσουὼθ ἐσσά, ὅπερ ἑρμηνεύεται· Ποτήριον σωτηρίου λήψομαι· ἴς δὲ τὸν ἄνδρα, ὡς φανερὸν ἐκ τοῦ· Ἐσρὴ ἀΐς, ὅπερ ἐστί· Μακάριος ἀνήρ. Κατὰ μὲν οὖν Ἑβραίους ἲς καὶ ἐσσὰ ἀνδρὸς, ὅτι

In our scriptures are found many socalled etymologies which are appropriate in Hebrew but not in our language. We should not be surprised, then, if the translators so administered the story of Susannah that they discovered either a derivative [Greek] name with the same sound as the Hebrew—though I doubt this—or else something analogous to it. Let us observe how something like this is given in our scripture. When the woman was built up by God from the man’s rib, Adam said, “She shall be called ‘woman,’ because she was taken from man.” Now the Hebrews say the woman was called “essa,” and it is clear from the text that this means “taken,” as is evident from the words, “Chos isouoth essa,” which is translated, “I have taken the cup of salvation” (Ps 115:14 LXX). But “is” means “man,” as is clear from the words, “Esrei ais,” that is, “Blessed is the man” (Ps 1:1). According to the

48 ἀπὸ ἲς ἀνδρὸς αὐτῆς ἐλήφθη αὕτη.54 Οὐδὲν οὖν θαυμαστὸν ἑρμηνεύσαντάς τινας τὸ περὶ Σωσάννης Ἑβραϊκὸν, ἐν ἀποῤῥήτοις, ὡς εἰκὸς, πάλαι παρ’ αὐτοῖς κείμενον, καὶ παρὰ τοῖς φιλομαθεστέροις καὶ φιλαληθεστέροις σωζόμενον, ἤτοι κυρίως ἐκδεδωκέναι τὰ τῆς λέξεως, ἢ εὑρηκέναι τὸ ἀνάλογον τοῖς κατὰ τὸ Ἑβραϊκὸν παρωνύμοις, ἵνα δυνηθῶμεν οἱ Ἕλληνες αὐτοῖς παρακολουθῆσαι. Καὶ γὰρ ἐπ’ ἄλλων πολλῶν ἔστιν εὑρεῖν οἰκονομικῶς τινα ὑπὸ τῶν ἑρμηνευσάντων ἐκδεδομένα· ἅπερ ἡμεῖς τετηρήκαμεν συνεξετάζοντες πάσας τὰς ἐκδόσεις ἀλλήλαις.

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Hebrews, then, “essa” [comes from] “is” and means “from man,” because she was taken from an “is,” her husband. We should not be surprised, then, if certain translators of the [lost] Hebrew text of Susannah—which may possibly have been laid up among them in secret since ancient times, and preserved by those who love learning and truth—either gave the exact wording [of the Hebrew] or found some analogy to the Hebrew words, that we Greeks might be able to follow them. For in many other cases we find a text aptly rendered by the translators, which I have discovered in the course of collecting the various editions [for the Hexapla].55

The details of Origen’s argument are somewhat opaque, in part because the text is corrupt. Origen apparently derives the word ‫אׁשה‬, “woman,” from the root ‫נשא‬, “to take.” In proof of this he cites the transliterated Hebrew of Ps 116:13a, “I will take up the cup of salvation” (‫יְ ׁשּועֹות ֶא ָּׂשא‬-‫)ּכֹוס‬. Origen believes that ‫“( אׁשה‬woman”) is related to the word ‫“( ֶא ָּׂשא‬I will take up”), signifying that the woman was “taken” from the man. Origen’s argument seems to depend on the fact that both were transliterated into Greek as essa, which he would have known from the second column of the Hexapla.56 Origen was not the only one to offer this etymology, for in his Greek translation of Genesis, Theodotion translates “woman” here as λῆψις, “taken.”57 Origen presumably knew Theodotion’s translation, since it was one of the Hexaplaric columns. 54 The text is corrupt here; see the discussion in de Lange, Philocalie, 577–8. 55 EpAfr 18 (12). 56 The roundabout way Origen demonstrates the meaning of the Hebrew words for man and woman is an indication that his knowledge of Hebrew was fairly superficial, as Nicholas de Lange points out (Philocalie, 576). 57 See the texts quoted in de Lange, Philocalia, 557: Field, Hexapla, 1.15; Jerome Qu. Heb. Gen sur Gen 2:13, et al. According to Nicholas de Lange, Origen’s appeal to a Jewish source for this etymology, “n’est qu’un camouflage, destiné à prêter autorité à ce qui suit” (Philocalie, 576). But since Theodotion also understood the etymology this way, and since it is not outside the bounds of rabbinic wordplay, there is no need to doubt Origen’s claim that he has learned this etymology from discussion with Jews.

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This etymology, it should be acknowledged, is implausible. The word for “take” in Gen 2:23 is not ‫נשא‬, as Origen’s etymology implies, but ‫לקח‬. The word “woman” is also written with a shin while “take” is written with a sin, a fact which is obscured by the identical Greek transliteration of these words that Origen uses. The plain sense of the text is that the word ‫“( אׁשה‬woman”) is derived from the word ‫“( איש‬man”), just as the woman herself is derived from the man.58 Origen seems to allude to this etymology as well when he says that “essa” means ἀνδρὸς, “from man.” Whether this is in fact the case and if so, whether he sees this second etymology as contradicting or complementing the former is difficult to say, since the text is corrupt at this point. As Origen observes, appeal to the significance of etymology is a characteristic linguistic practice within the scriptures. Origen adopts the Greek technical term “etymology” to describe it, albeit with a certain embarrassment—“as it were etymologies” (οἱονεὶ ἐτυμολογίαι)—probably in acknowledgement of the term’s Hellenistic provenance. The word “etymology” seems to have been coined by the Stoics, probably Chrysippus,59 and although many Greek philosophers used etymology, in Origen’s discussion of the Stoic view of names (quoted above), Origen specifically associates etymology with the Stoics and connects it to their doctrine that names are by nature.60 That doctrine may be in the background here as well, for Origen’s discussion of translating etymologies bears upon the common objection to the naturalness of names from the fact that there are many different languages.61 Origen identifies two ways that a Hebrew usage may be retained in translation: the same word may appear in both Hebrew and Greek,62 or, more likely, a clever translator may select or even invent words that are related to one another in an analogous way in multiple languages. The effect would be to use Greek in a way that imitates Hebrew

58 Bereishit Rabbah 18.4 takes it this way. 59 The term is first attested in the titles of Chrysippus’ books (DL 7.200; thus Allen, “Origins of Language,” 14). 60 CC 1.24, and see the discussion of this text below. 61 In other contexts, Origen responds to this difficulty by appealing to the Jewish tradition that Hebrew was the original language, given by God, and hence that it its mode of speech is uniquely natural. He sees other languages as the work of lesser divine beings, beginning at the Tower of Babel. Origen usually gives etymologies of Hebrew words, particularly of proper names (Trigg, The Bible and Philosophy, 155). The idea of a fall away from an original divine language was proposed in the Cratylus, and it was a common Stoic and Platonic trope. 62 This is not intrinsically impossible. Greek words like σάββατον (“Sabbath,” “week”) and the names of the letters of the alphabet were of Semitic origin.

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usage. Since Origen believed that Hebrew was the original natural language,63 the implication is that through skillful translation, Greek can be made more natural as well.64 In another text, De Oratione, Origen uses the Stoic account of the function of a proper name to make sense of scripture’s habit of changing names. The context is Origen’s discussion of the phrase “hallowed be Thy name” in the Lord’s Prayer, which leads him to ask about the function of proper names and the difference that the holiness of the divine name makes. After offering a technical definition of a proper name derived from Stoic sources [1], he argues that human names are rightly changed by scripture because human beings themselves change [2]. He then argues by contrast that just as God is unchanging, so too he has one holy name [3]. [1] Ὄνομα τοίνυν ἐστὶ κεφαλαιώδης προσηγορία τῆς ἰδίας ποιότητος τοῦ ὀνομαζομένου παραστατική· οἷόν ἐστι τὶς ἰδία ποιότης Παύλου τοῦ ἀποστόλου, ἡ μέν τις τῆς ψυχῆς, καθ’ ἣν τοιάδε ἐστὶν, ἡ δέ τις τοῦ νοῦ, καθ’ ἣν τοιῶνδέ ἐστι θεωρητικὸς, ἡ δέ τις τοῦ σώματος αὐτοῦ, καθ’ ἣν τοιόνδε ἐστί. τὸ τοίνυν τούτων τῶν ποιοτήτων ἴδιον καὶ ἀσυντρόχαστον πρὸς ἕτερον (ἄλλος γάρ τις ἀπαράλλακτος Παύλου ἐν τοῖς οὖσιν οὐκ ἔστι) δηλοῦται διὰ τῆς Παῦλος ὀνομασίας.

[1] A name is a summary appellation indicating the peculiar quality of the one named. For example, there is a certain peculiar quality of Paul the Apostle: of soul, according to which he is such and such; of mind, according to which he contemplates such and such; and of his body, according to which he is such and such. The peculiarity of these qualities and their incompatibility with an other are indicated by the name “Paul” (for no other is indistinguishable from Paul in these respects).

63 HomNum 11.4. Cf. Janowitz, “Theories of Divine Names,” 363. 64 The Septuagint made no attempt to do so in this case, obscuring the underlying Hebrew etymology; but Origen claims to have observed examples of these well-administered translations in the other Greek translations he gathered when producing his Hexapla. Their translations of this verse are an illuminating case in point. We have already observed Theodotion’s attempt to preserve the etymology by translating “woman” as λῆψις (“taken”). Symmachus, whose translation also appears in the Hexapla, has a more subtle solution. (Jerome calls it “pulchre”: Qu. Heb. Gen sur Gen 2:13, CCL 72 p. 5, qtd. de Lange, Philocalie, 575.) Assuming the plain sense derivation of “woman” from “man,” he translates “woman” using the coinage ἀνδρίς, which looks like a feminine counterpart to ἀνδρὸς, the genitive of “man” (ἀνήρ). Origen mentions this derivation in CM 14.16. This example shows how a translator might actually correct conventional Greek usage to bring it into line with Hebrew usage.

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[2] Ἀλλ’ ἐπὶ ἀνθρώπων, οἱονεὶ ἀλλα­σ­ σομένων τῶν ἰδίων ποιοτήτων, ὑγιῶς κατὰ τὴν γραφὴν ἀλλάσσεται καὶ τὰ ὀνόματα· μεταβαλούσης γὰρ τῆς τοῦ Ἀβρὰμ ποιότητος, ἐκλήθη Ἀβραὰμ, καὶ τῆς τοῦ Σίμωνος, ὁ Πέτρος ὠνομάσ­ ­θη, καὶ τῆς τοῦ διώκοντος τὸν Ἰησοῦν Σαοὺλ, προσηγορεύθη ὁ Παῦλος.

[2] But the scripture rightly changes the names of human beings, since their peculiar qualities are also changed. For when the quality of Abram was altered, he was called Abraham; and when the [quality] of Simon [was changed], he was named Peter; and when the [quality] of Saul who persecuted Jesus [was changed], he was called Paul.

[3] Ἐπὶ δὲ θεοῦ, ὅστις αὐτός ἐστιν ἄτρεπτος καὶ ἀναλλοίωτος ἀεὶ τυγ­ χάνων, ἕν ἐστιν ἀεὶ τὸ οἱονεὶ καὶ ἐπ’ αὐτοῦ ὄνομα, τὸ ὁ ὢν ἐν τῇ Ἐξόδῳ εἰρημένον ἤ τι οὕτως ἂν λεχθησόμενον. ἐπεὶ οὖν περὶ θεοῦ πάντες μὲν ὑπολαμβάνομέν τι, ἐννοοῦντες ἅτινα δή ποτε περὶ αὐτοῦ, οὐ πάντες δὲ ὅ ἐστι (σπάνιοι γὰρ καὶ, εἰ χρὴ λέγειν, τῶν σπανίων σπανιώτεροι οἱ τὴν ἐν πᾶσιν ἁγιότητα καταλαμβάνοντες αὐτοῦ), εὐλόγως διδασκόμεθα τὴν ἐν ἡμῖν ἔννοιαν περὶ θεοῦ ἁγίαν γενέσθαι …

[3] But since God remains always unaltered and unchanging, the name which he bears, as it were, is always one: “He who is,” (Exod 3:14) as is said in Exodus, or something similar. Because, therefore, we all suppose something about God and understand certain things about him, but we do not understand what he is—for rare and, if it can be said, rarer than rare, are those who grasp his holiness in all respects—we are rightly taught that the conception of God among us is holy …65

Origen defines a “name” as “a summary appellation indicating the peculiar quality of the one named.”66 This definition closely parallels that of the Stoic linguist Diogenes of Babylon, from whom it is probably derived. Diogenes distinguished an appellative [προσηγορία] from a proper name [ὄνομα]. An appellative is “that part of discourse that signifies a common quality [μέρος λόγου σημαῖνον κοινὴν ποιότητα],” such as “human” or “horse.” A proper name, by contrast, is “that part of discourse that indicates a peculiar quality [δηλοῦν 65 De Oratione 26.2. 66 Cf. SelGen 17:5 = PG 12.116A. In his second Homily on Numbers, Origen offers a definition of a “sign” as “those things by which the unique characteristics of each person are designated; for instance, all human beings are alike, to be sure, but there is a certain unique distinction in each one, either in our face or height or posture or dress.” Evidently a proper name is a species of what Origen calls a “sign.” Origen gives as an example the unique properties of each individual’s handwriting—although we write the same letters, we do so in a recognizably individual way. He then applies the same logic to qualities of the soul: “there is a certain chastity that is uniquely Peter’s and another that is Paul’s, even though it may seem one and the same,” and likewise with the other virtues (HomNum 2.2.2).

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ἰδίαν ποιότητα],” such as “Diogenes” or “Socrates.”67 The name “Paul,” for example, signifies that which distinguishes Paul from all other individuals, which according to Origen’s gloss includes a qualitatively unique body, soul, and mind.68 Proper names are, on this view, something like definite descriptions.69 Origen applies the same analysis to God. By giving God an unchangeable name and calling it holy, scripture teaches that the individual quality of God—“what he is” (ὅ ἐστι)—is both unchanging and beyond our ken. This discussion too emerges from an observation about a habitual scriptural usage. While scripture often says that God has one, unchangeable name, it frequently changes the names of human beings. Origen argues that this pattern of scriptural usage is sound (ὑγιῶς), that is, appropriate to its objects. His argument betrays a certain anxiety about the changing of names, most likely because the fact that names may change was a common objection to the thesis that names are natural.70 This objection, as we saw earlier, assumes that a “natural” relation between name and thing would take the form of a fixed one-to-one correspondence.71 Origen, however, argues that a more dynamic correspondence may obtain between the changeable usage of a name and the dynamic process a thing undergoes. It is natural to change the name of changing things. But this entails that a name is not natural in itself, but only when rightly used. To know a name is to possess a capacity to use it correctly in the face of change, to speak it of the right person at the right time.72 67 DL 7.58 = SVF 3 Diogenes 22 = LS 33M. 68 This thesis also accounts for the fact that when one is given a name, as he says elsewhere, one “participates in the reality named” (CJ 20.29.267). We may become, for example, “another Abraham,” if we imitate his qualities (CJ 20.3.16). 69 A. C. Lloyd, “Definite Propositions and the Concept of Reference,” in Les Stoïcens et Leur Logique (Paris: Libraire Philosophique J. Vrin, 1978): 251–72, esp. 288. 70 Proclus, Commentary on the Cratylus 16.25–26; qtd. Harl, Philocalie, 421. 71 The Cratylus raises this issue from the opposite direction. On Socrates’ view, the correct name of a thing expresses what it is, which Socrates understands as its unchanging essence. In a brief epilogue to the dialogue, however, Socrates points out that this sort of knowledge would seem to be impossible if the empirical world is always changing and in flux, as Heraclitus taught, for it must “inevitably, in the very instant while we are speaking, become something else and pass away and no longer be what it is” (Cratylus 439d). This coda raises doubts about whether our use of names could ever be adequate to a world in flux, which is one reason why Platonists take the unchanging Forms instead as the object of true knowledge. 72 After reporting the tradition of Democritus’ four objections to the naturalness of names, Proclus offers brief rebuttals to each. His response to the changeability of names is fruitful to compare to Origen’s. The argument from the changing of names, he says, “is a proof that names are natural because we exchange those laid down without authority and outside of nature for others in accordance with nature” (Proclus, Commentary on the Cratylus 16.23–27 = DK 26). For Proclus too, by changing names, he argues, we bring them into accordance with nature. But Proclus seems to assume that by changing names in this way,

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The Stoics sought a similar correspondence between the sage’s dynamic capacity for speech and the changing world about which he speaks. Drawing on a Stoic conception of the function of proper names, Origen identifies a deep affinity between their theory of language and the way Christians must speak in response to the transformative character of Christian life. 2.1.2 Effective Names Origen’s concern with the natural usage of names comes more to the fore in his most explicit discussions of Stoic philosophy of language, which occur in a family of three passages that directly addresses the ancient question of whether names are “by nature” or “by convention.” Each discussion occurs in the same context: his defense of the Christian refusal to call God by the name of any pagan deity, even unto death.73 In an anti-Christian tract, a certain Celsus had argued that “it makes no difference” (μηδὲν διαφέρειν) whether one calls the high God “Zeus,” as the Greeks do, or uses an Indian or an Egyptian name.74 Like many pagans, Celsus had no objection to monotheism of a certain sort; but he criticized for its exclusivism the Jewish and Christian refusal to use pagan proper names for this God. Origen regarded the apparently inclusive “linguistic monotheism”75 upheld by Celsus and his ilk not merely as an academic problem but as an existential challenge to Christian confession. He appeals to philosophy of language “lest anyone should trick us with sophistry or in any way defile our reasoning” by making the martyr’s devotion to the particular names of the Christian God seem superfluous.76 Both Celsus and Origen frame the issue in terms of the assumptions about language displayed in Christian linguistic practice. Origen aims to “defend the conduct of Christians,”77 which Origen regarded as standing in continuity with the linguistic practices recorded in scripture. In the Exhortation to Martyrdom, Origen observes that Christians use no names for God except “those used by the prophets and our Lord and Savior himself,” names such as Sabaoth, Adonai, and Shaddai. There is, he says, “no other custom among those who worship as we do, and among the prophets, and Christ the fulfillment of the Law, and

73 74 75 76 77

we progress from an incorrect name to a correct one; he treats nature, by contrast, as fixed. For Origen, by contrast, we may change from a name that is correct when said at one time to a name that is correct when said at another. That is, if for Proclus we change names because our language has errors that require correction, for Origen we change names because nature itself changes. EM 46, CC 1.25, 5.46. CC 1.24. On this idea, see Janowitz, “Divine Names,” 362. EM 46. Cf. CC 1.25, 5.46: Christians should “prefer to endure all manner of suffering rather than acknowledge Zeus to be God.” CC 1.25.

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his apostles.”78 Scripture also offers explicit second-order teachings and commands about the name of God. In this connection, Origen quotes Exod 3:14, “this is my name, there is no other”79 and he observes that Moses and the prophets explicitly commanded that no names of other gods may be spoken in prayer.80 But although Origen thinks the Christian refusal to use pagan names for God is rooted in scripture, his primary concern is with the intelligibility of Christians continuing this linguistic practice in the present. Origen adapts the Stoic account of names in order to demonstrate this intelligibility. Ultimately, Origen suggests, Christian martyrdom itself reflects a deeper wisdom than one finds in pagan philosophy, expressed not least in the commitment of the martyr to use language in particular ways. I have observed that the Stoic theory of names was noteworthy for not specifying the standard of correctness to which names should be held—and in particular, not assuming that this standard is necessarily mimetic correspondence. Origen is most Stoic precisely because of his similar openness to a variety of standards of naturalness.81 I have already cited his description of the three philosophical schools above which, by distinguishing the Stoic and Epicurean accounts of naturalness, demonstrates his awareness that a variety of natural standards are possible. In his Exhortation to Martyrdom, Origen’s summary of the issue reflects the openness with which he approaches the question of the relation between words and things. Πάλιν τε αὖ ὑπολαμβάνοντές τινες θέσει εἶναι τὰ ὀνόματα καὶ οὐδεμίαν αὐτὰ ἔχειν φύσιν πρὸς τὰ ὑποκείμενα, ὧν ἐστιν ὀνόματα, νομίζουσι μηδὲν διαφέρειν, εἰ λέγοι τις· σέβω τὸν πρῶτον θεὸν ἢ τὸν Δία ἢ Ζῆνα, καὶ εἰ φάσκοι τις· τιμῶ καὶ ἀποδέχομαι τὸν ἥλιον ἢ τὸν Ἀπόλλωνα καὶ τὴν σελήνην ἢ τὴν Ἄρτεμιν καὶ τὸ ἐν τῇ γῇ πνεῦμα ἢ τὴν Δήμητραν καὶ ὅσα ἄλλα φασὶν οἱ Ἑλλήνων σοφοί. 78 79 80 81

Furthermore, there are some who suppose that names are merely conventional and have no relation by nature to the things for which the names stand. And so they think there is no difference whether a person says “I worship the first god” or “Dios” or “Zeus,” and whether a person affirms “I honor and welcome the sun” or “Apollo,” “the moon” or “Artemis,” “the spirit in the earth” or “Demeter,” and all the others of which the sages of the Greeks speak.82

EM 46. EM 46. CC 5.46. Another example of Stoic influence on Origen’s theory of names is his claim that there was an original natural language, spoken by Adam, which he identified as Hebrew and claims was authored by God. Only after Babel did the divine language of Hebrew become the particular possession of the Jews, while the languages of other nations were authored by angels or princes (HomNum 11.4.4). See Janowitz, “Theories of Divine Names,” 362–64. 82 EM 46.

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A “conventional” name is one that “has no relation” to what it names, such that it “makes no difference” which name one uses. The implication is that a “natural” name is one that does have some relation, such that the particular name one uses does make a difference. However, which relation in particular remains to be specified. In each of the passages in which Origen explicitly discusses the question of whether divine names are “by nature,” he says almost nothing about their mimetic function. Rather, he focuses on what he calls “effective names,” names having power to bring about some effect in relation to a specific individual.83 Origen offers several examples of this effective power. First, Origen points to the power of Jesus’ name to expel demons in the context of exorcisms.84 Second, he points to the effective use of divine names in the context of theurgy. In Exhortation to Martyrdom, for example, he argues that “if names were merely conventional, demons or any other invisible powers when summoned would not obey those who know their names and name the names that have been given.”85 The basic concern is that by calling on God according to the name of a pagan god, one would bring about the effect of summoning a demon rather than the true God. Third, Origen points to the power of names in the context of spells and incantations. In these cases too, he argues, it is the name itself which has power, which he proves by pointing to the fact that spells are ineffective if one replaces a name with a translation of its lexical meaning. Each example is designed to show that proper names have power in relation to specific individuals, whether human, demon, or divine. This power, he emphasizes, adheres in the physical structure of each particular name, rather than any translatable semantic content that name might also have. In EM 46, he makes this point in the context of his discussion of theurgy: νυνὶ δὲ φθόγγοι τινὲς καὶ συλλαβαὶ καὶ μετὰ προσπνεύσεως ἢ ψιλότητος ἢ ἐκτάσεως ἢ συστολῆς ὀνομασίαι ἀπαγγελλόμεναι ἄγουσι τάχα τινὶ φύσει ἀθεωρήτῳ ἡμῖν τοὺς καλουμένους.

But as it is, certain sounds and syllables and expressions, aspirated or unaspirated and with a long or a short vowel, when they are spoken aloud, by some unseen nature immediately bring to us those who are summoned.86

In Contra Celsum 1.24, Origen makes the same point when discussing the power of spells:

83 84 85 86

CC 1.24. CC 1.25, noting that he had already discussed this issue earlier in CC 1.8. CC 1.24–5. EM 46.

56 Ἔτι δ’ εἰς τὸν περὶ ὀνομάτων τόπον λεκτέον ὅτι οἱ περὶ τὴν χρῆσιν τῶν ἐπῳδῶν δεινοὶ ἱστοροῦσιν, ὅτι τὴν αὐτὴν ἐπῳδὴν εἰπόντα μὲν τῇ οἰκείᾳ διαλέκτῳ ἔστιν ἐνεργῆσαι ὅπερ ἐπαγγέλλεται ἡ ἐπῳδή· μεταλαβόντα δὲ εἰς ἄλλην οἱανδηποτοῦν φωνὴν ἔστιν ἰδεῖν ἄτονον καὶ οὐδὲν δυναμένην. Οὕτως οὐ τὰ σημαινόμενα κατὰ τῶν πραγμάτων ἀλλ’ αἱ τῶν φωνῶν ποιότητες καὶ ἰδιότητες ἔχουσί τι δυνατὸν ἐν αὐταῖς πρὸς τάδε τινὰ ἢ τάδε.

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And one should also say on the subject of names that those skilled in the use of spells testify that speaking the spell itself in its own language is able to bring about what the spell is claimed to do. But if it is transferred to any other language, it is seen to be weak and able to accomplish nothing. Thus it is not what is signified about certain things, but rather the qualities and properties of the sounds that have in themselves a certain power to do this or that.87

Origen expands upon his claim that a translated name can “accomplish nothing” in Contra Celsum 5.45, clarifying that this extends not only to divine names but also to the names of human beings like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, or Israel, particularly when used in connection with God. The phrase “God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob,” for example, is not effective when translated into Greek, which Origen gives as: “God of the chosen father of the echo, God of laughter, and God of him who strikes the heel.” Origen’s argument turns on the distinction between proper names and common nouns. It is only the proper names of pagan gods that Christians reject; the use of the common noun “God” is perfectly legitimate in whichever language it is translated. In Contra Celsum 5.46, Origen draws a distinction between a proper name (κυρίῳ ὀνόματι), that of the Scythian deity Pappaeus, and a common noun (τὸ προσηγορικὸν), “God.” Λεγέτωσαν δὲ καὶ Σκύθαι τὸν Παπ­α­ ῖον θεὸν εἶναι τὸν ἐπὶ πᾶσιν· ἀλλ’ ἡμεῖς οὐ πεισόμεθα, τιθέντες μὲν τὸν ἐπὶ πᾶσι θεόν, ὡς δὲ φίλον τῷ λαχόντι τὴν Σκυθῶν ἐρημίαν καὶ τὸ ἔθνος αὐτῶν καὶ τὴν διάλεκτον οὐκ ὀνομάζοντες τὸν θεὸν ὡς κυρίῳ ὀνόματι τῷ

And let the Scythians say that Pappaeus is the God of all; but we will not assent. For we grant that there is a God of all, but we do not name God by the proper name “Pappaeus,” but regard it as agreeable to the [demon] who occupies the desert of Scythians and their people and

87 CC 1.24. The phrase “qualities and properties” [ποιότητες καὶ ἰδιότητες] is an allusion to the Stoic definition of a unique individual as “peculiarly qualified” (Syrianus, On Aristotle’s Metpahysics 28.18–19 = LS 28G = SVF 2.398; Simplicius, On Aristotle’s Categories, 222.30– 33 = LS 278H = SVF 2.378). The suggestion is that the unsubstitutable individuality of the sounds that constitute a proper name are an icon of the individuality of that which they name. So there is a kind of mimesis here, but it is the singular use of the name that imitates the singularity of that which it names.

Origen and Stoic Logic

Παπαῖον. Σκυθιστὶ γὰρ τὸ προσηγορικὸν τὸν θεὸν καὶ αἰγυπτιστὶ καὶ πάσῃ διαλέκτῳ, ᾗ ἕκαστος ἐντέθραπται, ὀνομάζων οὐχ ἁμαρτήσεται.

57 language. However, the one who uses the appellative name “God” in Scythian or Egyptian or in any other language in which he has been raised, will not be sinning.88

While the proper name “Pappaeus” establishes a specific relation to a particular (demonic) individual to whom the name is suited, the common noun “God” establishes no such relation. In Contra Celsum 1.24, he offers a similar defense of the Christian use of “τὸ κοινὸν ὄνομα τὸ θεὸς” (“the common noun θεος”), which Christians use “ἀορίστως” (indefinitely). A common noun like God is indefinite in the sense that it does not in itself determine which individual or individuals possess the quality signified by the word. A Christian may use the term “God,” as pagans do, because in doing so they leave open which individual god it is that truly possesses the quality of divinity. Origen’s terminology reflects the Stoic distinction between proper names and common nouns that we examined in the previous section. By identifying an effective power of names, however, Origen implicitly modifies the Stoic view. For the Stoics, both common nouns and proper names fail to make a sentence “definite;” that is, neither reliably identifies a single existent individual as the subject of a proposition.89 Only deictic terms like demonstratives (e.g. “this,” “that”) and first/second person pronouns (e.g. “I”, “you”), by directly identifying an individual that appears to the senses, succeed in denoting a definite individual.90 But if, as Origen argue, a name reliably effects something in relation to a particular individual being, this consistent perlocutionary effect would seem to succeed in establishing a definite referent. This is why, in uttering a name like “Zeus,” one cannot help but speak of the individual demon who, under that name, masquerades as the true God, even if one intends to do otherwise. Support for this interpretation can be found in Origen’s discussion of the Tetragrammaton in his fourteenth Homily on Numbers. Numbers 22:9 and 20 say that “God [ὁ θεός] came to Balaam.” Origen finds it troubling that God would appear to this false prophet, and so he asks whether it is possible that this text refers to some god other than the God of Israel.

88 CC 5.46. 89 Lloyd, “Grammar,” 285. 90 See Paolo Crivelli, “Indefinite Propositions and Anaphora in Stoic Logic,” Phronesis 39, no. 2 (1994): 187–206, and my discussion of deixis below, 116–19.

58 In Hebraeorum litteris nomen Dei, hoc est Deus, vel Dominus, diverse scribi dicitur. Aliter enim scribitur Deus, quicunque deus: aliter Deus ipse, de quo dicitur: “Audi, Israel, Dominus Deus tuus, Deus unus est.” Iste ergo Deus Israel, Deus unus et creator omnium, certo quodam litterarum signo scribitur, quod apud illos tetragrammaton dicitur. Si quando ergo sub hoc signo in Scripturis scribitur Deus, nulla est dubitatio quin de Deo vero et mundi creatore dicatur. Si quando vero aliis, id est communibus litteris scribitur, incertum habetur utrum de Deo vero, an de aliquo ex illis dicatur, de quibus Apostolus dicit.

Chapter 1

In the literature of the Hebrews, the name of God, that is, “God” or “Lord,” is said to be written in different ways. For sometimes when “god” is written it means any god, but other times it means God himself of whom it is said, “Hear O Israel, the Lord your God is one God” (Deut 6:4). Thus that God of Israel, the one God and Creator of all things, is written with a certain determinate sign comprised of letters, which they call the “Tetragrammaton.” So whenever God is written in the scriptures by this sign, there is no doubt that it is said of the true God and Creator of the world. But whenever it is written in other letters, that is, common ones, it is considered uncertain whether it is said of the true God or one of those gods of whom the apostle speaks.91

Here too Origen observes that the word “god” in itself is indeterminate and thus permits ambiguity as to its referent: it may refer either to “the true God or one of those [false] gods of whom the apostle speaks.”92 By contrast, Origen argues that a “determinate sign” for “the name of God”—the Tetragrammaton—is something like a rigid designator that always fixes the referent of a sentence as the God of Israel. This seems to be one of the powers Origen ascribes to proper names in Contra Celsum. Origen’s account of effective names has implications for the kind of wisdom entailed in knowing these names: it is a wisdom derived from empirical experience with the use of these names. The sage must examine the relation between words and things to discover the causal relations between them. This is why, when discussing the analogous power of spells, Origen says,

91 HomNum 14.1.3. Trans. Scheck, edited. 92 The reference is to 1 Cor 8:5–6, as Origen goes on to show.

Origen and Stoic Logic

Οἱ περὶ τὴν χρῆσιν τῶν ἐπῳδῶν δεινοὶ ἱστοροῦσιν, ὅτι τὴν αὐτὴν ἐπῳδὴν εἰπόντα μὲν τῇ οἰκείᾳ διαλέκτῳ ἔστιν ἐνεργῆσαι ὅπερ ἐπαγγέλλεται ἡ ἐπῳδή· μεταλαβόντα δὲ εἰς ἄλλην οἱανδηποτοῦν φωνὴν ἔστιν ἰδεῖν ἄτονον καὶ οὐδὲν δυναμένην.

59 Those skilled in the use of spells relate that when one says the spell in its own language, it brings about what it promises; but when it is translated into any other language, it is seen to be weak and able to do nothing.93

Origen appeals to the empirical experience—that which one can “see” (ἰδεῖν)— of those who use spells. The verb ἱστορεῶ, “relate” or “recount,” was, among other things, a technical term in scientific discussions of inference, referring to a person’s testimony to that which they had experienced themselves.94 These experts know something about the effects of these names that they have learned empirically. Moreover, since it is not the abstract structure of a name but its concrete embodiment that has efficacy, the power of names can only be observed when actually uttered. Consequently, expertise with the use of divine names is highly context specific. Each name operates in a manner that is specific to the language and locale of a people. Διὸ καὶ δύναται ταῦτα τὰ ὀνόματα, λεγόμενα μετά τινος τοῦ συμφυοῦς αὐτοῖς εἱρμοῦ, ἄλλα δὲ κατὰ αἰγυπ­ τίαν ἐκφερόμενα φωνὴν ἐπί τινων δαιμόνων, τῶν τάδε μόνα δυναμένων, καὶ ἄλλα κατὰ τὴν Περσῶν διάλεκτον ἐπὶ ἄλλων δυνάμεων, καὶ οὕτω καθ’ ἕκαστον τῶν ἐθνῶν, εἰς χρείας τινὰς παραλαμβάνεσθαι. Καὶ οὕτως εὑρεθήσεται τῶν ἐπὶ γῆς δαιμόνων, λαχόντων διαφόρους τόπους, φέρεσθαι τὰ ὀνόματα οἰκείως ταῖς κατὰ τόπον καὶ ἔθνος διαλέκτοις.

93 CC 1.25. 94 E.g. in Galen, On the Sects, 2. 95 CC 5.46.

Therefore these names can be used for a specific purpose, when said in a certain connection natural to them; and so also with other names according to the Egyptian language, which are invoked upon certain demons who are able to do specific things; and so with other names according to the Persian dialect, invoked upon other powers, and thus according to each of the nations. Thus also it will be discovered that the names of the demons of the earth, who occupy different places [i.e. as the tutelary deities], are appropriate to the dialects belonging to each place and people.95

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Each name has its own particular power because it operates in relation to real, concrete entities, albeit demonic ones.96 In sum, there are various powers of divine names that go beyond their mere conventional denotation in a particular language. These names have causal power in relation to that which they name, a relation which proves that these names are not merely conventional but rather natural, in the broader Stoic sense of this term. Consequently, one need not deny that there is wisdom implicit in the linguistic practices of the martyrs and in the practices of the scriptures that they are imitating. 2.2 Meaning Origen also drew on the Stoic theory of meaning.97 In a passage preserved in the Philocalia, Origen appeals to the Stoic theory to account for two related features of scriptural usage. First, many sentences of scripture are solecistic (i.e. ungrammatical), and thus seem to violate basic rules of correct speech. Second, the apostles call attention to their uneducated and ineloquent speech to argue that the very weakness of their language is a proof of the power of God. Origen proposes that this description of apostolic speech offers a key to the interpretation of scriptural solecisms: the reader must examine not only the utterance and the grammatical rules that govern it, but also the things about which an utterance is spoken, wherein God’s power is displayed. Origen expresses this insight in the language of Stoic philosophy: only by attending to things can the reader understand “the things signified” (σημαινόμενα) by a scriptural text. The text reads: Ὁ διαιρῶν παρ᾽ ἑαυτῷ φωνὴν καὶ σημαινόμενα καὶ πράγματα, καθ᾽ ὧν κεῖται τὰ σημαινόμενα, οὐ προσκόψει τῷ τῶν φωνῶν σολοικισμῷ, ἐπὰν

The one who distinguishes between the utterance, the things signified, and the states of affairs to which the things signified are referred, will not stumble at

96 Interestingly, this argument shares with Epicurus the insight that introducing causality into an account of the function of names helps explain cultural-linguistic difference. For both, different peoples use different names in response to the different conditions specific to their own contexts. 97 For discussions of Origen’s use of the Stoic lekton, see Louis Roberts, “Origen and Stoic Logic,” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association, vol. 101 (1970): 434–44, esp. 433–7; J. M. Rist, “The importance of Stoic logic in the Contra Celsum,” in Neoplatonism and Early Christian Thought: Essays in Honour of A. H. Armstrong, ed. A. H. Armstrong, H. J. Blumenthal and R. A. Markus (London: Variorum Publications, 1981), 64–78, esp. 76–77; Berchman, Middle Platonism, 205–6 and 210; Chin, “Christian Naming,” 410–20; and the texts cited below discussing Philocalia 4.

Origen and Stoic Logic

ἐρευνῶν εὑρίσκῃ τὰ πράγματα, καθ᾽ ὧν κεῖται αἱ φωναὶ, ὑγιῆ - καὶ μάλιστα ἐπὰν ὁμολογῶσιν οἱ ἅγιοι ἄνδρες τὸν λόγον αὐτῶν καὶ τὸ κήρυγμα οὐκ ἐν πειθοῖς σοφίας εἶναι λόγων, ἀλλ᾽ ἐν ἀποδείξει πνεύματος καὶ δυνάμεως.

61 a solecism in the utterances, if when he investigates, he finds the things to which the utterances are referred to be sound— and especially if the holy men confess that their word and preaching is “not with persuasive words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power” (1 Cor 2:4).98

Origen’s remarks are provoked by a “solecism in the utterances” of scripture. A “solecism” was standardly defined as an error in the combination of words and contrasted with a “barbarism” as an error in a single word.99 Unfortunately, the particular solecism to which Origen refers here is unknown. This passage was excerpted, the Philocalists tell us, from the lost fourth book of his Commentary on John. Since the extant second book comments only as far as John 1:7, and the next extant book, the sixth, begins with exegesis of John 1:19, Origen’s comments are probably a response to a solecism in the text of the first chapter of John’s gospel between verses 8 and 18. Marguerite Harl proposes verse 12 as the best candidate: “ὅσοι δὲ ἔλαβον αὐτόν, ἔδωκεν αὐτοῖς ἐξουσίαν τέκνα Θεοῦ γενέσθαι …” (But as many as received him, he gave to them authority to become children of God).100 Pour un lecteur attentif au moindre détail de la rédaction des textes, l’anacoluthe est remarquée: après une proposition qui donne déjà un sujet à la phrase (ὅσοι), la proposition principale suppose un autre sujet pour le verbe ἔδοκεν. Bien qu’il s’agisse là d’un tour qui n’est pas incorrect, il passait pour tel aux yeux d’Origène.101

98 Philocalia 4.1. On this important passage, see Harl, “Origène et la sémantique du langage biblique,” 182–83; Harl, Philocalie 1–20, 274–281; Neuschäfer, Origenes, 213–14. 99 See David Blank, trans. with introduction and commentary, Against the Grammarians, by Sextus Empiricus (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 233–4 and the texts quoted there. Apollonius Dyscolus defines a “barbarism” as “an error in a single word” and a “solecism” as “errors in the grammatical combination of the words in a phrase” (Syntax 3.4.8). A scholium to Dionysius Thrax has, “Solecism is an error concerning the syntax of the parts of the sentence [λόγος] … barbarism is an error of pronunciation occurring in a word [λέξις]” (Sch. DThr. 446.35–447.28). See also Polybius, On Barbarism and Solecism 283.1–5, 285.10–11; Anonymous, On Barbarism and Solecism 290.1–2, 9; Ps-Herodian On Solecism and Barbarism 309.1–5. All these are qtd. Blank, Grammarians, 233–4. 100 Harl, Philocalie, 274–75. 101 Ibid., 275.

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In confirmation of this hypothesis, Harl points out that in one of the catenae to John, Origen quotes this text in a more grammatical form: “Ὅσοι δὲ ἔλαβον αὐτὸν ἔσχον ἐξουσίαν τέκνα θεοῦ γενέσθαι” (But as many as received him had authority to become children of God).102 Even if this was the solecism on which Origen was commenting, however, his specific exegetical remarks have been lost. It is clear from the selection in the Philocalia that some regarded the solecisms of the Christian scriptures as a threat to their intelligibility. Origen appeals to the Stoic theory of meaning to demonstrate that it is possible to understand the meaning even of an ungrammatical utterance if one considers it in light of its subject matter. To show this, Origen invokes a distinction between three elements of language: the utterance (φωνὴ), the things signified (σημαινόμενα), i.e. the sense, and the states of affairs to which the things signified are referred (πράγματα), i.e. the referent.103 Using this terminology, Origen argues that the interpreter should “investigate” or “research” “the things” (τὰ πράγματα) about which the text speaks, which may prove to be “sound” (ὑγιής) even if the text is not. By this he seems to mean that because one has or may acquire independent knowledge of what a solecistic text like John 1:12 is speaking about, one can work out what the author is trying to say. We do this sort of thing all the time in ordinary conversation, e.g. when someone misspeaks. Origen’s remarks here should not be understood as giving instructions about how to interpret a solecism to one who does not believe doing so is possible, but rather as analyzing how this happens, as it obviously does. Moreover, his point is not that solecisms are the only sort of utterance that we interpret with reference to the subject matter. Rather, solecisms exemplify the more general fact that the interpretation of words requires an investigation of things as well. One may infer this from the fact that Origen turns from a narrow focus on solecisms to a broader discussion of Paul’s apostolic pedagogy. In 1 Corinthians, Paul directs the readers of his letters to look past the words themselves to the realities that the Spirit has worked in the Corinthian community, which constitute a “demonstration of the Spirit and of power.” Paul implies that understanding his letters requires more than merely grammatical facility. As in the

102 CJ fr. 7. 103 Origen’s influential predecessors Philo and Clement each draw a distinction along the same lines. Philo makes a clearly Stoic distinction between τὰ ὀνόματα, τὰ σημαινόμενα, and τὸ τύγχανον or τὸ πρᾶγμα (Leg. All. 2.15 = SVF 2.166). Clement distinguishes between τὰ ὀνόματα, τὰ νοήματα, and τὰ ὑποκείμενα πράγματα (Stromata. 8.8.23.1). Since Clement refers to the sense as a “concept” which “imitates” the things, however, the operative theory of language would seem to be Aristotelian.

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interpretation of solecisms, readers of Paul’s letters need extra-textual knowledge of their subject matter. Origen invokes a philosophical theory of meaning, then, to show that meaning in general is not merely a function of words in isolation, but rather of words in relation to the things about which they speak. Most scholars have argued that Origen is appropriating in particular the Stoic theory of the lekton.104 Origen’s key terms φωνὴ (utterance), σημαινόμενα (signifieds), and πράγματα (states of affairs) are indeed consistent with the Stoic distinction, though an Aristotelian might also speak in this way. A surer sign of Stoic influence is the procedural consequence he draws from this distinction. Exhorting someone to “investigate the things” would have had philosophical overtones,105 and it was the Stoics who sought to articulate a theory of meaning that would account for the need for this kind of investigation. As we saw earlier, the Stoics took a particular interest in the interpretation and logical function of solecisms, and Chrysippus even anticipated Origen in arguing for tolerance of solecistic speech. Origen also suggests that solecisms have the positive function of inviting readers to engage in an investigation and a demonstration of things, an activity more characteristic of the wisdom of philosophers than the eloquence of orators. Barbarism and solecism together were generally understood to exhaust the possible errors of speech, and they represent the contrary of those ideals of grammatical correctness and linguistic purity referred to as “Hellenism” or “Latinity,” which were foundational virtues of the orator. Drawing on the 104 See, for example, Harl, Philocalie, 276; Neuschäfer, Origenes als Philologe, 212–13; and Chin, “Origen and Christian Naming,” 413–415. To be sure, neither here nor anywhere else in his corpus does Origen unambiguously use the distinctively Stoic term lekton. The only possible text of which I am aware is a passage in his Homily on Ps 80, in which he uses the word λεκτὰ in parallel with σημαινόμενα. Probably it simply means “what is said” rather than bearing its technical Stoic sense (HomPs 80.1.3 = Pitra 80.1 = PG 17.149). 105 It was a frequent refrain of Plato that the sophistic orator knew only techniques of persuasion, not the actual “facts” (πράγματα) about which he sought to persuade (e.g. Gorgias 459b–c). In the Ion, Plato presses the same point in relation to interpreters of poetic texts. It was common to regard Homer in particular as expert in all human knowledge and to infer from this that, as Blank puts it, “those expert in Homeric poetry will be expert in everything” (Blank, Grammarians, 112; cf. the texts cited there). The classical rhapsode purported to be an expert in “all arts, all human affairs concerned with virtue and vice, and in divine matters” (Republic 598de, qtd. Blank, Grammarians, 112), as Cicero later argued that the orator needed knowledge of all things to be able to discourse about anything (On the Orator 2.2; cf. Aristotle Rhetoric 1.2, 1355b26–35; qtd. Blank, Grammarians, 330). So too it was often claimed that the grammarian had to know a variety of other arts (e.g. Quintilian, IO 1.4.4–5), and indeed, according to a preface to Thrax, that the “functions” [ἔργα] of grammar are ultimately all human knowledge (Sch. DThr. 115.15).

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Pauline and the philosophical critique of mere eloquence, however, Origen turns the objection to solecism on its head. Scriptural usage employs solecism as a challenge to Hellenistic ideals of conventional correctness and eloquence. Ἅτε δὲ οὐκ ἀσυναίσθητοι τυγχάνοντες οἱ ἀπόστολοι τῶν ἐν οἷς προσκόπτουσι, καὶ περὶ ἃ οὐκ ἠσχόληνται, φασὶν ἰδιῶται εἶναι τῷ λόγῳ, ἀλλ’ οὐ τῇ γνώσει· νομιστέον γὰρ αὐτὸ οὐχ ὑπὸ Παύλου μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ ὑπὸ τῶν λοιπῶν ἀποστόλων λέγεσθαι ἄν. ἡμεῖς δὲ καὶ τό· Ἔχομεν δὲ τὸν θησαυρὸν τοῦτον ἐν ὀστρακίνοις σκεύεσιν, ἵνα ἡ ὑπερβολὴ τῆς δυνάμεως ᾖ τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ μὴ ἐξ ἡμῶν·

But because the apostles were not ignorant of the things in which they stumbled and to which they gave no concern, they say that they are “simple in word but not in knowledge” (2 Cor 11:6)—for one should suppose that this would be said not only by Paul but also by the other apostles. And we too “have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the abundance of power might be from God and not from us” (2 Cor 4:7).106

In this and the surrounding passage Origen sketches what Harl refers to as “les deux langages”—a language of human wisdom, “caractérisé par un style (φράσις) qui a de la beauté (κάλλος), de l’ornement (περιβολή), de la cohérence (ἀκολουθία), un bel arrangement de mots (σύνθεσις λέξεως ou λέξεων)” and in contrast, the inspired language of the apostles, which though poor (εὐτελής) and an object of derision by the Greeks (εὐκαταφρόνητος), exercises a great power and attraction over human beings.107 Despite or even because of its simple and solecistic style, the language of scripture is the vehicle for divine persuasive power to operate through its words. The same simple style, Origen remarks, should be imitated by Christians in the present as well: “we too,” he says, speak in this way. The apostolic “language” is not limited to the authors of scripture, but characterizes the way Christians should continue to speak. In the example above, Origen seems to grant that solecism is an unintentional consequence of the apostles’ lack of Greek education. This is not, however, Origen’s only way of framing scriptural solecisms. Bernard Neuschäfer has sketched two basic strategies Origen adopts,108 corresponding to the traditional contrast between the unintentional solecisms of the uneducated and the intentional solecisms of poets exercising poetic “license.”109 Often 106 Philocalia 4.2. 107 Harl, Philocalie, 279–80. 108 Neuschäfer, Origenes als Philologe, 212–5. 109 Strictly speaking, in this case the ungrammatical utterance is no longer considered a solecism.

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Origen frames the solecisms of scripture as intentional violations of conventional forms of speech in order to express a deeper wisdom, in effect treating scripture as a kind of philosophical poetry. An example is Origen’s interpretation of Hos 12:4, which reads: … ἔκλαυσαν καὶ ἐδεήθησάν μου, ἐν τῷ οἴκῳ Ων εὕροσάν με. καὶ ἐκεῖ ἐλαλήθη πρὸς αὐτόν.

“They wept and made a request of me; in the house of On they found me.” And there he spoke to him.

In a fragment of his Commentary on Hosea preserved as Philocalia 8, Origen argues that the text shifts solecistically from plural to singular. Origen assumes that the speaker to which the final sentence refers is the same as the quoted speaker in the first sentence, namely, the prophet Hosea. But then why does the text describe his interlocutors first in the plural (“they wept … they requested … they found”) and then in the singular (“to him”)?110 Origen argues that despite its appearance of solecism, there is a deeper reason for this grammatical shift in number: it corresponds to a change undergone by the community. In the course of speaking to the prophet, Origen argues, the community finds God and by doing so, changes from being divided (and hence appropriately described in plural terms) to being united (and hence appropriately described as singular). When one takes into account the changing character of the community to which this utterance referred, the apparent solecism is appropriate, and indeed it hints at a deep insight into the effects of conversion on communal life. Although he regards this solecism as intentional, however, Origen’s procedures here are no different than what he commends in Philocalia 4. Here too he investigates the things—communities and the changes they undergo—in order to understand the function of the text. Moreover, there is a certain analogy here with Origen’s interpretation of scriptural names. There too Origen was confident that some relation obtains between names and things by virtue of which they are correct, but what that relation is varies and must be determined on a case by case basis. So it is with scriptural solecisms. Though each has a meaning and a wise purpose—their use, we might say, is “natural”—there is no single rule for determining how a solecism will function in any given case.111 110 This is, apparently, a so-called “solecism of number” (Neuschäfer, Origenes als Philologe, 212). 111 For this reason, there is no need to see a contradiction between Origen’s treatment of unintentional solecisms in Philocalia 4 and intentional solecisms as in the Commentary on Hosea, as Neuschäfer does (Origenes als Philologe, 213). There is a contradiction here only if one assumes that every solecistic utterance must be appropriate in the same way,

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2.3 Logic In the previous sections I documented Origen’s conviction that scriptural language displays a wisdom that is not exhausted by grammatical or conventional norms. Learning to interpret wise discourse of this kind requires the reader to develop an analogous wisdom of her own, which requires not only knowledge of words but also of things. The Stoics called the science of wise speech “logic,” as we have seen, the science of λόγος which ultimately came to include everything one can do with language. So it is not surprising that when Origen seeks a Greek term for the science of language by which he interprets the scripture, he opts for the term “logic.” As for the Stoics, so too for Origen: logic is the science of language governed by wisdom. In what follows, I focus on his two most explicit discussions of “logic” (called variously by Origen “logices,” “rational disciplina,” “τὸν λογικὸν τόπον,” and “τῶν λογικῶν”): his introduction to his commentary on the Song of Songs, preserved in Rufinus’ Latin translation and a portion of his commentary on Gen 1:16, preserved in Greek in the Philocalia.112 In both cases, he tends to characterize logic as a discipline focused on language and necessary for the interpretation of scripture.113 In Rufinus’ translation of Origen’s introduction to the Commentary on the Song of Songs, he says: Est enim logices, et velut nos dicimus rationalis, quae verborum dictorumque videtur continere rationes, proprietatesque, et improprietates, generaque, et species, et figuras singulorum quoque edocere dictorum …

For it is logic (which is, as we say, rational) that contains the meaning of words and utterances, and that teaches about proper and improper meanings, genera and species, and the tropes of every single utterance …114

an assumption akin to those Platonists who assume every word must be correct according to the same standard. But what is characteristic of Origen’s exegesis is the investigation and discovery of the various possible relations that might make an utterance appropriate to its subject matter. In Origen’s view, scripture contains solecisms in part to provoke just this sort of investigation. 112 See also Philocalia 25.2, FragLam 14, HomGen 6.3, 14.3, HomEx 3.3; and cf. Harl, Philocalie, 110–118 and Robért Somos, Logic and Argumentation in Origen (Münster: Aschendorff Vorlag, 2015), 13–22. 113 See also CM 17.7. For Origen’s appeal to “logic” in the context of the ancient philosophical curriculum, see Marguerite Harl, “Les trois livres de Salomon et les trois parties de la philosophie dans les prologues des Commentaires sur le Cantique des Cantiques,” in Texte und Textkritik, ed. Jürgen Dummer (TU 133; Berlin, 1987), 249–269; Somos, Logic and Argumentation, Chapter 1. 114 CCt Prol.3.

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Later he identifies logic as that discipline to which Solomon alludes in the beginning of Proverbs, when he exhorts his readers to attend carefully to the words of the wise. Et ideo dicit innocentibus per sapientiam dari astutiam, sine dubio ne in verbo Dei decipiantur fraude sophistica. Sed in hoc mihi videtur rationalis disciplinae meminisse, per quam doctrina verborum dictorumque significantiae discernuntur, et uniuscujusque sermonis proprietas certa cum ratione distinguitur.

And therefore [Solomon] says that subtlety is given to the innocent by wisdom, doubtless lest they be deceived in the Word of God by sophistical fraud. But in this, he seems to indicate the discipline of logic, by which the teaching about the significations of words and utterances is discerned, and the proper sense of any particular word is reliably distinguished by reason.115

Origen describes logic as a discipline focused on linguistic meaning (rationes, significantiae) in various aspects: proper and improper meanings; terms that refer to genus or species; and “figuras,” presumably a translation of τρόπος.116 He also emphasizes that logic is itself part of the “wisdom” by which the innocent interpret scripture. In Philocalia 14, Origen offers a similar description of logic in the course of an exegetical discussion. Gen 1:16–17 say that God creates the sun and moon “εἰς ἀρχὰς” [to be a ruler] of the day and the night respectively. In verse 18, it adds that God set them in place “εἰς τὸ ἄρχειν” [to rule]. Origen argues that by describing their creation first by using nouns and only later by using verbs, the text hints at the ontological priority of substances over their activities.117 Recognizing this, he says, requires learning from οἷς ἐμέλησε τῆς τῶν σημαινομένων ἐξετάσεως, ἐν τοῖς τόποις τοῖς ἔχουσι συζυγίαν προσηγοριῶν καὶ κατηγορημάτων …

those who concern themselves with the investigation of things signified, where they deal with the derivation of appellatives and predicates …118

115 Ibid. 116 As in Quintilian, IO 9.1.9. See the discussion of Origen’s interpretation of tropes in Neuschäfer, Origen als Philologe, 218–27. 117 He rightly observes that Aquila’s “most precise” translation preserves the same formal structure in different words, “authority” (ἐξουσίαν) / “to have authority” (ἐξουσιάζειν). 118 Philocalia 14.1.

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Later he expands upon this discipline that investigates “things signified,” explicitly designating the discipline he has in mind as logic (“τὸν λογικὸν τόπον”): Ἐπιστησάτω δ’ ὁ δυσπαραδέκτως ἔχων τούτων, εἰ δύναται ἠθικὸν πρόβλημα ἢ φυσιολογούμενον ἢ θεολογούμενον, χωρὶς ἀκριβείας σημαινομένων καὶ τῶν κατὰ τὸν λογικὸν τόπον τρανουμένων, ὃν δεῖ τρόπον παρίστασθαι. τί γὰρ ἄτοπον ἀκούειν τῶν κυριολεκτουμένων ἐν ταῖς διαλέκτοις, καὶ ἐφιστάνειν ἐπιμελῶς τοῖς σημαινομένοις; ἔστι δὲ ὅπου παρὰ τὴν ἄγνοιαν τῶν λογικῶν μεγάλως περιπίπτομεν, μὴ καθαίροντες τὰς ὁμωνυμίας καὶ ἀμφιβολίας καὶ καταχρήσεις καὶ κυριολεξίας καὶ διαστολάς …

If any one doubts the soundness of the preceding reasoning, let him consider whether a problem in ethics, or physics, or theology, can be properly conceived without precision about what is signified, and without making them clear according to logic. What absurdity is there in listening to those who determine the exact meaning of words in [various] languages, and in carefully attending to what is signified? And we sometimes through ignorance of logical matters fall into great errors, because we do not clear up homonyms, ambiguities, extended applications of words, proper literal meanings, and divisions of punctuation …119

The list of logical issues is similar to that in the Commentary on the Song of Songs, but Origen adds to the list homonyms, ambiguities, and διαστολάς, “divisions,” which probably refers to decisions about punctuation.120 Some scholars, noting that Origen’s description of logic focuses on language, have argued that Origen has in view grammar, or at least a science of language less expansive than Stoic logic.121 Clearly Origen’s “logic” includes the kinds of 119 Philocalia 14.2. 120 Later in the same passage he clarifies that he is referring to “τὴν διαστολὴν τῶν στιγμῶν.” 121 Harl, “Les trois livres,” 252 n. 17 refers to Origen’s logic as a “science du langage.” Martens translates the term in Origen’s Commentary on the Song of Songs as “linguistics” (Origen and Scripture, 79). Martens comments on the phrase “ἡ λογικὴ τέχνη” that it “often encompased in antiquity far more than what is customarily meant by logic today. ‘Linguistics’ is probably a more helpful translation since it catches better the wide spectrum of this ancient scholarly discipline: it certainly included inquiry into the patterns of argument expressed through language (resembling our logic), but it also comprised an assessment of language itself, that is, the sorts of issues philologists addressed” (79). Martens’ description of ancient logic dovetails with mine, but it does not justify the translation “linguistics,” which is a modern term for a science of language as distinguished from inquiry into patterns of argument. “Logic” remains the best translation, for even in our own context “logic” need not refer narrowly to formal logical inquiry into patterns of argument, as

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issues studied by grammarians, but as we have seen, Stoic logicians also dealt with grammatical issues of the sort Origen mentions.122 They argued that philosophical logic rather than merely grammar was necessary for the interpretation of poetry; Origen invokes logic in the context of a commentary on Song of Songs, which Origen identifies as a work of drama.123 The logic he has in view is plainly a philosophical activity, for Origen frames it as part of the traditional philosophical curriculum: Generales disciplinae quibus ad rerum scientiam pervenitur tres sunt, quas Graeci ethicam, physicam epopticen apellaverunt  … Nonnulli sane apud Graecos etiam logicen … quarto in numero posuere. Alii non extrinsecus eam, sed per has tres quas supra memoravimus disciplinas innexam consertamque per omne corpus esse dixerunt … quam utique disciplinam, non tam separari quam inseri caeteris convenit et intexi.

There are three general disciplines through which one attains scientific knowledge of things, which the Greeks called ethics, physics, and epoptics … There are indeed not a few among the Greeks who also include logic as a fourth … Others have said that [logic] is not a separate discipline, but is rather interwoven through these three abovementioned disciplines and joined with them as one body … This discipline should certainly not thus be separated from the others but connected and interwoven with them.124

Origen then correlates the disciplines of ethics, physics, and theory with the three traditional books of Solomon, from which, Origen claims, this philosophical curriculum ultimately derives. Proverbs corresponds to ethics, Ecclesiastes to physics (because it teaches the vanity of the natural world), and Song of Martens supposes. German idealists, phenomenologists, and pragmatists all tend to use the word “logic” in a much more expansive sense. By translating “linguistics,” Martens obscures the fact that the nature of “logic” as a discipline (and of reason its object) is itself one of the things at issue in using the term, then and now. 122 Diogenes Laertius’ list of topics in Stoic dialectic included most of the elements Origen mentions here: ambiguity, definitions, genera and species, and predicates. Origen also goes on to emphasize the use of logic in resisting “sophistical arguments” (thus rightly Somos, Logic and Argumentation, 15–16); the analysis of sophisms was certainly a major feature of Stoic dialectic as well. 123 CCt Prol.3. See also CC 6.7, a fascinating parallel in which Origen argues on the basis of several scriptural wisdom texts that “dialectic” is necessary for the interpretation of scripture. 124 CCt Prol.3. Translation my own. I have consulted the translations by Lawson op. cit. and Martens, Origen and Scripture, 79.

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Songs to epoptics. “Epoptics” (based on a well-established emendation of the term enoptica which appears in the manuscripts) was a term used by Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch, and Clement, to refer to the grasp of spiritual mysteries, which for Origen is the aim of the exegesis of the Song of Songs.125 A slightly different tripartite division of philosophy into logic, ethics, and physics, which originated with Xenocrates in the Platonic Academy,126 was adopted in some form by many Platonists and nearly all the Stoics.127 In several texts, Origen himself refers to this more traditional triad,128 and Origen is obviously alluding to it here as well. The fact that Origen has replaced “logic” with “epoptics”, however, poses certain difficulties, for besides Origen’s own claim to the contrary, there is no evidence that any Greek philosopher used the tripartite scheme of ethics, physics, and theology.129 Most likely the triad of disciplines listed by Origen is his own invention. We can identify several reasons he might have modified the elements of the traditional curriculum. Origen could not include theology within physics, as the Stoics did, since he rejected the idea that God is part of the natural world. But Origen also (rightly) regards the number three as traditional, which in any case also offers a suggestive parallel to the three books of the Solomonic corpus. To separate physics and theology while retaining the number three, Origen bumped logic from the list. But rather than demoting logic to the status of an organon, as on the Aristotelian account of logic, Origen insists that logic is integral to philosophy. It is either a fourth distinct philosophical discipline, or more likely, “mingled and interwoven with [the other three].”130 In attributing significance to logic, its etymological link to

125 See Somos, Logic and Argumentation, 13 n. 25. 126 Cf. Dillon, Middle Platonists, 23. 127 See Aetius, Iatricorum 1.preface.2 = LS 26A; DL 7.39–41 = LS 26B; Plutarch Stoic selfcontradictions 1035a = LS 26C; etc. 128 See SVF 2.35–44, which includes citations from both Philo (De agricultura §14 = SVF 2.39) and Origen (CM 17.7 = SVF 2.40), both of which refer to the more traditional triad in the order physics, ethics, and logic. This shows that notwithstanding Origen’s argument here, he is aware of the more standard division of philosophy. Here again he correlates “logic” with the discipline used for the interpretation of scripture. See also Harl, Philocalie, 110–118. 129 Although some philosophers did distinguish “theology” from “physics” as separate subdivisions of “physics” in a generic sense. The Stoic Cleanthes offered a six-part scheme correlating in theology, obviously by subdividing logic, ethics, and physics into pairs: rhetoric, dialectic, ethics, politics, physics, theology (DL 7.41 = LS 26B(4)). So too the Platonist Alcinous distinguishes “theology” and “physics” as coordinate sciences, where both (along with mathematics) are part of a broader “theoretical” science (Alcinous, Handbook 7.1). 130 Some Stoics argued in a similar fashion that all the philosophical disciplines were inseparably intertwined with one another (DL 7.40 = LS 26B(4)).

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the “Logos” would not have been far from Origen’s mind.131 As Jonathan Barnes notes, early Christians “literally worshipped Reason,”132 which is especially apropos of Origen. If logic deals with language and philosophical argument, this is because the sages use their words in a distinctive manner determined by their knowledge of logic. For this reason, wisdom and logic are necessary to interpret their words correctly. Particularly in the book of Proverbs, Origen claims, Solomon shows that “he was neither ignorant of the rational science nor refused to deal with it.”133 Solomon does so in several ways. First, the title of the book, Proverbs (Παροιμίαι), “denotes that one thing is openly said, and another is inwardly meant.”134 Second, Solomon shows that he “discriminates between the meanings of words;” for Proverbs begins by using a short succession of closely related words pertaining to wisdom and knowledge, which Origen takes as a sign that Solomon “distinguishes knowledge from wisdom, and instruction from knowledge, and represents the understanding of words as something different again.”135 Third, he say in Proverbs that, “subtlety is given by wisdom to the innocent,” which Origen glosses, “doubtless lest they should be deceived in the Word of God by sophistic fraud.”136 Finally, Solomon teaches that the scriptures use “different modes of expression and sundry forms of speech” by referring in Prov 1:6 to “the parable, and dark speech, and the sayings of the wise, and riddles.”137 In his mode of expression, Origen adds, “following the custom of the ancients, [Solomon] unfolds immense and perfect truths in short and pithy phrases.”138 The “ancients” here most likely includes Greek sages like Heraclitus, known for their cryptic philosophical epigrams. For all these reasons, the Christian cannot reliably interpret the wise words of scripture without wisdom and the discipline of logic. To this we should add one more observation. Origen hints that when Christians take up logic, they do so not only as a tool for interpreting scripture but also because their own speech, like Solomon’s, should be characterized by wisdom. By meditating on Solomon’s enigmatic sayings, Origen says, “the heart 131 I do not think Origen could agree with Somos that “logical ideas have no direct theological relevance” (Logic and Argumentation, 8). 132 Jonathan Barnes, “Galen, Christians, logic,” in Logical Matters: Essays in Ancient Philoso­ phy II, ed. Maddelena Banelli (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2012): 1–21, esp. 19. 133 CCt Prol.3, trans. Lawson. 134 Ibid. 135 Ibid. 136 Ibid. 137 Ibid. 138 Ibid.

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of a man is enlarged, when he is able, by taking statements from the Divine Books, to expand by fuller teaching the things that are said briefly and in enigmatic ways.”139 Logic is that discipline that enables the Christian sage, by way of interpreting scripture, to speak wisely—and more expansively—herself. This vision of logic is above all a Stoic one.140 3

Conclusion

In this chapter I have argued that Stoic philosophy of language provides the best introduction to Origen’s philosophical assumptions about language. For Origen as for the Stoa, the sage is one who always says what is true and appropriate. The sage thus subjects her speech to standards of correctness rooted in “nature.” By the same token, disciplines like grammar that take conventional language alone as their object are inadequate for grasping language in all its relations. Origen follows the Stoa in arguing that the discipline of logic is necessary for interpreting the words of the wise; in viewing meaning as a nonarbitrary relation between words and things; and in seeking the many ways that names may be appropriate to what they name. We also saw how logic, meaning, and naming take on a distinctly Christian cast in Origen’s philosophy of language, influenced by the particular portrait of wisdom he finds in the Christian scriptures. Beginning in the next chapter, my aim is to show how this general conception of wisdom and language generates the particulars of Origen’s exegesis. Exegesis itself is an activity of learning to speak the language of scripture, an activity which is nothing other than imitating Christ. 139 Ibid. 140 For this reason, there is a certain danger in approaching Origen’s logic in the way Somos does in his Logic and Argumentation. Somos rightly recognizes that the character of ancient logic was contested and that it ultimately included “rationality in the broadest sense” (Logic and Argumentation, preface). But he tends to treat logic as separate from scriptural interpretation: “…. the topic of logic is quite different from that of exegetical activity, spirituality and prayer in terms of importance” (preface). His book deals with “the common intersection of the Origenian and modern use of the word logica,” which risks obscuring the unity of reason and language in Origen’s distinct conception of logic (10). Somos goes on in Chapter 10 to argue that because Origen complements his use of Stoic inference schemes and terms with those drawn from Aristotle and available to Middle Platonists, Origen’s logic is not primarily Stoic. This claim may be true in the sense that, like other Middle Platonists, he drew on the logical resources of both Aristotle and the Stoa, so that there is no reason to see his logic as Stoic to the exclusion of Platonistic nor to posit any direct influence of a teacher or text who is “Stoic” in a narrow sense. But to understand how Origen could identify the science of exegesis as “logic,” neither Aristotle nor those Platonists who took Aristotle’s logic as a faithful development of Plato’s are likely to be much help.

Chapter 2

From Lexis to Logos In a fragment from his commentary on Matthew preserved in the Philocalia, Origen compares the interpreter of scripture to an expert musician. While dif­ ferent scriptural texts seem contradictory to the untrained reader, the wise interpreter knows how to perform them harmoniously by using them at the right time for the benefit of her hearer. Ὡς γὰρ αἱ διάφοροι τοῦ ψαλτηρίου ἢ τῆς κιθάρας χορδαὶ, ὧν ἑκάστη ἴδιόν τινα φθόγγον καὶ δοκοῦντα μὴ ὅμοιον εἶναι τῷ τῆς ἑτέρας ἀποτελεῖ, νομίζον­ ται τῷ ἀμούσῳ καὶ μὴ ἐπισταμένῳ λόγον μουσικῆς συμφωνίας διὰ τὴν ἀνομοιότητα τῶν φθόγγων ἀσύμφωνοι τυγχάνειν· οὕτως οἱ μὴ ἐπιστάμενοι ἀκούειν τῆς τοῦ θεοῦ ἐν ταῖς ἱεραῖς γραφαῖς ἁρμονίας οἴονται ἀνάρμοστον εἶναι … ἀλλ’ ἐλθὼν ὁ πεπαιδευμένος τὴν τοῦ θεοῦ μουσικὴν, σοφός τις ἐν ἔργοις καὶ λόγοις τυγχάνων … ἀπο­ τελέσει φθόγγον μουσικῆς θεοῦ, ἀπὸ ταύτης μαθὼν ἐν καιρῷ κρούειν χορ­ δὰς νῦν μὲν νομικὰς νῦν δὲ συμφώνως αὐταῖς εὐαγγελικὰς, καὶ νυνὶ μὲν προ­ φητικὰς, ὅτε δὲ τὸ εὔλογον ἀπαιτεῖ, τὰς ὁμοτονούσας ἀποστολικὰς αὐταῖς, οὕτω δὲ καὶ ἀποστολικὰς εὐαγγελι­ καῖς…. ἓν γὰρ οἶδεν τὸ τέλειον καὶ ἡρμοσμένον ὄργανον τοῦ θεοῦ εἶναι πᾶσαν τὴν γραφὴν, μίαν ἀποτελοῦν ἐκ διαφόρων φθόγγων σωτήριον τοῖς μανθάνειν ἐθέλουσι φωνὴν…

For the different strings of the psalterion or lyre, because each gives forth its own proper note that seems to be unlike the others, are considered by the unmusi­ cal and those ignorant of the theory of musical harmony to be discordant on account of the mere difference of the notes. So too those who do not know how to hear the harmony of God in the sacred scriptures think that there is dis­ cord … But when someone comes who is trained in the music of God and wise in deed and word … he will produce a note of God’s music, from which he has learned to pluck the strings at the right time—now legal texts, now gospel text harmonious with them, now prophetic texts, and when right reason demands, apostolic texts in tune with them, and likewise apostolic texts [in tune] with evangelical texts…. For he knows that the whole scripture is one perfect and harmonious instrument of God, produc­ ing from the many different notes one saving sound for those who desire to learn …1

1 Philocalia 6.2.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004448544_004

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A skilled musician has the ability to play the same instrument in more than one way, arranging the possible notes differently depending on the song she is playing and the effect she wants to have on her hearer. The image of scripture as the “instrument of God” suggests likewise that the wise interpreter must learn how to perform the scriptures wisely, discerning the various occasions when each text should be performed in a way that benefits the hearer. The implication is that the harmony of scripture is not a static property that could be displayed once and for all by reorganizing its sentences into a linear text like Tatian’s Diatessaron. Rather, the harmony of scripture is a dynamic property consisting in the capacity of scriptural texts to be used appropriately at the “right time” (καιρῷ) and “when right reason demands.” This chapter builds on a growing body of work on the performative charac­ ter of patristic exegesis in general and Origen’s exegesis in particular.2 In her UVA dissertation, Rebecca Rine contrasts a performative approach to language with, on the one hand, approaches that rely on “structuralist” conceptions of language and that tend to reduce language to a relation between texts and meanings, and on the other hand, approaches that rely on “post-structuralist” or “rhetorical” conceptions of language and that tend to reduce language to a relation between texts and users. What she calls a “performative theory” is one that analyzes the function of an utterance as a dynamic relationship between the objects that the utterance signifies and those patterns of usage/ performance by which it signifies. What an utterance means and what it does are inseparable. She explicates this through the helpful analogy of the text as a script: 2 Torjesen, Hermeneutical Procedure, called attention to the role of quotation and learning how to speak in the context of the scriptural pedagogy of the Logos. Young, Biblical Exegesis, places the exegesis of scripture in the oral context of ancient paideia. Chapter 5 in particular (97–116) shows how exegesis leads to the use of scriptural language in patristic orations. Cf. Rine’s discussion of performativity in Rebecca Rine, “The Song of Songs as Scripture and Script: Performance, Pedagogy, Patristics” (Dissertation, UVA 2012), 248–60. David Dawson, Christian Figural Reading, 15, speaks of a “performative” rather than a “semiotic” approach to scripture. Catherine Chin, “Origen and Christian Naming,” argues that Origen’s exegesis is a performance of a cultural-linguistic facility in a “Christianicity” analogous to Hellenicity. Chin’s analysis is powerful, so long as one keeps firmly in view that for Origen, Christian patterns of speech (“Christianicity”) are appropriate not because of their cultural correct­ ness but because of their appropriate relation to what is true. Olivier Munnich, “Le rôle de la citation dans l’ècriture d’Origène,” in Origeniana Decima, ed. Sylwia Kaczmarek and Henryk Pietras (Walpole: Peeters Publishers, 2011): 507–538, shows how the language of scripture functions for Origen as langue, units of utterance from with which he creatively develops his own thought. Cf. also Robert Louis Wilken, “In Defense of Allegory,” Modern Theology 14, no. 2 (April 1998): 197–212, especially his point that, “Allegory is about privileging the biblical language” (206).

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In the same way that an actor performs the words of a script, the fathers perform the words of the Song—by speaking them in a new communica­ tive context. The analogy is not a strict one, for actors speak only the words of the script, using intonation, timing, staging, costuming, and other tech­ niques to mediate the script to an audience. The fathers’ speech, by con­ trast, is not limited to the words of the Song; they mediate these words to their listeners by placing them in a new literary context in addition to a new communicative context. Nevertheless, this difference is one of degree rather than kind: just as an actor employs gestures or expressions to bring a script to life, the fathers insert “additional lines” into the script so as to enliven it and make it comprehensible for their listeners. Viewed performatively, then, the words of the Song are a script, and the writings of the fathers are performances of that script. In the fathers’ works, the dynamic potential of the Song’s signs has been actualized.3 It is a commonplace that early Christian interpretation of the Psalms took for granted that psalms were scripts to be used and performed, texts that should live on the lips of Christians. According to Brian Daley, “The psalms … do not simply command us to repent of our sins, to bear suffering patiently, or to praise God for his gifts; they actually give us the words by which we can come to say and do these things for ourselves.”4 Daley understands this perfor­ mance as broadly liturgical in character, the recitation of a psalm as a literary unity, particularly in public or private prayer. But while Origen’s Homilies on the Psalms amply bear out Daley’s observation about the performative character of the Psalms, the kind of performance towards which Origen directs his exe­ gesis is not primarily liturgical. For one thing, as we shall see, he tends to focus on the performance of single sentences, rather than the recital of a psalm as a whole. He also tends to propose ways of using those sentences in a wide range of discursive contexts, rather than merely analyzing liturgical uses. Instead, I argue that for Origen, learning to perform the Psalms is primarily a matter of learning to integrate the words of the psalm into the entirety of one’s own discourse. We might think of this process as a kind of “rational lin­ guistics,” rooted in Origen’s broadly Stoic conception of language analyzed in the previous chapter. Rejecting a merely grammatical conception of linguistic 3 Rine, “Scripture and Script,” 39–40. 4 Brian Daley, “Finding the Right Key: The Aims and Strategies of Early Christian Interpretation of the Psalms,” in The Harp of Prophecy, ed. Brian Daley and Paul Korbet (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2015), 11–28. This collection was published before Origen’s Psalm homilies were widely available, and it does not take them into account.

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competence that reduces it to the mastery of cultural norms like “Hellenicity” or “Latinicity,” the Stoics instead defended a logical conception of linguistic competence in which linguistic usage is governed by rational norms. The com­ petent speaker is not primarily the cultured elite but the sage, whose words are always true and well spoken. Being a Christian as well as a rationalist, Origen argues that speech according to rational norms is exemplified by the language of scripture, whose words derive from the divine Logos itself.5 Origen aims to reconstruct from the words of scripture how the Logos speaks—not only in the past words of the scriptures and their authors, but also in the wise words that disciples speak in the present. While it is common to analyze Origen’s exegesis as a procedural movement from one level of understanding to another (from the literal sense to higher spiritual senses), this chapter shows that Origen’s exegesis is best understood as the progressive development of rational-linguistic skills. Origen’s exegesis begins prior to the sense of scripture (literal or otherwise) with the recita­ tion and memorization of the very words (the λέξις) of scripture. His exegesis culminates in rational discourse itself (λόγος), a general capacity for speak­ ing rightly that is more expansive than merely understanding a spiritual level of meaning. Importantly, to speak rationally is not necessarily to speak alle­ gorically. Sometimes the rational speaker discerns that the figurative sense of scripture is the more superficial one while the literal sense is deeper and more advanced. More basic and more consistent than the intellectual movement from a literal to a spiritual sense, therefore, is the performative movement from lexis to logos, from learning to speak the words of scripture to mastering the underlying capacity for rational discourse that they exemplify. This chapter thus sketches what might be called the logical substructure of Origen’s exegetical procedures as an introduction to the more technical analy­ ses that follow in the subsequent chapters. In Part 1, I situate the movement from lexis to logos in two contexts: the Stoic logical distinction between λέξις (wording) and λόγος (rational discourse) which lies in the background of my account (1.1) and Torjesen’s influential description of Origen’s hermeneutic procedures as a pedagogical process (1.2). In Part 2, I trace some key elements of the movement from lexis to logos. I discuss Origen’s insistence on mastering the λέξις (wording) of scripture, particularly through memorization and other oral performances (2.1). I distinguish the wording from the immediate seman­ tic sense (κατὰ λέξιν) that the words bear for those who speak or hear them (2.2). I then show how Origen aims to determine general rules for the perfor­ mance of these words (2.3), often by appealing to or correcting the linguistic 5 PA preface.1.

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intuitions of his hearers (2.4), culminating in rational speech (λόγος) that con­ forms to the pattern of the divine Logos (2.5). 1

The Pedagogy of the Logos

1.1 Lexis and Logos Stoic logic makes a key distinction between λέξις and λόγος, the objects respec­ tively of that part of dialectic concerned with “utterances” and that concerned with “things signified.”6 According to Ineke Sluiter, There is a hierarchical order running from inarticulate sound through articulate sound irrespective of meaning, to articulate meaningful sound. The latter two stages are called λέξις and λόγος respectively. Λέξις may be either one word or a string of words, which is looked upon from its nonsemantic side, λόγος in principle may also be one word or a combination of words, but it is always meaningful—it is a combination of form and meaning.7 The most important source for this distinction is Diogenes Laertius’ account of the influential Stoic linguist Diogenes of Babylon. The Stoic Diogenes dis­ tinguished between three aspects of spoken language: “voice” (φωνὴ), “speech” (λέξις), and “discourse” (λόγος), each a species of the previous. Ἔστι δὲ φωνὴ ἀὴρ πεπληγμένος ἢ τὸ ἴδιον αἰσθητὸν ἀκοῆς, ὥς φησι Διογένης ὁ Βαβυλώνιος ἐν τῇ Περὶ φωνῆς τέχνῃ…. λέξις δέ ἐστιν κατὰ τοὺς Στωικούς, ὥς φησι Διογένης, φωνὴ ἐγγράμματος, οἷον Ἡμέρα. λόγος δέ ἐστι φωνὴ σημαντικὴ ἀπὸ διανοίας ἐκπεμπομένη … Τῆς δὲ λέξεως στοιχεῖά ἐστι τὰ εἰκοσι­ τέσσαρα γράμματα. Τῆς δὲ λέξεως στοιχεῖά ἐστι τὰ εἰκοσιτέσσαρα γράμ­ ματα. τριχῶς δὲ λέγεται τὸ γράμμα, τό τε στοιχεῖον, ὅ τε χαρακτὴρ τοῦ

Voice is air that is struck, or that which is proper to the sense of hearing, as Diogenes of Babylon says in his “On the Expertise of Voice.” … And accord­ ing to the Stoics, speech is (as Diogenes says) voice divisible into letters, such as “Ἡμέρα” [day]. But discourse is mean­ ingful voice sent out from intelligence. The elements of speech are the 24 let­ ters. And “letter” is said in three ways: the [spoken] element, the [written] form of that element, and the name, such as “alpha.” … Voice and speech are

6 Cf. DL 7.43–44 = LS 31A7, 9 and my discussion above, 36–40. 7 Ineke Sluiter, Ancient Grammar in Context (Amsterdam: VU University Press, 1990), 23 n. 91.

78 στοιχείου καὶ τὸ ὄνομα, οἷον Ἄλφα … διαφέρει δὲ φωνὴ καὶ λέξις, ὅτι φωνὴ μὲν καὶ ὁ ἦχός ἐστι, λέξις δὲ τὸ ἔναρ­ θρον μόνον. λέξις δὲ λόγου διαφέρει, ὅτι λόγος ἀεὶ σημαντικός ἐστι, λέξις δὲ καὶ ἀσήμαντος, ὡς ἡ βλίτυρι, λόγος δὲ οὐδαμῶς. διαφέρει δὲ καὶ τὸ λέγειν το προφέρεσθαι· προφέρονται μὲν γὰρ αἱ φωναί, λέγεται δὲ τὰ πράγματα, ἃ δὴ καὶ λεκτὰ τυγχάνει.

Chapter 2

different because even [mere] sound is voice, but only articulated [sound] is speech. Speech differs from discourse, because discourse is always meaningful, but speech may be meaningless, such as [the nonsense syllables] “blituri,” which is not discourse. And saying is different from pronouncing. For vocalized sounds are pronounced, but states of affairs are said, that is, the sayables.8

The definition of “voice” (φωνὴ) as “struck air” became a standard one. Origen himself quotes it several times, another indication of his reliance on Stoic linguistics.9 “Voice” refers to the material signifiers of spoken language qua material. λέξις and λόγος are subsets of voice as it enters into increasingly rational relations. λέξις is voice divisible into “letters” (ἐγγράμματος), by which he means sounds that are segmented into a finite number of distinct pho­ nemic units. This excludes inchoate vocalized cries, but includes even non­ sense words that can be committed to writing, such as his example, “blituri.”10 Diogenes also distinguishes the letter (γράμμα) as an element (στοιχεῖον) of spoken language from its written sign (χαρακτὴρ), anticipating the modern dis­ tinction between phoneme and grapheme. Though the word “letter” (γράμμα), which originally meant a drawing or a figure, would have connoted a written element of language, Diogenes uses it here first with reference to the elements of spoken language, probably because it is the segmentation of spoken lan­ guage into a finite set of phonic elements that makes alphabetic writing pos­ sible. This capacity for segmentation is what Diogenes means by calling λέξις “articulated” (ἔναρθρον). “λέξις” thus refers to spoken language as vocalized in sounds that may be analyzed into phonemes and hence committed to writing. Speech only becomes rational discourse (λόγος), however, when used by a rational agent “significantly” (σημαντικὴ) to actually say something (πράγματα, “states of affairs”), or in the more technical Stoic terminology, to express “say­ ables” (λεκτὰ). Unlike merely pronouncing sounds (προφέρεσθαι), as a parrot might do, to speak (λέγειν) is to perform a linguistic utterance in a speech act. For this reason, unlike λέξις, λόγος per se cannot be adequately confined to writing, because λόγος depends on the relation between words and the mind of 8 DL 7.55–57. 9 CC 2.72, 6.62. 10 This was a standard example; cf. Galen, de differentia pulsum 3.4 = SVF 2.149.

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the speaker by which she uses them. Varro traces this distinction to Chrysippus in the course of a Stoic-inspired etymology of loqui (equivalent in this passage to λέγειν): Loqui ab loco dictum. Quod qui primo dicitur iam fari vocabula et reliqua verba dicit ante quam suo quique loco ea dicere potest, hunc Chrysippus negat loqui, sed ut loqui: quare ut imago hominis non sit homo, sic in corvis, corni­ cibus, pueris primitus incipien­ tibus fari verba non esse verba, quod non loquantur. Igitur is loquitur, qui suo loco quodque verbum sciens ponit..

Loqui “to talk” is said from locus “place.” Because whoever is said to speak at first utters the names and other words before he can say them each in its own locus, “place,” such a person, as Chrysippus says, does not loqui “talk,” but quasi-talks; and therefore, as a man’s sculptured bust is not the real man, so in the case of ravens, crows, and boys making their first attempts to speak, their words are not real words, because they are not talking. Therefore he loquitur “talks,” who with understanding puts each word in its own place….11

Varro attributes to Chrysippus the insight that animals and children are capa­ ble only of the act he calls “quasi-talking” (ut loqui), because while they can form articulated sounds, they do not know how to use them meaningfully as part of discourse. In Diogenes’ terms, they can produce λέξις but not yet λόγος, pronouncing (προφέρεσθαι) words but not saying (λέγειν) them. True speech requires “understanding” (sciens) that manifests in one’s ability to “put each word in its place,” that is, to use words in their appropriate context. The distinction between λέξις and λόγος (expressing a λέκτον) lay at the root of the division within Stoic dialectic between the study of “signifiers” and “sig­ nifieds,” which was more or less a distinction between semantics (that aspect of linguistic meaning determined by the verbal signifier) and pragmatics (that aspect of linguistic meaning conditioned by its use). In his extensive study of Stoic and Aristotelian theories of speech acts, D. N. Schenkeveld compares the Stoic distinction between λέξις and λόγος to a distinction developed by Searle between the semantic level of communication and the pragmatic level.12

11 LL 6.56, trans. Kent, edited = SVF 2.143 part. 12 The Searlian terminology derives, in turn, from Charles Morris, Foundations of the Theory of Signs (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1938). Morris was a student of Charles Peirce, who develops Peirce’s triadic semiotic into a distinction between three branches of a science of semiotics: syntactics, semantics, and pragmatics.

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The semantic level is “that part of the total information conveyed [by an utterance] which is contributed by the linguistic properties of the sentence.” The pragmatic level refers to “those factors which have to do with the actual speech-situation.”13 Semantics refers to reflection on λέξις—the text or expres­ sion in light of the relevant linguistic conventions. Pragmatics refers to reflec­ tion on λόγος—the various uses to which sentences may be put, including the assertion of truths, but also other speech acts, poetry, and rhetoric. Such a dis­ tinction is apropos for Stoic philosophers concerned with mastering the art of dialectic. The semantic level of information conveyed by the utterance alone covers what one can learn from simply hearing a sentence without consider­ ing context. But as the sophisms that so exercised Chrysippus and other Stoic logicians show, what a sentence seems to signify on an initial hearing is often misleading. The pragmatic level required them to consider its function in the actual discourse of which it was a part and evaluate its truth, moving from superficial λέξις to the underling λόγος. Schenkeveld shows that the Stoic lekton is a performative category. As we saw in the previous chapter, it is equivalent to “the action and things thought which are expressed in sentences,”14 or again, “the final function of the sen­ tence in its situation,” including what we would call its illocutionary force.15 Since the function of a sentence is a relation between an utterance and prag­ matic features of the context in which it is uttered, the use and interpreta­ tion of a sentence must take these possible contexts of utterance into account. The Stoics, for example, distinguished between asking a question (ἐρωτᾶν) and the expression of self-doubt (ἐπαπορεῖν) as different speech acts.16 Quoting a line from Menander—“ἆρ᾽ ἔστι πάντων ἀγρυπνία καλλίστατον;” (“Is wakefulness the most beautiful of all things?”—Theon points out that the same sentence (the same λέξις) could be used either to ask a question or to express selfdoubt.17 The difference is determined only by their use: when speaking them, does one require an answer, or is one merely at a loss? The λεκτὸν expressed by this sentence is only determined contextually when the sentence is actually uttered in a speech situation. For this reason, Stoic interest in λόγος leads to a detailed analysis of the various uses to which a linguistic signifier (λέξις) may be put. As we shall see, Origen tends to approach the sentences of scripture in a similar way.

13 14 15 16 17

Schenkeveld, “Speech Act,” 326. Ibid., 324. Ibid., 326. See DL 7.66–68. Menander Sententiae 53, qtd. Schenkeveld, “Speech Act,” 330.

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1.2 Torjesen and the Scriptural Pedagogy of the Logos The Stoic distinction between λέξις and λόγος illuminates Karen Jo Torjesen’s sophisticated analysis of Origen’s hermeneutical procedures as a pedagogical process.18 Torjesen shows that for Origen, the interpretation of scripture is a site for the formative pedagogy of the Logos, having as its goal deification— participation in the divine nature of the Logos by grace. She wrote without the benefit of the recently discovered Psalm homilies, but it is not insignificant that her study began with a case study of Origen’s homilies on Pss 36–38, which were extant in Latin translations. Since the content of the Psalms ranges over the whole of scripture, Torjesen intuited that notwithstanding the particular hermeneutic issues posed by each genre of scripture, Origen’s homilies on the Psalms exemplify the dynamics of his exegesis as a whole. According to Torjesen, Origen approaches the psalms guided by an assump­ tion about their genre: they are prayers.19 Drawing on Origen’s account of his method for interpreting prayers in his study of the Lord’s Prayer, De Oratione, she argues that praying rightly involves answering two basic questions: what words one should use to pray and what attitude one should adopt in praying them.20 Scriptural prayers like the Lord’s Prayer or the Psalms provide read­ ers with appropriate words. To interpret them is to learn how to pray them rightly. Guided by this model, she identifies in the Psalm homilies a four-step procedure:21 1. 2. 3. 4.

Quote the words of the psalm (in connection with previous words) Interpret them in light of the ideal attitude of the Psalmist Apply them by analogy to the contemporary community Quote the words of the psalm again (now laden with meaning)

Torjesen rightly observes that although Origen’s Psalm homilies guide his hear­ ers through a spiritual progression, his exegesis does not generally proceed from one level of meaning to another. Typically the meaning Origen attributes to the text as prayed by the historical psalmist is the same as that which it has on the lips of a Christian. Rather, the basic dynamic of these interpretive units is pedagogical. His homilies train Origen’s hearers to become the kind of people who are able to pray the Psalms rightly by imitating the ideal attitude of the Psalmist, which is ultimately to be conformed to the pattern of Christ as 18 Torjesen, Hermeneutical Procedure. 19 Ibid., 26–27. 20 “τὸ ὃ δεῖ, οἱ λόγοι εἰσὶ τῆς εὐχῆς, τὸ δὲ „καθὸ δεῖ“ ἡ κατάστασις τοῦ εὐχομένου” (De Oratione 2.2). Sometimes, as here, Origen uses the word “λόγος” to refer to words themselves, i.e. the λέξις. 21 Torjesen, Hermeneutical Procedure, 28–29.

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the Logos (exemplified by the psalmist). This is one reason that Torjesen resists identifying the three stages of Origen’s hermeneutic theory with three levels of meaning, arguing instead that they refer to three stages in the pedagogical formation of the Christian.22 In light of the newly discovered homilies, Torjesen’s assumption that Origen’s exegesis of the psalms is governed by their genre as prayers is not tenable. (I look at a counterexample below). However, the progression she has identi­ fied remains illuminating. One needs simply to redescribe it as a particular case of a more general pattern. Rather than assuming Origen is asking how to pray the words of the psalms rightly, his question is more general: how does one use the words of the psalms rightly? Using them in prayer is only one possibility. By extension, her emphasis on the ideal attitude of the Psalmist is too narrow as well. Again, his problem is more general: identifying appropriate conditions for using the words of scripture. But these conditions need not involve attitudes of prayer or the historical person of the Psalmist. Rather than merely teaching his community to pray, through his homilies on the Psalms Origen teaches his community how to use the words of scrip­ ture rightly by integrating scriptural language into their own discourse. It will be helpful from the outset to get a feel for this process by applying Torjesen’s model to an example from Origen’s third homily on Ps 36, section 11, which I quote here at length: [1a] Δανείζεται ὁ ἁμαρτωλὸς καὶ οὐκ ἀποτίσει, ὁ δὲ δίκαιος οἰκτίρει καὶ διδοῖ.

[1a] “The sinner borrows and does not repay, but the righteous has compas­ sion and gives” (Ps 36:21 LXX).

[1b] Τοῦτο πάλιν ἐὰν ἐπὶ τοῦ ῥητοῦ λαμβάνοιμεν, ψεῦδός ἐστι· πολλοὶ γὰρ ἁμαρτωλοὶ δανείζονται ἀργύρια καὶ ἀποδιδόασι μετὰ τόκων …

[1b] Here agin, if we were to take this at face value, it is false—for many sinners borrow silver and repay it with interest.

[2] Ἀπεφήνατο δὲ ὁ προφήτης λέγων· δανείζεται ὁ ἁμαρτωλὸς καὶ οὐκ ἀπο­ τίσει. Ἀλλ’ ἐὰν κατανοήσῃς τίς ὁ δανείζων καὶ τίς ὁ δανειζόμενος, καὶ ζητῇς ἁμαρτωλὸν δανειζόμενον καὶ οὐκ ἀποδίδοντα, ὄψει πῶς δανείζε­ ται ὁ ἁμαρτωλὸς καὶ οὐκ ἀποτίσει· οἷον Παῦλος, ἐὰν διδάσκῃ καὶ στήκωσιν οἱ

[2] But the prophet declares that the sinner borrows and does not repay. But if you consider who is the one who lends and who is the one who borrows, and if you seek a sinner who borrows but does not give, you will see how it is that the sinner borrows and does not repay. For instance, Paul teaches and his hearers

22

Ibid., 39–43.

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ἀκροαταί, δανείζει Παῦλος, δανείζο­ νται δὲ τὸ δόκιμον ἀργύριον τῷ στό­ ματι Παύλου οἱ ἀκροαταί. Ἀλλ’ ἐὰν μὲν δίκαιος ᾖ δανειζόμενος, ἀποδίδωσι τοὺς τόκους καὶ λέγει· μνᾶν μοι δέδω­ κας, ἰδοὺ δέκα μνᾶς ἐποίησα … Ἐὰν δὲ ἁμαρτωλὸς τίσῃ, οὐκ ἀποδίδωσιν ἃ ἐδανείσατο ἀλλὰ ἀναλίσκει πάντα ἃ ἐδανείσατο.

are made to stand firm, Paul loans, and his hearers borrow the tested silver in the mouth of Paul. But if the righteous person borrows, he repays it with inter­ est, saying, “you have given me one gold coin; behold, I have earned ten gold coins” (Luke 19:16) … But even if a sin­ ner [in some sense] pays his debt, he does not repay what he borrowed, but consumes everything he borrowed.

[3] Ἄρτι πάντες ὑμεῖς δανείζεσθε. Ταῦτα γάρ εἰσι τὰ δάνεια, οὗτοι οἱ λόγοι ἀργύριόν εἰσι. Τὰ γὰρ λόγια κυρίου λόγια ἁγνά, ἀργύριον πεπυρωμένον, δόκιμον … Ἐὰν κακῶς διδάσκω, τὸ ἀργύριόν μου ἀδόκιμός ἐστι, κατὰ τὸ εἰρημένον τὸ ἀργύριον ὑμῶν ἀδόκι­ μον, ἐὰν καλῶς διδάσκω, τὸ ἀργύριόν μου, οὐκ ἐμὸν ἀλλὰ τοῦ κυρίου, δόκι­ μόν ἐστιν. Ἔξεστι μὲν δανείζειν τὸ τοῦ κυρίου ἀργύριον, ἐμὸν δὲ ἀργύριον οὐκ ἔξεστί με δανείζειν … Ἐὰν ἴδῃς Οὐαλεντῖνον λόγους γεννήσαντα καὶ τὰ αὑτοῦ διδάσκοντα, λέγε· ἐκεῖνον τὰ ἑαυτοῦ δανείζοντα καὶ ὑπὸ κατά­ ραν πίπτοντα· οὕτως ἐὰν Βασιλείδης, οὕτως ἐὰν Μαρκίων. Ἐὰν δὲ ἴδῃς τινὰ οὐ τὰ ἴδια λέγοντα ἀλλὰ τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ τολμῶντα εἰπεῖν ἀληθῶς· ἢ δοκιμὴν ζητεῖτε τοῦ ἐν ἐμοὶ λαλοῦντος Χριστοῦ; ἴσθι ὅτι ὁ τοιοῦτος δανείζει μέν, οὐ τὰ ἑαυτοῦ δέ, ἀλλὰ τὰ τοῦ κυρίου δανείζει … Εἴθε κἀγὼ δανείζομαι τὰ προφητικά, δανείζομαι τὰ εὐαγγελικά, τὰ ἀποστολικὰ καὶ ὁ δανειζόμενος εἴην μὴ ἁμαρτωλός, ἵνα μὴ κολασθῶ, ἀλλὰ δίκαιος δυνάμενος ἀποδιδόναι μετὰ τόκων ἐκ πολιτείας τὰ κεφάλαια ὧν ἤκουσα λόγων.

[3] Now all of you borrow [from me]. These [words] are your loan, these words are silver. For the oracles of the Lord are holy oracles, silver proven with fire … If I teach badly, my silver is unworthy—for unworthy silver is said to be your own. But if I teach well, my silver—not mine, but the Lord’s—is proven. For it is lawful to loan the Lord’s silver, but it is not lawful for me to loan my own … If you see Valentinus pro­ ducing words and teaching what is his own, say: “because he is loaning what is his own, he is subject to a curse,” and similarly with Basilides or Marcion. But if you see someone speaking not his own [words] but those of God, and saying boldly but truly, “or do you seek proof that Christ speaks in me?” (2 Cor 13:3) know that such a person indeed loans, but he does not loan what belongs to him, but rather what belongs to the Lord … So also I borrow [the words of] the prophets, I borrow [the words of] the gospels and of the apostles; and in borrowing may I not be a sinner, lest I be punished, but a righ­ teous person who is able to repay with interest through my way of life the main words that I heard.

84 [4] Δανείζεται οὖν ὁ ἁμαρτωλὸς καὶ οὐκ ἀποτίσει …

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[4] Therefore the sinner borrows and does not repay …23

In accordance with Torjesen’s model, Origen begins and ends with a quota­ tion of Ps 36:21a, “the sinner borrows and does not repay” [1a and 4). These words are not, however, a prayer, but rather a kind of proverb or aphorism. When Origen initially quotes them, what his audience understands is liable to be wrong, simplistic, or inadequate. This is why Origen first rejects this inter­ pretation at face value (ἐπὶ τοῦ ῥητοῦ) as false (1b) before developing (in 2 and 3) a more advanced but less obvious alternative—in this case, the allegorical understanding that one may loan and borrow words. As Torjesen shows, the effect of quoting these words again at the end (4) is to reinforce this deep­ ened meaning of the words, so that his hearers now hear them “laden with all the significance of its interpretation.”24 His sermon aims to create in his hearers the conditions for hearing the psalm in this deeper way. It is, we might say, a kind of ear training. The middle sections determine this deeper way of using the words of Ps 36, moving first from scriptural models of appropriate use (2) to their use by Origen’s community (3). In this case, however, the scrip­ tural model is not a matter of the Psalmist’s ideal attitude of prayer, but rather an example of an allegorical use of the discourse of loaning and borrowing, taken from a parable in Luke’s gospel and applied to Paul’s apostolic pedagogy. Section (3) then shows by analogy how Origen’s community should imitate this pattern—not, however, by adopting a certain attitude of prayer, but rather through rightly “borrowing” and “loaning” in the context of church teaching. As this example shows, we must carefully distinguish the words of the text from the different meanings those words may bear. While Origen rejects the literal meaning of these words, he encourages his community to go on using the words. In particular, we must be carefully to distinguish between the words of the text and the meaning that one understands immediately upon hearing them said. Here Origen refers to this immediate meaning as taking the words “ἐπὶ τοῦ ῥητοῦ,” “at face value” or “based only on what was said,” prior to any active rational engagement with them.25 In this case, it involves hearing the words “the sinner borrows and does not repay” as a generalization about sin­ ners and their economic behavior. Whenever one quotes a text, as Origen does 23 HomPs 36.3.11. 24 Torjesen, Hermeneutical Procedure, 28. 25 One should distinguish “κατὰ λέξιν” as the immediate understanding of a text from “κατὰ λέξιν” as the hermeneutic presumption that the immediate understanding of a text is normative. Origen’s objections to literalism are aimed only at the latter.

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at the beginning of this unit, this “face value” meaning is automatically acti­ vated for hearers possessing the relevant linguistic competence. This is why here, as so often, Origen first addresses this level of meaning. As we shall see, sometimes for Origen this immediate sense is profitable, occasionally pro­ found, but here, Origen rejects this immediate sense as false through a brief argument: “many sinners borrow silver and repay it with interest.” This brief argument is the first implicit appearance of λόγος, rationality, in the interpre­ tive process, through the person of Origen as the teacher, provoking his hearers to develop a more rational understanding. While the immediate meaning of the words must (in this case) be over­ come, however, this is not true of the words themselves, for Origen will quote them again at the end, bearing now an allegorical meaning. There is, as Robert Wilken has insisted, the most intimate connection between attention to the words of scripture and allegory.26 Ancient grammarians generally categorized allegory as a figure of speech, not a way of transcending words but rather a fig­ ural way of using them.27 By quoting the psalm at the end of this interpretive unit, Origen himself shows how to use the words of this text allegorically, hav­ ing prepared the ears of his hearers to understand them. Origen is not teaching his congregation how to leave words behind, but how to hear and use them in new ways. This passage also shows, however, that rational linguistic formation involves learning not only how to hear, but also how to speak. We may observe this emphasis on learning to speak in several aspects of this passage. First, Origen gives explicit instructions to his hearers about how to speak under certain circumstances using the formula, “if you see X, say Y.” “If you see Valentinus producing words and teaching what is his own,” Origen says, you should say: “because he is loaning what is his own, he is subject to a curse.” This formula posits that some form of words is appropriate for some occasion and exhorts his hearers to speak in that way. Second, training his audience to hear the words of this psalm allegorically also involves, from the teacher’s perspective, actually speaking those words on his own lips. In the new communal context created by this section of his sermon, he is able to use the words of the psalm rationally—in this case, allegorically—and be understood as such. In this respect there is little difference between his final quotation of the Psalm and a third aspect of this passage: his integration of other scriptural texts into his 26 27

“In practice allegory is a way of thinking about what is given in the Bible using the words and images of the Bible” (Robert Wilken, “The Inevitability of Allegory,” Gregorianum 86, no. 4 (2005): 742–753, esp. 750). See, for example, Quintilian, IO 8.6.44–45 and Heraclitus, Homeric Problems 5, p. 5.15.

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discourse, in this case words from Luke. Indeed, Origen rarely cites a text as evidence but tends instead to integrate scriptural phrases and sentences into the fabric of his own discourse,28 using the words of scripture as if they were his own. As with any sentence a person utters, he implies that his doing so is right, at least in the context of his own discourse on that specific occasion. While he sometimes argues explicitly that a sentence may appropriately be used in a particular way on a particular occasion (e.g. in the formula “if you see X, say Y”), when he uses scripture in his own discourse he asserts implicitly that this way of using it is appropriate as well. For this reason, throughout this exegetical unit questions of linguistic form and content are tightly integrated. When Origen asks “who borrows” and “who loans,” and answers that, “if Paul teaches and his hearers accept it, Paul loans, and his hearers borrow proven silver from Paul’s mouth,” he is doing two things at once: reminding his readers something true about Paul, and showing them how to use the metaphor of borrowing and loaning to say this true thing. Origen is teaching his community at one and the same time both what to say and what to express in so speaking. Once one recognizes that Origen is teaching his community how to speak, another striking feature of this passage emerges: much of the language Origen proposes goes beyond what the scriptural text he is discussing actually says. For example, while the text speaks only of borrowing, Origen infers that teach­ ers loan and that they should not loan their own possessions but rather those of Christ. If the word “interpretation” implies that Origen is trying to explain what a particular form of words means, then “interpretation” is not a very helpful word for this process. Rather, Origen sees the language of this text as connected to a broader family of metaphors, partially displayed in other sim­ ilar scriptural texts. His exegesis shows how these metaphors are related to one another and organizes them under a single coherent grammar. Logically, he is arguing by analogy (from an exemplary case or set of cases to other analo­ gous cases). The aim of Origen’s exegesis here is to discern the deeper rules underly­ ing these analogous cases and use them to guide his determination of other cases, both by showing how his community can use other words of scripture rationally and by proposing other things that scripture might have said but did not. It is these underlying rules that warrant the transition from scriptural examples to Origen’s own community, and it is by internalizing these rules that his community learns to hear the same words of scripture in a deeper way. 28 Cf. Rolf Gögler, Zur Theologie des biblischen Wortes bei Origenes (Dusseldorf: Patmos, 1963), 28–33.

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Of course what I have described procedurally as a kind of rational rule, Origen identifies theologically as the divine Logos. “The content of scripture,” Torjesen says, “is nothing other than the Logos incarnate in language.”29 To be a faithful teacher, Origen argues, is to speak the “oracles of God,” to loan words or teachings that are not one’s own but rather belong to God. To make this point, Origen also uses the words of 2 Cor 13:3, “or do you seek proof that Christ speaks in me?” in which Paul identifies Christ as the principle of his own apos­ tolic speech. By using them as his own, Origen implies that any faithful teacher may dare to utter the same words with respect to his own speech. In contrast­ ing God’s words with our own and appealing to the example of Paul, Origen implies that to speak rightly is to speak as the Logos speaks, which is possi­ ble only if in some sense it is the Logos itself that speaks through us. Origen’s own pedagogy aims at bringing this about in his readers, thereby participat­ ing in what Torjesen calls “the contemporary pedagogy of the Logos through scripture.”30 In this way, Origen leads his community from lexis to logos. 2

Elements of the Movement from Lexis to Logos

In the remainder of this chapter, I examine in greater detail some of the more important elements of this movement from lexis to logos. Origen’s exegesis aims to reconstruct an increasingly general linguistic competence exempli­ fied by the words of a particular text. Thus it moves from the words or lexis of scripture (2.1) to their face value or kata lexin interpretation (2.2), through determinate rules for using those words, often in a deeper sense (2.3), leading to the reader’s acquisition of a general rational linguistic competence or logos (2.5). In a brief interlude, section 2.4 addresses the important role of linguistic intuitions in this process. 2.1 Lexis Interpretation of scripture begins not with a literal “sense” but with the words themselves—the λέξις. As we have seen, Origen’s homilies on the Psalms tend to be organized into units that both begin and end with a quotation of scrip­ ture, as part of a larger process of teaching his community how to actually use those words rightly for themselves. In the background are ancient study and

29 Torjesen, Hermeneutical Procedure, 120. 30 Ibid., 117.

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liturgical practices in which the reading of the written word is closely bound up with its oral performance.31 According to Frances Young, Reader reception was universally through the oral medium and reading even in private was aloud … Rhetorical education encouraged reading aloud as practice for declamation and the use of literature as great speech to emulate in composition. Reading a manuscript without word division or punctuation required the kind of oral realisation that most of us need to read a musical score: it is not easy to do it in one’s head.32 In recognition of these difficulties, ancient grammarians included διορθώτικον (text-criticism) and αναγνώστικον (reading and construal of the text) as foun­ dational classroom practices and skills preliminary to the more advanced exegetical procedures called ἐξηγήτικον.33 Pierre Hadot emphasizes that philo­ sophical education and training were also oriented towards the oral context of dialogue. “More than other literature, philosophical works are linked to oral transmission because ancient philosophy itself is above all oral in character … In matters of philosophical teaching, writing is only an aid to memory, a last resort that will never replace the living word.”34 The oral recital of scriptural texts was also integral to particular church practices with which Origen was greatly concerned. The words of scripture were prayed in private or as part of the church’s liturgy.35 The name of Jesus

31

Scholars of religion have emphasized the oral use and transmission of scripture in various traditions. See William Graham, Beyond the Written Word: Oral aspects of Scripture in the history of religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993) and Wilfred Cantwell Smith, What Is Scripture? (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), especially Chapter 3, “Scrip­ ture as Form and Concept,” 45–64. 32 Young, Biblical Exegesis, 11–13. 33 On these divisions see Young, Biblical Exegesis, 82–89, and Martens, Origen and Scripture, 41–42. Origen’s discussion of the power of reading a text one does not understand is inter­ esting in this connection: cf. Philocalia 12 and Harl’s discussion (Philocalie, 394–7). 34 Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life, ed. Arnold I. Davidson, trans. Michael Chase (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), 62. 35 Origen states explicitly that the scriptures teach us what we ought to pray by giving us the very words to say (De Oratione 2.2). Moreover, sometimes we lack the words to pray, as in texts like Rom 8:26, “we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes on our behalf with unutterable groanings,” and 1 Cor 14:14, “If I speak in tongues, my spirit prays but my mind is without fruit.” Thus in his commentary on Rom 8:26, Origen imagines the Spirit as a school-teacher sounding out letters for his student to learn, so that in performing this inarticulate elementary speech the teacher

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was uttered in exorcisms or healings.36 And not least, by Origen’s day both Old Testament and New Testament texts were read publicly as part of church gatherings.37 This last use was tied especially closely to their status as scripture, so that debates about the canon were typically framed as debates about which texts should be publicly read.38 As we have seen, his homilies tend to be bro­ ken up into units that begin and end with the recitation of a sentence or two of scripture. Most important for our purposes, scriptural texts were memorized. Origen was famous for the vast amount of scripture he had committed to memory, beginning from boyhood.39 To memorize a text is, of course, to acquire a capac­ ity to utter it, and it is likely that words one has memorized will seep into one’s own speech in other contexts. This is all the more true in the ancient world, where writers intentionally cultivated the imitation of classical texts, leading to a highly intertextual style of speech and writing.40 This sort of formation is evident in Origen’s case, who not only quotes scripture frequently but whose patterns of speech are heavily shaped by scriptural language.41 The constant presence of scriptural texts on Origen’s own lips and nearly every page of his writing is a very strong indication that he regards scriptural texts as exemplars of language to be integrated into one’s own discourse. Origen frequently exhorted his hearers to memorize the scriptures as a pre­ requisite for interpreting them, as in this example:

becomes in a way like the beginner (CR 7.6). This is a powerful image of the Spirit teach­ ing the language of scripture. I thank Joseph Trigg for pointing me to this text. 36 In Origen, see CC 1.6, 24, 46, 67, et al. For exorcism in the first and second centuries, cf. Graham H. Twelftree, In the Name of Jesus: Exorcism Among Early Christians (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007). 37 Harry Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 211–31. 38 “The [canonization] debate was framed in terms of content and authorship, but the prac­ tical issue was whether those documents should be publicly read” (Gamble, Books and Readers, 215). 39 See the discussion and texts cited in Martens, Origen and Scripture, 176 n.66. 40 Young offers a rich discussion of allusion and quotation in the orations of Gregory Nazianzen in Biblical Exegesis, 97–117. Most of what she says applies to Origen as well. See also Rine, “Scripture and Script,” 66–123, esp. the patterns of quotation discussed in 71–76. 41 Cf. Gögler, Zur Theologie, especially his discussion of “Die Sprache des Origenes” (28–33). His observation that “Die Sprache der Hl. Schrift hat die Sprache des Origenes geprägt” (30) anticipates my thesis that Origen aims to learn the language of scripture.

90 Πολλάκις ἔρχεταί τις ζητῶν μαθεῖν νοήματα κείμενα ἐν τῇ ἱερᾷ γραφῇ, καὶ κεκρυμμένως κείμενα, μηδὲ εἰδὼς ῥητὸν εὐαγγελικόν, μηδὲ μεμνημένος λόγος ἀποστολικοῦ, μὴ εἰδὼς τί προφήτης λέγει καὶ τί δὲ ἐν τῷ Βιβλίῳ τῷδε γέγραπ­ ται. εἴποι δ᾽ ἄν τις πρὸς ἐκεῖνον εὐκαίρως πλάτυνον τὸ στόμα σου, εἰ θέλεις πληρωθῆναι τὸ στόμα σου διὰ τοῦ μανθάνειν ταῦτα, περὶ ὧν πυνθάνῃ. ἐὰν οὖν τις μέλλοι νοεῖν τὰ ἱερὰ γράμματα, μὴ ἄλλην παρα­ σκευὴν ἐχέτω ἢ ἀπὸ τῆς μνήμης ἐχέτω τῶν γραφῶν· λαλοῦμεν γὰρ τὰ θεῖα οὐκ ἐν διδακτοῖς ἀνθρωπί­ νοις σοφίας λόγοις, ἀλλ᾽ ἐν διδακτοῖς πνεύματος, πνευματικοῖς πνευμα­ τικὰ συγκρίνοντες.

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Frequently someone comes to me who seeks to learn the thoughts contained in the holy scripture, and contained there in a hidden manner. But they come without knowing the gospel text, without remem­ bering the word of the apostle, without knowing what the prophet says and what is written in such and such a book. Someone might say to this person at the appropriate time, “‘widen your mouth’ (Ps 80:11 LXX), if you want your mouth to be filled through these teachings, about which you would learn.” If therefore someone is going to understand the holy letters, let him prepare in no other way than by committing the scriptures to memory. For we speak divine things, “not in words of wisdom taught by human beings, but in [words] taught by the Spirit, comparing spiritual things with spiritual things” (1 Cor 2:13).42

Memorizing the scriptures is a condition for understanding them, in part because understanding takes linguistic form in the “widening of the mouth” that results. This presumably includes expanding on scriptural words through commentary, but Origen also indicates that by putting memorized words them­ selves to use, one may “speak divine things.” Origen models how to do so with several texts that he, presumably, has memorized himself. In the case of Paul’s words in 1 Cor 2:13, Origen seamlessly integrates them into his own discourse about memorization by quoting them without further comment.43 In his dis­ cussion of Ps 80:11b, however, Origen reflects on the appropriate conditions under which one may adopt a scriptural text as one’s own words. The words of the lemma, “widen your mouth, and he will fill it,” are puzzling if taken literally, as Origen argued in a discussion preceding the quoted section. How does one “widen” one’s mouth, and what kind of filling can one expect? Origen argues that instead of speaking these words in a literal sense, one should use them 42 HomPs 80.2.5. 43 The modern scholarly practice of placing verses in quotation marks and inserting scrip­ tural references can obscure the thorough integration of scriptural language into patristic discourse.

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figuratively with reference to memorization. Instead of regarding them as an exhortation about the generic good of memorization, however, Origen argues that there is a particular occasion under which these words may be rightly used in this figural sense. “Someone might say” these words to a specific kind of person (one who wants to understand scripture but has not memorized it) and at a specific time (εὐκαίρως, “at the appropriate time”). Only contextualized in this way do the puzzling words “widen your mouth, and he will fill it” function as a sentence about the way scriptural memorization leads to further insights. 2.2 Kata Lexin The problems facing one memorizing a text or hearing it read liturgically are similar to those facing Stoic logicians. Since the meaning one tends to under­ stand from the words alone is abstracted from their relation to a particular context of use, one tends to apprehend the text’s meaning according to its semantics alone.44 This is exactly the level of understanding that Origen’s notion of the literal sense aims to distinguish. The very names he most fre­ quently gives this sense suggest this, such as “κατὰ λέξιν” (“according to the wording”) and “ἐπὶ τοῦ ῥητοῦ” (“based on what is said”). Words like “λέξις” and “ῥητὸν” were part of Origen’s vocabulary for referring to linguistic utterances as physical objects. Lexically, a reading “κατὰ λέξιν” or “ἐπὶ τοῦ ῥητοῦ” would be one that corresponds to the words themselves. Scholars have long observed that Origen’s “literal” sense is neither the sense intended by the author nor the meaning of a text when referred to a particular historical context.45 Rather, the most careful examinations of Origen’s literal sense have focused on two important features, which must both be kept in view. First, the literal sense may be described, following Crouzel, in epistemo­ logical terms as “the raw matter of what is said, before, if it were possible, any attempt at interpretation is made.”46 Crouzel’s definition locates the literal sense in the event of speaking a text prior to any interpretation or reflection, though I would clarify that “raw matter” should be taken as a synecdoche for 44

The memorization of texts also helps explain the exegetical focus on individual sentences, as Kugel says of rabbinic midrash. “Midrash generally seems to be addressing its verse in the same relative isolation in which it is remembered” (James Kugel, “Two Introductions to Midrash,” in Midrash and Literature, ed. Geoffrey H. Hartman and Sanford Budick (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), 95). 45 De Lubac, History and Spirit, 128–143, esp. 129; Young, Biblical Exegesis, 187–88. 46 Crouzel, Origen, 62. Cf. Henri Crouzel, “Pourquoi Origene refuse-t-il le sens littéral dans ses homélies sur l’Hexateuch?” Bulletin de Littérature Ecclésiastique 70 (1969), 241–63; and Patricia Cox Miller, “Origen and the Witch of Endor: Toward an Iconoclastic Typology,” Anglican Theological Review 66 (1984): 137–147.

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the intellectual content that one apprehends when the material verbal utter­ ance sounds in the ear. The literal sense may then be reformulated as that which one understands or causes another to understand by reciting a text in a neutral context. It is, we might say, the unexamined sense of scripture, its plain sense when the words are taken at face value. It is that which a competent speaker automatically understands when reciting a text without thinking any further about the meaning or use of the words one is reciting. In his Homilies on the Psalms Origen frequently emphasizes the immediacy of this dimension of meaning. For example, when commenting on the saying in Ps 36:15 LXX, “Better a little for the righteous than the great wealth of sin­ ners,” Origen first comments on the disparities in wealth between the righ­ teous and the unrighteous, taking the word “wealth” in its merely semantic sense with reference to money. When introducing this interpretation, he reit­ erates the common theme that a text can benefit its hearers even when taken at face value, while contrasting this level of understanding with the deeper allegorical interpretation that will follow: Ἡ λέξις αὐτόθεν ἔχει τι ὠφέλιμον τοῖς ἀκεραιοτέροις, ὅπερ πρῶτον παρα­ στήσομεν, ἔχει δέ τι καὶ κεκρυμμένως εἰρημένον τοῖς βαθύτερον ἀκούειν τῆς γραφῆς ἐπισταμένοις.

The words of themselves contain some benefit for the more simple [hearers], which we will set forth first; but it also contains something said in a hidden way, for those who know how to hear the scripture more deeply.47

Origen calls an interpretation that takes the word “wealth” in its lexical sense the meaning that “the words of themselves” brings about, that understanding that the text brings to mind of itself without any conscious activity on the part of the interpreter. Later he will call it the “simpler” sense (τὸ ἁπλούστερον),48 by contrast with the deeper sense of these words available only to interpreters with particular capacities: “those who know how to hear the deeper sense of scripture.” After offering this comment he will refer back to this interpreta­ tion as one that “pertains to the text” (εἰς τὸ ῥητόν), that is, to the text alone.49 To focus on the text alone entails hearing the meaning it imposes of itself (αὐτόθεν), its simple lexical sense.50 47 48 49 50

HomPs 36.3.6. Ibid. Ibid. See also HomPs 67.2.2, where he concludes a literal interpretation with the words: “Ταῦτα μὲν οὖν εἰς τὸ ῥητὸν τὸ ᾄσατε τῷ κυρίῳ, ὅτι καὶ αὐτὸ καθ’ αὑτὸ ἔχει τὸ χρήσιμον,” “[I have said] these things then concerning the text ‘Sing to the Lord,’ because even [the text] in itself

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The literal sense can also be described, however, in procedural terms, fol­ lowing Tigcheler in his monograph on the Origenist Didymus the Blind.51 Tigcheler hypothesized that his results would apply to Origen as well, which Origen scholars have generally endorsed.52 Tigcheler shows that Didymus not only distinguished between two levels of reading—one oriented towards material realities, the other towards immaterial—but that he also worked with a clear distinction between sense and reference.53 The literal sense (πρὸς ῥητόν, κατὰ λέξιν) refers to the sense of the text for a reader who attends solely to what may be inferred from the physical text or utterance itself (in relation to its conventional idiom)—more or less the semantic level of meaning. Since the operative conventions of a text may be unknown, this sort of reading often takes the form of clarifying these conventions—for example, explicating the meaning of difficult words. The literal sense must be distinguished, however, not only from a text’s figural sense (κατ᾽ ἀλληγορίαν), but also from its vari­ ous possible referents, both corporeal (καθ᾽ ἱστορίαν) and incorporeal (κατ´ ἀναγωγήν). Although Tigcheler himself does not say so, since determinate ref­ erents and figural senses require a relation between text and world established through usage, both involve pragmatics. These two perspectives—epistemological and procedural—are comple­ mentary. The apparent contradiction in the fact that Crouzel describes the literal sense as an immediate sense while Tigcheler describes a procedure (hence, a mediation) for determining it can be resolved by pointing out that to understand a text “immediately” presupposes that one already possesses a facility with the relevant linguistic conventions. The kinds of procedures that Tigcheler outlines at the literal level aim at identifying the linguistic conven­ tions necessary for a reader to apprehend a text immediately in the way that Crouzel describes. For it is a familiar fact, and one of great concern to Origen, that one may recite words that one does not understand, even literally. In the Philocalia, Origen reflects on the extreme case in which one memorizes a has benefit.” Again his emphasis is on the immediacy of this level of interpretation, what the text communicates “of itself” (αὐτὸ καθ’). 51 J. H. Tigcheler, Didyme l’Aveugle et l’exégèse allegorique, son commentaire sur Zacharie (Nijmegen: Dekker & van de Vegt, 1977). 52 See, for example, Torjesen, Hermeneutical Procedure, 10–11, and F. M. Young, “Alexandrian and Antiochene Exegesis,” in A History of Biblical Interpretation, vol. 1, ed. Alan J. Hauser and Duane F. Watson (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 334–54, esp. 338. 53 He also offers a list of earlier scholars who neglect this crucial procedural distinction, including Henri de Lubac. Despite the important discussion in Young, Biblical Exegesis, 187–88, this distinction is still neglected all too frequently in discussions of patristic exegesis.

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text without understanding any of the words one is saying.54 In such a case, one experiences the text merely as sounds or syllables, without any sense. In another case, a reciter may understand the bulk of what she utters, yet not understand one or two difficult words, for which the grammatical clarification of words (γλωσσηματικόν) is necessary.55 Many of the texts the church reads aloud, especially Septuagint texts with their loan-words, coinages, and Semitic constructions, could be extremely puzzling. If, however, one is sufficiently competent in the language, then the immediate apprehension of the sense of a sentence as one speaks or hears it is what Origen refers to as its sense kata lexin. As Tigcheler suggests, however, it often requires a further act of investigation to establish that some corporeal referent exists to which the text might refer, even in its literal sense. Thus one must not only distinguish the literal sense of a text from the words themselves, but one must also distinguish the literal sense from its possible corporeal referents. While every well-formed sentence has a literal sense, not every such sentence has a corporeal referent. A realistic text may be fictional, for example. In a fragment from his commentary on Proverbs, Origen uses the distinction between sense and reference to give a compressed theory of parables as fictional narratives: Ἔστι τοίνυν παραβολὴ λόγος ὡς περὶ γενομένου, μὴ γενομένου μὲν κατὰ τὸ ῥητὸν, δυναμένου δὲ γενέ­ σθαι, τροπικῶς δηλωτικὸς πραγ­ μάτων ἐκ μεταλήψεως τῶν ἐν τῇ παραβολῇ λελεγμένων. Οὐ γὰρ γέγονε κατὰ τὴν λέξιν τὸ, Ἐξῆλθεν ὁ σπείρων, ὡς λέγομεν γεγονέναι τὰ τῆς ἱστορίας· πλὴν δυνατὸν γενέσθαι κατὰ τὸ ῥητόν· Ἰδοὺ ἐξῆλ­ θεν ὁ σπείρων …

54

A parable is discourse concerning an event that, though it did not happen accord­ ing to the literal sense, nevertheless could have happened. Instead, [a parable] refers to things figuratively by transferring what was said in the parable. For “the sower went out …” (Matt 13:3) did not happen accord­ ing to the literal sense, as we say the events of a historical narrative happened; but it could have happened according to the text that “Behold, the sower went out …”56

Even the sounds alone have a beneficial effect, he argues, like a medicine that works with­ out one’s conscious awareness (Philocalia 12). 55 On which see Neuschäfer, Origenes als Philologe, 140–55. An interesting example occurs in HomPs 36.1.1, where Origen notes with some delight that the LXX translators have used a word according to a usage “unknown both to philologists and to the uneducated.” 56 FragProv 1:6 = PG 13.20C. Hans Frei makes a similar point in The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), esp. 1–16.

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Parables have a literal sense, for they bring to mind events that might very well have happened. They tell a coherent story. But because parables are fic­ tions, they have no referent according to this literal sense. In saying “the sower went out,” Jesus is not referring to a historical sower. Rather, the story refers to things in a figurative way, applying the same words of the parable (“what was said”) in a transferred sense to an alternative referent (in this case, to one preaching the Word of God). An ordinary facility with conventional language makes possible the immediate and subjective apprehension of the text, and hence an understanding of its face value meaning; but determining its nonliteral senses and possible referents requires interpretive activity, guided by reason.57 Origen’s polemic against literalism is, strictly speaking, a polemic against assuming that every text signifies, in its literal sense, an existing ref­ erent, and against the corresponding tendency to neglect non-literal uses of language. In asking about the particular referent of a text, however, one moves beyond semantics to pragmatics, from the meaning of words considered in abstract isolation to a logical consideration of the possible uses of words to refer to particular objects with particular effects.58

57 There is an analogy here to the Stoic theory of perception. The senses make proposals that take the form of propositions (άξιωματα), but these propositions must themselves be tested by reason before the sage assents to them. On this point, see Berchman, From Philo to Origen, 214. 58 There is a parallel both historically and formally between Origen and the circle of tan­ naitic rabbis associated with Rabbi Ishmael. In his hermeneutical study of Mekhilta de Rabbi Ishmael and the Sifre Numbers, Azzan Yadin-Israel, Scripture as Logos: Rabbi Ishmael and the Origins of Midrash (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), calls attention to the technical vocabulary of “hearing” scripture. In these texts, “hearing” the scriptures refers to a reader’s passive grasp of the meaning of a scriptural text without any need for interpretation (Yadin-Israel, Scripture as Logos, 36). Generally the midrash rejects this passively understood reading in favor of an alternative reading that requires some form of argumentation (‫)דין‬, usually with reference to another scriptural text. On this account, what these rabbis label “as it is heard” (‫ )כשמועו‬is very similar to Origen’s κατὰ λέξιν. There does seem to be a difference in their theological evaluations of this stage, however. The rhetoric of the R. Ishmael midrashim generally implies that where possible, the passive reception of unmediated “hearing” is the ideal posture. Although the reading initially heard does not endure, “their initial mention indicates that the reader has intervened only after the preferred path of passive receptivity has proven to be unten­ able” (Yadin-Israel, Scripture as Logos, 44). By contrast, Origen’s rhetoric is frequently hos­ tile to the literal sense and always conscious of its limitations. Both agree, however, that one’s immediate apprehension of textual meaning must frequently be rejected in favor of a reading established by argument and appeal to texts beyond the lemma itself. Given that the Ishmael midrashim would have been circulating in Palestine during the period in which Origen lived there, this parallel suggests that there may be a substantive procedural

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It is important to distinguish the sense of a text at face value from its possible corporeal referents to display the full complexity of Origen’s exegetical analy­ sis. This distinction helps explain, for example, why Origen does not assume that the literal sense of Old Testament texts must have a pre-Christian refer­ ent. Rather, the literal sense may have a Christological referent. (For Origen, Christological interpretation of the Old Testament is not always allegorical.) Identifying Jesus as the most appropriate referent of an Old Testament text, even or especially in its literal sense, is one way of showing that that text was prophetic. For example, Origen applies Ps 73:4a LXX, “And those who hate you were proud in the midst of your feast,” “Καὶ ἐνεκαυχήσαντο οἱ μισοῦντές σε ἐν μέσῳ τῆς ἑορτῆς σου,” to the Passover feast during which Jesus was handed over to be crucified. Κατὰ τὸ ῥητὸν ἐλθέ μοι ἐπὶ τὸν χρό­ νον τῆς ἑορτῆς ἐκείνης, ὅτε ὁ Ἰησοῦς μου, πάσχα ὄντος, παραδίδοται εἰς τὸ σταυρωθῆναι. Ἐνεκαυχήσαντο οὖν οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι, οἱ πολέμιοι τῷ Χριστῷ, καὶ ἐνεργοῦντες τοὺς Ἰουδαίους ἐν μέσῳ τῆς ἑορτῆς· ἑορτὴ γὰρ ἦν, ὅτε παρε­ δόθη καὶ ἀντὶ προβάτου ἀπέκτειναν τὸν σωτῆρα

According to the text [at face value] come with me to the time of that feast when my Jesus, during the Passover, was handed over to be crucified. For those Jews who warred against Christ were “proud,” and they stirred up the Jews “in the midst of the feast;” for it was a feast during which he was handed over, and when they killed the Savior instead of a sheep.59

Although Origen applies the words of this ancient Psalm to the events of Christ’s passion, which took place centuries after it was written, this interpre­ tation remains at face value (κατὰ τὸ ῥητὸν) because it takes words like “feast” in their ordinary semantic sense. Origen goes on, however, to offer a figurative interpretation that contrast Christ’s death as the true Passover (a figurative sense of “feast”) with the Jewish Passover ritual which, he argues, is no longer possible to celebrate lawfully after the destruction of the Temple.60 Indeed, on this reading, although Origen interprets the text in two different senses, they have nearly the same Christological referent. Both refer to the past events of Christ’s death, though in different aspects.

issue at stake between Origen and his Jewish interlocutors concerning literalism, contra Martens, Origen and Scripture, 135–160. 59 HomPs 73.1.8. 60 Ibid.

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Conversely, the same literal sense may have two distinct historical ref­ erents, as another example from earlier in the same homily shows. Because the epigraph to Ps 73 LXX says “of Asaph,” Origen infers that it was written by Asaph, who lived prior to the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple by the Babylonians.61 Since the plain sense of the psalm applies most appropriately to the future destruction of the first temple, Origen argues that Asaph spoke this psalm prophetically.62 Verse 7, for example, says, “they burned your altar with fire, they defiled the dwelling of your name in the land.” But he also points out that the same words in the same plain sense can be applied to the destruction of the second temple as well: Συνειστήκει τὰ τῆς Ἰερουσαλήμ, ὅτε ὁ Ἀσὰφ ταῦτα προεφήτευσε, καὶ λέγει, ὡς πρὸς τὸ ῥητόν, τὰ συμβεβηκότα τῷ λαῷ μετὰ τὴν αἰχμαλωσίαν. τὸ γὰρ ἴνα τί, ὁ θεός, ἀπώσω εἰς τέλος, ὀργίσθε ὁ θυμός σου ἐπὶ πρόβατα νομῆς σου; μνή­ σθητι τῆς συναγωγῆς σου, ἧς ἐκτήσω ἀπ᾽ ἀρχῆς, καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς ἁρμοζει, ὅσον ἐπὶ τῇ λέξει, τοῖς πράγμασι τοῖς μετὰ τὴν αἰχμαλωσίαν. εἴποι δ᾽ ἄν τις ὅτι οὐ μόνον ἐκείνοις ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῖς μετὰ τοῦ Σωτῆρος ἡμῶν ἐπιδημίαν, τοῦ αἵματος κατὰ τῆν φωνὴν αὐτῶν ἐλθόν­ τος ἐπ᾽ αὐτοὺς καὶ ἐπὶ τὰ τέκνα αὐτῶν, γἐγονε ἡ αἰχμαλωσία καὶ τὰ εἱρημένα συμβέβηκεν· ἐν πελέκει γὰρ καὶ λαξευ­ τηρίῳ κατέρραξε τὰς θύρας αὐτῶν, ἤγουν τῆς Ἰηρουσαλὴμ καὶ τοῦ λαοῦ.

61 Cf. 2 Chr 20:14. 62 HomPs 73.1.1. 63 Ibid.

Jerusalem was still standing when Asaph prophesied these things, and yet he speaks, according to the text itself, of things that happened to the people after the exile. For the [words], “Why, O God, have you rejected us completely? Why is your wrath enraged against the sheep of your pasture? Remember your assem­ bly, which you created from the begin­ ning,” (Ps 73:1–2 LXX) and the rest, agree, so far as the text itself is concerned, with the things [that took place] after the exile. And someone might say that [it agrees] not only with these things but also with the things [that took place] after the sojourn of our Savior. After “his blood came upon them and their chil­ dren,” (Matt 27:25) according to their own word, the exile has come about and the things spoken have taken place. For “with axes and stone-cutting tools he shattered their gates,” (Ps 73:6b) that is, [the gates] of Jerusalem that belonged to the [Jewish] people.63

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Origen labels this plain sense reading using two synonymous expressions— “with reference to what is said” (ὡς πρὸς τὸ ῥητόν) and “so far as the wording is concerned” (ὅσον ἐπὶ τῇ λέξει)—to emphasize that both the interpretive possi­ bilities he offers involve the literal sense of the text. But the same words in the same literal sense may apply (“ἀρμοζει”) to two distinct corporeal referents: the destruction of the first temple “after the exile”64 and that of the second temple, “after the sojourn of our Savior.” The fact that Origen identifies distinct corpo­ real referents shows clearly that he distinguishes literal sense from corporeal referent. The meaning one understands upon first hearing the text is its literal sense; but even identifying one (or more) referents for this sense requires addi­ tional interpretive labor. 2.3 Rules of Usage If interpreting a text requires seeking out possible legitimate referents to which a form of words is appropriate, then interpretation is not primarily a matter of understanding what those words are trying to communicate. Rather, it requires understanding the rules by which those words might appropri­ ately be used in these different contexts. In the previous example, Origen dis­ cerned in the literal sense of Ps 73 a pattern that could be applied to a class of cases—the destruction of God’s temple—with at least two actual historical instances. Because the text does not identify these instances explicitly, how­ ever, it requires the work of the interpreter to search them out. The words of scripture deliver a rule of speech that takes on a determinate meaning in rela­ tion to particular appropriate referents. In the Homilies on the Psalms, Origen frequently interprets words of scrip­ ture by determining circumstances under which they could appropriately be used. For example:65

64

Presumably Origen means that the temple was destroyed after the beginning of the exile: cf. 2 Kgs 24:14–16 and 25:9. 65 Also HomPs 15.1.3: “The Savior recounts his own prayer to us, so that by recounting it, he might also teach us to pray,” and HomPs 36.3.11. Often, however, mastering the words of scripture requires recognizing that their most appropriate speaker is God and that the primary use the Christian must learn is how to hear them. This is generally the case, for example, with prophetic texts like Jeremiah. See Torjesen, Hermeneutical Procedure, 52.

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Ἔλεγον τότε διστάζων, ὅτι τί εἴπω περὶ τοῦ πνεύματος οὐκ οἰδα. Ἐδίδαξέν με ὁ προφήτης τί δεῖ λέγειν περὶ τοῦ πνεύματος· ἐμνήσθη γάρ, φησίν, ὁ θεὸς ὅτι σάρξ εἰσιν.

I just spoke hesitatingly [about the soul of the sinner changing from spirit to flesh], because I do not know what I should say concerning the spirit. But the prophet taught me what one should say about the spirit; for he says, “God remembers that they are flesh” (Ps 77:39a LXX).66

Μαθητής ἐστι τοῦ εἰπόντος· μάθετε ἀπ᾽ ἐμοῦ, ὅτι πραῢς είμι καὶ ταπεινὸς τῇ καρδίᾳ, ὁ τοσαῦτα περὶ ἑαυτοῦ ἐπὶ τὸ μετρίωτερον εἰπὼν …

The disciple of the one who says, “Learn from me, for I am meek and humble at heart” (Matt 11:29) says the same things about himself, so far as it is appropriate …67

Παῦλος, ὅσον ἐπὶ τῇ κατὰ θεὸν αὐτοῦ προκοπῇ καὶ τῷ ἀπὸ ἀληθείας λέγειν· ὅσοι οὖν τοῦτο τέλειοι φρονῶμεν, ὡς τέλειος δυνατὸς ἦν καὶ οὕτως δυνατῶς ὥστε λέγειν· πάντα ἰσχύω ἐν τῷ ἐνδυνα­ μοῦντι με Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ τῷ κυρίῳ μου.

Paul, in as much as he was far advanced towards God, said truly that, “We who are perfect should think this way” (Phil 3:15). Being perfect, he was also [fully] able, and thus he was able to say, “I can do all things through the one who strengthens me,” (Phil 4:13) Christ Jesus my Lord.68

Ὥσπερ δὲ οἱ λόγοι κἂν ἐξίωσιν ἐκ στόματός μου, ὦσι δὲ ἀνεπίληπτοι καὶ θεῖοι, οὐκ εἰσὶν ἐμοῦ ἀλλὰ τοῦ θεοῦ, ὤστε θαρροῦντά με λέγειν· ἢ δοκιμὴν ζητεῖτε τοῦ ἐν ἐμοῖ λαλοῦντος Χριστοῦ …

But just as the words that come out of my mouth, if they are blameless and divine, are not mine but God’s, so that I may boldly say, “or do you seek proof that Christ speaks in me …” (2 Cor 13:3)69

66 67 68 69

HomPs 77.6.2. HomPs 67.1.1. HomPs 77.9.1. HomPs 76.2.4.

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In each of these examples, Origen interprets words of scripture (not merely psalms) by placing them on someone’s lips. Often Origen’s point in doing so is ethical: by imitating her teachers, the Christian must learn to be the kind of person who can say words of Christ (HomPs 67.1.1) or of Paul (HomPs 76.2.4) appropriately. These interpretations are similar to Torjesen’s model, in which Origen asks about the “attitude” of the one praying. Sometimes, however, the emphasis is less on the character of the speaker and more on the context of what is said, as in HomPs 77.6.2, where the scriptural text provides language to use in speaking about a theological question. In every case, Origen’s aim is not (just) to explicate the meaning of these words but to teach his community how to use them, to teach “what one should say.” In short, he infers from the text a rule of speech. Making these sorts of judgment involves more than merely grammati­ cal competence. They are judgments about the relation between words and things, requiring knowledge of both. To recognize that “with axes and stonecutting tools he shattered their gates” may be applied to the fall of the second temple requires both a grasp of the relevant Greek words and some knowledge of history. Similarly, to rightly say “I am meek and humble,” requires both an understanding of the words and an accurate measure of one’s own character. As in his discussion of Ps 73 above, Origen often uses the verbs “ἁρμοζω” (“fit” or “be appropriate”) or its derivative “ἐφαρμοζω” (“fit upon” or “apply”) to refer to the relation of appropriateness that should obtain between a sentence and its referent. Appropriateness is an aesthetic or normative relation between two particulars, a kind of fit or rightness. As a judgment about particulars, Origen suggests that determining instances in which scriptural rules apply involves making an intuitive judgment about the relation between sentence and refer­ ent. For example, … καθέζεται ὅτε κρίνει. τῷ δὲ ἁγίῳ καὶ μακαρίῳ, ᾧ ἁρμόζει τὸ ὁ πιστεύων εἰς ἐμὲ οὐ κρίνεται, οὐ καθέζεται ἀλλὰ ἕστηκεν.

[God] sits when he judges. But for the one who is holy and blessed, to whom [the words,] “The one who believes in me is not judged” (John 3:18) are appro­ priate, he does not sit, but rather stands.70

The words of John 3:18 are appropriate when asserted of a holy and blessed person. Or again:

70 HomPs 67.1.3, emphasis added.

From Lexis to Logos

Καὶ εἰ βούλει ἀπὸ παραδείγματος νοῆσαι πῶς ῥομφαίαν ἐσπάσαντο οἱ ἁμαρτωλοί, κατανόησον μαχομένους ἐθνικοὺς καὶ ῥήματα οὐ θεμιτὰ λέγον­ τας πρὸς ἀλλήλους μετὰ ὀργῆς καὶ ἔριδος. Τότε γὰρ ἐφαρμόσεις τὸ ῥητὸν αὐτοῖς καὶ ἐρεῖς· ῥομφαίαν ἐσπάσαντο οἱ ἁμαρτωλοί.

101 And if you intend to understand from this example how “the sinners draw a sword,” (Ps 36:14a LXX) consider how the Gentiles make war and speak law­ less words to one another with anger and envy. For then you will apply the words [of the text] to them and say, “The sinners draw a sword.”71

Origen uses the related verb ἐφαρμόζειν, “apply,” for the act of fitting a sentence to a referent for which it is appropriate, in this case one that the sentence sig­ nifies allegorically. Origen is explicit that it is the wording—τὸ ῥητὸν—that may be fitted or applied to the Gentiles who speak lawlessly and that doing so involves saying the words “the sinners draw a sword” of them, in an allegorical sense. To recognize the appropriateness of this use requires inquiry beyond the words themelves by “considering” the proposed referent—Gentiles, in their warlike use of language. Origen often attempts to make explicit the underlying rules governing his intuitive judgments about the use of scriptural language. Consequently, his exegetical comments often amount to determinations of the pragmatic condi­ tions under which one may use a particular sentence of scripture. For example, …  εἴπερ βούλει ταχύνειν ἐπὶ τὸ ὁδεῦσαι ἐπὶ τὰ ἀγαθά, μὴ ὄκνει εὐδοκεῖν ἐν ἀσθενείαις καὶ τοιοῦτος εἶναι ὡς φάσκειν· ὅταν ἀσθενῶ, τότε δυνατός εἰμι.

… if you intend to hurry on the way to good things, do not shrink from giving thanks in weakness and being such as to say, “When I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor 12:10).”72

Being weak while intending to hurry towards good things is a condition for being able to say the words of Paul, “When I am weak, then I am strong.” Or: Ὥσπερ δὲ οἱ λόγοι κἂν ἐξίωσιν ἐκ στόματός μου, ὦσι δὲ ἀνεπίληπτοι καὶ θεῖοι, οὐκ εἰσὶν ἐμοῦ ἀλλὰ τοῦ θεοῦ, ὤστε θαρροῦντά με λέγειν· ἢ δοκιμὴν ζητεῖτε τοῦ ἐν ἐμοῖ λαλοῦντος Χριστοῦ … 71 HomPs 36.3.1, emphasis added. 72 HomPs 15.1.7, emphasis added. 73 HomPs 76.2.4, emphasis added.

But just as the words that come out of my mouth, if they are blameless and divine, are not mine but God’s, so that I may boldly say, “or do you seek proof that Christ speaks in me …” (2 Cor 13:3)73

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Here the rule is: if one’s words are blameless and divine, one may say, “Christ speaks in me.” These kinds of proposals are similar to the process of “ear train­ ing” identified above in connection with Torjesen. By stipulating a context for using a sentence of scripture that may not have occurred to his audience, Origen trains his community to hear different possible appropriate uses of the words he quotes. Frequently Origen frames the upshot of his interpretation as a proposal for a rule governing the use of a psalm by his hearers. An interesting example (and one with no hint of allegory) can be found in Origen’s second homily on Ps 36 LXX. Προστάσσοντος τοῦ λόγου καὶ λέγον­ τος· ὑποτάγηθι τῷ Κυρίῳ, ἀναγκαῖόν ἐστιν τὸ ἀναπτύξαι καὶ παραστῆσαι τῷ λόγῳ, τίς μέν ἐστιν ὁ ὑποτασσόμενος τῷ Κυρίῳ, τίς δὲ ὁ μὴ ὑποτασσόμε­ νος αὐτῷ. Ὥσπερ οὖν οὐ πᾶς ὁ λέγων μοι· κύριε, κύριε, εἰσελεύσεται εἰς τὴν βασιλείαν τῶν οὐρανῶν, ἀλλ᾽ ὁ ποιῶν τὸ θέλημα τοῦ Πατρός μου τοῦ ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς, οὕτως οὐ πᾶς ὁ λέγων ὑποτάσσεσθαι τῷ Κυρίῳ, καὶ ὅσον ἐπὶ τῇ φωνῇ λέγων τοῦτο ποιεῖν· ἀληθῶς ὑποτάσσεσθαι τῷ Κυρίῳ ἀπὸ τῶν ἔργων χαρακτηρίζεται.

Since the Logos commands and says, “submit to the Lord” (Ps 36:7a LXX), it is necessary to clarify and demonstrate by reason who it is that submits to the Lord, and who does not submit to him. For just as “Not all who say to me, ‘Lord, Lord!’ will enter into the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven” (Matt 7:21), so not everyone who says they sub­ mit to the Lord acts according to the word he says. Only from his works is he described truly as submitting to the Lord.74

It is characteristic of Origen’s rationalist linguistics that he immediately trans­ forms a problem of meaning into a problem of usage. For he assumes that to obey the command “submit to the Lord” is simply to become the kind of per­ son of whom the words, “submitted to the Lord,” can be said. To determine how to use this phrase, Origen argues by analogy with Matt 7:21, itself a dominical rule about the conditions under which one may call Jesus “Lord.” Origen argues that the grammar of submitting to the Lord should be analogous, depending in both cases on one’s works. As Origen makes clear, to grasp the rule by which the Logos (λόγου) speaks requires the reader to exercise reason (λόγῳ) herself. However, Origen then points out that Paul says of Christ, “When all things are submitted to him, then the Son himself will submit to the one who submits all things to him” (1 Cor 15:28). If Origen’s rule applied in this case, it would 74 HomPs 36.2.1.

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imply that the works of the Son himself had been imperfect. So Origen must postulate a refinement to his general rule that can account for Paul’s usage in this specific case. Ἀλλ᾽ ὅρα αὐτοῦ τὴν πολλὴν φιλαν­ θρωπίαν καὶ χρηστότητα· οὐδὲ αὑτὸν λογίζεται ὑποτετάχθαι, ὅσον ἔστι τι τῷ πατρὶ μὴ ὑποτεταγμένον. Τότε δὲ αὑτὸν ἐν ὑποτασσομένοις ἀριθμεὶ καὶ θαρρεῖ λέγειν ὑποτέταγμαι τῷ θεῷ, ὅτε πάντα παρίστησιν ὑποτεταγμένα τῷ λόγῳ.

But see his great love of humanity and his kindness: he does not consider him­ self to be submitted, as long as anything is not submitted to the Father. But then he will number himself among those who are submitted and boldly say, “I am submitted to God,” when he presents everything as submitted to the Word.75

Once again Origen transforms the problem of interpreting Paul’s meaning into that of describing how Christ appropriately uses the expression, “I am sub­ mitted to God.” Paul himself determines the appropriate occasion: Christ says this only after all things are submitted to God. The interpretive task is thus to determine the force of Christ’s language about submission under these cir­ cumstances, without contradicting the earlier rule or his commitments about Christ’s character. Doing so leads Origen to a proposal that is at once linguistic and theological: Christ may identify himself with us in what he predicates of himself. In denying or asserting that he is submitted to God, Christ applies to himself words proper to us, by virtue of his incarnational identification with us, rather than using those words to refer to the state of his own works. In this way, interpreting the psalmist’s command “submit to the Lord” as implying a rule for the usage of scriptural language leads Origen not only to determine how to predicate submission of ourselves, but also to articulate the extraordi­ nary rules governing Christ’s unique use of the same expression and to show how these two uses are related. 2.4 Linguistic Intuitions These examples make increasingly clear that, for Origen, linguistic practices embody rational commitments about the world. Linguistic practice involves judgments about how words may correctly be used of things, and hence involve an implicit understanding of both. For this reason, sometimes Origen’s exe­ gesis does little more than make explicit to his community some aspect of their current linguistic competence. In these cases, Origen’s exegesis tends to presuppose what they already know how to do with words, and hence what 75 Ibid.

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they already believe about the world. Doing so has the effect of solidifying his community’s grasp of their tradition, as embodied in their current intuitive judgments. For example, Origen begins his second homily on Ps 76 LXX with these words: Ὀ βιοὺς κατὰ θεὸν πολλάκις ἐν προ­ οιμίοις ὢν τοῦ βίου τοῦ κατὰ θεὸν οἴε­ ται τὴν ἀρχὴν πεποιῆσθαι τοῦ βιοῦν καθὸ χρὴ βιοῦν. ἐπὰν δὲ νοήσας τὴν διαφορὰν τοῦ προοιμίου τοῦ κατὰ θεὸν βίου γένηται μετὰ τὸ προοίμιον ἐπὶ τὴν ὁδὸν τοῦ κατὰ θεὸν βίου, ἐπιγινώσκων ὅτι πρότερον μὲν ἐδό­ κει ἄρχεσθαι, οὐκ ἦν δὲ ἀρξάμενος· ὕστερον δὲ ἔγνω τίς ἡ ἀρχή, φησὶ τὸ νῦν ἠρξάμην.

The one who aims to live a godly life frequently supposes that he has made a beginning of living as he ought to live, when he is only in the prelude of the godly life. But having come to understand the difference between the prelude of the godly life [and its beginning], he sets out after the prelude upon the way of the godly life, having come to recognize that though earlier he seemed to have begun, he had not [yet] begun. But later, when he knows what the beginning [really] is, he says, “Now I have begun!” (Ps 76:11)76

Origen does not explain what, if anything, provokes his commentary, but we might speculate that he is responding to the fact that the words of Ps 76:11 LXX, “And I said, ‘Now I have begun …’” are words about beginning that occur in the middle of the psalm, after many professions of piety that would seem to indicate that the psalmist has already begun.77 How can someone say “now I have begun” if she is already in the middle? Origen proposes a rule that would answer this question. If one has reached a new threshold in her spiritual life, in relation to which her earlier progress now seems to be merely a prelude, under such circumstances, a person might say, “Now I have begun.” Origen also gives an indication of the meaning those words would express when said under those circumstances. They express the recognition of a significant new beginning that nevertheless stands in some pedagogical continuity with what came before. Origen goes on to enumerate particular examples of this rule— one whose bad doctrine is corrected by good teachers; an Ebionite coming to recognize that the law is shadows; a Jew becoming a Christian; and so on.78 In

76 HomPs 76.2.1. 77 He has already, for example, cried to the Lord (v. 2), sought him in his suffering (v.3), and remembered the Lord with rejoicing (v. 4). 78 HomPs 76.2.1.

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each case, the person might say, “Now I have begun” to identify a relatively new beginning of understanding within a continuous process of learning. Each of these examples is introduced as a hypothetical, but Origen goes on to add that some Christians in fact already speak according to this rule. Ἐγὼ πολλάκις ἤκουσα ὁμολογού­ ντων πιστῶν πλείονα χρόνον ἐν τῇ πίστει πεποιηκότων καὶ μεμαθηκό­ των τὰ τῆς πίστεως μυστήρια, ἡνίκα ἐὰν περιτύχωσι διδασκάλῳ καλῶς τρανοῦντι, λεγόντων ὅτι νῦν ἠρξάμην Χριστιανὸς γενέσθαι, νῦν μανθάνω πρῶτον τί ἐστι Χριστιανισμός. ταῦτα δὲ λέγουσιν οὐχὶ τέλεον ἀθετοῦντες τὰ πρότερα, ἀλλ᾽ ὁρῶντες ὅτι πρότε­ ρον μὲν οὐ συνίεσαν τῶν μυστηρίων, ἀρχὴν δὲ ἔχουσι τοῦ νοεῖν ὅτε τετεύ­ χασι διδασκαλίας ἀγαθῆς.

I have frequently heard this sort of con­ fession from believers who have prac­ ticed the faith for some time and have learned the mysteries of faith, when it happens that [they learn] some espe­ cially illuminating teaching, that they say, “now I have begun to be a Christian, now I am learning for the first time what Christianity is.” But they say these things, not completely denying what came before, but seeing that before they did not understand the mysteries, but now they have a beginning of under­ standing when they are equipped with good teaching.79

Finally, he ends with an exhortation to his hearers to be the kind of people who can use these words of themselves: Καὶ ἡμεῖς οὖν πειραθῶμεν τοιοῦτοι γενέσθαι ὥστε ἐιπεῖν διὰ τὴν προκο­ πὴν ἡμῶν τῇ διαθέσει· νῦν ἀρηάμην.

Let us too, therefore, endeavor to be the sort of person who is able to say, on account of the progress in our disposi­ tion, “Now I have begun!”80

As in other examples we have seen, Origen determines a rule governing the use of a sentence of the Psalm and commends this rule for adoption by his hearers. For our purposes, most important is that the criteria for determining the use of scriptural sentences are the linguistic intuitions of his hearers, by which I mean their intuitive capacity for judging the appropriateness of par­ ticular ways of using an expression and for discerning its force when so used. Since we appeal to linguistic intuitions when interpreting the utterances of others, we might think of it as a capacity to judge by ear. But linguistic intuition 79 Ibid. 80 Ibid.

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operates also when we judge in imagination what an expression would mean under certain possible circumstances. Linguistic intuition is a capacity we use both when understanding others and when producing utterances of our own. Two features of his discussion suggest that Origen is appealing to the lin­ guistic intuitions of his hearers. First, his argument for each use case consists of little more than describing the case and announcing that such and such a person would say, “now I have begun.” This implies that he expects his hearers to accept his proposals immediately upon hearing them, which would be a judgment by linguistic intuition. Second and more revealingly, he appeals to the linguistic practices of Christians in his community, pointing out that he has actually heard people speak in the way he commends. This implies that the criteria for his proposals are rules that already govern how his hearers speak. For this reason, the cases Origen enumerates do not go much beyond the rules already implicit in their linguistic intuitions and operative in their linguistic practices. The primary result of his exegesis is to make explicit what they already know in order to show that the words of this psalm (which they may regard as puzzling) are in fact consistent with how his audience already uses language. But sometimes the words of scripture are such that the linguistic intuitions of his hearers cannot accomodate them—they are difficult, obscure, or simply offensive, the sorts of words that, in the hands of a Marcionite or Valentinian teacher, might lead a simple Christian away from Origen’s proto-orthodox community. These kinds of texts play a crucial role in learning to speak the language of scripture, since they provide the opportunity for correcting his hearer’s linguistic intuitions to account for the difficult text, training their ears, as it were, to hear differently. For example, Ps 77:65 LXX compares the Lord to “one strong and drunk with wine.” Origen comments: Ἐγὼ εἰ εἰρήκειν τὸν θεὸν ὠς δυνατὸν καὶ κεκραιπαληκότα ἐξ οἴνου ἀνί­ στασθαι, τίς οὐκ ἂν ἐλάβετό μου τῶν φιλαιτίων λέγων ὅτι μέθην καὶ κραι­ πάλην φέρεις ἐπὶ τὸν θεόν, ἄνθρωπος διδασκόμενος ὅτι οὐδὲ ἄνθρωποι μέθυ­ σοι βασιλείαν θεοῦ κληρονομήσουσιν; Ἀλλ᾽ ὅμως τὸ ἅγιον πνεῦμα ἐν τῇ ἐλευθέρῳ τοῦ λέγειν ἐξουσίᾳ τυγχάνον εἶπεν τὸν θεὸν διανίστασθαί ποτε ὡς δυνατὸν καὶ κεκραιπαληκότα ἐξ οἴνου.

If I had said that God arises “as one strong and drunk with wine,” who among those who love to find fault would not have censured me, saying, “You apply intoxication and drunken­ ness to God, yet human beings are taught that, ‘no drunk person will inherit the kingdom of God’ (1 Cor 6:10)”? But the Holy Spirit, having freedom to speak with authority, says that God some­ times awakes, “as one strong and drunk

From Lexis to Logos

Τάχα γὰρ οἱονεὶ ἡμεῖς καροῦμεν καὶ μεθύειν ποιοῦμεν τὸν θεὸν ὡς καθεύ­ δειν, ὡς ὀργίζεσθαι, ὡς τὰ λοιπά, ἵνα μὴ νήφῃ ὁ θεὸς ἀλλὰ γένηται ὡς δυνατὸς καὶ κεκραιπαληκώς. Ἀλλ᾽ ἐὰν ἐπι­ στρέψωμεν καὶ νηφαλίως ζῆν … ἐγείρεται ἡμῖν ὁ θεὸς ὡς δυνατὸν καὶ κεκραιπαληκότα ἐξ οἴνου. 3. Κολάζων μὲν γὰρ κεκραιπαληκώς ἐστιν ἐξ οἴνου, παύων δὲ τὴν ὀργὴν διανίσταται ὡς δυνατὸς καὶ κεκραιπαληκὼς ἐξ οἴνου.

107 with wine.”81 For perhaps when we are drunk, we also make God drink, and (as it were) sleep, and get angry, and other [drunken behaviors], so that God is not sober towards us but becomes like one strong and drunk. But if we turn and, as it were, live soberly … then God arises for us as one strong and drunk with wine. 3. For when God punishes, he is drunk with wine, but when he relents from his wrath, he awakes as one who is strong and drunk with wine.82

Again his interpretation is oriented towards the performance of the words of Ps 76:65 LXX in his own discourse. He points out that his hearers might find fault with him for saying these words, had they not been already said by the Holy Spirit, who possesses “freedom to speak with authority [ἐν τῇ ἐλευθέρῳ τοῦ λέγειν ἐξουσίᾳ].”83 The interpretive task is thus to propose a rule that accounts for this way of speaking, a tentative hypothesis introduced with the word “τάχα,” “perhaps.” His proposal determines conditions under which we can speak of God as drunk or sober by virtue of his relation to our own drunkenness or sobriety. When we are drunk, God adopts the behavior of one who is drunk in punishing us. When we live soberly, God relents from punishing as one who has returned to sobriety. Origen ends by putting the words of the Psalm on his lips—along with clarifying glosses—now laden with new significance for his hearers. If they are able to hear the psalm in the way he has proposed and understand why the psalm may be used in this way, then their linguistic intu­ itions have been changed; they will have gained a new capacity for hearing and a deeper understanding. They will have progressed from lexis to logos. 2.5 Logos Though the cases we have examined so far have focused primarily on deter­ mining rules for the use of single sentences, we have already seen that defining a rule for the use of one text may implicate other texts as well. Consequently, 81 HomPs 77.9.2; cf. Pitra 130.22–28. 82 HomPs 77.9.2. 83 I return to this important passage below, 230–31. See also HomPs 76.4.6, in which Origen speaks of the Word “daring to speak” concerning his flesh as food.

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Origen often attempts to formulate more general rules that organize the use of scriptural language over a broader range of cases. This kind of inductive argu­ ment can be used to organize a domain of allegorical discourse. A common case is Origen’s frequent observation that scripture uses the names of mem­ bers of the body as metaphors for aspects of the soul. For example: Μιμηταὶ οὖν τοῦ Χριστοῦ γινόμενοι καὶ ἡμεῖς, ὅσα λέγει τὸ ἀνθρώπινον τοῦ Χριστοῦ φιλτιμούμεθα εἰπεῖν. Διὰ τοὺτο γὰρ ταῦτα λέγει, ἵν᾽ ἔχω­ μεν ὑπογραμμὸν τί μιμησόμεθα καὶ ἡμεῖς εἴπωμεν· εὐλογήσω τὸν κύριον τὸν συνετίσαντά με, ἵνα καὶ ἡμεῖς εἴπωμεν· ἔτι δὲ καὶ ἕως νυκτὸς ἐπαί­ δευσάν με οἱ νεφροί μου.

Therefore as we also are becoming imi­ tators of Christ, it is worthy for us to say whatever the humanity of Christ says. For this reason [Christ] says these things, that we might have a kind of sketch of what we should imitate, that we might say, “I will bless the Lord who knit me together,” that we also might say, “yet through the night my kidneys disciplined me” (Ps 15:7 LXX).84

The performative context is clear: Christ’s words in Ps 15 are a sketch (ὑπογραμμὸν) for us to imitate by taking up the very words of the psalm as our own. But what would we mean in saying that our kidneys disciplined us through the night? Origen approaches this question by situating scripture’s use of the word “kidneys” in relation to its use of other bodily metaphors. Τοιαῦτά τινα νοήσεις, ἐὰν δυνη­ θῇς ἀκούειν καὶ συγκρίνειν πνευ­ ματικὰ πνευματικοῖς … Σωματικὰ γὰρ ὀνόματα ἐπὶ τῶν δυνάμεων τῆς ψυχῆς παραλαμβάνεται κατὰ ἀναλο­ γίαν τῶν σωματικῶν πραγμάτων…. Καὶ ὥσπερ ἡ καρδία κατὰ τὸ σῶμα ἔχει τὸ ἡγεμονικόν, οὕτως ἀνάλογον τῷ γινομένῳ ἐν τοῖς νεφροῖς γίνεται ἐν τοῖς νεφροῖς τῆς ψυχῆς … Ἀκούων οὖν τοῦ κατὰ τὸν σωτῆρα ἀνθρώπου λέγοντος· εὐλογήσω τὸν κύριον τὸν συνετίσαντά με, ἔτι δὲ καὶ ἕως νυκτὸς ἐπαίδευσάν με οἱ νεφροί μου, καὶ σὺ ταῦτα λέγε…. 84 HomPs 15.2.4. 85 HomPs 15.2.5.

You will understand certain similar things, if you are able to hear and “com­ pare spiritual things with spiritual things” (1 Cor 2:13) … For corporeal names are used for the powers of the soul by analogy with bodily things … And just as the cor­ poreal heart contains the ruling principle, so that which is produced in the kidneys is analogous to that which is produced in the kidneys of the soul … Hearing then the humanity of the savior saying, “I will bless the Lord who knit me together, yet through the night my kidneys disciplined me,” (Ps 15:7 LXX) so you also should say the same things …85

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When he says that corporeal names “are applied” to the power of the soul, he means applied by scripture, and he demonstrates this point by enumerating several texts that use the word “heart” in an obviously metaphorical way. In this case, his oft-cited principle of “comparing spiritual things to spiritual things” means that one may determine a rule of usage relevant to one case by collect­ ing examples of scriptural usage in other cases.86 Moreover, he assumes that scripture’s allegorical example should guide our own speech as well: “you too should say the same things.” In other cases, however, Origen can point to a pattern of literal usage in scripture as the most profound and commend it for imitation. In such cases, the forward movement towards a more rational language may actually involve a movement from figurative to literal. For example, Origen calls attention to this possibility when discussing the scriptural habit of personifying appar­ ently inanimate objects, as in Ps 76:17 LXX, “The waters saw and were afraid …” Origen first interprets these words as a figure of speech, a non-literal but com­ monsensical interpretation. But he then returns to the literal or face value sense to show that the text (ἡ λέξις) in itself has a deeper understanding to teach. Μὴ παρἐλθωμεν δὲ μηδὲ τὸ ῥητὸν κατ᾽ αὐτό, ἀλλ᾽ ἴδωμεν εἰ δύναται ἔχειν τινὰ νοῦν ἡ λέξις ἡ λέγουσα· εἴδοσάν σε ὕδατα καὶ ἐφοβήθησαν, ἐτα­ ράχθησαν ἄβυσσοι …

Let us not pass by even the wording in itself, but let us consider whether it is possible that the [mere] text contains some [deeper] understanding when it says, “The waters saw and were afraid, the depths trembled …” (Ps 76:17)87

Even τὸ ῥητὸν κατ᾽ αὐτό—that is, “the wording in itself,” the words taken at face value by assuming that the waters really see and fear in the ordinary sense of these words—contains “τινὰ νοῦν,” a certain deeper understanding. This would make sense only if the waters were living creatures, from which Origen infers a more general principle: Ἐπέρχεται δή μοι λέγειν, ὅτι πάντα ἐψύχωται καὶ οὐδέν ἐστιν ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ κενὸν ψυχῆς· πάντα δὲ ἐψύ­ χωται σώμασι διαφόροις. 86

It occurs to me to say that everything is ensouled, and there is nothing in the world devoid of soul; but everything is ensouled in different kinds of bodies.88

Cf. Gögler, Zur Theologie, 17; Martens, Exegetical Life, 61–63; and my discussion of “habits of scripture” in Chapter 4. 87 HomPs 76.3.2. 88 Ibid.

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Origen argues that this rule accounts not only for the present text, but for many similar texts in scripture, a number of which he goes on to enumerate. The case of Christ commanding the sea and the wind particularly impresses Origen, since the imperative force of a command depends in part on its prag­ matic relation to a hearer. “No one commands what is lifeless, but it is clear that he commands and speaks as Lord of all creation, ‘Be silent …’ And the sea was silent and became calm.” Assuming that Christ’s practice of command­ ing the natural world must be appropriate, Origen accounts for this practice by positing that those commanded must be living beings with the capacity to obey. And once again, Origen argues that the Christian—at least, the one who is sufficiently advanced in the process of deification—should speak according to the same rule, not only in general by saying that all things have souls, but even by commanding creation as Christ does. Ἐὰν γένωμαι κἀγὼ ἄνθρωπος γνήσιος τοῦ θεοῦ, δύναμαι ἐν τῷ ἐν ἐμοὶ λαλοῦντι Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ ἐπιτιμῆσαι τῇ κτίσει, ἵνα εἴπω τῷ ἡλίῳ· στῆθι κατὰ Γαβαώ.

And if even I become a genuine man of God, I am able—with Christ Jesus speaking in me (cf. 2 Cor 13:3)—to com­ mand creation, that I might say to the sun, “Be still over Gideon!” (Josh 10:12)89

The use of this text that shows the deepest understanding and the most thor­ ough identification with Christ is the more literal one. We should observe two things about this passage. First, the “literal sense” (τὸ ῥητὸν κατ᾽ αὐτό) clearly refers to a strict semantic construal of the words of the psalm, to the effect that the waters really have the capacity to see and fear. It is to show the plausibility of the text even on this literal construal that he goes on to defend the thesis that “everything is ensouled.”90 On this reading, Origen hypothesizes that even the waters are the kind of being that literally have the capacity to respond when addressed, to see and be afraid. Second, consistent with his general principle that not all texts have a referent in their literal sense,91 Origen does not simply assume that the literal sense obtains in this case. Indeed, there is good reason to suppose it does not. Rather, he has to demonstrate that this literal sense can be spoken of actual corporeal referents, which is just what he goes on to do. The literal sense is what one immediately apprehends, but whether what one immediately apprehends may truly refer to 89 Ibid. 90 Origen proposes the same possibility at PA 3.1.2. 91 In Peri Archon Origen famously says, “Ἀλλ’ ἐπεί εἰσί τινες γραφαὶ τὸ σωματικὸν οὐδαμῶς ἔχουσαι…” by which he means that some scriptures have no corporeal referent (PA 4.2.5).

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something is a distinct question. Because this particular use of the text is more insightful and surprising than the figurative one, Origen’s exegesis leads him to defend the literal use of this text as more rational, possessing deeper “insight” or “understanding” (νοῦν). To possess this understanding is to be one who can truly say, in the words of Paul, “Christ Jesus speaks in me.” Of course it is very often true that for Origen the most rational use of scrip­ ture is one that applies its words figuratively to incorporeal referents, and for this reason he can describe his exegesis in general as a movement from a literal to an allegorical interpretation. But this is true only generally and for the most part; there are many exceptions. By contrast, Origen’s commitment to exegesis as a rational pedagogy is deeper and far more consistent. Whether one learns to use scripture literally or figuratively, with reference to the past, the present, or the future, exegesis always aims at forming rational readers—readers who can hear the words of scripture according to rational norms and who, by virtue of their participation in the Logos, can speak in the same way themselves, iden­ tifying their own speech with Christ’s. To be sure, the words of scripture often surprise or confound human readers, as the rationality of the Logos transcends and transforms natural human rationality. John McGuckin has aptly said that Origen approaches scripture as a kind of “hyper-rational” poetry.92 We might add that the hyper-rationality of the divine Logos—expressed sometimes liter­ ally and sometimes in figures—is the normative model of human rationality as well. This is why the deepest procedural dynamic of Origen’s exegesis is not the cognitive movement from literal to spiritual levels of understanding but the pedagogical movement of the reader that begins by learning the words of scripture and culminates in the total conformity of the Christian to the pattern of the Logos—the movement, in short, from lexis to logos. 3

Conclusion

In this chapter I have shown how Origen characteristically determines spe­ cific rules for the use of single scriptural sentences and organizes these rules into broader rules that describe something more like a grammar of scriptural 92 John McGuckin, “Origen as Literary Critic in the Alexandrian Tradition,” in Origeniana octava: Origen and the Alexandrian Tradition, vol. 1, ed. Lorenzeo Perrone (Leuven: Leuven University Press and Peeters, 2003), 121–136, esp. 129. He adds that the famous quarrel between poet and philosopher is resolved “when the poet is himself the philosopher, an insight Origen did not fail to appreciate from his reading of Plato and an element which the many critics of the allegorical method as undisciplined and ill-directed have not gen­ erally appreciated” (129–30).

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language. I have also called attention to the central role played by linguistic intuitions in this process. Origen presupposes his hearers’ capacity to make judgments about the appropriate relation between words and things; but he also regards this capacity as fallible and in need of correction. Deepening our own capacities to hear and use the language of scripture is central to the peda­ gogy of the Logos through scripture. The boldest and most difficult sentences of scripture represent the leading edge of this pedagogy, where our own fallible capacity for speech encounters its limit in the wise words of scripture. I have also shown that the deepest or most rational uses of scriptural language are not necessarily allegorical uses. This implies that the dynamics of the scrip­ tural pedagogy of the Logos and their procedural manifestation as rationalist linguistics are more fundamental than his commitment to allegory. I have argued that we might think of this process as a kind of rationalist linguistics. On this view, instead of describing Origen’s exegesis as a move­ ment from one kind of meaning to another—from the literal to the spiritual senses—we should frame it instead as a pedagogical increase in capacities from lexis to logos, from mastering the words of scripture to learning to use them rationally in conformity with the divine Logos. In the next two chapters, we shall examine in more detail the procedural implications of this approach.

Chapter 3

The Pragmatics of Scriptural Utterances In a homily on Ps 15, Origen describes his aims as a reader by quoting the words of Paul. “If you have heard Jesus speaking these things [the words of Ps 15], hear also Paul commanding you, ‘imitate me as I imitate Christ!’” (1 Cor 11.1). Paul’s command to imitate himself and Christ extends, Origen argues, to the very words that Christ speaks, including those he speaks through the psalm that Origen is interpreting: Μιμηταὶ οὖν τοῦ Χριστοῦ γινόμενοι καὶ ἡμεῖς, ὅσα λέγει τὸ ἀνθρώπινον τοῦ Χριστοῦ φιλοτιμούμεθα εἰπεῖν. Διὰ τοῦτο γὰρ ταῦτα λέγει, ἵν’ ἔχωμεν ὑπογραμμὸν τί μιμησόμεθα καὶ ἡμεῖς εἴπωμεν· εὐλογήσω τὸν κύριον τὸν συνετίσαντά με, ἵνα καὶ ἡμεῖς εἴπωμεν· ἔτι δὲ καὶ ἕως νυκτὸς ἐπαίδευσάν με οἱ νεφροί μου.

For this reason [Christ] says these things, that we might have a kind of sketch of what we should imitate, that we also might say, “I will bless the Lord who knit me together,” that we also might say, “yet through the night my kidneys disciplined me” (Ps 15:7 LXX).1

Yet the words of this psalm pose very starkly the difficulties one faces in imitating Christ’s speech in scripture. Why exactly would someone pray “through the night my kidneys disciplined me?” Who is the “I” who can say these things, and what would she mean in praying this? These questions do not primarily concern the past or historical meaning of the phrase. They are first and foremost questions about the meaning of one’s own words, words that, though they are taken from an ancient text, nevertheless quite literally come out of one’s own mouth. Origen liked to quote the proverb, “the heart of a sage will understand the [words] that come out of his own mouth,”2 which both summarizes the problem and situates its possible solution in the context of the wisdom tradition. This proverb provides an apt summary of the concerns of this chapter. Origen treats the words of scripture as “words that come out of his own mouth,” words that the Christian in pursuit

1 HomPs 15.2.4. 2 “καρδία σοφοῦ νοήσει τὰ ἀπὸ τοῦ ίδίου στόματος” (Prov 16:23 LXX). For other uses by Origen, see CJ 6.4.21, 25; 13.48.316; 28.20.174; CM 12.41; CR 2.14 and 10.43.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004448544_005

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of wisdom ought to perform and make her own.3 But in thus uttering the words of scripture, I may not know what I am saying; or I may think I know and find it objectionable. The task of the wise exegete is thus to “understand the words” of scripture as they might come out of his own mouth. In the previous chapter, I sketched the general form of this kind of exegesis as a matter of learning how to use the words of scripture wisely, moving from lexis to logos. I showed that Origen’s exegesis can be understood as a kind of rational linguistics that reconstructs the rational linguistic competence implicit in the words of scripture. I also introduced the distinction between semantic and pragmatic aspects of an utterance. The semantic aspect is that which a sentence contributes to its meaning irrespective of its context of use, including the lexical meaning of its words. Its pragmatic aspect is that part of its function that depends on its use in a particular speech situation. Since committing a sentence to writing separates its words from particular pragmatic contexts of use, the interpreter of a written text must make decisions about the contexts in which one may appropriately use it, returning the written words to their home in orality. The Homilies on the Psalms offer a particularly useful vantage point for examining this process because, as a residue of their liturgical origin, the Psalms contain a high concentration of pragmatic linguistic devices, whose meaning depends on the context in which a sentence is uttered. Origen’s detailed engagement with questions of pragmatics is the central theme of this chapter. Pragmatic readings involve inferences beyond what can be established by information the text itself provides. The inferential character of pragmatics is essential for readers of Origen to bear in mind when assessing his exegesis. If one assumes that the proper task of exegesis is to clarify or translate the express content of the text, then Origen’s procedures cannot help but appear extraordinarily arbitrary. But pragmatic effects are by no means arbitrary, as the enormous development of an empirical science of pragmatics over the last half century demonstrates. It is simply that pragmatic uses of language depend on the reader to draw inferences from extra-textual information— background information, observable facts, features of the context of utterance, etc. One cannot hope to understand Origen’s exegesis without recognizing that his investigation of the text is always an investigation of the world at the same 3 I have taken the notion of scripture as script from Rine, “Scripture and Script,” 39–40. Rine’s argument focuses on the scholarly use of a performative theory of language to support the academic analysis of patristic texts. But as I showed in Chapter 1, Origen himself borrows from the Stoics a theory of language that is similar to what Rine calls a “performative” one. Performative questions and categories are themselves an explicit dimension of Origen’s exegesis, which further confirms the importance of Rine’s proposal.

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time. It is in recognition of the inferential character of pragmatics that the Stoics (and Origen) preferred to call the science of language “logic.” In what follows, I take my guide from some of the central issues in contemporary pragmatics. According to Stephen Levinson in his introduction to pragmatics,4 contemporary pragmatics generally includes at least five major topics. 1. Deixis, which concerns “the ways in which languages encode or grammaticalize features of the context of utterance or speech event, and thus also concerns ways in which the interpretation of utterances depends on the analysis of that context of utterance.”5 This includes phenomena like demonstrative pronouns, adverbs of time and place, tense, etc. 2. Implicature, which provides a theory of “how it is possible to mean … more than what is literally expressed by the conventional sense of the linguistic expressions uttered.”6 This is primarily a theory of how language users draw inferences in the course of a speech event on the basis of assumptions about the intentions of participants in a conversation, and includes phenomena like irony and hyperbole. 3. Presupposition, which deals roughly with the role of background assumptions in the assessment of the import of an utterance but not asserted by the utterance itself.7 The old chestnut “have you stopped beating your wife yet?” is an example of a question that turns on a presupposition. 4. Speech acts, which concerns what linguistic expressions may be used to do, especially beyond asserting truth and falsity, such as speech acts like promising, commanding, or praying. 5. Conversational structure, which deals with the organization of conversation and with “how coherence and sequential organization in discourse is produced and understood.”8 Each of these topics was examined with greater or lesser sophistication by ancient grammarians and logicians. The Megarian logician Eubulides, for example, developed paradoxes and sophistical arguments that highlighted the failure of Aristotelian syllogistic to deal with presupposition,9 raising issues that were of ongoing concern to Stoic logicians like Chrysippus. Aristotelians

4 Stephen C. Levinson, Pragmatics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). 5 Ibid., Pragmatics, 54. 6 Ibid., Pragmatics, 97. 7 HomPs 36.3.6. 8 Ibid., Pragmatics, 286. 9 Peter Seuren, “Eubulides as a 20th-century semanticist,” Language Sciences 27 (2005): 75–95.

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and Stoics each developed theories of the types and functions of speech acts.10 Dialectic, with its orientation towards the encounter between questioner and answer, had at least a tangential relation to pragmatic questions about conversational structure. I shall examine ancient thinking on deixis and implicature at greater length below. Most of these pragmatic functions of language were also of interest to Origen. If the previous chapter showed that Origen regards the sentences of scripture as sentences to be performed in concrete speech acts, this chapter examines in greater depth two other pragmatic aspects of his exegesis: deixis and implicature. I first examine ancient and contemporary theories of deixis (1.1) and show how a theory of deixis can illuminate the ways that Origen interprets texts containing explicit deixis of place (1.2) and person (1.3) by asking about the conditions under which a speaker might utter those words herself. I then examine ancient and contemporary thinking about implicature, by which readers draw inferences provoked by the text on the basis of background assumptions about the rational rules governing a particular conversational exchange (2.1–3). I show how a theory of implicature can account for Origen’s use of allegory (2.4) and his tendency to interpret the surface structure of a text as a clue to deeper logical relations (2.5). If Origen’s interpretation of deixis makes particularly evident that he approaches the text of scripture as a script and aims to learn its language, his interpretation of implicature brings to the fore the philosophical and logical character of his exegesis. 1

Deixis

1.1 Ancient and Contemporary Theories of Deixis The most straightforward way that linguistic utterances relate to context is through the phenomenon of deixis. Ancient grammarians and logicians had a sophisticated understanding of deictic expressions, focused on the use of demonstrative pronouns like “this,” “I,” or “you.” These pronouns can be put to multiple uses, not all of which are deictic. We find in Apollonius Dyscolus, for example, a distinction between δεῖξις and ἀναφορά, i.e. a deictic and an anaphoric function for these pronouns.11 According to Paolo Crivelli, 10 Schenkeveld, “Speech Act.” 11 Syntax 2.11–12. According to Levinson, if a deictic expression refers to some entity in the situation of utterance, “an anaphoric usage is where some term picks out as referent the same entity (or class of objects) that some prior term in the discourse picked out” (Pragmatics, 67). Somewhat more loosely, anaphora is intratextual reference whereas deixis is extratextual.

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The ancient grammarians distinguish between the anaphoric and the deictic use of the pronoun. When one uses a pronoun deictically, one refers to a present object which is selected by means of an indication (e.g. the use of “this” when one utters the sentence “This is an earring” while indicating a particular object). On the other hand, when one uses a pronoun anaphorically, the contribution of the utterance of the pronoun depends on another utterance of some expression to which the utterance of the pronoun is somehow connected (e.g. the use of “he” when one utters the sentences “I met John. He was very well dressed” or “Someone is ringing at the door. He is looking for you”).12 Since anaphora referred to something not itself present to the senses, Apollonius called it “δεῖξις τοῦ νοῦ” (deixis of the mind).13 Grammarians and Stoics differed as to whether an anaphoric pronoun rendered a proposition definite. The grammarians accepted that it did, while Stoics argued that only a deictic expression used in a concrete speech situation could establish a definite referent, because only in this way could some empirical individual be presented to the senses.14 Their rigorism on this point was related to their logical interest in clarifying the conditions under which a proposition could be empirically verified. A deixis of the mind alone could not determine an empirical object. Modern linguists have taken up many of these ancient insights and greatly expanded upon them. In his introduction to pragmatics, Stephen Levinson says, The term [deixis] is borrowed from the Greek word for pointing or indicating, and has as prototypical or focal exemplars the use of demonstratives, first and second person pronouns, tense, specific time and place adverbs like now and here, and a variety of other grammatical features 12 Crivelli, “Indefinite Propositions,” 195, and the texts cited there. For longer discussions see Michael Frede, Die stoische Logik (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1974), 52–53; Lloyd, “Definite Propositions,” 286 and 294; and U. Egli, “The Stoic Concept of Anaphora,” in Semantics from Different Points of View, eds. R. Baüerle, U. Egli, and A. von Stechow (New York: Springer, 1979), 266–83, esp. 272–73. 13 Apollonius Dyscolus, Syntax 2.135.12–136.4. Cf. Priscian, Institutes XVII 57, 142.17–20, and Crivelli, “Indefinite Propositions,” 195. 14 Cf. Charles Kahn, “Stoic Logic and Stoic LOGOS,” Archive für Geschichte der Philosophie 51.2 (1969): 158–172, who says, “The existence of the subject and the truth of the assertion are thus guaranteed by the familiar Stoic criterion of evident perception or ‘irresistable impression’ (φαντασία καταληπτική)” (160). See also Lloyd, “Definite Propositions,” 288, and Crivelli, “Indefinite Propositions,” 202–4.

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tied directly to the circumstances of utterance … [Deixis] concerns ways in which the interpretation of utterances depends on the analysis of that context of utterance.15 Deixis usually functions in an “egocentric” way, relative to a presumed “deictic centre” occupied by the speaker at the time and place of her utterance.16 This information is not given by the utterance itself but rather through features of the context specified by its use. By separating the utterance from a particular discursive situation, written utterances particularly exacerbate the lack of information necessary for interpreting a deictic utterance because they underdetermine this deictic center.17 Consider, for example, finding the following notice on someone’s office door: (1) I’ll be back in an hour. Because we don’t know when it was written, we cannot know when the writer will return.18 Much of Origen’s exegesis of sentences involving deixis aims at reconstructing this center, the appropriate context or contexts in which a scriptural sentence may be spoken. This information is not usually given in the utterance itself; it requires the exegete to make an independent (i.e. extra-textual) investigation. In speaking of a multiplicity of possible contexts of utterance, I should emphasize that Origen does not deny that texts have historical authors who may communicate their intentions through writing. The point is simply that the same words committed by an author to writing may serve (and may even be intended to serve) other functions as well.19 So the exegete must demonstrate 15 Levinson, Pragmatics, 54. 16 Ibid., 63–64. 17 See Paul Ricoeur, Interpretation Theory (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1976): “The absence of a common situation generated by the spatial and temporal distance between writer and reader; the cancellation of the absolute here and now by the substitution of material external marks for the voice, face, and body of the speaker as the absolute origin of all the places in space and time; and the semantic autonomy of the text, which severs it from the present of the writer and opens it to an indefinite range of potential readers in an indeterminate time—all these alterations of the temporal constitution of discourse are reflected in parallel alterations of the ostensive character of the reference” (35). 18 Levinson, Pragmatics, 64. 19 The above quote from Levinson illustrates this well. Levinson’s intention in writing the utterance, “I’ll be back in an hour” is not to communicate his own schedule but rather to

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in each case the possible performative conditions of the utterance in question. It may be that a past individual is one or the only possible speaker of a scriptural text; but as we have already seen, many texts may very well be taken up on the lips of Christians in the present as well. In the following sections I show how Origen investigates the appropriate performance of two of the three “traditional categories” of deixis—that of place and person—as they appear in scriptural texts.20 In both cases, Origen assumes that scripture provides sentences with deictic expressions as scripts to be used at other times and places by speakers besides the original author. Origen’s exegesis attempts to discover the possible occasions of utterance, which occasions the text itself typically leaves indeterminate. Origen operates less like a historian and more like a linguist. 1.2 Place Deixis Place deixis “concerns the encoding of spatial locations relative to the location of the participants in the speech event,” using expressions like demonstratives (e.g. “this”/“that”) and adverbs of place (e.g. “here”/“there”).21 Place deixis includes as well deictic reference to spatial entities like physical objects. The following example is one of the more noteworthy passages in the recently rediscovered manuscript of Origen’s Homilies on the Psalms. It offers a rare example of Origen engaging in an explicit discussion of δεῖξις. He begins with the notion that ordinary deixis operates by presenting an object to the senses in an actual speech situation through the use of gestures. But he then applies the same logic to his doctrine that the human person has spiritual senses corresponding to our bodily ones. Just as a demonstrative pronoun may be used for corporeal deixis, he argues, so too it may be used for an “intellectual deixis” that refers discourse to definite objects of these spiritual senses. The

invite his readers to reflect on the linguistic properties of the quoted sentence. Origen’s exegesis often becomes a good deal more intelligible if we assume he is thinking more like a linguist asking what a sentence can possibly do than he is like a historian, asking what a sentence did at a particular point in time. 20 The third traditional category, deixis of time, was not a significant part of ancient theories of deixis because of their orientation towards determining the subject of an utterance. But Stoic logicians were acutely aware of the temporal specificity of utterances. As has frequently been remarked, the Stoics reocgnize no utterances that are not temporally indexed. “An axioma is a proposition as asserted at a particular time and place” (Long and Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 205). For an example of Origen’s exegesis of time deixis, see his comments on the phrase “now I have begun” in HomPs 76.2.1, discussed above, 104–106. 21 Levinson, Pragmatics, 62.

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result is a spiritualization of deixis that accounts for how a corporeal text may successfully refer to an invisible entity like God. Psalm 77:54 LXX relates how God establishes Israel on his mountain after victory over his enemies at the Red Sea: Καὶ εἰσήγαγεν αὐτοὺς εἰς ὄρος ἁγιάσ­ ματος αὐτου, ὄρος τοῦτο, ὃ ἐκτήσατο ἡ δεξιὰ αὐτοῦ.

And he brought them to his mountain of holiness, this mountain, which his right hand made.22

Origen’s exegesis focuses on the deictic function of the demonstrative pronoun “τοῦτο” (“this”): Καὶ ἐκεῖνον μὲν τὸν λαὸν τότε εἰς ὄρος, ἐπεὶ τυπικὰ ἐποίουν τὰ πράγματα, εἰς ὄρος ἁγιάσματος σωματικοῦ, σὲ δὲ εἰς ὄρος ἁγιάσματος περὶ οὗ λέγει ὁ ἀπόστολος· ἀλλὰ προσεληλύθατε Σιὼν ὄρει καὶ πόλει θεοῦ ζῶντος, Ἰεροσαλὴμ ἐπουρανίῳ, καὶ μυριάσιν ἀγγέλων, πανηγύρει. ἐκεῖνο τὸ ἀληθῶς ὄρος τοῦ ἁγιάσματός ἐστι τοῦ θεοῦ, ὄρος τοῦτο ὃ ἐκτήσατο ἡ δεξιὰ αὐτοῦ. τὸ μὲν τοῦτο σωματικῶς εἰκὸς δεδεῖχθαι ὑπὸ τοῦ προφήτου ἐν Σιὼν καὶ νῦν δὲ τοῦτο τὸ ὄρος δείκνυται νῷ τῷ βλέποντι νοητὸν ὄρος. ὥσπερ ὀφθαλμοῖς σώματος ἡ δεῖξις σώματος γίνεται, οὕτως ὀφθαλμοῖς ψυχῆς ἡ δεῖξις νοητὴ γίνεται, ὥστε τοῦτο μὴ ἐν κενοπαθείᾳ λέγεσθαι, νῷ βλέποντι οὐσίαν καὶ ὑπόστασιν νοητοῦ.

22 Ps 77:54 LXX. 23 HomPs 77.8.4.

[He led] that people [Israel] in the past to a mountain, the mountain of bodily holiness, because they performed their acts as examples; but [he leads] you to a mountain of holiness about which the apostle speaks: “but he has brought you to Mount Zion and the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to the assembly of countless angels” (Heb 12:22). This is that which is truly the mountain of God’s holiness, “this mountain which his right hand created” (Ps 77:54b). The “this” was probably used by the prophet in Zion to indicate [by deixis] bodily; but even now the “this” indicates [by deixis] to the intellect which sees an intellectual mountain. As the deixis of the body occurs with respect to the eyes of the body, so the deixis of the intellect occurs to the eyes of the soul, so that “this” is said with respect to the intellect that sees the essence and subsistence of what is intellectual, not as an empty sensory affection.23

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Origen’s exegesis operates on both a corporeal and a spiritual level: the events that occurred in Israel’s history occurred as types that may be renewed spiritually for Christians.24 The analogy between these events has consequences for Christian speech, for where similar events take place, the very words that may be used of one may be used of the other as well. Origen’s exegesis turns on his account of the historical usage of the phrase “this mountain” by a prophet to refer to Mt. Zion. He assumes the mountain is Zion (not Sinai, as one might have expected) presumably because the epigraph of the psalm attributes it to Asaph, whom Origen placed in the retinue of David. In the historical stage of Origen’s exegesis, he posits an actual speech situation in which Mt. Zion is physically within sight of the prophet and his hearers. Origen takes the written text as a record of what words the psalmist said when actually standing upon Mt. Zion, where it functioned in a bodily sense: the psalmist used these words “to indicate [δεδεῖχθαι] bodily.” The Greek word δεδεῖχθαι (indicate) is cognate with the word δεῖξις (deixis) that appears in the following sentence. This line of interpretation clearly presumes the text may serve a deictic function only in an actual speech situation, in which the prophetic speaker may bring about “the deixis of the body [that] occurs with respect to the eyes of the body.” Origen probably means that the psalmist’s utterance, complemented by gestures of some kind, directed the corporeal eyes of his hearers at some past time to the mountain of Zion itself.25 The same sentence, however—“he brought them to his mountain of holiness, this mountain, which his right hand made”—may also be said with reference to the spiritual Mt. Zion to which “the apostle” refers in the book of Hebrews. By quoting the apostle, Origen establishes the identity of the referents of Heb 12:22 and Ps 77:54 when used in this sense. The “mountain of holiness” in the psalm, Origen says, is “that about which [the apostle also] speaks [περὶ οὖ λέγει].” Origen’s relative pronoun, “about which,” asserts the identity of the referents. In the next sentence Origen asserts this identity even more explicitly by using a deictic expression of his own: “this [mountain in the book 24

As Dawson says, “What is historical is an occurrence, and the ethical task is to read in a way that allows or enables that occurrence to “happen” again for the present-day reader” (Christian Figural Reading, 137). Origen’s language here is adapted from 1 Cor 10:6, 11, texts he frequently quotes in this connection. 25 The only significant parallel in Origen of which I am aware is a scholion to Luke 1:63 (PG 17.329B). In a discussion of the fact that John’s name signifies “ὁ δεικνύς,” [the indicator], Origen says that John the Baptist would “indicate with his finger [τῷ δακτύλῳ δεινύειν] the One who is present and say, ‘Behold, the Lamb of God!’” Here too we have a deictic reference, in an actual speech situation, secured by the use of bodily gesture in relation to something present to the senses.

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of Hebrews] is the true mountain of holiness [in Psalms].” Although Origen does not explain why he assumes these texts may refer to the same mountain, his primary reason is undoubtedly that both use similar language. If the psalm speaks of God “bringing” his people to “the mountain of holiness,” the apostle says “he has brought you to Mt. Zion … the heavenly Jerusalem.” Notice that from a performative perspective, there is no reason to assume that Origen is claiming that the prophet intended his words to be used in this way. We need only interpret Origen as claiming that the very words used by the prophet may also appropriately be used to refer to the same heavenly Mt. Zion to which the book of Hebrews refers. Origen has, we might say, gone looking for another referent for the psalm—but this is just what anyone must do when asking performative questions about the possible uses of a particular form of words. The content of Origen’s claim is best summarized thus: one who speaks of a spiritual Mount Zion as the apostle does in Heb 12:22 could legitimately use the language of Ps 77:54 to refer to the same thing. That Origen has the oral performance of these words in view is clear. He specifies a particular time when these words may bear a spiritual sense— “now”—and he explicitly describes his interpretation as an account of how the verse “is said” (λέγεσθαι). More importantly, Origen’s analogy with the corporeal speech act of the ancient prophet implies that something similar must occur in the present. That is, the utterance must be spoken in an actual context in which the “eyes of the soul” of its hearers might be referred to the spiritual mountain of which it speaks, perhaps the liturgical setting in which Origen is delivering his homily, just as the prophet’s utterance only referred truly to Zion if uttered in the sight of Zion. Only because Origen’s exegesis is oriented towards the performative use of this psalm does he feel the need to sketch a theory of intellectual deixis, one that accounts in philosophical terms for how a form of speech originally used to refer to a corporeal mountain may also be used to refer to a heavenly one. Origen’s strategy is to argue that spiritual deixis works in a manner analogous to bodily deixis. As ordinary physical deixis directs the eyes to something that appears before them, so intellectual deixis directs the intellect to something that appears to the eye of the mind, through the so-called spiritual sense.26 In both cases, the linguistic signifier is identical (the word “τοῦτο”)— 26

On Origen’s doctrine of the spiritual senses, see J. M. Dillon, “Aisthesis Noete: A Doctrine of the Spiritual Senses in Origen and Plotinus,” in Hellenica et Judaica: Hommage à Valentin Nikiprowetzky, ed. A. Caquot, M. Hadas-Lebel and J. Riaud (Leuven and Paris: Peeters, 1986), 443–55, and Mark J. McInroy, “Origen of Alexandria,” in The Spiritual

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the difference is a matter of its function to indicate a corporeal or spiritual object. Origen’s use of the phrase “ἡ δεῖξις νοητὴ” (intellectual deixis) recalls Apollonius’ use of the similar phrase “δεῖξις τοῦ νοῦ,” noted above. But while Apollonius uses it to refer to the reader’s intellectual recognition of anaphora in a text, for Origen the expression refers to a genuine mental deixis to extratextual realities, a spiritual deixis by way of the spiritual sense.27 What are these extra-textual realities? Origen describes them positively as “the essence (οὐσίαν) and substance (ὑπόστασιν) of what is intellectual.” Origen also describes what the intellect apprehends by way of contrast with “empty sensory affection” (κενοπάθεια). “Κενοπάθεια” is a very rare word. According to LSJ it means, “unreal sensation.”28 LSJ records only one usage of the word, Sextus Empiricus AM 8.184, which is also the only other occurrence of the word in the entire Thesaurus Linguae Graecae corpus. Sextus uses the word “κενοπάθεια” to characterize the Democritean theory of sense perception:

Senses: Perceiving God in Western Christianity, ed. Paul L. Gavrilyuk and Sarah Coakley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 20–35. 27 CM 12.19 also draws a parallel between a deixis that appeals to the senses and a “logical deixis” (τὴν λογικὴν δεῖξιν). In this text, the latter refers to a logical argument that presents some necessity to the mind. This seems to differ from the spiritual deixis discussed in HomPs 77.8.4, which presents a concrete entity to the spiritual sense. In CM 16.10, Origen argues that the word “behold” as uttered by the narrator in the verse, “behold, two blind men were seated beside the road …” (Matt 20:30) contains a deictic reference (δεῖξιν περιέχει). At first blush this seems like ordinary deixis. But Origen then continues, “since therefore by the indicating word [δεικνύντι δῷ λόγῳ] we are able to follow along with the two blind men and see them, we say that Israel and Judah, those before the sojourn of Jesus, were blind men …” leading to an allegory about the blindness of Israel. It is not clear how the deixis in this text can enable its present hearers to “see” either the two blind men or the two peoples in anything besides an intellectual sense. The intellectual deixis in this case seems to be primarily anaphoric. In CJ 2.9.66, Origen apparently uses the word δεῖξις to refer to anaphora. Origen is commenting on John 1:1–2: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. This one [οὗτος] was in the beginning with God.” Origen worries that the second sentence is superfluous. His demonstration that the sentence says something new turns on the function of the demonstrative pronoun οὗτος, which Origen refers to as “δεῖξις.” According to Heine, “the demonstrative pronoun, “this one”, which is the subject of [the fourth clause], sums up [the third]… Origen takes the demonstrative pronoun in [the fourth clause] to point to the immediately preceding proposition …, so that “this one” is equivalent to saying “God the Word”” (Heine, “Stoic logic,” 90–117). On this reading, its function is anaphoric. To account for the reference of a text like John 1 to the real eternal Word as existing outside the text, however, a theory like the one Origen develops here might be useful and is perhaps implicit. 28 “κενοπάθεια,” LSJ.

124 ‘Eπείπερ ὁ μὲν Δημόκριτος μηδὲν ὑποκεῖσθαί φησι τῶν αἰσθητῶν, ἀλλὰ κενοπαθείας τινὰς αἰσθήσεων εἶναι τὰς ἀντιλήψεις αὐτῶν, καὶ οὔτε γλυκύ τι περὶ τοῖς ἐκτὸς ὑπάρχειν, οὐ πικρὸν ἢ θερμὸν ἢ ψυχρὸν ἢ λευκὸν ἢ μέλαν, οὐκ ἄλλο τι τῶν πᾶσι φαινομένων· παθῶν γὰρ ἡμετέρων ἦν ὀνόματα ταῦτα.

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For on the one hand, Democritus says that nothing underlies the senses, but that what they apprehend are merely certain empty passions of the senses, and that neither the sweet, the bitter, the hot, the cold, the white, the black, or any thing else that appears subsists outside of us; for these are merely names for our own passions.29

Democritus developed “a thorough critique of the trustworthiness of the senses,” viewing all secondary qualities as purely conventional and subjective.30 The term “κενοπάθεια” in Sextus’ usage refers to a Democritean subjective appearance that reveals nothing about entities outside the experiencing subject. Sextus goes on to contrast this with the views of the Epicureans, who claim that what appears to the senses is always true, and the Peripatetics and Stoics, who hold that sometimes what appears is true and sometimes false.31 Sextus also uses the verb ὑποκεῖσθαί and the noun ὑπόστασις to refer to those existent individual entities to which the senses may give reliable testimony. Origen’s similar contrast between κενοπαθεία and ὑπόστασις probably signifies the same thing. The intellect has the capacity to “see” entities that are not empty affections of the subject but real external realities with qualities (“οὐσίαν,” “being”) and a substrate of which one may predicate those qualities (“ὑπόστασιν,” “substance”). Intellectual deixis is the linguistic mechanism by which a speaker may point a hearer to this intellectual object as it appears to the mind, just as she may direct him to a physical object of the senses. By drawing this parallel between the deictic mechanisms of sense and intellect, moreover, Origen makes especially clear that he has in view concrete spiritual existences analogous to the concrete particulars apprehended by our senses, rather than mere abstractions. The notion that Forms are subsistent individuals rather than mere abstractions is the Platonic view, and as David Dawson has rightly emphasized, for Origen too “spiritual” reality is not abstract but concrete.32 However, populated as it is by analogues of physical realities— such as spiritual mountains, angels, and liturgies—Origen’s spiritual realm 29 AM 8.184. 30 G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven, and M. Schofield, eds., The Presocratic Philosophers, 2nd edn. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 409; and see the whole discussion at 409–413. 31 AM 8.185. 32 Dawson, Christian Figural Reading, 50.

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contains concrete particulars, whereas Plato’s contains universals. And as this example shows, one mechanism by which scriptural language can be used to refer to such things is spiritual deixis of place. 1.3 Person Deixis Person deixis “concerns the encoding of the role of participants in the speech event in which the utterance in question is delivered,” through the use of pronouns (e.g. “I”/“you”) and associated predicate agreements.33 For Origen, person deixis characteristically leads him to ask about the appropriate identity of the speaker (and hearer) of scriptural texts. Person deixis plays a very important role in Origen’s exegesis. It is the main issue in one of Origen’s central analytic categories, namely, προσωπὸν or persona (the implied speaker as distinct from the author). The term προσωπὸν refers to a “face” and, by extension, to the masks used by actors in ancient theater.34 By metonymy, it was used by Alexandrian literary critics to refer to the character or persona adopted by a speaker in a drama or other text.35 Origen himself explicitly observes the dramatic context of the term,36 a reminder that persona is plainly a performative category. It refers to the implied role a speaker adopts in performing a particular utterance. The question about the persona of a text is the question of who may speak it—not a historical question but a linguistic and logical one.37 The category of persona enables Origen to resolve interpretive difficulties by identifying the corresponding figure of προσωποποιία (personification) in a scriptural text. For example, Origen interpreted the Song of Songs as a drama between lover, beloved, and their friends, which required him to ask of each verse who is speaking these words, i.e. which persona is speaking.38 The same category can be used to distinguish the actual person of the prophet from the implied persona in which his prophecy is spoken. Many psalms, for example, are recorded by ancient authors prophetically in the persona of Christ.39 So too Origen uses the category of persona to talk about the inspiration of the 33 Levinson, Pragmatics, 62. 34 “προσωπὸν,” LSJ III.1. 35 Cf. Neuschäfer, Origenes als Philologe, 263–268 (on its pagan use) and 268–276 (on Origen); Lorenzo Perrone, “The Bride at the Crossroads: Origen’s Dramatic Interpretation of the Song of Songs,” Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 82, no. 1 (2006): 69–102, esp. 84–85; Martens, Origen and Scripture, 58–59. 36 HomPs 81.3. 37 Cf. Torjesen, Hermeneutical Procedure, 27: “Therefore the question of identity—who is praying?—is quite distinct from the question of authorship.” 38 Philocalia 7, CCt Prol.1; and cf. Neuschäfer, Origenes als Philologe, 270–71. 39 See Origen’s extended discussion of this issue at HomPs 77.1.2. Cf. also HomPs 74.1.

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scriptures: although the Holy Spirit is the author, he speaks through the persona of a particular prophet.40 These examples show that persona is not an intrinsically historical category. The appropriate speaker of the words of a text may be an individual in the past, as in the case of Jeremiah; but words may also be written that are most appropriately spoken by someone in the future, as when prophets write in the persona of Christ. Moreover, even if one can assign the words of a text to a particular historical speaker, this does not preclude some later speaker from taking up those words in imitation of the earlier one. As we have already seen, Origen very often regards the task of the reader as imitating scriptural authors by taking up their words in precisely this way. The historical words of Jeremiah may be taken up by those in the present who are like Jeremiah, and the same applies to the characters in the Song of Songs and, indeed, to Christ himself. Origen frequently quotes Paul when exhorting his hearers to imitate the speech of scriptural speakers: “imitate me as I imitate Christ.”41 Here is an example of this performative dynamic from Origen’s first homily on Ps 76 LXX.42 Origen first uses the category of persona to draw a literary distinction between the author and implied speaker of the psalm on account of the psalm’s epigraph: “Εἰς τὸ τέλος, ὑπὲρ Ἰδιθούμ· τῷ Ἀσάφ ψαλμός.” [Unto the end, for Idithoum, a psalm by Asaph]. As he does with other psalms, Origen interprets the dative phrase “τῷ Ἀσάφ” as a reference to the psalm’s author, Asaph, the author of a number of psalms whom Origen regarded as an inspired prophet. If Asaph is the author, however, who is Idithoum? Origen identifies him as the Idithoum who, according to 1 Chr 16:41–2, was assigned the role of temple singer, a role which presumably would have involved singing psalms. Hence Origen interprets the words of the epigraph, “a psalm for Idithoum, by Asaph,” as teaching that Asaph authored the psalm for Idithoum to perform: “Asaph wrote it, but Idithoum took and spoke the psalm.”43 To this extent, Origen has offered a historical hypothesis about the original conditions under which this psalm was performed. The primary significance of the epigraph however, is that the same words may appropriately be performed in the present by one who shares the character of Idithoum. Origen identifies the persona of the psalm not as Idithoum the individual, but rather as a man with righteous character: “the persona which 40 Homily on 1 Samuel 28; cf. Neuschäfer, Origenes als Philologe, 276. 41 1 Cor 11:1. In the Homilies on the Psalms, see 15.2.4 and 77.9.1. In his broader corpus, see CJ 19.10.57; 20.31.279; 28.3.18, 28.4.25, 28.5.34, 28.23.196; CM 10.15, 16.1, HomJer 16.3, et al. 42 See also HomPs 81.3. 43 HomPs 76.1.1. “ὁ μέν Ἀσὰφ ἔγραψεν, ὁ δὲ Ἰδιθοὺμ ἔλαβε καὶ εἴρηκε τὸν ψαλμόν.”

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[Idithoum], being righteous, adopts, is that of a righteous man.”44 Yet while Origen uses the general term “righteous,” he does not treat its meaning as clear. Indeed, what righteousness looks like is just what the psalm comes to teach: “Ἴδωμεν οὖν τίνα ἄν ὁ δίκαιος λέγῃ καὶ δι᾽ ὅλου τοῦ ψαλμοῦ τηρήσωμεν, ἵνα τοιοῦτοι γενώμεθα ὡς καὶ αὐτοὶ τοιαῦτα εἰπεῖν” [Let us therefore see what the righteous man would say and observe it through the whole psalm, so that we ourselves might be similar and say similar things]. “Similar things” presumably indicates not only that the Christian should learn to use the very words of the psalm itself,45 but also that she might speak similar words other than those actually recorded in the psalm. For example, the righteous person not only says, in the words of Ps 76:2 LXX, “with my voice I cried to God,” but he offers up other body parts as well: Ἢ ἀναθῶμεν—εἰ δεῖ οὕτως εἰπεῖν—τοὺς ὀφθαλμοὺς τῷ θεῷ, ἵνα βλέπωμεν πάντα κατὰ θεὸν καὶ μύωμεν δὲ ὅπου μὴ χρὴ βλέπειν.

And we should offer up, so to speak, the eyes to God, that we might see everything in a godly way and that we might close our eyes where we should not look.46

Imitation of scriptural speech thus leads to the formulation of new speech, a dynamic which we shall examine at greater length in Chapter 4. For Origen, the words of the psalm provide empirical evidence about the proper actions and speech of a righteous person, and the primary task for the Christian reader is to imitate them. Identifying Idithoum’s speech as that of a “righteous man” does not make it superfluous, as though the details of the psalm could be replaced by an abstract definition of righteousness. Rather, the meaning of “righteousness” remains vague until determined by an examination of Idithoum’s concrete character as displayed in the words of the psalm. The hermeneutical rule here is not simply “be righteous”—we do not yet know what that is!—but “be righteous by imitating Idithoum.” The details of the text and its exact wording remain indispensable.

44 HomPs 76.1.1. “καὶ οὗ λαμβάνει πρόσωπον δίκαιος ὤν, τοῦτο δικαίου ἐστίν.” It is not entirely clear why Origen regards Idithoum as righteous. He states that this fact can be learned, “not only from this book [i.e. Ps 76] but also from the first book of Chronicles.” Presumably he has in view the pious content of the words uttered in Ps 76 and the fact that 1 Chr 16:41–2 accords Idithoum a place of honor in the temple. 45 HomPs 76.1.3 says, for example, “… not only do we speak the first verse but also the second, saying …”. 46 HomPs 76.1.2.

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After this introduction, we are not surprised that the first words of the psalm involve person deixis: “With my voice I cried to the Lord,” where on Origen’s interpretation, “I” may refer to any speaker who is righteous like Idithoum. The details of the subsequent argument are less important for our purposes than his conclusion that this verse, by using the deictic expression “my voice,” intimates that all the speech of any righteous person should be an offering to God. Instead of offering “irrational animals” (ἄλογα ζῷα) or even lifeless objects to God, when human beings offer their every word to God, they make an offering of what is most worthy of God, namely, the “rational animal” (ζῷον λογικόν) that we are. Ultimately, to learn to speak the words of the psalm (and by extension, the rest of scripture) is to learn the proper use of one’s rationality. Τί οὖν αὐτῷ ἀνατιθῶμεν; Λογικοὺς ἡμᾶς πεποίκε, καὶ τῷ λόγῳ χρῶνται οἱ πολλοὶ οὐ καλῶς. Ἡμεῖς οὖν αὐτοὶ τὸν λόγον, ὃν ἔδωκεν ἡμῖν, ἀναθῶμεν τῷ θεῷ, ἵνα ἀεὶ περὶ θεοῦ καὶ τῶν τοῦ θεοῦ διαλεγώμεθα, ἵνα ἀεὶ εἰς οἰκοδομὴν καὶ ὠφέλειαν ψυχῆς λέγωμεν· ἀναθῶμεν τὴν φωνὴν τῷ θεῷ, ἵνα πᾶσα ἡ φωνὴ ᾖ κατὰ θεὸν …

What then shall we offer to him? He made us rational, and the many do not use their reason well. We ourselves, therefore, offer to God the reason that he gave us, that we might always discuss God and the things of God, that we might always engage in discourse for the edification and profit of the soul. Let us lift up the voice to God, that every voice might be according to God …47

The right use of reason and of speech are tightly bound. Learning to speak rightly—to “always discuss God and the things of God,” and “engage in discourse for the edification and profit of the soul”—is inseparable from learning “to use reason well.” 2

Implicature

The term “implicature” was coined by Paul Grice to refer to the way a speaker can “mean” more than “what is literally expressed by the conventional sense of the linguistic expressions uttered.”48 It occurs when a speaker can assume the hearer will draw certain inferences about what the speaker intended 47 Ibid. 48 Levinson, Pragmatics, 97. I follow Levinson’s systematic exposition, which is developed from H. P. Grice, “Logic and Conversation,” in Studies in the Way of Words, ed. H. P. Grice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989): 22–40.

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on the basis of “a set of over-arching assumptions guiding the conduct of conversation.”49 These inferences are pragmatic because they depend on factors beyond what the utterance itself expresses—the purposes guiding a communicative exchange, rules of inferential reasoning, background knowledge, and the context of utterance. The modern theory of implicature helps us recognize that an implicature is not part of the conventional meaning of an expression but rather an inference that one draws only after one has decoded its literal sense. Hearers constantly go beyond what the text explicitly says by drawing inferences in light of what one knows or can discover about the world, in light of background assumptions about the type of communication in which one is engaged. These inferences need not be conventionally coded, which is why implicature allows one to use language in unconventional ways or indeed to revise the community’s conventions. 2.1 Ancient Implicature Levinson says that “unlike many other topics in pragmatics, implicature does not have an extended history.”50 One sign of this is that Grice himself coined the term “implicature.” However, ancient thinkers certainly observed that linguistic utterances may imply more than they expressly say and discussed examples similar to those identified by Grice and contemporary linguists. Particularly relevant is the term “ἔμφασις,” which could refer to an expression that suggests an unstated meaning, effecting a kind of “stretching” (ἐπίτασις) or “amplification” (αὔξησις) of the sense.51 Pseudo-Plutarch defines ἔμφασις as “that which, by suggestion, brings about a stretching of what is said.”52 Phoebammon says ἔμφασις is “when one does not state the matter itself, but implies it through other things.”53 The trope is related to allegory and other forms of obscure speech that Origen characteristically found in scripture.

49 Levinson, Pragmatics, 101. 50 Ibid., 100. 51 Neuschäfer, Origenes, 226. It was debated whether to classify it as a rhetorical trope, as in Tryphon, De figuris 3.199.15–20 or a figure, as in Phoebammon, De figuris 3.65.27–66.5 (qtd. 455 n. 629). The word ἔμφασις could also be used to refer to a more lively expression, in roughly the modern English sense of “emphasis.” This is attested in Demetrius, De eloc. 53 and other texts in the scholia, as discussed in Neuschäfer, Origenes als Philologe, 227. 52 Ps-Plutarch, De Homero 26; qtd. Neuschäfer, Origenes als Philologe, 455 n. 631. The Greek is: “ἔστι καὶ ἔμφασις, ἥπερ δι᾽ ὑπονοίας ἐπίτασιν τοῦ λεγομένου παρίστησιν.” Tryphon, De figuris 3.199.15–16, is very similar: “ἔμφασίς ἐστι λέξις δι᾽ ὑπονοίας αὐξάνουσα τὸ δηλούμενον.” 53 Phoebammon, fig. 3 (p. 65.27–66.5), qtd. Neuschäfer, Origenes als Philologe, 455 n. 631. The Greek is: “ἔμφασις δέ ἐστιν ὅταν μὴ αὐτό τις λέγῃ τὸ πρᾶγμα, ἀλλὰ δι᾽ ἑτέρων ἐμφαίνῃ …”.

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Blank and Atherton have suggested that in Stoic technical usage, the terms ἕμφασις and παρέμφασις might even appropriately be translated “implicature.”54 Chrysippus, for example, discussed an implicature of privative forms like ἀχίτων (shirtless) and ἀνυπόδετος (shoeless). He points out that people do not predicate these words of birds, even though in a strict sense it is true that a bird is shirtless or shoeless. Chrysippus calls these “habitual” privatives and explains this phenomenon in terms of implicature: “they indeed signify the bare removal [of a property], but they also signify a certain implicature,”55 for they imply that the property whose possession they deny (wearing a shirt or shoes) ordinarily belong to the thing. We may call people but not birds “shirtless” because only people habitually wear shirts, and so it is only informative to say of human beings that they are not wearing one. Origen sometimes uses these terms in the sense of “implicature” as well. Several key texts are discussed by Bernard Neuschäfer.56 In Luke 1:76, for example, Zechariah blesses his son John by saying, “and you [καὶ σὺ], child, will be called prophet of the most high.” Origen says that the words καὶ σὺ “contain an implicature [ἔμφασιν ἔχει], as though it said, ‘just like I and the other prophets.’” The apparently superfluous word “καὶ” signifies not merely the conjunction of this clause with the previous. It also implies that Zechariah too (the speaker of this sentence) is a prophet. Similarly, in a scholium to Gen 9:6, Origen observes that only Canaan, the son of Ham, is expressly mentioned in the genealogy of Noah’s children, and he argues that this is said “ἐμφαντικῶς.” The narrative makes clear that Ham and Canaan were wicked, whereas Noah was righteous. By expressly stating that Canaan is “son of Ham,” the text implies that he is the son of Ham only, and not the “son” of Noah—in a broader, ethical sense.57 Thus this text teaches by implication that physical descendants can turn away from the pious life of their ancestors. 54

David Blank and Catherine Atherton, “The Stoic Contribution to Traditional Grammar,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Stoics, ed. Brad Inwood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 310–327, esp. 326–27. 55 Simplicius, On Aristotle’s Categories 395.11–12. The Greek is: “σημαίνει μὲν καὶ ψιλὴν ἀναίρεσιν, σημαίνει δὲ καὶ παρέμφασίν τινα, ὅτε καὶ κατὰ στέρησιν λέγεται.” 56 Besides the following examples, see SelGen 20:4 = PG 12.117A11–B2 and FragLam 18. Neuschäfer also discusses cases in which Origen speaks of one translational variant as ἐμφατικώτερον than another, and notes pagan and Christian parallels (Origenes als Philologe 120, 130, 385 n. 150, 391 n. 197). 57 Neuschäfer wrongly includes this on a list of texts in which, he claims, Origen uses ἔμφασις not in the sense of implicature but rather to refer to a lively or emphatic form of speech (Origenes als Philologe, 227, 455 n. 635). Neuschäfer is also wrong to include FragLam 18 on this list. The LXX reads, “Καὶ ἐξῆλθεν ἐκ θυγατρὸς Ζιων πᾶσα ἡ εὐπρέπεια αὐτῆς.” Origen notes that the text says her beauty “went out” (“ἐξῆλθεν”) rather than saying that it was “carried out” (ἐξεκομίσθη) by her enemies as plunder, and that by doing so,

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On another occasion, not mentioned by Neuschäfer, Origen uses the Stoic term παρεμφαίνω in a similar manner. Origen is commenting on Luke 2:41–52, the story in which Jesus’ parents leave him behind in the temple in Jerusalem, only to find him wisely discussing Torah with teachers of the law. Origen observes that Mary says “your father” in reference to Joseph,58 while in his response, Jesus says “my father” with reference to God.59 Origen then argues, Ὅτι ἐτίμησεν αὐτὸν τὸ Πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον τῇ τοῦ πατρὸς προσηγορίᾳ καὶ τὰ λοιπά …, μήπως αὐτοὺς καταλέλοιπεν. Ὁ δὲ Κύριος, ἀφεὶς ἀνθρωπίνην δοῦναι ἀπόκρισιν, θείαν δίδωσι, παρεμφαίνων, ὅτι Θεὸς εἴη σεσαρκωμένος.

The Holy Spirit honored [Joseph] with the title “father” and the rest, … lest [Joseph] abandon them [i.e. Mary and Jesus]. But the Lord, instead of giving a human reply, gives a divine one, implicating that God may become incarnate.60

Jesus’ simple reference to God as “my father” implicates [παρεμφαίνων] that it is possible for God to exist in flesh, presumably because only a human who was incarnate God could appropriately refer to God as “my father.” 2.2 Conversational Implicature61 In the modern theory as developed by Grice, implicature is a way of describing inferences that speakers intend hearers to draw beyond the semantic meaning of their utterances in order to preserve shared assumptions about the purposes and norms governing a given communicative exchange. Grice’s theory deals with ordinary conversation in natural language, which is governed by an underlying Co-operative Principle: “make your contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged.”62 Grice further determines what cooperation entails in terms of so-called maxims of conversation that summarize

58 59 60 61 62

it spoke “ἐμφατικώτερον.” Neuschäfer claims, “Dies kann aber nur bedeuten: Die Version ἐξῆλθεν ist anschaulicher und aussagekräftiger als die Fassung ἐξεκομίσθη” (227). Surely, rather, the point is that the compressed verb “went out” includes by implication all the further details that Origen the commentator makes explicit, which would mean that it is an implicature. The other texts Neuschäfer points to, however, do probably use ἔμφασις in the modern sense of a lively expression: FragLk 181, CC 6.57. Luke 2:48. Luke 2:49. Schol. in Lucam PG 17.329C. Part of the following discussion is taken from Mark Randall James, “The Beginning of Wisdom: On the Postliberal Interpretation of scripture,” Modern Theology 33, no. 1 (January 2017): 9–33. Levinson, Pragmatics, 101.

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norms of everyday rationality. The maxim of Quality, for example, requires that you “try to make your contribution one that is true” by avoiding statements you believe to be false or for which you lack evidence. The maxim of Quantity requires you to make your contribution as informative as required for the purpose of the exchange but without superfluity. The maxim of Relevance requires that you make your contribution relevant. The maxim of Manner requires that you make your speech “perspicuous” by avoiding obscurity and ambiguity and remaining brief and orderly. Grice’s point is not that people always hold these rules to the letter. Rather, as Levinson clarifies, his point is that we tend to interpret expressions that superficially violate these maxims as adhering to them on a deeper level. An implicature is an inference that one draws to preserve the assumption of cooperation. One does so by forming hypotheses about the speaker’s intention beyond the semantic content of an utterance that preserve basic assumptions about the co-operative nature of the interaction.63 In effect, conversational implicature is an inference to the best explanation. When we overtly violate a maxim to provoke a conversational implicature, Grice calls this flouting. By flouting the maxims, we invite our hearers to infer that we intend to communicate something other or beyond what our sentence expressly states. Levenson gives the example: A: Where’s Bill? B: There’s a yellow VW outside Sue’s house. Here B’s contribution, taken literally, fails to answer A’s question, and thus seems to violate at least the maxims of Quantity and Relevance. We might therefore expect B’s utterance to be interpreted as a noncooperative response, a brushing aside of A’s concerns with a change of topic. Yet it is clear that despite this apparent failure of co-operation, we try to interpret B’s utterance as nevertheless co-operative at some deeper (non-superficial) level. We do this by assuming that it is in fact co-operative, and then asking ourselves what possible connection there could be between the location of Bill and the location of a yellow VW, and thus arrive at the suggestion (which B effectively conveys) that, if Bill has a yellow VW, he may be in Sue’s house.64

63 64

Ibid., 104. Ibid., 102.

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Several features of conversational implicature are worth emphasizing. First, conversational implicature is a model of intentional communication, which is to say, a theory of speaker or authorial intent. The ubiquity of implicature within our ordinary linguistic usage is an important reminder of how much what we mean and communicate through language is relative to our intentions in using language. There are other kinds of inferences we draw in the course of using language, but not all of these require attributions of intent to the speaker. For example, when someone stumbles onto a double entendre, we might infer from the ambiguity of the utterance and the look of embarrassment on the speaker’s face that she did not intend to communicate what she nevertheless communicated. By contrast, to identify a conversational implicature is to draw an inference about what the speaker herself intended to communicate. Second, conversational implicature takes place relative to rational norms, not merely conventional ones. The ubiquity of implicature implies that the activity of drawing rational inferences is integral to our most ordinary uses of language. Indeed, the theory of implicature shows that no theory of meaning can account for all communication as a function of linguistic conventions alone, for any linguistic convention may be flouted in order to provoke an inference beyond that very convention. To describe an implicature requires describing a relation between rational norms and conventional norms presumed by those involved in a given exchange. Finally, there is reason to believe that Grice’s theory applies very broadly indeed. To be sure, he is quite explicit that there are contexts in which we presume non-cooperation or in which different maxims come into play. Grice is not offering a theory of all linguistic usage. However, Grice does argue that the rational norms operative in everyday communicative exchanges are common sense norms, and empirical linguistics has largely borne this out. For this reason, we would expect that Grice’s theory would also be useful for modeling the relation between common sense rationality and language as operative in the ordinary Christians who made up the bulk of Origen’s congregations. 2.3 Scriptural Implicature In order to apply this model to Origen’s exegesis of scripture, it is necessary to modify it to take into account the distinctive possibilities available to God as a divine author. Grice offers a more precise account of what conversational implicature entails for ordinary human beings. In saying p one may be said to have conversationally implicated q if: (1) he is to be presumed to be observing the conversational maxims, or at least the Cooperative Principle;

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(2) the supposition that he is aware that, or thinks that, q is required in order to make his saying … p (or doing so in those terms) consistent with this presumption; and (3) the speaker thinks (and would expect the hearer to think that the speaker thinks) that it is within the competence of the hearer to work out, or grasp intuitively, that the supposition mentioned in (2) is required.65 Identifying a conversational implicature requires attributing three things to a speaker: that she herself is operating according to the co-operative principle; that she believes q is required to make the saying of p consistent with these norms; and that she thinks the hearer would know this or could work this out. While these three conditions are useful for thinking about implicatures possibly intended by scripture’s human authors, each requires modification when applied to the interpretation of a text such as Origen believes the scriptures to be, namely, one that providentially originates in a divine mind and expresses a divine intention. When interpreting scripture, one has to do not (only) with human agency but (also) with God’s agency. Each of these three conditions must be modified to take account of this fact. The first condition states that the speaker “is to be presumed to be observing the conversational maxims, or at least the Cooperative Principle.” Consistent with this principle, Origen tends to assume that the scriptures are said truly, not randomly, and in general, that they are well-said (καλῶς) and beneficial (ὠφέλιμος). Indeed, it is difficult to see how scripture could speak in human language at all if it simply disregarded ordinary rational norms of speech. Yet the difficulty here is that one cannot assume that God’s rationality simply coincides with human rationality, and hence that the everyday rationality governing ordinary discourse applies in the same way to the language of scripture.66 The reader of scripture may have to learn not only what God intends to say, but also the rational rules by which God speaks. The first condition must thus be modified:

65 66

Grice, “Logic and Conversation,” 30–31. As Grice already recognized, the background assumptions permitting the conversational variety of implicature that he describes are not always operative. In different kinds of communicative exchanges, different kinds of pragmatic inferences may be drawn. In a courtroom, for example, there is no presumption that a witness is being cooperative besides the bare requirement that the strict sense of their words be true; and so lawyers must elicit very precise statements whose interpretation requires no implicature. Cf. Levinson, Pragmatics, 121.

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(1) God is presumed to be observing the Co-operative Principle and the relevant maxims of rational discourse, whatever those might be. Indeed, implicature is itself one of the most effective mechanisms by which scripture can teach readers to correct their rational norms. By using language that, taken at face value, seems to flout ordinary rational norms, scripture invites readers of faith to discover a deeper rationality. This is one of Origen’s main points in his famous exposition of his hermeneutic theory in De Principiis: Ἀλλ’ ἐπείπερ, εἰ δι’ ὅλων σαφῶς τὸ τῆς νομοθεσίας χρήσιμον αὐτόθεν ἐφαίνετο καὶ τὸ τῆς ἱστορίας ἀκόλουθον καὶ γλαφυρόν, ἠπιστήσαμεν ἂν ἄλλο τι παρὰ τὸ πρόχειρον νοεῖσθαι δύνασθαι ἐν ταῖς γραφαῖς, ᾠκονόμησέ τινα οἱονεὶ “σκάνδαλα” καὶ “προσκόμματα” καὶ “ἀδύνατα” διὰ μέσου ἐγκαταταχθῆναι τῷ νόμῳ καὶ τῇ ἱστορίᾳ ὁ τοῦ θεοῦ λόγος, ἵνα μὴ πάντη ὑπὸ τῆς λέξεως ἑλκόμενοι τὸ ἀγωγὸν ἄκρατον ἐχούσης, ἤτοι ὡς μηδὲν ἄξιον θεοῦ μανθάνοντες, τέλεον ἀποστῶμεν τῶν δογμάτων, ἢ μὴ κινούμενοι ἀπὸ τοῦ γράμματος μηδὲν θειότερον μάθωμεν.

If the use of the law and the coherence and elegance of the narrative were always clearly manifest from [the text] itself, we would never have believed that something beyond the obvious [meaning] could be understood in the scriptures. For this reason, the Logos of God ordained that, as it were, certain “offenses” and “stumbling blocks” and “impossibilities” be introduced into the law and the narrative, lest—always being drawn by the pure style of the words—we either completely abandon their teachings because we learn nothing worthy of God, or we learn nothing more divine since we are never moved beyond the letter.67

What Origen calls “offenses” or “impossibilities” are those texts that, taken at face value (αὐτόθεν, πρόχειρον), seem to flout the overarching rational norm that scripture should say what is “worthy of God.” Not all non-literal readings are triggered by flouting (nor does Origen suggest that they are), but such cases serve as particularly illuminating examples for Origen since they make especially manifest the need to draw inferences beyond the semantic (face value) meaning of the words. Most important for our purposes is that these inferences are provoked not merely by the semantic content of a sentence, but rather by the relation between its apparent meanings and his readers’ underlying assumption about the rational norms of speech. Only what is rational is, for Origen, worthy of a God whose Logos speaks in scripture. This is why Origen 67 PA 4.2.9.

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describes troubling texts as lacking “good reason” (εὔλογον)68 or as having an appearance of “irrationality” (ἄλογον).69 Yet what the reader discovers through having these norms flouted is a deeper rationality, ultimately the Logos of God as both agent and content of scripture.70 Divine agency also transforms conditions (2) and (3) to the point of making them superfluous. Condition (2) is “the supposition that [the speaker] is aware that, or thinks that, q is required in order to make his saying … p (or doing so in those terms) consistent with this presumption.” In ordinary human conversation, propositions are not possible implicatures if we have no reason to believe a particular human speaker knew them (since we can only intend what we know). But since God knows everything, this condition places no limits whatsoever on the possible implicatures of divine speech. Since God knows everything, condition (2) is always satisfied. Readers of scripture may assume that any true proposition is already known to scripture’s divine author, if not necessarily to its human author, and hence that any true proposition whose presupposition is necessary to make a word of scripture true is a possible scriptural implicature. Divine authorship also makes moot condition (3), that “the speaker thinks (and would expect the hearer to think that the speaker thinks) that it is within the competence of the hearer to work out, or grasp intuitively, that the supposition mentioned in (2) is required.” Since God knows everything, any proposition a human reader comes to understand is one that ipso facto God must have known was within her competence. This is all the more true if one also assumes, as Origen did, that God’s activity through scripture is in part pedagogical, and hence that the competence of the human reader is itself developed through the activity of interpretation. Any true proposition that a human reader might possibly infer could constitute a possible scriptural implicature. Ultimately, then, the domain of possible scriptural implicatures is the domain of true propositions. Only condition (1) remains relevant as a limit, which is why for Origen, identifying scriptural implicatures is primarily a matter of demonstrating that some proposed statement beyond the face value meaning of scripture best preserves the assumption that God speaks according to rational norms and in cooperation with human readers.

68 PA 4.2.9. 69 PA 4.3.2. 70 As Gögler puts it, the Logos is both “objektives Wort” and “personales Wort” (Zur Theologie, 266).

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It follows that the skill necessary for interpretation is not merely linguistic. If any true proposition might be a scriptural implicature, discovering the full meaning of scripture would require a perfect capacity to draw inferences, i.e. perfect wisdom. As a result, Origen tends to assume a further pragmatic principle that we might label the principle of “maximum informativeness.” Levinson already points out that to account for certain implicatures we must posit a “principle of informativeness,” summarized by the maxim: “read as much into an utterance as is consistent with what you know about the world.”71 For example, Levinson argues that we normally interpret the word “and” in the sentence “He turned on the switch and the motor started” as implicating that turning on the switch caused the motor to start. We assume this not because causal connection is part of the conventional meaning of the word “and,” but rather as an inference we draw on the basis of our background knowledge about cars. A similar maxim seems to hold, Levinson notes, when interpreting utterances such as riddles.72 Origen, I suggest, operates with an even stronger version of this maxim: “read as much into an utterance of scripture as is consistent with what you know or could possibly discover about the world.” Where words have their source in a divine mind, there is no historical limit to the kinds of inferences one may legitimately draw, but only rational limits. This does not mean that drawing inferences beyond the intentions of historical authors is arbitrary or determined by tradition. It means simply that the ultimate norms of exegesis are norms of reason itself. Scriptural exegesis is ultimately a logical activity, not only a grammatical or historical one.73

71 Levinson, Pragmatics, 147. Note that to “read into” in this context means to draw an inference about the speaker’s intentions, not about the semantic content of the utterance. 72 See the discussion at Levinson, Pragmatics, 145–47. 73 Hans-Georg Gadamer argues that we cannot understand the discourse of another person without reflecting on its subject matter (Truth and Method, 2nd edn, trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (New York: Continuum, 2004), 355–61. Gadamer develops this point through a reading of Plato, whose arguments were repeatedly taken up by philosophical readers in antiquity. If an exegete takes seriously, however, that one cannot understand an utterance without also investigating its subject matter, then she must, as Origen did, constantly investigate not only the text but a good deal of extratextual material as well. This is very important to bear in mind, for often what appears like an “arbitrary” claim about the “meaning” of a text appears much more plausible as a claim about a relation between the text and some subject matter. Thus Neuschäfer rightly distinguishes Origen’s logical criticism from the merely aesthetic criticism of Dionysius Thrax and others, glossing its object as “des Zusammenhangs von sprachlichem Ausdruck und sachlicher Wahrheit” (Origenes als Philologe, 249).

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2.4 Allegory and the Maxim of Quality Since the theory of implicature offers a framework for understanding how hearers interpret figures of speech such as metaphor in the context of ordinary language, it provides a useful model for understanding the arguments by which Origen defends his use of allegory. Many traditional theories of metaphor treat it as a semantic phenomenon, that is, as a function of the syntactical structure of the sentence in relation to conventional rules of language.74 By contrast, to treat metaphor as a mode of implicature is to treat it as a pragmatic phenomenon conditioned by factors relative to its use. In Levenson’s model, the pragmatic interpretation of a metaphor is a reasoning process (often an implicit one) that involves two stages. In the first stage, one locates a trigger that provokes the need to draw an inference beyond the semantic content of the sentence, often by flouting the background rational norms or conversational maxims. In the second stage, one draws an inference that some other non-standard use is intended, which is the implicature communicated metaphorically by the sentence. As with other implicatures, both stages take place against the background of rational norms or maxims that warrant the inferences one may draw. For this reason, interpreting a metaphor is a skill that involves inferential reasoning whose outcome is not determined solely by linguistic conventions. For example, in his discussion of Ps 73:14 LXX, “You divided the heads of the dragon, you gave him as food to the peoples of Ethiopia,” Origen argues that by flouting the readers’ background assumptions about what is reasonable, the text invites a figural interpretation that accords with the rationality attributed to its divine author. We begin in the middle of an extended allegorical interpretation of Ps 73, just as Origen turns to verse 14 to offer further and decisive evidence of the need to read this passage of scripture figuratively.

74

On a semantic approach, metaphors are understood as functions of conventional rules of language. Thus on the comparison theory, metaphors are elliptically formulated similes. On this view, for example, “Iago is an eel” is an elliptical way of saying, “Iago is like an eel.” On the interaction theory, a metaphorical expression (the focus) is embedded in another expression (the frame) so that the meaning of each changes the other. On this view, when predicating of Iago (the frame) that he is an eel (the focus), the meaning of the word “eel” changes, signifying not that Iago is actually an eel but rather that he possesses certain conventional properties of eels. For a discussion of these theories and their problems, see Levenson, Pragmatics, 148–56.

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Εἶτα πάλιν τροπολογία· τίς δύναται μὴ ἀλληγορεῖν; εἰπάτω ὁ προσκόπτων καὶ μὴ νομίζων βιαίως ἡμᾶς ταῦτα λέγειν· σὺ συνέθλασας τὰς κεφαλὰς τοῦ δράκοντος, ἔδωκας αὐτὸν βρῶμα λαοῖς Αἰθίοψιν· ἆρα οἱ Αἰθίοπες, οἱ ἀπὸ τῶν περάτων τῆς οἰκουμένης, ἀπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ λαμβάνουσι δράκοντος σῶμα καὶ κόπτουσιν αὐτὸν ὥσπερ εἰς μέλη, ἵνα φάγωσι τὰς σάρκας τοῦ δράκον­ τος; τοῦτο ἄξιον τοῦ ἁγίου πνεύματος νόημά ἐστι; τοῦτο προφητικῆς χάριτος ἄξιόν ἐστι; … ἀλλ᾽ ἔστι παραστῆσαι ὅτι ὥσπερ οἱ ἅγιοι ἐσθίουσι τὸ σῶμα τοῦ Χριστοῦ καὶ λέγει ὁ Κύριος· ἡ σάρξ μου ἀληθής ἐστι βρῶσις καὶ τὸ αἷμα μου ἀληθὴς ἐστι πόσις, οὕτως οἱ ἁμαρτωλοὶ ἐσθίουσι τὸ σῶμα τοῦ δράκοντος.

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So again, a figure of speech; but who is able not to allegorize [this passage]? Let the one who is offended by this and believes we are not constrained to do so, say: “You divided the heads of the dragon, you gave him as food to the peoples of Ethiopia” (Ps 73:14 LXX). Do the Ethiopians, those who dwell at the ends of the earth, receive from God the body of a dragon and cut it into parts, that they might eat the flesh of a dragon? Is this understanding worthy of the Holy Spirit? Is this worthy of the prophetic gift? … But this is to show that just as the saints eat the body of Christ and the Lord says, “my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink,” (John 6:55) so the sinners eat the body of the dragon.75

The theory of scriptural implicature provides a model for understanding how the figural understanding (νοήμα) Origen develops, which obviously goes well beyond what the text in itself states, might reasonably be understood as part of what its divine author intended to communicate. This is intelligible if one assumes that the author of scripture takes for granted that readers will have a capacity to reason and that they may understand the results of that reasoning as part of what the speaker intended to communicate. There are several things to observe about this text. First, Origen assumes (and assumes that his hearers will assume) that scriptural discourse is governed by a Maxim of Quality: that scripture ought to say what is worthy of the Holy Spirit, which in this case includes a common sense obligation to say what is true. It must be a common sense rational norm since Origen assumes it will be shared by his hearers, who otherwise have very different hermeneutic assumptions—they are indeed “offended” by his way of reading.

75 HomPs 73.2.7.

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Second, this text baldly flouts this maxim, since on its face these words are false (and hence unworthy of the Spirit). The implication of his rhetorical question, “Do the Ethiopians … receive from God the body of a dragon and cut it into parts, that they may eat the flesh of the dragon?” is plainly that they do not. To recognize this, however, the reader must first supply referents for this text if taken in a narrowly semantic sense, e.g. the actual people of Ethiopia and a physical dragon. That scripture so flagrantly flouts so common-sensical a maxim proves that its violation of the norm cannot be accidental. Third, the evident falsity of the words of the psalm when referred to these referents triggers the need to draw an inference in order to preserve the assumption that scripture speaks the truth. Origen argues that his hearers must infer that the text speaks figuratively (τροπολογία, ἀλληγορεῖν). They are “constrained” (βιαίως) to do so, by which he means rational constraint. The alternative figurative referent that he proposes (through an argument by analogy with the usage of other texts of scripture) is that the text refers figuratively to the invalid Eucharists of the heretics, who eat the body of the devil. The same method of analysis can help illuminate a much longer passage. In the following example, Origen interprets a sentence of Ps 36 against the background assumption that it is said truly (ἀληθῶς). By assuming that the scriptural text intends to say something true, Origen regards it as speaking according to rational norms, again something like Grice’s Maxim of Quality.76 However, taken in its literal sense, the text is patently false, flouting this maxim. To preserve the assumption that scripture speaks truly requires Origen to draw inferences beyond what the text says on the basis of other knowledge acquired through investigation. Origen concludes that the text contains a homonym that may rightly be uttered in a spiritual sense77 of spiritual referents. The two stage 76 On other occasions in the Homilies on the Psalms the word “truly” seems to have this sense, e.g. 36.2.1, 36.3.11, 76.1.6, 77.2.4, et al. More often, however, Origen uses the word ἀληθῶς in a stronger sense with Platonic overtones of words that have a deeper (usually spiritual) truth. We look for the (spiritual) land which is truly flowing with milk and honey (HomPs 15.1.6). We learn what is truly eros from the Song of Songs (HomPs 67.2.2). Christ’s words truly shake the earth (HomPs 77.1.1). The heretics are truly called thieves (HomPs 77.1.6). Despite anthropomorphic language in scripture, God is not truly subject to passion (HomPs 77.9.1). The distinction between these two uses is not a hard and fast one. See also 15.2.10, 73.1.1, 4, 6, 73.3.4, 73.3.8, 75.2, 76.1.5, 76.2.1, 76.2.7, 76.3.2, 77.8.4, 80.2.3, et al. 77 Robért Somos rightly observes that Origen’s investigations of homonymy are not merely grammatical but logical: “as in the case of the difference between the literal and nonliteral senses of the statements and commands of scripture, so too in connection with homonymy the question of truth and falsity may emerge. Therefore, in this sense,

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process by which Origen rejects the literal referent and infers a figural interpretation that preserves the truth of the utterance should be understood as the explication of a kind of pragmatic implicature. Examining a longer piece of exegesis allows us to see how naturally Origen’s exegesis leads from identifying an implicature in a single text, to an investigation of its proper use, and then to correlating the use of this text with other similar texts. The result is the production of something like a “grammar” of some little region of scriptural language. In this way, Origen not only clarifies a scriptural implicature but also learns to put the same implicature to use in his own speech. Psalm 36:25b LXX reads, “I have not seen a righteous person forsaken.” Origen begins by summarizing the two stages through which his inquiry will proceed. … καὶ οὐκ εἶδον δίκαιον ἐγκαταλελειμμένον. ἐὰν σωματικῶς ἀκούῃς, ψεῦδός ἐστι. πολλοὶ γὰρ δίκαιοι ἐγκατελείφθησαν· ἐὰν δὲ πνευματικῶς, ἀληθῶς.

“… I have not seen a righteous man forsaken” (Ps 36:25b). If you hear this bodily, it is false. For many righteous people were forsaken. But if [you hear it] spiritually, [it is said] truly.78

The relevant maxim in this case is the Maxim of Quality: speak truly (ἀληθῶς). In the first stage of inquiry, Ps 36:25b triggers the need for an inference because if his audience takes these words in their conventional sense as a reference to bodily forsakenness, they are patently false. In the second stage of inquiry, to preserve the truth of this text, Origen infers that the text may be heard instead with reference to a spiritual forsakenness according to a figural interpretation. Origen expands the first stage of this interpretation by explicating the bodily sense of being forsaken in terms of things like becoming poor, sick, persecuted, and wandering alone. Probably he considers it obvious that the righteous experience these things, but in any case he confirms this judgment from scripture by quoting a long litany of the sufferings of the righteous in Heb 11:37–38.

homonymy has a logical character as well” (Logic and Argumentation, 63; and see all of Chapter 5). 78 HomPs 36.4.3.

142 Οἶον εἰ νομίζεις τὸ ἐγκαταλείπεσθαι διὰ πτωχείαν γενέσθαι, τὸ ἐγκαταλείπεσθαι ἐπὶ ἀσθηνείας σώματος γενέσθαι, τὸ ἐγκαταλείπεσθαι ἐπὶ τῷ διώκεσθαι γίνεσθαι καὶ περιέρχεσθαι ἐν ἐρημίαις. οἱ δίκαιοι ἐγκατελείφθησαν· περιῆλθον γὰρ ἐν μηλωταῖς, ἐν αἰγείαις δέρμασιν, ὑστερούμενοι, θλιβόμενοι, κακουχούμενοι, ἐν ἐρημίαις πλανώμενοι καὶ ὄρεσι καὶ σπηλαίοις καὶ ταῖς ὁπαῖς τῆς γῆς.

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For [many righteous people are forsaken,] if you consider it “being forsaken” to become poor; or if you consider it “being forsaken” to become sick in one’s body; or if you consider it “being forsaken” to be persecuted and to wander in solitude. The righteous are forsaken: “they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, persecuted, tormented, they wandered in the desert and in the mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground” (Heb 11:37b, 38b).79

It is noteworthy that Origen summarizes this section of Hebrews by saying “The righteous are forsaken,” words that directly contradict those of Ps 36:25b. Here is a striking example of learning to speak the language of scripture. Origen will not only show how to use the words of Ps 36:25b correctly—i.e. figuratively—he also models the correct literal use of their negation. For sometimes the reader of scripture must learn to say the opposite of what scripture does, albeit in a different sense. And it is clear that the criteria for doing so in this case are the facts themselves and his hearers’ linguistic intuitions about the appropriate way to speak about those facts. Because the righteous in fact suffer the sorts of things described in Hebrews, Origen can say, “The righteous are forsaken” in the literal sense. This first stage of interpretation triggers a second, in which Origen identifies a figurative construal of the words under which they come out true. Οὐκ ἐγκατελείφθησαν· προφῆται γὰρ ὄντες περιῆλθον ἐν μηλωταῖς. οὐκ ἐγκατελείφθησαν· εἰ γὰρ καὶ ἦσαν ἐν ἐρημίᾳ ἀνθρώπων, ἀλλὰ ἦν πλῆθος μετ᾽ αὐτῶν ἀγγέλων. ὅτε ἦν Ἐλισαῖος ἐν ἐρημίᾳ ἀνθώπων, ἀλλὰ φυγὼν τὴν ἀνθρώπων ἐρημίαν μετὰ στρατοπέδου ἀγγέλων ἦν. γέγραπ­ ται γοῦν· ὦ κύριε, ἄνοιξον τοὺς

79 Ibid.

But they were not forsaken: for it was prophets who went about in skins of sheep. They were not forsaken: for if they were in the desert so far as human beings are concerned, yet there was a multitude of angels with them. Elisha was once in the desert so far as human beings are concerned, but when he fled the desert of human beings, he was with an army

The Pragmatics of Scriptural Utterances

ὀφθαλμοὺς τοῦ παιδαρίου τούτου καὶ ἰδέτω ὅτι πλείους οἱ μεθ᾽ ἡμῶν τοὺς μετ᾽ αὐτῶν καὶ ὁρᾷ τὸ ὄρος πλῆρες ἵππων καῖ ἁρμάτων πυρός…

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of angels. For it is written, “‘O Lord, open the eyes of your servant and let him that those with us are more than those against us.’ And he saw the mountain full of horses and chariots of fire.” (cf. 2 Kgs 6:16–17)80

Origen now puts on his own lips the words of the psalm with reference to a spiritual forsakenness, according to which they can be said truly. Origen wants to identify various respects in which despite their sufferings, the righteous can be understood in a spiritual way as non-forsaken. First, he points out that those who appeared destitute were nevertheless prophets; presumably, his point is that prophets are certainly not forsaken by God. Second, he claims that even when abandoned by human beings in the desert, the righteous were surrounded by angels. In the text above he points to the example of Elisha; in the immediately following portion (not quoted above), he mentions Jacob’s ladder. These texts identify a mode of spiritual relation between the righteous and God of which it can truly be said that God has not forsaken the righteous, and they show that it obtains in certain paradigmatic cases. Once again, the criteria for these claims seem to be his hearers’ linguistic intuitions: he expects his hearers to recognize that “they were not forsaken” in the spiritual ways Origen outlines. After explicating the Jacob story, he concludes by correlating the words of the psalm with those of Paul, whose speech also evinces Origen’s distinction between two kinds of forsakenness. Ταῦτά μοι διὰ τοῦτο οὐκ εἶδον δίκαιον ἐγκαταλελειμμένον· οὐ γὰρ καταλείπεται ἐν πνευματικοῖς ὤν. καὶ οὐ χρεῖαν ἔχων ἐν σωματικοῖς ζημιοῦμαι ἐγκαταλειπόμενος· ἔχω πνευματικά. ἔξεστί μοι ἐγκαταλειπομένῳ σωματικῶς εἰπεῖν ἐκεῖνα τὰ ἀποστολικὰ καυχήματα· ἄχρι τῆς ἄρτι ὥρας καὶ πεινῶμεν καῖ διψῶμεν καῖ γυμνιτεύομεν καῖ κολαφιζόμεθα καῖ κοπιῶμεν καῖ ἀστατοῦμεν, ἐργαζόμενοι ταῖς ἰδίαις

80 Ibid.

I have said these things on account of the text, “I have not seen a righteous person forsaken.” For he is not forsaken in spiritual things. And though I am ruined and forsaken, I have no need of bodily things: I have spiritual things. It is lawful for me, being forsaken bodily, to speak these apostolic boasts: “To the present hour we are hungry and thirsty, we are poorly clothed and beaten and homeless, and we grow weary from the work

144 χερσί. καὶ ἔξεστί μοι ἐγκαταλειπομένῳ σωματικῶς λέγειν· λοιδοροῦμενοι εὐλογοῦμεν, διωκόμενοι ἀνεχόμεθα, δυσφημούμενοι παρακαλοῦμεν. ἀλλ᾽ ἐπεὶ οὐκ ἐγκαταλείπομαι, εὐδοκῶ ἀσθενείαις, ἐν ὕβρεσι καὶ ἀνάγκαις, ἐν διωγμοῖς καὶ στενοχωρίαις ὑπὲρ Χριστοῦ. δύο οὖν ἐγκαταλείψεις …

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of our hands” (1 Cor 4:11–12). And it is lawful for me, being forsaken bodily, to say: “when reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we speak kindly” (1 Cor 4:12). But because I am not forsaken, “I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ” (2 Cor 12:10) Thus there are two [kinds of] forsakenness …81

Origen uses these two kinds of forsakenness to organize Paul’s descriptions of his apostolic sufferings in his correspondence with the Corinthians. Origen treats Paul’s words as determining occasions for saying either “I am forsaken (bodily)” or “I am not forsaken (spiritually).” Origen himself utters these sentences numerous times, the effect of which is to train the ears of his hearers to distinguish these two modes of reference and their appropriate occasions of use. “The righteous are forsaken,” he said baldly above, after defining this forsakenness in terms of poverty, sickness, and abandonment. By then quoting Hebrews, he implies that the type of situation recounted in the book of Hebrews is the appropriate occasion for the bodily utterance of the sentence, “The righteous are forsaken.” Now he makes the opposite point that precisely for the one who is forsaken bodily it is lawful to utter “the apostolic boasts” of Paul. In both cases he expressly states that a Pauline text is “lawful” to speak when one is “forsaken,” showing again that his concern is with the conditions for the correct usage of scriptural language. Bodily forsakenness is itself an occasion on which specific Pauline utterances are appropriate. In doing so, however, Origen has also shown how these three scriptural passages— Ps 36:25b, Heb 11:37–38, and 1 Cor 4:11–12—can be organized as part of a single grammar of bodily forsakenness. Origen complements this clarification of the bodily grammar of forsakenness with a similar demonstration of its spiritual usage. In the previous section, he repeated the very words of the psalm twice—“they were not forsaken”— before enumerating instances in which the spiritual truth of this statement is apparent. Here he applies again the same words to himself, “because I am not forsaken …” and then immediately quotes Paul’s confession of his contentment amidst sufferings. The implication is that Paul’s ability to speak in this way is intelligible only because, notwithstanding his physical trials, like the prophets of old he too has not been forsaken by God. 81 Ibid.

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Notice that nothing in the passage itself suggests that there are two kinds of forsakenness. Rather, this distinction emerges from the two stages in Origen’s investigation, a semantic and a pragmatic. The obvious semantic sense of “forsaken” is the bodily one, but on this interpretation the verse is evidently false and hence flouts the maxim of truthfulness. Instead of rejecting the text, however, Origen seeks an implicature on the basis of other information he knows or can discover that would permit a true interpretation of the words. He discovers this in the example of suffering prophets and apostles, whom God nevertheless does not abandon. Origen shows little interest in what the psalmist intends. Instead, Origen aims to show that when said in certain contexts—of Elisha, of Paul—the words may be used truly. All of this suggests that the discovery here of a homonymy between two senses of “forsakenness” is by way of an implicature. 2.5 Order (τάξις) and the Maxim of Manner Implicature can also make sense of Origen’s tendency to infer further information from the order of the elements of a scriptural sentence. What Grice called the Maxim of Manner requires speakers to be perspicuous and, in particular, to be orderly in one’s presentation of information. In Levenson’s exposition, this maxim explains how the sequence of conjoined elements in a sentence can implicate more than mere conjunction. For example, and frequently communicates temporal sequence (“and then”) rather than expressing strictly logical conjunction. Perhaps the most important of the sub-maxims of Manner is the fourth, “be orderly.” For this can be used to explain the oddity of …: (31) ??The lone ranger rode into the sunset and jumped on his horse. This violates our expectation that events are recounted in the order in which they happened. But it is just because participants in conversation may be expected to observe the sub-maxim “be orderly” that we have that expectation. Provided with (32), we therefore read it as a sequence of two events that occurred in that order: (32) Alfred went to the store and bought some whisky. … [The semantic theorist] need not claim that there are two words and in English, one meaning simply that both conjuncts are true, the other having the same meaning plus a notion of sequentiality. For the sequentiality, the “and then” sense of and in sentences like (32), is simply a standard

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implicature due to the fourth sub-maxim of Manner, which provides a pragmatic overlay on the semantic content of and wherever descriptions of two events, which might be sequentially ordered, are conjoined.82 This model allows linguists to avoid claiming that and is semantically ambiguous, as though it sometimes signified mere conjunction and sometimes conjunction with sequentiality. Rather, they can assign and its strictly conjunctive semantic meaning and explain the fact that it sometimes also communicates sequentiality as the result of implicature. Ancient grammarians frequently signaled similar inferences using the terms τάξις (order, sequence) and ἀκολουθία (connection), terms borrowed from Stoic logicians.83 In Stoic philosophy, τάξις and ἀκολουθία and cognate terms were used to distinguish between empirically observable structure and immanent logical connection. According to Sluiter, The Stoa believes that a divine λόγος permeates the whole cosmos as a supreme rational principle, creating order everywhere. This rational order may be indicated by the terms ἀκολουθία and τάξις, τάξις representing the structural orderliness itself, i.e. the fact that one thing follows another, ἀκολουθία adding the idea that one thing follows from another, i.e. introducing a notion of causal nexus. Often however, these two words seem to be used as mere synonyms.84 Coming to know the λόγος immanent in the universe is a matter of drawing inferences from τάξις to ἀκολουθία, from observable sequence to underlying rational connection. This inferential movement was central not only to their logic but also to their physics and their ethics.85 To be sure, the observable providential order of things does not necessarily correspond to its underlying rational structure. Some events coincide by chance; not every τάξις reveals an ἀκολουθία. For the Stoics, the same is true of language as well, as we saw in Chapter 1. Though the Stoics sought correspondences between the verbal structure of a sentence and the logical structure of its meaning, they knew that ordinary language does not require such a correspondence to function, and

82 83 84 85

Levenson, Pragmatics, 108. For the following discussion, see Sluiter, Ancient Grammar in Context, 12–15. Ibid., 12–13. Cf. Ibid., 13, and the texts cited there.

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they cultivated attention to the ambiguities and multiple meanings of single utterances. In language too, the τάξις of a sentence is a probable rather than a necessary sign of the ἀκολουθία that obtains between the objects or events it signifies. So too for Origen. Because the τάξις of the text is a probable but not a necessary sign of an underlying rational connection in its subject matter, discerning such a connection requires not merely decoding the conventional meaning of a sentence but rather engaging in a process of inferential reasoning that considers the relation between the words of the text and their subject matter. The theory of implicature offers a useful model of this process. Inferences from the surface order of the words to a deeper logical connection between the things signified are a function of several elements. First, Origen assigns to the word “καὶ” and/or to the syntactic juxtaposition of linguistic elements a conventional semantic meaning of mere conjunction (logical “and”). Second, he assumes that scriptural discourse conforms to rational norms, including a maxim of orderliness. Third, in light of this assumption, Origen proposes a hypothesis that accounts for the syntactic order of linguistic elements in terms of a logical connection between the things signified, one that turns on an understanding of the things about which the scriptures speak. As an implicature, Origen understands this inference as one that the author intended readers to draw, and hence as part of the meaning communicated through this text. We may see this, for example, in his discussion of the parallel clauses of Ps 77:1 LXX. Προσέχετε, λαός μου, τὸν νόμον μου· κλίνατε τὸ οὖς ὑμῶν εἰς τὰ ῥήματα τοῦ στόματός μου.

Attend to my law, my people; incline your ears to the words of my mouth.86

Taking “law” as a reference to practical teaching and “the words of my mouth” as a reference to theory, Origen argues first that both practice and theory are essential before going on to show that the surface order of these elements in the text—first law, then words—is an indication that practice logically precedes theory.

86 Ps 77:1 LXX.

148 Ὁ τέλειος καὶ νόμῳ καὶ λόγῳ προσέχει· οὔτε γὰρ ἐν νόμῳ τις τελειοῦται μόνῳ, μὴ προσπαραλαβὼν καὶ λόγον σοφίας καὶ γνώσεως, οὔτε λόγος σοφίας οἷός τέ ἐστιν ἐγγενέσθαι τινὶ μὴ προκατορθώσαντι τὸν νόμον. Διὰ τοῦτο καὶ ἐν τῷ Ἠσαΐᾳ πρῶτον ἐκ Σιὼν ἐξελεύσεται νόμος, δεύτερον καὶ λόγος κυρίου ἐξ Ἰερουσαλήμ. Καὶ ἔν τινι δὲ τῶν δώδεκα, προστασσόμεθα ὑπὲρ τοῦ τελειωθῆναι ἀμφότερα ποιεῖν, καὶ βιοῦν καλῶς καὶ ζητεῖν τὸν λόγον. Ἔχει δὲ οὕτως ἡ λέξις· σπείρατε ἑαυτοῖς εἰς δικαιοσύνην, τρυγήσατε εἰς καρπὸν ζωῆς, ἑξῆς τούτοις φωτίσατε ἑαυτοῖς φῶς γνώσεως.

Chapter 3

The perfect person is concerned with both law and discourse. For no one is perfected by law alone without using as well the word of wisdom and knowledge, nor is the word of wisdom born in someone who has not already fulfilled the law. For this reason Isaiah also says first that “the law goes forth from Zion,” and second, “and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem” (Isa 2:3). And in one of the Twelve [prophets] we are commanded to do both in order to be perfected, both to live well and to seek the word. For the text says: “sow for yourselves righteousness, gather the fruit of life,” and after these things, “lighten yourselves with the light of knowledge” (Hos 10:12).87

Origen’s discussion begins at the semantic level by offering paraphrases that express the mere conjunction of practice and discourse: “the perfect person is concerned with both law and discourse,” and again, that we are commanded by the prophet “both to live well and to seek the word.” Origen has in view conjunction alone without sequence or logical connection, which he signals by his doubled use of the καὶ (“both”/“and”) and the word ἀμφότερα (“both”). At this semantic level, Origen infers nothing explicit about the mutual relation between law and discourse, a pattern which he discerns in texts drawn from Isaiah and Hosea as well. Yet these texts also place practice and theory in the same sequence as Ps 77:1 LXX, a fact to which Origen already begins to call his hearers’ attention. Isaiah speaks “first” of the law, and “second” of the word of the Lord, as Hosea commends righteousness and the fruit of life and only “after these things” speaks of the light of knowledge. The same pattern, Origen argues, obtains in Jesus’ ministry as well, which begins with the ethical teaching of the Sermon on the Mount before teaching the mysteries of the kingdom of God in the parables.

87 HomPs 77.1.5.

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Οὕτω δὴ καὶ ὁ Σωτὴρ καὶ Κύριος ἡμῶν τῆς διδασκαλίας ποιούμενος τὴν τάξιν, οὐκ ἤρξατο ἀπὸ παραβολῶν οὐδὲ ἀπὸ μυστηρίων, ἀλλ᾽ οἱονεὶ ἀπὸ νομοθεσίας καὶ διδασκαλίας. εἰς τὸ ὄρος ἀνοίξας τὸ στόμα, ἐδίδασκεν αὐτοὺς λέγων· μακάριοι οἱ πτωχοὶ τῷ πνεύματι ὅτι αὐτῶν ἐστιν ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς. καὶ ὅλα ἐκεῖνα οὐ παραβολὴ ἀλλὰ λόγος, ἥ ἐικὸς ἐφ᾽ οἷς λέγοιτο ἂν προσέχετε, λαός μου, τὸν νόμον μου, μετὰ δὲ ἐκεῖνα ὀλίγα διαλιπὼν ὁ Ματθαῖος ἀνέγραψε τὰς παραβολάς, ἵνα πληρωθῇ τὸ μὲν προσέχετε, λαός μου, τὸν νόμον μου, ἀναφερόμενον εἰς τὴν νομοθεσίαν τοῦ ἠθικοῦ τόπου, τὸ δὲ κλίνατε τὸ οὖς ὑμῶν εἰς τὰ ῥήματα τοῦ στόματός μου ἐπὶ τὴν διδασκαλίαν αὐτῶν τὴν διὰ τῶν παραβολῶν, ἥντινα σαφέστερον διηγούμενός φησιν· ἀνοίξω ἐν παραβολῇ τὸ στόμα μου, φθέγξομαι προβλήματα ἀπ᾽ ἀρχης.

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So also our Savior and Lord preserved this order in his teaching, not beginning from parables or from mysteries, but as it were from law-giving and from [ethical] teaching. On the mountain “he opened his mouth and taught them, saying, ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,’” (Matt 5:2–3) and the rest. And all these things are not a parable, but rather a discourse about which, perhaps, it might be said, “attend, my people, to my law.” But after these things and a small gap, Matthew records the parables (Matt 13). [All this was] that [the words of this psalm] might be fulfilled: “attend, my people, to my law,” (Ps 77:1a LXX) referring to the lawgiving of ethics, but “incline your ears to the words of my mouth” (Ps 77:1b LXX) about his teaching them through parables, which he explains more clearly by saying, “I will open my mouth in a parable, I will explain problems from the beginning” (Ps 77:2 LXX, Matt 13:35).88

Here Origen explicitly uses the word “τάξις” for the first time to introduce his claim that the order of Ps 77:1 LXX indicates not merely conjunction but the temporal sequence of Jesus’ ministry. Origen assumes that the opening words of Ps 77 are spoken in the persona of Jesus because Matthew applies the next verse of this psalm (“I will open my mouth in parables …”) to Jesus’ parabolic ministry.89 Inferring that Ps 77:1 LXX also refers to Jesus’ own teaching, Origen notes that Jesus preserves the same temporal “order” in his teaching as in Ps 77:1, Isa 2:3, and Hos 10:12. For Jesus first delivered his ethical teaching in the Sermon on the Mount and only later (“after these things and a small gap”) began teaching the parables. Origen’s claim that the sequence of words in Ps 77

88 Ibid. 89 Matt 13:35.

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indicates the temporal sequence of Jesus’ ministry is already an implicature, warranted by his assumption that the scriptures tend to speak in an orderly way and his knowledge of extra-textual background information about the actual order of Jesus’ teaching, derived from Matthew’s gospel. Origen goes on to draw another implicature: the verbal priority of practice to theory in these texts and its temporal priority in Jesus’ ministry each, in turn, correspond to the deeper logical priority of practical to intellectual teaching. ́ οὐκ Καὶ τὴν τάξιν οὐ�͂ν θαύμαζε, ὁ�τι ͂ πρῶτον· κλίνατε τὸ οὐ�͂ς ὑμῶν εἰς εἰ�πεν τὰ ῥήματα τοῦ στόματός μου. Πρῶτον γὰρ μάθημά ἐστι τὸ νόμον μαθεῖν ́ Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ· ἰ�δωμεν πῶς πολιτευτέον κατ’ αὐτόν· δεύτερον μάθημα, ́ ἐὰν ἐ�χῃς τὸν νόμον, ἐὰν πολιτεύῃ κατ’αὐτόν, ἐὰν ζητῶν λόγον καὶ σοφίαν προκόπτῃς ἐν αὐτοῖς. Καὶ ἀλλαχοῦ θαυμασίως γέγραπται· ἐπιθυμήσας σοφίαν, διατήρησον ἐντολὰς καὶ κύριος χορηγήσει σοι αὐτήν. Ἐὰν οὐ�͂ν πρὶν τηρῆσαι τὰς ἐντολὰς ἐπὶ τὴν ζήτησιν ἐρχώμεθα τῶν μυστικῶν ὁδῷ μὴ ὁδεύοντες, ἀναγκαίως πλανώμεθα.

And marvel therefore at the order, that he did not say first, “Incline your ears to the words of my mouth” (Ps 77:1b LXX) For the first lesson is to learn the law of Jesus Christ—let us see how to act in accordance with it. But the second lesson [comes only] if you have the law, if you act in accordance with it, if you advance in these things while seeking reason and wisdom. In another place it is also marvelously written, “if you desire wisdom, keep the commands, and the Lord will fill you with it” (Sir 1:26). If then before keeping the commands we inquire about the mysteries without walking in the way, we will necessarily fall into error.90

Origen is clear that the “lesson” of the law comes “first” and that of discourse and wisdom only “second,” a pattern which accounts for each of the previous texts he has discussed (and he throws in Sirach for good measure). Only if this priority is a logical one does it follow that Christians in general ought to observe it. Origen also remarks that the “order” (τάξις) of the words in this verse is something marvelous, presumably because the possibility of drawing these inferences is a testimony to the precision and wisdom of scriptural language—its supreme conformity, in other words, to rational norms like the Maxim of Manner. Because an implicature is not determined by linguistic convention, however, there may be cases when, in light of different background information, the surface order of a text does not warrant any further inference. For example, in his 90 Ibid.

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introductory remarks to his seventh homily on Ps 77 LXX, Origen points out that the narratives of the plagues in Egypt in Ps 77:44–51 LXX and Ps 104:28–36 LXX both omit certain plagues and recount them in a different order (τάξις) than one finds in the book of Exodus. In this case, however, Origen assigns no further significance to the narrated order of events in the psalm. His concern, rather, is to block his hearers’ likely tendency to assume that the plagues happened in the order in which the psalm narrates them, since this order would contradict that given in Exodus. More precisely, he aims to cancel the assumption that the surface order of the text implicates the temporal order of its referents. Τὸν περὶ τῶν ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ μαστίγων λόγον ἐν δύο ψαλμοῖς δοκεῖ ἐπιτέμνεσθαι ἡ ἐνεστῶσα γραφή· τῷ τε ἑδομηκοστῷ ἑδόμῷ—οὗ ἔτι ἐν χερσὶν ἔχομεν τὰς λέξεις—καὶ τῷ ἑκατοστῷ τετάρτῳ. ́ οὐ τὰς δέκα μάστιγας Τηρητέον δ’ ὁ�τι ́ ὠνόμασεν οὑ�τε ἐνταῦθα οὐ�́τε ἐκεῖ ἡ γραφή, ἀλλ’ ἐνταῦθα μὲν τὴν τρίτην καὶ τὴν ἕκτην καὶ τὴν ἐνάτην ἀπεσιώπησεν, ἐκεῖ δὲ τὴν πέμπτην ἀπεσιώπησεν. Καὶ ́ οὐ κατὰ τὴν τάξιν τοῦτο δὲ τηρητέον, ὁ�τι τῶν μαστίγων ἐξέθετο τὸν κατάλογον αὐτῶν ὁ προφήτης οὐδὴ ἐνθάδε οὐδὲ ἐκεῖ.

The appointed scripture in two psalms seems to abbreviate the account of the plagues in Egypt—both the seventyseventh Psalm, whose text I still have in hand, and the one hundred and fourth. One should observe that neither this scripture nor the other names [all] ten plagues, but that this one is silent about the third, sixth, and ninth, and that one is silent about the fifth. One should also observe that neither in the one nor the other does the prophet list the plagues according to their order.91

In this passage, Origen denies that these psalms provide an exhaustive list of the plagues and that they narrate them in order. His comments are necessary because he assumes that his readers will make two assumptions about the rational norms governing the text’s use of language. First, they are likely to assume that a narrative should recount all relevant events (Grice’s Maxim of Quantity). Second, they are likely to assume that a text should recount events in the order (τάξις) in which they occurred (Grice’s Maxim of Manner). Without rejecting the general validity of these norms, Origen goes on to demonstrate that neither assumption can apply in this case, since the book of Exodus recounts more plagues than these psalms and does so in a different order. Because these assumptions are inferences drawn by readers but not required by the text itself, Origen shows that the difficulty these psalms pose 91 HomPs 77.7.1.

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lies not in the text itself but rather in readers’ background assumptions. He is not criticizing the psalms but rather blocking certain plausible inferences from the silence (ἀπεσιώπησεν) and from the order (τάξις) of the clauses. Normally one would expect the text to uphold one of Grice’s Maxims of Quantity: “Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the purposes of the exchange).”92 Assuming that Ps 77 provided all relevant information, a reader might then infer that because Ps 77 recounts only seven plagues, only seven plagues occurred. But this inference is cancelable, for there is no contradiction in saying, “these seven plagues happened, but also three more.” Citing Exodus cancels the possible implicature that only seven plagues took place, as though Ps 77 said, “these seven plagues happened—and indeed even more.” Similarly, the assumption that the order of narration will correspond to the order of events may be expressed as one of Grice’s Maxims of Manner, “be orderly.”93 By assuming that Ps 77 narrates in an orderly manner, one might infer that the order of conjoined sentences is the order of the narrated events. In this connection, it is not insignificant that the clauses in the psalms referring to the plagues are conjoined by “καὶ,” rather than words that might explicitly signify temporal sequence. Origen may be alluding to this feature of the psalm by referring to it as a list (κατάλογος), which denotes a sequence of linguistic items, without necessarily implying that their referents must be ordered in the same sequence. The effect of Origen’s commentary is again to cancel these inferences by introducing information from the book of Exodus, as though Ps 77 said, “these seven plagues happened—but not in this order.” In this case, then, the psalm speaks truly only on a strict semantic construal. To draw the (pragmatic) inference that the order of events corresponds to the order in which it lists them is unsound—though this only becomes clear when one considers these texts in relation to one’s whole body of knowledge. 3

Conclusion

In this chapter I have shown how Origen’s performative interest in learning to speak the wise language of scripture leads him to pose pragmatic questions about the relation between the text and its possible contexts of use. In this respect, Origen behaves more like a linguist than a historian, which is why 92 Grice, “Logic and Conversation,” 26. 93 In HomPs 77.7.2, Origen refers to the first plague as “καὶ πρῶτον γε τὴν ὀνομασθεῖσαν καὶ γενομένην,” distinguishing between the order of naming and the order of events. In the case of the first plague and also the last, as Origen observes, the orders coincide.

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models of linguistic phenomena central to contemporary pragmatics—deixis and implicature—can be used to make Origen’s exegesis intelligible. We have also seen that, on Origen’s view, the wisdom of scripture entails that its discourse obeys certain rational rules of speech—rules, however, that the ordinary reader may not fully grasp. The task of the following chapter is to examine how, for Origen, the reader should proceed from an analysis of the individual sentences of scripture to a reconstruction of the underlying rules governing their usage.

Chapter 4

The Grammar of Scriptural Language Origen frequently compares scriptural interpretation to a process of inductive inquiry, analogous to the leading empirical sciences of his day. In a passage preserved in the Philocalia, for example, Origen compares the interpreter to a doctor whose practice is guided by scientific knowledge acquired through anatomy. Ἕκαστον μέλος τοῦ σώματος ἡμῶν ἐπί τινι ἔργῳ ὑπὸ τοῦ τεχνίτου θεοῦ γεγέ­ νηται· ἀλλ’ οὐ πάντων ἐστὶν εἰδέναι τίς ἡ ἑκάστου τῶν μελῶν μέχρι τῶν τυχόν­ των δύναμις καὶ χρεία. Οἱ γὰρ περὶ τὰς ἀνατομὰς πραγματευσάμενοι τῶν ἰατρῶν δύνανται λέγειν ἕκαστον καὶ τὸ ἐλάχιστον μόριον εἰς τί χρήσιμον ὑπὸ τῆς προνοίας γεγένηται. Νόει μοι τοίνυν καὶ τὰς γραφὰς τοῦτον τὸν τρό­ πον πάσας βοτάνας, ἢ ἓν τέλειον λόγου σῶμα· εἰ δὲ σὺ μήτε βοτανικὸς εἶ τῶν γραφῶν μήτε ἀνατομεὺς εἶ τῶν προφη­ τικῶν λόγων, μὴ νόμιζε παρέλκειν τι τῶν γεγραμμένων, ἀλλὰ σαυτὸν μᾶλλον ἢ τὰ ἱερὰ γράμματα αἰτιῶ, ὅτε μὴ εὑρί­ σκεις τὸν λόγον τῶν γεγραμμένων.

Each member of our body was created by God the craftsman to perform a cer­ tain function. But it is not for every­ one to know what is the power or use of each member, even the least. For only those doctors who practice anato­ mies are able to say of each, even the least, for what use it was created by Providence. So also, consider the scrip­ tures as analogous to all herbs, or as one perfect body of Reason. But if you are not a botanist of the scriptures or an anatomist of the prophetic words, do not suppose something to have been written in vain, but blame your­ self rather than the holy letters, when you cannot discover the rational order of what is written.1

As a doctor inquires into the functions of even the smallest organs, or as a botanist discovers the healing uses of various herbs, so the reader of scripture must learn to use the scriptures wisely. But to compare scriptural interpreta­ tion to scientific inquiry suggests that the goal of scriptural interpretation is not only to learn how to use particular texts but also to master the rational rules underlying these uses.2 As the world was created by God’s expertise (he 1 Philocalia 10.2. 2 On this theme see Mark Randall James, “Anatomist of the Prophetic Words: Origen on Scientific and Hermeneutic Method,” Studia Patristica XCIV (2017): 219–232.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004448544_006

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is a “craftsman,” “τεχνίτου”) with a knowable rational order grounded in divine Providence, so scripture is “one perfect body of Reason (λόγου),” an empirical object manifesting an underlying rational structure. The reader, like the scien­ tist, seeks to discover “the rational order (λόγον) of what is written.”3 Origen’s investigation of the underlying rational rules of scriptural language is the concern of this chapter. In Chapters 2 and 3, I showed that Origen char­ acteristically treats the words of scripture as utterances that the reader must learn to use appropriately. Since the function of an utterance is relative to the occasion on which it is uttered, the exegete must clarify the possible pragmatic conditions under which scriptural texts may wisely be said and elucidate their function when used under those conditions. But to judge that an utterance is appropriate is to appeal to an implicit norm or rule governing the use of lan­ guage. For this reason, scriptural interpretation requires more than determin­ ing the meaning or function of particular sentences. Rather, the interpreter

3 This is another implication of Origen’s analogy between scriptural interpretation and musi­ cal performance in Philocalia 6 (discussed above, 73–74). Skillful musical performance requires not only knowing the individual notes but also mastering the τέχνη of music theory, a practical skill grounded in rational principles discovered through empirical inquiry. Origen does not explicitly refer to music (μουσικῆς) as a τέχνη in Philocalia 6, but he does elsewhere, e.g. HomPs 80.2.1. Consistent with its status as a τέχνη, Origen emphasizes that music is a rational skill, saying in Philocalia 6.2 that the unmusical lack “knowledge of the principle of musical concord,” “τῷ ἀμούσῳ καὶ μὴ ἐπισταμένῳ λόγον μουσικῆς συμφωνίας,” using the verb επιστήμι, which implies a scientific or exact form of knowledge. He identifies the object of music theory as a rational account (λόγος) of musical concord, equivalent to ἀρμονια, “har­ mony” in the following sentence. In classical Greek music theory, one of the first exact sci­ ences in the West, ἁρμονία refers not to discordant or concordant intervals between two tones (“harmony” in the modern sense), but rather to the background “attunement” that creates the underlying structure of possible tones available to the performer. The object of harmon­ ics is, according to Barker, “the structures underlying melody”—something more analogous to the background “mode” or “key” which thus determines how to tune the strings of the psalterion or lyre (Andrew Barker, The Science of Harmonics in Classical Greece (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 7). This is why Origen speaks of concord (συμφωνία) and discord (ασυμφωνία) when referring to the relationship between particular notes (and, by analogy, texts). In Philocalia 6.1, he refers to the particular “words of the wise” as possessing concord or discord. In 6.2, he refers in the plural to the “discordances” between the various notes of the lyre, just as conversely he speaks of the actual performance of a particular evan­ gelical text as “concordant” with the performance of prophetic ones. By contrast, he speaks in the singular of the “harmony” or “attunement” of the scriptures as a whole (Philocalia 6.2). The analogous capacity for the interpreter of scripture “trained in the music of God” is not a merely grammatical or linguistic skills, then, but an expert mastery of the underlying order of scripture, which is ultimately wisdom itself. This is why Origen describes the interpreter as “wise in word and deed,” knowing the one to whom Origen refers as “the Logos … the one shepherd of rational things,” “Εἷς δὲ ποιμὴν τῶν λογικῶν ὁ λόγος” (Philocalia 6.1).

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must investigate the underlying rules of rational language by virtue of which particular utterances are appropriate, “the rational order of what is written.” In this chapter I argue that for Origen, interpreting scripture is an induc­ tive mode of inquiry that involves reasoning analogically from particular examples of linguistic usage to the underlying habits and rules of scriptural language as a complex of rational linguistic behavior. Since scriptural language is ex hypothesi supremely rational language, to reconstruct the rules governing its observable habits is ipso facto to determine norms governing the rational speech of Christians. As scripture speaks, so Christians ought to speak. This chapter begins by laying some philosophical groundwork. The first section introduces several key distinctions taken from pragmatist philosophy and shows their relevance for the understanding of ancient inductive rea­ soning. I first examine the sophisticated philosophies of science emerging in the Imperial Period, methods which include the grammatical use of analogy to reconstruct the rules of spoken language (1.1). I then discuss Peter Ochs’ account of the role of vagueness in the formulation of general claims, as exem­ plified by the Biblical wisdom tradition (1.2). The core of this chapter is my analysis of the logic operative in Origen’s reconstructions of what he calls “habits of scripture” (2.1). Habits of scripture, I argue, are vaguely formulated hypotheses about the rules of scriptural lan­ guage, second-order claims that guide exegetical judgments in future cases without fully determining them. In accordance with his philosophy of lan­ guage, Origen assumes that these habits of scripture express wisdom, that to speak in accordance with them is to say what is true or appropriate with respect to their subject matters. So Origen tends to reason that habits observed in scripture should correspond to habits of the world (2.2.1) and to the habits of the wise interpreter as well (2.2.2). While habits of scripture are second-order claims about scriptural language, it is also possible to assert them directly as first-order statements about the world, without making explicit their origin in an inductive process of inquiry (2.3). For this reason, almost any general sentence of Origen may operate according to the same inductive logic, not simply those explicitly labeled “habits of scripture.” Some of Origen’s more per­ plexing theological claims become intelligible once we recognize their induc­ tive origin. In the final section, I show how in learning habits of scriptural language, Origen goes beyond merely interpreting the sentences of scripture by cre­ atively formulating new scripture-like language of his own. After situating this practice in the context of ancient rhetorical invention (3.1), I demonstrate the fundamental continuity between the inductive activity of reconstructing hab­ its of scripture and the creative invention of new language. Whether Origen

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is interpreting a difficult text or inventing a new form of speech, he tends to ask the same basic question—when and how can the words in question be rightly said?—and to commend ways of speaking by their analogical relation to observable habits of scripture (3.2). I demonstrate this in relation to Origen’s invention of new scripture-like words (3.3) and sentences (3.4). In emphasizing the procedural continuity between inductive inquiry into the habits of scripture and the creative activity of linguistic invention, this final section is, as it were, anti-climactic by design. Origenian speculation, far from being an arbitrary departure from responsible exegesis, is simply more of the same. The primary difference between interpretation and speculative invention is not procedural but epistemological. Origen can assume a text of scripture is spoken correctly, whatever it means, whereas it may be that some formulation of his own must be rejected. 1

Inquiry and Vagueness

Origen’s inductive activity should be compared to two other ancient traditions of inductive inquiry: the Greek technai or “expertises,” of which grammar was widely regarded as a paradigmatic instance, and the Biblical wisdom tradition. Both traditions formulated empirical regularities in characteristically vague ways, leaving judgments about particular cases to be decided later on a case by case basis. The Biblical wisdom texts tended to formulate these general insights in a cryptic and poetic form. Greek natural science tended rather to formulate its insights as clear rules with explicitly acknowledged exceptions. Both, however, recognized that the way we speak about general truths must reflect the fact that empirical inquiry always remains open to new experiences and exceptional cases. Origen’s scriptural inquiry straddles these two traditions. In its most elemen­ tary forms, it differs little either in method or in terminology from the kind of inquiry we find in Greek grammarians. But for Origen, more profound wisdom tends to require more difficult language to express. As Origen’s inquiry passes from merely grammatical comments to summaries of scriptural wisdom, his own language becomes more paradoxical or aphoristic, more like scriptural wisdom texts. 1.1 Analogy and Inquiry Recent scholarship on the history of the philosophy of science has shown that practicing scientists during the Imperial Period developed sophisticated accounts of their own scientific practice as ongoing processes of proposing

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hypotheses (“abduction”) and testing them, accounts which influenced early modern scientists. The most significant figures are Apollonius Dyscolus the grammarian,4 Ptolemy the exact scientist,5 and above all, Galen the physician.6 Since Origen worked in the same milieu and frequently appealed to the empir­ ical sciences as a paradigm of his own exegetical activity, there is also reason to suppose that their proto-scientific processes of inquiry may have analogues in Origen’s exegesis.7 Of these figures, Galen offers the most extensive discus­ sions of method, and I shall focus on him, particularly his distinction between “invention” (εὕρεσις, inventio) and “testing” (πεῖρα) as moments in the process of inquiry.8 4 Cf. David Blank, “Analogy, Anomaly, and Apollonius Dyscolus,” in Language, ed. S. Everson (Cambridge; Companions to Ancient Thought, 3): 149–65. 5 Cf. A. A. Long, “Ptolemy On the Criterion: an epistemology for the practicing scientist,” in The Question of “Eclecticism”: Studies in Later Greek Philosophy, ed. John M. Dillon and A. A. Long (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 176–207; and Mark J. Schiefsky, “The Epistemology of Ptolemy’s On the Criterion,” in Strategies of Argument: Essays in Ancient Ethics, Epistemology, and Logic, ed. Mi-Kyoung Lee (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014): 301–331. 6 For recent work on Galen’s epistemology and scientific method, cf. Michael Frede, “Galen’s Epistemology,” in Essays in Ancient Philosophy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987): 279–298; R. J. Hankinson, “Hellenistic biological sciences,” in Routledge History of Philosophy, volume 2: From Aristotle to Augustine, ed. David Furley (New York: Routledge, 1997): 320–355; R. J. Hankingson, “Epistemology,” in The Cambridge Companion to Galen, ed. R. J. Hankinson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008): 158–178; and Glen Cooper, “Astronomy, Medicine, and Galen: The Beginnings of Empirical Science,” in The Traditional Mediterranean: Essays from the Ancient to the Early Modern Era, ed. Jayoung Che and Nicholas C. J. Pappas (Athens: Athens Institute for Education and Research and Institute for Mediterranean Studies, 2011): 161–171. 7 E.g. PA 4.1.7, Philocalia 2.4–5; 6; 10. Medicine, however, had an especially privileged place, as D. G. Bostock says: “For Origen the art of medicine was the clearest possible parable of the Gospel in action,” (D. G. Bostock, “Medical Theory and Theology in Origen,” in Origeniana Tertia, ed. R. P. C. Hanson and Henri Crouzel (Rome: Edizioni dell’Ateneo, 1985): 191–199, esp. 191. 8 It is doubtful that Origen knew Galen’s work. Eusebius knows Galen, and testifies to the influ­ ence of Galen’s logic on a heretical group of Roman Christians in the late second century CE (HE 5.28.3–19). The influential Peripatatic commentator Alexander of Aphrodisias, a con­ temporary of Origen, wrote an entire work against Galen, preserved in Arabic. So there is no prima facie reason why Origen could not have been familiar with Galen’s work, as Robert Grant argues (Robert M. Grant, “Paul, Galen, and Origen,” Journal of Theological Studies 34, no. 2 (Oct. 1983): 533–536). He claims that HomJer 39 (=Philocalia 10.2), which we shall exam­ ine below, must be a reference to Galen’s treatise UP 11.14, that his refrence to Celsus as an “Epicurean” in CC 1.8 is likely a reference to Galen’s De libris propriis 16.124.4, and that the order in which Origen treats topics in CC 1.9–10 suggests he is following a writen source, likely Galen’s De ordine librorum 80.11–81.2. However, Jonathan Barnes argues that there is no reason to believe that Origen knew of Galen (Jonathan Barnes, “Galen, Christians, logic”,

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Ancient discussions of scientific method generally took place in the con­ text of disputes about the status of a τεχνὴ (“expertise”). Even before Plato, the practitioners of various disciplines such as grammar, music, and medicine pur­ ported to possess a specialized expertise that distinguished the sort of knowl­ edge they possessed from that which may be acquired by the use of common sense and everyday reasoning processes. By Origen’s day, a general outline of what constituted an expertise or techne had long emerged. David Blank lists four generally agreed criteria: [a techne] should have a certain goal, distinct from those of other technai; it should be useful; it must be able to reach its goal; it must estab­ lish what is right and wrong to do, so that, while even an untrained per­ son may accidentally do the right thing, only the technical practitioner can explain that and why it is right …9 By these criteria, technical practitioners sought to distinguish the theoreticallygrounded expertise they claimed to possess from the sort of practical knowhow available even to the untrained person. Unlike the folk healer, the doctor should offer an explanatory account of why certain treatments are correct. Unlike the ordinary speaker, the grammarian should reliably explain the rules of pure Greek or Latin. Within each of the technai methodological disputes arose between “empiri­ cists” and “rationalists” about the sort of reasoning necessary for technical expertise.10 The terms, like the dispute itself, seem to have originated in medi­ cal circles.11 According to Galen, at issue was the proper method of discover­ ing the knowledge that constitutes the expertise (techne) of the doctor. Both parties generally agreed that the knowledge of medical practice arises by experience from empirical particulars. The question is whether “experience” (ἐμπειρία) alone is adequate to determine the rules of medical practice, or whether experience must be used in conjunction with “reason” (λόγος).

in Jonathan Barnes, Logical Matters (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2012), 12 n. 2). He makes this comment in passing, but one reason for suspicion is that, as Bernard Neuschäfer shows, Origen’s account of the various medical schools in CC 3.12 shows no awareness of Galen, nor does he tend to follow Galen’s account of physiological details in texts like PA 2.10.4 and CM 13.6—though Origen may have received some Galenic medical ideas through a handbook (Neuschäfer, Origenes als Philologe, 195–201, esp. 196 and 198). 9 Blank, Grammarians, xx. 10 My account follows Blank, Grammarians, xvii–xxxiv. 11 Blank, Grammarians, xxv–xxvii.

160 Οἱ μὲν τὴν ἐμπειρίαν μόνην φασὶν ἀρκεῖν τῇ τέχνῃ, τοῖς δὲ καὶ ὁ λόγος οὐ σμικρὰ δοκεῖ συντελεῖν … ἡ μὲν ἑτέρα διὰ πείρας ἰοῦσα πρὸς τὴν τῶν ἰαμάτων εὕρεσιν, ἡ δ’ ἑτέρα δι’ ἐνδείξεως.

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Some [i.e. the Empiricists] say that expe­ rience alone suffices for the art, whereas others [i.e. the Rationalists] think that rea­ son, too, has an important contribution … The one proceeds by means of experience to the discovery of medicines, the other by means of indication.12

“Experience” in this context does not refer narrowly to sense perception, but more broadly to habits or associations acquired by our natural learning pro­ cesses through repetition, memory, and the testimony of others.13 Empiricists accepted only the type of inference they called epilogismos (ἐπιλογισμός), which proceeds on the basis of “commemorative” signs, i.e. the habitual asso­ ciation of one class of object with another.14 By epilogismos one might infer, “If there is smoke, there is fire,” because smoke is habitually observed in asso­ ciation with fire. In rejecting “reason” (λόγος), the empiricists rejected only a specialized type of reasoning called analogismos (ἀναλογισμός), by which the rationalists purported to draw reliable inferences about unobservable enti­ ties. Analogismos proceeded by “indication,” i.e. by inference from observable entities to unobservable entities such as natures and causes.15 By analogismos one might infer, “If we sweat, we must have pores.” The dispute between ratio­ nalists and empiricists was, according to Galen, primarily about the validity and necessity of drawing inferences about unobservable entities by way of analogismos.16 Galen developed a position that mediated between empiricism and ratio­ nalism. Since he accepts the necessity of drawing indicative inferences about unobservable entities, he is strictly speaking a rationalist.17 But he is more confident than most rationalists in the general reliability of experience as far as it goes. Moreover, while he regards the construction of a rational theory as necessary for medical practice, he is acutely conscious of the unreliability of rational speculation when not disciplined by empirical testing. The doc­ tor, he says, must, “spend a great deal of time testing and justifying [what he 12 Sects 1.1, trans. Frede. 13 Galen, Subf. Empf. 4.50–1 defines experience as “the observation or memory of things which one has seen to happen often and in a similar way” which he later expands to include testimony (qtd. Hankinson, “Epistemology,” 172). 14 Sects 1.11. 15 Ibid. 16 Sects 1.13–15. 17 Frede, “Galen’s Epistemology,” 287.

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learns], seeing what accords with observable facts and what does not; and on this basis he will accept some doctrines and reject others.”18 In practice, for Galen the pronouncements of reason function as what Charles Peirce calls “abductions”—hypotheses that require inductive verification.19 “Reason sug­ gests and [empirical] testing proves,” “λόγος ὑπαγορεύει καὶ ἡ πεῖρα δείκνυσι.”20 As Michael Frede has shown, what Galen comes to see with particular clar­ ity is the need for a rational method of invention in scientific work. The term “invention” or “discovery” (εὕρεσις, inventio) was originally a rhetorical term for the process by which an orator discovers and elaborates the subject matter of his speech.21 For Galen, it refers to the methods used by the scientist to dis­ cover new experiential knowledge. In his On the Sects, Galen distinguishes a number of such methods used by empiricists. First, there is “incidental” expe­ rience, in which one learns something without any intentional act, e.g. when one learns that blood flows from wounds because it so happens that someone nearby was wounded. Other kinds of experience, however, emerge through intentional trial or experiment. There is “extemporary” experience, in which “we deliberately come to try something, either led by dreams or forming a view as to what is to be done in some other fashion.”22 By pointing to dreams as the source of a hypothesis to test, Galen calls attention to the creative and poten­ tially divine origin of new ideas. Galen also speaks of “imitative” experience, in which something that has worked in the past “is tried out again for the same disease.”23 Galen also describes a method he calls “transition to the similar,” a method of discovering treatments for genuinely novel cases.24 This was a par­ ticularly important mode of invention because it was primarily the doctor’s ability to offer successful treatment in new cases that demonstrated his posses­ sion of the expertise of medicine. “Transition to the similar” is a form of ana­ logical argument, in which one proposes a treatment in a new case by applying a proven remedy from a different cause that is analogous in some respect. Galen insists, however, that this method is not “invention” itself because

18 Galen, De naturalibus facultatibus 2.178–80; qtd. Hankinson, “Hellenistic Biological Sciences,” 344. 19 For discussions of abduction, see Ochs, Logic of Scripture, 28–31 and Umberto Eco, Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), 39–43. 20 De sanitate tuenda libri vi, Kühn 6.126; cf. Ad Glauconem de medendi methodo libri ii, 11.79. 21 E.g. Cicero, De inventione. 22 Sects 2.3, trans. Frede. 23 Ibid. 24 Ibid.

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these proposals still require proof through empirical “testing” (πείρα).25 It is, rather, an abductive method of producing testable hypotheses by analogical reasoning. Ancient grammarians likewise understood the task of reconstructing the rules of language as an inductive process, and the issues that arise in this con­ text provide close analogues to Origen’s own inquiry into the rules of scriptural language. Grammarians generally understood their discipline to be a techne concerned primarily with determining the norms of correct or pure speech they called “Hellenism” or “Latinity.” Although grammarians taught and inter­ preted literary texts, it was primarily by virtue of this purported ability to deter­ mine the rules of correct speech that grammar could be called a genuinely technical expertise (τεχνὴ). This is especially evident in the tripartite division of grammar reported by Sextus Empiricus:26 there was an “expert” part (τεχνικόν), which deals with, “the elements [of language, i.e. letters and syllables], the parts of a sentence, orthography, and Hellenism, and what follows from these;” a “historical” part (ἱστορικόν), in which grammarians “teach about persons … places … or transmit traditions about fictions and myths;” and a “special” part (ἰδιαίτερον), in which grammarians “examine what concerns poets and writers, where the grammarians explain what is unclearly said, judge the sound and the unsound, and sort the genuine from the spurious.”27 The implication of this division, drawn largely along epistemological lines,28 is that only the “expert” part of grammar constitutes grammar as a properly technical expertise. This 25 Sects 2.4. For rationalists, this sort of analogical argument was not sufficient without other forms of inquiry, especially anatomy: Sects 2.5. 26 This division apparently originated with Asclepiades, as Sextus says later (AM 1.252). A similar division is attested by Seneca (Ep. 88.3) who calls the first part a concern “for language,” and Diomedes, Ars Grammatica 1.426.18, who refers to it as “the rational study of correct speaking and writing” in opposition to “knowledge of poets and writers and the ready exposition of histories” (qtd. Blank, Against the Grammarians, 147). A similar two-part division of grammar, probably originating with Varro, is also attested in other sources. Quintilian, for example, divides grammar into “correct speech and explanation of poets,” later labeling correct speech alone as the “methodical” (i.e. technical) rather than the “historical” part of grammar (IO 1.4.2, qtd. Blank, Against the Grammarians, 147; cf. IO 1.9.1. See the whole discussion in Blank, Against the Grammarians, 146–8. 27 AM 1.92–93. 28 This is in contrast to the four-part division of grammar, on the basis of the order of class­ room activities, that has dominated discussion among patristics scholars of Origen’s use of Hellenistic grammar. The commentaries on Thrax generally presuppose a four part division of grammar into reading, textual criticism, exegesis, and criticism, and they explain that it reflects the course of the classroom hour (Blank, Against the Grammarians, 147; cf. Sch. DThr. 12.5–7 and 135.7–9). This division is the basis of Neuschäfer’s often cited study Origenes als Philologe.

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is also why Sextus devotes the majority of his skeptical attack to this part of grammar. The upshot is that the “expert” part of grammar was that aspect that dealt with general rules governing the correct use of language and not with exegesis or interpretation as such. In grammar as in medicine, there was a debate between rationalists and empiricists focused on how the rules of correct usage were to be determined. As David Blank says, the basic issue was “whether grammar should be regu­ lated by rule and theory or by observation of usage.”29 Rationalists sought to bring conventional written and spoken Greek under rational rules using ratio­ nal arguments from etymology and especially analogy.30 Empiricists tended to make the customary usage of one’s community the sole or primary criterion of correct speech.31 It was assumed that a “rational” norm would be one that dis­ plays some kind of regularity, which is why reason and analogy were so closely linked. It was also generally recognized that ordinary usage was full of irregu­ larities. So in practice, as Catherine Atherton shows, “the debate was over how [language’s] irregularity should be managed,”32 and hence, over the extent and function of analogical arguments. In their simplest forms, analogical arguments infer judgments about con­ tested cases from their similarity to clear cases.33 One may thus define anal­ ogy simply as “the comparison of similar things,” as we find in a scholium to Dionysius Thrax.34 This comparison could be expressed in a compressed form as a comparison between two terms, “as A, so B.”35 Strictly speaking, however, an analogy is a comparison involving four terms, “as A is to B, so C is to D.” For example, Sextus Empiricus rehearses the argument that as the form κτᾶσθαι

29 Blank, Grammarians, xxxv. 30 For this reason, Sextus’ criticism of rationalist grammar culminates in a discussion of Hellenicity focused on the failure of analogy as a criterion (AM 1.176–240). 31 Quintilian, an empiricist of sorts, says that “Custom … is the surest teacher of speaking” (IO 1.6.3). His other two categories, “authority” and “antiquity,” are empiricist in spirit as well, hence he lists them separately from “reason.” Sextus considers the possibility of treating the speech of an ancient author like Homer as a rational criterion of correctness, but easily shows that it this is simply another form of custom (AM 1.200–8). 32 Catherine Atherton, “What Every Grammarian Knows,” The Classical Quarterly 46, no. 1 (1996): 239–260, esp. 244. 33 On analogy, see D. Fehling, “Varro und die grammatische Lehre von der Analogie und der FLexion,” Glotta 35 (1956): 214–70; 36 (1957): 48–100; Elmar Siebenborn, Die Lehre von der Sprahrichtigkeit und ihren Kriterien (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1976). 34 Sch. DThr. 14.11. The Greek is: “Ἀναλογία λέγεται ἡ τῶν ὁμοίων παράθεσις.” Cf. Sch. DThr. 309.9, 169.29, AM 1.199. 35 For example, “καὶ τὸ πηρός ὀξυτόνως δεῖ ἀνγινώσκειν, ὡς τὸ πηλός” (Sch. DThr. 454.20–21).

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is derived from κτῆσις, so χρᾶσθαι should be derived from χρῆσις.36 This form of argument is analogous to Galen’s “transition to the similar,” which likewise proposes a judgment about a new case by its analogical relation to clear cases. Since implicit in analogical arguments is that similar cases are governed by a single underlying rule, analogy could also be framed as a procedure for recon­ structing general rules (κανόνες) from particular cases.37 For example: ἡ τῶν ὁμοίων παράθεσις δι᾽ ἧς συνί­ στανται οἱ τῶν ὀνομάτων καὶ ῥημάτων κανόνες.

[Analogy is] the comparison of similar things through which the rules of nouns and verbs are demonstrated.38

ἡ τῶν τεχνικῶν κανόνων ἀπόδοσις ἐκ παραθέσεως τοῦ ὁμοίου γενομένη.

[Analogy] is the demonstration of tech­ nical rules by the comparison of what is similar.39

On these definitions, analogy has become a full-blown inductive process of inference from particular to general, a mode of argumentation by which the grammarian demonstrates the rule underlying a collection of similar instances. Grammarians used analogical arguments with different degrees of confi­ dence. Some were happy to pursue analogical arguments even if they contra­ dicted the usage of authoritative speakers. For these grammarians, if empirical usage contradicts the results of “rational” argument, usage simply had to be corrected. Often the results were comical, as critics of grammarians loved to point out.40 But others, while willing to correct ordinary usage with reference to speakers (such as Homer) whose usage they deemed authoritative, also tended to see their task as reconstructing rather than correcting the underlying com­ petence displayed by these authoritative speakers. For these grammarians, the use of analogy to reconstruct the linguistic competence of these speakers took a form closer to that of Galenic scientific inquiry: it required using analogy abductively to propose hypotheses about the rules of language that still had to be tested inductively against ordinary usage. Apollonius Dyscolus in particular came to adopt this vision of grammar, as David Blank has shown.41 For him, it is not enough to collect empirical examples of usage, made by ordinary speakers 36 AM 1.197; cf. Sch. Hom. Iliad 1.216, and the discussion in Siebenborn, Sprachrichtigkeit, 64–6. 37 Siebenborn, Sprachrichtigkeit, 66–67. 38 Sch. DThr. 309.6–36, qtd. Fehling, “Varro,” 238. 39 Sch. DThr. 454.14–16, qtd. Fehling, “Varro,” 238. 40 See e.g. AM 1.206. See Blank, Grammarians, 206–7 and Atherton, “Grammarian,” 244–45. 41 Blank, “Analogy, Anomaly, and Apollonius Dyscolus.”

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by bringing cases under “the sense of hearing,” that is, by testing the grammati­ cality of particular forms against their own linguistic intuitions.42 Rather, the grammarian uses analogy to formulate hypotheses that explain the reason (τί) for or the nature (τὸ ποιοῦν) of the ungrammatical forms.43 Without a theory of this sort, ordinary users cannot correct their errors reliably with reference to a rational ideal of correct speech displayed by traditional authors. Προφανῶν οὐσῶν τῶν τοιούτων συντά­ ξεων οἰήσονταί τινες, κἂν μὴ παρα­ λάβωσι τὸν λόγον, διασῴζειν τὰ τῆς συντάξεως. Οὗτοι δὲ ὅμοιόν τι πείσονται τοῖς ἐκ τριβῆς τὰ σχήματα τῶν λέξεων παρειληφόσιν, οὐ μὴν ἐκ δυνάμεως τῶν κατὰ παράδοσιν τῶν Ἑλλήνων καὶ τῆς συμπαρεπομένης ἐν αὐτοῖς ἀναλογίας· οἷς παρακολουθεῖ τὸ εἰ διαμάρτοιεν ἔν τινι σχήματι μὴ δύνασθαι διορθοῦν τὸ ἁμάρτημα διὰ τὴν παρακολουθοῦσαν αὐτοῖς ἀπειρίαν.

Since constructions like these are obvi­ ous, some think that even if they don’t pay attention to reason [i.e. theory], they will still preserve proper syntax. They are like those who have acquired the forms of words simply by knack, but without the [explanatory] power of the tradition of the Greeks and the analogy implicit in [their usage]. For them it follows that if they make an error in some form, they cannot cor­ rect their error because of their corre­ sponding lack of skill.44

Nevertheless, Apollonius accepts that analogy on its own is fallible. Its results must be tested empirically against observable usage. Indeed, the unreliability of analogical inference was itself a commonplace. A scholium to Thrax observes forthrightly that “analogy is not without error.”45 For this reason, among those with less systematic ambitions than Apollonius Dyscolus, a more pragmatic attitude prevailed. For Quintilian, whose task was the practical formation of competent speakers, a theoretical system like that Apollonius aspired to construct does not provide adequate guidance for the case-specific needs of the orator. While Quintilian too appeals to rational anal­ ogy, he does so in a more modest way, as one useful criterion of Latinity among a number of others (usage, antiquity, authority) for making judgments about correct speech in contested cases. None on its own is a sure criterion; and all require “judgment” to apply rightly in particular cases.46 For Quintilian, then, 42 43 44 45

See e.g. Syntax 3.9. Syntax 3.6. Syntax 1.60. Sch. DThr. 471.24. The Greek is: “ἡ ἀναλογία οὐ παντάπασιν ἔχει τὸ ἄπταιστον.” Cf. IO 1.6.12, and the discussion in Fehling, “Varro,” 256–58. 46 IO 1.6.3; cf. IO 1.5.5, 40. Cf. Atherton, “Grammarian,” 244.

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the rules developed by analogy are heuristic generalizations or rules of thumb that guide judgment without obviating the need for wise judgment in particu­ lar cases. Quintilian’s view suggests that linguistic competence (and rhetori­ cal eloquence) is a capacity for case-specific judgment that cannot fully be reduced to general rules. 1.2 Vagueness and Wisdom Origen, as we shall see, tends to treat rules of scriptural discourse in a similar way as heuristic rules of thumb that require judgment to apply in particular cases. To understand the logic of his inquiry into the rules of scriptural dis­ course, we need to analyze the function of heuristic rules of this sort. To do so I draw on Peter Ochs’ account of vagueness. As Peter Ochs has argued, scriptural discourse is characteristically vague, especially in the writings of the wisdom tradition, which “defer the activity of completing their definitions or meanings to some other occasion.”47 Ochs has shown that vagueness plays an important role in facilitating empirical inquiry because vague formulations permit one to express provisional claims that remain open to the results of further inquiry.48 Origen, I shall argue, uses vagueness in just this way. Building on the work of pragmatist Charles Peirce, Ochs distinguishes vagueness from generality as two species of indeterminacy. A sign is general, Peirce says, “in so far as it extends to the interpreter the privilege of carrying its determination further.” He tends to use universally quantified propositions as examples: “Man is mortal,” i.e. all men are mortal. He comments, “To the question, What man? the reply is that the proposition explicitly leaves it to you to apply its assertion to what man or men you will.” By contrast, a sign is vague “in so far as it reserves further determination to be made in some other conceivable sign, or at least does not appoint the interpreter as its deputy in this office.” He tends to use existentially quantified propositions as examples, as here: “A man whom I could mention seems to be a little conceited.” He com­ ments: “The suggestion here is that the man in view is the person addressed; but the utterer does not authorize such an interpretation or any other applica­ tion of what she says. She can still say, if she likes, that she does not mean the person addressed.”49 A general sign gives an interpreter all the information she requires to apply its truth freely in each and every case that satisfies the rule 47 Ochs, Logic of Scripture, 9. 48 See Mark Randall James, “Ochs on Vagueness and Inquiry,” in Signs of Salvation: A Festschrift for Peter Ochs, ed. Mark Randall James and Randi Rashkover (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2020). 49 CP 5.447.

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it expresses. By contrast, Peirce says, vagueness restricts the freedom of the interpreter by withholding certain relevant information. For as Ochs explains, a vague sign “refers to something particular (thus, … it is not merely nominal and does not allow the interpreter to do with it as he or she pleases) but … it has yet to identify this particular explicitly (and, thus, … it is not determinate and does not preclude further discussion and interpretation).”50 The interpret­ er’s freedom is restricted because the vague sign refers her to a particular but to some extent unknown object (just as for Peirce, existential quantification is the paradigm of vagueness). For this reason, the interpreter must either await further information from the sign-giver or engage in a fallible investigation by her own lights. Which she should do often depends on the context in which a vague sign is operative. For example, if a student paper is vague, a teacher gives it a bad grade because it was the responsibility of the student to more fully illuminate the object in question (her paper topic). So too in the kind of oblique insult Peirce gave as an example above, the utterer strategically retains the right to elucidate the sign further to maintain plausible deniability. When Romeo and Juliet begins with a summary, “From forth the fatal loins of these two foes / A pair of starcross’d lovers take their life,” one function of this vague sentence is to whet the appetite of the audience to receive further signs from the players as the drama unfolds—signs, of course, which the audience is not at liberty to alter while watching the play. But other vague signs tend rather to provoke the interpreter to an independent investigation of a particular object. For example, a charac­ ter in a detective story might realize, “One of us in this room is a murderer!” Here vagueness directs the group to an investigation with a very determinate goal, and one with high stakes: identifying a specific murderous individual. At other times, a vague sign may invite an investigation whose character is more meditative. The pregnant vagueness of a good poem may have this effect: “April is the cruelest month” should, among other things, invite the reader to ponder the ironies of spring flowers blossoming after a brutal season of war. Precisely because vague signs may be used to leave something contingent upon further inquiry, they are particularly apt for formulating generaliza­ tions in the course of an ongoing process of inquiry while leaving some fur­ ther investigation as a task for later. A vague sign is only made definite, Ochs says, with respect to particular contexts of interpretation or investigation.51 This may be illustrated with reference to Biblical aphorisms that summarize patterns of general experience in a vague way. For example, 50 Ochs, Logic of Scripture, 181. 51 Ochs, Logic of Scripture, 9.

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Wounds from a friend can be trusted, But an enemy multiplies kisses.52 Lying behind a proverb like this is an implicit body of empirical experience. This proverb implies that many cases have been observed in which an appar­ ent “wound” was an act of friendship, while a multitude of apparent “kisses” was the work of an enemy. A proverb like this could reflect the insight of a single sage—Proverbs is attributed by tradition to Solomon, and Origen him­ self recognized the similarity to the cryptic aphorisms of ancient Greek sages, presumably Heraclitus53—but proverbs also tend to live in the oral life of some community. As Gerhard von Rad says, the experience a proverb formulates is “the common possession of a nation or of a broad stratum within a nation,” at least so long as that proverb continues in circulation.54 Conversely, a proverb that no longer crystallizes the experience of a community in a plausible man­ ner tends to die, passing out of oral circulation. The truth that a proverb expresses does not apply universally. Rather, prov­ erbs function in relation to speakers or communities who, by exercising wise judgment, are trusted to determined the appropriate circumstances of the proverb’s application. For example, the above proverb does not mean that every wound is the work of a friend, nor even that every wound from every friend can be trusted. Rather, it means something like: some wounds from some friends can be trusted, but it will require judgment to discern which. By virtue of this vagueness, one can be very confident that the proverb is true—i.e. that there are many cases in which it applies—while being quite uncertain as to whether it applies in any particular case. One of the attractions of vague formulations is that they permit their users to affirm their truth with a high degree of certainty, precisely because in doing so they may withhold judgment about particular cases. This is what Peirce called “inductive certainty,” which he glossed, “the sort of certainty we have that a perfect coin, pitched up often enough, will sometime turn up heads.”55 Notice the vagueness of this sentence: while he affirms vaguely that a coin will sometime turn up heads, he leaves indeterminate the particular occasions with respect to which this truth applies. That is, the truth of Peirce’s vague sentence does not entail on any occasion that this time the coin will turn up heads. That 52 53 54 55

Prov 27:6 (NIV). CCt Prol.1. Gerhard von Rad, Wisdom in Israel, trans. James D. Martin (London: SCM Press, 1972), 3. CP 6.474.

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judgment depends on factors specific to the context of interpretation, in this case, the results of an actual coin flip. Unlike Peirce’s more logical examples, however, proverbs and other Biblical wisdom texts tend to use a distinctly poetic mode of vagueness. Biblical apho­ risms usually take the form of what von Rad calls “epigrammatic poetry.”56 They have a density of expression that tends to provoke their readers to meditate on the subject matter of the proverb. “Wounds from a friend can be trusted,” for example, presumably invites us to compare painful criticism to physical wounds, and also to ask what constitutes a true friend. By this poetic form, proverbs not only presuppose wisdom in their users but also have the potential to help form it by provoking reflection and learning. This dependence on the reader’s active reflection also tends to lend proverbs that quality of obscurity that Origen sees as characteristic of scriptural discourse in general. As we shall see, Origen’s own generalizations and speculative proposals sometimes take on a similarly aphoristic or poetically dense quality.⁠ 2

Habits of Scripture

Like ancient grammarians, Origen is engaged in a process of empirical infer­ ence from particular authoritative texts to the rules of correct speech that they exemplify; and like rationalist grammarians, he uses analogical arguments to discover the underlying rules of scriptural language. The remainder of this chapter will be concerned with the logic of Origen’s empirical inquiry into the rules of scriptural discourse. In this section, I focus on what Origen calls a “habit” of scripture, a regular pattern of linguistic usage displayed in analo­ gous scriptural utterances. While particular utterances are empirically observ­ able, the rules by which these particulars are governed must be inferred by induction.57 A habit of scripture must be carefully distinguished from its linguistic for­ mulation. A habit is an observable regularity; its formulation signifies this reg­ ularity by expressing in language its general character. Since a pattern is not 56 57

Von Rad, Wisdom, 26. Many scholars have observed that Origen frequently draws inductive conclusions about the generic character of scriptural language, among them Harl, “Origène et la séman­ tique,”; Neuschäfer, Origenes als Philologe, 143–48; and Martens, Origen and Scripture, 83–5. Maurice Wiles, “Early Exegesis of the Parables,” Scottish Journal of Theology 11 (1958): 287–301, makes a similar point about the parables, which are for Origen “a special case of what is true of scripture as a whole” (288).

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exhausted by its observable instances, the formulation of a habit of scripture is also a hypothesis about the rule by which observable cases of scriptural lan­ guage will bear upon other cases. A formulation of a habit of scripture thus has both inductive and abductive elements. The formulated habit should be dis­ played in particular observable cases, and to that extent it may be verified by induction. But as a hypothesis about the rule governing new or difficult cases, it is also an abduction. Since Origen typically formulates habits of scripture so as to require further inquiry in order to apply that habit in a particular case, his formulations are characteristically vague. Habits of scripture thus exemplify the relation between vagueness and inquiry characteristic of formulations in the wisdom tradition. In what follows I focus on two closely related terms: συνήθεια (“custom,” “usage”) and ἔθος (“custom,” “habit”).58 Both terms were used to refer to observable patterns of behavior. In an exegetical context, they refer to empiri­ cal regularities in linguistic usage. Of the two, συνήθεια (“usage”) tends to be the narrower term. For grammarians it referred to the conventional usage of linguistic expressions, especially words and grammatical forms. It was often cited as a criterion of correct speech in opposition to “analogy” or “reason,” suggesting that it connotes language considered in its merely conventional aspect.59 Grammarians could use it with reference to the usage of a people or a regional dialect, or with reference to the idiom of a particular author, such as the “usage” of Homer. As Neuschäfer shows, Origen uses this term in more or less this grammatical sense to characterize the conventional usage of scrip­ ture, often by contrast with the usage of conventional Greek.60 The term “συνήθεια” appears twice in a grammatical context in the Homilies on the Psalms.61

58 Sextus explicitly treats them as synonymous (PH 1.146). 59 See e.g. Sextus Empiricus, AM 1.176–240, and the commentary in Blank, Grammarians, xxxiv–xl and 201–4. 60 On συνήθεια, see Neuschäfer, Origenes, 143–48, esp. n. 36. He observes that in HomPs 36.1.1, Origen distinguishes the usage of trained “philologists” from that of the “uneducated” multitudes. Cf. also Amneris Roselli, “ὁ τεχηνίτης θεός: la pratica terapeutica come para­ digma dell” operare di Dio in Phil. 27 e PA 3 1,” in Il cuore indurito del Faraone: Origene e il problema del libero arbitrio, ed. Lorenzo Perrone (Marietti: Bologna, 1992): 65–84, esp. 67; Somos, Logic and Argumentation, 80–81. 61 He also uses cognate adverbial forms: συνήθως (HomPs 15.2.9) and συνήθη (HomPs 36.4.1 of the custom of the Greeks). For a non-exegetical use, see HomPs 77.2.7.

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Τίς οὖν ἡ διαφορὰ τοῦ παραζηλοῦν παρὰ τὸ ζηλοῦν κατανοητέον. οὐ πάνυ τίς ἐστιν ἡ λέξις Ἑλληνικὴ οὐδὲ τέτριπ­ ται ἐν τῇ συνηθείᾳ τῶν Ἑλλήνων …

We must therefore consider what is the difference between “παραζηλοῦν” and “ζηλοῦν.” [The former] is by no means a Greek expression, nor is it customary in the usage of the Greeks …62

Καὶ ἄλλως μὲν ἡ συνήθεια ὀνομάζει τὴν γνῶσιν τῆς ἁμαρτίας. Οἶδε γὰρ ὁ πολὺς τί ἐστιν ἁμαρτία, ἄλλως δὲ ἡ γραφή … ἔδει γὰρ συνεξετασθῆναι τὸ ξενιζόντως λεγόμενον παρὰ τὴν συνή­ θειαν τῶν πολλῶν.

[Greek] custom uses “knowledge of sin” with a different meaning. For the mul­ titude “know” what sin is [in one way], but the scripture [uses this expression] differently … For it was necessary to investigate what was said [in scripture] strangely, contrary to the custom of the many.63

In both of these examples, Origen uses συνήθεια in the context of drawing a contrast between Greek and scriptural usage of individual words. He explains the Septuagint coinage “παραζηλοῦν” in Ps 36:1 LXX (36.1.1) and discusses scrip­ ture’s idiomatic use of the phrase “to know sin” in 2 Cor 5:21 to mean engag­ ing in sin rather than knowing what sin is (15.2.9). Origen is acutely aware of the scriptures as a foreign literature, which even in Greek posed difficulties for ordinary Greek speakers.64 In the first passage, he draws a clear contrast between scriptural usage and that of the “Greeks.” In the second, he notes that scripture speaks “ξενιζόντως” (“strangely”), which connotes foreignness. In both cases, συνήθεια refers to the conventional usage of a particular linguistic com­ munity or body of work. The word “ἔθος,” “habit,” usually has a somewhat broader meaning for Origen. It does not necessarily refer to a mere customary mode of expression, but may refer more broadly to patterns of speech that involve sentences in rela­ tion to their referents. To speak of a “habit” of scripture is to describe scripture as exhibiting a pattern of behavior that tends to bring into play the relation of language to things. Because habits of scripture relate language to things, they become important units of Origen’s theological discourse.

62 HomPs 36.1.1. 63 HomPs 15.2.9. 64 I owe the recognition of this point to conversations with Joseph Trigg.

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Origen uses “ἔθος” four times with reference to a scriptural habit in the Homilies on the Psalms:65 Ἔθος ἐστὶ τῇ γραφῇ δύο ἀνθρώπους εἰσάγειν καὶ καθ᾽ ἔκαστον ὁμώνυμα ποεῖν τοῦ ἑτέρου τῶν ἀνθρώπων.

It is a habit of scripture to introduce two human beings [i.e. an “inner” and an “outer”], and to name each by hom­ onymy with the other human.66

Ἔθος ἐστὶ τῇ γραφῇ πολλαχοῦ τοῖς προστακτικοῖς ἀντὶ εὐκτικῶν χρῆσθαι.

It is a habit of scripture frequently to use an imperative in place of an optative.67

Τοῦτο οὖν ἔθος ἐν ἑνὶ ψαλμῷ, ἔσθ᾽ ὅτε οὐχ ἓν εἶναι ὸ πρόσωπον τὸ λέγον, ἀλλὰ πλείονα.

This then is a habit in some psalms, that there is sometimes not only one persona speaking but many.68

Ἔθος ἐστὶ τῷ θεῷ λόγῳ, ἐάν ποτε ἡμᾶς ἐπάρῃ καὶ ὑψώσῃ ταῖς ἐπαγγελίας, πάλιν κωλύειν ἡμῶς διὰ τὰ ἁμαρτή­ ματα ἡμῶν …

It is a habit in the divine word, when it lifts us and exalts us with promises, later to rebuke us on account of our sins …69

As these examples show, habits range from observations about grammatical functions (67.1.2) and literary devices (77.1.2) to theologically suggestive gen­ eralizations about the dynamics of the divine pedagogy (81.3) and the deep analogy between the inner and outer human beings (36.1.4). Even the primar­ ily grammatical habits, moreover, concern the relation of verbal expression to meaning rather than merely a customary mode of expression as such.70

65 In HomPs 77.1.2, he also goes on to speak of his ἔθος as an interpreter (see the discussion below). To these texts we may add the following fragments on the Psalms: “It is the habit [ἔθος] for the prophets in the Septuagint frequently to announce things about Christ as though they had already happened [i.e. in the past tense]” (FragPs 2:2 = PG 12.1104C) and “The scripture has the habit [ἔθος] of referring to habits [ἕξεις] instead of those who pos­ sess them. For thus Paul says, ‘Love never fails …’” (FragPs 118:143 = PG 12.1617D). There are many similar examples in Origen’s broader corpus, e.g. CC 6.59, 70, 74, EM 28.13, De Oratione 27.13, FragJer 52 = PG 13.805. 66 HomPs 36.1.4 = PG 17.120. 67 HomPs 67.1.2. 68 HomPs 77.1.2. 69 HomPs 81.3. 70 A habit of scripture tends to involve that part of Stoic dialectic concerned with “things signified” rather than mere “signifiers,” and thus with λόγος rather than mere λέξις.

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2.1 The Logic of Scriptural Habits In this section, I examine the logical function of Origen’s formulations of “habits” of scriptural language. I focus on an example that remains primarily within the narrow sphere of grammar, since Origen’s procedure in this case is not unlike the kinds of philological arguments routinely used by historical text scholars today, and as such it will serve as an illuminating point of reference. Habits of scripture have two important logical features. First, a habit of scripture brings scriptural data to bear on a difficult text in a way that com­ bines inductive and abductive modes of inference. The dynamic between the labor of inductive testing and the creative abductive proposal of exegeti­ cal hypothesis is, I suggest, central to Origen’s exegesis. Second, Origen’s for­ mulations of habits of scripture are characteristically vague. Their vagueness involves Origen in an epistemic trade-off characteristic of wisdom discourse more generally. Vaguely formulated rules allow one to describe general pat­ terns of reality with a high degree of confidence; but their vagueness means that they cannot be applied with certainty to any particular case. To know a habits of scripture is to possess a form of general knowledge that requires fur­ ther investigation and wise judgment to apply in particular cases. A simple example is Ps 67:1 LXX, which begins by addressing God in the imperative mood: “ἀναστήτω ὁ θεός,” “let God arise!” Since imperative sentences typically function as commands, one might infer from this verse that human beings may command God. Origen argues that this text need not be understood as a command because imperatives may also function as optatives expressing a wish.71 To introduce this hypothesis, Origen appeals to a “habit” of scripture. Πρῶτον εἰδέναι χρὴ ὅτι ἔθος ἐστὶ τῇ γραφῇ πολλαχοῦ τοῖς προστακ­ τικοῖς ἀντὶ εὐτικῶν χρῆσθαι. Καὶ εὑρήσεται μὲν τοῦτο πολλαχοῦ, ἀρκεῖ δὲ νῦν παραθέσθαι ἀπὸ τοῦ εύαγγελίου ὅτι διδάσκων ἡμᾶς ὁ σωτὴρ ἡμῶν εὔχεσθαι, οὐ διδάσκει ἵνα προστάσσωμεν τῷ θεῷ, ἀλλ᾽ ἵνα προστακτικαῖς φωναῖς εἴπωμεν τὰ

71

First it is necessary to know that it is a habit of scripture frequently to use imperatives in place of optatives. This can indeed be found frequently, but it is suf­ ficient for now to compare [the text] from the gospel, where our Savior teaches us to pray. He does not teach that we should command God, but that we may say optative things in imperative utterances.

Both Origen’s observation and his terminology were common among grammarians. See Neuschäfer, Origenes als Philologe, 208–10.

174 εὐτικά· λέγεται γάρ, φησί, πάτερ ἠμῶν ὁ ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς, ἁγιασθήτω τὸ ὄνομά σου· ἐλθετω ἡ βασιλεία σου· γενηθήτω τὸ θέλημά σου, ἀντὶ τοῦ ἁγιασθείη τὸ ὄνομά σου, ἔλθοι ἡ βασιλεία σου, γένοιτο τὸ θέλημά σου.

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For what he says—“our Father, who is in heaven, let your name be hallowed, let your kingdom come, let your will be done” (Matt 6:9–10)—is said in place of “may your name be hallowed, may your kingdom come, may your will be done.”72

Origen’s argument is, I trust, fairly intuitive for modern readers. To show that it is possible for an imperative to function as an optative in Ps 67:1 LXX, Origen points to clear examples of the same in other cases, in this case taken from the Lord’s Prayer. Origen infers that what is actual in some cases is also possible in other analogous cases. Let us explicate this argument in a bit more detail. First, Origen establishes that this habit exists by a simple form of induction: he enumerates similar cases that exhibit the proposed regularity.73 He explicitly cites three petitions from the Lord’s Prayer, but adds that other examples can be found in scripture “frequently.” These examples are selected because they are analogous to one another in being imperatives that function as optatives. (In commenting on the Lord’s Prayer in De Oratione he appeals to the same habit of scripture, but in that case he runs the argument in reverse. There he points to examples of grammatically imperative prayers in the Psalms to show that the Lord’s Prayer should be taken optatively as well.)74 In an inductive argument, a general rule is logically dependent on particular cases. So it is here: to prove that the habit obtains, Origen enumerates par­ ticular cases that he regards as evident in themselves, without reference to the habit in question. Nor does he determine these cases by any other rule or by appealing to, say, a theory of language or a hermeneutic principle. Rather, to establish these instances he treats it as sufficient to make a case-specific appeal to the ear of his hearers, assuming that his audience will accept these on inde­ pendent grounds as clear cases of imperatives that function as optatives. He probably regards it as uncontroversial that the Lord’s Prayer is a prayer not a command, but in saying that Jesus “does not teach that we should command God,” he may be alluding more specifically to the fact that the Lord’s Prayer is explicitly framed as a petition in Matt 6:9. Second, Origen brings the rule exhibited in these clear cases to bear on the difficult case of Ps 67:1 by abduction. A habit of scripture is not reducible to an 72 HomPs 67.1.2. 73 On induction in Origen, see Robért Somos, Logic and Argumentation, 55, 71–87. 74 De Oratione 24.4–5.

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observable set of cases. Rather, it refers ampliatively to the underlying pattern they exhibit—a pattern that may also be exhibited in other cases. But these cases cannot simply be subsumed under the rule, as though the rule alone were adequate to determined their function in advance of considering the factors specific to the case. Rather, in relation to the difficult case of Ps 67:1 the habit functions as a hypothesis. We know this because Origen does not treat the habit in itself as determining the meaning of this text, but only as providing a plausible interpretation. Although invoking the habit of scripture disrupts the apparent obviousness of reading the text as a command, Origen goes on at length to defend the claim that Ps 67:1 should be regarded as an optative by offering further arguments specific to this particular text. He would not need to do this if the habit itself determined the reading. More impor­ tantly, he then goes on to suggest that it is possible after all to command God, at least in a certain sense. At most, then, the invocation of the habit warrants the hypothesis that this particular case too might be an instance of the pattern. But this must be verified by showing in this case that this hypothesis yields an intelligible reading.75 Third, Origen’s formulation of this habit is vague, particularly as to the frequency with which it obtains. He says simply that “frequently” (πολλαχοῦ) imperatives function as optatives. This is not a universal judgment govern­ ing every case. Habits admit exceptions (as in the following example); or as in the present example, a habit may itself be an exception to a general rule that obtains more often. For it is presumably the case that most imperatives do not function as optatives, even though some do. The fact that most imperatives function as imperatives is one reason why Origen worries that his audience will assume this is always the case, leading them to misunderstand this par­ ticular text. That a habit is not a universal rule is what we would expect, since habits are proved by induction. Origen is also vague about the specific cases in which the habit obtains. In itself, his formulation of the habit—“frequently [scripture] uses impera­ tives in place of optatives”—does not specify any particular cases at all. It is not equivalent, say, to a list of specific data points or a conjunction of singu­ lar judgments, as though it implied, “the habit obtains in the following cases: this one and this one and this one …” So while each piece of evidence that he cites is further cumulative proof that the habit exists, no particular piece of 75 Compare HomPs 36.1.4: “Let us come, then, after many examples [establishing the habit of scripture that an inner and an outer human correspond], to the text that lies before us …” and HomPs 77.1.2: “But if this [habit] occurs in some psalms, let us investigate if also here we might understand something similar.”

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evidence is necessary to his argument. One could disagree with some of the examples Origen cites or could have cited while still agreeing that the general habit exists. This helps explain the off-hand way Origen cites evidence for the existence of the habit: “it is sufficient for now to compare …” His hearers do not need to agree with Origen about every case (or indeed, about any of these cases), so long as they grant that some such cases exist. For this purpose, it is sufficient to cite a few cases he regards as sufficiently clear. It follows that even though a habit is logically dependent on its instances, one may be more certain that a vaguely formulated habit exists than one is about any particular case. This is not as counter-intuitive as it may seem; it is a direct consequence of the fact that a vague formulation does not commit itself to the determination of any particular case. One can say “I sometimes get the flu” far more confidently than one can say, “I have the flu here and now,” and one can say “I generally like action movies” far more confidently than one can say, “I will like this action movie.” As we saw above, Charles Peirce calls this “inductive certainty.” In the same way, one can share Origen’s confidence that some imperatives function as optatives, even if one disagrees with his par­ ticular examples. Because of the vagueness with which these rules are formu­ lated, to show that no such habit exists would require demonstrating that all or nearly all apparent instances of the rule are in fact not. By contrast, a universal rule is difficult to be certain about, since it is dis­ proved by a single counter-example; but granting the validity of the rule, its application in particular cases is straightforward. Because the rule is universal, it requires no judgment to apply in any given case. “If a woman is pregnant, she has been with a man”: if one knows that a woman is pregnant, this universal rule asserts, one can be fully confident that she has been with a man. This clas­ sical example also demonstrates the fragility of universal rules, however, for it admits rare but revealing counter-examples. A Christian might point to the Virgin Mary; and of course it is now possible for a woman to become pregnant through artificial means. So while the rule is easy to apply, it is also fragile and, in this case, false. As is often the case, however, this universal rule could be made both true and secure simply by reformulating it with more vagueness: most pregnant women have been with a man. By doing so, one treats preg­ nancy as a probable rather than a necessary sign of having been with a man. One can assent to this claim with a fairly high degree of confidence, but one cannot apply this knowledge with confidence to any particular case without further investigation. Perhaps this woman was artificially inseminated! There is, then, a certain epistemic trade-off involved in formulating habits of scripture vaguely. By induction one can be very confident that certain gen­ eral patterns obtain, precisely because one leaves for some later occasion the

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determination of particular cases. This is not because their determination is arbitrary, but simply because their determination must be made on the basis of factors particular to the case. A habit of scripture thus behaves in a manner similar to the heuristic rules of Greek empiricists or the aphoristic wisdom of scriptural proverbs. 2.2 Scripture, World, and Interpreter What Origen calls “habits of scripture” are operative in many more cases in his exegesis than those he explicitly labels as such, and their significance extends far beyond the mere second-order description of scriptural language. Rather, habits of scripture are functionally interchangeable with statements about the world and instructions to language users and interpreters. The reason for this is Origen’s assumption that the language of scripture is not merely conventional, but rather appropriate to the things about which it speaks. In this section, I focus on the transition from second-order description of scriptural habits to first-order claims about the world and about the inter­ preter. First, since a habit of scripture accords with that about which it speaks, to learn how scripture speaks is at the same time to learn about things by learn­ ing how to speak appropriately about them. For this reason, a habit of things corresponds to a habit of scripture. Second, to the extent that a habit of scrip­ ture is not only a summary of observable cases but a hypothesis about how to decide novel or difficult cases, a habit of scripture gives guidance to the inter­ preter as well. It does not do so by determining any particular interpretation or set of interpretations. Rather, by disrupting the apparently obvious meaning of a difficult text, identifying a habit of scripture shows that some hitherto uncon­ sidered alternative interpretation is possible and must therefore be examined. In this way, a habit of inquiry corresponds to a habit of scripture.76 Habits of scripture are not only second-order formulations about scriptural language, then, but may lead directly to theological claims about the world or practical instructions for the interpreter. In either case, however—and this is critical to understand—the same inductive and abductive logic of habits remains operative. When Origen’s assertions about the world or instructions about interpretation arise from habits of scripture, they retain the same vague­ ness we observed in habits of scripture. They are not universal rules, but more 76

For example, “ἐδείχθη πολλάκις ἡμῖν ὅτι Δαυὶδ ἀντὶ τοῦ Χριστοῦ ὀνομάζεται” (HomPs 77.9.6), and the same habit in HomPs 67.2.3. Speaking of Scriptural references to Joseph and Ephraim, he says, “ἡρμηνεύσθη δὲ ἡμῖν πολλάκις οὗτος εἰς τοὺς σχίζοντας ἀπὸ τῆς ἐκκλησίας ἑτεροδόξους ὄντας” (HomPs 80.1.6), which he defends at greater length in a discussion of Hosea in HomPs 77.2.3; and cf. HomPs 77.9.5. Further examples include HomPs 75.2 and 76.3.2.

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like proverbs, general summaries, or rules of thumb that require wisdom and judgment to apply in particular cases. 2.2.1 Habits of the World Let us consider first how a habit of the world may correspond to a habit of scripture. In this example, Origen comments on the words “delight yourself in the Lord” in Ps 36:4 LXX. He worries that the word “delight” denotes a bodily pleasure that should not be applied to God. To generate an alternative inter­ pretation, Origen appeals to one of his favorite habits of scripture: scripture habitually uses words that apply to the physical body (the “outer human”) with reference to the soul (the “inner human”) as well. Origen infers from this con­ sistent pattern of usage that a real analogy obtains in the corresponding things. That is, the grammar of scriptural speech about the soul is analogous to the grammar of its discourse about the body for the simple reason that souls are analogous to bodies. Discerning this habit helps Origen identify an allegorical use of this psalm. Ἔθος ἐστὶ τῇ γραφῇ δύο ἀνθρώπους εἰσά­ γειν καὶ καθ᾽ ἔκαστον ὁμώνυμα ποιεῖν τοῦ ἑτέρου τῶν ἀνθρώπων· λέγω δὲ τὰ τοῦ χείρονος καὶ κατὰ τὸν κρείττονα καὶ σχεδὸν πάντα τὰ τοῦ χείρονος ἔχει καὶ ὁ κρείττων. ὁ μὲν γὰρ χείρων, οὗτος ὁ σωματικὸς ἐσθίει. ἔστι δέ τις καὶ τροφὴ τοῦ ἔσω ἀνθρώπου, περὶ ἧς λέγεται· οὐκ ἐπ᾽ ἄρτῳ μόνῳ ζήσεται ἄνθρωπος, ἀλλ᾽ ἐπὶ παντὶ ῥήματι ἐκπορευμένῳ διὰ στόματος θεοῦ ζήσεται ἄνθρωπος. ἔστι τι ποτὸν καὶ τοῦ ἔσω ἀνθρώπου· πίνομεν γὰρ ἐκ πνευματικῆς ἀκολουθούσης πέτρας καὶ πίνομεν τὸ ὕδῶρ τὸ πνευματικὸν καὶ ἅγιον. ἔστιν ἔνδυμα τοῦ ἔξω ἀνθρώπου, ἔστιν ἔνδυμα καὶ τοῦ ἔσω ἀνθρώπου. ἐὰν γὰρ ἁμαρτωλὸς ᾖ, ἐνεδύσατο κατάραν ὡς ἱμάτιον· ἐὰν δὲ δίκαιος ᾖ, ἀκούει· ἐνδύσασθε τὸν κύριον Ἰσοῦν Χριστὸν καὶ ἐνδύσασθε σπλάγχα οἰκτιρμῶν, χρηστότητα, ταπεινοφρoσύνην, πραότητα, μακροθυμίαν. καὶ τί με δεῖ λέγειν τὰ τοῦ ἔσω ἀνθρώπου τίνα πρόπον ὁμώνυμα

It is the habit of scripture to introduce two humans and to make of the one human a homonym of the other. I say the things of the lesser also of the better, and the better contains nearly every­ thing that the lesser does. For the lesser [food], this bodily one eats. But there is also a certain food of the inner human, about which it is said, “a person shall not live by bread alone, but a person shall live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (Deut 8:3). There is also a certain drink of the inner human: for we drink “from the spiritual rock that followed them” (1 Cor 10:4) and we drink the water that is spiritual and holy (cf. John 4:14). There is cloth­ ing of the outer human, and there is also clothing of the inner human. For if someone is a sinner, “he put on curs­ ing as a garment” (Ps 108:18a LXX) but if he is righteous, he hears: “put on the Lord Jesus Christ,” (Rom 13:14) and “put

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τοῖς ἔξω ἐστί; πανοπλίαν ἔχει ὁ κατὰ τὸν ἔξω ἄνθρωπον στρατιώτης καὶ ὁ κατὰ τὸν ἔσω ἄνθρωπον στρατιώτης ἐνδύσεται τὴν πανοπλίαν τοῦ θεοῦ πρὸς τὸ δύνασθαι στῆναι πρὸς τὰς μεθοδείας τοῦ διαβόλου. ἔλθωμεν οὖν μετὰ πολλὰ παραδείγματα ἐπὶ τὸ προκείμενον, ἵνα ἴδωμεν τί δηλοῦται ἐκ τοῦ κατατρύφησον τοῦ κυρίου καὶ δώσει σοι τὰ αἰτήματα τῆς καρδίας σου.

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on compassion, goodness, humility, meekness, patience” (Col 3:12). And why is it necessary to speak of how the inner human is homonymous to the outer? For the soldier according to the outer human has armor and the soldier according to the inner human puts on the armor of God, in order “to be able to stand against the schemes of the devil” (Eph 6:11). Let us then after many examples come to the present text, that we might see what is indi­ cated by the text, “delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the requests of your heart.”77

The term “habit” functions in this text just as it did in the previous example. First, Origen proves that this habit exists inductively, by enumerating cases from throughout the scriptures that satisfy the general rule that things pertain­ ing to the human body are also applied analogously to the soul. Origen treats the rule as logically dependent on the cases, since he treats their meaning as evident independent of the rule they help establish. Second, Origen brings this habit to bear abductively on the case in question, not to determine it but rather as a hypothetical proposal whose applicability in this particular case still needs to be demonstrated. After introducing the habit, Origen still says, “let us come after all these examples to see what is indicated” by this text, and then goes on to investigate the kinds of spiritual delights that might be appropriate for the Christian. Finally, Origen remains vague about the extent to which this habit obtains, although in this case he believes it applies broadly indeed. We find that the inner human contains “almost everything” (σχεδὸν πάντα) the outer does, but the caveat is important: it does not necessarily hold in every case. The rule is not universal, then, and it still requires judgment to work out whether and how this rule applies in the case at hand. Nor does the rule determine exactly how a particular part of the body is analogous to a function of the soul; this too depends on factors specific to the case at hand. But unlike the habit in HomPs 67.1.2 discussed above, which was primarily grammatical in character, Origen views this pattern of scriptural naming as indicative of a corresponding analogy in the world between body and soul. 77 HomPs 36.1.4.

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This is evident from the way Origen frames his examples of scriptural usage in terms of their referent: “there is also a certain food of the inner human, about which it is said …” “There is also a certain drink …” “There is clothing of the outer human, and there is also clothing of the inner human.”78 Origen argues that the same words of the psalm about delight may be used in analogous ways with reference to analogous things. A number of commentators have observed that Origen tends to assume that scriptural symbols are used in consistent ways—that, for example, Solomon is generally a type of Christ, the Ephraimites of the heretics, and so on.79 He tends to assume this even of texts separated by vast historical and cultural dis­ tances. Here, for example, Origen takes the use of language in Paul and John as a clue to the psalm. Historically-minded readers like R. P. C. Hanson would presumably regard this kind of exegesis as anachronistic. Hanson calls this a “conventional allegory” that rests on nothing more than “the arbitrary decision of the allegorist.”80 And even ancient grammarians recognized that usage dif­ fers between different authors, in different historical epochs, and in different linguistic communities. One might appeal to the unified divine authorship of scripture to account for Origen’s assumption, but it is difficult to see why divine authorship should have just this implication. The deeper rationale, rather, is linguistic. Origen is a linguistic naturalist, as we have seen, who assumes that wise patterns of linguistic usage are appropriate to their subject matter. Origen also assumes that scriptural discourse exemplifies this wisdom. He may therefore infer from scriptural habits of speech that corresponding habits obtain in the things themselves—in this case, that there is a real isomorphism between the outer and the inner humans. In a discussion of the same homonymy in the introduc­ tion to his Commentary on the Song of Songs, Origen speaks explicitly of the need to draw an inference from patterns of linguistic usage to the natures of the underlying things to which they refer: The thing we want to demonstrate about these things is that the divine scriptures make use of homonyms; that is to say, they use identical terms (per similes appellationes, immo per eadem vocabula) for describing differ­ ent things. And they even go so far as to call the members of the outward 78 Origen frequently uses this expression, “there is an X” when introducing an allegorical interpretation. 79 See Young, Biblical Exegesis, 133–37, and Ronald Heine, “Reading the Bible with Origen,” in The Bible in Greek Christian Antiquity, ed. and trans. Paul M. Blowers (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997): 131–148, esp. 136–39. 80 Hanson, Allegory and Event, 248.

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man by the same names as the parts and dispositions of the inward man; and not only are the same terms employed, but the things themselves are compared with one another (non solum vocabulis, sed et rebus ipsis sibi invicem comparantur).81 As a linguistic naturalist, Origen infers that the rationale for scripture’s habit of applying outer names to inner things is the analogy between the things themselves: “not only are the same terms employed, but the things themselves are compared with one another.” From a pattern of scriptural metaphors Origen infers a pattern of analogical relations in the underlying things.82 If this habit bears upon the interpretation of Ps 36, then it is not a direct inference from scripture’s habit of usage. Rather, the inference is an indirect one by way of things. Origen infers from this habit of scripture a corresponding habit of things, which in turn suggests to Origen a possible referent with respect to which this psalm may be uttered. There are two abductions here, not just one. Where the things about which one speaks remain consistent, it is reason­ able to suppose that patterns of right speech about these things will also dis­ play a certain degree of consistency, even across different speakers in different historical contexts. This grammatical consistency would not be a function of historically relative conventions but of the things in relation to which these conventions function. We can see this in more common sense cases. In many different times and places, the same ocean rises and falls with the tide. A natu­ ralist like Origen would anticipate that where the tide behaves in the same way, so the usage of various languages would correspond to these habits of the ocean. She would expect different languages to develop analogous ways of speaking of “high” and “low” tide, of the ebb and flow of waves, and so on. Similarly, in different times and places the human body has had relatively con­ sistent features. Insofar as this is the case, we would expect different linguistic communities to use language about the human body in analogous ways—to speak similarly about eyes and ears, their relation to the face and head, and so on.83 Just as usage about physical bodies tends to be similar in different times 81 82

83

Qtd. Somos, Logic and Argumentation, 66. See also Origen, Dial. 11.16–12.14 and 15.28–23.1. Scholars have frequently observed that this isomorphism between outer/inner humans is broadly Platonic. Somos comments, for example, “This may be regarded as an isomorphic relation between the sensible and the intelligible, which offers a Platonic vision about the structure of reality” (Somos, Logic, 66). But it is equally important to observe that this “Platonic” isomorphism is inferred inductively from patterns of scriptural usage. The point is not that oceans or bodies are fixed, only that insofar as they remain the same over time, the naturalist expects linguistic usage to reflect this similarity. Where things change—if oceans dry up or human bodies are altered by technology—the naturalist

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and places, Origen supposes that the usage of the wise about spiritual bodies will display a similar consistency. The same set of assumptions implies that scriptural texts that speak in general about things may also function as clues about habits of scriptural usage concerning those things. Conversely, as I shall examine in more detail in the following section, Origen may also formulate a habit of scripture as a direct assertion about things. There are two examples of this in the above pas­ sage. First, Origen adopts the Pauline description of our “inner” and “outer” human to characterize this habit of scripture. In 2 Cor 4:16, Paul says that “even though our outer human is wasting away, our inner human is being renewed day by day.” By using the same word “human” of two different aspects of our person, Paul plausibly hints that there is a real analogy between the two in some respect. Origen seeks to explicate this analogy by drawing on the other instances of scriptural usage that he organizes as this “habit” of scripture. The second example is Paul’s exhortation in Ephesians to put on the “armor of God.” Origen refers to this text with a rhetorical question—“why is it neces­ sary to speak of how the inner human is homonymous with the outer?”—that suggests he is particularly impressed with this example. One can see why: after speaking of the armor of God, Paul proceeds to explicate it in detail. 13 Therefore take up the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. 14 Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness. 15 As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace. 16 With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 17 Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.84 For the reasons I have just sketched, Origen would already have anticipated that Paul’s reference to “the armor of God” could be explicated in detail, just as he assumes about the “inner human.” But in this case, Paul provides powerful confirmation of this hermeneutic impulse by actually enumerating the spe­ cific details of this spiritual armor himself: the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, etc. Each particular image draws an analogy between the equip­ ment of the body and various modes of spiritual protection and weaponry. would expect usage to change as well. On this, see my discussion of name-changing above, 50–53. 84 Eph 6:13–17 (NRSV).

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Once again Origen glosses this pattern of Pauline usage with reference to the things it is about. Paul shows, he claims, that “the soldier according to the outer human has armor and the soldier according to the inner human puts on the armor of God.” Paul has in effect done the work of organizing an entire habit of correct usage by which the inner human puts on armor analogous to that of outer human. The term “armor of God” in turn hints at the under­ lying analogy between the inner and outer human, an analogy which Origen expands by analogy with Paul’s elaboration of the armor of God. In this way, a scriptural text can function both as first-order claims about the world and as second-order clues to the appropriate habits of speech one should adopt in relation to the world. 2.2.2 Habits of Inquiry A habit of the interpreter also corresponds to a habit of scripture. The habits of a reader must correspond to the habits of the text she is reading because she must make it her practice to ask in each case whether or not a relevant habit in fact obtains. Inductively proven habits of scripture generate rules of interpre­ tation because interpretation is primarily inquiry. This is especially clear in Origen’s interpretation of Ps 77:2 LXX, where Origen connects his own habit (“ἔθος”) as an interpreter with a corresponding habit of scripture. The psalm begins with the words: Ἀνοίξω ἐν παραβολαῖς τὸ στόμα μου, φθέγξομαι προβλήματα ἀπ᾽ ἀρχῆς· ὅσα ἠκούσαμεν καὶ ἔγνωμεν αὐτὰ καὶ οἱ πατέρες ἡμῶν ἀνήγγειλαν ἡμῖν …

I will open my mouth in parables, and I will expound problems from the beginning; whatever we have heard and known, our fathers announced them to us …85

As Origen observes, Matthew’s gospel explicitly puts the words of the first verse into the mouth of Jesus, implying that they are spoken in his persona.86 Origen aims to show that the whole of Ps 77 may appropriately be used in a way that is consistent with Matthew’s interpretation of verse 1 as words rightly spoken by Jesus. This faces a difficulty, however, for according to Origen, the words that follow may not appropriately be said by Christ. While the psalm says that “whatever we have heard and known, our fathers announced to us,” Origen

85 Ps 77:2 LXX. As Origen notes in HomPs 77.1.1, Matt 13:35 quotes the last phrase as “ἀπὸ καταβολῆς κόσμου.” 86 Matt 13:35. See my discussion of persona above, 125–28.

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points out that Christ claims to have learned many of his teachings directly from the heavenly Father. To resolve this problem, Origen argues that the speaker or persona of this psalm changes in the middle (as it does in a dialogue or an antiphonal psalm). To show that this proposal is plausible, he appeals to a habit of scripture, which he does not explicitly formulate until the end of his discussion. Τοῦτο οὖν ἔθος ἐν ἑνὶ ψαλμῷ, ἔσθ᾽ ὅτε οὐχ ἓν εἶναι ὸ πρόσωπον τὸ λέγον, ἀλλὰ πλείονα. εἰ δὲ τοῦτο ἔν τισι ψαλ­ μοῖς γίνεται, ζητητέον εἰ καὶ ἐνθάδε τὸ παραπλήσιόν ἐστι νοητέον.

This then is a habit in some psalms, that sometimes there is not only one persona speaking but many. But if this occurs in some psalms, let us investigate if also here we might understand some­ thing similar.87

This habit displays the same logical features of the other habits we have seen. First, it is formulated vaguely in two respects. Origen is vague, first, about the frequency with which the habit obtains. He says only that it obtains “some­ times.” (Presumably the habit of psalms changing personae represents an exception to a more common general pattern of psalms being spoken in a sin­ gle persona.) His formulation is also vague as to how this habit obtains. It does not, for example, specify which personae will speak, because decisions like this have to be worked out on a case by case basis. It is clear that Origen appeals to this habit abductively as a hypothesis, since he recognizes that it still requires a case-specific investigation to determine whether it applies to this text, as he says: “But if this occurs in some psalms, let us investigate if also here we might understand something similar.” Origen offers an inductive proof that this habit exists by enumerating exam­ ples that likewise contain a shift of persona. He does so in the immediately preceding portion of this homily, focusing primarily on Ps 31 LXX: Καὶ γὰρ πολλαχοῦ ἔν τινι ψαλμῷ πλεί­ ονα πρόσωπα λέγεται. Καὶ παραδείγ­ ματος ἕνεκεν ἀρκεῖ ἐπὶ τοῦ σωτῆρος λαβεῖν τὸν τριακοστὸν πρῶτον ψαλ­ μόν· μακάριοι ὧν ἀφέθησαν αἱ ἀνομίαι καὶ ὧν ἐπεκαλύφθησαν αἱ ἁμαρτίαι μακάριος ἀνήρ, οὗ οὐ μὴ λογίσηται κύριος ἁμαρτίαν οὐδὲ ἔστιν ἐν τῷ 87 HomPs 77.1.2.

For also frequently in a certain psalm multiple personae speak. As an example it suffices to take Psalm 31, concerning the Savior: “Blessed is the one whose lawless deeds were forgiven, and blessed is the man whose sins were covered, whose sin the Lord will not reckon and in his mouth there is no guile” (Ps 31:1b–2

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στόματι αὐτοῦ δόλος. Καὶ τοῦτο μὲν τὸ πρόσωπον διδασκαλικώτερον τὸ λέγον· μακάριοι ὧν ἀφέθησαν αἱ ἀνομίαι, καὶ δύναται ἐκ προσώπου λέγεσ­ θαι τοῦ προφήτου ἢ ὑπὸ τοῦ ἁγίου πνεύματος ἢ ὑπὸ τοῦ Χριστοῦ. Ἴδωμεν δὲ ἐν τοῖς ἑξῆς ὁμολογουμένως μετα­ βάλλον τὸ πρόσωπον· τὴν ἀμαρτίαν μου ἐγνώρισα καὶ τὴν ἀνομίαν μου οὐκ ἐκάλυψα …Συνετιῶ σε καὶ συμβιβῶ σε ἐν ὁδῷ ταύτῃ, ἧ πορεύσῃ. Ἀλλὰ ἄντικρυς ὁ μὲν λέγων· συνετιῶ σε καὶ συμβιβῶ σε ἐν ὁδῷ ταύτῃ, ἧ πορεύσῃ, ὁ θεός ἐστιν. Ὁ δὲ λέγων· τὴν ἀμαρτίαν μου ἐγνώρισα καὶ τὴν ἀνομίαν μου οὐκ ἐκάλυψα, ἄνθρωπός ἐστιν ἐξομολογούμενος τὰ ἴδια παραπτώματα.

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LXX). And the [words], “blessed is the one whose lawless deeds were forgiven” is spoken in a more didactic persona. It could be spoken in the persona of the prophet or of the Holy Spirit or of Christ. But we observe that afterwards the persona becomes confessional: “I have known my sin and my lawlessness I have not hidden … I will instruct you and teach you in the way, which you should go” (Ps 31:6, 8 LXX). But obvi­ ously the one who says, “I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go” is God. But the one who says, “I have known my sin and my lawlessness I have not hidden” is a human being con­ fessing his own transgressions.88

Origen establishes the changing personae of these verses with reference to specific details of each text. At one point he explicitly appeals to what is “obvious” (ἄντικρυς), showing that he is appealing to the case-specific judg­ ment of his hearers rather than using a general rule to determine the meaning of this psalm. Showing that the persona speaking changes in the course of a single psalm is, in turn, inductive evidence for the general claim that scrip­ tural psalms habitually change their persona. Origen describes this psalm as an “example” (παραδείγμα), which is a technical term for a case from which one reasons by induction.89 Particularly noteworthy, however, is that Origen begins this discussion not, as in other cases, by describing a scriptural habit, but rather by announcing a habit of his own: ῾Ως ἔθος ἡμῖν ἐπὶ τῶν ψαλμῶν καὶ τῶν προφητειῶν ζητεῖν τί τὸ πρόσωπον τὸ λέγον, οὕτως καὶ ἐνθάδε ζητητέον τίς ὁ λέγων …

As it is our habit in the psalms and prophets to inquire what persona is speaking, so also here let us inquire who is speaking …90

88 Ibid. 89 E.g. Aristotle, Rhetoric 1356b10–15. Robért Somos discusses Origen’s use of this term in PA preface.10, its source in Aristotle, and its translation as “exemplum” by Rufinus (Logic and Argumentation, 55–56). 90 Ibid.

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In light of his subsequent discussion of scripture’s habit of using multiple personae, it is evident that Origen’s habit as an interpreter corresponds to this habit of scriptural speech. The interpretive habit is to engage in a particular kind of investigation, namely, “to inquire what persona is speaking.” The inter­ rogative character of this interpretive habit corresponds to the hypothetical character of the habit as a hypothesis. Since a habit of scripture determines only that some pattern may possibly apply in a particular case, the interpreter must adopt the habit of investigating some possibility. 2.3 Implicit Habits of Scripture The fact that habits of scripture are convertible with habits of the world and habits of interpretation has an important implication for Origen’s own use of language. Sometimes what he formulates as a general statement about the world or a general rule of interpretation may have a habit of scripture as its basis. For this reason, the content of these claims cannot be fully separated from their context within the ongoing exegetical process of inquiry through which they were derived. Indeed, the language in which Origen generalizes about scriptural patterns of speech is itself often borrowed from scripture. We have already observed this phenomenon above, when Origen interpreted Paul as giving a second-order indication that a habit exists by way of a first-order claim about the “inner” and “outer” man. Here I show that Origen’s own firstorder statements may function in a similar way. Recognizing that habits of scripture need not be formulated as metalinguistic utterances considerably broadens the significance of their empirical logic for the interpretation of Origen’s texts. It means that the logic of scrip­ tural habits sketched in the previous sections may apply to Origen’s apparently direct theological claims. Even when formulated in an apparently universal or direct way, his assertions may function as heuristic summaries of implicit exegetical work. General claims about the world may thus retain the vagueness and obscurity characteristic of scriptural discourse. They may require wisdom to apply and admit exceptions. So too his formulations of hermeneutic rules may themselves be summaries of prior exegetical experience, whose applica­ bility in any particular case must still be demonstrated exegetically. They too may have exceptions.91 91 It is often observed that Origen’s exegetical practice does not consistently follow his stated theory that scripture has three senses. If the theory that scripture has three senses is the inductive result of inquiry applied abductively to future cases, however, there is no reason to suppose that Origen assumes this theory will apply in every case. It would func­ tion more like a heuristic guide. As Brian Daley says, Origen’s theory of the three senses of scripture is not an interpretive method but primarily “the observation that the true and

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Consequently, many of Origen’s speculative teachings or hermeneutic prin­ ciples should not be understood as deduced from first principles, but rather as inferences from inductively discovered habits of scripture. The same logic appropriate to claims about habits would then apply to these claim as well. They may, for example, have unstated exceptions or remain open to falsifica­ tion through further inquiry.92 One cannot assume that Origen uses words in a univocal manner, nor that his claims apply without exception, nor that the content of his claims can be separated from the habits of scriptural usage from which they are derived. To show that direct claims about the world and about interpretation cannot be separated from the inductive activity by which they were formulated, I will show that they function in Origen’s argument in more or less the same way as a habit of scripture does. Since these formulations will not make their empiri­ cal character explicit by using the words “συνήθεια” or “ἔθος”, however, it will be helpful first to identify some other words that Origen characteristically uses in conjunction with these terms to refer to the process of induction. 1. Origen has a variety of ways of referring to the plurality of examples from which he argues inductively. Origen refers to the habits in HomPs 67.1.2 and 77.1.2 as obtaining “πολλαχοῦ” (“frequently”) in the scriptures. With reference to a point of scriptural usage he speaks similarly of gathering texts “πολλαχόθεν” (“from many places”).93 In HomPs 36.1.4 and 77.1.2 he refers to these cases directly as “παραδείγματα” (“examples”). These and similar terms generally indicate that Origen is arguing inductively.94 important meaning of a passage is not always obvious to a serious Christian reader, and … must therefore often be searched out studiously by those already advanced in heavenly wisdom and communicated by them to the rest” (Brian Daley, “Origen’s ‘De principiis’: A Guide to the ‘Principles’ of Christian Scriptural Interpretation,” in Nova et Vetera: Patristic Studies in Honor of Thomas Patrick Halton, ed. John F. Petruccione (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1998), 3–21, esp. 16. 92 Recall that, as I showed in Chapter 1, the Stoics regarded the truth of general sentences involving common nouns as dependent on the truth of particular sentences involving deictic reference to a particular existent entity. For this reason, a general sentence may be regarded as a kind of shorthand summary of a speaker’s implicit capacity to formulate particular sentences, just as the Stoics regarded “truth” more broadly as a capacity to for­ mulate true sentences. So too with Origen, I argue, a general sentence is often a kind of shorthand summary of a capacity for speech. 93 HomPs 67.2.7. 94 These terms appear frequently in Origen’s Homilies on the Psalms. “πολλαχοῦ”⁠: HomPs 67.2.3, 75.6, 77.2.3. “πολλάκις”: HomPs 36.3.9, 73.1.6, 75.2, 76.3.2, 76.3.3, 77.1.1, 77.9.6, 80.1.6. More often, Origen uses this word to refer to generalizations about the empirical world: HomPs 36.1.1, 36.2.2, 36.2.3, 36.3.6, 73.1.9, 76.1.8, 76.2.1, 77.3.4, 77.4.4, 77.5.4, 77.8.6, 80.2.5. “πολλαχῶς”⁠: HomPs 73.1.6. Origen compares texts “πολλαχόθεν”⁠: HomPs 67.2.7. Origen uses

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2. Origen also uses a wide variety of expressions and idioms to describe his general procedure of gathering and enumerating similar cases. When dem­ onstrating the habit of scripture in HomPs 67.1.2, Origen speaks of “compar­ ing” (παρατίθημι) similar texts.95 To establish a point of usage in HomPs 36.1.1, Origen speaks of “gathering” (συνάγω) examples.96 These terms, which Origen uses frequently, may indicate elsewhere that Origen’s procedure is inductive.97 HomPs 36.3.9 shows how Origen can formulate a de facto habit of scripture as a direct statement about reality. Ps 36:18 LXX says that the Lord “knows the days of the blameless.” Origen is struck by the fact that the text singles out divine knowledge of the blameless for mention. Surely God knows everything! In the face of this common sense idea, Origen defends a difficult general state­ ment about God: “the Lord does not know everything but only good things.” I suggest that this formulation is a de facto habit of scripture, as though Origen had said, “it is a habit of scripture to speak of God knowing good things only.”

95 96 97

these and other expressions when enumerating multiple examples or at least assert­ ing that he could do so. Origen also refers often to particular enumerated instances as “παραδείγματα”,⁠ “examples,” in HomPs 36.1.4; 36.4.2, 3; 67.2.5; 74.4; 76.1.5; 77.1.2; 77.7.6; referring narrowly to grammatical paradigms (HomPs 15.1.8, 36.4.2). Origen uses it once to refer to an example of a scribal error (HomPs 77.1.1). Origen can refer to an analogi­ cal argument as one “κατά τι παράδειγμα” (HomPs 76.4.4), and indeed some of the uses above could perhaps be translated “paradigm,” i.e. an example from which one reasons by analogy. On the other hand, often παράδειγμα refers simply to an illustration—a case that is not cited to establish a rule but only to clarify its content. Twice he introduces an illustration uses the phrase “νοήσεις δὲ τὸ λεγόμενον ἀπὸ παραδείγματος” [you will under­ stand what I mean by an example]: HomPs 76.1.7 and 77.8.6; cf. 36.1.1. Other examples of παράδειγμα to illustrate a rule are: HomPs 76.1.8; 76.2.1, 3; 36.1.4; 36.3.1; 36.4.2; 67.2.6. (The word παραδειγματίζω, “to shame, make a spectacle of,” which Origen uses in HomPs 77.2.4, probably after Heb 6:6 and Col 2:15, is unrelated to these logical uses.) Each of these terms may indicate that Origen is implicitly articulating a habit of scripture. See also HomPs 15.1.9, 36.3.9, 36.4.3, 67.2.3, 77.2.7, 77.7.1, 77.7.2, 77.9.4. See also HomPs 15.1.9. Origen also cites several scriptural texts to exhort his hearers to gather texts from many places in scripture; these also may be indications that Origen is proceeding inductively. The most common of these texts is 1 Cor 2:13: “compare spiritual things with spiritual things,” in e.g. HomPs 15.2.5, 36.1.1, 76.3.3, and frequently in his broader corpus. On Origen’s use of this prooftext, see Gögler, Zur Theologie, 46–48; Hanson, Allegory and Event, 180– 82; Heine, “Reading the Bible,” 136–38; Martens, Origen and Scripture, 61–62. Other simi­ lar passages include Deut 19:15, which says that one can only establish a point “by the mouth of two or three witnesses”⁠ (HomPs 15.2.1, 80.2.2.), and John 5:39, where Jesus com­ mands his hearers to “search the scriptures” (HomPs 77.8.2.). In a few cases Origen also uses terms drawn from the technical empiricist vocabulary around induction, which is another indication that he is arguing inductively: τῇ πείρᾳ, “by testing”: HomPs 77.2.4; τηρέω, “to observe”: HomPs 77.9.6.

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Γινώσκει κύριος τὰς ἡμέρας τῶν ἀμώμων καὶ ἡ κληρονομία αὐτῶν εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα ἔσται. κατὰ τὰς γραφάς, ὡς πολλάκις τετηρήκαμεν καὶ εἰρήκαμεν, ὁ κύριος οὐ πάντα γινώσκει ἀλλὰ μόνον καλά· ἀνγοεῖ γὰρ τὰ κακὰ ὡς ἀνάξια ὄντα τῆς γνώσεως αὐτοῦ. παρετιθέμεθα τὸ εἴ τις ἐν ὑμῖν προφήτης ἢ πνευματικὸς ἐπιγνωσκέτω ἃ γράφω ὑμῖν ὅτι θεοῦ ἐστιν· εἰ δέ τις ἀγνοεῖ, ἀνγοεῖται. ἐχρησάμεθα δὲ καὶ τῷ νῦν δ᾽ ἐγνωκότες θεὸν μᾶλλον δὲ γνωσθέντες ὑπὸ θεοῦ. παρετιθέμεθα τὸ ἔγνω κύριος τοὺς ὄντας αὐτοῦ καὶ ἀποστήτω ἀπὸ ἀδικίας πᾶς ὁ ὀνομάζων τὸ ὄνομα κυρίου. πάντως δὲ εἴ ποτε εὑρεθείη γινωσκομένη ἡ ἀσέβεια τῶν ἁμαρ­ τωλῶν, ὡς ἐπίναν μέντοι τὸ γινω­ σκόμενον καλόν ἐστιν! εἰ δὲ τοῦτο, τὰς τῶν ἁμαρτωλῶν ἡμέρας οὐ γινώσκει κύριος ἀλλὰ τὰς τῶν ἀμώ­ μων. ἄξιαι γάρ εἰσιν αἱ τῶν ἀμώμων ἡμέραι τῆς γνώσεως τοῦ θεοῦ.

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“The Lord knows the days of the blame­ less, and their inheritance will be forever” (Ps 36:18 LXX). According to the scriptures, as we have frequently observed and said, the Lord does not know everything but only good things. For he is ignorant of evil things as being unworthy of his knowl­ edge. We compared the text, “if there is a prophet among you or someone spiritual, let him recognize that what I am writing to you is of God; but if someone is ignorant, he is unknown [to God]” (1 Cor 14:37–38). And we also used the text, “knowing God, or rather, being known by God” (Gal 4:9). We compared the text, “The Lord knows those who are his, and let all who name the name of the Lord keep away from injustice!” (2 Tim 2:19). And undoubtedly if you ever find the impiety of sinners being known, it is said rather of something good in them that is known! And if this is the case, the Lord does not know the days of sinners but the days of the blameless. For [only] the days of the blameless are wor­ thy of being known by God.98

That Origen’s claim has an inductive basis is, in this case, fairly clear. First, he says that his claim is “according to the scripture.” Second, he uses the terminol­ ogy of empirical and inductive investigation. He describes the sentence “the Lord does not know everything but only good things” as something “πολλάκις τετηρήκαμεν” (frequently observed) in the scriptures. He describes his proce­ dure as “comparing” scriptural texts. Furthermore, his argument explicitly pro­ ceeds by enumerating a number of examples that exemplify his stated rule. The cases Origen considers are of two kinds: either God is said not to know someone who is unspiritual (1 Cor 14:37–38); or God is specifically said to know particular good people, suggesting by implicature that he does not know others (Gal 4:9, 2 Tim 2:19). This plurality of examples establishes by induction scripture’s general habit of asserting or implying that God is ignorant of those 98 HomPs 36.3.9.

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that are not good. Origen brings this habit to bear on the lemma, “the Lord knows the days of the blameless” (Ps 36:18 LXX) to propose a similar interpreta­ tion here. Since Origen’s terminology and mode of argument are characteristic of what Origen elsewhere calls a habit of scripture, the sentence “the Lord does not know everything but only good things” should be understood as a summary of a pattern of scriptural usage. Though formulated as a first-order claim about reality, it could just as well have been formulated in meta-linguistic terms: “it is the habit of scripture to speak of the Lord as not knowing everything but only good things.” Given Origen’s assumption that scriptural discourse is wise and thus appropriate to its subject matter, there is little logical difference between these two formulations. Recognizing this equivalence explains several other aspects of Origen’s argument. First, a habit of scripture was a summary of a pattern of scriptural usage. So too here, Origen’s formulation does not translate or restate in clearer language the meaning of the scriptural texts he cites. Instead, his formulation preserves and even heightens the difficult language of the cited texts, espe­ cially their use of the word “know.” Origen offers only a very partial explica­ tion of the meaning of this difficult pattern of speech: “he is ignorant of evil things as being unworthy of his knowledge.” This gloss is not a definition of the word “knowledge” as it applies to God, since it itself uses the word “knowl­ edge” and one cannot use the definiendum in its definition. Rather, Origen is giving something like a clarification of the conditions under which this word is used: divine “knowledge” is not predicated of sinners, since they are unwor­ thy of it. Exactly what it means to speak in this way, and whether there might be other senses in which God does know sinners, is left unexamined. Rather than replacing scriptural language with something clearer or more precise, he adopts scripture’s pattern of speech as his own. Second, a habit need not obtain universally; it may permit exceptions, or even itself be the exception to a more general rule. If it is a habit of scripture to say that “God does not know sinners,” it does not follow that this sentence is rightly said in every case, nor that it might not also be true to say, in a different sense, that God does know sinners. Indeed, Origen explicitly observes that it admits exceptions: “if you ever find the impiety of sinners being known, it is said rather of something good in them that is known!” That Origen is concerned with scripture’s usage of the word “know” is clear, first, because he speaks of “finding” this to be the case (i.e. by observing it in other scriptural texts) and second, because he explicates how such a text “is said.” To be sure, there is no contradiction between these two patterns of usage: if in the first case we say that God does not “know” sinners because of their unworthiness, here we learn

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that in cases when we do say that God knows sinners, it is because there is nonetheless some good in them. In both cases, Origen begins with a pattern of scriptural usage and explicates its meaning in particular cases. In this way, Origen’s formulation of a theological claim about divine knowl­ edge retains the ambiguity and obscurity of the scriptural discourse it sum­ marizes, and thus takes on something of the character of a cryptic aphorism. To put the same point rather more sharply: if Origen seeks to imitate the language of scripture, Origen scholars should expect to find in Origen’s own discourse the linguistic phenomena that he regards as characteristic of scrip­ tural discourse. 3

Invention

Thus far I have showed how Origen reconstructs the wise linguistic compe­ tence underlying the texts of scripture by determining what he sometimes calls “habits of scripture.” Linguistic competence is not simply a matter of understanding and imitating the words of others, however. It also includes a capacity to speak words of one’s own. A child has not learned to speak if she simply repeats the words of her parents; rather, through a process both imita­ tive and creative, she must learn to say new things for herself. So it is with wis­ dom: one has not learned to speak wisely until one can produce wise words of one’s own. If reading scripture is a process of formation in wisdom, then wise exegesis must include invention—the generation of new insights expressed in new words. As we shall see, Origen’s boldest and most speculative utterances may fruitfully be understood as attempts to extend habits of scripture to new cases by inventing new theological formulations. For this reason, even specu­ lation operates according to the inductive logic of analogy described above. In particular, it follows that Origen’s inventive proposals have the character of vague hypotheses about what kind of speech is consistent with the habits of scripture. 3.1 Rhetorical Invention Earlier in this chapter I observed an abductive moment in Origen’s empirical inquiry into the habits of scripture, whereby he brought observed patterns of scripture to bear by analogy on new cases as a hypothesis that requires further inquiry to confirm. I connected this to the concern among ancient empirical scientists like Galen to articulate a method of “invention” by which the scien­ tist may discover new knowledge. Here we return to Origen’s use of invention, this time focusing on invention as an activity of producing new speech. This

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section situates invention in its home in the context of rhetoric, where it sig­ nifies the art of the discovery and arrangement of the subject matter about which the orator would speak.99 An earlier generation of scholars tended to downplay the influence of rhet­ oric on Origen’s speech.100 Robert Berchman, however, showed that Origen does draw on rhetorical traditions, though not so much the Second Sophistic as a Middle Platonic tradition of philosophical rhetoric, in which eloquence is subordinated to logic and inquiry.101 In this view, speaking well is insepa­ rable from reasoning well. While Berchman focuses mainly on invention in the development of arguments in his theological works, a number of other scholars have called attention to Origen’s use of invention in his homilies.102 Le Boulluec has called attention to “la puissance inventive du texte construit par l’exegete,”103 by which Origen takes up and expands the language of scripture in developing his own thought. Le Boulluec identifies this activity as rhetoricalphilosophical invention, and describes the dynamic as a “textualisation de la pensée.”104 Olivier Munnich’s study of Origen’s Homilies on Jeremiah develops these insights by describing the intertextual ways Origen uses scripture not only to help him interpret difficult texts but also to engender his own linguistic creativity.105 Origen’s own language emerges from scriptural language, so that scripture functions not so much as a text (an actual utterance with a particular meaning) but as langue (the language or vocabulary out of which many mean­ ings may be produced). L’exégète utilise ici le texte scripturaire, non comme objet d’étude, mais comme mode de formulation de sa propre pensée; il ne s’agit pas seule­ ment pour lui d’interpréter l’Écriture par l’Écriture mais de penser un lieu scripturaire avec les ressources lexicales et syntaxiques que lui offre l’Écri­ ture elle-même.106 99 Cicero, De inventione 1.7; 100 See the discussion in Berchman, Philo to Origen, 217–18. 101 Berchman, Philo to Origen, 215. 102 Besides Le Boulluec and Munnich, discussed below, see Padraig O’Cleirigh, “Topoi of Invention in Origen’s Homilies,” in Origeniana Sexta, ed. Gilles Dorival and Alain le Boulluec (Leuven University Press, 1995): 277–286. 103 Alain Le Boulluec, “Les répresentations du texte chez les philosophes et l’exégèse scrip­ tuaire d’Origène. Influence et mutations,” in Origeniana Quinta, ed. R. J. Daly (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1992). 104 Le Boulluec, “Les répresentations,” 111. 105 Munnich, “Le rôle de la citation dans l’ècriture d’Origène,” in Origeniana Decima, ed. Sylwia Kaczmarek and Henryk Pietras (Walpole: Peeters Publishers, 2011): 507–538, esp. 520–21. 106 Ibid., 528.

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Although Munnich speaks of scripture providing a “logique” and a “mode de raisonnement” for this activity,107 he does not describe this logic and clarify its relation to Origen’s other exegetical procedures. This description is my aim in the remainder of this chapter. Origen’s penchant for speculation arises, I argue, as a logical consequence of his conception of exegesis as learning the language of scripture. In particu­ lar, it is a consequence of the logical relation between textual utterance and the underlying linguistic competence. An utterance is an action, while a com­ petence is a concretely existing habitus for action. The set of utterances in a text, including scripture, is actual and finite, but the competence they express includes an infinite number of other possible performances. For this reason, exegesis that aims at forming competence must be an expansive movement from the finite to the infinite. In a similar way, the capacity of a musician is determined by what is possible for her, not merely by the actual performances by which she demonstrates her competence. Her competence includes an ability to perform an infinite set of songs, most of which she has never yet played, even songs that do not yet exist. At the same time, this infinite capac­ ity is acquired by practice and performance with some finite set of songs. Like learning a language, learning to play an instrument has the logical character of a movement from the finite to the infinite. This infinite character of linguistic competence was not wholly unknown to ancient thinkers, but it proved difficult for prevailing models of rationality to accommodate, since Greek thinkers tended to identify rationality with the imposition of finitude and limit. For this reason, Origen’s contemporary Sextus Empiricus could exploit the infinity of linguistic competence as a skeptical argument against the possibility of “grammar” as a methodological expertise of language. According to Sextus, a certain Chaeris proposed a definition of grammar focused on the linguistic competence of ordinary speakers: Χάρης δὲ … τὴν τελείαν φησὶ γραμ­ ματικὴν ἕξιν εἶναι ἀπὸ τέχνης καὶ ἰστορίας108 διαγνωστικὴν τῶν παρ’ Ἕλλησι λεκτῶν καὶ νοητῶν ἐπὶ τὸ ἀκριβέστατον, πλὴν τῶν ὑπ’ ἄλλαις τέχναις.

Chaeris says that complete grammar is “a skill which diagnoses from expertise and research the things said and thought by Greeks as accurately as possible, except those things which come under other kinds of expertise.”109

107 Ibid., 529. 108 Blank inserts “καὶ ἰστορίας” on the basis of the parallel in Sch. DThr. 118.11, and I follow him here (Sextus Empiricus, Against the Grammarians, trans. and commentary by D. L. Blank (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998)). 109 AM 1.76, trans. Blank.

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Sextus argues that this expertise would have to include knowledge of an infinite or unlimited set of things, and that no method for an infinite knowl­ edge could exist. Οὗτος δὲ περὶ πᾶσαν Ἑλληνικὴν φωνὴν καὶ περὶ πᾶν σημαινόμενον καταγίγ­ νεσθαι ταύτην θέλει. ὅπερ, εἰ θεμιτὸν εἰπεῖν, οὐδὲ θεοῖς ἀνυτόν ἐστιν. ὡς γὰρ καὶ πρότερον ἐλέγομεν, οὐδεμία μέθο­ δος συνίσταται περί τι ἄπειρον, ἀλλὰ καὶ μάλιστα αὐτὴ110 τοῦτο περατοῖ· τῶν γὰρ ἀορίστων ἡ ἐπιστήμη δεσμός ἐστιν· τὰ δὲ σημαίνοντα καὶ σημαινό­ μενα τῶν πραγμάτων ἐστὶν ἄπειρα· οὐκ ἄρα ἐστὶν ἡ γραμματικὴ τέχνη περὶ τὰ σημαίνοντα καὶ σημαινόμενα. καὶ μὴν παντοῖαι γίνονται τῶν φωνῶν μεταβολαὶ καὶ πρὸ τοῦ γεγόνασι καὶ εἰσαῦθις γενήσονται· φιλομετάβολον γάρ τί ἐστιν ὁ αἰών, οὐκ εἰς φυτὰ μόνον καὶ ζῷα ἀλλὰ καὶ εἰς ῥήματα. περὶ ἑστῶσαν δὲ ἀπειρίαν, οὐχ ὅτι γε111 καὶ μεταβάλλουσαν ἀμήχανόν ἐστι γνῶσιν ἀνθρωπίνην εὑρεῖν. οὐδὲ ταύτῃ ἄρα ἡ γραμματικὴ συστήσεται.

[Chaeris] wants [grammar] to be in force concerning every Greek word and every signified thing which, if it is not impious to say so, is not even possible for the gods. As we also said earlier, there is no methodological treatment of anything unlimited, but in fact method itself, more than any­ thing else, limits it, since knowledge is a tying-down of the unlimited. The signifiers and signifieds of things are unlimited, therefore the expertise of grammar is not about the signifiers and signifieds. Moreover, many changes occur, have occurred before, and will occur again in words, for time is fond of change not only in plants and animals, but also in words. But it is impossible to find human knowledge of a fixed infinitude—let alone of a changing one. So grammar will not exist in this way either.112

Sextus recognizes two respects in which linguistic competence is infinite. First, conventional Greek (like any natural language) permits one to say an infinite number of linguistic utterances with an infinite number of corresponding meanings. Second, the conventions of a language are always changing. The perfect linguistic competence to which the grammarian aspires would thus, in Sextus’ view, have to bring under clear and finite rules not only an infinite number of present possibilities, but furthermore, the infinite future possibili­ ties that have not yet arisen. He regards this as impossible, “even for the gods.”

110 Following Blank, I read αὐτὴ for αὕτη. 111 Reading οὐχ ὅτι γε instead of οὔ τοί γε with Blank. 112 AM 1.81–3, trans. Blank.

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Sextus’ account helps us see why, for Origen, the infinity of linguistic com­ petence must show itself in an infinite demand to say new things—whether actualizing some hitherto potential possibility of one’s existing language or even changing a language altogether. For while the text of scripture records a finite number of utterances, the rules that govern them, whose reconstruc­ tion we analyzed above, extend to an infinite number of possible utterances. This is why if reading scripture is a matter of being formed according to its habits of speech, then one’s capacity for scriptural speech will have to show itself in utterances besides those explicitly recorded in scripture. To speak the language of scripture is to be able to invent new utterances of that language. This description also makes clear why the logic of habits will continue to operate in this context as well. The basic exegetical task is the same: to recon­ struct rules of scriptural discourse by arguing analogically from its observable utterances. The primary difference is that in the examples below, Origen uses analogical arguments to confirm the viability of proposed new utterances rather than to interpret utterances given in scripture. And here it is worth noting another contrast with Sextus. Sextus calls attention to the fallibility of analogy as a criterion of linguistic correctness. Origen recognizes this as well, which is why he treats analogical arguments as probabilistic rather than neces­ sary. Sextus draws from this fallibility a skeptical conclusion: the only possible criterion of correct speech is “usage,” and learning to speak is merely “assimila­ tion and observation” to a given community’s habits of speech.113 For Origen, an approach like this would be impossible because the actual speech of the Christian community may be fallible and in need of correction.114 Merely observing and assimilating to the community’s conventional speech would not reliably yield wisdom; on the contrary, by acquiring wisdom, Origen comes to propose changes to the community’s way of speaking. It would be more correct to say that Origen aims to observe and assimilate to the usage of scripture, as some proposed to learn correct speech and wis­ dom by conforming to an ancient authority like Homer.115 Here, however, the problem is that scripture contains merely a finite set of utterances, while lin­ guistic competence requires one to be able to say an infinite number of things. At best, scripture can function as exemplary of an underlying competence that—insofar as the exegete is not yet wise—the exegete must reconstruct by 113 AM 1.176. 114 On Origen’s criticism of “the many,” see esp. Gunnar af Hällstrom, Fides Simpliciorum according to Origen of Alexandria (Helsinki: Societas Scientiarum Fennica, 1984). 115 Appeal to Homer as a standard of correct Greek was very common: see e.g. AM 1.200–8; Ps-Herodian, On Solecism and Barbarism 311.5–7; and the discussion in Blank, Against the Grammarians, 225–232.

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some process of argument. Origen deploys analogy as a principle for doing so, yet always with Sextus’ skeptical consciousness that analogical arguments are probable rather than necessary—even or especially when used in the context of inspired speculation. 3.2 Analogy and Invention I showed above that analogical arguments about “habits of scripture” are one of the basic ways that Origen proposes interpretations of difficult texts. In this section, I offer an overview of Origen’s production of new scripture-like speech that calls attention to the central role played by analogical arguments in this context as well. This sets the stage for two longer discussions of specific exam­ ples in which I demonstrate in detail the continuity between Origen’s exegeti­ cal procedures of interpretation and of invention. To identify analogical arguments, which are ubiquitous in Origen’s writing, I shall take my clue from Origen’s terminology. Analogical arguments are fre­ quently indicated by the pair “ὥσπερ”/“οὕτως,” which appear on nearly every page of his work, or some equivalent.116 To be more explicit, Origen sometimes uses the word “[τὸ] ἀνάλογον” and derivatives.117 Arguments that proceed by way of analogy are often designated “κατὰ [τὴν] ἀναλογίαν”.118 Origen sometimes explicitly distinguishes two different kinds of analogical argument, which are thus two basic procedures for generating new scripture-like utterances. In some cases, including HomPs 73.1.7 and 77.7.2 below, the analogy is between terms that are opposites of or contraries to one another. Origen often identifies analogical arguments of this sort with some form of the word [τὸ] ἐναντίον,119 116 Frequently Origen substitutes ὡς for ὥσπερ; instead of οὕτως Origen often uses the longer phrase τὸν [τ]αὐτὸν τρόπον. See e.g. HomPs 15.1.6, 9; 36.1.1, 2, 3; 36.3.1; 36.4.2; 67.2.8; 73.3.4; 75.1, 4; 76.1.3, 4, 6, 9, 10; 76.4.3; 77.2.6; 77.4.4; 77.5.5; 77.7.1, 5, 7; 77.8.3, 4, 6, 9; 80.1.1; 80.2.5. 117 HomPs 36.1.1; 36.3.4; 36.3.5; 36.3.10; 67.1.9; 67.2.7; 73.2.1; 75.6; 77.2.6; 77.7.7; 77.9.5. Several analogies are especially frequent: the body is an analogy for the soul (HomPs 15.2.3, 5; 36.4.3) and physical weapons (especially in the psalms, bow and arrows) are analogous to spiritual ones (HomPs 36.3.2, 3; 76.3.5); physical objects in this world are analogous to those in the world to come (HomPs 67.1.5; 67.2.3). Synonymous words are analogous to one another (HomPs 77.5.3, 80.1.2). Origen also uses the term in the sense of “proportion”: the glories of our resurrection bodies are assigned in proportion to our merit (HomPs 76.2.5); the rich assign seats in proportion to the wealth of their guests (HomPs 67.2.5). Also: οἱ ἀναλόγους: HomPs 15.2.2. 118 HomPs 15.1.9; 15.2.5; 36.4.2; 73.1.2; 77.8.5; 80.1.1. The adverb ἀναλόγως, used in HomPs 15.2.2, means more or less the same thing. Origen also uses the expression κατὰ [τὴν] ἀναλογίαν to mean “proportionally.” In the extant Homilies on the Psalms, he always does so in the context of the just proportion of God’s final judgment: HomPs 73.3.4, 74.4, 77.6.2. 119 τὸ ἐναντίον: HomPs 36.2.1, 8; 67.2.5, 7; 74.3; 75.7; 77.4.8. Often in the plural genitive, τῶν ἐναντίων: HomPs 67.2.7, 75.2, 77.7.2, 80.2.3. Origen refers to these analogical arguments

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“the opposite.” These may accordingly be called analogy by opposition. In other cases, the analogical terms are similar without any opposition between them. Analogical arguments of this sort are more common and are not usually desig­ nated by an explicit term; these arguments are, in a sense, analogies simpliciter. Occasionally, however, Origen designates these arguments with some form of the word παραπλήσιον, “similar.”120 These may be called analogy by similarity. Analogical arguments concern not only the content of some scriptural text, but its linguistic form as well. The beginning of his first homily on Ps 73 LXX is particularly illuminating in this respect. By framing a proposal for a new utter­ ance as something “disciples of Christ” are “able to say,” Origen makes the point that he is not only drawing an inference about some new theoretical insight or content, but rather proposing a particular linguistic formulation that is part of the broader competence of the Christian speaker. Ὡς καὶ Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ μαθηταὶ καὶ δυνάμενοι λέγειν οὐ μόνον περὶ νόμου τὸ οἴδαμεν γὰρ ὅτι ὁ νόμος πνευματικός ἐστιν, ἀλλὰ καὶ περὶ τῶν προφητῶν ὅτι οἴδαμεν γὰρ ὅτι οἱ προφῆται πνευματι­ κοί εἰσιν, πειραθῶμεν ἕκαστον τούτων ἑρμηνεῦσαι …

And because as disciples of Christ Jesus we are also able to say not only concerning the Law, “for we know that the Law is spiritual” (Rom 7:14), but also concerning the prophets, “for we know that the prophets are spiritual,” let us try to offer an interpretation of each of these things [said in Ps 73] …121

Origen justifies the new formulation by analogy with a saying of Paul. If Christians may certainly say, as Paul said, “we know that the Law is spiritual,” by opposition through a family of related expressions: ἐκ τοῦ ἐναντίου⁠ most frequently (HomPs 36.2.8; 36.3.10; 67.1.9; 73.3.9; 74.1; 77.7.2, 5; 77.9.4), as well as ἐκ τῶν ἐναντίων (HomPs 36.3.2), ⁠κατὰ τὰ ἐναντία (HomPs 81.3), περὶ τῆς ἐναντίας (HomPs 36.3.6), and ἐναντίως (HomPs 67.2.5.). Opposing terms in analogies by opposition Origen designates with the substantive [τὸ] ἐναντίον, “the opposite,” (HomPs 36.2.1, 8; 67.2.5, 7; 74.3; 75.7; 77.4.8), often in the plural genitive, τῶν ἐναντίων (HomPs 67.2.7, 75.2, 77.7.2, 80.2.3), or fre­ quently, a corresponding adjectival form (HomPs 67.2.7; 73.1.9; 73.2.5; 77.4.7; 77.7.2, 4, 5, 6). 120 He refers to terms compared in an analogical argument using the substantive or adjectival use of [τὸ] παραπλήσιον (substantive: HomPs 67.1.8; 76.2.1; 77.1.2; 77.4.8; 77.7.3; adjectival: HomPs 76.3.1; 77.2.4; 77.8.6.), or he describes his procedure as proceeding παραπλησίως (HomPs 36.1.1–2.) or κατὰ τὸ παραπλησίως (HomPs 67.2.6.). Origen often uses these words outside of the context of an analogical argument simply to denote that something is “sim­ ilar” to something else. παραπλησίως: HomPs 76.1.8 (though here he is multiplying similar instances of a rule, the argument is not by analogy). τὸ παραπλήσιον in various inflections: HomPs 36.2.1, 76.4.2, 77.2.6, 77.6.2, 80.2.3. 121 HomPs 73.1.1.

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so by analogy they should be able to say, “we know that the prophets are spiri­ tual.” The proposal turns on a real analogy that obtains between the Law and the prophets, but it also bears an analogy to Paul’s utterance in its linguistic structure. As a consequence of the fact that Origen uses analogy to justify a specific way of speaking, both sentences have the same grammatical form: “we know that X is spiritual.” Origen does not always say as explicitly as he does here that his analogical arguments warrant proposals about new ways of speaking. But the structural parallels between Origen’s analogical argument here and those in less explicit cases give a strong indication that even there, Origen uses analogy to com­ mend new forms of scripture-like language. In each of the following cases, for example, Origen’s argument concludes with a phrase or sentence whose surface form is analogous to that of some scriptural text. (Origen’s proposed formulations are given in italics.) Ὥσπερ οὖν οὐ πᾶς ὁ λέγων μοι· κύριε, κύριε, εἰσελεύσεται εἰς τὴν βασιλείαν τῶν οὐρανῶν, ἀλλ᾽ ὁ ποιῶν τὸ θέλημα τοῦ Πατρός μου τοῦ ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς, οὕτως οὐ πᾶς ὁ λέγων ὑποτάσσεσθαι τῷ Κυρίῳ, καὶ ὅσον ἐπὶ τῇ φωνῇ λέγων τοῦτο ποιεῖν· ἀληθῶς ὑποτάσσεσθαι τῷ Κυρίῳ ἀπὸ τῶν ἔργων χαρακτηρίζεται.

For just as “Not all who say to me, ‘Lord, Lord!’ will enter into the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven” (Matt 7:21), so also not everyone who says they submit to the Lord, inasmuch as they sim­ ply say in speech that they do so; only from his works is he described truly as submitting to the Lord.122

Ἐκείνοις γοῦν λέγεται αὐχοῦσιν εἰναι υἱοῖς τοῦ Ἀβραάμ· εἰ ἦτε τέκνα τοῦ Ἀβραάμ, τὰ ἔργα τοῦ Ἀβραὰμ ἂν ἐποιεῖτε, ὥστε ἠρνήσαντο διὰ τῶν ἔργων καὶ τῆς εἰς τὸν θεόν μου Ἰησοῦν Χριστὸν ἀπιστίας μὴ εἶναι υἱοὶ τοῦ Ἀβραάμ, οὕτω δὲ καὶ τοῦ Ἰσαάκ, οὕτω δὲ καὶ τοῦ Ἰακώβ.

To those who boast that they are sons of Abraham, it is said, “if you were children of Abraham, you would do the works of Abraham” (John 8:39), so that through their works and their disbelief in the God of my Jesus Christ, they denied that they were sons of Abraham, and so also of Isaac, and so also of Jacob.123

122 HomPs 36.2.1, emphasis added. 123 HomPs 76.2.7, emphasis added.

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Ὅσα γέγραπται εἰρηκέναι, ὅσα δὲ καὶ ἄλλα ἐστὶν ἃ οὐ γέγραπται πεπονη­ ρεῦσθαι ἐκεῖνον, οὐδ᾽ αὐτὸν γὰρ οἶμαι τὸν κόσμον χορῆσαι, οὐ μόνον περὶ τῶν ἄλλων τοῦ Ἰησοῦ πράξεων τὰ γραφόμενα βιβλία, ἀλλὰ καὶ περὶ τῆς τοῦ διαβόλου πονηρεύσεως …

As many as were written to be spoken [openly], and as many other fornica­ tions [of the devil] as were not written, I do not think “the whole world could contain the books that could be writ­ ten” (John 21:24) not only concerning the other works of Jesus, but also concerning the fornications of the devil …124

Ὥσπερ οὖν τὴν πόλιν Χριστὸς ποταμὸς εὐφραίνει καὶ ποταμοὶ ἀπὸ τῶν μαθητῶν αὐτοῦ ἐξέρχονται, πηγῆς ὕδατος ἀλλομένου εἰς ζωὴν αἰώνιον, οὕτως ἐναντίοι τῇ ἀληθείᾳ λόγοι καὶ αὐτοί εἰσι ποταμοί, ἀλλὰ ποταμοὶ ἐχθροὶ τῷ ποταμῷ τοῦ θεοῦ.

Therefore, just as Christ is “a river makes glad the city” (Ps 45:5 LXX), and rivers go out from his disciples, “a spring of water gushing to eternal life” (John 4:14), so there are words that oppose the truth and they too are rivers, but rivers that are enemies to the river of God.125

Each analogical argument leads to a formulation that goes beyond what the scriptural lemma says on the basis of an analogy that obtains between a phrase in the scriptural text and the corresponding phrase in Origen’s proposed for­ mulation. For example, saying “Lord, Lord” is analogous to saying “I submit to the Lord,” and so we may suppose that in both cases, words alone are not suffi­ cient to guarantee entry into the kingdom of heaven (HomPs 36.2.1). Abraham is analogous to Isaac and Jacob, and so in each case, one should say that if you were truly his children, you would do his works (HomPs 76.2.7). Jesus and the devil are analogous, such that one may say of the devil’s works something scripture says of Jesus’ works (HomPs 73.1.7). There is an analogy between the generativity of the words of the righteous and of the enemies of God, and so one may speak of both as “rivers” (HomPs 77.7.2). In each case, the analogy between the linguistic form of a scriptural sentence and Origen’s proposal con­ firms that here too his concern is with imitating scriptural language, not only augmenting its content.

124 HomPs 73.1.7, emphasis added. 125 HomPs 77.7.2, emphasis added.

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The fact that Origen’s proposed sentences are analogous in form to the words of scripture has important consequences for how we understand Origen’s own language. For one thing, it suggests that his analogical proposals—and per­ haps his speech in other cases as well—are intended to obey the same global semantic habits that, as Marguerite Harl has shown, Origen attributes to scrip­ tural discourse in general: simplicity, obscurity, ambiguity, carefully crafted sequence, etc.126 This opens the possibility that Origen might propose a new utterance whose meaning or use, like some words of scripture, he himself does not fully understand. Indeed, because Origen’s arguments often turn on lin­ guistic analogies rather than solely on the content of a scriptural text, Origen might at times be more confident that a proposed sentence is something that Christians may say than he is confident that he knows what they should mean in saying it.127 Origen might have good reason to propose new forms of speak­ ing whose explication requires further inquiry even from himself.128 We shall see several indications of this as we consider increasingly bold examples of Origen’s speculation. 3.3 Invention of New Words The procedural significance of the above examples becomes clear once one recognizes that the relation of analogy that obtains between a scriptural utter­ ance and Origen’s proposed new utterances is identical to the relation that obtains between individual instances of a habit of scripture. This suggests that the same exegetical logic operative in Origen’s reconstruction of habits of scripture operates in the context of Origen’s invention of scriptural language as well. This is what I show in the following two examples. Whether in the context of interpretation or invention, Origen proceeds in the same empirical way: he enumerates examples of scriptural language by induction which he then uses to generate a hypothesis by abduction. In both cases, consequently, his hypoth­ eses have the logical force of probability rather than necessity. These examples 126 Harl, “Origène et la sémantique,” 161–87. 127 Indeed, if any sentence may have many possible uses, the inductive logic of habits I sketched in the previous chapter would lead us to suspect that this is in fact the general rule. That is, we can always be more confident that a sentence has some proper use than we can be sure that we have identified a specific occasion for its proper use or adequately determined its meaning in any particular use. Once again, by tolerating vagueness in theological language, one can attain a greater “inductive certainty” about the possible truth or appropriateness of what one says. 128 Origen considered it possible that scriptural prophets did not fully understand their own words, though he ultimately rejected this view: CJ 6.4.21–5.30, esp. 24.

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help us begin to see how even Origen’s speculation can be part of a process of empirical and non-arbitrary inquiry into the scriptures. In this first example, I discuss a passage in Origen’s second homily on Ps 67 to demonstrate the continuity between the analogical arguments he uses to propose a new form of speech and those he uses when determining the meaning of a difficult text. This example centers on Origen’s coinage of a new word—“ἀντινύμφιος,” “anti-bridegroom”—which he proposes as a way of referring to the devil by analogy to the word “ἀντίχριστος,” “anti-Christ.” This example is unusual, because Origen more often proposes new sentences than coining individual words.129 But coinage provides a particularly clear example of Origen’s creative invention of new scripture-like speech for several reasons. First, it is unequivocally a creative act. Second, a word in itself forms part of one’s linguistic competence but is not yet as such an utterance that asserts something; in structuralist terms, a word is langue, not parole. For this reason, we may be sure that when Origen coins a word he is proposing a new possibil­ ity for language. Nevertheless, his arguments for this proposal follow the same logic of analogy analyzed earlier. Origen is commenting on Ps 67:6, which refers to God as “the judge of wid­ ows.” Origen investigates whether it is also possible to use these words in a figurative sense with reference to spiritual “widows” of some kind, a pos­ sibility which he develops through a complicated series of arguments. First, he reasons that if someone is a widow, she was necessarily married to some bridegroom; by the same token, in speaking of a spiritual widow, one would imply the existence of a corresponding spiritual bridegroom from which the widow is separated. Second, Origen believes that scripture leaves little doubt that Christ may be called the bridegroom of the soul, referring to the possibil­ ity of union between the soul and Christ. Third, by calling God the “judge” of widows, this verse implies that there are different kinds of widows between whom God must judge. Origen hypothesizes that God does so on the basis of the quality of their bridegrooms.

129 Origen uses the verb πλάσσω, which literally means to shape or to form, and could refer to forming a word by coining. It certainly implies a creative act. In HomPs 76.1.6, he uses the more unusual verb παραπλάσω: “If the memory of God exults, what will his presence do for the one who perceives it? I shall coin a word for it: it super-exults.” “εἰ γὰρ ἡ μνήμη τοῦ θεοῦ εὐφραίνει, ἡ παρουσία αὐτοῦ τῷ αἰσθανομένῳ αὐτῆς τί ποιήσει; παραπλάσω ὄνομα αὐτῷ κἀγω· ὑπερευφραίνει.” An analogical argument is implicit. Paul’s expression in Rom 5:20, “grace super-abounds” (ὑπερεπερίσσευσεν ἡ χάρις) could also be in the background as a paradigm for this coinage. For other examples see CJ 19.22.149, FragRm 29, and HomJer 18.6.

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Through this course of argument, this text about widows leads Origen to ask whether there is some other bridegroom besides Christ to whom the soul might be united. The devil is the obvious candidate; and in the course of argu­ ing that the devil should indeed be understood as this alternative bridegroom, Origen proposes the term “anti-bridegroom” as an appropriate way to refer to the devil in this aspect. Ἀλλὰ ἴδωμεν καὶ τὸ κριτοῦ τῶν χηρῶν. ὡς καὶ χριστὸς καὶ ἀντίχριστος, ὡς φῶς ἀληθινὸν καὶ μετασχηματιζόμενος εἰς ἄγγελον φωτός, οὕτω νυμφίος καί, εἰ δεῖ πλάσαντα ὄνομα εἰπεῖν, ἀντινύμφιος ἀνάλογον τῷ ἀντίχριστος. μνηστεύεται οὖν νομίμως μὲν τὴν ἀνθρωπίνην ψυχήν ὁ Χριστός, παρανόμως δὲ ὁ διάβολος· καὶ βούλε­ ται αὐτῆς νυμίος γένεσθαι, ἵνα ποήσῃ αὐτὴν ἐφθαρμένην. οὗτως ἐθέλησέ ποτε φθεῖραι τὴν Εὔαν, οὕτως ἐθέ­ λησέ ποτε φθείραι τὴν Κορινθίων ἐλλησίαν, ὅπερ φοβηθεὶς ὁ ἀπόστολος καὶ θεραπεῦσαι βουλόμενος τὴν φθα­ ρησομένην, ἐὰν ἀκούσῃ τῶν λόγων αὐτοῦ, εἶπεν· φοβοῦμαι δὲ μήποτε ὡς ὄφις ἐξηπάτησα τὴν Εὔαν τῇ πανουργίᾳ αὐτοῦ φθαρῇ τὰ νοήματα ὑμῶν ἀπὸ τῆς ἁπλότητος τῆς εἰς Χριστόν.

But let us also consider [the phrase] “judge of widows” (Ps 67:6a LXX). Just as there is both a Christ and an anti-Christ, and just as there is a “true light” and one who “takes the form of an angel of light” (2 Cor 11:14), so also there is a bridegroom and, if it is necessary to speak with a coined word, an “anti-bridegroom” analogous to the “anti-Christ.” Therefore Christ is lawfully betrothed to the human soul, but the devil is unlaw­ fully [betrothed]—and he intends to become its bridegroom that he might corrupt it. Thus he desired once to cor­ rupt Eve, thus he desired once to cor­ rupt the Corinthian church, for which the apostle was afraid. And intending to heal the one who might be corrupted if she should hear his words, [Paul] said, “I am afraid lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your thoughts may be corrupted from purity towards Christ” (2 Cor 11:3).130

Origen’s argument is clearly analogical. It is framed by the comparative terms “ὡς” and “οὕτω,” and he states explicitly that the word “ἀντινύμφιος” is “analogous” (ἀνάλογον) to the word “ἀντίχριστος”. He enumerates scriptural examples—Christ, anti-Christ, true light, false light—as an inductive dem­ onstration of the existence of what we now recognize as a habit of scripture

130 HomPs 67.2.7.

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displayed in these analogical cases.131 He might have formulated this habit by saying something like: “it is a habit of scripture to apply falsely to the devil a name that applies truly to Christ.” More specifically, in coining this word Origen is making an analogical argument of the four-term form: A : B → A’ : B’. If “Christ” (A) corresponds to “bridegroom” (B’), then so should “anti-Christ” (A’) correspond to “anti-bridegroom” (B’). Origen expands the analogy with two further terms, “true light” and “one who comes as an angel of light,” which satisfy the general rule that scripture applies names falsely to the devil that apply properly to Christ, though in this case without expressing this with the grammatically analogous prefix “ἀντι-.” The analogy is logical, not merely grammatical, for it depends not only on the grammatical forms of the words but also on the appropriate relationship between a pattern of naming and those things named according to that pattern. “There is a Christ and an anti-Christ” he says, invoking not only the names but also their referents. Scripture’s habit of speaking about the devil corresponds to the way that the devil opposes Christ but in such a way as to present himself as a counterfeit to what Christ is truly. Adding the prefix “ἀντι-” to a name of Christ signifies this opposition and false imitation in a particularly apt and suc­ cinct way. Nevertheless, neither the fact that Christ is the bridegroom nor the grammatical analogy between the words “anti-Christ” and “anti-bridegroom” seem to constitute a definitive argument. Rather, Origen feels the need to go on to demonstrate that the word “anti-bridegroom” may aptly be used to refer to the devil by virtue of other facts he knows about the devil. Origen draws on 2 Cor 11:3 to show that the devil really is the kind of being who tries to seduce and corrupt a soul that ought to be united to Christ, for which reason the title “anti-bridegroom” is appropriate. This argument closely parallels Origen’s reconstruction of habits of scrip­ ture. Here too, Origen establishes a habit of scripture by induction and applies the rule by abduction to a questionable case. In this case, however, the ques­ tionable case is not a difficult text but a word he has coined himself. This sug­ gests that for Origen, interpretation and invention are both aspects of the same process of learning to speak the language of scripture by drawing analogical inferences from its observable habits of speech. 131 Scripture uses the title “Christ” of Jesus, but the Johannine epistles also use the title “antiChrist” as a title for his deceptive adversary (1 John 2:18, 22, 4:33; 2 John 7).⁠ Similarly, John’s gospel speaks of Jesus as the “true light” (John 1:9), while the expression “one who takes the form of an angel of light” is a direct quotation from 2 Cor 11:14. Finally, scripture refers to Christ as the “bridegroom” in several parables, and the image is suggested by Paul’s use of Adam/Eve as types of Christ and the church (Eph 5:25–33).

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3.4 Invention of New Sentences This dynamic is even clearer in a passage from Origen’s second homily on Ps 36. The passage turns on Paul’s extended metaphor of the armor of God in Eph 6:11–18, which, as we saw above, Origen treats as an exemplary instance of a habit of scripture. In this passage, Origen uses analogy to expand Paul’s meta­ phor by speaking of a corresponding armor of the devil. What is particularly striking is that Origen’s argument does not distinguish at all between the inter­ pretation of difficult texts and the invention of new language. Origen passes from one activity to the other as part of the single process of learning to speak according to the habits of scripture. Because Origen is developing an extended metaphor, we might speak of Origen as engaging in allegory. But it would be incorrect to say that he is engaging in allegorical interpretation, since many of the terms for which he proposes spiritual meanings are not given in the text. Rather, he is engaged in allegorical invention in which he produces allegorical correspondences of his own. He is not so much clarifying what Paul meant as he is reproducing the activity by which Paul produced the metaphor of an armor of God in the first place. Origen’s comments are occasioned by Ps 36:14 LXX, which speaks of the “sword” (ῥομφαίαν) and “bow” (τόξον) of sinners. ᾽Ρομφαίαν ἐσπάσατο οἱ ἁμαρτωλοί, ἐνέτειναν τόξον αὐτῶν τοῦ καταβαλεῖν πτωχὸν καὶ πένητα.

The sinners draw their sword, they stretch out their bow to slay the poor and impoverished.132

Since sinners cannot reliably be said to use these and other military equip­ ment in a literal sense (referring to physical equipment), Origen seeks a figura­ tive sense in which these terms may be used to refer to spiritual weapons and armor. He does so by showing that the words of this psalm may function as part of the broader grammar of spiritual warfare exemplified by Paul’s extended metaphor of the armor of God in Eph 6:16–18. Oὐ γὰρ πάντες οἱ ἀμαρτωλοὶ ἔχουσι ῥομφαίαν σωματικήν, ἀλλὰ μήποτε ὥσπερ ἔστι τις πανοπλία θεού καὶ θώραξ δικαιοσύνης καὶ λέγεται μάχαιρα τοῦ πνεύματος καὶ θυρεὸς τῆς πίστεως, οὕτως ἐστι τις πανοπλία τοῦ διαβόλου, 132 Ps 36:14 LXX.

For not all sinners have a bodily sword, but perhaps just as there is a certain “armor of God” and a “breastplate of righteousness” and one speaks of a “sword of the spirit” and a “shield of faith,” (cf. Eph 6:11–17), so there is a

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ἣν ἐνδέδυται ὁ ἀμαρτωλὸς ἄνθρωπος. ἰδὼν δὲ τὴν πανοπλίαν τοῦ θεοῦ, ἀντί­ θες ἑκάστῳ ὀνόματι ὅπλου τῆς πανο­ πλίας τοῦ θεοῦ τὸ ἐναντίον, ἵνα ἴδῃς τὴν πανοπλίαν τοῦ διαβόλου, καὶ κατανοή­ σεις ἀμφοτέρους τοὺς στρατιώτας, τὸν τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ τοῦ διαβόλου, ἐνδύσασθαι τὸν θώρακα. ὁ θώραξ τῆς δικαιοσύνης ἀπὸ τῆς πανοπλίας ἐστὶ τοῦ θεοῦ, ἔστι τις καὶ θώραξ ἀδικίας, καὶ ἔστι τις περι­ κεφαλαία σωτηρίου. ἐνδέδυται καὶ ὁ ἀμαρτωλὸς περικεφαλαίαν ἀπωλείας. ἔστι τις ἑτοιμασία τοῦ εὐαγγελίου, ἔστι τις ἐκ τοῦ ἐναντίου. οἱ πόδες αὐτῶν ἐπ᾽ ἀδικίαν τρέχουσι καὶ ὑπόδημα δῆλον ὅτι ἑτοιμότητος εἰς τὴν ἁμαρτίαν. ἔστι τις θυρεὸς πίστεως, ἔστι τις καὶ θυρὲος ἀπιστίας. οὕτως ἔστι τις μάχαιρα τοῦ πνεύματος, ἔστι τις καὶ μάχαιρα τοῦ πονηροῦ πνεύματος· ταύτην ἐσπάσα­ ντο οἱ ἁμαρτωλοί. ἀπορρίψωμεν τὰ ὅπλα τῆς ἁμαρτίας καὶ ἀναλάβωμεν τὰ ὅπλα τῆς δικαιοσύνης, τὰ δεξιὰ καὶ ἀριστερά, ὡς ὀνόμασέ που ὁ ἀπόστολος ὅπλα ἀδικίας.

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certain armor of the devil, which the sinful person puts on. But seeing the armor of God, one should set the oppo­ site against each name of an imple­ ment of the armor of God, so as to see the armor of the devil. And one should consider how both soldiers, the one of God and the other of the devil, put on their breastplate. The breastplate of righteousness is from the armor of God, but there is a certain breastplate of unrighteousness. There is also a helmet of salvation, and a helmet of destruction put on by the sinner. There is equipment for the gospel, and there is the opposite. “Their feet run after” injustice (Prov 1:16) and it is clear that their sandal is prepared for sin. There is a shield of faith, and there is also a shield of unbelief. And so too there is a sword of the Spirit, and there is a sword of the evil spirit—it is this that the sinners draw. Let us cast off the implements of sin and take up the implements of righteousness on both the right and the left, just as the apostle spoke somewhere of the “instruments of injustice” (2 Cor 6:7).133

Although Origen does not explicitly use the term “habit” of scripture here, we saw above that Origen treats the armor of God as part of such a habit, and the same logical features of a habit are on display here.134 Origen’s focus in this passage, however, is on expanding the metaphor through an analogy by 133 HomPs 36.2.8. See also the continuation of this discussion in HomPs 36.3.2. 134 Origen enumerates analogous examples of the armor of God by induction, whose inter­ pretation Origen regards as evident. Origen signals that his proposal is an abductive hypothesis by adding the qualification “μήποτε,” “perhaps.” Origen’s argument depends on the relation of appropriateness between words (“armor,” “sword,” etc.) and their referents, introduced with the same phrase, “there is a certain X.” His argument leads to a proposal about the possible use of a scriptural utterance, namely, “the sinners draw their sword.”

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opposition. Origen argues that “seeing the armor of God, one should set the opposite against [ἀντίθες … τὸ ἐναντίον] each name of an implement of the armor of God, so as to see the armor of the devil.” More precisely, Origen seeks to show that the same noun may be applied with a contrary valence to both the saint and the sinner: “both soldiers [of God and of the devil] put on their breastplate,” and so on. Usually Origen also substitutes the logical contrary of whatever adjective or qualification the scripture gives to some element of the armor of God. For example, he replaces “salvation” with its opposite, “destruction”—“There is a helmet of salvation, and a helmet of destruction put on by the sinner”—or “faith” with its opposite, “unbelief”—“there is a shield of faith, and there is also a shield of unbelief.” The result is to generate a way of speaking about the armor of the devil that is analogous to how Paul speaks about the armor of God. The analogy is not only linguistic, however, for the plausibility of this argument rests on the real opposition in the underlying things: God and the saints on the one hand, the devil and the sinners on the other. While Origen frequently uses analogy by opposition on the basis of this underlying moral dualism, in this case it is especially appropriate, since it is surely difficult to think of the saint as a spiritual soldier without positing an opponent for her to fight. Origen does not only expand Paul’s metaphor by proposing language of his own, however; he also identifies instances of scriptural usage that also accord with his proposed grammar of speech about an armor of the devil. In these cases, Origen uses habits of scripture to propose new ways of using difficult scriptural texts, consistent with my account of habits of scripture above. First, Origen suggests that Prov 1:16, “their feet run after evil” (he quotes: “after injus­ tice”) could be taken as part of the same family of metaphors. To show this, Origen expands it through a brief argument: if their feet run after evil, surely the sandals with which their feet are figuratively clad can be called “prepared for sin,” contrary to the sandals that Paul mentions, “prepared for the gospel” (Eph 6:15). Second, Origen quotes Paul’s injunction to cast off the “instruments of injustice” (2 Cor 6:7) as an implicit summary of this whole contrary habit of scripture. Just as above Origen treated the phrase “inner man” as a secondorder summary of a habit of scriptural metaphors about the body, so here he takes “instruments [ὅπλά] of unrighteousness” as a summary of this habit of scriptural metaphors concerning evil spiritual weapons. Paul’s sentence is not only an ethical injunction, then, but implies at the same time a rule of inves­ tigation, which we might formulate: “identify what particular instruments of injustice exist, and cast them off.” Finally, the “sword of sinners” in Ps 36:14 LXX that occasioned this investigation becomes an instance of this broader habit on the interpretation Origen proposes.

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Origen is not primarily concerned in this example with explicating the meaning of Paul’s metaphor, however, so much as with taking it up and expand­ ing it to include its contrary. For this reason, we might describe him as filling in the gaps in a habit of scripture only partially modeled by Paul and other scriptural authors. Interpretation and invention are fundamentally in conti­ nuity with one another because in both cases Origen is concerned primarily with reconstructing the underlying habits of scripture and learning to speak in accordance with them. Origen assumes that Paul knows something in speak­ ing as he does, and that Origen may in turn learn and imitate this wisdom. In expanding upon Paul’s metaphor, it is as though Origen asks, “what does Paul know about scripture and about spiritual warfare that would lead him to adapt scriptural language in the way he does?” Origen’s own exegesis aims to develop the same skill exercised by Paul, which displays itself not only in understand­ ing what Paul actually said but in developing Paul’s metaphors in analogous speech of his own. For this reason, as an exegete Origen continues the very process by which Paul and the other authors of scripture produced their own scriptural writ­ ings. Origen’s own words are warranted not because they explicate Paul’s meaning, but rather because they emerge from the same inspired wisdom by which Paul spoke. A comparison with the practice of Valentinus may be illuminating. As David Dawson showed in his study of Valentinus’ Gospel of Truth, the gnostic teacher “erases the line between text and commentary, as interpretation becomes new composition.”135 Origen, to be sure, always leaves the line between text and commentary in place—the text (or the Logos who acts through it) is always the Pedagogue, the commentator always the learner. Nevertheless, Origen is like Valentinus in that for him too, interpretation becomes new composition. 4

Conclusion

I have demonstrated in this chapter how Origen’s exegesis proceeds from the performative and logical examination of the usage of particular sentences to the formulation of grammatical rules governing this usage. We saw that Origen’s exegetical procedures should be understood as part of a process of inductive inquiry into these rules with analogies in the ancient empirical sci­ ences and the Biblical wisdom tradition. Origen’s exegesis is a process of mak­ ing hypotheses whose validity must be tested by further empirical inquiry. 135 Dawson, Allegorical Readers, 128.

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We also observed how knowledge of the underlying rules of scripture permits one to go beyond the words of scripture, inventing new scripture-like language consistent with its observable habits. To learn the language of scripture is not merely to grasp the meaning its texts communicate but the wisdom by which they speak. In the following chapter, I examine in more detail the theological context for this approach to scriptural language.

Chapter 5

The Deification of Discourse Thus far Learning the Language of Scripture has focused on the procedural implications of Origen’s exegesis as a pedagogical movement from the words of scripture to their underlying wisdom, from lexis to logos. As we have seen, learning to speak the language of scripture requires Origen to attend to pragmatic aspects of scriptural discourse and to inquire inductively into the habits of scriptural language. The disciple’s mastery of scriptural language culminates not only in her ability to understand the words of scripture as writings of others but also in her capacity to speak according to the rules by which scripture speaks, leading her even to invent new scripture-like words and sentences of her own. What we have so far examined from a procedural point of view, however, also has rich theological implications. Mastering the rules of scriptural language is the linguistic aspect of the process of conforming one’s natural reason to the divine Logos through the scriptural pedagogy of the Logos, a transformation at the heart of Origen’s vision of Christian life. Since the ultimate goal of this divine pedagogy is the Christian’s participation by grace in the nature of the Logos—deification—it follows that her rationality, including her linguistic competence, also in some sense share in this deification. Origen himself frequently identifies the words of deified Christians with those of the Logos, often using for this purpose Paul’s words in 2 Cor 13:3: “… or do you seek proof that Christ speaks in me?”1 In his homily on Ps 81 LXX, for example, Origen resolves the apparently polytheistic implications of verse 1, “God is in the gathering of gods,” by identifying deified Christians as the “gods” with whom God gathers. This identification suggests in turn that the following verse—“how long will you play the part [πρόσωπον] of sinners?”—has some connection to deification as well. Drawing on the dramatical echoes of the term “πρόσωπον,” Origen argues that using and reciting words can transform the reader in accordance with those words—towards sin, in the case of the sinful personae represented on the pagan stage, or towards righteousness, in the case of the personae given in the scriptures.2

1 See my discussion of HomPs 76.3.2 above, 109–11. Origen also uses 2 Cor 13:3 to this end in HomPs 15.1.7, 36.3.11, 67.1.1, 80.2.3, 81.3, and frequently in his broader corpus. 2 See my discussion of persona above, 125–28.

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Πάντες γὰρ οἱ ἀγωνιζόμενοι ἀεὶ πρόσωπα λαμβάνομεν· ἐὰν μὲν μακάριοι ὦμεν, οἱονεὶ πρόσωπον λαμβάνομεν τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ λέγομεν· υἱοὺς ἐγέννησα καὶ ὕψωσα, αὐτοὶ δέ με ἠθέτεσαν. Πάλιν, ἐὰν δίκαιοι ὦμεν, πρόσωπον λαμβάνομεν Χριστοῦ καὶ ἄνθρωποι ὄντες λέγομεν· πνεῦμα κυρίου ἐπ’ ἐμέ … Εἰ θέλεις πρόσωπον λαμβάνειν, λάβε πρόσωπον θεοῦ, λάβε πρόσωπον Χριστοῦ, εἰπέ· ἢ δοκιμὴν ζητεῖτε τοῦ ἐν ἐμοὶ λαλοῦντος Χριστοῦ;

For all who are contending always play a part. If we are blessed, we play as it were the part of God and say, “I begat sons and exalted them, but they denied me” (Isa 1:2). Again, if we are righteous, we play the part of Christ and, being human, we say, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me” (Isa 61:1) … So if you want to play a part, play the part of God, play the part of Christ, say, “or do you seek proof that Christ speaks in me?” (2 Cor 13:3)3

Origen proposes that the one who desires to be blessed—deified—should “take up the persona of God” by using words God says of himself as her own, in this case, Isa 1:2, “I begat sons and exalted them, but they denied me.” By uttering these words, she refers the word “I” not to God but to herself as the (deified) human speaker, a shift of referent predicated on the underlying linguistic principle that the deified Christian can speak words properly applied to God with reference to herself. Moreover, because these divine words play a part in forming a Christ-like nature in readers, Origen implies that the Christian in process may already say them by way of anticipation, while still “contending.” In short, using God’s words in scripture as one’s own is part of the deifying pedagogy of the Logos because the ability to speak divine words is itself a fruit of deification. In this chapter, I argue that Origen’s exegesis should be understood as an activity of imitatio scripturae whose end is nothing less than the deification of discourse. I borrow the phrase “imitatio scripturae” from Azzan Yadin-Israel’s analysis of the Ishmaelan tradition of rabbinic midrash, which provides a suggestive contrast to Origen.4 For Yadin-Israel, the Ishamaelan rabbis imitate scripture instead of a God who is too transcendent for human beings to imitate: If midrash is, in fact, a religious ideal, then the model presented by the Mekhilta and the Sifre Numbers denies the ideal of imitatio Dei— not possible with a transcendent God—and replaces it with imitatio 3 HomPs 81.3. 4 For a broader treatment of Origen’s relationship to Judaism, see Nicholas de Lange, Origen and the Jews (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976).

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scripturae … “Torah spoke the language of man.” It is only Torah that speaks the language of man; the language of God is radically, categorically unattainable.5 By learning the language of scripture, Origen too regards imitatio scripturae as a religious ideal; but by virtue of the incarnation of the divine Logos, the human language of scripture is not other than the language of God. Rather, scripture itself constitutes embodied human speech of the divine Logos. What I have described in procedural terms as the wise linguistic competence underlying the scriptures is ultimately identical, for Origen, with the divine Logos itself. To learn the language of scripture is ultimately to identify one’s rationality with that of the divine Logos. Thus for Origen, imitatio scripturae is at one and the same time imitatio Christi et Dei, and learning the language of scripture is governed by the patristic logic of deification. If God became human that human beings might become divine, so the Logos spoke the language of man that human beings might speak the language of God. I argue in this chapter that this deification of discourse manifests itself paradigmatically in the characteristic boldness of Origen’s speculation. When Origen describes his own speculative activity, he frequently applies to his own speech the language of boldness that the scriptures apply to the speech of the apostles and of Christ (1.1). Origen’s discussions of boldness shall be our guide in this chapter. As we shall see, for Origen, faithful imitatio scripturae requires imitating scripture’s boldness by using even its most difficult language as one’s own (1.2) and by producing new difficult utterances that go boldly beyond what is written in the scriptures (1.3). Engaging in speculation is thus a theological imperative, for to eschew bold speech would be to eschew the divine wisdom that is the goal of Christian philosophy. The second section of this chapter grounds Origen’s exegetical boldness in the characteristic freedom to speak (παρρησία) exercised by the Christian by virtue of Christ’s incarnation. After surveying the notion of παρρησία in Origen’s work (2.1), I examine in detail portions of Origen’s first homily on Ps 67 LXX, in which Origen situates the boldness and parrhesiastic discourse of the disciple in its incarnational context (2.2–3).

5 Yadin-Israel, Scripture as Logos, 141.

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Bold Speech

Describing the logic of Origen’s procedures in the previous chapters has led us to the heart of some of Origen’s most difficult and controversial claims about scripture. First, speaking the language of scripture requires imitating the form of scriptural language, including its obscurity, ambiguity, and difficulty. Second, speaking the language of scripture requires reproducing the very process by which the scriptural authors themselves spoke, speaking out of the same inspired wisdom and capacity for speech that the scriptural authors possessed. Since this wisdom is what underlies the words of scripture, not merely part of their content but also the rules by which they were spoken, the exegete who seeks wisdom must necessarily go beyond what the scriptures say.6 It is no wonder Origen so often said things like, “Just as the one who was ordered to speak these things had need of the Holy Spirit, so he who wishes to expound their hidden significance has need of the same Spirit”7 or that the meaning of John’s gospel “no one can understand who has not leaned on Jesus’ breast nor received Mary from Jesus to be his mother also,” that whoever would understand John’s gospel must become “another John.”8 The potential dangers of this approach were pressed against Origen almost from the beginning. Already in his Apology for Origen, Pamphilus states as the basic charge against Origen and his followers that they ranked “both Origen 6 Cf. Rowan Williams’ important essay, “Origen: Between Orthodoxy and Heresy,” in Origeniana Septima, ed. Wolfgang A. Bienert and Uwe Kühneweg (Louvain: Peeters, 1999), 3–14. Williams argues that Origen defends an “Academic” rather than “Catholic” style of church life (10), in which orthodoxy can be guaranteed neither by creeds nor by institutions, but rather by the ongoing practice of scriptural exegesis as a spiritual discipline. For Origen, “it is the practice of exegesis that comes to constitute the unity of Christian doctrine” (7). Whereas later orthodoxy, Williams says, “relies on synchronic statement [e.g. creeds], the decisive utterance that makes plain a contested truth—even when its reading of scripture is less radically synchronic than Origen’s,” by contrast, “Origen’s orthodoxy has an inescapably diachronic quality, even where he appeals to a strongly synchronic, unhistorical construal of the text of scripture as a timeless ‘surface’ of signifiers” (10). This is the dynamic I have described as learning the language of scripture—a diachronic process of learning that approaches scriptural words as synchronic exemplars of wisdom. When later Christians abstract Origen’s words from their context in an ongoing process of inquiry into the underlying wisdom of scripture, however, he is bound to appear heretical. “… Origen’s sense of what orthodoxy requires, because it is based upon a close connection between orthodoxy and the practice of systematic spiritual exegesis considered as, in the strictest sense, a spiritual exercise, is almost bound to appear heterodox in an age when the dominant discourse of theology is moulded by the pressure to agree formularies that can be communicated economically and authoritatively” (13). 7 HomEz 2.2, qtd. de Lubac 361, and see the other texts quoted there. 8 CJ. 1.4.23, trans. Heine.

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himself and his words at the same level as the holy apostles and prophets.”9 The charge that Origen is over-bold or dangerously speculative has often been renewed against him in the history of the church, as has Pamphilus’ response: that Origen “speaks with a great fear of God and in all humility,” as evidenced by the conjectural character of his exegetical proposals and his practice of entertaining multiple possible interpretations of the same text.10 His speculative boldness is checked by his modesty and diffidence. In fact both interpretations are not without textual warrant, and even contemporary scholarly interpretations of Origen often turn on how one construes the relationship between his boldness and his modesty. In his essay, “Origen’s Modesty,” Joseph Trigg has called attention to this dialectic between modesty and boldness in Origen’s exegesis.11 Trigg insists on doing justice to the boldness of Origen, which his apologists have sometimes downplayed. This boldness, he shows, is evident in his frequently expressed aim of becoming like the apostles in moral perfection and spiritual understanding, his aspiration to attain an inspired wisdom by which he can say things “beyond what is written” (ὑπὲρ ἃ γέγραπται) in the scriptures.12 At the same time, Trigg identifies two aspects of genuine Origenian modesty. First, “Origen is genuinely modest in so far as he always recognizes a need for divine assistance.”13 Among other things, this requires the exegete to wait for revelation when faced with the obscure language of scripture, rather than rushing in to interpret as was characteristic, on Origen’s view, of his gnostic opponents.14 Second, “Origen is modest in the sense that, while gratefully aware of the grace he had received, he always considered himself on the way, not one who has entirely arrived.”15 9 Apology 1, trans. Heine. 10 Apology 3, trans. Heine. Modern defenders of Origen, from Pico della Mirandola and Daniel Huet to Henri Crouzel, have often renewed the same line of argument. 11 Joseph Trigg, “Origen’s Modesty,” in Studia Patristica XXI, ed. Elizabeth A. Livingstone (1989): 349–55. Already from Denis we hear of Origen as “toujours humble et modeste dans ses plus grandes audaces” (J.-F. Denis, De la philosophie d’Origène (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1884), 558). 12 CJ 13.6.33–4. 13 Trigg, “Modesty,” 353. Origen shows a willingness to correct misunderstandings held by the vast majority of believers, to expand upon the rule of faith, and even to reinterpret some of its articles. Although Origen frequently characterizes his own interpretations as hypotheses and conjectures, Trigg argues that often Origen is using the rhetorical device of “understatement” (350), quoting the definition in Ad Herennium IV.38: “in order to avoid the impression of arrogant display, we moderate and soften the statement of [something].” 14 Trigg, “Modesty,” 354, making reference to Harl, Philocalie 1–20, 51–7. 15 Trigg, “Modesty,” 354.

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The disciple is always progressing—indeed, study of the scriptures will continue even after death.16 In this section, I want to show in some detail how this conception of boldness manifests Origen’s commitment to imitatio scripturae. Origen saw boldness as a characteristic formal feature of scriptural discourse, especially in texts that express more profound wisdom. To learn the language of scripture required Origen to imitate scripture’s boldness more and more as he advanced in wisdom. Origen frequently labeled words of scripture and words of his own as bold, primarily because they tended to strike Origen’s hearers as counterintuitive, even dangerous. Bold sentences are often those that best exemplify Origen’s speculative tendencies. Procedurally, then, to commend a bold statement is to offer a correction of his hearer’s linguistic intuitions, one that invites his hearers to a wisdom that is more difficult but for that very reason more profound. But this activity also has profound theological significance. If boldness is a feature of scriptural discourse, that is because, on Origen’s account, boldness is characteristic of divine speech. To conform one’s own speech to the pattern of scriptural boldness by speaking speculatively must therefore be seen as part of the process of deification, a deification of discourse. Following Trigg, we might say that exegetical modesty is a function of human dependence upon a transformation effected by divine grace, while boldness is one of the fruits of this grace.17 To eschew bold speech would be to call into question the incarnation of the Logos and the possibility of our deification; but to eschew the appropriate modesty would be to deny God as the origin of our wisdom, the Logos as its pattern, and the Spirit as that by which it is realized. Although the theme of boldness culminates in Origen’s production of new, speculative language, it extends throughout his exegesis more broadly. This gives us an opportunity to recapitulate our argument that Origen’s exegesis is an attempt to learn the language of scripture through the lens of scriptural boldness. 1.1 The Boldness of Scripture In his Homilies on the Psalms, Origen uses a family of related expressions for calling attention to boldness, many of which he has borrowed from the language of scripture. This terminology will be our initial clue to passages about Origen’s boldness. Often Origen prefaces a statement of his own using a verb or adjective denoting boldness in conjunction with a verb of speech. Sometimes

16 PA 2.11.5 et al. 17 As Trigg says, Origen’s “humility before God, can embolden him before men” (“Modesty,” 353).

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Origen uses the word θαρρέω, “I will be bold,” with a speaking verb.18 This formulation is similar to Heb 13:6, a text which probably serves as Origen’s paradigm, which introduces a quotation of Ps 117:6 (LXX) with the words, “so that you may be bold [θαρροῦντας] to say …” Paul frequently uses the verb θαρρέω in a more general way to describe his own boldness as an apostle,19 and he implies that the same boldness should characterize all Christians who walk by faith.20 The same verb appears thirty-three times in the Septuagint, typically when exhorting individuals or the nation to bold and fearless action.21 Most notably, perhaps, the word appears in Prov 1:21 as a characterization of the speech of wisdom, which “boldly speaks [θαρροῦσα λέγει] in the gates of the city.” More commonly Origen uses some form of the verb τολμάω, “I dare.” This verb occurs most frequently in the construction “τολμῶ καἰ λέγω”22 or τολμάω with a verb of speech in the infinitive.23 It also appears as “τολμήσω καὶ ἐρῶ,”24 in a number of other verbal constructions,25 or the comparative “τολμηρότερον” with a verb of speech.26 This was a common term in Paul, who writes “very boldly” (τολμηρότερον) to the Romans,27 who “dares” (τολμάω) to say only what Christ has accomplished in him through word and deed,28 who shall “dare” to boast as others do.29 Other terms, though not themselves scriptural, function as part of the same semantic network of boldness and sometimes appear in Origen’s work in conjunction with the scriptural language above. Very frequent is the imperative “μὴ ὄκνει λέγειν,” “do not shrink from saying,” which he uses to invite his 18 HomPs 15.1.4, 15.2.8, 36.2.1, 67.2.5, 76.2.4 (x2). In HomPs 67.1.2 (discussed below) we find, “θαρροῦντα… ἀντιπροστάξαι τῷ θεῷ,” where Origen uses as the verb of speech one meaning “command back.” He uses this verb twice without a speaking verb to refer to other bold actions besides speech: HomPs 36.1.5 and 67.2.7. 19 2 Cor 10:1–2. 20 2 Cor 5:6–8. 21 E.g. Gen 35:17, Exod 14:13, 20:20, etc. 22 HomPs 67.1.3; 73.3.4 (x2); 76.3.3; 77.9.5; 80.1.1; 80.2.3. The variant “ἀποτολμῶ καὶ λέγω” occurs in HomPs 15.2.7, where Origen introduces the hypothesis that a text has a scribal error. 23 HomPs 36.3.11, 67.1.3, 67.2.7, 73.1.6, 74.2, 77.4.6. A special case is the construction “εἰ δεῖ τολμήσαντα εἰπεῖν,” which appears in HomPs 36.4.1; 67.2.6; 73.3.9; 76.1.9; 76.2.5. 24 HomPs 15.1.9; 73.3.6. 25 Other expressions: HomPs 15.1.6 (“μέλλει τι ὁ λόγος τολμᾶν καὶ τολμᾶν μέγα”), 77.1.2 (“οὐκ ἂν οὖν ἐγὼ ἐτόλμησα, εἰ μὴ ὁ Ματθαῖος εἶπεν”), and 77.9.6 (“οἷον τολμήσαιμ᾽ ἂν καὶ εἴποιμι”). HomPs 80.1.7 has the variant ἀποτετολμημένον, attributed to a prophet. 26 HomPs 15.2.4, 67.1.2 (of Paul, who is “ἐμοῦ τολμηρότερος”), 77.1.6, 77.6.1. 27 Rom 15:15. 28 Rom 15:18. 29 2 Cor 11:21; cf. 2 Cor 10:1, 2, 12; Phil 1:14.

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hearers to use a particular formulation.30 We also find the verbs κινδυνεύω or παρακινδυνεύω (“to risk danger”) with a speaking verb,31 and other derivative formulas.32 There are also a number of rarer expressions Origen uses to call attention to the paradoxical or surprising content of bold speech.33 Although the majority of cases in which Origen speaks of bold speech are those in which he commends boldness as a good, one should bear in mind that the risk involved in speaking boldly is genuine. Origen speaks critically of the Jews for their boldness in rejecting Christ;34 of an ignorant scribe for daring to change the text of Matthew’s gospel;35 and of those who dare to ask what profit there is in righteousness.36 Some bold words should not be dared: one should not, for example, say that “a human ate the bread of angels” in a physical sense.37 If learning the language of scripture requires boldness in speaking new utterances, this is because speech, especially theological speech, is fraught with risk. Most of the time, however, Origen is commending some bold way of speaking, and in these cases the boldness is usually a matter of the apparent difficulty or scandal of the formulation he is proposing, particularly to his less spiritually mature congregation. In one illuminating text, when Origen exhorts his community to say boldly (θαρρήσῃς) that Jesus “rides upon the setting sun” (Ps 67:5), he adds the caveat, “κἂν δύσφημον αὐτόθεν φαίνηται λέγεσθαι,” “even though in itself it appears slanderous to say.”38 To learn to say these words 30 HomPs 15.1.7, 36.2.7, 36.3.3, 36.4.1, 36.4.2 (x2), 36.4.3, 67.1.8, 73.1.6 (x2), 73.1.10, 77.7.4, 77.8.9 (x2). He also uses the variants “μὴ ὄκνει ὀνομάσαι” (HomPs 67.2.6) and “οὐκ ὀκνῶ φάναι” (HomPs 76.4.4). The word also appears twice where Origen exhorts the community to speech-acts: confession (HomPs 73.3.8) and prayer (76.1.3). Very often Origen uses this expression when inviting his hearers to utter a scriptural text rather than a novel formulation. This is probably because Origen does not encourage the same freedom in his (presumably less spiritually mature) listeners as he exercises himself. 31 κινδυνεύω: HomPs 36.3.2, 75.7. παρακινδυνεύω: HomPs 76.4.3. 32 HomPs 67.1.3: Paul speaks “παρακεκινδυνευμένως” to his hearers of God’s “foolishness.” In HomPs 73.3.6, Origen says that the Bible gives us an elliptical formula so that we can add our own corresponding words to it “χωρὶς κινδύνου”! The verb κινδυνεύω also appears in other contexts referring to danger or risk: HomPs 77.9.2, 6; 80.1.2. 33 HomPs 77.6.1: “ἀδόξως γε ἐρῶ.” HomPs 15.2.4: “Οὐ λέγω ὅτι ἀμήχανόν ἐστι,” to say that we imitate not only the humanity but also the divinity of Christ. HomPs 36.4.3: “ἀλλὰ καὶ παραδοξότερον ἐρῶ.” HomPs 81.1: not only do the spirit and soul become divine, but “τὸ δὲ τούτων πάντων θαυμασιώτερον,” even the body becomes divine! 34 HomPs 73.1.2. 35 HomPs 77.1.1. 36 HomPs 36.2.2. 37 HomPs 77.4.5; cf. 36.2.2, 80.2.2. 38 HomPs 67.2.5. These issue may be saying something poorly in its own right, but the problem may also be saying more than one’s hearers can bear, words whose danger lies in their

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correctly is, of course, to understand the sense in which they may be said without scandal. In HomPs 67.1.3 (discussed below), Origen describes a sentence that Paul was “bold” (ἐτόλμησεν) to say as spoken “with risk, as though to hearers that did not know how to hear” (παρακεκινδυνευμένως ὡς πρὸς τοὺς ἀκροατὰς μὴ εἰδότας ἀκούειν). The “risk” is clearly the fact that his audience is liable to misunderstand.39 From this vantage point, we may say that “bold” speech represents areas in which the linguistic intuitions of his hearers require the most drastic correction, where he is pushing the boundaries of the wisdom of his audience. Yet despite the risk of appearing slanderous or of courting misunderstanding, Origen insists on speaking boldly to train his congregation to speak the language of scripture. In doing so, he was simply imitating the pedagogy of scripture. The thoroughly scriptural language in which Origen describes his own boldness is itself an important indication that he sees his bold speech as imitatio scripturae. In several passages, however, Origen explicitly remarks on the boldness or freedom of the scriptural authors, of Christ, or of the Holy Spirit who inspires their bold speech.40 Psalm 80:6 LXX, for example, says that, “When [Israel] went out from Egypt, it understood a language that it had not known.” Origen takes this to mean that Israel only began speaking Hebrew at the Exodus. Since this detail is not explicitly mentioned in the book of Exodus, Origen remarks on the boldness of the Spirit for adding to the scriptural narrative: Εἶτα μετὰ ταῦτα λέγεται περὶ ὅλου τοῦ λαοῦ μυστήριον μὴ γεγραμμένον ἐν τῇ Ἐξόδῳ, ἀλλ᾽ ἀποτετολμημένον ὑπὸ τοῦ ἐν τῷ προφήτῃ πνεύματος …

After these things a mystery is spoken concerning the whole people [of Israel] which is not written in the book of Exodus, but has been boldly ventured by the Spirit [speaking] by the prophet …41

Usually, however, scriptural texts display boldness because what they say is formulated in a way that is liable to abuse or misinterpretation. For example, in his second homily on Ps 36 LXX, Origen labels words of Paul “bold” when he imagines them spoken by the Word himself. In 1 Cor 15:28, Paul says, “When all things submit to him, then the Son himself will be submitted to the one who capacity to be misinterpreted. See HomPs 67.1.3 and 77.4.6, both of which deal with the discretion with which scriptural authors speak boldly. 39 HomPs 67.1.3, and cf. 77.4.6. 40 See also my discussion of HomPs 67.1.3 below. 41 HomPs 80.1.7.

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submitted all things to him.” These words, Origen points out, could imply that Christ is not yet perfectly obedient to the Father. Rejecting this interpretation, Origen argues that Paul intends instead to teach the “philanthropy and goodness” of the Word, who though he always does what the Father wills, yet he “does not consider himself to be submitted so long as anything remains that is not yet submitted to the Father.” When Origen then imagines the eschatological future time at which the whole church submits to God, Origen describes the Word as saying these words of Paul—and characterizes his doing so as “bold.” Τότε δὲ αὐτὸν ἐν ὑποτασσομένοις ἀριθμεῖ καὶ θαρρεῖ λέγειν ὑποτέταγμαι τῷ θεῷ, ὅτε πάντα παρίστησιν ὑποτεταγμένα τῷ λόγῳ.

But then he will number himself among those who are submitted, and he will be bold to say, “I am submitted to God!” when all things are submitted to the Word.42

This text highlights well the stakes of bold scriptural speech. Precisely those texts that are most liable to misinterpretation contain some of the profoundest insights—in this case, that Christ’s identification with his people is so radical that his own submission is, in a certain sense, incomplete apart from that of the church. 1.2 Boldness in Uttering Scriptural Sentences Since certain scriptural texts were daring utterances even for their wise authors, it is not surprising that for ordinary Christians, who are only progressing in wisdom, to utter the words of scripture might also be fraught with risk.43 Accordingly, when Origen specifies the proper occasion for the utterance of scriptural words, he sometimes calls attention to the risk or boldness of doing so. Often he does so through some variant of the formula, “ἐὰν ἴδῃς … μὴ ὄκνει λέγειν,” “if you see X, do not shrink from saying Y.”44 X designates the proposed 42 HomPs 36.2.1. 43 Compare the rabbinic formula, “if the text had not been written, it could not be said” (‫ )אלמלא מקרא כתוב אי אפשר לאומרו‬and related expressions in e.g. b. RH 17b, b. Ber. 32a, b. Bava Batra 16b, et al. On this formula, see the insightful remarks of Moshe Halbertal, “If the text had not been written, it could not be said,” in Scripural Exegesis: The Shapes of Culture and the Religious Imagination: Essays in Honour of Michael Fishbane, ed. Deborah A. Green and Laura S. Lieber (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 146–161. 44 HomPs 15.1.7, 36.2.7, 36.3.3, 36.4.1, 36.4.2 (x2), 36.4.3, 67.1.8, 73.1.6 (x2), 73.1.10, 77.7.4, 77.8.9 (x2). He also uses the variants “μὴ ὄκνει ὀνομάσαι” (67.2.6) and “οὐκ ὀκνῶ φάναι” (76.4.4). The word also appears twice where Origen exhorts the community to speech-acts: confession (73.3.8) and prayer (76.1.3). Very often Origen uses this expression when inviting his hearers to utter a Scriptural text rather than a novel formulation. This may suggest that

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occasion for speaking, while Y refers to the scriptural words one should utter. For example: Ἐὰν ἴδῃς ψυχὴν ἤδη μετεωροποροῦσαν, ἤδη φανταζομένην τὰ ἐπουράνια, αἰχμάλωτον γενομένην ὑπο τῆς ἁμαρτίας καὶ πεσοῦσαν, μή ὄκνει λέγειν ὅτι ἐβεβήλοωσαν τὸ σκήνωμα τοῦ θεοῦ αἱ δυνάμεις αἱ ἀντικείμεναι ἐπὶ τοιοῦτον.

If you see a soul already traveling through the air, already imagining heavenly things, going into exile by sin and falling, do not shrink from saying about such a person that the opposing powers “defiled the dwelling place of God’s name” (Ps 73:7 LXX).45

…  κἂν βλέπῃς τοῦς τοιούτους, ὅτι πονοῦσι καὶ αὐτοὶ καί εἰσιν ἐν πόνοις ἀλλ᾽ ἐν πόνοις ἀξίοις παραδοθῆναι τῇ ἀκρίδι, μὴ ὄκνει περὶ αὐτῶν λέγειν, ἅπερ γέγραπται καὶ περὶ τῶν Αἰγυπτίων· καὶ τοὺς πόνους αὐτῶν τῇ ἀκρίδι.

And if you see similar people, that they labor and are in the midst of labors, but labors that are worthy to be given over [as it were] to the locust, do not shrink from saying about them what was written also concerning the Egyptians: “and [he gave] their labors to the locust” (Ps 77:46b LXX).46

Διὰ τοῦτο, εἴπερ βούλει ταχύνειν ἐπὶ τὸ ὁδεῦσαι ἐπὶ τὰ ἀγαθά, μὴ ὄκνει εὐδοκεῖν ἐν ἀσθενείαις καὶ τοιοῦτος εἶναι ὡς φάσκειν· ὅταν ἀσθενῶ, τότε δυνατός εἰμι.

For this reason, if you intend to hurry on the way to good things, do not shrink from giving thanks in weakness and being such as to say, “When I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor 12:10).47

By addressing his hearers with the phrase “do not shrink,” Origen indicates that using scripture in this way involves some difficulty or risk that might lead his hearers to refrain from doing so. In the first two examples above, the difficulty may lie in seeing an analogy between the moral life and the history of Israel at the destruction of the temple (HomPs 73.1.10) or during the Egyptians plagues (HomPs 77.7.4). In HomPs 15.1.7, the difficulty is more evident. Because “weak” and “strong” are logical contraries, the expression, “When I am weak, then I am strong” is paradoxical on its face. Origen does not encourage the same freedom in his (presumably less spiritually mature) listeners as he exercises himself. 45 HomPs 73.1.10, emphasis added. 46 HomPs 77.7.4, emphasis added. 47 HomPs 15.1.7, emphasis added.

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These sorts of texts create a particularly useful teachable moment, an occasion to correct the basic linguistic intuitions of his hearers about what kind of speech is possible and appropriate. And as other passages make clear, the boldness of the teacher who is able to flout his hearers’ intuitions is a consequence of his share in the deification of discourse. We observed above that in HomPs 81.3, the deified Christian may boldly take up words spoken in the persona of God and speak them as her own. A passage from HomPs 76.2.4 makes a similar point. Origen is commenting on Ps 76:13 LXX, “I will be concerned with all the works of God.” He argues that the phrase “the works of God” can be said with reference to our own works, insofar as God works in them, and that it is especially these works of God in us about which we should properly be “concerned.” Origen proves that our own works may be called “works of God” by drawing an analogy between our deeds and our words. Ὅσα καλῶς γίνεται, ταῦτα θεοῦ ἐστιν, οἷον οἱ λόγοι καλοὶ τοῦ θεοῦ εἰσιν. οὐ γὰρ τὰ ἴδιά τις λέγει καλῶς, ἀλλὰ τὰ τοῦ θεοῦ λέγει. ὥσπερ δὲ οἱ λόγοι κἂν ἐξίωσιν ἐκ στόματός μου, ὦσι δἐ ἀνεπίληπτοι καὶ θεῖοι, οὐκ εἰσὶν ἐμοῦ ἀλλὰ τοῦ θεοῦ, ὥστε θαρροῦντά με λέγειν· ἢ δοκιμὴν ζητεῖτε τοῦ ἐν ἐμοὶ λαλοῦντος Χριστοῦ, οὕτως κἂν πράττω καλῶς ὥστε τὰ ἔργα πάντα ἑλέσθαι τοῦ λόγου τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ ἀεὶ κατὰ τὴν ἐντολὴν τοῦ θεοῦ εἶναι ἐπιτελούμενα, τοῦ θεοῦ ἐστιν … Τί οὖν ἐστι τὸ λεγόμενον· μελετήσω ἐν πᾶσι τοῖς ἔργοις σου ἢ δηλονότι τὰ σὰ ἔργα πράσσων μελετήσω;

Whatever is done well is of God; and so too good words are of God. For someone does not speak well when he speaks his own words, but rather when he speaks those of God. If words come out of my mouth, yet if they are firm and divine, they are not mine but God’s, so that I am bold to say, “or do you seek proof that Christ speaks in me?” So too if I act well, all my works are of God, if they are taken from the word of God and always completed according to God’s command … Why then is it said that “I will be concerned with all the works of God,” except to make clear that I will be “concerned with your works” by putting them into practice?48

At issue is the character of the words one speaks, which is a sign of their true origin. Only if they are “firm and divine” may one be bold to say, in imitation of Paul, that “Christ speaks in me.” Wisdom—here, the capacity to speak “well” (καλῶς)—is ultimately a matter of speaking these “divine” words, which Origen claims may include not only the words of scripture but also other “words that come out of my mouth.” The utterance of 2 Cor 13:3 functions as a kind 48 HomPs 76.2.4.

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of performative commentary on Origen’s argument, in that the very words of scripture by which Paul affirmed that Christ was speaking in him exemplify the bold and divine discourse to which Origen exhorts his hearers.49 This sentence is bold, no doubt, because to speak it is not only to present oneself as an equal of Paul, but also to identify one’s own words as divine by grace. 1.3 Boldness in Formulating New Sentences Boldness is also and especially a feature of those occasions when Origen proposes new utterances that go beyond the sentences given in scripture. Though with these examples we find Origen in his most speculative mode, nevertheless even here the basic logic of analogy continues to operate. Even these speculative proposals are consistent with underlying habits that Origen discerns in the scriptures. However, by virtue of their analogy to the language of scripture, Origen’s speculative sentences tend to show their boldness by imitating and even intensifying the difficulty of scriptural language. As a result, his own words invite further interpretation and meditation, just like the words of scripture that he imitates. Origen’s bold formulation of new sentences can be observed in these typical examples: Ὁ βουλόμενος προσκοπτέτω τῇ ἐμῇ φωνῇ· ἐγὼ θαρρῶν λέγω ὅτι ὡς πρωτότοκός ἐστιν ἐκ τῶν νεκρῶν, οὕτως καὶ πρῶτος σάρκα ἀνήγαγεν εἰς οὐρανόν.

Let whoever wants to stumble at my utterance do so; I will be bold and say that just as [Christ] is the “firstborn from the dead” (Col 1:18), so also he was the first to take up flesh to heaven.50

Ὁ λέγων τῷ δικαίῳ· ποῦ ἐστιν ὁ θεός σου, δοκεῖ τὸν δίκαιον ὀνειδίζειν, τὸ δὲ ἀληθὲς τὸν Κύριον ὀνειδίζει. ἐγὼ δὲ τολμήσω καὶ εἴπω· ὁ τὸν δίκαιον ὀνειδίζων, τὸν Κύριον ὀνειδίζει. μὴ νομίσητέ με ἔξω τῆς γραφῆς τολμᾶν!

The one who says to the righteous, “where is your God?” (Ps 41:4 LXX) seems to curse the righteous, but in truth he curses the Lord. And I will be bold and say: whoever curses the righteous, curses the Lord. Don’t suppose I speak boldly beyond [what] the scripture [permits]!51

49

It is possible that Origen calls these words “firm” corresponding to Paul’s claim to possess a “proof,” while calling them “divine” because their source is no longer Paul but Christ. 50 HomPs 15.2.8, emphasis added. 51 HomPs 73.3.6, emphasis added.

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Διὰ τοῦτο οὐ μόνον ὅταν ἁμαρτάνωμεν χρείαν ἔχομεν βοηθοῦντος τοῦ θεοῦ, ἀλλ᾽ ἐγὼ τολμῶ καὶ λέγω· ὄταν τελειωθῶμεν πλείονος βοηθείας δέομεθα.

For this reason we need God to help us not only when we sin, but I will be bold and say: when we are perfect, we need even more help!52

Οἷον τολμήσαιμ᾽ ἂν καὶ εἴποιμι ὅτι Παύλου τοῦ προδότου μαθητής ἐστιν ὁ προδότης τῶν μεμαθηκότων τὸν λόγον· Παύλου δὲ τοῦ ἀποστόλου μαθητής ἐστιν ὁ μιμησάμενος Παύλου τὸν βίον καὶ τὴν ἀποστολήν.

I might be bold and say that the one who betrays the disciples of the Word is a disciple of Paul the betrayer [before his conversion]; but the one who imitates the [subsequent] life and apostleship of Paul is a disciple of Paul the apostle.53

The boldness of these sentences consists to a great extent in the fact that they press the boundaries of what his audience would have recognized as appropriate Christian speech. That is not to say that these examples would necessarily have struck his audience as overtly heretical; but each has the air of something counter-intuitive or paradoxical. For example, not only is it intrinsically surprising to think of flesh being taken up to heaven, the domain of God, but Origen must also go on to show that other plausible candidates—Enoch54 and Elijah55—were not in fact taken up physically to heaven as Jesus was (HomPs 15.2.8). The notion that cursing the righteous is equivalent to cursing the Lord may have seemed to identify God too much with human beings; but Origen goes on to list examples of just this sort of identification (HomPs 73.3.6). The idea that the perfect need more help rather than less upsets the expected correlation between perfection and self-sufficiency (HomPs 76.3.3). To think of Paul, the great apostle, having “disciples” in those who persecute the church would surely have been an unusual reversal (HomPs 77.9.6). By boldly teaching his hearers to accept each of these sayings as appropriate despite their apparent difficulty, Origen corrects their linguistic intuitions and thus advances their ability to speak the language of scripture. These kinds of formulations should be compared to the difficult aphorisms of the biblical wisdom literature. Like aphorisms, these bold sayings are not, as a rule, clear and precise, but rather vague and provocative. They have a poetic density that invites ongoing reflection and meditation. Like habits of scripture, 52 53 54 55

HomPs 76.3.3, emphasis added. HomPs 77.9.6, emphasis added. Gen 5:24. 2 Kgs 2:11–12.

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as we saw in the previous chapter, their linguistic formulation is inseparable from their content. For this reason, Origen’s speculative formulations should not necessarily be interpreted as firm defenses of settled theological opinions in clear language. Rather, scholars should consider whether they are intended to function vaguely within an ongoing process of formation and inquiry. Origen’s own words, in imitation of scripture, may demand the kind of interpretive labor that the scriptures themselves require from their readers. Indeed, having defended these speculative formulations by their linguistic analogy to other scriptural expressions, Origen himself may not fully understand the meaning of his own words. Origen’s speculative production of bold scripture-like language is particularly evident in his comments on Ps 73 LXX. His exegetical procedure is intelligible only as an inductive attempt to reconstruct and expand the linguistic competence underlying scripture’s words. In Ps 73:17a LXX the psalmist prays, “σὺ κατηρτίσω πάντα τὰ ὅρια τῆς γῆς,” “you prepare all the territories of the earth.” Once again we pick up the argument in the middle. Origen has argued that according to its surface sense (ἐπὶ τῷ ῥητῷ), the psalmist refers to God setting limits to the territories of the various nations. Origen then defends an allegorical use of the same sentence, referring it to “territories” not in the present earth but in another “earth,” that eschatological earth to which Isa 65:17 refers when prophesying about “the new heaven and new earth.” Isaiah’s reference to a new heaven coordinate with the new earth, however, suggests to Origen the possibility of formulating a new and bolder utterance by analogy: Ἐγὼ δὲ ἐπαναβαίνω τῷ λόγῳ καὶ τολμῶ καὶ λέγω ὅτι σὺ κατηρτίσω πάντα τὰ ὅρια τοῦ οὐρανοῦ …

But I shall ascend by reason and be bold and say, “you prepare all the territories of heaven”.56

This bold utterance is built analogically on the pattern of Ps 73:17a LXX, “you prepare all the territories of the earth,” merely replacing the word “earth” with “heaven,” on the basis of an implicit analogy between the two. The link is not merely verbal; rather, Origen is seeking speech adequate to a subject matter he already knows something about (Isaiah’s “new heaven and new earth” to come).57 Isaiah’s conjunction of these terms shows that the Christian needs

56 HomPs 73.3.4. 57 Other texts are probably in the background as well, such as Jesus’ teaching that the meek shall “inherit the earth” (Matt 5:5) but also that Christians shall enter “the kingdom of heaven” (Matt 18:3) a phrase Origen uses in the subsequent discussion below.

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to be able to speak about her future inheritance both in terms of an “earth” and a “heaven.” Although scripture does not explicitly speak about territories of heaven prepared for Christians, Origen arrives at this formulation “by reason” (τῷ λόγῳ). In particular, he argues by analogy, a mode of argument that we have seen generally had probabilistic rather than necessary logical force. That his argument is merely probabilistic is confirmed by the fact that he develops several other analogical arguments in support of his bold formulation. First, he appeals to his hearers’ common sense intuitions about the grammar of discourse about “heaven,” showing that in the literal context, speaking about “territories” of heaven must refer to the locations of the various stars. Καὶ ὥσπερ ἐν τοῖς ἄστροις κατήρτισε τὰ ὅρια τοῦ οὐρανοῦ, ἵνα οἵδε μὲν οἱ ἀστέρες κατὰ τὴν ἄρκτον ὦσιν, ἄλλοι δὲ κατὰ τὴν μεσημβρίαν καὶ ἄλλοι ἐπὶ τοῦ ζωοφόρου καλουμένου, καὶ ἔτι ὅδε μὲν ὁ ἀστὴρ πρὸς αὐτῇ τῇ ἄρκτῳ, ὅδε δὲ ὀλίγω πορρωτέρω· τὸν αὐτὸν τρόπον, ἵνα οἱ βασιλείαν κληρονομοῦντες ὅρια λάβωσιν ἐν οὐρανῷ ἃ κατηρτίσατο ὁ θεός.

Just as he prepares for the stars the territories of heaven, so that these stars might be in the north, others in the south, and others in the so-called Zodiac, and this star in Ursa Major itself, that one further off; in the same way, those inheriting the kingdom will receive territories in heaven which God has prepared.58

The basic thrust of the argument in this passage is to establish that in our ordinary literal speech about the physical heavens, it is appropriate to speak as well about “territories.” That Origen sees the need for this argument indicates that he sees the boldness of his proposed utterance not only in its speculative reference to a spiritual heaven beyond the spiritual earth, but also in the fact that the phrase “territories of heaven” has an odd ring to it even when used in a literal way. To establish the legitimacy of this usage, he appeals to the fact that we tend to speak about stars occupying specific locations: “in the north,” “in the south,” “in Ursa Major,” and so on. Although Origen develops a correspondence between the literal heaven and the kingdom of heaven, it is once again not in the strict sense an allegorical interpretation of Ps 73:17, which nowhere refers to the “territories of heaven” for which he seeks a spiritual referent. Instead, Origen is interpreting his own words, which he has produced by an allegorical invention. Origen develops an extended metaphor using empirical details of the physical sky, in particular, the fact that stars occupy specifiable locations in the sky. Since in speaking 58 HomPs 73.3.4.

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about “heaven” scripture compares the eschaton vaguely to the sky, Origen proposes that other aspects of our grammar about the empirical sky are transferable to our speech about the eschaton as well—that what we say about the physical heaven we should be able to say about the spiritual heaven as well. Origen’s bold formulation about “territories of heaven” specify one aspect of this grammar. Having clarified that it is stars that occupy the “territories of heaven” in the physical sky, Origen can then offer a further scriptural argument for his proposed utterance by enumerating instances of scripture’s habit of comparing those who are resurrected to stars.59 Ἵνα δὲ ἔτι πεισθῆς ἀπὸ τῶν γραφῶν ὅτι, ἐὰν ἄξιος γένῃ βασιλείας οὐρανῶν, ὅρια τινὰ λήψῃ ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ ἀπὸ τῶν ἀστέρων τῶν εἰρημένων, μετάβηθι ἐπὶ τὸν λόγον τῆς ἀναστάσεως ὁμοιούμενον ἄστροις· ἄλλη γὰρ δόξα ἡλίου, ἄλλη δόξα σελήνης, ἄλλη δόξα ἀστέρων· ἀστὴρ γὰρ ἀστέρος διαφέρει ἐν δοξῃ, οὕτως καὶ ἡ ἀνάστασις τῶν νεκρῶν, ὡς οὖν τούτοις τοῖς ἄστροις ἔστησεν ὁ θεὸς ὅρια ἐν οὐρανῷ, τὸν αὐτὸν τρόπον, ἐὰν γένησθε φῶς τοῦ κόσμου καὶ γένηται ἀληθῶς τὸ ὑμεῖς δέ ἐστε ὡσεὶ τὰ ἄστρα τοῦ οὐρανοῦ τῷ πλήθει, θήσεται ὑμῖν ὅρια ὁ θεός, οὐκ ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς ἀλλ᾽ ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ.

But that you might be further convinced from the scripture that, if you are worthy of the kingdom of heaven, you will receive certain territories in heaven from the so-called stars, draw an inference from the word comparing the resurrection to stars: for “there is one glory of the sun, another glory of the moon, another glory of the stars; for stars differ in glory from other stars” (1 Cor 15:41). And thus it is with the resurrection of the dead: just as God establishes for such stars territories in heaven, in the same way, if you become “the light of the world” (Matt 5:14) and if it should come about that you are truly “like the stars of heaven in number” (Exod 32:13), God will establish territories for you, not on earth but in heaven.60

First, Origen quotes at length Paul’s teaching that the glory of the resurrection bodies will be analogous to heavenly bodies (1 Cor 15:41). Second, he alludes to Jesus’ teaching that Christian should become “the light of the world” (Matt 5:14), which is a possible way of speaking about stars, since they likewise illuminate the world. Third, he refers to the promise in Exod 32:13 that God’s 59

The stars were a favorite topic of Origen’s speculation. See Alan Scott, Origen and the Life of the Stars (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991). 60 HomPs 73.3.4.

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people shall be “like the stars of heaven in number.” None of these texts refers specifically to the territories of stars, but Origen is able to show that scripture compares God’s people to stars in several other aspects: their glory and their number. Origen’s proposed utterance extends this scriptural habit to their territory by analogy.61 Despite its boldness, Origen’s speculative proposal is not arbitrary—not, however, because it plausibly expresses the content of any particular scriptural text, but because it is arguably consistent with scripture’s habits of speech, the underlying linguistic competence by which the scriptural authors knew that it was legitimate to draw various comparisons between the resurrection and stars. Origen cannot resist offering another bold utterance, defended by the same kinds of inductive and analogical arguments. Καὶ τί λέγω ἐν οὐρανῷ; τολμῶ καὶ λέγω ὅτι ὑπὲρ τὸν οὐρανὸν ἐν πᾶσι τοῖς οὐρανοῖς ἔσται τὰ ὅρια τῶν δικαίων. οἱ οὐρανοὶ γὰρ διηγοῦνται δόξαν θεοῦ καὶ εἰς πάντας ἀναβαίνειν τοὺς οὐρανοὺς δύναται ὁ ἀκαλουθῶν τῷ Ἰησοῦ, περὶ οὗ γέγραπται· ἀρχιερέα ἔχομεν μέγαν διεληλυθότα τοὺς οὐρανούς, Ἰησοῦν τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ θεοῦ, εἰπόντι τῷ μαθητῇ ὅπου νῦν ὑπάγω, οὐ δύνασαί μοι νῦν ἀκολουθῆσαι, ἀκολουθήσεις δὲ ὕστερον….

But why do I say “in heaven”? I will be bold and say, “beyond heaven, there will be territories of the righteous in all the heavens.” For “the heavens declare the glory of God” (Ps 18:2 LXX), and the one who follows Jesus is able to ascend to all the heavens. It is written about him, “we have a great high priest who went through the heavens, Jesus the son of God” (Heb 4:14), and he said to the disciple [Peter], “where I am going now, you cannot follow me now, but you will follow me later” (John 13:36).62

Origen quotes two passages that establish that scripture refers to “heavens” in the plural. The analogical argument for this second bold formulation is implicit: if the righteous will (in the eschaton) follow Jesus through the heavens, then just as God prepares for them territories in earth and in (the one or lowest) heaven, so too he prepares territories for the righteous in all the heavens. 61

It is also noteworthy that Origen uses the verb μεταβαίνω to invite his hearers to “draw an inference” from scripture’s pattern of comparing the resurrection to the stars. Origen may be using this verb in the technical sense of a “transition [μετάβασις] to the similar,” which we analyzed above (162–62), a form of inductive argument by analogy used to bring past experience to bear on cases with which one has no direct experience. 62 HomPs 73.3.4.

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Parrhesia and Deification

2.1 Parrhesia Origen’s procedural emphasis on the development of bold speech is rooted in a distinctive incarnational theology of Christian παρρησία, the freedom to speak openly without fear of reprisal.63 Παρρησία was originally the political freedom of speech granted to free citizens in the Athenian polis. With the decline of Athenian democracy, it came increasingly to be reinterpreted as the virtue of speaking candidly and boldly, displayed in the political posture of speaking truth to power and in the willingness of friends to give difficult criticism. It was a virtue of great interest to Greek philosophers, embodying the freedom of the philosopher in his pursuit of reason, displayed paradigmatically in Socrates’ willingness to freely engage in inquiry whatever the cost, and praised in different ways by Cynics, Epicureans, and Stoics. In Foucault’s useful summary of these trends, “in parrhesia, the speaker uses his freedom and chooses frankness instead of persuasion, truth instead of falsehood or silence, the risk of death instead of life and security, criticism instead of flattery, and moral duty instead of self-interest and moral apathy.”64 Παρρησία is thus a relational activity, defined by the power differential between speaker and hearer, a freedom to speak the truth plainly made possible by rational virtues. In the philosophical context, we might say that παρρησία is how the wise speak in the face of danger. Many of these classical themes are reiterated in the Christian scriptures. In the Septuagint, παρρησία characterizes the freedom to worship without fear for which Israel hopes.65 It refers as well to the characteristic boldness of the Christian proclamation, even at the risk of death.66 It is a quality of the wise, particularly in giving and receiving rebuke.67 The evangelists use the word to

63

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On παρρησία, see H. Schlier, “παρρησία,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, vol. 5, ed. Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich, trans. Geoffery W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1967), 871–886; Michel Foucault, “Discourse and Truth: The Problematization of Parrhesia.” 6 Lectures at University of California, Berkeley, CA, Oct-Nov 1983. Accessed May 17, 2020.https://foucault.info/parrhesia; and Kyriakoula Papademetriou, “The Performative Meaning of the Word παρρησία in Ancient Greek and in the Greek Bible,” in Parrhesia: Ancient and Modern Perspectives on Freedom of Speech, ed. Peter-Ben Smit and Eva van Urk (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 15–38. Foucault, “The Meaning and Evolution of the Word ‘Parrhesia’,” in Foucault, “Discourse and Truth.” Lev 26:13. 2 Cor 7:4, Eph 6:19, et al. Prov 1:12, Wis 5:1.

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describes the frank speech of Jesus’ private teaching with his disciples,68 sometimes with the clear implication of being plain (as opposed to figural) speech.69 And παρρησία comes to be seen as the bold frankness with which the righteous may speak to God, already by Job70 but particularly by Christians in light of Jesus Christ.71 Origen is one of the first Christian theologians to discuss παρρησία at length, not least because of his procedural focus on learning to use scriptural language. According to the Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, the word παρρησία appears well over 100 times in his extant Greek corpus, including several sustained meditations that draw on most of the above scriptural strands. For Origen, as we shall see, παρρησία is how the Logos and those who participate in the Logos speak in the face of danger. The prophets in particular display what he calls “prophetic parrhesia,” exercised when speaking truth to political power, exemplified by John the Baptist, whom Origen calls “the undaunted John, who shows no respect for person, does not fear [Herod’s] royal authority, and is no less than full of prophetic parrhesia.”72 Other examples include Jeremiah73 and Mordecai,74 as well as the apostles.75 In his fifteenth homily on Jeremiah, includes παρρησία with freedom (ἐλευθηρία) in a list of related words describing the character of prophetic speech that Christians should imitate: their “vigor and freedom and power and parrhesia,” virtues he sees displayed in their ability to “disregard the circumstances that came about because of their freedom.”76 Here freedom (ἐλευθηρία) refers to an inner quality of strength that does not shrink from suffering, similar to the rational freedom of the Stoic sage, but enabling a far sharper style of social criticism than was typical among the Stoics. Elsewhere Origen emphasizes a more characteristically Christian expression of παρρησία: that of the righteous in prayer before God. Origen discerns παρρησία, for example, in Moses (who according to Exod 33:11, spoke with God “face to face”)77 and Paul (who with echoes of Job 27:6 LXX, could say in 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77

Mark 8:32, John 7:13, 26, 10:24, et al. John 16:25. Job 27:9–10. Eph 3:12, Heb 3:6, 10:19, 1 John 3:21, et al. HomLk 27.158: “ὁ ἀκατάπληκτος Ἰωάννης ὁ μηδενὸς πρόσωπον λαμβάνων, οὐ φοβηθεὶς τὴν βασιλικὴν ἐξουσίαν, οὐδὲν ἧττον πληρῶν προφητικὴν παρρησίαν.” See also CM 10.22. HomJer 15.1–2. PG 11.81. HomJer 15.1, FragLk 148. HomJer 15.1. PA 3.1.22, SelJob 40:7 = PG 12.1045B, FragJob 40.3 = PG 17.97C.

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1 Cor 4:4, “I am aware of nothing against myself”).78 In fragments of his homilies on Job, Origen argues that while speaking before God is supremely dangerous by virtue of the natural inequality between God and humanity, God nevertheless makes παρρησία possible by a kind of gracious reciprocity that results from God humbling himself and exalting human beings. In Job’s case this takes the remarkable form of God submitting to judgment from human beings,79 a theme that he develops at length in his Homilies on the Psalms.80 In his sixteenth homily on Jeremiah, Origen describes Christian παρρησία as a right of Christian citizenship (πολιτεία), with echoes of παρρησία’s original political context. While Adam hid from God after he sinned, Ὁ δὲ ἅγιος οὐ κέκρυπται, ἀλλ’ ἔχει καρδίαν μετὰ παρρησίας τῆς κατὰ τὴν ἁγίαν πολιτείαν πρὸς τὸν θεόν·ἐὰν γὰρ ἡ συνείδησις ἡμῶν μὴ καταγινώσκῃ, ἔχει παρρησίαν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ ὃ ἂν αἰτώμεθα λαμβάνομεν παρ’ αὐτοῦ.

the saint does not hide, but he has a heart of boldness towards God in accordance with his holy citizenship; for “if our conscience does not accuse us, we have boldness towards God, and whatever we ask, we will receive from him” (cf. 1 John 3:21–22).81

There is a third type of παρρησία situated in the pedagogical context of the teacher and the advanced student, whose paradigm is the frank and intimate pedagogy of Jesus Christ with his disciples. For example, in a fragment of his comment on Eph 6:19, Origen says, Ὅταν ἀνοιχθῇ τὸ στόμα δοθέντος λόγου, τότε παρρησίᾳ γνωρίζεται τὸ μυστήριον τοῦ εὐαγγελίου καὶ οὐκέτι ἐν παροιμίαις καὶ παραβολαῖς, ὡς καὶ ὁ σωτήρ φησιν ἔρχεται ὥρα ὅτε οὐκέτι ὑμῖν ἐν παροιμίαις λαλήσω ἀλλὰ παρρησίᾳ περὶ τοῦ πατρὸς ἀπαγγελῶ ὑμῖν.

When the mouth of the one given language is opened, then it makes known the mystery of the gospel with frankness, and no longer in riddles and parables, just as the savior said, “a time is coming when I will no longer speak to you in riddles but with plainness I will speak to you of the Father” (John 16:25).82

78 SelJob 27:6 = PG 12.1040D: “Οὐ γὰρ σύνοιδα ἐμαυτῷ ἄτοπα πράξας (Job 27:6). Τοῦτο καὶ Παῦλος ὕστερον ἐφθέγξατο, καὶ προσέθηκεν·Ἀλλ’ οὐκ ἐν τούτῳ δεδικαίωμαι (1 Cor 4:4). Πολλὴ ἡ παῤῥησία τοῦ δικαίου …” 79 FragJob 22.4 (Pitra 2.373); FragJob 40.3 (PG 17.97C). 80 See the discussion of HomPs 67.1–2 below. 81 HomJer 16.4. 82 FragEph 36.

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Here the emphasis is on the rhetorical sense of παρρησία as plain or unstudied speech, in contrast to a posture of reserve or the use of figures. Since the Logos exercises his pedagogy through the scriptures, Origen speaks of the scriptural authors as exercising παρρησία when they speak difficult teachings plainly. For example, the righteous exercise παρρησία not only in speaking boldly to God in prayer, but also in daring to speak to others about their own purity of conscience, the very purity that enables them to speak frankly before God.83 The fact that the speech of the advanced is characterized by παρρησία is an indication that for Origen, as the Christian advances in rationality and spirituality, while she learns how to interpret the scriptures allegorically, she does not always adopt more figural or allegorical ways of speaking herself. As we have seen, while Origen cautions against literalism as a hermeneutic program of taking texts at face value, it does not follow that words used in a literal (i.e. non-figural) sense must be simple or elementary. This should be obvious, since the language in which one explicates the meaning of a scriptural allegory is often itself literal; and frequently Origen appeals to the literal sense of one text (e.g. words of Paul) to clarify the allegorical sense of another. Although advancing in the Christian life involves mastering the allegorical uses of scriptural language, the most advanced forms of Christian discourse are often the most frank and for that very reason, they may often be the most literal. To be sure, even language that functions literally can be difficult or obscure, and so it is with parrhesiastic discourse. As we shall see, Origen frequently emphasizes that parrhesiastic language is difficult precisely by virtue of its plainness. The Christian who is still in progress must train her own speech by learning to hear and understand the boldest words of scripture—and then learn to imitate them by using them as her own. Origen tends to equate παρρησία with the “authority” or “right” (ἐξουσία) or the “freedom” (ἐλευθηρία) to speak, both classically associated with parrhesia.84 Already in the New Testament, ἐξουσία is strongly associated with the authority of the Christian teacher. Jesus himself brought “a new teaching with authority (ἐξουσίαν),”85 as Paul claimed to possess a distinctive “authority” as an apostle.86 For Origen, the teacher requires the authority and freedom to speak boldly 83 SelJob 27:6 = PG 12.1040D. 84 For example, in FragJob 40.3 = PG 17.97A, Origen glosses Job’s παρρησία as “ἐξουσίαν τῆς ἀποκρίσεως.” In CM 16.20, when Jesus cleanses the temple he exercises “παρρησίᾳ καὶ ἐξουσίᾳ.” In HomJer 15.1, Origen speaks of the “εὐτονίαν καὶ ἐλευθερίαν καὶ δύναμιν καὶ παρρησίαν προφήτου.” 85 Mark 1:22, 27, et al. 86 1 Cor 9:4–5, 2 Cor 10:8, 13:10 et al.

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because what they say is formulated in such a way as to be liable to abuse or misinterpretation. Using both terms together, for example, Origen implies that the Holy Spirit exercises parrhesia by comparing the Lord to “one strong and drunk with wine.” Ἐγὼ εἰ εἰρήκειν τὸν θεὸν ὠς δυνατὸν καὶ κεκραιπαληκότα ἐξ οἴνου ἀνίστασθαι, τίς οὐκ ἂν ἐλάβετό μου τῶν φιλαιτίων λέγων ὅτι μέθην καὶ κραιπάλην φέρεις ἐπὶ τὸν θεόν, ἄνθρωπος διδασκόμενος ὅτι οὐδὲ ἄνθρωποι μέθυσοι βασιλείαν θεοῦ κληρονομήσουσιν; ἀλλ᾽ ὅμως τὸ ἅγιον πνεῦμα ἐν τῇ ἐλευθέρῳ τοῦ λέγειν ἐξουσίᾳ τυγχάνον εἶπεν τὸν θεὸν διανίστασθαί ποτε ὡς δυνατὸν καὶ κεκραιπαληκότα ἐξ οἴνου.

If I say that God arises “as one strong and drunk with wine,” who among those who love to find fault would not censure me, saying, “You apply intoxication and drunkenness to God, yet human beings are taught that, ‘no drunk person will inherit the kingdom of God’ (1 Cor 6:10)”? But the Holy Spirit having authority in its freedom of speech, says that God sometimes awakes “as one strong and drunk with wine.”87

If like Jesus and Paul, the Holy Spirit possesses “authority in freedom of speech [ἐν τῇ ἐλευθέρῳ τοῦ λέγειν ἐξουσίᾳ],”88 the implication is that the parrhesia of the apostles and Christ is an inspired work of the Holy Spirit. This association between parrhesia, freedom, and authority is a useful index of parrhesiastic themes in Origen’s work, even in cases where he does not use the word παρρησία itself. 2.2 Commanding God The connection between deification and parrhesiastic discourse is a central theme of a remarkable interpretive sequence in Origen’s first homily on Ps 67 LXX. In two consecutive sections, Origen points to the parrhesiastic boldness of scriptural language as a model for the speech of the Christian disciple. This passage is a fitting conclusion to my study of Origen’s exegesis as a practice of learning to speak the language of scripture. In the first section of this homily, Origen reflects on the possibility that human beings may exercise παρρήσια by issuing commands to God by virtue of the surprising reciprocity between God and humanity made possible through the incarnation. Although Origen is ostensibly defending the appropriateness 87 HomPs 77.9.2. 88 See also HomPs 76.4.6, in which Origen speaks of the Word “daring to speak” concerning his flesh as food.

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of a bold practice of speech—commanding God—each stage of his argument deepens and enriches his readers’ understanding of what commanding God entails and why one should do so. This example shows how Origen’s own bold speech, patterned after the language of scripture, may come to provoke the sort of reflection and inquiry that scripture itself provokes. Origen’s own wise speech may come to play the role of scriptural discourse in the formation of wisdom in his hearers. This passage continues Origen’s discussion of Ps 67:2–4 LXX, which we began examining in Chapter 4. As we saw there, the psalm addresses a series of imperatives to God, such as, “let God arise,” which might suggest that the one praying this psalm is commanding God. Origen’s exegesis began with the common sense observation that sometimes an imperative functions as an optative, expressing a wish rather than a command. Here, however, we consider the continuation of that argument, in which he develops the bolder alternative proposal that we may command God after all.89 The discussion that ensues entirely ignores the content of Ps 67 LXX and focuses solely on demonstrating the general claim that Christians may sometimes command God. For this reason, I treat this text as a proposal for a new scripture-like sentence along the lines of, “one who is commanded by God … may command God back” (some variant of which Origen repeats several times, as we shall see). Origen summarizes his argument using a rhetorical understatement, placing his bold proposal on the lips of “someone bolder than I.”90 Εἴποι δ᾽ ἄν τις ἐμοῦ τολμηρότερος ὅτι ταῦτα δύναται εἰρῆσθαι καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν προστακτικῶν.

But someone bolder than I might say that these things [i.e. the imperatives in Ps 67:2–4] can be said even as commands.91

We should observe first that despite the boldness of this proposal, taking this psalm as a series of commands is actually the more face value (more literal or kata lexin) reading, since it involves hearing its imperatives in their most straightforward function as commands. This is a theme we have observed before: texts functioning in a literal way may nonetheless have deep meanings when used wisely. The rational speech that interpretation aims to form in readers is not necessarily allegorical; indeed, parrhesiastic speech is characteristically plain and direct. 89

It is also worth noting that this interpretation is more “literal” in the sense that it construes the text in accordance with its surface grammar. See the similar example in HomPs 76.3.2, discussed above, 109–11. 90 On understatement, see Trigg, “Modesty,” 350. 91 HomPs 67.1.1.

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To show that we may command God and to draw out the significance of doing so, Origen develops no less than five different lines of analogical argument. In summary, Origen will argue: 1) as scripture requires equality between humans who command (masters) and those who are commanded (slaves), so an analogous equality obtains between God and his human slaves; 2) as scripture records God humbly “asking” us to obey his commands, so conversely we may “ask” him to obey ours; 3) as Christ served his disciples and permitted Peter to command him, so it may be with other disciples as well; 4) as God is judged together with us, so a fortiori he may be commanded by us; and 5) as a human son may sometimes command his father, so we may sometimes command God as our Father. Each argument concludes with an exhortation to display “freedom of speech” or “confidence” (παρρήσια) before God by commanding Him. Let us examine briefly the stages of this argument, before ending with some more general observations. Origen’s first example is noteworthy because it connects parrhesia towards God with a Christian social ethic. Εἰ γὰρ ἐντολὴν ἀπὸ τοῦ λαλοῦντος ἐν Παύλῳ Χριστοῦ εἰλήφασιν οἱ δεσπόται τὸ δίκαιον καὶ τὴν ἰσότητα τοῖς δούλοις παρέχεσθαι καὶ ὁ καλὸς δεσπότης παρέχει τὴν ἰσότητα τοῖς δούλοις, τί ἄτοπόν ἐστι τὸν προστασσόμενον ὑπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ λαμβάνοντα προστάγματα, θαρροῦντα ἐπὶ τῷ τετηρηκέναι τὰ προσ­ τάγματα μετά τινος παρρησίας οἱονεὶ ἀντιπροστάξαι τῷ θεῷ εὐχόμενον;

For if masters have received a command from Christ who spoke in Paul, “return justice and equality to slaves,” (Col 4:1) and if the good Master returns equality to his slaves, how is it irrational if one who is commanded by God and who receives commands, and who has observed these commands, commands God back, boldly and with a certain freedom of speech, when he prays?92

Origen argues from the ethical relation that obtains between Christian masters and slaves to that which grounds it, the relation between God and his human servants. Origen takes the word ἰσότητα in Col 4:1 to refer not the equity that masters should establish among slaves, but rather to the equality that should obtain between master and slave. Glossing the same verse in his commentary on Matthew, Origen says that Paul teaches masters to “give up threatening” (ἀνιέναι τὴν ἀπειλὴν) and cultivate “equality of speech” (ἰσολογία), and he exhorts bishops and leaders in the church likewise to stop threatening their parishioners and disdaining the poor.93 What he calls “equality of speech” there and 92 Ibid. 93 CM 16.8.

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“freedom of speech” here are not, in the first instance, virtues of the speaker, but rather a social context in which equality prevails in speech despite an imbalance of power and authority. Powerful masters should grant an equality or reciprocity in speech to those under their power, a logic that Origen presses to its utmost limit. For while commanding is surely the definitive prerogative of the master, Origen argues that slaves of a good master should likewise have the freedom to issue commands to him. (It is difficult to avoid the implication that if parrhesia extends to reciprocity in commanding (and by implication, in obeying), then it entails the de facto dissolution of the master/slave relation.) And the same, Origen argues, may obtain between servants of God and the God who requires masters to imitate him by granting equality.94 Second, Origen draws an analogy that turns on the reciprocity of human and divine asking. Καὶ παραμυθήσεται τὸ τοιοῦτον ἀπὸ ῥητῶν ἑτέρων περὶ τούτων γεγραμμένων καὶ ἐρεῖ· αἰτοῦμαί τινα κύριον τὸν θεὸν ἡμῶν πειθόμενος τῷ εἰπόντι· πᾶς ὁ αἰτῶν λαμβάνει. Οὕτως οὖν, ὥσπερ ἡμεῖς αἰτοῦμεν ἀπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ, καὶ αὐτὸς ὁ θεὸς ἀναγέγραπται ὡς καὶ αὐτόθεν καὶ κοινότερον ἐμφαινόμενον οὐ τηρῶν τὸ ἀξίωμα τοῦ θεοῦ, ἀλλὰ αἰτῶν τινα ἀφ᾽ ἡμῶν· οἱονεὶ γάρ, ἵν᾽ οὕτως ὀνομάσω, ταπεινοφρονεῖ ὁ θεὸς ἀφ᾽ ἡμῶν αἰτῶν ἃ γέγραπται αὐτὸν αἰτεῖν. Τί δὲ αἰτεῖ; Ἄκουε ἐκ τοῦ· καὶ νῦν, Ἰσραήλ, τί κύριος ὁ θεός σου αἰτεῖ σοῦ ἀλλ᾽ ἢ φοβεῖσθαι κύριον τὸν θεόν σου, πορεύεσθαι ἐν πάσαις ταῖς ἐντολαῖς αὐτοῦ καὶ ἀγαπᾶν αὐτὸν καὶ λατρεύειν κυρίῳ τῷ θεῷ σου ἐξ ὅλης τῆς καρδίας σου καὶ ἐξ ὅλης τῆς ψυχῆς σου; Ὡς οὖν αἰτεῖ ἀφ᾽ ἡμῶν, οὕτως καὶ ἡμεῖς αἰτοῦμεν ἀπ᾽ αὐτοῦ λαμβάνοντες παρρησίαν τοῦ προσ­ τάσσειν αὐτῷ, ἐὰν τηρῶμεν αὐτοῦ τὰ προστάγματα. 94

And such a one is encouraged by other texts written concerning these things and he will say: “I will ask the Lord our God for something, being persuaded by the one who says, ‘Everyone who asks receives’ (Matt 7:8/Luke 11:10).” Thus just as we ask from God, it is written about God that freely and with the appearance of being more like our equal, he does not maintain the dignity of God, but asks something of us—as though God, so to speak, humbles himself below us by asking what it is written that he asks. And what does he ask? Hear from the text, “And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you, but that you fear the Lord your God, walk in all his commands, love him, and worship the Lord your God with all your soul” (Deut 10:12–13). As he asks from us, so we also ask from him and receive the boldness to command him, if we keep his commands.95

He may have in mind the fact that in both Col 4:1 and Eph 6:9, Paul’s exhortations to masters are rooted in the fact that God is, in turn, their Master. 95 HomPs 67.1.1.

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Origen points out that it is not only we who ask of God; rather, God also “humbles himself below us,” by adopting the posture of one who asks something of us. On this view, to ask of another is to petition them and submit oneself to their will, a posture that implies God is “more like our equal.” This alone might be enough to suggest that we might therefore even command God as equals, but Origen goes on to make two more specific points. First, if Christians are promised that they will receive whatever they ask, this includes their right to ask for “the boldness to command him.” Second, Origen is impressed by the fact that when scripture uses the word “ask” of God, the content of what God asks is precisely that we “walk in all his commands.” Thus not only does scripture promise in general that we may ask freely of God; it also shows that when God humbles himself to “ask” of us, what he asks includes that we keep his “commands.” So by analogy, under certain circumstances (“if we keep his commands”) we may ask the God whom we imitate to keep our commands in return. To speak of God humbling himself already suggests an incarnational framework, but in his third analogy, this becomes more explicit. Origen argues a fortiori that it is less remarkable that Christians, who shall become heirs of God, should command him, than it is that in the incarnation, the son of God came as a servant and obeyed the commands of human beings. Οὐ γάρ ἐστι μεῖζον τὸ προστάξαι τῷ θεῷ τοῦ κληρονόμον αὐτοῦ γενέσθαι· οὐκ ἔστι μεῖζον τὸ προστάξαι τῷ θεῷ τοῦ συγκληρονόμον αὐτῷ γενέσθαι τοῦ Χριστοῦ αὐτοῦ· οὐκ ἔστιν μεῖζον τὸ προστάξαι τῷ θεῷ τοῦ τὸν τηλικοῦτον υἱὸν τοῦ θεοῦ γεγονέναι ἐν μέσῳ ἀνθρώπων, οὐχ ὡς τὸν ἀνακείμενον ἀλλ᾽ ὡς τὸν διακείμενον, τὸν διακονοῦντα· οὐκ ἔστι μεῖζον τὸ προστάξαι τῷ θεῷ τοῦ ἐκδύσασθαι τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ θεῖναι τὰ ἱμάτια καὶ λαβεῖν λέντιον καὶ ζώσασθαι καὶ βαλεῖν εἰς νιπτῆρα καὶ ὕδωρ καὶ νίψαι τοὺς πόδας τῶν μαθητῶν. Ἀλλὰ κατὰ τὸν νιπτόμενόν ἐστι καὶ νοήσαντα ὅτι καθαρίζεται ἐκ τοῦ νίπτεσθαι· καὶ προσδοκῶν ὅτι λαμβάνει μερίδα παρ᾽ αὐτοῦ ἐκ τοῦ νίπτεσθαι καὶ προστακτικῶς λέγει αὐτῷ, οὐχ ὅτι ἡμεῖς ἄξιοι τοῦ προστάσσειν ἐσμέν,

For it is not greater to command God than to be his heir. It is not greater to command God than to be a co-heir with his Christ (cf. Rom 8:17). It is not greater to command God than for such a son of God to come among human beings, not as one who is served but as one who serves, as a servant (cf. Luke 22:27). It is not greater to command God than for the son of God to disrobe, “take off his outer robe, take a towel, tie it around himself, pour water into a basin, and wash his disciples’ feet” (cf. John 13:4–5). But after being washed and understanding that he is purified through washing, and recognizing that he receives a share with him by being washed, [Peter] even speaks to him with commands—not because we are worthy to command him, but because

236 ἀλλ᾽ ὅτι πολλή ἐστιν ἡ φιλανθρωπία καὶ ἡ χρηστότης τοῦ θεοῦ πρὸς ἡμᾶς. Ἀκούωμεν γὰρ καὶ τοῦ· ἀγαπητοί, ἐὰν ἡ καρδία μὴ καταγινώσκῃ, παρρησίαν ἔχομεν πρὸς τὸν θεὸν καὶ ὃ ἐὰν αἰτῶμεν λαμβάνομεν ἀπ᾽ αὐτοῦ, ὥς φησιν ὁ Ἰωάννης ἐν τῇ ἐπιστολῇ· μόνον οὖν ἡ καρδία μὴ καταγινωσκέτω, ἀλλ᾽ἐχέτω παρρησίαν πρὸς τὸν θεὸν τὸ συνειδός.

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great is God’s love of humanity and kindness to us. For let us hear the text, “Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have freedom of speech before God and whatever we ask we receive from him” (1 John 3:21–22), as John says in his epistle. Therefore let our hearts not condemn us, but let our conscience have freedom of speech before God.96

Origen’s argument turns on the servanthood of the incarnate Jesus, focusing on the occasion in which Jesus, acting as a servant while washing Peter’s feet, permitted Peter to command him. Although Origen does not mention Peter by name, he clearly refers to the encounter between Jesus and Peter in John 13:4–10. 4 ἐγείρεται ἐκ τοῦ δείπνου καὶ τίθησιν τὰ ἱμάτια, καὶ λαβὼν λέντιον διέζωσεν ἑαυτόν· 5 εἶτα βάλλει ὕδωρ εἰς τὸν νιπτῆρα, καὶ ἤρξατο νίπτειν τοὺς πόδας τῶν μαθητῶν καὶ ἐκμάσσειν τῷ λεντίῳ ᾧ ἦν διεζωσμένος. 6 ἔρχεται οὖν πρὸς Σίμωνα Πέτρον· λέγει αὐτῷ Κύριε, σύ μου νίπτεις τοὺς πόδας; 7 ἀπεκρίθη Ἰησοῦς καὶ εἶπεν αὐτῷ Ὃ ἐγὼ ποιῶ σὺ οὐκ οἶδας ἄρτι, γνώσῃ δὲ μετὰ ταῦτα. 8 λέγει αὐτῷ Πέτρος Οὐ μὴ νίψῃς μου τοὺς πόδας εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα. ἀπεκρίθη Ἰησοῦς αὐτῷ Ἐὰν μὴ νίψω σε, οὐκ ἔχεις μέρος μετ’ ἐμοῦ. 9 λέγει αὐτῷ Σίμων Πέτρος Κύριε, μὴ τοὺς πόδας μου μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ τὰς χεῖρας καὶ τὴν κεφαλήν. 10 λέγει αὐτῷ ὁ Ἰησοῦς Ὁ λελουμένος οὐκ ἔχει χρείαν εἰ μὴ τοὺς πόδας νίψασθαι, ἀλλ’ ἔστιν καθαρὸς ὅλος …

96 Ibid. 97 John 13:4–10.

4 [Jesus] got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. 5 Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him. 6 He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” 7 Jesus answered, “You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” 8 Peter said to him, “You will never wash my feet.” Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.” 9 Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” 10 Jesus said to him, “One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean …”97

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Origen points out that Peter responds to Jesus’ washing “with commands” (προστακτικῶς). Presumably Origen is referring to two sentences of Peter: “You will never wash my feet” (13:8), and after Jesus demurs, “wash not my feet only but my hands and my head also” (13:9). Origen states, however, that Peter commands Jesus after having understood that he must be washed to be purified and to receive a share with Jesus. This is difficult to reconcile with the text of John, since Peter’s commands seem to provoke these lessons from Jesus rather than presupposing his knowledge of them. Either Origen has forgotten the order of events in this narrative, or he is implying that somehow Peter already knew the lessons contained in Jesus words before Jesus spoke them. In any case, two things are clear. First, Origen regards Peter’s behavior in this episode as exemplary, which is why the fact that Peter commands Jesus gives reason to suppose that we might be able to command God as well. Second, although the freedom that permits human beings to command God is contingent upon having a clear conscience—“if our hearts do not condemn us”—for Origen it is ultimately rooted in divine grace, a consequence not of our “worth” but of “God’s love of humanity and kindness to us.” Fourth, Origen argues a fortiori from the fact that God is himself said to be judged with us, which is greater than merely being commanded.98 Καὶ ἵνα ἔτι μᾶλλον πεισθῶμεν περὶ τῆς παρρησίας, ἣν ἔχειν βούλεται τὸν ἄνθρωπον πρὸς αὑτὸν ὁ θεός, παραθήσομαι ὅπερ τάχα μεῖζόν ἐστι τοῦ προστάξαι τῷ θεῷ· τὸ μέλλειν μετ᾽ ἐμοῦ κρίνεσθαι ὁ κριτής. Διὸ λέγει ἄνθρωπος· ὅπως ἄν δικαιωθῇς ἐν τοῖς λόγοις σου καὶ νικήσῃς ἐν τῷ κρίνεσθαί σε, ὅπερ οἱ μὴ νοήσαντες πεποιήκασιν ἐν τῷ κρίνεσθαί με. Οἱ δὲ τοιοῦτοι τί ποιήσουσι καὶ ἐπὶ τῶν ἄλλων ῥητῶν ἔνθα γέγραπται· αὐτὸς κύριος εἰς κρίσιν ἥξει μετὰ τῶν πρεσ­ βυτέρων τοῦ λαοῦ καὶ μετὰ τῶν ἀρχόντων αὐτοῦ; Ἀλλ᾽ εἰ τοῦτο οὐδέπω σαφῶς σοι παρίστησιν ὅτι ὁ κριτὴς οἱονεὶ μετὰ σοῦ κρίνεται, ἅκουε τοῦ· 98

And that we might be yet further convinced concerning this freedom of speech that God intends human beings to have towards him, I will compare something that is perhaps greater than commanding God—the fact that the Judge is going to be judged with me. For it is a human being who says, “That you might be justified in your words and victorious when you are judged,” (Ps 50:6 LXX) which some who lack understanding have changed to, “when you judge me.” But what will such people do about these other words which are written: “The Lord himself will enter into judgment with the elders of the people and with his rulers?” (Isa 3:14). But if this does not yet prove to

As we saw above, commanding God is also a theme of Origen’s discussions of παρρησία in his Homilies on Job.

238 δεῦτε καὶ ἐλεγχθῶμεν, λέγει ὁ κύριος. Ἐπέτρεψέν σοι ὁ κύριος εἰπεῖν μετὰ παρρησίας πρὸς αὐτόν, καταστήσας ἑαυτόν, ὁποῖα ἔλεγχος εἶναι δοκεῖ, ἐᾶν καὶ φαντάζῃ ὅτι δύνασαι αὐτὸν ἐλέγξαι ὡς ῥαθυμήσαντα ἀπὸ τῆς πρὸς σὲ προνοίας καὶ εἴπῃς μετὰ παρρησίας τὰ τοιαῦτα.

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you clearly that the Judge is, as it were, judged with us, hear the text: “Come and let us be convicted together, says the Lord” (Isa 1:18 LXX). The Lord exhorts you to speak to him with freedom of speech, making himself seem to need conviction of a sort, so that if you should imagine that you can convict him of being careless in his providence towards you, you might say these things with freedom.99

Here we may observe first a very practical reason that, in Origen’s view, the church needs to cultivate an ear for bold speech. A scribe, coming across a difficult formulation in a scriptural text, might conclude that the text contains an error and correct the text in favor of something more straightforward. (Origen already has some sense that the lectio difficilior is to be preferred, though this is by no means a universal principle of his textual criticism.) In this case, Ps 50:6 LXX says to God, as Origen reads it, that “you are victorious when you are judged [ἐν τῷ κρίνεσθαί σε].”100 Although one might take κρίνεσθαί as a middle infinitive, so that the line reads, “you are victorious when you judge,” Origen takes κρίνεσθαί as passive, indicating that God himself is the object of judgment. Origen may have regarded this reading as more consistent with the courtroom language of the previous clause, which has God “being justified” (δικαιωθῇς), i.e. being the object of a positive verdict, which presumably implies that he has been judged. That God too is judged is undoubtedly a surprising statement, because of which, Origen tells us, “some who lack understanding [οἱ μὴ νοήσαντες]”—presumably he is referring to scribes—changed the text to read, “you are victorious when you judge me [κρίνεσθαί με].”101As we observed earlier, in other contexts, Origen can castigate scribes for being overly bold in changing texts. Here, however, their problem is lack of boldness, or at least an inability to recognize the characteristic boldness of scriptural discourse. Ironically, preserving the exact letter of scripture depends in this case on appreciating the speculative boldness of the scriptures. Finally, Origen returns to the logic of incarnation, this time stressing not the divine descent but the adoption of human beings as brothers and sisters of Christ. 99 HomPs 67.1.1. 100 This text is also quoted by Paul in Rom 3:4. 101 Neither Rahlfs, Septuaginta nor Nestle-Aland 27 records any text with this reading.

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Καὶ ἀκόλουθον δέ ἐστι τῷ πνεύματι τῆς υἱοθεσίας καὶ τῷ οὐκέτι εἶ δοῦλος, ἀλλὰ υἱός· καὶ ὁ πατήρ σού ἐστιν ὁ θεὸς καὶ ἀδελφός σου ὁ κύριος ὁ λέγων· διηγήσομαι τὸ ὄνομα σου τοῖς ἀδελφοῖς σου, μᾶλλον δὲ τοῖς ἀδελφοῖς μου, ἐν μέσῳ ἐκκλησίας ὑμνήσω σε. Τί παράδοξον υἱὸν παρρησίαν ἔχοντα πρὸς τὸν πατέρα, οὐ καταισχύνοντα τὸ πνεῦμα τῆς υἱοθεσίας, προστασσόμενον ὑπὸ τοῦ πατρός, ἀντιπροστάξαι τῷ πατρί, ἀξιοῦντα περὶ ὧν βούλεται;

239 And consistent with this is the text, “by the spirit of adoption,” and, “you are no longer a slave, but a son.” And your father is God, and your brother is the Lord who says, “I will announce your name to your brothers,” or rather, “to my brothers; I will sing to you in the midst of the church” (Ps 21:23 LXX, Heb 2:12). How is it remarkable if a son has freedom of speech towards his father, not being ashamed of the spirit of adoption, but being commanded by his father, to command his father back, if he is worthy of what he desires?102

If the incarnation makes human beings not merely slaves but children of God, then under certain conditions even commanding God is not inappropriate. Let us step back and reflect on Origen’s discussion as a whole. At one level, we may describe it as an extended inductive argument demonstrating that it is a habit of scripture to speak of a surprising reciprocity between God and human beings and of the parrhesia to command God that this permits. Most of these arguments in turn identify more local habits of scripture, such as scripture’s habit of presenting Jesus as a servant or its habit of speaking of God as being judged. In none of these cases does scripture explicitly teach that human beings may command God, although especially in the first three arguments Origen gathers a fascinating collection of texts that provide the basis for analogical arguments that deal specifically with commanding. We have seen that analogical arguments typically have probabilistic rather than necessary force; and the fact that Origen attacks the question of commanding God from so many varied (and sometimes tenuous) vantage points suggests that he himself does not regard any one of these arguments as necessary. A cumulative argument, as we saw in the previous chapter, is such that one may have much greater certainty about the vague rule one proves than one has about the specific instances of this rule that one offers. This is surely the case here. Although each particular argument may be rather tenuous, the cumulative effect is to commend a bold claim with a much higher degree of confidence. But Origen is not simply arguing for the viability of commanding God as a mode of Christian speech. This argument also progressively enriches our 102 HomPs 67.1.1.

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understanding of why and how we might command God, the incarnational significance of which is not obvious at the outset. In effect, throughout this passage Origen is meditating on an utterance of his own—his claim that we should command God—which invites reflection because it possesses an obscurity not unlike that of the most difficult passages of scripture. Although we can summarize the results of his meditations in terms of a reciprocity between God and humankind and the parrhesia that results, this insight is very much the fruit of an inductive process rather than its presupposition. Origen’s meditation proceeds by way of analogical arguments focused as narrowly as possible on our ability to command God. The result is to bring into relation with one another a variety of texts and themes that are not obviously “incarnational” on the surface, such as the equality of masters and slaves, our ability to “ask” of God whatever we like, and texts that speak of God being judged. Incarnation and deification enter into this text not so much as its explicit subject matter but rather in the deep grammar governing habits of scriptural discourse about Christian freedom of speech. 2.3 Imitating Christ The following section of Origen’s homily on Ps 67 LXX develops the theme of the boldness of scriptural speech within the same incarnational framework. This passage shows that parrhesiastic boldness is a real possibility both for the scriptural authors and for those who imitate them by partaking of Christ. It also indicates that speculative speech is a fruit of the transformation of Christian rationality that makes parrhesia possible. We pick up Origen’s text in the middle of a theological explanation of the scriptural tendency to attribute change to God. While God is immutable in se, he argues, scripture speaks of God changing because his aspect changes in relation to us. After quoting several texts in support of God’s immutability (Ps 101:27–28 LXX, Mic 3:6), Origen argues that Paul, in imitation of Christ himself, models the same divine pattern of gracious change in relation to those in need. Παῦλος μὲν οὖν ἄνθρωπος δι᾽ ἀγάπην καὶ φιλανθρωπίαν ἑκάστῳ γενόμενος, οὗ χρῄζει ὁ εὐεργετούμενος, λέγεται· ἐγενόμην τοῖς Ἰουδαίοις ὡς Ἰουδαῖος, ἵνα Ἰουδαίους κερδήσω· τοῖς ὑπὸ νόμον ὡς ὑπὸ νόμον, ἵνα τοὺς ὑπὸ νόμον κερδήσω· τοῖς ἀνόμοις ὡς ἄνομος, μὴ ὤν ἄνομος θεοῦ ἀλλ᾽ ἔννομος

Thus Paul, a human being, who because of his love and philanthropy became whatever was required for each person who was to be benefited, said: “to the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain Jews; to those under the law, as one under the law, that I might gain those under the law; to the lawless, as a lawless one (not [truly]

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Χριστοῦ, ἵνα κερδήσω τοὺς ἀνόμους· τοῖς ἀσθενέσιν ὡς ἀσθενής, ἵνα τοὺς ἀσθενεῖς κερδήσω· τοῖς πᾶσι γέγονα πάντα ἵνα πάντως τινὰς σώσω.

lawless with respect to God, but under the law of Christ), that I might gain the lawless; to the weak, as one who is weak, that I might gain the weak. I have become all things to all that by every means I might save some” (1 Cor 9:20–22).103

Origen argues that in becoming weak, Paul is imitating Christ. As evidence of this, Origen points to Paul’s language about “the weakness of God,” which Origen regards as especially bold. Ἀλλὰ τίνος ὢν μιμητὴς Παῦλος ταῦτα ποεῖ; τολμῶ καὶ λέγω· Χριστοῦ, ὃς ἐγένετο ἀσθενέσιν ἀσθενής, ἵνα τοὺς ἀσθενεῖς κερδήσῃ. καὶ ἔστι τὸ ἀσθενὲς τοῦ θεοῦ ἰσχυρότερον τῶν ἀνθρώπων. οὐ μόνον γὰρ τὰ ἀσθενὲς τοῦ Χριστοῦ, ὃ ἐσταυρώθη ἐξ ἀσθενείας, ἰσχυρότερόν ἐστιν τῶν ἀνθρώπων, ἀλλ᾽ ἐτόλμησεν ὁ ἀπόστολος εἰπεῖν—ὡς ἐξουσίαν ἔχων λέγειν τὰ ἀληθῆ καὶ εἰπὼν ὅτι τὸ ἀσθενὲς τοῦ θεοῦ ἰσχυρότερον τῶν ἀνθρώπων—παραβόλως πάνυ καὶ παρακεκινδυνευμένως ὡς πρὸς τοὺς ἀκροατὰς μὴ εἰδότας ἀκούειν. φησὶ γάρ· τὸ μωρὸν τοῦ θεοῦ, σοφώτερον τῶν ἀνθρώπων ἐστίν.

But as whose imitator does Paul do these things? I am bold and say: [as an imitator] of Christ, who became weak to the weak, that he might gain the weak. And “the weakness of God is stronger than human beings” (1 Cor 1:25). For not only the weakness of Christ, who was crucified by weakness, is stronger than human beings, but the apostle was bold to speak, as one having freedom to speak the truth, even to say that “the weakness of God is stronger than that of human beings”— speaking very parabolically and with risk, as though to hearers that did not know how to hear. For he says, “the foolishness of God is wiser than human beings” (1 Cor 1:25).104

Origen describes a double chain of imitation, Christ imitating God and Paul imitating Christ, which underlies Origen’s application of two different scriptural texts to Christ. First, Origen applies to Christ words Paul uses of his own ministry: he “became weak to the weak, that he might gain the weak.” Second, Origen applies to Christ words Paul uses of God: “the weakness of Christ … is stronger than human beings.” In both cases, Origen assumes that what may be said of the imitator may also be said of the one being imitated, a principle that permits Origen to produce new Christological formulations on the basis 103 HomPs 67.1.2. For a close parallel, see HomPs 79.9.1. 104 HomPs 67.1.2.

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of Christ’s likeness to God, on the one hand, and his likeness to his faithful disciples, on the other. In particular, since Christian ethics is imitation of Christ, Origen assumes that one may apply to Christ, and hence to God, language that scripture applies to ideal disciples like Paul. Origen uses the formula, “I am bold and say” (τολμῶ καὶ λέγω) to introduce his application of Paul’s words to Christ’s ministry. Origen’s boldness consists, it would seem, not only in using Paul’s words about becoming weak, but especially in his daring to expand upon them by applying them to Christ as well. In speaking of Paul as an “imitator” of Christ, Origen is alluding to 1 Cor 11:1, in which Paul exhorts his readers to “imitate me as I imitate Christ.” His allusion to it here is a hint that he and his readers should continue the same pattern of imitating Paul—not only by becoming weak to gain the weak, but more overtly in this passage, by imitating his bold speech. For the same formula Origen uses to introduce his own bold speech he uses as well to introduce Paul’s words about the weakness of God—though to be sure, Paul’s boldness exceeds Origen’s, a fact of which Origen leaves no doubt by his intensified language of boldness. Although this passage does not use the word parrhesia, Origen is clearly describing the apostle in parrhesiastic terms. Origen says that the apostle “was bold to speak” (ἐτόλμησεν … εἰπεῖν), and again, that he spoke “with risk” (παρακεκινδυνευμένως). Origen also characterizes Paul as “having authority to speak” (ἐξουσίαν ἔχων λέγειν), a serviceable definition of παρρησία, in language which may also allude to Paul’s discussion of his apostolic freedom in the immediately preceding passage of 1 Corinthians105 and to Jesus’ “new teaching with authority (ἐξουσίαν).”106 This is further confirmed by the fact that Origen uses with reference to Paul other language that scripture applies to Jesus’ ministry. Paul speaks “parabolically (παραβόλως) to those who hear but “do not know how to hear,” no doubt an allusion to Jesus’ pedagogy through parables. Jesus frequently used the refrain “he who has ears to hear, let him hear” to hint that his parables required interpretation.107 This parallel is also not without difficulties, since parables are paradigmatically obscure discourse while the trouble with Paul’s bold speech here seems to be that it is all too open (the rhetorical sense of παρρησία). But this problem is more apparent than real. Jesus’ parables themselves involve many openly bold comparisons 105 Paul’s discussion there is focused on his apostolic freedom of action (1 Cor 9:4–5: “do we need have authority to eat and drink? do we not have authority to take a believing wife …”), whereas Origen speaks of a freedom displayed in speech; but Origen probably regards Paul’s apostolic freedom of action as exemplary of a broader freedom that includes bold speech as well. 106 Mark 1:22, 27, et al. 107 Mark 4:9, et al.

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(such as when he compares God to an unjust judge),108 while Paul’s utterance here is, despite its boldness, obscure or parabolic in the sense that it cannot be taken at face value. Origen imitates the same pedagogy in turn, and in this connection we should observe that Origen pivots (as Paul does) from a divine weakness that is stronger than human strength to a divine foolishness that is wiser than human wisdom. In quoting this text, Origen suggests that the bold and paradoxical expressions he has been discussing are themselves part of this foolish wisdom. Here the stakes of bold speech become especially clear: despite the risk of implying that God is changeable, or even weak and foolish, bold formulations are necessary to express the deepest wisdom of God, demonstrated in the depths of his love for humankind. The implication is that the advanced teacher must feel free, by virtue of his union with the Logos, to exercise parrhesia by proposing difficult or counterintuitive teachings despite the dangers involved in doing so. It is no wonder that Origen acquired a reputation for heresy. 3

Conclusion

This chapter has situated Origen’s exegetical practice in the context of his theology of incarnation and deification. For Origen, the divine Logos became human that human rationality might be deified. The incarnate Logos as mediated through the scriptures transforms Christian rationality according to its divine pattern, bearing linguistic fruit as the deification of discourse, the disciple’s capacity to speak divine words in imitation of the scriptural authors. It requires a characteristic boldness for a teacher to speak such words before her community, whether by speaking the “hyper-rational” words of scripture or by formulating new scripture-like language of her own.109 Bold speech is also the leading edge of the pedagogy of the Logos through scripture, since it is an index of occasions when the community’s linguistic intuitions need correction in relation to the pattern of the scriptures. Origen connects this pattern of bold speech to the classical notion of παρρησία as taken up in the Bible as a characteristic virtue of saints. For this reason, the imperative to produce the bold speculations for which Origen is infamous is integral to his theological vision. 108 Luke 18:1–8. 109 On scriptural language as “hyper-rational” see again McGuckin, “Origen as Literary Critic,” 129.

Chapter 6

Origenism as Pragmatism: A Sketch of a Sapiential Hermeneutic This book began with the suspicion that contemporary scriptural interpretation tends to suffer from a lingering arbitrariness. In search of a remedy, we turned to Origen of Alexandria. Though Origen has often been regarded as one of the most arbitrary interpreters of scripture, we were guided by a paradoxical hope that his appearance of arbitrariness reflects not the true character of his interpretation but rather the limits of our own hermeneutic imagination. By discovering the deep rules governing his interpretive practice, we hoped also to discover rules that might help repair our own arbitrariness. The rule we have discovered is wisdom, understood as a mode of linguistic rationality implicit in linguistic practice, exemplified by the words of scripture, and towards the formation of which exegesis proceeds. Interpretation governed by the rule of wisdom takes the procedural form of learning the language of scripture. Building on my historical reconstruction of Origen’s hermeneutical procedures in the previous chapters, this final constructive chapter sketches an Origenism that imitates the spirit of Origen’s thought without being restricted by the letter of his writings. I develop an account of Origenism as a form of pragmatism, where by “pragmatism” I mean that family of philosophies that understands rationality in terms of practical skill.1 While “pragmatism” in its narrowest sense refers to a distinctively modern philosophy, pragmatists have often emphasized the continuity between pragmatism and certain strands of pre-modern thought. Pragmatism is, according to William James, “a new name for some old ways of thinking,” identifying Socrates and Aristotle as ancient forerunners.2 Charles Peirce called his pragmatic maxim “an application of the sole principle of logic which was recommended by Jesus: ‘Ye may know them by their fruits.’”3 My emphasis in previous chapters on Origen’s use of Biblical

1 Robert Brandom makes this point especially clearly. What he calls conceptual pragmatism is “an account of knowing (or believing, or saying) that such and such is the case in terms of knowing how (being able) to do something” (Robert Brandom, Articulating Reasons: An Introduction to Inferentialism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), 4). 2 William James, Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1907), 50. 3 CP 5.402 n.2. See also CP 5.464–6.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2021 | doi:10.1163/9789004448544_008

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wisdom texts, Stoic logic, and early scientific methods should be understood as an attempt to recover hitherto neglected pragmatic dimensions of his thought. The Origenism that I develop in this chapter is a kind of rationalist pragmatism with affinities to pragmatists like Charles Peirce, Jürgen Habermas, and Robert Brandom. Theologically it is closest to post-liberal theologians like George Lindbeck, David Ford, and Robert Jenson. Above all, it reflects the influence of Peter Ochs, whose “scriptural pragmatism” exemplifies the sort of pragmatism I develop here and provides its implicit substructure.4 One might say that this chapter shows how to speak as a scriptural pragmatist in the scriptural language of wisdom.5 In section 1, I sketch an account of philosophy as a way of life in pursuit of wisdom and a pragmatic account of wisdom as a practical skill for acting well in matters that pertain to the ultimate norms of human life (1.1). I then develop a linguistic account of pragmatic rationality according to which the wise person is able to say the right thing on the right occasion in the right way for the right reason (1.2). This pragmatic wisdom emerges from the everyday rationality of common sense, which philosophy transforms while retaining continuity with it (1.3–4). In section 2, I develop an account of a wisdom tradition as one whose common sense conforms in part to the norms of wisdom and of scriptures as wise writings that exemplify the linguistic practices of a wisdom tradition (2.1). In such a tradition, learning wisdom takes the paradigmatic form of learning the language of scripture (2.2). The Christian tradition is a wisdom tradition with its own distinctive construal of what wisdom consists in. How one learns the language of scripture depends on whether one lives in ordinary times of communal confidence or in a time of hermeneutic crisis (2.3). In section 3, I outline a model of the rules of sapiential interpretation, philosophical interpretation of scripture in pursuit of pragmatic wisdom. Such interpretation must overcome the written medium of the scriptures, which seems to pose an obstacle to wisdom by cultivating the kind of “literalism” that Origen labeled “kata lexin” interpretation (3.1–2). The wise interpreter must instead read in a way that puts her own rationality into play, proceeding from lexis to logos, from the words of the written text to the capacity for speaking wisely that they exemplify (3.3). This process involves forming four kinds of skills: the verbal skill for repeating the words of scripture (3.3.1), the performative skill for 4 See especially Ochs, Logic of Scripture and Ochs, Another Reformation. I give an account of Ochs as a thinker in the wisdom tradition in Mark Randall James and Randi Rashkover, “The Wisdom of Peter Ochs: From Common Sense to Scriptural Pragmatism,” in Signs of Salvation: A Festschrift for Peter Ochs, ed. Mark Randall James and Randi Rashkover (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2020). 5 For an earlier sketch of some of these ideas, see James, “The Beginning of Wisdom.”

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determining the appropriate contexts for using those words (3.3.2), the explicative skill for clarifying the function of those words (3.3.3), and the logical skill for describing and correcting the discursive capacities of readers (3.3.4). Finally, in section 4, I sketch an Origenist theology of scripture that suggests how these formal categories might be developed in light of the Christian commitment to Jesus Christ as the Logos and Wisdom of God. 1

Wisdom

1.1 Wisdom and Pragmatism Origen exemplifies a vision of Christian life as philosophy in its etymological sense as the loving pursuit of wisdom. As the classical telos of philosophy, the term “wisdom” vaguely denotes an ideal end or ultimate norm of human life as a kind of intelligence or rationality. Wisdom is an end in itself, an inexhaustible or infinite good that transcends finite goods like pleasure, money, or honor, and with respect to which finite goods may be evaluated. The pursuit of wisdom may not preclude the pursuit of finite ends and may even facilitate attaining them; it may turn out that the wise tend to be honored or successful, at least under certain conditions. But one cannot pursue wisdom for its own sake without being prepared to lose other goods for its sake. As the book of Proverbs says, “The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom. Though it cost all you have, get understanding.”6 As a criterion for evaluating ends, wisdom is not reducible to instrumental rationality, the capacity to determine the right means to a given end.7 Merely instrumental reason judges means relative to ends taken as given—whether by nature, society, individual choice, desire, God, or some other source. But within the horizon of instrumental rationality, these ends are arbitrary, for it cannot give a reason for them or subject them to further rational criticism. To seek wisdom is to examine what we believe and how we live, in pursuit of final ends and ultimate norms of human life that are not merely arbitrary.

6 Prov 4:7 (NJPS). Biblical quotations in this chapter will be taken from the New Revised Standard Version unless otherwise noted. 7 Aristotle called merely instrumental rationality δεινότης (“cleverness” or “shrewdness”) and argued that it has value only in conjunction with φρόνησις (practical wisdom), which also knows the right ends of action (NE 1144a24–36). Instrumental rationality is perhaps equivalent to ‫ערמה‬, that “prudence” which the book of Proverbs exhorts the simple to learn (1:4, 8:5), and with which it says that wisdom dwells (8:12), yet which may also take on the negative connotation of a merely instrumental shrewdness or craftiness (e.g. Exod 21:15 and Gen 3:1).

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Because philosophy seeks wisdom as the goal and measure of life, it does so without fully knowing what wisdom is or whether it can be attained. Philosophy is a venture whose success can only be fully evaluated from the standpoint of its end, a leap of desire that is not without risk.8 While few are happy to be called fools, there are those who do not seek wisdom because they regard it as undesirable or unattainable. Nevertheless, an ideal of wisdom is arguably intrinsic to human nature. Most languages have words analogous to “wisdom,” different in the details of their use but related by a vague family resemblance. The Bible itself often assumes that wisdom is sought even by those outside of Israel and the church,9 even as it presents its own distinctive account of what wisdom consists in and where it can be found. There is thus a kind of conversion to philosophy that may precede the adoption of a particular conception of wisdom.10 Through his teaching, his example, and his friendship, Origen was known for awakening this love for wisdom in his pupils, as one of his students testifies: And thus, like a spark falling within our soul, love (ἔρως) was kindled and indeed inflamed—love for the most lovable Holy Logos, who draws all to himself by his ineffable beauty, and love also for this man [Origen], his friend and advocate. And so there was but one thing dear and lovable to me: philosophy and this divine man and teacher of philosophy.11 Augustine recounts a similar conversion to philosophy through reading Cicero’s Hortensius long before he became a Christian.12 A central task facing philosophical traditions is to evoke this desire for wisdom in those who do not yet possess it, often by redirecting desire for finite goods to wisdom as their condition and criterion. In works like the Symposium and the Phaedrus, for example, Plato argues that the beauty of physical bodies may evoke a desire for 8

According to Origen, those who join a Greek philosophical school must begin with faith, just as Christians do (CC 1.10–11). 9 See for example Gen 41:33–40, 1 Kgs 4:29–34, and Dan 1:18–20. 10 On conversion as a subtext of American pragmatism, see Roger Ward, Conversion in American Philosophy: Exploring the Practice of Transformation (New York: Fordham University Press, 2004). 11 Gregory Thaumaturgus, Address 6, translation mine. The Greek is: “Οἷος οὖν τις σπινθήρ, ἐνσκήψας μέσῃ τῇ ψυχῇ ἡμῶν, ἀνήπτετό τε καὶ ἐξεκαίετο ὅ τε πρὸς τὸν ἁπάντων ὑπὸ κάλλους ἀρρήτου ἐπακτικώτατον αὐτὸν λόγον τὸν ἱερὸν τὸν ἐρασμιώτατον, καὶ ὁ πρὸς τὸν ἄνδρα τόνδε τὸν αὐτοῦ φίλον καὶ προήγορον ἔρως…Ἓν δέ μοι φίλον ἦν καὶ ἀγαπώμενον, φιλοσοφία τε καὶ ὁ ταύτης καθηγεμὼν οὗτος ὁ θεῖος ἄνθρωπος.” 12 Confessions III.4.vii–viii.

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the immaterial beauty of wisdom. Much of the poetry in the book of Proverbs likewise uses the love of finite goods as symbols evocative of love for wisdom. Happy are those who find wisdom, and those who get understanding, for her income is better than silver, and her revenue better than gold. She is more precious than jewels, and nothing you desire can compare with her.13 While the pursuit of wisdom distinguishes philosophy from other forms of human life, different philosophies may be distinguished by the controlling paradigm in terms of which they anticipate the form of wisdom. On what I shall call a pragmatic conception of philosophy, wisdom takes the paradigmatic form of a practical skill. This conception is implicit in the biblical words conventionally translated “wisdom” (‫ חכמה‬and σοφία), each of which originally denoted a skill or competence, a capacity for successful performance in some particular domain, such as wood-working.14 Each then came to be applied by analogy to the ideal of a global capacity for correct performance in the world, an art of living well, embodied by human sages and a fortiori by God or the divine.15 A skill is a normative capacity to act well in some domain under a wide range of possible circumstances, including novel circumstances. It is the capacity to do the right thing on the right occasion in the right way for the right reason. The pragmatist anticipates that wisdom is such a capacity: a skill for doing the right thing on the right occasion in the right way for the right reason in matters that pertain to the ultimate ends of human life. As a skill, wisdom is associated with right action and discernment, formed through experience and study, taking time to acquire and hence associated with old age. Beyond the mastery of determinate rules, pragmatic wisdom requires the capacity for making intuitive judgments about individual cases and an imaginative capacity to reflect on novel possibilities. One may best grasp the significance of this pragmatic conception of wisdom by contrast. One of the deepest guiding intuitions of the Platonic-Aristotelian 13 Prov 3:13–15. 14 Von Rad, Wisdom, 20–1. For examples of ‫ חכם‬and σοφός or derivatives used in this way, see the MT and LXX of Exod 31:3, Isa 40:20, et al. 15 On the relation between ordinary and philosophical uses of the term σοφία see Aristotle, NE 1141a and DL 3.63.

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philosophical tradition is that geometry exemplifies the form of the highest wisdom. A late tradition has it that engraved at the entrance to Plato’s Academy were the words “let no one enter without geometry.”16 The historical merits of this tradition notwithstanding, it certainly captures the Platonic fascination with geometry. In Plato’s Republic, geometrical forms are models of the ideal Forms of Being to which the philosopher ascends.17 According to his student Aristotle, the highest wisdom is the theoretical capacity for deriving necessary and universal rules deductively from clear and evident first principles, analogous to geometrical reasoning.18 By making practical wisdom (φρόνησῖς) distinct from and secondary to theoretical wisdom as the goal of the philosophical life, Aristotle indicates that geometry rather than pragmatic skill is the paradigm of true philosophical wisdom. This geometrical model of wisdom heavily influenced medieval philosophy and, through philosophers like Descartes and Spinoza, continues to exercise an enormous influence on contemporary thought. By encouraging philosophers to seek the highest wisdom in theoretical concepts rather than practical skill, the geometrical paradigm leads to habits of mind that remain deeply embedded in the West, even among erstwhile critics of Western rationality. First, geometry seems to produce principles that apply universally (in every context), whereas rules of skill tend to apply only in particular contexts or with a generality that permits context-specific exceptions.19 Second, geometry requires concepts that are clear and distinct, whereas skills often involve vague concepts that retain a degree of openness to the unique specificities of context. Finally, geometrical inferences are supposed to follow intuitively from principles evident to any rational agent, as Plato demonstrated in the Meno by showing that an uneducated slave could be led through a geometrical proof. By contrast, while skills also involve drawing intuitive judgments, these judgments are not evident to all because the capacity to draw them must be formed and may need correction.20

16 Elias, Commentary on the Categories, XVIII, 118.18–19; and see also John Philoponus, Commentary on the soul, 15.117.27. 17 Most famously in Plato’s account of the so-called “divided line” in Republic 509c–511e. 18 NE 1140b31–1141a8. 19 However, in light of the modern discovery of consistent non-Euclidean geometries, it has become apparent that the principles of Euclidean geometry do not in fact apply universally in every context. 20 What I have called a “habit of scripture” obeys a context-specific logic of skill, rather than a universal logic of geometry. See my account above, 169–91.

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1.2 Linguistic Rationality This book has emphasized Origen’s debt to the Stoics because they sought from within the Greek philosophical tradition to recover a more pragmatic conception of wisdom. Central to this recovery were the attempts of Stoic logicians to produce a more pragmatic logic in terms of the practical mastery of language. Spurred by the linguistic overtones of the word λόγος (“reason,” “word”) and the paradigmatic example of Socratic dialectic, the Stoics argued that thinking is not a matter of mastering the theoretical use of extra-linguistic concepts but rather a practical skill for using language appropriately. This includes the mastery of non-technical uses of language like Heraclitean riddles or Homeric poetry, which do not possess the universality, clarity, or evidence of geometrical concepts. The result is an early version of what Robert Brandom calls “linguistic pragmatism.” As we saw in Chapter 1, Origen discerned in Stoic logic a more satisfying account of the kind of wisdom capable of linguistic expression in the words of scripture than a logic of concepts derived from Aristotle. For the Stoics, a wise person possesses a linguistic skill, the capacity to speak in accordance with reason by saying the right thing on the right occasion in the right way for the right reason. According to the Stoics, “the sage is a dialectician,” capable of using language appropriately even in the face of dialectical questioning. On this view, rationality is linguistic because implicit rational norms operate within linguistic practice. The Biblical wisdom tradition similarly emphasizes the rightness or appropriateness with which wisdom speaks: Listen, for I have trustworthy things to say; I open my lips to speak what is right. My mouth speaks what is true, for my lips detest wickedness. All the words of my mouth are just; none of them is crooked or perverse.21 But because language is a practical skill, the rational linguistic norms governing linguistic practices cannot apply to sentences in themselves, but apply rather to their pragmatic use as concrete speech acts. Indeed, speech acts are constituted in part by the rational norms that determine their criteria of success. Assertions are constituted by the norm of truthfulness, in that part of what it means to make an assertion is to purport to state something true. Promises are constituted by the norm of faithfulness, in that part of what it means to make a promise is to purport to bind oneself to act in a certain way; and so 21 Prov 8:6–8.

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it is with other speech acts. Because speech acts are constituted by rational norms, one cannot learn to use a language without presupposing some relationship between utterances and the rational norms they purport to embody. Rationality is implicit in the use of ordinary language. By the same token, the Stoics recognized that the smallest complete meaningful unit of language is neither the word nor the sentence but the utterance in a context. The meaning or function of an utterance (the Stoic lekton) thus depends not only on its sentence structure but also on pragmatic relations between the sentence and the world, through which the whole universe may enter into linguistic practice. This is why in learning to speak language wisely, one also learns to understand the world. Understanding the world does not require somehow getting “outside” of language to conceptual objects (as if meaning were equivalent to the intentions of a speaker or the response of a reader) or to things in themselves (as if meaning were equivalent to the referent of a sentence). The skeptical worry that we are trapped “inside” of language unable to reach a thing in itself beyond language is likewise misleading. The spatial categories of inside and outside simply do not apply to language. Linguistic practices are embodied habits in and of the world; and as such, language may be an adequate medium for understanding the world. 1.3 Learning a Skill If philosophy is the pursuit of wisdom, and if pragmatic wisdom takes the form of a practical skill, then pragmatic philosophy must be a process of formation analogous to learning a skill. Learning a skill is not merely the passive reception of information. It is rather an active process of forming more complex and refined capacities by putting more basic capacities into play. Sometimes the pre-existing capacities of the student are vague or indefinite. In this case, forming a skill is a process of determination or definition, as when one learns new ways of using a tool in new contexts. At other times, the student’s pre-existing capacities are wrongly determined. In this case, forming a skill requires correcting one’s habits, as when one learns to grip a tool differently. This sort of corrective learning is first an unlearning, a going backwards to go forward. In either case, however, while learning a skill presupposes pre-existing capacities in the learner, these capacities do not remain fixed over the course of learning. So too in pursuing pragmatic wisdom, one does not begin with fixed foundational beliefs to which one adds or upon which one builds. Rather, one begins with rational capacities and normative categories that are transformed in the process of learning. Here too learning may sometimes be a process of determining relatively indeterminate rational capacities in the learner. In this case wisdom emerges from a posture of relative openness, simplicity, or childlikeness,

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as the book of Proverbs teaches “shrewdness to the simple, knowledge and prudence to the young.”22 At other times, learning wisdom requires correcting wrongly determined habits, unlearning a “way that seems right to a person.”23 We may call ill-formed rational capacities “foolish,” particularly when they nevertheless seem right to the learner, and all the more as she willfully resists correcting them. In either case, learning wisdom presupposes capacities in the learner that are subject to change over the course of learning. Something like this lies behind the paradox of learning that so puzzled ancient philosophers. On the one hand, seeking wisdom involves acquiring knowledge one does not yet possess. The one who seeks wisdom begins not knowing what wisdom is. On the other hand, to seek wisdom (rather than something else) requires some advance conception of what one is seeking. So the one seeking wisdom begins already knowing what wisdom is. How is it possible both to know, and not to know, the wisdom which one seeks? The answer is that learning wisdom is a process of determining a vague preliminary grasp of wisdom. Thus in Stoic epistemology, the pursuit of wisdom begins not with an a priori grasp of determinate conceptual forms, but rather with vague “common notions” that the wise are able to determine correctly,24 just as for Origen the pedagogy of the divine Word presupposes in human beings the natural reason that it transforms. To the extent that rationality is linguistic, the formative process of acquiring wisdom must also involve learning to use language well, beginning with the elementary linguistic competence acquired by children and culminating in the distinctive linguistic skill of the wise. This is why Origen supposes that by virtue of their wisdom, the apostles and prophets speak in a distinctive manner—not in technical terms wholly alien to everyday usage, but rather in a language that, as it were, stretches and deepens ordinary language. Because learning a skill is a process of formation, the sort of argument that would guide someone to acquire wisdom must involve more than deductive or syllogistic argument. A deductive argument infers conclusions that explicate what is already contained in fixed premises. But an argument that forms a skill must lead a person not only from one proposition to another but also from one state of practical formation to another.25 Since individuals and their 22 Prov 1:4. 23 Prov 14:12. 24 See, for example, Plutarch, On Common Notions 1060a (= LS 40R) and Epictetus, Discourses I.22.1–3, 9–10 (= LS 40S) and the following discussion in LS. 25 A distinction of Charles Peirce’s might be useful here. He defines an “argument” as “any process of thought reasonably tending to produce a definite belief,” which would include

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contexts are unique, pragmatic arguments must retain a degree of openness to the specificities of circumstance. This kind of argument might take many forms. Like some biblical proverbs, Jesus’ parables, or a Zen koan, one might use words that directly provoke particular learners to acquire an insight without fully determining its content. Alternatively, one might commend some particular example as worthy of imitation, such as an individual (like a biblical saint) or a set of practices (like the methods Galileo used in proving a particular scientific theorem), while leaving vague how exactly the learner should imitate them. One might also commend a particular learning process for imitation by narrating it and inviting other learners to enter into an analogous process from their own unique starting point. Plato recounts this kind of process for the learners in his dialogues, as Augustine does with his own life in the Confessions. But it is also possible to offer an advance sketch of a learning process in general terms. When it is actively guided by a teacher presumed to be further along in the process and who anticipates its outcome, learning takes the form of pedagogy and an advance sketch is a curriculum. When one actively guides one’s own learning process without knowing its outcome, learning takes the form of inquiry and an advance sketch is a method. The distinction between pedagogy and inquiry is not absolute. On the one hand, good pedagogy often involves inviting students to learn for themselves through inquiry. On the other hand, theists like Origen conceive of the ultimate wisdom at which philosophical inquiry aims as a personal being capable of actively guiding inquiry. Even where learning is inquiry from a human perspective because it takes place without a human teacher, it nevertheless takes place through a providential divine pedagogy. In either case, however, a general account of a learning process must retain the sort of vagueness proper to its practical character. Whatever rules it offers apply only in general and for the most part; they permit exceptions and their application depends on context-specific factors. (My own account of learning wisdom in this chapter is an advance sketch of this general type.) 1.4 Wisdom and Common Sense One might call the preliminary capacities from which pragmatic wisdom emerges common sense. By “common sense” I mean the skills required for the successful negotiation of everyday life, a shared embryonic wisdom identifiable any adequate learning process. By contrast, an “argumentation” is “an Argument proceeding upon definitely formulated premisses,” of which a syllogism would be the most obvious example (CP 6.456).

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in ordinary behaviors.26 Common sense includes instrumental rationality, but it also includes the ability to make everyday judgments about intrinsic goods and ultimate norms, such as everyday moral or aesthetic judgments. Pragmatic philosophy could then be defined as the practice of seeking wisdom by determining and correcting common sense. For the linguistic pragmatist, common sense is implicit in the grammar of ordinary language, and one’s deepest ordinary linguistic intuitions are an index of one’s common sense. Philosophy thus includes a process of linguistic formation, transforming the ordinary language of common sense into the extraordinary language of wisdom. Since the skills necessary for everyday life vary from community to community and context to context, one cannot precisely define a universal set of common sense beliefs or principles a priori (as the “common sense” philosophers of the Scottish school attempted to do).27 Common sense is shaped by the various commitments—religious, moral, metaphysical, etc.—that distinguish one community from another and influence the everyday concerns of ordinary people in different communities. On the other hand, the conditions of human life and flourishing are not wholly different from one context to another, and so it would be surprising if one community’s common sense bore no family resemblance to another’s. We might think of common sense as existing between two poles: a more general pole of skills common to most human beings and a more particular pole of skills specific to one context or community. Towards the general pole of common sense would be the kinds of skills that children tend to develop as they become adults, emerging from and continuous with biological instincts and capacities—motor skills, the use of our senses, instrumental reasoning, a sense of fairness, etc. It would include the beliefs implicit in the grammar of everyday words about concrete objects like “chair” or “tree.” Towards the particular pole would be the distinctive capacities embodied in the traditions and linguistic practices of a particular community, its deep culturallyspecific beliefs and commitments. Towards its general pole common sense refers to capacities innate to the human mind, while towards its particular pole

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I owe this formulation to James Lawrence. Compare Dewey: “I shall designate the environment in which human beings are directly involved the common sense environment or ‘world,’ and inquiries that take place in making the required adjustments in behavior common sense inquiries” (John Dewey, Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1938), 60). See also Ochs, Logic of Scripture, 175–182, a commentary on the notion of common sense in Peirce, “What Pragmatism Is,” CP 5:411–437. Cf. Thomas Reid, Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (London: Charles Griffin and Co., 1865), “Essay V: Judgment,” Chapter 3.

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common sense refers to the conventional wisdom of a particular community or tradition. To practice philosophy presupposes that common sense is in some sense inadequate, for one would not need to seek wisdom if it were identical to common sense. In the Western philosophical tradition, this difference has often hardened into antagonism. In some contexts, this antagonism can be humorous: common sense may laugh at the uselessness of the philosopher’s purported wisdom, as in the tale of Thales falling into a well.28 But the death of Socrates, the original trauma of Western philosophy, symbolizes the possibility that philosophy may appear threatening to common sense and provoke a violent response.29 For Christians, the crucifixion of God’s Wisdom made flesh and the martyrdom of so many of his prophets and disciples underscores this danger even more radically. Certain conceptions of philosophic wisdom can reify its opposition to common sense by seeking wisdom from a source that is not subject to examination by the common sense of ordinary people in the community, such as immediate intellectual insight (nous)—the wisdom of Platonic-Aristotelian philosophers—or revelation from a god alien to human understanding—the wisdom of gnostics. By bypassing common sense altogether, these conceptions of wisdom encourage the one who seeks wisdom to hold herself aloof from ordinary people with their everyday concerns. On a pragmatic conception of wisdom, by contrast, the relation between common sense and pragmatic wisdom is not intrinsically oppositional, but rather pedagogical: common sense is related to wisdom as the beginning of a learning process is to its end. To be sure, while wisdom is available to ordinary people, it may not leave them the ordinary people they were. But however radically a person is transformed in the course of learning wisdom, the end of a formative process is never a total repudiation of its beginning. Even a very counter-intuitive wisdom, even the divine Wisdom itself, retains continuity with common sense rationality. Because wisdom can only be fully known at the end of inquiry, one cannot assume a priori that any particular element of common sense is wise. Nor should a pragmatic philosopher suppose that all who pursue wisdom begin in the same place, with identical skills or capacities. While human beings could not seek wisdom without some advance grasp of it, this grasp is vague and varied, like the different grammars of words in different languages that are only roughly translatable as “wisdom.” The universality of wisdom is visible 28 29

See for example Thaetetus 174a and DL 2.4–5. In Plato’s allegory of the cave, the philosopher who returns to the cave is subject to both laughter and the possibility of a violent end (Republic 517a).

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only from its end, and all need not pursue it along the same path or at the same pace. Thus while for Origen, the pedagogy of the Logos is universal, the Logos cannot be known a priori, in terms of the rationality available to those beginning to seek it. Rather, the Logos displays its universality by its capacity to draw every kind of learner—according to their various capacities and from their unique starting points—to itself.30 2

Scripture and Philosophy

2.1 Tradition and Scripture At some level everyone who would acquire wisdom must seek it for herself. However, to the extent that rationality operates within linguistic practices, the pursuit of wisdom cannot remain a merely individual affair. Linguistic practices are inextricably social. Because the linguistic practices that the philosopher transforms were inherited from her community, her pursuit of wisdom is at least in part a social and political activity. If “common sense” refers to the everyday rational skills possessed by ordinary members of a community and implicit in its linguistic practices, then when a community’s language has been shaped by philosophy, even its common sense may come to conform in part to the norms of wisdom. Wisdom would be to some extent implicit in its practices and in the intuitive judgments of ordinary members of the community.31 We might call such a tradition a wisdom tradition. A philosopher formed in a wisdom tradition might reasonably hope to seek wisdom within rather than beyond her community’s common sense by delving into the riches of her own community’s traditional wisdom and making it explicit. Indeed, because pragmatic wisdom retains pedagogical continuity with the general pole of common sense, one might expect to discover at least a nascent wisdom immanent in all living traditions. In our present context, however, it is especially those traditions that we customarily call religious traditions that tend to concern themselves explicitly with the ultimate or infinite wisdom sought by the philosopher.32

30 31 32

Compare Peirce’s pragmatic definition of truth as “the satisfaction which would ultimately be found if the inquiry were pushed to its ultimate and indefeasible issue” (CP 6.485). On this account, wisdom has a dialectical relationship to common sense. Wisdom transcends common sense, and yet common sense may contain wisdom. On the contribution of ancient philosophy to the modern concept of religion, see Wilfred Cantwell Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991), esp. 27–28.

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Transmitting a wisdom tradition requires the exercise of a certain kind of authority, namely, the sort of pedagogical authority possessed by teachers by virtue of their superior knowledge or skill. Pedagogical authority derives its legitimacy from students’ belief that teachers possess wisdom and share it with others, each according to her capacity. Wise parents are a prototype of this legitimate pedagogical authority. This is why the book of Proverbs, though offering wisdom for a wide range of domains from law and politics to theology, begins by situating its instruction in the context of the family. “Hear, my child, your father’s instruction, and do not reject your mother’s teaching.”33 Within a wisdom tradition, the linguistic intuitions of its legitimate authorities are an authoritative index of the community’s purported wisdom. Such communities might then reflect on these intuitions and attempt to formulate the rules implicit in their linguistic practice as criteria of correctness for future linguistic performances. In the early church, the regula fidei (rule of faith) was just such a linguistic criterion. As Robert Jenson has argued, The regula fidei, though directed and attuned to statement in language, was not itself written or even memorized; the phrase “communal linguistic awareness” in the previous paragraph was carefully chosen. The early pastors and theologians who invoked the rule of faith in their teaching, liturgical instructions, or polemics lived in a community experienced as immediately identical with that of the Lord’s first witnesses, a community that was for them a single living reality embracing the Lord, his immediate witnesses, and themselves. They located the “rule” of this community’s faith in its communal self-consciousness.34 The rule of faith summarized the early church’s common sense as distinct from rival conceptions of wisdom. The problems of transmitting tradition and evaluating the correctness of linguistic performances are intrinsic to all linguistic wisdom traditions. However, it is not necessary that a community recognize scriptures, authoritative writings against which the ongoing linguistic practices of the community may be tested. A scriptural wisdom tradition is a wisdom tradition that identifies a collection of writings as a supremely appropriate norm of its linguistic practice. As linguistic objects themselves, writings may function as linguistic norms only if they conform to the norms to which the community aspires. Since a wisdom tradition regards the highest such norms as the rational norms 33 Prov 1:8. 34 Jenson, Canon and Creed, 15.

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of wisdom itself, identifying writings as scriptures entails ascribing wisdom to them and hence, pedagogical authority. Its scriptures actually speak wisely, as its members ought to speak. In itself scripture is a collection of sentences. But rational norms govern not sentences per se but their performative use in concrete utterances. It follows that it is not the words of scripture per se that possess wisdom, but rather their wise use. The authority of scripture cannot reside in the sentences themselves, nor in something other than or behind the sentences (e.g. their propositional “meaning” or a certain kind of inner experience). Rather, scripture’s authority must be a property of the relation between its sentences and the wisdom by which they are used appropriately. In functional terms, scriptural authority consists in the fact that every sentence of scripture may be used in conformity with the relevant linguistic norms.35 We might formulate this as what I shall call “the doctrine of appropriateness”: every sentence of scripture may be used appropriately.36 35

As we saw above (133–37), the assumption that scripture conforms to rational linguistic norms undergirds Origen’s use of what I have called “scriptural implicature.” 36 This doctrine of appropriateness may usefully be contrasted with the evangelical doctrine of inerrancy as defined by the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, printed in Norman Geisler, ed., Inerrancy (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1980), 493–502. The doctrine of appropriateness entails that scripture need never be heard as saying something false when truthfulness is the relevant linguistic norm. In this sense, the doctrine of appropriateness is consistent with a kind of inerrancy. But it differs in two important ways from inerrancy. First, the Chicago statement attributes inerrancy to “scripture in its entirety” without clarifying whether it is texts or their pragmatic uses that are inerrant (Article XII). It thereby neglects the performative dimension of language so central to Origen’s exegesis and that of other church fathers. Second, the Chicago statement determines in advance the relevant interpretive rules that should be applied to the scriptures: “We affirm that the text of scripture is to be interpreted by grammatico-historical exegesis, taking account of its literary forms and devices, and that scripture is to interpret scripture” (Article XVIII). To determine one’s interpretive methods prior to the act of interpretation, however, is to assume that one understands the linguistic form of wisdom prior to learning from scripture how in fact wisdom speaks. One cannot be sure in advance that wisdom must speak in a way that reveals itself to the “historico-grammatical method,” particularly in light of the range of interpretive methods deployed in the Bible itself. According to the doctrine of appropriateness, by contrast, until one possesses wisdom one cannot fully determine what uses of scripture are appropriate nor what the relevant norms of wisdom are that govern those uses. The doctrine of appropriateness determines less than the doctrine of inerrancy, but precisely by determining less in advance about how scripture must function, the wise reader holds herself more open to learning from scripture—learning not only what scripture communicates but also the rules of wisdom it embodies, both the content of wisdom and its form. In practice, it means that scriptural interpretation should be as much an

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It was not obvious to early Christians that the church should recognize new authoritative scriptures analogous to the Hebrew scriptures it had inherited from Israel.37 However, over time the church came to recognize a core collection of writings as authoritative scriptures. Integral to this process of canonization was the church’s growing conviction that this collection of texts (whose boundaries took time to define) speaks rightly and hence may appropriately be read aloud in the church and studied by its members. In short, the church came to regard its scriptures as supremely wise. A belief in the wisdom of the scriptures, axiomatic for Origen as for most traditional scriptural interpreters, was encouraged by the Christian scriptures themselves, whose habit it is to characterize their own words as wise.38 Obviously Proverbs and other texts in the so-called “wisdom” tradition characterize their own words as wise. Some of these wisdom sayings clearly arose in a judicial context, and so it is not surprising that legal texts are also understood to embody wisdom. We may cite Deut 4:6 in particular: “You must observe [these laws] diligently, for this will show your wisdom and discernment to the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people!’” By virtue of its position as the last book of the Torah and the words of Israel’s greatest teacher, Deuteronomy suggests that the whole Torah is supremely wise, a hint made explicit in Ps 119 and deuterocanonical wisdom texts like Bar 4:1, “Wisdom is the book of the commandments of God, the law that endures forever.” The word of the prophets is also wise, not least because prophetic criticism often targets the apparent wisdom of those who are “wise” in a merely human or immanent sense.39 An apocalyptic text like Daniel intensifies this theme of inspired wisdom, as the ongoing sufferings of Israel makes interpreting God’s will amidst historical events seem humanly inscrutable. Thus the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings each inquiry into the appropriate norms for interpreting scripture (which the Chicago statement defines a priori) as it is an inquiry into the meaning of scripture. 37 The early second century teacher Papias of Hierapolis, for example, still believed that the most authoritative form of the church’s wisdom was its oral embodiment in living teachers. Introducing his own written collection of early oral traditions, he says, “For I supposed that things in books would not profit me so much as the things [spoken] by a living and abiding voice,” (HE 3.39.4. The Greek is: “οὐ γὰρ τὰ ἐκ τῶν βιβλίων τοσοῦτόν με ὠφελεῖν ὑπελάμβανον ὅσον τὰ παρὰ ζώσης φωνῆς καὶ μενούσης”). While the church might commit oral traditions to writing to preserve their memory, these writings should remain a secondary witness to tradition rather than a normative authority in their own right. Papias seems to have understood the gospel writers as engaged in the same project. 38 On wisdom as an overarching category for ancient scripture interpreters, see James Kugel, The Bible as it Was (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1997), 1–50. 39 Isa 44:25.

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claim to possess their own distinctive mode of wisdom. It is no wonder that 2 Timothy can say of the Old Testament scriptures as a whole that they are “able to make you wise unto salvation.”40 The same habit of scripture continues in the New Testament. 2 Peter already bears witness to the fact that Paul’s letters were coming to be regarded as scripture by virtue of their wisdom—“our beloved brother Paul wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, speaking of this as he does in all his letters”—as displayed by the fact that their language is difficult and liable to misinterpretation, like the “other scriptures.”41 Paul himself calls attention to the divine wisdom ironically expressed in the apparent “foolishness” of his own message.42 The synoptic gospels present Jesus Christ in his human ministry as a supremely wise teacher. Luke makes a point of this throughout his gospel, beginning with Jesus’ growth in wisdom.43 Above all, the New Testament frequently reaches for categories drawn from the discourse of wisdom to make sense of the incarnation of Christ.44 If Jesus Christ is identified with God’s wisdom, then by implication the words of the New Testament that narrate Christ’s life, death, and resurrection and that reflect paradigmatically on its significance must also be understood as wise. 2.2 Learning the Language of Scripture If wisdom is a skill, scriptural wisdom cannot be reduced to the content that its words communicate. To learn wisdom from the scriptures is instead to acquire that skill by which the scriptures speak, including the capacity to produce the sort of linguistic acts of which the scriptures are most immediately exemplars. This is why, in its linguistic aspect, interpreting scripture is the task of acquiring wisdom by learning its language—learning how to understand its words in the mouths of others and how to speak its words oneself, and conforming all one’s linguistic practices to its wise example. The idea that scriptural interpretation is a practice of learning the language of scripture has close affinities with George’s Lindbeck’s “intratextual” account of scriptural interpretation. Lindbeck argues that scripture constitutes paradigmatic samples of Christian language, “exemplary or normative instantiations of [its] semiotic [code].” Theologians test the church’s language by asking about “the degree to which descriptions [of Christian language] correspond to 40 41 42 43 44

2 Tim 3:15. 2 Pet 3:15–16. 1 Cor 1:21. Luke 2:52. 1 Cor 1:24, Heb 1:3, John 1:1.

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the semiotic universe paradigmatically encoded in holy writ,” to “the religious language of whose use the text is a paradigmatic instance.”45 Many critics of Lindbeck have interpreted him as treating Christian language as a closed and static semiotic system that stands over and against the world.46 His tendency to take for granted the “scriptural world” or “domain of meaning” that “absorbs the world” arguably points in this direction.47 By understanding scriptural language as samples of an ideal wisdom, however, it is possible to develop a more open and dynamic account. Wise language is only actual in its textual paradigms and in a community insofar as it speaks according to rules that might have produced the utterances written in those texts. Lindbeck’s scriptural “domain of meaning” should be understood as a regulative ideal of wise speech that Christians seek over time rather than as the present possession of any given community or individual. Instead of saying that “scripture absorbs the world,” then, I prefer to speak in more dynamic terms of learning the language of scripture.48 The notion of a wise language of scripture provides a framework for understanding the unity of a canon of writings as the unity proper to a skill. The unity of the canon does not entail that every text communicates a single coherent worldview or that a single consistent set of timeless propositions may be derived from the scriptures. It entails only that every word of scripture has its appropriate time and place and that the appropriateness of each text is consistent with the possibility of using every other text appropriately. This is why Origen could compare the scriptures to a musical instrument and their interpreter to a skilled performer who knows the right time and place to use each text.49 Particular scriptural texts exemplify how the wise speak in some particular relation or context, giving material content to Christian wisdom by displaying different kinds of appropriate performance: accumulated human wisdom (Proverbs or Ecclesiastes), just legislation (legal portions of the Torah), faithful prayer (Psalms and portions of the prophets), authoritative apostolic witness (New Testament epistles), divine speech (portions of the Pentateuch and gospels), and so on. Different uses of these texts will be appropriate depending on 45 George Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1984), 102. 46 A powerful version of this argument can be found in Mary McClintock Fulkerson, Changing the Subject: Women’s Discourses and Feminist Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994), 158–64. 47 Lindbeck, Nature of Doctrine, 103. 48 For a similar critique of Lindbeck, see Rowan Williams, “Postmodern Theology and the Judgement of the World,” in Theology After Liberalism: A Reader, edited by John Webster and George P. Schner (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2000), 321–334. 49 Philocalia 6.2, and see my discussion above, 73–4.

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the kind of linguistic performance they are taken to exemplify, and they may be appropriately used in different ways in many different contexts. Wisdom is one though it speaks differently in different contexts. Our ordinary linguistic competence involves a capacity to interpret the meaning of a wide range of utterances by an intuitive grasp of the norms implicit in our shared linguistic practice. Learning the language of scripture involves testing and correcting these linguistic intuitions against the paradigmatic samples of scripture, proceeding from the ordinary language of common sense to the extraordinary language of scripture. Even in a language in which we are generally competent, our linguistic intuitions may fail us when we encounter something unfamiliar: an unknown word, say, or a puzzling response from a conversation partner. That we are often able nonetheless to work out what someone intended to communicate is a reminder that using and learning to use ordinary language are interrelated activities. When competent speakers draw inferences about the meaning of unfamiliar words or forms of speech, they in effect learn two things from the same utterance: what a speaker intended to communicate and the rules implicit in the way she communicated. Without the capacity to infer both, we could never learn a language in the first place. This framework suggests an answer to the classic question whether Christians should read the Bible “like any other book.” This question asks about the skills that readers should bring to bear upon the interpretation of the scriptures, skills that, in scriptural wisdom communities, must themselves be formed in part through the process of scriptural interpretation. The answer to the question is that students begin reading scripture like any other text but end by reading it according to the distinctive wisdom it contains. Learners begin with common sense linguistic skills that will tend to be generally applicable. Everyone begins learning from a posture that is relatively indeterminate and common: as a child learning to speak for the first time, or as a convert and catechumen, who must become “like a child” to learn a new way of speaking. Interpretive counsel aimed at such beginners will tend to be general—basic linguistic skills, openness to learning, etc. Such counsel is a “general” hermeneutic, or more precisely a vague hermeneutic, one that applies only prima facie and “for the most part.” As a beginning of inquiry it must remain open to correction in the course of learning. But the wisdom towards which interpretation tends is determinate and particular, and it includes the linguistic skills used in the act of interpretation. Scriptural interpretation reshapes not only the content that one believes but also the skills and procedures one uses in interpretation. A Christian theology must be, among other things, a proposal about how to interpret scripture,

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whose adequacy to the texts of scripture must be tested by actually interpreting them accordingly. In that sense, one cannot read scripture like any other book. A Christian theology will include a “special” hermeneutic, or more precisely a determinate hermeneutic appropriate to a more advanced stage of learning. 2.3 Interpretation and Crisis Learning the language of scripture takes different forms depending on how much wisdom a reader believes her own community possesses. In what we might call “hermeneutic ordinary time,” while individual children and catechumens must learn to speak the language of scripture from scratch, the community as a whole—especially as embodied in teachers, saints, and other speakers the student recognizes as authoritative—is generally confident in its ability to understand the texts of scripture according to the rules embodied in the community’s linguistic practices. Such a community operates with a relatively untroubled traditionalism. It reads scripture in a highly tradition-specific way, determining the uses of scripture by appeal to linguistic intuitions whose wisdom the community does not in general have reason to doubt. Competent speakers know how to integrate the words of scripture into their linguistic practices and their linguistic intuitions are a reliable guide to their meaning. In general, these speakers experience the scriptures as immediately and transparently saying what is familiar, what they ought to say. If now and then they encounter difficult texts that demand “interpretation,” they approach these texts confidently as an opportunity to deepen and expand their scriptural linguistic competence, i.e. to grow wiser.50 Academic theology can consist primarily of description of the grammar of the community’s actual linguistic practice.51 A philosopher under these circumstances can operate in the relatively confident spirit of a commentator making explicit what is said in the words of scripture in accordance with authoritative teachers. Early Christian appeals to the rule of faith often exhibit just this sort of confidence. As a summary of what the church believes, it was useful both as a curriculum that authoritative teachers could draw on in training new 50 What Scheleiermacher calls a “special hermeneutics” reflects a community that needs no more than ad hoc interpretive guidance about particular difficult texts (Friedrich Schleiermacher, Hermeneutics: The Handwritten Manuscripts, ed. Heinz Kimmerle, trans. James Duke and Jack Forstman (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997), 109–10. 51 In ordinary time, we might say, theology should be methodologically Schleiermachean. Cf. Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, ed. H. R. MacKintosh and J. S. Stewart (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1928), esp. §16, “Dogmatic propositions are doctrines of the descriptively didactic type …” and §19, “Dogmatic Theology is the science which systematizes the doctrine prevalent in a Christian Church at a given time.”

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catechumens and as a criterion for distinguishing the received wisdom of the community from rival accounts of wisdom, such as those offered by Marcionite and gnostic dualists. At the same time, it is important not to overstate the normative importance of the regula fidei itself, particularly for those already formed in the community’s wisdom. Precisely because the rule of faith summarizes the community’s linguistic intuitions, those who have internalized the community’s language should not need to draw on it as an external authority to settle questions about what is or is not appropriate to say, including how best to understand the words of scripture. It should be sufficient for them to consult their own intuitions and understanding. (Conversely, if a teacher can assent to a community’s doctrines only on the grounds of external authority, this may already be a sign that such a teacher is alienated from the wisdom of the community she would teach.) This is why early Christian theologians, though often citing the rule of faith to situate their theological writings within the community’s wisdom, generally do not appeal to the rule of faith as an authority to settle particular interpretive or theological disputes. Having a feel for the inner logic of Christian language, they could display its logic in their own speech without appealing to the rule of faith as an external constraint on interpretation. There is even a sense in which the scriptures themselves rightly become superfluous during ordinary time. A community relatively confident in the adequacy of its own language will tend to experience the meaning of the scriptures as coinciding with their own linguistic intuitions. Scripture will seem to say what is familiar and to confirm what the community already knows. This is why Irenaeus can praise the wisdom of those who keep the faith even without the scriptures. Those who, in the absence of written documents, have believed this faith, are barbarians, so far as regards our language; but as regards doctrine, manner, and tenor of life, they are, because of faith, very wise indeed; and they do please God, ordering their conversation in all righteousness, chastity, and wisdom. If any one were to preach to these men the inventions of the heretics, speaking to them in their own language, they would at once stop their ears, and flee as far off as possible, not enduring even to listen to the blasphemous address.52

52 Irenaeus, AH 3.4.2, trans. Roberts and Rambaut.

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Where scripture can be adequately understood according to the wise linguistic intuitions of believers, those intuitions themselves are a reliable guide concerning what to say, even in the absence of the scriptures. By contrast, in what we might call “hermeneutic crisis time,” a community in whole or in part comes to lack confidence in its ability to speak the language of scripture. Readers find that the scriptures all too frequently do not conform to the norms implicit in their intuitive linguistic judgments, that the scriptures frequently say what (it seems) they ought not to say. Again and again the scriptures seem foolish—evidently false, or morally troubling, or otherwise offensive. Readers find that not only this or that text of scripture, but rather scripture as a whole, seems to demand “interpretation.”53 For such a community, theology cannot only be descriptive but must also be critical, correcting the deep linguistic intuitions of the community in light of its scriptural paradigms and the challenges of its present context.54 The philosopher must be not only a commentator who develops the wisdom of a tradition but also a prophet who corrects it. We might take Origen as a model of a philosopher who discerns that his community is in the midst of such a hermeneutic crisis. Although he aims to retain continuity with the church’s linguistic practices as expressed in the rule of faith, he finds the community’s actual linguistic intuitions all too unreliable. For one thing, the rule of faith is full of gaps, failing to give guidance about how Christians ought to speak on a range of new and pressing topics.55 Moreover, the linguistic intuitions of ordinary Christians seem to contradict both common sense and the patterns of speech displayed in the scriptures, especially the Old Testament.56 The scriptures exemplify a language that his community does not reliably speak. It is no coincidence that among early Christian teachers

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Such a community may then feel the need for what Schleiermacher calls a “general hermeneutic” that assumes “misunderstanding happens as a matter of course” (Hermeneutics, 110). As a universal rule, this seems like an expression of that Cartesian anxiety that pragmatists characteristically try to defuse; but it is a fruitful description of the demands facing an interpreter in the context of a hermeneutic crisis. For an account of the logic of repair during this sort of crisis, see Ochs, Logic of Scripture, 260–8. 54 In crisis time, we might say, theology should be methodologically Barthian. Cf. Karl Barth’s definition of dogmatics as “the scientific self-examination of the Christian Church with respect to the content of its distinctive talk about God” (Church Dogmatics I.1: The Doctrine of the Word of God, trans. G. W. Bromiley, ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (New York: T & T Clark, 2004), §1). 55 PA preface.3. Cf. Trigg, The Bible and Philosophy, 130–2. 56 PA 4.8–9.

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it is Origen, rather than Irenaeus, who devotes himself zealously to the study of the scriptures in their entirety in order to learn their language anew.57 Part of what such a crisis involves is that the actual linguistic intuitions of a community have become unreliable—not necessarily in the sense that everything its members say stands in need of correction, but rather in the sense that they are not able to discern reliably what aspect of their language needs correction. In this context, attempts to control interpretive chaos by appeal to a traditional norm like the regula fidei or by developing a theologically robust special hermeneutic are liable to be question-begging. To fix doctrinal principles or traditional guidelines in advance means presuming to possess the very wisdom that, in a state of crisis, one has come to believe one lacks. To impose such rules would amount to an arbitrary dogmatism or defensive traditionalism that leaves unaddressed the community’s deeper crisis of intelligibility. A scriptural wisdom tradition in the midst of a hermeneutic crisis needs rather to unlearn its language, retracing it to an earlier and hence more vague stage of learning. For such a community to seek wisdom requires returning to a Socratic posture of relative ignorance, or saying with Job in his time of crisis: But where shall wisdom be found? And where is the place of understanding? Mortals do not know the way to it, and it is not found in the land of the living.58 By unlearning its wisdom, a community retraces it back to its roots in common sense. It then must somehow reconstruct a more reliable language without guidance from human authorities, except perhaps the tentative and charismatic authority of an inspired philosopher like Origen. The philosophical interpreter in a time of crisis requires parrhesia, the bold willingness to speak without fear of reprisal (described in Chapter 5), even 57

Cf. Joseph Lienhard, “Origen and the Crisis of the Old Testament in the Early Church,” Pro Ecclesia 9, no. 3 (2000): 355–66. Thus when Peter Ochs says, “Biblical texts whose plain sense appears to present or correct explicit rules of everyday practice are to be read only as vehicles for delivering the Bible’s corrective rules; the Bible’s plain sense guides everyday practices only when it reinforces common sense (however much that common sense has been reshaped by previous biblical legislations),” we may refer his words to the kind of ordinary time represented by Irenaeus. When he goes on to say, “The Bible speaks as holy writ, however, only where its plain sense is troubled, for this trouble, alone, is a sign that the attentive reader’s world of everyday practice is troubled in a way that biblical legislation, alone, will repair,” we may refer his words to the kind of hermeneutic crisis represented by Origen (Logic of Scripture, 320). 58 Job 28:12.

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when speaking within her own community. She must be willing to say what appears wise to her, even though to her community, judging by the very linguistic intuitions that need correction, her words may seem unintelligible, wrong, or offensive. (She may also need to exercise reserve if her corrective words are likely to be misunderstood and abused by her hearers.) Of course, in exercising parrhesia she risks more than mere opposition from her hearers. She also takes the more fundamental risk of saying what is false or inappropriate in itself, and hence of falling short of the wisdom that she desires to possess. The scriptural philosopher under conditions of crisis must flirt with heresy. Origen’s reputation as a heretic is to be expected. At the same time, if a scriptural community is not to abandon its commitment to the inherited wisdom of its scriptures—which is, to be sure, a potentially reasonable option during a hermeneutic crisis—in reconstructing its language it must also return anew to the scriptures as its deepest exemplars of supremely appropriate speech. Indeed, scripture becomes indispensable precisely in a time of crisis as an authoritative source for correcting the community’s language. It is especially during a hermeneutic crisis that wise scriptural interpretation requires the kind of exegesis exemplified by Origen, which seeks to reconstruct the extraordinary language of scripture in order to correct the ordinary language of the community. From a human perspective, this reconstructive process must take the form of open-ended inquiry rather than tradition-bound pedagogy, even if from the divine perspective it is providentially guided by the pedagogy of the Logos. 3

Sapiential Interpretation

3.1 The Problem of Writing I have argued that in a scriptural wisdom tradition, scriptures are writings that possess authority because they exemplify and impart wisdom to individuals or communities that lack it. It is now necessary to face the philosophical problem of writing: it is by no means evident that any written text is capable of teaching wisdom to those who lack it. Because a string of words is finite and relatively fixed, words can be more or less adequately committed to writing.59 But wisdom is an infinite capacity to say the right thing at the right 59 This is an implication of the foundational text of modern information theory, C. E. Shannon, “A Mathematical Theory of Communication,” Bell System Technical Journal 27, no. 3 (July 1948): 379–423. His noisy-channel coding theorem shows that it is possible to transmit discrete (finite) data through a channel with negligible error. This possibility lies

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time in the right way for the right reason. The interpreter who would learn wisdom from a written text thus faces the task of learning a dynamic and infinite capacity from a static and finite object. The locus classicus for this problem is Plato’s Phaedrus. Socrates points out that writing (and its correlate, reading aloud) involves the identical repetition of finite content, what we would now call the graphemes or phonemes that constitute the elements of words. The word Plato uses for “writing” here is γραφή, the same word “scripture” that the New Testament will use with reference to the Old Testament and that Origen will use with reference to the whole Christian canon. As Socrates says, written words “always signify only one and the same thing.”60 Writing is like an “image” (εἴδωλον), which signifies iconically by virtue of some homology between the form of the written page and its meaning.61 The problem is that the finite form of the written word encourages readers to assume that understanding takes the same finite form. Writing cannot encode what Phaedrus calls, with evocative Biblical overtones, “the living and ensouled discourse [λόγον] of the one who knows.”62 As practices of identical repetition, writing and reading both symbolize and seem to cause passive habits of mind that divorce language from rationality. For this reason, writing can impart at best “an apparent, not a true wisdom.”63 I want to highlight three aspects of this separation between language and rationality. First, because writing encodes words while abstracting from most of the information that would be determined in a concrete speech situation, writing tends to break the connection between words and pragmatic norms. Socrates puts the point this way: “once something is written down, every discourse is bandied about everywhere, the same to those who understand as to those it does not concern, and it does not know to whom it should speak and to whom it should not.”64 Written words are the same irrespective of their context, which cultivates a habit of mind that neglects to ask which words are appropriate for which context. In short, writing encourages readers to assume that sentences can be understood adequately in abstraction from their possible contexts of utterance. Let us call this the performative problem of scripture. at the root of alphabetic writing systems, which use a finite number of written graphemes to more or less adequately encode a finite number of significant phonemes. 60 Phaedrus 275d: “ἕν τι σημαίνει μόνον ταὐτὸν ἀεί.” 61 Plato is working towards a broadly structuralist theory of writing, developed differently in the Cratylus and then by Aristotle (see my discussion above, 40–45). 62 Phaedrus 276a: “τὸν τοῦ εἰδότος λόγον λέγεις ζῶντα καὶ ἔμψυχον.” 63 275a: “σοφίας… δόξαν, οὐκ ἀλήθειαν.” 64 275d–e: “ ὅταν δὲ ἅπαξ γραφῇ, κυλινδεῖται μὲν πανταχοῦ πᾶς λόγος ὁμοίως παρὰ τοῖς ἐπαΐουσιν, ὡς δ᾽ αὕτως παρ᾽ οἷς οὐδὲν προσήκει, καὶ οὐκ ἐπίσταται λέγειν οἷς δεῖ γε καὶ μή.”

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Second, written words can be read and transmitted independently of their subject matter. This encourages readers to assume that the content of those words is also “clear” (σαφὲς) and “secure” (βέβαιον)—as clear and secure, that is, as the finite characters encoded on the page.65 Such texts would not require explication through dialectical inquiry that would clarify the meaning of a text in relation to its subject matter and examine its truth. Instead, the apparent clarity of writing invites readers to focus on questions of origin and authorship, what Plato calls a concern with the “father of the letters.”66 Thus Socrates rebukes Phaedrus: “But to you it perhaps makes a difference who is speaking and where he comes from. Should you not consider only this: whether it is as he says it, or whether it is otherwise?”67 In short, writing trains readers to think of sentences as delivering content of themselves, independent of any inquiry into their reasons and their relation to the subject matter in question. Let us call this the dialectical problem of scripture. Third, writing signifies the same thing irrespective of the knowledge or skill of the reader (except the finite skill of decoding written symbols). The written word cannot impart a techne, a practical skill or expertise; and so it cannot offer the rational justification for its actions that was part of the emerging Hellenic ideal of techne.68 The written word is “unable to defend or help itself.”69 While the expert should be able to offer arguments in response to an indefinite variety of criticisms, or revise her practice in response to criticism, writing can encode no more than a finite amount of information. By comparison to discourse alive in the soul and responsive to ongoing challenges, writing is dead and impotent. Writing thus encourages readers to settle for finite and static conceptual structures analogous to the verbal structures delivered by writing rather than seeking an infinite and dynamic capacity for rational discourse. Let us call this the logical problem of scripture. As critics like Galen and Celsus pressed already in the second century, the problem of writing seems even more acute in the case of the Jewish and Christian scriptures, purportedly divinely authoritative texts written in an often apodictic style and memorized word for word.70 If writing cultivates a passive, uncritical, and irrational “belief” that precludes the formation of 65 276c. 66 275a: “πατὴρ ὢν γραμμάτων.” 67 275c: “σοὶ δ᾽ ἴσως διαφέρει τίς ὁ λέγων καὶ ποδαπός. οὐ γὰρ ἐκεῖνο μόνον σκοπεῖς, εἴτε οὕτως εἴτε ἄλλως ἔχει;” 68 See my earlier discussion of techne above, 159. 69 275e: “αὐτὸς γὰρ οὔτ᾽ ἀμύνασθαι οὔτε βοηθῆσαι δυνατὸς αὑτῷ.” 70 Cf. Robert Wilken, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them, 2nd edn. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 72–77.

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wisdom, attributing divine authority to such a text seems only to exacerbate the problem. 3.2 Literal Interpretation (Kata Lexin) The apparent irrationality of writing is the best context for understanding the Origenist critique of those who interpret scripture “literally.” The word “literal” is a slippery one,71 but I use the word here as equivalent to Origen’s phrase “kata lexin” (and related expressions), which means an interpretation “according to the words” or “at face value.”72 Origen uses the phrase “kata lexin” in one sense to refer descriptively to interpretations that take the words of a text at face value, according to the meaning that they bear immediately for the reader without engaging actively in inquiry. In this sense, kata lexin is the sense that a text automatically provokes for a person reading or hearing them read aloud. For a reader who knows the relevant linguistic conventions, a text will almost always mean something for them in this immediate way. In this sense, the phrase kata lexin is purely descriptive, roughly corresponding to the semantics of a text in abstraction from its pragmatics. It is the dimension of meaning that grammarians, experts in the rules of linguistic convention, are generally equipped to determine without appeal to philosophical wisdom. Origen tends to begin by addressing the face value meaning of the text (sometimes upholding it, sometimes criticizing it) before moving on to other interpretations in part because, when the scriptures are read liturgically, their meaning kata lexin hangs in the air. But kata lexin can also refer to a normative hermeneutic policy of taking texts at face value, the hermeneutic principle that one ought to understand words according to the meaning they seem to have immediately or automatically, without examination or rational inquiry.73 When used in this sense, Origen certainly intended the phrase to be pejorative. For to adopt a policy of reading without examination is to make a virtue of separating language from rationality, the very separation that the Phaedrus suggests is a basic threat to the formation of wisdom. It is to abstract the words of scripture from the logos that constitutes their ultimate content and norm. This way of formulating 71 Cf. Kathryn E. Tanner, “Theology and the Plain Sense,” in Scriptural Authority and Narrative Interpretation, ed. Garrett Green (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987), 59–78. 72 See my earlier discussion of kata lexin above, 91–98. 73 To reject this policy one need not adopt its contrary—never take words at face value— but only its contradictory—do not always take words at face value. The latter rather than the former is Origen’s hermeneutic policy, which is why (contra some interpreters of Origen) there is not the slightest contradiction between rejecting a policy of reading kata lexin and defending particular interpretations kata lexin.

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the problem also suggests why Origen believed the stakes were so high for Christians. To read scripture without logos is tantamount to separating scripture from Christ, the Logos and Wisdom of God. In particular, the kata lexin reader falls prey to each of the problems identified by Plato in the Phaedrus. First, she tends to assume that the words of scripture can be understood without asking about the context of their appropriate use (the performative problem). Such a reader imagines that the text says the same thing in every context, as though meaning were a function of the words alone irrespective of their pragmatic context of use; or she imagines that her own context is the only relevant one, without inquiring into the possible appropriate function of its words in other contexts. Among “the many” in Origen’s audience, this often took the form of a wooden literalism in which the meaning of a text was reduced to its mere semantics, ignoring possible pragmatic effects that depend on the relation between an utterance and a context of utterance. By uncritically neglecting the relation between words and their possible appropriate contexts of use, such readers arbitrarily assume that the text has the logical force of a universal proposition, one whose content applies in the same way in every context. Second, the kata lexin reader tends to assume that the words of scripture can be understood without rational inquiry into their subject matter (the dialectical problem). She imagines that the text’s meaning is immediately given with the words themselves, as though words were merely instruments for communicating finite information or producing finite effects. She ignores the possibility that the meaning of words might be deepened through experience or inquiry into their subject matter. By uncritically neglecting the functional relations between sentences and their possible subject matters, such readers arbitrarily assume that texts always have a determinate meaning or function, as though they had no vagueness requiring further inquiry to clarify. Third, the kata lexin reader tends to assume that the words of scripture can be understood without any transformation of her own rational capacities (the logical problem). By taking the text at face value, a reader trusts the adequacy of her present linguistic intuitions about a text’s meaning without submitting to criticism the rational capacities of which her intuitions are an index. She thus assumes that her rational capacities are already adequate to the interpretive task, whether because she imagines understanding as a wholly passive process, or because she assumes that ordinary linguistic competence and common sense rationality are adequate for understanding language, or because she believes that she is privileged to possess the necessary capacities without any need for transformation. By uncritically neglecting the relation between words and their own rational capacities, such readers arbitrarily assume that

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the meaning of a text is self-evident, as though what it says should be obvious irrespective of one’s rational formation. For the kata lexin reader, then, the words of scripture appear to speak universally, determinately, and evidently.74 There appears to be no gap between written words and their appropriate contexts, functions, and the skills necessary for understanding them, as though these were simply given with the words. By making these assumptions, the kata lexin reader loses sight of her responsibility to pose normative questions in the course of her interpretive activity—questions about which uses are appropriate, in what sense, and on what grounds. To be sure, the reader kata lexin also implicitly commits herself to normative judgments, but because she behaves as though the text imposes these judgments on her, she does not take responsibility for them. She too judges, but she judges rashly, assuming without sufficient reason that how things appear to her is how they are. Because she judges rashly, her interpretive judgments are ultimately arbitrary. Origen’s category of kata lexin thus implies a theory of hermeneutic arbitrariness. Arbitrariness is not at root a hermeneutic error that might be corrected by proposing a better theory of meaning or understanding. Rather, it is a logical error that must be corrected by changing our habits of reasoning. Philosophical readers avoid arbitrariness by making the exercise and formation of rationality integral to every stage of the interpretive process. The answer to the question of how writing can form wisdom, then, is that it cannot do so on its own, but only in relation to rational capacities that a reader already possesses. One way writing may do so is by adopting a poetic form that provokes readers to exercise their reason. Despite his critique of writing in the Phaedrus, Plato presumably thought it possible to produce written texts that to some extent disrupt the irrational tendencies of writing through their dialogical form, which encourages readers to actively pursue wisdom for themselves. Origen discerned an analogous potential in the form of the Christian scriptures, prototypically in texts from the biblical wisdom tradition. Unlike most modern forms of philosophic or academic writing, these ancient texts are vague by design, leaving open the pragmatic contexts of their application, their implications, and the rational rules for their right use. Moreover, they are, as it were, clearly vague—their linguistic form makes it especially difficult (though 74 These are, of course, the logical features of geometrical reasoning, which suggests that there is a link between geometrical thinking and the kind of rationality encouraged by writing. See, for example, Eric A. Havelock, Preface to Plato (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1963). It is not insignificant that the Greek word γραφή, “writing,” can also denote a drawn or painted image.

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not impossible) for readers to persist in taking them at face value. Origen’s regular practice of showing that in particular cases, the face value meaning of a text is intolerably irrational—so evidently irrational that it should provoke even the most committedly passive reader to the activity of inquiry—aims to undermine the rashness of kata lexin readers.75 3.3 Sapiential Interpretation What I call sapiential interpretation is the active process of seeking wisdom by learning the language of scripture. While it approaches scripture as a source of authority by virtue of its supreme wisdom, it avoids the arbitrariness of kata lexin interpretation by putting the reader’s rationality into play at every stage of the interpretive process—sometimes in the relatively confident way appropriate in hermeneutic ordinary time, and sometimes in the troubled way appropriate to a time of hermeneutic crisis. In this section, I offer a description of sapiential interpretation, including some suggestions about how sapiential interpretation might integrate contemporary critical methods with the pursuit of wisdom. I also give an account of how a common sense reader might learn how to practice it through the scriptures themselves.76 Origen argued that the book of Proverbs in particular contains instruction in logic, the theory of λόγος as both reason and language. So too I suggest that the book of Proverbs (and more generally, texts from the wisdom tradition) are an apt starting point for those beginning to seek wisdom from the scriptures. For the book of Proverbs constitutes a point of transition from everyday common sense to scriptural wisdom. Explicitly concerned with teaching “the beginning of wisdom,”77 Proverbs addresses not only the wise but also those just beginning to seek wisdom.78 If it contains depths of spiritual wisdom, it also reiterates the kinds of everyday wisdom that a reasonably prudent and observant person might acquire through ordinary experience. As Origen noted, the book of Proverbs also promises to teach readers how to use and interpret the language of the wise, focusing on mastering wise words in the prototypical form of the single-sentence proverb.79 75

Again, this does not necessarily entail rejecting face value interpretations in every case, as though the rational or spiritual reader is one who is awake to a hidden reality behind appearances. Sometimes things are as they seem, even after careful consideration. The point is simply that it is one thing to provide a reason for believing that in particular cases appearances can be trusted, quite another to adopt a policy of judging by appearances. 76 As a map of a learning process, it is also a kind of argument: see my discussion above. 77 Prov 1:7, 4:7, 9:10. 78 Prov 1:4–5. 79 See my earlier discussion of Origen and logic above, 66–72.

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Drawing on Biblical wisdom texts and guided by Origen’s example, we may identify four kinds of skill that the scriptures may provoke readers to learn, corresponding to four aspects of the sapiential interpretation of scripture. First, the wise reader must memorize the very words (λέξις) of scripture as the verbal condition for learning how to use them. Second, since it is only sentences uttered in particular contexts that have determinate meanings, she must learn to contextualize the words of scripture within possible contexts in which they may appropriately be used as utterances (λέγειν), what I call the performative aspect of interpretation. Third, she must learn to understand the meaning or function (λεκτόν) expressed through these utterances by explicating the inferential relations in which an utterance stands to others, what I call the explicative aspect of interpretation (corresponding to the dialectical problem above). Finally, she must develop wisdom itself in its aspect as a linguistic skill (λόγος), the general discursive capacity to make judgments about the right use and function of language, what I call the logical aspect of interpretation. We may then reformulate the doctrine of appropriateness to make these relations explicit. To say that every sentence of scripture may be used appropriately is to say that every sentence of scripture may be used in an appropriate context, with an appropriate function, according to the appropriate rational norms. Sapiential interpretation is inquiry into the appropriate uses of the sentences of scripture in these performative, explicative, and logical aspects, making progressively more explicit the competence of one who can speak with the wisdom of scripture. Interpreting scripture is thus not primarily a movement from one sense or level of meaning to another—say, from a literal to a spiritual meaning, as Origen is often understood to teach. Rather, its deeper movement is from lexis to logos, from the words of scripture to the wisdom they embody.80 3.3.1 The Verbal Condition Wise interpretation of scripture presupposes mastery of the verbal aspect of scripture—the words themselves irrespective of their meaning or content. It approaches scripture as a prototypical answer to the question, “what words may be said?” Although the reading and memorization of the words of scripture will naturally provoke some meaning kata lexin in the minds of readers, the words (the λέξις) of scripture are distinct from the understanding they provoke. A proverb, for example, is a poetic form of words whose content is inseparable from its form. Because mastering the wisdom that a proverb teaches requires learning its form as well as its content, interpreting a proverb must 80

See my earlier discussion of the movement from lexis to logos in Chapter 2.

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begin with the humble task of memorization. The book of Proverbs frequently exhorts readers to memorize its words, often figuring memorization as writing: My child, do not forget my teaching, but let your heart keep my commandments … Bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart.81 Get wisdom, get insight; do not forget, nor turn away from the words of my mouth.82 My child, keep my words and store up my commandments with you … Bind them on your fingers, write them on the tablet of your heart.83 Incline your ear and listen to the words of the sages … It is good that you store them inside you, And that all of them be constantly on your lips.84 So too if interpretation of scripture is a matter of learning to use its words appropriately, this activity is impossible without first acquiring the capacity to perform the words themselves. Taking seriously the wisdom of the scriptures requires the church regularly to read them, prototypically by reading them aloud in the liturgical context. To ensure the ongoing possibility of doing so, the community also commits itself to faithfully copying the written words of scripture, initially through the relevant scribal practices and later, through other information technologies like the printing press or the internet. It also requires critical disciplines like textual criticism, by which the community makes judgments about how to correct transmission errors and according to which criteria. Above all, individuals must not only hear the scriptures or read them for themselves, but they must also memorize them, for one cannot use words that one does not remember. In doing so, a person writes on her heart words whose possible appropriate uses she may not yet understand, in hope that they will deepen for her as she grows in understanding. To memorize scripture is, as it were, to acquire a seed of wisdom without yet knowing when and where to plant it so that it will bear fruit. Conversely, where communities neglect 81 82 83 84

Prov 3:1, 3b. Prov 4:5. Prov 7:1, 3. Prov 22:17a, 18 (NJPS).

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scriptural memorization, it is an index of a tendency to separate the pursuit of wisdom from the use of language. As we have seen, for one who knows a language, to recite or hear a text read immediately provokes a certain understanding of its meaning kata lexin. When the words of scripture are very near, on one’s lips and in one’s heart, Origen’s problem of how to integrate those words into one’s own linguistic competence becomes difficult to avoid. However, since the function of words depends on the relation between the words and the conditions of their use, the words of scripture are never superfluous, never superseded by the meaning of the text or the community’s rules of interpretation. If sapiential interpretation offers a way of overcoming the temptations to kata lexin reading, it does not do so by bypassing the fixity of words, as Origenist allegory is often understood to do. Those advanced in wisdom may come to reject what the words of scripture seem to mean at face value, learn to use them in new ways, and even say new things at which the scriptures only hint. Nevertheless, even the wisest reader can never outgrow the words of scripture themselves, and she always remains indebted to the labor of the scribes, printers, and teachers by which she came to learn them.85 Sapiential interpretation overcomes “literalism” without rejecting the “letter” of scripture. 3.3.2 Performative Interpretation The performative aspect of scriptural interpretation asks about the relation between a sentence and its possible contexts of use. Calling into question the 85

This sapiential approach explains both the importance of textual criticism and the apparently low-key attitude with which someone like Origen could approach many textual variants. Textual criticism matters because wisdom includes a capacity for producing exactly the right words, not just the “meanings” behind those words. Once wise words have been identified, it behooves learners to transmit them exactly. Moreover, the modern science of textual criticism has shown that scribes tend to bring the texts they are transmitting into accordance with their own linguistic intuitions. The text critical principle of preferring the lectio difficilior is thus not only useful for reconstructing earlier versions of a text by reverse engineering the process of transmission. It is also a method for producing more difficult readings, which is to say, readings that tend to contradict the expectations of the church’s common sense. For this reason, text criticism can be an instrument for undermining spurious conventional wisdoms and recovering words that may provoke deeper insights. At the same time, if the task of interpretation is learning to speak wisely, one can frequently take a low-key attitude towards most textual variants. Most variants involve words that can plausibly be used appropriately whatever reading one prefers; indeed, often one variant can be inferred from the other. (For example, it is rarely appropriate to call God “God” when it would not also be appropriate to call him “Lord,” though one might express something different in doing so). Under such circumstances, one may happily interpret both readings.

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assumption of the reader kata lexin that words function universally, in the same way irrespective of context, performative interpretation asks the question, “when may these words be said?” Answering this question requires determining conditions for the possible appropriate uses of scriptural sentences, returning the written words of scripture to some real or hypothetical context as concrete speech acts, moving from λέξις to λέγειν. Understanding a proverb, for example, requires learning to use it rightly by determining the circumstances in which its words do and do not apply. Common sense is familiar with this characteristic of proverbs in ordinary life—to understand them often involves learning to utter them in appropriate contexts. It is also a habit of scripture to call attention to it: How good is a word in its time!86 The mind of the wise makes their speech judicious …87 A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver.88 The legs of a disabled person hang limp; so does a proverb in the mouth of a fool.89 For example, despite its grammatical form, a proverb like “the lamp of the wicked is extinguished”90 is not necessarily making a universal assertion, as though it meant that the lamp of the wicked is always extinguished. Rather, the reader is assigned the task of determining which wicked people will have their lamp extinguished, when, and in what sense. Often one expresses such determinations by actually uttering the proverb itself on the appropriate occasion. Knowing full well that some wicked people live to old age, one might nevertheless say of a wicked person whose crimes led to her own destruction, “the lamp of the wicked is extinguished.” Even if one does not literally speak the proverb on some occasion, understanding it involves being able to make context-specific judgments about the contexts in which it might appropriately be used or applied. Its logical form is thus better understood as involving an

86 87 88 89 90

Prov 15:23 (NJPS). Prov 16:23. Prov 25:11. Prov 26:7. Prov 13:9 (NJPS).

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existential quantifier, as though it said, “the lamp of the wicked is (in some sense) extinguished” or “the lamp of the wicked is sometimes extinguished.” Interpretive disputes within a wisdom tradition often focus not on the truth of a sentence per se but rather on its domain of legitimate applicability. Job’s friends, for example, rashly assume that “the lamp of the wicked is extinguished” applies in Job’s case, inferring that his suffering should be understood as a sign of a hidden sin.91 Job does not reject the appropriateness of this proverb in general; but confident of his own innocence and increasingly aware of other innocent sufferers, he criticizes the tendency of his friends to apply it too broadly. “How often,” he asks, “is the lamp of the wicked extinguished?”92 The question is not whether this proverb is true, but in what contexts and in what sense. So too interpreting scripture in general requires determining conditions for the possible appropriate uses of its sentences. By determining appropriate pragmatic conditions under which the words of scripture may be used, the reader returns the written words of scripture to the life of orality. Identifying this pragmatic dimension of Origen’s exegesis has been a central concern of this book. We have observed his tendency to propose circumstances in which scriptural sentences may appropriately be said, often encouraged by a deictic term such as “this” or “now” by which a sentence includes its context of utterance in its meaning, and particularly his use of the category of persona to distinguish the appropriate speaker of a text from its author. Though Origen’s primary interest was in the pedagogical question of what kind of person one has to be to truly speak scriptural words, performative interpretation might also include questions about the appropriate cultural or eschatological contexts of a text, not least questions about how Christian readers may continue to use the Hebrew scriptures in their own context. It would include attempts to show that a text is prophetic—that is, that certain words of scripture are most appropriately used of events that occurred after the text was written. It would also include questions about the appropriate use of scriptural texts in prayer, liturgy, and song. One of the basic challenges facing interpreters at this level is a lack of imagination for the variety of possible contexts in which words might be appropriate. Since wisdom is a capacity to speak rightly in every possible context, a community is wiser that knows how those in other historical or cultural contexts, or those in contexts of oppression, ought to speak. For this reason, performative

91 Job 18:5. 92 Job 21:17.

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interpretation may be aided by the historical work of reconstructing the contexts of others. A form critic, for example, might reconstruct the early liturgical uses of a psalm, drawing out the reasons for those users’ normative judgment that that psalm can appropriately be used in such and such a liturgical context, which might in turn inform the liturgical judgments of contemporary readers. Similarly, a source critic might reconstruct the earliest uses of some of the words in a scriptural text, tracing the process by which those words came to be used in a new text, describing the redactor’s editorial process, and explicating the rationale for judgments that old words may appropriately be used in this new context. The wise reader need not assume that the only appropriate meaning of words is their meaning when first committed to writing, but she may benefit from the source critic’s work as a source of insight into their possible appropriate use in different contexts. Indeed, it would be arbitrary for readers to insist in advance, as some theological interpreters do, that scriptural texts must always be read as unities. Wise readers might judge that some texts may most profitably be used as fragments, such as a psalm, a proverb, or the pericope adulterae. Similarly, liberationist hermeneutics help cultivate attention to the voices and experiences of those who have been silenced or oppressed, making hitherto neglected wisdom available to the community in general. There is a kind of foolishness that results from a blindness to contexts besides one’s own and to the insights available there, to which, one suspects, the privileged are particularly susceptible. A community cannot pursue wisdom while neglecting the insights of women, people of color, and others whose voices have been marginalized. A critical hermeneutics can also help wise readers develop more refined tools for analyzing possible pragmatic uses of language, asking questions, for example, about social position or the relative power of language users. Performative interpretation might ask questions like: Who are the most appropriate speakers of Isaiah 53? To whom is the Torah addressed? When is one ready to read the Song of Songs? When should one pray, “Our Father, who art in heaven …”? Are there occasions when “turn the other cheek” does not apply? To what extent may Christians take Paul’s words to the Romans as though they were addressed to them as well? If Jesus spoke some of his teachings to the crowds and some to his disciples, should his words be applied to different groups today? Is it time yet to say, “God is going to do something that you would not believe even if I told you?”

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Is there a historical context in which “wives, submit to your husbands” would be appropriate? At what point in the liturgy should one say the Sanctus? “Today, if you hear his voice”—which day is “today”? In itself the performative dimension is primarily the activity of making explicit one’s existing linguistic intuitions. Because linguistic intuitions (and the wisdom of which they are an index) include judgments not only about one’s actual context, but also about imaginatively reconstructed possible contexts, pragmatic interpretation is not only focused on how texts apply to one’s own context, but is also a practice of imagining alternative possible contexts. Because one’s own imagination is limited, making these kinds of discoveries is greatly facilitated by reading in community with others, who have experienced different contexts and whose imaginations are differently limited. (Wise readers read in community with others who are different from them.) Where readers already possess some practical sensitivity to context in their own linguistic practice, performative interpretation can help them bring this wisdom to bear on the scriptures, making it explicit. But this practice of imagining alternative contexts can also powerfully disrupt the tendency of many readers to read kata lexin because imagination already involves discovery and learning. By privileging her own context, the kata lexin reader neglects implicit intuitions she may already have about cases that she has never explicitly considered. To imagine words in relation to a new possible context is to come to know one’s own intuitions better. In itself, performative interpretation remains conservative, situating the words of scripture within the horizon of a community’s existing beliefs. Nor is it arbitrary to answer questions about the appropriate circumstances under which words may be said by appealing to one’s own linguistic intuitions. Indeed, all linguistic practice presupposes the possibility of making intuitive judgments about the use of our words. It would become arbitrary, however, if one regarded one’s existing linguistic intuitions as infallible. Sapiential readers, by contrast, remain open to the possibility that their own intuitions will need correction. “The wise, when rebuked, will love you. Give instruction to the wise, and they will become wiser still.”93 But the correction of fallible linguistic intuitions requires a deeper intervention than is possible at the level of performative interpretation, beginning with more intentional inquiry into the function of scriptural language. 93

Prov 9:8b–9a.

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3.3.3 Explicative Interpretation The explicative aspect of scriptural interpretation asks about the possible functions of a sentence. Calling into question the assumption of the reader kata lexin that words have fully determinate conventional meanings, apart from the rational inquiry of readers into their subject matter, explicative inquiry asks in general the question, “how may these words be said?” Answering this question requires clarifying what is said in using the sentences of scripture by drawing out their implications, moving from λέγειν to λεκτόν. To the extent that the meaning of a sentence may depend on its subject matter, explicative interpretation has the effect of deepening scriptural language, as experience, learning, and insight give wise readers a more refined and context-specific mastery of the various implications of its words. In using a proverb, for example, one supposes that something is expressed—a teaching, perhaps, or a rule of action. But proverbs characteristically use language in a dense and compressed way that leaves their implications implicit. Beyond simply referring proverbs to appropriate occasions of use, understanding them also requires being able to explicate the implications of those uses. They invite us, as Origen said, “to expand by fuller teachings the things that are said briefly and in enigmatic ways.”94 In short, proverbs give rise to commentary. It is a habit of scripture to call attention to this quality of wise discourse: The tongue of the wise produces much knowledge.95 The words of the mouth are deep waters; the fountain of wisdom is a gushing stream.96 When an intelligent person hears a wise saying, He praises it and adds to it.97 A proverb does not generate commentary merely as a function of its words or their conventional meaning, however. Rather, proverbs invite their users to consider more carefully the world in which one must speak and act and thereby to refine one’s judgment. That which follows from the appropriateness of using a proverb in a particular context—its “meaning”—depends, in

94 95 96 97

CCt Prol.3, trans. Lawson. Prov 15:2 (NJPS). Prov 18:4. Sir 21:15a.

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part, on truths about the world. This is why interpreting proverbs requires not merely grammatical or cultural expertise, but wisdom and experience. My child, if you accept my words and treasure up my commandments within you, making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding …98 All [the words of wisdom] are straightforward to the intelligent man, And right to those who have attained knowledge.99 Go to the ant, you lazybones; consider its ways, and be wise.100 Recall my earlier discussion of Prov 27:6, “wounds from a friend can be trusted.”101 Because of its pragmatic aspect, we know that despite its grammatical form, this proverb is not predicating “can be trusted” of all “wounds from a friend.” Rather, it asserts that some wounds from some friends can be trusted in some respect while assigning the reader the task of clarifying when and how. While the contours of this task are conditioned by the language of the proverb, its full meaning—which wounds from which friends are trustworthy, and in what sense—is not determined merely by linguistic or cultural conventions. It is also contingent upon whether a wounding friend will in fact, prove trustworthy. One has not fully understood this proverb until one has acquired the capacity to discern this complex class of occasions. Doing so also invites a renewed attention to the language of the proverb. Its predicates are highly indeterminate—what exactly is a friend? What kind of trust should one give to a friend who wounds? The “wounds” it speaks of may also be metaphorical, so the reader must reflect on what activity might be analogous to wounds in the relevant way (in the first instance, presumably, speaking painful words). Explicating the full implications of using this proverb appropriately thus requires attending to the complex relation between its words and the world. It is precisely because its implications depend on the world, not just the words of the text, that reflecting on a proverb can impart wisdom.102 98 99 100 101 102

Prov 2:1–2. Prov 8:9 (NJPS). Prov 6:6. Above, 167–68. Cf. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 355–61.

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So too interpreting scripture in general requires determining the function of its sentences and clarifying their implications. Explication is the primary work of traditional commentary. It includes questions dealt with in traditional grammar, including the rules of conventional language and the relevant background information necessary to understand a text. Wise readers recognize, however, that since the function of a sentence depends on the relation between its words and its context of use, the formal structure of a scriptural sentence does not in itself determine its function. Rather, the explication of a sentence is relative to its pragmatics. Only relative to an appropriate occasion of use can one determine, for example, what kind of speech act one might use an utterance to perform (asserting, praying, promising, commanding, etc.), or what possible figures of speech one may use (irony, allegory, synecdoche, etc.), or its relevant genre conventions (narrative, law, proverb, drama, etc.). Explication also involves clarifying the mode of relation between words and subject matter—whether they are used corporeally or spiritually; whether they refer to the subject in itself or in some aspect by virtue of its relation to something else; whether they are used strictly or loosely; and so on. The function of a sentence conditions what inferences one may draw from it. Origen showed, for example, that a sentence in the subjunctive mood could be understood as a prayer or a command, which imply different relations of authority between speaker and hearer. To determine that a sentence is ironic licenses inferences that in some way subvert the face value meaning of a sentence. To determine that a sentence is part of a fictional narrative means that the speaker is not committed to the actual existence of its referents, though it may have some other kind of truth. To the extent that Origen’s use of allegory is appropriate, it is because a sentence of scripture that may be applied to one thing (say, the temple in Jerusalem) in a literal sense may also be appropriately said of an analogous thing (say, the Christian community) in a figurative sense. One of the basic challenges facing readers at this level is to develop their grasp of the possible ways of using language while expanding their knowledge of the things about which scripture speaks, and this task may be aided by modern critical methods. The historian can support the explicative task by reconstructing patterns of linguistic usage in different historical contexts. She might, for example, describe the inferences that an author did or would have intended her readers to draw (the “authorial intention”); or she might ask about readers themselves, whether those envisioned by the author or those in some later context, clarifying the use they made, or would have made, of some text in their own context. She might also inquire into the subject matter of a text, not in itself but rather as it would have been understood by those in the historical and cultural contexts with which she is concerned. While none of

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these reconstructions in themselves determine appropriate uses of language exemplary for wise readers, they may prove to be appropriate when examined by the sapiential reader. In particular, words tend to be wise because they originate in the wisdom of human authors, and so for a community seeking the wisdom in certain writings, it is generally fruitful to inquire about what an author intended in committing those words to writing. Similarly, a liberationist reader might identify ways of using language in general, and hence perhaps ways of using the language of scripture, that are particularly appropriate in contexts of oppression. She might, for example, identify political strategies for using language to speak truth to power, poetic ways of using language to disrupt and expand a community’s existing language, techniques of writing between the lines to obscure one’s meaning in contexts of persecution, and so on. She might also be especially alert to the ways words of scripture may be abused to effect violence or entrench unjust power. Oppressed groups may also have deeper insights into the subject matter of the Bible, particularly as the Bible itself takes a special interest in the life and welfare of the oppressed—the so-called “hermeneutical privilege of the oppressed.”103 For example, it may be difficult to learn from the book of Job how to speak rightly about God in the face of suffering without having experienced poverty or living in solidarity with the poor.104 Explicative interpretation might ask questions like: Since righteous people clearly suffer, what might it mean to say “I have never seen a righteous person forsaken”? How might the experience of being almost sacrificed by Abraham have shaped Isaac’s future feelings and actions? What could the word “love” mean when said of Amnon just before raping Tamar? Why does scripture appropriate the name “spirit” to the person of the Holy Spirit if the divine nature common to the three persons is spiritual? Why does the gospel characteristically take the form of a narrative? In what sense should Christians wish for “burning coals” on the heads of those to whom they show mercy?

103 Cf. Lee Cormie, “The Hermeneutical Privilege of the Oppressed: Liberation Theologies, Biblical Faith, and Marxist Sociology of Knowledge,” Proceedings of the Catholic Theological Society of America 33 (1978): 155–181. 104 Thus Gustavo Gutierrez, On Job: God-Talk and the Suffering of the Innocent (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1987).

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What should Christians learn from the story of Adam and Eve in light of current evolutionary science? What inferences should Christians draw from the command “Remember the Sabbath” about their own practices of resting? Can Christians use the word “Israel” of the church, and what would be the implications of doing so for the church’s relationship with contemporary Jews? Explicative interpretation remains focused on making the wisdom of an individual or community explicit by displaying its capacity to account for particular words of scripture, like Socratic dialectic in its “maieutic” use. Explicative inferences are thus relative to a reader’s convictions about how it is appropriate to speak in general. Although the explicative interpreter may be very free in drawing inferences from particular texts of scripture, the content of these inferences cannot pose a direct and fundamental challenge to the wisdom of a tradition, since one invariably appeals to that wisdom when drawing an inference. (Only if scripture delivered content to passive readers without any exercise of their rationality—that is, only if scripture functioned as the kata lexin reader imagines—could it deliver clear content that directly challenges a tradition without also presupposing some of that tradition’s existing wisdom.) For this reason, readers from different communities may offer different interpretations presupposing their own distinctive wisdom, between which it is impossible to adjudicate at the level of explicative interpretation. Jews and Christians, drawing on their respective traditions, may interpret the same text in incommensurable ways, and likewise Protestants and Catholics, conservatives and progressives, and so on. But as Socratic dialectic also had a skeptical or “elenchic” use, demonstrating someone’s lack of wisdom by their failure to coherently explicate their own meaning, so explication can have the negative function of displaying the ignorance of a reader or community by leading them into contradiction or perplexity. In this way, it may occasion a radical but indirect change in a tradition’s wisdom. Provoking change in this way may be dangerous to the exegete, requiring the exercise of parrhesia, the willingness to speak the truth frankly without fear of reprisal. To be sure, there is a kind of ersatz radicalism exemplified by a kata lexin reader like Marcion, whose tendency to take scripture at face value leads him to discern contradictions between texts throughout the emerging canon. Origen saw that the contradictions Marcion discerned were superficial, however, because they would dissolve for wise readers with a wider set of linguistic skills and a deeper understanding of Christian teaching. A Marcion may speak boldly, but his boldness is predicated on rashness.

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By contrast, the wise reader is slow to discern contradictions. Unlike the kata lexin reader, she considers the words of scripture in every possible context and every possible function. If such a reader nevertheless finds that she does not understand how to use a sentence of scripture appropriately—in a manner consistent with other sentences of scripture and with her other beliefs— then this reader’s experience of apparent contradiction is a reliable index of a much deeper failure of wisdom, whether that of the scriptures or that of the reader (together with her community). If the problem lies with the scriptures themselves, then it could be reasonable to adopt the liberal strategy of denying the appropriateness of at least some of the scriptures, or the more radical strategy of rejecting altogether the wisdom tradition that attributes authority to those scriptures. But one cannot be sure that the problem lies with the scriptures without examining the alternative possibility that the meaning of scripture seems problematic because the wisdom of the reader and her community needs correction. This is the possibility that comes to the fore in what I call logical interpretation. 3.3.4 Logical Interpretation The logical aspect of interpretation asks about the relation between scriptural sentences and the discursive capacities of an interpreter or interpreting community. Calling into question the assumption of the reader kata lexin that the meaning of scripture will be evident to any reader regardless of her rational linguistic capacities, logical interpretation asks in general the question “why may these words be said?” and by implication, “what other words may be said on similar grounds?” Ultimately it leads to second-order reflection on the relation between scripture and the norms of the community’s rational and linguistic practices, which includes both descriptive inquiry into the actual logic or grammar of Christian discourse and critical proposals about how these norms should be corrected.105 Answering these kinds of question requires asking in 105 Compare Hans Frei’s definition of academic theology as “the Christian community’s second-order appraisal of its own language and actions under a norm or norms internal to the community itself,” which appraisal has two aspects. “The first is descriptive: an endeavor to articulate the ‘grammar,’ or ‘internal logic,’ of first-order Christian statements. The second is critical, an endeavor to judge any given articulation of Christian language for its success or failure in adhering to the acknowledged norm or norms governing Christian use of language” (Hans Frei, Types of Christian Theology, ed. George Hunsinger and William C. Placher (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 2). I would note, however, that though wisdom is an “internal” norm of the Christian community, it is the sort of norm that invites relations with those “outside” the community. Similarly, to say that a vague norm like wisdom is “acknowledged” by the community does not entail that any particular determination of that norm is beyond criticism.

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a more general way about the relation between the words of scripture and the discursive capacities of readers, moving from λεκτόν to λόγος. Only from this vantage point can a community explicate the deep logic of its own wisdom in the form of doctrines that describe the basic grammar of its language; and only from this vantage point can a community draw on its scriptures to reform its deepest convictions and fundamental rules. Critical attention to communal norms may nevertheless constitute a form of scriptural interpretation because texts may form readers as well as communicate information to them. The book of Proverbs, for example, does not require that readers possess in advance the wisdom necessary to use them correctly. Rather, it teaches rational readers how to use them well. Some proverbs communicate the nature of wisdom as part of their meaning. It is a habit of scripture, for example, to call attention to the paradoxical situation of a good learner, who lacks wisdom and yet possesses the wisdom of being open to correction. Let the wise also hear and gain in learning and the discerning acquire skill.106 Do not be wise in your own eyes …107 Rebuke a wise man, and he will grow wiser …108 But proverbs may also function as a pedagogical instrument of transformation by provoking readers to acquire wisdom for themselves, particularly through the device of flouting norms that appear rational to the reader. As we saw in Chapter 3, by means of implicature a speaker may communicate something beyond the semantic meaning of her words by speaking in a way that flouts her hearer’s expectations about the rational norms governing a communicative exchange. If the hearer nevertheless supposes that the speaker is speaking rationally, the effect is to provoke her to draw an inference that makes sense of the speaker’s apparent violation of rational norms. Such an inference could be a hypothesis that the rational norms which the reader assumes are governing that very communicative exchange should be corrected. Through this mechanism, a text may provoke the reader to correct her assumptions about what wisdom is. 106 Prov 1:5. 107 Prov 3:7a. 108 Prov 9:9a.

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Proverbs 26:4–5 contains a particularly clear example of a text that may perform this pedagogical function. Do not answer fools according to their folly, or you will be a fool yourself. Answer fools according to their folly, or they will be wise in their own eyes.109 The overt contradiction between these two proverbs apparently violates the common sense principle of non-contradiction. A reader might therefore infer that at least one of these proverbs must be false. However, if she persists in believing that both have some wisdom to teach, she might instead seek some way of dissolving the initial appearance of contradiction by revising her assumptions about how these proverbs function. She might do so by recognizing their pragmatic character: that each has its own appropriate occasion of use. In some contexts, it is appropriate to answer a fool according to his folly, but in other contexts, it is not. By juxtaposing two sentences whose grammatical form seems contradictory, then, this written text not only teaches these particular proverbs, but also provokes a general inference concerning the rules of wise speech: sometimes wisdom requires learning to use sentences that in their surface grammar appear contradictory. This passage thus has the pedagogical potential to transform its readers’ capacity to read and understand. So too logical interpretation in general involves describing and correcting the discursive capacities of an individual or community in response to provocation by the scriptures. It might, for example, clarify various skills necessary for interpretation, including knowledge of the relevant linguistic conventions, the common sense capacities implicit in everyday uses of language, and the various virtues necessary for acquiring wisdom, guided as Origen was by scriptural texts that speak about wisdom. It would also include the description of a community’s grammar and the formulation of its deepest rules of speech as communal doctrines. But logical interpretation also involves the corrective use of scripture to provoke readers and communities to become wiser. It would include the speculative process I described in Chapter 4—the empirical reconstruction of patterns of scriptural language (what Origen called “habits of scripture”) and the creative invention of new scripture-like ways of speaking. It would also include attempts to correct the community’s habits of interpretation by showing that new ways of reading are more consistent with scripture’s own habits of using language. 109 Prov 26:4–5.

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Modern critical methods are most directly relevant to the logical interpretation of scripture, since it is precisely their consciousness that the function of a text depends on communal norms and practices that makes these methods “critical” in the modern sense. By developing methods for reconstructing the discursive practices of a particular community, critical methods can aid a community in the descriptive task of articulating its own linguistic intuitions and the operative grammar of its language. As George Lindbeck and others have argued, formulating descriptive rules implicitly governing a religious community’s linguistic practices is the task of doctrine, an activity which can be aided by academic disciplines that make the rules of linguistic practices explicit, such as ethnography, linguistics, and ordinary language philosophy. Historical critical methods can also play a corrective function, equipping communities to relearn their language by reconstructing the norms that governed other readers in other times and places. For example, the New Perspective on Paul has helped the contemporary church speak in a manner more consistent with the Jewish wisdom that informed the earliest Christians. Similarly, critical liberationist practices make it possible to think more expansively about the ways that communal norms may need correction by showing, for example, how power or violence can distort rationality and linguistic practice. Liberationist hermeneutics are pedagogical like Origen’s exegesis, in that they aim to correct the habits of individuals, but they are also, far more overtly than Origen, political in that they aim to change communal norms and practices as well. Logical interpretation might ask questions like: How does the humble person speak and interpret the speech of others? If “the words of the wise are like a goad,” how ought we to use them? What methods of argumentation does Paul model in his epistles? How does Jesus set an example for the interpretation of the Old Testament? What kinds of legal reasoning are modeled in the scriptures? How should we formulate scripture’s implicit rule for using divine and human predicates with respect to Jesus Christ? “There is no Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female”—how should we speak to continue this pattern? How do unjust social structures lead to abuses of scriptural language? Why has scripture failed to be an instrument of life in our community? We have seen that performative and explicative interpretation in themselves tend to take for granted the adequacy of the community’s wisdom, since performative interpretation appeals to linguistic intuition and explicative

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interpretation appeals to the community’s existing rules of reasoning and using language. And to be sure, it is possible to engage in logical interpretation from a standpoint of relative confidence in one’s communal norms (i.e. during hermeneutic ordinary time), particularly in its descriptive aspect. During a time of crisis, however, which is a sign of some deep failure in a community’s norms, logical interpretation becomes urgent for wise readers, particularly in its corrective aspect. Only through the logical dimension of interpretation can one’s own deepest intuitions, or those of one’s community, be corrected when they cannot account for the language of a scriptural text in relation to what one believes about the world. To avoid arbitrariness, however, the correction of wisdom cannot take the form of a direct appeal to a clear intuition, such as an intuition about the evident meaning of a scriptural text or a clear moral intuition. Such appeals presuppose the adequacy of the intuitions to which one is appealing, and hence of the wisdom of which those intuitions are indices. To trust some individual’s intuitive judgments is to attribute wisdom to the normative practices by which she makes them and to the learning process by which those practices were formed. The appropriateness of such judgments is conditioned by the wisdom available within that community. To trust one’s intuition about what is clear or evident, then, is to trust that one’s community continues to possess wisdom. (This is as true of a progressive’s sense that a text obviously violates principles of justice as it is of a conservative’s appeal to the “plain” meaning of scripture.) To the extent that one offers one’s present intuitions as a reliable guide to the correction of a community’s norms, the problems with those norms cannot run particularly deep. One’s criticisms are reformational rather than revolutionary, appropriate to what I have called hermeneutic ordinary time. The more radical the problem, however, the less reliable are the intuitions of a community’s members about how to correct it, since intuitions presuppose the very normative practices that need correction. For this reason, scripture is most radically transformative not through texts we believe we understand, but rather through those we know we do not understand. The deepest corrections must come by way of the sharpest difficulties.110 This does not mean insisting on whatever problematic meaning a text seems to bear, as the kata lexin reader might, which is another way of taking one’s present interpretive norms as already reliable. Rather, textual difficulty may provoke readers to transform their rationality by imagining new normative practices, given not as universal, 110 On scripture bringing repair by way of interpretive difficulty, see Ochs, Logic of Scripture, 319.

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clear, self-evident principles but as hypotheses, appropriate to problems arising in one’s own context, whose implications are vague and as yet undetermined, and in need of testing by their capacity to make the text and the world more intelligible. The most radical forms of learning are inherently mysterious, involving an anarchic element of creativity, imagination, even play. If the Holy Spirit is the living God making things new, it is precisely in the face of textual difficulties that readers experience the Holy Spirit most directly. As Origen recognized, it is when the meaning of the text at face value (kata lexin) breaks down and a novel linguistic proposal emerges that genuinely spiritual interpretation takes place. 4

Towards a Sapiential Theology of Scripture

The account of scripture sketched here is too formal and minimal to adequately guide the church’s scriptural interpretation. It speaks of wisdom only vaguely, using categories that hover between the philosophical and the theological. This vagueness is a consequence of my judgment that the Christian church remains in a situation of hermeneutic crisis that requires retracing the process of learning our language from its vague beginning in common sense. In this context, I fear that a theologically robust account of scripture could not avoid the arbitrariness that results from judging rashly. Nevertheless, following Origen’s lead, it is possible to anticipate the form a more determinate sapiential Christian theology of scripture might take. I have argued that wisdom in its linguistic aspect is the regulative ideal of a capacity for wise linguistic performance. For Christians, however, wisdom is not merely a regulative ideal. Rather, Wisdom is actual as the second person of the Trinity, the Logos who became incarnate in Jesus Christ. A sapiential theology of scripture would further determine the nature of wisdom in light of its identity with Jesus Christ. To say formally that the scriptures are wise entails materially that the words of scripture are words through which the divine Wisdom speaks. This is true most directly of the words of Jesus of Nazareth. But in all the words recorded in scripture, insofar as they are wise, the Logos himself speaks. Each text of scripture exemplifies some way of speaking rightly in a particular context, displaying how the Logos embodied in Christ can be refracted “in many and various ways,”111 in many and various circumstances. This takes place in such a way that the identity of the individuals who speak is not undermined. Christ 111 Heb 1:1.

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speaks through the wise because the wise conform to the pattern of Christ; but wisdom brings life, and so it preserves the integrity of the individuals who possess it. Indeed, because the one Word of God is both truly human and truly divine, the scriptures that conform to this Word may contain both God’s words to Israel and the church—“thus says the Lord”—and exemplary words of his people to God and to others. To learn the language of scripture is to learn both what it means to be God and what it means to be human. The scriptures are sometimes the words of God and sometimes the words of the church (sometimes, perhaps, both), but they are always the words of Christ. The scriptures through which the Logos speaks participate in the relations of the Trinity. Scriptural words have their source in God the Father, and are thus supremely authoritative writings. They have their content in Christ the Logos and are thus supremely rational writings. They have their quickening power in the Holy Spirit and are thus supremely inspired writings. As authoritative, even when the scriptures speak in a human voice, they do so in a manner authorized by God. As rational, these words say what is true and appropriate, as these ideals are exemplified by Christ. As inspired, these words bring spiritual life to those who hear and understand them. Moreover the activity of these three is inseparable in scripture. Scripture’s authority would be mere domination (heteronomy) without conforming to wisdom and bringing life. Scripture’s rationality would be in vain without its divine origin and spiritual power. Scripture’s inspiration would be empty enthusiasm without rationality rooted in divine authority. Only by reading the Bible spiritually, rationally, and obediently can one read it as scripture. It is because these three operate as one in the scriptures that scripture is an instrument of God’s gracious pedagogy, his activity in graciously transforming Christians according to the divine pattern of Christ. The divine pedagogy has an incarnational structure: the Logos became human so that we might become divine, “participants of the divine nature” by grace.112 Scripture is an incarnational site for this gracious transformation of readers—for their sanctification and ultimately their deification. Even for finite human beings a written text may carry our words and express our intention without our bodily presence, though we would not ordinarily consider a written text to be part of its author’s body. But because the Word of God actively speaks in the scriptures and makes himself present in them, the scriptures themselves may be called “the body of the Logos.” As a corporeal object through which Christ is present in language, the scriptures are a sacramental object that realizes the incarnation for its readers. 112 2 Pet 1:4.

Origenism as Pragmatism

293

Origen saw that pedagogical formation is a fruitful controlling metaphor for the gracious dynamic of incarnation and deification at the heart of the gospel. The wise teacher acts graciously and without envy, seeking equality and reciprocity by freely empowering her student to possess the same capacities that she possesses. This logic applies foremost to God, who in Christ generously shares the fullness of His nature with us, becoming what we are so that we may acquire the Wisdom that He is. In this aspect Christian faith takes the form of discipleship and the church may be figured as a school for fools and sinners. The humility of the child as a learner exemplifies the posture of the disciple.113 To understand the scriptures is to form the linguistic competence they embody and, by doing so, to conform to the pattern of the Logos. For this reason, acquiring wisdom by learning the language of scripture culminates in the deification of our discourse. This deification is an act of divine grace, not a natural capacity of human reason. Through the instrument of scripture, the Spirit graciously imparts the divine nature of the Logos to disciples—learners—of Jesus Christ. Yet the Logos’ redemptive pedagogy neither obliterates human rationality nor leaves it as it was. Rather, it transforms ordinary human rationality and, in transforming it, perfects it. “Grace does not destroy nature, but perfects it.”114 By their participation in divine Wisdom, the very words of the saints take on the character of the words of scripture in their Trinitarian relations. The words of wise disciples too come forth authoritatively from God, according to the wise pattern of Jesus Christ, by the life-giving power of the Spirit. Christians should aspire by grace to speak with authority like apostles, the wisdom of sages, and the inspiration of prophets—although speaking in this deified way is only possible as the culmination of a life of discipleship. To the extent that this kind of speech sounds strange or even dangerous to those who are not disciples of Christ, it may require exercising parrhesia. Since the language of scripture is the paradigm of Christian language in general, its uniqueness cannot lie in the distinctive quality of its words. Rather, scripture is unique because of its authoritative function in the church as norma normans non normata. In these words alone among human words, the church trusts that it finds language that is appropriate, a trust it acts upon by giving the scriptures a privileged role in its liturgical and study practices. But God’s grace may work in others what it worked in the authors of scripture. Perhaps no Christian reader has so identified his whole person with the scriptures as Origen, and perhaps in no Christian has the fire of the Word burned so intensely—a fire that heals, but also destroys. There is a reason that 113 Matt 18:4. 114 Thomas Aquinas, ST I.1.8 ad 2.

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communities more settled in their orthodoxies should look suspiciously on such a man. But if our problem is lingering arbitrariness and the physical and spiritual violence wrought by unreason and misology; if we lack the capacity to imagine rules of reasoning adequate to the task of interpreting scripture in our time; then we need a man like Origen to model the rigorous pursuit of a deeper and more daring rationality.

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Index of Citations Bible Genesis 1:16–18 66–67 2:23 49 3:1 246 5:24 222 9:6 130 35:17 215 41:33–40 247 Exodus 3:14 51, 54 14:13 215 20:20 215 21:15 246 31:3 248 32:13 225 33:11 228 Leviticus 26:13 227 Numbers 22:9 57 Deuteronomy 4:6 258 6:4 58 8:3 178 10:12–13 234 19:15 188 Joshua 10:12 110 1 Kings 4:29–34 247 2 Kings 2:11–12 222 6:16–17 143 24:14–16 98 25:9 98

1 Chronicles 16:41–2

126, 127

2 Chronicles 20:14 97 Job

18:5 278 21:17 278 27:6 (LXX) 228, 229 27:9–10 228 28:12 266

Psalms (LXX) 1:1 47 15:7 108, 114 18:2 226 21:23 239 31:1b–2 184 31:6 185 31:8 185 36:1 171 36:4 178 36:7a 102 36:14 204, 206 36:14a 101 36:15 92 36:18 188–90 36:21 82 36:21a 84 36:25b 141–42, 144 41:4 221 45:5 199 50:6 237 67:1 173–75 67:2–4 232 67:5 217 67:6 201–2 73:1–2 97 73:4a 96 73:6b 97 73:7 219 73:14 138–39 73:17a 223–24 76:2 127

318 76:11 104 76:13 220 76:17 109 77:1 147–50 77:2 149, 183 77:39a 99 77:44–51 151 77:46b 219 77:54 120–22 77:65 106–7 80:6 217 80:11 90 101:27–28 240 104:28–36 151 108:18a 178 115:14 47 116:13a 48 117:6 215 Proverbs 1:4 246, 252 1:4–5 273 1:5 287 1:6 71 1:7 273 1:8 257 1:12 227 1:16 205–6 1:21 215 2:1–2 282 3:1 275 3:3b 275 3:7a 287 3:13–15 248 4:5 275 4:7 246, 273 6:6 282 7:1 275 7:3 275 8:5 246 8:6–8 250 8:9 282 8:12 246 9:8b-9a 280 9:9a 287 9:10 273 13:9 277

Index of Citations 14:12 252 15:2 281 15:23 277 16:23 277 16:23 LXX 113 18:4 281 22:17a 275 22:18 275 25:11 277 26:4–5 288 26:7 277 27:6 168, 282 Isaiah 1:2 210 1:18 LXX 238 2:3 148–49 3:14 237 40:20 248 44:25 259 61:1 210 65:17 223 Daniel 1:18–20 247 Hosea 10:12 148–49 12:4 65 Micah 3:6 240 Baruch 4:1 259 Sirach 1:26 150 21:15a 281 Wisdom 5:1 227 Matthew 5:2–3 149 5:5 223 5:14 225 6:9–10 174

319

Index of Citations 7:8 235 7:21 102, 198 11:29 99 13:3 94 13:35 149, 183 18:3 223 18:4 293 20:30 123 27:25 97 Mark 1:22 230 1:27 230 4:9 230 8:32 228 Luke 1:63 121 1:76 130 2:41–52 131 2:48 131 2:49 131 2:52 260 11:10 234 18:1–8 243 19:16 83 22:27 235 John 1:1 260 1:1–2 123 1:7 62 1:9 203 1:12 62 1:19 62 3:18 100 4:14 178, 199 5:39 188 6:55 139 7:13 228 7:26 228 8:39 198 10:24 228 13:4–5 235 13:4–10 236 13:36 226 16:25 228, 229 21:24 199

Romans 3:4 238 5:20 201 7:14 197 8:17 235 8:26 88 13:14 178 15:15 215 15:18 215 1 Corinthians 1:21 260 1:24 260 1:25 241 2:4 61 2:13 90, 108, 188 4:4 229 4:11–12 144 6:10 106, 231 8:5–6 58 9:4–5 230, 242 9:20–22 241 10:4 178 10:6 121 10:11 121 11:1 113, 126, 242 14:14 88 14:37–8 189 15:28 217 15:41 225 2 Corinthians 4:7 64 4:16 182 5:6–8 215 5:21 171 6:7 205–6 7:4 227 10:1–2 215 10:8 230 10:12 215 11:3 202–3 11:6 64 11:14 202–3 11:21 215 12:10 101, 144, 219 13:3 83, 87, 99, 101, 110, 209–10, 220 13:10 230

320 Galatians 4:9 189 Ephesians 3:12 228 5:25–33 203 6:9 234 6:11 179 6:11–18 204 6:13–17 182 6:15 206 6:19 227, 229 Philippians 1:14 215 3:15 99 4:13 99 Colossians 1:18 221 2:15 189 3:12 179 4:1 233–34 2 Timothy 2:19 189 3:15 260 Hebrews 1:1 291 1:3 261 2:12 239 3:6 228 4:14 226 6:6 188 10:19 228 11:37–8 141–42, 144 12:22 120–22 13:6 215 2 Peter 1:4 292 3:15–16 260 1 John 2:18 203 2:22 203 3:21 228

Index of Citations 3:21–22 229, 236 4:33 203 2 John 7 203 Greco-Roman Sources Aetius Iatricorum 1.preface.2 70 Alexander On Aristotle’s Topics 1.8–14 28 Alcinous De Doctrina Platonis (Handbook of Platonism) 7.1 70 Ammonius On Aristotle’s De interpretatione 34.20 41 17.24–8 39 Anonymous On Barbarism and Solecism 290.1–2 61 290.9 61 Apollonius Dyscolus Syntax 1.60 165 2.11–12 116 2.135.12–136.4 117 3.4.8 99 3.6 165 3.9 165

321

Index of Citations Aristotle

Democritus

De interpretatione 16a 38

Fragments 26 42

Nicomachean Ethics 1140b31–1141a8 33, 249 1141a 248 1144a24–36 246

Diogenes Laertius

Posterior Analytics 71b8–33 33 Rhetoric 1355b26–35 63 1356b10–15 185 Topics 100a29 33 Cicero De fato 8.15 36

Vitae Philosophorum (Lives of Eminent Philosophers) 2.4–5 255 3.63 248 7.39–41 70 7.40 70 7.41 70 7.41–4 33 7.43–44 34, 77 7.55–57 78 7.58 52 7.62 40 7.65 32 7.66–68 80 7.83 33 7.89 31 7.180 33 7.200 49

De finibus (On Ends) 3.3 32

Diomedes

De inventione 1.7 192

Ars Grammatica 1.426.18 162

De Oratore (On the Orator) 2.2 63

Elias

Cornutus Theologiae Graecae compendium 5.5.4–7 44 5.5.7–9 44 21.41.2–3 44 Demetrius De elocutione 53 129

Commentary on the Categories 118.18–19 249 Epictetus Discourses 1.6.15 31 1.22.1–3 252 1.22.9–10 252 3.1.25 31 3.16.15 31

322 Galen De captionibus penes dictionem (On Fallacies due to Language) 4.106.16–18 40

Index of Citations Subfiguratio empirica (Outline of Empiricism) 4.50–1 160 Heraclitus

De differentiis pulsuum (On the Difference of Pulses) 3.4 79 10 28

Homeric Problems 5.15 85

De libris propriis (On My Own Books) 16.124.4 158

Sententiae 53 80

De methodo medendi (On the Method of Healing) 11.79 161

Phoebammon

De naturalibus facultatibus (On the Natural Faculties) 2.178–80 161 De ordine librorum (On the Order of My Own Books) 80.11–81.2 158 De placitis Hippocratis et Platonis (On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato) 206.13–15 44 De sanitate (On Hygiene) 6.126 161 De sectis (On the Sects) 1.1 160 1.11 160 1.13–15 160 2 59 2.3 161 2.4 162 2.5 162 De usu partium (On the Function of Parts of the Body) 11.14 158

Menander

De figuris 3.65.27–66.5 129 Plato Cratylus 399c 44 439d 52 Gorgias 459b-c 63 Phaedrus 275a 268–69 275c 269 275d 268 275d–e 268 275e 269 276a 268 276c 269 Republic 509c–511e 249 517a 255 598de 63 Theaetetus 174a 255

323

Index of Citations Plutarch Stoic self-contradictions 1035a 70 De communibus notitiis (On Common Notions) 1060a 252 1060e8 31 Polybius On Barbarism and Solecism 283.1–5 61 285.10–11 61 Priscian Institutes XVII 57, 142.17–20

117

Proclus

1.9.1 162 8.6.44–45 85 9.1.9 67 Scholia Scholia to Dionysius Thrax 12.5–7 162 14.11 163 115.15 63 118.11 193 135.7–9 162 169.29 163 309.6–36 164 309.9 163 446.35–447.28 61 454.14–16 164 454.20–21 163 471.24 165 Scholia to Homer’s Iliad 1.216 164

Commentary on the Cratylus 7.18–20 41 16.23–27 52 16.25–26 52

Seneca

Pseudo-Herodian

Sextus Empiricus

On Solecism and Barbarism 309.1–5 61 311.5–7 195

Adversos Mathematicos (Against the Learned) 1.7.248 35 1.76 193 1.79 35 1.81–3 194 1.92–93 34, 162 1.176 193, 195 1.176–240 163, 170 1.197 164 1.199 163 1.200–8 163, 195 1.206 164 1.252 162 8.11–12 37 8.125–6 36 8.184 123–24 8.185 124

Pseudo-Plutarch De Homero 26 129 Quintilian Institutio Oratoria 1.4.2 162 1.4.4–5 63 1.5.5 165 1.5.40 165 1.6.3 165 1.6.12 165

Epistles 88.3 162

324 Pyrrhoniae hypotyposes (Outline of Pyrrhonism) 1.146 170 2.81–3 32 Simplicius

Index of Citations JEWISH SOURCES Philo De agricultura §14 70

In Aristotelis categorias commentarium (On Aristotle’s Categories) 222.30–3 56 395.11–12 130

Legum allegoriarum 2.15 62

Stephanus

Babylonian Talmud Bava Batra 16b Berakhot 32a Rosh Hashanah 17b

On Aristotle’s De Interpretatione 9.7–10 41 9.13 41 Strabo Geographica 1.2.3 35 2.76.11–12 31 Syrianus On Aristotle’s Metaphysics 28.18–19 56

Rabbinic 218 218 218

Bereishit Rabbah 18.4 49 CHRISTIAN SOURCES Augustine Confessions III.4.vii–viii 247

De figuris 3.199.15–16 129 3.199.15–20 129

De dialectica 10.1–3 43 10.3–9 43 10.9–11 43 10.10–13 43 11.13–14 43

Varro

Clement

De Lingua Latina 6.56 79 9.17 36 9.5 36 Fr. 113G 43

Stromata 8.8.23.1 62

Tryphon

Eusebius Historia Ecclesiastica 3.39.4 259 5.28.3–19 158 6.19.8 35, 44

325

Index of Citations Gregory Thaumaturgus Address 6 247 Irenaeus Adversus haereses (Against Heresies) 3.4.2 264 Jerome Quaestiones Hebraicae in Libro Geneseos (Hebrew Questions on Genesis) 2:13 48 John Philoponus Commentary on Aristotle’s De Anima 15.117.27 249 Origen Contra Celsum 1.6 89 1.8 55, 158 1.9–10 158 1.10–11 247 1.24 40–41, 49, 53, 55–56, 89 1.24–5 55 1.25 53, 55, 59 1.46 89 1.67 89 2.72 78 3.12 159 5.46 53–54, 57, 59 6.7 69 6.48 35 6.57 131 6.59 172 6.62 78 6.70 172 6.74 172 Commentarii in Canticum (Commentary on the Song of Songs) Prol.1 125, 168 Prol.3 66, 69, 71, 281

Commentarii in Epistulam ad Romanos (Commentary on Romans) 2.14 113 7.6 89 10.43 113 Commentarii in Johannem (Commentary on John) 1.4.23 26, 212 2.9.66 123 6.4.21–5.30 200 6.4.21 113 6.4.25 113 13.6.33–4 213 13.48.316 113 19.10.57 126 19.22.149 201 20.3.16 52 20.29.267 52 20.31.279 126 28.3.18 126 28.4.25 126 28.5.34 126 28.20.174 113 28.23.196 126 frag. 7 62 Commentarii in Matthaeum (Commentary on Matthew) 10.15 126 10.22 228 12.19 123 12.41 113 13.6 159 14.16 50 16.1 126 16.8 233 16.10 123 16.20 230 17.7 66, 70 De Principiis (On First Principles) Preface.1 76 Preface.3 265 Preface.10 185 2.10.4 159 2.11.5 214 3.1.2 110 3.1.22 228

326 De Principiis (On First Principles) (cont.) 4.1–3 29 4.1.7 158 4.2.5 110 4.2.9 135–36 4.3.2 136 4.8–9 265 De Oratione (On Prayer) 2.2 81, 88 24.4–5 174 26.2 51 27.13 172 Dialogus cum Heracleida (Dialogue with Heraclides) 11.16–12.14 181 15.28–23.1 181 Epistula ad Africanum (Letter to Africanus) 18 (12) 48 Exhortatio ad martyrium (Exhortation to Martyrdom) 28.13 172 46 53–55 Fragmenta in Epistula ad Ephesianos 6 229 Fragmenta in Ieremiam 52 172 Fragmenta in Iob 22.4 229 40.3 228–30 Fragmenta in Lamentaciones 14 66 18 130 Fragmenta in Lucam 148 228 181 131 Fragmenta ex commentariis in Proverbia 1:6 94

Index of Citations Fragmenta in Psalmos 2:2 172 118:143 172 Fragmenta in Epistula ad Romanos 29 201 Homiliae in Exodum 3.3 66 Homiliae in Ezechielem 2.2 212 Homiliae in Genesim 6.3 66 14.3 66 Homiliae in Jeremiam 15.1 228, 230 15.1–2 228 16.3 126 16.4 229 18.6 201 39 158 Homiliae in Joshuam 9.8 13 Homiliae in Lucam 27.158 228 Homiliae in Numeros 11.4 50 11.4.4 54 14.1.3 58 2.2.2 51 Homiliae in Psalmos 15.1.3 98 15.1.4 215 15.1.6 140, 196, 215 15.1.7 101, 209, 216, 218, 219 15.1.8 188 15.1.9 188, 196, 215 15.2.1 188 15.2.2 196 15.2.3 196

Index of Citations 15.2.4 108, 113, 215, 216 15.2.5 108, 188, 196 15.2.7 215 15.2.8 215, 221, 222 15.2.9 170, 171 15.2.10 140 36.1.1–2 197 36.1.1 94, 170, 171, 187, 188, 196 36.1.2 196 36.1.3 196 36.1.4 172, 175, 179, 187, 188 36.1.5 215 36.2.1 102, 140, 196, 197, 198, 215, 218 36.2.2 187, 196, 216 36.2.3 187, 196 36.2.7 216, 218 36.2.8 196, 197, 205 36.3.1 101, 188, 196 36.3.2 197, 205, 216 36.3.3 216, 218 36.3.4 196 36.3.5 196 36.3.6 92, 115, 187, 197 36.3.9 187, 188, 189 36.3.10 196, 197 36.3.11 84, 98, 140, 209, 215 36.4.1 170, 215, 216, 218 36.4.2 188, 196, 216, 218 36.4.3 141, 188, 196, 216, 218 67.1–2 229 67.1.1 99, 209, 232–239 67.1.2 172, 174, 179, 187, 215, 241 67.1.3 100, 215, 216, 217 67.1.5 196 67.1.8 197, 216, 218 67.1.9 196, 197 67.2.2 92, 140 67.2.3 175, 187, 188, 196 67.2.5 188, 196, 197, 215, 216 67.2.6 188, 197, 215, 216, 218

327 67.2.7 187, 196, 197, 202, 215 67.2.8 196 73.1.1 97, 140, 197 73.1.2 196, 216 73.1.4 140 73.1.6 140, 187, 215, 216, 218 73.1.7 196, 199 73.1.8 96 73.1.9 187, 197 73.1.10 216, 218, 219 73.2.1 196 73.2.5 197 73.2.7 139 73.3.4 196, 215, 223–26 73.3.6 215, 216, 221, 222 73.3.8 140, 216, 218 73.3.9 197, 215 74.1 125, 197 74.2 215 74.3 196, 197 74.4 188 75.1 196 75.2 140, 175, 187, 196, 197 75.4 196 75.6 187, 196 75.7 196, 197, 216 76.1.1 126–27 76.1.2 127 76.1.3 127, 196, 216, 218 76.1.4 196 76.1.5 140, 188 76.1.6 140, 196, 201 76.1.7 188 76.1.8 187, 188, 197 76.1.9 196, 215 76.1.10 196 76.2.1 104, 119, 140, 187, 188, 197 76.2.3 188 76.2.4 99, 101, 215, 220 76.2.5 196, 215 76.2.7 140, 198 76.3.1 197 76.3.2 109, 140, 175, 209, 232

328 Homiliae in Psalmos (cont.) 76.3.3 187, 188, 215, 222 76.3.5 196 76.4.2 197 76.4.3 196, 216 76.4.4 188, 216, 218 76.4.6 107, 231 77.1.1 140, 183, 187, 188, 216 77.1.2 125, 172, 175, 184, 187, 188, 197, 215 77.1.5 148 77.1.6 140, 215 77.2.3 175, 187 77.2.4 140, 188, 197 77.2.6 196, 197 77.2.7 170, 188 77.3.4 187 77.4.4 187, 196 77.4.5 216 77.4.6 215, 217 77.4.7 197 77.4.8 196, 197 77.5.3 196 77.5.4 187 77.5.5 196 77.6.1 215, 216 77.6.2 99, 196, 197 77.7.1 151, 188, 196 77.7.2 152, 188, 196, 197, 199 77.7.3 197 77.7.4 188, 197, 216, 218, 219 77.7.5 196, 197 77.7.6 188, 197 77.7.7 196 77.8.2 188 77.8.3 196 77.8.4 120, 123, 140, 196 77.8.5 196 77.8.6 187, 188, 196, 197 77.8.9 196, 216, 218 77.9.1 99, 140, 241 77.9.2 107, 216, 231 77.9.4 188, 197 77.9.5 175, 196, 215

Index of Citations 77.9.6 175, 187, 188, 215, 216, 222 80.1.1 196, 215 80.1.2 196, 216 80.1.3 63 80.1.6 175, 187 80.1.7 215, 217 80.2.1 155 80.2.2 188, 216 80.2.3 140, 196, 197, 209, 215 80.2.5 90, 187, 196 81.1 216 81.3 125, 126, 172, 197, 209, 210, 220 Homiliae in Samuelum 28 126 Philocalia 2.4–5 158 4 60, 65 4.1 61 4.2 64 6 154–55, 158 6.1 155 6.2 73, 155, 261 7 125 8 65 10 158 10.2 154, 158 12 88, 94 14.1 67 14.2 68 25.2 66 Schol. in Lucam 1:63 131 Selecta in Genesim 17:5 51 20:4 130 Selecta in Job 27:6 229–30 40:7 228

329

Index of Citations Pamphilus

Thomas Aquinas

Apology for Origen 1 213 3 213

Summa Theologiae I.1.8 ad 2

293

Index of Names and Subjects abduction 21–22, 157–66, 173–75, 191–92 see also invention Africanus 47–48 Alcinous 70n129 Alexander of Aphrodisias 28, 31, 158n8 allegory 23–24, 112, 230, 276 and invention 204–7 and the Maxim of Quality 138–45 and Stoicism 35 and theological interpretation 6–8 as arbitrary 9–10, 180, 283 as Biblical way of speaking 74n2, 85 Allen, James 41n39, 43–45, 49n59 anagnostikon see reading analogismos (ἀναλογισμός) 160 analogy (ἀναλογία) 86, 121–22, 178–83, 188n4 and boldness 221–31 and inquiry 157–66 and invention 196–207 as criterion of correct speech 170, 195–96  anaphora (ἀναφορά) 116–17, 123 see also deixis, reference anatomy 154–55, 162n25 appellative (προσηγορία) 51, 57 see also nouns aphorisms see proverbs Apollonius Dyscolus 61n99, 116–17, 123, 164–65 appropriateness 10, 65n111, 82–86, 105, 203, 250, 292–93 and boldness 219–23 and performative context 79, 98–103, 118–19, 144, 168, 261–62, 268, 271, 276–80 doctrine of 257–59, 274 of names 41–45 Aquila 67n117 arbitrariness 23–24, 38–39, 137, 177, 180, 226, 244, 246 and kata lexin interpretation 271–73 and theological interpretation 1–8 attributed to Origen 8–18 Aristotle 30, 33, 63, 70, 72n140, 185n89, 244, 246n7, 248n15, 249, 268n61

and conventionalism 38–42 see also practical wisdom Asaph 97, 121, 126 Asclepiades 162n26 Atherton, Catherine 30n6, 130, 163–65 Augustine 7, 30, 43–44, 247, 253 authorial intention 133, 283 authority (ἐξουσία) 5, 67n117, 106–7, 228, 264, 269–70 as linguistic criterion 163n31, 165 charismatic 16, 266 pedagogical 257–58 see also scripture, authority of; parrhesia, and authority barbarism 34, 61, 63 see also solecism Barnes, Jonathan 71, 158n8 Barth, Karl 1, 265n54 Barton, John 4–5 Basilides 83 Berchman, Robert 27n1, 60n97, 95n57, 192 Berner, Ulrich 12, 16 biblical studies see historical criticism Billings, Todd 3 Blank, David 61n99, 63n105, 130, 158–59, 162–64, 170n59, 195n115 boldness 212–243, 266–67, 287 see also parrhesia Brandom, Robert 244n1, 245, 250 Byassee, Jason 6–7 Cadiou, René 16 canon see scripture, canon of Carneades 31 Cartesian anxiety 265 Celsus 53, 158n8, 269 Chaeris 193–94 charismatic intellectual 16–18, 266 Chin, Catherine 28n3, 74n2 Christianicity 74n2 Chrysippus 30–36, 49, 63, 79–80, 115, 130 Cicero 63n105, 161n21 Cleanthes 70n129 Clement of Alexandria 62n103, 70

Index of Names and Subjects co-operative principle see implicature, co-operative principle of Codex Monacensis Graecus 314 18–19 coinage 50n64, 171 see also invention, of words Colish, Marcia 31n9 common notions 252 common sense  and hermeneutic crisis 265–66, 291 and implicature 131–33, 139 and proverbs 273, 277, 288, and textual criticism 276n85 and wisdom 253–57, 262 contrast with techne 159 see also language, ordinary connection (ἀκολουθία) 64, 146–47 conversion see philosophy, conversion to Cornutus 44 Crates 34 Cratylus 40–44, 49n61, 52n71, 268n61 creeds 4, 6–7, 212n6 Crivelli, Paolo 57n90, 116–17 Crouzel, Henri 8n26, 12n36, 91–93, 213n10 cultural formation 17, 28, 74n2, 75–76, 282 curriculum 253, 263 ancient philosophical 68–71 custom see usage Daley, Brian 75, 187n91 Daniélou, Jean 8n29, 12n36, 16 Dawson, David 9, 16, 45n52, 74n2, 121n24, 124, 207 De Faye, Eugene 12–13, 16, 18 De Lange, Nicholas 48, 210n4 De Lubac, Henri 1, 8, 12–16, 18, 20–21, 91n45, 93n53 definiteness 52, 57, 117, 119, 167 deification 81, 110, 292–93 of discourse 209–243 deixis (δεῖξις) 57, 115–119, 187n92, 278 intellectual 117, 123 of person 125–28 of place 119–125 of time 119n20 see also anaphora; persona; reference Democritus arguments against linguistic naturalism 41–42, 52n72

331 theory of sense perception 123–24 Derrida, Jacques 2 Descartes 249 see also Cartesian anxiety dialectic 116 and Origen 69, 172 and the Stoics 28, 32–34, 70n129, 77–80, 250 Socratic 285 see also lexis, to logos; writing, dialectical problem of Didymus the Blind 93 Dillon, John 27n1, 44n50 Diogenes Laertius 31–34, 51–52, 69n122, 77–79 Diogenes of Babylon 51–52, 77–79 Diomedes 162n26 diorthotikon (διορθώτικον) 88, 162n28 see also textual criticism discipleship 16n55, 229, 242, 293 discovery see invention discursive capacity see logos doctor see medicine ear training 84–85, 102 eloquence 28, 63–64, 166, 192, emphasis (ἔμφασις) 129 see also implicature empiricism 159–163, 177, 188n97 see also experience Ephraimites 180 Epicureanism 124, 158n8, 227 theory of names 40, 45n51, 54, 60n96 epilogismos (ἐπιλογισμός) 160 equality of speech (ἰσολογία) 233 etymology (ἐτυμολογία) 40–42, 47–50, 79, 163 Eubulides 115 example (παραδείγμα) 185, 187–88 exegetikon (ἐξηγήτικον) 88, 162n28 exorcism 55, 88–89 experience (ἐμπειρία) 35, 58–59, 186, 226n61, 248, 271, 273 and proverbs 167–68, 282 see also empiricism expertise see techne explicative interpretation 281–86 see also lekton; interpretation, sapiential

332 extraordinary language see language, extraordinary face value see kata lexin fiction 94–95, 162, 283 figurative language 7n25, 93, 95–96, 109–11, 125, 138–43, 204, 283 allegory as 85 contrast with parrhesia 228, 230 flouting see implicature, and flouting maxims foolishness 243, 252, 260, 265, 279 Foucault, Michel 227 Fowl, Stephen 1–3 Fraade, Stephen 20–21 frankness see parrhesia Frede, Michael 31, 35, 38n30, 161 freedom (ἐλευθηρία) 106–7, 228–231 see also authority; parrhesia Frege, Gottlob 38 Frei, Hans 94n56, 286n105 Gadamer, Hans-Georg 137n73, 282n102 Galen 31, 59n94, 158–62, 269 Gamble, Harry 89n37–38 geometry 33 logical features of 249–250   analogy to kata lexin interpretation 272n74 glossematikon (γλωσσηματικόν) 94 gnosticism 9, 207, 213, 255, 264 Gögler, Rolf 86n28, 89n41, 109n86, 136n70, 188n97 grammar Hellenistic 27n1, 68–69, 88, 157–59, 162–66, 193–95 of ordinary language 254, 263, 270 of scripture 86, 102, 111–12, 141, 144, 169–83, 204–206, 286–89 grammarian 17, 28, 63n105 contrast with logical critic 34–35 see also grammar Grant, Robert 158n8 Gregory Thaumaturgus 247n11 Grice, H. P. 128–129, 131–136, 145–152 habit (ἔθος) implicit 186–191 of inquiry 177, 183–186 of scripture 109, 169–77, 225–26, 249n20

Index of Names and Subjects of the world 177–83 see also invention; usage Hadot, Pierre 88 Halbertal, Moshe 218n43 Hanson, R. P. C. 9–10, 12n36, 180, 188n97 Harl, Margerite 12n36, 16–17, 27n1, 61–64, 66n113, 68n121, 70n128, 169n57, 200 harmonics 73–74, 155n3 Hebrew 46–50, 217 as original language 54n81 Heine, Ronald 123n27, 188n97 Hellenicity 34, 74n2, 76, 163n30 Heraclitus of Ephesus (6th-5th c. B.C.E.)  52n71, 71 heresy 212n6, 243, 267 see also orthodoxy hermeneutic crisis 9, 265–67, 292 hermeneutic ordinary time 263–65, 273, 290 hermeneutical privilege of the oppressed  284 hermeneutics 2 general 265n53 liberationist 279, 284, 289 special 263n50 see also interpretation Hermogenes 41 heteronomy 292 Hexapla 48, 50n64 historical criticism 1–8, 12–14, 173, 258n36, 278–79, 283, 289 see also meaning, historical  historikon (ἱστορικόν) 162 Holy Spirit 292–93 and rational norms 139–40 boldness of 106–107, 217, 231 gives language 88n35 source of insight 16, 62–63, 212, 291 see also persona Homer 35, 63n105 as authoritative speaker 17, 163–64, 170, 195 homonymy 68, 178–83 and the Maxim of Quality 140–45 as argument against naturalness of names 41–42 Hosea 65, 148, 177n76 hypothesis see abduction

333

Index of Names and Subjects idealism see pedagogical idealism idiaiteron (ἰδιαίτερον) 162 Idithoum 126–28 imagination 20 and linguistic intuition 106 and the Holy Spirit 278–80, 291 logical 11, 21, 244 imitatio Christi 126–27, 211, 240–43 imitatio scripturae 109–110, 210–11, 214, 217, 223 imperatives 39, 110 as optatives 172–76, 232 implicature 115, 128–29, 189 ancient 129--31 and maxim of manner 145–52 and maxim of quality 138–45 and proverbs 287–88 conversational 131–33 scriptural 133–37, 258n35 see also emphasis incantation 55 incarnation 87, 131, 214, 260, 291–93 enables reciprocity between God and humanity 231–40 see also imitatio Christi; parrhesia induction 169–70, 174–76 see also empiricism; example; habit; invention; testing inductive certainty 168–69, 176, 200n127 inerrancy 238n36 inquiry 16–22, 227, 253–56, 262, 267 and the Holy Spirit see Holy Spirit, source of insight see also abduction; habit, of inquiry; induction; interpretation, sapiential; invention; techne interpretation 86, 177–78, 183–86, 204 allegorical see allegory and logic 66–72 figurative see figurative language kata lexin see kata lexin midrashic see midrash sapiential 273–74 see also explicative interpretation; logical interpretation; performative interpretation; verbal condition of interpretation spiritual 8–10, 13–15, 76, 212n6, 291



theological 1–8, 13, 279 see also hermeneutics; inquiry; lexis, to logos; logic intertextuality 89, 192 intuition see linguistic intuition invention (εὕρεσις, inventio)  and analogy 196–200 contrast with interpretation 86, 224–25 of sentences 204–7 of words 200–3 rhetorical 161, 191–96 scientific 158–66 see also abduction Irenaeus 264–66 Isaiah 148, 223–24 James, William 244 Jenson, Robert 3, 245, 257 Jeremiah 98n65, 126, 192, 228–29 Jesus 131, 174, 212, 222, 235–37, 291–94 as proto-pragmatist 244 name of 55, 88–89 pedagogy of see pedagogy, of Jesus referent of Old Testament 96, 148–50, 183–84 see also incarnation; logos, divine Job 228–30, 237n98, 266, 278 John the Evangelist 26, 180, 212 John the Baptist 121n25, 130, 228 Jowett, Benjamin 5–6 kata lexin 91–98, 270–73 analogy to ‫ ועומשכ‬95n58 as deeper sense 109–11, 230, 232 see also lexis; literal sense; interpretation, sapiential Koch, Hal 12n36, 16, 27n1 Kugel, James 91n44, 259n38 language conventional 35–36, 50n1, 54–55, 93, 128–33, 138n74, 163   see also implicature; names, standard of correctness of; solecism; usage extraordinary 254, 262, 267 natural 54–55, 65   see also names, standard of correctness of norms of 23, 28, 35–36, 66, 75–76, 111, 131–37, 162–66, 250–51

334 language (cont.)   see also implicature of scripture 22–24, 64–65, 74n2, 89–91, 192–96, 212–14, 260–67   see also deification: of discourse; habit, of scripture; imitatio scripturae; interpretation, sapiential; invention; lexis, to logos ordinary 22–23, 95, 131–37, 163–65, 193–96, 251, 262, 267   see also common sense; kata lexin original 35n23, 42, 49–50, 54n81 see also allegory; grammar; logic; logos; names; rationality Latinity 34, 63, 162, 165 Lauro, Elizabeth Ann Dively 10n34 Le Boulluec, Allain 192 learning 16–18, 22–24, 104–6, 160, 193–96, 212n6, paradox of 252 skills 248–56   see also linguistic competence; pragmatism see also inquiry; language, of scripture; pedagogy lekton (λεκτόν) 36–40, 60–65, 79–80, 251 see also explicative interpretation letter (γράμμα) 7, 77–78, 238, 276 see also lexis; literal Levinson, Stephen 115–20, 125, 128–29, 131–34 lexis (λέξις) 77–80, 87–91 to logos 23, 81–87, 111   see also interpretation, sapiential see also kata lexin Lindbeck, George 245, 260–61, 289 linguistic competence 21–24, 28n3, 75–76, 87, 164–66, 201, 252, 274, 293 infinity of 191–196 see also linguistic intuition linguistic intuition 103–7, 142–43, 164–66, 254, 262, 280, 289 and boldness 217, 220–26 and hermeneutic crisis 263–67, 290–91 see also ear training; rule of faith, and linguistic intuition linguistic pragmatism see pragmatism, linguistic

Index of Names and Subjects linguistics 22–23, 68n121, 119, 289 rational 75–76, 102–3 Stoic see Diogenes of Babylon see also deixis; implicature; logic; pragmatics; semantics; speech acts literal sense 4, 7, 10, 23, 75–76, 142, 224 see also kata lexin; implicature liturgy 87–88, 275, 278, 293 and meaning kata lexin 91, 270 and the Psalms 75, 114, 122, 279 logic (λογικὴ) 115, 273 and linguistics see linguistics, rational Aristotelian 70, 115   see also Aristotle descriptive 19–22 inductive see induction logica utens 19 of scriptural habits 171–77, 249n20   see also habit of vagueness see vagueness Origen’s 25–26, 66–72 Stoic 31–36, 250   see also lekton; lexis; Stoicism, theory of names see also arbitrariness; dialectic; logical interpretation; logos logical interpretation 286–91 see also logic; logos; interpretation, sapiential logical problem see writing, logical problem of logos (λόγος) 31, 36–38, 66, 102, 107–12, 146, 155, 228, 250, 268–71 analogy to ‫ ןיד‬95n58 contrast to lexis 77–80 divine 70–71, 135–36, 155n3, 209–10, 247, 291–94   see also boldness; parrhesia pedagogy of see pedagogy, of the Logos  see also lexis, to logos; logic; logical interpretation; rationalism; rationality Long, A. A. 31–33, 38n31, 43n43, 45n52, 119n20, 158n5 Lord’s Prayer 50, 81, 173–74 Marcion 9, 83, 285 Martens, Peter 12n36, 17n60, 68n121, 88n33, 95n58, 109n86, 169n57, 189n97

335

Index of Names and Subjects martyrdom see names, and martyrdom Mates, Benson 38n30 Matthew 149–50, 183, 216, 233 maxim of manner see implicature, and maxim of manner maxim of quality see implicature, and maxim of quality McGuckin, John 111, 243n109 meaning 127, 133, 135–37, 200, 223, 258, 261–64 historical 91, 113, 125–26, 137 levels of 82, 111–12 spiritual see spiritual sense see also allegory; figurative language; kata lexin; lekton; semantics medicine 158–62 as analogy for scriptural interpretation 94n54, 154–55, 158n7 memorization see scripture, memorization of Menander 80 metaphor 86, 108, 138, 181, 204–7, 224 see also allegory; figurative language method 18–22, 186n91, 194, 253 scientific 154–66 midrash 20, 48n57, 91n44, 95n58, 210–11, 218n43 mimesis 44–45 modesty 213 Morris, Charles 79n12 Moses 54, 228 Munnich, Olivier 74n2, 192–93 music theory see harmonics name-bearer (τυγχάνον) 37, 62n103 names (ὀνόματα) and martyrdom 53–55, 60 changing of 42, 50–53 effective 53–60 proper 49–60 standard of correctness of 40–60 see also homonymy; nouns; Tetragrammaton; translation narrative 4, 6, 94, 151 Neuschäfer, Bernard 17, 27n1, 63–65, 67n116, 94n55, 125–26, 129–31, 137n73, 158n8, 169n57, 170, 173n71 New Testament 5, 13–15, 89, 260, 268 noisy-channel coding theorem 267n59

nouns 56–57, 67, 187n92 see also deixis; names Ochs, Peter xi, 2n9, 19–22, 161n19, 166–69, 245, 254n26, 265n53, 266n57, 290n110 see also pragmatism; vagueness Old Testament 7, 89, 260, 265, 268 Christological referent of 15, 96 optative 39 see also imperatives, as optatives orality 20–1, 74n2, 87–91, 114, 122, 168, 259n37, 278 see also pragmatics; rule of faith; writing orator 63–64, 161, 165, 192 order (τάξις) 145–52 ordinary language see language, ordinary orthodoxy 106, 294 and Origen 14–15, 18, 28n3, 212n6 see also heresy paideia 74n2 Pamphilus 18n64, 212–13 Papias 259n37 parable 71, 84, 169n57, 203n131, 253 definition of 94–95 Jesus’ use of 148–49, 183, 229–30, 242 paradigm see example parrhesia (παρρησία) 227–31 and authority 195, 230–31, 234, 242 and hermeneutic crisis 266–67, 285 in commanding God 231–40 in imitation of Christ 240–43, 293 see also boldness; deification, of discourse Paul 102–3, 143–45, 172n65, 180, 182–83, 197–98, 201n129, 204–7, 222, 233–34, 260 and imitation of Christ 87, 111, 113, 126, 209, 220–21, 240–43   see also imitatio Christi name-change of 50–52 New Perspective on 289 parrhesia of 228–31 pedagogy of see pedagogy, Paul’s pedagogical idealism 16 pedagogy 74, 111–12, 217, 253, 267, 292–93 of Jesus 227–31, 242–43 of the Logos 16, 27n1, 81–87, 207, 210, 252, 255–56   see also boldness; parrhesia

336 pedagogy (cont.) Paul’s 62–64, 84, 215–18 see also inquiry; learning Peirce, Charles 2, 19, 21n73, 79n12, 161, 166–69, 176, 244–45, 252n25, 254n26, 256 performative interpretation 274, 276–81 see also interpretation, sapiential performative problem see writing, performative problem of performativity 44, 74–76, 80, 108, 114n3 see also deixis; orality; pragmatics; performative interpretation Perrone, Lorenzo xi, 18–19, 125n35 persona (προσωπὸν) 149, 172, 183–86, 209–10, 220, 278 see also deixis: of person Peter 51, 226, 235–37 Phaedrus 247, 268–73 Philo 62n103, 70n128 philosophy 23, 29, 88, 211, 246–49, 253–56, 263–67, 291 definition of 246, 254 of science: see empiricism; rationalism tripartite curriculum of 66–72 see also Platonism; pragmatism; Stoicism Phoebammon 129 phronesis see practical wisdom physician see medicine Plato 63n105, 70, 111n92, 137n73, 159, 253 see also Cratylus; Phaedrus Platonism 49n61, 70, 140n76, 181n82, 255 and geometry 248–49 Middle 12, 27n1, 30, 72n140, 192 Neo- 12, 27n1, 30 theory of Forms 31, 52n71, 124 theory of names 40–45, 66n111 see also Plato Plutarch 31, 70, 254n24 poetic license 35, 64 poetry 28, 34–36, 63n105, 80, 162, 272 scripture as 65, 69, 111 see also proverbs, as poetry Porphyry 30, 35n25, 44n47 post-structuralism 2–3, 74 see also structuralism practical wisdom (φρόνησις) 246n7, 249

Index of Names and Subjects Pradel, Marina Molin 18 pragmatics 93, 114–16, 270 contrast with semantics 79–80, 95 see also deixis; implicature; speech act; utterance pragmatism 2, 19, 68n121, 166, 244–56, 265n53 see also Peirce, Charles; Ochs, Peter prayer 54, 81–82, 84, 88n35, 98n65, 100, 113, 125n37, 278, 283 and parrhesia 229–30, 233 see also liturgy; Lord’s Prayer probability 147, 176, 195–96, 200, 224, 239 Proclus 41n39, 52 pronouns see deixis prophecy 53–54, 57, 96–99, 121–22, 143, 197–98, 200n128, 278, 293 and parrhesia 228 and persona 125–26, 185–86 rationality of 139, 252, 255, 259–61, 265 see also Hosea; Isaiah; Jeremiah; John the Baptist; Moses proposition (ἀξίωμα) 32–34, 57, 95n57, 117, 119n20, 136–37, 252, 258, 261, 271 proverbs 84 and vagueness 167–69   see also habit as prototype of wise language 113–14, 177–78, 259 as provocation to inquiry 253  circumstances of use 277–78   see also performative interpretation correct habits of readers 287–88   see also logical interpretation generate commentary 281–82   see also explicative interpretation memorization of 274–75   see also verbal condition of interpretation Proverbs, book of 94, 246, 248, 251–52, 257, 259 as transition between common sense and wisdom 273 teaches logic 67–72, 273 providence (προνοία) 27n1, 154–55 Pseudo-Plutarch 129 Ptolemy 158

Index of Names and Subjects Quintilian 63n105, 67n116, 85n27, 162n26 and criteria of correct speech 163n31, 165–66 rabbinic pragmatism 19 rabbinic interpretation see midrash rashness 272–73, 278, 285, 291 see also kata lexin rationalism 76, 159–66, 169, 245 see also linguistics, rational rationality 17, 20–21, 23, 72n140, 85–87, 128, 146–47, 253–56, 292–4 and arbitrariness 10–11 as finite 193–96 contrast with kata lexin 84, 270–73 divine 133–37 see also deification everyday see common sense geometry as model of see geometry hyper- 111, 243n109 instrumental 246 linguistic 154–56, 250–51   see also linguistics, rational norms of 34, 131–37   see also appropriateness; implicature skill as model of 248–49, 251–53 see also logic; logos; rationalism reading (αναγνώστικον) 88, 162n28 see also orality reason see logos reciprocity between God and human beings 229, 231–240 see also parrhesia reference 93–98, 116n11, 118n17, 220 corporeal v. incorporeal 141–44, 178–83 see also anaphora; deixis; sense regula fidei see rule of faith Reno, Rusty 1, 5n19 reserve 230, 267 ressourcement 8 see also De Lubac, Henri rhetoric 28, 32–33, 70n129, 74, 80, 88, 129n51, 230 and invention see invention, rhetorical see also barbarism; eloquence; orator; solecism

337 Ricoeur, Paul 118n17 Rine, Rebecca xi, 74–75, 89n40, 114n3 risk see boldness Rufinus 18n64, 66, 185n89 rule of faith (regula fidei) 4, 7, 10 and linguistic intuition 257, 263–66 Origen’s attitude towards 13, 16, 213n13, 265–66 sapiential interpretation see interpretation, sapiential sayable see lekton Schenkeveld, D. M. 39–40, 79–80, 116n10 Schleiermacher, Friedrich 263, 265n53 science see inquiry scriptural implicature see implicature, scriptural scripture (γραφή) 256–60, 291–94 and implicature see implicature, scriptural as body of the Logos 154–55, 292 as norma norms non normata 293 as script 74–75, 114n3 authority of 259n37, 267, 269–70, 273, 286, 292–93 boldness of 214–18   see also boldness canon of 89, 261–62 definition of difficulty of 66–72, 230, 263, 272–73, 277n85, 290–91   see also boldness; scripture, obscurity of habits of see habit, of scripture harmony of 73–74, 155n3, 261–62 inspiration of 27n1, 125, 292–93   see also Holy Spirit interprets scripture 4 language of see language, of scripture memorization of 24, 76, 89–91, 93–94, 269, 274–76 obscurity of 17, 106, 129, 132, 169, 186, 200, 212–13, 240, 242–43   see also scripture, difficulty of return to 1–4 three senses of 9, 10n34, 29, 186n91 see also appropriateness, doctrine of; imitatio scripturae; writing

338 semantics 79–80, 95 see also kata lexin Seneca 162n26 sense 38, 93–98, see also lekton; reference sentence see utterance Septuagint 50n64, 94, 171, 172n65, 215, 227, 238n101 Sextus Empiricus 31, 123–24,, 170n58 on the infinity of linguistic competence 193–96 on the lekton 36–38 Shannon, C. E. 267n59 sign 51n66, 58, 166–67, 176 Sirach 150, 281n97 skepticism 162–64, 193–96, 251, 285 about allegory 23–24 see also Sextus Empiricus slavery 233–34 Smith, James K. A. 2–3 Socrates 227, 255 forerunner to pragmatism 244 forerunner to Stoicism 33 see also Cratylus; dialectic, Socratic; Phaedrus solecism 34 interpretation of 60–65 Solomon 67, 69–72, 168, 180 see also Proverbs, book of Somos, Robért 66, 69n122, 70n125, 71n131, 72n140, 140n77, 170n60, 174n74, 181n82, 185n89 sound (φωνὴ) see voice speculation 157, 160, 191, 193, 200–1, 243 speech act 38–40, 78–80, 115–16, 122, 250–51 see also imperatives; optatives; performative interpretation; utterance speech situation 40, 80, 114, 268 see also deixis spell see incantation Spinoza 249 Spirit, Holy see Holy Spirit spiritual interpretation see interpretation, spiritual spiritual sense 119–125 Steinmetz, David 1, 3, 5n19 Stoicism 250–52 and freedom 228

Index of Names and Subjects and propositions 117, 119n20 harmony with nature 28, 31 lexis and logos 77–80 logic see logic, Stoic theory of meaning see lekton theory of names 40–45 theory of perception 95n57, 124 theory of truth 31–32, 37, 187n92 see also Carneades; Chrysippus; common notions; Crates; Diogenes of Babylon; lexis; order; Zeno structuralism 74, 201, 268n61 see also post-structuralism subject matter (πράγμα) 34, 37–42, 60, 62–63, 65n111, 78, 137n73, 147, 169, 269 see also explicative interpretation Symmachus 50n64 Tatian 74 Tauriscus 35n22 techne (τεχνὴ) 159, 162, 269 technikon (τεχνικὸν) 162 see also grammar, Hellenistic testing (πεῖρα) 158–162, 188n97 Tetragrammaton 57–58 textual criticism 275–76 and boldness 238 see also diorthotikon Theodotion 48, 50n64 theological interpretation see interpretation, theological theology 1–2, 6, 212, 262–64, 286n105, 291 in Greek philosophy 68, 70 post-liberal systematic 8, 12–13, 29 Theon 80 Tigcheler, J. H. 93–94 Torjesen, Karen Jo 8–9, 16, 74n2, 81–87, 93n52, 98n65, 102, 125n37 tradition 3–8, 13–17, 104, 137, 256–60 see also common sense transition to the similar 161, 164 translation 48–50, 55, 67n117 Treier, Donald 4 Trigg, Joseph xi, 8n28, 16–18, 49n61, 213–14, 232n90, 265n55 trigger 135, 138, 140–42 Trinity 291–92 truth 256n30

339

Index of Names and Subjects and Maxim of Quality 141–45 and vagueness 168–69, 200n127 see Stoicism, theory of truth understatement 213n13, 232 unlearning 251–52, 266 see also learning usage (συνήθεια) 170–71, 187 see also habit utterance 22, 74, 78–80, 92 φωνὴ see voice see also habits, of scripture; speech act; voice vagueness 33, 127, 157, 166–69, 249, 271–72, 291 and learning 252–53, 262–63, 266 of Origen’s language 170, 173–77, 179, 184, 186, 222–23 of “wisdom” see wisdom, vagueness of see also inductive certainty Valentinus 83, 85, 106, 207 Vanhoozer, Kevin 1–3, 5n19, 6 Varro 35–36, 43n45, 79, 162n26 verbal condition of interpretation 274–76 see also interpretation, sapiential; lexis voice (φωνὴ) 34, 37–39, 59–63, 77–78, 128, 194, 221, 259n37 see also lexis Von Rad, Gerhard 168–69 Wiles, Maurice 169n57 Wilken, Robert Louis 74n2, 85, 269n70 Williams, Rowan 212n6, 261n48 wisdom (σοφία) 18, 23, 25–29, 31–35, 66–72, 137, 150, 155n3, 186, 246–56



boldness of see boldness of the martyrs 58–60 relation to common sense see common sense, and wisdom vagueness of 23, 173, 246–47, 255–56, 286n105, 291 see also interpretation, sapiential; logic; logos; practical wisdom; rationality; wisdom tradition wisdom tradition 113–14, 166–69 scriptural 257 see also proverbs wording see lexis writing (γραφή) 267–70 alphabetic 49n62, 77–78 and orality 87–91, 114, 118 see also orality as information 267n59 as performance 75 dialectical problem of 269, 271   see also dialectic logical problem of 269, 271–72   see also logic performative problem of 268, 270   see also pragmatics see also scripture Xenocrates 70 Yadin-Israel, Azzan 95n58, 210–11 Young, Frances 16–17, 74n2, 88, 89n40, 91n45, 93, 180n79 Zeno 1n1, 30