The Spell of the Logos: Origen’s Exegetic Pedagogy in the Contemporary Debate regarding Logocentrism 9781463216283

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The Spell of the Logos

Gorgias Eastern Christian Studies

10

Gorgias Eastern Christian Studies brings to the scholarly world the underrepresented field of Christianity as it developed in the Eastern hemisphere. This series consists of monographs, collections of essays, texts and translations of the documents of Eastern Christianity, and studies of topics relevant to the unique world of historic Orthodoxy and early Christianity.

The Spell of the Logos

Origen’s Exegetic Pedagogy in the Contemporary Debate regarding Logocentrism

Mihai Vlad Niculescu

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34 2009

Gorgias Press LLC, 180 Centennial Ave., Piscataway, NJ, 08854, USA www.gorgiaspress.com Copyright © 2009 by Gorgias Press LLC

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise without the prior written permission of Gorgias Press LLC. 2009

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9 ISBN 978-1-59333-698-1 ISSN 1539-1507

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Niculescu, Mihai. The spell of the logos : Origen's exegetic pedagogy in the contemporary debate regarding logocentrism / Mihai Niculescu. p. cm. -- (Gorgias Eastern Christian studies, ISSN 1539-1507 ; 10) Includes bibliographical references and indexes. 1. Origen. 2. Bible--Criticism, interpretation, etc.--History--Early church, ca. 30-600. 3. Word (Theology) I. Title. BR65.O68N53 2009 270.1092--dc22 2009014146 Printed in the United States of America

To Bogdan Bucur

Edward Hopper Rooms by the Sea Yale University Art Gallery Bequest of Stephen Carlton Clark, B.A. 1903 Image reproduced by permission from Yale University Art Gallery. Image © by Yale University Art Gallery.

TABLE OF CONTENTS Table of Contents....................................................................................................v Acknowledgments ..................................................................................................xi Abbreviations and Translations ..........................................................................xv I Spelling Salvation. Speech Address as Messianic Advent ........................1 1 Argument......................................................................................................1 2 Logocentric and Anti-Logocentric Readings of Origen’s Definition of the Gospel as Ordinary Speech ..................................3 2.1 Three Logocentric Readings of Origen’s Definition of the Gospel as Ordinary Speech...........................................................8 2.1.1 Naïve Logocentrism .............................................................................8 2.1.2 Hermeneutical Logocentrism............................................................10 2.1.3 Communicative Logocentrism .........................................................11 2.2 Three Anti-Logocentric Readings of Origen’s Definition of the Gospel....................................................................15 2.2.1 Deconstructionism .............................................................................16 2.2.2 Responsibility Ethics as a Speech Pragmatics of Saying.....................................................................................................21 2.2.3 Heuristic or a Speech Pragmatics of Givenness ............................22 3 A Tentative Placement of Origen’s Ordinary Gospel Pragmatics within the Debate regarding Logocentrism ................29 3.1 A Diagnostic Test for Logocentrism ..................................................29 3.2 The Outline of a Non-Logocentric Reading of Origen’s Definition of the Gospel as Ordinary Speech ...................................................................................................31 3.3 Preliminary Evidence for a Non-Logocentric Reading of Origen’s Ordinary Gospel-Discourse .........................................34 4 A Non-Logocentric Definition of the Ordinary Gospel and Its Theological Transposition ....................................................36 5 A Tentative Profiling of Origenism as Theological Logocentrism and the Clarification of Its Use in the Overall Argument of This Book.......................................................37 v

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THE SPELL OF THE LOGOS 6 Synopsis ......................................................................................................41 Spiritual Leavening as The Grand Scenario of Origen’s Exegetical Pedagogy.....................................................................................43 1 Growing Up. The Advent of the Logos as Bible and the Reception of the Logos as Bible Exegesis.......................................43 1.1 The Historical Dimension of Logos’ Advent as Bible and of Logos’ Reception as Bible-Exegesis ....................................46 1.1.1 The Historical Dimension of the Advent of the Logos as Bible ......................................................................................46 1.1.2 The Historical Dimension of the Reception of the Logos as Pedagogic Bible Exegesis ..................................................52 1.1.3 Rising with the Messiah. The Leavening History of the Bible and of Bible’s Pedagogic Exegesis ...................................56 1.2 The Textual Dimension of Logos’ Advent as Bible and of Logos’ Reception as Bible Exegesis ............................................62 1.2.1 The Bible’s Guide to the Reading of the Bible according to the Exegetical Theory in the Fourth Book of On First Principles ..............................................................62 1.2.1.1 The Mediation of the Twofold, Literal and Spiritual, Constitution of the Bible...................................................62 1.2.1.2 The Bible’s Assistance in the Exegetical Engagement of the Split between the Bible’s Letter and the Bible’s Spirit ...........................................................................65 1.2.1.2.1 The Signaling of the Split between the Letter and the Spirit................................................................................................66 1.2.1.2.2 The Origination of Heterodoxy in the Misinterpretation of Bible’s Exegetical Suggestions ......................68 1.2.1.2.3 Spiritual Progress as the Outcome of the Observance of the Bible’s Exegetical Signals .................................71 1.2.2 The Bible’s Guide to the Reading of the Bible in the Light of Origen’s Exegetical Procedure...........................................73 1.2.2.1 The Split Constitution of the Bible and of the Reader Shapes the Exegetical Procedure.........................................73 1.2.2.2 The Exegetical Procedure as Bible-Induced Spiritual Ascent....................................................................................75 1.2.2.3 The Spiritual Ascent as an Exegetical Reduction of the Hermeneutical Distance between the Reader and the Biblical Logos ................................................................................77

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1.2.3 A Tentative Synopsis of the Exegete’s Encounter with the Biblical Logos during the Bible-Sanctioned Exegesis of the Bible as Gospel ........................................................79 2 Upbringing. The Advent of the Logos as Biblical Teaching and the Reception of the Logos as BiblicalExegetical Learning .............................................................................85 2.1 Introduction. The Biblical School Curriculum as the Messianic “Incarnation” of the Logos or the Divine Teacher..................................................................................................85 2.2 Mournful vs. Joyful Pedagogy. An Analysis of Two Origenian Texts on the Curriculum .................................................90 2.2.1 The Teacher’s Grief. The Reception of the Curriculum as Instantiation of the Condescending Teacher according to Fragments 13 and 14 of Origen’s Commentary on Lamentations .................................................90 2.2.2 The Teacher’s Joy. The Reception of the Curriculum as Instantiation of the Ascending Teacher according to the Prologue of The Commentary on the Song of Songs ...................93 2.2.2.1 The Teacher, His Teaching and the Disciple’s Availability for Being Taught. An Outline of Origen’s Phenomenology of Humanity’s Didactic Attunement to God ...................................................................................................94 2.2.2.1.1 Three Hypostases of the Teacher and the Disciple ................94 2.2.2.1.2 The Threefold Division of the Curriculum..............................97 2.2.2.1.3 The Curriculum as a Spiritual Progress Scenario ....................99 2.2.2.2 Joy as the God-Attuning Mood of the Observance of the Curriculum ..............................................................................101 2.2.2.2.1 Gospel and Curriculum. The Parallelism between the Biblical-Exegetical and the Pedagogic Coming of the Logos ............................................................................................102 2.2.2.2.2 Exodus-Entrance as the Shared Scenario of the Biblical-Exegetical and the Pedagogic Sequences ........................104 2.2.2.2.3 The End of the Road. Ultimate Pedagogy as a Wedding Feast in Jerusalem.............................................................111 2.2.2.2.4 Beyond the Image. Love as the Ultimate Observance of the Curriculum and the Joy of Sonship ..............113 3 Retrospect.................................................................................................117

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III Emmaus and Beyond. The Growth of the Kingdom Documented by the Doxological Gestures, Postures and Feelings of a Priestly Homilist..................................................................121 1 Leavening (1): A Uniform Growth?.....................................................121 2 Transformative Gestures. “Placing or Hiding In” and “Opening Up”. A Possible Correlation between Origen’s Interpretation of the Parable of the Leaven and the Experience of the Disciples on the Road to Emmaus ..............................................................................................129 3 Testimonial Postures ..............................................................................137 3.1 “Being Placed in” and “Being Put on”. An Analysis of the Emmaus Reference in Origen’s Interpretation of the Atonement Day Liturgy in Lev. 16.11–14 ..............................137 3.2 “Being Laid Out Before”. An Analysis of the Interpretation of the Atonement Offering in Origen’s Exegesis of Lev 16.11–14.................................................................147 4 Leavening (2): A Catastrophic Growth. A Revision of the Uniform Progress Theory of Salvation ...................................152 5 Testimonial Feelings ...............................................................................157 5.1 Lost Love Kept Current in Spirit. The Kindling of the Heart (Luke 24.32) as a Wound of Love (Cant 2.5) ....................157 5.2 After Emmaus. The Physical Experience of Awe ..........................162 5.3 Beyond Emmaus. The Epoptic Experience of Love .....................173 6 Leavening (3): The Surge of an Articulate Cry...................................184 7 A Kingdom’s Growth.............................................................................189 8 Is Origen’s Exegetical Pedagogy Logocentric?...................................194 IV Disputing Emmaus ....................................................................................201 1 Emmaus as the Christological Authorization of a Typological Reading of History ......................................................201 2 A Pragmatic-Linguistic Analysis of Origen’s Exegesis of the Bible as Gospel ...........................................................................209 2.1 Preliminary Clarifications....................................................................209 2.2 The Gospel Phrase-Complex.............................................................212 2.3 The Performance of the Gospel Phrase Complex .........................215 2.4 The Authorization of the Gospel Phrase Complex........................219 3 An Anti-Logocentric Critique of Origen’s Emmausian Authorization of the Reading of the Bible as Gospel .................223 3.1 The Gospel as an Auto-Thematic Meta-Discourse of the Logos ............................................................................................223

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3.2 The Critique of the Performance of the Gospel PhraseComplex and of its Authorization ..................................................226 4 An Anti-Logocentric Endorsement of Origen’s Emmausian Authorization of the Reading of the Bible as Gospel ..................................................................................235 4.1 The Two Faces of Origen’s Pedagogic Exegesis ............................235 4.2 Origen Otherwise than Origen ..........................................................237 4.2.1 A Non-Logocentric View of the Performance of the Gospel Phrase Complex...................................................................237 4.2.2 A Non-Logocentric View on the Authorization of the Gospel Phrase Complex ............................................................248 5 Disputing Emmaus .................................................................................253 6 About a Certain “Shrug of the Shoulders” .........................................260 Appendix 1 Why the Middle-Platonist Twice-Twofold Division of the School-Curriculum Might Have Resonated with Origen’s Project of Biblical Instruction ..........................................................................................265 Appendix 2 Origen’s Interpretation of Gen 26.26–32 (the Covenant between Isaac and Abimelech)......................................277 Appendix 3 Origen’s Interpretation of the Parable of the Tenants in Mat 21.33–43..................................................................279 Appendix 4 Origen’s School-Curriculum according to His Letter to Gregory...............................................................................283 Appendix 5 Origen’s School-Curriculum according to Gregory Thaumaturgus’ Address to Origen ......................................287 Appendix 6 Origenian Logocentrism in Light of Three Readings of Totalitarianism .............................................................291 Endnotes...............................................................................................................299 Graphs and Tables ..............................................................................................461 Bibliography .........................................................................................................479 Primary Sources ..........................................................................................479 Works of Origen.........................................................................................479 Works of Other Ancient Authors............................................................485 Secondary Literature ..................................................................................486 Acts of Origenian Congresses ..................................................................486 Books and Articles .....................................................................................487

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Subject Index........................................................................................................507 Ancient Author Index.........................................................................................545 Moden Author Index..........................................................................................547 Biblical References Index...................................................................................551

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS An important part of this book—actually, most of its second chapter—is based on my first doctoral dissertation, which I began to write in 1996, during my studies in early Christianity at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. Since then I have carried this portion of the book with me to Bucharest, Romania, where I returned to live for two years between 1997 and 1999. I have finalized the dissertation in 2002 in Toronto, Canada, while completing a second doctorate, in philosophy, this time, at The University of Toronto. Among the institutions, which supported me in the elaboration of this section of the book, I would like to mention the Early Christian Studies Program (now The Center for the Study of Early Christianity) at the Catholic University of America in Washington D.C., the Roman Catholic Institute “Saint Theresa” and the New Europe College in Bucharest, Romania as well as the Philosophy Department at the University of Toronto. I would like to thank for their generous support Fr. Sidney H. Griffith, Dr. Robin Darling Young, Dr. Peter Casarella, Dr. Eric Perl, Professor Charles Bonner, Fr. David Power, Fr. David Johnson, Msgr. Robert Sokolowski, Dr. David L. Schindler, His Eminence, Ioan Robu, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Bucharest, Dr. Francisca Băltăceanu, Dr. Monica Broşteanu, Professor Andrei Pleşu, Dr. Anca Oroveanu, Dr. Robert Gibbs, Mr. Skip Burhans, Ms. Ioana Razi and Ms. Cornelia Gheorghe. I am particularly grateful to Robin Darling Young, Fr. Sidney Griffith and Peter Casarella for their support and guidance during the elaboration of this study. I have spent my days of study at the Catholic University of America protected, enriched and enlightened by the hospitality of Dr. Virgil Nemoianu and of Dr. Anca Nemoianu. My gratitude will always fall short of their generosity. My first explorations in the theory and the history of literature have been guided by the late Laurentiu Ulici, Professor Mircea xi

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Martin and Dr. Virgil Nemoianu, whose teachings have turned out to be of great help in the elaboration of this book. My access to the Greek and Latin of the primary patristic sources would not have been possible without the excellent instruction of my professors in the Classics Department at the University of Bucharest, who under great political hardship have maintained high standards of professionalism and an impeccable moral rectitude. I am in particular indebted to the instruction and formative example of the late Dr. Iancu Fischer and Dr. Dan Sluşanchi, of Dr. Francisca Băltăceanu and Dr. Nicolae Tanaşoca. I am also grateful for the guidance that I received from Professor Marian Ciucă and Professor Ilieş Câmpeanu. The rest of the book (chapters I, III and IV) has been written between 2005 and 2008, in the last part of my doctoral studies in philosophy at The University of Toronto and during my first years of teaching philosophy at the universities of Marquette and Bradley. I would like to thank Dr. Robert Gibbs from the Philosophy Department at the University of Toronto for having introduced me to the study of Rosenzweig, Levinas, Derrida and Lyotard. The place that these authors occupy in this book reflects the extent of Robert Gibbs’ influence on my thought and life. My gratitude goes also to the Philosophy Department at Marquette University, who has offered me my first academic job, assuring, thus, the continuity of my work at this book. I cherish the memory of the enriching conversations that I had at Marquette with Dr. Sebastian Luft, Dr. Claudia Schmidt and Dr. James South. I am also thankful for the kind support of my colleagues in the Philosophy and Religious Studies Department at Bradley University. I am particularly grateful to Dr. Michael Greene and Dr. Robert Fuller for reading through parts of the manuscript of the book and providing me with valuable suggestions and opinions. The friendship and the ever competent philosophical insight of my colleague, Dr. Andrew Kelley, have contributed essentially to my work in its last stages. I would like to thank him for his generous help in editing and rearranging the last version of the book. The support of the Research Excellence Committee at Bradley University has been essential in the publication of this book. I thank the members of the committee who approved the allocation of the necessary funds toward the publishing of this work with Gorgias Press.

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I would also like to thank Bogdan Bucur and Dragos Giulea for their competent advice and their friendship. Although somewhat anachronistic in the course of my thought and life, I learned to treasure my past interest in Origen and the Early Christianity by admiring Bogdan Bucur’s steady dedication to these topics. The care and moral support of Dr. Eugen Papadima and Dr. Thomas O’Brien have been essential in carrying this project to an end. Last, but not least, I thank Gorgias Press for accepting my work for publication and for granting me the necessary time to revise, rewrite and supplement the text of what was initially submitted as a publishable Ph.D. Dissertation.

ABBREVIATIONS AND TRANSLATIONS For the quotations from Origen’s works I followed the abbreviations in G. W. H. Lampe, A Patristic Greek Lexicon, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005, xxxv-xxxvi. A complete list of the main editions of these works in the language in which they have been preserved (Greek and/or Latin), and of their abbreviated references has been included in the bibliography at the end of this book. The bibliography also lists the English translations of the works that have been quoted in this study. Those instances in which I provided a translation of my own have been signaled as such. The other abbreviations used in this book are the following: ACW Ancient Christian Writers: the Works of the Fathers in Translation, Westminster: Newman Press. ANF Ante-Nicene Fathers. Translations of the Writings of the Fathers down to A.D. 325, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans AThR Anglican Theological Review BLE Bulletin de littérature ecclésiastique ETL Ephemerides theologicae Lovanienses FC Fathers of the Church, Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press GCS Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte. Berlin JECS Journal of Early Christian Studies PG Patrologia graeca, by J. P. Migne (Ed.) RAM Revue d’ascétique et de mystique StPatr Studia Patristica SC Sources Chrétiennes TU Texte und Untersuchungen ZKT Zeitschrift für katholische Theologie

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I

SPELLING SALVATION. SPEECH ADDRESS AS MESSIANIC ADVENT

1 ARGUMENT If, as Origen believed, humanity’s hope for salvation has been answered by a divine Word, whose coming into the world has unfolded history according to a messianic intrigue, Origen’s messianic reading of world history as a soteriological discourse should not come as a surprise. How does Origen refer to this discourse? On the one hand, it is not enough to conceive it simply as a speech that refers to a soteriological event like, for example, the historical presence of the Word as the human Jesus or the pre-incarnational theophanies of the Logos. As a speech that spells the coming Word or the Word-a-coming, this discourse would have to be soteriological in its very wording, it would have to happen soteriologically. The Word’s historical unfolding would have to be approached as a speech event, which, literally, spells salvation. On the other hand, Origen considers that both the historical spelling of salvation and salvation’s biblical spelling are scripted according to the same messianic intrigue. In other words, sacred world history and the Bible are messianic in the same way, namely, through the historical deployment of the messianicity of the coming to world and to words of the same divine Word. Thus, receiving the messianic Word would necessarily consist in the receiver’s application to the Word’s soteriological “good spell,” which, as a form of exegesis, is a particular, prophetic or inspired mode of spelling this Word. Alternatively, the application to the Word can be described as a form of allowing oneself to be spelled by the biblically coming Word as an actor in the biblical event of His coming. Obviously, such an exegesis is not only an interpretation of the saving signs that the messianic Logos proffers biblically, but also a testimony to the event of making sign, of signifying, which is the evangelic Word (the Word as gospel). 1

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For Origen the exegetical spelling of the Word originates with the Word’s own soteriological spell as a universal selfannouncement. However, as long as, thinking with Origen, one holds this soteriological announcement to have been a good spelling (a Gospel) phrased by the Word in the human terms of ordinary speech, a necessary, although not also sufficient, condition for a hearer to be saved would be her being assigned by the Word to respond to His announcement as the elect addressee of the historical words, which, by pronouncing them, He made His, which He claimed as His own and even as Himself (His biblical incarnation, so to speak). Thus, by responding to the Word’s gospel, the addressee discovers that, in spite of herself, she has been placed in the following, most peculiar, speech situation: as one who has been elected to respond to a divine Word, which manifests itself in and as human speech or ordinary words (the text of the Bible as gospel), the hearer has been made into a living testimony of the electing address, to which she was asked to attend to and to expound before a messianic congregation of fellow-addressees or Logos-disciples. As a Logos-claimed (elect) addressee, the exegete is, thus, assigned to her neighborly audience, to whom she is expected to minister through her homiletic and commenting work. Exegesis becomes, thus, a liturgical attestation to the soteriological advent of the Logos or a liturgical spelling of the very gospel, which, in His messianic coming, the Word has spelled out authoritatively. The task of this study is twofold. In addition to offering a detailed analysis of Origen’s understanding of exegetical pedagogy as a liturgical attending to the Word’s high-priestly advent in the Bible as the Bible (a sort of textual redoubling of the incarnation), I shall also raise a series of questions that I cannot pretend to be able to answer fully. Following in the path of old concerns that, nevertheless, have flared up in the work of a series of eminent recent philosophers, I shall ask whether there is not anything that passes under silence in Origen’s Christian claim of spelling world history as the Word’s universal Gospel. Can Origen’s exegetical spell of the Word as universal Gospel prevent the silencing of the otherwise than Christian speech of, let us say, the Greek or the Jew? If it turns out that it cannot, does the silence of the non-Christian Greek or Jew still spell out something when phrased by Origen’s Christian Word as universal Gospel? Is this silence still audible, and, if so, how? Ultimately, from an extra-Origenian angle, one

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may wonder whether it is possible to dissociate the Christian Word from the spell of a universalist metaphysics and what would be the consequences of such an attempt?1 Briefly put, would the Logos lose His messianic appeal, if He were to cease keeping His disciples under a metaphysical universalist spell?

2 LOGOCENTRIC AND ANTI-LOGOCENTRIC READINGS OF ORIGEN’S DEFINITION OF THE GOSPEL AS ORDINARY SPEECH In this introduction I shall lay out two possible interpretations of Origen’s pragmatics of ordinary speech (lo¢goj), then I shall trace the transformation of this ordinary speech into a discourse, which has been claimed by the incarnate Logos as His own, as the wording of His own soteriological announcement.2 For the time being, I shall focus solely on Origen’s general definition of the word “gospel” (to£ eu¹agge¢lion), which in many ways can be said to function as the foundation of the theological construction of the first book of The Commentary on the Gospel according to John.3 According to Origen, a gospel (eu¹agge¢lion) is: a discourse (lo¢goj) containing a report (a¹paggeli¢an) of things which, with good reason (kata£ to£ euÃlogon), due to their beneficial character, make the hearer glad whenever he receives (parade¢chtai) what is reported (to£ a¹paggelo¢menon). Such a discourse is no less gospel should it also be examined with reference to the hearer’s attitude (pro£j th£n sxe¢sin tou½ a¹kou¢ontoj). The gospel is either a discourse which contains the presence (parousi¢an) of a good (a¹gaqou=) for the believer, or a discourse which announces (e©paggelo¢menoj) that an awaited good is present (parei½nai a¹gaqo¢n to£ prosdokw¢menon).4

This text offers a nuanced use of three closely related terms designating the act of announcing (a¹gge¢lein), namely eu¹agge¢lion, a¹paggeli¢a (with the variation to£ a¹paggelo¢menon) and e¹paggeli¢a, in the expression e©paggelo¢menoj. I have followed Ronald Heine translating a¹paggeli¢a as report, a term that captures well enough the sense of pointing back to a source or origin entailed by the Greek prefix a¹po-.5 Thus, a report could be seen as an announcement referring the hearer back to its source, to its

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“wherefrom.”6 By contrast, for e¹paggelei½n and e¹paggeli¢a I have used, also following Heine, the terms “announcing” and “annunciation,” which keep close to the meaning of the Greek prefix e¹pi- in e©paggelo¢menoj.7 Like the Greek e¹pi-, the Latin prefix ad-, featured in the English term “annunciation,” clarifies the “whereto” of the act of announcing or its addressee. I think that one could intuitively agree on calling the “fromto” orientation of the report-annunciation pair the basic scenario of any addressative discourse, including the Origenian gospel. In a plain reading the definition seems to say that what makes a regular briefing discourse into a gospel (an eu¹-agge¢lion ) is the fact that the addressee of a gospel address receives the briefing (to£ a¹gge¢lein) as a report on beneficial things. Furthermore, the evangelic discourse (lo¢goj) seems to be beneficial in a second, more profound way. Given its function of offering uplifting news about the presence of beneficial goods, the discourse may be qualified as being intrinsically beneficial. Thus, as one may argue, an eu¹agge¢lion or a beneficial briefing discourse is named so insofar as it was meant to do “good” to or to benefit its specific addressee. When read in this way, Origen’s explanation of the beneficence of the news reveals a double determination; the news can be said to be beneficial both in regard to its referent (the announced good or the a¹gaqo£n) and in regard to the intention of the reportingannouncing act (the well-meaning or the eu¹), which conveys the sense that the performance of the discourse was designed to bring about in the receiver a state of joy or well-being. Although straightforward and coherent, the above interpretation is far from unproblematic. Interestingly enough, Origen’s definition of the beneficent briefing is quite elusive on at least one point, more precisely on the signification of the a¹po- reference of the discourse, insofar as this discourse is viewed as a report. There are two possible readings of this prefix. As a report (a¹paggeli¢a) the discourse can be construed as an uplifting news from a wellmeaning addressor, which implies that, as an annunciation (e¹paggeli¢a) to a hearer, the efficacy of the briefing could have been ascertained by the extent to which the beneficent intent of the addressor translates into the addressee’s actual joy.8 Another possible reading, strongly supported by the last phrase of the above quotation, could take the discourse itself (the lo¢goj) as the source of

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the report.9 Given this, perhaps not entirely unintentional imprecision, the interpretation of the double orientation of the speech address, which is the good news as news-from (report) and news-to (annunciation), becomes more difficult. In essence, the difficulty consists in providing an unambiguous answer to the following two questions: What is, after all, the “wherefrom” of the report pointing to and how is the wherefrom of the report related to the whereto of the annunciation?10 Given Origen’s construal of the discourse (lo¢goj) as the linguistic site in which these two dimensions converge, in a manner that needs yet to be clarified, distinguishing the report from the annunciation and clarifying the character of their articulation become matters of utmost importance. To summarize, there are three dimensions of the beneficent briefing. As a briefing-from, the news is called a report and it marks the addressor, who, as it was shown, can be either the person who issues the discourse or, in a more enigmatic sense, it can be the discourse itself. As a briefing-of or a briefing-about, the discourse refers to a set of goods that it either makes present or it announces as present. Thus, the present/presented goods can be said to be the referent of the news. Finally, as a news-to the briefing discourse is called an annunciation, which marks the position of the addressee. The addressee is the one expected either to (a) rejoice over the news about the presence of the referent or (b) to become uplifted by the event of the news as such. If gladdened by the news as a briefing event, the addressee can take it either as (i) a token of the beneficence of the discourse’s addressor or as (ii) a token of the beneficence of the discourse as a sui generis addressor.11 Recent philosophy provides us with a distinction between two approaches to language that may, in fact, be of great help in the current investigation. The approach to language, which deconstructionist philosophy has qualified as logocentric, favors the idea of a primacy of thought over spoken language and, in turn, of spoken language over writing, and proposes understanding as the resolution of the difference between the addressor and the addressee (see above Origen’s distinction between a “wherefrom” and a “whereto” of the news) in a trans-linguistic community of mind (nou¤j) or thought (lo¢goj).12 Thus understood, logocentrism can be said to rely on metaphysical and anthropological assumptions, such as, the intentional preconditioning of language (language as an

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intersubjective exchange aimed at a reciprocal understanding of the communicative intentions of the involved parties),13 the existentialontological preconditioning of language (language as Being’s mode of manifestation in the historical existentiality of a particular beingin-the-world such as the Dasein),14 or the rational-communicative preconditioning of language (language as driven by a rational teleology of reaching understanding).15 The philosophers who espouse the above views share the conviction that there is a sufficient reason of language or an ultimate rationale for language’s performance.16 This sufficient reason may be expressed in various ways such as the societal harmonization of intentions, the need for rational communicative agreement, or a person’s successful existential positioning in the world and in history by means of pertinent interpretations of the other person’s discourse. Based on the above observations, I shall characterize logocentrism as a form of reductionism. Although the sufficient reason that authorizes this reductionism may be expressed in various ways (it can be a speculative idea, an a priori or an empirical concept, rule or norm), the effect of its application is invariably a more or less subtle destruction of the transcendence of language as an event that surpasses determination. For the anti-logocentrist language is first and foremost an event which undermines communication, reception-traditions, or the rules of informational exchange by playing out discourses otherwise than intended, expected, authored, received, interpreted or transmitted. In this sense antilogocentrism’s main task consists in attesting to language’s transcendence by attending to the discourse of the parties that a logocentrical construal of language mutes or reduces, while looking for alternative ways of phrasing that would be more mindful of the alterity of these muted discourses.17 Indirectly, this will be also a testimony for the transcendence of language and, in so far as the Logos could be proven to stand for the irreducible event of language, it could function as well as a defense of the transcendence of the Logos over the reductionistic claims of logocentrism. I shall limit the current discussion to only three species of logocentrism, namely, the naïve or pre-hermeneutical, the hermeneutical, and the universal pragmatic or communicative, and to three species of anti-logocentrism, namely, deconstructionism, the ethical pragmatics of saying, and the heuristic pragmatics of givenness. The speech pragmatic theory, which I shall start to articulate

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in this introductory chapter and which will be most rigorously applied in the final chapter of the book, is a revision of Austin’s classical speech act theory18 and of Gadamerian phenomenological hermeneutics19 in light of deconstructionist, postmodern and heuristic philosophical theories of language. I shall rely on a reading of J. L. Austin’s speech act theory along the lines of its “continental” elaboration in the works of Jacques Derrida,20 Jean-François Lyotard,21 and Jean-Luc Marion.22 Austin’s approach is pragmatic insofar as it is focused on the ability of language to do or perform certain operations (promising, ordering, declaring, etc) and attaining certain effects by means of these operations. The alternative approach, which is primarily focused on the meaning of words and phrases outside of (or, at least, not strictly in the light of) their communicative use, bears the name of semantics. Thus, Austin sees language or, more precisely, speech, as a complex sort of performance, which, in addition to a propositional structure (the locution) that secures its truth value also presents a non-propositional “force” (the illocution) by which an addressor may or may not evince from an addressee a certain response (the perlocution).23 The continental revision of Austin’s speech act theory originates with philosophers with a solid phenomenological training, who, however, have taken the classical phenomenology of Husserl, Heidegger and the phenomenological hermeneutics of Gadamer beyond their intentional-existential design. Thus, Derrida’s deconstructionism centered on the notion of différance (translated as “difference” but also as “deferring”), Lyotard’s postmodern pragmatics centered on the notion of the différend (translated as “differend” or an open ended conflict, as opposed to a litigation, or a conflict with an equitable solution) and Marion’s pragmatic heuristics centered on the notion of donation or givenness (donation), corroborate Austin’s speech act theory with phenomenology and phenomenological hermeneutics (in the case of Lyotard the corroboration extends also to Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language), while exposing them to a sympathetic critique. This critique has polarized the philosophical heirs of Austin into two contending schools. On the one hand, there is a school of thought that opposes the above mentioned revision and sees language as intentionally or communicatively predetermined (Searle, Habermas), i.e., as a set of speech acts which are meant to be redeemed by the addressor according to preset rules of pertinent reception. On the other hand, there are those

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who agree with the continental critique and who, while recognizing the possibility of pertinent speech reciprocation as contingent, avoid making communicative reciprocation into a necessary regulative principle of speech. This party construes speech as an event, which allows for a plural, iterative redemption of speech acts, within a language game that always remains open. The speech event is believed to make evident the ethical (Levinas, Lyotard) and/or agapic (Marion) asymmetry of speech as a socialization based on the speaker’s obligation to respond to the other person, rather than on an analysis of the speech intentions of the isolated subject (intentional pragmatics) or on neutral, trans-personal, agreement structures (transcendental communicative pragmatics). The aptness of my methodological choice will be further clarified during the subsequent analysis of various Origenian texts, starting with the above mentioned definition of the term “gospel.” 2.1 Three Logocentric Readings of Origen’s Definition of the Gospel as Ordinary Speech 2.1.1 Naïve Logocentrism The first form of logocentrism, which may be called prehermeneutical, or naïve, considers discourse as a linguistic vehicle of the intention of the speaker or the addressor.24 In this perspective understanding the discourse of the addressor means understanding the addressor’s speech-intention. Consequently, a first logocentric reading of Origen’s distinction between a reporting and an announcing function of the addressative discourse (lo¢goj) would consist in the fathoming of the intention of the one from whom the discourse reports (the addressor) by the one to whom the discourse announces the presence of the goods (the addressee). In this perspective the addressor and the addressee appear as two extra linguistic rational instances verbalizing their thoughts as briefing-beneficial intentions or as the acknowledgment of these intentions. Thus, when viewed as a report, the discourse is construed along the lines of its function of making known the intention (what Origen would have called the nou¤j or the mind)25 of the absent sender by offering tokens of her concern for the addressee. It is also implied that by properly understanding the report, the addressee, who is at a distance from her informer-benefactor, is brought into the addressor’s presence, or, at least, into the presence

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of the discursively expressed beneficence of the addressor.26 Thus, understanding a piece of news properly (that is, understanding it as intended by the addressor) is the addressee’s means of overcoming or, at least, reducing her alienation from the news giver. However, by fathoming the addressor’s intention, the addressee cancels the difference between the “wherefrom” of the report and the “whereto” of the annunciation, making the linguistic mediation of the discourse no longer required. The informed-benefited addressee is now in an extralinguistic oneness of mind or thought with the addressor.27 Alternatively, when taken as an annunciation, the discourse is viewed along the lines of its suitability to a certain hearer as the designated addressee of the addressor’s informative beneficence. In the light of the annunciation the hearer discovers herself in the presence of that referring to which the discourse bears news (the “good” destined by the beneficent addressor to make the addressee rejoice) or, alternatively, she is being brought to an understanding of the message of the distant addressor from whom the discourse brings news. The difference between the addressor and the addressee is revealed and, by the same token, cancelled, through the conditioning of the effectiveness of the beneficent briefing on the fulfillment of the addressee’s expectation of intelligibly uplifting news. This news is informative in response to and solely within the limits of the addressee’s capacity and need to be informed and it is uplifting in response to and under the sole determination of the addressee’s ability and need to rejoice in it.28 The above theory deserves to be called “logocentric,” insofar as it reduces linguistic verbalization (the logocentrist’s rendering of Origen’s discourse or lo¢goj) to the understanding of a speech-intention as a mental idea or thought (the lo¢goj as intention of a nou¤j). There are, as I mentioned above, more refined versions of logocentrism that do not involve a genetic-chronological precedence of thought (intentions) over language (as speech) but rather a hermeneutical-ontological or a pragmatic-communicative principle or rationale (lo¢goj) that regulates the belonging together or the mutual pertinence of an address and a response.29 I shall outline first the hermeneutical-ontological logocentrism, then I shall sketch the essentials of logocentric-pragmatic communication.

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2.1.2 Hermeneutical Logocentrism In an ontological-hermeneutical perspective, Origen’s lo¢goj, translated in the above quotation as a discourse, or, more broadly construed, as language, is the medium of the presentation of a world.30 The event of the coming to language of the world is independent from or, at least, non-coincident with, the intention of the speaker of the discourse.31 The goods announced by the news are truly present because language brings them to presence, displays or manifests them in the receptor’s interpretation of the text of the announcement.32 Thus, the wherefrom of the report points to the discourse itself, to the announcement of the good news as a text delivered to us within a tradition of interpretation in which, we, as historically situated interpreters, are already involved.33 We learn about the appearance of a world (the presence of the announced good, for example) from the lo¢goj as discourse or, rather as text, and we do so as historically situated interpreters.34 The logocentrism can be noticed in the identifying of language’s condition of possibility as the matching between the world of the announcement, which comes to language or to text, and the interpretative reception of this linguistic-textual coming as the pertinent or proper adjustment35 of the text to the historical situation of the interpreter (what Gadamer designates as the act of Anwendung or application).36 In Origen’s terms, the discourse destines the good that is discursively coming-to-presence (the reported good), to a possible future application, to a future pertinent reception as an informativebeneficial annunciation. Thus, insofar as it is historically or traditionally capable of being announced, the report is applicable and the reception of the report is, thus, pre-established in the a priori existential-historical character of the manifestation of the discourse, even though its actual reception can and will be inevitably plural and variable.37 Since this belonging-together of report and annunciation occurs in the discourse (lo¢goj) out of an ontological necessity that governs language,38 one would not be wrong in calling this ontological necessity a redoubled lo¢goj, that is, a lo¢goj or rationale determining the applicability of the language-disclosed world to the historically effected and traditionally predetermined consciousness of the interpreter.39 Thus, hermeneutics is logocentric insofar as it is necessitated by an ontological rationale (lo¢goj) that couples language (lo¢goj as discourse) and interpretation. Although exem-

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plified in language, the rationale is, ultimately, a meta-linguistic plot of language (eine Sage, an original meta-linguistic saga), which is more original than any actual linguistic phrasing (die Sprache).40 In brief, hermeneutical logocentrism does not take the intention of the addressor as the central, trans-linguistic lo¢goj of communication,41 but rather postulates a more subtle lo¢goj as the ontological articulation of the report and the annunciation, the “wherefrom” and “whereto,” the annunceability of the report and the applicability of the announced.42 Understanding a text is overcoming the text’s alienation from the interpreter or overcoming the hermeneutical distance between the text and the interpreter in the name of the belonging-together of these two as it was established by an ontological-apophantic lo¢goj of language (die Sage der Sprache).43 2.1.3 Communicative Logocentrism In a third attempt to define logocentrism one can construe the lo¢goj of Origen’s definition along the lines of universal pragmatics. Universal pragmatics distinguishes between two dimensions of speech, namely, the locutionary one, as sense and reference, and the illocutionary dimension, which allows a speaker to reach a communicative uptake.44 As a proponent of universal pragmatics Jürgen Habermas rearranges Austin’s distinction between the locutionary dimension of the speech as the speech act’s meaning and the illocutionary dimension as the speech act’s force.45 While for Austin meaning, or the locutionary aspect of a speech act such as “I hereby announce that something good is present,” can be identified as the propositional part of the statement, i.e., as the “something good is present” segment of the utterance and, while the force or the illocutionary aspect pertains to what the announcement “does” or its effectiveness in letting someone know that something good is present,46 Habermas takes both aspects as subclasses of pragmatic meaning. ‘Force’ then stands for the meaning of expressions that are originally used in connection with illocutionary acts, and ‘meaning’ for the meaning of expressions originally used in connection with propositions. Thus we distinguish ‘force’ and ‘meaning’ as two categories of meaning that arise with regard to the general pragmatic functions of communication: the establishment of interpersonal relations, on the one hand, and

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THE SPELL OF THE LOGOS representation (reporting of facts or states of affairs,) on the other.47

A third function is added to the two just mentioned, namely, the expressive one, which is supposed to disclose the subjective experience of the speaker of the utterance.48 Thus, in light of universal pragmatics, the speech act “I hereby announce that something good is present” is focused on making the receiver represent the referent (the presence of the good or, rather, the good as present). By contrast, a speech act such as “I promise you that a good will be present” is focused on establishing an interpersonal relation (an obligation to keep a promise towards someone), while a speech act such as “I confess that something good is present” is focused on disclosing how the speaker feels about the presence of the good.49 Habermas calls the speech acts that are focused on representations “constative”; the speech acts focused on establishing interpersonal relations are called “regulative” or “normative,” while those focused on expression are called “avowals.”50 As a constative, the above announcement raises a validity claim to truth, which means that by this speech act the speaker has placed herself under the obligation to provide grounds for her assertion that the said goods are present, and has exposed herself to a possible observational verification of her statement from the part of the hearer.51 For regulative speech acts, the validity claim does not concern the truth of the propositional content of the statement, but rather the rightness or appropriate character of the interpersonal relation that the speech act establishes, while the obligation of the speaker is not one of providing a ground for the verification of truth but rather to provide a justification for the kind of social relation in which the hearer has been invited to enter (why is the hearer justified in accepting to become an expecting recipient of the goods that the speaker promises, a “promisee,” so to speak, of the “promissor”). Finally, an expressive speech act raises a claim to truthfulness, placing the speaker under the obligation to prove herself trustworthy, in light of her subsequent behavior. Thus, if a confession has been made in regard to the presence of certain goods, the hearer should be able to verify its truthfulness by matching the confessor’s subsequent behavior with her currently expressed internal state (the subsequent behavior of the one confessing the presence of the goods should show that she was sincere in making this confession).52

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According to Origen’s definition, a gospel discourse (lo¢goj) is in its announcement dimension (as far as the a©gge¢lein in eu©agge¢lion is concerned) a constative speech act that is focused on the referent and makes a claim to the truth of the presence of the announced goods. The hearer can accept this claim insofar as it is cognitively verifiable that the goods that are announced to be present are truly present and are truly good. However, there is also the beneficent aspect of this speech act (the eu- in eu©agge¢lion), which suggests that the gospel discourse might as well be construed as an expressive statement. If expressive, the hearer takes the gospel as a disclosure of the magnanimity or generosity of the sender, of the sender’s sincere well-meaning. A third, less explicit, way in which one can construe the gospel, is that of a regulative speech act. Insofar as it is received as the fulfillment of a communicatively induced expectation, for example, as the speaker’s follow up on a promise, the gospel announcement regarding the present goods can be said to function as a regulative statement. Nevertheless, in order to be regulative, the gospel lo¢goj has to be also meant, not just received, as regulative. Is there any evidence for the gospel discourse’s having been meant to establish an interpersonal relation? Apart from the subsequent messianic interpretation that Origen gives to the definition of the ordinary gospel,53 I think that one can detect a subtle regulative aspect in Origen’s tracing of the briefing (constative) and the beneficent (expressive) dimensions of the speech act to what I have named a “from-to” or addressative basicstructure of the gospel. If the report as news-from is to succeed in briefing and benefiting the hearer, the report has to be convertible into an annunciation or a news-to. Perhaps one can explain the convertibility of a report into an annunciation as the pragmatic obligation under which Habermas considers that a speaker is placed when raising a validity claim, be it a constative claim to truth or a regulative claim to rightness, or an expressive claim to truthfulness.54 In any of these speech acts the speaker acts in regard to the hearer as someone who is bound by the obligation not to fail a possible test of truth (by the examination of the referent of the constative), or of rightnenss (by the examination of the justification of the proposed social relation) or of truthfulness (by the monitoring of the match between the speaker’s subsequent behavior with the inner state that the speaker claimed to have had at the time of the expression). Thus, if one beneficently announces the presence

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of (beneficial) goods, one places oneself under the obligation to stand the test of an observational verification of these goods (a test of the referent), of the promise-fulfillment character of the presence of the goods (a test of the promissor-promissee relation), and of the well-intended character of the announcement (a test of the sincerity of the announcement/promise). What is of interest for the current evaluation of universal pragmatics as logocentric, is Habermas’ opinion regarding the nature of this obligation. For Habermas, this obligation is a universal a priori determination of communicative action in general and of communicative speech acts in particular.55 Insofar as reaching agreement is the necessary, transcendentally established, goal of reason,56 which can be identified by linguistic reconstructive methods,57 as being at the same time the universal goal of speech, communicability (the possibility of reaching agreement) can be called the reason (lo¢goj) of speech (lo¢goj in Origen’s sense), or a rational, trans-linguistic lo¢goj (reason) of the lo¢goj (discourse). Also, insofar as a gospel discourse places an addressor under an obligation to an addressee in accordance with a transcendental rational determination postulating its communicability as the normal function of speech,58 a gospel discourse (lo¢goj ) functions in accordance with a necessitating reason (lo¢goj), that is, it is transcendentally and thus trans-linguistically determined as communicative.59 In conclusion, if Origen’s lo¢goj were to be proven to be a transcendental communicative determination of speech as specified by universal pragmatics, Origen’s approach to speech would be inevitably logocentric. Looking back at the logocentric readings of the good news offered above, one can detach two straightforward understandings of the lo¢goj and an additional, more subtle, interpretation of the term. On the one hand, o¥ lo¢goj designates the empirical discourse of announcement, that is, a text that logocentrism views as a verbal expression (a chain of signifiers) of a conceptual or ideal content (the signified or the sense).60 The pre-hermeneutical version of logocentrism considers discourse as a verbalization of a communicative intention of the speaker; the hermeneutical approach construes the discourse as a text in which a world comes to words; finally, the communicative action approach treats discourse as the verbalization of a series of socio-linguistically predetermined communicative claims. On the other hand, lo¢goj could designate that

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which is verbalized, either directly, as the overall, world-disclosing sense of the verbal discourse or the intention of the speaker, or, indirectly, as the things or the state of affairs that the conceptual sense refers to and the speaker thematizes as her intentional objects. By contrast, the term lo¢goj can be used in a more subtle way to designate a principle of world disclosure (hermeneutics) or of reaching agreement (communicative action), which I have called above a lo¢goj of the lo¢goj or a reason of discourse. Thus, for ontological hermeneutics this redoubled lo¢goj is the event of Being’s happening to beings as displayed in Dasein’s inquisitive historical existence, while, for the communicative action theorists, it represents the original, structuring principle and the telos of language-use, which is that of reaching understanding, as opposed to other non-communicative uses like the strategic or the poetic.61 2.2 Three Anti-Logocentric Readings of Origen’s Definition of the Gospel The interpretation that recent deconstructionist, postmodern and heuristic philosophies propose as an alternative to the logocentric view of language exposes the arbitrariness of the assumption that language is only a verbalization of thought or that language can be completely determined by the specification of a universal a priori principle of truth disclosure or communicative agreement.62 In fact, the anti-logocentric thinkers reject the metaphysical presuppositions of the belief in a hierarchical primacy of thought over language, in which they see the main bias of Western culture.63 For the anti-logocentric party, language is first and foremost an event that, while making possible the distinctions between the various instances of a universe of discourse (the addressor, the addressee, the sense and the referent), engages them in a play that indefinitely defers any final unification into a speech-suppressing disclosure of truth, a perfect match of thoughts (intentions) or a mutual, teleologically-preconditioned understanding.64 As a deferred truth, intentional coincidence or communicative agreement, language cannot be reduced to an original thought, a rational first principle, or an intention of either an individual or of a cosmic mind.65 Escaping any form of reduction and thematization, language is an event that happens or plays out as an anarchic (i.e., previous to any determinative principle) possibility of speaking-otherwise.66 Language allows any phrase to happen otherwise than phrased, intended, or

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received.67 What follows is a brief description of some of the most representative anti-logocentric linguistic theories. Anti-logocentrism can be roughly divided into two categories. A first category comprises thinkers such as Levinas and Derrida,68 for whom a criticism of logocentrism entails necessarily a criticism of the lo¢goj as it was traditionally understood by the West, including the Christian Patristic elaboration on the Johnanine Logostheology, of which Origen is a prominent representative. What characterizes this position is the belief that the “-ism” in the notion of “logocentrism” does not stand just for an ideological ossification of an otherwise flexible, plural, non-dominative lo¢goj. The lo¢goj as self-present reason, mind, spirit, Being, Son, etc69 is viewed as intrinsically rigid and totalizing; in other words, logocentrism’s “ism” and its self-centered-ness (its “-centrism”) belong to lo¢goj’s essence, which needs to be de-centered, dis-placed, de-constructed. By contrast, Jean-Luc Marion proposes an anti-logocentrism that does not give up the lo¢goj. Drawing on an original reading of phenomenology, but ultimately on patristic and patristic-inspired sources, Marion develops the Johanine Logos-theology into a direction that goes against a logocentric subordination of language (as speech but also as writing) to thought.70 2.2.1 Deconstructionism Derrida’s deconstructionism is meant, to a large extent, as a response to Ferdinand de Saussure’s linguistic semiology and to Austin’s linguistic pragmatics, which could be conveniently illustrated by Origen’s definition of the good news.71 Let us first look to the second half of the definition, which provides the elements for a logocentric semiology. According to one possible reading of Origen’s definition, a discourse (lo¢goj) as a verbal announcement can either contain, that is, maintain in its hold as an envelope or a recipient (peri-eÓxein), the presence (parousi¢a) of goods or it can refer to these goods as present (parei¤nai). When transposed in Saussurian terminology, the discourse appears as a verbal chain of signifiers with a certain sense (the sense of the gospel announcement, for example). Derrida submits that, by the binary distinction between a signifier and its signification as arbitrarily related aspects of the same linguistic sign, de Saussure has not entirely overcome logocentrism’s distinction between thought and speech.72 He main-

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tains that the conceptual signification of the discourse is still a kind of thinking (the performative understanding of the discourse’s message by a communicatively competent speaker) that is present to mind, or even the mind’s self-presence, while the signifier, as the expression of the signified, is external and somewhat subordinated to this mind’s thought.73 In the Saussurian perspective the gospel discourse is expected to “contain” thought in such a manner that it becomes intelligible and communicable as a meaningful announcement-report. Consequently, for the Saussurian logocentrist, the verbal expression of the gospel discourse as a beneficial-informative signifying is meaningful and, therefore, useful only when viewed in light of its intrinsic (“contained”) sense or signification or, in Origen’s terms, in the spirit that is hidden in, but has primacy over, the letter.74 Given the mutual relation between a signifier, a signified and the reference of the linguistic sign as the words of the discourse, the overall, present-to-mind sense of the report-announcement and the goods that are reported-announced as present, the reception of the discourse is appropriate only insofar as the receptor understands the signification of the verbal signifiers (the spirit of the letter, so to speak), that is, only insofar as the receptor competently applies herself to the verbalization of the discourse in order to get through and past the words to the conceptual presence of meaning or to the things meant.75 Derrida points out the hierarchical relation that Saussurian semiology establishes between signification and its verbal signifier.76 If writing, as the inscription of verbalization, is brought into discussion along with speech, one can express this hierarchic, binary opposition as the Pauline contention between a letter that, if taken all by itself, kills (is unintelligible, opaque, misleading) and a spirit that gives life (i.e., intelligibility, communicability).77 According to Derrida, Saussurian logocentrism maintains a primacy of speech as more intimately connected to thought (speech as a significantly articulated “breathing” of sound) over writing as a more distant, communicatively less controllable, representation of speech (the graphic inscription of in-spired or “breathed” speech).78 This distinction is, according to Derrida, a constant of Western thought, which traditionally favors the spirit as self-present consciousness, individual or universal mind, will to power, etc., over the mimetically distant, incomplete (vague, deceptive) letter.79 To overcome

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the alienation between the letter (the signifier) and the spirit (the signification) one needs to develop an immediate familiarity with the spirit, that is, one needs to acquire the communicative competence to decode the message of the news giver. Moving now from the sketch of a semiosis in the second half of the definition to a sketch of a speech pragmatic theory in its first half, one encounters the same metaphor of “containing.” This time, however, the contained element is a communicable reportannunciation. The role of the reporting-announcing is to make present, via its signification (the sense of the gospel announcement), either the desired (because absent) goods or the beneficent intention of the (absent) sender of the news. According to Derrida, the pragmatic rephrasing of semiology is still logocentric insofar as it makes speech and writing into vehicles of communication and evaluates the propriety of this verbal/scriptural communication by the success of its communicative performance.80 If a discourse is received otherwise than meant or, if it is interpreted otherwise than the disclosure of the “truly” announced goods, the speech pragmatic logocentrist can construe this discrepancy only as a communicative mishap that can be fixed by readjusting either the speech expression (the phrasing of the communication) or its interpretation to the communicative intention of the speaker. In both cases, a clearly specified or specifiable lo¢goj or communicative principle/reason/norm can be invoked as a firm guide in this operation of readjustment. Once one has became a competent user of communicatively regulated speech one has learned how to use speech mediation in order to restore the alienated to identity, the anomalous to normality, absence to presence, vagueness to clarity, image to truth, and letter to spirit.81 Derrida’s criticism of the above versions of logocentrism starts from an apparently simple observation, namely that, in addition to the thematization of the members of this binary opposition (let us call it, in the Pauline terms preferred by Origen, the spirit— letter pair), one needs to inquire about their opposedness, about their difference.82 If diligently conducted, this inquiry will reveal the arbitrariness of the containing metaphor and will make one question the assumptions that produced it. Following Origen’s definition along Derridean lines, one could note that signification can never be an accomplished, self-present, spiritual “content” readied to be verbally and graphically transported to a linguistically compe-

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tent hearer/reader. A clue for an unprejudiced approach to signification or sense can be found in the difference between reporting and announcing, or, rather, in a more Derridean fashion, between the very possibility of news-giving as the hyphened (i.e., split and deferred) reporting-announcing. The fact that a piece of news can be eventually announced (and received) as reported is only a token that the announcement and the report have been articulated (hyphenated) as two distinct speech dimensions (the news reports from someone; it also inscribes the one from whom/that of which it reports as something receivable by the one to whom the news is announced, and it prompts a response from the one to whom it reaches out). It, thus, becomes obvious that the news is not a monolithic entity, that the news is structurally in lack of selfsameness; in fact, the news is the very happening of a nonsameness, of a difference.83 As a result, what can be announced as reported is only one of the many ways in which an announcement can happen. An announcement can be always meant otherwise (a report-variation as a departure from the intention of the addressor), or it can be referred otherwise (a report-variation as a surprising ostension, naming or description of the referent) or it can be received otherwise (an annunciation-variation as a departure from the expectation of the addressee).84 The Derridean anti-logocentrist considers that the communicative use of the news, which is verified by its performative success (the joy of an informed and uplifted receptor), should not be allowed to cover up the essential non-coincidence of the announcing and the reporting dimensions of the briefing act. The announceability of the report is, according to Derrida, a work of the différance, by which he means a linguistic event that distinguishes the report from the annunciation, while, at the same time, deferring their ultimate coincidence, and with it, the ultimate communicative closure of speech by a thought agreement between its main instances (the addressor or the “wherefrom” of the report, the addressee or the “whereto” of the annunciation, the sense or the announcement’s “content” and the referent as the “goods”).85 This is what I have called above the hyphenation of the gospel as reportannouncement. As the event that hyphenates the report and the annunciation, différance spaces (differs) and temporalizes (defers) the discourse (lo¢goj); it makes it happen in the contingent form in which it happens. In Lyotard’s terms, while différance makes it nec-

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essary that a discourse be phrased (that it happens), how the discourse is phrased is always contingent (there is no necessary reason [lo¢goj] for it to happen the way it does).86 Discourse is the work of a différance, that is, a trace of a language event (in Origen’s terms, a coming [e©pidhmi¢a)]).87 This trace in-scribes sense in the sounds/letters as always already differentiated, already set linguistically into play (jeu). Thus, the play of the trace, which is the différance,88 sets into play the very temporality and the spacing of the language of the announcement. Nevertheless, although productive and disseminative of meaning, the trace itself cannot be inscribed in discourse either as a signifier (verbal sound or written letter), or as a siginified (sense); the event of language does not allow itself to be linguistically thematized.89 The Derridean-Lyotardian reading of language as event construes the lo¢goj as a spaced and deferred discourse. The question arises whether it is also possible to take the lo¢goj as the différance itself, establishing thus a distinction between lo¢goj as a deferred thematic discourse and lo¢goj as a non-thematic event of différance.90 This hypothesis brings us closer to Marion’s antilogocentric but still Logos-committed heuristics. Nevertheless, before any analysis of Marion’s approach, I shall return one more time to the feature that the deconstructionist view of Derrida shares with Lyotard’s post-modernism, namely the insistence on language as event. Both Lyotard and Derrida see language as a non-thematizable event, which can be attested to by the trace that it inscribes in thematic speech/writing, by the irreducible play of a plethora of contingent language games. Both authors see the attempt at speculating on the character of this event as an abuse, and formulate ethical responsibility as a sort of duty towards the very happening of language, towards the alterity of language’s plural play.91 However, in an enigmatic statement, which is worth a special attention, Levinas (an author from whom both Derrida and Lyotard claim an intellectual descent) seems to construe this responsibility as an event which precedes language, or at least manifests a certain primacy over it.

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2.2.2 Responsibility Ethics as a Speech Pragmatics of Saying Levinas calls the event of language, which Derrida and Lyotard designate as the différance or the différend, an anarchic, immemorial, otherwise than apophantic kind of saying (dire), which is clearly distinguished from what is being said (le dit).92 While the said comports the semiologic and pragmatic analyses offered above, the saying eludes them, and, not unlike Derrida’s différance, it announces itself in the trace left by the dislocation of the ontological lo¢goj, or in the disruptive “effect” that it has on the disclosive, representational, apophantic said.93 Nevertheless, for Levinas, the disruption of the lo¢goj or the said has a specific ethical character; as an event, the saying unfolds according to what Levinas terms “an intrigue of responsibility.”94 What is this intrigue? Obviously, the question is not well suited for an event that precedes thematization and outwits speech. Nevertheless, judging by the ethical trace that this event inscribes in subjectivity and in the lo¢goj of the said, the intrigue is an ineffable deferral of the closure of language in communicative agreement, one’s ethical opening towards the other outside the reach of hermeneutical truth or communicative agreement, that is, outside Being and its lo¢goj (said).95 This intrigue anarchically socializes the subject as one responsible for/to the other and therefore it makes ethical responsibility into the trace of the event of saying.96 As immemorially plotted by the event of the saying, one discovers oneself substituted to the other, a one-for-the-other, a responsive and responsible “me,” older than a free, and free willing, “I.”97 However, Levinas’ discourse takes a surprising turn when, with an enigmatic formula, he refers to the ethically plotted or intrigued saying as a gravity that stalls speech: For this formula “transcendence to the point of absence” not to mean the simple explicitation of an ex-ceptional word, this word itself has to be put back into the divine comedy without which it could not have arisen. That comedy is enacted equivocally between temple and theater, but in it the laughter sticks to one’s throat when the neighbor approaches—that is, when his face, or his forsakenness, draws near.98

The use of a dramaturgic term (intrigue) to mark the stalling of speech as a (comedic) play and the anarchic conditioning of language on a playabiltiy whose playfulness is interrupted by the appearance of the neighbor, seems to mark a departure from the po-

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sition of Derrida and Lyotard, although probably more in the sense of a deepening than that of an invalidation. The ethical saying as substitutive responsibility (my speech as a testimony for having been elected to speak for the other to whom I am accountable) does not reduce the plural play of speech (comedic play) to the metaphysical quasi-gravity of a rational principle, like logocentrism, but it deploys it along the lines of a grave commandment, which plots or intrigues it in a certain way, that of ethics.99 As Lyotard has noticed, Levinas’ saying is a substitutive address, an “arch”prescriptive: “Listen!” attested to in the dramatically deferred response of a “Here I am” spoken by the one obliged by/to the human other person.100 Thus, according to Levinas, speech as saying is anarchically addressative and, consequently, anarchically social.101 I would like to highlight the fact that, in contrast with the différance, the Levinasian arch–command is a plotted speech, an ethically-religiously socialized (dramatized) language, and thus, that Levinas sees this sociality (the ethical-religious dramatization) as having a certain non-logocentric primacy both over the phraseable speech (the said) that it puts forth and over the infinite play of the différance, the spacing-temporalizing of this speech, which it ethically fixates, it stalls into gravity, it plots.102Moreover, as the abovementioned quotation indicates, ethical-religious plotting anarchically orients the (comedic) openeness of play toward the other, it deploys the saying addressatively as the testimony of the responsible person for having been anarchically assigned to the other human, by having been anarchically commanded to serve the other. Thus, one can now rephrase the initial question regarding the possibility of construing the lo¢goj as the event of speech itself. The rephrased question should be an inquiry into the possibility of construing the lo¢goj as an anarchic (dramatically-liturgically)103 social and socializing address, an addressatively plotted or intrigued saying. 2.2.3 Heuristic or a Speech Pragmatics of Givenness The revised question makes it easier to understand Marion’s heuristic speech pragmatics. While, for reasons that will become apparent in the fourth chapter of this study, Levinas avoids associating the saying with the Logos, Jean-Luc Marion does not find this association objectionable.104 However, not unlike Levinas, Marion articulates his linguistic pragmatics from the position of an addressee

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who is already engaged with the event of language (with the saying), an engagement that may be called testimonial.105 Like Levinas’ saying, which comes to pass in the very witnessing of the obliged addressee and traces itself in her response to the other person, Marion’s Logos is an immemorial speech event,106 the event of speech giving itself as the spoken, of a saying giving itself as the said to the attestation of a givee.107 Nevertheless, Marion’s witnessing does not take the form of an ethical responsiveness to or the responsibility for the other, but as a sui generis obligation108 to facilitate the inscription (or, rather, the in-carnation) of the Word in the words (of the saying in the said)109 by passing it on to one’s neighbor as a gift,110 as a call to her to speak back Logos’ words as words of praise (“thanksgiving,” “gratitude”—translating the Greek ”eu©xaristi¢a”).111 Thus, a discourse worthy of the Logos requires that one be placed testimonially, as a givee of Logos’s gift, and that, imitating the unconditional giving that gives the Logos to words, the givee should give herself to her neighbor;112 this selfgiving will take the form of an address in which the gifted addressor passes on not just words, but the Word (the Logos), or rather, the words as they have been incarnationally invested by the Word, as the Word’s iconic embodiment.113 Giving oneself addressatively to the other is the way in which, ultimately, a givee praises the Logos who gave Himself to the other in and as His words.114 Marion identifies this praise of gratitude or thanksgiving as filial, and the sociality that it institutes as a filial-paternal sociality.115 Following Lyotard, I have pointed out the ethical intrigue of Levinas’ speech event (the saying) as enacted by an archprescriptive (a command); I shall now pursue a similar path in tracing the love-intrigue of Marion’s speech event (the Logos) as enacted by an arch-expressive (a filial confession of love). According to a line of thought opened by Levinas, Marion judges Derrida’s conception of the language event as an infinite play of differences to be a useful but also insufficient departure from logocentrism. Marion’s critique of Derrida follows and expands Levinas’ critique of the speculative, scientific-analytic and ontological metaphysical methods, which postulate an approach to the other from a position of neutrality and, thus, prioritize an objectivating indifference over a testimonial involvement with the other (what Levinas calls a form of non-indifference).116 In general, Levinas believes, Western thought seems to be more interested in

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establishing the truth about the other, than in facing the other or attending to her needs in ethical responsibility.117 Although no longer metaphysical or structuralist (analytic-scientific), Derrida’s pragmatics, as Marion sees it, preserves at least one Western feature, namely the belief that only an indifferent non-principle, in this case, the différance (as an iterability that is indifferent to the signs, contexts, or the structure of the phrases that it defers) can prevent a metaphysical totalization of language as communicative selfpresence. In essence, Marion expresses a concern regarding the indifference of différance which, because it plays language indifferently and indefinitely, can be said to institute a more subtle reduction of that which it deconstructs to the neutrality of the deconstructive event.118 We have seen how Levinas avoided such a critique by discovering in the event of language the trace of an addressative intrigue that assigns and commits the obliged subject to the other as a living testimony of an immemorial prescriptive (an anarchic command). Can one find a similar intrigue of involvement and non-indifferent socialization in Marion’s own speech pragmatics? Procedurally, Marion stays very close to Levinas. He retains from Levinas’ approach the necessity to draw a testimonial phenomenology of the immemorial intrigue as a trace inscribed in the passivity of an addressee. In other words, one can pragmatically trace an immemorial address (without thematizing it) only from the position of a testimonial, non-indifferent addressee.119 For Levinas this testimonial position was that of the addressee of an immemorial command, that is, of one who has already been turned inside out towards the other, who has been substituted to the other, in brief of one who exists as one-for-the-other. The infinite play of différance is thus brought to a check by an immemorial command that announces itself as the trace of a saying in the responsibility to the other. By analogy, Marion’s testimonial stance is that of a recipient of the event of language as a givee of an immemorial, nonthematic giving. Unfolding Heidegger’s understanding of the event (Ereignis) of the ontological difference (of the fact that Being is given, es gibt das Sein, il y a Être) from the abandonment of the ontological determination operated in Derrida’s notion of différance,120 Marion asks two questions concomitantly. First, he inquires “what” gives Being, what is the status of the Es in Es gibt or the il in il y a?121 In a Lyotardian reformulation, this question could sound as

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follows: “who comes in the event of language, in its happening; who is the “il” in il arrive”?122 Like Lyotard, Marion answers these questions in a Heideggerian-Derridean fashion: the “what” (Es, il) is the very event of giving, it is the giving event of language, which he calls the Logos.123 The Logos happens linguistically; the Word happens as words or dicts/scripts (lo¢gia).124 However, a second question places this answer into perspective. Testimonially, one can ask the first question only from the position of a givee, the givee of a radical giving, the event of language-giving, as a gift given without a reason, an abandoned gift. A responsible givee can ask the above question again only as one whom the giving has turned into a nonindifferent givee, as one whose very asking witnesses for her being a givee (that is, being non-indifferent to the giving).125 This position opens the givee to a double responsibility: on the one hand, she will give praise for this immemorial giving, that is, she is doxologically-eucharistically responsive to this gift (what Marion, following Dionysius the Areopagite, calls a discourse of praise);126 on the other hand, the discourse of praise preserves the gift only insofar as it does not appropriate it; only insofar as it gives it over to an other (praise is a Eucharistic giving oneself to the other).127 However, since the givee, insofar as it praises the giving from the position of a givee, is a living testimony for the giving (what Marion calls an icon of the giving),128 the givee keeps giving only if she gives herself (devotes herself) to the giving that gives itself, abandoning itself to this giving, namely to the Logos as love event.129 The trace of an intrigue announces itself in this testimonial phenomenology of praise, namely, that of a sacrificial self-dispossession (a ke¢nwsij) that plots the Eucharistic praise of the givee. Thus plotted, a gift is a non-indifferent, linguistic-addressatively socialized event with the following characteristics: as a self-dispossessing giver the addressor cannot retain anything of her self-presence; as an abandonment (a giving over) with no reason, such a gift cannot be thematized, that is, objectified; as a giving beyond any need, no expectation can dictate the conditions of this giving’s happening.130 Ultimately, Marion sees this intrigue as that of a self-sacrificing and altruistic love sociality, like the filial-parental one.131 If what is being abandoned as self-given gift (which is the same as self-speaking speech or the Logos) is acknowledged testimonially (in praise) as phrasable language or specific signs, words or names (the lo¢gia), the wording of this language is witnessed in

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praise by the givee as donatively modified by the trace of an immemorial giving;132 this trace is what makes that which is being given—in this case the said or the phrasable language—into an icon of the event of giving.133 When doxologically, that is, nonpredicatively, non-apophantically, spoken by a givee, language becomes an icon of the event of saying, or, as Marion calls it, an icon of the Logos as Love-giving.134 I decided to call this immemorial, agapic Logos that is witnessed in praise, an arch-expressive. What plots the words, the said-s/scripts (lo¢gia) as icons of the Logos is the event of immemorial donative expressing as the love abandonment of the Logos to the lo¢gia, an immemorial sacrifice, or disownment of the Logos on behalf of the lo¢gia’s gifted speakers/interpreters (the logikoi£).135 Love gives speech for no reason,136 and therefore love can be spoken/scripted iconically only as the praise that a givee raises for this giving before the neighbor, to whom the gift, in order to be maintained as a gift, needs to be passed over.137 Praise opens the givee to the gift, it allows her to discover the gift as it is given (in its own giving) and to discover herself as immemorially gifted.138 Consequently, a hermeneutics of praise can be, according to Marion, more properly called a heuristics.139 Thus, the intrigue of love socializes language as a heuristic liturgical doxology (this is a doxology insofar as it praises the immemorial giving of speech—the Logos—by speaking in praise Logos’s words— lo¢gia—to the neighbor, as icons of the Logos; it is also liturgical insofar as it requires an unconditional self-giving to the neighbor for the preservation of the gift).140 How does Marion’s love-plotted, speech pragmatics differ from the other anti-logocentric pragmatic approaches exposed above? By contrast to Derrida and Lyotard, and similar to Levinas, Marion holds the event of language to be anarchically plotted and non-indifferently socialized. This plotting is not a thematization; it marks the testimonial trace of the language event that Marion calls an icon. Marion’s and Levinas’ plotted pragmatics indicate, somewhat against Derrida and Lyotard, that the reason why language gaming, as indifferent alterization, plays the phrases otherwise, defers and spaces them, disrupts contexts, and can be iteratively quoted, is exactly because it is not indifferent, because it is addressatively plotted, immemorially social and socializing. Marion and Levinas differ, however, on the character of this plotting, and, consequently, on the description of linguistic socializing. While for

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Levinas language traces itself in the event of responsibility as an immemorial command (a socialization of ethical responsibility as substitution and expiation), Marion’s testimony traces language to an immemorial donation or an abandonment (a socialization of love as self-sacrifice). Also, in contrast with Marion, who admits a certain reflexivity of the Logos (the Logos gives Himself, interprets Himself, etc.) doubled by an incarnational representation (the Logos gets incarnated in the words), Levinas avoids any reflexive (re)presentation of the saying as well as any incarnational construal of the relation between the saying and the said. In general the Levinasian intrigue does not script the play of language as a relation between a supposedly divine addressor of the saying (the Father, in Marion’s Trinitarian speech) and a human receiver, but rather as “a knot of infinity” traced in the human sociality of responsibility.141 By contrast, Marion’s intrigue engages the addressee/givee with the paternal addressor/giver in an almost mystical communion.142 Another feature that distinguishes Marion (and Levinas) from both Derrida and Lyotard is their acceptance of a testimonial tracing of the event of language; however, all four authors would agree that such a witnessing should not lead to a thematization of this event, as a phrased prescriptive or expressive (a phrase with a prescriptive or an expressive regimen).143 In regard to the performative effect of the arch-phrases of Levinas and Marion, the differences are also visible. The arch-prescriptive of Levinas’ command is a disruptive event; it traces itself traumatically, as a stalling of comedic linguistic play and as a rupturing of the coherence of the said; it also places its addressee as the obliged on the position of the accused, the persecuted; it claims her as a subject in an immemorial accusative. Marion’s arch-expressive is also disruptive, but its disrupting force manifests itself in a different manner; the archexpressive of the Logos traces itself into the lo¢gia by outwitting the idolic aims of speech, and by exposing the vanity of any attempt to bring speech to a closure, to a thematic unity and to a unified naming the unnameable. However, for Marion the event of speech is also a pardoning or forgiving of the said, or the words that the Logos outwitted, exceeded, and abandoned to vanity; the Logos (speech event) does not simply play the lo¢gia otherwise; the Logos also gives itself to be said in these words otherwise than the words could say it. As a subject spelled by the Word in an immemorial dative inflection, the addressee of these iconic Logos-

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claimed lo¢gia is called to abandon herself to the Logos as a givee.144 For reasons that will be made evident in the last chapter of the book, I shall not attempt here a Levinasian reading of Origen’s definition of the gospel discourse, or lo¢goj, as a form of saying. Instead, I shall turn now to a Marionesque interpretation of the definition of the gospel. I shall start from the belief (which, procedurally, at least, Marion shares with Levinas) that the event of speech can be witnessed, although not thematized. Since Marion identifies the event of speech with the Logos, one is offered an opportunity to address an aspect of Origen’s definition that, until now, has been given very little attention. The second part of the definition can be read as a placing of the lo¢goj in the position of the addressor (the gospel is presented as “a discourse which announces that an awaited good is present”). In a logocentric reading, this passage could be taken as a reference to ordinary speech’s susceptibility of being explicated meta-linguistically (“I state x” can be rendered as “my stating x meant y”). A version of this logocentrism that is closer to Origen’s intellectual environment, is the construal of the discourse as a Middle-Platonist cosmic Mind that thinks itself and explicates itself (a cosmic meta-disourse).145 However, when taken in Marion’s sense, the lo¢goj is not a meta-linguistically explained text but an immemorially expressed (traced, incarnate, iconically inscribed) event, the Logos or the event of speechgiving.146 In this interpretation the lo¢goj or, rather, the Logos, gives the report as announceable, the news as uplifting, the announcement as expected, where the “as” marks the transcendence of a gift, a gracious condescendence, a happening of speech to an addressee as a givee. The fact that the “as” does not manifest any intrinsic necessity (communicative or apophantic) of language, can be witnessed pragmatically from the position of a givee, but it cannot be submitted to a cognitive protocol of verification (language as event is not thematizable therefore not verifiable). When read in Marion’s terms, the disposition of the hearer, as mentioned in the second phrase of Origen’s definition, marks the self-maintaining (sxe¢sij) of a givee in the event of giving, her testimonial praise for a given (therefore linguistically and rationally undetermined) pertinence or applicability of the gift, as opposed to the thankfulness for the confirmation of an anticipation or the satisfaction of a need.147 Thus, in Marion’s approach, one needs to take the term

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lo¢goj in two ways, namely, as the event of speech (Logos) and as the spoken announcement (lo¢goj or discourse). The advent of the Logos invests the lo¢goj with iconic status as attested in the testi-

monial praise of the givee. In fact, the joy of the givee is the trace of this donative arch-expressive, the iconic aura of an immemorial announcement. In conclusion, a summary of the various logocentric and antilogocentric renderings of the Origenian ordinary discourse (lo¢goj) presents us with the following four options: a) the lo¢goj is a vehicle of thought (naive logocentrism); b) the lo¢goj is the text or, alternatively, the disclosure principle of the text or the coming to words of a world (hermeneutics); c) the lo¢goj is the agreement principle that regulates speech as communicative (communicative action); d) the lo¢goj is a speech event that may be either an unplotted trace of a free play (deconstructionism, post-modernism) or that may be anarchically-socially plotted (responsibility ethics, agapic heuristics).

3 A TENTATIVE PLACEMENT OF ORIGEN’S ORDINARY GOSPEL PRAGMATICS WITHIN THE DEBATE REGARDING LOGOCENTRISM 3.1 A Diagnostic Test for Logocentrism After outlining some of the logocentric and the anti-logocentric linguistic theories, it is perhaps time to draw a diagnostic test by which one can evaluate Origen’s definition of gospel discourse. The role of such test would be the identification of those presuppositions that authorize the reduction of the anarchic, immemorial event of language to a specific rational principle of either thought, or speech, or both. Loosely following Marion, whose approach epitomizes a larger range of anti-logocentric views, a theory can be qualified as logocentric if it provides, either explicitly or implicitly, a metaphysical determination of the anarchic event of language (language as free play, as an immemorial command or as an immemorial donation). The most basic determination of the language-event is its conditioning on the two fundamental metaphysical principles of identity and sufficient reason.148 I shall briefly summarize the ways in which logocentrism attempts to reduce language to the

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principle of identity or noncontradiction, then I shall discus the reduction of language to the principle of sufficient reason. Naïve logocentrism obeys the principle of identity when it draws language to a previous well-formed, that is, noncontradictory, thought or to the rational intention of an addressor. Moreover, a non-contradictory rational intention requires the existence of a rational subject as an extra-linguistic self-present, selfconscious being, or a being that can produce in one way or another a rational justification of its identity (its being one and the same).149 By contrast with naïve logocentrism, hermeneutics relies on a phenomenological-ontological justification of the unity and selfpresence of language that it traces phenomenologically to the unity of the language-disclosed world. The language-disclosed world appears as one in the unity of traditionary-hermeneutical appropriation, even though this oneness is instantiated historically in ever changing ways. The unity of the linguistic-textual phenomena that appear in the horizon of an interpetation is the historical unity of the existentiality of the interpreting Dasein or, rather, the unity of the happening of Being in and as the interpreting Dasein. In this sense, hermeneutics can be also said to obey the principle of identity or non-contradiction. Finally, the principle of identity is ascertained in the transcendental, communicative determination of language as rational reciprocation. Reciprocity is an expression of identity insofar as it reduces the event of an ethical or agapic address, or of a free play of differences, to a principle of communicative pertinence as communicatively regulated linguistic exchange. In regard to the logocentric demand for a sufficient reason for the happening of language (the language-event), various forms of logocentrism identify this reason in different ways. Language can be said to happen out of a necessity to express intentions and, thus, to fulfill intentionally construed expectations (naïve logocentrism), or in fulfillment of an ontological aim to disclosure or truth, that is, the horizonally appropriate disclosure of a textual phenomenon under the questioning of a historically effected consciousness (hermeneutics) or, finally, in compliance with a rational, communicative principle intrinsic to language itself. Thus, for the logocentrist the event of language cannot be acknowledged to exist unless it is thematized as rationally non-contradictory (logically wellformed; phenomenologically evident [non-monstrous], and communicatively pertinent) and it has a reason to appear (intelligibility,

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manifestability, communicability). Nevertheless, the antilogocentrist will insist that as an event language does not appear (it cannot be thematized), that it precedes all principle (it is anarchic), all intentional-historical temporality (it is immemorial), and all selfpresence (it is an injunction of the other). The above test can be used to evaluate Origen’s definition of the gospel discourse in the form of a question such as the following: Is Origen’s “good reason” (to£ euÃlogon), i.e., the reason on which the beneficial announcement is supposed to gladden the hearer, the ultimate condition for the occurrence of the news? A negative answer to this question would make impossible a reduction of language as event to a more primordial principle of thought along any of the lines sketched above, namely: 1) the cancelling of the difference between the one from whom the good news comes and the one to whom the good news is addressed (the addressor of the report and the addressee of the annunciation) through the communicative matching of their intentions and expectations (a pre-hermeneutical solution); 2) the cancelling of the difference between the sense of the announcement (either as previously undisclosed beneficial intention of the addreessor, or as the previously undisclosed definition of the beneficial goods) by its full disclosure and an appropriate interpretation and understanding thereof (the hermeneutical solution); and 3) the cancelling of the recipient’s suspicion regarding the claims that one makes by announcing the present goods with a convincing warranty of the communicative, i.e., non-deceptive, nature of this announcement as an offer of participation in a transparent social relation (the universal pragmatic solution). Given the above clarification of what makes a discourse logocentric, I shall now sketch the general directions for a nonlogocentric reading of Origen’s gospel discourse, without pretending to make any claim about the applicability of my reading to Origen’s actual work. 3.2 The Outline of a Non-Logocentric Reading of Origen’s Definition of the Gospel as Ordinary Speech The “from-to” orientation of speech, which was first disclosed by the event of news-giving, cannot be reduced to a contingent relation between the addressor and the addressee as two extra linguistic preexisting beings. If anything, the reverse should be the case: in its double determination as news-from (report) and news-to (annun-

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ciation), the discourse’s wording or happening as a speech event (an alternative reading of the term lo¢goj) inscribes the addressee in a speech situation from which she could only reflect post factum on the nature and stakes of the beneficent briefing and on the possibility of finding herself in agreement with what she metalinguistically construes as the addressor’s communicative intention.150 Thus, unlike the logocentrist, who justifies the event of speech by the intentionality/truth/communicative principle of the announcement, the anti-logocentrist will take the announcement/report, the beneficial, informative intention of a supposed addressor and the addressee’s expectation as instances that happen the way they do, and entertain the relations that they entertain due to an unphraseable event of speech, a saying older than the said.151 Consequently, unlike the logocentrist’s interpretation of Origen’s evasiveness on the identity of the addressor and the nature of the relation between the report and the annunciation as a form of vagueness, which needs to be dispelled by an identification of the source of speech and its intrinsic cohesion, the anti-logocentrist will take this so-called vagueness as a mark of the inexpressibility of the anarchic event of language, without seeking an impossible clarification. While, for the logocentrist, the source of speech can and should be determined, the non-logocentrist understands that by leaving it linguistically unmarked Origen is not being vague, but rather commits himself to honoring the transcendent and the ineffable. In this sense, Origen’s evasiveness in specifying the addressor is not only appropriate, but is also the only way to avoid a fraudulent claim to speak the unspeakable. For more clarity, I shall call the logocentrist’s lo¢goj a logically structured phrase, where the term “logical” refers to the structuring principle or the regimen of such a phrase;152 by contrast, I shall call the anti-logocentrist’s lo¢goj a legic event (from le¢gein, which designates the event or act of addressative speaking).153 Thus, as a manifestation of a legic event, of the happening of the lo¢goj as a beneficent briefing, the difference between the one to whom the lo¢goj happens and the unspecified “wherefrom” of lo¢goj’s happening has to be acknowledged not only as unbridgeable or unsurpassable (i.e., impossible to be closed by a pertinent response), but also as otherwise than logical (i.e., otherwise than rationally phraseable). In brief, the lo¢goj as a legic event is a non-phraseable report that saturates the phrased announcement with an excess of signification, thus indefinitely deferring the seizure of its sense,

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the manifestation of a truth in a perfectly apposite expression and the pertinent communication of the expressed sense/truth.154 Let us return for a moment to the diagnostic question regarding logocentrism, namely, “On what reason [lo¢goj] does the addressative (‘from-to’) legic event happen the way it happens?” It is obvious that, if phrased in this form, the question is self-defeating. If, indeed, the legic event could be found to have a reason (a logocentrically construed lo¢goj), which includes any rationally construable condition of reception (intelligibility as entitlement to know; satisfaction as entitlement to desire happiness, communicative pertinence as entitlement to redeem the speech of the interlocutor, etc), then the legic event would no longer be an event; it would be effaced by being presented as a specific phrase or discourse standing under the determining rule of a specifiable reason (a phrase-regimen or a discourse genre). However, one should take into consideration the particular way in which Origen refers to this reason or lo¢goj, namely, as an adverbially good reason or an euÓlogoj. A non-logocentric reading of the so-called reason of speech would insist on this eventful beneficence; in a non-logocentric approach, the gospel happens as a legic reporting-announcing, as a beneficence, which is its own reason. Following Marion’s and Levinas’ Neo-Platonist leaning toward a goodness beyond Being and beyond Being’s speech, one can describe this beneficence or the goodness of the event of speech as (1) a reporting (giving, signifying) that offers more than any speech can announce, i.e., a reporting that is always at a loss; (2) an announcement received beyond any communicative or hermeneutical ability, i.e., always in excess, and (3) a discourse (the ordinary sense of lo¢goj) with a deferred theme (i.e., a discourse that cannot be reduced to an object of a logical, linguistic analysis) comporting an ever-deferred verification, i.e., a discourse that cannot be satisfactorily justified by any sufficient, structurally equivocal discourse.155 Looking back at the logocentric and the anti-logocentric readings of Origen’s definition of ordinary speech as gospel, one may wonder which of the two represents more accurately Origen’s views? Is Origen’s pragmatics of ordinary speech aimed at a “logical,” speech-cancelling thought-agreement, or rather at an indefinite deferral of such an agreement in light of an eminent beneficent saturation of the discourse by an unphraseable legic event? I shall provide here a tentative profile of a non-logocentrically construed

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gospel, reserving a detailed in concreto treatment of this issue for the second and the third chapters of this study. 3.3 Preliminary Evidence for a Non-Logocentric Reading of Origen’s Ordinary Gospel-Discourse Insofar as the gospel discourse (lo¢goj) is destined to inform and benefit the receiver and, insofar as Origen’s understanding of the condition of the human receptor is that of a lo¢goj-endowed creature (a logiko¢j), it looks like the good news discourse (lo¢goj) is apposite to the human receptor as someone for whom being receptive to the lo¢goj is an essential determination of her condition.156 In other words, it looks like the communicative-beneficial action of the discourse (lo¢goj) is pointing towards humanity as its destined receptor, which, when translated in Origen’s terms, would amount to a designation of humanity as “logic-al,” i.e., as essentially meant for discursive application to the lo¢goj.157 Language or discourse would be only an instrument in achieving a rational (logic-al) assimilation of the rational human receptor to his or her model, namely, the Logos or Reason itself.158 However, there are good reasons to believe that Origen’s speech pragmatics might not be most accurately represented by the above logocentric treatment.159 An alternative is not hard to imagine and it can be tentatively rendered as follows: Origen is keenly aware that more original than its being an annunciation, the speech address is a report and that, upon discovering oneself addressed by the good news, the receiver finds herself epiphanically and incarnationally claimed by the event of a speech or saying, i.e., the lo¢goj as legic report with a nondescript “wherefrom” or a nondescript anarchic source.160 Thus, it is essential to notice that, far from being an automatic, unambiguous, communicative match between an addressor and an addressee, who stand under the determination of the same lo¢goj or reason, the well-meant gospel discourse (lo¢goj) happens (Origen would say “arrives” or “comes”) to the addressee as a messianic address. In Pauline fashion, Origen construes this coming as a free, nonnecessitated adaptation or a “condescending” of the discourse event to the addressee’s condition.161 Thus, an alternative reading to Origen’s construal of the addressee as a naturally lo¢gojendowed being, could explain the lo¢goj determination of the addressee in non-logocentric terms, more precisely, as a pragmatic

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form of election and as a testimonial responsiveness to a legic event. Likewise, in a pragmatic perspective, the reception of the address would no longer be a matter of rational (logic-al) speech comprehension or rational (logic-al) communicative competence, but rather a form of self-maintenance (sxe¢sij) in an attitude of exposure and availability to the event of the address, of allowing the good news discourse (lo¢goj) to offer itself to me as my sole good reason (euÃlogon) to rejoice outside of any expectations that I might have regarding this discourse or any conception that I have about my needs based on a knowledge of my rational “nature.”162 In Origen’s terms, the coming (e¦pidhmei¤n) of the lo¢goj, whose beneficence is its very happening (a legic, adverbial good—eu— rather than a logical, nominal good—a©gaqo¢n), is properly received (prosde¢xesqai) or, as I shall call it from now on, it is properly welcomed, only if it can be said to be itself the graced, preeminent good reason (to£ euÃlogon) for the addressee’s enlightening joy.163 It must also be noted that Origen’s Pauline understanding of communicative speech action as a spiritually-received, addressativebeneficial condescension does not provide a necessary correlation between one’s being addressatively elected to be lo¢goj-receptive and one’s actual living up to this election. It is always possible to encounter a mismatch of the two. Customarily, Origen describes this mismatch in logocentric terms, as the inexperienced receptor’s fascination with the more readily accessible (Origen would call them the more “literal”) aspects of the discourse as receiveradapted, condescending annunciation, that is, with the annunciation’s capacity to make intelligible the “mind” or the intention of the distant, inconspicuous, addressor as a “here-present,” bodily or literally available, nominal, not adverbial, “good.”164 Nevertheless, even in this preliminary, literal exegesis, of the inexperienced receptor, the inconspicuousness of the logocentrically-construed intention of the sender, and with it, of the logocentrically-construed report-dimension of the news-giving as such, proves to be foundational for the conspicuous character of the good news as annunciation.165 Without an inconspicuous, non-phraseable report from a non-descript, un-spoken, addressor, there would be no close-up annunciation tailored to the receiver’s actual condition and no announced good to be received as intimately beneficial and immediately present. Thus, in Origen’s version of the communication

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process the receiver has to work out her way gradually from a familiarization with the news as the condescendingly receptoradjusted annunciation to a deeper and more arduous familiarization with the news as a distant report, ultimately with the lo¢goj as a divine address.166 As it can be easily noticed, this familiarization is, by no means, a spontaneous or effortless advance from the conspicuous to the inconspicuous, from the present letter of the discourse to the distant spirit, or a quasi-telepathic grasp of a divine addressor’s “mind” or intention. Origen sees this increasing familiarization with the inconspicuous, the distant, the absent, in the gospel discourse (lo¢goj) as the outcome of an availability to the event of addressative speech (the welcoming of a reportingannouncing) that requires the interpreter of the discourse (lo¢goj) to realize her having already been addressed by the discourse’s beneficial briefing as someone incarnationally claimed, that is, as someone summoned or elected to respond to an immemorial vocation.167 In this sense, to be a logiko¢j, is, first and foremost, to exist legically, that is, by the sole fact of being incarnationally phrased by the event of speech (the Logos), before any logical (i.e., anthropological or even ontological) prejudgment on one’s “nature” as an addressee (for example, before any qualification of the addressee as a rational being).168 In Origenian terms, one’s gradual awakening to one’s essential discursive-communicative vocation appears characterized as a form of speech-pragmatic “growing” into the condition of one who has been immemorially summoned to respond to a distant address-event (to a messianic coming of the Logos). As will be shown later, Origen’s biblical-exegetical terminology registers this awaking to an elect condition as a sort of spiritual “leavening.”169

4 A NON-LOGOCENTRIC DEFINITION OF THE ORDINARY GOSPEL AND ITS THEOLOGICAL TRANSPOSITION The non-logocentric reading of Origen’s definition of ordinary speech that I proposed above is tentative and will be further qualified and amended during the subsequent course of this essay. Nevertheless, at the end of this first stage in the development of this introduction I shall venture a comprehensive, although by no means final, non-logocentric definition of the Origenian good news in its ordinary sense. The eu¹agge¢lion is a briefing discourse (lo¢goj)

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that, exceeding an addressee’s expectation, points to a non-descript, immemorial addressative event (lo¢goj), whose beneficence is believed to be made available to anyone who happens to discover herself placed in the position of this event’s witness and responds testimonially to this discourse’s non-phraseable summon. It suffices to switch from this generic pragmatic understanding of the lo¢goj to a more specifically theological construal of the term and the above definition will reveal the outline of Origen’s evangelic messianism. In a theological “translation” the above definition says that the good news is the epiphanic-incarnational trace of the coming Logos who, exceeding humanity’s “natural” expectations, points to a transcendent paternal God, whose beneficence the Logos makes available to His witnessing addressees as Logos-transformed sons. Thus, as it turns out, the “fromto” orientation that I identified as the basic scenario of addressative speech has emerged as the basic scenario of a messianic coming or advent (e¹pidhmi¢a) of a paternal God in, through, and as His filial Logos to a welcoming, Logos-responsive, humanity.170

5 A TENTATIVE PROFILING OF ORIGENISM AS THEOLOGICAL LOGOCENTRISM AND THE CLARIFICATION OF ITS USE IN THE OVERALL ARGUMENT OF THIS BOOK The transposition of beneficially-informative discourse (lo¢goj) into a messianic kerygma has introduced a relevant alteration in the ordinary definition of the term. The theological interpretation construes the adressative event of ordinary speech as the activity of a divine person (the Logos) whose filial mission consists in announcing salvation to humanity as a report of the Father’s soteriological mandate. The kerygmatic address is, thus, described as the conversion of the filial report from the Father into an announcement to us, which, with a Levinasian term, may be called the “plot” (intrigue) of Logos’ messianic mission.171 Origen seems to describe this mission as twofold. The Logos-Son lavishes humanity with God’s beneficence in as much as He is caring, condescending love,172 and He informs or enlightens humanity in as much as He is God’s Wisdom.173 Moreover, since the Logos is not simply coming from the Father to humanity, but He actually is this coming (the divine speaking of His and of any human speech; the divine wording of His and of any human words), He occurs as the event of the conversion of His love for the Father (the report) into a love for us

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(the annunciation).174 This further entails that the proper reception of the filial-condescending good news benefits the receptive, welcoming, humanity that, as a consequence, becomes transformed into the likeness of the Logos and adopts Logos’ filial love for the Father as her own filial love.175 The conversion of the Logos from a reporting-filial condition to an announcing epiphanic or incarnational one, and humanity’s subsequent conversion from a fallen condition to a divine cofiliality with the Logos, describe the generic, speech-addressative “from-to” outline as the scenario of a descent followed by an ascent, and presents the Logos as the “articulation” of humanity with God in a unique soteriological event.176 The question that is going to be the structuring concern of this entire study regards the character of this articulation. The articulating Logos, if logocentric in the manner described above, offers Himself as the reason of this mediation, as the principle of all principles, a self- and othersthinking Mind, a totalizing cosmic self-presence.177 Consequently, one could rightfully worry that, thus construed, the Logos would be wording humanity as God and God as humanity, which means nothing less than a wording of wording, an idolatry of the self-present Word as sufficient reason of the exchange between God and humanity. This is, to be sure, a peculiar, conceptual, sort of idolatry; it consists in a subtle reduction of God to the Logos, more precisely, to the conditions imposed on the manifestation of God by the mediative function of the Logos.178 If the above suspicion were confirmed, the work of the Logos as mediator between the Father and humanity could be said to present the following features that anti-logocentric philosophy has identified in the logocentric interpretation of linguistic communication. For example, the soteriological work of the messianically coming Logos would consist in the restoration of humanity to a Logos-attuned status; its primary goal would be the retrieval of humanity’s once effective being-in-God’s-image, where the “image” represents the Logos Himself.179 Thus, a first feature of Origenism as theological logocentrism can be stated as the nostalgic circularity of its soteriological procedure as a return to an initial blessedness, to an Edenic logical origin.180 Secondly, this return implies the identification of the human disciple with the Logos, first in His condescending, humble manifestation, then in his exalted manifestation. The transformative emulation of the Logos

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would be meant to bring about an eschatological oneness, characterized by God’s Logos-determined because Logos-mediated presence in all the saved, and perhaps, in everyone and everything without exception (God’s being “logically” “all in all.”). Thirdly, even if not a pantheistic identification, the eschatological oneness would be characterized by a considerable symmetrization of the rapport between God and “logically” transformed humanity, who can be said to have become “a Christ” and, thus, a “god.” The rule that would govern this eschatological restoration to unity and sameness in the divine presence would, in fact, be a meta-rule, or a meta-discursive “logical” necessity, which requires that humanity become divine only by an assimilation to the one who mediates humanity’s access to God, that is, the self-interpreting, self-teaching Logos Himself. Fourthly, insofar as it could be proven that Origen assimilates this meta-rule of transformative iconic emulation into love, love itself would become a mediatory operation of the Logos meant to restore the world to God’s “logical” unity. Thus, the imperatives of loving God and the neighbor would be reduced to the necessity of a mimetic conversion, whose principle or governing rule is the Logos Himself. The Logos would be, therefore, justified if He announced Himself as the principle of any theoretical (i.e., speculative) agreement between God (as prototype) and humanity (as a creation “in God’s image”), a mimetic measure, so to say, of God’s transcendence over humanity’s immanence.181 A fifth feature of logocentrism, thus, becomes apparent in this last remark, namely, the reduction of any testimonial prescriptive or expressive approach to God (ethical command or love sacrifice)182 to a speculativecognitive soteriological procedure (theoria as the mimeticassimilative contemplation of the Logos).183 A sixth feature of theological logocentrism is indicated in Origen’s alleged reliance on the reversibility of the “from-to” addressative orientation of soteriological speech (the Logos) as a necessary, not merely contingent, principle of communicative reciprocation, instituting a regulated, logical exchange between God and humanity.184 When expressed theologically, the principle of necessary reciprocation would recommend the Logos as the condition of the possibility of the unity between God and humanity, which makes it necessary that His divine condescending annunciation be reciprocated by a restorative ascent of humanity to a God-like condition.185 Due to this “logical” necessity of the reversibility of condescension in ascension, the

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Logos would appear as universally (because a priori) soteriological and as the only authorized mediator that humanity as a whole has (and cannot but have) upon God. Let us pause for a moment and ask a question that any reader who is already familiar with the work of Origen, would normally ask, namely, “Is this the Origen that one usually gathers from his writings?” My logocentric reading of ordinary, beneficialinformative speech and the transposition of this reading into a logocentric Word-theology, were tentative; their primary goal was to align Origen, somewhat stereotypically, to the standard view of logocentrism as it appears formulated in the contemporary writers who coined this term and who, needless to say, find themselves in divergence with this view. Over the next chapters, I shall use this intentionally stereotypical “logocentric” reading of Origen as a litmus test of Origen’s beliefs as they emerge from a close reading of his works. In this sense I shall pursue a double path. On the one hand, I would like to see if what could pass for a standard logocentrist description of salvation stands the test of a careful reading of Origen, an author who is supposed to be one of the main exponents of the Christian, and, by extension, of the Western Logoscentered approach. On the other hand, I would like to see how the philosophical reaction to logocentrism could illuminate aspects of the Origenian text that would otherwise pass unnoticed. I am referring primarily to the elements of discontinuity or heterogeneity in the itinerary of the spiritual ascent, to a possible primacy of nonmimetic elements, such as love, in the structuring of the Origenian notion of iconicity and to a few other aspects of doctrine that, by not being considered consonant enough with what is usually expected to be Origen’s Alexandrian Logos theology, have been excluded from a serious examination. In other words, I shall take seriously, but I shall not uncritically bet on, the possibility of an otherwise than logocentric Origen. I hope, above all, that my approach will be of use both to those contemporary philosophers who are interested in adding a patristic dimension to the recent debate regarding logocentrism and to the patristic scholars who manifest an interest in a more philosophical assessment of the Hellenistic-Jewish and early Christian doctrine of logocentrism. If followed diligently and with a certain patience, which an intemperate demand for historical critical accuracy normally feels justified to lack, this tentative view of gospel

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discursivity in Origen might transform, by the end of this study, into the summoning of a more Origenian voice to respond to, rather than just be interpreted by, the anti-logocentric philosophies of today.

6 SYNOPSIS In this last section of the introduction I have pointed out an essential aspect of Christian messianism, as Origen and, indeed, as a much larger category of early Christian authors, might have understood it.186 I am referring to the reversible “from-to” constitution of the Logos as the immemorial soteriological “plot” that allows for Logos’ missionary “downward” advent from the Father to humanity, and for His ascent to the Father together with a historically and messianically progressing (growing or “leavening”) humanity.187 The second chapter of this study will pursue this double itinerary until the project exhausts its resources in a manner that will prove to be meaningful in more than one sense. Thus, in the first part of this investigation I shall trace the structure of Origen’s Bible and his proposed Bible-study program along the lines of the report–annunciation scenario of the messianic advent of the Logos. More precisely, I shall show how Origen’s proposed sequence for the study of the Bible can be explained in the light of Origen’s understanding of Logos’ conversion from a reporting-filial to an announcing-epiphanic attitude and vice-versa. On the same token, I shall also show that the layering of the senses of the Bible in Origen’s Bible-exegetical theory and practice has been dictated by the same “from-to” scenario of Logos’ messianic coming. This first part in my study will end with a discussion of the reception of the coming Logos or, as I have called it, the welcoming of the Logos by the disciple, along the lines of Origen’s biblical pedagogy. Again, I shall trace back the sequence of Origen’s spiritual progress, as pedagogical spiritual advancement, to the condescendence of the Logos and to Logos’ return to an exalted filial condition in as well as along with His responsive disciples. The methodology of my approach in this second chapter of the book will be predominantly phenomenological-hermeneutical. The investigations in the second chapter (the Bible program explanation, the explanation of the layering of the Bible’s senses, and the rationale for the sequence of Origen’s Bible-grounded pedagogy) will be tied in the third chapter into Origen’s exegesis of

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Jesus’ post-resurrectional opening of the Scriptures to the disciples on the road to Emmaus as the centerpiece of the Origenian exegetical pedagogy. My discussion of Origen’s rendering of the Emmaus episode will serve as a test of Origen’s logocentric allegiance (or lack thereof). In many ways, this third chapter of the current study can be said to be a heuristic-deconstructionist revision of the phenomenological-hermeneutical interpretation of Origen’s exegetical pedagogy of the previous chapter. In the fourth chapter of this study I shall offer a detailed, although more speculative, presentation of the possible objections that the anti-logocentrist party could have voiced against Origen’s understanding of the evangelic discourse, and in particular of the totalizing potential of his Logos-based messianism. I shall conclude this investigation with a few personal remarks on the overall signification and implications of Origen’s Logos-centered exegesis and pedagogy.

II

SPIRITUAL LEAVENING AS THE GRAND SCENARIO OF ORIGEN’S EXEGETICAL PEDAGOGY

1 GROWING UP. THE ADVENT OF THE LOGOS AS BIBLE AND THE RECEPTION OF THE LOGOS AS BIBLE EXEGESIS The general definition of the term “gospel” has offered the reader a glimpse into the way in which Origen sees speech happening. As previously mentioned, for Origen the gospel discourse (lo¢goj) happens in an immemorial addressative, “from-to,” manner, as a yet to be discussed conversion of a report into an announcement. Subsequent to the general definition of the gospel in the Introduction to the Commentary on the Gospel according to John and a series of recommendations on its possible application to various books of the biblical corpus, Origen specifies the referent of this evangelic announcement in the following terms: Each gospel teaches about the saving sojourn with men of Christ Jesus, “the firstborn of every creature” (Col 1.15), a sojourn which occurred on account of men. But it is also clear to everyone who believes, that each gospel is a discourse which teaches about the sojourn of the good Father in his Son with those who are willing to receive him1

The term “sojourn,” more properly rendered as “advent,” translates Origen’s frequently used e¹pidhmi¢a. According to Origen, there are several forms in which the Logos can be said to sojourn among humans; in addition to the central, most authoritative, “bodily” sojourn of Christ in the “recent times” (Incarnation to Ascension), there is also a spiritual sojourn, which includes the visitation of the spiritually advanced of Israel and the church and is about to happen for those Christians who are spiritually progress43

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ing, but who have not yet worked out the necessary receptivity for Logos’ full spiritual accommodation.2 We must not fail to remark, however, that Christ came spiritually even before he came in a body. He came to the more perfect and to those who were not still infant or under pedagogues and tutors (Gal 3.25; 4.2), in whom the spiritual “fullness of the time” (Gal 4.4) was present, as, for example, the patriarchs, and Moses the servant (Heb 3.5), and the prophets who contemplated the glory of Christ. But just as Christ visited the perfect before his sojourn which was visible and bodily, so also he has not yet visited those who are still infants after his coming which has been proclaimed, since they are “under tutors and governors” (Gal 4.2) and have not yet arrived at “the fullness of time.”3

How does the Bible, as generalized gospel, refer to these sojourns? An answer is suggested in the above quotation: it is the spiritual visitation of Christ that enables Moses, the prophets and the neotestamentary authors to function as evangelists, i.e., to recount the deeds and sayings first of the pre-incarnational and then of the incarnate Word. However, acting in the capacity of an evangelist implies as well that one no longer speaks in his or her name, that one speaks testimonially or, as it were, in persona Christi.4 This requirement has at least one important and far reaching implication. Origen is fully aware that, when proclaimed in persona Christi, a gospel discourse, which refers to Christ’s sojourn, becomes nothing short of Christ’s self-proclamation and self-exegesis.5 Thus, a discourse is made into a gospel not only by the “good things” to which it refers, namely, Christ’s soteriological sojourn(s), but also by the testimonial character of the recounting, which, ultimately, is the work of Christ’s visitation of the evangelists, that is, of Christ’s sojourning with, coming to, happening to, them. Anticipating a topic that will prove to be central for this study, the most unequivocal instance of the testimonial evangelization regarding Christ’s sojourn is Christ’s own interpretation of the Scripture on the way to Emmaus, which Origen mentions twice in the Introduction to the Commentary on the Gospel according to John in close relation to the general definition of the gospel discourse. In the Emmaus scene Jesus does not simply recount his preincarnational sojourns (the explanation of the Old Testament epiphanies as referring to him), but his very recounting of these

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sojourns is a sojourn, it is the advent of all advents, which fulfills the prophecies in a present, self-authorizing display of the arrived, self-interpreting, Messiah.6 The Emmaus reference provides an important insight into Origen’s understanding of the relation between the gospel or the speech act of beneficial reporting-announcing, and the sojourn, which, as we have seen, is not only the subject-matter but also the actual Christological happening of the gospel. When seen in the light of Emmaus (and, after Emmaus, Christians are expected to see the Gospel primarily in this light), gospel and sojourn, speech and history, the announcing to be presently happening and actual happening, are brought together into one Christological event. In contemporary terms, the Emmaus episiode offers an interpretation of the notion of sojourn as the performative dimension of the gospel announcement as a soteriological speech-act; such a sojourn is what the Word does when the Word speaks historically. Let us follow, for a moment, this train of thought in greater depth. Like eu¹agge¢lion, the general notion of e¹pidhmi¢a comports a double analysis. In its most general sense an e¹pidhmi¢a, or advent, is a sojourn implying one’s coming-from a certain place (the place of origin) and one’s arrival and eventually settling for a longer period of time in another locality (the place of destination). Also, in order to be an e¹pidhmi¢a, one’s arrival from abroad and one’s settling down somewhere have to be driven by an intentionality (coming from abroad in order to settle down), or even by a sense of mission, as it is the case with the establishment of an embassy in a foreign land or of the visit that an imperial representative pays to a certain province (coming to and settling in a place in compliance with a mandate from a state official).7 In a certain sense, it is the directionality of the intention or of the mission that makes mere ambulation into a journey and a journey into an advent. Like the gospel, which is an addressative kind of speech, an advent or sojourn is a directionally plotted event,8 a coming-to, a unilateral designation of one specific place as the place to come and settle to in response to a relocation mandate.9 When transposed into theological terms, the advent of the Logos should be expected to take a double determination, in regard to its “wherefrom” or the origin of the Logos’s mission, and in regard to its “whereto” or the beneficiary of this mission.10 Since both in its epiphanic and in its incarnational aspects the messianic

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advent can be said to organize time as history (the sacred history of Israel or that of the Church), it is important to notice that, before taking any chronological historical expression, the advent of the Logos happens historically, that is, it happens in accordance to the immemorial “historicality” of Logos’s filial and philanthropical “from-to” address (his eternal filial-doxological address to the Father and his charitable concern for a neighborly humanity).11 What is, in Origen’s view, this immemorial historicality? How does Origen see it played out in the constitution of the Bible? To answer these questions I shall take a look at the theological interpretation that Origen gives to the good news, both according to the modes of its advent as Bible and in terms of its reception as biblical exegesis. With regard to the advent of the news, I shall follow, at first, Origen’s theological explanation of the report, then I shall move on to a clarification of his theological understanding of the annunciation. The biblical communication of the Logos will be examined first in relation to the sequence of the books in the Bible in which Origen claims to distinguish the scenario of a historically incremental, messianic revelation. Subsequently, I shall switch from a historical to a textual perspective, presenting the communication of the Logos as an incremental disclosure of the hierarchically layered senses of the biblical text, starting with the more readily comprehensible or the literal sense and ending with the more profound or the spiritual one. A last section of this chapter will cover the pedagogic dimension of the communication of the Logos as a biblical school-curriculum or biblical teaching and the pedagogic reception of the Logos as a form of biblical learning. Biblical teaching will be first viewed as an iconic attunement of a fallen humanity with the Logos as a condescending teacher, then it will be described as an advanced attunement of humanity to the Logos as an exalted pedagogue. 1.1 The Historical Dimension of Logos’ Advent as Bible and of Logos’ Reception as Bible-Exegesis 1.1.1 The Historical Dimension of the Advent of the Logos as Bible History, for Origen, starts before its epiphanic-incarnational articulation; it starts with Logos’s immemorial missionary departure from the Father and His charitable turn toward lapsed humanity.12 How-

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ever, this philanthropic disposition is not an existential determination of the Logos as a divine being or entity, in the Heideggerian sense of the term, but rather an immemorial event, a gesture of missionary filial love, which is meant to reveal God’s paternal love for humanity (the mandator’s sojourn in the one mandated to accomplish a soteriological mission; the sojourn of the Father in the sojourning Son).13 While in the previous chapter I have used the dramatic notion of plot or intrigue to characterize the addressative orientation of the gospel discourse, I shall now extend the use of this term to designate the directionality of Logos’s historical happening to humans (for example, His historical inscription of his advent or sojourn as an advance from type to truth) and I shall qualify this immemorial plot as charitable. Let us take a look first at the manner in which this “from-to” charitable plotting of the event of Logos’ messianic advent shapes the Bible as an exegetical school-curriculum or, rather, as the outline of a Bible-centered divine pedagogy. As a report from the Father, the mission of the Logos is to represent the Father who sent Him on this mission. Nevertheless, the Father is “the beginning” of Logos’s mission, which Origen calls a trans-chronologic principle or an a¹rxh¢.14 The identification of the Father as the a¹rxh¢ of Logos’ mission allows for an explanation of the report (a¹paggeli¢a) from the Father as that dimension of the advent of the Logos that presents his news-bearing mission in the light of its beginning15 or, as one might add, from the beginning (a¹p' a¹rxh½j).16 In this sense the report can be properly called an a¹parxh¢, which is the denomination that Origen uses for the Gospel.17 Thus, one may say that the report, as announced to those who can receive it in light of its spiritual a¹rxh¢, is the gospel par excellence, or, rather, that the spiritual announciation of the filial report (Logos’ intratrintiarian filial relation with the Father) is the gospel-matrix of the Bible, the Bible’s sacred historicality. Origen calls this matricial historicality an eternal, spiritual or eschatological Gospel.18 It is possible to be even more specific on this issue. Among the four historical gospels there is only one that specifically describes the condition of the Logos e¹n a¹rx$½. This is the Gospel of John, which, due to its prologue specifically addressing the issue of the existence of the Logos “in the beginning,” is believed to be the most spiritual report (a¹paggeli¢a) on the origin (a¹rxh¢) of the Logos as bearer of the good news.19 Origen calls the Gospel of

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John the a¹parxh¢ of the a¹parxai¢, that is, the first fruit of the first fruits or the gospel of gospels.20 The only other report that would be more spiritual than the one contained in the Gospel of John would be what Revelation designates as the eternal Gospel or the eschatological vision of God, which was briefly mentioned above.21 After clarifying the advent of the Logos as an ultimate, spiritually announceable report (a¹paggeli¢a), to whom John’s historical but also spiritual Gospel is the closest match, one needs to inquire about the theological rendering of the other aspect of the advent of the Logos, namely the annunciation or e¹paggeli¢a. As has been shown, the annunciation is that dimension of the advent of the Logos that is responsible for its accommodation to the condition of the addressee, which often is a less than spiritual receiver of the good news. As Origen puts it, in his more intensly accommodative or condescendant advents, the Logos has to convert his exalted condition of Truth-for-the-Father into the condition of Image-for-us.22 For Origen, the title (e¹pi¢noia) of image is different from the title of truth insofar as its prevalent orientation is not the wherefrom, i.e., its Father-directedness, but rather the whereto, that is, its orientation toward the one to whom it is addressed.23 In other words, in the title of image there comes to the fore the sense of representing something for the benefit of someone, rather than what this image represents. Thus, the annunciation can be construed as the Word’s self-rendering to a fallen, spiritually impaired, humanity as an Image of the Father adapted to this humanity’s diminished receptivity. As dictated by the Logos’s switch from a higher to a lower e¹pi¢noia (truth to image), the annunciation appears as a transposition (Origen calls it a translation, metalh½yij)24 of the report in more accessible accounts, that is, a transposition of the spiritual Gospel of John into more accessible gospels. Instead of a report on the pre-temporal origin of the news-bearing Logos, this adapted version of the original report focuses on the historical and sensible origin or starting point of the advent of the Logos.25 Thus, although still an a¹parxh¢, such a gospel brings a new understanding to the idea of origin (a¹rxh¢) of the Logos’s mission, placing the inception of this mission in the bodily-historical event of Logos’ incarnation.26

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Origen identifies the synoptic gospels as instantiations of this more pregnantly condescendant annunciation and even draws a hierarchy of these three gospels.27 It is not necessary to expose here in great detail the intricacy of the scriptural conjecturing that leads Origen to the establishment of this hierarchy, but I shall sketch nevertheless its general outline, paying specific attention to the various ways in which Origen interprets the synoptic genealogies of Christ.28 According to Origen, Matthew has an interest in the human, in particular, the bodily genealogy of Christ.29 What signals this interest is Matthew’s frequent use of the term birth (ge¢nnhsij) and genealogy or descent by birth (genealogi¯a) in relation to Christ.30 Matthew provides a list of Jesus’ ancestors starting with Abraham, which includes both the male and the female forerunners. In a slightly different approach Luke provides a genealogy of Jesus starting with Jesus himself and ending with Adam. Interestingly enough, the Lukan list omits the female ancestors.31 With a startling choice of words, Origen calls the Matthean list “descendant” and the Lukan one “ascendant.”32 Given Origen’s equation of the pre-lapsarian nou½» or intellect with the male, and of the female with the cooled-down nou½» or the soul (yuxh¢) descended in a fleshly condition,33 the featuring of the females in the Matthean list can be said to be indicative of the fall of the protological intellects leading to their current, historical incorporation, while the Lukan list, which omits the female characters, can be construed to be referring to the return or ascent of the fallen souls to their initial condition of intellects.34 In brief, Matthew and Luke represent an annunciation of the bodily advent of the Logos based on the mode of the appearance of Christ’s preexistent soul; Matthew captures a more condescending Jesus, i.e., a Logos who is involved in a more intense assumption of humanity’s fall, while Luke proposes a less condescending, more ascensional, view on the Savior as the one coming to the baptismally purified in order to perfect the restoration of their intellects to their initial, pre-lapsarian, condition.35 Mark refers to the “beginning of the good news [gospel] of Jesus Christ, the son of God” (Mark 1.1) in yet another way than the bodily genealogies of Matthew and Luke. His is what Origen qualifies as a prophetic and baptismal genealogy. The “beginning (a¹rxh¢) of the gospel of Jesus Christ” is the Old Testament in its prophetic dimension, namely as a collection of prophetic texts and

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as a report on the uninterrupted chain of prophets ending with John the Baptist. These prophets refer to the bodily advent of the Logos as Messiah.36 The identification of the beginning of Jesus as a prophetic one, namely as John the Baptist, the symbol of the entire Old Testament, indicates a higher, more spiritual perception of the coming Logos, on the part of Mark, one which stands in between the somatic genealogies of Matthew and Luke and the accomplished spiritual genealogy (actually an “archeology”) of John.37 From the above analysis it is clear that, for Origen, the gospels that are currently called “synoptic” stand in contrast with the Gospel of John. Among them the Mattehan and Lukan accounts would have to be ranked last, insofar as they are concerned with the human aspect of the Logos’s advent in the sense of making up for a fall of the protological nou¤j and its restoration in its initial, iconic condition.38 Mark’s account would come second, as a spiritual prophetic insight in the humanity of the Christ as baptismally restored iconic nou½», mediating, on the one hand, between the body and the body-attached parts of the fallen nou½» or the soul (yuxh¢), and the Logos, on the other hand.39 First comes the Gospel of John which traces Jesus back to the condition of Logos e¹n a¹rx$½ (in the beginning) and identifies this a¹rxh¢ as the Father of the Logos.40 So far I clarified the annunciation as a condescending advent of the Logos that is captured in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark as genealogical a¹parxai¢ and in Luke as prophetic a¹parxh¢. However, Origen refers as well to a vetero-testamentary coming of the Logos that stands apart from the synoptic and Johannine annunciation and, therefore, needs a specific treatment. All three synoptic approaches link Jesus to the world of the Old Testament, either along the line of his birth or through the prophetic mediation of a character standing between the new and the old, namely John the Baptist.41 Given that the prophetic foretelling of the birth of Christ as the beginning of a bodily advent of the Logos is contained in a cryptic way in the Law and the Prophets,42 Origen will identify the vetero-testamentary corpus as a distinct form of the annunciation. He describes it as an annunciation of the advent of the Logos, which has a chronologic precedence over the others, and calls this advent a protogh¢nnema (firstling), in order to distinguish it from the a¹parxh¢ or the gospel annunciation,

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which is historically (not just chronologically or historiologically) precedent.43 In the compound term protogh¢nnema one can distinguish two terms, namely pro¢to» and gh¢nnema. The second term is closely related to ge¢nesij, which, for Origen, designates a chronological beginning and a bodily birth.44 Through this denomination one can establish a correlation between the Old Testament, especially its more literal passages, included in the Law, and the Matthean and Lukan annunciation that traces the origin of Jesus to a ge¢nesij or a bodily birth. The other component, pro¢to», designating the first in a discrete series of numbers, by contrast with a¹rxh¢, which designates a pre-numeric, intelligible beginning, further supports the understanding of the Old Testament advent as chronologically, rather than spiritually, first.45 Thus, both pro¢to» and ge¢nesij appear as the sensible, chronological, rendition of the spiritual, historical, a¹rxh¢ (a sensible, chronological or historiological, “first” over a spiritual, historical, “first”; a sensible “origin” over a spiritual “origin”). A presentation of the mission of the coming Logos from its beginning in the sense delineated by the Old Testament as protogh¢nnema (firstling) would have to be carried out by exegetes with a predominantly literal and bodily understanding of this advent. They are the Jewish literalist interpreters of the Law, who do not differ much from the audience of Matthew and Luke.46 Nevertheless, Origen is also aware that the protogennematic (bodily, literal) annunciation can be translated into a more spiritual one,47 if an advanced exegete reads it along the prophetic clues sewn in the Old Testament by the Logos Himself.48 These clues can be found more emphatically in the books of the Prophets, whom Mark establishes as Christ’s spiritual beginning (a¹rxh¢).49 In addition to the protogennematic annunciation, the Old Testament also contains a sui generis form of report, a sort of vetero-testamentary equivalent of the Gospel of John. These are the texts that, according to Origen’s own account, the Jewish Rabbis in Alexandria and Caesarea were calling deuterw¿sei», that is, “secondary” or “higher” texts with a mystical and eschatological resonance. The deuterotic corpus consists of the beginning of The Book of Genesis, containing references to a certain creation e¹n a¹rx$½, the passages on the cherubim (10.1–22), and on the temple

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(40.1–48) in the Book of Ezekiel and the Song of Songs. The youth were prohibited from the study of these texts.50 In conclusion, Origen’s theological interpretation of the communication of the good news provides a comprehensive reading of the Bible along the scenario of a transformative messianic advent of the Logos. Starting from the immemorial, historical distinction between report and annunciation, I have delineated several ways of mapping the Bible. First, I have distinguished between an eternal gospel and the Bible in the historical form in which it is preserved. Secondly, I have distinguished between the most spiritual of the gospels, the Gospel of John and the Synoptics. I have designated the eternal gospel and the Gospel of John as manifestations of a spiritually announceable report. Then, among the remaining three gospels, I have distinguished between the gospels of Mathew and Luke, on the one hand, and the gospel of Mark, on the other. Within the Old Testament, I also distinguished between advanced mystical and eschatological texts (the deuterw¿sei»), the Prophets and the Law. I have placed the deuterw¿sei» in the spiritual proximity of the neo-testamentary texts designating the report (the Gospel of John and the eternal gospel), then I have paralleled the Prophets with the Gospel of Mark and, finally, I have paralleled the Law with the other two Synoptic Gospels (the gospels of Matthew and Luke).51 All these distinctions have been made possible by the messianic historicality of the Logos as an immemorial address that inscribes God’s love in human history, directing this history’s unfolding toward a soteriological outcome. Origen’s Bible can be said to bear the trace of this immemorial address, to be Logos’ missionary sojourn in human words out of love for His human exegetes. 1.1.2 The Historical Dimension of the Reception of the Logos as Pedagogic Bible Exegesis I shall turn now to Origen’s theological understanding of the reception of the advent of the Logos as historical Bible exegesis.52 To a certain extent this has already been accomplished in the analysis of the biblical forms in which the report and the annunciation take shape. Indeed, one could say that there are two main types of receptivity, namely, that of the beginners and the advancing, who represent the audience of the condescending annunciation as a¹parxh¢ (the Synoptics) and protogh¢nnema (the Law and the

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Prophets), and that of the spiritually accomplished, who are the audience of the exalted annunciation as a¹parxh¢ a¹parxw¤n (the Gospel of John) and as deuterw¿sei» (primarily the Song of Songs).53 The New Testament beginners (the audience of Matthew and Luke) receive the coming Logos mostly in its bodily aspect and so do the Jewish literalists with regard to the Law.54 A slightly more advanced, that is, more spiritual, reception provide those with a Markan frame of mind and those formed in the reading of the Prophets of the Old Testament.55 By contrast with all the above stand the ones whom Origen calls “the perfect” or the spiritually accomplished. They have worked out a spiritual receptivity for the evangelic report, not only for the annunciation. Like John the Evangelist, they have become sons like the Son and they acquired the filial, report-adapted, receptivity of the Son for the Father.56 The complex division of the books of the Bible as manifestations of the advent of the Logos could be presented also along different lines, namely in accordance with the transformative effect of the pedagogy of these books upon their reader or, as Origen calls it, the reader’s spiritual “leavening.” Origen considers that an effigy of the entire Bible can be found in the three Solomonic treatises, the Proverbs, the Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs.57 The Proverbs would be the equivalent of the Law and the gospels of Matthew and Luke, that is, of the lower protogh¢nnema and the lower a¹parxh¢ annunciation. The Ecclesiastes is an equivalent of the Prophets and the Gospel of Mark, that is, of the higher protogh¢nnema and the higher a¹parxh¢. Finally, the Song of Songs stands for the deuterw¿sei» and the Gospel of John/the Eternal Gospel, which represent the accomplished spiritual reception or the a¹parxh¢ a¹parxw½n.58 Based on this hierarchy of the Solomonic books and of the Bible in general, Origen sketches a pedagogic curriculum in three stages, namely ethics, physics and epoptics or mystical contemplation, each of the books corresponding to one of these stages: The Proverbs/Law/lower Synoptics to ethics, the Ecclesiastes/Prophets/higher Synoptics to physics and the Song of Songs/deuterw¿sei»/the Gospel of John to epoptics.59 Each of the three disciplines displays a specific advent of the Logos with a transformative impact on the receptor or student. The ethical annunciation and pedagogy purifies the disciple of the attachment to the lapsarian flesh (sa¢rc) and its effects, namely the

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passions.60 By internalizing the ethical coming of the Logos in the Bible the disciples annul the effects of Adam’s banishment from Paradise61 and become one body (sw=ma) with the embodied Logos.62 They also reconvert their disposition from a penchant to be in the image of the earthly realm to a steady mirroring of the heavenly Logos.63 In exegetical terms, the apprentice of ethics learns to distinguish in the ethical account of the Bible a moral teaching and is guided to refer this teaching to Christ as incarnate Logos-Sophia and depository of all virtues.64 The accomplishment of the iconic re-conversion (from image of the earthly to an image of the heavenly) comes about through the physical pedagogy of the Logos, which leads to the disciple’s becoming one spirit with Christ.65 At this point the physical receptor works out a restored, fully iconic, relation with God and is reestablished in the protological condition of an image of God. In exegetical terms, this stage is dominated by a prophetic type of guidance and it is focused on the familiarization of the disciple with the prophetic referral of the textual figures or types to their image and their truth (the reading of the Law in light of the Prophets, the reading of Matthew and Luke in light of Mark, the reading of the Old Testament in light of the New). In the final stage of epoptics, the receptor becomes one god with God, that is, he acquires the likeness with God in addition to the condition of being an image of God66 (see graph C). This condition is described either as an adoptive-filial intimacy with the Father or as the mystical familiarity of the soul-bride with the father of her heavenly Bridegroom (the Logos).67 Exegetically, by working out a spiritual receptivity for the Logos the reader accomplishes the prophetic referral into a direct contemplation of the fulfillment of the prophecies. A glimpse of this epoptic accomplishement is offered in Jesus’ “opening of the scriptures” (Luke 24.32) on the road to Emmaus. As one can easily notice, in the progress from the figural reconversion to the iconic restoration and to the mystical adoption, the progressing receptor internalizes gradually the good news first as a figural (ethical) or iconic (physical) textual advent, i.e., as a condescendingly announced report, then as the manifest textual truth (epoptics), i.e., as an ascensionally announced report. The exegete has as a transformative pedagogue, the coming Logos, first as Image-for-us (figural and iconic advent), then as Truth-for-theFather (aletheic advent).68 Origen calls this a process of spiritual growth or maturation (what I termed a spiritual “growing up”) un-

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der the guidance of the biblical-exegetical pedagogy of the Logos (which may be called a spiritual “up-bringing”).69 During this process the receptor is claimed or elected by the Bible as Logos’ advening address and internalizes the messianically coming pedagogue (his sojourn), becoming a living testimony of his pedagogy.70 In Origen’s terms, the Logos-Son, as internalized pedagogue, functions like a leaven that leavens the student (brings the student up), allowing him to be shaped in his likeness (i.e., to grow up spiritually) and to experience a mystical-filial familiarity with the Father.71 Unlike modern hermeneutics, Origen does not construe the advent of the biblical Logos according to the existential historicity of the human receptor, but rather according to the immemorial historicality of the Logos Himself. The Logos claims or elects the receptor by biblically addressing him or rather, He is the advent of a biblical address, which claims the receptor as an immemorially called addressee.72 The progression from figure to image and then to truth constitutes, as we have seen, the trace that Logos’ electing address inscribes in human history (the kind of chronological succession that was announced already in the use of the prefix pro¢toj in protogh¢nnema).73 Biblical figures and images speak to the reader morally and physically (prophetically) only insofar as the Logos spells them out historically to us or, insofar as the Logos addresses us figuratively and iconically in the Bible as the Bible. Thus, the reader needs to discover how he is called to respond, what kind of addressee he is called to be when being exposed to the Bible as the pedagogic advent of the Logos.74 The responsiveness of the elected reader (addressee) to the biblically advening Logos traces human history according to the immemorial event of God’s love address (the Logos), or, in other words, it reinterprets human history according to the trans-chronological historicality of Logos’ intra-trintiarian filiality. Origen’s envisaged procedure of learning from the advening address of the biblical Logos about how to respond to Bible’s elective claim will be discussed in great detail later on, in the second section of this chapter. Until then, however, I shall piece together the findings of this investigation, insisting on the convergence of the advening address of the Logos (the messianic Logos-event) and of the testimonial reception of the Logos as the two aspects of a unique christologically induced spiritual transformation.

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1.1.3 Rising with the Messiah. The Leavening History of the Bible and of Bible’s Pedagogic Exegesis The attempt to identify the scenario of a comprehensive spiritual pedagogy in Origen’s biblical exegesis has reached a moment of remarkable articulation with the work of Karen Jo Torjesen. Torjesen sets out her interpretation of Origen in two stages. First, from the principles of Origen’s hermeneutical procedure she derives Origen’s program of a transformative pedagogy,75 then she offers an analysis of the transformation of the interpreter during the exegetical process.76 The latter stage of her work completes her initial project by shifting the emphasis from the act of interpretation to the experience of the interpreter. In my doctoral dissertation, I have taken a slightly different path by proposing an interpretation of Origen’s exegetical project along the lines of Origen’s pedagogic assumptions. I have called this pedagogically shaped biblical hermeneutics a “mystagogic paideia” and I analyzed some of its foundational biblical scenarios.77 Torjesen’s study of Origen’s biblical hermeneutics clarifies an important issue that previous Origenian scholarship seemed to have minimized, namely the historical character of Origen’s transformative reception of the Bible.78 Previous discussions of the Origenian understanding of history have been, for the most part, limited to descriptions of the typological scenarios of Origenian biblical exegesis, or, alternatively, to the delineation of the Origenian scenarios of the spiritual ascent as speculatively or mystically transhistorical.79 In her analysis of Origen’s hermeneutics, Torjesen managed to point out the link between these exegetic-typological scenarios and the pedagogic scenarios of the spiritual progress. In her view Origen’s Bible-reception requires the placement of the reader in the Biblical text where he is supposed to encounter the Logos and to be exposed to Logos’ transformative pedagogy.80 Torjesen is most likely right in pointing out that such an intextuation of the reader/hearer is guided by the biblical text itself (by the Bible-intextuated Logos) and represents a reversal of the history of humanity’s fall by a gradual purificatory-restorativeperfective ascent, which recapitulates the historical progress of Logos’ revelation from the typological apparitions in the Old Testament to the iconic apparitions of the historical Gospels and, further, to the alteheic disclosure of the eschatological Gospel.81

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The current study adds what I would like to consider a genetic dimension to both Torjesen’s phenomenology of exegetical transformation and to my previous description of Origen’s mystagogic paideia. The genetic clarification consists in specifying what makes possible the application of the biblical text to a specific reader. Indeed, as I suggested above, without yet substantiating it by textual evidence, Origen’s Bible is susceptible to a historical application, such as the one described by Torjesen, because the event of Logos’ advent, Logos’ spelling of the ordinary words, has been immemorially plotted as a charitable elective address.82 Thus, in addition to any descriptive phenomenology of the hermeneutical implication of the reader in the various biblical texts, my task will be to provide an outline of a pragmatics of the calling or the electing of the reader to a specific attending to the Bible by the biblical Logos. I do believe that a genetic phenomenology of (good) news-giving as an immemorial charitable address can, ultimately, clarify the interdependence between what Origen considers to be a universal applicability of the good-news and the variability of its actual historical application. In carrying out this task, I shall retain Torjesen’s very Origenian methodological principle, which requires that any analysis of the reception of the Logos should unfold from the revelatory guidance of Logos’ address rather than from a preconceived theoretical construal of the condition and hermeneutical capabilities of the receiver.83 Thus, in the light of my discussion of the advent of the Logos as report and annunciation both Torjesen’s unfolding of pedagogy from exegesis and my previous attempt at unfolding exegesis from pedagogy are expected to reach a unifying genetic justification, which was presupposed in both studies without having been given a complete and explicit articulation. In the remainder of this section of the essay, I shall take a further step towards this goal by providing a unifying, even though intriguingly metaphoric, notion under which Origen’s understanding of exegetical pedagogy can be presented, namely, that of leavening.84 The correlate of the anthropological transformation of the disciple is the gradual transformation of the disciple’s perception of the Bible during the advancement of his soul through various exegetical stages.85 For Origen, the protogh¢nnema aspect of the Bible shades gradually into the a¹parxh¢, then the a¹parxh¢ becomes an a¹parxh¢ a¹parxw½n.86 For this transformative process, Origen uses a metaphor of Pauline extraction, namely that of leavening.87

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THE SPELL OF THE LOGOS And I would not be off target to use the example, “A little leaven leavens the whole lump” (Gal 5.9). Because ***** sons of men in his divinity, when he had removed the veil on the Law and prophets (2 Cor 3.15), he showed the divine nature of them all when he presented clearly to those wanting to become disciples of his wisdom what things were true in the law of Moses, which the ancients cultivated in a copy and shadow (Heb 8.5), and what the truth was in the events in the stories, which “happened to them in a figure, and were written” on account of us “on whom the ends of the world have come” (1 Cor 10.11). 88

For the beginner who advances and becomes perfect or for the ethical disciple who advances to a physical state and then to the mystical vision, the Bible appears as a gradually “leavening” Book. The Law reveals its spiritual potential in the light of the Prophets and the Prophets disclose their eschatological potential in the light of the New Testament, or, to put it in Origen’s terms, the Old Testament is read in the light of the authoritative, spiritual beginning (a¹rxh¢), which are the Gospels, and it attains the “leavened” state of a¹parxh¢ or a gospel.89 The synoptic gospels are also leavened, if, when read in the light of the Gospel of John, they advance from the condition of a¹parxai¢ to that of a¹parxh¢ a¹parxw½n, i.e., they become all spiritual.90 However, the Bible’s “becoming Gospel” finds a correspondent in the transformative process that takes place in its readers. For now I shall limit the discussion of this leavening process that takes place in the receptor of the leavened Bible to an analysis of its occurrence in the humanity of Christ over the triduum paschale. As it was suggested in the previous reference to the Emmaus scene, the triduum represents the most accomplished image of the transformative effects that the biblical pedagogy of the Logos has on the Logos’s assumed humanity and, by extension, on the humanity of any disciple of the Logos, who under His direct guidance internalizes Logos’ divine good news.91 According to Origen, on Good Friday, Christ’s body went into the earth, his soul descended to Hades and his spirit (i.e., the individual pneu½ma) was delivered into the hands of God the Father.92 The Resurrection reunited the body with the soul but not yet with the deposited spirit. The Ascension integrated the previously reunited body and soul with the spirit, which had previously been

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deposited with the Father.93 Only at that point did the entire humanity of Christ become fully integrated with the Logos and, in the Logos, it became one god with God.94 Those who, in light of a Pentecostal completion of Emmaus, encounter the resurrected and ascended Christ, are offered the chance to internalize the incarnate Logos as a whole, as body, soul and human spirit, united with the Logos and reunited, through the Logos, with the Father.95 Applying the terminology of the genealogies of Christ that was presented earlier96 to the description of the triduum one can construe the Resurrection and Ascension as the accomplished integration of the genealogou¢menoj (i.e., Christ’s humanity) with the a¹genealo¢getoj (the Logos) in the a¹rxh¢ (the Father). The account of the integration of the genealogou¢menoj is the protogh¢nnema and the a¹parxai¢ (the Old Testament and the New Testament, mostly as the Synoptic Gospels), while the further, eschatological, integration of the Synoptics with the Gospel of John is the passage of the a¹parxai¢ in the a¹parxh¢ a¹parxw½n. Thus, the triduum can be read as the narrative of the leavening of Christ’s humanity, and of humanity in general, along the lines of the leavening of the Bible. It is this (almost leavened) Bible that Jesus opens to the disciples on the road to Emmaus and that the Church keeps open in the spirit of Pentecost.97 It is also important to note that after contemplating the Resurrected Christ, the spirituals receive the Logos Himself as an eternal gospel or an eternal good news from the Father not as distant addressees (fallen souls) of a condescending annunciation, but as filial witnesses of an exalted paternal report. This new receptivity is usually rendered by Origen in the terms of an experience of union with God,98 which can take the form of an inhabitation of the soul by the Son and the Father,99 or it can appear as an introduction of the soul in the intimacy of the Father and the Son. The latter is featured in Origen’s interpretation of the introduction of the bride in the nuptial chamber in the Song of Songs100 and in the entrance of the high priest in the holy of holies.101 In yet another account,102 the leavened reader of the leavened Scripture appears as the cherub described by Ezechiel as a footstool and a vehicle of God, closely united to the One whom it carries.103 In these conditions the biblical communication of the good news becomes a mystical event that is consummated as a direct encounter rather than as a distant mediation through signs.

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There are a number of questions that I shall raise here, without providing for now a detailed answer. For example, one may wonder whether the distance is entirely absent from this new, filial, relation that the perfect ones entertain with God? If the perfect disciple is said to be no longer distant, and to address God before God’s face, by a “face to face” vision, what is it that allows this eschatological relation to be still played as an address?104 Should not assimilatory, mystical, oneness make any address impossible or rather no longer needed? More urgently put, would not an eschatological vision collapse the annunciation (news-to) into the report (news-from) and the one to whom the news is announced (the addressee) into the one from whom the news comes (the addressor), disclosing, thus, the suppression of distance as the telelology of the spiritual ascent? As we shall presently see, the above concerns can be to a great extent answered in the negative. It suffices for now to notice that the reported news passes from the sign of an absence into the reality of a presence, which, once internalized, leavens the soul of the receiver turning him into a son like the Son and a god in the image of the Son’s divinity.105 Thus, leavening is aimed at the attainment of a filial, rather than a pantheistic, oneness with God, and therefore it preserves distance as a paradoxical, unitive sociality. As it will be shown in the subsequent development of this study, if the Logos is an advening address, then such an address does not cease to happen addressatively, but rather it changes its direction; from a condescending address meant to bring humans into a filial condition the Logos emerges as the filial address of the restored humanity to the Father, as a filial doxology.106 In conclusion, the Logos is the leaven of the messianically leavening Bible who addresses the exegete, turning him into a leavening addressee. The human historicity of this addressee gets transformed along the lines of the Bible’s historical progress (protogh¢nnema a¹parxai¢ - a¹parxh¢ a¹parxw½n) in the trace of the immemorial historicality of the Logos as an elective love-address. The consequence of this exegetical inscription of the human history into a divine historicality is the exegete’s becoming a good news (gospel) bearing Bible, along the following assimilative scenario: first, the typological reading of the Law will refer him to the gospels of Matthew and Luke, by the interpretation of which he will start sharing in the bodily/literally accessible presence of the condescending Logos as the human Christ or the genealogou¢menoj. Then, by a typological reading of the prophets, he will be referred to the “prophetic” gospel

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of Mark, whose interpretation will allow him an emancipation from the literal/bodily approach of the previous stage and a first, spiritual insight in the divinity of the exalted Logos or the a¹genealo¢getoj. Finally, the reading of the Song of Songs will refer the exegete to the Gospel of John and further to the eschatologic “eternal gospel,” by whose mystical exegesis he will become assimilated into the Logos or the a¹genealo¢getoj.107 This complex progress can be said to reverse the historicality of Logos’ condescension from the Father to humanity into a biblically formulated ascent of humanity to the Father, which takes the form of an exegetical “translation” of the old into the new; of the type, as an anticipative prefiguration, into the reality of which the type is the figure, and of the image into the actual truth.108 * So far I have offered a historical construal of the parallelism between the leavening of the Bible and the leavening of the Bible’s reader. In the next section I shall provide an alternative perspective on this parallelism, which may be called textual. This new approach is founded on Origen’s belief that the Scripture is a replica of the Incarnation109 and, thus, that, by analogy with the way in which one identifies a body, a soul and a human spirit in the humanity of the incarnate Logos, one can identify in the Bible a literal, a moral and a spiritual sense.110 Thus, the exegetical progress can be construed as a gradual advance in searching the depth of the Biblical text, from its manifest, literal or bodily meaning to its most profound sense, or its spirit. In light of this analogy, the Scripture can be said to appear gradually as a spiritually leavened text, in which the literal, the moral and the spiritual senses (the body, the soul and the spirit of the Scripture) have been integrated with the self-interpreting Logos who, as the Resurrected Christ of the Emmaus scene, reads Himself in each of them.111 In the following pages, I shall describe the Bible’s transformation into a leavened, spiritualized, text in close correlation with the transformation of the literal exegesis of the Bible into a spiritual exegesis.

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1.2 The Textual Dimension of Logos’ Advent as Bible and of Logos’ Reception as Bible Exegesis 1.2.1 The Bible’s Guide to the Reading of the Bible according to the Exegetical Theory in the Fourth Book of On First Principles 1.2.1.1 The Mediation of the Twofold, Literal and Spiritual, Constitution of the Bible Origen’s Bible guides the exegete by an alternate use of two basic instructional strategies, namely that of disclosure and that of concealment.112 In its current state of a “leavening” but not a yet fully “leavened,” that is, not fully spiritually expounded document, the communication of the deeper, spiritual, sense of the Bible113 is conditional on the exegete’s understanding of the letter or the immediate sense of the text, which Origen compares to an envelope, a rough garment (eÃnduma) or an “earthly vessel” (2 Cor 4.7). This opaque container allows only episodic glimpses into its concealed content or the “treasure” (2 Cor 4.7), which Origen calls its “spirit.”114 Origen construes the tension between the spirit and the currently opaque letter of the Bible by analogy with the tension between the flesh (sa¢rc) and the spirit (pneu¤ma) in the constitution of fallen humanity.115 As the flesh of the ethically purified and spiritually transformed exegete is gradually spiritualized by its integration with the exegete’s spirit, he becomes more adept at referring the previously opaque letter of the Bible to the Bible’s spiritual meaning. Through this process, the opaque letter of the Bible is thought to be gaining a special spiritual transparency. Origen sees the gradual gain in transparence of the properly, that is, spiritually, interpreted Bible as closely dependant on the conversion of the Spirit-inspired and Logos-inhabited soul of the biblical exegete from a body-attachment to an increasing emulation of the Logos in the Spirit.116 This conversion is said not only to result in a greater insight in the Scripture’s spiritual sense but also to increase the pedagogic efficacy of one’s exegesis in bringing about the progress of the hearers from a bodily condition of beginners, to a psychic condition of advancing disciples and, ultimately, to the condition of a perfected disciple.117

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Since the letter is commonly understood as the obvious meaning of the Bible,118 the disclosure of its concealed spiritual sense requires one of the following two forms of exegesis. For the Old Testament, the spiritual sense of the Law’s (the Pentateuch’s) narratives and prescriptions119 will become apparent through a typological referral of the narrated events and the proposed prescriptions to the Gospels and, eventually, to the eschatological events of the second coming anticipated in the Gospel of John.120 Since the typological referral of the Law to the gospels is prophetic,121 prophetic exegesis can be most effectively learned from the Old Testament’s books of the prophets122 and from what Origen refers to as the advanced “deuterotic” texts of the Jewish Scripture.123 The spiritual sense of the prophetic books and the deuterotic texts is believed to consist in “enigmas” and “obscure sayings” (Prov 1.6).124 The other form of exegesis harmonizes the letter and the spirit of the New Testament for the benefit of the spirituallyadvancing hearer. The fulfilled prophecy, which is the gospel, can be witnessed in the account of the human career (birth, preaching and death) of Christ as Logos incarnate, but it may be also contemplated in the divine manifestations of Christ’s salvation work as Logos.125 According to Origen, the former appears most pregnantly, but not exclusively, in the gospels of Matthew and Luke, while the latter is emphasized in the gospel of John, which is closely related to John’s book of Revelation.126 Their harmonization depends on the prophecy focused Gospel of Mark, which translates the contemplation of Jesus as human into a contemplation of the more divinely advening Christ of John’s gospel.127 The spirit of the gospels is designated as “the mind of Christ” (nou¤j Xristou¤),128 while the spirit of John’s writings appears as “the cypher of ineffable mysteries” (h( e)pi/kruyij a)porrh/twn musthri/wn).129 Thus, in both testaments the mediation between the letter-focused texts, designed for the instruction of the bodycentered exegete, and the more spiritual texts that address the needs of a spirit-centered audience is a prophetic one.130 Prophecy functions as the Bible’s aid for the soul that is willing to rise above her bodily-literal attachments and to convert to a life in the spirit. This ascent is prophetically guided by a series of spiritual clues, from typological hints, to enigmata and obscure sayings, to words “speaking” “Christ’s mind” as fulfilled prophecy and, finally, in

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reference to the end of times, by expressions of “ineffable mysteries.”131 As a follow up to my previous observations on the biblicalexegetical aspects of prophecy, I would now like to advance the opinion that prophecy, in the extended sense provided above, qualifies for a “soul” of the Scripture132 in at least two respects. First, historically, the prophetic “legatos” of the Bible’s progressive revelation (the Prophets between the Law and the deuteroseis; the gospel of Mark between the gospels of Matthew and Luke and the gospel of John) mediate between the more literal, readily understandable texts as a body of the Scripture and the more difficult ones or those containing the spiritual sense, which the literal disruptions and defects signal, as the Scripture’s spirit.133 Secondly, from a textual point of view, prophecy enjoins to a shift of focus from the opaque, cryptic letter (again, the so called “body” of the Scripture) to that which transparentizes this letter, which makes it disclosive, rather than concealing, that is, Scripture’s so-called “spirit.”134 In terms of reception, the prophetic or psychic diachronic and synchronic disclosure of the Scripture benefits those readers/hearers whose body-emancipated and spirit-converted soul indicates as being ready for a higher, mystical-eschatological encounter with the Scripture’s “divinity” (the Father, who willed it, the Son who brought this paternal will into existence and the Holy Spirit who inspired it).135 In this sense, prophecy as the Bible’s “soul” orients the historically situated ecclesiastic reader towards an eschatological revelation and fosters a prospective exegesis of things past and present in the light of things yet to come.136 As letter-rooted, prophecy facilitates catechesis for the bodily, the beginners or the catechumens, and has an ethical goal, namely, the working out of a purgative mastery over the passions. As spirit-referral, prophecy foretells the mystical (epoptic) experience of the saints of the eschatological church (the Jerusalem from above).137 As mediation between the letter and the spirit, prophecy provides an instruction for the members of the historical church, acquainting them with the vanity of the letter/carnal body and motivating them to advance from “the letter that kills” to the spirit “that vivifies.” 138

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1.2.1.2 The Bible’s Assistance in the Exegetical Engagement of the Split between the Bible’s Letter and the Bible’s Spirit After identifying the prophetic nature of the mediation between the letter and the spirit of the Bible, I would like to turn to the qualification of the task that stands before the Bible as teacher of Bibleexegesis or self-exegete. The Bible’s main task is not only one of teaching the reader/hearer to tackle the tension between the letter and the spirit. Even more important, is the Bible’s aid in signaling the very existence of this tension. For the spiritually unenlightened (the worldly person, before becoming a catechumen and eventually a baptized novice) the anthropological and the biblical-exegetical distinction between the Scripture’s letter or its body, and the Scripture’s spirit is, by no means, evident. The inconspicuous character of this crucial distinction has to be traced back to the almost perfect homonymy between the literal and the spiritual senses in the split constitution of the receptor’s humanity after the fall. Although created in the image of the heavenly, which is the Logos, humanity has preferred to emulate the image of the earthly, or the devil, and, consequently, has been torn between the residual iconic tendencies of its upper soul or the pneumatic intellect and the tendencies of her flesh-prone, lower soul.139 This iconic dis-tunement has produced the split but homonymous constitution of the current humanity, which comprises the so-called outer, fleshly, human being with his sensible senses, as well as the inner, spiritual, human, who could still regain his use of the spiritual senses.140 It is essential to notice that, given the homonymous expression of the split parts of humanity141 and of the Scripture,142 their antinomic tension remains concealed and so does the necessity to overcome it. This further implies that one cannot make a conscious choice to become a disciple of the Logos and a spiritual exegete of the Bible as long as, due to one’s ignorance of this homonymy, one omits to acknowledge the anthropological and scriptural split between the letter/flesh and the spirit. In other words, the homonymy does not conceal only the solution of the problem to be addressed, it also conceals the existence of the problem. As humanity does not stand alone in its attempt to gain awareness of its split constitution, divine assistance is not failing the exegete in his attempt to fathom the homonymy which conceals the split constitution of the Bible. For this task the exegete

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can rely on the help of the Bible itself, or rather, on the biblically coming Logos, who enlightens him on the need to “search the Scripture” (John 5.39)143 and indicates the manner in which this investigation should be pursued. Thus, the Bible as teacher of Bible-exegesis has a double function. On the one hand, it helps the spiritually receptive reader to realize (un-conceal) and disequivocate (clarify) the existence of the letter-spirit homonymy,144 on whose exposure depends his entire spiritual progress. On the other hand, the Bible prevents the spiritually unprepared from gaining an undeserved and premature spiritual insight, by exposing them to several offenses.145 One can, therefore, distinguish between the following two exegetical situations. For some, namely, the simple believers, the homonymy between the spirit and the letter is total, which makes the split between the two dimensions of the Bible utterly inconspicuous. The other possibility involves only a partial concealment of the split between the letter and the spirit, which means that the existence of the homonymy has been at least partially acknowledged, but its consequences have not yet been perceived at a profound, existential level. Nevertheless, even if only partial, the acknowledgment of the homonymy makes possible a conscious choice of addressing the split between the letter and the spirit, which may amount to a spiritual harmonization of these two, or, alternatively, to that which Origen deems a heterodox preference of one over the other.146 Examples of such heterodoxy are the literalist’s rejection of the spirit – the so-called “Jewish error”147 – or the spiritualist’s rejection of the letter as a “Gnostic error.”148 1.2.1.2.1 The Signaling of the Split between the Letter and the Spirit Let us take a look at the procedure that the Bible uses to guide the exegete towards an accurate, i.e., Bible-sanctioned, interpretation.149 First, the Bible could signal the split between the letter and the spirit and warn its reader of the offence that the reader/hearer could incur by ignoring it.150 One such signal consists in breaking the homonymy between the letter and the spirit by disrupting the literal coherence of a narrative or normative text through the insertion of “striking discrepancies and impossibilities” (prosko¢mmata kai£ a¦du¢nata),151 which refer to things that “could not have happened” (mhde£ dunato£n gene¢sqai) and are “unreal” (mh£ geno¢menon).152 Another way of signaling the homonymy consists in

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inserting within a narrative or normative text a specification that refers to events/prescriptions that are possible (they could have happened—dunato£n gene¢sqai) but unreal (they did not happen—ou¦ mh£n gegenhme¢non).153 Hereafter, I shall call the texts in the first category “impossible and unreal” and those in the second one “possible but unreal.”154 By contrast, both the Law and the Gospels, especially the “humanity focused” gospels of Matthew and Luke, contain narratives and precepts which, for the most part, are possible and true. Occasionally the Bible will disrupt the literal (historical) coherence of the humanity-focused Synoptics by historical inadvertences, which will need to be explained spiritually in light of higher insights to be found in the “prophetic” gospel of Mark and the spiritual-eschatologic gospel of John. The second way in which the Bible provides guidance is by refraining from offering any literal, visible, signal for the existence of the letter—spirit homonymy. The advanced exegete is expected to familiarize himself with this homonymy by spiritual means and to allow being guided by the Bible in a spiritual, rather than just a literal, manner.155 Given that most biblical texts refer to events or prescriptions that are both possible and real,156 the spiritually advanced exegete should be prepared to interpret as a signal the very absence of a literal signal, i.e., the absence of the letter’s defectiveness. Thus, unaided by literal means, but sensitized to the spirit by the Bible’s spirit alone, he will ascend from an understanding of the literal sense of the Scripture to its spiritual sense and will grasp the typologic sequence (ei¥rmo£j)157 of revelation’s progress from a shadow of an eschatological truth, to an increasingly clearer image of this truth and finally to the disclosure of the truth itself.158 In this respect, the advanced biblical exegete will resemble the prophet or the prophecy centered evangelist (Mark). It is, indeed, the prophet’s task to bridge the split terms of the letter-spirit homonymy by inscribing them in a progressive, typological scenario. The prophetic scenario of typology can be found in the Old Testament in the connection that the books of the prophets and the advanced deuterotic texts establish between the histories and precepts of the Law and the messianic future.159 The same scenario can be found in the Gospel of Mark’s insistence on the figure of John the Baptist, whose witnessing of the arrival of the Messiah allows the passage of prophetic anticipation into an actual fulfillment.160 Likewise, under the influence of the same Spirit that in-

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spired Scripture’s prophets and the Spirit shaped Scripture itself, the spiritual exegete will engage in a work of corroborating the prophetic clues of the Old Testament with the events of the New Testament.161 Thus, exegetical work is essentially of a prophetic nature and requires an advanced, prophetic, familiarity with the Scripture’s spirit as the Holy Spirit itself.162 1.2.1.2.2 The Origination of Heterodoxy in the Misinterpretation of Bible’s Exegetical Suggestions The Bible’s double pedagogy of signaling the letter-spirit homonymy and of refraining from such signaling could be ignored or misinterpreted, which, in Origen’s view, may lead to a series of exegetical errors.163 All these errors can be traced back to a form of taking offence at the split constitution of the Bible in its temporal, “disharmonious” state164 and, furthermore, at the twofold manifestation of the historically coming Logos.165 What are these offences? Some of them are occasioned by the most common biblical texts, which are those referring to both possible and real events/prescriptions, while others are occasioned by texts that refer to events and prescriptions which are possible but unreal.166 Both texts expose the reader to a double offence. While reading a perfectly possible account, be it a real or unreal one, the reader could fall under the spell of the text’s literal coherence, forgetting to search the account’s spiritual sense.167 Such readers are the simple Christians who take all the words of the Bible as literally true, without inquiring whether or not they stand the test of a historical verification (truth) or that of logical and moral plausibility (possibility).168 I shall call this error naïve literalism. By contrast, when reading an impossible but unreal text, the reader could feel inclined to reject the literal sense of the Bible as a whole and to take flight toward an arbitrarily established spiritual sense, a subjective figment of one’s imagination.169 I shall call this error wild spiritualism and I shall identify it as Origen’s definition of the exegetical position of the Gnostics.170 In the eventuality that a reader, who noticed the defectiveness of the letter either as impossibility or, even more radically, as unreality, decides to stick with the impossible and/or unreal literal sense, this exegete would have to attribute to God absurd or immoral acts, becoming, therefore, what one could call a wild literalist. Like the Gnostic or the wild spiritualist, the wild literalist perceives the signal (the historical incoherence or the impracti-

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cable prescription), but misinterprets it due to what nowadays could be called a rationalization. “Rationalizing” the literal impossibility as a test of his faithfulness to the letter, rather than as an incentive to a search for a spiritual, higher, meaning, the wild literalist will reinforce his penchant to stick to the letter of the Bible by what Origen would consider a self-deceptively construed sense of devotion to the Scripture’s obvious sense. Origen identifies these exegetes as the Jewish literalist.171 One can therefore distinguish Origen’s wild literalist or the literalist Jews from the naïve literalists or the simple Christians and place the former in the same category with the wild spiritualists or the Gnostics insofar as both of them share the same awareness of a possible distinction between the letter and the spirit and an equally informed choice for one of these two. The simple Christians differ from both the literalist Jews and the Gnostics insofar as they take offense at the Bible by ignoring, rather than misinterpreting, its literal signal.172 The homonymically concealed split between the letter and the spirit functions as the stumbling block173 that differentiates the Bible-sanctioned exegesis from an interpretation that does not meet the Bible’s exegetical standards. For the simple Christian (the naïve literalist), there are neither impossible and unreal, nor possible but unreal accounts. According to him the entire Bible is to be read as a literal text that refers to possible and real events and actions. Thus, the naïve literalist ignores both the positive and the negative signaling of the homonymy and remains unaffected by the Bible’s higher, spiritual, sense. By being cut-off from the Bible’s guidance toward the spiritual sense, which consists in the above-mentioned signals, the naïve literalist also misses the chance for fostering a prophetic disposition in matters of exegesis. By contrast, the wild literalist or the Jewish literalist exegete and the wild spiritualist or the Gnostic are not intellectually and morally naïve. In Origen’s view, they have to fabricate reasons that would allow either for a sort of complacency in the Bible’s literal interpretation, or for an arrogant rejection of any literal interpretation in the name of a privately revealed, higher or spiritual, sense. Unlike the simple one’s assent to the Bible’s letter, their upholding or denial of the Bible’s twofold, that is, literal and spiritual, constitution takes effort, skill and subtlety, and leads to what Origen considers a complex distortion of the signals that the Bible uses to establish a canon of exegetical orthopraxy. Growing disillusioned with what he considers to

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be a rather unattractive letter, the Gnostic will reject both the possible and real and the possible but unreal literal accounts as if they were both impossible and unreal. Thus, the Gnostic will misinterpret the Bible’s pedagogy and its incentive to a spiritual ascent, taking the letter’s disruption as a license to fantasize and speculate “spiritually.” In other words, he will not ignore the Bible’s positive signal, but rather grossly falsify it through arbitrary generalization.174 Likewise, the wild literalist (the Jewish literalist exegete) will be a miscreant of what he deems a spiritualist forgery of the allegedly self-evident, literal sense of the Bible. He will take Origen’s Christian typology as an adulteration of the solely desirable representation of Israel’s messianic future, which is the literal one.175 On this account, he will reject any idea of a spiritual interpretation, including the one that Origen considers Bible-sanctioned. The wild literalist will take the spiritual interpretation of the Bible’s positive signal as a distortion of true (i.e., literal) prophecy and as a prompting to introduce false messianic expectations. In conclusion, it is safe to assume that, for Origen, the wild spiritualist and the wild literalist are similar in one important respect, namely, their use of what I called a “rationalization” as a justification for the suppression of the Bible’s signaling of its twofold, literal and spiritual, constitution. The result of this rejection is a severe reduction of the Bible to either a spiritless or a letterless condition. By contrast, the naïve literalist (the simple Christian) is unaware of the positive signal and, therefore, of the homonymy that conceals the tension between the letter and the spirit, thus being in no position either to mediate their opposition (exegetical orthopraxy) or else to err by the suppression of one of them (wild literalism or wild spiritualism). In historical terms the simple Christian is the naïve receptor of the Law, the Prophets and the Gospels, who is in need of a spiritual or “prophetic” awakening. The awakening will not be effective unless it disrupts the literalist’s complacency in the logical-moral coherence of the letter, or, in other words, unless it provides active and authoritative guidance for a spiritual elevation. This disruption should be explicit enough to make it logically and morally impossible for the exegete to stay at the literal level of the text. While for the simple Christian or the naïve literalist the letter-spirit homonymy tends to be inconspicuous, the same homonymous split will be “rationalized” and simplified by the Jewish wild literalist and

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the Gnostic wild spiritualist, who are both aware of the homonymy, if not fully, at least as an exegetical possibility. The wild literalist and the wild spiritualist will reduce the Christian understanding of the prophecy as the spiritual mediation between the letter and the spirit either to an all-literal or to an all-spiritual phenomenon. If reduced to a purely literal dimension, prophecy becomes an announcement of historical events that would eventually have to match to the letter the terms of the prophetic prediction.176 Ultimately, Origen thinks that the literalist believes these prophecies in spite of their implausibility or, even more so, because they are implausible (a sort of credo litterae quia absurdum).177 One could see here the root of the Christian construal of the wild literalist’s position as an exegetical excision of the spiritual-prophetic dimension of the Old Testament which, ultimately, translates into a wholesale rejection of the New Testament (the New Testament is deemed a spiritualist, pseudo-prophetic distortion of the Law and the Prophets). Alternatively, the wild spiritualist or the Gnostic will reduce the prophecy’s spiritual mediation between the letter and the spirit to an entirely spiritual phenomenon, which will further lead to an excision of the literal dimension of the Bible erroneously construed as an “allogenic” “Old” Testament. After purging the Bible of the Old Testament the Gnostic will further select from the Gospels and the New Testament as a whole only those passages that are susceptible of what he considers an esoteric, spiritual, interpretation. 1.2.1.2.3 Spiritual Progress as the Outcome of the Observance of the Bible’s Exegetical Signals As mentioned above, the Scripture has two ways of signaling the homonymously concealed split between the letter and the spirit, namely, a positive and a negative one. Both positive signals (the impossible and untrue history or prescription; the possible but untrue history or prescription) allow the exegete’s realization of the homonymy and help him un-conceal the split between the letter and the spirit as the terminus a quo the spiritual progress should commence. The positive signal operates in a more explicit manner, while the negative one proceeds in a more covert way. The recipients of this pedagogy by positive signaling are, therefore, those in need of a more concrete and more emphatically interventionist guidance or the simple ones (catechumens and novices, those in

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need of a preliminary, pre-baptismal, and a more advanced, baptismal, ethical training). By the same token, they are also helped to avoid naïve literalism as the main offence at this stage. The negative signal (non-signaled homonymy between the literal and the spiritual meanings of a possible and true history or prescription) allows the more advanced exegete to seek the spirit of Scripture by way of a spiritual, invisible, “heavenly grace,”178 rather than by the sensible disruption of the literal aspect of the text (the positive signal). Such an exegete can be said to be the recipient of a prophetic inspiration or rather a sui generis prophetic “flair.”179 The recipients of this pedagogy are those with a hightened awareness of the anthropological, scriptural and pedagogical manifestations of the homonymous split as a consequence of the fall and of the judgment that God passed on the fallen creation.180 These are the exegetes who attained the pedagogic stage of physics or natural contemplation.181 Their prophetic flair stands for the iconic activity of a soul that has been restored to its initial emulation of the heavenly and that opened up its spiritual senses to the spiritual reception of the Spirit.182 As the soul becomes more capable of emulating the heavenly, the Bible, which the exegete contemplates, becomes a document with a prophetically illuminated letter. Consequently, one can identify the physically trained exegete as a disciple who has learned how to cope with the homonymous, lapsarian, split between the flesh/letter and the spirit, even though, for the time being, he cannot overcome it.183 In exegetical terms, he is one who, by receiving the Logos spiritually has received the same inspiration that allowed the prophets of the Old Testament and John the Baptist to establish the link between the Law of Moses and the Gospels of Jesus.184 Ultimately, for the teaching of the perfect readers (the epoptic disciples, the saints and the resurrected faithful), the Bible needs neither positive, nor negative signals. At this stage, the Bible appears to these disciples in such a unified (i.e., “leavened”) way that there is no homonymy to be exposed and no split to be mediated. The biblical texts that announce this eschatological state of perfection are the Old Testament’s deuterw¿sei» (in particular the Song of Songs) and the New Testament’s “gospel of gospels” (the Gospel of John and the Book of Revelation).185 Given their high spiritual importance, these texts are usually signaled by the current, homonymous, twofold, Bible through a peculiar, more deceptive, literal defectiveness.186 It would probably be more accurate to say

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that the literal defectiveness of the deuterotic texts indicates that they were meant to be read as no longer having a lapsed, material, letter (the equivalent of the pre-Resurrection material body), after their letter has been prophetically harmonized with an eschatologically revealed spiritual truth and, like a post-resurrectional spiritualized body, it has exchanged its material quality for a spiritual one.187 In conclusion, the spiritualization of the Bible’s letter can be attributed to the transformative reading of the spiritual exegete in whose body, soul and spirit the resurrected Christ lives. For Origen’s perfect exegete, the Bible appears as an eschatologically leavened document, whose constitution the condescending Logos has gracefully unified and purged of lapsarian dichotomy and homonymous deception.188 As was mentioned earlier, the disciples on the road to Emmaus have been given a foretaste of this prophetically leavened Bible, in anticipation of the ultimate contemplation of the mystical-eschatological, fully leavened, eternal Gospel.189 Moreover, the exegetes of the eschatological Bible, as recipients of the biblically coming, eschatological Christ, can be said to have started to become this Bible themselves, to have started to become assimilated with the Logos as the leaven of this Bible, when they became partakers of Christ’s self-announcing and self-explaining messianic interpretation of the Scripture (His “opening” of the Scripture) on the road to Emmaus.190 In the following, I shall focus on the concrete aspects of this exegetical experience, as they are featured in Origen’s exegetical practice. 1.2.2 The Bible’s Guide to the Reading of the Bible in the Light of Origen’s Exegetical Procedure 1.2.2.1 The Split Constitution of the Bible and of the Reader Shapes the Exegetical Procedure Karen Jo Torjesen’s book Hermeneutical Procedure and Theological Method in Origen’s Exegesis provides what could be rightfully called one of the most nuanced analyses of Origen’s exegetical procedure. According to Torjesen, the Origenian exegesis of a scriptural passage consists in (1) an enunciation of the biblical verse or the extended biblical passage, followed by a clarification of its grammatical sense; (2) a clarification of the historical situation that the text refers to, with a particular insistence on the historical person who exemplifies, either as the addressor or as the receptor of a teaching,

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the pedagogic lesson of the biblical account.191 These first two steps account for the exegesis of the letter of the biblical text.192 In the third step (3) of the exegetical procedure Origen shifts the focus to the spiritual aspect of the historical account, usually to a Christologic and ecclesiastic one that consists of a teaching whose universal applicability is believed to have been satisfactorily attested to by the growth of the Church and the spreading of Christianity.193 This teaching emerges from an allegorization of the literal sense and has, as was previously mentioned, a pronounced Christologic and ecclesiastic character. In the fourth step (4) of the spiritual exegesis the reader/hearer is invited to adopt the attitude of the receptor of the teaching in the historical situation (see 2) as allegorized in the third step of the procedure.194 In this capacity, the hearer will experience Logos’ teaching either immediately, from the selfannouncing, self-interpreting Christ, or through the mediation of intermediary, saintly, exegetes with a Christological identity (prophets, patriarchs, wise people, etc).195 Torjesen describes this fourth step as the reader’s spiritual positioning in the Biblical text, which, ultimately, implies the reader’s becoming a follower or student of Christ as biblical teacher.196 After being positioned into the text, or, more accurately, in the “role” of the allegorized historical follower of Christ configured by the text, the reader will experience the Logos in variable degrees, ranking from a dim, distant, comprehension to a mystical vision.197 The variation in the text-inscribed reader’s familiarity with Christ as biblical teacher indicates the extent of the reader’s lapsarian alienation from the Logos as his iconic prototype as well as the exegetical mediation, which is needed for the reader’s spiritual restoration to the initial emulation of this model.198 For example, an exegetical mediation shaped along the lines of an ethical reception of the Logos is, usually, indicative of a greater alienation in the reader’s condition than one shaped by a physical, or an epoptic (mystical) reception.199 Thus, as a rule, a placement in the role of a less advanced biblical character entails a greater spiritual estrangement of the reader’s soul from the Logos, which calls for a greater exegetical condescension on the part of the self-exegesing Christ or any of the other exegetes that speak in persona Christi.200 Origen’s exegetical procedure as described by Torjesen is in agreement with the main point of Origen’s exegetical theory in the fourth book of On First Principles, which conditions the successful

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tackling of the Scripture’s split, spiritual and literal, constitution on the reader’s acceptance of the biblical Logos’ exegetic-pedagogic guidance.201 The realization of this split constitution makes possible the transition from the grammatical (literal) historical approach in the first two stages to the application of the spiritual teaching (stage three) to a contemporary ecclesiastic audience (stage four). As was previously shown, the Bible’s procedure for aiding the beginner in his struggle to detach from the literal meaning consists in the use of literally defective passages that account for events and prescriptions that are either possible but not true or impossible and untrue.202 These disruptions of the letter are clues for the detection of a higher, more spiritual sense, of the text, which Origen epitomizes in the diachronic progression from types (for the Law), to enigmas and dark sayings (for the Prophets), to Christ’s “mind” or spiritual teaching (for the Gospels) and to “ineffable mysteries” (for the book of Revelation).203 As I have pointed out earlier, noticing the Bible’s clues and the tension between the letter and the spirit plays a decisive role in establishing whether one is going to take offense at the Bible or, rather, one will engage on a path of spiritual progress through a Bible-sanctioned biblical exegesis.204 1.2.2.2 The Exegetical Procedure as Bible-Induced Spiritual Ascent How does the Bible take the reader beyond the pure realization of its split constitution towards a proper interpretation of its concealed spiritual mysteries? Those readers who have made their way beyond the literal sense of the text are further guided towards the spiritual teaching that emerges from the allegorization of the text’s letter by what can be called a Bible-induced self-assessment procedure. They are invited to place themselves into various roles that the spiritual interpretation of the Bible configures and to assess their spiritual advancement through their aptness for these roles.205 Thus, by placing oneself within the Law, one could assess one’s suitability for the role of the new Israel or the church whom God guides toward perfection or the promised-land.206 As a participative reader of the Prophets, one could see and evaluate oneself as the addressee of the prophet’s warnings regarding an imminent judgment.207 As a reader of the Song of Songs, one is invited to test one’s preparedness for an advance toward a nuptial union with Christ as a mystical-eschatological bridegroom, while as a reader of

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the gospels the reader/hearer could try his capacity for becoming one of Christ’s direct followers.208 Each division of the Bible presents the reader with more than one identification option and, more importantly, with a scenario of spiritual advancement from roles that indicate a more distant relation with the Logos as biblical teacher to the adoption of roles that display an increased familiarity with Him.209 Thus, as a rule, what distinguishes the more advanced, spiritual, exegete from the less advanced one is his or her capacity for discerning the spiritual pedagogy of the biblical Logos (His spiritual teachings and teaching strategies) without having to rely on the letter disrupting clues. The advanced reader is expected to rely primarily on what I have called his prophetic “flair” for the spiritual sense of the Bible as a token of his increased likeness to the Logos and on his direct inspiration by the Holy Spirit.210 The extent of this likeness can be exegetically “diagnosed” by monitoring the reader’s various identifications with the biblical roles that the Logos has pre-configured with a pedagogical and soteriological intent and with a prophetic foresight of their possible individual application.211 A series of questions could further clarify the criteria by which one is guided through the ascending roles of a spiritual progress within the biblical text. First of all, it is important to establish the one who communicates the spiritual teaching. This person could be an allegorized character in a narrative or the locutor of a prescriptive or prophetic speech, issuing a commandment, law or a warning.212 In this respect, it is essential to establish whether this character or locutor, who communicates the teaching, is Christ himself or, rather, an intermediate teacher213 and, if it is Christ the one who speaks, whether He is viewed predominantly as human or as Logos.214 In the second place, one should establish with whom is the Bible inviting the reader to identify. In this sense one can look at the reader’s choice of identification, more precisely to the biblical person designating a recipient of spiritual instruction that one chooses to identify with. This person could be a character in a biblical text, the locutor of a biblical text, a biblical text’s author or even the addressee of a text.215 The position of the “chosen recipient”-role in the sequence of the stages of the spiritual ascent establishes whether the reader sees himself as a beginner, an advancing or a perfected disciple. In the third place, after his positioning as a participative reader within the text, one should inquire regarding

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the intended usefulness216 of the teaching that the Bible offers and regarding the method that the Bible uses to induce in the reader the realization that such an identification is spiritually profitable.217 The beginners will be offered a more obvious, more interventionist, aid by signals of literal disruption, while the more advanced will be expected to use their own spiritual insight for their choice of the spiritual sense of the teaching over its literal one. While at this stage it is also important to establish what kind of clue is the reader offered. Types are more ordinary, while enigmas and obscure words are for those capable of a more acute prophetic scrutiny. Ineffable mysteries are usually reserved for the perfect or the saints. 1.2.2.3 The Spiritual Ascent as an Exegetical Reduction of the Hermeneutical Distance between the Reader and the Biblical Logos All the above questions point toward a reality that Torjesen, without elaborating on its sense, has called the “distance” that exists between the reader as disciple and his or her teacher as biblical Logos.218 Beginners are distant, i.e., thoroughly alienated, persons, instructed by an intensely condescendant teacher, usually the human Christ or a lower, intermediary pedagogue. The beginner has, first, to realize the distance that separates him from God by becoming conscious of the homonymy between the letter/body and the spirit, then he has to make himself into a recipient and a beneficiary of the spiritual usefulness of the Bible dictated by God’s auctorial intention or will.219 In other words, he or she has to learn from the Bible to pay attention to Logos’ instruction on how to cope exegetically with the distance between the letter and the spirit. The diminishing of the textual distance between the letter and the spirit is signaled by an increasingly less condescendant communication of Logos’ biblical teaching and a self-manifestation of the teacher as an exalted, rather than a humble, Logos. Torjesen’s analysis of Origen’s exegetical procedure confirms these observations insofar as the transition from the exegesis of the Old Testament to that of the New Testament presents a less mediated, more direct interaction with Christ on the part of the text-situated reader and a decrease in the frequency of the applicative passages on Origen’s part, which indicates a less obvious or literal, and a more “invisible” or spiritual pedagogy.220 A similar transformation can be

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noticed, according to Torjesen, in the passage from Origen’s homiletic exegesis to the exegetical procedure in the commentaries.221 I shall take now a closer look at the transformative experience of the act of reading the gospels under Logos’ exegetical guidance. While reading the Gospels, one is presented with the “mind of Christ”222 in the form of an account of Christ’s teachings and of His exemplary deeds. The gospels place the exegete under the instruction of the teaching Christ in two ways, namely, by a contemplation of Christ as human (The Logos as incarnate), or by the beholding of Christ as divine (the Incarnate as Logos). To receive the teaching of a predominantly human Christ, the reader needs to work out an identification with a member of the crowds that the Gospels present as followers of Jesus.223 As one of the crowd the reader will be the recipient of a twofold instruction. On the one hand, he will be addressed in easily comprehensible words that will not be too challenging for his undeveloped logical-critical powers and will edify him through their moral relevance.224 For the most part, these are the words of the literal-biblical discourse as described by Torjesen.225 On the other hand, the Gospel will spare the beginner a premature and potentially harmful access to more spiritual issues by relating him to Jesus’ parables.226 The reader who identifies with the crowds seems to fit the description of the primarily intended audience of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, as people with a predominantly letter- and body- mediated understanding of the Scripture and the universe. To advance toward a contemplation of Christ as divine, i.e., of the Incarnate as Logos, the exegete needs to identify with those whom the Gospels designate as the disciples.227 It is to them that Christ entrusts spiritual teachings in plainer, non-parabolic terms, during private conversations.228 For these readers, the incarnate Logos appears less condescending, that is, closer to His initial, exalted, condition. The readers who get closer to the Logos as disciples and become transformed in the image of Christ’s soul, as the accomplished recipient of His divinity, are the targeted audience of the prophecy centered Gospel of Mark. They have an understanding not only of the literal manifestation of the Logos in obvious discourse (histories or narratives, prescriptions or laws) but also of the spirit of this discourse (its references to spiritual realities of the current or the coming age), which means that they have become familiar with the twofoldness of the Bible and the tension between its letter and its

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spirit. In the third place, among the disciples with whom the reader can identify, there is one who has a preeminent position, namely, John the evangelist, the author of the fourth, spiritual, gospel, and of the book of Revelation.229 The exegete who identifies with John beholds the resurrectional-ascensional Logos, that is, the least condescendant, most exalted, appearance of Christ, in an assimilative fashion.230 This is also the kind of exegete who constitutes the targeted audience of John’s Gospel.231 His assimilative experience of Christ anticipates the complete suppression of the lapsarian distance between humanity and God by the eschatological, scripturally unmediated, spiritual union of the reader with the Logos and his becoming a son of the Father in the Son’s likeness.232 As it seems, the main effect of the transformative reading of the Gospels consists in the gradual reduction of the hermeneutical distance between the text-positioned reader and the biblical Logos. During the progressive identification with each of the three categories of Christ’s followers (the crowds, the disciples, the beloved disciple), which can be also loosely equated with an identification with the targeted audiences of the gospels of Matthew and Luke, Mark and, ultimately, John, one experiences the manifestation of an increasingly proximate, less distant, Christ, culminating in a direct assimilative beholding of Christ as resurrectional-ascensional selfexegete. Earlier in this study I have discussed the anthropological transformation implied by the triduum and suggested by the hierarchy of the Gospels, therefore I shall not further insist on this aspect. Instead, I shall provide a preliminary tentative synopsis of the reader’s experience of the reduction of the distance between himself and God during the historical-textual exegetical encounter with the biblical Logos. For reasons of brevity, I shall again have to limit this discussion to the analysis of the experience of an exegesis of the Gospels. 1.2.3 A Tentative Synopsis of the Exegete’s Encounter with the Biblical Logos during the Bible-Sanctioned Exegesis of the Bible as Gospel As previously mentioned, in the first stage the Gospel-reader, as a recipient of a highly condescendant teaching, is positioned in the evangelic discourse as a member of the crowds. Like the people of the crowds who hold the incarnate Logos as a man with spiritual authority, the reader will refer to Christ as a historical person

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whom the evangelic account depicts as the addressor of an accessible, logically intelligible and morally acceptable speech. At this stage, internalizing this doctrine means placing oneself through the mediation of the literally interpreted text in relation to the sayings and example of the evangelic Christ-character in the manner in which an evangelic crowd-follower is depicted doing. In the second stage, the text positioned reader realizes that what he experiences as the authority of this character exceeds his bodily understanding, that His literally intelligible humanity displays a more than human (more than literal) authority. By an advanced placement in the text in the role of a disciple, the reader realizes that this more than human authority of the locutor who is Christ can be narrated, that is, textually circumscribed and contained, in a biblical discourse, like that of the evangelist, only by way of Christ’s condescension. Keeping in mind that, for Origen, the Logos as incarnate/intextuate God is the author of the Scripture, or, at least, its efficient cause,233 the authoritative Christ character in the evangelic narrative would have to be construed as the condescending manifestation of the narrative’s divine author, that is, as a self-authored character. Thus, in the disciple’s qewri¢a of the Christ of the second stage, the Christ-character reveals himself as the Gospel’s author, who exchanges, for the disciple’s sake, a meta-textual auctorial condition for an intra-textual, characterial one. The speech of the disciple’s Christ is, therefore, a coming into words of the unspeakable author of speech, of the condescending, unspeakable Logos. At the same time, the doctrine that His speech conveys is marked by Logos’ condescending authorship, which is structured on the “from-to” scenario of a direct address. This auctorial address further determines the dramatic change in the pragmatics of the Scriptural discourse wherein the Logos appears as a character. Due to the auctorial advent of the condescending Logos, the narrative that makes reference to Christ’s historical person and Christ’s teaching becomes an address to the reader as a disciple. This is the occasion on which the reader who discovers himself elected to discipleship gets a sense of the spiritual immensity of the distance that must have been bridged by the author’s condescending to the position of a character in his own narrative and stands in awe before this divine feat as an overwhelming, revelatory excess, as a fact that is incomprehensible for the human mind.234 This is also the moment when the reader realizes that the effort of reducing the dis-

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tance between Christ as narrated, authoritative character and himself as someone inscribed in the textual role of a disciple of Christ cannot have been the work of an individual hermeneutical choice (an imaginative will to understand oneself projectively as the disciple of Christ, whom the narrative depicts), as it was still possible to believe while performing a strictly literal approach to the text. The literal approach to Christ as an intra-textual character does not account for the distance that exists between the Christ-character in the humanly authored accounts, which are the Gospels, and the more profound spiritual authorship of this character. It becomes evident that, on the part of the disciple, the reduction of this distance requires a placement into this distance as a follower not just of the evangelic character of Christ but also of his evangelic (wellboding) self-authoring. Thus, in the biblical character of Christ, the exegete perceives the divine author of the Bible, distantly at first, then with an increasing, even though literally incomprehensible, proximity.235 The realization of the distance between character and author is, nevertheless, simultaneous with the realization of the charity of the condescension that bridges it, and it introduces into the pragmatic of the reception of the text an interesting new turn. Unlike the literal approach, which is still indebted to an imaginative projection of the reader into the world of the text (for example, as a crowd follower), in the disciple’s hermeneutics, the roles are reversed. It is the biblically coming Logos as condescending author of the Bible, who as a historical, narratively referred to, person (the one the text speaks about) calls upon the reader to become a disciple like the narratively referred to apostolic disciples and a follower like Christ’s apostolic followers. Thus, before he or she was offered the choice of an imaginative identification with a specific disciple of Christ, the reader has already been personally elected to discipleship by Christ as biblically coming Logos.236 At this point the reader discovers himself in, what Origen calls, a position of discipleship; he is inscribed in a text that was turned inside out, that was opened up by a messianic advent of a divine author, which originates outside the text’s human penning. As a disciple, the exegete is ready to e-lope (ascend) outside of this already extroverted, disenclosed biblical text, on the graded path of the distance of Logos’ messianic in-trusion (descent).

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There are two important characteristics of this second stage (that of discipleship) in the exegetical reduction of the distance between God and humanity. First, the reader’s positioning in the text no longer appears as a hermeneutical option, but as a response to a personal call to discipleship, which the character to be emulated (Christ) launches as author of the text by which he calls.237 Secondly, and as a consequence of the reader’s realization of the above aspect, the reader’s response to the author’s call as an intra-textual acting teacher, is no longer an occurrence that happens exclusively within the text. Once positioned within the text as a follower of the intextuated author, the reader acquires a sense that the textual condescension of the author, his auctorial self-exegesis, transforms the text from a mediated account of human penning into an immediate (face to face), assimilative address of the Logos as God to humanity. Although aware of the imminence of this transformation, the reader of the second stage is still encountering Christ within the text but this time the encounter is accompanied by an increased sense of the condescendent, meta-textual source of Christ’s presence as a character in the biblical narrative. This implies, as well, that the reader has an increasing sense of the distance that the auctorial, meta-textual Logos has covered in order to become part of a human account (lo¢goj). To realize the hermeneutical distance that separates the text-positioned reader from the meta-textual auctorial Logos, yet not to be able to bridge this distance is, in essence, a physical experience that Origen describes as one of religious awe.238 In the third stage, the Logos will not address His disciple any longer by the mediation of the text, but rather through an immediate, face to face, address.239 This address is assimilative, therefore, the addressee’s exegesis will become a filial life-testimony for the Father of the Logos, as the ultimate arch-auctorial author of the text, while the disciple’s discourse will be his life-testimony as liturgical praise or glorification of the Father.240 The exegete identifies at this stage with John, the beloved disciple who rested his head on Jesus’ breast and, from this positioning, he will discover that the auctorial advent of the divine Logos as described in the previous stage, is indicative of the concern of a paternal arch-author, from whom and unto whom the auctorial Logos reports. The Bible is perceived as the direct addressing of the good news by the direct, addressative Word (the Logos) of a divine Father, a Word that is not only one of love, but is also the transformative love of the Fa-

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ther as such. Responding to this filial Love-Word as a beloved disciple means glorifying the Father in the Son with one’s whole being, or, rather, being the love by which one is loved.241 Although this is a process beyond exegesis, a form of direct, assimilative doxologic vision, it also entails a missionary sort of return to the textual exegesis of the previous stages.242 By filially doing the will of the Father as Love Word, the disciple becomes a condescendant son like the condescending Son and, therefore, a condescending good news bearer, a homiletic exegete or preacher, who will clarify the biblical coming of the Logos (the Bible) to the less advanced readers, contributing to the expansion of the ecclesiastic community.243 It is in this light that exegesis can be construed as pedagogic or filially transformative (both in the sense of a filial mission and in the sense of a facilitating of the ecclesial adoption of the crowdmember and the disciple). In brief, the clarification of the reception of the Logos as a textual advent was centered on the textual manifestation of the distance between God and humanity, which, in the first two stages of the exegetical ascent (that of crowd-exegesis and that of disciple exegesis) appears as the split, current constitution of the Bible. This split biblical text was said to hinder the exegete’s assimilation of the exemplary character of Christ in the biblical account. In pedagogic terms, in the first stage the reduction of this distance requires the correction of one’s critical-philological (in Origen’s terms, the logical) and ethical flaws by one’s self-placement in the textual role of a follower of Christ as a literally meaningful (i.e., logically sound and ethically authoritative) teacher. The pedagogy that realizes this preliminary reduction of distance is, therefore, an ethical and logical propedeutic to more spiritual insights, similar to the propedeutic role of the liberal arts in regard to philosophy, or that of the catechumenal training in regard to baptism.244 At the second stage, distance appears as that which separates the literal follower of the literally construed Christ as human text-figure (character) from the spiritual follower of this same Christ as meta-textual, divine author. In hermeneutical terms, distance is now measured by the address of the Logos, as divine author of the Gospel, to the reader through His condescending textual manifestation as a textual, but, in fact, more-than-textual, otherwise than textual character.245 The hermeneutical distance as it appears in the first and second stages of the ascent was construed as an expression of humanity’s protologic,

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lapsarian alienation from the auctorial Logos, while its pedagogic reduction was represented as a physical restoration of humanity in its initial condition of an image of God. Exegetically, this restoration involves a harmonization of the literal and the spiritual aspects of the biblical text, a transparentization of the letter that allows the revelation of its spiritual usefulness and of the divine auctorial intent. In other words, the physical reduction of the hermeneutical distance was said to have turned the biblical text inside-out, from the medium of a divine advent from God to humanity, into a graded, ascending path that allows an ascent from humanity to God. While at the first, logical and ethical, stage one was “entering” the role proposed by the biblical text in order to relate to the teacher as authoritative character within the text, at the second, physical, stage the reader realizes that he or she has been called within the text to emulate a character who turned out to be the condescending author of the text. This emulation would necessarily lead one “out” of the text towards an extra-textual, personal, encounter with the text’s author who chose the reader as his filial disciple. The realization of the transcendence of the author in regard to the text as well as the condescending character of the presence of the author in the text as self-authored character is the equivalent of one’s physical realization of the condescendence that made possible the incarnation of the Logos in a fallen world with a split, fleshly and spiritual, condition. Additionally, the encounter with the author of the biblical text outside of the text, which is the main event of the third stage, marks a suppression of the lapsarian distance, both in its anthropologic (flesh-spirit) and in its exegetical (letter-spirit) determinations. The reader of the third stage is no longer distant in regard to the Logos; he is an intimate partner of the Logos and an immediate filial beneficiary of the Fatherly goodness that the Son, as good-news, reports.246 As accomplished pedagogue, this eschatological exegete is able to address the crowds logically and ethically, the disciples physically, and his fellow beloved disciples, epoptically. In other words he is able to facilitate for his students the same Logos-advent that made possible his spiritual progress. The following section in this study will trace in greater detail Logos’ pedagogic advent and its consequences, as the scenario of a biblical up-bringing of humanity from a fallen fleshly condition to a divinized or leavened state (a spiritually mature person or a grown-up).

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2 UPBRINGING. THE ADVENT OF THE LOGOS AS BIBLICAL TEACHING AND THE RECEPTION OF THE LOGOS AS BIBLICAL-EXEGETICAL LEARNING 2.1 Introduction. The Biblical School Curriculum as the Messianic “Incarnation” of the Logos or the Divine Teacher The following discussion of Origen’s Bible-based curriculum unfolds from the previous investigation of the role of Origen’s idea of “gospel” (e)uagge¢lion) in the shaping of a Christian Bible-study program.247 As previously noted, Origen distinguishes two aspects of the gospel. The messianic good-news is both the self-communication of the Word (lo¢goj) to a community of religious exegetes in the form of the words (lo¢goi) of the Bible, and the exegetical reception of this scripturally communicated Word.248 Following Origen, I have called the self-communication of the Word in the scriptural words His biblical-exegetical coming (e)pidhmi¢a), which I further divided in two. As annunciation or e)paggeli¢a, this coming is a condescending communication of the Logos to us, His fallen, less than perfect, receptors, while, as a©paggeli¢a or report, the coming Logos discloses to the spiritually advanced the immemorial intrigue of His revelatory mission, which is God the Father’s philanthropic salvation mandate.249 In an equally Origenian fashion, I have called the reception of the messianically coming Logos a welcoming act.250 In brief, one can define Origen’s notion of gospel as the exegetical welcoming of this twofold, announcing and reporting, biblical coming of the Logos. Given the transformative effect of the exegetical welcoming of the biblical Word, one can now feel compelled to draw an analogy between Origen’s biblical-exegetical definition of the notion of gospel and his Bible-based understanding of a Christian curriculum. In the following pages, I shall show that, like the gospel in the biblical-exegetical dimension, the curriculum takes shape through the disciple’s welcoming of the didactically coming Logos as messianic teacher. I shall also maintain that, like the gospel, which is a textual incarnation (an in-textuation) of the Word in the exegetically received biblical words,251 the curriculum is a doctrinal incarnation (one may call it an “in-doctrination”) of the Teacher (the Logos) into the biblical teaching or doctrine, which the disciple internalizes by his meditative observance (mele¢th).252

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My interpretation of the Origenian curriculum relies on the creative correlation that Origen draws between the Son’s condescension from an exalted to a humble condition,253 on the one hand, and the typological reading of sacred history as the progressive revelation of a messianic future unfolding from a prefiguration or shadow (ski¢a¢) to an increasingly accurate image (ei)kw¢n) of the eschatological reality (pra¤gma)254 or truth (a)lh¢qeia), on the other.255 The following passage in On First Principles illustrates Origen’s use of the typological image-truth pair in the assessment of the Son’s switch from being “in the form of God” to being “in the form of the slave.”256 Our Savior is therefore the image of the invisible God, the Father, being the truth when considered in relation to the Father himself, and the image, when considered in relation to us, to whom he reveals the Father.257

The outcome of this correlation is the emergence of a sui generis scenario of condescension,258 which reverses the ascendant course of revelation’s historical passage from image to truth.259 Origen explains the possibility, not just the actuality, of the trans-historical event which is Logos’ condescension from an exalted to a humble condition,260 in strict correlation with the possibility of the fall261 of humanity made in God’s image, or, to be more precise, in reference to the virtual versatility of any being that exists according to the image.262 An enlightening passage in this respect is the following excerpt from the first book of The Commentary on the Gospel of John: Since the firstborn of all creation is the image of the invisible God (Col 1.15), the Father is his beginning. And likewise also Christ is the beginning of those made according to the image of God (Gen 1.27). For if men are “according to the image,” and the image according to the Father, the “according to which” of Christ, on the one hand, is the Father, his beginning, but, on the other hand, Christ is the “according to which” of men, who are made, not according to that of which Christ is the image, but according to the image.263

Although, strictly speaking, the notion of image (ei)kw¢n) characterizes only the Logos, while the humans, who are not, per se, an image, are said to exist “according to the image” of the Logos as a model or prototype,264 the Logos, too, as divine “image of the in-

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visible God” exists in the mode “according to” in regard to His model, who is the Father. By postulating an according-to (kata£) manner of being, Origen does not describe merely humanity’s actual emulation of the divine image or archetype, which is the Logos, but also the condition of any created or uncreated being whose existence is structurally a relatedness to a model.265 Thus, being created in the image of the Logos means being fundamentally “according-to” (kata£) the Logos, that is, being in an essential iconic accord with the Logos. This accord designates more than the accidental correlation between two otherwise independent entities, i.e., the humans and the Logos. Like the Logos, humans are characterized by an accordant mode of being that would be more properly designated by a hyphenated “being-according-to” (the image, for humanity, and the Father, for the Logos). In the following pages, I shall call this essentially accordant mode of being an attunement.266 Although constitutive and therefore indestructible,267 the attunement of the human creature to the Logos can be misused by an emulation of lower, ungodly, models,268 which is usually the case when the soul succumbs to the influence of the passions.269 This is also a reminder that, although invariably accordant, the original humanity of Gen 1.27 can still vary in its choice of the object that it gets attuned to. On the other hand, the Logos is also an entity (in this case a divine image) existing in an accordant manner. He is characterized by a form of attunement to the Father,270 which, as one has learned from the above quotations from The Commentary on the Gospel according to John and On First Principles, is aletheic, rather than iconic. This condition of being-according-to, with its inherent possibility of substituting the object of one’s attunement for another one, allows the Logos to respond to humanity’s fall by exchanging His exalted “for-the-Father” condition of truth for a condescending “for-us” condition of image. Nevertheless, unlike the humans that he aims to save, the Logos proceeds to the switch from an exalted to a humble condition in a condescending, rather than in a lapsarian way.271 The possibility of attunement (being-according-to) explains both the coming of the Logos as a messianic teacher to the fallen humanity as a potential disciple, and the shaping by this very coming of a soteriological curriculum as Logos’ pedagogic incarnation.272 At the same time, humanity’s condition of being-in-

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accordance-with makes possible the reception (the “welcoming”) of the pedagogically coming Logos in the manner of a meditative application (mele¢th) to the practice of Logos’ messianic curriculum.273 Thus, one can claim that the curriculum emerges as the disciple’s ascendant attunement to the condescending, humanity-attuned teacher through the disciple’s working out of a receptive, welcoming, disposition for his teacher’s didactic coming. The above mentioned correlation allows Origen to discern a tension between a “for-us” and a “for-the-Father” disposition in the Son,274 which is the outcome of the Son’s willful adaptation to a fallen humanity that is torn between the demands of the flesh and those of the spirit.275 The twofolding of the Logos into an “image” aspect and a “truth” aspect comes in response to the split of the fallen humanity into what Paul calls the “inner” and the “outer” human (2 Cor 4.16).276 I intend to show that becoming acquainted with this homonymy277 in the Logos and in humanity is not only the crux of Origen’s approach to the entire history of salvation, which unfolds from one’s understanding of Logos’ Incarnation, and to the Bible, which unfolds from one’s understanding of the Word’s intextuation. Although seldom emphasized, a similar homonymy is at work in Origen’s pedagogy, which is centered on the curriculum-instantiation of the Logos as Teacher, which I have called an “in-doctrination.”278 For Origen, the outer man designates a humanity that, although structurally created to be according to the Logos as the divine image of God, has failed to persist in this iconic attunement, and that has exchanged its condition of an “image of the heavenly” (i.e., the Logos) for that of an “image of the earthly” (i.e., the devil).279 The pedagogic coming of the Logos aims to eliminate this homonymous, split condition, by reconverting the “outer man” (the “image of the earthly”) into an “inner” one (the “image of the heavenly”).280 Nevertheless, this re-conversion comes at a price, which is the sacrificial condescension281 of the Logos, implying the trans-historic switch from a higher, “for the Father,” attunement (the Savior as truth) to a lower, “for us,” one (the Savior as image).282 Thus, humanity’s fall can be said to generate not only a homonymous intrinsic split within humanity herself (the inner vs. outer human); it also occasions a homonymous twofolding of the condescending Logos.283 As I hope to establish in the subsequent analysis of fragments 13 and 14 of Origen’s Commentary on Lamentations and the prologue

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of The Commentary on the Song of Songs, the twofold self-manifestation of the Logos as truth-for-the-Father and image-for-us, which echoes closely the “dis-tunement” or iconic crisis of humanity after the fall (image of the earthly instead of “image of the heavenly” or the “outer” human instead of the “inner” one), constitutes what may be called the theological origin of Origen’s curriculum.284 The acknowledgment of this origin helps explaining the pedagogic contribution of both parties involved in Origen’s instructional act, i.e., the Logos as teacher and humanity as disciple. As condescending teacher, the Logos aims to restore the “inner man” by purifying him from the effects of the fall (the “outer” fleshly aspects).285 An additional pedagogy is needed to enhance humanity’s recently restored condition of being-in-the-image (Gen 1.27) by a filial (that is, mystical and eschatological) familiarity with God the Father, designated by the likeness of Gen 1.26.286 While in the first stage humanity’s pedagogue is predominantly the humanity-attuned Logos as image, for the second stage humanity emulates the Father-attuned Logos as truth. Insofar as it is well-received, that is, spiritually internalized or “welcomed,” this double pedagogic coming of the Logos to humanity materializes into a twofold curriculum that comprises a preliminary purifying and restorative instruction (ethics and physics) followed by an advanced, spiritual, instruction (epoptics).287 Before proceeding to a more detailed analysis of the curriculum, I would like to lay down the following methodological principle. The curriculum, or the teaching, will be viewed as the expression of the charitable twofolding of the messianic teacher as attested by the disciple’s internalization (welcoming) of this teacher’s double (ethical-physical and epoptic) didactic coming. Consequently, the analysis of Origen’s curriculum will be pursued in two ways. On the one hand, I shall analyze the emergence of the curriculum from the pedagogic coming of the Logos to us, following the Logos’s trans-historical conversion from truth-for-the-Father to image–for–us. On the other hand, I shall allow the curriculum to come out in its full complexity as the expression of the disciple’s transformation in the image of the Logos through the gradual reception of the Logos’s coming. In this context I shall describe the disciple’s experience of the spiritual ascent through the twofold imitation of the Logos, first as image-for-us, then as truth-for-the-Father. I shall refer on this occasion to the psychological and anthropological implications of both the preliminary, ethical and physical, reception of the Logos as image-for-

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us, and the advanced, epoptic, reception of the Logos as truth-forthe-Father. The entire analysis will be carried out in light of Origen’s remarks on the curriculum in the fragments 13 and 14 of The Commentary on Lamentations and the prologue to the Commentary on the Song of Songs.288 2.2 Mournful vs. Joyful Pedagogy. An Analysis of Two Origenian Texts on the Curriculum 2.2.1 The Teacher’s Grief. The Reception of the Curriculum as Instantiation of the Condescending Teacher according to Fragments 13 and 14 of Origen’s

Commentary on Lamentations

Two fragments of the now lost Commentary on Lamentations can give one a sense of Origen’s early attempts at articulating a Bible-based school curriculum.289 The main focus of these texts is the first part of Lam 1.4 (“The roads to Zion mourn, for no one comes to the feasts.”).290 Origen’s translation of the name Zion is skopeuth¢rion (watchtower),291 hence the spiritual interpretation of the desolation of Zion as a depreciation of the watchful and contemplative power (skopeutikh¤» kai qewrhtikh¤» duna¢mew») of the soul overcome by passions.292 The many roads that lead to Zion stand for the various curricular doctrines leading to “the intellection and contemplation of the things to come” (th£n katano¢hsin kai£ qe¢an tw=n prokeime/nwn).293 These doctrines fall within three main categories, i.e., mystics, physics and ethics, with a possible addition of a fourth one, namely, logics,294 a classification that matches closely the one offered in the Prologue of The Commentary on the Song of Songs.295 The mourning of the roads, i.e., of the disciplines of the cursus preparing the eschatological contemplation or Zion,296 appears allegorized as the dereliction of the spiritual practice (mele¢th) by the traveler, who is the soul of the progressing disciple.297 The curricular disciplines are “in mourning” whenever the soul that succumbed to the passions fails to apply itself to the purifying, restorative, and assimilative pedagogy of ethics, physics, and mystical contemplation. Conversely, the roads rejoice when the disciple treads them in the hope of attaining the spiritual eschatological perfection or Zion.298

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The scenario of spiritual progress in the above fragments seems to comprise two main stages, namely, the road-trip to Zion, and the sojourn in the city after reaching there. One detail of the literal interpretation in fragment 13 on Lam 1.4299 seems to suggest that this twofold division might have also held some weight in the allegorical interpretation of the passage. Fragment 13 presents Zion as the final destination of non-resident travelers who undertake a ritual journey to participate in the celebration of the religious feasts.300 Given Origen’s customary interpretation of the feast as a symbol of a great spiritual accomplishment, perhaps even of the attainment of eschatological beatitude,301 and his characterization of the curricular roads as a preparation of those things to come (tw¤n prokeime¢nwn), the distinction between a journey that takes place in this life and its eschatological destination stands out even more clearly. In light of these observations, one can configure a sketch of a curriculum, comprising two cycles of instruction, namely, the road-trip as the preliminary instruction through logic, ethics, physics and mystics, and Zion as an eschatological furthering of the mystical experience of this life.302 The explanation of this division can be corroborated with Origen’s customary interpretation of the notion of “way” or “road” (o¥do¢j). Although the fragments do not provide explicit clues in this sense,303 one can easily supply them by drawing on Origen’s frequent ascription of this e¹pi¢noia to Christ.304 If, for example, one takes the approach proposed in The Commentary on the Gospel according to John, which interprets the road as a symbol of Christ and the travelers as the disciples whose feet (i.e., their no¢e») tread the Christological way,305 the three-staged ethical, physical, and mystical progress appears as a gradual internalizing of a threefold Christological teaching. The successful internalization of this teaching makes Christ (the way) rejoice in the accomplishments of his disciples.306 Origen also represents the end of the journey as an entrance through a door, the title of “door” being another denomination of Christ.307 Thus, after taking a road-trip that assimilates him to the condescending Logos, the disciple enters the door, which is Christ as exalted Logos,308 and is re-introduced in heavenly Jerusalem or the protologic community of the intellects.309 This final stage is a state of perfect iconic attunement with the exalted Logos (Gen 1.27) and of assimilative communion (Gen 1.26) not only with the Logos as Son but also, in the Logos, with His Father.310

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The use of the plural for the Christological title of “road” indicates that the Logos as road-guide (o¥dhgo¢j),311 makes Himself available to the various categories of disciples in a condescending manner. The main reason for this conversion of the Logos from one to many (the one way becoming many ways) is the fall of the intellects followed by a split of their initial community into a multiplicity of souls with a multiplicity of spiritual conditions.312 The fallen soul’s failure to apply itself to the imitation of the Logos, its archetypal, divine image,313 appears in light of Lam 1.4 as a failure of attending to one’s liturgical duties within Zion or attending Zion’s feasts.314 Looking back at Origen’s analysis of Lam 1.4, it seems that the hierarchy of the disciplines of the curriculum, which is also the sequence of the stages in the spiritual ascent and the description of the transformation of the disciple during this ascent, is based on a mimetic principle.315 The iconic soul (Gen 1.26) progresses on its way toward God as long as it persists in the unabated emulation of her road-guide (o¥dhgo¢j), which is the Logos, or the archetypal, divine image in its “for us,” condescending manifestation as “way.”316 Conversely, by failing to do so, the fallen, negligent (a¦melh¢»), and dissolute soul scorns the sacrificial intention that determined Logos’ exchange of His exalted condition for a condescending one,317 causing Christ’s affliction318 and, ultimately, His mourning. Responsiveness to the Logos’s pedagogy results in minimizing the effects of the fall and therefore in reducing the suffering of the condescending Teacher empathetically attuned to humanity’s fallen condition.319 Thus, the lack of meditative application (mele¢th) to the curriculum is explained as a pedagogic and liturgical flaw in one’s iconic emulation of the divine teacher and spiritual guide.320 It would be insufficient, and, ultimately, wrong to treat the disciple’s mimetic emulation of the teacher simply as an activity geared toward the attainment of spiritual perfection. In the final analysis, Origen’s understanding of iconic attunement does not designate only a manner of acting, but also a manner of being. The observance of the teaching that brings one into accordance with God is a form of attuning one’s whole being to God and, at the same time, a testimonial form of living up to that which one was meant to be, i.e., a God-attuned creature.321 In this sense, the switch from the initial iconic attunement of the soul with the Logos

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to an attunement with the earthly (the devil) represents a profound crisis that brings under judgment not only one’s choice but also the existential management of one’s being (how one lives up to that which one was meant to be); by falling one becomes what one was not meant to be. Humanity’s iconic crisis has an impact also on the Logos who, out of compassion for the fallen souls, engages in a condescending re-adjustment from a Father-attuned condition (His condition as truth) to a humanity-attuned state (His condition as image). It is in this sense that Origen calls the condescendingly reconstructed attunement of the Logos a form of spiritual grief. Humanity as a negligent, unobservant (a¦melh¢») disciple is, thus, the cause of the Teacher’s grief and, consequently, the curriculum, as the soteriological pedagogy that the disciple fails to observe and as an expression of Logos’ condescendingly reconstructed humanityattunement responding to the “dis-tunement” of the fallen soul, appears as a form of spiritual mourning. In brief, as long as it remains unobserved, the curriculum is the teacher’s mourning, while the unobservant disciple is his teacher’s grief. 2.2.2 The Teacher’s Joy. The Reception of the Curriculum as Instantiation of the Ascending Teacher according to the Prologue of The Commentary on the Song of Songs In light of my previous interpretation of Origen’s comments on Lam 1.4 the curriculum emerged as an expression of Logos’ mourning on behalf of those disciples who failed to persist in their initial iconic Logos-attunement. Now, it is time to provide also a more optimistic definition of the curriculum. A positive rendering of the mournful pedagogy of Lam 1.4 would trace the emergence of the curriculum to the joy that an increasingly Father re-attuned Logos takes in the conversion and spiritual progress of His disciples. In the following pages, I shall ground this hypothesis in the evidence provided by Origen’s views on Christian instruction, starting with its most elaborate expression in the prologue of The Commentary on the Song of Songs.322 For this purpose I shall, first, offer an analysis of the major segments of Origen’s phenomenology of the didactic attunement of humanity to God, presenting the teacher’s self-communication to the disciples, His gradually dispensed teaching as a disciple-tailored curriculum and the transformative reception of this teaching by the learner as a staged spiritual ascent. In the second place, I shall analyze joy as the mood of the spiritually

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advancing disciple, explaining it as a token of one’s overall spiritual condition, rather than as an episodic psychological phenomenon. 2.2.2.1 The Teacher, His Teaching and the Disciple’s Availability for Being Taught. An Outline of Origen’s Phenomenology of Humanity’s Didactic Attunement to God 2.2.2.1.1 Three Hypostases of the Teacher and the Disciple The Prologue of The Commentary on the Song of Songs mentions a Bible-based curriculum comprising the teachings of the Solomonic books of the Proverbs, the Ecclesiast and the Song of Songs.323 If Origen agrees to qualify the doctrines of the biblical curriculum in the Greek terms of ethics, physics and epoptics, it is only because he is convinced that the Greek sages have misappropriated these disciplines from Solomon himself.324 In brief, Origen believes that the original curriculum was biblical before being Greek, that its author and first practitioner was Solomon, who entertained a particularly close relation with the Wisdom-Logos,325 and that the ultimate source of this curriculum is God’s [Holy] Spirit.326 Thus, tracing the curriculum back to a biblical origin is nothing short of an act of “historical” restitution.327 The allegedly “historical” genealogy of the above mentioned curriculum undergoes a further elaboration when read typologically. Origen maintains that Solomon or the “historical” author of the biblical curriculum is a type of Christ,328 which further allows him to establish the Christological origin of the threefold teaching of the Proverbs, the Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs.329 Origen finds the main evidence for this interpretation in the allegorical reading of the Septuagint inscriptions of the three Solomonic books, which are the following: “Solomon, the son of David, who ruled over Israel,” for the Proverbs, “The words of the Ecclesiast, son of David, king of Israel in Jerusalem” for the Ecclesiastes, and “The Song of Songs, which is of Solomon himself,” for the treatise with the same name.330 Origen’s interpretation of the distinctions and similarities in these three inscriptions is centered on the idea of a transformation in the condition of the author of the treatises, which is further described as his adaptation to the various conditions of the readers. The analysis of the inscriptions of the three Solomonic treatises suggests a gradual

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self-communication of the teacher (Solomon) to the reader/disciple in a threefold scenario of a spiritual ascent.331 I shall look first at the typological author of these treatises. Each inscription is shown to contain a title of Christ, while the entire series of the Solomonic writings is assessed in light of the hierarchy of these Christological titles as a progressive revelation of Christ as messianic Teacher. This spiritual progress is from a king of kings, to a gatherer or “ecclesiast” and, ultimately, to an eschatological pacifier.332 In the inscription of the Proverbs, Solomon is presented as a king who rules over a particular nation, namely Israel, and is identified by his human descent (“son of David”).333 The genealogical remark constitutes an indication that the Proverbs facilitates the reader/disciple’s interaction with the incarnate Logos as a messianic Teacher in his sensible, bodily and, by extension, human aspect.334 The use of the title of “king” in connection with a particular nation over which this king rules is also an indication of a somatic and human presentation of the teacher. In the classification of the Christological titles that Origen offers in The Commentary on the Gospel according to John, Origen places the title of king among the condescending Christological denominations, which identify the Savior by names denoting the condition of the beneficiaries of His soteriological works.335 In this case the subjects are an elect, kingly, nation, namely Israel,336therefore Solomon/Christ as the incarnate Logos can be said to have become for their sake a “king of kings” (1 Tim 6.14).337 In the inscription of the Ecclesiastes, the manifestation of the Logos as a king of kings is revised and reshaped into the still condescending but, this time, more spiritual title of kingly “gatherer.” 338 Again, it is the condition of the beneficiary of this act of gathering that indicates the degree of condescension that is required from the Savior. The gathered represent the Church, but not in her historicsomatic aspect, which falls under the rule of the incarnate Logos as historical king of Israel, but rather in a spiritual-protologic sense. One can get an idea of this protologic status from the qualification of the location of the “throne” of the ecclesiast in the heavenly Jerusalem.339 Thus, the kingship of the “gatherer” is over a heavenly city or the protologic community of the intellects before their fall. The act of assembling the scattered, initial ecclesia or the protologic church is a restoration of humanity’s condition “in the beginning,” that is, in the Logos,340 which is also the state of perfect Logos-attunement (the condition of being-in-the-Image or in-the-Logos). Although not dis-

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embodied, the disciple who has reached the state of physics is free from the lapsarian demands occasioned in him by the bodily needs, which his unified, intellect-attuned soul understands and addresses at the origin of their formation in the soul’s lower parts.341 In this limited sense the “physical” disciple can be said to be spiritual or heavenly.342 The allusions to protological events in Origen’s comments on the inscription of the Ecclesiastes makes it clear that to come as a kingly gatherer for the sake of the gathered (the heavenly Church) implies a lesser condescension and, therefore, an increased exaltation on the part of the Logos than to come as a king for the sake of a human, kingly nation. Unlike Israel, over whom the Logos of the Proverbs is said to be ruling as king, the gathered of the Ecclesiast have relinquished their “old natural conditionings” (discussis priscis et naturalibus causis).343 For their sake, the Logos proceeds to a less drastic condescending. While the condition of the Israelite is one of obedience in faith344 as an introduction to vision,345 the condition of those reassembled in the heavenly Jerusalem is one of spiritual discernment as an introduction to the attainment of mystical-eschatological peace.346 Nevertheless, both the kingly nation of Israel and the gathered subjects of the heavenly Jerusalem receive Solomon/Christ as a condescending king. Israel designates the disciples who undergo an ethical training; they acquire the virtues as a remedy for the lapsarian carnality and the passions. Those gathered in Jeruslaem are the disciples who have not only mastered their passions (ethical training), but have also attained a complete detachment from the fallen sensibility (the “vanity”) of this world. Since at the end of this second stage the disciple can claim to no longer know Christ “according to the flesh” (2 Cor 5.16), one could represent the progress of the Savior’s selfrevelation from a “king of kings” to a kingly “gatherer” as a transition from a condescending communication of the incarnate Logos as human to His still condescending, but more advanced, selfcommunication as Logos.347 The passage from faith through the vision of peace to the final attainment of peace is indicated by the Christological epinoia in the inscription of the Song of Songs. Origen explains this inscription by relating it to 1 Cor 1.30, which designates Christ’s becoming “for our sake wisdom from God, and justice and peace.”348 Here, though, the emphasis is on the notion of peace, which is featured in the name “Solomon,” or “the Pacifier.”349 Becoming a

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“pacifier” (Solomon) for those in need of pacification indicates the working out of an advanced, more spiritual, receptivity on the part of the beneficiaries of this form of revelation, one that is spiritually attuned both to the condition of the Logos as image of God for us and to His advanced condition of truth for the Father. In other words, the pedagogic self-manifestation of the Logos as pacifier is no longer called for by a profoundly lapsed condition of the recipient. The “pacified” disciple has already been restored by the previous two pedagogical transformations to an accomplished, iconically attuned, soul (i.e., it has been ruled by the “king of kings” and unified by the kingly “gatherer” or the ecclesiast), therefore the exalted Logos comes now to such a person in love as to a peer, a fellow master and lord.350 This is the very same love that unites the Son with the Father in the eschatological oneness of the kingdom of God.351 It is only at this stage that the disciple can claim no longer to know “Christ according to the flesh” (2 Cor 5.16). 2.2.2.1.2 The Threefold Division of the Curriculum So far I have followed the threefold ascendant transformation of the messianic teacher in close relation to the various needs of his disciples. I shall now attempt a more specific analysis of the content of this transformative teaching, which is Origen’s Bible-based curriculum. As it was mentioned above, the Middle-Platonist cursus that Origen holds as representative for all of the Greek philosophy contains four disciplines, namely, logic, ethics, physics and epoptics.352 Although he allows for certain differences between the Greek curriculum and his own biblical cursus, Origen sees the former as a distortion of the latter, in accordance with the misappropriation thesis, which was mentioned earlier. By allegorizing the Egyptian spoils of the Israelites as the Greek liberal arts and philosophy,353 and by reversing the sense of this misappropriation into a sort of repossession (the unreturned goods used to belong at first to the Israelites before they have been confiscated by the Egyptians), Origen manages to present his Christian elaboration on a Greek paideia as a reconstruction of an original “Israelite,” that is, ecclesiastic, instruction-program or the true,354 divine355 philosophy.356 This reconstructed paideia requires the meditative application (mele¢th)357 of the entire humankind to the Logos-Wisdom as an archetypal self-teaching philosopher/philosophical doctrine.

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In the Greek version of the curriculum, logic is presented as a discipline that deals with “the meanings (rationes) of the words (uerborum) and sayings (dictorumque) and the propriety or impropriety of their use, their genres and their species, and gives information about the form of each and every saying.”358 The biblical “logician” retains the interest of his Greek namesake in the meaning of words, but he gives it a new, allegorical, turn, in keeping with the divine design of the Bible. Thus, what in the Greek definition appears as “the meanings of words and sayings” becomes in biblical logic an interest in “proverbia,” that is, in formulae that seem to be saying something openly, while in fact concealing a deeper meaning.359 Origen considers that the Book of Proverbs establishes on this logic-exegetical basis certain distinctions between essential notions such as science, wisdom, true justice and right judgment.360 These distinctions serve a defensive purpose. They prevent the reader from falling prey to “fraus sophistica,” which stands, most likely, for the subtleties of the heterodox.361 There is no doubt that such an instruction benefits the novices and the catechumens, who are “children” in faith.362 In brief, Biblical logic is a discipline that regulates the allegorical hermeneutics of the Scripture and allows for its undistorted, spiritual reading.363 Greek ethics aims at providing a “seemly manner of life” and at creating “habits that incline to virtue.”364 By contrast, biblical ethics requires an incessant, meditative application to Wisdom365 and its investigative pursuit.366 The success of this pursuit has to be granted by Wisdom herself, insofar as she has been properly entreated to disclose herself.367 The disciple who followed Wisdom’s commandments368 and who has worked out the proper moral receptivity for Wisdom is made into a participant of Wisdom through the work of the Holy Spirit.369 The symptom of this ethical participation in Wisdom is what Origen calls the “enlargement of the heart.”370 Greek physics is concerned with the examination of nature and with the edifying understanding of each thing in light of the purpose of its coming into being.371 By contrast, biblical physics seems to be concerned more with the finitude of nature as a creature whose vanity becomes apparent when contrasted with the greatness of the creator.372 The positive interest in the first causes of things is, thus, enhanced by an experience of the limitations of creaturely knowledge. Biblical physics is, therefore, a way of getting

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acquainted with the ephemerality of the fallen sensible existence and an incentive to exchange the corruption of the worldly condition for the bliss and enlightenment of a spiritual life.373 The symptom of this conversion from the worldly to the spiritual life is the reopening of the spiritual senses that the soul enjoyed in its initial condition in Paradise.374 By epoptics, as the Greeks see it, one can hope to transcend the visible aspects in order to reach to a pure vision of the divine, one that is of the mind (mens, nou¤j) alone. From the biblical point of view, the epoptic process consists in the perfect soul’s union with the Logos, in the aftermath of its ethical purification and of the restoration of its natural (physical) unity.375 The object of the epoptic contemplation is God himself, while the manner in which God is approached is mystical love.376 2.2.2.1.3 The Curriculum as a Spiritual Progress Scenario I shall look now at the curriculum as the outline of the disciple’s guided advance through a progressive set of learning stages and I shall measure this advance by the growth in the disciple’s receptivity for the Savior as a messianic teacher. One starts working out an ethical existence by applying oneself to the reception of an intensely condescending teacher or the king of kings.377 The kingly character of this teacher’s pedagogy is experienced as an awe-inspiring, corrective guidance,378 which is meant to bring the fallen, flesh-prone soul under the rule of the intellect379 and under the intellect’s overseer which is the Logos.380 One should portray the recipients of this ethical pedagogy as people with a potential for moral excellence or, in Origen’s terms, “kingly” humans.381 By contrast with the less rational fold of the common believers, for whom the Logos first has to come as a shepherd,382 rather than as a king of kings, the ethical disciple is an obedient follower of the kingly faculty of reason (the nouj¤ or h¥gemoniko¢n) for self-governance and soul-scrutiny purposes.383 Nevertheless, the soul of the ethical disciple is still split between passional tendencies that would attune him to the image of the earthly, and rational tendencies, that would attune him to the Logos or the image of the heavenly. The function of this kingly pedagogy, which is the ethical coming of the Savior as Wisdom, is, for now, a metriopathic one.384 Ethics aims at establishing the soul into an abiding attunement with the Logos, while preventing a lapse

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into an anti-iconic attunement with the devil.385 Ultimately, Origen sees this kingly pedagogy as an invitation to law abidance and as a justification by submitting oneself to God’s judgment.386 In brief, the king is a just judge387 and the ethically accomplished disciple is an obedient rational subject. According to Origen, the exemplary, ethical disciple is Abraham.388 Physical receptivity is the soul’s capacity to apply itself to the coming of a less condescending, more exalted, teacher as kingly gatherer or “ecclesiast.”389 Once the discordant tendencies of the soul have been corrected and the soul has been re-attuned to its divine model, the soul’s split can be said to have ceased or, in other words, the soul’s lower and upper faculties have been gathered under the governance of the nouj¤, who is now standing under the unique rule of its iconic model, the Logos.390 The restored rule of the iconic nouj¤ or h¥gemoniko¢n over the disobedient lower parts of the soul amounts to an increased capacity of discernment,391 which translates into the vivid realization of the judgment that God as an ethical king has passed on the universe and on humanity.392 The expression of this judgment is the submission of the universe to vanity.393 By rejecting the vanity of earthly pursuits, the disciple can concentrate on reaching more heavenly goals.394 The function of this advanced, ecclesiastic pedagogy is apathic, rather than metriopathic, in the sense that it is meant to detach the soul fully from the passions, which the soul has already learned to master through ethics.395 Thus, physical pedagogy restores the soul to its protological condition of being in the image of God.396 As an ecclesiastic, that is, unifying or “gathering” pedagogy, physics is a fullcircle return of humanity to its condition before the trespassing and the subsequent judgment. The senses-detached vision of the world that the disciple now enjoys is a synoptic one; it embraces the universe and humanity as a whole by contemplating the Wisdom that made them.397 For Origen, such an accomplished scrutinizer of the universe and humanity is the well-digging Isaac.398 One works out an epoptic receptivity by applying oneself to the coming of the exalted Teacher as heavenly bridegroom.399 Enraptured by a mystical love for the exalted Logos as truth-for-theFather, the disciple is not just iconically attuned to the Logos as prototypal image-of-God-for-us; he is also assimilated with this divine image, as a bride becoming one with the bridegroom that she espoused,400 and acquires Logos’ filial relation to God as truth-

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for-the-Father. The symptom of this experience is the “wound of love”.401 After being “wounded by love” the disciple has internalized in spirit both the Logos and His Father.402 The Logos has performed within the disciple’s soul a mystical self-exegesis, which is the equivalent of the fiery excitement that the disciples felt when the resurrected Jesus interpreted the Scripture for them on the way to Emmaus (Luke 24.32).403 Once he has become capable of beholding Logos’ post-resurrectional self-exegesis, the accomplished, spiritual exegete becomes a prophet in the sense that he is inhabited by the same Spirit that inhabited the prophets.404 As a prophetic exegete, the disciple also becomes a teacher like His Teacher.405 Such an exemplary epoptic disciple is Jacob.406 I propose the following synthetic view on the correlation between the titles of the teacher in the inscriptions of the Solomonic treatises, the three disciplines of the curriculum and the three modes of reception of the curriculum-instantiated teacher: Self-communication of the Teacher Shepherd

Curricular Discipline

King of kings

Liberal arts/catechumenal instruction as propedeutic to the true, i.e., Biblical philosophy Ethics

Kingly gatherer

Physics

Peace-maker

Epoptics

Reception of the curriculum instantiated teacher The catechumens; less-rational, more emotional obedience to the teacher Abraham-like disciple; enlargement of the heart Isaac-like disciple; spiritual discernment

Jacob-like disciple; assimilative vision and wound of love

2.2.2.2 Joy as the God-Attuning Mood of the Observance of the Curriculum So far my analysis was focused on the emergence of the curriculum from the receptive application of the disciple to the pedagogic coming of the Logos as messianic teacher. This application (mele¢th) was presented as a progressive teacher-attunement spanning from the ethical experience of rational obedience (the enlargement of the heart) to the physical experience of the soul-

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nou¤j unification (the reopening of the spiritual senses) and in the epoptic experience of mystical assimilation (the “wound of love”). I shall now try to capture the mood that characterizes this progression, which, given the ascendant direction of this itinerary, could be expected to be a positive or a joyful one. Like the roads leading to Zion, one can expect the Solomonic curriculum to be “rejoicing” whenever the disciples are properly applying to studying it. I shall start this last stage in the current investigation with the delineation of the basic spiritual progress scenario that both the biblicalexegetical and the pedagogical experience of welcoming the coming Logos have in common. Then, I shall indicate how joy characterizes the disciple’s experience of growing in the likeness of an increasingly less condescending and more exalted teacher. The investigation will end with a series of remarks on the nature of joy and its close relation with spiritual love.

2.2.2.2.1 Gospel and Curriculum. The Parallelism between the Biblical-Exegetical and the Pedagogic Coming of the Logos An important clue for the evaluation of the mood of the progressing disciple comes from Origen’s interpretation of the title of the Song of Songs. One can learn from the prologue of the Commentary on the Song of Songs about the division of the Bible into a series of “songs” that culminates with a “song of songs.” These songs designate specific texts in the books of the Old Testament, but also, by extension, the Old Testament in its entirety (i.e., the Law and the Prophets)407 and, perhaps, the entire Bible as well. The Song of Songs surpasses the Law and the Prophets, or the main body of Origen’s Old Testament,408 in the same manner in which, in the order of the Solomonic treatises, it surpasses the Proverbs (an equivalent of the Law) and the Ecclesiast (an equivalent of the prophets).409 There are various ways of justifying a division of the Old Testament into a set of common readings (the songs) that are open to everyone, and an advanced reading, which is reserved for the spiritually accomplished (a song of songs). According to one of Origen’s remarks in the Prologue of his Commentary on the Song of Songs, the Palestinian rabbis or the tannaim used to reserve a series of biblical texts only for an advanced audience.410 These texts, which were called in Greek the deuterw¿sei» (secondary or advanced),

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comprised the Song of Songs, the creation narrative in the first chapters of the Book of Genesis and the passages on the cherubim and the temple in the Book of Ezekiel.411 The other justification for the twofold division of the Old Testament is typological. Given the Christological key in which Origen reads the Song of Songs, one has good reasons to suspect a parallelism between the songs—song of songs division of the Old Testament and Origen’s division of the New Testament and, ultimately, of the entire Bible, into plain gospels and a gospel of gospels.412 Indeed, in the introductory passages of his Commentary on the Gospel of John Origen distinguishes between the gospels called the a¹parxai¢ or the first fruits of the Bible and an advanced gospel, that of John, which is said to be the a¹parxh¢ a¹parxw¤n or the first of the first fruits.413 Both the song of songs and the gospel of gospels are ranked above the other books of the Bible because they capture the Logos in an exalted perspective, as an exalted beginning (a¹rxh¢) of humanity and the universe.414 By comparison with this exalted Johanine view of the Logos in the beginning (e¹n a¹rx$½.) all other gospels (and, for Origen, the entire Bible can be said to be a gospel)415 are condescending derivations from the beginning or a¹p-arxai¢.416 Similarly, by comparison with the exalted Solomonic view of the epoptic pedagogy of the Song of Songs, all other Old Testament pedagogies are condescending reconstructions of the doctrine of this treatise or mere songs. Thus, as the Logos is said to be revealing Himself in the New Testament first as a condescending gospel, then as an exalted gospel of gospels, so, one could maintain, can He be said to appear in the Old Testament as a preliminary song (the Law and the Prophets in the context of the entire Old Testament; the Proverbs and the Ecclesiast, in the context of the Solomonic treatises) followed by an advanced manifestation as the Song of Songs.417 Together, the song—song of songs sequence and the gospel—gospel of gospels sequence give one a comprehensive image of the biblical coming of the Logos or, as I called it, His intextuation, while the curriculum as scenario of a spiritual ascent is the pedagogic dimension of these two biblical schemata. Thus, the pedagogic dimension of the in-textuation of the Logos as Bible unfolds as a pedagogic in-doctrination of the Logos as a mystagogic curriculum. The pedagogically in-doctrinated Logos is, in a strict sense, the Solomonic curriculum (the Proverbs and the Ecclesiast as songs followed by the Song of Songs), but also the entire

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Old Testament pedagogy (the Law and the Prophets as songs followed by the Song of Songs or, eventually, by the entire corpus of the deuterw¿sei»),418and even the entire Bible (the Law/the Proverbs/the gospels of Matthew and Luke together with the Prophets/the Ecclesiastes/the Gospel of Mark, as songs, followed by the Song of Songs/the Gospel of John as ultimate song of songs).419 The in-textuation and the in-doctrination present the same two staged introductory–advanced division.420 The introduction is twofold (the Law and the Prophets as songs and the Synoptic Gospels as first fruits, for the biblical sequence; ethics and physics for the curricular sequence) and it is followed by an advanced stage (the Song of Songs and John’s Gospel of Gospels, for the biblical sequence; epoptics, for the curricular one). Origen presents the authors of the Law and the Prophets and those of the Synoptic Gospels (the so-called “songs”) as the lower pedagogues designated to be the companions of the bridegroom,421 or, in a different interpretation, as condescending manifestations of Christ (the Solomon of the Proverbs and the Solomon of the Ecclesiastes).422 They guide the progressing disciples through the preliminary and intermediary stages of their advance towards the final accomplishment or spiritual perfection. By contrast with the condescending ethical and physical authors of the “songs,” the exalted epoptic author of the “song of songs” and the “gospel of gospels” stands for the Logos Himself as mystical bridegroom, while His audience is the accomplished disciple423 or the spiritually mature bride.424 I shall now look in greater detail to the assumptions on which Origen establishes his parallelism between in-textuation and indoctrination. 2.2.2.2.2 Exodus-Entrance as the Shared Scenario of the Biblical-Exegetical and the Pedagogic Sequences425 The number of songs included in Origen’s hierarchy of songs varies. In the Commentary on the Song of Songs, Origen provides a list of six songs (Exod 15; Num 21.16–18; Deut 32; Judg 5.1–3; 2 Sam 22.1–3 with its equivalent Ps 17.3; 1 Chr 16.8–9 with its equivalent Ps 95.1–13). The Song of Songs is the additional seventh song.426 On a second thought, Origen considers that it would be possible to extend the list to include some of the psalms and some of the postSolomonic writings. The new list comprises the six songs mentioned above followed by the fifteen songs in Ps 119 and the song

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of Isaiah (Isa 5), a total of 22 songs, with the addition of the Song of Songs as the 23rd.427 In The Homilies on the Song of Songs there appears a list of six songs. The first five are the same as the ones from the previous list. Number six in the Commentary on the Song of Songs list (1 Chr 16.8–9) is missing from The Homilies and instead appears Isa 5 which was on the additional list in The Commentary.428 If one ignores the additional list proposed in the Commentary, the two hierarchies of the songs contain the same number of stages, namely seven. A synopsis of the seven stages with their symbolic topology and events could look as follows: Songs

Topology

Events

1. Exod 15

On the other side of the Red Sea

2. Num 21.17–18

4. Judg 5.1–3

Between the Red Sea and the river Jordan, in the desert. Near a well, dug out by the kings of the Gentiles At the source of the river Jordan, in the desert. In the Holy Land.

After the crossing of the Red Sea under Moses’ guidance. After departing from the valley of Zareth (translated as “strange descent”)429 under Moses’s guidance. Under Moses’s guidance.

5. 2 Sam 22.1–3

In the Holy Land

6. 1 Chr 16.8–9

In the Holy Land

6bis. Isa 5 7. The Song of Songs

In the Holy Land In the Holy Land.

3. Deut 32

A song sung by Deborah (the bee)430 after Joshua conquered the Holy Land. David has escaped from the hands of Saul and of his enemies. A Song sung by David. A song sung by David, Asaph and his brothers. A song sung by Isaiah. A song sung by Solomon in the voice of the bridegroom

The clue for our final evaluation of the transformative ascent in the Solomonic curriculum is the following: the symbolic places where the songs have been sung correspond to the main points in Origen’s topography of the Exodus cycle and of the entrance in the Holy Land (roughly speaking, the events covered by the books of

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Exodus and Numbers).431 The correlation between this scenario, which, for brevity, I shall call the exodus-entrance scenario,432 and the Solomonic curriculum is not aleatory. One can encounter it in Origen’s Letter to Gregory, where the transition from Greek studies (including the liberal arts and Greek philosophy) to an application of the study of the Bible is described in relation to the scenario of the exodus from Egypt.433 The Egyptian spoils that the Jews take with them across the Red Sea stand for the liberal arts and Greek philosophy; they will be used for the building of the tent of worship (i.e., the true, biblical, philosophy)434 that will accompany the people in its journey toward Judea and Jerusalem. A brief description of the division of the exodus itinerary in Origen’s exegetical works on the Pentateuch comprises the following divisions: 0. from Egypt to the shore of the Red Sea; 1.a) from the shore of the Red Sea to Mount Sinai through the desert; 1.b) from Mount Sinai to the shore of the river Jordan; 2. across the river Jordan in the Promised Land.435 A quick look at the distribution of the “songs” within this itinerary indicates the following: song number 1 is right at the end of the preliminary stage; songs two and three belong to the first stage, and songs four to six belong to the second stage. The song of songs also belongs to the second stage. There are various interpretations that Origen gives to the topography of the exodus cycle,436 but, in general, they could all be reduced to the following sequence: a preliminary purification (exiting Egypt by crossing the Red Sea),437 a more thorough purification and restoration438 (crossing the desert, from the Red Sea to Mount Sinai439 or 1a above, followed by the journey from Mount Sinai to Jordan, or, 1b above)440 and the final spiritual accomplishment (crossing the river Jordan into the Holy Land where Jerusalem is, or 2 above).441 This series corresponds to the pedagogic sequence of the curricular disciplines, starting with the liberal arts and Greek philosophy (Egypt to the Red Sea)442 and continuing with biblical philosophy as ethics (Red Sea to Sinai), biblical philosophy as physics (Sinai to Jordan) and biblical philosophy as epoptics (Holy Land and Jerusalem).443 So far I have paralleled the hierarchy of the curricular disciplines with the exodus-entrance scenario featured in the books of Exodus and Numbers. However, the same exodus-entrance scenario can be found in the Gospels and it involves, by and large, the

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following stages: 0. from Nativity as Logos’s coming into the “Egypt” of the world444 to the Baptism and the crossing of the Jordan;445 1a. the preaching in Galilee and perhaps in other regions outside Judea; 1b. the preaching in Judea446 and 2. the entrance in Jerusalem.447 The itinerary comprises therefore a preliminary purification (0.) followed by a preaching for the beginners (1a), a preaching for the advancing ones (1b) and the attainment of perfection (2).448 In a first reading 1a (the ministry in Galilee) is a recapitulation of the Red Sea to Sinai or the 1a portion of the ExodusNumbers itinerary; 1b (the ministry in Judea) is the recapitulation of the Sinai to Jordan journey or the 1b portion of the ExodusNumbers itinerary, and 2 (the entrance in Jerusalem) is a recapitulation of the entrance in the Holy Land or the 2nd portion of the Exodus–Numbers itinerary.449 In a second reading the preliminary stage450 (0. in the New Testament itinerary) is a recapitulation of the Exodus and Numbers events up to the entrance into the promised Land (0, 1a and 1b in the Exodus–Numbers cycle), while 1 and 2 are the equivalents of the epoptic progress (2 in the Exodus– Numbers cycle).451 This exodus-entrance schema, which is common to both the Exodus–Numbers and the Gospels scenarios and designates the purification, restoration, and perfection of humanity, is the underlying structure of the messianic curriculum of the Logos. The concordance of the Exodus–Numbers and the Gospels scenarios and their correlation with the didactic-curricular schema of the spiritual progress can been captured in the following table: Exodus – Numbers

Gospels (first reading)

Gospels (second reading)

Songs or Specific Biblical texts

Curriculum

0. Egypt to the Red Sea

0. Nativity to Baptism

0. Nativity to Baptism

0. Song 1 – extra-biblical catechumenal education

0. Liberal arts/catech umenal training

1a. Red Sea to Sinai. The desert.

1a. Ministry in Galilee

1a. Song 2 & 3 The Law/ The Gospels of Matthew and Luke452

0. Song 1 – extra-biblical catechumenal education

1a. Ethics

0. Liberal arts/catec humenal training

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Exodus – Numbers

Gospels (first reading)

1b. Sinai to Jordan.

1b. Ministry in Judea

2. The Promised Land

2. Entrance in Jerusalem; the triduum

Gospels (second reading)

1a. Ministry in Galilee 1b. Ministry in Judea 2. Entrance in Jerusalem

Songs or Specific Biblical texts

Curriculum

1b. The Prophets/ The Gospel of Mark453

1b. Physics

2. Song 4, 5, 6 &7 The Song of Songs/The Gospel of John

1a. Song 2 & 3 The Law/ The Gospels of Matthew and Luke454 1b. The Prophets/ The Gospel of Mark455 2. Song 4, 5, 6 &7 The Song of Songs/The Gospel of John

2. Epoptics

1a. Ethics

1b. Physics 2. Epoptics

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It is worth noticing that Origen sees the spiritual ascent in the Exodus–Numbers and the Gospels narratives as the reverse of the down-fall of the souls described in the first sections of the Book of Genesis.456 A brief sketch of this interpretation would have to acknowledge the following correlations: 0. Gen 3.21–24. Egypt is the condition of humanity after its trespassing and banishment from Paradise.457 This post-Paradise humanity is a further deterioration of the condition of the humanity of the second creation. These humans are fashioned from the earth (Gen 2.7)458 and are characterized by a split soul that can deviate from its original attunement to the Logos (the image of the heavenly) and can become dis-iconic (an attunement to the devil or the image of the earthly).459 The tresspassing is, in a certain sense, an actualization of this anti-iconic potential. The corporality of this fallen soul is an earth that ceased to be fertile; more precisely, this infertile earth is the inferior homonym of the earth created in the first day, later to be re-named the dry land.460 The flesh –sa¢rc–, designated by the “tunics of skin” that clad humanity after its banishment from paradise (Gen 3.20–24)461 is such a “dry land,” to be distinguished from the body –sw¤ma–, as the “good earth.” The flesh is mortal as a result of sin.462 The crossing of the Red Sea represents a preliminary purification that is aimed at restoring humanity to a less carnal condition, that is, removing the fleshly character of humanity’s body and the flesh-prone aspects of the lower soul.463 The same can be said about Jesus’ circumcision and baptism.464 1.a. Gen 2.7. The ethical purification designated by the journey of the Jewish people through the desert to Mount Sinai465 and by Jesus’ preaching in Galilee,466 aims to liberate the soul from the grip of carnality and to restore the body and lower soul to the virtuous, more spiritual, condition of a fertile earth (the condition before the actualization of the anti-iconic potential or the primal sin).467 Although this is a state that precedes the trespassing, it is not beyond the possibility of a trespassing as such (it is not immutable). In this condition the possibility of a lapsed attunement and an iconic split between a Logos-prone and a devil-prone part of the soul is present but not yet actualized. It is the role of ethics to prevent and avoid this actualization. Nevertheless, ethics cannot eradicate the possibility of dis-tunement. This goal is brought one step closer by physics.

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1.b. Gen 1.27. Physics is an advanced purification that brings the discernment of the sensible from the spiritual. At this stage, the disciple is similar to the humanity that was restored in the condition of its first creation, i.e., in the image of the Logos.468 Although still embodied, this soul is fixated in an iconic attunement to the Logos and maturely evaluates the corruption of the fleshly quality of the bodily existence that resulted from the fall. The pneumatized intellect or the Logos-prone aspect of humanity has now gained total control over the yuxh¢ or the flesh-prone part of humanity and has reconverted it to its original Logos-orientation; consequently the nou¤j and the yuxh¢ of humanity are now harmoniously coupled in spiritual emulation of the Logos.469 This is the stage of the people’s journey from Mount Sinai to the river Jordan470 and of Jesus’ preaching in Judea.471 2. Gen 1.26. The ultimate accomplishment is designated by an “entrance,” be it the Hebrews’ entrance into the promised Land,472 or Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem.473 The entrance represents the reintegration of the noetic-psychic aspects of iconic humanity (the equivalent of the male and the female as well as of heaven and earth) in the beginning (a¦rxh¢) (Gen 1.1), which is the Logos Himself.474 In a certain sense, this stage is a continuation of the physical one but, in other respects, it is more than that. By the addition of the experience of being not only in God’s image, but in His likeness as well, the disciple goes beyond his initial iconic state and enjoys a higher intimacy with the Logos and His Father.475 Origen designates this state as an exalted, rather than condescendent, experience of Christ, an experience of Christ’s being truth-for-theFather rather than just an image-for-us.476 Due to its meta-iconic status, Origen sometimes locates this eschatological experience “beyond” Jerusalem.477 My investigation so far has established two things. On the one hand, I delineated the common structure of the historical scenarios of the Exodus cycle and the Gosples with their biblical and pedagogic extensions (the sequence of the books of the Old and the New Testament as songs/gospels culminating with a song of songs/gospel of gospels and the sequence of the curricular disciplines). On the other hand, I have noted that the basic exodusentrance schema designates a spiritual progress scenario that reverses the descent or fall of humanity and the condescension of the Logos in the aftermath of humanity’s fall. In the following section

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of this study, I shall concentrate in greater detail on Origen’s description of the last stage of the spiritual ascent, which will provide a better insight into the phenomenon of spiritual joy and its signification. 2.2.2.2.3 The End of the Road. Ultimate Pedagogy as a Wedding Feast in Jerusalem I have shown in the previous section how Origen reads the exodus-entrance scenario as a return of the soul to an initial iconic condition (Gen 1.27), followed by the soul’s “entrance” into the eschatological beatitude (the likeness mentioned in Gen 1.26). Depending on what reading one chooses for this scenario, one can interpret Jerusalem either as the return to the protological state of the soul as a being in the image of God (Gen 1.27), or as an accomplishment of the eschatological state of being an image in God’s likeness (Gen 1.26).478 The former reading would take Jerusalem as the final destination of the ascent, while the second one would place the final destination in a Jerusalem-beyond-Jerusalem, at times called also a “heavenly Jerusalem” (an eschatological, rather than a protologic destination).479 Judging from Origen’s interpretation of Lam 1.4, this final destination is the location of a liturgical celebration or a feast in Zion, one that people can choose either to ignore or to observe. One may suppose that in the eventuality of a strict observance of Zion’s feast the Christological curriculum (the roads) leads the disciple to the joy of a liturgical feast, that is, to spiritual perfection. In other words, the end of the pedagogic ascent that is Origen’s “true philosophy” as an application to Wisdom (mele¢th sofi¢aj), is represented as a feast of Wisdom in Jerusalem. Fortunately, we have Origen’s interpretation of such a feast in his various remarks on Prov 9.1–6. According to Origen, Prov 9.1–6 describes the spiritual feast that Wisdom offers to Her disciples. This is in essence a wedding feast, as confirmed by Origen’s association of Prov 1.9 with the parable of the wedding banquet in Matt 22.1–14.480 This correlation opens a further associative line that brings into the discussion the nuptial mysticism of The Song of Songs, especially the epoptic experience described as the entrance of the bride in the house of wine (Cant 2.4).481 The house that wisdom builds for herself (Pr 9.1) is the Incarnation or, rather, Christ’s body, which may also be interpreted as

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the Church.482 Thus, by her invitation to attend to her feast Wisdom calls everybody to internalize the Incarnation and to live a life in Christ. This internalization is a form of spiritual eating or partaking of spiritual, Eucharistic foods,483 which will reopen the disciple’s spiritual senses, that is, will restore the disciple to the primordial iconic attunement before the fall.484 Those invited to Wisdom’s feast will no longer starve or be affected by the famines; although they still are a “dry land” (i.e., they are in the fallen condition of humanity or Egypt), they will nevertheless quench their hunger with the heavenly food of the spiritual sense of the Scripture485 and will again become heavenly, that is, iconic.486 Thus, Wisdom’s feast as the Incarnation (in the broad sense of the entire earthly sojourn of the Logos) and its Eucharistic internalization by the disciple, can be said to reverse the fall and to return humanity to its initial Paradise state. The feast marks, thus, the end of an ascendant exodusentrance journey (the itinerary of the people from Egypt to the Promised Land; Jesus’ itinerary from Galilee to Judea and Jerusalem or from Nativity to Baptism, preaching and the triduum), which reverses the downwards journey of the soul (the fall) as described in the first sections of the book of Genesis. As mentioned above, Origen also takes the end of the spiritual progress described in Prov 9.1–6 as the equivalent of a wedding feast, which is presented as the introduction of the bride in the “house of wine” (Cant 2.4).487 The process leading to the consummation of this nuptial experience is gradual.488 While the beginning of the progress is the fear of the Lord489 (ethics), its perfection comes with intellection (su¢nesij) (physics) and its final accomplishment is love (epoptics).490 Epoptic love is the wine at Wisdom’s feast, that is, the partaking of Wisdom’s inmost mysteries.491 Thanks to the disciple’s spiritual advancement, this eschatological wedding union no longer requires from the bridegroom-Logos the adoption of a condescending condition (image of God for us), but allows Him to appear in His exalted, divine, condition (truth for the Father). The epitome of this mystical-eschatological experience is the state of being “wounded by love” (Cant 2.5), which represents the ultimate internalization of the Logos or Wisdom.492 Considering that the end of the spiritual progress is, in Origen’s view, a wedding feast in Jerusalem, one can now qualify the overall mood of this nuptial event as the joy of a consummated mystical-eschatological love. The history of the attainment of this

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nuptial joy is in brief, the following: by responding to the condescending love of the Logos (to His “existential” switch from being truth for the Father to being an image of God for us) the disciple has made a successful return to his initial attunement with the Logos (ethics and physics), then, according to another Pauline expression often mentioned by Origen, the disciple has reached the epoptic stage by being “transformed into the image” of his teacher, the Logos, and has become not just “an ‘according to the image’” (Gen 1.27) but an image like the divine image (the Logos) (Gen 1.27); he has added to the initial iconic attunement the dimension of an eschatological likeness becoming his teacher’s peer or friend,493 a christ like Christ494 and, one might add, a teacher like the Teacher.495 I submit that, as the disciple’s accomplished application to the Logos or the exalted, divine, teacher, and as the complete internalization of this teacher (the “wound of love”), epoptic love allows for the conversion of the teacher’s mourning into joy. In other words, I shall show that the observance of the curriculum as the disciple’s meditative application to the teacher’s messianic coming determines an existential transformation in the condition of the teacher. I also maintain that epoptic joy is not only the disciple’s progressive attunement to the teacher but also the eschatological return to an aletheic-filial condition, which this progress occasions in the teacher. 2.2.2.2.4 Beyond the Image.496 Love as the Ultimate Observance of the Curriculum and the Joy of Sonship As announced in the introduction, I have traced back the origin of Origen’s curriculum to the “existential” switch in the condition of the Logos as messianic teacher from a “for us,” iconic, disposition, to a “for the Father,” aletheic, one. I have called this origin a theological one, in order to distinguish it from a historically-critically established, most likely Middle-Platonist, source of Origen’s instruction program.497 I shall end this study with a few observations on the distinction between an iconic and an aletheic attunement to God and some additional, more speculative, remarks on Origen’s use of this distinction in the articulation of a Christian pedagogy. If taken strictly, Origen’s distinction between Logos’ attunement to humanity as image, and His attunement to the Father as truth, could suggest a twofold division of the curriculum. Indeed, in the preliminary, ethical and physical, cycle of instruction, the

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beginning or the advancing disciple gets attuned to the condescending Logos as image of God, while in the final, epoptic, one, he is brought into a perfect attunement to the exalted Logos as truth. However, if, as mentioned previously, the image-attuned disciple is the restored creature of Gen 1.26, while the perfect, truthattuned disciple is one who acquired a mystical-eschatological likeness, as “prophesized” in Gen 1.27,498 one has to admit a qualitative, not just quantitative, primacy of the assimilative (homoiotic) discipline of epoptics, over the iconic (restorative) disciplines of physics and ethics. What is the one feature that epitomizes this primacy of epoptics over all the other disciplines? Origen’s analysis of the epoptic experience in the Prologue on The Commentary on The Song of Songs qualifies this homoiotic, meta-iconic, instructional cycle as a work of love499 that completes and perfects the previous pedagogy of ethical fear and physical contemplation.500 As shown in the excursus on love in the second section of the prologue501 and as it is further confirmed by Origen’s interpretation of the “wound of love” in Cant 5.8,502 this exalted love is, ultimately, God,503 by which one has to understand both the Father and the Son insofar as the Logos in His exalted, “for the Father,” condition as truth is “one god” with God the Father.504 It is this exalted, assimilative, love that the epoptic disciple receives after he internalizes the love of the condescending Logos-image (the “elected arrow”) in the form of an agapic “wound.”505 How do the condescension of the Logos and the subsequent ascent of the disciple stand in relation to God’s love? At the beginning of this study I have tried to explain Logos’ condescending switch from the “form of God” to the “form of the slave” and humanity’s ascendant Logos-reattunement as a typically iconic capacity or a versatility that characterizes any iconic being, taking into account Origen’s description of the Logos as an image (an icon) of the Father and the soul as an iconic being or a being “according to” the Image (Logos).506 At that point, I suggested that the possibility of condescension in the Logos is to be explained on the basis of an iconic being’s capacity to emulate something else other than its original archetype,507 and I distinguished, following Origen, between the charitable and voluntary use that the Logos makes of this capacity, and the lapsarian use that humans made of it.508 Now, with the acknowledgement of a possible meta-iconic relation,

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which is the filial-aletheic, and the characterization of this relation as a love-based one, I wonder whether a revision of the initial explanation would not be in place. This revision would have to answer the following two questions. First, one needs to inquire whether one should explain the love that determined the condescension of the Logos as an expression of the versatility that characterizes any iconic being or whether, conversely, one should trace Logos’ versatility to the love that the Logos is as God.509 Secondly, one should inquire about the relation of epoptic love with the condescending manifestation of the Logos “for us.” As the development of my essay has suggested, in regard to the first matter I hold the latter to be the case. The Logos adopts the “form of the slave” and appears as an image of God for us because as truth He who is said to be love exists in the “form of God.”510 However, insofar as being love seems to be closely connected to love’s being neighbor-seeking, one is now directed to the second issue under debate. As I would like to suggest, Origen treats the condescending love-manifestation of the Logos-image (the “elected arrow”) as an elaboration on His exalted love-being, insofar as by being truth, the Logos is one god with God and God is said to be love.511 The implications of this statement are profound. Not only is neighborly love being admitted as an exalted, not just condescending kind of love, but also it is being traced back to the filial love of the Logos (His being truth for the Father).512 In brief, neighborly love is Logos’ agapic other-orientation, which, when exalted, is filial, that is, Father-seeking,513 while, when condescending, it is soteriologic-pedagogic, i.e., neighbor-seeking.514 As exalted, the filial attunement is aletheic (“for the Father”), therefore also meta-iconic, while, as neighbor–seeking, it is iconic. Supposing that it were correct to distinguish so sharply between a filial, meta-iconic or aletheic attunement and an iconic one, I could venture now one step further to identify this meta-iconic experience as one of joyful love and explaining the possibility of the Son’s switch from an exalted to a humble condition as a condescending modification of this joyous, other-seeking, love into a mourning care (also a work of love) for a fallen other (the neighbor).515 I am of the opinion that this exalted love, which is ultimately the love between the Son and the Father, can be described in iconic terms but cannot be reduced only to an iconic function.516 In other words, it is not because of the iconic resem-

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blance between Himself and humanity that the Logos mourns humanity’s fall as a narcissistic loss and rejoices for humanity’s return as a narcissistic self-glorification. Instead, I would like to maintain that Origen’s theology favors a different view. Since the exalted condition of the Logos is that of truth-for-God-the-Father and God [the Father] is said to be love, the loving Logos reaches out toward humanity not only in His condescending quality of image, but also in his exalted quality of truth. In other words, for Origen, love is not a form of condescension, but condescension is a form of love. The Logos does not love in order to save humanity from its anti-iconic deviance, but rather saves it because His being love means manifesting Himself as other-seeking (as addressative, “from-to” event), both in an exalted, filial, manner (truth-for-theFather), and in a condescending fashion (image-for-us, His neighbors). In this sense, and only in this sense of a filially grounded love or a love beyond the image, can Logos’ love be said to be genuinely, rather than narcissistically, other-, and, implicitly, also neighbor-, seeking.517 One may now remark that love as the main event of epoptic experience is the pedagogic reversal of mourning into joy, and one may further ask whose joy and mourning we are referring to here? Since in love the disciple is “transformed into the image” of the Logos and, like this divine image, he shares into the mysticaleschatological sonship of the Logos (His condition as truth), the progress of the disciple can be said to be one from condescendingly loved neighbor to Logos-assimilated human, while, as a Logos assimilated human, he is Logos’ Father-seeking love. It is essential to notice that the disciple in his transition from condescendingly loved neighbor to Father-loving son is the one who occasions the reversal of the Teacher’s mourning (His being an image-of-God-for-us) into joy (His being truth-for-the-Father). As the nuptial metaphor suggests, the manner in which the disciple allows for such a reversal is a peculiar loveunion, which implies the following: first, internalizing one’s lover’s love (Logos’ love), then becoming-one with one’s lover (with the Logos) and, ultimately, becoming the love of one’s lover (a filial love for the Father).518 By the disciple’s (the bride’s) becoming one with the Logos as teacher (the bridegroom), the homonymic tension between a “forthe-Father” and a “for-us” aspect in the Logos is cancelled. This cancellation brings about a mystical-eschatological situation in

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which both the Logos as truth and the Logos-assimilated (“united”) disciple519 share a unique, “for the Father,” filial attunement.520 Since it is the love-union of the disciple with the teacher that “allows” the teacher to revert to the joy of being in an exalted union with the Father (as truth-for-the-Father), rather than persisting in a mournful condescending attunement with a fallen humanity (image-for-us),521 I shall claim that at the stage of epoptics the disciple becomes, literally, his teacher’s joy.522 Also, given that the epoptic manifestation of the teacher as truth, with its overall joyful existential mood, is a filial one (for-the-Father)523 and that epoptics is a recapitulation of the entire curricular progress (a song of all songs),524 I shall designate the curriculum as the expression of the disciple’s experience of becoming the filial joy of his teacher’s Father, which means, not simply imitating the Teacher’s love for His Father, but becoming the love that the Teacher is. 3 Retrospect By identifying the aletheic attunement of the Logos as the report and the iconic attunement of the Logos as the annunciation, one can conveniently reconstruct the exegetical determination of Origen’s biblical pedagogy. The Bible as the love-plotted event of Logos’ textual advent plays out iconcially-alteheically (reportingannuncing), that is, it plays out as a complex descendant (kenotic) and ascendant (exaltational) elective address. The Bible can be said to be the textual site of the manifestation of the Logos as a historical event with a deep pedagogic and soteriological signification. Ultimately, the pedagogic function of the iconic-altheic Bible is double: on the one hand, it plays out as a modality of bringing the exegete into a filial relation to biblical Logos’ Father, while, on the other hand, it brings the exegete into a ministerial relation to the unandvanced readers. Later on I shall clarify these functions as the filial-doxologic and the ministerial-homiletic. Until then, however, it is necessary to run a brief check on the main features of Origen’s exegetical pedagogy as they have been construed so far, testing their logocentric potential. The image of Origen’s exegetical pedagogy and pedagogic exegesis, which emerges from the above investigations, seems to match many of the basic features of naïve, hermeneutical and communicative logocentrism as was discussed in chapter one (I). First, on the basis of these investigations, the metaphysical two-

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folding of the Scripture and the curriculum can be said to have been ultimately and conclusively mediated by the Logos, who elaborates a strict program for the spiritual transformation of humanity in God’s image and likeness. Secondly, as a logically predetermined being, humanity is bound to reciprocate the charitable paternal concern communicated through Logos’ filial mediation, and to seek a union with the Father in the Son. In other words, the logikoi¢ are expected to be able to provide a full, communicational redemption of the paternal salvation announcement by a commensurate (pertinent) filial response. Thirdly, language itself seems to be subordinated to direct vision (epoptics), to beholding God face to face and being drawn into His eternal presence. The receiver of the biblical Logos seems to be invited to enter the biblical text briefly and provisionally in a preestablished discipleship role only to leave it again for a union with the trans-textual auctorial God. All these features seem to have been confirmed and epitomized by the fourth and the last arch-feature, which has to do with the selfinterpretation of the incarnate Logos on the road to Emmaus. This self-interpretation can be, ultimately, suspected of historically marking the end of historical interpretation: the Logos manifests itself not only as interpretable Bible, but also as ultimate Bibleinterpetation (a potential closure of any pluralism of interpretation). By interpreting Himself as the Bible that He incarnationally is, the Logos can be thought to authorize a definitive, Christological reading of the Bible (His own), which after the Pentecost will be passed on to the Church in the Holy Spirit. The next two chapters will dispute the logocentric readings offered above. In the third chapter, I shall reexamine the image of a relatively uniform spiritual progress, which could, to a certain extent, be said to have emerged from the investigations of Origen’s exegetical pedagogy in the second chapter of this book. While the phenomenological-hermeneutical methodology and jargon that I chose to use in this section of the book can be deemed appropriate for a more “systematic,” more “philosophical” Origen, as Origenian scholarship has once tried to present him, there is nothing to suggest that my methodological preference has succeeded in bringing out the full potential of the Origenian text (as that Origenian party, which opposes a view of Origen as a systematician would, most likely, be pleased to hear).525 To prove this, the following two chapters will register a change of strategy on my part. I

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shall read select texts of Origen in an eclectic, deconstructionist, and heuristic manner, transforming the critiqual stance of these approaches in regard to phenomenological hermeneutics, communicative theories and naïve theories of language, into a criticism of the logocentric assumptions in my previous analysis of Origen’s exegetical pedagogy (the one in chapter II). It remains to be seen if, after a careful deconstruction of the logocentric reading presuppositions, which my previous approach might have entertained, Origen’s text will be allowed to speak in a more “Origenian” voice than its previous, phenomenological-hermeneutical idiom has allowed for. I shall leave for the last (the fourth) chapter, the decisive discussion regarding the logocentric potential of an Emmauscentered exegesis of the Bible.

III

EMMAUS AND BEYOND. THE GROWTH OF THE KINGDOM DOCUMENTED BY THE DOXOLOGICAL GESTURES, POSTURES AND FEELINGS OF A PRIESTLY HOMILIST

1 LEAVENING (1): A UNIFORM GROWTH? The previous two chapters have described Origen’s exegetical pedagogy as a gradual spiritual advance (“growing-up”) and as the gradual dispensation of a transformative teaching (“upbringing”). During this investigation the idea that such an exegetical pedagogy is meant to respond to the needs of a large variety of humans, perhaps to humanity as a whole, has also emerged as a central feature of Origen’s understanding of the Bible as generalized Gospel. I would now like to concentrate on two dimensions of Origen’s gospel-centered exegetical pedagogy, which Origenian scholarship has often, although not necessarily correctly, construed as “Platonist.” I shall refer to them as the cosmo-theological1 and the historicaleschatological dimensions. Cosmo-theologically, Origen was thought to assume that current humanity is an inhabitant of two realms, the psycho-somatic or the earthly realm, and the noetic-pneumatic or the heavenly one.2 Humanity is said to have been established in an intermediary position between the community of the angels including the nonlapsed, blessed intellects (the protological “church”) and the irrational creation (the animals, the plants and inorganic matter), which together constitute the compound, sensible-intelligible or bodily and psycho-noetic, created world.3 The unifying principle of this twofold world is the Wisdom-Logos, in whom the world is present as a system of ideas.4 In turn, the Wisdom-Logos, or the Son, is presented as a mediator between the large scale creation (the compound world) including its small-scale epitome (the compound 121

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humanity), in relation to whom the Logos is said to be an Image of God, and God the Father, in relation to whom the Logos is said to be the Truth.5 The articulation of the cosmo-theological schema Father–Logos–world seems to be made possible by the special relation that the Logos entertains with humanity (and, by extension, with the entirety of creation).6 Humanity is said to be created according to God’s Image (Gen 1.27), which Origen interprets as the condescending Logos, and it has been promised the eschatological supplement of a divine likeness (Gen 1.26),7 which Origen interprets as the emulation of the filiality of the exalted Logos.8 In brief, humanity responds in the created realm to Logos’ twofold disposition of Image-for-us and Truth-for-the-Father.9 In the first half of the 20th century, many Origenian scholars used to rely, sometimes uncritically, sometimes hyper-critically, on what they believed to be the “Platonist” assumptions of Origen’s cosmo-theology.10 In this light, Origen’s cosmo-theology was thought to present humanity’s spiritual progress from a fallen, distorted iconicity, to a restored, iconic rapport with the Logos and his Father in the form of a gradual change of humanity’s ontological status, starting with the condition of a materially embodied human and ending with that of a spiritually embodied intellect (an angel) or even a god.11 The same holds true for the evaluation of Origen’s historical-eschatological scenario.12 Origen’s vision of the historical progress of humanity has often been construed as a historical cover-up of a cosmic progress that takes the disciple out of the temporality of this world and assimilates her to God’s eternal self-presence.13 In this perspective the historical-eschatological advance spans from a historical, bodily-literal, application to God’s historical revelation (in Pauline terms, His manifestation as a “shadow”), to a higher, pre-eschatological, psycho-noetic, hermeneutics of God’s communication to humanity (His manifestation as an “image”), then to a full, trans-historical, mystical-eschatological, grasp of God’s revealed truth construed as God’s pneumatic allencompassing self-presence (the “all in all”).14 A brief look at Origenian scholarship could hardly overlook its unusually long process of “working through” the suspicion of “Platonism,” which, at one point, seemed to have been embraced by a large range of historically-critically minded scholars, while being starkly opposed by their more theologically committed peers.15 It looks almost as if, for most of its modern existence, Origenian

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scholarship has been haunted by the need to appease this suspicion, which goes back to the early Christian anti-Origenist literature.16 As Mark Edwards has noticed, such efforts have often materialized in compensative apologetics.17 An understanding of what is at stake in this more or less explicit apologetics, would, I think, make more accessible the kind of project that underlies this book and, in particular, the investigation in this chapter. The twentieth century defenses of Origen usually capitalize on Origen’s dedication to the Bible, insisting on its genuineness, either in a broader ecclesial-sacramental context, as it is the case with Catholic scholars,18 or outside such a context, as it often happens in the Protestant Origenian exegesis.19 The non-partisan, although still apologetic, studies of Origen’s Bible approach are few but almost unfailingly remarkable.20 Strangely enough both the partisan and the non-partisan apologetic approaches seem to agree on at least one issue, namely, that what is at stake in the refutation of the thesis of a primarily philosophical Origen is the necessity to do justice to a misunderstood, Bible-committed, Christian thinker who, for better or for worse, deserves to be taken at his word regarding his devotion to Scripture. However, taking Origen at his word requires that one should provide proof of the consistency of his theological procedure and his exegetical, pedagogical praxis with his often proclaimed goal of approaching the God of biblical revelation in a manner that is God-worthy.21As it was shown in the previous chapter of this study, by approaching God in a Godworthy manner, Origen understands a form of exegetical-pedagogic commitment to God’s compassionate transcendence, which is epitomized in His Son or the Logos’ evangelic advent as Bible.22 Looking back at the way in which the more theologically committed apologetics intended to establish Origen’s devotion to the Bible, one can find two major assumptions, which to this day have hardly been reexamined by Origenian scholarship, namely, 1) that the evidence which would most decisively undermine Origen’s claim to a transcendence-mindful discourse about the God of the Bible would be his indebtedness to the emmanationist subordinationism of late Platonism or to any other combination of Greek psychagogic metaphysics establishing a reversible, non-substative procession of the Logos from the Father, and 2) that the most persuasive token of Origen’s reverence would be the Christian character of his commitment to the Bible.23 What is discarded by omis-

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sion in the correlation of these two assumptions, is the possibility that a discourse worthy of the biblical God of revelation can be undermined otherwise than by a Greek, philosophical immixture in the biblical faith, more precisely, that such undermining can be attributed to beliefs that Christianity itself has produced and that Origen’s preferred version of Christianity would not have deemed heterodox. This ignored view, which at Origen’s time was that of Rabbinic Judaism,24 reemerges in the postmodern and deconstructionist critique of Western thought as logocentric, that is, as based on a metaphysical, reductionist use of rationality leading to what Levinas has called a “destruction of transcendence.”25 Within the economy of this study, testing Origen’s discourse for being biblically grounded and “God-worthy” means addressing the more comprehensive suspicion of logocentrism as a Western view which, according to its opponents, may, under certain conditions, include both Platonism and the Logos-based Christian and JewishHellenistic theologies.26 In this way, a defense of Origen’s commitment to “talking God” in a manner that is worthy of God, cannot be limited to a proof of Origen’s commitment to a model of Christian orthodoxy (either his own or one supplied by the interpreter); it would rather have to be sought by an analysis of the character of Logos’ implication in the exegetical act and the function that the Logos plays in the theology that shapes Origen’s exegesis.27 Ultimately, what needs to be ascertained is whether the Origenian Logos fosters a reduction of divine transcendence, which I set out to investigate by looking at Origen’s pragmatics of biblical exegesis as a transformative pedagogy. In the previous chapters I have sufficiently dwelled on what Origen formally qualifies as a God-mindful exegetical and pedagogic discourse.28 Alternatively, I would now like to claim that an exegesis that allows for a representation of spiritual progress as a uniform, transformative advance of humanity towards God, may be deemed by the anti-logocentrist as a major, if not even the single greatest, obstacle in the articulation of a discourse, which is worthy of the God of the biblical revelation. 29 Abstractly speaking, the problem is the following: If, indeed, Origenian exegetical pedagogy proposes a scenario of spiritual ascent that is uniform in the sense that it homogenizes the terminus a quo and the terminus ad quem (God and humanity), one may rightfully wonder what makes it so, what is the source of this uniformity? One possibility is that humanity itself

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can be such a source and, consequently, that the spiritual advance of the humans toward God is uniform because it takes place on humanity’s own volitional and/or cognitive grounds (the will to power, the metaphysics of presence), positing as its goal a God who is nothing short of an idol.30 As a reductionist position that emerges in the trail of Cartesianism and of the Kantian Copernican Revolution (at the nihilist end of the development of these doctrines), this position is not going to be a concern in this study.31 However, there is an alternate explanation of uniformity, one which is of a greater interest for the current investigation. The spiritual advance can be made uniform by the mediative work of a cosmic, rather than a particular, mind, like the second hypostasis of certain brands of late Platonism, whose function could be said to be one of unifying and homogenizing the cosmo-theological or historical-eschatological scenarios (the cosmic hierarchies and the process of advancement within the hierarchies).32 In this sense, uniformity would be yet again gained at the expense of a reduction of God (the Father, in Origen’s economic-subordinationist terminology) to the immanent coherence of this cosmic mind’s mediation scenario, although this time the reductionist is not humanity but the Mind or the Logos Itself, a Logos-generated idolatry, so to speak. 33 By mentioning this view, I do not intend to return to a stage in the debate that was focused on rejecting the suspicion of “Platonism,” but to articulate this suspicion in a different, more comprehensive way. While for the anti-Platonist the main concern was to show that the Origenian Logos is neither a reversible emanation of the one Father, nor a first-creature, subordinated to the Father as a creator, my concern regards the mediative function of the Origenian Logos as it is expressed in the advent of the Logos as Bible. The revised concern is, thus, the following: granting that Origen’s Logos is neither an unsubstantial emanation, nor a subordinated first-creature, is it still possible that the meditative coming of the Logos as Logos-interpreted Bible homogenizes humanity and the Father by inscribing them into a continuous, uniform textual progress scenario, which is dictated by the Logos as a naïveintentional, hermeneutical or communicative sufficient-reason (a “logical” hermeneutical-soteriological principle rather than a legic event)?34 As one may easily notice, with my interpretation, the suspicion of Platonism becomes a suspicion of logocentrism, but can a Chris-

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tian approach such as Origen’s become susceptible of logocentrism? Although placing Origen in an economic “subordinationist” tradition, together with the Apologists and Clement,35 may be a compelling proof of the revealed, otherwise than metaphysical, setting of Origen’s discussion of the Logos, one may agree on the necessity to discuss this issue otherwise than doctrinally or dogmatically. One may want to ask whether the praxis of pedagogic exegesis, as Origen has conceived it, does not use the Logos as a homogenizing force or as a factor of uniformity and immanentization (a Logos induced immanentism, but immanentism nevertheless). The final answer could then come from the examination of the exegetical pragmatics and the pedagogic praxis that the Origenian Logos proposes and authorizes by His messianic biblical coming as generalized gospel. In case this praxis turns out to homogenize humanity as well as God (the Father) through a mediatic reduction of God’s transcendence, the spiritual progress would appear less as a graced salvation and more like humanity’s vicarious self-realization in the historical-eschatological and cosmotheological self-realization of the Logos.36 As a consequence, when judged by the very standards that Origen upholds doctrinally, such a discourse would not qualify as a God-worthy one. By specifying the requirement of a non-uniform or, at least, otherwise-than-uniform spiritual ascent as a necessary condition for the genuine upholding of God’s transcendence and otherness, I have somewhat reshaped the apologetic concern of Origenian scholarship with Platonism into a broader concern for a possible immanentization of salvation as Logos’ self-realization. It needs to be noted that, in this revised form, it is impossible to exclude philosophy de plano from the debate, as an immanentist, less then godly, form of discourse; likewise, one can no longer assume that formally identifying Origen as a Christian Scriptural exegete is a sufficient proof of his non-logocentrism. In a certain sense, in the current debate Origen’s Logos-based Platonism and Logos-based Christian theology and exegesis are asked to respond to the concerns of the anti-logocentric camp, which could, in turn, nuance and contextualize this camp’s claims. In consonance with the program announced at the beginning of this study,37 the manner in which I shall discuss Origen’s understanding of the God-worthiness38 of the exegetical-pedagogical discourse will not be historical-philological, but deconstructive-

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heuristic.39 After the careful phenomenological description of the exegetical and pedagogic scenarios of the spiritual progress provided in the previous chapter, I shall now focus on one particular aspect of Origen’s exegetical pedagogy, namely the manner in which the Logos plays out in these scenarios. Instead of discussing this issue in a speculative fashion I shall concentrate on the significance that Origen attributes to a specific scene in the career of the incarnate Logos, namely, His self-exegesis as the messiah of the scriptures on the road to Emmaus. The justification of this choice is simple. If, thinking with Origen, the Bible is the textual body of the Logos,40 Jesus’ self-exegesis, as the one that the Bible is about, can be said to be not only a fulfillment of the prophecies, but also the ultimate (i.e., eschatological) biblical hermeneutics, Origen’s long desired interpretation of the “Bible through the Bible.”41 Since a similar, although less elaborate interpretation of Emmaus, has once stirred Levinas’ criticism,42 I decided to start by an in depth investigation of Origen’s understanding of this scene, while postponing for the next chapter a more rigorous philosophical elaboration of Levinas’ puzzlement as an objection to logocentrism. However, an outline of this objection needs to be offered upfront and can be formulated as follows. Since the Logos is said to be the one who provides in a revelatory fashion the transition from a historically plural, pre-Emmausian Bible and Bible exegesis, to an eschatologically unified Bible and a supremely authorized, unique, spiritual exegesis, the Logos appears as the divine fold or the articulation of created history with God. Nevertheless, one may wonder whether the two dimensions that the Logos articulates could not be said to have been reduced to the principle that allows for this articulation. Moreover, is not a reading of the biblical history, as a typological-incarnational unfolding of the Logos, suppressing the otherness of the historical people (patriarchs, prophets, sages) in whom the soteriological economy of the Logos is being played out? One will thus have to decide whether or not Origen’s take on this Emmausian articulation is, indeed, a source of uniformity, immanentization and, ultimately, reductionism. Depending on this decision one will be able to say whether taking Origen as the proponent of an Emmaus shaped exegesis and theological discourse is an asset or a liability in the debate with anti-logocentrism. The issue at stake is not trite. If regarded as continuous and hierarchically homogenous, then the advance from the pre-

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Emmaus Bible, or, in Origen’s language, the image, to the messianically interpreted Bible of Emmaus or the truth, can be said to have as its sole unifying principle the assimilative presence of the Logos Himself. The grasp that humanity may get on this so-called principle could further turn exegetical pedagogy into a Logosauthorized technique of historical self-realization with an enormous totalizing potential. If, conversely, the transition from image to truth is not susceptible of a principled justification (a deduction, in Kant’s terms, an analysis and demonstration, in the MiddlePlatonist elaboration of these logical notions),43 the terms mediated by the Logos (humanity and the Father) can be acknowledged as transcendentally or anarchically “gathered,”44 and the up-turn of the Logos from a historical to an eschatological condition (image to truth) could be said to safeguard, rather than reduce the transcendence of God as well as to introduce a trace of His transcendence into the history of humanity’s historical progress. On the downside, however, such an anarchic upholding of transcendence could also undermine the very notion of a hierarchically staged progress in ways that would need a careful consideration. The following pages will present a guardedly negative response to the above question: “no, for the most part, Origen does not espouse an immanentist use of the Logos, unless…..” The guardedness, too, will have its reasons, which I shall expose in due time. Concretely, I shall pursue what I take to be the leads that Origen offers for a deconstruction of the uniformity of the historical-eschatological scenario, indicating how the Origenian Logos could be read, without putting an excessive strain on the Origenian text, as a differentiating, otherwise than self-reflective, selfjustifying first principle (a legic event rather than a logical sufficient reason). As a consequence, my investigation will undergo a visible shift of interest. I shall turn away from the predominantly coherence-and-uniformity focused, intentional and communicative hermeneutics of the gospel definition in chapter one and of the scenarios in chapter two, to an analysis of the elements of disruption, the gaps, and the discontinuities in Origen’s depiction of the spiritual progress. Intentional hermeneutics was, indeed, better suited to delineate the aspect of uniformity in the scenarios of the exegetical, pedagogic progress, with its monotonous ascendant and descendant mood attunement,45 while a deconstrutive-heuristic approach will allow a discussion of the Logos as a transcendent force of dis-

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ruption in the uniformity of any linear spiritual advancement and as the one who makes possible the saturation of reason by an excess of love. In the following pages, the disruptive, and exceeding, interventions of the Logos in the uniform exegetical-pedagogic scenarios will be called transformative gestures; the humanity that emerges from these experiences will be captured in what may be called a few testimonial postures (mostly the neighborly and the filial ones) that are accompanied by a couple of otherwise than logically (that is, reductively rational) articulated, testimonial feelings such as awe and love.46 Thus, after a preliminary discussion of the messianic gestures that destructure and saturate the uniformity of spiritual leavening, I shall pursue with an analysis of the liturgical aspect of pedagogic exegesis, proposing an alternative view on the spiritual progress as the working out of a double, doxological-filial and homiletic-neighborly, posture in response to Logos’ messianic coming to the exegete from the Bible as the Bible. The testimonial value of this double posture will be discussed not in the terms of a discursive (in Origen’s words, “logical”) doctrine, but rather in the terms of the transcendentally articulate feelings that emerge in the aftermath of the failure of the doctrinal articulation; this failure will be shown to attest for a different kind of articulation that Origen calls a “ruling,” “gathering” and, ultimately, a “pacification” of humanity, the world and the Bible by the fearful judge, the aweinspiring gatherer and the charitable pacifier who is the transcendent Logos.47 I shall point out as well some of the limitations of this Logos-centered approach, more precisely, its patent inefficacy in preventing certain forms of historical totalization.

2 TRANSFORMATIVE GESTURES. “PLACING OR HIDING IN” AND “OPENING UP”. A POSSIBLE CORRELATION BETWEEN ORIGEN’S INTERPRETATION OF THE PARABLE OF THE LEAVEN AND THE EXPERIENCE OF THE DISCIPLES ON THE ROAD TO EMMAUS Let us return to Origen’s description of exegesis and pedagogy as aspects of the same process of spiritual leavening. More precisely, let us trace this description to its biblical source, by focusing on Origen’s interpretation of the parable of the leaven in Luke 13.20– 21 and Matt 13.33.48 As mentioned before, Origen believes that parables refer to events that could have happened, but did not happen in the literal terms in which they were presented; he also

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thinks that parables target two sorts of people. Their literal sense is for the beginners, or the crowds, who focus on their literal plausibility, while their spiritual meaning is for the more advanced or the disciples,49 who are able to refer the literal account to the events in the sacred history.50 The key terms of Luke 13.20–21 and Matt 13.33 that the Origenian fragments quote are the following: “the kingdom of heaven” (th=j basilei/aj tw¤n ou)ranw=n51), “woman” (gunai¤ka;52 gunh\53), “took” (labou=sa),54 “leaven” or “yeast” (zu/mhn;55 zu/m$,56 zu/mh57), “hid in” or “mixed in” (eÓkruyen),58 “three measures” (sa/ta tri/a),59 “flour” (t%¤ a)leu/r%; a)leu/rou),60 “all” (referring to the flour) (oÀloj;61 oÀlon),62 and “was leavened” (zumw/q$).63 The fragments contain only a brief reference to the literal sense of the parable,64 but they provide a succinct account of the allegorical interpretation. Origen identifies the function of the above mentioned parables as the edification of the reader on the spiritual growth (the “leavening”) of the kingdom of heavens within her and in humanity as a whole. Thus, at the individual level, the growth of the kingdom means an integration and unification of the three parts of the human constitution, namely, the body, the tripartite soul (its appetent, irascible and noetic parts)65 and the individual spirit.66 In regard to humanity as a whole, which consists of individuals endowed with rational (i.e., “logic-al”) souls (logikai£ yuxai£), the growth of the kingdom means the spreading of God’s lo¢goj to all nations67 through the ecclesiastic exegesis of the Bible. Origen identifies the woman who “introduces” or “hides” the leaven in the threefold constitution of each member of the congregation (i.e., the three measures of flour), and in all the nations (the offspring of the three sons of Noah—another sense of the three measures of flour) as the church, which means the ecclesiastic, priestly, exegetes and receivers of God’s word.68 Not surprisingly, the most important element of the account, which is the leaven, appears allegorized in more than one way. The leaven is said to be either the Holy Spirit,69 or the teaching on the kingdom of heaven,70 or the teaching of truth71 or, last but not least, the word/Word of God.72 Although plural, Origen’s allegorization of the leaven is, by no means, inconsistent. The Word, as God, is spirit.73 The resurrected Christ breathes the Holy Spirit on his dis-

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ciples,74 while the ascended Christ sends over his apostles the same Spirit at Pentecost.75 The Word is also the one through whom the Bible was written by its spirit-inspired human authors at the Father’s will, while the Holy Spirit is the one in whom the reader/hearer receives from the biblical word/Word the will or the intention of the Father in the form of a kingdom- or truth-inducing teaching.76 Thus, the interpretation of the parable seems to be pointing towards a common spiritual authorship of the Scripture through the Word in the Spirit by a fatherly mandate, which materializes into the spiritual sense of the Bible as a teaching elaborated by an inspired ecclesiastic exegete.77 Closely associated with this threefold divine authorship is the human exegetical act, which appears synthesized in the woman’s (the church’s) gesture of “taking” (labou¤sa) the leaven or the inspired exegesis of her evangelists, apostles, wise men and prophets, and placing or, more precisely, hiding it in the readers (e©ne¢kruyen), i.e., the delivery of the spiritual sense of the Scripture to the reader by a liturgical-exegetical guidance with transformative effects.78 The extant fragments on the parable of the leaven do not offer details about its application to the reader (the fourth step in Torjesen’s schema of the exegetical procedure),79 but an allegorization of the terms in which the parable describes the woman or the ecclesiastic exegete’s activities could provide some clues in this direction. The woman is said to be “hiding” the leaven “in” (e©ne¢kruyen) the three measures of flour, which is a combined action of intromission and concealment. At the same time, the placing of the leaven in the mass of flour is preceded by the woman’s action of “taking” the leaven from a certain place (labou¤sa) and relocating it in the dough. The two actions of taking-from and placing/hiding-in match what the introduction of this study identified as the speech address scenario of the messianic advent or the “from-to” manifestation of the gospel Logos as news-from [a¦paggeli¢a]/the coming-from [a¦podhmi¢a] and the news-to [e¦paggeli¢a]/the coming-to [e¦pidhmi¢a]). The same scenario of condescension as a messianic advent can be found in Origen’s interpretation of the parable. Due to the woman’s gesture of concealing intromission, the leaven “comes” from the place wherefrom it was taken to the unleavened dough, while the homogenized dough is said to grow from an unleavened to a leavened state.80 The dough, that is, the individual and the general constitution of humanity, is

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said to be turning from a scattered or disharmonious state to a cohesive (“gathered”) or unified state in a process that Origen designates as a change (metabolh/) or transfiguration (metamo/rfwsij).81 The transfigurative ascent, which is the process of leavening, is, evidently, a reproduction in reverse of the descent of the concealing intromission or the condescension symbolized by the directionality of the “a¦po-“ and the “e¦pi-“ prefixes of the verbs of “annunciation” and “coming.” Based on the above reading of the parable of the leaven I shall now attempt a reconstruction of the reception or the application of this parable as Origen might have envisaged it. The non-advanced reader is invited to place herself in the situation of the three measures of flour before the introduction of the leaven. In Origen’s terms, the somatic reader (the one in whom the first, “bodily,” measure of flour prevails) is the beginner or the catechumen whom the Gospels designate as one of the crowds.82 She receives the biblical Logos in a condescending form, as the literal, possible or plausible, sense of the parable83 with a moral and logical coherence. For this reader, the co-authored teaching of the Trinity on the kingdom of heavens appears as a rather opaque parabolic figure of speech (the simile of the leaven), with a distant, Church mediated interpretation.84 At this stage the reader is enjoined by the more advanced exegetes to take this figure as a reference to higher, undisclosed, mysteries that she is not yet ready to comprehend.85 Switching from a textual-exegetical to a historical-exegetical perspective, the first-measure of flour, or the literalist, bodily, reader, appears as the historical Israel and the literally-minded audience of the gospels of Matthew and Luke.86 This reader’s identification with the first measure of flour is a literal form of placement in the text, which makes possible the reception of the pedagogy of the spirit or the “leaven” in a preliminary, logical and ethical way.87 The advancing reader, as a baptized novice, is cast into the role of the second measure of flour, which gets transfigured upon the reception of the leaven. Given the allegorization of the second measure of flour as the noetic soul or the second faculty in the human constitution, one could call this process a psychic one. In the language of the Gospel narratives, the reader is now one of the disciples to whom Jesus explains the parable inside the house, rather than the crowds who receive His teaching outdoors or at the shore of the sea.88 Such a reader has a somewhat clearer under-

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standing of the kingdom both as the textual figure of the leaven and as the teaching to which this figure refers. Through her acquaintance with the teaching, the reader gets a sense of the authorship of the Logos who appears in this textual figuration. In other words, Christ is perceived as the author who, like the leaven, has “entered” the text and is now leavening it or as the auctorial exegete who inscribes the reader in a text that he claimed as his (he interprets as being about himself) so that the reader could grow out of this figural text towards a direct transformative encounter with the author himself. Historically speaking, this psychic reader is an heir to the prophets of the Old Testament89 and to Mark who, by their spiritual positioning in the text as disciples, witness the fulfillment of the prophecies and are gradually guided out of history toward an eschatological union with the ascended Christ.90 Neither historically, nor textually can this experience be considered an accomplished one. Now that the condescending path of taking-from and placing-in, coming from (the Father) to (us) and reporting to (the Father) for (us), has been reversed (metaba¢llesqai) into an ascent, this ascent is still far from being over. The psychic or prophetic reader is in an in-between condition, a leavening but not yet completely leavened state, neither entirely inside the text, nor entirely outside it,91 neither entirely within chronological history, not entirely outside it, in imitation of Christ’s mixed pre-ascensional condition, which Origen calls “humble glory.”92 In pedagogic terms, this reader is the “physical” disciple awaiting a final, epoptic, enlightenment. In the previous sections of this study I suggested a possible connection between this physical stage of the leavening process and Christ’s post-resurrectional/pre-ascensional apparition to the disciples on the way to Emmaus.93 For the current analysis, the most relevant aspect of this scene is Jesus’ gesture of “opening the scriptures” to the disciples.94 More precisely, the spiritual “opening” of the scriptures occurs during their prophetic interpretation by the resurrected Christ who, as Logos, is also their (co)author,95 and it consists in the disclosure that the messiah mentioned in the scriptural text is He,96 this text’s (co)author as ultimate interpreter. If read this way, this disclosure may appear also as Christ’s definitive, “auctorial” claim on the Scripture97 not just as a text that refers to Him, but also as His text (as Origen would put it, as Logos’ verbal body) or even as He Himself (the Scripture assumed incar-

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nationally by the Logos is the Logos Himself).98 However, the same Scripture is also a text in which, through the exegetical work of authoritative interpreters, the reader has been inscribed first as a member of the crowds, and then as a disciple.99 By being claimed through Logos’ self-referential, auctorial interpretation as His textual “body” or, even as He Himself, the opened up scriptures offer also a transfigured version of the scripture inscribed reader, a reader whose “eyes” have been opened (Luke 24.31) and who lives now as Christ’s own humanity/scripturality, in a resurrectional condition with a resurrectional Christological self-understanding.100 This reader has started to experience the growth of the kingdom not so much within his soul, but in the Logos whose textual body she became when she was interpreted by the church as a disciple of the Logos in this Logos-claimed Scripture. In keeping with the imagery of leavening and with the phenomenology of the essential gestures involved in the exegeticpedagogic process that precedes the opening up of the scriptures (the placing or hiding of the Logos in the Scripture, the inscription of the reader in the leavening Scripture, the growth of the Logos within the Scripture-inscribed reader, who, in turn, grows in the scriptures as a Logos claimed body to become one with the Logos Himself), I shall call this transformation of the Scripture-inscribed reader a turning inside-out.101 By being turned inside-out the reader is not simply placed in the role of the disciple alongside the leaven, that is, of Christ as the scriptural character whom she follows and emulates; instead she has been opened up with this text and has been exposed to an auctorial Logos who claimed her as His. She has been claimed or elected by the messianic address/advent of the Word in the words, which, in spite of its verbal figurative expression, consists in a non-figurative wording.102 The trans-figurative character of physical exegesis consists precisely in the realization of this distinction between the non-figural (spiritual) wording of the Word and His figural (literal) manifestation. It is worthwhile noting that, in the interpretation that I propose, the transfigurative gesture of opening up the scriptures as the turning inside-out of the text represents the reversal of the other transformative gesture of placing or hiding the leaven in the dough of the text. The experience of receiving the leavening scriptures of Emmaus from their auctorial interpreter marks, thus, a transition from the exegete’s hermeneutical inscription in a cryptic, leaven- or

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Logos-concealing text, to the reader’s growing out of this text along with the text’s turning inside-out (the text’s prophetic leavening or opening up, which exposes or reveals the Logos—the leaven —as the awaited messiah). Thus, the whole transition can be said to have been summarized in a single gesture, namely, Christ’s auctorial self-interpretation in the scriptural text as the Messiah on the road to Emmaus.103 While inscribed in this apocalyptic (openingup), leavening text, the reader grows within the text and out of the text, becoming re-authored, i.e., restored, in the image of the text’s author who can be said to be equally growing within the reader.104 Like the ascended Christ, the text-inscribed ordinary disciple can advance further to an enactment of the scriptural role of beloved disciple by identifying with the third measure of flour in the parable (the personal spirit or the eschatological church of the saints). Once the dough of the disciple’s constitution got leavened via her individual spirit, the disciple is not only one spirit with Christ and the Spirit but also one god with God,105 a condition that makes her apt to understand the deuterotic texts of the Bible.106 With the completion of the leavening, the receiver is no longer Scripture inscribed; she can be said to be scripturally as one who has been introduced to the co-auctorial relation that the Logos entertains in the Spirit with the Father. This scripturality beyond the (current) Scripture, will follow thus the intra-Trinitarian dynamics of a filial and neighborly love.107 At this last stage of the progress, one no longer contemplates the exalted Christ as a textual figure (the Christ figural character in the biblical text), neither does one experience Him as a mixed textual character and extra-textual author of the text (the Christcharacter as divinely [self]-authored and [self]-interpreted by Christ Himself as the biblical Logos).108 This is an assimilative, intimate, experience of having grown into Christ’s filiality by the growth of His filiality in me (my growing to be one with the leaven whose growth in me makes me into a leaven).109 I submit that this grown up filiality is liturgical in two different but intimately related ways. First, the disciple has been leavened into a Christ and a son and has been involved in the filial, co-auctorial worship of the Father by the Son outside of the scriptural text in its historical form. As someone who has grown in the likeness of an ascended intextuated Logos, the disciple can be said to have become an eschatological gospel or scripture that no longer refers to God by the mediation of a spirit-

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alienated letter (a condescending annunciation). She is a testimonial and doxological enactment of the Logos as the soteriological address of God to humanity, as God’s messianicity.110 Secondly, the filiality of the perfect disciple can be said to take a missionary form. More than ever the disciple is now part of the church of the saints (another sense of the woman in the leaven parable) whose exegesis communicates the Logos condescendingly to the non-advanced.111 Thus, the perfect disciple identifies with the leaven (the Logos) not only in His Father-seeking divinity (eschatological, doxologic scripturality), but also with His neighbor-seeking condescension (His reaching out to humanity through the pedagogic exegesis of the historical Bible).112 In brief, grown up (leavened) filiality implies responding liturgically before the Father for the homilized/taught neighbor, as the recipient of one’s biblical exegesis. The above interpretation has proposed a view of leavening as the growth of the kingdom through a homiletic-pedagogic exegesis of an ecclesiastic disciple of Christ. According to a few remarks at the beginning of the Commentary on the Gospel according to John, the accomplished exegete and pedagogue acts in a high-priestly capacity. While inscribed on the position of a beloved disciple, the epoptic exegete will become, like John the evangelist, a Christ, and a son,113 that is, a high-priest in the line of Aaron, who emulates Christ as a high-priest in the line of Melchizedek.114 This means that the transfigurative gestures of “hiding-in” and “opening-up” could be read as pedagogic and exegetical actions with a liturgical (doxologic and missionary) value, and consequently, that they stand in need for a pragmatic interpretation, rather than the usual semantic allegorization. If this reading is correct, then the central concern of this study can be reformulated as an interrogation regarding whether or not this high-priestly exegetical and pedagogic liturgy of the Logos, whom the ecclesiastic teacher and homilist emulates, homogenizes the relation between humanity (the homilized or the taught) and God (the glorified Father). To provide an answer, I shall now proceed to a more in depth investigation of exegeticpedagogy as a liturgical performance, paying a particular attention to its transformative effects.

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3 TESTIMONIAL POSTURES 3.1 “Being Placed in” and “Being Put on”. An Analysis of the Emmaus Reference in Origen’s Interpretation of the Atonement Day Liturgy in Lev. 16.11–14 I shall focus now on a different scenario of spiritual progress, namely, on the high priest’s entrance in the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement as Origen discuses it in the 9th Homily in Leviticus.115 [a] But consider the marvelous order of the rites. When he goes into the Holy of Holies the high priest carries with him fire from this altar [i.e., the altar of the whole burnt offerings” in the first sanctuary or “the holy”] and he takes “incense” from this sanctuary. But the garments also with which he was clothed he took from this place. [b] Do you not think that my Lord (Dominus meus), the true high-priest, will see fit to receive from me (a me) also some part “of the finely composed incense,” which he may bring with himself to the Father? Do you not think he finds in me (in me) some small fire and my whole burnt offering burning that he may see fit “to fill his censer with coals” and in these to offer to God the Father “a pleasing odor”? [c1] Blessed is he whose coals of his whole burnt offering he finds so living and so fiery that he may judge them worthy to be placed upon “the altar of incense.” Blessed is he in whose heart (in cuius corde) he finds so subtle, so fine, and so spiritual an understanding (tam spiritalem sensum) and so composed with a diverse sweetness of virtues that he sees fit “to fill his hands” from it and to offer to God the Father the pleasing odor of his understanding (suavem odorem intelligentiae eius). [c2] On the contrary, unfortunate is the soul the fire of whose faith is extinguishing and whose warmth of love is grown cool; to which, when our heavenly high priest comes seeking from it (venerit…quaerens ab ea) fiery and burning coals upon which he can offer incense to the Father, he finds in it dry ashes and cold embers. Such are all who withdraw themselves and stay far from the word of God, lest when they hear the divine sermons they be kindled to faith, grow warm to love, be set on fire for mercy.116

The passage contains (a) a literal exposition of the ritual of the entrance of the high priest in the Holy of Holies, (b) an allegorical application of the literal exposition to the experience of the exegete of this passage, namely to Origen himself, and (c) an allegorical

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application of the passage to (c1) a generic, spiritually-advanced person, and (c2) a generic reader/hearer, who neglects her duty of spiritually minding (mele¢th) the Scripture and the biblical Logos. In a subsequent passage,117 Origen narrows the focus of his exegesis to one aspect of the entrance rites, namely, the high priest’s transference of the fire from the altar of the whole burnt offering in the Holy to the altar of incense in the Holy of Holies. As it turns out, he discovers in this liturgical action an important analogy with the disciple’s experience of hearing and being inflamed by Jesus’ interpretation of the Scriptures on the road to Emmaus. [d] Do you want me to show you how the fire goes out (exeat) from the words of the Holy Spirit and ignites the hearts of the believers? Hear David speaking in the Psalm: “The declaration of the Lord has set him on fire.” (Ps 118.140) And again in the gospel it was written, after the Lord spoke to Cleopas, “Was not our heart burning within us when he opened the Scriptures to us?” (Luke 24.18,32) Whence (unde) will you burn? Whence (unde) will “the coals of fire” be found in you who are never set on fire by the declaration of the Lord, never inflamed by the words of the Holy Spirit? Hear also in another place David himself saying “My heart burned within me and in my meditation (e¦n t$¤ mele¢t$ mou) fire became inflamed.” (Ps 38.4). From where (unde) do you glow? Whence (unde) is the fire kindled in you who never meditate (meditaris) on the divine declarations? On the contrary, what is more unfortunate is that you glow in the spectacles of the circus, in the contests of horses, in the contests of athletes. And so this fire is not from the altar of the Lord (de altari Domini), but is that which is called “an alien fire” and you heard a little earlier that those who brought “a foreign fire before the Lord were destroyed.” (Lev 16.1) You also burn when wrath fills you and when rage inflames you; meantime you burn also with the love of the flesh and you are cast away into the fires of most disgraceful passions. But all this is “an alien fire” and contrary to God, which, without doubt, whoever burns will endure the lot of Nadab and Abiud (Lev 10.1–2).118

The above passage (d) represents an elaboration on the (b) and (c) sections of the first quotation. After the application of the entrance scene to a specific reader/hearer, namely, to Origen, or the exegete himself (b), and its further application to a generic spiritual reader/hearer (c1) as well as to a negligent, non-spiritual one (c2),

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Origen offers the audience an example of negligent or Bibleunmindful behavior, which he then sets in stark contrast to the behavior of spiritually mindful receptors such as David or the disciples who are on the road to Emmaus. The (d) section contains also an important elaboration on the spiritual interpretation of the entrance rites in (c1), especially on the allegorization of the fire. The literal exposition (a) describing the passage of the highpriest from the Holy to the Holy of Holies marks emphatically the terminus a quo and the terminus ad quem the high priest is supposed to pick up and to carry a set of three objects, namely, the fire (actually the burning charcoals), the incense and the liturgical garments.119 Due to the typological references that the high priest’s use of the burning charcoals occasion (Origen takes this gesture as an allusion to Jesus’ words on the road to Emmaus, which set on fire the hearts of the disciples), one of these three objects, namely, the fire, is given particular attention. The terminus a quo for the transportation of the fire is the altar of the whole burnt offering located in the Holy, while the terminus ad quem is the altar of incense in the Holy of Holies.120 In the high priest’s actions of picking up the fire from the altar of the whole burnt offering and carrying it over to the altar of incense, one can distinguish the “from-to” scenario of a liturgical coming or advent (the high priest comes to the altar “seeking from it fiery and burning coals”) and its reversal into a liturgical return (the high priest takes in his censer the burning coals and transports them to the Holy of Holies), which I have discussed in great detail at the beginning of this study.121 The literal exposition is followed by a first application of the passage to the exegete (Origen himself), who now speaks in the first person singular (meus, a me, in me), that is, in his own persona.122 Origen asks his audience two questions regarding his own ability to become a receptor of the spirit (the fire). The questions are laid out, for the most part, in literal terms, with one notable exception, namely the typological rendering of the high priest as the “Lord”123 and as the “Son” of God “the Father.”124 As an advanced exegete, Origen inscribes himself in the text as a provider of the burning charcoals (the virtuous disposition of his soul and the soul’s practical and contemplative God-minding)125 for the whole burnt altar and for the high priest’s censer; also he is a provider of the “finely composed incense” (i.e., the pious and subtle search of the scriptures or biblical exegesis)126 that the high priest will burn on the

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altar of incense in the Holy of Holies. Consequently, as a bearer of the fire (the burning charcoals), the receptor is closely associated first with the altar of the whole burnt offering, which one may construe as the historical, pre-resurrectional humanity of Christ,127 then with the censer, standing for the humanity of the resurrected but not yet ascended Christ,128 and, finally, with the humanity of the ascended Christ, or the altar of incense.129 At the same time, the allegorical application of the scene to the advanced exegete personalizes the previously defined from-to interval as one spanning “from me (i.e., Origen)”—to “the Father,” and explains the high priest’s gesture of taking the charcoals in his censer as indicative of Christ’s filial intercession “for me (Origen)” with His (Christ’s) Father. It is also to be noted that the register of Origen’s discourse has changed in this passage from expositive (a) to addressative-interrogative (b). Origen now embeds the terms of his previous exposition of the liturgical ritual in (a) into a personalized, direct address, to the reader/hearer. Consequently, the switch from an expositive to an addressative-interrogative speech register revises the relation between what, with a contemporary terminology, may be called the semantic and the pragmatic dimensions of Origen’s exegesis of the scene. The main focus of the exegesis of the passage’s expositive part (a) consists in defining the literal sense of the terms to be allegorized and establishing their reference to the historical ritual of the high priest’s entrance in the Holy of Holies. By contrast, in the application under (b) Origen introduces a switch of focus from the semantic clarification of the exposition under (a) to the pragmatic of the homiletic act, from what the text means (semantics), to what the text is supposed to “do” for its receptor (pragmatics). This turn to pragmatics has been made possible by the specific identification of the advanced exegete (Origen) with the burning charcoal on the altar of the whole-burnt offering (his inscription in the biblical text on the position of the charcoal) and his speaking to the reader from the textual role of a bearer of the fire (i.e., the Spirit but also the Word) that the high priest (Christ) will transport to the Holy of Holies (an eschatological completion of the spiritual progress).130 The less advanced reader/hearer is, thus, enjoined to consider and emulate the exemplarity of the exegete’s gesture of self-placement in the biblical text first on the position of Christ’s pre-resurrectional humanity (the Holy with the altar of the whole burnt offering from which the burning charcoal is to

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be picked up),131 then on the position of Christ’s resurrected, but not yet ascended, humanity (the censer in which the burning charcoal will be transported to the altar of incense in the Holy of Holies).132 When carefully considered, the reader/hearer’s emulation of the advanced exegete’s inscription in the text of the passage, first as the burning charcoal resting on the altar of the whole burnt offering, then as the fire transported in the Holy of Holies in the high priest’s censer, may reveal a yet more subtle pragmatics of Origen’s homiletic discourse. By placing himself in the position of the burning charcoal of the altar of the whole burnt offering, Origen presents himself as a direct beneficiary of an approach of the high priest to this altar, i.e., of the Lord’s (his Lord’s) coming from the Father to “pick” him “up.” He renders, thus, the personalized approach of the Lord as a direct address to him, which, as a homilist, he further reports to the members of his audience, to whom he discloses his doubt regarding his readiness to receive such an advent. In this way the audience construes Origen’s report of his personal spiritual welcoming of the high priest’s advent as a reference to an actual encounter with the Lord, or, at least, as an allusion to Origen’s prayerful entreating of the Lord (his Lord) to come (“I ask you, my Lord, to come” becomes, when reported, “Do you, my audience, think that my Lord sees me fit for His advent to me?”). The new pragmatic shift consists in the fact that, from his textual inscription as a potential or actual direct receptor of the high priest, i.e., as the burning charcoal of the altar of the whole burnt offering waiting to be picked up in the priest’s censer, Origen has reinscribed his experience of being directly addressed by the Word into his own direct address to the reader/hearer, offering, thus, his audience a chance to be addressed by the same Word by whom he has been addressed.133 This will further prompt the reader to consider whether or not it would be worthwhile emulating Origen, whose exegesis (the fine incense), thoughts (the charcoal) and the entire personality (the linen coat)134 have been transformed by the Spirit/Word (i.e., have been kindled) through Origen’s inscription in the Word’s textual body (the Bible as a textual altar of the whole burnt offering and as a censer in which Origen has been placed, i.e., has been exegesed as the burning charcoal waiting to be carried over to the Holy of Holies).

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Interestingly enough, the allegoric application of the passage to a generic Bible-mindful reader (c), is set as a discourse of praise (a “doxology,” of sorts), rather than as an interrogative address (b) or a descriptive exposition (a). On this occasion, Origen introduces the allegorization of the altar, the fire, the incense and the coals, merely as a recapitulation of the allegorical analysis of the scene in the preceding passages. Thus, one learns that, by the charcoals of the whole burnt offering, one is to understand the heart (cor,135 translating kardi¢a, a synonym of the intellect or the nou¤j).136 The incense is the activity of the spiritual understanding (sensum, nou¤j), while its “fine composition” represents the diverse Christological virtues that shape the Christian understanding of Scripture and the subtlety of one’s scriptural exegesis.137 In so far as the understanding in the exegete’s heart (the charcoals and the incense) is spiritualized or fiery, that is, permeated by the spirit (fire) that “goes out from the words of the Holy Spirit,” or the Bible, the reader’s noetic-spiritual activity is adopted by Christ and transformed into Christ (see the high priest’s gesture of filling one of his hands with the incense and carrying in the other hand the censer with the burning charcoal, while dressed in the linen outfit) to the effect that it is being given a filial-doxological turn (it becomes the Son’s offering of the burning incense, i.e., the exegete’s spiritualized thought, mind and whole being, to the Father).138 In this sense, Origen’s blessing (“doxology”) of the receptive reader/hearer discloses its more profound rationale as a blessing of those whom the Logos- and Spirit-guided exegesis transformed into a filial Christological doxology of the Father (those whose whole life is a filial praise of the Father). The counter-example of the disciple who is not mindful of the activity of the Spirit and the Logos, that is, the one who lapses from a constant spiritual meditation of God’s natural and textual economy, provides some enlightening insights into the above allegorization. The one, whose charcoal is extinguished (the cooled down nou¤j become a yuxh¢ or a soul)139 “withdraws” from “the word of God,” that is, from the divine sermons (sermones divinos) and from the biblical exegesis of spiritually advanced exegetes such as Origen or those whom Origen has mentioned before as blessed. Ultimately, it is not the alienation from the exegete that produces the cooling of one’s heart but the alienation from the one in whose person the text inscribed exegete speaks, that is, the intextuated

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biblical Logos.140 By contrast, we should surmise that a strict observance of the spiritual guidance of the exegete implies an inscription of the hearer/reader in the allegorized text,141 where the encounter with Christ not just as biblical character but also as the auctorial biblical Logos intextuated in the words of the Bible, leads to an assumption of the reader by this Logos and her becoming a biblical “body” of the Logos or a Bible.142 As I have shown, the most accomplished form that this Bible-turned Christomorphic disciple takes is that of a filial doxology. Thus, withdrawing from a spiritual minding or meditation of the Bible means neglecting one’s design of being one (i.e., “of one” textual body) with the one who made the Bible his own body, namely the Logos. Given that scripturality is, due to Logos’s intextuation, a fundamental condition of humanity, which needs to be minded at all times by a sort of permanent existential exegetics (one’s stable inscription in the text that one reads), failing to spiritually mind the Bible as the Word’s textual body is failing to live up to one’s scriptural-Christologic design, living against one’s design of being according to the scripturally intextuated Logos, neglecting one’s ultimate condition of a Father glorifying son. Before discussing the final scriptural-doxological reshaping of humanity, I would like to return to the analogy that Origen establishes between the liturgical ritual of the high priest’s entrance into the Holy of Holies and the scene of the disciple’s encounter with Christ on the way to Emmaus. On Origen’s interpretation, the fire that kindles the charcoal of the altar of the whole-burnt offering in the holy stands for “the fire that goes out from the words of the Holy Spirit and ignites the hearts of the believers.”143 Since this is also the fire that was kindled in the disciples on the road to Emmaus when Christ “opened the scriptures” (Luke 24.32) to them, one may surmise that the liturgical operation by which the charcoals of the whole burnt offering are kindled stands for the resurrected Christ’s exegesis of the scriptures, which the Emmaus disciples have witnessed. Like these disciples, Origen’s hearers/readers are expected to be “inflamed” and transformed by his spiritual exegesis.144 The analogy holds in so far as the altar of the whole burnt offering is closely associated with the body of the incarnate Logos, including His textual body, or the current Bible, and the fiery charcoals that designate the intense existential meditation of the Bible, even to the point of one’s inscription into the Bible as a disciple of

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Christ.145 However, how is one to relate to the Emmaus scene the next step in this liturgical progress, namely the transferring of the fire to the high-priest’s censer? I would like to suggest that the transferring of the lit charcoals to the censer represents the beginning of a second cycle in the liturgical process. While the first cycle consisted in the high priest’s actions of going to the altar of the whole burnt offering and taking or picking up from this altar certain objects, more precisely, the incense and the burning charcoals, the second cycle consists in taking these objects from the altar of the whole burnt offering into the Holy of Holies. The beginning of this second cycle is marked by a double gesture, which is not only a taking-from but also a transferring-to or an intro-duction, a placing-in. When allegorized in the terms of the Emmaus scene, this double gesture discloses two essential aspects about Origen’s transformative exegesis. Most of all, one needs to distinguish between 1) the simple exegesis, which sets the audience’s hearts/minds on fire or places a spiritual fire in people’s hearts, as an equivalent of the kindling of the charcoal of the first liturgical cycle,146 and 2) an advanced exegesis that inscribes the inflamed receptor of the first exegesis in the very text whose exegesis has set her on fire.147 This complex exegesis corresponds to the placing of the burning charcoal in the censer of the linencladded high priest (the incarnate-, intextuate-Logos)148 at the beginning of the second liturgical cycle. If my interpretation is correct, then the censer, which is Logos’ resurrected body, stands not just for any spiritually exegesed Bible, which, according to Origen, is Logos’ textual body, but for the “resurrectional” scriptures of Emmaus which the auctorial Logos interprets149 or “opens” to the disciples, disclosing their prophetic reference to Himself or, in Origen’s interpretation, disclosing that by being His body, they are He.150 If the Emmaus scriptures that Jesus opens to the disciples are his self-exegesis as his own scriptural-being (Logos’ scripturality, so to speak), then the fire that kindles the heart of the receptor and inscribes her as a disciple in this resurrectional, self-interpreting Bible can be said to have made her into a Christ interpreted Bible, into a textual body of the resurrected Christ or even into a Christ.151 As one can easily notice, now it is no longer the exegetical fire that is being introduced into the receptor, but the kindled receptor that is being introduced (received) into the censer of the Bible as the self interpreting Spirit/Word.

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The transformative reversal from being kindled by Christ to burning as a Christ, has been explained so far only in a general outline and solely in regard to its exegetical dimension. The exegetical general outline presents this liturgical image as a transition from one’s spiritually-inspired decision to interpret oneself into the biblical text (the simple exegesis mentioned above) to being interpreted by Christ as his, i.e., as His own textual “body,” and getting transformed with Christ’s ascent from a humble to an exalted condition (the complex exegesis mentioned above). In a historical-exegetical perspective the reversal from an interpreter of Logos’ textual body to being resurrectionally interpreted by the biblical Logos as His textual body, is a particular kind of prophetic operation. Since the scriptures that Christ interprets on the way to Emmaus are being read in a prophetic key (Luke 24.27), while the ultimate interpretative act is the very presence of the one about whom the Scripture prophesize, that is, of the messianic interpreter himself, the exegetical reversal can be considered the end of prophecy and the beginning of an eschatological experience which, at the time of the Emmaus event, is only episodic or intermittent. Thus, in the progress from the Law to the prophets to the deuteroseis, this scene marks the accomplishment of the prophetic rereading of the Law as a type of the deuteroseis and as the opening of the secondary cycle of an advanced vision of the truth (the “opened” deuterotic texts).152 Mutatis mutandis the same can be said about Origen’s sequence of the Gospels (Matthew-Luke, Mark and John). Markan prophecy finds an end in the Johanine vision after reinterpreting the more literal minded gospels of Matthew and Luke.153 In more general terms, the Emmaus scriptures and Jesus’ self-exegesis in/as these scriptures mark the neotestamentary re-reading of the Old Testament and introduce the reader to an eschatological scripturality (the eternal Gospel), which I shall discuss presently.154 From a textual-exegetical perspective the Emmaus scene marks the consumption of a psychic revisiting of the literal sense of the Bible and the opening towards the resurrectional assumption of the letter in the Spirit or the integration of the split, homonymous Bible in the auctorial Logos.155 Likewise, pedagogically, Emmaus marks the end of the physical revision of ethics and the beginning of epoptics.156 As it became clear during the above analysis, this progress from the Law to the deuteroseis, from the Synoptics to John, from the letter to the spirit and from ethics to epoptics, is not linear.

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Origen interprets Emmaus as a sort of spiritual “loop” in an allegedly linear spiritual progress, a kind of radical reversal or turning inside-out of the humanity of the exegete-disciple, who, in a Pauline assessment, no longer lives for herself, but rather for Christ who lives in her.157 The exegete no longer pursues the Logos as an outsider of the Bible but the biblically intextuated Logos claims him/her as His pedagogically and exegetically articulated scriptural body. Likewise, the disciple no longer learns from the teacher’s curricular teaching, but she is being “taught,” that is, she is being didactically exhibited or displayed to the unadvanced as an embodiment of a Christological teaching or curriculum.158 In brief, one no longer grows up in a linear, ascendant pursuit of God, but rather one is brought up or leavened by God’s growth within her. Reinterpreting a term used by Levinas, I have called this exegeticexistential condition “being turned inside-out” (out of oneself, out of one’s own hermeneutical initiative, and onto God as a Fatherseeking son and neighbor-serving minister). As one may easily notice, this reversal in the exegetic, pedagogic and liturgical phenomenology of the spiritual progress is only the beginning of a second cycle of advancement. In liturgical terms, the fire that the high priest places in the censer that he holds in his left hand and the fine incense that he holds in his right hand don’t get to be mixed until after he has entered the Holy of Holies (has gone past “the curtain”),159 and has placed them both on the altar of incense (Lev 16.13).160 In an allegorical interpretation, the Christ-formed, virtuous, well-ordered and appropriately tended mind161 (the kindled charcoal that was placed in the censer)162 gets to fully exercise its spiritual, Christological exegesis163 (the incense)164 only when its filial doxology (the fragrance of the incense that is burnt on the fiery charcoals brought from the Holy)165 is addressed to the Father in/through the high priest, i.e., the exalted, ascended Christ (the “cloud of the incense,” which raises from the altar of incense in the Holy of Holies and covers “the mercy-seat that is upon the covenant”—Lev 16.14).166 The allegory seems to suggest that the process that started with the reversal of the human act of interpreting into “being interpreted,” or, actually, into being interpreted by Christ Himself as His own or even as He Himself, has a development that will take us beyond this Emmausian, selfreferential, self-interpretative loop167 into a doxological-filial opening toward the Father.168 In the following, I shall offer a tentative

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reconstruction of Origen’s understanding of this last stage of the ascent using a selection of Origenian texts, which allegorize the last segment of the atonement liturgy. 3.2 “Being Laid Out Before”. An Analysis of the Interpretation of the Atonement Offering in Origen’s Exegesis of Lev 16.11–14 In the Homilies on Leviticus Origen presents the last segment of the atonement ritual as follows: There are two sanctuaries in the Tent of Witness or in the Temple of the Lord. The first is where ‘the altar of the whole burnt offerings’ (Exod 29.25) is, which is kindled with perpetual fires, in which it is permitted only the priests to stand and to celebrate the rites and ministries of sacrifices. Neither the Levites nor any other person is granted access beyond these. But the second sanctuary is interior, separated from this only by ‘a veil.’ Behind that veil were placed ‘the ark of the testimony’ and ‘the mercy seat’ above which were mounted ‘two cherubim’ and ‘the altar of incense’ (Exod 26.33, 34; 25.18; 30.6) Into this sanctuary ‘once a year’ (Exod 30.10; Lev 16.34) whoever was high priest went in first, after he offered offerings of atonement, about which we explained above. Having each hand filled, one ‘with a censor of coals’ and the other ‘with the finely composed incense’ (Lev 16.12), immediately, when he had entered, ‘the smoke’ would rise from the coals with incense placed on top and fill the whole sanctuary so that ‘the cloud’ (Lev 16.12) of incense might cover the sight of the holy things which the entry of the high priest had revealed.169

The sources for the above description are Lev 16.12–13170 and Exod 25.10–23. In the third book of his Commentary on Romans, Origen will return to these two biblical passages, offering a detailed allegorical explanation of the ritual actions and the objects that belong in the Holy of Holies. According to this explanation, the propitiatory or the seat of mercy represents “the holy and pure soul of Jesus.”171 The two cherubim are the Word and the Holy Spirit, which “dwell (…) in the soul of Jesus.”172 The ark of the covenant, on which the propitiatory is seated represents the “holy flesh” in which the soul of Jesus dwells,173 while the testimonies are the marks of the suffering inflicted on Christ’s flesh as tokens of the fulfillment of the prophecies.174 The one who will speak to the high-priest from “above the propitiatory, from between the two

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Cherubim” (Exod 25.22) is God (the Father).175 The “smoke” or the “‘cloud’ of incense” that was burnt on the kindled charcoals represents the high priest’s (Christ’s) doxology of the Father (an offering of His thoughts and actions) which is at the same time a testimonial way of life and an existential spiritual exegesis.176 The other function of the advanced testimonial exegesis of Christ (the cloud of incense) is one of protecting the non-advanced from an offensive (“deadly”) exposure to the mystery of the Trinity. In conclusion, on Origen’s interpretation, Christ appears at the same time as (a) the altar, in an extended sense, consisting of the ark, the propitiatory, the altar of incense and one of the Cherubim, (b) the priest who officiates the sacred ritual, and (c) the offering, consisting of the Christ-assimilated disciple or the burning charcoal and the incense. The following schema represents an outline of the distribution of the liturgical objects on the altar in the Holy of Holies and of Origen’s allegorization of each of these objects: Voice (God the Father) cherub 1 cherub 2 (the Son/Word) (the Holy Spirit) The propitiatory and the objects related to the altar of Incense (the soul of Jesus with its thoughts) The ark and testimonies (the body of Jesus and the marks of His Passion) The main orientation of the offering gesture is from Christ (the high-priest, the altar and the offering itself) to the Father (the smoke of incense or the prayer). In response to the filial doxology of Christ, God the Father will speak to the ascended Christ and the Christ-assimilated disciple “from above the propitiatory, in between the cherubim,” that is, in the intimate sociality of the Trinity.177 Another orientation of the offering gesture is toward the nonadvanced who are protected from offense by the cloud of incense that blocks the inquisitive vision of the altar and of the Trinity. An alternative interpretation of the two cherubim can be found in Origen’s Homilies in Ezekiel where they appear allegorized

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as the world and the soul. In a cosmological perspective, the four faces of the Cherubim (Ezek 1.5–10) represent the community of the hyper-ouranial beings, which includes the higher angels and the soul of Jesus; the heavenly beings are the lower angels and the saints; the earthly creatures stand for humanity in its actual condition, and the infernal creatures are the demons.178 The psychological interpretation equates the four faces of the cherubim with the tripartite soul (the appetent [concupiscentia; e©piqumi¢a], the irascible [iracundia; qumo¢j] and the mind [rationale; nou¤j]) to which one must add the individual spirit (spiritus; pneu¤ma).179 One can represent the distribution of these four parts of the cherubim as follows: Eagle (spirit; trans-celestial beings) Human (mind; celestial beings) Bull Lion (appetent soul; infernal beings) (irrascible soul; earthly beings) The aspect of the soul/world that is placed at the left is more pronouncedly lapsarian, while those aspects at the right designate those beings that have strayed less from the purity of the protologic creation.180 The element that is placed above all the others is the spirit (pneu¤ma), which humans have as a deposit from God and which will play an important role in the reconstitution of humanity at the time of the Resurrection.181 It is easy to notice that the interpretation of the cherub as the soul in The Homilies on Ezekiel does not match the interpretation of the cherubim in The Commentary on Romans; instead, it comes close to what The Commentary on Romans designates as the propitiatory, namely Christ’s soul. Is there an explanation for this exegetical inconsistency? I would suggest that, based on my presentation of Origen’s interpretation of the liturgical events in the Holy, one would not need to acknowledge an inconsistency here. One may remember that the linen-vested high priest, who holds the censer in one hand, while holding the finely composed incense in the other hand, is none other than Christ after His Resurrection but before the Ascension. Given that the high-priest celebrating the liturgy in the inner sanctuary (the Holy of Holies), is at the same time the

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altar of this celebration, that is, the ark, the propitiatory (with the altar of incense) and one of the cherubim, one may conclude that, like the linen-cladded, coal- and incense-bearing high priest who officiates this liturgy, the complex ark-propitiatory-cherubim in the Holy of Holies represents the eschatological-ascensional state of Christ. However, according to a description of the triduum paschale in The Dialogue with Heraclides, the Ascension is said to complete a process of integration of the body, the (tripartite) soul and the individual spirit of Christ (i.e., the Holy Spirit) with the Logos, which further allows the ascended Christ a “return” to His full Trinitarian and filial communion with the Father (His being one god with God).182 This integration serves as a model for the unification and spiritualization of the human being at the Resurrection or, in the language of The Homilies on Ezekiel, the unification of the “human” cherub (the tripartite soul and the individual spirit) with the Logos, who is also the “divine” cherub of The Commentary on Romans. In brief, given that the Logos is one of the cherubim on the propitiatory, one may call this transformative unification of the human being (the “human” cherub and the propitiatory) a form of becoming one with the ascended Christ or becoming a Christ like Christ (the “divine” cherub). This cherubic condition is that of the advanced spiritual person or the high priest according to Aaron, which is to be distinguished from the high priest according to Melchizedek, or Christ Himself.183 In conclusion, I would like to submit that the interpretation of the cherub in The Homilies on Ezekiel represents a preliminary, historical view on the human soul, followed by a full, eschatological qewri¢a of the divinized humanity (the altar in the Holy of Holies) of the Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans. Thus, the designation of the soul of Christ and of the Logos by the same name of “cherub” has to be considered as a significant use of homonymy, which is meant to draw the exegete’s attention to the limitations of her historical understanding of the eschatological events.184 It is time now to address the need for a more synthetic description of the eschatological posture of “being laid out before” God the Father “under the watch of” the Son and the Holy Spirit or the two cherubim. One way of approach would be to start from the description of the previous posture, namely, that of “being taken in” the Bible as Logos’ self-interpreted “body.” While the Emmaus scene can be seen as a preliminary transformation of the

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text-inscribed exegete in the image of the author (the Logos) who interprets Himself as the condescending incarnate/intextuated Logos (the Logos as Image-for-us), the secondary development of the Emmaus event could appear as an equivalent of the Ascension, and could be said to mark the transformation of the text-inscribed exegete in the likeness of the author (the Logos as the exalted Truthfor-the-Father). Thus, in contrast with the iconic transformation, which is reflexive (a self-exegesis) but also condescendent (a selfinterpretation of a condescending author as a character in the text and as the text as a whole), the homoiotic transformation is ascendant testimonial (the advanced exegete is laid out before the Father and is addressed by the Voice of the Father “from between” the cherubim). This posture of being laid out before the Father takes the form of a doxology; in fact, the very existence of the exegete becomes at this stage doxological.185 The exegete becomes not only a Bible but an eternal Gospel, while doxology emerges as the resurrectional-eschatological scripturality of the saint.186 For the saint, Christ no longer opens up the scriptures (the Emmaus gesture); instead, he lays open the saint as an eschatological scripture, before the Father, in a posture of filial adoration (doxology). I have tried to formulate this testimonial doxology as a posture, which is no longer a denomination for an existential condition (kata¢stasij,187 upo¢stasij188), a dramatic or narrative profile or character (pro¢swpon),189 or a qualification of substance (upo¢stasij),190 but rather a status that one is conferred by grace and that one maintains by responding doxologically to this gift.191 Switching from exegesis to pedagogy, the phenomenology of the gestures and postures of the liturgy in the Holy of Holies seems to call for a revision of the previous description of the advanced learning as visitive or epoptic.192 As it turns out, this e©poyi¢a is not primarily an act of seeing, but rather one of being seen (being watched by the cherubim) and being addressed by the Voice of the Father. If one has to refer to this final stage as a form of sight, this sight is one’s visual response for having been seen; likewise, if one has to refer to this final stage as a form of speech, this speech is a doxological response to being addressed or spoken to. Both postures convey, thus, a sense of passivity on the part of humanity, who is expected to be testimonially responsive, before it gets to become exegetically or pedagogically active or inquisitive.

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4 LEAVENING (2): A CATASTROPHIC GROWTH. A REVISION OF THE UNIFORM PROGRESS THEORY OF SALVATION The above description of the two testimonial postures could now be used to reshape the rather uniform image of the spiritual progress proposed in the second chapter of this study. In light of the two fundamental postures of exegetical discipleship described in III.3, the uniformity of the ascent appears to be seriously undermined. Within the scenario of the spiritual progress, the postures of “being placed in” and “being laid out before” function as moments of reversal, which delegitimize the belief in a primacy of activity over passivity, of interpreting over being interpreted, of addressing over being addressed, etc. I shall call such a moment of reversal a “catastrophe,” which is a free elaboration on Aristotle’s use of this term in Poetics 11, 1452a1,193 and I shall adjust the previous description of the exegetical and pedagogic, spiritual growth in light of the transformative effects of the two, above-mentioned catastrophes. Since the “human” cherub, which the Word (the high priest) transports from the holy to the Holy of Holies (the linen robe, charcoals and incense) is an equivalent of the ark and the propitiatory, while the Word Himself is one of the “divine” cherubim, which are placed on the propitiatory, and which “spread out” their wings over it,194 it would be very tempting, indeed, to read the liturgical ritual as an allegory of a uniform, cosmo-theological and historical-eschatological progress meant to homogenize a historically-situated being which is according to God’s image with the true eschatological God in whose Image this being is by the mediation of the Image itself or the Logos. On this reading the created, human cherub, or the propitiatory, could be said to gradually become one with the divine, uncreated, cherub (the Word), who, in turn, is one with God (the Father) who speaks from above the propitiatory, “in between” the two cherubim (Exod 25.22). Although tempting in its coherent simplicity, this reading of the Origenian spiritual progress as a uniform mimetic ascent is fundamentally insufficient and, as I would like to suggest, adding my voice to the previous scholarship on this matter, it misses essential, distinctive aspects of the Origenian approach.195 In the following, I shall refer again to Origen’s exegesis of the atonement liturgy to substantiate my assertion.

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Let us turn first to a few aspects of the liturgical narrative, which do not fit well with the thesis of a linear progress through a homogenous, mimetically-structured, hierarchy of being. Among the liturgical events in the Holy, the symbolic representative of historical humanity or the linen outfit of the high priest (the Word) is said to have been “put on”; it is this gesture of “putting” humanity “on” that allows humanity to be transported by the Logos from the Holy (this world) to the Holy of Holies (the world to come). At the same time, the gesture of “putting on” is followed by a double gesture of “taking in,” namely, by the introduction of the burning charcoal in the high priest’s censer, and the filling of the high priest’s hand with incense (Lev 15.12). This gesture indicates, as was already mentioned, the assumption of humanity’s deeds and thoughts by the incarnate Logos.196 It needs to be noted that both gestures (the putting-on and the taking-in) are initiatives of a coming, messianic Logos (the high-priest approaching the altar of the whole burnt offering) in relation to whom humanity appears in a passive-expectant posture (humanity is the one who is being put on and taken in).197 Keeping in mind that in order to “put on” humanity and to “take” it “in” (to assume her deeds and thoughts), the Logos had to switch from a condition of truth-for-the-Father to one of image-for-us, one can trace back the ascent, which these gestures induced in humanity, to a disposition of the Logos, namely, that of an “immemorial” condescension.198 Moreover, if one were to take Logos’ iconic “for us” orientation as an expression of His love rather than as a determination of His nature (an ontological versatility),199 humanity or the “according to the Image” can be said to have been given the occasion to be “according” or attuned to the Image by this Image’s compassionate elective address, and therefore it can be said to be iconic only insofar as it has been lovingly chosen to be addressed by the Logos. In this interpretation, humanity emerges as iconic only insofar as it emerges as an addressee of Logos’ condescending address. The passive-expectant humanity assumes its iconicity only by responding to the agapic coming of the Logos to it as Logos’ immemorial, messianic iconicity, that is, by welcoming the Logos as an Image-of-God-for-us. Here one can detect a revised, more pregnant definition of iconicity as a form of responsiveness to a Love address.200 As the above interpretation suggests, iconicity can be read otherwise than as an ontological condition. Humans are seen as

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iconic only insofar as they have been summoned by the Logos to respond to His condescending Love, which Love is itself iconic because it represents Logos’ filial responsiveness to the Father. The Icon’s advent (Logos’s coming as image for us) calls humanity to an iconic existence or rather, following the imagery of the introduction of the charcoal in the censer, inserts humanity in Logos’ divine iconicity. Thus, iconicity is not a mimetic-ontological determination of humanity or of the Logos as a cosmic entity (a cosmic Mind) but rather, an immemorial event or, as one may also call it, a gracing gesture, while welcoming Logos’ gesture places humanity in a graced iconic posture, that of being “taken in” or “put on.”201 As concerns the liturgical events in the Holy of Holies I shall refer to two gestures that seem to escape the linear progress description, namely the disposition of the cherubim on the propitiatory and the address of the Father “from above the propitiatory, from between the cherubim (Exod 25.22).” The two cherubim or the Word and the Spirit do not simply sit each at one end of the propitiatory (Exod 25.18–19); they also have their wings spread out, overshadowing the mercy seat.202 Origen interprets this disposition of the cherubim as the Word and the Spirit’s “dwelling in” or “being with” the advanced spiritual person (a “walking with” us while “dwelling within” us [e©mperipath¢sw] along the lines set by Lev 26.12).203 This indicates a permanence of God’s companionship, which only the soul of Jesus enjoys in an accomplished fashion.204 The position of the two cherubim would not be fully interpreted without taking into account their orientations or postures; the cherubim are said to “face one to another,” their “faces” “turned toward the mercy seat” (Exod 25.20) or the soul of Jesus. Origen explains the effect of this posture of the cherubim (looking downwards on the propitiatory while keeping facing each other) as the soul’s being infused (infunditur) “by the Son of God and the Holy Spirit” with “an understanding of divinity” which becomes “united and harmonious with it [the soul].”205 Again, one can notice here the receptive or expectant passivity of a soul who gains its raison d’être by being infused with a Trinitarian sociality of understanding or mind (sensus).206 This infusion is a (con)descendant advent oriented along the lines of Logos’ iconic “for us,” but equally directed by Logos’ ascendant “for the Father,” or His divinity (diuinitas), which He shares with the other cherub or the Holy

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Spirit.207 On account of this infusion the soul enters a sort of doxologic sociality, a collegiality of liturgical praise directed to the Father in the company of the Father-praising Son and Holy Spirit.208 However, this doxology is the response to God’s (the Father’s) manifestation to the advanced spiritual person “from that place” (i.e., from the propitiatory “in the midst of the cherubim”), which takes the form of a direct address (“I shall speak to you,” (Exod 25.22). The soul is, thus, immemorially promised that she will have been made into an addressee of a paternal speech, with no identifiable (“visible”) addressor (just a “voice”). By becoming assimilated with the ascended Christ (as a being “taken into” Christ’s iconicity in the sense that I proposed above), the addressee responds to the paternal speech with a filial-spiritual doxology (the total exposure to the promised address of the Father). However, this doxology bears the trace of the immemorial “for the Father” orientation of the Son as truth, that is, of a posture of the Son that is otherwise than iconic. In other words, the Son interprets the Christ-inscribed saint or the high priest in the Spirit as His own or even as Himself (the ark and the propitiatory), to the effect that the saint becomes able to respond to the paternal address by a filial doxology which is not only iconic (according to the Logos as condescendant Image), but also aletheic (being according to the Logos as ascendant truth-for-the-Father).209 In biblical terms, this aletheic doxology would have to be the likeness, which was promised to humanity at the time of its creation (Gen 1.27).210 In light of this aletheic likeness, iconicity gains a new doxologic sense, as the forGod/to-God responsiveness of a spiritual son, which is radically different from the mimetic-ontological disposition of humanity in a uniform, cosmo-theological hierarchy of being.211 In conclusion, the liturgical postures of being “put on/taken in” (by the high priest) and “being laid out before” to be “addressed by” (the Father) seem to disrupt the intentional and temporal continuity of the progress of humanity as a steady conatus toward God. Instead, progress appears as a gift of iconicity and likeness emerging in the discovery that one has been immemorially placed in the position of an addressee of a Love-Word. The history of this disruption can be briefly traced as follows.

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First, there is the inscription of humanity in the Logos (the charcoal taken in the high priest’s censer), which, as it was shown above, corresponds to Christ’s post-resurrectional/pre-ascensional self-interpretation in the scriptures on the road to Emmaus. This stage marks a redefinition of iconicity, outside of its mimeticontological presuppositions in the following manner. The progress of the saint bears the traces of the immemorial versatility of a Logos who is under no ontic necessity to switch from being Truth for the Father to being Image for us, but does so on the sole basis of a charitable-missionary mandate of the Father. This switch revealing Logos’ being-a-coming “for us” happens out of pure charity and is experienced as a form of testimonial-responsiveness (the burning hearts of the disciples on the road to Emmaus) to the Father through, in, and even as, the filiality of the Son. Iconicity is, thus, something that immemorially happens to humans insofar as they are elected to respond to an ever a-coming Logos. In this sense, iconicity is reinterpreted as a meta-ontological posture, that of being inscribed in Christ as the “us” of His iconic “for us” condescension, which can be followed both in an incarnational and in an intextuational manner (the Logos immemorially takes those for whom He is an Image as His humanity as he takes or interprets the Bible in whom the disciples are inscribed as about Him and even as being Him). Secondly, there is the Ascension as a laying out of the offering (Christ’s humanity) under the watch of the cherubim (the Word and the Spirit) followed by the address of the voice (God the Father). The iconicity of the offered human being appears here enhanced by a likeness that is not mimetic. In Christ’s self-offering, humanity is being given a fundamental passivity, that of addressees of a paternal addressor, who appeals to their fundamental (although not essential) filiality.212 In other words, filial likeness appears more like a form of human responsiveness to the advent of God (the Father) through/in the Son and as humanity’s posture of being inscribed in a more than condescendant Logos (the Logos as an Image-for-us); this is the posture of one who has been inscribed in the ascended Logos (the Logos as Truth-for-the-Father). Christ brings this saint before the Father to be directly addressed by the Father and readies her to respond as an angelic (cherubic-seraphic) son.213 As will be presently shown, neither the iconicity of the first posture, nor the likeness of the second posture, is a simple mimetic relation of an image to its prototype; they are instead testimonial

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disruptions of the ontic hierarchy and of its ontological principle (mimesis), through a divine coming of Christ as filial-neighborly charity. * It is now time to inquire about the way in which the exegete experiences these reversals of the spiritual progress, which I have called by the name of “spiritual catastrophes.” As one might surmise, this experience can be neither representational (empirical, visual), nor purely intellectual, although nothing prevents its being registered in a conceptual or visual form. After all, the advent of the Logos inscribes its trace in the human concepts and words, and it is the pursuit of this trace that confers a spiritual-testimonial character upon one’s exegesis. In the following section of this chapter I shall present the catastrophes, which were said to be enacted by the gestures of the Logos, as the occurrence of two ineffable feelings. As it will be shown, these feelings are not empirically psychological but rather spiritual, insofar as they erupt from the breakdown of representational conceptualization during what Origen calls the physical experience of judgment and the epoptic experience of love.

5 TESTIMONIAL FEELINGS 5.1 Lost Love Kept Current in Spirit. The Kindling of the Heart (Luke 24.32) as a Wound of Love (Cant 2.5) One of the senses that the fire takes in Origen’s allegorization of the atonement liturgy is that of “the declaration (to£ lo¢gio£n; eloquium) of the Lord” (Ps 118.140).214 Origen interprets “the declaration of the Lord” either as the Bible, that is, “the words (verba) of the Holy Spirit,”215 or as an authoritative exegesis of the scriptures, such as that of Jesus on the road to Emmaus,216 or even as the inspired exegetical teaching of Jesus’ followers.217 According to Origen, the “declarations of the Lord” or the “words” of the Bible or the teaching of biblical exegesis inflame the hearer by placing in her heart the transformative fire of the Spirit.218 At the same time, Origen connects the “words” or “declarations” of the Lord219 with the arrow mentioned in Isa 49.2;6 (“He has made me as an elected arrow [be¢loj e©klekto£n; sagittam electam], and in his quiver He has

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kept me. And He said to me: ‘it is a great thing for You to be called my servant.’”).220 The association of Ps 118.40 with Isa 49.2;6 is highly relevant, insofar as it allows a construal of Jesus’ exegetical “declaration,” including the self-exegesis that inflamed the disciples’ hearts on the road to Emmaus, as a sort of arrow, while the reception of this declaration appears as a wound. By the same token Jesus himself as the incarnate-intextuate self-interpreting Word or Declaration can be said to be both the wounding arrow and the archer. The aforementioned train of associations constitute the basis on which Origen establishes yet another connection, namely, that between the experience of the disciples on the road to Emmaus and the experience described by the bride in Cant 2.5 as “being wounded by love.”221 Consequently, as the following quotation attests, being set afire by Jesus’ self-exegesis and being wounded by love can now be considered one and the same event: How beautiful, how fitting it is to receive a wound from Love! One person receives the dart of fleshly love, another is wounded by earthly desire; but do you lay bare your members and offer yourself to the chosen dart, the lovely dart; for God is the archer indeed. Hear what the Scripture says of this same dart; or rather, that you may marvel even more, hear what the dart Himself says: He hath made me as a chosen arrow [be¢loj e©klekto£n; sagittam electam], and in his quiver He hath kept me. And He said to me: ‘it is a great thing for Thee to be called my servant.’ Understand what the arrow says and in what manner He is chosen by the Lord. How blessed is it to be wounded by this dart! Those men who talked together, saying to each other: Was not our heart burning within us in the way, whilst He opened to us the Scriptures? had been wounded by this dart. If anyone is wounded by our discourse, if any is wounded by the teaching of the Divine Scripture, and can say, ‘I have been wounded by love,’ perhaps he follows both the former and the latter. But why do I say ‘perhaps’? I offer a clear explanation.222

This passage establishes the following equivalences: the archer appears as God (Deus) who is also known to be Love (charitas);223 the arrow is either God’s chosen son,224 or Jesus225 as the one who speaks to the disciples on the road to Emmaus, or the discourse (sermo) of the authoritative exegetes of the church, or the teaching (magisterium) of the Scripture. The wounded bride stands for the disciples,226 or the hearer/reader of the Scripture and of the authoritative scriptural exegesis. The other passages in which Origen

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refers to Cant 2.5 elaborate further on these associations. The archer can be also construed as the Father227 or the Word;228 the arrow is also said to be the Word229 as Image and as Wisdom;230 the Son;231 Christ;232 the Savior;233 or Moses, the prophets and the apostles.234 The wounded bride is also said to be the church;235 the soul of the advanced, epoptic, disciple,236 and the “interior man” (2 Cor 4.16) who bears the “image of the heavenly” (1 Cor 15.49).237 Let us now parallel the experience of the wound of love with the experience of getting inflamed by hearing Jesus interpreting the scriptures on the road to Emmaus, using as a third point of reference the inscription of the disciple in Christ as the burning charcoal carried by the high priest in the Holy of Holies. As Crouzel has rightly noticed, there are some relevant difficulties in interpreting the wound of love, especially insofar as the allegorization of the wound is concerned.238 In an interesting passage of Against Celsus,239 the “wound” (trau¤ma) is said to be “the imprint” (tu¢poj) of the Word-Christ himself” or “the Christ in each of us from Christ the Word” (to£n e©n e¥ka¢st% Xristo£n a©po£ Xristou¤ lo¢gou).240 One can recognize here the gesture of “placing in,” which was discussed above in relation to at least three situations, namely, the insertion of the leaven into the dough; the exegetical introduction of the spiritual fire in the disciple’s hearts, and the kindling of the coals of the altar of the whole burnt offering. Following this moment of internalization (the wound as the outcome of being hit by an arrow), there are two other moments, which in Origen’s interpretation acquire all the features of a reversal or a catastrophe. One can note these two reversals in Origen’s analysis of the embrace scene in Cant 2.6 (“His left hand is under my head, and His right hand shall embrace me”).241 In accordance with Prov 3.16, the left hand of the bridegroom (the Logos) is His condescendent posture, materialized in the Incarnation and the Passion,242 while his right hand is an exalted posture, including his preexistence with the Father and His ascensional-eschatological condition.243 The first catastrophe in this scene consists in the inclusion of the arrow-/Logos-wounded bride in the wounding arrow (the embracing Logos), that is, the turning of the gesture of “placing in” into a posture of “being placed in,” as it was the case in the placing of the charcoal in the high-priest’s censer or the inscription of the disciples in the scriptures that the self-interpreting Christ exegeses on the road to Emmaus.244 The

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other catastrophe in the “wound of love” scene is more difficult to trace. One could start by noticing that the arrow’s initial condition is that of being “kept” in the Father’s “quiver” (Isa 49.2). If the embrace in Cant 2.6 implies an assimilation of the disciple not only with the condescending Christ (the launched arrow) but also with the exalted Christ (the arrow resting in the Father’s quiver), one can expect Logos’ embrace to offer the disciple to the Father as a son (the equivalent of the posture of being “laid out before” in the atonement ritual), which would further mean an introduction of the disciple in the Trinitarian sociality or the Father’s quiver (an election like the election of the arrow). In conclusion, the wound of love can be said to be a turning inside-out of the disciple, which begins with the imprinting of the wound in the soul as a mark (tu¢poj) or image (eiÃdwlon) of the Image, i.e., of the condescending Logos, and develops into an inclusion of the disciple in the double embrace of the Logosbridegroom-archer as a beloved bride and an elect arrow. In the second stage, the disciple-bride feels the embrace of the left arm of the archer-bridegroom mentioned in Cant 2.6, that is, the neighborly love of the condescending Logos; she feels also the embrace of the right arm of the archer or the Logos-bridegroom, while emulating the filiality of the exalted Logos as truth for the Father. Thus, the archer’s double, neighborly and filial embrace allows the disciple to rest in the paternal quiver (The Trinity) with the Son as an elect, filial arrow. After establishing the disciple’s experience of Jesus’ selfexegesis as a wound and an embrace of love, that is, as getting inspired or fired up by the words of Jesus and being inscribed in the Bible as Jesus’ prophetically self-interpreted body of words, it is time now for a late but necessary and quite sobering observation. Like Cant 2.5, Luke 24.32 is a retrospect on an experience, rather than a testimony for an ongoing event. In other words, the statement in Luke 24.32 refers to a life-changing encounter with Christ as an enlightened recollection (see the “opening of the eyes” in Luke 24.31 after Jesus has vanished) of an event which those who do the recollection have actually experienced in a state of relative blindness (see Luke 24.16). Moreover, the enlightened retrospective implies Christ’s absence (see Luke 24.31) and it is meant to make up for an unenlightened past witnessing of a once present, but now vanished Christ.

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As it becomes evident, Emmausian recollection is a memorial of a presence. Nevertheless, this memorial consists in a spiritual kind of insight or visualization, a spiritual vision that allows the disciples to hold on spiritually to the one who has physically “vanished.” If one reads, hypothetically for now, this memorial as an attempt to keep Jesus’ self-exegesis present, or, in the terms of the allegory, to retain His self-exegesis as a love wound in one’s heart, recollection may appear as an effort to persist in the iconic attunement or a love response to the Logos (keeping the heart kindled), which is more or less what the first creation (the protological intellects) was expected to do. It would be interesting to ask what exactly prevents this iconic attunement in love from becoming permanent, given that the Christ of Emmaus is already risen? Although such a discussion cannot be pursued here to a satisfactory extent, the direction in which the subsequent investigations will take me, will at least outline such an answer. Before any attempt to discuss this issue in greater depth, it is worthwhile pointing out the other indicators of transience and mutability in the Emmaus episode, which one would have liked to see Origen explain in greater detail. The most evident of them is Christ’s vanishing from the sight of the disciples (Luke 24.31), preceded perhaps by Christ’s attempt to leave them behind in the village (Luke 24.28). Interestingly enough, the physical abandonment (Luke 24.31) coincides with a gain of spiritual sight on the part of the disciples, that is, with their passage from a lack of sight (Luke 24.16) to an opening of their eyes (Luke 24.31). This gain of vision is closely connected with a gain of prophetic-exegetical insight (they now “see” the connection between the prophecies—Luke 24.25–27—and the one whose presence they have witnessed— Luke 24.32). The opening of the eyes corresponds, thus, to a prophetic “opening” of the scriptures (Luke 24.32). As it seems, the turn from physically witnessing an unrecognized Christ to spiritually recognizing a physically absent Christ is a turn from literalist, exegetical opacity or closure to a spiritualist, exegetical transparence or openness. An additional dimension of this transformation can be noticed in the change in the disciples’ moods. The disciples turn from sadness (Luke 24.17) to excitement and further to the recollection of this excitement as an event of the past (Luke 24.32). Origen’s treatment of this experience on the fringe between a past and, to a certain extent, still current possibility of the loss of Christ’s

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presence, and a future but somehow already actual possibility of holding fast to Christ’s presence, will be at the center of my attention in the following investigation. One cannot fail noticing that an important transition or, as Origen calls it, a momentous step in the process of leavening, takes central stage in the Emmaus scene. The goal of the following analysis is to elaborate on the previous description of the elements of mutability in the Emmaus scene in light of the overall feelings that accompany this experience, namely, awe and love. As it will be shown, awe is the feeling generated by the possibility of the loss of divine love in this current life (with its afferent exegetical and pedagogic implications), while love is the anticipation of a permanent, filial-doxological socialization with the Father and a brotherly missionary socialization with the neighbor in God’s kingdom. 5.2 After Emmaus. The Physical Experience of Awe The eyes of the disciples on the road to Emmaus open just in time to witness a vanishing Jesus (Luke 24.31). Since the open eyes stand for the spiritualized mind,245 the disciples can now be said to have acknowledged in spirit what they can no longer witness bodily, namely, the sight of the scriptures being opened by the exegesis of the once present, now vanished, self-prophesizing interpreter.246 The coincidence between the enlightenment (the opening of the eyes) and the vanishing (the loss of the interpreter’s presence, as long as the Emmausian interpreter is the interpreted Bible), indicates the fundamental ambivalence of this scene (joy in grief; gain in loss). If one were to ask why it is not possible for the resurrected Christ to offer the disciples a steady presence at the time of their encounter on the road to Emmaus, Origen’s answer would be unequivocal: neither Christ, nor the disciples can be said at this time to have fully reversed the downward path of a condescending/fall into an accomplished upward ascent. Insofar as Christ is concerned, Origen finds sufficient proof that his Resurrection needs to be perfected by the Ascension;247 likewise, the vision of the disciples needs to undergo a Pentecostal transformation in order to behold the ascended Christ.248 Thus, both the disciples and Jesus can be said to be in an in-between, transitional, state that will make their encounter vulnerable to the constraints of a world that is still submitted to vanity.249 In pedagogical terms, Origen calls the spiritual insight that characterizes this in-between condition a physical

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or natural one.250 In the following pages, I shall attempt an analysis of the overall feeling of awe (qau¤ma; stupor)251 that characterizes the physical experience. I shall start with a brief recapitulation of the function of physics in the pedagogic version of the spiritual progress, then I shall identify some of the distinctive signs of the physical experience as Origen describes them in his exegesis of the book of the Ecclesiastes;252 finally, I shall use these signs as guidelines for a description of a physical exegesis of the Bible. In pedagogic terms the physical enlightenment implies a look back on one’s spiritual progress comprising a conversion from ignorance to the study of the liberal arts and select doctrines of secular philosophy; a further advance to the divine or biblical philosophy and the successful completion of its first stage, the ethics of the Book of Proverbs.253 Additionally, to complete the physical training, one is required to scrutinize one’s life and to get acquainted with the overall signs of worldly existence.254 This assessment culminates in capturing the overall feeling of what it is to be in the world, which, previous to the physical enlightenment, was one of fear,255 while after the enlightenment it became one of awe.256 The physical disciple contemplates being in the world without the illusions and, therefore, without the disappointments that appetent and irascible attachments to this world generate, because she has been inscribed in Christ and contemplates the world with the “mind” of Christ.257 She takes the current world for what Christ knows it to be, namely, the outcome of a fall,258 which lead to humanity’s turning unresponsive or mal-attuned to the Logos (the Image),259 and as a fixation of humanity in a state of iconic alienation, which the divine judgment acknowledged and made quasipermanent.260 The divine judgment has also established the iconically unresponsive soul in a world that suites this lapsed inhabitant.261 As beings with a schizoid allegiance to their own self (their world-appetence and secular ambitions, which are a development of the ultimate anti-iconic allegiance to “the earthly” or the devil) and to the Logos, fallen humans inhabit a world that appears twofold, that is, material and spiritual, earthly and heavenly.262 Origen diagnoses this schizoid condition of humanity and of the world as a form of “being submitted to vanity”263 and correlates the gain of a full awareness of this condition and of its causes with the pedagogic enlightenment of physics.264

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In the preliminary stages of the pedagogic ascent (from ignorance or lack of erudition to the liberal arts and secular philosophy, and further to the first stage of biblical philosophy or ethics) the embodied tripartite soul (the “human” cherub) is guided through a process of purification from the effects of the fall, which it does not entirely comprehend. By contrast, through the Biblical philosophy of physics, which corresponds to the doctrine of the Ecclesiastes, the spiritual eyes (the spiritualized mind) of the disciple open to a full realization of creation’s submission to vanity by a divine judgment.265 Now the disciple can look back at her ethicalascetical struggle and comprehend its scope and rationale in the light of the divine judgment that established her in the vane condition in which she currently is. She also understands the cosmic implication of her unresponsiveness to the Image, namely the split of her current constitution into a fleshly, external and a spiritual, internal humanity.266 The physical revision of ethics takes place from a firm positioning of the disciple at an intermediary stage in the Biblical or Solomonic curriculum, while the curriculum itself can be said to be Christ as Solomonic Pedagogue or Gatherer (literally, the ecclesiast).267 Thus, it is by being “taken in” Christ, that is, by being inscribed in a scriptural curriculum, which has been claimed by Christ as His or even as He Himself, that the disciple gains perspective on the previous stages of her progress or an “opened up,” spiritual, vision (mind) and “gathers” the protological-eschatological clues offered by the scriptures. For example, when seen through the eyes of the Gatherer, what may have looked previously as a purely human moral effort to combat vices and acquire the virtues turns out to be a Christ-assisted struggle for regaining one’s iconicity and annulling the verdict of the judgment (the adoption of the virtues as Christological titles—a physical task).268 In retrospect, ethics appears, therefore, as Logos’ (Wisdom’s) call for reinstating humans in an iconic state of responsiveness to God, which would overturn the judgment. 269 Although advanced, the physical condition is not entirely free of vanity. The most visible token of a state that is still affected by the judgment is the physical disciple’s self- and world-assessment in a twofold manner, namely, as fleshly or earthly and as heavenly or spiritual.270 Like this twofold world, the scriptures that Jesus interprets on the road to Emmaus are also twofold, namely literal and

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spiritual, historical and eschatological.271 They need to be prophetically “gathered” or pieced together, which means that their constitution is not unitary.272 In retrospect, on the road to Emmaus the disciples discover that they have been inscribed in these prophetically “gathered” scriptures by the (self)interpretation of Jesus and that they too have been “gathered” or spiritualized along with these scriptures.273 However, this “gathering” is for the time being only resurrectional; the gathered scriptures are not yet the unified ascensional or epoptic doxology, i.e., they are not the scripturality of the eschatological condition. In other words, the first catastrophe or the disciples’ physical inscription in the split Scripture still awaits to be perfected by a second and final, epoptic, catastrophe, which will eliminate vanity and will uphold the effects of judgment.274 What are the signs of a physical experience according to Origen? I shall enumerate here just a few, which I have gathered from his scattered remarks on the Book of the Ecclesiastes. First of all (1), there is an acute awareness of vanity as a judgment-sanctioned effect of a fall.275 The central feature of a vane vision of the world, as well as that of an overall contemplation of this vane vision consists, as was mentioned above, in one’s approach to the world, to the soul, and to the Scripture as twofold or split.276 Secondly (2), the experience of time that accompanies this split world-view is equally dichotomic. The heavenly and the spiritual appear as eternal or immutable, while the earthly, the bodily and the literal appear as transient and elusive.277 Furthermore (3), the transience of the current aspect of the bodily/literal realm frustrates worldly desire or the appetent attachment of the soul to the under-celestial, perishable goods. For this reason one of the most prominent features of the physical disciple’s experience of time is her acute sense of the possibility of loss doubled by an impressive detachment from all the perishable goods of the world.278 Moreover, if loss is intrinsic to the temporality of the sensible-literal realm, it is only natural that one should stand in fear before contracting such attachments. Since the physical disciple is acquainted with the recurrence of loss as the vanity by which God has judged any earthly human enterprise,279 she will direct her desire to a realm of immutable bliss that she recommends as the only one worth pursuing.280 Bringing out one’s fear of sinfully attaching to the world and of the suffering that such attachments cause will be an important pedagogical strategy in the preliminary stages of the ascent, but it will be gradually

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abandoned in the transition to the superior stages.281 A fourth (4) aspect of the physical experience of vanity is that of reverent awe (a revised sort of fear) at the incommensurable distance between transience and eternity, recurrent loss and divine immutability, the world’s recurrent relapse in a state of unresponsiveness (negligence) and God’s eternal mindfulness for his creation.282 This revised fear motivates one in the pursuit of the eternal realities, which one sees in what is, for now, a limited, metaphysical manner, as an eternal realm beyond the current, historical world.283 Five (5), there is a hermeneutical implication of this split mode of existence. Vanity is contemplated at once or holistically, rather than inferred from a series of particular, local, cognitive, practical and emotional failures.284 At first, this may appear as the contemplation of someone who sees the world “from above,” that is, from a position of spiritual superiority. It should, however, be noted that “spiritual” here does not mean extra-worldly, and “from above” does not imply an exteriority of the observer to the world which she observes. The physical person is in the world but has attained a detachment from the world.285 Like Solomon or the ecclesiast (the gatherer) the physical disciple laments the vanity of a world in which she is inscribed but she does so with the hermeneutical awareness of the one who has backed off from the attachments to this world, having been reinscribed in the humanity of a resurrected although not yet ascended Christ (the first catastrophe).286 Contemplating the world, soul, and the Bible as gathered does not mean that they are no longer split, but rather that their split condition is viewed as “gatherable.” This explains the sixth (6) aspect, namely, the sense of poignancy in the physical disciple’s description of the grief of loss. Although her grief is that of a regular worldly person, her capacity to contemplate and explain the vanity of the world as a symptom of the judgment is out of the ordinary.287 The physical disciple is not overcome by grief, because she has been reinscribed through hope in the, for now, still to be perfected immutability of the resurrected Christ.288 In the seventh place (7), this detached, holistic view on the world of grief and loss implies a conversion from an appetent and irascible approach to the world occurring in the “for me” or “to my benefit” mode, to an incipient liturgical existence in the “for God” mode.289 Physics marks only the preliminary stage toward this liturgical existence, namely the detachment from the anti-iconic attachments of the appetent and irascible parts of the

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soul.290 In so far as this detachment is owed to God as a judge, this detachment can be said to have a “for God” directionality.291 Existence begins to be experienced less as a search for satisfaction (“for me”) and more as an occasion for devotion (“for God”)292 in religious awe before God’s greatness, which is incommensurable with this world.293 Eight (8) and last, although this physical conversion from a “for me” to a “for God” mode of existence is still intermittent or instable, the realization of this very intermittence is part of the physical experience of vanity and of judgment.294 Thus, the realization of the very possibility of the failure of one’s permanent watchfulness295 is itself a spiritual experience that acquaints the disciple with the humble reverence that she owes to God.296 This spiritual insight is also the motivation for renewed ethical struggle, which now appears as a spiritual war between a Logos driven, iconic tendency in the disciple and a devil-driven, anti-iconic tendency.297 This is, however, an ethics viewed from the holistic (“gathered”) contemplative approach of physics,298 the perspective of one who knows physically what is at stake in the ethical struggles of this life and no longer fights them blindly. The world, the soul and the Scripture as physics describes them appear not only clearly twofold, but also hierarchically predetermined, in a fashion that suits the taste of late Platonism.299 It is, thus, obvious that Origen’s physical disciple prefers the higher over the lower, the intelligible over the sensible, the spiritualized mind over the body-dependent soul, the spirit over the letter, and the eschatological truth over the historical image-shadow. This preference becomes intelligible only if one assumes that the constitution of the universe and that of history is hierarchical and that it can be used as a graded itinerary for a soteriological ascent. The principle that articulates the cosmic and the historical hierarchies is iconicmimetic (the lower has to emulate the higher, or else it becomes “sinful,” anti-iconic, etc).300 In this perspective, the detachment of the physical disciple would indicate her advancement to the higher, predominantly intelligible, segment of this hierarchy, which allows a holistic retrospective of the lower, material one. Although strongly supported by many of Origen’s texts,301 the above view might be missing one important detail, namely, the fact that this split outlook of the world, humanity and the Bible, is the outcome not only of a fall (this, indeed, can be easily construed in Platonist terms), but also of a divine ruling or judgment, which

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“submits” them to vanity.302 Thus, the metaphysical outlook might itself be considered a symptom of vanity and an outcome of the judgment.303 This remark allows an alternative reading of the dichotomist and hierarchical metaphysics of Origen’s natural contemplation, as a discipline marked by the lapsarian nature of its object (the fallen world and world history). It also occasions a further suggestion. I would like to advance the view that, given that Origenian physics represents an intermediary, transitional, stage in the spiritual progress of the disciple, the hierarchic-dichotomist terminology in which it is expressed should be taken only as a description of how the world and humanity appear at this stage of the disciple’s progress. Moreover, I would like to suggest that at this physical stage in the progress the enumeration of the symptoms of vanity, which I have proposed above, could not and should not be used as an explanation of the judgment as such, precisely because judgment precedes and, in a certain sense, establishes the fallen creation in this vane condition. Thus, from an Origenian point of view, a metaphysical, Platonist interpretation of protology is going to be fated to run into unsolvable contradictions, ambiguities and homonymic hoaxes,304 which are abundantly exemplified not only in the works of the older critics of Origen, but also in the more recent scholarship on this topic.305 In line with the above suggestions, I would like to propose a change of exegetical strategy. Instead of forcing a metaphysical explanation on the notion of judgment in the hope of reducing it to the “judged” metaphysical framework in which its verdict was formulated, I would suggest taking seriously the role that, following the Ecclesiastes, Origen ascribed to vanity, which is one of de-structuring meaning (including the meaning of the metaphysical terminology in which it is being described) and exposing a grace-divorced understanding as an all too human, i.e., too vane, activity.306 Since Origen sees the gist of the physical experience in the feeling of being judged, which is awe, perhaps one should make one’s task to address physics through the testimonial function of this feeling, as the manner in which vanity exceeds any linguistic and ontological dichotomoushierarchic view of the world, the history and the Bible.307 When understood in a physical sense, the fear of this vane, current existence becomes awe before a transcendent judgment,308 which gathers the world and humanity without providing a “naturally” comprehensible rule for this gathering.309 Although it is ex-

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pressed as a mimetically articulated world, the judged world is otherwise than mimetically gathered. This gathering can be contemplated only in the Judge who gathered humanity after its fall, that is, as inscribed in Wisdom or the Logos as a gathering Judge.310 But what does it mean to be “taken in” the Judge and be gathered by Him as a Gatherer (Ecclesiast)? I shall limit my answer to the exegetical aspect of this process and I shall start from an enumeration of the symptoms of vanity that one can identify in the physical experience of the Emmaus scene. The retrospect on their encounter with the resurrected Jesus gives the disciples a sense of the intermittence of the enlightenment in this world, of the transience of physical presence and of the blindness that contends with prophetic insight, or, what is even worse, of the structural possibility of the loss of prophetic insight and of the relapse into worldly, chronologic-historical blindness.311 All of these are additional reasons for the disciples to stand in awe before Jesus’ prophetic “gathering” of the Bible, as a transhistorical divine event.312 Nevertheless, as was mentioned on numerous occasions, this diagnosis of the world’s vanity is the work of a Christ transformed humanity, of a humanity that has been read scripturally by Christ as His own and even as He Himself, if, like Origen, one chooses to see the Bible as Logos’ textual body. How does vanity appear in the hermeneutics of these Christ/Bible inscribed disciples? How does it play out hermeneutically in their interpretation of Christ as a self-interpreting Messiah? Most likely, it allows a look back on their literal hermeneutics of the Bible (which is also morally and logically justified) and a comprehension of the ways in which exegesis can miss its mark;313 it would also allow an understanding of why these exegetical limitations and failures are possible, as the part of vanity’s work in the exegete as a judged person and in the Bible as a historical text.314 This realization of vanity as constantly impending on exegesis is possible due to the physical exegete’s detachment from the bodily world and the literal Bible and her being transformed into an interpreter of the biblical Logos in the spirit. The physical exegete no longer follows her appetent and irascible attachments to the letter of the biblical text, which she now subordinates to a reverent devotion to the depth of the Bible’s spirit. However, what is the exegetical expression of this detachment, and how does it work in the overall scheme of an exegetic-pedagogic progress?

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In the second section on biblical exegesis of the second chapter of this study, I showed how the Bible or rather the intextuated biblical Logos guides the exegete towards a spiritual exegesis. As was explained, this itinerary towards the spirit of the Bible is marked not only by the concern for a right, Bible-worthy interpretation of this document, but also by an interest in the many possible exegetical offences, which can lead to at least three main forms of exegetical heterodoxy, namely naïve literalism, wild literalism and wild spiritualism.315 In each case, one strays from the iconic emulation of the intextuated Logos through a self-serving “vane” attachment to either the letter of the Bible alone (be it plausible and true, implausible and untrue or plausible but untrue) or to what is construed as the Bible’s spirit, independent from the letter.316 It is obvious, therefore, that the possibility of an exegetical offence is: 1) structural to the exegetical process in this current “judged” life, and 2) that it originates with a type of interpretation that is guided by the idiosyncrasies of a fallen historical interpreter (her “vane” or lapsed desires and ambitions), which appear projected onto the biblical text.317 Although constantly in peril of incurring an interpretative offense, the Bible-worthy hermeneutics does not originate with the interpreter but with the Bible or rather with the biblically coming Logos.318 Instead of a reading of the Bible “for me” (one’s own literalist or spiritualist projection in the text), one is being “taken into” the Bible by the Logos, through Logos’ Emmaus selfexegesis of the Bible as Himself.319 However, once “being taken in,” one has to persist in this posture of “being in,” which, as the same Emmaus scene indicates, is not yet a spontaneous and effortless enterprise.320 As Origen suggests, having switched from an existence in the “for me” mode to the existential-testimonial state of being turned “inside out” both towards the Logos (the auctorial character in the text who interprets Christologically the very text in which the exegete is inscribed)321 and towards the neighbor (the audience that listens to the homily of the text-inscribed exegete),322 the exegete has to maintain an attitude of mindfulness or watchfulness for the biblical Logos,323 which is required exactly because vanity implies the constant possibility of the converse.324 Before she has benefited from the physical enlightenment of Christ’s Emmausian self-prophecy and self-interpretation, the exegete stands in fear of an exegetical offence, which she sees as possible or even imminent, but which she does not yet understand. The

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exegete is warned of the possibility of offence by more advanced exegetes who have the “mind of Christ”325 or by the Bible itself as Christ’s textual body. The ethical fear of being wrong develops into a physical fear of the impossibility of being right all by oneself,326 which generates a switch from self-reliance to a reliance on the spirit itself for the spiritual search of the scriptures.327 With the Emmausian enlightenment, one contemplates this fear before a split, judged Bible from the position of the prophetic Gatherer who has pieced together the Bible and has messianically claimed it as His. Thus, fear gives way to awe before a prophetic hermeneutics or gathering, a transformation of the current historical Bible with the gradual un-judging (forgiveness) of the Bibleinscribed exegete by the Bible intextuated judge who is the Logos as the Bible’s divine author. As with the judgment, the gathering is an immemorial action, which cannot be formulated exhaustively in historical worldly terms.328 Jesus’ self-exegesis in/as the scriptures does not have a “principle” or “method;” it is the pure event of the coming of the Logos.329 Ultimately, what the Emmaus self-exegesis offers is not a method of prophetic interpreting of the Bible, but the participation in the interpreter’s interpretation, a mode of referring the Bible to the incarnate/intextuated Logos as divine (self)interpreter. This referral without a criterion, which takes as its sole an-archic principle Christ’s self-interpretative gathering, announces itself in the feeling of awe that the physical exegete experiences before the inscrutable depth of the Bible.330 Exegetically speaking, physical awe is the other face of ethical fear; it is fear experienced from the posture of the one who has been inscribed in the resurrectional Bible and who attests to the Logos as a gatherer of the words into one Word and of the books into one Book.331 In this sense, the physical exegete knows testimonially what the ethical exegete fears blindly, namely vanity as the possibility of exegetical offense.332 Also, she is knowingly watchful of that which the ethical exegete minds in blind fear, namely the loss of her spiritual positioning in the Bible, either by a lapse in literalism or by a spiritualist arrogance.333 Although, as one who has been gathered, the physical exegete preaches, in awe, a prophetically gathered Bible in/from the persona of the Gatherer, being gathered does not mean that the exegete is one god with God.334 This holds true both for the exegete, and the Bible that she preaches, as well as for the resurrected but

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not yet ascended intextuated Logos in/from whose person she preaches. For this reason physical awe is a still mutable state in which vanity is resented poignantly, while epoptic ascensional love is only episodically glimpsed.335 This physical posture attests to Christ’s resurrectional in-between-ness (not yet fully over with being condescendant, while just beginning to be exalted) or to Logos’ being turned inside-out in His double condition of filial truth-forthe-Father and neighborly Image-for-us.336 What is the pedagogic function of exegetical awe? Awe destroys or deconstructs the logic of the dichotomist hierarchy of the fallen world revealing in a negative form the infinite distance that separates the Word from the biblical words and the humanity that the Word claims as His. By being exposed to this distance the exegete can no longer construe her human “according-to” (her humanity’s “being according to the Image”) as a mere determination of nature or an ontological-analogic iconicity. Having had this ontological rug pulled from underneath her feet, the physical exegete is given the occasion to rethink iconicity in light of the very coming of the Image in the according-to-the-Image or, exegetically speaking, from the very coming of the Word in the words, which culminates with Christ’s prophetic self-exegesis on the road to Emmaus. The prophetic rewording of the Bible by the auctorial Word is also a rewording of the Bible-inscribed disciple, her reauthoring which, in the terms of Origen’s anthropology, would be called a restoration of humanity’s iconic condition. Thus, awe should be thought simultaneously in two ways: on the one hand, awe is the fear for what the still worldly aspect of the disciple construes as a destructuring, an uprooting of one’s appetent and irascible attachments to words and things; on the other hand, the Logosresponsive dimension of the disciple “feels” that this destructuring makes her available for an even greater love-responsiveness to the Father and to the Logos. In this light, physics appears as Logos’ pedagogic containment of the disciple’s fear of being re-authored by His messianic coming, an ineffable pedagogic reassurance that this reauthoring is a gathering of what ontologically and historically appears as ungatherable (the earth and the heavens; the letter and the spirit; the flesh and the spirit; the shadow and the truth, etc). In other words, physical awe is otherwise than naturally, i.e. it is gracefully gathered (contained) fear.

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5.3 Beyond Emmaus. The Epoptic Experience of Love The Gospel of Luke seems to indicate that the experience on the road to Emmaus and the other post-resurrectional apparitions reach their completion with the Ascension, which leaves the disciples with a great “joy” (xara¢, Luke 24.52), but also establishes them in a quasi-permanent doxological posture (“they were continually [dia£ panto£j, my emphasis V. N.] in the temple blessing God” Luke 24.53). In the third section of the previous chapter I discussed Origen’s interpretation of the mood of joy as an epoptic completion of the spiritual ascent.337 The permanent service suggested in Luke 24.53 can be as well related to Origen’s last stage of the spiritual ascent as described in his interpretation of the Atonement Day ritual, especially to its last liturgical segment in the Holy of Holies.338 After being taken up into the censer, the kindled charcoal (standing for the resurrectional humanity or the physical disciple or the unified human cherub), is being laid out before God on the altar of incense. There the high-priest (Christ or the Christassimilated humanity) will be addressed by the Father from among the two cherubim (the Son and the Spirit). I have explained above this gesture as a second inscription of humanity (the burning charcoal) in the ascended Christ (the ark with the testimonies, the propitiatory and one of the cherubim), which amounts to the disciple’s being offered by Christ (the high priest) as His or even as He Himself to the Father, that is, as the disciple’s adoption of Christ’s twofold attitude of filially responding to the Father for us (His neighbors).339 This inscription follows another, preliminary, inscription, which was designated as the “taking in” or “putting on” of humanity by the condescending Christ (the condescending Logos claiming humanity and the Bible as His or as He Himself), which was equated with the Emmaus experience.340 Given that both the pedagogic accomplishment signified by the mood of joy and the liturgical completion signified by incessant doxology are references to the final, epoptic stage of the spiritual ascent as described by the Song of Songs and its overall feeling of pure spiritual love, one can briefly describe the joy of a permanent doxology as the scriptural existence of the saint in love.341 As will be shown presently, following Christ, the saint reports to the Father on the results of his annunciation to the neighbor,342 that is, she responds before the Father for the neighbor, whom she has the duty to teach/homilize and to bring before the Father as an offering.343

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Also like Christ’s love, her love is a token of her being filially and neighborly turned inside-out, existing for the other in a sociality that resembles closely the Trinitarian one.344 Following in the path of my previous investigation into the sense of awe that characterizes the physical portion of the ascent, I shall now turn to Origen’s understanding of the epoptic, accomplished love, which can be construed as an ascensional elaboration on the Emmausian reception of Jesus’ (self)exegesis. According to the previous investigation, the fiery arrow by which God (the Father) wounds the human soul (the bride) is an equivalent of the fire that the disciples of the Emmaus scene have discovered in their hearts, which means that, like the bride, they can be said to have been “wounded” by the discourse (the arrow) of the filial-condescending Logos.345 The result, however, is that they become this wound of love by being put on/taken in by the Logos or the high priest of the atonement liturgy.346 Since the Logos is god and, as god, He is also love,347 being wounded by love implies being inscribed in Love, becoming love.348 The fiery arrow which is the self-exegesis of the Emmausian Christ as god and love, wounds the disciples turning them into love, that is, into a doxologic filial address (an arrow), which the ascending Christ deposes before the Father (the incense offering deposed by the high priest on the altar before the Father under the watch of the two cherubim).349 In what consists the transition from the physical love experience of Emmaus to the epoptic love doxology of the Ascension? Given the scarcity of the evidence on Origen’s exegesis of the final sections of the gospel of Luke,350 I shall turn for an answer to the following passage of Origen’s Homilies on the Song of Songs, which, as I shall try to show, contains a valuable, although only indirect, reference to a post Emmausian event, which resembles closely the Ascension: The Bride then beholds the Bridegroom; and He, as soon as she has seen Him, goes away. He does this frequently throughout the Song; and that is something nobody can understand who has not suffered it himself. God is my witness that I have often perceived the Bridegroom drawing near me [coming to me, adventare, my translation, V. N.] and being most intensely present with me; then suddenly He has withdrawn and I could not find Him, though I sought to do so. I long, therefore, for Him to come (desidero eius adventum) again, and

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sometimes He does so. Then, when He has appeared and I lay hold of Him, He slips away once more; and, when He has so slipped away, my search for Him begins anew. So does He act with me repeatedly, until in truth (vere) I hold Him and go up (donec illum teneam et adscendam), “leaning on my little brother’s [nephew’s] arm [leaning on my beloved’s breast, ‘innixa (e©pisthrizome¢nh LXX, e©pisthqizome¢nh Origen) super fratuelem meum,’ Cant 8.5, my translation, V. N.].”351

The first part of the passage presents an experience, which fits the description of the intermittent apparitions of the resurrected Christ, especially the experience of the disciples on the road to Emmaus.352 Origen inserts himself in the Biblical account as the bride, which, following the analogy between Luke 24.32 and Cant 5.2, is the equivalent of the advanced disciples who have been “wounded” by Jesus’ self-interpetation in the post resurrectional account.353 From his positioning in the persona of the lovewounded bride, that is, of a disciple who attained a physical enlightenment, Origen imagines the next and final stage, which is the completion of the ascension.354 According to the above quotation, this stage includes a permanent grasp on the ascending Logos, an immediate contact with him in the form of a leaning on or over Him, and an overall characterization of this experience as occurring “in truth” or “truly.” Following these clues and expanding on the analogy between the Emmaus scene and the wound of love, Cant 8.5 could be considered an elaboration and perfection of the Emmaus experience, which may have been echoing the now lost Oriegenian exegesis of the Ascension. That which in the Emmaus scene appears as a transitory experience, becomes in the ascensional description a permanent state; that which the Emmaus experience describes as a posture of inclusion (being inserted in the textual body claimed by a condescending Logos as His), is elaborated into a nuptial embrace;355 finally, that which in the previous stage appears as an iconic emulation (the text-inscribed disciple relates to the condescending Logos as Image of God for us), becomes now a union with the exalted Logos (as truth-for-theFather). I would like to continue to insist on the ascensional posture of the bride as is described in Cant 8.5. According to Origen, the bride of Cant 8.5 represents the resurrected human who has been reinvested with the tunics of light356 and who now “leans on” the

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breast (standing for the h¥gemoniko¢n) of the Logos357and clings to the Logos forever.358 Since the h¥gemoniko¢n of the Logos is His preexistent soul (which, as a unified fourfold cherub is a spiritualized intellect),359 the bride leaning on Logos’ h¥gemoniko¢n can be said to have the same posture as the offering (the burning charcoal and incense), which the high priest places on the propitiatory (the soul of Christ) in between the cherubim (the Logos and the Holy Spirit) during the last portion of the atonement liturgy.360 She is leaning on the breast of Christ (Cant 8.5), designating His soul or the place where His heart or His intellect resides after having been embraced by the Logos with both hands (Cant 2.6), that is, after she has emulated the Logos both in his condescendence and in his exaltation. After having become an arrow like the arrow by which she has been wounded (Cant 2.5; Luke 24.32), she can be expected to rest in the quiver of the Father with/as “the arrow of election” (Isa 49.2), which is the Logos. Thus, Origen makes it clear that the experience in Cant 8.5 designates the highest stage of the spiritual ascent or epoptic perfection,361 which consists in the complete union of the Church/soul with the exalted Christ and marks the end of the physical dialectic of presence and absence.362 As the distinctive mark of the epoptic experience the posture of “leaning on” Logos’ breast in “the embrace of” Logos’ two arms is a reference to the feeling of accomplished spiritual love, which I shall now turn to for a more detailed examination. In the prologue of The Commentary on The Song of Songs love or charity appears described as a feeling that is always directed towards God (ad Deum tendere), from whom (a quo) also it takes its origin (originem ducit), and looks back towards the neighbor (ad proximum respicere), with whom it is in kinship [literally, “with whom it bears participation,” cum quo participium gerit, my transl. V. N.] as being similarly created in incorruption.363

One can recognize in this description a double orientation of love. On the one hand, there is the downward, “from-to,” orientation; this is a form of “looking back” (respicere) from God, as the divine origin of the Logos-Love, to the neighbor with whom the Logos bears a participative relation of similarity in accordance with His other, created origin (the birth of the Logos as a human from Mary). Thus, in so far as love is a title of Christ,364 the one who claims to be looking back to the neighbor from the divine origin is

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Christ as Logos, while the one to whom the Logos looks and with whom he makes himself akin (a neighbor),365 is Logos’ own humanity and, in general, the humanity claimed by the Logos as His (the Church).366 Thus, it becomes apparent that the neighborliness of the human neighbor originates in Logos’ gesture of inscribing humanity in Himself as His own (the incarnation), which can be further traced back to a condescending posture of the Logos as such, or His “looking-back,” his condescending to us as His neighbors. Origen makes it clear that this looking back or condescension of the Logos as Image-of-the-Father-for-us, cannot be aligned with the metaphysical kinship of nature, which all created beings share. Instead this neighborly relation emerges during the charitable work, which is the service that one owes to anyone in need: By nature, indeed, we are all of us neighbors one of another; but by the works of charity a man who has in his power to do service to another who has not that power, becomes his neighbor. Wherefore also our Savior became neighbor to us, and when we “were lying half-dead” (Luke 10,30) from “the wounds the robbers have inflicted on us” (Luke 10.30), he did not “pass us by.” (Luke 10.31)367

If, following the allusion to the parable of the good Samaritan,368 one applies the above passage to Christ, it becomes clear that, what configures the Logos-inscribed humanity as a neighbor,369 is the loving condescension of the Logos as serviceable work, rather than an alleged ontological kindredness between the Logos and humanity. Consequently, the iconicity that this condescension conveys (the condescending Logos as the image of the Father for us) and which He confers on humanity (Gen 1.27 as the establishment of humanity as being “according to the image”) is not primarily an ontological one, but one of agapic praxis, as serviceable acting (Logos’s election of those to whom He condescends; Love’s making herself Image-for-us, which makes us her neighbors).370 Thus, so far, love appears as Logos’ iconic gesture of “looking back” from the Father to us as neighborly service to the neighbor. To put it in the terms of Origen’s definition of the gospel, love, in its condescending form, is Logos’ neighborly reporting announcement from the Father to a humanity that is being made into a neighbor by this very announcement.371 However, in an alternative presentation, love is also “always directed towards God,” it is an

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upward gaze towards the one from whom the loving Logos gets his neighborly mission. Thus, as Truth for the Father, the Logos is characterized by a divine, filial posture, an upward tendency toward the Father372 or a filial attending to the Father.373 Again, as an interpretative guideline one can here use Origen’s remark on the meta-ontological determination of neighborliness, which amounts to a qualification of ascendant love or filiality as a mystical determination of deed, rather than a (meta)physical relation of nature.374 Insofar as the neighbor is inscribed also in this second, filial determination of the Logos, the neighbor is turned into a son of the Father. In this sense, ascendant, “forward” looking, love becomes a feeling of what it is like to be a son of God. The two postures of the Logos, namely, filiality as doxologic (at)tending to the Father, and neighborliness, as missionary (at)tending to the human (and perhaps not only to the human) neighbor, provide a complex characterization of Logos’ condition of being turned inside-out. Love is, in its full determination, the feeling of being turned inside out in/with/by the Logos. This feeling conveys, although it does not conceptually capture or logicallyontologically define, the following immemorial plot: the Logos gets “distracted” (looks back) from His attendance to the Father by an impossible to overlook (per-transire) distress of a neighbor in need;375 in turn, this distraction proves to be a more complex paternal mission, which consists in attending to the Father (a “looking forward” to the Father) by readying the neighbor to appear as a son (a filial offering) before the Father, from whose face he has once concealed himself in shame.376 The condition of being turned insight-out is fundamentally liturgical, that is, service-centered, while this epoptic liturgy appears as a permanent doxology and as an eschatological Trinitarian sociality. I have sketched the outline of this liturgical sociality in my treatment of the integration of the human with the divine cherub (The Son-Logos) and of the offering of humanity to the Father on the altar of the Holy of Holies under the watch of the two cherubim (the Son and the Spirit).377 This idea of the saint as someone in whom the cherubim can dwell and over whom the cherubim can watch while her entire existence is laid before the Father, undergoes, in Origen, a further development, by what may be called a relevant and, to a certain extent, intentional confusion of biblical references.

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In the eighth chapter of the third book of The Commentary on Romans, while presenting the soul of Christ as permanently indwelled by the cherubim mentioned in Exod 25.19,378 Origen adds the following: Now among men you will find no soul this blessed and this exalted except that one alone in which the Word of God and the Holy Spirit find such a great breadth and such a great volume that they are said not only to indwell [that soul] but to spread forth their wings and sometimes even fly about, according to a new institution of the mystery.379

In a relevant and surprising manner, the “spreading forth” of the wings introduces a reference to Isa 6.2, a passage which does not refer to the cherubim but rather to the seraphim. A brief look at Origen’s interpretation of the seraphim leaves no doubt regarding the intentional character of this confusion. Drawing on an ancient Jewish-Christian reading of this passage, Origen interprets the two seraphim of Isaiah’s vision as the Son and the Holy Spirit and associates them with the “two living [beings]” of LXX’s Hab 3.2 (“In the midst of the two living creatures thou shalt be known”).380 The intended character of this assimilation of the cherubim with the seraphim becomes even more evident in light of the Habakkuk quotation, with its specification of the “two living creatures,” which a fragment of On First Principles quoted by Justinian381 calls the two “liturgical beings” (leitourgika£...z%¤a).382 In what consists the liturgical function of these beings according to Origen? The seraphim’s function is both doxologic (they proclaim “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts” [Isa 6.3]) and missionaryexegetic. The missionary-exegetical dimension consists in veiling with their two upper and their two lower wings the face and feet of God (the Father), that is, the beginning and end of sacred history, and to reveal the middle part of His “body,” namely the current events;383 this concealment is a protective measure aimed at the non-advanced exegete/spectator, while the disclosure is an instructional measure for the same kind of receptor.384 The gesture of disclosure allows the seraphim to use their two middle wings for flight (the spreading forth and flying around, mentioned in the above quotation).385 Thus, the seraphim combine two different postures, a kinetic one, that of flying, which they perform in a revealing mode, and a static one, that of veiling, which they perform in a concealing mode.386 Their doxology is, therefore, prophetic, in the sense that it

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announces the fullness of glory, which the coming of Christ (perhaps a reference to His second coming) will bring on earth.387 The liturgical-exegetical function of the seraphim in the current life bears the signs of the judgment, i.e., of the split, disclosingconcealing perspective in which a creature submitted to vanity approaches God. However, when Origen mentions that the seraphim “are said not only to indwell [the perfect soul] but to spread forth their wings and sometimes even fly about,” one may surmise here an epoptic experience that ends with a sight of God (the Father), although not of God’s face.388 As the bride whose two eyes are the Son and the Holy Spirit,389 the saint is inhabited by the two seraphim, who make her into an offering to the Father, into a living neighborly-filial doxology. This doxology implies appearing, that is, being presented before God the Father, and “being known” by Him “from among” the internalized “two living beings” (the perfect soul’s eyes).390 Being turned inside-out means, thus, being seen with a filial-pneumatic vision or being known by the Father (“having in one’s head” the eyes, which, like the cherubim, watch over someone so that he or she can emerge as worthy to be addressed/known by the Father “from their midst”). How does the above description of love as a state of being turned inside-out translate into exegetical terms? Following Origen’s suggestion of interpreting love as a work or an act (an event) rather than as an ontological determination, one is lead to the realization that an exegesis of an epoptic love-drama would necessarily have to give priority to what nowadays would be called the pragmatics of the dramatic text, to love as the dramatic text’s filialneighborly performance.391 At the same time, one would have to realize that what structures this drama, its characters, their action, their speech and all the other dramatic resources, as well as the very reception of the drama, is an immemorial love intrigue which, precisely because it is immemorial (meta-ontological), undermines the comprehensibility of the very drama that it structures.392 I have previously identified this undermining as a double reversal or catastrophe, namely, the emergence of the neighbor from the exegete’s inscription in the text as self-interpretatively claimed by the condescending Logos (Emmaus), and as the emergence of the son in the ascending Logos’ doxologic presentation of the exegete as a filial offering before the Father (the Ascension and the Pentecost).393 I

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shall follow now the scenario of this double reversal in regard to Origen’s guidelines for an exegesis of the Song of Songs. The Song of Songs is said to be an epithalamic or nuptial drama.394 The characters of the drama can be grouped in three classes: (1) the two main characters, the bride (the advanced soul, the spiritual hierarchs of the Church) and the bridegroom (the Logos), (2) the two sets of other secondary characters, presented as two choruses, namely, the companions of the bride (the nonadvanced soul, the ordinary believers) and the companions of the bridegroom (the angels and the saints), and (3) two, non-manifest but frequently referred to “characters,” namely, the mother of the Bride or the eschatological community of the saints, and the Father of the bridegroom (God the Father).395 The drama, as well, consists in a series of “from-to” addresses and responses, namely, that of the bride to the bridegroom, the bridegroom to the bride, the bride to her companions, the bridegroom to his companions, the companions of the bride to the bride, and the companions of the bridegroom to the bride, as well as in the various characters’ actions of coming (“ascending”) to the stage and leaving (“descending” from) the stage or appearing and disappearing, all of which structure the development of the dramatic action.396 The father and the mother do not appear and do not speak, but they are referred to in the characters’ verbal exchanges. The pragmatics of dramatic creation mentions the author of the drama (Solomon standing for the Logos) as speaking to the bride in the persona of the bridegroom.397 If taken literally, this posture makes the entire drama (its characters, action, speech, and resources) into a presentation of the gradual assimilation of the audience to the author (the bride, in whose person the audience is enjoined to cast itself, expresses her desire to be united with the bridegroom/author or the Logos),398 which seems to echo the Platonist mimetic assimilation of the lower into the superior, of the authored into the author.399 However, as it was previously noted, love is not an ontological determination,400 and Logos’ auctorial “speaking from the persona of” the bridegroom is not a poeticmimetic claim,401 but rather a charitable reaching out towards humanity, which makes humanity into a neighbor.402 But, in which way other than as an authored dramatic character with an ontologically determined condition, that of a dramatic artifact, can the bride

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be said to be addressed?403 For an answer to this question, one has to turn to Origen’s pragmatics of dramatic reception.404 According to Origen, the audience is invited to inscribe itself in the text of the drama either in the role of the bride, or into that of the bride’s companions, or, alternatively, in the role of the bridegroom’s companions.405 Ultimately, this triple inscription amounts to only one, since the companions of the bride are about to become like the bride and the bride herself is about to become like the bridegroom’s companions.406 If one were to extend this mimetic identification into a reception pragmatics, one could say that, by inscribing oneself in the role of the Logos-claimed bride, one becomes claimed by this author, either in the mild form of comprehending to the full His intention (his “mind”), or in the more pregnant form of an identification with the author, of becoming the author.407 There is, nevertheless an alternative to this reading, which consists in viewing authoring otherwise than as a mimetic production. If, by speaking on behalf of the bride, the Logos is not viewed as an author of the bride-character in the same way in which, let us say, the poet (or maker) would be a producer of the poem (or artifact),408 but rather as the addressor instance of the text enacting the text’s love performance of a neighborly-filial reaching out to an addressee, the bride is being made by the love performance of the author into a characterial dramatic site, which can accommodate the audience in a variety of neighborly postures. Thus, the claiming of the bride-inscribed audience as a neighbor by the author’s love is not the same as the author’s poetic activity of authoring the bride as a character, or bringing this character poetically into existence.409 The former is an agapic, social-Trinitarian event, while the latter is an ontologically-determined, poetic praxis as productive mimesis. By turning toward every potential actor of the bride-role in neighborly love, the neighborly Logos-Love opens the possibility of the audience’s inscription in this role as a neighbor; he reaches out to the audience with a call to respond neighborly to His messianic Love. This subtle distinction between the condition of the author as productive maker and her condition as agapic addressor, marks the opening of the drama to the exteriority of a spectator, or in brief, a neighborly opening. Moreover, the auctorial character of the bridegroom-Logos calling out the neighborly bride (the audience) needs to be redefined as well in agapic terms. This means that the Logos will be construed as a filial

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author, that is, as an author who has to respond before His Father for the authored bride (created humanity) as His neighbor. This marks a second opening of the drama to the exteriority of a fatherly, otherwise than-auctorial instance, which may be called a filial opening. In brief, the pragmatics of love authoring as dramatic event and love reception as response to the event can be said to open up the drama that a logical-communicative exegesis with its ontological presuppositions tends to close upon itself, either as an auctorial mimetic self-referral of the Logos to Him Himself, or as an exegetical closure of the receptor on herself in the hermeneutics of text appropriation.410 As a neighbor the bride is not primarily a penned character but the dramatic non-spatial site in which the exegete is being reached as a neighbor by the call of the filial author’s love and is asked to respond as a daughter to the filial-author’s Father.411 In so far as she responds, she is established in this site, as in a Paradise,412 where she can appear without shame before the face of the Father responding to Love’s call as a daughter accountable for her neighbor.413 In conclusion, love stands for that aspect of this drama, which cannot be logically-communicatively phrased and poeticallyontologically articulated, that is, the immemorial plot that turned the drama inside-out towards the exteriority of the fallen audience, while turning the drama inscribed audience inside-out towards the exteriority of a paternal, otherwise than auctorial, transcendence. Love undermines, thus, any ambition for a full comprehension of this drama in the sole terms of its scenic visibility (this visibility is the result of the filial-neighborly immemorial exhibiting or turning inside out of the drama’s content toward an audience elected to a neighborly existence), or in the terms of a pragmatics of reception of the auctorial intent (the author “means” to signify only insofar as He responds for the neighbor or the audience before the Father in a filial fashion; likewise, the receptor or the audience receives as a neighbor only that which the author gives filially, that is, what He gives otherwise than just from Himself, what He reports from the Father). Any attempt to comprehend the drama of love is bound to end in an exegetical offence, of which Origen’s physical exegete stands in fear as a symptom of vanity. Love alone seems to be the “right” reception of this love drama, but love is a work or event, which one can attest to as an elect addressee, rather than comprehend in one’s own, speculative, terms. The testimony for love’s happening as Bible is one’s pragmatic positioning in the Bible on the filial-neighborly

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position of the Logos, that is, in that Paradise-like textual site of neighborly election in which, while inscribed, the exegete is turned inside-out. Speaking in this capacity, from such a place, makes the exegete or the commentator a high-priest according to Aaron, who is liturgically accountable before the Father for his homiletic attendance to his neighborly hearers/readers.414 This is a cherubic-seraphic posture, the sign of an eschatological-doxological mode of life.415

6 LEAVENING (3): THE SURGE OF AN ARTICULATE CRY The discussion of the two testimonial feelings of awe and love has brought us closer to a response regarding the concern that, as a uniform spiritual progress, Origen’s pedagogic exegesis might be a gradual self-realization of the Logos in the Scripture, in the world and in humanity. My analysis has pointed out a few aspects of Origen’s thought that seem to stand in contradiction to the thesis of a uniform spiritual progress. After a final summary of these points, I shall reserve an entire chapter (the fourth one) for a discussion of the considerations that may still be standing in the way of a complete removal of the above mentioned suspicion. The physical exegetical experience of awe materializes into a peculiar doctrine, one that is undermined by its very founding theme, namely the awe before the unfathomable “gathering” of the split, twofold scriptures by the Emmausian exegesis of the prophetic gatherer who is the Logos. Since this Logos is as much intextuated as He is incarnate, this awe can be said to announce an otherwise and, certainly, more than human exegetical act. Insofar as it is otherwise than human (insofar as it does not display an intelligible structuring criterion or principle of the unification of the letter with the spirit and of the shadow with the truth), the Emmausian “gathering” stands proof that physics cannot be construed as a strictly-speaking rational doctrine and that physical pedagogy cannot be said to follow a strict, rational, technique or methodology. One stands in awe before a prophetic, exegetical gathering exactly because one could not have anticipated this gathering in human terms, in spite of one’s alleged ontological “kindredness” with the Logos as a logiko¢j.416 When interpreted by the Logos, the scriptures do not make a human-sense, or rather, they make sport of an all too human sense,417 they baffle and leave the mind puzzled and outwitted.418 However, if it is not only, nor even primarily, a rational systematic doctrine, what else can physics be? Most likely,

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Origenian physics is a mystagogic praxis meant to expose the exegete-disciple to the eminence of the Logos and to bring him/her to attest for this eminence by her own existence. In exegetical terms, during the anarchic419 gathering of the scriptures, the Scriptureinscribed physical reader/hearer is compelled to rethink her habitual construal of the Bible as a dually structured text with a mimetically uniform articulation (the letter referring to the spirit, the shadow of the old referring to the truth of new revelation, etc). The reader now realizes that this dual order is a mere symptom of a judgment, and the reversal of judgment (forgiving) that is Logos’ exegetical gathering is infinitely otherwise than any metaphysics that makes sense of the world and the Scripture’s order in terms of binary distinctions such as the sensible and the intelligible, or even the flesh and the spirit. At the end of the day, the physical exegete can be neither a literalist, nor a spiritualist, nor can she practice a (philo)logically neutral exegesis of the letter and the spirit;420 she will turn to God’s messiah for the ultimate prophetic gathering of the scriptures, and, while thus turned, will stand in awe before the radical transcendence of this act. Although mindful of the intrinsic logic of words, the gathering of the words in the Word exceeds these words and their human exegesis, while this excessive transcendence manifests itself as the testimonial feeling of awe as it was described above. Thus gathered, the exegete is ready to be exposed to the fact that she has been inscribed in the “immemorial intrigue”421 of what Origen calls an agapic pacification or reconciliation,422 that is, in Logos’ twofold, filial and neighborly love. The scripturality of this love determines the posture of this eschatologic exegesis, which, as ecclesiastic (gathered and gathering) homiletics, is neighborseeking, and as a doxologic offering of the gathered neighbor to the Father as a son it is Father-seeking.423 Its ultimate outcome is a Trinitarian pacification, which can be deemed a unification only insofar as the One in whose name neighbors come together in filial praise is one, that is, God the Father.424 Love is, thus, the testimonial sociality of peace as the exegete’s responsibility before the One Father for the neighbor whom she homiletically serves. Ultimately, the testimonial value of this non-doctrinal homiletics, which is epoptics, is to be made sense of liturgically, as a praise (doxology) offered to God by the neighbor whom the homilist dedicatedly serves,425 or, as Origen also calls it, as an ecclesiastic engendering of

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Father-praising sons.426 It is crucial to notice that filial doxology is the neighbor’s emerging sonship through the service of the priestly (and ultimately high-priestly)427 homilist,428 while the homilists’ own doxology is only a deferred sonship, that of a minister who will enter the final pacification last, after his disciples, each according to their condition, have been brought into a filial relation with God.429 The above descriptions of exegetical awe and love as prophetic gathering and liturgical (doxological-homiletic) pacification place in a new light the “doctrinal” character of physics and epoptics. From the doctrinal perspective of human wisdom (the liberal arts and the philosophical curricula),430 physics and epoptics may appear as a variable, perhaps even improvisational, mystagogic guidance of the reader toward an optimal placement in the Scriptural text, one that would ready her to become an addressee of God and to work out, one by one, the testimonial postures of an awe-struck, dumb-founded adorer (physics) and a neighbor- and father-loving daughter (epoptics). In both postures, the priestly liturgical work of the pedagogic exegete communicates the archpriestly liturgical work of the Logos, more precisely, Logos’ double filial and neighborly love disposition. Thus, it can be said that, ultimately, by His liturgy of Love, the Logos articulates humanity’s double mission of praising the Father by serving the neighbor, which is, ultimately, what holds (i.e., gathers and pacifies) Origen’s mega-scenarios of spiritual ascent. The Logos is the love that otherwise articulates the world, the Scripture and the humanity, which a worldly wisdom sees as dual and mimetically articulated (a compound of the earthly and the heavenly, the flesh and the spirit, the letter and the spirit, etc). Following the incremental implementation of this other, agapic, articulation of the world, the Scripture and humanity in awe (physics) and love (epoptics), one can envisage an alternative way of approaching the Origenian exegetical pedagogy, which I shall now briefly outline. Any discussion of Origen’s understanding of the feelings of awe and love would have to take into consideration Origen’s rejection of irrational affection.431 However, while following Origen’s train of thought, one is not led to embrace uncritically the binary logic of the “judged” world. In other words, if not irrational, feelings do not have to be rational, that is, logical, according to a fallen and judged human lo¢goj or ratiocination. They can be, simply, otherwise than rational, in two distinct manners: first, as an underde-

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termined attestation for the Logos from the position of an understanding that “feels” outwitted by the transcendent address of the Logos (awe) and, secondly, as an overdetermined attestation of the Logos from the position of one who has been ecclesiastically claimed by the Logos and, therefore, sees everything in/as the Logos (love).432 What is one to make of the common human understanding of the awe at the world’s vanity as a verdict of a divine judgment? As it was shown, awe does not present the world and the scriptures in a disarticulate manner. To the contrary, awe conveys a vivid sense of articulation, which Origen calls gathering. However, the world and Scripture articulation, which such gathering provides, is the very act that exposes the vanity of the other articulation of the worldly and human discourse, which is the lapsed, binary logocentric one.433 Providential (for the world) and prophetic (for the scriptures) gathering does not mean the fallen and judged mind’s discursive speech articulation; actually, articulate gathering is what suspends this lapsarian articulation (without for this reason annihilating its laws and rigors). The feeling of awe is the mute testimony of the overwhelmed, outwitted human understanding (lo¢goj) gathered in/by the Logos.434 The site of this feeling continues, though, to be the discursive (logic-al) mind, therefore, the gathering intervention of the Logos is experienced as a stoppage of speech, a silence, or even as a silent cry.435 Awe is the mind’s fear for having not been gathered in its own (lapsarian) terms, for one’s thought’s having been gathered by the other’s messianic address (Logos’), rather than by its own discourse;436 allegorically put, it is the fear of being immemorially inscribed in the archpriest’s censer and transported to a destination yet unknown.437 Transcendence is first acknowledged negatively, in awe as the feeling of being gathered; it is not yet articulated as a positive response to the fatherly or neighborly other and, in this sense alone, the physical attestation can be said to be underdetermined (the “gathered” reader feels that she cannot understand the gathering by which her progress has been articulated). In awe, gathering is perceived as an assault upon the articulate discourse of the human mind, to which the one who experiences awe clings as to the fabric of her identity.438 Conversely, once in love, the saint experiences this gathering not in the discursively constructed identity of his or her mind but from a Christological

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perspective, “having,” so to say, “Christ’s mind.”439 Therefore, love does not appear as an intrusion or an assault but as a liturgical responsibility; love is the feeling of the one who has been already turned inside-out (filially, towards the Father, and missionary, towards the neighbor). Her discourse contributes to the pacification of the world in Christ (the evangelic growth of the kingdom) and is already part of this kingdom; in this sense homiletic-doxology is a liturgically pacified, rather than disruptively gathered discourse. In the doxologic-homiletic love of the priestly exegete, the Logos filially reconciles the neighbor with the Father.440 Thus, love is the unspeakable (because overly-, that is, gracefully or Christologically articulate) feeling of being at peace with the neighbor by filially ministering to her needs in the name and to the praise of the One Father. As the above definition shows, the testimonial feeling of love is far from inarticulate; its articulation is the sociality of a Trintarian liturgical intrigue, which is different from the ontic solidarity of all beings.441 A pacified discourse is, therefore, a human discourse that Christ speaks out (or a discourse which is spoken out in Christ) as a Son’s response to the neighbor’s need in praise of the Father. This is a discourse that has been transformed by the agapic performance, which is the Logos as evangelic speech act, as evangelic addressative saying, phrasing or word-ing.442 As I shall show in the fourth chapter of this study, insofar as it is phrased by/in the Logos the human discourse of the exegete becomes a testimonial doxologic homiletics, which is articulated in accordance with an eschatological pragmatics. If the spiritually improvised physical and epoptic guidance turn out to be successful, what is the site or the posture in which the readied disciple can experience awe and love? As was shown, from an exegetical point of view, awe is experienced in the posture of the disciples on the road to Emmaus in an in-between, postresurrectional but not yet-ascensional situation;443 likewise, love is experienced in the posture of the love embraced bride or that of the ascended Jesus.444 By way of analogy, the site of the testimonial feeling of awe is the (still) guarded threshold of Paradise or the inbetween of a split (because lapsarian) but gathered (because judged) Bible.445 By contrast, the site of the testimonial feeling of love is Paradise itself, as the filial readiness to serve the other to the praise of the Father, that is, a pacific liturgical sociality.446 This is, indeed, a social experience insofar as the characteristic posture of humanity

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in love is that of being turned inside-out toward a fatherly and a neighborly other; this experience is liturgical insofar as this sociality develops along two lines, namely, the doxological and the homiletic. The pacific character of this socialization is displayed in the liturgical convergence of all the neighborly related sons in the praise of the one God the Father.447 Another word for this pacific liturgical sociality is that of the kingdom of God,448 while the role of exegetical pedagogy can be, now, redefined as facilitating the growth of the kingdom by situating the reader/hearer in the liturgically tended Biblical sites that would allow her to be exposed to God’s love and, thus, to be filially turned inside out towards the neighbor in the name of the Father. The ultimate, eschatological expression of this doxologic homiletic discourse is a peculiar one. Origen construes this awe and love discourse as a testimonial silent cry, surging from the saint’s heart (Gal 4.6), i.e., the mind, otherwise than according to the human disposition of this mind.449 This is the unspeakable cry of intercession of the Holy Spirit on the saint’s behalf before the Father (Rom 8. 26–27), which, nevertheless, comes out as a filial address (Gal 4.6).450 The Father “hears” the saint insofar as she silently cries to Him as a son in/through the Holy Spirit.451 Given Origen’s interpretation of the seraphim in Isa 6.2–3 as the Son and the Holy Spirit, this would be the surge of a seraphic cry, which accomplishes the growth of the kingdom.452

7 A KINGDOM’S GROWTH Looking back at the introductory sections of this book (chapter I) and the first chapter of part III, one may remember my formulation of the central concern of this study, namely, the possibility of maintaining a sense of God’s transcendence in the context of a Logos-centered, but not necessarily logocentric, exegetical pedagogy such as Origen’s. More precisely, I was giving expression to the alarm of the recent critics of logocentrism at the terms and consequences of the grand unification of the world history and of religious discourse by a divine filial Logos. In brief, the question is the following: in Origen are we dealing with a conception of salvation as a uniform progress through homogenous cosmo-theological and historic-eschatological hierarchies, and if so, is the Logos introducing a potentially totalizing uniformity into the multiplicity of human discourses? After a prolonged wandering through the details of Origen’s grand scenarios of the spiritual progress (the sec-

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ond chapter), I was able to propose a reading of Origen in which the Logos appears as a deferrer of the unity and uniformity of these scenarios, insofar as they are the outcome of a human logic, and as an anarchic principle that articulates the exegetic-pedagogic scenarios according to a transcendent Trinitarian “intrigue” of love. In this third chapter, the Logos-articulated progress emerged as a nonuniform trajectory, marked by catastrophic reversals, unspeakable surges of testimonial feeling, and an improvisational doxologichomiletic praxis. Although it looks like my initial question has already been answered, and that the answer is negative, it is worthwhile chancing a last look at the course of the Origenian exegeticpedagogic progress or, as Origen called it, the spiritual leavening. As one may remember, one of the meanings that Origen ascribes to the leaven, is that of the teaching about the kingdom of heavens (h¥ didaxh¢ peri£ thj¤ basilei¢aj tw¤n ou©ranw¤n),453 which means that the gradual leavening of the three measures of flour, standing for a tripartite humanity, indicates a gradual, historical-eschatological growth. Given that the three measures of flour comport the same interpretation as the constitution of the “human” cherub454 and that the goal of the allegorization of the atonement liturgy was the explanation of the gradual unification of the “human” cherub with Christ as the “divine” cherub,455 one would not be mistaken in interpreting the above mentioned liturgical progress as a phenomenology of the growth or leavening of the kingdom.456 Following up on my previous outline of Origen’s cosmologic and anthropologic allegorization of the ark, propitiatory, and cherubim in the Holy of Holies,457 I shall develop this scenario in an exegetical and pedagogic direction that summarizes my findings in the second chapter of this book. The following schemata will be then used in the final assessment of the exegetical and pedagogic aspects of the growth of the kingdom of heavens:

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192

THE SPELL OF THE LOGOS The Holy of Holies as outline of a biblical-textual growth of the kingdom 1a God the Father 1b Word 1c Spirit 2a Individual spirit 2b1 noetic sense 2c literal sense 2b2 psychic sense 3 words The Holy of Holies as an outline of the pedagogic growth of the kingdom 1a God the Father 1b Word 1c Spirit 2a Epoptics (Song of Songs) 2b1 Physics (Ecclesisast) 2c liberal arts 2b2 ethics (Greek cursus) (Proverbs) 3 ignorance

As noted above, the main liturgical event in the Holy was the insertion of the burning coals into the high priest’s censer and the high priest’s gesture of taking a handful of incense, that is, the insertion of humanity, with its deeds and thoughts, in Christ. The exegetical equivalent of this insertion is the exegete’s reading herself into the Bible in the role of a follower of a self-interpreting Christ and, likewise, the disciple’s enrollment in the biblical curriculum as a follower of the self-teaching teacher. Thus, although in its incipient phase (the transition from [3] to [2] and, possibly, also the transition from [2c] to [2b]) the process is experienced as a progress towards Christ, the advanced stages (the transition from [2b2] to [2b1]) disclose that, in fact, this is already a progress in Christ, that Christ’s condescendence has made possible the exegete’s/disciple’s ascent and, moreover, that humans undertake this ascent as immemorially called to become like Christ. In the terms

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of the Emmaus scene, the entirety of humanity has been interpreted in Christ’s self-interpretation in the Scripture as participative in Logos’ messianic condescendence.458 I have called this episode a first catastrophe or a disruption of the expectation that exegesis and pedagogy are a hermeneutical communicative exchange between an interpreting subject and the Logos structured text. Finding oneself inscribed in the text of the Bible and being turned inside-out by a messianic self-exegesis amounts to admitting that exegetical pedagogy originates in a fundamental passivity of being messianically addressed and, therefore, being interpreted and being taught.459 This unsettling discovery is accompanied by a feeling of awe at the mysteries of a historically and textually “gathered” Bible in which one is inscribed. In the passage from understanding oneself as an agent of a lapsed human history (see the third row of the tables) to discovering oneself as exegetically inserted in a sacred history (see the second row of the tables above), one is confronted with the difficulty of this double inscription as a split condition (body/letter vs spirit), and learns to read it as a symptom of a fall followed by a divine judgment. This reading requires an ethical purification from a predominantly appetent approach to the world and an appropriative hermeneutics of the scriptures in the mode “for me,” and a transition to a physical contemplation of the vanity of this appetent-appropriative relation to the world/Scripture as the verdict of God’s judgment on the fallen souls.460 In other words, one exchanges the posture of being subjected to the rule of Christ as an authoritarian shepherd for the rule of Christ as an ethical king of kings and for the experience of being gathered by a physical kingly gatherer, who is also Christ.461 I shall move now to the advanced stages of the progress. In the passage from understanding oneself as someone inscribed in the sacred history (the second row of the tables above) to an eschatological doxology (the first row of the tables) one is being offered to God as a son by the Son in the Spirit.462 This stage is accompanied by an ineffable feeling of filial or nuptial love, which in pedagogic terms characterizes the stage of epoptics.463 The defining posture of the epoptic disciple is that of a pacified son of a fatherly God. The pacification, which consists in the accomplished integration of humanity (the “human” cherub) with Christ (the “divine” cherub) (see the transition from [2a] to [1bc]), is the incremental liturgical sociality of the kingdom of Christ (the unified third and

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second rows), which the Son, in the end, submits to the Father (the unity of 1 a,b and c as the model for the unifying of 1,2 and 3).464 This is the second catastrophe illustrated by Christ’s Ascension and by the Pentecost.465 In liturgical terms, this is the high-priest’s gesture of laying out the atonement offering (the third and the second rows) before the Father (1a) in between the two cherubim (1b and 1c).466 The two transitions (from subjection to gathering [3 to 2] and from gathering to pacification [2 to 1]) are, as it was already indicated, discontinuous; they are punctuated by moments of reversal or catastrophes which are announced by feelings with a testimonial value (awe and love). In light of these two catastrophes and feelings, the project of this book can be said to have followed the Origenian version of the exegetic-pedagogic growth of the kingdom along the following lines: in the phenomenology of the biblical exegesis in II.1 (“Growing up”) and in the phenomenology of biblical pedagogy in II.2 (“Upbringing”) I had the chance to analyze the trajectory of the exegetical ascent and I laid the groundwork for a discussion of the manner in which the coherence of this trajectory can be undermined by the Emmaus and the Ascension events. The analysis of Emmaus and the Ascension in chapter III has completed this project by providing a phenomenology of a few gestures, postures and feelings by which the exegete attests to the divine disruption of the expectation of a uniform biblical-exegetical progress; by the same token I have also emphasized the impact and relevance of these two catastrophes in light of their characteristic testimonial feelings of awe and love. Thus, the analyses in the third chapter of this work have allowed the emergence of two Logos “articulated” types of discourse, which defer uniformization indefinitely, namely, the physical, awe inspired, discourse of gathering and the epoptic, love inspired, discourse of pacification.

8 IS ORIGEN’S EXEGETICAL PEDAGOGY LOGOCENTRIC? The above recapitulation indicates that a unilateral reading of the exegetic-pedagogic process in the light of its grand-scenarios is insufficient and even distortive. Origen’s phenomenology of spiritual leavening is a catastrophic growth, one which is reversed and disrupted by transcendent gestures such as gathering and pacification, and by otherwise than rationally-articulated testimonial feelings such as awe and love. In its immemorial plot, the spiritual leavening

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bears the trace of a filial-neighborly mission, the imprint of the condition of being-turned-inside-out of the Trinitarian Logos Himself as an overall figure of the condition of humanity in the kingdom.467 However, it is now time to inquire whether the above reading of the Origenian project has effectively dispelled the suspicion of logocentrism that was expressed in six points at the end of the fifth section of the first chapter of this study? Let us take these six points in order. A circular soteriology? (Ad 1 in I.5). As has been mentioned very often in the anti-logocentric literature, logocentric temporality is retrievable, gatherable into the present by memory and, thus, existentially reiterable in the presence of a recollecting mind or reason.468 When transposed into theological terms, this idea fuels the suspicion of a circular soteriology, in which the work of the incarnate/intextuate Logos is a restorative one, namely, the reinstating of the fallen intellects in the steady recollective minding of their now neglected (forgotten) pre-fall condition, which, in turn, closely resembles Logos’ ever self-thinking, ever self-present mode of existence. The careful analysis of Origen’s doctrine (his anthropology and cosmology in relation to his soteriology) offered by a series of prestigious Origenian scholars starting with Crouzel and ending with Edwards, has convincingly put to rest the idea of a circular Origenian soteriology in which the end is identical with the beginning.469 For my part, I think that their conclusion can be extended in a non-doctrinal, pragmatic direction. In the third chapter of this study I have tried to show that the historical unfolding of the Logos, as evangelic Bible, inserts the exegete into a filial-neighborly, rather than a reflexive, auto-thematic, event, namely the doxologichomiletic advent of the Logos. Like the immemorial historicality of the doxologic-filial and homiletic-neighborly existing Logos, the temporality of the Christian exegete/disciple is commended by the other (the Father; the neighbor in need) and, as such, it is immemorial, irretrievable in the self-thinking consiciousness of an autonomous subject. Being inscribed in the biblical text and growing with the biblical text as a response to the call of the Other (the Logos of the Father) implies an overcoming of the temporality of hermeneutical appropriation (the aggiornamento or historically effected consciousness) and modifies the circular temporality of the interpreter into an open, future- and other-oriented historicality of election. Election-hermeneutics (what Marion calls a heuristics) is

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oriented toward the ever-current advent of an unforeseeable future, rather than toward the restoration of an Edenical past. Once beyond what Origen calls the physical reading of the Bible, the exegete has overcome the vane recurrence of profane time, nostalgia and restorative soteriologies,470 and lives in light of the ever occurring promise, which is Logos’ evangelic advent. Is salvation a mimetic self-realization of humanity in the self-sameness of the Logos? (Ad 2 in I.5). In the previous sections of this chapter I have shown that, in a pragmatic reading, the Origenian Logos is not primarily a metaphysical entity, a One-Many and a selfreflective cosmic Mind. I have read the work of the Logos as an event that is immemorially plotted as a filial-neighborly, sacrificial, performance. If this reading is correct, then the Logos cannot be reduced to the condition of a self-reflective cosmic mind, the object and subject of a narcissistic self-contemplation. My analysis of the feeling of love and the soteriological exegesis that it generates offers a view of the Logos as a social and socializing speech event, as an address that calls the exegete to praise the Father by homiletically attending to the needs of the neighbor. Thus, like the Logos, the exegete is turned inside-out; his or her reflexive self-sameness and self-presence is deferred, interrupted, by its liturgical duty to the other. In my approach, it becomes quite clear that Origen sees salvation as a social (ecclesial) event, rather than as a solipsistic selfrealization of the isolated exegete through a private revelation of the Logos; it is also clear that Origen construes the condition of the saved as a Trinitarian, neighborly-filial sociality. Is there a communicative necessity of responding to the address of the biblical Logos and are there any pertinence criteria for this response? When placed in a soteriological dimension, this question can be addressed as follows: Is there a necessity that all exegetes be hermeneutically saved, if their intextuated savior were construed as their auctorial prototype? (Ad 3 in I.5). The possibly distorted reception of Origen’s doctrine of a©pokata¢stasij has been competently discussed by Origenian scholarship at the level of doctrine.471 In my pragmaticphenomenological approach, the objection could be rendered as follows; if biblical exegesis is ultimately a Logos exegesis, can we say that the Logos has laid down the ultimate interpretative rules that, when “sufficiently” and “adequately” popularized, humanity as a whole would feel rationally (in the sense of logic-ally) compelled to understand and use as the ultimate meta-linguistic clarifi-

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cation of the various soteriological strategies of the Logos in the Bible and as the ultimate guide for effectively responding to the biblical advent of the Logos? Is there an ideal of reaching understanding on which the Logos relies when He passes on to the rational exegete/disciple His interpretation of the Scripture? If, indeed, responding to God is responding to His biblical address or His biblical Logos by a liturgical doxologic exegesis (attending homiletically to the neighbor in praise of the Father), exegesis is not dictated, ultimately, by a speculative metaphysics of the kindredness between the nature of God or the meaning of His intention, as the author of the Bible, and the nature of humanity, as the Bible’s “naturally” competent receptor. Instead, the sole driving force of this hermeneutics would be the Christological address of God issued on behalf of and even as the neighbor in need.472 Origenian exegesis seems to be a Christological form of condescending to the needs of the neighborly disciple and of readying the disciple to be addressed by God’s biblical Logos in a community of ecclesiastic God-praising sons. In the third chapter of this study, I have also tried to show that this Logos is not a message, a specific kind of discourse, or an authorized meaning or communicative rationale of a biblical discourse, but rather an event, a spiritual advent. Thus, being divinely addressed or being exposed to God’s biblically coming Logos means being in a position of discipleship and stewardship, which divinization cannot and does not change into a symmetric, peer-like, reciprocal relation.473 Divinization implies a filial, doxologic posture, a being presented to God the Father’s address and being readied to respond to His address in a cherubic-filial voice. Regardless of how Origen might present this process doctrinally (for example, as a reflection of a rational mimetic kindredness between God and the humans or between the humans and the Bible), his Christological pragmatics of biblical exegesis does not seem to be adequately represented by this doctrinal elaboration. However, there is a lingering suspicion that the Christian claim of having been addressed by Speech itself (the Logos) in each particular phrase, passage, book or group of books present in the Bible, may yet conceal a universalist claim, which is surreptitiously logocentric. Although I shall discuss this claim in greater detail in the fourth chapter of this study, a brief presentation of the issue will be presented later on in this section.474

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If not passionate (i.e., emotional), is Logos’ biblical advent, as condescending Love, susceptible of an exclusively intellectual exegesis? (Ad 4 and 5 in I.5). Logocentrism manifests a preference for the rational metadiscourse, or the constative-centered rational explanations and definitions, which tend to subordinate all other forms of discourse.475 Thus, if a love discourse is formulated as an expressive, the logocentrist will claim that a constative-ruled, cognitive or speculative meta-discourse is needed to explain objectively and exhaustively what is “truly” at stake in the emotional display of the expressive and, moreover, that this meta-discourse can bring out and isolate the rationale of the emotion of love, its ultimate “true” reason. Origen’s rejection of irrational enthusiasm and his apprehensiveness for irrational emotions seem to place him in a logocentric paradigm. However, my analysis of Origenian love and of its theological expression, which is Logos’ immemorial self-emptying, seems to present us with an alternate view on the issue. Filialneighborly love as the immemorial intrigue of Logos’ condescension (including His biblical, textual, condescension) seems to be an irreducible phenomenon, surpassing any meta-discoursive clarification. By presenting the biblical text as a performance of an immemorial love (the Logos) and by rendering exegesis as a doxologichomiletic furthering of this love to a neighborly audience, I have answered the above question in the negative. The biblical Logos does not seem to be an intellectual meta-discourse addressing the mind of the biblical exegete in the rhetorical semblance of an emotional love-discourse; instead it looks like this Love event, which is the Logos, happens textually to the exegete, claiming him or her to discipleship. Neither emotional, nor intellectual Love happens as the immemorial speech performance, the “from-to” charitable address of the Father’s Logos. The rigor or order of this Love event476 is to be sought testimonially in the event itself (the immemorial, filially- and neighborly-intrigued performance) rather than in a speculatively identified rationale of this love.477 My response to the possible construal of Origen as a logocentrist thinker along the lines set out in I.5. is not yet complete. While the issue of uniformity has been discussed at sufficient length in relation to Logos’ modes of manifestation, proving that physical gathering is not homogenizing unification and that pacification is sociality, rather than monolithic oneness, the manner in which the Logos articulates humanity with God has been somewhat ne-

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glected. Although not ontic-ontologically self-contained and not effecting a closure of history in one of its points, the Logos, whose inside-out condition is, for Origen, the very opening of the world, the Bible and humanity toward God, is still said to be articulating the various aspects of these entities. Gathering and pacification are modes of articulation with clear ecclesiastic, pedagogic and exegetical expressions. If, theoretically at least, the Logos provides an open mediation, offering humanity to God in a multiplicity of biblical postures, Origen unequivocally prefers and even recommends certain scenarios of the progress as more authorized than others and traces this authorization back to the historical activity of the Logos Himself. Thus, one can reformulate the suspicion of uniformity in a different fashion, namely, as a suspicion regarding the totalizing use of the mediative function of the Logos for a unilateral authorization of a Christian exegesis of the Bible, which would subordinate all other forms of exegesis (especially the Greek and the Jewish ones). Likewise, one can express a concern regarding the use of the mediative function of the Logos for a unilateral Christian authorization of pedagogy, to the effect that non-biblical pedagogies (such as the Greek) and non-Christian biblical pedagogies (like the tannaitic) find themselves assimilated in the uniquely authorized Christian pedagogy. Let us formulate this objection more rigorously. Can one truly maintain that Origen’s evangelic Logos is a soteriological speech event, rather than a specific mega-genre of speech (the Christian lovespeech as generalized gospel), when Origen praises the Logos for having included all other speech genres and pedagogic methods, especially the Greek and the Jewish? (Ad 6 in I.5). According to the reading that I proposed in III.5.2, it looks like Logos’ messianic wording strikes human exegesis with vanity in order to gather and pacify it otherwise than according to its own lapsarian, appropriative, logic. In this sense, an epoptic, post-metaphysical reading of the performance of the Logos is expected to foster a non-totalizing universalism, a gathering of a plurality of ecclesiastically socialized, filial-neighborly biblical interpretations. However, as my analysis of both the theory and the procedure of Origen’s pedagogic exegesis indicates (see above chapter II), Origen seems to abide quite adamantly by the thesis of an assimilationist universality of the Christian interpretation of the Bible, claiming as its supreme authorization Christ’s selfinterpetation on the road to Emmaus. Therefore, it looks like, in

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terms of Origen’s hermeneutical doctrine and praxis, the suspicion of logocentrism can be consolidated into a fairly solid evidence. However, my indication of an alternative reading of the Emmaus scene, which is equally based on various aspects of Origen’s doctrine and work, suggests that a different, non-assimilationist, nonuniversalist, reading of Origen’s exegetical pedagogy is not impossible, even though this is not the preferred reading of Origen himself. A further discussion of this reading will be offered below in the fourth chapter of this study. In keeping with the initial project, I shall address this last concern regarding the totalizing potential of Origen’s Logosuniversalism in its pedagogic-exegetical dimension. In its most general formulation, the problem is the following: since the Logos, as wording or phrasing, articulates human discourse as a filial modality of praising the Father (doxology) by the enacting of an evangelic proselytism as a neighbor-addressed homiletics, it can be said that the growth of the Christian kingdom happens in this exegetical (doxological-homiletic) evangelization as a divinely authoritative annunciation of a filially reported good news to the neighbor.478 Given Origen’s belief that the Logos as the messianic event of an evangelic address is the articulation of the addressee with a fatherly addressor, who is not and cannot be marked in the “universe of discourse” of the annunciation, it is necessary to analyze this eschatological articulation of the Christian evangelization outlining and assessing what, with a modern term, could be the source of its performative effectiveness and its power of authorizing a universal doxologic homiletics. If carried out in great detail, such a task would exceed the current format of this study, therefore I shall limit it to a targeted analysis of Origen’s exegesis of a specific biblical text, which will be then assessed in light of two contending antilogocentric doctrines.

IV

DISPUTING EMMAUS

1 EMMAUS AS THE CHRISTOLOGICAL AUTHORIZATION OF A TYPOLOGICAL READING OF HISTORY In 1949 the Catholic poet Paul Claudel published under the title Emmaüs a compendium of what he considered to be the standard Christian interpretation of the Jewish scriptures.1 Apologetic in intent and poetic in style, Claudel’s Emmaüs is loosely based on the exegetical works of the 9th century Benedictine theologian Rabanus Maurus of Meinz and, via Rabanus, on earlier Patristic sources.2 In a book review published one year later the French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas outlines a Jewish response to the Christian view of history that results from Claudel’s typological reading of the Scripture, pointing out the historically distorting and politically totalizing potential of this reading.3 Given Claudel’s emphatic reference to Jesus’ exegesis of the Bible on the road to Emmaus as the source and final justification of Christian scriptural exegesis,4 it would be interesting to inquire what aspects of Claudel’s reading of the Emmaus scene are most susceptible of Levinas’ anti-totalizing criticism and to what extent the Claudelian reading of the Emmaus scene is related to Origen’s take on this event. After a brief summary of Levinas’ objections to Claudel’s use of typology and a more detailed presentation of Lyotard’s reworking of these objections into an overall criticism of Christianity, I shall conclude this study with a discussion of the applicability of this criticism to Origen’s exegetical pedagogy. I shall maintain that, while a nontotalizing reading of Origen’s use of the Emmaus scene is possible, Origen may not have always abided by it, and that Origen’s Christian hermeneutics of history is, to a great extent, susceptible of the same criticism that Levinas voiced against Claudel. * 201

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Levinas’ objections primarily regard the assimilationist effects of Claudel’s typological reading of sacred history. On occasion Levinas also refers to the broader theological assumptions that authorize the Christian application of this hermeneutics to the Jewish scriptures. Most of all Levinas calls for an ethical judgment on what, from the stand point of a survivor of the Shoah, he sees as the no longer virtual, but rather historically actual, misappropriation of Judaism by the Christian West. The tone of Levinas’ critique is that of a subdued suffering, an indignation without pathos and without any expectation for a prompt understanding on the reader’s part. Certain turns of the phrase in this text seem to indicate that Levinas construes his interlocutor as insensitive or rather as desensitized to the suffering of the Jews by something much more powerful than ignorance or malevolence (as a matter of fact, Levinas finds Claudel neither ignorant nor ill-intentioned).5 As we shall have the chance to notice, the insensitivity that Levinas anticipates is of a very particular sort; it consists in the interlocutor’s false conviction that he is already sensitive to the speaker’s suffering because he has been given access to God’s providential rationale for this suffering.6 Feeling disheartened or helpless before such an insensitivity is different from the feeling of one who lacks an intellectually apt partner for discussion or a shared cultural idiom to make oneself understood. This is more like an exasperation for not being able to reach out to one’s interlocutor as a responsive person, for not being able to bear testimony of one’s suffering before a person who is under the potent spell of an authorizing conviction (a comprehensive “reason” or justification) that denies her an unprejudiced opening toward the other. According to Levinas, Claudel’s allegorical reading of sacred history is driven precisely by such a conviction, when it suggests that a Jew can, essentially, stay true to his Jewish identity only by accepting an Emmausian, post-resurrectional or spiritual, exegesis of his history as prefiguratively Christian.7 When placed in a Patristic Alexandrian setting, the conviction that authorizes the allegorical hermeneutics of sacred history is further grounded in the belief that the one speaking in and as the resurrected Jesus on the road to Emmaus is the Logos as the first principle of the creation and of world-history, and therefore that as an exegesis of the Logos, Christian exegesis is more original than the literal, merely historical exegesis of the Jews.8 As I shall try to prove, the ultimate result of

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logocentrism, including Origen’s own logocentrism, is a desensitization to suffering through an excision of one’s ethical responsiveness towards the other as an other and a treatment of the other as a mere actor in a metaphysically plotted theo-drama.9 Two of Levinas’ objections are aimed at certain, all too obvious flaws in Claudel’s biblical exegetical procedure. Such is the remark that, unlike the expert biblical scholar, Claudel has an insufficient knowledge of the original languages of the Bible and that he relies uncritically on the speculative etymologies offered by the patristic and the medieval tradition.10 The other criticism regards the excessive and undiscerning manner in which Claudel uses the figural, hermeneutical approach, namely his habit of identifying each positive character in the Jewish Scripture as a type of Christ, and every negative character as Christ’s persecutors, often construed as “the Jews.”11 The charges of dilettantism (in the sense of a scholarly, in this case, a philological deficiency) and pedantry (Claudel’s insistence that every aspect of the Jewish Bible be read as a non-equivocal reference to the New Testament), can be deepened by an inquiry into the theological assumptions of Claudel’s exegesis. Levinas seems to suggest that Claudel’s neglect of the literal sense of the Scripture might be more than a flaw in his philological deontology. A certain encouragement to overlook the letter of the Scripture and to minimize the suffering of those Jews whose identity is inextricably associated with the literal reading of the Bible could have been prompted by an overly zealous preference for the Scripture’s spirit over its letter.12 Although one may surmise in this objection a direct attack on the Christian, mostly Pauline, postulation of a primacy of the spirit over the letter,13 Levinas’ objection is more narrowly aimed at the allegorist’s habit of instrumentalizing the spirit to patch the historical “incoherences and gaps” in the literal reading of the Bible’s text.14 This criticism seems to turn on its head (or should it be rather taken as a restoration to a “normal” upright position?) Origen’s view that illogical and immoral biblical statements are part of a biblical pedagogy meant to sensitize the exegete to a deeper, ethically exemplary and logically flawless, spiritual sense of the Bible.15 Whether one takes it as the realist’s defense of literalism or rather as the spiritualist’s opposition to the rationalization of the spirit’s transcendence,16 Levinas’ criticism confronts the Origenian thinker with a serious issue: if one were to investigate the assump-

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tions of his recourse to allegory as a spiritual restoration of the logical coherence and ethical justification of the text’s letter, is one not surreptitiously admitting an ethical-rationalist conditioning of the spirit (an ethical logos as the spirit’s “sufficient reason”) or, at least, a similar conditioning of the spirit’s textual performance (an ethical logos as the ultimate motivation of the spirit’s textual pedagogy)? Equally serious might be the radicalization of the pedantry reproach, if the pedantic referral of everything “old” to everything “new” is traced to a certain universalist penchant in Christianity’s use of typology for the construction of its identity. In this approach, pedantry is the stylistic symptom of a metaphysically justified, speculative rigor or of a metaphysically justified systematicity and announces a certain taste for what, following Rosenzweig, Levinas has elsewhere called “totalization.”17 In his review of Claudel’s book, Levinas presents this totalizing tendency in dramaturgic terms.18 Briefly put, he thinks that the Claudelian Christian exegete presents the world as a stage, history as a drama, the Bible as this drama’s script and the exegete as a psychoanalytic spectator, whose interpretation reverts the manifest literal-historical drama to its latently “real,” Christological and Trinitarian, plot.19 Levinas’ response to Claudel is twofold. On the one hand, he takes an argumentative stance, wondering whether Claudel’s theodramatic view does not substitute the act of creation to a directorial act, and whether it does not reduce the freedom of created humanity as a community of free persons to the heteronomy of a puppetry of staged roles.20 As he suggests, one can respond to God’s order (presumably the Law understood in a Levinasian fashion, as an immemorial assignation of the I to the other in ethical responsibility) only as a created person; as a role (or mask) one can only play a part in “a sublime and sacramental fatum in which, instead of being, man figures.”21 This, unfortunately, is a concern that I shall not be able to address as I would have wanted to and as it deserves.22 It is undeniable that Origen and, with a risky generalization, Christianity, display a certain taste for a larger-than-life and yet historically and worldly played out theo-drama.23 I am not in the position to give a firm pronouncement on whether the Christian, dramatic imagination makes Christian humanity deficient on the ethicalpersonalist level required by the Jewish approach of Levinas (responding ethically to an immemorial order), or whether, alterna-

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tively, it offers a divine-human reading of humanity’s historical drama, which does not infringe on a human’s freedom as a created person (in which case the dramatic view criticized by Levinas would have to be properly aimed at a speculative-metaphysical misuse of Christianity’s Christological and Trinitarian dramatic potential).24 Nevertheless, whatever stand one may take in regard to Levinas’ anti-dramatic argument, the weight of his criticism would not be fully grasped if one were to stay solely at an argumentative level. The other aspect of Levinas’ critique of Claudel, and the most important one, as far as I can tell, is testimonial.25 Levinas does not simply argue against the dramatic alteration of the God of creation and the correlative depersonalizing (a dramatic reduction or de-realization) of biblical humanity by means of an allegorical text exegesis and a prosopopoietic theory of reception; instead he attests to these effects. I take the following statement as an epitome of Levinas’ testimonial stance: I wonder if our Christian friends can understand that Claudel’s book leaves us feeling frightened and disoriented: as if our grandparents, parents, sisters and brothers were rigged out in exotic gear, and spoke a strange language. Unknown and hostile. Ethnically and racially transfigured, at each step they deny us. In Emmaüs we are more than ever before a people guilty of deicide. (…) Does not Cain prefigure the Jewish people and Abel the Sacrificed Lamb? This is a courtly explanation of all our woes subsequent to exile, Auschwitz included. Eliphaz of Theman had already offered Job such an explanation, with all his contrition and tact. This is a prefiguration which we accept.26

This statement, with its subtle counter-typological (although still typological) final suggestion, is highly interesting. Levinas voices here, by way of testimony, the concern of a Jew who suffers hic et nunc the totalizing effects of Claudel’s Christian typological reading of history. He also proposes an alternative reading of this history, which is no less typological. In this reading, Claudel’s Christian stance seems to reiterate the position that Eliphaz of Theman adopts in regard to Job, who, in turn, becomes a figure of the Jewish people. If, following the description offered in the first chapter, one identifies the retributive-providentialist stance of Eliphaz of Theman as a form of logocentrism27 and takes Eliphaz’s attitude to-

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wards Job’s suffering as a logocentrically constructed stance (Eliphaz of Theman’s concern for Job is, if not generated, at least authorized, by his alleged knowledge of the reason of Job’s suffering), it might be relevant to note that Eliphaz’s logocentrically constructed compassion for Job is exactly what numbs his responsiveness to Job. If responding to suffering is conditional upon one’s knowledge of the reason of this suffering, one responds only to what one knows this suffering to be, which, according to Levinas and Lyotard, constitutes a double offence. On the one hand, it institutes a primacy of cognition over ethics, which reflects a much deeper prioritizing of the sameness of the knower’s consciousness over the otherness of the suffering neighbor.28 On the other hand, it entertains a totalizing belief that the suffering which is being phrased in the other person’s discourse is exhaustively and satisfactorily rendered by its translation in the terms of a cognitive statement (consider the difference between responding to “I feel sick” by “It must be flu” instead of “Here I am” or “What can I do?”).29 A third offence can be formulated in the terms of Marion’s critique of logocentrism. Eliphaz of Theman’s response to Job excludes de plano the possibility of a suffering that surpasses or exceeds any possibility of cognition, an event that offers reason an opportunity to respond (it gives one a reason to respond by its very happening), rather than allowing itself to be summoned before reason’s court for being evaluated and offered a reason (in this sense, one’s decision regarding whether one’s suffering is worthy to be responded to and how it needs to be responded to is always later than the reason that the event of suffering gives one to respond).30 As it seems, for Levinas the Claudelian allegorist is a logocentrist who views the world as a retributive theo-drama and places himself, through a cognitive prosopopoiesis, in a position of intimate acquaintance with the director of the drama’s artistic design (he knows the divine director’s reason for plotting the drama so that Job would suffer the way he does or, at least, he knows that there is such a reason). In a logocentric hermeneutics, the suffering of the other is muted by the more or less explicit, more or less brutal, grip of an allknowledgeable, quasi-providential, concern. This knowledgeable concern is the attitude of a person who has fallen under the fanaticizing spell of a powerful belief (for example that of a quasidivinely authorized, universal retribution or an all-justifying love) and approaches the suffering neighbor accordingly. The spell-like

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authorization that this illusion gives to the logocetrist’s world-stand makes it impossible that he might have any misgivings regarding the other’s possible refusal to acquiesce to the rigors of his knowledgeable concern and excludes the possibility that the other’s suffering could somehow except itself from the redemption that his justice and/or compassion has to offer. In brief, in its absolute, totalitarian, form, logocentrism leaves the other’s suffering no other means of expression than the non-language of feeling,31 which is, the testimonial, non-discursive, non-argumentative, form that Job’s and Levinas’s discourse ultimately share. As we have seen, an aspect that is essential in Claudel’s approach to the Jewish Scripture and that Levinas does not address directly is the claim that hermeneutics should be traced back to Jesus’ exegesis of the scriptures on the road to Emmaus. Although justified from a Christian point of view, this genealogic claim is not sufficient to establish the accuracy of Claudel’s hermeneutics. One needs to inquire as well into the details of this genealogical claim, more precisely into the stance that one takes in regard not only to the overall meaning of the Emmaus scene but also in regard to the overall functioning of the tradition in which this meaning is being handed over and preserved. For the purposes of this study, it suffices to test the logocentric character of the authorization that a Christian, allegorical exegete claims in referring to the Emmaus scene by looking at the position that he takes in regard to this scene. In a general formulation, I consider as totalizing any interpretation that authorizes the interpreter to place himself on the position of a quasi-divine, directorial mind/will/subject and to treat the other (a person, a person’s interpretation of a text, a tradition of textual interpretation) as if staged and scripted by such a mind/will/subject. In this sense, a totalizing use of figural exegesis could be traced back to a sort of prosopopoietic interpretation of the Emmaus scene by which one casts oneself into the position of Christ as a meta-discursive, self-interpreting, universal Logos. From this position, one can feel authorized to tell the “complete” “real” story of salvation, becoming thus desensitized, by the very holistic stakes of the task, to the suffering that his interpretation inflicts on the people whose texts, traditions and idioms it appropriates. This last look at Origen’s exegetical pedagogy will, therefore, be focused exclusively on the character of its authorization. A final placement of our findings regarding the authorization of Origenian exegesis in

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the context of my previous analyses of Origen’s take on the Emmaus scene (see chapters two and three above) will conclude this study. Needless to say that the conclusion that I am about to draw is highly tentative and that I see it as a stake for further debates. The following sections of this chapter will insert Origen’s exegetical pedagogy into the contemporary debate regarding logocentrism. In the second section of this chapter (IV.2) I shall transpose the previously described evangelic scenario of Origen’s exegetical and pedagogic thought (see chapter II above) into an eclectic linguistic-pragmatic idiom, which combines classic Austinian, pragmatic terminology with the linguistic terminology proposed by Jean-François Lyotard in the work called The Differend.32 Thus, the second section of this chapter (IV.2) will be focused on what may be called the more emphatically logocentric aspect of Origen’s thought, which in the third section of the chapter (IV.3) will be criticized from a Lyotardian, post-modern, position. In IV.4 I shall return to the anti-logocentric revision of the evangelic grandscenario offered in chapter III (the non-logocentric reading of Origen’s exegetical pedagogy), which I shall describe in a linguisticpragmatic terminology inspired by the heuristic phenomenology of Jean-Luc Marion. The result will be a reassessment of the logocentric position in chapter II along with its linguistic-pragmatic transposition in IV.2 and an alternative reading of Origen as a nonlogocentric thinker. The fifth section of this chapter (IV.5) will outline three readings of the Emmaus scene, namely, a logocentric one, along the lines of the exegetic-pedagogic scenario in II and IV.2; a non-logocentric Lyotardian reading of Emmaus, along the lines of IV.3 and a non-logocentric Marionesque reading of Emmaus along the lines of the constructions in chapters III and IV.3. On this occasion I shall offer an assessment of Origen’s take on the Emmaus scene and of the role that the Origenian reading of this scene plays in authorizing an exegetical and pedagogic praxis. From this complex analysis, Origen will emerge as a bifid thinker, as an exegete and a pedagogue with a double, both logocentric and anti-logocentric, allegiance (compare chapters II and III above) that prevents any easy holistic criticism or endorsement. In IV.6 I shall offer my interpretation on the relation between the logocentic and the anti-logocentric aspects of Origen’s thought along with a final (but by no means definitive) pronouncement on the totalizing potential of Origen’s exegetic-pedagogy.

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2 A PRAGMATIC-LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF ORIGEN’S EXEGESIS OF THE BIBLE AS GOSPEL 2.1 Preliminary Clarifications I would like to return now to Origen’s definition of the ordinary good news, which I shall interpret from a pragmatic-linguistic perspective. The proposed interpretation recapitulates and expands on some of the findings in my investigation in chapter one. For more convenience, I shall divide Origen’s definition of the gospel into two main sections, each of which containing two sub-sections: 1(a) The gospel, therefore, is a discourse containing a report of things which, with good reason, due to their beneficial character, make the hearer glad whenever he receives what is reported. (b) Such a discourse is no less gospel should it also be examined with reference to the hearer’s attitude. 2 (a) The gospel is either a discourse which contains the presence of a good for the believer, or (b) a discourse which announces that an awaited good is present.33

A structural analysis of the above passage allows at least three observations, which I shall further supplement with a series of clarifications on the basic concepts that will be used throughout this last section of the essay. First, both sets of definitions identify the gospel as a kind of discourse (lo¢goj), that, according to one of Origen’s subsequent remarks, may be as brief as a few inter-connected phrases or as extensive as a book or even a set of biblical books (the four gospels, for example).34 I shall call the interconnected phrases that make up the minimal gospel discourse a gospel phrase-complex. Additionally, I shall distinguish between two possible uses of the term “discourse” or lo¢goj. On the one hand, I shall take lo¢goj as a designation of what J.-F. Lyotard calls a phrase, i.e., the unitstatement of any larger discourse. For Lyotard, each individual phrase configures a universe of discourse comprising an addressor, an addressee, and a referent, in accordance with a certain structuring rule called the phrase regimen.35 For example, constative phrases such as “[I announce] that x is here” tend to emphasize their referent (x) as an object of cognition, while prescriptive phrases like “See for yourself!” tend to emphasize their addressee as the person who should find herself under the obligation to do

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what is being prescribed.36 By contrast, an expressive such as “If only x could have been here right now!” emphasizes the instance of the addressor, more precisely his state of mind. On the other hand, I shall take the term lo¢goj as a designation of what Lyotard calls a genre of discourse.37 A discourse genre is a teleological principle that prescribes rules for the linkage of various phrases within a phrase-complex and brings together various phrase-complexes in a coherent body of text with a precise, communicative function. Thus, according to its genre, a text can appear as a narrative, a dialogue, a debate, etc.38 On the basis of the linking rules that the genre prescribes to a discourse, it is possible to draw a distinction between pertinent and non-pertinent responses to a phrasecomplex. A pertinent response would be one that conforms to the communicative purpose that a discourse genre imprints on a phrase-complex.39 In light of the above linguistic-pragmatic distinctions one can define a phrase-complex as any group of inter-connected phrases (lo¢goi, in Origen’s terms) that displays in a nutshell the linkage principle (lo¢goj) of the genre that rules over the larger body of text (also a lo¢goj) in which these phrases are embedded. A third, more elusive, but, at the same time, more profound interpretation of the term lo¢goj will be offered presently.40 Secondly, a gospel discourse seems to be characterized by a double linguistic performance. (1a) insists on the discourse’s double function of announcing or letting-know (the a¹gge¢lein aspect of to£ eu¹agge¢lion) and on its beneficence (the eu¦- in to£ eu¹agge¢lion).41 As previously noted, a phrase whose performative function is to let-know or to inform is called a constative, while the phrase conveying the disposition of the addressor is an expressive. As intimated in (2a) and (2b), the addressee of the kerygmatic phrase-complex is expected to perceive the constative performance (the briefing) as “good” and as an occasion for joy, which means that the gospel phrase-complex is ruled by a genre that dictates the linkage between expressive phrases or expressive phrase-parts and constative phrases or constative phrase-parts. In addition to its function of briefing, the combined illocutionary force of such a constative-expressive complex would also have the function of offering its addressee a token of the beneficent or charitable disposition of the one who does the briefing. This expressive feature, which appears interwoven with the constative performance, will

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need our future attention both in regard to its meaning and in regard to its linguistic form. Thirdly, the above definitions display a formal parallelism, which could help defining what linguistic theory calls “the universe of discourse” of the kerygmatic phrase-complex. For example, both (1a) and (2a) describe the discourse as “containing” a certain something, namely, a report of beneficial things or the presence of a good. This “good” is the referent of the gospel discourse, or what the announcement is about. The parallelism goes further, insofar as (1a) and (2a) identify the addressee as the one for whom the reported things and the good announced to be present turn out to be beneficial. Following this parallelism, it is possible to describe the common structure of (1a) and (2a) as “G is a species of L, which contains x to the benefit of A.” For more clarity I shall break this formula in two: (i). “G is an L” and (ii.) “Lg contains x to the benefit of A,” where G stands for the gospel, L is the initial of the Greek word lo¢goj, translated as “discourse,” Lg designates the gospel as a specific kind of discourse, x stands for both the “report of beneficial things” and for the “presence of a good,” and A stands for the addressee, whom (1a) describes as “the receiver” of the announcement, while (2a) describes as “the believer.” Thus, according to these formulae, a second instance of the gospel’s universe of discourse takes preeminence, namely, its addressee or recipient. (1b) offers a further elaboration on (1a)’s identification of the addressee of the report. According to (1b), this addressee has to be someone able to work out a specific disposition that would allow the report’s beneficence to come into effect. In linguistic-pragmatic terms, one may call (1b) a specification of the perlocutionary effect of the illocutionary force of the gospel discourse as described by (1a).42 Thus, (1a) and (1b) can be said to display the following argumentative line: i. All G-s are L ii. All L-s contain/announce x to the benefit of an A43 (a reference to the illocutionary force of the Logosannouncement as a constative speech act) iii. All G-s induce A-s to display a certain receptive attitude r towards x or what is reported (a token of the perlocutionary force of the gospel announcement as a constative speech act)

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(i., ii, iii.) Æiv. If an L is received by an A and this A has been made receptive to x by this L (an act of reception that presents the characteristics under iii.), this L is a G It is worthwhile noting the emphasis that (1a) and (2a) place on two instances of the gospel’s universe of discourse, namely, the referent (the “things” “contained” in the report and the “presence of a good” which is said to be “contained” in the announcement), and the addressee (the receptive hearer or the expectant believer). By contrast, the addressor, or the one who reports or announces, is not explicitly named in any of the two definitions, unless, by an excessive devotion to the letter of the text, the reader would be willing to take the terms “report,” “announcing discourse,” or “gospel” as designations of the addressor of the briefing discourse (Lg). Should this happen, instead of calling the gospel a discourse by which an addressor announces the good news to an addressee, one would have to identify the gospel discourse as that instance which does the announcing or, in brief, its addressor (the announcer).44 2.2 The Gospel Phrase-Complex My previous observations on Origen’s definitions of the gospel indicate that a minimal gospel phrase-complex might consist in a linkage of two phrases that emphasize two different instances of their universe of discourse, namely, the referent (for the constative) and the addressee (for the prescriptive). Also, the two definitions of the term “gospel” designate the function of the gospel phrasecomplex by a conjoined use of the terms “announcement” and “report.” Definition (1a) refers to the gospel phrase-complex as a report that is embedded (Origen would say “contained”) in a larger net of phrases belonging to the gospel genre, while definition (2a) refers in a similar way to the gospel phrase-complex as an embedded annunciation. As far as one can tell from the abstract definitions of the gospel, the gospel phrase-complex seems to have not only a briefing (reporting-announcing) function but also a pronounced ostensive force; the announcing-showing of the “certain things” mentioned in (2a) or of the “good’s” presence /the “present good” of (2b) seems to suggest that the gospel might be a constative (a phrase describing states of affairs) containing ostensive phrase parts such as deictics (adverbs, pronouns) or quasi-deictics (proper names).45 The role of the deictics in this phrase-complex might be

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to indicate a referent or the “good” as present within the temporalspatial coordinates of the phrase’s universe of discourse, and to situate the presence of this good (the referent) in regard to the addressee who is said to draw a benefit from its current reception. The phrase-complex might also contain indications of an expressive illocution, which for now are still obscure both in content and in regard to their concrete linguistic realization. Thus, risking a guess, the initial gospel phrase-complex could look as follows: “Look! Here are the things that by your very reception of them you attest as beneficial!” or “Look! Here is the good you were waiting for!” or “Look! Here is the good that you believed one day would arrive!” Definition (1b) can be also rendered as a kerygmatic constative such as: “This is the glad, welcoming disposition that only the occurrence of a gospel-lo¢goj can bring!” Let us verify the accuracy of these guesses by turning to the concrete phrase-complex, which Origen identifies as the matrix of the gospel genre. In the introduction to The Commentary on the Gospel according to John, Origen considers a few ways in which one can diagnose a biblical text as a gospel. First, the term “gospel” can strictly designate the four narratives traditionally named so;46 secondly, it can designate the four gospels and select passages in the apostolic acts and epistles, in which the apostles speak in the name of God, as opposed to speaking in their own name;47 thirdly, the entire New Testament may be considered a “gospel” insofar as “it contains various ascriptions of praise and teachings of him on account of whom the gospel is gospel.”48 The third use of the term “gospel” opens the way for a fourth, generalized, definition according to which the entire Bible, including the Old Testament, is called a gospel, insofar as it refers to an allegedly unique messianic event;49 similarly, all the biblical authors may be called evangelists insofar as their discourse “confirms the things concerning Jesus.”50 Also, as a rule, the term gospel should be taken in more than one sense at a time. For example, one can simultaneously interpret the term “gospel” as a strict designation of the four gospels and as the denomination of select passages in the NT corpus (the first and the second definitions above) and as a loose definition of the NT in its entirety or even of the Bible as a whole (the third and the fourth definitions above). The strictly defined and the loosely defined “gospel” are related as homonyms.51

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I would like to focus for now on the strict sense of the term “gospel,” which is applicable to the four biblical texts traditionally called so. Origen believes that one can diagnose these writings as “gospel” by the structuring function that the gospel phrasecomplex plays in each of them. Origen further identifies one such diagnostic gospel phrase-complex as John 1.29: “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”( ÓIde o( aÃmnoj tou¤ qeou¤ o( aiÃrwn th\n a(marti/an tou¤ ko/smou).52 The statement in John 1.29, which was issued by John the Baptist upon his meeting with Jesus (John 1.29–35)53 consists in a combination of two phrases. As anticipated, one of the phrases of the prophetic announcement is a constative: John (announcing): (This is) the lamb who takes away the sin of the world. However, the regimen of the phrase, which appears attached to the constative, singles it out as a prescriptive: John (demanding): “Behold ( ÓIde) [it, i.e., the lamb]!” The prescriptive seems to be drawing the hearer’s attention to the referent of the constative, reinforcing the ostensive function of the deictics in this phrase.54 Thus, the overall phrase-complex can be rendered as a combination of an ostending-describing-naming constative and a prescriptive such as: John (announcing): (This here [ostension] is) the lamb [nomination] that takes away the sin of the world [description]. Look at it! [order].55 The newly found gospel phrase-complex matches quite well my previous projections. The only notable difference between Origen’s diagnostic phrase and the four tentative phrases that I proposed earlier is one of emphasis. Origen’s phrase-complex does not contain any explicit metalinguistic reflection on what would constitute a pertinent reception of the announcement. However, the mode of attestation of the beneficence of the phrase (see the first tentative statement above), the predetermination of the reception (see the second and the third tentative statements above) and the thematization of the reception as an availability for the advent of the lo¢goj (see the fourth tentative phrase), become explicit through Origen’s allegorization of the term “world” as the ecclesiastic receptor of Christ (the lamb) and by his laying out of the exegetical and pedagogic conditions under which this “world” can become a beneficiary of the lamb’s activity.56 What remains to be dis-

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cussed is, first, the performance of this phrase-complex, and, secondly, the justification that Origen provides for the Christian use of this phrase-complex as a diagnostic test for the establishment of the evangelic character of a biblical text and for an exegetical unification of the Bible as a comprehensive evangelic discourse. 2.3 The Performance of the Gospel Phrase Complex What does Origen think that the gospel phrase-complex “does” or enacts? In what consists its performance? Origen believes that this complex speech-act functions as an exceptionally effective ostension or presentation. He calls it a discursive “pointing” (deiknu¢ousa)57 of the present messiah to distinguish it from a merely expectant foretelling or a premonitory announcement (prokhru¢ssousa) of a savior yet to come.58 He also thinks that the pointed at messiah comes to presence not only historically (Jesus whom John reports of seeing), but textually as well, and that the messiah manifests himself in the title that names the referent of the prophetic phrase and in the phrase that contains the title. Consequently, the messianic advent of the Logos in history as man can be transposed into a messianic advent of the Logos in the gospel phrase-complex as a revelatory title (“the lamb”). Thanks to the presence of the messianically transformed title, the above mentioned phrase-complex becomes a gospel discourse, with a particular, revelatory, performance. The following is a list of the main characteristics of the gospel’s performance as Origen might have seen it. 1. Presentation. John’s prophetic proclamation refers to the “coming” (e¦pidhmi¢a) of the messiah59 as a current event and describes it by an emphatic use of the present tense (“Behold the lamb who takes away the sin of the world!”).60 For Origen the reference to the actions of the messiah as current is not just a way of inscribing an event (the “taking away the sin of the world”) within the spatial-temporal coordinates of the gospel phrase’s universe of discourse (the here and now of the addressor and the addressee’s witnessing of the lamb’s coming). This currency would be a literal one, and could be validated as true only by adopting the stance of the addressor of the proclamation (John) and of his addressees (John’s co-witnesses of the coming lamb). Instead Origen expects the Christian addressee to take the order of beholding the coming messiah as an obligation to perceive in the literal aspect of messiah’s

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historical and textual coming (the historical Jesus; the noun “lamb”) a spiritual advent (the Logos as condescending address). In other words, he is asked to act in regard to the referent of John’s phrase, i.e., the lamb, which John has reported to have seen at the time of the proclamation, as a spiritual fellow-visionary of John, i.e., to co-experience spiritually the vision of the coming messiah with the spiritually advanced addressor of this report, who is John the Baptist. To do so, one has to start by inscribing oneself in the text of the proclamation (the gospel phrase complex) on the position of John’s historical audience or the addressee, then to work out a spiritual fellowship with the addressor of the proclamation who is John, or rather with the spirit of the incarnate/intextuate Logos speaking spiritually in and through John.61 As it was previously shown, this prosopopoietical text inscription is not construed as an initiative of the exegete, but rather as an election of the exegete by the biblical Logos himself. If one were to draw a distinction between the presentation of a phrase and what the phrase presentation makes present within the phrase’s universe of discourse,62 one could tentatively designate the biblical Logos as such a presentation event, which entails a similar distinction between a literal-historical currency of the vision of the lamb as the referent of the gospel phrase-complex (chronologically marked as present), and a spiritual currency, interpreted as a beholding of the non-phraseable event of a phrase-presentation or the fact that there is a “Behold the lamb who takes away the sins of the world,” instead of no phrase at all.63 In other words, the pragmatically impossible chronological contemporaneity of the textinscribed exegete, as a prosopopoietic member of John’s historical audience, with John’s witnessing of the historical lamb, is made spiritually possible by the inscription of the exegete into the spiritual present of Logos’ coming to words as the Christological title “lamb” and as “gospel,” more precisely through the election of the exegete by the coming Logos as the addressee and beneficiary of his textual coming-to-presence.64 Thus, more than being made into an addressee of an ordinary phrase, with its circumscribed time coordinates, the Logos-elected addressee becomes spiritually transformed by the phrase presentation which is Logos’ condescension to the words.65 Ultimately, for Origen, the reception of this exceptional textual advent of the Logos in the gospel phrase complex (John 1.29) coincides spiritually with the uttering of the kerygmatic

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phrase complex by its addressor (John) insofar as both John and the text inscribed exegete (John’s audience) are condescendingly phrased (presented) by the parousi¢a of the same Logos.66 2. Recognition. The addressee of the prescriptive (“Behold the lamb!”) is expected to act as if the illocutionary force of this phrase —the obliging injunction to behold the lamb—could alone induce the addressee actually to recognize or to identify the said “lamb” as the one named, described and ostended by the constative—the one “who takes away the sins of the world.”67 Thus, the Christian addressee is expected to respond to the illocutionary force of the prescriptive (Behold [the lamb]!) as if it were the perlocutionary force of a cognitively (metalinguistically) clarified order (instead of merely feeling an obligation to contemplate a still to be determined “lamb,” he has to feel placed under the obligation to behold the lamb as it has been determined by the description that the constative offers of the lamb, namely as “the one who takes away the sins of the world”). For him the prescription to look (“Look at the lamb!”) becomes applicable as a normative of recognition (“If a Christian, you ought to recognize the Lamb named in the prophet’s order to ‘behold the lamb’ as the prophet declared to have seen it!”). 3. Assimilation. 3a. The assimilation of the addressor and the addressee with the referent. The investigations in chapters II and III have shown that, based on an interpretation of Gen 1.26–27 and other related biblical passages,68 Origen construes beholding as a transformative-assimilative act.69 By beholding the messiah, who is the incarnate Logos, the believer is transformed into the image of the Logos.70 Since the prophet’s “pointing” is stated in terms of sight, rather than hearing (“Behold!” instead of “Listen!”),71 Origen feels justified to identify the addressor of the phrase-complex as a particular, visionary (epoptic), kind of believer. John is a special kind of prophet who has evolved from an expectation of a Christ yet to come (what Origen calls a sort of distant “hearing” of the Messiah, like that of the Old Testament prophets), to an immediate sight not only of the historically present Jesus, but also of the spiritually coming Logos as the historical Jesus.72 Consequently, the result of a pertinent reception of John’s prophetic “pointing” of the messiah should not stop at making the addressee a contemporary of John (a contemporaneous seeing of the lamb in the spiritual company of the prophet

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and, perhaps, under his spiritual guidance). Since by seeing Christ (the lamb) John is said to have become like Him, or even “a Christ,”73 and since the prophetic proclamation places the addressee in the presence of Christ as experienced and reported by the prophet, the ultimate result of the prophetic performance is the transformation of both the addressor and the addressee into the likeness of the contemplated messiah, that is, their becoming “Christ-like.” 3b. The subordination of the prescriptive to the constative. As it was shown above, the addressee of the prescriptive (the exegete of the proclamation prosopopoietically inscribed in the position of a member of John’s audience) gets assimilated with the prescriptive’s referent (the lamb) as described by the constative (he who takes away the sins of the world), to the effect of his further transformation into an addressor, like the addressor of the phrase by which he was addressed (John as an imitator of the lamb and, thus, as a lamb-like person). By being made into another Christ (which implies as well being made into another John), the exegete is authorized to address to his fellow-Christians a call to a recognition of the lamb or, in brief, to function in the capacity of an evangelist.74 If one takes the constative as a phrase that is focused on describing, naming and ostending its referent, these assimilative transformations seem to subordinate the prescriptive to the constative. In this particular case, the referent comes to words messianically and presents itself (self-ostension) as the lamb (naming), who takes away the sin of the world (description). Thus, the order to behold the lamb is prompted by a self-presentation of the order’s referent as described by the constative. The proclamation uses the order (the prescriptive) to bring the addressee to a transformative sight of the self-ostending referent (the lamb).75 In the title “the lamb” the Logos or the event of speech offers Himself to be understood in the same way in which He gives Himself incarnationally to be seen as a historical lamb (an intextuation as the analog of the incarnation).76 Summing up, there are three important alterations that Origen’s mystical-eschatological interpretation introduces into the performance of the ordinary gospel phrase-complex namely, (1) the textual-instantiation of this phrase’s presentation-event as the selfostending referent of the phrase; (2) the simultaneity of illocution and perlocution (ordering Y to recognize x is automatically succeeding in inducing Y to recognize x as described/viewed by the

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one who has issued the order); (3a) the assimilation of the instances of each phrase’s universe (the addressee of the perlocutionary illocution, which is the kerygmatic phrase-complex or a prophecy of the present, and its addressor become co-present and interchangeable through their relatedness to a referent that turns out to be the event of language-as-a-whole or the Logos; they are phrased by what they speak as they speak it); and (3b) the assimilation of the various kinds of phrases in a phrase complex, in this case, the assimilation of a prescriptive with the constative (what is ordered is the beholding of what is described; the one who orders is the one who describes; the recipient of the order is the one who understands the description as an obligation and will further obligate others by way of describing; the order is an order to recognize the lamb according to the description, while describing functions as an order to become assimilated to what is described). The overall result of the messianic coming of the Logos to words is double. On the one hand, an ordinary noun (the “lamb”) becomes a messianic title. On the other hand, a phrase-complex performs a messianic announcing-ostending so that meaning to announce is at the same time a succeeding to let know as a powerfully persuasive ostension. 2.4 The Authorization of the Gospel Phrase Complex Origen’s interpretation of the performance of the gospel phrasecomplex entails the idea that, by his proclamation, John facilitates Logos’ textual coming to words, which in turn authorizes the addressee to use the gospel phrase-complex as a diagnostic test for the reading of the Bible as a Christian gospel.77 Let us now look in greater detail at the articulation of this authorization process. One can distinguish in the kerygmatic phrase-complex the preoccupation of the prophetic addressor (John) with evincing from the addressee (the world) a soteriologically effective kind of response, which consists in the transformative beholding of the messianic referent of the enunciation (the lamb) by an actual, spiritually assimilative, sight.78 In this preoccupation of the prophet for the manner in which the addressor ought to receive his proclamation, Origen senses a pedagogic-exegetical concern not only for facilitating one’s addressee’s transformative contemplation of the referent (the advent of the lamb), but also for initiating a liturgicalpedagogical action that would both draw the non-advanced addressee closer to an experience of the lamb as the referent of the

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gospel-announcement and help him assess or verify whether he she has been a witness to the authentic lamb (an orthodoxy of reception, so to say).79 But how does one “make sure” of having seen the authentic lamb as the prophet proclaims to have seen it? As Origen believes, what allows one to take the prophet’s description of the lamb as an authoritative, self-assessment procedure is the revelatory, textual manifestation of the proclamation’s referent (the Logos intextuated in the title “lamb,” for example) as an instance that authorizes-itself not only by the transformative effect that it has on the text of the proclamation but also by the assimilative effect that the proclamation has on those whom the self-attesting referent has elected as its addressees.80 Ultimately this type of authorization may be called sacramental Eucharistic, insofar as the exegesis of the Christological title of “lamb” and of the gospel phrase complex appears construed as a liturgical partaking of the Word coming-topresence in the words as his textual-sacramental body, while the exegetical reception of this sacramentally transformed text makes the receiver one with the intextuated Word. For more clarity, I shall now take a closer look at Origen’s understanding of the Eucharist and its application to the exegetical practice. Although he admits a real presence of the Logos in the Eucharistic gifts, Origen does not see the bread and wine as Logos’ flesh and blood;81 instead the flesh and blood of the Logos are the words of the priest’s consecration prayer, which happen to be a direct quotation of Christ’s own consecratory words at the holy supper (Matt 26.26–28).82 This is essential, insofar as one can discern here the ultimate justification of Origen’s view of the Bible as an analog of the Incarnation of the Logos.83 In light of the Eucharistic presence of the Logos in the biblical words of the consecration statement in Matt 26.26–28, the biblical words (appellationes; e©pinoi¢ai), their meaning and doctrinal interpretation, are revealed as the textual body and blood of the Logos84 through a liturgicalsacramental operation that the Logos performs both in an archpriestly capacity (Christ officiating at the last supper a paschal ritual) and in the capacity of the sacrificial victim (the bread and wine to be consecrated or the paschal lamb to be sacrificed on this occasion).85 Thus, instead of a supposed metaphysical, speculative kindredness between the Word and the words,86 it is the sacramental, liturgical consecration of the words as the Word by the Word which makes the Origenist’s Bible a

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textual body of the Logos87 and turns the biblical curriculum into Logos’ doctrinal body.88 While the Christian reading of the Bible as the sacramental body of Christ can be said to have been instituted (not only historically but also textually-sacramentally) at the Last Supper, when specific biblical words (the consecration statement) got phrased eucharistically by the incarnate Logos as his textual body and blood, the authorization of the application of this Eucharistic exegesis to the entire corpus of the Scripture can be said to have been initiated during the Emmaus episode, and to have been further extended to the larger church after the Ascension and the Pentecost.89 As Origen’s interpretation of the Eucharist suggests, the Logos does not simply assume the consecratory biblical words as his body and blood but he also makes this assumption into a double liturgical act: on the one hand, he offers his biblical body and blood to the exegetical congregation as a priest who is at the same time the offered victim,90 while, on the other hand, he makes himself into a co-receptor of this textual Eucharist with the exegete.91 Thus, the recipient of the exegetical Eucharist has been immemorially claimed to be the addressee of the consecratory address of the arch-priestly acting Logos, while the exegetical partaking of the Bible as a textual Eucharist made the addressee into an embodied/intextuated Logos to be further liturgically-exegetically imparted to one’s neighbor.92 This textual Eucharist is, in final analysis, the authorization of what I have previously called the exegete’s election to be inscribed in the spiritually-messianically transformed biblical text as gospel.93 Origen’s interpretation of John 1.29 emphasizes the sacrificial character of the Eucharistic intextuation of the Logos. The Logos as the event of speech offers Himself to become a textual wording, like the lamb-title, the gospel phrase-complex, the paschal consecration formula or even the Bible as a whole. Thus, the condescension of the Logos allows for Logos’ manifestation as an ordinary text (a “speechless” text, so to speak, if one were to replicate Origen’s interpretation of Christ as a “speechless lamb”),94 which ordinary exegesis takes as an object of interpretation rather than as an interpretation prompting source. In an ordinary hermeneutics, this is a text that the exegete’s interpretation “makes speak,” rather than one whose speech prompts an exegetical response. However, by making the “speechless” ordinary text into an event of speech (the

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speech of the Logos), the Logos liturgically offers this text to be partaken by the biblical exegete and inscribes the receptive exegete, who partakes of this sacramentally “speaking” text, in the sacramentally transformed Bible as Gospel. In other words, the Logos turns the biblical exegete into a biblical witness, and transforms his life into a biblical-existential testimony.95 The testimony of the exegete is a filial-liturgical one; the transformed exegete is existentially both a Eucharistic doxology addressed to the Father and a homiletic extension of this Eucharistic doxology toward the neighbor.96 In this sense, the liturgical role of the Logos is not just one of phrasing Himself sacrificially as a Eucharistic biblical text, but also of making the exegete into a testimonial, textual offer that Christ, as high priest, brings before the Father,97 reconciling the world with Him (taking away the sins of the world).98 If the above interpretation is correct, then the ultimate authorization of the diagnostic use of the gospel phrase-complex consists in the sacramental presentation (the coming-to-presence and the bringing-to-presence) of the self-offering Logos in the title “lamb,” in the gospel phrase complex and in the Bible as a whole. Thus, according to Origen, in the prescriptive “Behold the lamb!” the prophet does not simply bring to one’s attention the referent of the ordinary noun “lamb” and by the constative “This is the lamb who takes away the sins of the world” he does not provide only an ordinary description of the referent of this noun, placing it in the space-time coordinates of the phrase-complex’s universe of discourse. Instead the prophet facilitates the Eucharistic self-offering of the Logos as a transformative title, a gospel phrase-complex and, ultimately, a Bible become gospel.99 For Origen the ordinary noun “lamb” functions as a Christological title, which authorizes an exegetic-liturgical use and requires a testimonial response, only when it is read spiritually, in light of Logos’ sacramental-exegetical self-offering. More precisely, it is only in the doxological life testimony or the exegetical martyrdom of the recipient of the Eucharistically transformed text100 that the word “lamb” emerges as a Christological title and the constative-prescriptive phrase complex enacts its gospel-performance.101 The sacramental interpretation of the gospel phrase-complex’s performance which was offered above stands at the foundation of Origen’s reading of the Emmaus event as the inauguration of a Logos authorized spiritual exegesis of the Scripture.102 In this

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sense, any critique of Origen’s spiritual exegesis of the Bible can be read as well as a critique of the Origenian understanding of the Emmaus event. Following on this train of thought, I shall now outline a critique of the Emmausian authorization of spiritual exegesis on account of its being logocentric.103 To better evaluate the pertinence of the Levinasian concern regarding the logocentric character of the allegorical exegesis of the Bible as Gospel, I shall develop Levinas’ objections along the lines suggested in Lyotard’s critique of Christianity as part of the philosophical discourse of the West, then I shall contrast this approach with Marion’s anti-logocentric stance that tends to except Christianity from Lyotard’s critique of the West.

3 AN ANTI-LOGOCENTRIC CRITIQUE OF ORIGEN’S EMMAUSIAN AUTHORIZATION OF THE READING OF THE BIBLE AS GOSPEL 3.1 The Gospel as an Auto-Thematic Meta-Discourse of the Logos I would like to insist now on the last observation in IV.2.1, which may prove essential for the understanding of Origen’s exegesis of the gospel discourse. In a Lyotardian interpretation, what allows for an identification of the gospel discourse (the lo¢goj) both as the addressor and as the referent of the kerygmatic phrase-complex is a particular use of the metalinguistic function of ordinary speech, a use that I shall call “auto-thematic.”104 By referring to the lo¢goj as “a discourse which announces that an awaited good is present” Origen may have been responsible for an auto-thematic, metalinguistical elaboration on an ordinary phrase, probably a constative. For example, let us take the ordinary announcement “x is present!” as made by a herald. One can give it a metalinguistic turn by saying that “[the herald’s] ‘x is present’ announces the presence of x.” The resulting metalinguistic statement has been obtained by autonymizing105 the initial announcement-phrase (“x is present”) and by quoting this autonymized phrase in the context of another phrase (a metalinguistic descriptive-explanative) on the position of this phrase’s grammatical subject (“The ‘x is present’ announces that x is present”).106 The outcome is a new phrase that seems to have all the features of a tautological definition.107 However, placing the autonymized phrase as the subject of what appears to be a tauto-

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logical discourse does not automatically turn the autonymized phrase into an addressor of this discourse.108 The following is an example of a statement in which the autonymized announcement is both the addressor and the subject of the metalinguistically altered phrase: “I, the ‘I am here,’ announce that I am here.” This new turn in the transformation of the initial announcement requires that the pronoun “I” designates at the same time two different phrase instances: as the “I” in “I am here” it stands for the grammatical and logical subject of the initial, non-autonymized, phrase, which does not necessarily imply that “I” is also this phrase’s addressor. “I” stands also for the subject of the metalinguistically transformed phrase “I, the ‘I am here’ announce that I am here” whose addressor it is, while continuing to appear as the subject of the autonymized phrase (“the ‘I am here’”), which is quoted as the apposition of the metalinguistic phrase’s subject (“I, the ‘I am here’…”). This statement is no longer a simple, quasi-tautological definition of the meaning of a phrase such as “‘x is here’ announces that x is here.” Instead it contains a much stronger claim, namely, that of instantiating the event of a phrase’s presentation (the “saying,” as Levinas calls it)109 into an instance of the universe of the presented phrase (what Levinas calls the “said”); in the case under discussion this instance is the addressor (“I”). The result is a self-phrasing discourse as a self-ostended, i.e., self-demonstrated, self-explained performance, or a self-referential definition as self-evident. I have chosen to call this metalinguistic turn of phrase an auto-thematic one, insofar as the phrase is presented at the same time as both its utterer and as that which is being uttered, its subject matter, referent, or theme. To put it in pragmatic terms, in “I, the ‘I am here,’ announce that I am here” we have a phrase-presentation (lo¢goj as saying) that explains itself as a self-phrased phrase (lo¢goj as what is being said), whose addressor is the very same lo¢goj, in accordance with a rule that the same lo¢goj has established as the regimen of the phrase (a descriptive constative) and the genre of the discourse in which the phrase appears embedded (a metalinguistic definition). The main problem of this claim is that it does not stand a critical examination. Following Wittgenstein and Heidegger, Lyotard points out that any metalingistic use of an autonymized phrase involves a certain, very subtle, deception.110 Autonymy alters the pragmatics of the initial phrase,111 in accordance with the cognitive-

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speculative rules of the genre that governs the metalinguistic discourse, in which the autonymized phrase is embedded.112 For example, by stating that “My ‘I am here’ was not meant to scare you,” the metalinguistically embedded autonymized phrase “I am here” is no longer treated as the initial “I am here” phrase, which could have been answered in a plurality of ways (“Yes, I see!” or “How good!” or “So what?” or “Who are you?”), each response displaying performatively a specific interpretation that a receptor could have given to this statement.113 Instead the performative force of the “I am here” phrase has been neutralized by the turning of this phrase into a referent of another phrase, the meta-linguistic explanation, which follows cognitive, truth-focused, rules of verification and authorization.114 Moreover, the performative force of the initial “I am here” phrase has also been altered by the placement of this autonymized phrase into the position of the addressor, which adds an autothematic dimension to the metalinguistic statement. The statement “I, the ‘I am here’ mean/announce that I am here” claims to identify the subject of the metalinguistic phrase, i.e., the autonymized initial phrase (the “I am here”) with the indirect speech mentioning of the same phrase (that I am here), while it is obvious that the autonymized “I am here” subject and the indirectly mentioned “I am here” predicate represent two different alterations of the initial “I am here” phrase. More than a logical fallacy (a tautology), the autothematic statement contains what may be called a pragmatic fallacy. The pragmatic fallacy in the autothematic metalinguistic use of the “I am here” phrase consists in the claim of having instantiated the phrase event (the happening/coming of the “I am here” phrase) in a specific type of phrase (a metalinguistic constative), which the addressee is expected to take as selfexplanatory (a phrase that explains the event of its phrasing by presenting itself as a self-explanatory phrase).115 In brief, Lyotard’s point and his main objection to an Origenian linguistic use of the biblical Logos could be that a phrasing event (the event of a phrase’s happening, of there having been said something, as distinct from what phrase has happened or what has been said) cannot be presented without alteration into a specific phrase or complex of phrases, and, thus, that there is no phrase that can be said to speak out its own happening or to present itself within its own universe of discourse.116 Any attempt to present the Logos either as a particular kind of phrase (lo¢goj), a specific

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phrase-part (a referent, an addressor) or a phrase genre (lo¢goj) is meant to lead to a pragmatically unjustifiable totalization of language, to a form of linguistic injustice or offence (tort), insofar as the autothematic metalinguistic discourse in which the event of phrasing is allegedly instantiated, is a particular, cognitivespeculative, type of phrasing, which is illegitimately expected to present and explain all other kinds of phrasing along with the event of their phrasing. For Lyotard any claim to have phrased the Logos as “language as a whole” or “speech itself” involves, thus, a subtle dictate of the metalinguistic speculative genre over all other speech genres and over all other phrases, but most of all, it represents a violation of the non-phraseability of the event of phrasing.117 By contrast, upholding the unbridgeable, unsublatable, difference or, as Lyotard calls it, the différend, between the metalinguistically “homogenized” phrases and, most of all, that between the event of phrasing and a specifically phrased phrase, is an ethical imperative that the philosopher is called to live by.118 For Lyotard, testifying for the différend between the phrases that are part of the gospel phrase-complex means, inevitably, testifying against an understanding of the gospel as an universal autothematic meta-discourse and, consequently, opposing an exegetic-pedagogy based on logocentric assumptions such as the one described in chapter II above and in the second section of this chapter (IV.2). 3.2 The Critique of the Performance of the Gospel PhraseComplex and of its Authorization The Lyotardian criticism of Origen’s pragmatics of the gospel proclamation brings into question the Emmaus event insofar as this event is thought to authorize a Christian exegesis of the biblical history as a gradual enactment of a pedagogic self-exegesis of the Logos.119 As it was pointed out in the second chapter of this study, the evangelic exegesis amounts, pragmatically speaking, to an assimilation of the Hebrew Bible and of the extra-biblical (Greek) philosophies into a unified gospel discourse. It is now time to look in greater depth at the theological assumptions that allow Origen to read the Emmaus scene as an authorization of a universalist, Christian exegesis with a totalizing potential. In a Lyotardian interpretation, Origen seems to be taking the ostension-nomination-description in the constative of the kerygmatic phrase-complex as a token that John (the constative’s addres-

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sor) has seen the lamb (the constative’s referent) as present.120 This seems to imply further that the order to behold the lamb (“Look!”) establishes the addressee’s obligation to look at the same lamb that John has seen and spiritually to become John’s fellow visionary. However, to link the constative, which contains the report of a direct sight of the lamb, to the prescriptive, which enjoins to a reiteration of the reporter’s experience, one needs to identify the addressor, the addressee and the referent of the prescriptive with the addressor, the addressee and the referent of the constative. To substantiate this identity claim Origen supposedly appeals to a third, meta-linguistic, explanatory statement like the definitions of the gospel presented above, which, in turn, is authorized by Origen’s belief in the self-ostension of the Logos, by Logos’ prompting the Christian to behold His coming to words as a messianic advent. This is, ultimately, the background assumption of Origen’s submission that John 1.29 is the matrix of the gospels and of the Bible as extended Gospel.121 Nevertheless, as Lyotard pointed out, definitions and commentaries belong to a cognitive-theoretical genre122 of discourse, which, while closely related to the regimen of the constatives, with their focus on the naming-description-ostension of the referent, is considerably different from the regimen of the addressee-focused prescriptives.123 Consequently, for Lyotard a reading of the kerygmatic phrase complex in light of the gospel definitions (or of any other meta-discourse, for this reason) would have to render the prescriptive in the cognitive-theoretical terms of a constative dominated genre of discourse.124 Lyotard believes that by submitting the prescriptive in the gospel phrase-complex to the pragmatic rules of linking that characterize the constativedominated cognitive, or, in this case, the speculative genre (the definitions of the gospel as explanations of the self-ostension of a cosmic Logos), one inflicts a sort of pragmatic “suffering” on the prescriptive and covers up the différend which exists between this phrase and the dominant constative.125 Assuming that this criticism is correct, I shall continue to follow Lyotard’s argument by referring to his aforementioned theory of discourse authorization.126 According to Lyotard one can distinguish three ways of authorizing the recognition of the lamb, namely, the narrative, the cognitive-scientific, and an authorization that stands at the origin of the cognitive-scientific, but, as we shall see, may be used in a narrative setting, namely the speculative. The

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narratively authorized recognition requires that John’s (a protoChristian’s) announcement of having seen the lamb (Christ) places the Christian aspirants (the catechumens) and the actual Christians under the obligation to see and recognize the one whom John designates as the lamb as John described him. By fulfilling this obligation (the sight of Christ), the addressee confirms that he is a Christian, that is, that he belongs to the same Christian community as the addressor of the order and the order’s referent.127 The rule of this narrative authorization is “See the Lamb (Christ) as described by the advanced, spiritual, Christian who narrates of having had seen him.”128 By contrast, the critical-scientific authorization orders one to look at the lamb for oneself in order to verify whether or not John has described accurately what he has seen. Its sense is “Look at the lamb in order to make sure that what John has reported to have seen is truly the lamb.” Since the critical-scientific authorization is a procedure that does not fall within the scope of Origen’s approach, I shall leave it out of the current discussion.129 Instead, I shall focus on a version of the narrative authorization of the gospel phrase complex, which may be called narrativespeculative. The narrative-speculative authorization may be formulated as follows: “See in the lamb the Logos who, by phrasing you as John’s addressee, authorizes your exegesis of John’s prophetic exegesis of the lamb as a self-exegesis of the Logos.”130 In the following I shall explain this type of authorization in pragmatic terms. Let us turn first to an ordinary pragmatic assessment of the authorization of the gospel phrase-complex. Such an assessment of Origen’s Eucharistic authorization of the Christian discourse will, no doubt, retain its social-testimonial character, which can be easily rendered as the socializing force of a narrative procedure. The addressor (John) narrates of having been authorized by the sight of the referent (the lamb) to proclaim his sight-based description of the lamb as a norm of recognition of the referent by an addressee (the Bible inscribed exegete as a member of John’s audience). It is the same referent (the Logos “incarnate” in the textual figure of the lamb in John’s proclamation) who is believed to help out the addressee in carrying out John’s prescription (Look! Recognize!), although, in a clearly circular manner, the addressee cannot qualify for a sight of the lamb unless he is already eligible to see the lamb. In Lyotard’s narrative pragmatics, the circular authorization process could be summarized as follows: if you have been elected to see the

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lamb, you will recognize Him and if you recognize the lamb, you were elected to see him.131 As a textual manifestation of the same Logos (of the same event of speech), whom John’s narrated description attests to be incarnate in the lamb that John saw,132 John’s proclamation can be subsequently used by its addressees as a diagnosis of an orthodoxy of reception, i.e., as a narrative way to tell whether or not they have lived up to the gospel recognition norm laid down by John.133 Moreover, since the contemplated lamb is said to be the incarnate, universal Logos, in whose image humanity was created, the intextuated Logos (the lamb) authorizes the narrative-speculative evangelization of the “logical” humanity in its entirety134 as potentially or “anonymously” Christian.135 In this sense the Christian narrative, as a Lyotardian reader would be inclined to take it, proves to be not only a local discourse of a specific Christian community but the discourse of all discourses (a phrasing of all phrases applicable to every human).136 Consequently, in light of this universal narrative-speculative authorization, the evangelist would be expected to transcend the differences between the hermeneutical idioms of its various receivers (the Jewish, the Greek), who are narratively construed as meant to actualize their anonymous Christianity by embracing the Logos-authorized evangelic proclamation. The problem that a Lyotardian might see in this universalist claim of Alexandrian exegesis is the impossibility of its justification.137 In Lyotard’s perspective, the claim of John’s narrativelyspeculatively interpreted proclamation to have enacted a universally applicable self-authorized evangelization of the Logos, transgresses both its narrative and its experiential framework. Lyotard holds this authorization claim as pragmatically fallacious in two major ways. Insofar as narratives are concerned, they cannot be pragmatically justified as universal.138 Narratives are authorized by the permutation of the instances of their universe of discourse or, in this case, John, the lamb, and the exegete/audience within the particular (therefore non-universal) sociality of the narrative act.139 In other words, such a narrative may hold true for the Christians, but there is no reason why a non-Christian, Greek or Jew should feel obligated to adopt it. With a double criticism, Lyotard also counters the Christian claim to have experienced the referent of a narrative (the lamb) as the universal phrasing of all phrases (the Logos). First, this claim implies that the event of phrasing (the Logos) can be presented as an instance of a phrase (the referent of the kerygmatic

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phrase-complex), which, as we have come to see, he holds as pragmatically impossible (a speculative offence).140 Secondly, the Emmausian exegesis makes a speculative and, therefore, from Lyotard’s Kantian perspective, an unwarranted assumption about the universal applicability of this event, which in the ordinary speech situation is always connected to the occurrence of specific phrases within specific contexts.141 In this sense, there is no empirical evidence of a specific phrase that occurs the way it does due to the event of language-as-a-whole and which would appear as compellingly self-evident to all addressees.142 Since there is no phenomenal linguistic evidence of the language-as-a-whole or the Logos, Lyotard considers the Logos to be an idea in the Kantian sense, and he evaluates the claim of instantiating this idea as a dialectical illusion.143 Thus, in their use of the gospel phrase complex the Origenian Christian seems to engage in a double, narrative and speculative, fallacy. In addition to making an arbitrary claim for the possibility of a universal narration, he arbitrarily claims to have textually instantiated the idea of language (the referent “lamb” cannot authorize the universal narrative of the Logos because, as a literal figure of speech, it cannot incarnate/intextuate the Logos). As we shall see, for Lyotard, more temperate, non-universalistic claims, would be acceptable (the lamb could be a linguistic sign of a sublime coming of the messiah as an unpredictable emmancipatory event;144 its attestation would be the enthusiasm of the exegete articulated as an emotion phrase).145 The narrative-speculative authorization of the gospel phrasecomplex, as it was described above, seems to have allowed the prescriptive only an instrumental role in the recognition of the referent of the constative. In other words, according to the Christian exegesis of the kerygmatic phrase complex, one is placed under the obligation to see only because there is a necessity to recognize and emulate that which one ought to see, a sight that has been normatively established and pedagogically prescribed by the Logos Himself through/in His evangelists. One may ask, however, whether one can sustain the claim to have subordinated the prescriptive to the constative (the ethical to the theoretical) even in the ordinary, not necessarily theological, analysis of the gospel phrasecomplex.146 More concretely, one can identify in the kerygmatic phrase complex a prescriptive that conveys the order “to look” at the lamb

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“who takes away the sin of the world.” Let us call this a theoretical obligation (in the sense of an obligation to see).147 Where does the performative force of this obligation reside? It is worthwhile noting that the theoretical aspect of the obligation accounts only for the prescribed manner of executing the order (by looking), which is contingent. By contrast, the authorization of the order consists solely in the illocutionary “force” of the prescriptive phrase or, rather, of the event of ordering, which places the addressee under the obligation to listen to an order, independently from any indication as to the way in which he should carry out this obligation (by seeing or otherwise). Thus, the order “Look!” can be more properly rendered as “Listen, you ought to look!” This distinction between an ordering (conventionally, therefore not properly, marked as a prescription: “Listen!”) and what is ordered (to look) allows for a new perspective on the authorization of the kerygmatic phrase complex. One is indeed entitled to wonder if the order to behold the lamb, which allegedly had to be obeyed by virtue of its role in inducing a theoretical recognition of what one had been ordered to see, has not come in effect by means that are unaccountable in cognitive-theoretical terms (i.e., the terms of the constative and/or one of its meta-discursive variations like the definition or the commentary)? One needs to consider whether the obligation to look at the lamb (“Behold!”) would have been effective if one had not first felt placed under the obligation to follow the order to look (“Listen, you ought to look!”) and if so, wouldn’t it be fair to say that this obligation is necessary for authorizing the narrative of a vision of the messiah as the lamb who takes away the sin of the world, while its manner of execution (by sight) is merely contingent?148 As it seems, what makes possible the narrative authorization of the gospel phrase-complex is the authorizing force of the prescriptive “Listen!” in “Listen, you ought to look!” on which the Alexandrian exegete has allegedly authorized the obligation to see. However, the prescription to listen cannot be taken as yet another procedural specification of the manner in which one should carry out the order, namely, by paying attention or hearing.149 Following Levinas one should construe the phrase “Listen!” as a token of an unpresentable, unphraseable phrasing-event or, as Levinas puts it, a saying older than any form of a said (in this case, a prescribing event rather than the prescriptive phrase that the prescribing pre-

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sents).150 The “Listen!,” which obliges one to consider the order to look as it was formulated in the kerygmatic phrase-complex is not an order, but the ordering of an order, the illocutionary force of a prescriptive, an obliging “saying,” which Levinas considers to be at work in all the phrases that the other person addresses to me as an addressee who is bound to respond.151 Every speech act of the other (not only the prescriptives) issues an ethical call to respond (the arch-prescriptive “Listen!”) by way of a non-locutionary saying, a presentative (but not presented) phrasing.152 In this sense, it would be more accurate to say that the metalinguistically, i.e., cognitively, legitimated theoretical obligation, as it was laid out by the gospel phrase-complex, capitalizes surreptitiously on the authorizing force of a non-phraseable ordering (Listen!), while at the same time it pretends to have subsumed the immemorial order to listen to the metalinguistic, constative centered, explanation of the referent (the lamb, as him whom the addressee should see in order to be relived of sin).153 But, in admitting it, are we not somehow acknowledging a subtle primacy of the prescribing (not of the prescriptive) over both the constative and the prescriptive,154 a primacy that the metalinguistic linkage of the prescriptive and the constative within the same gospel phrase-complex tends to cover up? As it was shown above, the prescriptive phrase can be said to somehow “suffer,”155 by its incorporation in a kerygmatic phrasecomplex that obeys cognitive-theoretical rules of linking. However, by acknowledging its authorizing force I have not reversed the suffering of the prescriptive under the rule of the constative into a suffering of the constative under a prescriptive dictate. In fact, what has been acknowledged was a situation that is impossible to be settled or, in Lyotard’s terms, a différend,156 between a saying or phrasing, which Levinas identifies as an obliging or prescribing, and a said or a phrase, which may be a prescriptive, a constative or a phrase complex like the one that I have described above. While this saying places one under the obligation to listen and to respond to the phrase of the other, be it a prescriptive or a constative, a stated order, a narrative account, a commentary or an announcement, this saying cannot be in turn said or phrased; it is otherwise than what it says.157 I shall retain, therefore, the idea of a fundamental distinction between the saying of a phrase and what the phrase says, while, based on this distinction, I shall describe the options that one has in characterizing the performance of the gospel phrase-

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complex. Subsequently I shall try to find among these options the one that describes best Origen’s gospel pragmatics. For this purpose I shall return for one last time to Lyotard’s pragmatic theory, in particular to his classification of the main types of discourse which converge in the intellectual fabric of Western culture and which, according to him, the West attempted to assimilate or, at least, homogenize. Following Levinas, Jean-Francois Lyotard sees the tendency to subordinate prescriptives to constatives (ethics to cognition) as the main characteristic of Western thought.158 He also considers that the phrases that are linked in a cognitive genre have been determined and authorized in accordance with the pragmatic goals that this genre has pre-established for their linking, which will unavoidably result in making at least some of them “suffer.” I have described above the “suffering” of the prescriptive phrase under a cognitive genre. Given that Lyotard calls the prioritizing of the ethical (the prescribing focused phrasing) over the cognitive as one of the main characteristics of the Jewish discourse,159 for him, as for Levinas before him, the Western and the Jewish phrasings are in a différend. The main virtue of the Jewish phrasing consists in a devotion to the unphraseable, which prescribes a respect for an open variety of phrases, without becoming instantiated in any of them.160 Jewish phrasing is also singular in its responsiveness to those modes of phrasing that have been muted, i.e., have been prevented from gaining expression, by the universalist claims of the Western speculative meta-discourse.161 According to the Jewish phrase, one has an obligation to uphold the différend that the cognitive genre tends to cover up, that is, an obligation to respect a phrase’s “suffering” under the rule of any linking genre with universalist homogenizing pretentions.162 We have, thus, a menu of two positions, one of which (the Western narratively or scientifically and speculatively authorized cognition) is advocating for the primacy of the theoretical over the ethical, and another one (the Jewish prescription), which proposes a management of the différend between the cognitive and the prescriptive phrases through an unspecified and unspecifiable transcendent responsibility towards the phrases in différend. One may add, as well, a third position, that of Lyotard himself, which stipulates a pragmatic commitment to the différend without the adoption of an explicitly Western or Jewish position. This is what Lyotard calls the pagan way of phrasing,163 a

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principled relativism that allows for any phrasing insofar as it does not suppress the possibility of the phrasing of other phrases.164 The question that needs to be asked is: where does Origen’s Christianity stand in this debate between what Lyotard calls the Western, the Jewish and the pagan modes of phrasing?165 To answer this question, I have to extend Lyotard’s notion of a différend as a conflict between phrases to a Levinasian conflict between a saying (which he invariably construes as an event of prescribing) and a said, or, to put it again in Lyotardian terms, a conflict between the addressatively construed event of phrasing and the phrase that this event presents.166 In a Lyotardian-Levinasian critique, Christianity seems to be closer to the Western discourse than to the Jewish one. Pragmatically speaking, Christianity seems to have produced a universalist meta-discourse, which is authorized predominantly in a speculative and narrative, rather than prescriptive, manner. At the core of this discourse is the event of Logos’ incarnation, which Origen sees replicated as a Biblical intextuation and which authorizes a spiritual exegesis through the Emmaus event. If, indeed, the universalist logocentrism of Christian discourse manifests itself as a tendency to cover up a residual but highly resilient différend in the way described above, our previous analysis of Origen’s gospel phrase-complex can be taken as an uncovering of the parties that Lyotard describes as being in conflict in this phrasecomplex. Following a Lyotardian line of thought, I have exposed at first the heterogeneous content of the gospel proclamation. In light of this analysis other readings of the kerygmatic phrase-complex beside the speculatively Christian (metalinguistic-theoretical) have emerged as possible, namely the Jewish ethical reading and Lyotard’s pagan relativism, which might be eventually matched with the Rabbinic Jewish exegetical pedagogy and the Greek philosophical curricula of Origen’s time.167 With the Jewish reading of the kerygmatic phrase-complex, a certain rearrangement of Lyotard’s views in light of Levinas’ philosophy has become necessary. What emerged from this rearrangement was a more profound understanding of the différend as what was tentatively and provisionally called the “incarnationally covered up différend” between the saying and the said. Consequently, Christianity’s covering up of this différend no longer appeared as a mere subsumption of one type of phrase under another (the prescriptive to the constative, for exam-

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ple), but rather as an unsupported claim to a full revelation of the saying in the said.168 Bearing in mind this critique of Christianity, which requires closer reassessments and finer tuning, I shall retain for the purposes of this argument, its central insight, namely, the existence of a différend between a saying or phrasing and a said or what is being phrased, and the main issue that is at stake in its articulation, namely defining Christianity’s manner of handling the différend between the saying, which the Origenian Christian conceives as the Logos, and the said, which he sees as the manifestation of the Logos in history (the incarnation), in the Bible (intextuation), and in the curriculum (indoctrination).169

4 AN ANTI-LOGOCENTRIC ENDORSEMENT OF ORIGEN’S EMMAUSIAN AUTHORIZATION OF THE READING OF THE BIBLE AS GOSPEL 4.1 The Two Faces of Origen’s Pedagogic Exegesis In spite of the fact that Lyotard’s references to early Christianity are rather sparse,170 and that the Kantian assumptions on which he elaborates his critique of the totalizing aspects of Western thought are not always conducive to an unbiased assessment of the early Christian portion of this tradition,171 there are important conclusions that one can still draw from the use of Lyotard’s linguistic pragmatics in an evaluation of Origen’s pedagogic exegesis. As I suggested in the previous section of this chapter (IV.3), the construction of a totalizing allegorical/typological reading of the Bible as gospel can be more or less traced back to the following scenario. Starting from a common Christian belief that the accomplished Christian reading of the Bible is Christ’s own Emmausian biblical exegesis, and giving the Logos identity of the Emmausian Christ an emphatically speculative turn, as a first principle of both the universe and of the Bible, one ends up reading the Emmaus event as a reflexive, auto-thematic exegesis of the Logos intextuate (the Bible) by the Logos incarnate (Christ). Following the above scenario, one could take Origen to suggest that, while the messianic coming of the Logos brings about an end of history, the gospel phrase complex, which enacts a prophecy of the present (not of the future), brings about an end of the historical textuality of the Bible (the truth fulfillment of the types as a perfect transparentizing of the Bible’s significance and design; sig-

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nification as self-evidence).172 Moreover, the same interpretation suggests that the prophecy of the present enacts the announced transformative messianic event as a current experience of the eschatologically transformed addressee, provided that the addressee of the prescriptive (“Behold!”) is authorized to such a reception (i.e., provided that this addressee is a member of the “world”173 or the church, whom John announces as about to be relieved of sin).174 However, assuming in a speculative-metaphysical fashion that the Logos carries out a universal soteriological mission upon a humanity that is “logically” predetermined or whose existential design is to be according to the Logos,175 everyone is, at least potentially, part of the church/world and, therefore, everyone is obliged to respond to the Logos.176 Thus, the summation of the gospel phrase-complex performance is the assimilation of the “world” to the “lamb” as condescending (incarnate/intextuate) divine Logos and, therefore, God’s becoming “all in all” (1 Cor 15.28).177 This entails a transformation of speech and textuality as we currently know them, an eschatological unification of the various phrases (the prescriptive, the constative, the expressive, etc); of the instances of their universe of discourse (the addressor, the addressee, the referent); of the specific genres under which they function (narrative, prescriptive, dialogic, etc) and of the modality of their enactment (illocution, perlocution) in the event of this phrasecomplex’s phrasing (the Logos), which would be speculatively construed as “language-as-a-whole” or “language itself”.178 Finally, such an assimilation makes possible the narrative authorization of the Christian reading of the gospel-phrase complex, a reading in which the three instances of the addressor, the addressee, and the referent should be permutable (“I, John, a Christian, tell you, the audience-intextuated exegete, a Christian, about this lamb [Christ] that he is the one who takes away the sins of the world [your sins].” If one follows John’s narrative, one is a Christian and, if one is a Christian, one follows John’s narrative. If one understands what the narrative is about, one is a Christian and, if one is a Christian, one understands what the narrative is about. If one tells the narrative, one is a Christian and, if one is a Christian, one can tell the narrative of Christ.)179 Insofar as one maintains that everyone is a Christian, at least anonymously, one holds the Christian narrative to be authorized as a universal or total narrative and the result is a totalitarian assimilative discourse.180

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From the rather specific stand-point of the investigation in this last chapter of the book, which is an inquiry regarding the totalizing potential of Origen’s exegetical pedagogy, it will be fair to say that the thought of Origen, as I presented it in chapter II (a thinker of universalist grand-scenarios of salvation, which are meant to assimilate the Jewish scriptures into the New Testament181 and to absorb the Greek school-curriculum into a biblical paideia),182 is, in general, consistent with the totalizing scenario criticized by Lyotard and Levinas. This is an Origen who, to me at least, appears to be practicing a Logos-authorized exegesis which, in spite of its cosmopolitan, universalist claims is insensitive to the otherness of the discourses that it pretends to integrate and “save.”183 Nevertheless, I equally think that the view on Origen that I advanced in the third chapter of this work presents an alternative aspect of his thought, which is equally important and, unlike the logocentric construction in chapter II, is less susceptible to becoming a target of the Lyotardian critique. I would like to think that, at least in its great outline, chapter III offers a view of an Origenian thought that is more mindful of alterity and allows for a moderation of the assimilative force of the construction in chapter II. Moreover, the interpretation in chapter III allows for an Origenian critique of Origen’s own logocentrism. To better emphasize the alternative that the third chapter presents over the description in chapter two, I shall point out the main non-logocentric aspects of the interpretation proposed in this chapter by dividing them into (1) aspects pertaining to the performance of the gospel phrasecomplex and (2) aspects of the gospel phrase-complex’s authorization. (1) will function as a revision of the results of the discussion on the performance of the gospel phrase-complex in IV.2.3, while (2) will bring a new angle to the discussion of the authorization of the gospel phrase-complex in IV.2.4. 4.2 Origen Otherwise than Origen 4.2.1 A Non-Logocentric View of the Performance of the Gospel Phrase Complex Let us look first at the gospel phrase complex’s function of presentation.184 One may have noticed that the incarnational and sacramental (Eucharistic) manner in which the Origen of the third chapter conceives Logos’ relation to the biblical text is not formulated in

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terms of presence, but rather as a coming-to-presence with a particular emphasis on the idea of coming (e©pidhmi¢a).185 Here I shall look at two aspects of Origen’s understanding of the textual coming-to-presence of the Logos, namely, a sacramentally-semantic one, which refers to the coming-to-presence that turns the ordinary noun “lamb” into a Christological title, and a sacramentallypragmatic one, which refers to the coming-to-presence that turns an ordinary, prescriptive-constative phrase-complex into a gospel phrase-complex.186 When, in his proclamation, John indicates the presence of the lamb, Origen takes this prophetic indication as a quasi-revelatory event, that is, the coming to textual presence of the Logos as the referent of the noun “lamb” and the transformation of this noun into a Christological title.187 By contrast, in a Lyotardian interpretation, the title “lamb” is nothing more than a noun used as a proper name, one whose presentative function depends on its variable insertion in a chain of signifiers called a phrase. Lyotard considers that the textual situation of any referent in a constative phrase depends on semantic and pragmatic conditions of presentation such as ostension, nomination and description,188 which makes it impossible for any referent to be self-presented (a quasi-revelatory proper name).189 Thus, it seems that, in an ordinary semantics, the textual presentation of “the” lamb will be always limited by the conditions of possibility of linguistic presentation in which the lamb is signified (for example, “this [ostension] is the lamb [nomination] who takes away the sins of the world [description]”). In contrast to Lyotard’s critical (Kantian-Wittgensteinian) linguistic stance, Marion elaborates a theory of saturated phenomena, which, for the purposes of this study, I shall now coin in a linguistic form.190 The coming to language of the referent “lamb” as described by Lyotard is, for Marion, only a poor, linguistic phenomenon.191 As used by Marion, poverty is the condition of a phenomenon (in this case of a linguistic presentation as a referent’s coming to language of itself, in itself) which has been reduced in accordance to the semantic and pragmatic conditions of possibility of linguistic phrasing in general (the referent’s presentation must happen within a phrase’s universe of discourse, and it must obey a phrase-regimen). For example, the coming to language of the lamb as the noun “lamb” qualifies for a poor phenomenon as long as the lamb’s linguistic manifestation is limited by the conditions of lin-

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guistic possibility of constative phrasing (that of an ostension [this is], naming [the lamb] and semantic description [it takes away the sins of the world]). However, in contrast with Lyotard, Marion’s phenomenology allows (or, at least, does not find any justification for an exclusion of) the possibility of a different kind of linguistic phenomenalization (coming-to-presence), which he calls a saturation. A saturated phenomenon is a phenomenon in which what appears exceeds the conditions of possibility of its empirical display (the restriction imposed on phenomenalization by the pure forms of intuition and the categories of understanding, in a Kantian idiom; the descriptive, nominative and ostensive conditions of constative phrasing, in Lyotard’s idiom).192 In a nutshell, Marion argues that the observation that ordinary significant presentations (the poor phenomena) are conditional on rational (Kant) or linguisticpragmatic (Lyotard) conditions of possibility does not entail the impossibility of a phenomenalization that would exceed these conditions, i.e., of a phenomenon that appears of itself, in itself.193 In our case, a saturated phenomenon would be the coming to linguistic presence of the Logos as the one the gospel phrasecomplex calls “the lamb” to the effect that his presentation would exceed, rather than just obey the semantic conditions of an ordinary linguistic manifestation. As a saturated phenomenon, the noun “lamb” would appear as a Christological, revelatory, title with a saturated semantics. Although the frequency of saturated phenomena in ordinary speech is rather low,194 Marion considers that their occurrence in the religious use of language is almost unavoidable.195 In this sense, Origen’s sacramental-Eucharistic understanding of the use of the noun lamb can serve as an illustration of Marion’s point. Origen does not submit the presentation of the Logos to conditions of semantic possibility (naming, ostending and describing) but rather extends the scope of semantics in light of this saturating, excessive, coming-to-presence of the Logos. For Origen a Christological title196 or a gospel phrase-complex are ordinary linguistic constructions that have been sacramentally invested by the comingto-presence of the Logos event as attested to in the testimony of the exegetes whom this coming-to-presence has claimed as its addressees, namely, the Christians.197 Thus, in light of this definition, the exceptional status that a noun can acquire as a title can be identified as such only within the sociality of the liturgical-sacramental

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use of the Bible (the filial-missionary and doxological-homiletic performance of a high-priestly Christ),198 which, in the interpretation proposed in chapter III, is testimonial, rather than speculative. Origen’s prosopopoietic exegesis, in its testimonial, nonspeculative, version suggests that, as a Christian, he responds to the gospel phrase-complex from the position of the one claimed (elected) as an addressee of the addressative event that is the coming to textual presence of the Logos199 or, in this case, the sacramental saturation of the ordinary description-nomination-ostension of the noun “lamb” by the Logos-event. The semantics of a noun as a sacramentally invested title needs to be supplemented with a pragmatics of a linkage of phrases as a sacramentally invested gospel phrase-complex. As a poor phenomenon, the gospel phrase-complex is nothing more than a combination of a constative and a prescriptive. Each of these phrases obeys the fundamental condition of pragmatic possibility formulated by Lyotard, namely, that a phrase’s presentation is not itself presentable (cannot be situated) in the very same phrase,200 while the phrase complex that unites these phrases has the limitation that any phrase complex normally has, namely that there is no rule (genre) that would link phrases such that the resulting phrase complex would not subsume (and, thus, wrong) at least one of them and perhaps all of them.201 In other words, as poor phenomena the phrases that are part of the gospel phrase-complex cannot be said to be autopresented, or else one would be suspect of committing a speculative offence.202 Also, as a poor phenomenon a phrasecomplex cannot stand under a genre that would not subsume its component phrases (no genre can offer a free, non-subsumptive linking of the phrases that it links).203 To this Marion could reply that the conditions imposed on the presentation of a phrase by the pragmatic rules of linguistic situation (the requirement that any presentation be construed in the terms of a phrase with a definite universe of discourse, standing under a definite regimen and obeying definite rules of linking within a definite genre of discourse) does not preclude the possibility of a presentation that gives itself to be situated and, therefore, exceeds the conditions of its phrase situation.204 Marion could also reply that nothing prevents a phrase complex from being linked otherwise than as allowed by its genre (a saturating gathering links one phrase onto another otherwise

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than in the subsumptive manner in which a concept, a rule, and, ultimately, a linguistic genre do). I would like to suggest that Origen’s understanding of the notion of coming (e©pidhmi¢a), for example, the coming to textual presence of the Logos as a gospel phrase-complex, matches closely the Marionesque pragmatic of saturation that I described above. In this sense, one may call the coming Logos an “immemorial address” event or an “addressative presentation” whose textual situation saturates not only the phrase-complex in which it is situated, but also the addressee’s response to this phrase. This saturated reception or, in other words, the bringing to presence of the receptor,205 happens along the following lines. First, the listening to the injunction to behold the lamb (“Listen [the immemorial Logos address], this is the lamb who takes away the sins of the world. Behold it! [the contingent situation of the Logos in each of the two phrases as their referent and the contingent linking of the phrases in a pedagogic-homiletic genre]”), which inscribes the Christian in the position of a recipient of the gospel phrase-complex, attests to the coming-to-presence (the intextuation, the textual Eucharistic presence) of the Logos in this title and in the phrase-complex.206 Secondly, the addressee of the prophetic injunction is made into a witness of the addressor’s statement (John’s) as saturated by an immemorial Address (Logos’) and is elected to a textual inscription not only as John’s addressee (a prosopopoietic distribution in the role of John’s historical audience) but also as a witness of the Logos speaking in John. In this sense, the Christian status of the addressee is acknowledged by his testimonial response to the Logos, as opposed to a speculative-metaphysical postulation of a kindredness between himself as a “logical” or rational creature and the Logos (in linguistic terms, the reception happens otherwise than as claimed by an addressee who pretends to have presented, in his discourse language itself, a phrase of all phrases or a genre of all genres). It should be noted that, when construed as a witnessing of a saturated noun, phrase or phrase-complex, the testimonial (doxological-homiletic) exegesis of the Bible cannot be said to have a universal applicability, at least not in the speculative totalizing sense described above. In a doxological-homiletic reading, being Christian is not an ontological condition (a being-according-to the Logos as cosmic Mind and cosmic Image of God; a competent reception

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of a proper name or of language itself) which comports a universal interpretation (everyone rational bears the image of the Logos, i.e., everyone is a linguistic—“logic”—being, therefore, everyone rational or capable of speech is anonymously a Christian), but rather a pragmatic-testimonial situatedness.207 This situatedness is one’s saturated responsiveness to the event of the Address, which is Logos’ textual coming-to-presence in the liturgicaly-sacramentally read title “lamb” and in the liturgically-sacramentally read gospel phrasecomplex. Once it is established that a Christological title such as “the lamb” and the gospel phrase-complex represent a condescendingly elective coming-to-presence of the Logos, which is to be witnessed only in the personalized manner of this address (see Origen’s qualification of the Lord as “his Lord” as opposed to his more speculative construal of the Lord)208 one’s Christian identity is established by the testimonial posture in which one has been placed by this sacramental-textual coming.209 Such testimonial commitment to the biblical Logos would be certainly altered by one’s engagement with speculations regarding the metaphysical status of the Logos and about the universal scope of Logos’ communication and reception. These speculations require a shift from a testimonial to a speculative attitude, which submits the sacramental-testimonial conception of the Logos’ coming-to-presence to a meta-linguistic, abusive, elaboration such as: “The one coming-to-presence in the “Behold! This is the lamb…” [autonymization] is the Logos [nominalization of the event]” or “As rational beings [speculation on the “nature” of the addressee], everyone [universalization of the speculative construal of the addressee as the instantiation of an ideal prototype] is supposed to behold this lamb as a universally applicable Logos [a communicative-hermeneutical restriction of the reception of the event to a priori universal conditions of pertinence or propriety]”). At this point I would like to signal a distinction that will be particularly important in the final assessment of Origen’s exegetical pedagogy.210 If, in the terms of Lyotard’s pragmatics, the speculative offence is an illusory, unwarranted, extension of ordinary linguistic phenomenalization beyond the limits imposed by its conditions of linguistic possibility,211 from the standpoint of a theological pragmatics like Marion’s (and Origen’s), this offence would be more properly called a form of idolatry.212 In other words, while for Lyotard speculation appears as an unjustified expansion of the

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conditions of possibility of a poor phenomenal presentation, i.e., an illusion, for Marion the same speculation appears as the unjustified reduction of the excess of presence in a saturated phenomenon through the imposition of restrictive conditions of phenomenalization. In this sense, the same speculation, which the criticallyminded philosopher construes as an inflationary phenomenon or an illusion, appears to the theologically-minded philosopher as an abusively deflated phenomenon, i.e., as an idol. In a prosopopoietic approach, the speculative idealist illusorily extends his rationality or ordinary speech competence by casting himself into the position of a quasi-divine other, in whom he surreptitiously expects to find himself exonerated of his rational and linguistic poverty, while the idolater casts the other into his rational or intra-linguistic position surreptitiously expecting that the other will depose his transcendence or even that the other will have thus fulfilled a countertranscendental desire of being he (i.e., the idolater). The illusionist talks himself into believing that he is more than he can be, while the idolater deceives himself regarding the other’s being no other than he (i.e., than the idolater). The illusionist claims to be the other because he despairs of being himself, while the idolater claims that the other is he, out of a despair that there is an other. As illusion, speculation is a phenomenalization of pride, while as idol, speculation is a phenomenalization of envy. We may take a look now at the gospel phrase-complex’s function of inducing recognition and at the phrase-linkage imposed by the evangelic genre, to the effect of a subordination of the prescriptive to the constative.213 In Lyotard’s understanding a norm emerges from the linking of a prescriptive (for example, “Be just”) with a constative phrase, which explains what the prescription means (for example “‘being just’ means not to engage in acts that lead directly or contribute to the killing of other humans”) as well as from a legislator’s subsequent ruling of the thus explained prescription into a law (“It has been decided that we/I/you must be just by refraining from killing other humans or from contributing to such acts”). As Lyotard sees it, the problematic aspect of this procedure consists in the double alteration of the specific pragmatics of the embedded prescriptive. While the prescriptive is characterized by an emphasis on the addressee without a specification of the addressor and independently from any explanation of the prescriptive’s referent (one can feel obliged to be just only as an addressee of a prescription

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like “Be just!” in which case this obligation is not based on a preceding cognition of what “just” means), the normative specifies the prescriptive’s addressor and the interpretation that he gives to the prescriptive’s referent (I/we, the legislator[s], have decided that I/we/you should be just, that is, that you must not kill”).214 Thus, while the prescriptive is said to oblige its addressee by the pure force of its injunction (its illocutionary dimension is perlocutionary all by itself, without any need of a metalinguistic clarification of its locutionary content), the cognitively motivated prescriptive or the normative requires that the addressee be given a reason other than the illocutionary force of the prescriptive to carry out the order (its perlocutionary effectiveness depends on a metalinguistic clarification of the prescriptive’s locutionary content, rather than on the prescriptive’s pure illocutionary force).215 Thus, the normative can be said to have weakened the illocutionary force of the prescriptive, to the extent that the normative embedded prescription is no longer perlocutionarilly effective as an illocution, but rather needs a constative to explain its content and, thus, to motivate the addressee to comply with its injunction. In other words, in the normative phrase-complex prescribing is no longer sufficient to make one feel obliged; to feel normatively obliged one needs to be persuaded to subject oneself to that which the law prescribes by the reason that the legislator gives him, or else one could only be coerced into such a compliance.216 A Marionesque approach construes the conflict between a prescriptive’s obligation without a reason and a normative’s reasoning that does not oblige as the symptom of a poor linguistic phenomenalization. A saturated linguistic phenomenon displays a different pragmatics than that of the poor one, namely, a pragmatics that allows for a together-giving of an order with its explanation without placing their illocutionary and their perlocutionary dimensions above and beyond their poor disjunctive relation (either an obliging without reason, or a reason without obliging power). In a Marionesque approach, both the order and its reason can be seen as given. Thus, the illocutionary force of the order of the prescriptive, which is perlocutionary all by itself, and the rationallylocutionarilly conditioned force of the normative’s perlocution, which is illocutionarilly weak, can be said to become saturated when their linguistic happening overcomes this essential disjunction (either obligation without reason or reason without obligation;

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either an illocution that gains its perlocutionary force at the expense of a locutionary lack, or a perlocution that is locutionarily motivated but lacks illocutionary force). A saturated normative would appear as the together-giving of two saturated phrases in a genre that is, itself, saturated, to the effect that the resulting phrasecomplex would display as together-given both reason and obligation, both the locutionary and the non-locutionary (illocutionary and perlocutionary) dimensions of phrasing.217 One can illustrate this position in reference to Origen’s interpretation of John’s proclamation. If one takes the giving, which is a saturating phrase presentation, as the equivalent of Origen’s notion of coming, one can construe the immemorial elective address of the Logos as such a form of saturating giving. Thus, the coming to textual presence of the Logos in the constative (“This is the lamb who takes away the sins of the world”) can be said to confer a quasi-revelatory clarification on the referent of the prescriptive (“Behold the lamb!”) beyond or in excess of any rule of linking of the two phrases imposed by the ordinary discourse genre. Insofar as the giving of this clarification is not an imposition of a reason on the heterogeneous prescriptive (“Behold the lamb insofar as it is found to be the one who takes away the sins of the world!” “Behold it for this and only for this reason!”) but rather a saturative textual presentation of the lamb (the Logos) itself as an obliging givenness (the lamb’s sacramental coming to text commands attention as the saturated order that it, at the same time, is—“Behold!”; the coming is the commanding as well as the offering of evidence), the two phrases (the prescriptive and the constative) are no longer linked by a subsumptive genre determination. They are donatively “gathered” or together given, according to no categorial or pragmatic linking necessity. If the Logos gives itself to His witnesses to be beheld as a lamb who takes away the sins of the world, it is the saturative modality of this unmotivated giving that makes the “cognitive” content of the constative into a saturated reason for the execution of the prescriptive, rather than a metalinguistic speculative cognition of the linkage of the two phrases, which a legislator could be said to have established and to have made into a recognition norm. Origen takes this giving as an immemorial speech or an addressative coming or, briefly put, the Logos. The Logos is the presentative event which, exceeding and subverting the ordinary linking rule of the two phrases, offers them to a testimonial

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reception as together-given. In this sense the elected addressee is not led to the beholding of the lamb by metalinguistically justified norms of recognition like those that explain the applicability of the prescription on the basis of a cognitive clarification of the meaning of its referent; instead, he discovers that which the prescriptive orders to be beheld (the referent of the prescriptive) as the saturated comingto-presence of the lamb in the constative (the sacramentally charged referent of the constative), where the “as” is the pure expression of a presentative together-giving.218 Finally, we shall take a look at the thesis of an assimilation of the addressor and the addressee with the referent.219 The suspicion of a dictate of a specific kind of phrase (the cognitive) on the others is closely related to the suspicion that the Christian discourse is fundamentally assimilationist. Thus, one might fear that a Christian reading of the gospel phrase complex postulates an assimilation of two of its instances, namely, the addressor and the addressee to a third one, i.e., the referent. Indeed, Origen’s Platonizing use of mimetic terminology (the referent or the lamb is the Logos who is the prototype or Image of the addressor [John] and of the addressee [John’s audience], as members of a “logical” humanity created according to the Image/Logos) does not seem to help in dispelling this suspicion. When translated into Lyotard’s terminology, this suspicion can be formulated as the concern that the admission of the “lamb” as a nomination that is at the same time a description and an ostension (a quasi-revelatory proper-name) or the admission of a phrasepresentation that is situated as a phrase-instance in the phrase that it presents will lead to the totalizing homogenization of the instances of the phrase. On this basis one could explain the textual incarnation of the Christian Logos as an assimilationist, totalizing event (the referent assimilates the other two instances; the assimilated instances become interchangeable; the authorization of the Christian narrative is based on the interchangeability of the three instances as figures of Christ). As we have seen, Marion provides an alternative, less critical, reading of the intextuation or the textual coming-to-presence of the Logos. He refers to it as a saturation of the ordinary phrase complex, which does not entail its homogenization, and can be verified only by a testimonial reception. Thus, in Marion’s reading, the addressor, the addressee, and the referent of the gospel phrase complex preserve their ordinary distinction even after being saturated

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by the presentative giving that is the coming to text of the Logos, or after being phrased as the situation of Logos’ presentation. Indeed, the sacramental transformation of the three instances of a phrase cannot be taken as a reduction to the Logos, as long as the Logos is not a meta-instance (an extra-textual “thing”), as long as Logos’ text situation as a phrase-instance is not a transformation of the Logos into the instance that the Logos situates (the instance that He claims as His or even as He Himself). Although textually situated as a phrase instance, Logos’ presentation remains fundamentally different from the instance in which it is situated (the Logos is a phrase presentation which, by coming to text, becomes saturatively, not assimilatively, an instance in a phrase’s universe of discourse). In other words, even when situated, the Logos, as a phrase presentation is distinguishable from the situation that it presents. Thus, a Marionesque reading of Origen’s hermeneutics of the gospel phrase-complex requires a radical revision but not an abrogation of the otherwise practicable and even recommended critical view that construes the textual phenomenalization of the Logos in disjunctive terms such as: if a phrase presentation, the Logos cannot be a phrase instance; if a phrase instance, the Logos cannot be a phrase presentation; overstepping this disjunction leads to an unjustifiable totalization: a Logos as instantiated phrase presentation is the totalizing assimilation of the phrase to the Logos. When transposed in Origen’s terms, this criticism warns that the incarnation of the Logos as prototypical Image into a person or a phrase instance as mimetically conditioned instances (as instances that subsist due to their being according-to-the-Image), suppresses their mimetic condition reverting it to the unique reality of the prototype or the original (disposes of the “figure” on behalf of the “reality”). Marion agrees with Lyotard on the need for a criticism of metaphysical speculative assimilationism, while disagreeing with him on the account of the disjunctive conditioning of the presentation of the Logos in a phrase (the impossibility of Logos’ saturation of a phrase by situating Himself in it cannot be critically justified, because it does not fall under criticism’s jurisdiction; it is in a différend with the critical stance).220 In a similar manner, if it can be proven that Origen reads the Logos otherwise than as a metaphysical entity (a cosmic mind, a divine substance, etc.), nothing prevents the incarnation/intextuation of the Logos from saturating a human being or a textual figure without suppressing it and without

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historically or textually assimilating it to the Logos. I would like to think that my reading of Origen in the third chapter of this book provides supporting evidence for such a view. 4.2.2 A Non-Logocentric View on the Authorization of the Gospel Phrase Complex The interpretation of the gospel phrase complex as a textually saturated phenomenon calls for a revision of the understanding of the Christian authorization procedure as Lyotard described it. In the revised form that I propose, Christian authorization may still look somewhat narrative, but it is no longer speculative. It would be perhaps more proper to call it dramatic-sacramental. According to the interpretation proposed in the third chapter of this book, Origen considers that the Christian exegete is inscribed into the scriptural text by the immemorial Address that is Logos’ textual coming-to-presence.221 By taking in the intextuated Logos (a liturgical-sacramental form of receiving the homiletics of Christ as officiating high-priest) the exegete is taken into the intextuated Logos, i.e., he is prosopopoietically situated in the biblical text in a position in which his reception can become saturated by Logos’ transformative pedagogy.222 For example, an exegete can be inscribed in the text in the position of John’s audience (the addressee of John’s proclamation) with the effect that he becomes co-present with John (the literal addressor) in the witnessing of the lamb (the spiritually or sacramentally charged literal referent or the lamb as Logos).223 I have pointed out repeatedly that the authorization of this double performance (Logos’ intextuation as “lamb” and the prosopopoietic text-inscription of the exegete as John’s addressee) is not dictated by an ontological-linguistic kindredness between the Logos as Word, the lo¢gia or lo¢goi as biblical words and the rational-linguistical or “logical” nature of the exegete, but by the sole spiritual-sacramental force of Logos’ saturation of the referent of the gospel phrase-complex as the transformative Christological title “lamb” and by the saturation of the linkage of the complex’s phrases as a non-subsumptive together-giving. This sacramental reading of the coming to text of the Logos is nonspeculative and, moreover, it subverts any speculative authorization of the gospel phrase-complex, including the narrative-speculative one described by Lyotard.224 However, one may want to ask in

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what sense can this sacramental authorization of the phrasecomplex be still called narrative? One may start by asking a preliminary question, such as, what is the narrative that the Christian addressor and the addressee are using to validate their Christian condition? Lyotard has rightly pointed out that the Christian phrasing presents itself as a situating of the event of phrasing (of a phrase presentation) or, in Christian terminology, a situating of the Logos.225 However, Lyotard’s interpretation is probably less accurate (at least insofar as its application to the presentation in chapter III is concerned) when he reduces Christianity to a transcendental “primordial story,” that he formulates as follows: God, construed as the event of phrasing [Logos], which is also the event of Love, comes to presence in the world/words and is ill received by the world/the human addressees.226 According to Lyotard, those who welcome or receive the Logos-Love or the Christians become authorized to tell the story of Logos’ coming as a love (or, rather, Love’s) self-sacrifice for the sake of all human narratees, who are at the same time obliged to validate themselves as Christian by telling to and hearing from each other this narrative of universal love.227 As we have seen, in a Marionesque approach, the most that can be said about the textual presentation of the Logos is that it saturates a textual figure (a noun, a phrase, a phrase-complex), which, while being sacramentally charged, preserves its ordinary semantic and pragmatic function (as a title, the lamb continues to be a noun; as a gospel phrase-complex the constative and the prescriptive continue to allow for an ordinary linking). Likewise, one can say that, while saturated by the coming to textual presence of the Logos, the Christian narrative (the account of Logos’ historical career as man) continues to remain a local narrative or a genre of linking various phrases into a complex of phrases with an ordinary specific pragmatics. Lyotard’s critique of Christian authorization would be pertinent if Christianity were attempting a universalization of the linking rules of its narrative insofar as this is perceived in its ordinary (poor) sense (i.e., as a local narrative) or, in other words, if it claimed that the literal narrative of Jesus can validate an anonymous Christianity of humanity as a whole.228 However, by contrast to the poor narrative, in which narration has to be performed in order to be authorized and it can authorize only insofar as it is performed (therefore its inescapable pragmatic circularity),

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in a saturated narrative authorization is given unconditionally rather than achieved conditionally. In a saturated narrative, neither is performance conditional on authorization, nor is authorization conditional on the continuity of performance. For example, one tells the good news as authorized by the good news giving Logos and one is authorized as performer of the gospel narration based on the elective prosopopoiesis of the coming to historical and textual presence of the Logos as immemorial gospel address. There are two reasons that a Marionesque interpreter can invoke in support of a change of the authorization from a circular bi-conditional into a sui-generis categoric (from “perform if authorized, while keep being authorized by keeping performing” to “perform as authorized, because authorization is performance”), namely the non-situational character of the elective coming of the Logos (the anarchic character of Logos’ textual self-presentation) and the testimonial passivity of the text in which the Logos comes to presence (in an intentionalist, Kantian-Husserlian idiom, sometimes preferred by Levinas, the anarchic passivity of the subjects elected by the immemorial address) or an anarchic reception. In light of the Marionesque revision of the narrative authorization of Christianity one can submit that interpreting the comingto-presence of the Logos as a universally authorizing narrative would not only be a speculative offence (as Lyotard suggests) but also a form of speculative idolatry (the Logos would be a quasimythological, transcendental subject, the hero of a heavenly drama and its first narrator) in which, as Levinas put it, humanity “figures, rather than is.” The Origen of my chapter III would know how to avoid such speculative idolatry. For a non-logocentric Origen the historical narrative of the gospels is not the allegorization of a heavenly “primordial story.”229 What makes possible the historical story of the gospel is a spiritual event of the coming Logos (the “from-to” immemorially scripted address that is the Logos,230 or, in Origen’s terms, the Logos as he appears to a spiritual, nonanthropomorphic, contemplation).231 This coming or address is not, properly-speaking, narrative in the sense in which it could be phrased as a primordial story, but it may be called anarchically narrative or rather anarchically dramatic insofar as it enjoins a testimonial prosopopoiesis of the elect according to that which, with a Levinasian term, one may call an immemorial intrigue (that of God’s elective-addressative self-giving).232 Origen designates this

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immemorial intrigue with biblical sacrificial terms such as “condescendence,” “self-emptying,” or “philanthropy.”233 This is a drama that is driven by an anarchic growth or a leavening and whose intrigue exceeds any speculation about the teleological unfolding of this intrigue into a fully fledged narrative; by the same token any speculatively, non-testimonially situated claim at having grasped the teleology of this growth in the Bible or in history, becomes automatically problematic.234 Given that we encounter here only a sacrificial intrigue of Logos’ coming-to-presence in the doxological-homiletic testimony of his exegetes, and not a primal (metaphysically originative) narrative, one can change the denomination of the authorization of Christian discourse into dramatic-sacramental, keeping in mind that the dramatic aspect reflects only the elect’s testimonial performance of this anarchic intrigue as a filial doxology of the Father and a homiletic service for the neighbor.235 However, one may say that it is exactly this dramatic determination of Christian exegesis (its sacramental prosopopoietic character) that could still raise one’s concern. Does the dramatically authorized, propsopopoietic procedure not depersonalize its historical agents, making human history into a divine puppetry of roles? If viewed strictly from a testimonial standpoint, dramaticallysacramentally authorized exegesis might not in fact be depersonalizing. The prosopopoietic text inscription of the exegete can be seen as the exegete’s interpretative response to the elective comingto-presence of the Logos as the event that invests a specific text figure (a character or a situation) with the status of a typological exemplum. The typological exemplarization of certain characters in the text happens only within the pragmatic-liturgical situation of a specific exegetical act, and is validated within a liturgically situated community of witnesses who have been claimed by the textually coming-to-presence Logos as His addressees. Typological exemplarization or Logos’ presentation (phrasing) of a certain biblical character for a specifically witnessing reader as His sacramental textual expression, that is, as his type,236 becomes depersonalizing only when the intextuation of the Logos is viewed in a speculativemetaphysical fashion (when it becomes dramatic-speculative). For example, claiming that, according to the plan of a cosmic Logos, the historical Synagogue or Greek wisdom has been allotted a historical role only for a limited length of time and only by way of a

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prefigurative vicariousness (as prefiguration of the Church or of Christian biblical pedagogy), while after the incarnation of the Logos and the formation of the Church they are superseded and assimilated with the Church’s prototypal reality, is a dramaticspeculative way of approach with an undeniable depersonalizing character.237 The speculative character of this approach is evident in the logocentric articulation of the relation between type and reality, which implies (a) an originative hierarchization (the reality is the proto-type of the type, therefore, also the principle from which the type derives as a lesser reality), (b) a serial temporalization of the hierarchy that prohibits the simultaneity of the reality and the type (unlike the saturated phenomena that comport at the same time a legitimate interpretation as regular or poor phenomena, the logocentrist’s types cannot be at the same time the reality). In this speculative frame of reference, the type is significant only because the reality is not [yet] present, while reality validates itself only by an exclusionary presence, i.e., one that supersedes the type.238 Depersonalization seems to be less the case in Origen’s (more precisely, the Origen of the third chapter) sacramental-dramatic understanding of the typological exemplarization of a character. The textual advent of the Logos gives to the addressee for further prosopopoietic witnessing a textual figure or type, which is sacramentally invested (saturated) rather than superseded. Moreover, this saturated giving of a person as type counts as a transformative phenomenon only in the testimonial sociality of a liturgical exegesis (being elected to an inscription in the text by the coming to type of “reality” as it comes to whom it comes). Testimonial prosopopoietics does not relate the exegete to a text by an arbitrary act of coercion as it was at times thought about allegorical hermeneutics; instead the exegete is inscribed in a pragmatically leavening text, in which the ferment is the anarchic saturation of textuality by the Logos. Logos’ sacramental exemplarization of certain figures attested in the addressee’s exegesis of a specific character happens in a pragmatically personalized manner in accordance with the revelatory investment of these characters or their leavening by the Logos, a leavening whose ultimate sense cannot be definitively formulated in a teleologically accomplished world-historical narrative or as a universally applicable school pedagogy.239 *

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From the above analysis emerged a distinction between a logocentric, totalizing Christianity, which practices a dramatic-speculative exegesis of the Bible, and a non-logocentric Christianity, which is based on a testimonial-sacramental reading of the Scripture. Lyotard offers a description of Christianity that comes close to the former, without making any pronouncement on the possibility of an alternative, more positive, reading of Christian biblical exegesis and on exegetically authorized Christian politics.240 Although in agreement with Lyotard on the totalizing potential of logocentrism, Marion offers a description of Christianity as non-logocentric. In this view, it is the logocentric misreading of Christianity that needs to be submitted to criticism, not Cristianity as such. In the previous pages I have tried to show that the second chapter of the book offers a view of Origen as a thinker who is still captive of a set of logocentric assumptions and who is all too often susceptible to Lyotard’s criticism. By contrast, the third chapter was supposed to offer a view of a less-logocentric Origen, who proves to be in many respects compatible with Marion’s description of Christianity. We may now turn back to Emmaus for one last time to analyze the various ways in which this scene can be used to authorize Christian exegesis and pedagogy. 5 Disputing Emmaus The speculative face of Origen that prevails in the presentation in chapter II, and the testimonial face of Origen, which is featured in chapter III, suggest a double interpretation of the matricial event of the Origenian exegesis, namely the Emmaus episode. In the following, I shall sketch a few possible interpretations of the Emmaus scene, which will be grouped as follows: (i) a logocentric interpretation that seems to closely match Claudel’s and perhaps Origen’s approach as presented in the second chapter of this book; (ii) two anti-logocentric interpretations of this scene among which (ii.1.) a Lyotardian one and (ii.2) a Marionesque one. (ii.2) will be shown to come close to the Origenian approach as described in the third chapter of this book (iii). (i) As mentioned before, a logocentric exegesis of the Emmaus scene is based on the following assumptions: first, the addressor of the bible-exegesis is the messiah himself, further to be interpreted as the Johnanine Logos as instantiated cosmic Mind (in a Platonist Alexandrian idiom), as experience displayed, divine Ideal

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(in a Kantian idiom) or as a situated phrase presentation (in a Lyotardian idiom). Thus, Jesus’ exegesis of the Scripture in Luke 24.27 would be taken as an ostension of the final meaning of the Scripture (the reality of its types) (see Jesus’ homily in Luke 24.26–27) in the person of the arrived messiah, which would further mean the supersession of these types by the reality that they announce. Secondly, the referent of Jesus’ messianic exegesis is Jesus himself, as the subject matter of the Old Testament, which, as a messianic type, is fulfilled and superseded by the self-explanatory presence of the messiah in history and in the Gospel. In this sense, the history of the Jews is assimilated by the history of the Church as the spiritual embodiment of Christ, while the Jewish Scripture is assimilated by the Gospel. Thirdly, in the interpretation of the reception of Jesus’ self-exegesis the logocentrist will emphasize the moment of recognition (Luke 24.31) and will further interpret the emotion in the anamnesis in Luke 24.32 as a derivate of this recognition (an excitement for having recognized the self-interpreting incarnate/intextuate Logos). The recognition will be further interpreted as a transformative event, in the sense that the one who recognizes the prototypal Logos becomes like him. The Emmaus event would be, thus, relevant as Logos’ narrative self-delivery to the worldchurch, and the inauguration of a total, biblical hermeneutics and a totalizing transformative pedagogy, which are authorized by the Logos himself. The totalitarian character of this exegetical pedagogy can be verified by the universalist extent of the application of this self-authorized narrative in which the entirety of humanity becomes Christian, while the Jews, their discourse and their Bible, as well as the discourse and the school curriculum of the Greeks, become an internal Christian affair. Claudel’s claim of having provided the interpretation of the Bible that the Emmausian Jesus has provided can be called, in this sense, a logocentric assimilative and supersessionist claim. Also, a reading of Origen’s pedagogic exegesis as presented in the second chapter of this book in disconnection from the revision in the third chapter would be equally logocentric. As one can easily notice, the main focus of the logocentric reading of Emmaus is on the assimilative (re)cognition of an addressor who is at the same time the referent of his discourse (an autothematic Logos) (Luke 24.27; 24.31a). The marginalized or simply omitted aspects of the scene are the evangelist’s vagueness regarding the content of Jesus’ exegesis (Luke 24.27), the vanishing

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that follows the recognition (Luke 24.31b), the Eucharistic meal that occasioned the recognition (Luke 24.30) and the feelings of the disciples (Luke 24.32). (ii.1). In an anti-logocentric reading of Emmaus along the lines of Lyotard, one, would start from the emotional aspect of the anamnesis in Luke 24.32 that describes the enthusiasm that the disciples remember to have felt when listening to Jesus interpreting the scriptures. Most likely Lyotard would insist on the fact that this enthusiasm is not derived from an anamnesis of the content of Jesus’ exegesis (Luke 24.27) or from having had recognized Jesus (Luke 24.32) (the former was faced with disbelief at the time of the experience and did not lead to a recognition; the latter was followed by a vanishing, therefore, neither of them could be said to be final and enduring), but rather it is an emotion that one feels in regard to an exceptional and, therefore, confusing and contradictory event that does not allow for an unambiguous conceptual comprehension or judgment (see, for example, the disciple’s confusion about the recent events in Luke 24.13–24). In light of the emotion that the disciples felt in regard to such an event, the event appears as what, following Kant, Lyotard calls a “sign of history,” while the emotion can be deemed a sublime enthusiasm.241 Thus, Jesus as the direct display of the messianic sense of the Scripture (as self-exegete) and as a direct display of the messianic sense of scriptural pedagogy (an auto-pedagogue) would be, for Lyotard, an ideal that inscribes its trace in the sublime enthusiasm of the disciples in what Lyotard calls an inarticulate “emotion phrase” (the fire in their hearts).242 Any exegesis of Emmaus would represent a cognitive elaboration on this emotion phrase (the “fire” means x, or the “fire” was caused by y, or the “fire” prompts a response along the lines of z), which ultimately wrongs the emotion phrase.243 The duty of the Lyotardian exegete is to acknowledge the transcendence of the sign of history that announces itself in an emotion phrase or to attest to the différend in which the emotion phrase is placed by certain genres of discourse (for example, the metalinguistically authorized, cognitive-scientific genre or the speculative-philosophical genre). In this sense, Lyotard could object to the identification of the Logos as He was pointed at in a subjectively-sublime witnessing of a sign of history (the enthusiasm of the disciples) with the empirically experienced Jesus or with the content and method of the empirical exegesis that Jesus practiced at Emmaus. In brief, the main focus of a

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Lyotardian, anti-logocentric reading of Emmaus is on the subjective emotion of the addressee as a sublime pointer toward the Logos as an exegetic-pedagogic ideal (Luke 24.32). The altered or marginalized aspects of the scene are the exegesis event as such (Luke 24.37), which is rendered as merely empirical (its ideal dimension, i.e., Logos’ ideal self-interpretation, can be acknowledged only subjectively, and its content is not susceptible of any descriptive or theoretical exposition), the Eucharistic meal (Luke 24.30) and the recognition (Luke 24.31). The authorization of this reading is deliberative-critical, insofar as one has to distinguish critically a theoretical, determinant hermeneutics of the event, from a reflective, politico-esthetical hermeneutics, and one needs deliberatively to determine that one should stay strictly within the limits of the latter.244 We may call this a critical post-modern reading. (ii.2) The second anti-logocentric reading of Emmaus is that of Marion.245 Marion’s emphasis is neither simply on the content of Jesus’ self-interpretation (Luke 24.27), i.e., on the addressor and the referent of the Bible exegesis, nor simply on the reception of Jesus’ self-exegesis (Luke 24.32) or on Jesus’ recognition (24.31), i.e., on the addressee. Instead, Marion focuses on the Eucharistic celebration (Luke 24.30) as the event that makes possible the recognition and on the emotional anamnesis of the exegesis (Luke 24.35) as an actual, sacramental-spiritual, encounter with the resurrected Christ (Luke 24.36). The placement of biblical hermeneutics on a Eucharistic site implies a saturation of ordinary hermeneutics by the presence of the Logos or a saturation of the words of the interpretation with the Word as a revelatory event (in a Lyotardian idiom, a saturative situation of the Word in the words, which the Word claims as His; in a Kantian idiom, a saturative illustration of the ideal in experience). The Eucharistic placement of biblical hermeneutics also inscribes the receptor on Christ’s position (taking in the Logos he is taken in by the Logos), without any merger or separation.246 The receptor or addressee who takes in Christ is taken into Christ and, therefore, recognizes Christ with a saturated cognition, symbolized by the fiery emotion. Thus, for Marion, the emotion in Luke 24.32 is the event of a revelatory giving which, instead of excluding understanding and placing itself in a relation of incompatibility towards it, simply saturates it. Moreover, the addressee of Jesus’ eucharistically transformed hermeneutics is a disciple, i.e., a witness of this saturation, while his emotional anamnesis (Luke

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24.32) and his kerygmatic report (Luke 24.34) are a testimonial homiletics with revelatory powers (Luke 24.36). Thus, the main focus of Marion’s anti-logocentric reading of Emmaus is on the coming Logos as the saturation of the exegetical homiletic (pedagogic) discourse (of this discourse’s addressor, referent, sense and addressee). This interpretation is, generally speaking, compatible with Origen’s dramatic-sacramental approach as described in the third chapter of this book.247 As a hermeneutics that operates by saturation rather than selection, this reading does not marginalize or omit any of the details of the episode. The authorization of this hermeneutics is sacramental-testimonial, insofar as the reading is made possible by the sacramental phenomenalization of the Logos in the biblical words of His biblical exegesis and the reception is strictly by way of testimony.248 We may call this reading a revelatory heuristic one. (iii) In the fragmentary form in which it is preserved, Origen’s exegesis of the Emmaus sequence indicates a rather marginal interest in the exegetical aspect of this scene (Luke 24.37) and an overwhelming interest in an entirely different aspect, namely the retrospective reception of Jesus’ exegesis by the disciples (the fire that they remember to have felt in their hearts when Jesus was interpreting the scriptures or Luke 24.32).249 Origen seems, thus, to be unwilling to legitimize, in a Claudelian fashion, his exegetical practice as a direct reproduction of the (self)exegesis practiced by Jesus on the road to Emmaus.250 Moreover, his sacramental-Eucharistic understanding of exegesis suggests that Origen’s now lost interpretation of the Eucharistic celebration mentioned in Luke 24.30 and Luke 24.35 might have had some weight in his overall interpretation of the scene. Also, Origen seems to have focused on the testimonial aspect of the Emmaus episode, which does not mention what the disciples were remembering Jesus’ biblical exegesis to have been, but rather that their hearts have been set on fire by Jesus’ exegesis of the scriptures as a saturating revelatory phenomenon.251 In other words, for the Origen of the third chapter, Emmaus seems to be more of a testimony of a revelatory exegetical event (the coming of the Logos to presence in his interpretatively claimed Scripture) rather than an exposition of an exegesis or of an exegetical principle for a further, so-called “dogmatic” use as a rule of interpretation or as a pedagogic norm.

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The two major theses that my interpretation of Origen in chapter three proposed as the basic assumptions of a nonlogocentric Origenian interpretation of the Emmaus scene were (1) the possibility of a testimonial reading of the Logos as an immemorial saturating event or address, rather than as an autothematic speculative idea or meta-discourse, and (2) the reading of Origen’s physics as a deconstruction of metaphysics, which prohibits universalist speculations on the identity of the Logos as a cosmic entity (a Mind) and makes way for a testimonial (doxologic-homiletic) pragmatics of filial-neighborly love. The coming to text of the Logos as a saturating event cannot be captured by the text’s ordinary semantics and pragmatics and, therefore, one stands in awe before this excessive text investment. However, this awe is replaced by love when one witnesses the textual phenomenalization of the Logos as a gift, which, instead of undermining the limitations of the ordinary semantics and pragmatics of the text, adjusts to them condescendingly. Like the disciples on the road to Emmaus, the Origenian exegete is overwhelmed by mixed feelings of awe and love before Logos’ intextuation, however, not in the fashion of a sublime reference to an ideal, as suggested in the critical postmodern reading, but as a saturative presence, as suggested in the revelatory heuristic reading. Finally, we may inquire as to what are the readings of Origen’s pedagogic exegesis that emerge from the three interpretations of Emmaus presented above? As expected there are at least three ways of interpreting Origen’s Emmaus-authorized pedagogic exegesis. First (I), there is a reading of Origen’s exegesis along the lines of the analysis in the second chapter of this book and of its reformulation in IV.2, as an assimilationist hermeneutics of history performed by a metaphysical cosmic Logos. According to this reading, Origen’s exegetical pedagogy would appear as a typical illustration of ancient speculative logocentrism (mostly of Platonist and Stoic extraction), while the politics that it could eventually authorize would appear as an assimilationist-supersessionist kind of totalitarianism, with a narrative-speculative authorization. Secondly (IIa), one could imagine a deconstructive, critical Origen who undermines the exegetic-pedagogic construction in chapter two, breaking its grand scenarios into a plurality of more local scenarios employable in a tentative experimental fashion. This would be an anti“dogmatic” Origen, whose thought presents affinities with the dia-

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logic approach of rabbinic Judaism, the Reformation, the Enlightenment and post-modernism. Although hardly plausible per total, isolated aspects of this view can be identified in Origen’s extant works and they have been pointed out more than once by modern Origenian scholarship.252 I shall call this an assessment of Origen as a critical deconstructionist avant la lettre. When applied to the view under I, IIa functions as an Origenian deconstructive criticism of Origenian logocentrism, i.e., a deconstructionist self-criticism, which I shall designate as IIb. IIb coincides to a great extent with the conclusions of the Lyotardian criticism in the third section of the fourth chapter above. Aspects of this Origenian self-criticism have also been expressed in various forms in modern Origenian scholarship.253 In the third place, one can read Origen in light of the Marionesque hermeneutics of chapter three and of its reformulation in IV.4. This would be an Origen interested in a sacramentally and ecclesiastically contextualized reading of the Bible, which announces the taste for paradox and mysticism of the theologians of the Patristic ecumenical conciliar period, or the mystical theology of the Western Catholic and the Eastern Byzantine Middle Ages.254 This Origen is also a predictable favorite of the resourcement Catholic theologians of the 20th century and of many of the 20th century post-modern philosophers.255 Following Marion, one may call this an assessment of Origen as a heuristic thinker.256 When applied to the view of Origen under I, IIIa becomes a critique of logocentrism as idolatrous. I shall designate the heuristically selfcriticism of Origen as IIIb. In conclusion, we have two ways of endorsing Origen’s exegetical pedagogy, namely as logocentric (I) or as anti-logocentric (II and III), the latter being further subdivided into a deconstructively anti-logocentric endorsement (IIa) and a heuristically antilogocentric endorsement (IIIa). There are also two ways in which one can draw an Origenian revision of Origen’s logocentric exegetical pedagogy under I., namely, a deconstructive self-criticism (IIb) and a heuristic self-criticism (III.b).257 In both cases, we end up with a bifid representation of Origen (I and IIa; I and IIIa), an Origen who offers the elements for an antilogocentric criticism of his own logocentric assumptions.258 It is obvious that, when read in isolation from the criticaldeconstructive and the heuristic-testimonial aspects of Origen’s thought (III; IV.3 and IV.4), the grand-scenario of Origen’s exe-

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getical pedagogy reveals an undeniable totalitarian potential. Although a delicate matter such as the weight that the logocentric and the anti-logocentric sides of Origen should be accorded in an overall evaluation of his work will not be settled in this book in any decisive way, I shall nevertheless venture in this speculative territory to address one last issue, for which I have reserved the next and last section of this chapter and the book.

6 ABOUT A CERTAIN “SHRUG OF THE SHOULDERS” “I know that if these lines come one day under the gaze of Claudel, he will merely shrug his shoulders” Levinas, “Persons or figures (On Emmaüs, by Paul Claudel)”

If one were to claim, as it is historically and critically reasonable, that the non-logocentric Origen of chapter III, cannot be read in disconnection from the logocentric Origen of the second chapter, it would be interesting to know how the two sides of this bifid Origen come together (if they come together at all) relatively to the specific topic of supersessionist assimilation. The development of the book provided, I hope, sufficient support for my view that a depiction of Origen as entirely logocentric or one that presents him as entirely anti-logocentric would be extreme and hard to sustain. For this reason, I shall launch one final question, which will be only tentatively answered: why did the anti-logocentrism of the view in III not prevail fully over the logocentric articulation of the exegetical and pedagogic grand scenarios in II, to the effect of problematizing supersessionism and assimilation? In other words, as a spirit so much inclined to tentative statements, so averse to fanaticism and so mindful of the differences in the status of his disciples, why did Origen fail to become alert to the totalizing potential of the thesis of a Bible made Gospel (backed up by the belief in the supplanting of the Synagogue by the Church)259 and of a Greek curriculum as rightfully biblical (backed up by the belief in the misappropriation of the biblical wisdom by the Greeks)?260 After all, what strange isolation process could have prevented him from extending his considerate attendance to the diverse needs of most, if not all, of his Christian auditors to the Jew and the Greek, whom he otherwise knew and by whom he was, to no negligible extent, schooled?

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There are some conveniently apologetic answers to this question. First, one could invoke the fact that the totalizing effect appears only in the preliminary, pre-physical, portion of Origen’s mystagogy and, thus, that the universalist totalizing grand-scenarios represent only a transitional phase in the spiritual ascent, one which is to be further deconstructed and abandoned during the physical and epoptic advancement. This explanation offers us a view of a strategically split exegetical pedagogy, which in its first stage is played out logocentrically, while in its middle and final stages turns anti-logocentric and becomes a criticism of the initial stage. Secondly, one could attribute the totalizing effect of Origen’s exegetical pedagogy to an immixture of the speculative approach in Origen’s more biblically inspired and ecclesiastically shaped core beliefs.261 This immixture can be attributed to Origen’s exposure to Middle-Platonist philosophies or, generally speaking, to his spending his formative years in a speculation imbued Alexandrian milieu. The church historians, the historians of philosophy, and the experts in Alexandrian realia, will be in a better position than I am to bring nuance to this statement and to give a pronouncement on its accuracy. Whatever explanation one would consider, it is hard to shrug off a perhaps anachronistic, but, to my mind, justified suspicion. As I made it clear repeatedly, in my interpretation Origen emerges as a thinker with an undeniable but, to a large extent, only selectively actualized potential of attending to the other person. Given that what prevented this potential from being more generously actualized had been no lack of character, cultivation, or natural intelligence, I have often been left with the impression that what stands in the way of a more radical turn towards the other is a potent, almost spell-like, obstruction. To elucidate this enigma, I came to consider it less plausible that a purely intellectual allegiance to the Logos of the late antique philosophies could have, all by itself, lead to such a potent restriction, and I started to surmise that, at least in part, this restriction needs to be traced back to a more characteristically Christian urge. So, what would this urge be? I believe that, as an accomplished Alexandrian Christian intellectual, Origen must have found it rather difficult to isolate his widely shared Christian belief of having had witnessed the fulfillment of a messianic expectation from a more philosophical construal of this fulfillment as the mimetic assimilation of a lesser,

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copy-like condition of humanity, to the plenitude of an ideal prototype, like the metaphysically construed Logos. In this case, Origen’s notion of spiritual leavening might be presenting us with a mixture of a messianic prophecy of the present,262 which is typically Christian, and a more characteristically “Greek” logocentrism as a metaphysics of presence.263 But if this guess is correct, tracing the potential totalitarianism of Origen’s approach to the Jew or the Greek to a logocentric philosophical prejudice (which, as philosophical, would have to be “Greek” and not Christian)264 is not only too apologetic an explanation to be entirely true, but also one that errs by omission. Should we not, instead, say that it was the immoderation of a Christian urge that prompted Origen to seek and find in the Greek metaphysics of presence a cognate, and that this urge is an avidity for presence or, what may be called, a messianic impatience? Unlike the logocentrist’s premature closure of inquiry over an illusory claim of having found a sufficient reason for everything, and an eventual transformation of this reason into an authorization of a political mastery over everyone and everything, messianic impatience reduces a messianic coming-to-presence into an idolatrous being present or, rather, present being. Thus, the former’s ambition of finding a sufficient reason of history, out of a horror of imperfection as unreason, becomes reworked into an impatience of having history completed (or closed), which originates in the horror of an abandonment (of the other’s not-coming). Would it be right to think that in at least a part of Origen’s work the reader witnesses an attempt at an illusory completion of an imperfection through an idolatrous anticipation of a coming as having reached one’s present, as an arrival? For my part, I find this a plausible characterization of the leavening scenario, which was described in the second chapter of this book. In brief, I consider that an impatient, messianic authorization of logocentrism is totalizing insofar as it is aimed at the rejection of the critic as a witness not only of the totalizer’s imperfection (reversed into a false claim to perfection), but also of his impatience with the other’s ever-deferred coming (reversed into a false claim to idolic self-presence). Thus, the critic is hated not only for his cognitive indigence, which is reminiscent of the totalizer’s own lack of a sufficient reason for everything and an exposure of his having wishfully made himself into such a reason. He is odious for his being other and for the excess that announces itself

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in this otherness in the form of an ethical imperative (Levinas) or a gift of love (Marion). This otherness, which appears critical only to the impatient, is an event for which one can never be on time (one is always too late for this event’s “not yet,” according to Levinas, or too early for its excessive “always already,” according to Marion). The main symptom of the idolatrous illusion, which is the driving force behind impatiently-messianic logocentrism, is a special kind of insensitivity, one which is immune to argument and testimony alike, and is as impregnable as a potent spell. It is Eliphaz of Theman’s insensitivity. By listening to Levinas’ testimony, it is no longer possible to construe logocentrism solely as a “Greek” phenomenon, nor even as a “Hellenic” “deviationism” of Christianity. The problematization of a certain impatience for a messianic completion of history, to which Christianity seems more prone—even though certainly not fated—to succumb to than other religions,265 could be what Levinas wanted to bring to Claudel’s attention. Insofar as it is right to surmise that this diagnosis also applies to Origen’s stance toward the superseded Jew or the dispossessed Greek schoolmaster, it would be useful to remember that no messianically authorized prejudice, either old or recent, has yet proven an easy spell to break. After all does it not look foolish to interrupt Eliphaz as long as, like any skilled logocentrist, he continues to convince his audience that his is an enlightened compassion, one that makes of Job’s suffering a perfect, even providential, sense? But what if making perfect sense bears no necessary connection to compassion? In turn, what if a testimony like Job’s, which makes so little sense, is meant to be attended to with a compassion which does not require that one’s tribulations be made sense of in order to be responded? This is a doubt that the logocentrist cannot bear to entertain.

APPENDIX 1 WHY THE MIDDLE-PLATONIST TWICE-TWOFOLD DIVISION OF THE SCHOOL-CURRICULUM MIGHT HAVE RESONATED WITH ORIGEN’S PROJECT OF BIBLICAL INSTRUCTION The relation between Origen’s school curriculum and the Greek Middle-Platonist curricula has received a careful consideration from the part of accomplished scholars such as Pierre and Ilsetraut Hadot.1 The same sense of insuperable completeness faces the readers of Crouzel’s analysis of Origen’s insertion of the disciplines of the Greek curriculum in a biblical setting, where they are allowed to play out as types of a higher, Christian instruction.2 This brief study does not aim at further clarifying any of these two topics, but rather at connecting them in a manner that, at first, might look unusual. I would like to advance, for further examination, the hypothesis that Origen’s allegorical transposition of the Greek curriculum into a typological-biblical scenario with supersessionist and assimilationist characteristics might have been facilitated by logocentrist, supersessionist and assimilationist, tendencies in the Greek cursus itself.3 To this purpose, I shall offer a brief description of the main types of the Greek school curricula and of their relation to the various versions of the school curriculum that Origen proposed in various parts of his work. The passages of the Origenian corpus to which I shall refer are the following: Cant, Prol. 3.7–20 (SC 375:138–142);4 Hom.14 in Gen 3 (SC 7bis:338–348);5 Comm. in Mt. 17.6–12 (GCS 10:595–603) and Fr. 421 in Mt (GCS 12:175–176);6 Ep. Ad Greg. (SC 148:185–197);7 Fr 13 and 14 in LXX Lam 1.4 (GCS 3:241).8 Also useful for understanding Origen’s schoolcurriculum is Gregory Thaumaturgus’ Pan. Or. (SC 148: 93–185).9 In a seminal article on the divisions of the parts of ancient philosophy,10 Pierre Hadot distinguishes between three types of classifications of the philosophical disciplines, namely, the pyramidal, the circular and the progressive.11 The pyramidal model originates with Plato but receives its first major systematization in the works of Aristotle.12 This classification distinguishes between various curricular disciplines based on their objects and the methods that have been applied in the elucidation of these objects.13 P. Hadot’s reconstruction of what could have been the initial model of Aristotle’s classification of the sciences is based on Plato’s dis265

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tinction between theoretical and practical disciplines.14 Among the theoretical disciplines Plato mentions dialectics and mathematics,15 which have mainly intelligible objects, while among the disciplines that refer to sensible objects, he mentions politics as a discipline regarding the human achievements in the sensible world.16 Aristotle will further subdivide the category of theoretical sciences into disciplines that are focused on objects that are intelligible properlyspeaking (dialectics, mathematics) and disciplines which are focused on objects that represent instantiations of the intelligible in the sensible (physics).17 Thus, Aristotle’s revision of Plato’s systematization of the sciences could be represented as follows: Dialectics Theoretical Sciences

Focussing on the Intelligible

Focussing on the sensible Practical

Mathematics Physics

Politics (including ethics)

If one takes into account the Old Academic tendency to merge mathematics with dialectics18 along with the interpretation of politics as a subclass of a broadly-construed discipline of ethics, the Platonic classification can be reduced to the basic sequence dialectics (sometimes also called logic) – physics – ethics. This is, in great outline, Xenocrates’ systematization of Plato’s division of the sciences,19 which subsequently served as the model for most Middle-Platonist philosophical school curricula.20 Origen’s classification of the secular sciences in The Homilies on Genesis follows this Xenocratic division of the curriculum.21 The criteria that regulate the division of the sciences in Plato’s curriculum are two, namely, the ontological status of the objects of these sciences and the degree of reliability that the ontological status of these objects confers on the methods by which they are approached.22 Contemplative knowledge (e©pisth¢mh) is more reliable than discursive knowledge (dia¢noia), which is more reliable than opinion (pi¢stij),23 because, as objects of contemplative knowledge, the ideas are more real than the mathematical objects, which are made available by way of discursive knowledge. The sensible objects of opinion as the domain of physics, in the theoretical

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dimension, and of ethics, in the practical dimension, can be ranked as least ideal, therefore as least real.24 If the relation between dialectics, mathematics and physics/ethics is similar to the relation between their objects, then one should expect their relation to be mimetically-hierarchical. As sensible objects are said to be copies of mathematical objects, which, in turn, are copies of the ideas,25 so ethics and physics should be imitations of mathematics, which is an imitation of dialectics. Moreover, the constitution of a mimetically ordered hierarchy of the sciences makes possible the representation of the school curriculum as the scenario of a spiritual progress that starts from the sensible realm and ends with the intelligible realm (from the copy to the prototype, from the image to the truth). As P. Hadot puts it, the Platonic myth of the cave attests to a psychagogic reading of the pyramidal classification of the sciences as the outline of a spiritual ascent leading from “human contingence to divine transcendence.”26 The Aristotelian classification of the sciences27 preserves the main distinction between theoretical and practical disciplines but changes the criterion that made this distinction possible. The new criterion consists in an evaluation of the degree of mobility in the object of each science. The theoretical sciences have immobile objects and are subdivided into theology (Aristotle’s name for Plato’s dialectics)28 and mathematics; by contrast, physics is concerned with objects that are mobile.29 Practical sciences are all concerned with mobile objects; they refer to internal changes in the condition of the soul that determine the course of human action and allow for the evaluation of these actions as right or wrong, good or bad, virtuous or vicious. Among other names, political sciences are also known as ethics.30 The other branch of the practical disciplines consists in the productive sciences and bears the name of poetics.31 The following schema captures the Aristotelian division of the sciences:

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With immobile objects Theoretical Sciences Practical

theology

With mobile objects

mathematics physics

Practical properly speaking

political (ethics)

Productive

poetics

If we leave aside mathematics, which has a problemtic status in Aristotle,32 and poetics, which is not of immediate importance for our investigation, the remaining sciences are, in decreasing order, theology (later to be called “metaphysics”), physics and ethics. This sequence comes very close to Xenocrates’ systematization of the Platonist disciplines (Platonist dialectics, physics and ethics),33 which, as we have seen, could have served as a model for Origen’s classification of the sciences in The Homilies on Genesis.34 With the replacement of the Platonist denomination of “dialectics” by the Aristotelian notion of “theology,” dialectics did not disappear from the Aristotelian philosophical vocabulary. The notion has been given a different employment, more precisely a logical one. Due to Aristotle’s rejection of the Platonist belief in selfsubsisting, non-instantiated, ideas, Platonist dialectics lost its object, which further determined a revision of the Platonist method of attaining ideas by way of division and definition. Aristotle retains from Plato’s dialectical approach to ideas only the procedural aspect. For him, dialectics designates only a technique of argumentation, which serves as an auxiliary for all other disciplines.35 The Stoics will further elaborate on the Aristotelian conception of dialectics, presenting it under the name of logics.36 Thus, a complete Aristotelian classification of the sciences includes, besides the core disciplines of ethics, physics and theology, the auxiliary discipline called dialectics or, by its Stoic name, logic. One can detect Aristotelian and Stoic influences in the employment of the terms “dialectic” and “logic” in Gregory Thaumaturgus’ description of Origen’s instruction system.37 The term logic, as an equivalent of the Aristotelian dialectic, is also present in Origen’s own classification of the sciences in the Prologue of The Commentary on the Song of Songs,38 the Homilies on Genesis,39 the fragments of the Commentary on Lamenta-

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tions40 and the interpretation of the parable of the tenants in The Commentary on Matthew.41 In spite of its Platonist origin,42 Aristotle’s classification of the sciences is no longer based on a mimetic structuring principle. As we have come to see, motion is the new criterion that structures the Aristotelian sciences, arranging their objects and their methods in a coherent sequence.43 However, this new criterion preserves the hierarchical systematization of the sciences; not unlike Plato, Aristotle sees praxis as a less precise version of theory and he sees wisdom as a superior version of prudence;44 moreover, in the Aristotelian curriculum the theoretical sciences preserve their primacy over the practical ones and they continue to be preferred over the disciplines that, due to their change—and matter—dependant objects, are deemed as less reliable.45 Thus, oddly enough, in spite of their substantive differences, Aristotle’s division of the sciences continues to coincide formally with Plato’s. The second type of classification of the sciences that P. Hadot mentions is the circular one, which is of Stoic extraction.46 This classification prefers a reciprocal correlation of the disciplines of physics, ethics and logic, over their hierarchical ordering. The circular classification is also anti-dichotomous, in the sense that it does not favor a separation of the theoretical sciences from the practical sciences.47 For the Stoics, each discipline entails the other because each discipline originates in the activity of the same cosmic Logos that produces the universe, regulates human action, and governs thought.48 Consequently, the curricular disciplines could easily exchange places, no single science having an absolute ascendance over the others.49 One could trace to a Stoic tendency the switch between physics and ethics in Gregory’s description of Origen’s curriculum,50 although other factors might be equally responsible for this substitution. The structuring principle of the Stoic classification is the multifaceted activity of the Logos as this is expressed in the three disciplines of logic, ethics and physics. In this way, the hierarchical principle of the Platonist division of the sciences, which, as we have seen above, was still functional in the Aristotelian classification, is completely eliminated. Neither the sciences, nor their objects and methods could be said to relate as a subordinate to its superior. Instead, each of them is a part in a complex organism animated by the vital force of the same Logos.51

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The third classification of the philosophical disciplines that P. Hadot proposes is based on the idea of spiritual progress.52 This classification focuses on the pedagogical benefit that the audience obtains from the teaching of the various disciplines, the benefit of which can be taken both in a logic-cognitive sense and in a psychological sense.53 Hadot mentions as the main sources of the Middleand Neoplatonist curricula two scenarios of the spiritual progress, namely, Plato’s myth of the cave and the references to the initiation in the Eleusinian mysteries in Plato’s Symposium.54 There are a few aspects that should retain our attention in Plato’s discussion of the myth of the cave in the Republic and in the mysteric ascension in the Symposium.55 First, one can notice the two-tiered structure that they share. The progress from the darkness of the cave to the daylight delineates two stages of the ascent, which can be further subdivided in other substages.56 Likewise, the Eleusinian ascent is double and comprises a preliminary enlightenment (the “small” mysteries), followed by an accomplished, secondary enlightenment (the “great” mysteries).57 Secondly, one should note the mimetic principle on which the two scenarios are built. Both of them describe a progress from the sensible to the intelligible, which ranks the sensible objects below the intelligible ones and relates them as a copy or image to the original or the archetype. Thirdly, the mimetic principle of this hierarchy allows a reading of the spiritual progress as a gradual assimilation of the copy to the original or of the image to the truth. Since this assimilation comes about by vision or contemplation, by replacing the Platonic term of dialectic, and the Aristotelian term of theology with the mysteric term of epoptics (literally, a spiritual kind of “vision”), Middle-Platonists were in fact reasserting their fidelity to the mimetic hierarchical conception of the Platonist division of the sciences. As P. Hadot pointed out, the Eleusinian scenario accommodates two sorts of ideas. First, it translates the pyramidal classification of the sciences into a two-staged psychagogy, which, in an incipient phase, consists of an ethical preparation (usually accompanied by a logical instruction) and a training in physics (which includes mathematics), while, in an advanced stage, it consists of a study of dialectics/theology, otherwise known as epoptics.58 The first division constitutes the small mysteries, while the second one represents the great mysteries.59 Another aspect that has been cast in the pattern of the two-staged mysteric scenario is the hierarchy

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of the virtues. First, the ethical training is supposed to offer the political virtues of prudence, justice, temperance and courage, then physical instruction completes this purgative stage of the progress by offering the virtue of apathy as a total detachment of the soul from the sensible existence; ultimately epoptics provides the theoretical virtues and the assimilation of the soul to its model, namely the divine intellect.60 The first two stages stand for the small mysteries, followed by the third stage as an accomplished vision or the great mystery. I would like to focus on an aspect of the psychagogic revision of the pyramidal cursus that is only briefly noted in P. Hadot’s 1979 essay.61 In the Platonist-Aristotelian pyramidal cursus, twofolding was mostly an expression of the distinction between the theoretical sciences (mathematics, dialectics) and those sciences with a sensible object (physics and ethics or politics). As mentioned above, the conversion of the pyramidal schema into a two-tiered psychagogic scenario originates with Plato himself and is continued by the Middle- and the Neoplatonist philosophers. However, in the transition from Middle- to Neoplatonism one can record an interesting development, namely, a further doubling of the two-tiered curriculum, that is, its transformation into a twice-twofold instruction scenario.62 In this scenario Aristotle’s two-tiered philosophy constitutes the introductory cycle (the equivalent of the small Eleusinian mysteries), while the twofold Platonic cursus is viewed as a secondary, more advanced, cycle of instruction (the equivalent of the Eleusinian great mysteries).63 The passage from a two-tiered mysteric curriculum to a twice, twofold mysteric cursus is worth a closer examination. We encounter the simple, rather than the doubled, two-tiered scenario in a Middle-Platonist of the second century of our current era such as Theon of Smyrna.64 Theon uses the Eleusinian mystery analogy to explain the spiritual progress as a transition from the preliminary stage of the liberal arts (e©gku¢klioj paidei¢a) to the main sciences of a hybrid Platonist-Aristotelian curriculum and, within this curriculum, from the preliminary sciences of logic, politics and physics to the advanced discipline of epoptics.65 A quick look at Theon’s sketch of a spiritual progress indicates the second and the third stages of his scenario of the spiritual progress as the PlatonicAristotelian preparatory instruction comprising politics/ethics and physics, preceded by the Aristotelian-Stoic discipline of logic. They

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are followed by the advanced instruction, namely Plato’s dialectics (an equivalent of Aristotle’s theology), which later Platonism calls epoptics. The Platonist-Aristotelian curriculum is introduced by the study of the liberal arts of mathematics and music, while its advanced stages offer the disciple the ability to teach and the spiritual benefits of a blessed life.66 Another example of a Middle-Platonist, twofold curriculum can be found in the work of Alkinoos.67 Alkinoos divides philosophy into theoretical, practical and dialectical, according to an obviously Aristotelian pattern. Theology, physics, and mathematics figure within the theoretical division, while ethics, economics, and politics figure in the practical one. Dialectics is considered, in a customary Aristotelian fashion, an auxiliary of the sciences in the first two branches.68 Nevertheless, this Aristotelian division is further cast into a Platonist, psychagogic scenario, which presents similarities with the Eleusinian scenario of Theon.69 In a psychagogic perspective, the dialectical and practical branches of philosophy, as well as the mathematical and physical subdivisions of theoretical philosophy appear as a first cycle of instruction that is followed by an advanced, theological training.70 The outline of Philo’s and Clement’s school curricula71 as well as the school curriculum that Origen proposes in his letter to Gregory72 can be considered reinterpretations of the Middle-Platonist curricula such as those mentioned above. It is not impossible that the additional twofolding that is present in Albinus and the Neoplatonist curricula73 appeared as an attempt at solving the uneasy cohabitation between the Aristotelian and the Platonist aspects of hybrid Middle-Platonist curricula, such as Theon’s or Alkinoos’. Two things seem to be required to obtain a twice, twofold curriculum out of a hybrid twofold cursus: first, one unequivocally has to see the Platonist and the Aristotelian division of the sciences as two different, although not incompatible, educational projects; secondly, one has to align, in a typical Platonist fashion, the Aristotelian curriculum with the Platonist one, by construing the former as a lower, imitative version of the “authentic” philosophical model, which is the latter. In other words, one needs to radicalize the differences between Aristotle and Plato to Aristotle’s disadvantage, Aristotle being given less credit than Plato in the philosophical formation of the disciple, while conditioning the credit given to Aristotle on an alleged resemblance of his doctrine

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to the “prototypical” doctrine of Plato. The result is a forced reading of Aristotle’s hierarchical classification of the sciences as if it were based on a mimetic principle and, therefore, an assimilation of Aristotle’s system of the sciences with Plato’s educative program. As a consequence, pedagogic advance appears as a gradual supersession of the copy-like, lower instruction (Aristotle’s) by the higher, prototypical one (Plato’s). The fact that the revised, twice-twofold curriculum is unified under the sole principle of mimetic analogy is quite remarkable. Why did Middle-Platonists like Albinus or Neoplatonists like Proclus refrain from proposing a twice-twofold curriculum in which the Aristotelian cycle would be hierarchically subordinated without being altered in a mimetic sense (without any mimetic supersession and assimilation)? The answer resides probably in the latePlatonist’s correct opinion that the Platonist and the Aristotelian division of the sciences share a common, twofold scenario, namely the distinction between a theoretical and a practical approach, and on a much less accurate view that the shared distinction must have been drawn on a typically Platonist principle, namely that of mimetic subordination. Consciously or not, the late-Platonists overlook the rather important fact that the shared division of the sciences of the Aristotelian and Platonist curricula is in form only, while, at a more profound, substantive level, the Platonist and the Aristotelian curricula follow different criteria of systematization. It is, probably, safe to say that when the Neoplatonists radicalize certain trends in the hybrid, Aristotelian-Platonist, Middle-Platonist curriculum, dividing it into two different instructional cycles, they adopt Platonist mimesis as the sole structuring principle of the parallelism between the two main cycles (the Platonist and the Aristotelian) instituting a twice-twofold, mimetically authorized, hierarchy of the school disciplines. Thus, the distinction between a theoretical and a practical aspect that divides both the primary, Aristotelian, cycle and the secondary, Platonist, one, is now reworked in a mimetic Platonist fashion as a principle that subordinates the entirety of the Aristotelian curriculum to the Platonist one, as if the former were a mere image of the latter. The altered Aristotelian “small mysteries” serve to acquaint the disciple with the distinction between the sensible and the intelligible while he or she is still in a non-advanced, predominantly sensible state. By contrast, the Platonist “great mysteries” view this distinction from the standpoint

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of an advanced, senses-emancipated or spiritualized disciple. As read by the Middle- and the Neoplatonists, Aristotle is a stepping stone toward Plato, while in the advance from an Aristotelian to a Platonist training, the copy-like Aristotelianism is gradually superseded and assimilated by prototypical Platonism. Given that the formulation of a twice-twofold curriculum originates in Middle-Platonism, the more or less covert supersessionist-assimilationist principle of the Middle-Platonist negotiation of the relation between Aristotle and Plato could have resonated with Origen, who was assiduously engaged in a process of realigning Greek instruction to a Biblical mind-set.74 In particular, Origen’s curricula described in the Prologue of The Commentary on the Song of Songs and The Homilies on Genesis as well as Gregory’s description of his Origenian training could be considered a good example of Origen’s reinterpretation of the twice-twofold scenarios described above.75 If this hypothesis is correct, Origen can be said to have cast his biblically derived curriculum in the position previously occupied by the Platonist great mysteries, while relegating the entire Greek philosophical cursus to the position of the Aristotelian “small mysteries” in the twice-twofold cursus of Late-Platonism.76 The solution that some Middle- and Neoplatonists have found for the dispute between Plato and Aristotle seems to have been not only odd but also oddly radical; instead of seeking mediation between the philosophies in dispute, Middle- and Neoplatonists chose to deny expression to the very existence of the dispute. Insofar as Middle- and Neoplatonism presents Aristotle’s thought as an imitative propedeutic to Plato’s thought, the dispute between the two philosophical parties seems to have been settled in the terms of only one of them (the mimetic-hierarchic view of Plato), while the assimilated party (the Aristotelian) is allowed to seek expression only in the idiom of its assimilationist Platonist counterpart. J.-F. Lyotard has called such a situation a différend, that is, a dispute in which the wronged party is denied the means to substantiate the wrong.77 In our case, the différend consists in Platonism’s conditioning the expressibility of Aristotelianism’s claim to philosophical independence on the expression of this claim in a Platonist idiom, whereas, thus expressed, such a claim becomes self-defeating (it acknowledges Platonism as the rightful arbiter of the dispute). If my interpretation is correct, then I would like to advance the hypothesis that the assumptions on which some of the Middle- and Neopla-

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tonists chose to articulate their twice-twofold school-curriculum might have come close to the assumptions that allowed Origen to represent the Greek curriculum as a propedeutic to a biblical instruction.78 Origen explains the subordination of Greek paideia to the biblical instruction by way of what one may call today a “justifying rationalization.” In his letter to Gregory and in the Prologue to his Commentary on the Song of Songs he revives a long standing patristic belief in the Greek misappropriation of biblical wisdom.79 On the basis of this belief, he explains the conversion of the gentiles and of their philosophy to Christianity as a form of restoration, as a return to the one and only true philosophy, which is Bible-based and ecclesiastically dispensed.80 In this sense, Abimelech’s covenant with Isaac stands for the return of philosophy to its biblical, “rightful” roots.81 Likewise, casting the Greek curriculum in the form of a Solomonic paideia, constitutes a restitution of biblical wisdom to Solomon as its “rightful,” biblical owner.82 This brief, and rather sketchy, study is not meant to trace Origenian supersessionism and assimilationism to a “Greek,” “philosophical” origin, but rather to identify the reason why, in order to authorize his Christian, typological supersessionism and assimilationism, Origen could have found it convenient to adopt a Greek school curriculum as an introductory, first cycle of instruction. If my suggestion is correct, then the Origenian and the Neoplatonist twice-twofold curricula display a common assimilationistsupersessionist mindset, one that homogenizes heterogeneous disciplines according to the binary logic of mimetic subordination. In the third and the fourth chapters of this book I exposed and criticized this binary logic of mimetic hierarchization as a manifestation of logocentrism, and I tried to offer an alternative, non-logocentric reading of Origen’s twice-twofold spiritual progress scenario.

APPENDIX 2 ORIGEN’S INTERPRETATION OF GEN 26.26–32 (THE COVENANT BETWEEN ISAAC AND ABIMELECH)1 In the third section of his 14th homily on Genesis, Origen provides an allegorical interpretation of the biblical narrative of the covenant between Isaac and Abimelech (Gen 26.26–32).2 In Origen’s interpretation, the covenant stands for the conversion of the secular sciences to a Bible-based Christianity or the conversion of the gentiles to the Christian faith. Thus, Abimelech and his two companions, Ochozath and Phicol, stand for the three main disciplines of the Greek cursus, namely, logic, physics and ethics.3 Phicol, the name of the commander of Abimelech’s forces, is translated as “the mouth of all” (os omnium).4 He represents moral philosophy, “which is in the mouth of all and pertains to all and is situated in the mouth of all because of the likeness of the common precepts”5 (quae in ore est omnium et ad omnes pertinet et pro communium similitudine praeceptorum in omnium ore uersatur).6 The name of Ochozath, Abimelech’s son-in-law, appears translated as “containing” (tenens).7 He represents natural philosophy (philosophia naturalis), a discipline that is “fixed and contains all things, as depending on the forces of nature itself”8 (naturalis illa est quae fixa est et tenet omnia, uelut naturae ipsius uiribus nitens).9 Abimelech himself, whose name is translated as “my father is king” (pater meus rex), represents logic or rational philosophy.10 This is the discipline that “acknowledges God to be father of all” (illa quae Deum patrem omnium confitetur).11 In a previous chapter of his Homilies on Genesis Origen considers that “Abimelech represents the studious and wise men of the world, who by giving attention to philosophy, although they do not reach the complete and perfect rule of piety, nevertheless perceive that God is the father and king of all things.”12 (Abimelech interpretatur pater meus rex. Videtur ergo mihi quod hic Abimelech formam teneat studiosorum et sapientum saeculi, qui philosophiae operam dantes, licet non integram et perfectam regulam pietatis attingerint, tamen senserint Deum patrem et regem ommnium, id est qui genuerit et regat universa).13 The aforementioned intellectual insight of the studious and the wise seems to describe that which Hom. 14 in Gen. 3 characterizes as “logic” or “rational philosophy,” that is, the dialectics of the Platonist curricula and the theology of the Aristotelian cursus. 277

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In the scene under discussion Abimelech does not appear alone. He is accompanied by his wife and servants. Origen considers that the wife of Abimelech stands for natural philosophy or physics, while the servants stand for “the contrivances of dialectic discipline which are diverse and various by virtue of the nature of the school”14 (diuersa et uaria pro qualitate sectarum commenta dialecticae).15 The name Isaac appears translated as “laughter” (ge¢lwj).16 Origen’s interpretation of the translation confirms the messianic symbolism of the character. Laughter is what is being promised to those who cry in this life (Luke 6.21). As a title of Christ, laughter designates Christ himself and epitomizes all other promises, including the promise of a child that God made to Abraham in his old age. In brief, Isaac stands for Christ as the messianic promise to humanity. Rebecca’s name is translated as patience (patientia) but, more broadly, she stands for virtue.17 Christ, as the new Isaac, offers his virtue (Rebecca) to Abimelech (the secular sciences and the gentiles), involving them in a higher, Christian, Bible-based, progress towards spiritual perfection.18

APPENDIX 3 ORIGEN’S INTERPRETATION OF THE PARABLE OF THE TENANTS IN MAT 21.33–43 In Comm. in Mt. 17.7 Origen offers an ecclesiological and an exegetical interpretation of the parable of the tenants.1 Fr. 421 in Mt provides a summary of these two interpretations.2 Additionally, Comm. in Mt. 17.8 offers a psychological interpretation of the parable.3 The scenery in Matt 21.33–34 consists of a vineyard surrounded by a wall. Within the enclosure of this wall there are a winepress and a tower. The characters in the parable are the landlord, the first set of tenants, the second set of tenants, the first set of servants, the second set of servants, and the landlord’s son. After planting the vineyard the landlord rents it to the first set of tenants who will later claim it as their own. The first tenants kill or mistreat the two sets of servants whom the landlord sends to collect the fruits. Ultimately, they end up killing the landlord’s son who is the inheritor of the property. In response, the landlord punishes these tenants and brings in another set of tenants with whom he is ready to share the harvest. Origen interprets the vineyard as the kingdom of God4 and as “the fusiologi¢a according to the divine Scripture.”5 Fr. 421 in Mt. combines the two explanations, describing the vineyard as “the kingdom of God and its mysteries [comprised] in the Law and the Prophets, and in the other fusiologi¢a.”6 As Hermann Vogt remarks, the term fusiologi¢a does not designate the writings (ketubim) of the Old Testament,7 but it may stand for a specific type of biblical interpretation that pertains to those exegetes who attained the curricular stage of physics. fusiologi¢a stands also for the “fruit of the vineyard,” explained as “the life” that “bears fruits through virtue and excellent deeds”8 or “the life [which is] virtuous with regard to manners.”9 Thus, it seems that by the fruit Origen understands an ethical outgrowth of fusiologi¢a or the life according to the natural doctrine. The wall of the vineyard represents “the logiko¢j to¢poj and the letter of the Scripture.”10 It circumvents the vineyard “on the outside,” preventing any glance into the vineyard and its “hidden fruit.”11 In Fr. 421 in Mt. the terms for “vineyard” and “hidden 279

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fruit” appear replaced by the formula “the hidden mysteries” (ta¢ kekrumme¢na muster¢ia).12 It is possible to associate the logiko¢j to¢poj with logic, as Origen understands this discipline, namely with the critical-exegetical capacity of discerning the various senses and usages of the words.13 Logic is a discipline that Origen integrates with ethics and physics14 or the preliminary stages of the biblical curriculum and has a preventive-defensive character. It prevents misinterpretations and keeps out those who, due to their precarious morality and their lack of insight into the nature of things, are not ready to discern between the letter and the spirit; it also prepares the disciples for such discernment (i.e., for the higher stage of physics or, as our text names it, the fusiologi¢a).15 The winepress that the landlord ordered to be dug in the vineyard stands for “the depth of the soul who receives the fruits and rejects everything that is superfluous.”16 The fruits processed in the winepress are, according to the above allegorization, the ethical life as the outgrowth of the fusiologi¢a. 17 The tower that was built in the vineyard, represents “the lo¢goj regarding God.”18 Origen characterizes this lo¢goj as a “temple for the divine nou¤j [who dwells] in it.”19 Obviously, the word lo¢goj does not designate in this context the human faculty of reason. As the following sections of the commentary indicate, by lo¢goj Origen designates the discourse of the interpreter of the Scripture, which is supposed to “enshrine” the divine intention (nao¢j wån tou¤ e©n au©t%¤ qei¢ou nou¤).20 The construction of this discourse resembles that of a tower, insofar as it has to be well designed in order to stay erect.21 The tower or the spiritual interpretation is higher than the vineyard, the wall or the winepress, which means that it surpasses ethics and physiology, as well as logic, which is part of both.22 Like the biblical pedagogy, the building of the tower requires an orderly progress or a progress through stages starting with the laying of the foundation and ending with the final accomplishment.23 Thus, the finalized tower can be taken as a symbol of the pedagogic accomplishment that in Origen’s curriculum appears designated as the stage of epoptics.24 The landowner is God,25 the first set of tenants represent the Jews,26 the two sets of servants of the landlord are the prophets,27 the son is Jesus Christ and the second set of tenants are the apostles or, by extension, the Church. The ecclesiastic interpretation of

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the plot refers to the supersession of the people of Israel by the Church after the coming of Christ.28 However, there are also a pedagogic and a psychological dimension to this plot. The pedagogic interpretation of the passage refers to those who falsely claim a spiritual acquaintance with God’s mysteries (the fruits of the vineyard), without having accomplished the preliminary training of logic, physics and epoptics. Origen shows that their soul is incapable of processing the fruits of the vine (an unaccomplished training in logics, ethics and physics) and therefore their tower (their doctrines) remain unfinished (they cannot shelter in their words the divine intention, an aborted epopsis).29 The psychological interpretation confirms the pedagogic one. In the psychological perspective, the vineyard is the lo¢goj (this time understood as the highest aspect of the human nou¤j), while the soil in which the vine has been planted is the soul.30 The maturing of the lo¢goj in the soul comprises various stages,31 which could be rendered as the ethical, physical and epoptic ones mentioned above. Each believer has to provide a good crop to the servants of the landlord (the prophetic and apostolic pedagogues) and, ultimately, to the son of the landlord (the supreme pedagogue who is Christ). The growth of the soul is measured by the gradual internalization of the Christological virtues, starting with the ethical ones and ending with the epoptical virtues of love, peace, joy and patience.32 The exegetical, the ecclesiastic, and the psychological interpretations of the parable confirm the importance of the curriculum in Origen’s thought. The soul protected by logic and ethics (or the spiritual skills of critical discernment and ascetic purification) becomes immune to external interventions (demons, passions). By fusiologi¢a or natural contemplation the soul recovers its natural iconic state. The further internalization of the biblical lo¢goj, which stands for God’s mind or counsel (nou¤j), and the further internalization of the Christological virtues, allow the believer to reach the epoptic stage (the successful edification of the tower). The believer is now a perfected soul planted, like the vineyard, in the ethically purified, physiologically restored, and logically self-contained kingdom of God. In this state the believer is receptive to the pedagogy of the Father (the landowner) as this is conveyed by the Son. The success of this pedagogic progress is measured by the fact that in the end God allows the purified, restored and perfected soul to

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partake of His divinity (the landowner shares the fruits with the new tenants).

APPENDIX 4 ORIGEN’S SCHOOL-CURRICULUM ACCORDING TO HIS LETTER TO GREGORY In his letter to Gregory, Origen lays out a model of spiritual instruction customized for those Christians who are well-versed in the Greek liberal sciences and in philosophy. The prerequisite for any such instruction is a generous natural endowment of intelligence (ei©j su¢nesin ... eu©fui¢a).1 The condition for a steady spiritual progress consists in being willing to put one’s intelligence to work or practice (aÃskhsin proslabou¤sa).2 The expected result (eÃrgon) of this practice consists in fulfilling, according to possibilities, the goal (te¢loj) that one has set for one’s betterment.3 This is a general educational scenario, which Origen further applies to Gregory’s special case. At the time when this letter was written Gregory had already accomplished a stage of instruction in the liberal arts and in Greek philosophy, and might have also finished a preliminary Christian training with Origen. The curriculum that Origen envisages for Gregory and, by extension, for those sharing a similar educational history with Gregory, is twofold. The overall scenario of Origen’s instruction is explicitly related to the twofold scenario of the Greek philosophical curricula that take the liberal sciences (e©gku¢klia maqh¢mata) as a propedeutic to philosophy.4 Among the liberal sciences, Origen mentions the four mathematical disciplines of arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music, which he adds to the other two preliminary disciplines called grammar and rhetoric. Christian instruction revises the Greek paideia (liberal arts and philosophy) turning it into an introductory study to Christianity (xristianismo¢j).5 From the same letter one can gather that “Christianity” involves an intense study of the Bible, which, apparently, Gregory is in need to accomplish.6 This study comports the working out of two dispositions, namely, an inquisitive one, described in references to John 10.3, and a prayerful-receptive one, described along the lines of Matt 7.7 and Luke 11.9.7 The result of one’s inquisitive and prayerful application to the study of the Bible is a double participation in the spirit of Christ and in the spirit of God.8 In brief, the first cycle of Origen’s curriculum comprises a propedeutic section, consisting in the liberal sciences, and a, prop283

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erly-speaking, philosophical section. According to the outline of a curriculum in the prologue of the Commentary on the Song of Songs and in the Homilies on Genesis, philosophy is further divided into a preliminary ethical and physical training, followed by an advanced training in dialectics or theology, also known as epoptics.9 Thus, it is quite obvious that the introductory, Greek cycle of Origen’s curriculum was very similar to the complete (introductory and advanced) cursus of the Middle-Platonist training of philosophers such as Theon of Smyrna, Alkinoos or Nikomachus of Gerasa.10 We have, indeed, a detailed exposition of this preliminary training in Gregory’s account of his studies under Origen’s guidance in Caesarea.11 In regard to the second cycle, the letter to Gregory offers two important clues. The first clue is the characterization of the instruction as centered on the idea of participation, rather than mere intellectual learning. Secondly, we know that this participation is gradual, spiritual, and that it has a twofold goal, namely the disciple’s assimilation first to the spirit of Christ, then to the spirit of God.12 What should one make of this twofold division of the secondary cycle or “Christianity”? The elucidation of this matter has to do with Origen’s special reading of the Biblical passage in which the distinction between these two stages originates, namely 1 Corinthians 24–26. This passage refers to a first accomplishment of a kingdom under Christ and a further perfection of this kingdom, when it is delivered by the Son to the Father. As we have noticed in our analysis of Origen’s designation of Solomon (a type of Christ) as the Pacifier,13 the Solomonic pacification is clearly connected to the event of the delivery of the Kingdom. Since the attaining of peace is also connected with the ultimate stage in the Christian cycle of Origen’s curriculum, namely epoptics, one can safely infer that the participation in the Kingdom of God designates the upper division of the second instructional cycle and that it bears the name of biblical epoptics. Consequently, the preceding stage, namely the kingdom of Christ, must be standing for the preliminary disciplines of the advanced cycle, namely biblical ethics and physics.14 My analysis of the letter to Gregory, agrees on all the essential points with the other versions of Origen’s curriculum, especially with the ones offered in the Prologue of the Commentary on the Song of Songs and in the Homilies on Genesis.15 In all these accounts the curriculum appears as a twice-twofold ascent. Each of its main cy-

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cles, i.e., the Greek and the Biblical, is further subdivided in a twofold manner, into a preliminary, ethical and physical training, and an advanced, epoptic instruction. The curriculum has a hierarchic structure and it is based on a mimetic organizing principle requiring that the inferior stages imitate the superior ones.

APPENDIX 5 ORIGEN’S SCHOOL-CURRICULUM ACCORDING TO GREGORY THAUMATURGUS’ ADDRESS TO ORIGEN In his Address to Origen, Gregory Thaumaturgus mentions four stages of instruction. After a dialectic training, the disciples are introduced to the natural science (including also the mathematics and astronomy), then to the study of morals. The final stage is called theology and comprises two sub-stages, namely the study of select texts from the Greek philosophers and the study of the Scripture.1 Gregory does not ascribe one, but rather two denominations to the preliminary stage of the instruction. In Pan. Or. 8.109 he calls this stage dialectics (dialektikh¢).2 Gregory also describes the outcome of this preliminary instruction as a logical formation (logiko¢j e©cepaideu¢eto) of that part of the soul that displays the capacity for discernment or criticism (kritiko£n h¥mw¤n th¤j yuxh¤j me¢roj).3 The benefits of the logical formation are primarily technical but also moral. The lucid discernment provided by the correct use of reason helps one to grasp the proper use of spoken expressions and words (le¢ceij kai£ lo¢goi).4 This lexical and logical training that Origen used to dispense in a maeutic fashion5 was not only meant to equip the disciple with much needed reasoning skills; it was also contributing to the disciple’s ethical purification.6 The technical training in logics was also aimed at developing one’s capacity to distinguish between true and false opinions7 and it had the immediate practical application of building the disciple’s immunity to rhetorical deception.8 The second discipline in Gregory’s description of Origen’s cursus is not ethics, as one would normally expect, but rather physics (fusiologi¢a). However, the ethical–cathartical dimension is as central to the natural doctrine as it was to logic. fusiologi¢a seems to be aimed at correcting the irrational motions induced in the lower faculties (the appetent/e¦piqumetiko¢n and the irascible/qumo¢j) of the unprepared soul by a contemplation of the majesty of the created universe.9 Gregory describes the practice of physics as consisting in dividing things into their constituent parts and describing their transformations.10 When successful, natural science is supposed to replace the beginner’s irrational awe before nature with a rational admiration (logiko¢n qau¤ma) based on an 287

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analytic study of nature’s elements, parts and the harmonious articulation of the universe.11 Most effective in this transition from an irrational to a rational admiration of the universe seem to have been two particular sciences that encompass the whole of natural doctrine. Gregory claims that Origen was using geometry as the foundation of the natural doctrine, and astronomy as its summation.12 The ascent from geometry to astronomy is described as a journey from earth to heaven. Crouzel sees in Gregory’s description of the physical ascent in Pan.Or. 8.114 an allusion to Gen 28.12 (Jacob’s ladder).13 However, it is perhaps safer to admit that Gregory’s allusions to procedures of division and description are more reminiscent of Origen’s definitions of the Greek discipline of physics than of his description of the biblical natural doctrine.14 Gregory’s description of Origen’s ethical instruction is centered on the practice of acquiring the virtues through a reasoned imitation of the example of the teacher. Gregory gives a detailed description of this experience, including 1) a mention of the goal set for this stage of the training, 2) the means by which it should be attained, and 3) a list of the virtues that were supposed to be acquired and their definitions.15 Looking back at the description of the last two disciplines (Gregory’s physics and ethics), we notice that they are both ethical in essence. What Gregory calls physics is a cathartic discipline targeting the lower parts of the soul and their passions, while Gregory’s ethics is focused on the assimilation of the (mostly) Greek Platonist virtues of courage, justice, prudence and temperance, which is the higher stage of the so-called physical purification.16 The final stage of Gregory’s study under Origen is called theology (qeologi¢a).17 At this stage Gregory mentions for the first time the distinction between a Greek and a biblical instruction.18 Theology offers the apprentice “a cognition of the origin (or cause) of the universe”19 in two different ways, namely, by an unbiased study of the Greek philosophers and poets, excepting those who deny God and providence, and by a study of Scripture.20 Theology takes the previous ethical acquirement of the Greek virtues one step further, elaborating on the religious virtue of piety.21 In regard to Greek theology, we need to remark the double determination of Origen’s instruction. Greek theology is meant to acquire knowledge (gnw¤sij) of the first cause of all,22 which means that it is addressed to the higher part of the soul (the nou¤j), as opposed to the

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lower ones. This further means that we are now past the purgative stages of dialectic, physics and ethics. The other concern of the teacher of theology is the preservation and strengthening of the disciple’s sense of piety.23 It is for their lack of piety that atheistic philosophies (Epicurean and some of the Peripatetics) have been excluded from Origen’s curriculum.24 However, the upholding of piety25 in a theistic and providence-friendly form is the only restriction that Origen imposes on the study of Greek philosophers.26 Agreement on all issues philosophical is not required at this stage; to the contrary, Origen considers that it is beneficial to expose the disciple to as many philosophies as possible, thus hoping to prevent him or her from falling under the spell of one system.27 The double emphasis on cognition or the higher, intellective, activities of the soul and on piety or the higher, religious, virtue, indicates clearly that Origen was conceiving theology as an advanced instruction. But how are we to explain the further dividing of this discipline into a Greek and a biblical cycle? The transition from the philosophical-Greek cycle of theology to the biblical one is marked, in Gregory’s account, by a subtle switch from a mysteric to a prophetic terminology. If, towards the end of the section on philosophical theology, Gregory presents Origen as a psychagogue, who accompanies and guides the disciple in the spiritual journey,28 in the description of biblical theology Origen appears as a prophetic exegete29 who initiates the disciple into the spiritual sense of the Bible as an inspired text.30 The title of “friend of God” reappears in the description of the biblical theologian, accompanied by the other titles that Gregory has used in relation to the accomplished teacher, most of all, that of spokesperson of God.31 The Holy Spirit enables the teacher and the exegete to penetrate the mysteries of the Bible, as if by a prophetic affinity.32 If the biblical authors are, in a certain sense, prophets, that is, people inspired by the Holy Spirit, and the Bible is a prophecy or an oracle, the exegete, who is supposed to be receptive (to “listen,” in Gregory’s terminology)33 to the biblical prophecy, has to be inspired by the same Spirit who speaks this biblical prophecy. Furthermore, as a sui generis prophet, the biblical exegete is capacitated to teach, which Gregory construes as the ability of functioning as God’s spokesperson.34 In conclusion, my analysis of Gregory’s description of Biblical theology suggests two ways of interpreting the Address’s version of

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the curriculum. One classification places biblical theology on the position that Origen ascribes to epoptics, reserving for Greek theology the position occupied by physics in Origen’s curriculum (see graph N). Gregory’s ethics and physics can be brought under one, overarching, ethical concern (the purification of the lower parts of the soul) that makes them an equivalent of ethics in Origen’s versions of the curriculum (see graph N). Dialectic has the same ambiguous status as Origen’s logic, being both a propedeutic to philosophy and an auxiliary of all the other disciplines. The second way to look at Gregory’s curriculum would be to place his logic, physics, ethics, and Greek theology in the position of the first, Greek cycle of the cursus, followed by a more advanced Biblical cycle, namely biblical theology (Origen’s epoptics). We can represent these two interpretations in the following table: 1st interpretation Dialectic = Logic Physics & Ethics = Ethics Greek theology = Physics Biblical theology = Epoptics

2nd interpretation Dialectic = Logic Physics = Greek Physics Ethics = Greek Ethics Greek theology = Greek epoptics Biblical theology = Biblical epoptics as the sum-total of the entire biblical cycle (comprising also Biblical ethics and Biblical physics)

The first version of the curriculum is twofold and contains an integrated teaching of the disciplines in the two cycles, in contrast to the second version that is twice-twofold and proposes a separate training in the Greek and the Biblical curriculum. It is hard to say which of the two interpretations comes closer to the reality of Origen’s teaching, if, indeed, this reality can be spoken of in the singular. Obviously, the first version is closer to the curricula offered by Theon, Alkinoos, Philo, and Clement (see graphs O,P,S and T), while the second one comes closer to Origen’s own curricula in the Commentary on the Song of Songs and the Homilies on Genesis (see graph N) as well as to the Neoplatonist curricula (see graph R).

APPENDIX 6 ORIGENIAN LOGOCENTRISM IN LIGHT OF THREE READINGS OF TOTALITARIANISM At the end of IV.6 and in graph Z, I offered a menu of a few possible readings of Origen’s exegetic pedagogy. According to this menu, there are two ways of endorsing Origen’s exegetic pedagogy, namely as logocentric (Aa) and as anti-logocentric (Ba), the latter being further subdivided into a deconstructively anti-logocentric endorsement (IIa) and a heuristically anti-logocentric endorsement (IIIa). In this study, I shall draw a further distinction between a narratively authorized logocentrism (I) and a normatively authorized logocentrism (I’). There are also two ways in which one can draw an Origenian revision of Origen’s logocentric, exegetic pedagogy under (I) and (I’), namely, a deconstructive self-criticism (IIb) and a heuristic self-criticism (IIIb). In both cases we end up with a bifid representation of Origen (I/I’ and IIa, or I/I’ and IIIa), an Origen who offers the elements for an anti-logocentric criticism (Bb) of his own logocentric assumptions (Aa).1 Both the narratively and the normatively authorized forms of logocentrism can generate totalizing political models that I would now like to outline and discus. After a brief analysis of the narratively instituted totalitarianism (I) as a universalist, logocentric prosopopoiesis, I shall analyze the normatively instituted totalitarianism (I’) first as an ideological utopism, then as an ideological demonism.2 My discussion of these models of totalization is speculative rather than empirical-historical. In other words, the description that I shall provide for these models is neither derived from, nor is it intended as an exact illustration of, concrete historical situations. Occasionally, I shall indicate possible historical illustrations of these speculative models, which, nevertheless, should be taken as tentative.3 Narratively instituted totalization (logocentric prosopopoiesis). The reading of the Emmaus scene in IV.5.i allows a better understanding of this type of totalization. The exegesis of Emmaus as the narrative of the inauguration of Christian exegesis, with Jesus as a first cosmic-universal addressor who is, at the same time, the first referent (the autothematic Logos) and the disciples as the first logomorphic addressees, is undoubtedly a totalizing one (the world is the stage for the dramatic qui pro quo of the “logic” Christian narra291

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tor, narratee and referent, while whoever is not “logically apt” for this dramatic prosopopoiesis is either sub-human or does not altogether exist).4 If Jesus is seen as the Logos, that is, as the Image of humanity, while the addressees are viewed as representatives of a humanity subsisting by an ontological attunement to the LogosImage, reiterating the Emmausian self-exegesis of the Logos is a dramatically enacted ontological re-attunement of the copy to the original. When eschatologically accomplished, this attunement will result in an assimilation of humanity to the Logos, or, in other words, in an assimilation and/or supersession of the copy by the prototype. As the biblical types are gradually replaced by the reality, so the exegete is gradually assimilated to the biblical Logos, to the point that he or she becomes like his or her prototypal addressor (mimetic assimilation). The assimilationism of this view is doubled by a supersessionism, which is evident in the mandatorily prosopopoietic way in which the exegetic reception takes place. The Emmausian primal narrative is told to narratees whose prosopopoiesis is supposed to supersede the typological narrattees of the previous, “local,” narratives (the OT or the Greek humanity as “figures” of the “reality,” or the church) only to become themselves assimilated to the arch-narrator (the Logos); afterwards, they are expected further to narrate this supersessionist-assimilationist story to others to the same effect. The result is, as Levinas pointed out, a world view in which people “figure instead of being,” and history is the implementation of a narrative according to a universal script.5 Normatively instituted totalization (ideological utopianism and ideological demonism). An endorsement of Origen along criticaldeconstructionist lines (II.a) allows for a reading of Emmaus as the sublime experience of Jesus’ self-exegesis as a sign of history (see IV.5.ii.1 above). Although somewhat anachronistic (normative totalization becomes politically conceivable only with the rise of modern republicanism),6 the exposition of such a reading of the Emmaus scene is useful for a better situation of Origen in the current, anti-logocentric debate. One may acknowledge a deliberative institution of a normative rational politics in any historical situation in which a group of people gather to decide “who they ought to be?” and use their identity-fashioning decision to authorize a certain course of political action that they see as regulated by norms.7 Following this train

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of thought, one can make the point that the use of Emmaus as a narrative authorization of a Christian identity could, and, perhaps, must be, accompanied by a deliberation on the content and method of Jesus’ self-exegesis on the road to Emmaus, and, automatically, on the possibility of establishing a norm of exegetic orthodoxy as the gurantee of the agreement of one’s biblical exegesis to Jesus’ own. Whether or not there has been in early Christianity a debate that followed this deliberative scenario is less important in this context; what is, indeed, important is to realize that Origen writes at a time when synodal deliberations and doctrinal debates, even if not yet of ecumenical proportions, were by no means absent and that deliberative attempts at shaping a Christian identity were frequent and, at times, dramatically contradictory.8 Thus, insofar as a group of people ever decided to treat a deliberatively authorized type of biblical exegesis as the exact reproduction of Jesus’ self-exegesis on the road to Emmaus, while treating the Emmausian exegesis as an eschatological self-interpretation of the Logos with a universal normative applicability, critical thinkers like Lyotard or Kant could retort that such a group has committed a speculative offence, i.e., that it has overstepped the rational boundaries of criticaldeliberative thinking by using an idea (a speculative illusion) as the norm for a political course of action.9 I have called this position a totalitarian utopism. Let us imagine such a totalizing reading of the Emmaus scene and the effects of the political action that it could authorize.10 Under the influence of the enthusiasm occasioned by the yet unsubstantiated reports of Jesus’ resurrection, the disciples start feeling that the recent events are a “sign of history,”11 that is, they feel that the recent events could provide the elements for a possible messianic clarification of history. However, instead of limiting themselves to the insight provided by this sublime, but merely subjective feeling, they identify the addressor of this eschatological hermeneutics as the historical Jesus, further explained as a historical incarnation of the divine Logos, that is, as an empirically displayed Ideal, or a prototypal Image of humanity and the world as a divine Wisdom or a cosmic Mind. Furthermore, based on the concrete scriptural interpretation that they heard from the historical Jesus, which is now believed to be the ultimate, ideal reading of history and of nature, the disciples elaborate a universal norm of scriptural interpretation and of education, which they pass on to

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various communities of believers who hold it as a standard of orthodoxy (an universal rule of faith). In critical terms, this claim to be in the empirical possession of an ideal, universal, exegeticpedagogic norm, which is that of the Logos, has two sets of effects.12 On the one hand, it translates into an exclusionary action towards the “outsiders,” i.e., towards those who do not endorse Jesus as the incarnate Logos. Ultimately, they will be considered to have excepted themselves from the logical pre-determination of their nature and, thus, to have offended the a priori Christological humanity in themselves and in others (one possible explanation of the Christian exclusion of those Jews who do not see it as their destiny to be a propedeutics to Christianity in accordance to Logos’ historical logic and of the Greek philosophical schools that oppose the official genealogical thesis of a Greek misappropriation of the biblical Wisdom/Logos). On the other hand, the claim of a historical embodiment of the Emmausian hermeneutic ideal generates a policy of terror targeting the “insiders” or those who endorse Jesus as the Logos but insist on submitting the traditionary version of His self-exegesis to a critical exam (heresiology construed as the activity of an anti-critical ideological police).13 Moreover, the “orthodox” themselves are supposed to internalize the fanatic, antiheresiological action in a form of incessant auto-suspicion and continuously to prove their non-provable—because impossible— conformity with the Emmausian historical instantiation of the ideal norm of exegesis and pedagogy. Thus, what in cognitive terms appears as an illusion—the instantiation of the Image in the copy [Plato]; the empirical illustration of an ideal [Kant]; the situation of a phrase presentation in a particular phrase [Lyotard]—becomes in practical terms the driving force behind a politics of terror and suspicion (a heresiological utopism; an utopical asceticism).14 The enactment of this terror can have the following explanation: given that an ideal cannot be displayed empirically, the attempt at bringing one’s empirical existence in accord with the ideal is meant to fail or, in other words, the empirical norm that the disciples derive from the historical self-exegesis of Jesus at Emmaus will invariably keep falling short of a universal, exegetic norm. However, this failure will be denied by the fanatical totalitarian party (the ecclesiastic utopist) by way of rationalizations such as the sabotage of the outsiders (therefore the suspicion of Judaizing or Hellenizing the faith) or by the contamination of the insider’s faith with heretical, devi-

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ationist, elements (the insidious influence of the Gnostic, the literalist, the theopaschite, the anthropomorphite, to enumerate just a few of the views that Origen deemed heterodox) or, finally, by a personal shortcoming (a lack of spiritual vigilance, an insufficient ethical self-scrutiny, the original sin, a subtle, first fault such as “negligence” or “satiation,” etc).15 All of the above function as cover ups of the fact that the normative ideal announced in the Emmaus experience as a sign of history cannot and is not meant to be empirically instantiated. Emmaus should, therefore, remain a sign of history, the object of a sublime but private experience, which the critical philosopher (see IIb in graph Z) will be in the best position to distinguish from a historically concrete event and will avoid transforming into a politically authorizing norm.16 It is interesting that normative logocentric totalitarianism (I’) does not aim to silence only those critics (IIb) who insist on exposing the illusory status of the historical instantiation of the ideal and the criminal effects of political utopism, i.e., the dissidents whose free-thinking attests to the fraud in the utopian party’s selfpresentation as the historical embodiment of an ideal). Indeed, such a normatively authorized terror is not directed only towards those critical spirits who contest the possibility of an empirical illustration of the ideas and who insist on distinguishing ideas from the regular concepts with a legitimate, but only local, empirical applicability; it also targets those revelation-committed thinkers (see IIIb) who attest to the possibility (or, at least, to the impossibility of an exclusion) of a revelatory saturation of empirically displayable concepts (see IV.5.ii.2 above).17 For example, the Marionesque construal of the Logos as an immemorial Address (the Logos as a revelatory gift) that saturates the self-interpretation of the historical Jesus making it into an iconic-sacramental testimony18 is equally inconvenient for the logocentric utopist.19 However, while critical deconstructionism (IIb) is persecuted for trying to expose an illegitimate aggrandizement of a particular concept of exegesis, such as the Emmausian one, into a universal exegetic norm or an exegesis of all exegeses, heuristics is persecuted for claiming that this allegedly universal exegetic ideal is a reduction of a revelatory event to a theoretical and political idol.20 While the critical thinker exposes the utopian side of totalitarianism as the “pride” of subjectivity,21 the heuristic thinker exposes the idolatrous side of totalitarianism as subjectivity’s “envy.”22 The former exposes the totalitarian’s wish

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to be self-sufficient to the exclusion of all others23 (the “solution” is, therefore, the imaginative grasping of otherness on a subjective basis),24 while the latter exposes the totalitarian’s rage over having to be for and with the other (the “solution” is, therefore, making the other and transcendence not to have happened).25 The wish of the former is narcissistic, while the rage of the latter is misologic or heterophobic.26 In conclusion, one can become a target of normatively authorized totalitarianism not only for viewing the empirical historical Emmausian exegesis as too “poor” to match the Logos ideal (an ideological suppression of criticism), but also for exposing the speculative construal of Emmaus as a normative exegetic ideal as too “poor” to capture the overabundance of Logos’ Emmausian revelation or the event of Logos’ “coming”27 (an ideological suppression of the ethical or the agapic-sacrificial testimonial stance of the revelation-committed, heuristic, thinker).28 The distinction between a totalitarianism of illusion (utopism) and a totalitarianism of idolatry (demonism) can be drawn only on the basis of the testimony of the persecuted, depending on his or her critical rationalist or his or her revelatory (heuristic) stance. Thus, while the critically minded person views a totalitarianism of illusion as the outcome of a proud aggrandizing of the subject’s immanence and as its identification with an utopically instantiated universal idea, a heuristically minded person views the totalitarian’s identification with the utopically instantiated idea as the result of an envious reduction of transcendence to an idealized subject (and, ultimately, to this subject’s empirical, non-ideal, historical condition), that is, as an idol. Thus, it is important to know in which sense one interprets the action of the normative totalitarian party. In critical terms, the totalitarian idealist transgresses the same reason within the limits of which the critic knows that he or she should stay, therefore, the dispute between the two seems to be, in Lyotardian terms, a litigation, not a differend.29 By contrast, in revelatory-testimonial terms, the totalitarian idealist uses an ideal to cover up the destruction of the other’s transcendence (his or her ethical or agapic testimony) and to silence everyone else’s testimony for the other’s transcendence. Between the “sufficient reason” that utopist ideology uses illegitimately to un-happen alterity and the alterity whose testimony is being un-happened there is no common rule of judgment, therefore, their dispute is not a litigation, but a differend.30

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In light of the above analyses of totalitarianism, Origen’s exegetic pedagogy reveals a profound complexity. On the one hand, Origen can be read along a twofold, anti-totalitarian scenario. Origen’s advocacy for a tentative, experimental treatment of certain issues that have not been regulated by the symbol of faith, and his insistence on a dialogic strategy of handling doctrinal controversy,31 could be seen as a critical-deconstructive response (IIb) to both a totalitarianism of illusion (I) and a narrative totalitarianism (I’). One can also qualify as anti-totalitarian, but, this time, in the sense of anti-idolatrous (see IIIb), Origen’s testimonial exegesis of the Scripture as a text that is sacramentally saturated by an immemorial, transcendent, Logos. However, insofar as the critical and testimonial criticism of totalitarianism in IIb and IIIb can be considered a self-criticism or Origen’s criticism of his own assimilationist grandscenarios of salvation described in the second chapter of this book and under (A) in table Z, we are compelled to adopt a more nuanced approach to the totalizing potential of Origen’s logocentric thought. In the narratively authorized prosopopoiesis, which reduces historical people to historical- and cosmo-dramatic roles (roughly, the presentation under the second chapter of the book), one may also distinguish traces of a totalitarianism of illusion as well as of a totalitarianism of idolatry. As I suggested, whether one chooses to criticize Origen’s exegetic pedagogy as totalitarian, or to endorse it as (at least in part) anti-totalitarian, one may benefit from using the distinction between two ways of being totalitarian (the narratively and the normatively authorized totalization) as well as from the distinction between two forms of normatively authorized totalitarianism, namely the ideological utopist and the ideological idolic), with their two anti-totalitarian responses (the criticaldeconstructive and the testimonial-heuristic). Historians of the Origenist controversies will be in a better position than I am to evaluate the applicability of these distinctions and, in case they would be found useful, to decide the specific conditions of their application.

ENDNOTES

PART I 1 As it will become apparent in the subsequent development of this study, by “universalist metaphysics” I do not mean the Platonist aspects of Origen’s thought, although, in a certain sense, these too should be taken into consideration. Throughout this study metaphysics is viewed as a procedure of immanentization, as the reduction of transcendence to an alleged self-presence of a first principle, which may be either intentional consciousness, or critical reason, or the Being of beings, or even an idolically construed proper-name of “God.” See, in this sense, the synthetic critique of metaphysics in Levinas (1996) 129–149 and developed in Marion (1991) 25–53. As Levinas has shown, metaphysical reductionism exercises a certain fascination (one might call it a “spell”) on its practitioner. This spell, which Marion has termed “idolic,” is an unjustified pretense that the language and the world can be traced back to and thus mastered by a unique principle of coherence, which is self-present and identical (consciousness, spirit, individual or cosmic mind, etc). Western thought’s reductionist insistence on offering a “sufficient reason” for the event of being (Heidegger) or language (Lyotard; Wittgenstein; Derrida; Heidegger) or givenness (Marion) can be seen as a metaphysical drive of this thought toward the immanentization of transcendence (Levinas [1996] 129–149). 2 From this point on I shall prefer to refer to the Word as the Logos, which better reflects the intentional ambiguity between discourse, reason, word, thought, and the second person of the Trinity. On occasion, where the context will allow and/or require I shall return to the designation of the Son as the Word. For an overview of the various interpretations of the word lo¢goj from Heraclitus to Origen see Kelber (1958). 3 Although there is no comprehensive study dedicated to Origen’s philosophy of language, this topic has been discussed in depth in the works of a few modern Origenian scholars. This is the case of Bernhard Neuschäfer, whose monograph on Origen’s philological science remains to this day a work of reference (see Neuschäfer [1987]). The religious use of language and linguistics in Origen has been studied by a variety of

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scholars, of whom I shall mention here only three, namely Marguerite Harl (see in particular Harl [1993]), Karen Jo Torjesen (see Torjesen [1986]) and The Italian Research Group on “Origen and the Alexandrian Tradition” (a complete bibliography of the members of the group can be found in their annual newsletter, entitled Adamantius, Notiziario del Gruppo di Ricerca su “Origene e la tradizione alessandrina,” Pazzini editore, 1986–2008). 4 Jo. 1.5.27 (GCS 4:9). Origen, Commentary on the Gospel according to John, Books 1–10, Translated by Ronald E. Heine, FC (Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1989) 39. I have modified Heine’s “he accepts” into “he receives.” 5 Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 191. The prefix “re-,” featured in the English word “report,” used to have in Latin the sense of pointing back, along with the more familiar sense of repetition. Oxford Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), 1578. 6 ¡Apagge/llw and its derivatives occur frequently in Origen’s work. In the first five books of The Commentary on the Gospel according to John (the only ones written in the Alexandrian period of Origen’s career) the term is used in a variety of senses, such as “to relate” (Jo. 1.6.33 [GCS 4:11]; 1.26.173 [GCS 4:32]; 1.28.196 [GCS 4:36]; 2.34.205 [GCS 4:92]), “to explain” (Jo. 1.5.29 [GCS 4:10]; 2.14.101 [GCS 4:70]; 2.19.131 [GCS 4:76]), “to proclaim” (Jo. 1.6.33 [GCS 4:11]; 1.8.46 [GCS 4:13]; 1.15.87 [GCS 4:19]; 1.22.136 [GCS 4:27]; 1.23.144 [GCS 4:28]; 1.38.283 [GCS 4:49]; 1.39.289 [GCS 4:51]; 2.4.40 [GCS 4:58]; 2.9.64 [GCS 4:63]; 2.16.113 [GCS 4:73]; 2.28.174 [GCS 4:85]; 2.32.193 [GCS 4:89]), “to express” (Jo. 1.24.152 [GCS 4:29]; 1.38.277 [GCS 4:49]; 2.3.19 [GCS 4:55]; 2.3.47 [GCS 4:60]; 2.9.68 [GCS 4:63]), “to pronounce” (Jo. 1.39.284 [GCS 4:50]), “to declare” (Jo. 5.5 [GCS 4:102]) and “to recite” (Jo. 5.5 [GCS 4:103]). In many of these contexts the indication of the source of the proclamation, marked by the prefix a¦po-, has been lost, the term becoming almost synonymous with e¦pagge/llw. However, especially in the passages discussing the relation between the Father and the Son, the term allows an etymological interpretation, such as the one proposed in this essay. In addition to the passage under discussion see Jo. 1.38.277 (GCS 4:49); 1.38.283 (GCS 4:49). See also Jo. 1.39.289 (GCS 4:51) on the relation between the Logos and Wisdom. For a full discussion of the term see Liddell-Scott, Greek–English Lexicon, 169 and A Patristic Greek Lexicon, edited by G. W. H. Lampe (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), 173. 7 Like the Greek e¹pi-, the Latin prefix ad-, featured in the English term “annunciation,” clarifies the “whereto” of the act of announcing or its addressee. ¡Epagge/lw and its derivatives appear in the first five books of The Commentary on the Gospel according to John with the following senses:

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“to proclaim”(Jo. 1.6.33 [GCS 4:11]; 2.11.79 [GCS 4:66]) “to promise” (Jo. 1.8.13 [GCS 4:13]; 1.26.173 [GCS 4:32]), “to announce” (Jo. 2.7.56 [GCS 4:61]; 5.8 [GCS 4:105]) and “to profess” (Jo. 2.8.59 [GCS 4:62]). As with a¦pagge/llw our etymological analysis of the concept brings out a sense of addressing, which is lost or almost lost in many of the contexts mentioned above. The addressor is at times left indefinite, while other times Origen identifies it specifically. For a full discussion of the term see Liddell-Scott, Greek–English Lexicon, 602 and Lampe, Patristic Greek Lexicon, 505. For the sense of the prefix e¦pi- see Liddell-Scott, Greek–English Lexicon, 621. 8 For a more technical discussion of the performative success of evangelic briefing see below chapter IV. 9 The latter procedure complicates the analysis of the definition in two important respects. To read a reporting discourse as its own addressor makes it both self-referential (the discourse offers a metalinguistic account of its own reporting function) and incomplete or open ended (the “one” from whom the discourse reports, while reporting that it reports, remains non-thematic). See my detailed discussion of these issues in chapter III, section 1 and in chapter IV. 10 For the idea of a communicative distance or gap that could paradoxically unite see E. Osborn (1980) 95–105. See also the correlation between the idea of distance and the christological use of the terms e¹pidemi¢a and a¹podemi¢a in Scognamiglio (1987) 198. In philosophical terms I find extremely valuable the perspective that Jean-Luc Marion’s notion of distance brings to the act of speech communication. See, for example, Marion (2001) and, in particular, the last chapter, “Distance and Its Icon,” which provides a reinterpretation of Derrida’s notion of différance. 11 Most of the authors that I shall discuss in the following pages draw in one form or another the above mentioned distinction between an addressor, an addressee, what is being spoken of (the referent), and the sense of speech. See for example Heidegger (1992) 406–407; Gadamer (1994) 265–381; Habermas (1998) 22; Lyotard (1999)111. For Origen’s distinction between the phonetic expression, the signification and the things signified see Jo. 4.1–2 (GCS 4:98–99). 12 For Jacques Derrida’s use of the term “logocentrism” see Derrida (1967). For the subordination of speech to thought see J. Derrida’s essay “Signature, Event, Context” in Derrida (1982), 307–330 and its sequel in Derrida (1990). This subordination entails as well a subordination of the written to the oral dimensions of language, as Derrida pointed it out, among other places, in his essay entitled “Différance” (See Derrida [1982] 1–29). In Hom. 1 in Lc. 4 (SC 87: 104); Jo. 4.1–2 (GCS 4:98–99) and Fr. CXVIII in Jo. 1.26 (GCS 4:566) Origen seems to embrace the idea of a

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subordination of speech to thought. For further references to similar passages in Origen and other patristic authors see note 2 in SC 87: 105. Another logocentric distinction that Origen espouses on occasion is that between speech, which is non-substantial, and reason or meaning which has an essence. See Jo. 1.24.151 (GCS 4: 29). 13 See I.2.1.1. 14 See I.2.1.2. 15 See I.2.1.3. 16 For the identification of logocentrism as an attempt to reduce alterity (in this case, the linguistic manifestation of alterity) to a sufficient reason, I followed the central thesis of Marion’s article “The Reason of the Gift.” (See Leask and Cassidy [2005] 101–135). Although more commonly associated with Derrida, the critique of logocentrism may be interpreted also in light of Marion’s heuristic philosophy. Marion is not only a post-modern thinker who, like Derrida, absorbed the Levinasian critique of Western thought; he is also more familiar than Derrida with the early Christian doctrine of the Logos and, for this reason, he can provide an important link between the current debate on logocentrism and Origen’s Logos theology. For further details on Marion’s position see I.2.2.3. In this study I shall try to reach a balance between two different and, at times, even opposed, brands of anti-logocentrism, namely, Marion’s and Lyotard’s. 17 See Lyotard (1999) xiii. 18 See Austin (1999). 19 See Gadamer (1994). 20 Derrida (1967, 1982). 21 See Lyotard (1983). 22 See Marion (1977, 1982, 2005). For further references see chapter IV and the bibliography. 23 For a more detailed discussion of all these aspects, see below chapter IV with the afferent bibliographical references. 24 For a description of a naïve logocentrism see Derrida’s critique of Condillac in “Signature, Event, Context” in Derrida (1982) 307–330 and Lyotard, “The Presentation” in Lyotard (1988) 59–86. Although somehow more refined, Schleiermacher’s hermeneutic theory has important resemblances with this view. See a critique of Schleiermacher in Gadamer (1994) 291–292. The same can be said about Grice’s intentional semantics, a criticism of which can be found in Habermas (1998) 106–107. 25 Hom. 9 in Jos. 8 (SC 71:260); Jo. 1.38.277 (GCS 4: 49). 26 As I will show in the subsequent chapters, for Origen, the reception of the news requires more than its proper interpretation; indeed, it requires that the news-bearing Logos or the Logos intextuated as the Bi-

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ble interpret itself, therefore that the Bible be interpreted through the Logos/Bible. 27 See Lyotard (1997) 199–217, but also Jean-Luc Marion, “The Reason of the Gift” in Leask and Cassidy (2005), 101–135. 28 Synthesizing an entire line of critique of the metaphysical bias of Western thought Marion identifies this reductionism as the conditioning of pragmatic donation on the principles of identity and sufficient reason (See Jean-Luc Marion, “The Reason of the Gift” in Leask and Cassidy [2005] 101–135). Rephrasing Marion, subordination means, ultimately, demanding that the event of speech be accounted for in terms of its reason, that is, in terms of its communicative coherence (the identity principle as an a priori of communicative reciprocation, for example) and its causal intelligibility (dictated by the principle of sufficient reason); this demand reduces the event of saying to the thought-structured system of what is being said (a language). The subordination of speech to thought entails a cancelling of speech by a pertinent understanding of the communicative rationale of what has been spoken, while this rationale has been formulated and accounted for in a meta-linguistic, speculative discourse. (See also Lyotard, “The Presentation” and “The Result” in Lyotard [1988], 59–107). 29 “There can be no speaking that does not bind the speaker and the person spoken to.” Gadamer (1994) 397. Whether this “binding” is regulated by a strict, logical a priori, or rather by an ontological-hermeneutical or pragmatic principle is of less importance within the current investigation. For a discussion of communicative apriorism, construed along logical lines, see Habermas’ critique of Karl-Otto Apel in “What is Universal Pragmatics” (see Habermas [1998] 21–105). Nevertheless, Habermas’ criticism is itself transcendentally aprioristic, although in a different, not logical, but rather linguistic-pragmatic sense. For a critique of Habermas’ view and of a larger array of communicative apriorisms, see Lyotard’s essays “A Bizarre Partner” and “The Intimacy of Terror” in Lyotard (1997) 123–149; 199–217 and Lyotard (1992) 9–27. 30 “…language has no independent life apart from the world that comes to language within it. Not only is the world acknowledgeable as a world only insofar as it comes into language, but language, too, has its real being only in the fact that the world is presented in it. Thus, that language is originarily human means at the same time that man’s being-in-the-world is primordially linguistic.” Gadamer (1994) 443. See also Gadamer (1994) 446–447; 450; 456; 463. “Inasmuch as language is coming as speech again and again on the scene, it pertains to what comes to presence.” Heidegger (1992) 402. See also Heidegger (1992) 404; 407–410. 31 Gadamer (1994) 391. This is Gadamer’s critique of Schleirmacher and of the Romantic understanding of hermeneutics (See Gadamer [1994]

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171–265). Gadamer’s criticism echoes Heidegger’s objection to Humboldt’s placement of human subjectivity at the origin of language (see Heidegger [1992] 405). Further analogies can be found in Habermas’ critique of intentional semantics, as will be shown below. See also Habermas (1998) 278. 32 “All understanding is interpretation, and all interpretation takes place in the medium of a language that allows the object to come into words and yet is at the same time the interpreter’s own language.” Gadamer (1994) 389. See also Heidegger (1992) 411. 33 “…the essential relation between language and understanding is seen primarily in the fact that the essence of tradition is to exist in the medium of language, so that the preferred object of interpretation is a verbal one.” Gadamer (1994) 389. Linguistic tradition is tradition in the proper sense of the word—i.e., something handed down. It is not just something left over, to be investigated and interpreted as a remnant of the past.” Gadamer (1994) 389. A more developed description of the traditionary reception of texts can be found in Gadamer (1994) 277–300. 34 Gadamer (1994) 265–381. For an endorsement of Gadamerian hermeneutics and a strong advocacy for a hermeneutic approach to Patristic studies see Osborn (1992). Unfortunately, Osborn uses his careful and, for the most part, accurate description of Gadamerian hermeneutics to instrument a whole-sale rejection of what he calls “irrationalism.” Osborn’s argument is considerably weakened by his tenuous knowledge of the origins and scope of contemporary continental thought and by his idiosyncratic reading of Clement and Origen as representatives of that which he anachronistically construes as philosophical “rationalism” (an anti-“dogmatic,” historical and analytic type of thinking that is hardly Clement’s logic or Origen’s epoptics). Osborn’s criticism of Derridean deconstructionism is based on superficial references to Derrida’s work (apparently quoted after Rorty); also Osborn brushes off Wittgenstein as an “anarchist;” he does not seem to find it useful to refer to Lyotard’s critical reception of linguistic pragmatics, and, most of all, he does not seem to be aware of the Patristic-based deconstructionism of Marion or of the fact that one of the roots of deconstructionism is the Levinasian criticism of Western thought, which is not anti-rationalistic. Most upsetting is Osborn’s attempt to lump together into an updated panarion a series of unrelated contemporary theories (“relativism,” “theosophy,” “anarchic” pragmatism and deconstructionism), which he finds guilty of “irrationalism” (instead, the preferred “rationalist” theories or the “true” inheritors of the European tradition of Clement and Origen, are Gadamerian hermeneutics and analytic philosophy). I can only hope that the study of Origen that I propose will show that Osborn’s choice between an allegedly moderate rational (i.e., logos-centered) hermeneutic pluralism and an in-

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temperate, “irrational” pluralism, is a false one. One of the lessons that, not unlike deconstructionism, Clementine and Origenian physics and epoptics/logic might have to offer us is that a pluralist thought which does not have the logos at its center does not have to be “irrational,” while, conversely, a logocentric rationalism might not always offer a credible warranty against totalization. 35 For the notion of propriety as the event of a propriation or claiming of the hearer/interpreter by the text or the saying (Sage) of the text see Heidegger (1992) 414–426. 36 This is what Gadamer designates as the application aspect of interpretation (see Gadamer [1994] 307–312) that happens as a fusion of the interpretative horizons of text and interpreter (Gadamer [1994] 277–307) or the dialectic adjustment of the prejudices of a historically effected consciousness to the traditionarilly delivered text (Gadamer [1994] 341–381; 474–493). For an analogy between text interpretation and the conversation between two persons, which is determined by agreement rules susceptible to be reconstructed by way of questioning and answering, see Gadamer (1994) 387–388; 446. “On the other hand, however, it must be emphasized that language has its true being only in dialogue, in coming to an understanding. This is not to be understood as if that were the purpose of language. Coming to an understanding is not a mere action, a purposeful activity, a setting up of signs through which I transmit my will to others. Coming to an understanding as such, rather, does not need any tools, in the proper sense of the word. It is a life process in which a community of life is lived out. (…) reaching an understanding in language places a subject matter before those communicating like a disputed object set between them. Thus the world is the common ground, trodden by none and recognized by all, uniting all who talk to one another. All kinds of human community are kinds of linguistic community.” Gadamer (1994) 446. 37 “The linguisticality of understanding is the concretion of historically effected consciousness.” Gadamer (1994) 389. For the historical character of interpretation see Gadamer (1994) 265–381. The belonging together of understanding, interpretation and application is emphasized in Gadamer (1994) 389; 397–399; 417. See also Clark (2004) 111–113. 38 This necessity appears more clearly stated in Heidegger (see Heidegger [1992] 409–410; Heidegger [1962] 55–58), where language is the mode of Being’s happening to beings. For Heidegger the coming to world of beings is a linguistic-ontological event. In a Heideggerian reading Origen’s definition says that what speaks essentially in every discourse (lo¢goj) is a saying (the lo¢goj in a more profound sense, as Heidegger’s Sage) as the showing, manifestation or indication (Zeige) of a world (wherein the announced goods belong) and the presentation of this world to the one who pays heed or listens (hören) to what the discourse has to

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say (to the saying or Sage of the discourse – Sprache – or the Lo¢goj of the lo¢goj ). The hearing (Das Hören) in/by which the saying of the text presents the goods of the annunciation belongs (gehört) to the saying, insofar as the saying is a propriation (Ereignen) or a proper address that is historically adjusted to the hearers (das Eignen). Thus, it is not incorrect to believe that the lo¢goj of the lo¢goj claims both the text and the hearer’s speaking/understanding/interpreting of the text as its own. This lo¢goj instituted belonging (Zugehörigkeit) of the hearer to the world of the text and to the saying (Sage; Lo¢goj) of the text itself, to the claiming or electing event (Ereignis) of language, is the more profound sense of the good news (eu©agge¢lion), its beneficial joy (eu©frosu¢nh). Ultimately, this is a propriation of beings by Being, the event of truth (See Heidegger [1962] 256– 274). 39 “Language is the language of reason itself.” Gadamer (1994) 401. The fact that reason is itself linguistic, should not obscure the other fact that, for Gadamer, the belonging together of reason and language, understanding and interpretative application is regulated by a reason of language, by language’s ontological oneness. For a discussion of this oneness, aloneness or selfsameness of language see M. Heidegger’s essay “The Way to Language” in M. Heidegger (1992) 423–424. See also Gadamer (1994) 403; 417; 469. It is obvious that, for Heidegger, what we have called a reason of language, is not a regular, logical-regulative, reason; it is the appropriative linguistic belonging together of the saying that language is and what is being said (see Heidegger [1992] 415–416). 40 Etymologically Das Sage is closely related to saga or story, that is, it stands for a kind of saying which organizes the said along the lines of a historical plot. Thus, for Heidegger, Being provides the plot of speech and speech performs the saga of Being. “If we are trying to define the idea of belonging (Zugehörigkeit) as accurately as possible, we must take account of the particular dialectic implied in hearing (a©kou¤ein, hören). It is not just that he who hears is also addressed, but also that he who is addressed must hear whether he wants to or not.”Gadamer (1994) 462. See also Gadamer (1994) 466; 472–474 and Heidegger (1992) 411; 413; 417–418; 425. 41 Gadamer (1994) 391; 395. 42 Gadamer (1994) 463. Insofar as this trans-linguistic, redoubled, lo¢goj as the fold or articulation of language or the ordinary lo¢goj can be explicated as the event of Being happening speculatively as language (Heidegger [1992]414–415; Gadamer [1994] 474–491) one may want to inquire whether the placement of the redoubled lo¢goj as the wherefrom of the report does not actually make the lo¢goj into a sui generis addressor. In other words, would hermeneutics allow for a literal reading of Origen’s definition of the gospel as “a lo¢goj announcing that…,” where the

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lo¢goj designates the event of speech as a self-spoken beneficial-

announcing? I shall postpone the discussion of this hypothesis for the last chapter of this study. (See below chapter IV.) However, the following remark of Heidegger can prepare the way for such an interpetetion: “Speech, taken on its own, is hearing. It is listening to the language we speak. Hence speaking is not simultaneously a hearing, but is such in advance. Such listening to language precedes all other instances of hearing, albeit in an altogether inconspicuous way. We not only speak language, we speak from out of it. We are capable of doing so only because in each case we have already listened to language. What do we hear there? We hear language speaking.” Heidegger (1992) 411. As the one who does the saying, language is not an ordinary addressor; it is an addressor which does not appear itself in what is being said (Heidegger [1992] 424). Echoes of the Heideggerian philosophy of language can be found in Cox Miller’s reading of Origen in Cox Miller (1988) 165–179. 43 For the idea of overcoming alienation by interpretation see Gadamer (1994) 291–300 and 390. Although never final or perfect, this overcoming is being warranted a priori by the ontological belonging together of text and interpreter. Alienation is greater in written language, than in speech, but the task of interpretation is to reduce this alienation by referring writing to speech and by viewing speech as a dialogue geared towards reconstituting an agreement that is ontologically warranted. See Gadamer (1994) 393; 448. For the characterization of phenomenology as an ontological apophantics of the phenomena, see Heidegger (1962) 55– 58. 44 Habermas (1998) 66. See also IV below. 45 Habermas (1998) 66–72. 46 Austin (1999) 94–120. 47 Habermas (1998) 71–72. See also Habermas (1998) 110–111. 48 Habermas (1998) 72. 49 The representational, the regulative and the expressive claims “must always be raised simultaneously and recognized as justified, although they cannot all be thematic at the same time.” Habermas (1998) 89. 50 Habermas (1998) 81. 51 Habermas (1998) 86. For regulative speech acts, the validity claim is not to truth, but to rightness, and the obligation of the speaker is not to provide a ground but rather to provide justification for the kind of interpersonal relation in which she invites the hearer to enter. 52 Habermas (1998) 88. 53 See below chapter II. 54 Habermas (1998) 81–88. 55 “I have called the type of interaction in which all participants harmonize their individual plans with one another and thus unreservedly

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pursue their illocutionary aims ‘communicative action.’” Habermas (1998) 128. 56 Habermas (1998) 41–46. 57 Habermas (1998) 35–46. 58 For Habermas’ pragmatic reconstructive way of understanding transcendentalism, and his reshaping of Apel’s notions of “transcendental hermeneutics” and “transcendental pragmatics” into “universal pragmatics” see Habermas (1998) 44–46. Habermas’s transcendentalism is pragmatic insofar as it refers to universal generative patterns of response to utterances that raise universal validity claims under the determination of the a priori teleology of language, which is that of reaching understanding (Habermas [1998] 145). See also Habermas (1998) 136. 59 The task of Habermas’ reconstructive universal/transcendental pragmatics is to show “that the use of language oriented toward reaching understanding is the original mode of language use upon which indirectly reaching understanding, giving to understand something or letting someone be understood—in general, the instrumental use of language—is parasitic.” Habermas (1998) 122. “Reaching understanding (Verständigung) is the inherent telos of human language (Sprache).” Habermas (1998) 120. In this sense, see also Habermas (1998) 152. For a defense against a possible objection that his approach is extra-linguistic transcendentalist (a transcendentalism of thought outside language) see Habermas (1998) 237–238. By the expression “trans-linguistic” I did not intend to suggest that Habermas places rationality outside of language, but rather that he makes communicative reason the principal determination of language. 60 As formulated by Derrida, logocentrism is a feature of Western thought in general. However, Derrida identifies as decisive moments in the articulation of a logocentric approach Plato’s Phaedrus, Rousseau’s works on language and education, and Hegel’s Encyclopedia. See Derrida (2004) 145–148. Derrida articulates his anti-logocentric grammatology by a careful analysis and criticism of Ferdinand de Saussure’s semiology, which is the prevalent linguistic theory of European structuralism (see Derrida’s discussion of de Saussure in Derrida [2004] 42–108). De Saussure works with a notion of a linguistic sign as the arbitrary correlation between a signifier (the verbal, phonetic, expression) and a signified or the sense (a concept), which, in turn, refers to a thing or state of affairs. Although referring approvingly to de Saussure’s understanding of this correlation as arbitrary (i.e., non natural), Derrida is concerned about the unjustified metaphysical presupposition of such a theory that proposes a primacy of thought (the signified) over speech (the signifier) and of speech (a redoubled signified) over writing (a mimetic, weak signifier of speech, which in turn is the signifier of thought) within the binary logocentric systems of Western thinking (Derrida [1967] 409–429). Another contem-

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porary linguistic theory in contradistinction to which Derrida defines his grammatology is Austin’s speech-act pragmatics, or, rather, its logocentric radicalization in the works of John Searle. For Derrida’s criticism of Austin’s distinction between a communicative and non-communicative use of speech see Derrida (1972) 382–390. To the phonocentric approach of speech acts theory Derrida opposes a grammatologic approach, focused on the iterability (quotability) of inscriptions (phrases, words) that does not privilege a “serious,” i.e., communicative use of speech, over a “parasitic” one (for example, the recitation of an order on the stage in a theatric performance, as opposed to a “real life” ordering), although it definitely makes possible the distinction. Derrida’s deconstruction of the primacy of the “serious” use over the “parasitic” one exposes the metaphysical prejudice that speech can be traced back to the self-presence of the communicative lo¢goj as its determinative first principle. For a defense of logocentrism in speech pragmatics see Habermas (1998) 383–403. A semanticsfocused logocentric approach to Origen can be found in Harl (1993) 82– 84. A speech-pragmatic and hermeneutical logocentric approach to Origen can be found in King (2005) 179–220. 61 Habermas (1998) 120. 62 Each of the three philosophical currents draws on its own sources in articulating this criticism. Although heavily influenced by Derrida’s deconstructionism, Lyotard’s postmodernism and Marion’s heuristics claim also their separate genealogies. While Derrida’s deconstruction is a development of Heidegger’s “de-struction” of the history of ontology (see Heidegger [1962] 41–49) along the lines of Levinas’ critical interpretation of Heidegger (see Derrida [1967] 117–229), Lyotard draws on Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language (Lyotard [1999] xiii) as well as on Levinas’ critique of the phenomenological tradition (Lyotard [2007] 117–130). Marion’s heuristics draws, in addition to Derrida himself (Marion [2001] 198–255), on Levinas’ interpretation of phenomenology (Marion, Chrétien, Henry, Ricoeur [2000] 287–309) and on patristic and medieval authors as well as on patristically influenced 20th century Catholic theologians such as von Balthasar, de Lubac and Lustiger (Marion [1991] and Marion [2001]). 63 See Derrida (1967) 409–429; Lyotard (1999); Marion (2005) 99– 119 and Marion (2000) 13–35. It needs to be noted that the rejection of a primacy of the metaphysical presence of thought over language in the Western tradition is not a rejection of the Western tradition as such, but amounts to a rather different reading thereof. 64 This is, indeed, the sense in which Derrida uses the neologism différance, which means both to differ and/or be different, and to defer. See Derrida’s “Différance” in Derrida (1982) 1–29.

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For a discussion of the functioning of the Origenian Logos as a cosmic mind see Berchman (2004). 66 The event of language has been described as a testimonial saying without the said (Levinas [1996] 145), or a play of the trace (Derrida [2004] 103–104), or a speech game (play, jeu) (Lyotard [1996] 19–44) or the anarchic play (jeu) of vanity (Marion [1991] 54–61; 126–132; 139–144). The idea of play, which appears in all the above mentioned thinkers, will prove essential in this study. While Derrida’s Nitzschean understanding of play (Derrida [1972] 18–19; 29) and Lyotard’s Wittgensteinian understanding of gaming (playing) are being used to deconstruct the Western logocentric metaphysics of presence (the primacy of thought over language, for example), both Levinas and Marion suggest an opening of this play beyond this play, to the non-metaphysical seriousness of either an ethical command (Levinas [1996] 141) or a sacrifice of love (Marion [1991] 139– 161; 183–199). Ultimately, for these thinkers the play of language is a dramatic performance with an immemorial intrigue or plot, which, for Levinas, is the substitution, and for Marion is the triduum paschale. One would probably not be amiss in saying that for Levinas and Marion language is dramatically plotted as either anarchic (ethical) command or as an anarchic-sacrificial love-gift. 67 Derrida (1972) 382–390; Lyotard (1999) 32–59. 68 A detailed discussion of the post-modern anti-logocentrism of Lyotard will be offered in the fourth chapter of this study. 69 See Berchman (2004). As it will be shown in chapter III above, Berchman’s reading of the Logos along the lines of a late-Platonist philosophy of mind, is rather unilateral, in the sense that it ignores the nonmetaphysical determination of the Logos as a condescending Love, as radical giving, as immemorial Address, etc. 70 In addition to the brief remarks in this chapter, Marion’s position will be discussed in correlation with Levinas’ and Lyotard’s in the fourth chapter of the book. Although by no means obvious and easy to draw, there is a possible connection between Levinas, Derrida and Lyotard as proponents of a Jewish messianic line of thought, insisting on a nonclosure of history, on the justification of expectation and therefore of a valuation of the temporality of the future over that of the present. By contrast, a messianism of the incarnate Logos (and of any derived logocentrism) is viewed as a closure of history in the present and as a potential totalization that is ethically prejudicial. 71 Derrida (2004) 42–109; Derrida (1972) 382–390. 72 Derrida (2004) 65–96. 73 Derrida (2004) 21–31. 65

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The analysis of the underlying metaphysics of the thought-speech pair includes, indeed, the Pauline distinction between the spirit and the letter, as shown in Derrida (2004) 15–42. 75 A specific discussion of the theological roots (or, at least, what Derrida considers to be the theological roots) of this metaphysics of presence that underlies the logocentric view of language can be found in Derrida (2004) 24–25; 106–107. 76 Derrida (1972) 9–10. 77 Derrida alludes to this Pauline reading in Derrida (2004) 52–53. 78 Derrida (1967) 253–293. 79 For the binary determination of language as a feature of Western thought see Derrida (1967) 409–429. A discussion of Origen that can work as an illustration of Derrida’s view on Western thought can be found in Harl (1994) 263; Harl, Introduction to SC 302, 127–133; Antonova (2004) 433–434 and King (2005) 73–75. 80 Derrida (1972) 369–382. 81 Derrida (1972) 369–382. For an overview of the position of Derrida in relation to speech pragmatics and hermeneutics see Clark (2004) 135–137; 142–145. 82 Derrida (1972) 9–12; Derrida (1967) 423–424. 83 The caesura between the “from,” the “of,” and the “to” is a token of the language event’s or différance’s temporalizing and spacing, that is, a play of the trace. See Derrida (1972) 1–31. 84 Derrida illustrates this plural possibility as an effect of dissemination that is due to the grafting of a sign or phrase in an indefinite number of “contexts,” which he also attributes to the iterability of signs (a sign’s capacity to be repeated and linguistically inscribed beyond the intention of an addressor, the propriety of a context or the expectation of a receiver). See Derrida (1972) 1–31; 365–393. In a similar way Lyotard describes this variability as the effect of the plural character of speech as language game. See Lyotard (1999) 32–59. For a view that is compatible with Derrida’s without however having been developed on Derridean principles see LeBoulluec (1992) 110–11; 113–114. 85 The news involves a spatial non-presence of the one from whom and that of which one reports in regard to the one to whom the report is announced. This non-presence is not reduced by semiosis and pragmatic communication, but it is the very condition of the possibility of the two, the spacing-temporalizing of the event that language is, the very mode of language’s occurrence. Derrida (1972) 1–31; Lyotard (1999) 59–86. 86 Lyotard (1999) 80. 87 Derrida (1998) 17–18. 88 Derrida (2004) 102–103 74

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89

59–86.

Derrida (1967) 426–427; Derrida (2004) 102–103; Lyotard (1999)

This would be, in Derridean terms, a lo¢goj under erasure – rature, or, to put it in Levinas’ terms, it would be a saying which is immemorially older than the said. 91 Derrida (1997); Lyotard (1999) 57; 107–127; 142; 181. 92 Levinas (2000) 5–8; 45–61. 93 Levinas (2000) 153–165. 94 Levinas (2000) 6. 95 Levinas (2000) 147; 150–151. 96 Levinas (2000) 150–151. 97 Levinas (2000) 99–131. 98 Levinas (1996) 141. 99 Levinas (2000) 48–51. The very enlightening footnote 34 on page 48 of this work suggests that the scripting of discourse according to an ethical intrigue does not make it into a dramatic peripeteia in view of a denouement, as the logocentric plotting of communicative action and hermeneutical truth disclosure do. “The plot (intrigue) of proximity is not a vicissitude (péripétie) of the plot of cognition. For knowing is justified by communication and by saying in responsibility, which in addition supplies the plane of disinterestedness which preserves science from ideology. The essence of communication is not a modality of the essence of manifestation. The plot of saying in which lies the who or the One can be surprised in the trace that the said retains of its reduction is thus possible. The said in absorbing the saying does not become its master, although by an abuse of language it translates it before us in betraying it. The unravelling (dénouement) of the plot (intrigue) of saying does not belong to language qua said, does not belong to the last word. Saying signifies without stopping in the said, does not part from an ego, does not go back to a disclosure in a consciousness.” Levinas (2000) 190. In this sense, the alternative to a comedic plotting of language is not a tragic one (which would also have a phraseable peripeteia and a denouement), but an ethical-religious open ended drama, a testimonial drama of the temple, rather than a drama of the theater. “Witness, this way for a command to sound in the mouth of the one that obeys, of being revealed before all appearing, before all presentation before a subject, is not a psychological wonder, but the modality in which the anarchic infinite passes the finite, or the way it passes itself, not entering by the signification of the one-for-the-other into the being of a theme, but signifying and thus excluding itself from nothingness. The saying in the said of the witness born signifies in a plot (intrigue) other than that which is spread out in a theme, other than that which attaches a noesis to a noema, a cause to an effect, the memorable past to the present. This plot connects to what detaches itself absolutely, to the Absolute. The 90

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detachment of the Infinite from the thought that seeks to thematize it and the language that tries to hold it in the said is what we have called illeity. One is tempted to call this plot religious; it is not stated in terms of certainty or uncertainty, and does not rest on any positive theology.” Levinas (2000) 147. 100 Lyotard (2007) 117–130. See also my discussion of this issue in the fourth chapter of this book. 101 Levinas (2001) 204–209. 102 Marion considers that, with Levinas, onto-theology (and, I would add, its logocentric linguistics) “yields to a dramatic of the Other.” A trace of this passage from thought to language (the equivalent of the DerrideanLyotardian critique of logocentrism) followed by an additional passage from language to dramatic-liturgical sociology (an equivalent of the Levinasian deepening of the turn to language in Derrida and Lyotard) can be found in the threefold architectonic of Rosenzweig’s The Star of Redemption, a work that has profoundly influenced Levinas. 103 See in the quotation in I.2.2.2. the reference to the theater and the temple, theatrical drama and religious drama (liturgy). 104 Marion’s speech pragmatics can be extracted from his more explicitly theological works, such as The Idol and the Distance and God Without Being. The main sources for my reconstruction of Marion’s speech pragmatics are Marion (2001) 139–255 and Marion (1991) 139–161; 183–233. 105 Levinas is the first to distinguish between truth as disclosure and truth as testimony. Unlike the apophantic lo¢goj of Heideggerian hermeneutics, which has the function of disclosing or bringing to manifestation the phenomena (what comes to manifestation), the Levinasian saying is what orders me to the other in responsibility, and can be accounted for only testimonially, that is from the position of one who has already been obliged by this order. See Levinas (1996) 97–109; Marion (1991) 195–199 and Marion (2002) 248–320. 106 For Marion’s discussion of the phrase and of the text as traces of a speech event see Marion (1991) 144–152. 107 “He [the Logos] says Himself, and nothing else, for nothing else remains to be said outside of this saying of the said, saying of the said said par excellence, since it is proffered by the said-saying.” Marion (1991) 140. 108 For Marion the saying is an arch-illocution which obliges or what he calls a paternal command. See Marion (1991) 142. 109 “The Word is not said in any tongue, since he transgresses language itself, seeing that, Word in flesh and bone, he is given as indissolubly speaker, sign and referent. The referent, which here becomes locutor, even if he speaks our words, is not said in them according to our manner of speaking. He proffers himself in them because he exposes himself in them; and exposes himself less as one exposes an opinion than as one

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exposes oneself to a danger: he exposes himself by incarnating himself. Thus speaking our words, the Word redoubles his incarnation, or rather accomplishes it absolutely.” Marion (1991) 141. 110 The gift of language is the self-giving of a language event (a saying) to and as that which is being said, the saying’s letting itself be spoken as the said. Marion (1991) 141. 111 Marion (2001) 180–196; Marion (1991) 143. This speaking back does not imply a return to the logic of dialogal reciprocity or communicative exchange. See in this sense Marion (1986) 91–120. 112 Even more radically, this giving of the Word happens incarnationally. It is a self-giving of the Word’s givee to her neighbor as spoken by the Word. Marion (1991) 144. 113 Marion (1991) 143. This testimony requires an interpretation of the words in and as the in-textuated Word interprets them, which, for Marion, is enacted liturgically and eucharistically. Marion (1991) 148–152. 114 The self-giving of one to the other as a gift holds together the asymmetric sociality of the gift, which Marion calls a hierarchy. See Marion (2001) 162–180. 115 Marion (1991) 95–100; 139–161. See also Marion’s analysis of fatherhood in his essay entitled “The Reason of the Gift” in Leask and Cassidy (2005) 101–135. 116 Marion (2001) 220–226. 117 Levinas (1996) 97–109. 118 Marion (2001) 220–226. 119 Marion (1991) 149–152; 195–199. See also Marion’s effective critique of Kant’s categorical imperative, and its extension to Levinas’ understanding of responsibility, in Marion (1986) 91–120. 120 Marion (2001) 233–255. 121 Marion (2001) 233–255. 122 Lyotard (1999) xvi, 115–116. 123 Marion (2001) 233–255. 124 Marion (2001) 180–196; Marion (1991) 144–149. 125 Marion (2002) 248–320. 126 Marion (2001) 180–196. 127 This is the anarchic principle, which constitutes a hierarchy. See Marion (2001) 162–180 and Marion’s essay “The Reason of the Gift” in Leask and Cassidy (2005) 101–135. 128 Marion (2001) 233–255. 129 Marion (2001) 162–180; Marion (1991) 149–152; Marion (2002) 234–248. 130 See Marion (2001) 162–180 and Marion’s essay “The Reason of the Gift” in Leask and Cassidy (2005) 101–135.

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Marion (2007); Marion, “The Reason of the Gift” in Leask and Cassidy (2005) 101–135. 132 Marion (1991)144–149. 133 The icon is a linguistic or visual sign or symbol that commands to be beheld (interpreted, viewed) as the visible site of the advent of the unthematizable event of signifying, as the coming to presence or giving to presence of the saying or the Logos. In this sense only a givee who praises the giving by becoming, testimonially, the site of this giving, can offer an iconic reading of a sign. Only the one made into its icon by the giving can read the signs iconically. Iconcity, in its most accomplished form, is an incarnational testimony, a letting the saying be said as the said and be given as the gift, a be-holding or maintaining oneself in the giving of this self-giving gift. The icon is ultimately an icon of the giving/saying as selfgiving/pro-fessing love. Marion (1991) 7–53; Marion (2001) 1–27. 134 Marion (2001)180–196; Marion (1991) 183–199. 135 Marion (1991) 144–153. 136 Marion, “The Reason of the Gift” in Leask and Cassidy (2005) 101–135. 137 Marion (2001) 162–180. 138 For Marion, the speech situation from which praise is launched is, ultimately, a liturgical one, in which case praise becomes a Eucharistic discourse. Marion (1991) 149–153. 139 Marion (2005) 99–119. 140 Marion sees the arch-sociality plotted by the event of speech as filial-paternal, not only in the Trinitarian sense, but also in the human one. See Marion (1991) 143; Marion, “The Reason of the Gift” in Leask and Cassidy (2005) 101–135. In his analysis of the Origenian allegorical method Chadwick emphasizes the non-volitional, sacramental-like exegesis that the biblical text calls for. See Chadwick (1998) 20–21. 141 Levinas (1996) 129–149. In this sense Levinas is closer to Lyotard and Derrida than to Marion. 142 The marking, which is not a proper thematizing, of the giver is a decision that Marion justifies phenomenologically. See Marion (1991) 102–107. In the same text he acknowledges a reading that does not specify a giver, but only the giving as such, its givee and a gift. This other reading, which is not the one he prefers, is closer to the Levinasian approach. 143 See below chapter IV. 144 For a systematic presentation of the similarities and the differences between these positions see below Graph I. 145 See Berchman (2004). 146 I shall leave for the last chapter a critique of Marion’s formulation of this event in self-referential terms (the Logos gives Himself, explains Himself, etc). See also Harl (1993) 74 and 82. 131

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Marion, “The Reason of the Gift” in Leask and Cassidy (2005) 101–135. 148 Here I shall be following Marion’s discussion of the metaphysical reduction of the gift, applying it to the language event. See Marion, “The Reason of the Gift” in Leask and Cassidy (2005) 101–135. 149 This justification can be a form of reduction, as it is the case in Descartes or in Husserl; a transcendental deduction, as in Kant or an existential analytic, as in Heidegger. The form in which Origen knows this justification to be practiced is the self-referentiality of a cosmic Mind, or the second principle of the Middle- and Neo-Platonist hierarchies. See also Berchman (2004). 150 See Lyotard’s “The Presentation” in Lyotard (1988) 59–86 and Lyotard’s “The Logic of Levinas” in Cohen (2007) 117–130. It goes without saying that this metalinguistic reflection is not an accurate representation of the event of the speech address. For more details, see below chapter IV. 151 Lyotard, “The Presentation” in Lyotard (1988) 59–86. 152 Origen designates the superior part of the soul both by the term nou¤j and by the term lo¢goj. My use of the terms “logic” and “logical” is a pragmatically reinterpreted version of Origen’s ambiguous use of the adjective logiko£j or logikh£ to designate both rationality and a familiarity of the rational soul with the Logos. For an overview of Origen’s anthropology see Henri Crouzel (1955) 366–369; 373–374. Lyotard defines the regimen of a phrase as a set of rules that structure a phrase, making it apt to present a universe of discourse in a specific fashion. Thus, a regimen can determine a cognitive, descriptive, interrogative, etc, presentation of the universe of discourse of a specific phrase. See Lyotard (1988) xii. 153 The addressative event of speech should not be mistaken for a phrase standing under an addresative regimen. Following a Levinasian idea, Lyotard suggests that speech happens to us as a non-phraseable address (a non-phraseable prescription), as a saying that obliges us to respond, that is, to phrase, and, in this sense, the “from-to” orientation of the event that prompts us to speak is immemorial. See the section entitled “Obligation,” in Lyotard (1988) 107–128 and Lyotard (1996) 22. 154 For the notion of saturation see Marion’s essay entitled “The Saturated Phenomenon” in Marion, Courtine, Chrétien, Henry and Ricoeur (2000) 176–217. See also Marion’s elaboration on this seminal essay in Marion (1998; 2002 and 2004). My application of Marion’s notion of saturation to Lyotard’s notion of the phrase-event is only tentative and will be further qualified and, to a certain extent, modified, in the fourth chapter of this study. As it will become evident, Marion’s speech pragmatic is considerably different from Lyotard’s. The elements of Marion’s speech pragmatics need to be gathered from a number of his works that 147

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are not specifically focused on this issue. Most clues can be found in the fifth chapter of Marion (1991) 139–161 and in the second part of the essay “Hors-Texte,” which is included in the same book (183–199). As mentioned above, an important source for the pragmatic interpretation in this study has been Jean-Luc Marion’s “The Reason of the Gift” (See Leask and Cassidy [2005]). 155 See Jean-Luc Marion, “The Reason of the Gift” in Leask and Cassidy (2005) 124. 156 See Jo. 6.6.38 (GCS 4: 114); Crouzel (1955) 366–369; 373–374 and Crouzel, (1956). 157 A complex analysis of the receivers of the Logos as logikoi¢ can be found in Sfameni Gasparro (1992) 301–320. For a comprehensive study of Origen’s employment of the term lo¢goj see Gögler (1963) and Lieske (1938). For further bibliographical references on Origen’s lo¢goj doctrine see Monaci Castagno (2000) 167–168. 158 See Fédou (1995) 249–250; 250–269; Berchman (2004). 159 This anthropology is founded on larger metaphysical assumptions like the distinction between the intelligible and the sensible realms of the cosmos and of humanity, the iconic relation of the intelligible with the Logos and the preexistence of the world in the Logos-Wisdom as the intelligible model of the universe. For a discussion of these presuppositions, see below III.1. 160 The term “anarchic” has been used in the manner prescribed by Levinas, in reference to an otherwise than temporal, otherwise than ontological event, a transcendent address without an origin by which the other disrupts the subject. See Levinas (1998) 99–102. In keeping with this understanding of the non-origination of the event of speech, the “wherefrom” of the report has been designated as a source, not as a principle or origin. The notion of source is configured by the addressee’s pragmatic experience of being anarchically addressed and anarchically summoned to speak by no-one in particular, or, at least, no one nameable. 161 For a brief but relevant discussion of Origen’s use of the biblical notion of sugkata¢basij see Harl (1958) 232–233; 310. Aloisius Lieske’s discussion of Origen’s mysticism provides an important clue regarding the theological background in which the current discussion of the event of speech as the divine condescendence of the Logos needs to develop. For Origen this is a mystical event, which occurs as an extroversion of Trinity’s immemorial interpersonal life or sociality. This extroversion is a form of mercy and love. “Zwei Gedankenkreise bestimmen—dogmatisch gesehen—die ganze tiefe und Wärme origenisticher Vollkomenheitslehre: Origenes’ Trinitätstheologie und seine Gnadenlehre.” (Lieske [1938] 218). In this study I consistently translated sugkata¢basij by “condescension,” which, needless to say, has to be taken in the etymological, rather

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than in its current, negative, sense. Although somewhat demanding on the reader, my choice is justified by the need to preserve the term’s sense of “descent” along with its emotional reference (an intensely—con— downwards-adjustment—descending—of the compassionate Logos to the condition of a lower, lapsed, receptor). Maintaining the dynamic space reference of the term will be crucial for the understanding of my linguistic-pragmatic analysis of the Logos as redemptive address or the event of a linguistic-textual coming of the Logos to the receptive exegete. 162 In other words, the reason that the addressee of the event of speech imposes on this event (communicability, for Habermas, phenomenological hermeneutical appropriation, for Gadamer, receivability, for Jauss and Iser) is always “late” or ever more “recent” than the anarchic occurrence of this event. 163 For a detailed discussion of Origen’s use of the verb e¦pidhmei¤n and its derivatives see below II.1.1. and II.1.2. The interpretation of Origen’s mention of a (good) reason for the beneficent briefing follows Marion’s “The Reason of the Gift” in Leask and Cassidy (2005) 101–135. 164 Origen deems the beginners to be more inclined to take the annunciation at its face value, or, as he puts it, literally. By contrast, the progressing and the advanced ones will seek in the annunciation not only the expected good (the discourse’s referent) but also the intention (the “mind”) of its sender as a token of the sender’s well-intended (beneficent) attitude toward the hearer. Within the conspicuous annunciation they will distinguish the report and, by fathoming the report, they will develop a special familiarity with the beneficent sender of the news in whose presence they will now start to live. This is the kind of familiarity that Origen calls “spiritual.” J. A. McGuckin has pointed out the importance of the idea of auctorial intentionality in the Alexandrian exegesis. As Homer needs to be interpreted through Homer, so any discourse is best interpreted through the intention of its author and any news is best understood through the intention of its sender. See McGuckin (2003) 121–137. 165 Origen uses the Scriptural term a©o¢ratoj (invisible) to designate the non-bodily nature of divinity, and, therefore, also the Spirit (Fr. 13 in Jo. 1.18 [GCS 4:494–495]). Although used mostly in cosmological contexts (Princ. 2.3.6 [SC 252:264–270]), the close correlation between cosmology, anthropology and the Scripture that is noticeable in Origen’s thought allows an application of the term to the spirit of humanity (Mart 47 [GCS 1:42–43]) and to the spiritual sense of the biblical text (for the analogy between the sense of the Scripture and the various parts of humanity see below II.1–2). In calling the report inconspicuous, and the annunciation conspicuous I have reworked into a phenomenological–pragmatic language Origen’s often used Pauline distinction between the spirit and the letter.

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An important problem arises here, namely, the justification for nominalizing or autonymizing the term that designates the event, i.e., lo¢goj. Is it pragmatically justified to refer to the event of speech or the discourse-event as if it were an addressor? Following Levinas and Wittgenstein, Lyotard finds this procedure arbitrary (See Lyotard [1999] 59– 86), while Marion finds it, under certain conditions, justified (see Marion [1991] 102–107). A detailed discussion of this important issue will be offered below in chapter IV. 167 See below III. 168 See below my discussion of the iconic attunement of humanity to God in II.3 and the revision of some of its main theses in III. As it will be shown in chapter IV, in light of Lyotard’s pragmatics, the logocentric qualification of the addressor and the addressee as beings with a “rational nature” are a speculative metalinguistic reworking and altering of previously phrased speech acts. For Origen’s doctrine of election see Pietras (2005) 441–449. 169 See below the phenomenology of leavening in chapter II and its revision in chapter III. 170 For the Origenian use of the notion of e©pidhmi¢a, or “coming,” see below II.1.1. In the fourth chapter of her study Hermeneutical Procedure and Theological Method in Origen’s Exegesis, Karen Jo Torjesen synthesizes the conclusions of an entire century of Origenian scholarship placing them in a rigorous hermeneutical framework. Her statement that “The doctrine of the Logos as guiding principle of Origen’s spiritual exegesis includes the origin of Scripture from the Logos, the manifold forms of the Logos activity in Scripture and the pedagogical use of Scripture by the Logos in its present interpretation” (109) clarifies, to a great extent, the relation between the Logos doctrine and the praxis of scriptural exegesis in Origen. It also sheds light on the correlation between scriptural interpretation and pedagogy as activities of the same Logos. My phenomenology of the good news is slightly different insofar as it traces the origin of the Scripture back to the speech event of the Logos as Logos’ “revelatory mission” from the Father. In other words, for me it is the mission of the Logos manifested in and as the Scripture that shapes the Scripture’s content and use. Thus, in my opinion, the necessary analysis of the origin of the Scripture in the activity of the Logos has to be introduced by a phenomenological analysis of the missionary function of the Logos as good news from the Father unto us. As the following sections of this essay will indicate, an analysis of the role of the Logos in the Scripture would have to take into account the twofold nature of the Logos as reporter of the good news from the Father and as announcer of this good news to us. For a discussion of Logos’ “revelatory mission” (mission de révélation) see Harl (1958) 85. 166

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See Levinas (1998) 102–109; Levinas (1996) 146. An analysis of this plot or intrigue will be offered in the third chapter of this study. For Origen’s use of the dramaturgic terminology see Perrone (2006) 81–83. According to Perrone, the Latin translations attest Origen’s use of the term plot as textus (see Perrone [2006] 82, n.48). 172 Cant. Prol. 2.41–48 (SC 375:120–125). 173 Jo. 1.19.119 (GCS 4:24). 174 See below chapter II, sections 1 and 2. 175 See below chapter III. 176 For the Johanine and Pauline origins of this belief see Grillmeier (1975) 15–33. 177 See Berchman (2004). 178 This question has been asked in Origenian scholarship in the form of a suspicion that Origen could be a Platonist or a Hellenizing philosopher in Christian disguise (see the development of this theme in III.1.). However, in the way in which I had framed it, the debate gets a much broader scope. It is not only the mimetic ontologism or the metaphysics of late Platonism that could fit the description of logocentric idolatry, but also a certain Christian reading of the mediative function of the Logos. It suffices, for now, if one were to keep in mind as a tentative concern the possible homogeneization of humanity with God in the Logos. By the end of the first part of this study, one shall be offered enough insight into the Origenian texts to comprehend my partial rejection of the above suspicion as well as my acceptance of some of its aspects. 179 See below chapter II. 180 For my justification for siding with the scholars who reject a circular temporality of salvation in Origen (the thesis of the coincidence of eschatology with protology) see chapter II below. However, even if not circular, the regressive-restorative element in this soteriology can be said to continue to be a concern, insofar as, by bringing humanity in a state of filial oneness with the Father, the Logos retraces His own filial-Trinitarian oneness with His Father, as a preexisting model. 181 See below chapter II. 182 Desire is “desirable” only insofar as it can be proven to be rational or “logical.” 183 For a discussion of the suspicion that assimilative love could be somehow derived from the theoretical emulation of the Logos as a principle of transformative iconic attunement, see below II.3 and the revision in III. 184 It is of less importance for the current debate how one construes this necessity, whether as an ontological-existential one, as Heidegger does, or merely as an epistemologic-intentional one, in the vein of Husserl; whether as Gadamer’s hermeneutical circularity or as Habermas’s 171

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transcendental communicative agreement. As it was suggested and as it will be further discussed below in II.3 and in III, for Origen, this reciprocation of Logos’ conversion from a for-the-Father to a for-us condition by an ascent of humanity to the Father is dictated by love. What remains to be decided is whether there is a (sufficient) reason for this love (the ontological solidarity of the creation with God, for example), or rather, love is its own reason. Depending on the answer, one can decide whether Origen’s approach is logocentric or not. 185 See below II.2. 186 Although it cannot be pursued here, a more comprehensive study of logocentric messianism in the Johanine and Philonic theologies of the early Alexandrian writers would be certainly helpful. 187 See below II.1.1 and II.1.2. PART II 1 Origen, Commentary on the Gospel according to John, trans. Heine, 39. Jo. 1.5.28 (GCS 4:9–10). 2 These instances of “coming-from” and “going-to” can be interpreted historically in relation to Jesus’ earthly sojourns or spiritually, as indicative of meta-historical events, especially as the condescension of the Logos leading to the revelation of the paternal doctrines or mysteries. For the meta-historical use see Jo. 32.29.25–32 (GCS 4: 475). For a detailed discussion of the spiritual and the historical senses of the coming–leaving acts of the Logos see or. 23.1–5 (GCS 2:349–53). 3 Origen, Commentary on the Gospel according to John, trans. Heine, 41– 42. Jo. 1.7.37–38 (GCS 4: 11–12). 4 Jo. 1.1.7.43 (GCS 4: 13). 5 “But do not be surprised if Jesus announces the good things which happen to be nothing other than himself to those who are about to announce the good things.” Origen, Commentary on the Gospel according to John, trans. Heine, 47. Jo. 1.10.65 (GCS 4:16). See also Torjesen (1986) 119–121; Fédou (1995) 128–131. 6 For more details on Origen’s exegesis of the Emmaus scene see below chapter III. 7 These are, indeed, two of the senses that the Greek e¹pidhmi¢a can take in common usage. See Lampe, Patristic Greek Lexicon, 521–22 (under e¹pidhmi¢a); Liddell-Scott, Greek-English Lexicon under e¹pidhme¢w; James Hope Moulton and George Milligan, Vocabulary of the Greek Testament (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1949), 237–38 (under e¹pidhme¢w). The e¹pidhmi¢a as coming-to implies an a¹podemi¢a or a coming-from. For a discussion of the christological sense of a¹podemi¢a in Origen, see Scognamiglio (1987) 194–201. See also Fédou (1995) 136–137.

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For an existential analysis of spatial directionality, see Heidegger (1962) 143–144. 9 Jo. 1.7.37–38 (GCS 4: 11–12); Hom. 4 in Gen. 5 (SC 7bis: 154–157); Hom. 6 in Ez. 6 (SC 352:228–231); Jo. 1.32.230–232 (GCS 4:41) and Jo. 20.18.153–156 (GCS 4:350–351). 10 Jo. 1.5.27–8 (GCS 4. 9–10). In her study Origène et la fonction révélatrice du Verbe incarné, M. Harl criticizes a certain trend in the Origenian exegesis of that time for being focused almost exclusively on the redemptive aspects of Christ’s mission (Harl [1958] 85). In Harl’s view, this unilateral focus implies the neglecting of what she considers the main feature of Alexandrian Christology, namely the interest in the revelatory and the educative functions of the incarnate Lo¢go». According to Harl, the project of a comprehensive work on this neglected aspect calls for a careful analysis of the titles and formulae that synthesize the revelatory mission (mission de révélation) of Christ and the terms “qui définissent l’Incarnation comme une présence, une manifestation, une épiphanie, ceux qui soulignent dans le Christ un rôle d’enseignement, de révélation, d’éducation....” (Harl [1958] 85). Later on in the work, Harl admits that the concept of coming (la venue, e¹pidhmi¢a) is used by Origen for describing various revelatory manifestations (mystical, incarnational, eschatological, etc) (205–6). In spite of the remarkable character of her suggestion, Harl fails to insist in her study on the phenomenology of the coming of the Logos to us, limiting the analysis to a classificatory enumeration of the various concepts by which Origen designates the revelatory function of the Logos. In this essay I try to provide a sketch of such a phenomenology, following up on Harl’s above-mentioned suggestion. 11 In Being and Time Heidegger opposes the so-called “objective” temporality of the old-school historians, which he calls historiology (Historie), to an existential temporality, which he calls historicality (Geschichtlichkeit). Historicality is based on the temporal situatedness of Dasein and on Dasein’s being in time in the fundamental mode of care, that is, by way of anticipative projects and existential reinterpretations of the traditions in which Dasein’s existence inevitably takes shape. See, for example, Heidegger (1962) 424–456. I have reinterpreted Heidegger’s notion of historicality to mark the immemorial (pre-chronological) charitable turn of the Logos toward fallen humanity. The Logos can be said to exist in the mode of a charitable reaching towards the human other (the neighbor) as well as a filial reaching towards the Father. For the missionary nature of Logos’ “turn” towards the human neighbor (the turn as a soteriological mandate from the Father) see Jo. 1.32.230–232 (GCS 4:41); Jo. 20.18.153–156 (GCS 4:350–351) and Hom. 25 in Lc. 7 (SC 87:334–337). The issue of an immemorial historicality of the Logos will be discussed in greater detail in chapter III below. For Origen’s use of the term of “history” see Studer (2004). 8

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351).

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Jo. 1.32.230–232 (GCS 4:41) and Jo. 20.18.153–156 (GCS 4:350–

Hom. 6 in Ez. 6 (SC 352:228–231). Jo. 1.17.9–14 (GCS 4:22). 15 In the following paragraphs I shall refer specifically to the correlation that Origen draws between the Logos and the paternal beginning in his interpretation of the Prologue of the Gospel according to John. 16 The analysis of the term “first-fruit” that I propose in this section of the essay draws upon the theological meaning that Origen ascribes both to the compound word a¹parxh¢ and to its main component, namely the notion of a¹rxh¢. However, it needs to be acknowledged that Origen does not explicitly articulate a rigorous analysis of this sort in any of his extant writings. 17 Jo. 1.3.12 (GCS 4:6); 1.2–4 (GCS 4:5–9). For the meaning of the term see Liddell-Scott, Greek-English Lexicon, 180 and Lampe, Patristic Lexicon, 177. 18 Jo. 1.7.40 (GCS 4: 12). 19 Jo. 1.4.23 (GCS 4:8); 1.16.90–5 (GCS 4: 20). 20 Jo. 1.4.23 (GCS 4:8). 21 Jo. 1.7.40 (GCS 4:12). For the use of the references to the Book of Revelation as a pointer toward an accomplished spiritual exegesis see Anselmetto (1980) 256–257. 22 “Imago” ergo est “invisibilis dei” patris salvator noster, quantum ad ipsum quidem patrem “veritas,” quantum autem ad nos, quibus revelat patrem, “imago” est. (Princ. 1.2.6 [SC 252:124]) “Our Savior is therefore the image of the invisible God, the Father, being the truth, when considered in relation to the Father himself, and the image, when considered in relation to us, to whom he reveals the Father” (Origen, On First Principles, Translation and Notes by G. W. Butterworth [New York: Harper and Row, 1966], 19–20). I agree with Harl’s reading of this passage—see Harl (1958) 113–14— which maintains the distinction truth-for-the-Father vs. image-for-us by contrast with Crouzel’s hypothesis of a Rufinian switch of terms. Crouzel’s proposed translation is the following: “Par rapport au Père, le Fils est l’image, par rapport à nous, il est la vérité dont nous sommes l’image.” Crouzel (1956), 78. Harl’s reading confirms, however, Crouzel’s other thesis that a¹lh¢qeia and ei¹kw¢n are related, not opposite, terms. See Crouzel (1959) 32. The aletheic contemplation is more radically spiritual than the iconic one but both of them represent stages in the same spiritual ascent of the believer. 23 In his article “Le recours aux e¹pinoi¢ai du Christ dans le Commentaire sur Jean d’Origène” in Origeniana sexta, 481, J. Wolinski proposes to translate the term e¹pi¢noia as “point of view,” suggesting that each title presents an aspect of Christ from a certain perspective. Thus, one could 13 14

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add, each title becomes a diagnosis of the spiritual receptivity of a reader for the mode in which the Logos comes for/to him. See also Gruber (1962) 241–268. 24 Jo. 13.22.131 (GCS 4:245). See also Crouzel (1995) 340. 25 See Jo. 1.4.21–3 (GCS 4:7–8). )Egw\ d’oiÅmai oÐti kai\ tessa/rwn oÓntwn tw½n eu¹aggeli¯wn oi¸oneiÜ stoixei¯wn th½j pi¯stewj th½j e¹kklhsi¯aj … a¹parxhÜn tw½n eu¹aggeli¯wn ei¹nai toÜ prostetagme¯non h¸mi½n u¸poÜ sou½ kataÜ du¯namin e¹reunh½sai, toÜ kataÜ ¹Iwa¯nnhn, toÜn genealogou¯menon ei¹poÜn kaiÜ a¹poÜ tou½ a¹genealogh¯tou a¹rxo¯menon. Matqai½oj meÜn gaÜr toi½j prosdokw½si toÜn e¹c ¹AbraaÜm kaiÜ DabiÜÜd ¸Ebrai¯oij gra¯fwn! “Bi¯bloj, fhsi¯, gene¯sewj ¹Ihsou½ Xristou½, ui¸ou½ Dabi¯d, ui¸ou½ ¹Abraa¯m,” (Matt 1.1) kaiÜ Ma¯rkoj, ei¹dwÜj oÁ gra¯fei, “arxhÜn” dihgei½tai “tou½ eu¹aggeli¯ou” (Mark 1.1) ta¯xa eu¸risko¯ntwn h¸mw½n toÜ te¯loj au¹tou½ paraÜ t%½ ¹Iwa¯nn$ **** toÜn “e¹n a¹rx$½” (John 1.1) lo¯gon, qeoÜn lo¯gon. ¹allaÜ kaiÜ Louka½j **** * “Now, in my opin-

ion, there are four Gospels, as though they were the elements of the faith of the Church. …. But I think that John’s Gospel, which you have enjoined us to examine to the best of our ability, is the first-fruits of the Gospels. It speaks of him whose descent is traced, and begins from him who is without a genealogy. For since Mathew, on the one hand, writing for the Hebrews awaiting the son of Abraham and David, says, “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham,” and Mark, knowing what he is writing, relates the “beginning of the gospel,” perhaps we find its goal in John (when he tells of) the Word “in the beginning,” the word being God. But Luke also,…” Origen, Commentary on the Gospel according to John, trans. Heine, 37. In this heavily corrupt passage one can notice the distinction between a beginning that is not bodily or genealogical, namely the a¹rxhÜ in the prologue of John’s Gospel, and a beginning that is genealogical, namely that mentioned in the prologue of Matthew’s Gospel. John’s Gospel starts with the origination of the Logos from the Father, while Matthew’s starts from the birth of Christ and the lineage of Christ’s ancestors. Since Matthew writes for a more literally inclined audience, his account transposes the spiritual sense of the advent of the Logos in a sensible form. Later on in this essay, I shall discus also the notion of the beginning of the Gospel in light of Mark and Luke . 26 Jo. 1.5.27–8 (GCS 4:9–10). 27 Jo. 1.4.21–3 (GCS 4:7–8). 28 Jo. 1.4 (GCS 4:7–9). 29 See Jo. 1.4.22 (GCS 4:8–9). 30 Origen draws a comparison between Luke 3.23–38 and Matt 1.1– 17, concluding the following: Dominus noster atque Salvator, qui multo Melchisedech, cuius generationem scriptura non docuit, melior fuit, nunc secundum partum

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ordinem natus esse describitur; et cum divinitas eius humano non subiaceat exordio, propter te, qui ortus in carne es, nasci voluit. Et tamen non aeque ab evangelistis nativitatis eius ordo narratur, quae res nonullos plurimum conturbavit. Matthaeus enim incipiens nativitatis illius seriem texere ab Abraham usque ad id pervenit, ut diceret: “Christi autem Iesu generatio sic erat,” (Matt 1.18) et describit non eum, qui baptizatus est, sed qui venit in mundum; Lucas vero exponens nativitatem eius non a superioribus ad inferiora deducit, sed cum baptizatum ante dixisset, usque as ipsum pervenit Deum. Genealogei½tai o¸ ku¯rioj h¸mw½n ¹Ihsou½j Xristo¯j, a¹genealo¯ghtoj meÜn wÄn kataÜ thÜn qeo¯thta, ei¹j genealogi¯an deÜ e¹mbalwÜn e¸autoÜn diaÜ se¯. Hom. 28 in Lc. 190 (GCS 9:172–77). “Our

Lord and Savior was greater than Melchizedek, whose genealogy Scripture does not trace. Now, the Lord is described as being born according to the order of his ancestors. Although his divinity has no human origin, for your sake he willed to be born, since you have your origin in flesh. But the evangelists do not give the same account of his genealogy. This fact has disquieted some people very much. Matthew begins to construct his genealogy from Abraham, and reaches the point at which he says, ‘But the birth of Jesus Christ was thus,’ (Matt 1.18) and describes him not at the time of his baptism but at the time at which he came into the world. Luke, in contrast, when he explains his genealogy, does not proceed from the earlier to the later; instead, after he had already said that Jesus was baptized, he traces his ancestry all the way back to God himself. Nor are the same persons mentioned in his genealogy when his descent and his ascent are traced. Matthew, who makes him descend from the heavenly regions, mentions women—not any women at all, but sinners, and those whom Scripture had reproved. But Luke, who tells of Jesus at his baptism, makes mention of no woman.” Origen. Homilies on Luke. Fragments on Luke, Translated by Joseph T. Lienhard, S.J., FC (Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996), 115. The above passage makes evident that Origen sees the prologue of Matthew’s Gospel as an account of Jesus’ ge¯nnhsij or generation (Matt 1.18). For the use of the term ge¯nnhsij as a denomination of birth see also fr. 20 in Lc. (GCS 9:235). However, Origen’s notion of birth is a very complex one and implies the idea of the incorporation of a preexistent soul (hom. 1 in Jer. 10 (SC 232:217–218); Sandro Leanza, L’esegesi di Origene al libro dell’Ecclesiaste (Reggio Calabria : Parallelo 38, 1975), 10. For most humans the preexistent soul is incorporated after a protological fall, but for Jesus and for a few other spirituals (John the Baptist, for example) the descent of the soul into a body is a missionary, condescendant, act that has not been caused by a previous fall. (Sandro Leanza, L’esegesi di Origene al libro dell’Ecclesiaste, 15; hom.in Cant. 2.6 [SC 37bis:122]). The paragraph above contains an important allusion to the descent of Christ’s soul in a body at birth, namely the assertion that Matthew describes “the one who came into the world” (eum

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qui venit in mundum). The expression “to come into the world” attached to the humanity of Christ appears in a slightly modified form in Hom. 27 in Num. 3.1 (SC 461:285), where Origen compares the generations preceding Christ with the stations in the exodus of the Jews from Egypt. The stages of the descent of Christ in “the Egypt of this world” (in Aegyptum mundi huius) are the same that the progressing soul will go through in his spiritual ascent. The qualification of the world as Egypt is important, insofar as it clarifies the birth as a descent and an accommodation to a carnal condition (Egypt is a symbol of the carnal body and of the sensible world); see Hom. 7 in Ex. 7 (SC 321:228–31). An analysis of Origen’s understanding of Egypt as a symbol of the world can be found in Alcain (1973) 45–61. The carnal condition involves a corruption that Origen terms r¸u¯poj or sordes. For a discussion of this theme in relation to birth-giving and to the birth of Christ in particular see hom. 14 in Lc. (GCS 9:94–98), Jo. 32.24.314 (GCS 4:469). See also Sfameni Gasparro (1984) 193–253; Scognamiglio (1992) 438–44. See also Pisi (1987) 328. By contrast with the soul of Christ, which gets incorporated at birth and whose genealogy can be traced, Christ’s divinity (the Logos) is impossible to trace genealogically. 31 Hom. 28 in Lc. (GCS 9:172–77). 32 Hom. 27 in Num. 3.1 (SC 461:285); Hom. 28 in Lc. (GCS 9:172–77). 33 Hom. 1 in Gen. 1–15 (GCS 6:18–9); Comm. in Mt. 14.17 (GCS 10:325–26). 34 See Hom. 28 in Lc. (GCS 9:172–77). Nec eadem personae sunt in generatione eius, quando descendere dicitur et quando conscendere. Qui enim facit eum de caelestibus descendentem, et mulieres non quaslibet, sed peccatrices et, quas scriptura reprehenderat, introducit. In Matthaeo ergo, ut diximus, nominatur Thamar, quae cum socero fraude concubuit, et Ruth Moabitis nec de genere Israhel, et Rachab, quae unde sumpta sit scire nequeo, et coniux Uriae, quae violavit mariti thorum. Quia enim dominus noster atque Salvator ad hoc venerat, ut hominum peccata susciperet, et “eum, qui non fecerat peccatum, pro nobis peccatum fecit” Deus, propterea descendens in mundum assumpsit peccatorum hominum vitiosorumque personam et nasci voluit de stirpe Salomonis, cuius peccata conscripta sunt, et Roboam, cuius delicta referuntur, et ceterorum, e quibus multi fecerunt “malum in conspectus Domini”. Quando vero de lavacro conscendit et secundo ortus describitur, non per Salomonem, sed per Nathan nascitur, qui eius arguit patrem super Uriae morte ortuque Salomonis sed in Matthaeo semper generationis nomen adiungitur; hic vero penitus siletur. “Nor are the same persons mentioned in his genealogy when his descent and his ascent are traced. Matthew, who makes him descend from the heavenly regions, mentions women – not any women at all, but sinners, and those whom Scripture had reproved. But Luke, who tells of Jesus at his baptism, makes mention of no woman. Matthew, as we said, names Tamar who, by deception, lay with her father-in-law; and Ruth, the Moabite, who was not from the race of Israel; and Rahab—I cannot learn where she was taken from;

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and the wife of Uriah, who violated her husband’s bed. For, our Lord and Savior had come for this end, to take upon himself men’s sins. God ‘made him who had committed no sin to be sin for our sake’ (2 Cor 4.21). For this reason, he came down into the world and took on the person of sinners and depraved men. He willed to be born from the stock of Solomon, whose sins have been recorded, and from Rehoboam, whose transgressions are reported, and from the rest of them, many of whom ‘did evil in the sight of the Lord’ (1 Kgs 15.26 and 34).” Origen, Homilies on Luke, trans. Lienhard, FC (Washington D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1989), 115–16. 35 Hom. 28 in Lc. (GCS 9:172–77), Hom. 27 in Num. 31 (SC 461:285). In the light of Origen’s remarks in these two passages, the allegorical sense of a genealogy is the account of the stages of the soul’s descent into a body. In this sense only Matthew’s account of the genealogy of Christ would fit this definition. Luke proposes a baptismal description of Christ’s ancestors, which, in an allegorical reading, indicates the restoration or the ascent of the soul to the protological condition. One could call this a counter-genealogy. By contrast with Matthew and Luke, John provides neither a genealogy, nor a counter-genealogy of Christ. He starts with the Logos and his origin in the beginning, a©rxh¢, which could be properly called an archeology. 36 See Jo. 1.13.79–80 (GCS 4:18). ProÜj toi½j ei¹rhme¯noij kaiÜ tou½to periÜ eu¹aggeli¯ou i¹ste¯on, oÀti prw¯twj th½j kefalh½j tou½ oÀlou tw½n swzome¯nwn sw¯matoj, Xristou½ ¹Ihsou½, e¹stiÜ toÜ eu¹agge¯lion, wÀj fhsin o¸ Ma¯rkoj: “ ¹ArxhÜ tou½ eu¹aggeli¯ou Xristou½ ¹Ihsou½” hÃdh deÜ kaiÜ tw½n a¹posto¯lwn tugxa¯nei: dioÜ le¯gei o¸ Pau½loj: “KataÜ toÜ eu¹agge¯lio¯n mou.” plhÜn h¸ a¹rxhÜ tou½ eu¹aggeli¯ou … hÃtoi pa½sa¯ e¹stin h¸ palaiaÜ diaqh¯kh, tu¯pou au¹th½j oÃntoj ¹Iwa¯nnou, hÄ diaÜ thÜn sunafhÜn th½j kainh½j proÜj thÜn palaiaÜn taÜ te¯lh th½j palaia½j diaÜ ¹Iwa¯nnou parista¯mena. “In addition to what has been said, we must

know this too about the gospel. First of all, it is the gospel of Christ Jesus, the head of the whole body of the saved, as Mark says: ‘The beginning of the gospel of Christ Jesus.’ But further, it is also the gospel of the apostles, on account of which Paul says, ‘According to my gospel.’ But the beginning of the gospel … is either all the Old Testament, John being its type, or, because of the connection of the New with the Old, the final events of the Old Testament which were presented through John.” Origen, Commentary on the Gospel according to John, trans. Heine, 49–50. See also Jo. 6.24.127– 32 (GCS 4:134–35). 37 In Jo. 1.4.22 (GCS 4:8) Origen remarks the use of the term a¹rxh¢ in the prologue of the Gospels according to Mark and John, by contrast with the use of the term ge¯nnhsij in the Gospel according to Matthew.

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In Jo. 1.4.21–4 (GCS 4:8) Origen establishes a prophetic use of the term a¹rxh¢ invoking the figure of John the Baptist and his role in announcing the coming of Christ. These two observations suggest that Origen views Mark’s Gospel as a prophetic reading of the advent of the Logos, which functions as an introduction to the accomplished spiritual presentation of the advent in the Gospel of John. 38 Jo. 1.4.21–4 (GCS 4:7–8). 39 For a correlation of these three stages with the three steps of Origen’s pedagogy, namely ethics, physics and epoptics see Niculescu (2002). It looks like the somatic and baptismal genealogy of Matthew and Luke represent an ethical reading of the advent of the Logos, one which is focused on the ideas of fall and purification. By contrast, Mark’s gospel proposes a physical perspective by announcing Logos’ advent as a restoration of the soul in its original state, while John presents an epopticeschatological spiritualization of the soul. 40 Jo. 1.4.21–4 (GCS 4:8). Another scenario of the communication of the annunciation in the New Testament is Origen’s allegorical interpretation of the various stages in Jesus’ preaching career. Jesus starts his earthly mission in Galilee, then advances to Judea and accomplishes his work in Jerusalem. Origen sees in the Galilean mission an annunciation for the beginners (the audience of Matthew and Luke). The Judeans are the progressing ones or those with a more advanced receptivity for the coming of the Logos as accomplishment of the prophecies. They would correspond in our scheme to the audience of Mark. Finally, the events in Jerusalem and especially the triduum represent an accomplished spiritual education reserved for the spiritual ones (the audience of John). Elements of the other scenario can be found in Comm. ser. Mt. 141 (SC 11:292–95); fr. 563 in Mt. (SC 12:231–32); Hom. 26 in Num. 5–7 (GCS 7: 251–55) and hom. 23 in Jos. 4.9 (GCS 7: 446). 41 Jo. 1.13.80–1 (GCS 4:18). 42 Origen follows the Pauline denomination of the Old Testament as the Law and the Prophets. Jo. 1.2–3.12–6 (GCS 4:5–6). 43 Jo. 1.3.12–7 (GCS 4:6–7). For the distinction between historical and histriological see above n.11. 44 For the use of genealogou¢menoj and a¹genealo¢getoj see Jo. 1.4.21–2 (GCS 4:7–8). The one with a genealogy is the humanity of Christ due to the fact that the preexistent soul of Christ has assumed a human body. For an analysis of birth as incorporation of a preexistent soul see hom 14 in Lc. (GCS 9:96); Jo. 6.23 (GCS 4:142) and Jo. 32.24 (GCS 4:469). For a detailed discussion of the issue of the carnal quality of the body at birth see Sfameni Gasparro (1984) 193–253, Scognamiglio (1992) 438–44 and Pisi (1987) 328. This issue is discussed extensively in relation to the

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Genesis narrative and the so-called second creation in Niculescu (2002) 66; 85; 120–25; 164; 279; 281 and 454. 45 “For, properly speaking, first (pro¢ton) applies only to those things which are beginning even if they come last. What is first (a¹rxh¢) is always beginning, but beginning is not always first.” Origen, Treatise on the Passover and Dialogue with Heraclides, Translated and Annotated by Robert J. Daly, ACW (New York: Paulist Press, 1992), 32. Pasc. 8 [Guéraud-Nautin 168:10–32]). 46 Jo. 1.4.22 (GCS 4:8). 47 Jo. 1.6.33–6 (GCS 4:11). 48 See Jo. 1.7.37 (GCS 4:11–2). 49 Jo. 1.13.80–1 (GCS 4:18). 50 Cant. Prol. 1.7 (SC 375:84–7). According to de Lange, the term deuterosis is the Greek for mishnah. Quoting Jerome and Eusebius, who could be both relying on Origen as a source, de Lange attests the use of deuterotes for the tannaitic rabbi and of the formula hoi sophoi deuterosin for “the Sages [or rabbis] teach traditions.” See de Lange, Origen and the Jews, 34. An interesting aspect, which is missing from de Lange’s account, is the rather narrow application of the term deuteroseis to a specific group of Biblical texts only. The discussions of the term deuterosis by Bietenhard, Lawson and Simonetti, listed in note 1 on page 84 of the SC edition of Origen’s Commentary on the Song of Songs do not bring much light to the discrepancy between a general use of the term for mishnah and the particular use that Origen makes of it. As de Lange mentions, there is no specific reference to this prohibition of teaching deuteroseis to the young in the rabbinic literature of that time. Indirect allusions to restrictions imposed on the study of the Song of Songs could be found, nevertheless, in a saying of Rabbi Akiba. For details, see de Lange, Origen and the Jews 60 and Harl (1987) 253, quoting Scholem. In the absence of more susbstantial information regarding this topic, I shall attempt an indirect assessment of the influence exercized by this presumptively Rabbinic pratice on Origen by 1) a brief historical look at Origen’s work on the above mentioned biblical books and 2) an assessment of the place that these three books occupy in Origen’s Bible study program as it appears in the internal analysis of Origen’s work. Sometime between 215 and 229 C.E. Origen, who was then in charge of the catechetical school of Alexandria, decides to split the crowds of students in two and introduces two cycles of study, one for the beginners and the other for the advanced. He reserves for himself the instruction of the advanced. (Eusebius, h.e. 6.15 [GCS 9:48], Nautin [1977] 420). (For a tentative reconstruction of Origen’s teaching project see Perrone [2006] 76–78 and the afferent bibliography; for Origen’s interest in a two-tiered curriculum see also my discussion of two fragments of a work dating from this perod, namely the Commentary to Lamentations, in II.2 below). In the same period, probably around 222 C.E., he writes a commen-

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tary on the Psalms (Nautin [1977] 420; Perrone [2006] 72) in which he mentions his time of apprenticeship under the instruction of a teacher identified as “The Hebrew,” a convert to Christianity coming from a Palestinian rabbinic family. This instruction could have taken place, according to Nautin (Nautin [1977] 420) not much earlier, around 217 C.E. “The Hebrew” seems to have made a lasting impression on Origen who consulted him in the articulation of the Tetrapla. He has also left his mark on Origen’s scriptural exegesis, as attested in the introduction to his Commentary on the Psalms (Nautin [1977] 417). Much later, towards the end of his career, Origen mentions specifically the Jewish Rabbinic practice of allowing only the advanced students to study certain texts of the Jewish Scriptures called deuterw¿sei». “And there is another practice too that we have received from them [from the Jews]— namely, that all the Scriptures should be delivered to boys by teachers and wise men, while at the same time the four that they call deuterw¿sei»—that is to say, the beginning of Genesis, in which the creation of the world is described; the first chapters of Ezechiel, which tell about the cherubim; the end of that same, which contains the building of the Temple; and this book of the Song of Songs—should be reserved for the study till the last” Origen, The Song of Songs Commentary and Homilies, translated and annotated by R. P. Lawson (Westminster, Maryland: The Newman Press, 1957, 23). Origen endorses this practice as stated in his introduction to The Commentary of The Song of Songs, written probably in 245 C.E. in Caesarea, long after his definitive departure from Alexandria. One may wonder whether among those mentioned as practicing the deuterotic division Origen was including as well “The Hebrew” of his early apprenticeship, or, in any case, whether in some other way Origen could have been familiar with this practice in the Alexandrian period of his career. In the absence of more substantial data on the identity of the Hebrew and on Origen’s contact with other representatives of the Jewish community, I have no other choice but to leave this question open. However, a brief look at Origen’s list of works dating from the Alexandrian period could indicate an increased interest on his part in at least two of the texts mentioned among the deuterw¿sei». In Alexandria, at about the time of the split of the curriculum, Origen writes a now lost commentary on the Song of Songs (Nautin [1977] 418.) and starts a commentary on Genesis (Nautin [1977] 422); Heine [2004] 63– 73). My analysis of the introduction to Origen’s Commentary on the Gospel of John (see II.1), a text written around 231 or 232 C.E. also in Alexandria (Nautin [1977] 366–67; 427), and the Prologue to his late Commentary on the Song of Songs (see II.2) indicates clearly a twofold division of Origen’s Bible study program (see graph N). In the superior, “secondary,” section of this program figure the Song of Songs and John’s Gospel, whose prologue contains the spiritual genealogy of the Logos from the Father, a text

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closely related to the beginning of the Book of Genesis. Thus, in ways which need further analysis and clarification, Origen seems to have payed a closer attention to at least two of the deuterotic texts (the Song of Songs and the prologue to the Book of Genesis), which he further correlated with what looks like a Christian equivalent of the Jewish deuteroseis, namely the Gospel of John. For his interest in the deuterotic passages of Ezekiel see below chapter III. The relation between Origen and the rabbis is discussed in detail in Sgherri (1982) 42–56. For a description of the Jewish schools of Caesarea and the potential for a contact between Origen and these schools see McGuckin (1992) 15–16; Brooks (1988) and Blowers (1988). The deuterotic corpus consists of texts that Origen considers “bodiless” or asomatic, i.e., texts that comport only a spiritual interpretation. For an extensive discussion of this theme see King (2005) 54–73. 51 See graph B. 52 In her study Hermeneutical Procedure and Theological Method in Origen’s Exegesis, 124–38, Karen Jo Torjesen provides an excellent analysis of the reception of the Scripture and its pedagogic function in Origen’s exegesis. Some interesting treatments of the notion of receptivity in Origen can be found in Potworowski (1992) 16; Crouzel (1995) 333–42; McGuckin (1995) 442; Torjesen (1985) 37–41. The act of internalization or reception of the revelation by the believer/exegete has been called also an act of subjectivization (subjectivation) by Anne-Marie Pelletier in her study Lectures du Cantique des Cantiques. De l’énigme du sens aux figures du lecteur (see Pelletier [1989]). 53 Jo. 1.7.37–9 (GCS 4:11–2). 54 Jo. 1.4.22 (GCS 4:8). 55 Jo. 1.4.22 (GCS 4:8). 56 Jo. 1.4.23 (GCS 4:8); tolmhte¯on toi¯nun ei¹pei½n a¹parxhÜn meÜn pasw½n grafw½n eiÅnai taÜ eu¹agge¯lia, tw½n deÜ eu¹aggeli¯wn a¹parxhÜn toÜ kataÜ ¹Iwa¯nnhn, ou toÜn nou½n ou¹deiÜj du¯natai labei½n mhÜ a¹napeswÜn e¹piÜ toÜ sth½qoj ¹Ihsou½ mhdeÜ labw½n a¹poÜ ¹Ihsou½ thÜn Mar¯ian ginome¯nhn kaiÜ au¹tou½ mhte¯ra. kaiÜ thlikou½ton deÜ gene¯sqai dei½ toÜn e¹so¯menon aÃllon ¹Iwa¯nnhn, wÀste oi¸oneiÜ toÜn ¹Iwa¯nnhn deixqh½nai oÃnta ¹Ihsou½n u¸poÜ ¹Ihsou½. ei¹ gaÜr ou¹deiÜj ui¸oÜj Mari¯aj kataÜ touÜj u¸giw½j periÜ au¹th½j doca¯zontaj hÄ ¹Ihsou½j, fhsiÜ deÜ ¹Ihsou½j thÜ mhtri¯:“ ÃIde o¸ ui¸o¯j sou½” kaiÜ ou¹xi¯ “ ÃIde kaiÜ ouÂtoj ui¸oÜj sou,” iÃson eiÃrhke t%½ “ ÃIde ouÂtoj e¹stin ¹Ihsou½j oÁn e¹ge¯nnhsaj.” kaiÜ gaÜr pa½j o¸ tetelei¯wme¯noj “z$½ ou¹ke¯ti,” a¹ll’ e¹n au¹t%½ “z$½ Xristo¯j”, kai Ü ¹epeiÜ “z$½” e¹n au¹t%½ “Xristo¯j”, le¯getai periÜ au¹tou½ t$½ Mari¯#:“ ÃIde o¸ ui¸o¯j sou” o¸ xristo¯j. “We might dare

say, then, that the Gospels are the first-fruits of all scriptures, but that the first-fruits of the Gospels is that according to John, whose meaning no

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one can understand who has not leaned on Jesus’ breast nor received Mary from Jesus to be his mother also. But he who would be another John must also become such as John, to be shown to be Jesus, so to speak. For if Mary had no son except Jesus, in accordance with those who hold a sound opinion of her, and Jesus says to his mother, ‘Behold your son,’ and not, ‘Behold, this man also is your son,’ he has said equally, ‘Behold, this is Jesus whom you bore.’ For indeed everyone who has been perfected ‘no longer lives, but Christ lives in him,’ and since ‘Christ lives’ in him, it is said of him to Mary, ‘Behold your son,’ the Christ.’ Origen, Commentary on the Gospel according to John, trans. Heine, 38. 57 Cant. Prol. 3 (SC 375:128–43). For the importance that these writings used to have in the canon of the Alexandrian Jews, see Stroumsa (2004) 26. 58 See graph B. 59 See graph B. 60 Cant. Prol. 3.8–13 (SC 375:128–43). For more details regarding the effects of this ethical pedagogy on the soul in Origen’s ethical mystagogy see Niculescu (2002) 185–257. 61 See Niculescu (2002) 9–114; 257–75. 62 Dial. 3–7 (Scherer 124–38). 63 Comm. in Rom. Fr. 7 (Heither 6:59); Jo. 6.1.2–3 (GCS 4:106) hom. 8 in Ex. 4 (GCS 6:223–26); hom. 12 in Lev. 7 (GCS 6: 65–67); hom. 8 in Ezech. 6 (GCS 6: 396). For a detailed discussion of this theme see Sfameni Gasparro, Origene, 157–93. 64 Hom. 3 in Is. 3 (PG 13:230). 65 Cant. Prol. 3.14–15 (SC 375:137–39). See also Vogt (1999) 207– 225. 66 Cant. Prol. 3.16 (SC 375:139); Niculescu (2002) 257–416. See also graph C. 67 Cant. 1.1 (SC 375:177–187); Hom. 1 in Cant. 2 (SC 375:70–9). The transformative process described above can be rendered in different forms that have been discussed at length in my doctoral dissertation. In the language of the Genesis narrative (see below graphs U and V), ethics annuls the so-called second fall, namely the banishment of Adam from paradise and the acquisition of a carnal body (the “tunics of skin”). Through ethics the body is transformed from a fleshly into a spiritualized condition, from the tunics of skin to the luminous body or the “good earth” of Paradise, from which the first humans were shaped or fashioned (Gen 2.7). Physics annuls the so-called first fall, which turned the intellects into passion driven souls. These restored souls represent the first creation (Gen 1.26), which is that of the iconic human (the human “according to the image”). Thirdly, epoptics fulfils the Genesis prophecy of adding to the image the dimension of likeness (Gen 1.27). In the language of the Exo-

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dus cycle (see below graph V), ethics is the crossing of the Red Sea and the journey through the desert, physics is the crossing of the Jordan into the Promised Land and epoptics is the entrance into Jerusalem. In the language of the Gospels ethics is Jesus’ ministry in Galilee, physics is Jesus’ ministry in Judea and epoptics is Jesus’ activity in Jerusalem, culminating with the triduum. The triduum is another way of expressing all of the above. See graphs W and X and Niculescu (2002). 68 See Niculescu (2002) and graph A. 69 Jo. 1.7.37–38 (GCS 4: 11–12); Hom. 11 in Lc. 1–3 (SC 87:188–193). See the discussion of the idea of spiritual growth in Gruber (1962) 39–43. 70 Jo. 2.30.183–184 (GCS 4:87); Torjesen (2004) 287–303; Gruber (1962) 38. 71 Jo. 1.6.34 (GCS 4:11). 72 It is interesting that the discussion of the term “gospel” in the Commentary on the Gospel of John is introduced by an allegorization of the divisions of the tribes of Israel. In the Church or the new Israel, people are called to attend to the Bible in various ways; the priests and the high priests according to Aaron are those who have to devote most or all of their life to biblical exegesis, as a liturgical practice (a divine service). See Jo. 1.1–2.1–15 (GCS 4:1–6). Thus, Origen seems to establish a relation between election (the election of the Jews, that of the Church), a call to priesthood, and exegesis as a liturgical priestly practice, which I shall pursue and elaborate on in the following chapter of this work. 73 In addition to the inevitable correlations with Levinas and Derrida (see above chapter I), my use of the notion of trace is also a reference to Origen’s own employment of the term iÓxnoj in an exegetical context such as Princ. 4.1.6 (SC 268:27–28). The inscription of the divine trace in human history is prophetic and plays out prophetically in the biblical hermeneutics of the spiritual exegete. For the correlation between prophetic inspiration and the exegetical pursuit of the trace of the Logos in the Scripture, see Perrone (2004) 231–249 and Wallraff (2004). 74 Hom. 1 in Cant. 1 (SC 37: 61–62). 75 Torjesen (1985) 29–42; Torjesen (1987) 370–79 and Torjesen (1986). 76 Torjesen (1987) 287–303. 77 The main part of my dissertation was written outside the United States in conditions of relative bibliographical scarcity. I have only gained access to Torjesen’s work later in the process, at a time when I could not do more than acknowledge its major importance, without engaging its argumentation on a more profound level. 78 Unlike other studies on Origen’s biblical exegesis, Torjesen’s Hermeneutical Procedure and Theological Method does not adopt the all too easy distinction between an Origenian exegetical practice and an Origenian

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exegetical theory and does not aim at a simple “verification” of the consistency of this theory’s application in practice (for an example of such an approach see Dively Lauro [2005], which is a response and refutation of the inconsistency thesis in de Lubac [1950] 141 and Hanson [1962] 236). Torjesen takes seriously Origen’s insistence that Scripture be read during the hermeneutical act under the guidance of its intrinsic intent, which is a useful one (124–125). It is this usefulness that allows the reader a certain reception of the Scripture and makes him into a beneficiary of the Scriptural pedagogy of the Logos. Since usefulness can not be reduced to the adaptation of a preexisting (neutral, or use-indifferent) theory or doctrine to the given situation of a reader/hearer, usefulness should be interpreted as an essential component of the doctrine; it ultimately represents the soteriological intent of Logos’ scriptural pedagogy (41–42; 111; 126). In this sense, Origen’s exegete is not expected to “experiment” with various hermeneutical models to test their applicability or usefulness. Instead he needs to allow Scripture’s plural usefulness to help him out in the way in which the scriptural Logos sees it fit (114, n.22; 118–119). Origenian exegesis, as Torjesen describes it, is a way of allowing the Logos to make Himself useful to the reader/hearer through His Scriptural pedagogy (43). On the basis of this observation and her close, but not servile, use of contemporary hermeneutical reception theories, Torjesen is able to offer an Origenian phenomenology of the exegetical experience of the spiritual ascent. For her, as for Origen, the spiritual ascent is not a technical following of a salvation procedure but rather a response to an addressed, personalized, soteriological teaching. The phenomenology of the ascent is, thus, a phenomenology of the exegetical response to the pedagogy of the Scriptural Logos, a phenomenology of exegetical learning (42). Torjesen is right in pointing out that, unlike in contemporary hermeneutics, the Origenian exegete does not respond to the biblical Logos by an appropriation of his message, but rather by placing himself or herself in the scriptural text in such a way that the text is allowed to make itself useful to him (43; 130–134; 146–147). Torjesen’s analysis of select texts in Origen’s work traces the transformation of the exegete from a literal to a spiritual positioning in the text (49–69). Unlike most other works on Origen’s scriptural exegesis, Torjesen’s study brings to the fore the history of this transformation as a historically effected process (as the happening of the text to a historically positioned reader and as the inscription of this reader into the sacred history of Logos’ advent in the Bible [112; 133–138]). Another author who demonstrates an interest in the historicity of Bible reception in Origen is Lorenzo Perrone. See Perrone (2004) and Perrone (2005). 79 To enumerate just two of the most prestigious accounts of typological historicity in Origen, see de Lubac (1950) and Crouzel (1989) 61– 87. An emphatic connection between these historical scenarios and the

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stages of spiritual progress can befound in Gruber (1962) 52–71. By contrast, Hanson (see Hanson [1962]) sees these scenarios as a self-serving manipulative subjectivization of history; for him Origen’s approach is subjectively-historical; it has the subjective historicity of an arbitrary appropriation, not of application. Finally, Harl sees the scenarios of spiritual progress as rather non-historical (see Harl [1958]). 80 Torjesen (1986)131–133. 81 Torjesen (1986) 70–108. 82 An important step in this direction has been made by Michel Fédou who has drawn Origen’s historical-typological reading of the Bible to the pre-chronological event of the self-emptying of the Logos. See Fédou (1995). Fedou’s analysis of the role of the kenotic event in Origen’s biblical interpretation and theology of history is likely to prompt a revaluation of the customary suspicion that Origen’s theology of history is too metaphysical to be properly speaking historical. In light of Fédou, the debate cannot be carried on in binary terms such as historical-speculative (metaphysical), but it should be instead transposed into a distinction between a chronological historicity (that of the literal sense), a sacred historicity (the trace of Logos’ immemorial historicality in chronological historicity) and a metaphysical non-historicity (a metaphysical speculation about the Logos as a cosmic hypostasis and about one’s assimilation to the Logos). These distinctions have already taken center stage in the Christian theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar, which is one of the sources used by Fédou, and, more recently, in Marion. See von Balthasar (1990) 23–36; Marion (1991). For an analysis of Phil 2.5–11 (the kenosis hymn) in Origen see Bostock (1995). 83 Torjesen (1986) 47–48; 118–120. 84 Jo. 1.6.34 (GCS 1:11). The metaphor of leavening is Pauline (see Gal 5.9 and 1 Cor 5.6 “’A little leaven leavens the entire dough’”). For an additional reference to these two Pauline passages see Jo. 10.18.109 (GCS 4:187–98). The theme of leavening appears as well in Luke 13.20–21. In reference to Luke 13.20–21 see fr. 205 in Lc. and fr.302 in Mt. and our discussion of this issue in III.2. below. 85 An example of the main stages of this transformation has been provided in the previous section of this essay in the discussion of the effects of the ethical, physical and epoptical biblical texts on the reader. The sequence Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, contains not only the biblical version of the Greek philosophical curriculum, ethics, physics and epoptics, but it is also an effigy of the entire Bible. Thus, The Law is predominantly ethical, the Prophets are predominantly (meta)physical and the Song of Songs is an epoptic prefiguration of the Gospels, especially of the Gospel of John. See Niculescu (2002). 86 Jo. 1.6.32–6 (GCS 4:10–1); Jo. 1.2–4.12–26 (GCS 4:5–9).

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As the subsequent quotation indicates Origen uses Gal 5.9 and 1 Cor 5.6 in a rather unusual sense. In the Pauline passages the leaven has a negative significance. It represents either a preservation of the immoral, pre-conversion, habits by the new Christians or an attachment to the old custom of circumcision. Thus, for Paul, the persistence of the old ways corrupts the entire meaning of one’s newly embraced Christian life. Paul enjoins to a life of abstinence that he compares with the Passover azyms, which were free of leaven (1 Cor 5.7–8). Origen preserves the Paschal sense of Paul’s allegory, but imprints it a positive turn. The leaven is the Logos who leavens the entire Scripture turning it into a Gospel. Origen’s understanding of this process continues to be paschal but in an eschatological sense, which allows for a switch from a negative to a positive understanding of the leaven. With the coming of Christ the unleavened bread of the Passover becomes the leavened bread of the Resurrection. For Origen, the incarnate and intextuated Logos is the eschatological leaven, while the leavened Scripture is the bread of an eschatological exegetical Passover. Hom. 7 in Ex. 8.35–45 (SC 321: 232–34). An important role in the reversal of the negative understanding of the leaven into a positive one can be attributed to Origen’s reading of Luke 13.20–21, where the kingdom of God is compared with a woman who mixes the leaven with three measures of flour. In fr. 205 in Lc. (GCS 9:316) Origen takes the woman as the church, the three measures of flour as the body, soul and human spirit, and the leaven as the Holy Spirit. 88 Origen, Commentary on the Gospel of John, trans. Heine, 41. KaiÜ ou¹k 87

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