American Society of Church History

Origen of Alexandria's Interpretation of the Teacher's Function in the Early Christian Hierarchy and Community Author(s): Carl V. Harris Source: Church History, Vol. 24, No. 3 (Sep., 1955), pp. 273-274 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Society of Church History Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3162116 . Accessed: 27/08/2013 13:11
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DOCTORAL DISSERTATIONS
"Origen of Alexandria's Interpretation of the Teacher's Function in the Early Christian Hierarchy and Community" by Carl V. Harris. (University of Dubuque, Dubuque, Iowa.) Duke, 1952. Directors: Professors Ray C. Petry and Thomas A. Schafer. This dissertation is an attempt to understand Origen of Alexandria's interpretation of the teacher's function in the early Christian hierarchy and community. The aim is to set forth an estimate of Origen's thought and personality which does justice to the various sides of his work. The writer recognizes in him a balanced mind in which the intellectual does not destroy the spiritual. Origen is among the greatest of Christian teachers, and he is justly compared with the greatest philosophers. He was a scholar, but by no means a pedant, and his interest was as much in the love of God as in the knowledge of Him. His homilies are expository sermons delivered for the most part at Caesarea in Palestine and taken down by shorthand writers. Intellectual rather than sentimental in their appeal, they reveal their author as one of the great preachers of antiquity. Origen is an excellent example of the fact that the functions of preaching and teaching reinforce one another in the Christian ministry. What Origen taught of doctrine and of the Scriptures is that which he preached and upon which he commented. It seems that all the best characteristics of Origen, his thoroughness, his patience, his courage, his humility, come out with singular distinctness in his conception of the teacher's vocation. Whatever the value of his own personal work, the dignity of his high calling admits for him no question. He is a guide of those who are called to carry their search for Truth above that which is written. As a true teacher, he never loses sight of his many limitations and his overwhelming respon273 sibilities. This dissertation attempts to show his understanding of the great harm that has come upon the church through the incompetence of her appointed instructors. Origen makes it unmistakably clear that the teacher's task is not wholly one of instruction. He reminds us that along with doctrine must go the vitae exemplum, and teaching must arouse the conscience as well as inform the mind. He regards the pedagogical functions as sacred. For Origen, the true priesthood is to be found in the spiritual perfection of the individual soul. He summons the saintliest men from the ranks of the laity and charges them with the spiritual care of the faithful. He places upon them an obligation of obedience toward the hierarchy, but that obedience is purely external. Origen is far from distinguishing the visible body of the faithful, the community, from the group of the elect. Deliberately he mingles them. The Church, as Origen conceives it, is more that of the hierarchy of saintliness grouped around the spiritual master than that of the ecclesiastical community around its bishop. He wrestles with the question of the relation between the visible hierarchy of the presbyters and the hierarchy of the teachers or doctors. Certain attitudes correspond to each of these hierarchies. The presbyters are turned more toward worship; the instructors more toward the ministry of the word and the Scripture. Although Origen rather clearly represents the course of the teachers or doctors, his life and work attest to an epoch in which the two hierarchies tend to unite. Whereas he does not deny the powers of the visible hierfrom the priestly ordiarchy comrning nation, he is not resigned to dissociate the sacerdotal powers from the sacerdotal sanctity. For him what is important is not the institutions but spiritual reality.

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274

CHURCH HISTORY instinct with the unique superiority of Holy Writ to anything that secular culture can offer. To Basil the issue presents itself as "foolish wisdom" vs. "the oracles of the Spirit." The Word of God mediated to the believer by the Spirit is infallible revelation; the faith which enshrines this revelation is the highest wisdom; and before such wisdom reason itself must bow. (IV) For the Scriptures are theopneustos; it is this divine inspiration which gives them their incontestable authority. Basil's concept of authorship and the divine afflatus is conspicuous for its sanity; nor is the illapse of the Spirit less essential to the understanding of the Scriptures than to their authorship. Thus it is that Basil ventures the bold step of making the Bible interpreted by the Spirit-filled conscience of the believer the ultimate seat of authority. Prophecy, while vehemently contrasted with divination, is largely conceived of as prediction; the Psalms especially abound in messianic allusions. As a consequence of its equal inspiration throughout, a fundamental unity and harmony pervade Scripture, though Basil exhibits a keen awareness of the superiority of the Gospel to the Law and has his decided preferences among the books. (V) Basil is a biblicist rather than a traditionalist. Although in theory tradition has the same force as Scripture for him, actually his use of the written revelation dwarfs his resort to the unwritten. But while the accent is heavily on Scripture, he is concerned that the ancient heritage be preserved inviolate no less in its traditional than in its scriptural formulation. He is the avowed enemy of novelty: thus his quarrel with Eunomius is largely a matter of the latter's refusal to honor scriptural-traditional terminology and of his proclivity to innovate instead. (VI) From both the scholarly and the edificatory standpoints Basil's exegetical consciousness is of a high order. He combines a lexical and grammatical regard for Scripture with an appreciation of its formal and stylistic side, and is given to probing the context to discover the thread of meaning or ar-

This is a study of t h e original sources, as far as they have come down to us. Practically all the extant writing of Origen, either in the original Greek or, where that is lacking, the Latin translations of Rufinus and Jerome, have been examined, although not all with equal thoroughness. The homilies and commentaries have been the most important resources for this study; however, supplementary evidence has been gathered from the whole corpus and from numerous secondary sources. A certain degree of caution has been used with respect to the Latin translations of Rufinus. No important conclusions in this dissertation depend upon controverted passages in De Principiis. "Basil of Caesarea and the Bible" by William A. Tieck (144 W. 228th St., New York 63, N. Y.). Columbia University, 1953. Director: Prof. Frederick C. Grant (Union Theological Seminary) (I) Basil the Great of Caesarea (329/30-379) presents a remarkable instance of the struggle between a profoundly religious "heredity" and an equally thoroughgoing secular educational "environment." Coming out of an ancestry of virile Christian piety and a home in which he was nurtured on the teachings of Origen mediated through Gregory Thaumaturgus, he spent many of his formative years under the best rhetors and sophists of the day in Constantinople and Athens. (II) This tension between Christianity and classicism was resolved in his late twenties, when he renounced wealth, position, and worldly wisdom (at least outwardly), and withdrew to an ascetic life. The outstanding feature of the monastic asceticism which he was soon practicing and propagating was its bibliocentricity. The Bible was the regula par excellence, the rule by which he rigidly fashioned his own life and the monastic system for which he is celebrated. (III) Henceforward Basil's conviction of the absolute sufficiency and finality of Scripture dominated him. Both his theory and his practice are

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