I. Depreciates Literalism; Exalts Mystical and Spiritual

1. MASTER MIND OF MYSTICAL INTERPRETATION

As already stated, Origen was rated as one of the most learned men and profound thinkers of ante-Nicene times, profoundly influencing the doctrinal positions of the church. He engaged in constant controversies, these continuing to harass the church until the sixth century. Having become profoundly persuaded of the “philosophical truth” of the Innate Immortality of the soul, he recast his Christian views to meet the pattern of his Platonic philosophy. This involved virtually every vital doctrine.CFF1 998.3

Always inclined to be erratic, he was at first an extreme literalist. Then, swinging to the other extreme, he became the master mind of the School of Mystical Interpretation, reducing it to a system. How could the Platonic postulates be harmonized with the Bible? The genius of Origen devised a way—the Bible was to be understood allegorically, not literally, or as metaphors, under which its latent sense and real truth were concealed. By this ingenious method the Bible could be made to teach Platonic positions without unavoidable contradiction.CFF1 999.1

2. ALLEGORIZATION DETERMINED ENTIRE EXEGESIS

Origen, most voluminous of the early writers, was the initiator of textual criticism. His crowning work in Biblical criticism was his Hexapla—six versions in parallel columns. It required eighteen years to produce. His commentaries cover the Bible. His great apologetic work was his able Contra Celsus, meeting the most scurrilous attack of the time against Christianity.CFF1 999.2

Origen’s chief dogmatical work, De Principiis (On the Principles), the first systematic theological exposition of Christian doctrine, was written before he left Alexandria, and was the most speculative of all his works. He here conjectured about God and heavenly things, and man and the material world—together with free will and its consequences, and immortality, eternity, eternal life, et cetera—all the subject of our quest. But all of these were covered with a veil of allegory. And this allegorization determined the whole pattern of his exegesis.CFF1 999.3

3. ORIGEN’S THREE “SENSES” TO SCRIPTURE

To Origen there were three senses to Scripture—the literal, moral, and spiritual. The literal (which he called earthly, sensual, carnal, Jewish) had little value, was not true. The moral, or deeper sense (celestial, intelligible, symbolical, mystical, secret), relates to moral matters and the religious life on earth. And the spiritual pertains to the heavenly life in the world to come—his principal interest. The “common and historical sense,” was for the “more simple,” but the advanced were to be “edified by the very soul of Scripture.” ^{66) Origen, De Principiis, book 4, chap. 1, sec. 11, in ANF, vol. 4, p. 359.}CFF1 999.4

Origen did not deny that the Scriptures taught a literal resurrection, a personal Second Advent, and a millennium—if taken in a literal sense. But such, he contended, was not the true and inner sense. So Origen deprived the Scriptures of all force by adopting the allegorical method of exegesis.CFF1 1000.1