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Origen (edited and translated by John Behr),On First Principles. 2 Vols (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2017). 664 pp. $220.00 hardback.
In this new edition and translation of Origen’s magisterial On First Principles, John Behr has rendered a valuable service to the academy. A reader’s edition of the translation, which includes most of Behr’s introduction, has recently been made available (Oxford University Press, 2020) for classroom use at $35.00.The original publication and subsequent reader’s edition will become the new stan- dard of English translations of Origen’s treatise for the next generation.
One of the significant challenges of studying Origen is clearing away later interpretations and interpolations of his work that occurred during the Ori- genist controversy. Nowhere is this more clearly on display than On First Prin- ciples (completed ca. 229/230ce), which has been transmitted almost entirely in Rufinus of Aquileia’s Latin translation. When Rufinus began in 398ce, he admitted that interpolations and corruptions to Origen’s Greek were already happening. His solution was to omit passages that sketched out ideas he could not find elsewhere in Origen’s writings. While comparisons between Rufinus’ translation and the extracts of Origen’s text preserved in the Philocalia have offered a more favorable impression of the translation than Jerome’s nega- tive assessment would indicate, it is still the case that one must work with a Latin rendition of Origen’s thoughts governed by Rufinus’ decisions. For this reason, Koetchau’s 1913 edition (and Butterworth’s subsequent English transla- tion) tried to overcome Rufinus’ translation by trusting the citations given by later opponents to Origen’s teaching, which, as Behr notes, ended up distorting rather than clarifying Origen’s positions. The judicious scholar must find a path through this thicket to engage Origen himself, which is why Behr’s new edition and translation is so important.
Building on the scholarship of the past fifty years, Behr has succeeded in giv- ing the English-world a more historically-sound examination of this important treatise. There are three areas where Behr’s edition and translation improves upon Koetchau’s edition and Butterworth’s 1936 English translation, which is based upon it. First, Behr follows recent scholarship in returning to Rufinus’ translation and placing Greek texts into the edition where they actually fit so that the reader can compare the Greek to Rufinus’ Latin. This approach under- scores the relative soundness of the Latin translation. Another benefit of pro- viding the Latin and Greek together is that the reader can discern how technical Greek terms from the third century entered into the Latin Christian tradition. For example, in one place, Rufinus renders Origen’s use of the Stoic termhormé (impulse/desire) as the phrase voluntas quadam vel incitamentum (a “sort of wish or incitement”) because he seems unsure of the best rendition. Still, the
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close association of voluntas with hormé is crucial since “will” in Latin can mean simply wish, a point that you can see clearly in Augustine’s thought. Else- where, Rufinus reduces Origen’s phrasepathesi kai kinēmasin(“passions/affec- tions and movements”) to motus (“movements”), no doubt partly because of the negative connotation of pathos in Latin circles at the time. This is par- ticularly crucial for Pentecostals concerned with the history of affectivity in Christian tradition.
Second, Behr offers a more literal rendering of the Latin into English in an effort to preserve the basic meaning as much as possible. The result is that the reader can easily follow Behr’s translation decisions between Latin and English. Moreover, Behr adds explanatory footnotes where possible that deal with Greek technical terms underneath the Latin and English translations. One quibble here is that Behr renders the Latin termarbitriumas “will” rather than “choice” or “decision,” which obscures an important distinction between free choice and free will. Thus, Origen’s discussion of self-determination (autex- ousios) becomes an investigation of free will rather than Rufinus’ interpretation of free choice (liberum arbitrium). In the Latin tradition, choice becomes the means by which impulses, desires, and affections associated withwillare acted upon or not. This is partly due to the slippage between will and wish in vol- untas (of which Rufinus is aware given his rendition of hormé into voluntas). With respect to the interior movements of thought and emotion in the human person, the locus of freedom is choice, a point that Behr’s translation obscures.
Finally, Behr’s introduction is one of the most significant contributions of the new edition. In particular, Behr offers an analysis of scholarship on the structure of Origen’s treatise that concludes with a proposal for a new way of structuring the text. The treatise centers upon two major cycles (parts) that Behr describes as “theology” (God and things pertaining to God) and “econ- omy” (God and God’s plan in time) followed by a final part on scripture, it’s interpretation, and a recapitulation of the whole. The order underscores the need to approach scripture through the teaching of the church, which is why the reader must move through the two major cycles before turning to scrip- ture. Behr further argues that a close reading of Origen’s preface suggests that the first two cycles are subdivided into apostolic preaching and ecclesiastical preaching. The former represents the basic teaching handed down from the apostles and the latter the church’s elaboration on that teaching. Origen deals with human freedom under the ecclesiastical preaching in relationship to the soul. The upshot of Behr’s revised structure is that one can clearly see Origen’s approach is to discuss the teaching of the apostles and the church relative to God and the plan of God. It is a fundamentally narrative approach to theology that should prove stimulating to Pentecostal scholars for whom story is crucial.
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If I were teaching a course on pre-Nicene Christianity, Behr’s edition and translation of On First Principles would be required reading. It elucidates both the fundamentally narrative approach to theology from Irenaeus to Origen as well as the way in which the most significant thinker in the third century was fusing philosophical ideas into the story of God to fill out the “church’s teach- ing.”
Dale M. Coulter
Pentecostal Theological Seminary, Cleveland, Tennessee, USA [email protected]
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