The Word and the Descent of Christ

If someone suffers from a Jewish blindness to the gospel, one should recite to him the sayings of Solomon, saying: 'For the Almighty's word', containing all in silence and swiftly dwelling in the privacy of night, comes from the thrones of kings in heaven, a sharp sword bearing your unhypocritical command, filling all with the strokes of death; indeed it touched heaven, but it established itself upon the earth (Psalm 149:6; Psalm 18:4).

If therefore his only-begotten Son, the Word of God, is proclaimed and is God in glorious communion, through whom angels and heavens and earth and seas and depths and heavenly luminaries and the whole constitution of all created things were made, he thus makes all wise through just judgment, seated on the throne of the eternal kingdom in heaven, yet punishing the unrighteous with a sharp justice (but being Almighty in deed and action, since he is God and the Word of God, 'indeed it touched heaven, but it established itself upon the earth' in the same way), making his divinity's excellence manifest by filling all things everywhere.

Surely, if such a nature has been seized, the impious ones who think the Divine is described by a place or a spoken word of a certain region are speaking through Origen's hand, more by ignorance than by wisdom of the cosmos, saying that Christ, having descended to the lowest parts of the earth, lived above his willful choice.

For he did not realize that, being God, he did not remain above as it seems with such a readiness of mind, by the energy of divinity filling all things as if most especially everywhere. But such things are fitting for glorifying Christ, he who is defined by a demon to raise up prophetic souls; and the Pythian sibyl, as she saw the demons who were of the same womb as herself, just as she was raising up kindreds of the same mother like certain brothers of the same belly, cries out: 'I have seen gods ascending from the earth.'

But the boastful one did not hesitate to tell Origen that the demon did not only lift up the soul of the prophet, but asked whether other holy souls of prophets had also 'ascended together.' Not being satisfied with such provocation, he even defined the angels as having ascended together with the spirits; for he said that for the sake of the salvation of those praying, they breathed in here.

Therefore, as it seems, Origen places the greatest hopes in the angels and prophets, or indeed in the whole choir equal to the saints, first by introducing them as being under demonic power, and then by warning that they were brought here through a possessed woman, to heal those suffering like prisoners being led away.

It does not seem to me that it is less foolish to speak thus; for by this work he most pitifully disgraced the holy men, and even the rank of the heaven-flying angels was disgraced by casting them down. Or let him show boldly, by such a standard being established, from where having taken from the earth he said he was sending down the angels who are feasting in the heavens; for these have not descended into Hades being led as redeemers to the captives for remissions, but Christ, since this one also established a victorious trophy against the enemy, and having snatched the spoils of the captives, ascended to the heavens in a transformation of his body. But angels stand before God always, rushing to perform those which they owe for worship, but they do not dwell in Hades.

But, as it seems, Origen pretends not to understand, in order to prepare a demoniacal divination; then, having undertaken to allegorize all the Scriptures, he will only pretend to accept this not merely on the letter of the interpretation, while not even attending to its body with good sense. But, discussing indeed the paradise which God planted in Eden (Gen 2:8), and then wishing to explain in what way the fruit-bearing trees were to be interpreted, he brought forward other things: 'when reading, let us ascend from the myths,' he said, 'and from the literal interpretation, and let us seek what the trees are,' he says, 'they are those things which God cultivates...'