Origen and Scripture: The Contours of the Exegetical Life

Written by Peter W. Martens Reviewed By Andrew M. Selby

Imagine that a renowned sculptor decided to chisel a massive statue out of the rock in a mountain range. A viewer walking along the valley might admire the finely hewn base of the sculpture. Another observer, taking a higher mountain path, might insightfully describe the statue's upper part. But only when someone happened upon the right vantage point, and so could perceive the whole at once, would the parts formerly discovered assume their richest possible significance.

In his study of Origen and the Bible, Peter Martens appears to have gained such a privileged viewpoint on the great Alexandrian's theology by focusing on readers of Scripture themselves. Martens asks what kind of life the exegete lives for Origen. His thesis is that Origen's ideal interpreters are those who participate in the drama of salvation even while studying that drama on Scripture's pages. This “subjective” approach, concentrating on the interpreter per se, allows Martens to join together Origen's many comments on ideal reading practice with Origen's own biography, since he sought to embody this mode of Christian existence himself. As Martens states with justified confidence, “This topic also holds the key for unlocking Origen's panoramic vision of the entire exegetical enterprise” (p. 5).

In the introductory chapter 1, Martens provides a helpful summary of the hot topic of Origen's hermeneutics. Much attention has been paid to Origen's exegetical method both because he so profoundly influenced subsequent biblical interpretation up to the Enlightenment and because he can serve as a resource for those dissatisfied with modern ideals of professional biblical interpretation put forth in the past two centuries. Martens also lays out the plan for his study: Part One (chs. 2-3) discusses Origen's understanding of Greco-Roman paideia (education) and his theological arguments for its necessity for good biblical interpretation. Part Two (chs. 4-10) describes how the equipped exegete participates in the Christian story.

Origen eagerly cultivated skills and knowledge in philology himself and directed his students to do likewise. (The term “philology” could be misunderstood since some within the modern academy consider that an arcane discipline. However, for Origen-as Martens describes him-philology was synonymous with what the Victorians called “a man of letters,” accomplished in the liberal arts and philosophy.) Origen knew undergoing paideia was a laborious process, but it provided the tools necessary to mine the deeper gems hidden in Scripture's text. While Martens's account here offers much, it would have been more complete had he explained how rhetorical education would illumine Origen's vision of the well-trained philologist-he instead focuses more on grammatical curriculum-especially as key terms from ancient rhetorical curriculum occur in his description of historical analysis of the text (“refutation and confirmation,” pp. 49-50) and literary analysis (pp. 54-63).

Along these lines, Martens cites a fascinating quotation from Contra Celsum (3.58) in which Origen describes these students as “having been trained beforehand (progymnasmenous)” in “general education” and “philosophical thought.” Then, through study of Scripture, Origen would “lead them on to the exalted height . . . of the profoundest doctrines of the Christians.” The word progymnasmenous is closely related to the technical term for the pre-rhetorical curriculum (progymnasmata) students learned throughout the Greco-Roman world as the next-to-last step before attaining the height of education. (For a relevant reconstruction of these exercises in ancient Alexandria, see Raffaella Cribiore's Gymnastics of the Mind [Princeton University Press, 2001].) Martens could have mentioned how Origen's assertion here displays a breathtaking subversion of the usual ends of paideia-namely, political power, social status, and/or a place in a philosophical school-toward Bible study in the small and seemingly insignificant church of the mid-third century, but his focus is (not wrongly) on Origen's “openness to” and “ambitious endorsement of” Greco-Roman education.

In Part 2, Martens shows how Origen locates the well-rounded scholar in the Christian narrative. Chapter 4 explains that Origen situated Greco-Roman learning under God's providential activity in history, and as such, could interpret it as divinely instituted for the sake of biblical exegesis. For instance, Origen pits the Apostle Paul's allegorical reading strategies (e.g., Gal 4:21-24), against the pagan Celsus's literalistic reading of the OT, thus sanctioning the view that the Bible was intentionally composed in a multivalent fashion. In other words, the Bible shared with pagan literature allegorical meaning and thus could and should use the “pagan” tool of allegorical interpretation.

The search for the deepest things of God by delving into Scripture's manifold meaning marks off Origen's ideal interpreter from the simpler members of the Church (the simpliciores), Martens's subject in chapter 5. Scriptural inquiry orders the mind, the aspect of humanity bearing closest resemblance to God, and moves the exegete beyond faith to discover the underlying reasons for Christian beliefs. While such an elitist view might place Origen under suspicion of undermining the church, chapters 6 and 7 prove Origen a devout churchman insofar as his exegesis adhered strictly to the rule of faith. These basic doctrines, passed on from the Apostles, demarcate what Origen took to be his orthodox exegesis from the aberrant readings of Gnostics and Jews.

The final three chapters (8-10) explore other facets of Origen's inscription of the interpreter into the Christian story. In addition to cultivating virtuous character and trusting that the Bible is unified in one message despite its diversity, the ideal reader also proleptically participates in the eschatological schooling for which every soul is destined.

It is impressive how much historical background the study covers: we learn about pagan education, ancient apologetics, Gnosticism, and Jewish-Christian conflict, to name a few of the core topics in patristics Martens deftly handles. But one of the study's chief strengths is the author's thorough knowledge of Origen's oeuvre, which permits him to substantiate his general claims with ample concrete evidence. Many of the footnotes contain additional citations of texts where Origen discusses the theme at hand. Between the copious notes, an extensive yet well-organized bibliography, and the concise survey of scholarship in chapter 1, this book could double as a reference manual for Origenian studies. While Martens does not claim to have defended Origen's assessment of scriptural scholarship against the sort of training in biblical interpretation most of us receive in seminaries and graduate school (p. 244), his masterful study, which succeeds in making Origen's account of biblical interpretation more intelligible to us moderns, functions as prolegomena to retrieving at least some facets of it for the Church.

All in all, Martens's account of the ideal interpreter in Origen and Scripture is an ideal starting point to encounter Origen's hermeneutics.


Andrew M. Selby

Andrew M. Selby
Baylor University
Waco, Texas, USA

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