Digital Logos Edition
This volume consists of the important and influential writings of Origen (c. 185–254), a Christian mystic and early Church Father. Origen was born in Alexandria and lived through the turbulent years during the collapse of the Roman Empire. Selections include An Exhortation to Martyrdom, Prayer, First Principles: Book IV, Prologue to the Commentary on the Song of Songs, and Homily XXVII on Numbers. This volume also includes a preface by Hans Urs von Balthasar.
For a massive collection including over a hundred and twenty of the volumes in this series, see the Classics of Western Spirituality Bundle (126 vols.).
“Origen is a Christian Platonist not because he has turned Christianity into Platonism or vice versa, but because he has found the Platonic idiom of his day capable of expressing the truth of the Gospel.” (Page 6)
“Now the reason those we have just mentioned have a false understanding of these matters is quite simply that they understand Scripture not according to the spiritual meaning but according to the sound of the letter.” (Page 180)
“Therefore, the discussion of prayer is so great a task that it requires the Father to reveal it, His Firstborn Word to teach it, and the Spirit to enable us to think and speak rightly of so great a subject.” (Page 86)
“One of these two, I mean the ‘what we ought,’ consists of the words of prayer, while the ‘as we ought’ refers to the disposition of the person praying.” (Page 83)
“Therefore, let us not suppose that the Scriptures teach us to say ‘Our Father’ at any appointed time of prayer. Rather, if we understand the earlier discussion of praying ‘constantly’47 (1 Thess. 5:17), let our whole life be a constant prayer in which we say ‘Our Father in heaven,’ and let us keep our commonwealth (Phil. 3:20) not in any way on earth, but in every way in heaven, the throne of God, because the kingdom of God is established in all those who bear the image of the Man from heaven (1 Cor. 15:49) and have thus become heavenly.” (Page 125)