In the Shadow of the Incarnation: Essays on Jesus Christ in the Early Church in Honor of Brian E. Daley, S.J.

Loving Christ according to Origen and Augustine

149 7 Loving Christ according to Origen and Augustine Basil Studer, O.S.B. When I was first invited to contribute to Brian Daley’s Festschrift, I was asked to provide an overview of recent trends in the literature on the soteriology of early Christian authors.1 While such an overview would certainly prove useful, it unfortunately lies beyond the more modest ambitions that I have set forth for this essay. I will, rather, limit myself to two theologians, Origen of Alexandria and Augustine of Hippo, both of whom, to this day, continue to receive remarkable scholarly attention. I think I am justified in selecting these two authors if only for the simple reason that, in the last few years, reference works devoted to each of these theologians have appeared. The Dizionario Origene2 was published a few years ago in Italian, and more recently, the Westminster Handbook to Origen3 has been offered to an English audience. For Augustine, in addition to the fascicles of the AugustinusLexikon4 that continue to emerge, there is also the encyclopedia, Augustine through the Ages.5 For my part, I have also had the opportunity to author several works on both of these theologians.6 150 Basil Studer, O.S.B. The topic of Origen and Augustine’s soteriologies requires, nevertheless , further restriction. If a presentation of patristic soteriology will resonate with us today, then it ought to articulate, I would contend, the personal dimension of this topic. As such, I would like to present Origen ’s and Augustine’s views on loving Christ as integral to their respective soteriologies. It is clear that both theologians have a profound interest in the Johannine theme of God’s love that preceded our love (1 John 4:8–10). But we can only speak of God’s preceding love for us in its fullest sense when we also include our response, that is, our own love for God and, consequently, our love for Christ. The topic for this essay, then, is our love for Christ. At the “Ninth Origen Conference” I delivered a paper on Origen’s view of loving Christ,7 and in my recent introduction to Augustine’s De Trinitate I devoted the last chapter to Augustine’s view of loving Christ.8 In this essay the task remains to summarize and compare the results of both of these previous studies. Even if I cannot scale the heights that the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, reached in his paper on Augustine’s Christology at the 2003 International Patristics Conference in Oxford,9 I nevertheless attempt to offer in my analysis of Origen and Augustine what believers today especially wish to discover: an account of salvation that accentuates the love, and indeed the friendship, that exists between believers and Christ. Loving Christ in Origen “Christ is present to all who seek him.” —Origen, Hom. Lev. 9.14 The Theological Discipline—a Quest for the Truth When many scholars eagerly devote themselves to Origen today, they tend to do so with the intent of studying his interpretation of Scripture and of tracing the extent to which his exegesis influenced the thinkers, preachers, and theologians of subsequent generations.10 It used to be that Origen’s De principiis stood at the foreground of research, and with Loving Christ according to Origen and Augustine 151 that, a strong interest in its philosophical orientation11 (one indication of which is the remarkable energy expended in deciphering the title Peri archon).12 De principiis was one of Origen’s earliest writings, and even if we keep its fourth book in mind, in which Origen discusses at length Scripture and its interpretation, it is clear that De principiis does not yet re- flect the robust sort of scriptural interpretation that we see elsewhere in his writings, in which he opens up to believers the deeper senses of Holy Scripture. Furthermore, many of his reflections in this work are admittedly of a philosophical nature (if one even wants to distinguish between philosophy and theology in this period), and it is certainly also the case that Origen seldom addresses Christ in this work as his “Lord and Master,” as he will do in his sermons. Nevertheless, De principiis is a thoroughly theological project, as Origen himself announces at the beginning of the work (though the opening lines of this work are very often overlooked).13 “All who believe and are convinced...