Jerome Points to His Commentary on Ephesians

But now I will turn the tables and put my accuser to the question. Tell me, great master: if there is anything to blame in a writer, is the blame to be laid on the one who reads or translates his works? Heaven forbid, he will say; certainly not. Why do you try to trap me with your riddles? Am I not myself both a reader and a translator of Origen? Read my translations and see whether you can find in them any of his peculiar doctrines, especially any of those I now mark out for condemnation. When pressed to the point, he says: [a] “If you want to see fully how abhorrent the very suggestion of such doctrines has always been to me, read my Commentaries on Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians. You will see from what I wrote there what opinion I formed of him from reading and translating his works.” [b]

I ask, can we accept as a great and serious teacher a man who praises Origen in one of his works and condemns him in another? who in his introductions calls him a master second only to the apostles, but now calls him a heretic? What heretic, I ask, was ever called a master of the churches? “It is true,” he replies, “I was wrong about this; but why do you keep bringing up that unlucky little preface against me? Read my Commentaries, especially the ones I have named.” Will anyone think this a satisfactory answer? He has written a great many books, and in almost all of them he trumpets the praises of Origen to the skies. Through all these years these books have been read, and are still being read, by everyone. Many of their readers, having accepted his opinions, have left this world and gone into the presence of the Lord. They hold the opinion about Origen that they learned from this man’s statements, and they departed in the hope, on this man’s assurance, of finding him there as a master second only to the apostles. But if we are to trust his present writings, they have found him condemned, among the ungodly heretics and the pagans. Is this man now to turn around from what he once maintained and say, “For some thirty years, in my studies and my writings, I have been praising Origen as equal to the apostles, but now I pronounce him a heretic”? How can this be? Has he come across some new books of Origen’s that he had never read before? Not at all. It is from these same sayings of Origen that he once called him an apostle and now calls him a heretic. But it is impossible that this should really be so. For either his former praise was right, and his judgment has since been warped by some extreme ill will, in which case no attention should be paid to him; or else his former praise was mistaken, and he is now condemning himself. In that case, what judgment does he think others will pass on him, when, in the apostle’s words, he passes sentence on himself? [c]

“But surely,” he says, “that judgment no longer stands, since I have repented.” Not so fast! We all go wrong, it is true, especially in what we say, and we may all repent of our errors. But can a man do penance, and accuse others, and judge and condemn them, all at the same moment? That would be as if a prostitute who had kept away from her trade for a night or two felt called on to start writing laws in favor of chastity, and not only to pass these laws but to go on to tear down the tombs of all the women who had died, because she suspected they had lived lives like her own. You do penance for having once been a heretic, and you do right. But what has that to do with me, who never was a heretic at all? You are right to do penance for your error. But the true way to do penance is not by accusing others but by crying for mercy, not by condemning but by weeping. For what sincerity can there be in repentance when the penitent issues a decree of pardon for himself? Whoever repents of having spoken ill does not heal his wound by speaking ill again, but by keeping silent. For so it is written: “You have sinned; be at peace.” But now you first bring yourself in as a criminal, then acquit yourself of your crime, and at once change yourself from a criminal into a judge. This may be no trouble to you, who mock us in this way; but it is a trouble to us if we let ourselves be mocked by you. [e]