Jerome Has Not Really Changed His Mind About Origen

But let us come to these two commentaries, which alone he exempts from the general condemnation and disowning he pronounces on all the rest of his works. We shall see with what modesty and restraint he conducts himself in them. Remember that it is by these alone that he has chosen to prove that he is sound in the faith and wholly opposed to Origen. Let us, then, examine as witnesses these two works, the only ones of all his writings that satisfy him: the three books of his commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, and the single book, I think, on Ecclesiastes. Let us look for a moment at the one that comes first, the commentary on the Letter to the Ephesians. Even here, see in his arguments the influence of the man who is his comrade, his partner and, to use his own word, his fellow initiate. And first of all, take these poor weak women he makes fun of because they say that after the resurrection they will not have their frail bodies, since they will be like the angels. Let us hear what he has to say about them. In the third book of his commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, on the passage that says, “He who loves his own wife loves himself, for no one ever hated his own flesh,” after a few other remarks he says: [a]

“Let us men, then, cherish our wives, and let our souls cherish our bodies, in such a way that the wives may be turned into men and the bodies into spirits, and that there may be no difference of sex; but that, as among the angels there is neither male nor female, so we who are to be like the angels may begin here to be what we are promised we shall be in heaven.”