Jerome’s Views Shown Again to Be Origen’s

But let us spare him now. We must bend to our examination of the books, for, to use one of his own expressions, a great work leaves no time for sleep. Yet he himself spares nobody. He does not so much use reasonable speech as lash whomever he pleases with the whip of his tongue, and anyone who refuses to flatter him must expect to be branded at once as a heretic, both in his treatises and in hundreds of letters sent to every part of the world. Let us not follow his example, but rather that of the patriarch David, who, when he had surprised his enemy Saul in the cave and could have killed him, refused to do it and spared him. This man knows well how often I have done the same for him, in word and in deed; and if he does not choose to admit it, at least it is fixed in his mind and conscience. [a]

So I will pardon him, though he never pardons others, but condemns men for their words without any consideration or love. For the present I will let him climb out of this pit, until he falls into that other one, from which all of us together will be unable to rescue him, however much we may wish and strive to. He has to explain how it comes about that in the first passage, where the doctrine was being put forward that sought to vindicate the justice of God, he really meant to speak of someone else, and that this was the person he now wants condemned; yet in the second passage, where the speaker says the opposite and does not accept what was said before, the ‘other’ he speaks of means himself. It may be that he is sure this is what he meant, but was not able to make it plain in writing. Let us give him the benefit of the doubt, and assume that in this latter passage the ‘other’ is himself, and that it is he who does not accept the doctrine which holds that our souls existed and hoped in Christ before our life in the body began. I will quote the whole passage, and make a fresh and careful inquiry to see where it leads. This is what he says:

“Another, who does not accept this doctrine that our souls existed and trusted in Christ before our life in the body began, changes the sense of the passage. He takes it to mean that at the coming of our Lord and Savior, when in his name every knee will bow, of things in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father; when all things will be made subject to him; then there will be some who are made subject willingly, but others only by necessity. “Those who have hoped in him before his coming in his majesty will be to the praise of his glory, and these therefore are called Fore-hopers. But those who are found to believe only through necessity, when even the devil and his angels will be unable to reject Christ as King, are to be called simply Hopers, and they are not to the praise of his glory. “And we see this partly fulfilled even now, since we can tell apart the reward of those who follow God willingly from that of those who follow him through necessity. But whether in pretense or in truth, let Christ be proclaimed; only let each of them understand, both the Hopers and the Fore-hopers, that because of the difference in their hope they will receive different rewards.” [c]