Preface to Origen’s On First Principles

Addressed to Macarius at Pinetum, in the year 397. The translation of the first two books of On First Principles was issued soon after the Apology of Pamphilus, or at the same time. The preface to them was meant to remove prejudice by showing that Jerome, who is not named but is clearly described, had gone before Rufinus in translating Origen. The compliments paid to Jerome were no doubt sincere, but the use made of his earlier action can hardly be justified. Rufinus knew well that Jerome’s view of Origen had changed to some extent; that an unpleasant controversy had sprung up at Jerusalem about Origen, in which he and Jerome had taken opposite sides; and that the bitterness it stirred up had been calmed only with the greatest difficulty, and a reconciliation made at the very moment he left Palestine. This preface, with the translation of On First Principles, was the most immediate cause of the violent controversy and the final break between Rufinus and Jerome. [a]

I know that a great many of our brothers, moved by their longing for knowledge of the Scriptures, have pressed various men skilled in Greek literature to give the works of Origen to those who use the Latin language, and so to make him a Roman. Among these was that brother and colleague of mine to whom this request was made by Bishop Damasus. When he translated the two homilies on the Song of Songs from Greek into Latin, he put in front of the work a preface so beautiful and so magnificent that he awoke in everyone the desire to read Origen and to search out his works eagerly. He said that the words, “The King has brought me into his chamber,” might well be applied to the soul of that great man; and he declared that in his other books Origen had surpassed all other men, but in this one he had surpassed himself. What he promises in that preface, indeed, is that he will give Roman ears not only these books but many others of Origen’s. But I find that he is so in love with his own style that he pursues a still more ambitious aim: to be the creator of the book, not merely its translator. So I am carrying on a task he began and recommended by his example. But it is beyond my power to set out the words of this great man with a force and eloquence like his. And so I have to fear that, through my fault, the man he rightly praises as a teacher of the church second only to the apostles in both knowledge and wisdom may be thought to rank far lower, because of my poverty of language. [b]

When I thought about this, I was inclined to keep silent, and not to give in to the brothers who were constantly pleading with me to make the translation. But your influence is such, my most faithful brother Macarius, that even the awareness of my unfitness is not enough to make me resist. So I have given in to your persistence, though it was against my resolve, so as to be no longer exposed to the demands of a severe taskmaster. But I have done so on this condition and this understanding: that in making the translation I should follow, as far as possible, the method of those who went before me, and especially of the man I have already mentioned. After translating into Latin more than seventy of Origen’s books, which he called Homilies, and also a number of his “Tomes,” he went on in his translation to purge and pare away all the causes of stumbling found in the Greek works; and he did this in such a way that the Latin reader will find nothing in them that jars with our faith. So I follow in his steps, not indeed with the power of eloquence that is his, but, as far as I can, in his rules and method. That is, I take care not to publish the things found in Origen’s books that are at odds with each other and contradict each other.

I have set out the cause of these differences very fully for your information in the Apology that Pamphilus wrote for Origen’s books, to which I have added a very short treatise showing, by proofs that seem to me quite clear, that his books have in very many cases been falsified by heretical and ill-disposed people. This is especially true of the books you now require me to translate, the Peri Archon, which may be rendered either On First Principles or On Principalities. These books are in truth, quite apart from these questions, extremely obscure and difficult; for in them he discusses matters over which the philosophers have spent their whole lives without any result. But our Christian thinker has done all in his power to turn to the purposes of sound religion the belief in a Creator and in the order of the created world, which the philosophers had made serve their false religion. So wherever I have found in his books anything contrary to the truth about the Trinity, of which he has spoken elsewhere in a strictly orthodox sense, I have either left it out as foreign and not genuine, or set it down in terms agreeing with the rule of faith which we find him constantly affirming. There are things, no doubt, that he has developed in somewhat obscure language, wanting to pass over them quickly, since he was addressing people with experience and knowledge of such matters. In these cases I have made the passage plain by adding words I had read in other books of his where the matter was treated more fully. I have done this for the sake of clarity, but I have put in nothing of my own; I have only given him back his own words, though taken from other passages.

I have explained this in the preface, so that those who slander us should not think they had found fresh material here for their charges. But let them look to what they are doing in their perversity and contentiousness. As for me, I have not undertaken this laborious task, in which I trust God will be my helper in answer to your prayers, in order to shut the mouths of slanderers, but to supply material for the growth of real knowledge to those who wanted it. This only I require of everyone who undertakes to copy out these books or to read them. I charge him in the sight of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and I adjure him by our faith in the coming kingdom, by the certainty of the resurrection of the dead, and by the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels, as he hopes not to receive as his eternal inheritance that place where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, and where their fire will not be quenched and their worm will not die. He is to add nothing and take nothing away, insert nothing and change nothing, in what is written. He is to compare his copy with the one it was copied from and correct it carefully, letter for letter. And he is not to keep by him a copy that has not been corrected and checked, so that, if his copy is not clear, the difficulty of the meaning does not breed still greater obscurity in the readers’ minds.