Thomas McGlothlin - Resurrection and Spiritual Interpretation: A Functional Approach to Resurrection in Origen

Origen’s understanding of the resurrection has been one of the most controversial aspects of his thought, and scholars such as Henri Crouzel have focused on adjudicating the merit of the accusations leveled against his views by his critics, both ancient and modern. Although this line of research has cleared away some misunderstandings, it remains an approach shaped by his opponents’ questions and concerns. Instead of starting from the points of contention—resurrection’s nature and mechanism—this presentation will ask about its function in Origen, specifically focusing on how Origen uses resurrection to argue for the necessity of the spiritual interpretation of Scripture. Commenting on Jesus’ rebuke of the Sadducees for knowing neither the Scriptures nor the power of God, Origen claims that a promise of the resurrection is nowhere to be found in the Old Testament. This is a surprising claim, because other early Christians routinely appealed to several passages as prophetic proof of the resurrection—most notably Isaiah 26.19, Ezekiel 37.1-14, and Daniel 12.2. When Origen does cite these passages elsewhere, however, he never uses them as proof of the resurrection and sometimes argues against such literal interpretations of them. With respect to Jesus’ claim, Origen rejects suggestions that Jesus misspoke, Matthew misrecorded Jesus’ words, or the resurrection is to be found in “hidden” books, instead arguing that resurrection is found in the Old Testament only when interpreted spiritually. Similarly, Origen argues that an important function of Jesus’ Easter resurrection is to confirm his identity as the Son of God to his Jewish disciples so that he can teach them how to interpret the Scriptures spiritually without driving them away in shock. This presentation will conclude by assessing the significance of this link between resurrection and spiritual interpretation in the light of Origen’s controversial rejection of overly “crass” understandings of the resurrection—understandings that he ascribes to overly literal readings of Scriptural promises.