Preserving Scriptural Harmony

Only one allusion to the phrase “the faith once delivered to the saints” (Jude 3) survives from the early church, in Book 10 of Origen’s Commentary on John. This article establishes that Origen is offering a close paraphrase of this saying, and suggests that it appears as a slogan, possibly reflecting use by other Christians, in favour of overriding the implications of the spiritual reading of John 2.20–22. It shows how Origen’s interpretative procedures – distinguishing literal and spiritual senses, and invoking the key principle of Scripture’s internal harmony – interact and combine to resist this deployment of Jude 3. Although this requires Origen to admit some kind of “change of good things once given to the saints”, it constitutes an application and further elucidation of his careful exegetical method which, ultimately, “preserves the harmony of the narrative of the Scriptures”.