Zusammenfassung / Summary
The collection of 29 homilies on the Psalms by Origen in Codex Graecus 314, discovered in 2012 by Marina Molin Pradel in the Bavarian State Library of Munich, opens with two homilies on Ps 15. The two sermons present an extended exegesis of this psalm, whose verses 9 and 10 were treated as a christological testimonium already in the Acts of the Apostles (Act 2:25-31). After identifying its ‘speaking person’ in Christ as God and man, Origen develops a manifold interpretation with a view on the salvific economy of Christ as a whole. Therefore he deals with the Logos descent into the world through the Incarnation and with the assumption of the resurrected Christ to heaven in his earthly body. The christological conception largely corresponds to the well known thought of Origen, whereby he anticipates the classic ideas of patristic christology, especially with regard to the union between God and man in Christ and the communicatio idiomatum resulting from it. On the other hand, we are able to discern some aspects which are typical of Origen: the central role played by the soul of Christ in the Logos incarnate (starting with the pre-existence and until the descent of the soul into the underworld after Jesus’s death); the dependency of the Son upon the Father with regard to his being, which seems to betray a subordinationist approach. Moreover, the ceaseless contemplation of the Father grants to the Son his existence. A further feature to be mentioned is the inclusive character of Origen’s christological doctrine, drawing several implications of soteriological, anthropological, ecclesiological and pneumatological nature. The section of the second homily devoted to comment verses 9-10 was so far known only through Rufinus’ translation of Origen’s Apology by Pamphilus.