Annotatio CXVII

”They shall pour the blood round about the altar, which is before the door of the tabernacle.” — Leviticus 1:5

Origen, in the first homily on Leviticus, narrating this passage, indicates that Christ suffered not only for the sins of men, but also of the Angels,¹ writing in this manner: “The blood of Jesus was poured out not only in Jerusalem, where the altar was, but also upon that altar which is in the heavens, where is the Church of the firstborn; there the same blood was sprinkled — just as the Apostle also says, ‘Making peace through the blood of his cross, whether the things that are on earth, or the things that are in heaven.’² For Jesus was offered as a victim not only for earthly [beings], but also for heavenly ones: and here, indeed, for men, he shed the very corporeal matter of his blood; but in the heavens he immolated the vital power of his body, as a certain spiritual sacrifice. Do you wish to know that there was in him a double victim — suitable for earthly [beings], and apt for heavenly ones? The Apostle, writing to the Hebrews, says ‘through the veil, that is, his flesh’;³ and again, the inner veil is interpreted [as] heaven, which Jesus penetrated, that he might now stand before the face of God for us. If, therefore, two veils are understood, which Jesus — as a high priest — entered, consequently a double sacrifice too must be understood, by which both earthly and heavenly things are reconciled.” To the same opinion he alludes in homily 2 on Leviticus, where, explaining that [passage] from Leviticus chapter 4, “The high priest shall offer a calf for his own sin,”⁴ he says thus: “See, therefore, lest perhaps Jesus — whom Paul says to have made peace through his blood, not only [for] the things which are on earth, but [for] those which are in heaven — be himself that calf, which in the heavens was offered not for sin, but as a gift; but on earth, where sin reigned from Adam to Moses, he suffered for sin.” This same thing he expresses more openly in the first Tome of the commentaries on John, saying thus: “Our great high priest offered himself as a victim — a victim not for men alone, but also for every [being] which is participant of reason. For, except God, he tasted death for all: not only for men, but also for the rest which use reason did he endure death. For it is absurd to say that he died for human sins, and not for some other [being] besides man which was in sin — as, for instance, for the stars, since not even the stars are wholly clean before God, as we read in Job.”⁵ He has a similar assertion also in the first book of the commentary on the Epistle to the Ephesians, where, explaining that [saying] from the first chapter of the same epistle, “He subjected all things under his feet,” he speaks thus: “In that he says ‘all things,’ he seems to raise a question. For as to that which is said, ‘He must reign until he put [his] enemies under his feet,’ you do not greatly seek an interpreter: because those things which are hostile, when they have been overcome, will be subjected under his feet, and will come into the power of the victor. But how all things — that is, angels, thrones, dominations, powers, and the other virtues, which were never contrary to God — will be subjected to his feet, seems obscure. It can therefore be answered that no one is without sin, and that the stars themselves are not clean before God, and that every creature dreads the coming of the Creator; whence also the cross of the Savior is reported to have purged not only those things which were on earth, but also those which were in heaven.” Rufinus, in the first book of the Invectives, imputes this very dogma to Jerome — by a conjecture plainly invalid — because he [Jerome], in the commentaries on the Epistle to the Ephesians, inserted Origen’s aforesaid words, without the author’s name, into his own explanation, no confutation of them being added. See Annotations 170 and 292 of the following book.