Annotatio CLX

”He hath set his tabernacle in the sun.” — Psalm 18:5

Origen is accused by Serapion, Bishop of Thmuis (writing against the Manichees),¹ [on the ground] that in the allegorical elucidation of this little verse he taught that Christ, when he ascended into heaven, left his body in the globe of the Sun, but thence carried up his soul alone with himself above all the heavens to the right hand of the Father; and hence [Serapion] says that the Manichees were persuaded to adore the Sun as the tabernacle and perpetual domicile of the body of Christ.² Augustine, in book 20 against Faustus — no mention being made of the Origenic name — reports that the Manichees, from this psalm-testimony wrongly understood, fell into the adoration of the Sun. Whence it can easily be believed that Origen’s commentaries were in this passage falsified by the heretics — and this especially because Pamphilus the martyr, in the Apology, demonstrates that this opinion was, by set purpose, attacked by Origen, in this very explanation of the present psalm and verse, in these words plainly taken from Origen’s own commentary: “What is it that David said, ‘He hath set his tabernacle in the sun’? Some indeed were saying that our Savior, ascending from the earth to heaven and assuming his body, came up as far as that circle which is called the Zone of the Sun; and there, they say, he set the tabernacle of his body — for it was not possible to advance beyond. But they think these things thus because they will not receive allegory in the divine Scripture; and therefore, describing [it] as pure history, they compose fables and figments of this kind. But we pray the omnipotence of God, that he may deign to hear us, and to open to us the secret things of spiritual understanding. What, therefore, is understood by us in this passage is this: ‘In the sun he hath set his tabernacle.’ I ask, what is the tabernacle of Christ, and what is the habitation in which the tabernacle of Christ is placed? The habitation of the tabernacle is said to be the Sun. But the tabernacle of Christ I understand [to be] the Church. And the Sun — whom else must I understand, unless that true light which enlightens every man coming into this world?³ I see the Sun himself, of whom it is said, ‘To you that fear my name the Sun of justice shall arise.’⁴ Therefore ‘in the sun he hath set his tabernacle’ — that is, ‘In the Sun of justice he hath placed his Church.’”