Annotatio CCXXII

”The Seraphim cried one to another.” — Isaiah 6:3

That Origen wrongly expounded these things in [his] commentaries, Jerome testifies, in book 3 on Isaiah, saying:¹ “Impiously does he understand the two Seraphim [to be] the Son and the Holy Spirit — whereas, according to the Evangelist John and Paul the Apostle, we are taught that the Son of God was seen reigning in majesty, and that the Holy Spirit spoke.” And in the epistle to Pammachius and Oceanus: “In the reading of Isaiah, in which the two Seraphim are described crying — Origen interpreting [them as] the Son and the Holy Spirit — I changed his detestable exposition into the two Testaments.” Although Jerome says that he changed [this], we nevertheless still read, in Origen, in the fifth homily on this passage of Isaiah, that our Lord Jesus Christ is one of the two Seraphim — which indeed one ought to understand according to the allegory, and according to the dispensation of the flesh.