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Translated by Allan Menzies.
Origen Resources OnLine & in Print
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This Part: 132 Pages
Page 43
23. Heracleon's View of This Utterance of John the Baptist, and Interpretation of the Shoe of Jesus.
But Heracleon declares the words, "There standeth one among you," to be equivalent to "He is already here, and He is in the world and in men, and He is already manifest to you all." By this He does away with the meaning which is also present in the words, that the Word had permeated the whole world. For we must say to him, When is He not present, and when is He not in the world? Does not this Gospel say, "He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not." And this is why those to whom the Logos is He "whom you know not," do not know Him: they have never gone out of the world, but the world does not know Him. But at what time did He cease to be among men? Was He not in Isaiah, when He said, [4916] "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He hath anointed me," and [4917] "I became manifest to those who sought me not." Let them say, too, if He was not in David when he said, not from himself, [4918] "But I was established by Him a king in Zion His holy hill," and the other words spoken in the Psalms in the person of Christ. And why should I go over the details of this proof, truly they are hard to be numbered, when I can show quite clearly that He was always in men? And that is enough to show Heracleon's interpretation of "There standeth in the midst of you," to be unsound, when he says it is equivalent to "He is already here, and He is in the world and in men." We are disposed to agree with him when he says that the words, "Who cometh after me," show John to be the forerunner of Christ, for he is in fact a kind of servant running before his master. The words, however, "Whose shoe-latchet I am not worthy to unloose," receive much too simple an interpretation when it is said that "in these words the Baptist confesses that he is not worthy even of the least honourable ministration to Christ." After this interpretation he adds, not without sense, "I am not worthy that for my sake He should come down from His greatness and should take flesh as His footgear, concerning which I am not able to give any explanation or description, nor to unloose the arrangement of it."
[4916] Isa. lxi. 1.
[4917] Isa. lxv. 1.
[4918] Ps. ii. 6.
Reference address : https://www.ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/fathers/origen/john-commentary-2.asp?pg=43
