Origen's final homily on Luke, covering the Sadducees' resurrection trap-question and Jesus's saying on paying tribute to Caesar.
Homily 39 is the last of Origen's thirty-nine surviving homilies on the Gospel of Luke, preserved only in Jerome's Latin translation from the Greek. It closes out the series by treating two connected episodes from Luke's Gospel: the Sadducees' question about a woman married successively to seven brothers, and the question of paying tribute to Caesar.
Origen first identifies the Sadducees as a Jewish sect that denies bodily resurrection and the soul's survival after death. He works through their hypothetical case (a widow who marries each of seven brothers in turn) and Jesus's answer that in the resurrection people 'neither marry nor are given in marriage' but are like angels. Origen then poses his own hard question: where in scripture is that claim actually stated? He argues that people misread prophetic passages about fruitful vines, olive-shoot children, and the rebuilding of Jerusalem as literal predictions about marriage and offspring in the age to come, when in fact these are to be understood spiritually, as Paul does with the language of 'every spiritual blessing.'
The homily then turns to the coin bearing Caesar's image. Origen reads the denarius allegorically: humanity bears two images, one from God given at creation and one taken on through sin and subjection to 'the ruler of darkness.' Rendering 'the things that are Caesar's to Caesar' means casting off the earthly image so as to be able to render 'the things that are God's to God.' He closes with the parable of the minas, read as proof that God asks for what we have only so that he can return it multiplied. A closing colophon notes that these are the thirty-nine homilies of Origen on Luke, translated from Greek into Latin by Jerome.
“You are mistaken, not knowing the scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection of the dead, they take no wives and are not given as wives, but will be like angels”
— Homily on Luke 39 · read this chapter →
“Surveying both the old and the new testament in memory and mind, I do not recall any such thing being said anywhere. But if perhaps I am mistaken, let one who knows more instruct me; I gladly learn what I do not know.”
— Homily on Luke 39 · read this chapter →
“There are two images in man: one, which he received from God, made in the beginning, as it is written in Genesis, "in the image and after the likeness of God," and the other afterward, which, cast out of paradise on account of disobedience and sin, he took on: that of "the prince of this age," having been persuaded.”
— Homily on Luke 39 · read this chapter →
“God, then, asks of us and entreats us, not because he needs anything for us to give him, but so that, once we have given it to him, he may give that very thing back to us for our salvation.”
— Homily on Luke 39 · read this chapter →
It is the last of Origen's thirty-nine homilies on Luke's Gospel, covering two episodes: the Sadducees' question about a woman married to seven brothers in succession (used to test belief in resurrection), and Jesus's saying about paying tribute to Caesar. Origen explains both allegorically and spiritually rather than literally.
Origen describes the Sadducees as a Jewish sect that denies the resurrection of the dead and holds that the soul perishes with the body, leaving no sense-perception after death. They put the seven-husbands question to Jesus specifically to attack belief in an afterlife.
He takes Jesus's answer that the resurrected 'neither marry nor are given in marriage' but are 'like angels' to mean that the redeemed actually become angels. He then honestly notes he cannot find any other scriptural passage stating this directly, and invites correction if he is wrong.
He reads it allegorically: humans bear two images, the original image of God from creation and a second image acquired through sin under 'the ruler of darkness.' Rendering 'Caesar's things to Caesar' means casting off the sinful image so one can render 'God's things to God,' the image of the heavenly man.
Origen cites it to argue that God asks things of us not out of need but so he can give them back multiplied for our salvation, paralleling the servant whose one mina became ten and was returned to him with more added.
Yes. A closing note in Homily 39 states that these are the thirty-nine homilies of Origen Adamantius on the Gospel of Luke, translated from Greek into Latin by the presbyter Jerome, since the Greek originals are largely lost.
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