THE ANGEL OF GREAT COUNSEL: CHRIST AND THE ANGELIC HIERARCHY IN ORIGEN'S THEOLOGY

Abstract

A student of Origen, traditionally identified as Gregory Thaumat urgus, the apostle to Pontus, presumably expected this allusion in his panegyric of his teacher to be understood and appreciated. Its source may come as a surprise. 'Angel of Great Counsel' is from Isa., 9: 6 (9: 5 in Rahlfs and Kittel), a Messianic text familiar to us from Handel's chorus, 'For unto us a Child is Born'. There the Septuagint apparently translates the Hebrew פלא יועץ , literally 'wonder of a counsellor' as Μeγάλης βουλής άγγeλος, 'angel', or 'messenger', 'of great counsel'. 'Angel of Great Counsel' thus became an accepted title for Christ. As we shall see, Origen's student reflected his master's use of the title in two significant ways: (a) it presents Christ in the context of a hierarchy of angels, who share with him the ministry of guarding souls, even if he is not, strictly speaking, an 'angel among the others'; (b) it refers to Christ in his role as a the mediator of a privileged knowledge of God to a select few, even though he is the Saviour of all. Origen probably has Christ as his guardian angel 'because of his perfec tion'; by implication those less perfect must be content with less exalted guardians. Speaking of Christ as an angel, while incongru ous by the standards of the later Christian tradition, did not seem so to Origen and his contemporaries. He evidently saw no contra diction between a traditional angelic terminology and the descrip tion of the Son as a divine hypostasis. Origen's teaching on the relationship between Christ and the angels may seem anything but neglected. One of the charges in Justinian's Letter to Menas, accepted as a ground for Origen's condemnation by the Second Council of Constantinople in 553, is 'That after the Son in speaking of the Holy Spirit also he reckons them among the other created beings [κτίσμασι]. Thus he even calls them worshipping creatures [λeιτουργικά ζφα]'.2 There fol lows, as evidence, a citation from On First Principles 1. iii. 5: