Breakfast with Jesus: Origen’s three levels of reading Scripture

Well we have finally reached the end of our long, long journey on the Camino (though we are adding an epilogue of four days walking to the sea - Fisterra by the Atlantic). 779kms and 36 days of walking across all kinds of terrain, weather and meeting lots of people on different kinds of journey. It was actually quite emotional to walk into the huge square of Santiago and give each other a hug and shed a few tears of joy - and relief!

Anne begins this chat with her reflections on this momentous journey - and what it meant to her. One of the rich experiences was our epic (theological) conversations that would be sparked by a comment and then move into a long and winding road of inquiry and discussion… and became generative. That is what ‘conversation’ does - people think together. And as far as I can tell, this is a Spirit guided and authenticated human experience - discussion and sharing. Unfortunately in all levels of society, ‘conversation’ is neglected and its artistry is little understood or practised. I can remember one of my dear clients, a key leader at one of the biggest banks in the world, lamenting the executive team NEVER had ‘conversations’ about critical policy decisions, but instead defaulted to premature decisions and bureaucracy.

And frankly the church is not much better. The heart of most evangelical services is the ‘sermon’ which is didactic lecturing NOT conversation - and there are precious few opportunities for real conversations. (Watch out for Leisa Aitken’s upcoming Gospel Conversations talk on this topic).

Anyway, at its best marriage offers the context for great conversations - and this chat is one example. It began with us talking about how to read and interpret the Bible - a topic that Mark and Ben have given a couple of great talks on recently for GC. Our chat began with me sharing with Anne the great Substack post where Brad Jersak recently explained Origen’s ‘three levels’ of Scripture reading. (Have a read of Brad’s post on “Spiritualising the Biblical text”).

We absorbed this - and Anne shared how pedantic readings harmed her as a young Christian - and how helpful it would have been to have Origen’s system back then. And we then went on to a ‘yes but…’ comment where Anne said that Origen’s system missed one important aspect. This in turn got me thinking about how we need to adapt and develop Origen’s system to accommodate the ‘New Testament’ - since for Origen the ‘Scriptures’ means the Old Testament. And so the conversation spiralled and grew…. we are glad to share it with you all.

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