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On Prayer

Origen, tr. Oulton, 1954

“And bring us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.” But the words “But …

BRING US NOT INTO TEMPTATION
(Chapter XXIX)

“And bring us not into temptation,¹ but deliver us from the evil one.”² But the words “But deliver us from the evil one” are not found in Luke.³ It is, I think, a question that deserves discussion (unless the Saviour commands us to pray for the impossible), how we can be bidden, when the whole of men’s “life on earth is a temptation,”⁴⁵ to pray that we enter “not into temptation.” For inasmuch as we are on earth “compassed about with”⁶ “the flesh”⁷ “that warreth”⁸ “against the Spirit,”⁷ “the mind” of which “is enmity against God,” and “cannot” in any wise “be subject to the law of God,”⁹ we are “in temptation.”

That the whole of human “life upon earth” is “a temptation” we learn from Job, as follows: “Is not the life of men upon earth a temptation?”⁴; and from the seventeenth Psalm the same thing is indicated in the words: “In thee I shall be delivered from temptation.”¹⁰¹¹ And Paul also writing to the Corinthians says that God grants, not that they should not be tempted but, that they should “not be tempted” beyond their power, saying, “There hath no temptation taken you but such as man can bear: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation make also the way of escape that ye may be able to endure it.”¹² For whether “the wrestling”¹³ is with “the flesh” that “lusteth”⁷ and “warreth”⁸ “against the Spirit,”⁷ or with “the soul of all flesh”¹⁴¹⁵ (which is synonymous with the guiding principle,¹⁶ called the heart, which dwells in the body)—of whatever kind “the wrestling”¹⁷ is for those who are “tempted” with “temptations such as man can bear”¹⁸; or whether the contests we undergo are “against the principalities” and “the powers” and “the world-rulers of this darkness” and “the spiritual hosts of wickedness” and we are as mightily striding and perfectly trained athletes, no longer “wrestling against flesh and blood,”¹⁷ nor proved by “temptations such as man can bear”¹⁸ (for these are already “trodden under foot”)¹⁹: in either case we have not been delivered from temptation.

How then does the Saviour bid us pray not to enter “into temptation,”²⁰ when in some sense God tempts all? For “remember,” says Judith,²¹ not only to the elders of that day but also to all those who read her book, “all the things which he did to Abraham, and all the things in which he tempted²² Isaac, and all the things which happened to Jacob in Mesopotamia of Syria, when he kept the sheep of Laban his mother’s brother. For the Lord, who scourgeth them who come near unto him to admonish them, doth not take vengeance on us as he tried them in the fire, to search out their hearts.”²³ And David also shows in a general way concerning all righteous persons when he says, “Many are the tribulations of the righteous”²⁴; and the apostle in the Acts, “Through many tribulations we must enter into the kingdom of God.”²⁵

And if we do not understand a point which escapes many people in connection with praying not to enter “into temptation,” now is the time to say that the apostles frequently failed to be heard when they prayed: for they suffered countless trials in their life-time, “in labours more abundantly, in stripes more abundantly, in prisons above measure,²⁶²⁷ in deaths oft”; and Paul on his own account “of the Jews five times received forty stripes save one, thrice was” he “beaten with rods, once was” he “stoned, thrice” he “suffered shipwreck, a night and a day was” he “in the deep,”²⁸ a man “pressed on every side” and “perplexed” and “pursued” and “smitten down”²⁹; and he confesses that “even unto this present hour we both hunger, and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwelling-place; and we toil, working with our own hands: being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we endure; being defamed, we intreat.”³⁰ Now if the apostles in praying have failed to be heard, what hope is there for anyone inferior to them of gaining the ear of God to his prayer?

The words in the twenty-fifth Psalm, “Examine me, O Lord, and prove³¹ me; try as by fire my reins and my heart,”³² might reasonably be supposed by some one who did not grasp accurately the meaning of the Saviour’s command to be opposed to what our Lord taught concerning prayer. But when did anyone think that he was outside the range of “temptations such as man can bear,”³³³⁴ in the knowledge that the sum total of them had been completed? What season is there, during which anyone light-heartedly thinks that he has not to struggle to avoid future sin? Is anyone “needy”? Let him take care lest he “steal” and “use profanely the name of the Lord.”³⁵ Is he, on the other hand, rich? Let him not presume. For “when” he “is full,” he may “become a liar,” and being lifted up “say, Who seeth me?”³⁶ And certainly Paul, “rich in all utterance and all knowledge,”³⁷ was not delivered from the danger of sinning, through being on that account “exalted overmuch,” but he needed “a thorn of Satan buffeting” him, “that” he “should not be exalted overmuch.”³⁸ And should anyone be conscious of his own superiority and eagerly expect freedom from ills,³⁹⁴⁰ let him read what is stated in the Second Book of Chronicles concerning “Hezekiah,” who is said to have fallen from “the pride of his heart.”⁴¹

But if, since we have not said more about the poor man, anyone should presume that there is no temptation attached to poverty, let him know that the plotter plots “to cast down the poor and the needy”⁴²; and especially since, as Solomon says, “the poor man submitteth not to threatening.”⁴³ What need is there to speak of those who because of material riches, which they have failed to administer well, have received the place of punishment allotted to the “rich man” in the Gospel,⁴⁴ and of those who bear their penury ignobly and live in a lower and more servile fashion than is “becoming” for “saints,”⁴⁵ and so have fallen from the heavenly “hope”?⁴⁶ Neither are they who are between these on either side, riches and poverty, entirely freed from sinning because of their moderate possessions.

But a man healthy in body and in good condition supposes that he is beyond all temptation because of this very health and good condition. To whom else attaches the sin of “destroying the temple of God,”⁴⁷ except it be to those who are in good condition and healthy? No one will dare to say what may be said on this topic because the matter is evident to all. Has a sick man, then, escaped the incitements to “destroy the temple of God,”⁴⁸ seeing that he has at that time full opportunity for receiving impure thoughts? What need is there also to speak of the other things that trouble him, unless “with all watchfulness” he “keep the heart”?⁴⁹ For many, when they are overcome by misfortunes and do not know how to bear sicknesses bravely, have as a result of their sickness suffered damage in the soul rather than in the body. And many also in fleeing ignominy have been ashamed to bear nobly the name of Christ, and so have fallen into eternal shame.

A man thinks that he may safely rest free from temptation when he has been glorified among men. But how can the saying, “They have received their reward” from “men,”⁵⁰ be anything but a hard one, spoken as it was to those lifted up by the glory bestowed upon them by the multitude as for some good thing? And how can they fail to be censured by the words: “How can ye believe, which receive glory one of another, and the glory that cometh from the only God ye seek not?”?⁵¹ And what need is there for me to recount the falls through pride of those reckoned highborn, and the fawning submission, due to lack of savoir-faire, towards their supposed superiors on the part of those who are accounted lowborn—a submission which separates from God those who lacking genuine friendship lay pretence to the most beautiful thing to be found among men, namely, charity?

“The” whole “life,” therefore, “of man upon earth is temptation,”⁵² as we have said before.⁵³ Accordingly let us pray to be “delivered”⁵⁴ from temptation, not in the sense of not being tempted (for that is impossible, especially for those “on earth”⁵⁵) but in the sense of not being overcome when we are tempted.⁵⁶ In my opinion, he who is overcome in being tempted “enters into temptation,”⁵⁷ being held fast in its meshes. These meshes, because of those who were caught in them aforetime, the Saviour entered: “Glancing through the meshes,”⁵⁸ as it is said in the Song of Songs, “he replies” to those who were caught by them aforetime and who “entered into temptation,” and “he says” to her who is his bride: “Rise up, come, my near one, my fair one, my dove.”⁵⁹ And I will add the following to show that every time is a time of temptation for men: not even he who “meditates” on “the law” of God “day and night”⁶⁰ and exercises himself to fulfil the saying “the mouth of the righteous will meditate wisdom,”⁶¹⁶² is delivered from being tempted.

What need is there also to speak of those who though giving themselves up to the study of the divine Scriptures have misinterpreted the statements of the Law and the Prophets and have given themselves up to godless and impious, or else to stupid and ridiculous, doctrines; for it would seem that very many who cannot rightly be charged with neglect of these writings have nevertheless fallen into this kind of error? And the same thing has happened to many in the case also of the apostolic and evangelical writings, when in their own folly they invent a Son or a Father⁶³ other than him whom the saints speak of as God and conceive of in accordance with the truth. For he who fails to think truly concerning God or his Christ has fallen away from “the true God”⁶⁴ and his only begotten.⁶⁵ But him whom his folly has invented, supposing him to be Father and Son, he does not truly worship. This happens to him because he has failed to recognize the “temptation” that lurks in reading the holy [Scriptures], neither has he armed himself for a contest which was at that very time upon him, nor stood firm.

We ought therefore to pray, not that we may not be tempted (for that cannot be), but that we may not be encompassed by temptation, a thing that happens to those who are held fast by it and overcome. Since, then, outside the prayer it is written “not to enter into temptation”⁶⁶ (the meaning of which is clear enough from what has been said),⁶⁷ but in the prayer we are to pray to God the Father “bring us not into temptation”⁶⁸: it is worth while to see how we may conceive of God leading “into temptation” him who did not pray or him whose prayer was not heard. For inasmuch as he who is conquered “enters into temptation,” it is incongruous to think that God leads anyone “into temptation,” in the sense of giving him up to be conquered. And the same incongruity remains however we interpret the words: “pray not to enter into temptation.” For if it is an evil to fall “into temptation”—a thing we pray that we may not suffer—it must needs be absurd to think that the good God, who “cannot bring forth evil fruit,”⁶⁹ encompasses anyone with evil.

In this connection, then, it is useful to quote what is said by Paul in the [Epistle] to the Romans, as follows: “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness of an image of corruptible man, and of birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. Wherefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts unto uncleanness, that their bodies should be dishonoured among themselves.”⁷⁰ And a little further on: “For this cause God gave them up unto vile passions: for their women changed the natural use into that which is against nature: and likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned,”⁷¹ and so forth. And again, a little further on: “And even as they refused to have God in their knowledge, God gave them up unto a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not fitting.”⁷² All these things, however, must be put to those who divide the Godhead,⁷³ and it must be said to them, since they suppose that the good Father of our Lord is other than the God of the Law: if the good God leads “into temptation” him whose prayer is not answered, and if the Father of the Lord gives up “in the lusts of their hearts” those who had previously sinned “unto uncleanness, that their bodies should be dishonoured among themselves,” and if, as they say, having done with judgment and punishment, he “gives them up unto vile passions” and “unto a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not fitting,” would not those who were not “given up” to them by “God” have been “in the lusts of their hearts,” and would not those who were not “given up” to them by “God” have fallen “into vile passions,” and would not those who came under this condemnation fall “into a reprobate mind” apart from being “given up” unto it by “God”?⁷⁴

I know well that these observations will trouble the persons in question exceedingly,⁷⁵ in that they have imagined a God other than the creator of heaven and earth because they find many such things in the Law and the Prophets and have taken offence against him as not good⁷⁶ who utters such sentiments. Confronted, however, with the difficulties arising out of the words: “Bring us not into temptation,” because of which we quoted the text from the apostle, let us now consider if we can find an adequate solution of these contradictions.⁷⁷ I verily believe that God orders every rational soul with a view to its eternal life, and that it always maintains its free will, and of its own motion either mounts ever higher and higher until it reaches the pinnacle of virtue, or on the contrary descends through carelessness to this or that excess of wickedness. When a rapid and brief cure⁷⁸ causes some to regard lightly, as easily cured, the diseases into which they have fallen, so that after being restored to health they fall the second time into the same condition: in such cases God will with good reason disregard their increasing wickedness to a certain point, and even overlook it when it has developed in them to such an extent as to be incurable, in order that continuance in the evil may cause them to take their fill and be glutted with the sin they desire: thus they may become conscious of their harmful condition and hate what they formerly welcomed, and so when they are healed they can possess more securely the health that comes to their souls by being healed. So it was once upon a time with “the mixed multitude that was among” the children of Israel. They “fell a lusting, and the children of Israel also sat down and said, Who shall give us flesh to eat? We remember the fish that we did eat in Egypt for nought, and the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic: but now our soul is dried away; we have nought save this manna to look to.”⁷⁹ Then a little further on it is said: “And Moses heard them weeping throughout their families, every man at his door.”⁸⁰ And again a little further on the Lord says to Moses: “And thou shalt say unto this people, Sanctify yourselves against tomorrow, and ye shall eat flesh. Ye shall not eat one day, nor two days, nor five days, nor ten days, nor twenty days; for a month of days ye shall eat, until it come out at your nostrils; and it be loathsome unto you; because that ye have rejected the Lord which is among you, and have wept before him, saying, Why came we forth out of Egypt?”⁸¹

Let us therefore look at this account, to see if it serves you with a useful parallel in resolving the difficulty that lies in the words “Bring us not into temptation” and in the texts from the apostle. “The mixed multitude that was among” the children of Israel, having “fallen a lusting, wept, and the children of Israel”⁸² with them. And it is clear that so long as they had not the things that they desired, they could not be satiated with them nor cease from their evil state. But the kind and good God, in giving them that which they desired, did not wish so to give it as to leave in them desire. Therefore it says that they did not eat the “flesh one day”⁸³ (for their evil state would have remained in a soul inflamed and set on fire by the meat, if they had partaken of it for only a little while): indeed he did not give them that which they desired for “two days” alone. But in his wish to satiate them with it, he does not give a promise, as it were, but rather threatened with his intended gifts him who is able to understand, saying, Ye shall spend “not five days” only eating “the flesh,” not even twice that number, nor even twice that number again, but “ye shall eat” for so long a time, eating meat for a whole month, until that which ye deemed good, and your blameworthy and shameful desire concerning it, “come out at your nostrils” with a “loathsome” effect.⁸⁴ And [this I will do] that ye may have desire no longer when I rid you of life, and thus coming forth, as men purified from desire and remembering through what afflictions you were freed from it, you may be able either to fall into it no more, or else, if this should at any time come to pass, only after a long lapse of time, when you have forgotten what you suffered because of your desire: in which case, if you do not take heed to yourselves and receive the word that rids you perfectly of every kind of mishap, and so fall into evil, and afterwards desire earthly things⁸⁵ and again ask to receive for the second time your desires, you may then, having come to hate⁸⁶ that which you did desire, be able to retrace the path towards beauty and that heavenly food, which you once despised when you yearned after evil things.

Like sufferings will befall those who having “changed the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness of an image of corruptible man, and of birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things,” are “given up,” through abandoning him, “in the lusts of their hearts unto uncleanness, that their bodies should be dishonoured.”⁸⁷ By giving it to a lifeless and senseless body they have degraded the name of him who has bestowed upon all sensible and rational creatures not only the power of sense but also that of reasonable sense, and, in the case of some also, of perfect and virtuous sense and perception. And with good reason such persons are given up by the God they have abandoned, being in turn abandoned by him, “unto vile passions, receiving that recompense of error which was due,” in the itch of the pleasure they loved.⁸⁸ For “that recompense of error which is” their “due” falls to their lot when they are “given up unto vile passions” rather than when they are purged with the wise fire⁸⁹⁹⁰ or made to pay in “prison” every debt up to “the last farthing.”⁹¹ For when they are “given up” to “vile passions,” not only those according to nature but also many of those that are “against nature,” they are defiled and made gross by the flesh, so that we might say they no longer possess a soul or mind, but become altogether flesh. But in the fire and the “prison” they do not receive “the recompense of error,”⁹² but rather a benefaction⁹³ to cleanse them from the evils committed in their “error,” together with salutary sufferings that follow lovers of pleasure: thus they are delivered from all the filth and blood with which they had been so filthied and defiled that they could not even think about being saved from their own perdition. For God “shall wash away the filth of the sons and the daughters of Sion, and shall purge the blood from the midst of them, by the spirit of judgment and the spirit of burning.”⁹⁴ For “he goes forth as the fire of a foundry and as the lye of fullers,”⁹⁵ washing and cleansing them who are in need of such healing remedies, because they did not will determinedly “to have God in their knowledge.” When they are willingly given over to these remedies they will hate their “reprobate mind.”⁹⁶ For God does not wish⁹⁷ that good should come to anyone as of necessity, but of free will. Perhaps there are some who from their long association with evil will come to perceive its ugliness with difficulty, and turn away from it as from something that has falsely been supposed to be beautiful.

It is to be noted if it was for this reason that God “hardens the heart of Pharaoh,”⁹⁸⁹⁹ that he might be able to say what he said when he was not hardened: “the Lord is righteous, and I and my people are wicked.”¹⁰⁰ But he needed to be hardened still further and still further to suffer certain things, in order that too rapid a cessation of the hardening should not cause him to despise the hardening as an evil, and should not render him many times more worthy to be hardened. If, then, “not unjustly are the nets spread for birds,”¹⁰¹¹⁰² as is said in Proverbs, but if on the contrary with good reason God “brings into the snare,” according to him who said, “Thou broughtest us into the snare,”¹⁰³ and if “without” the will of “the Father” not even the cheapest of winged creatures, the “sparrow,”¹⁰⁴ falls “into the snare”¹⁰⁵ (for when it falls “into the snare” it does so for this reason that it did not make good use of the power given by its wings to fly aloft), let us pray that we may never do anything worthy of being “brought into temptation” by the just judgment of God: for everyone is so brought who is “given up unto vile passions,” and everyone who, “inasmuch as he refused to have God in himself,” is “given up unto a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not fitting.”¹⁰⁶

The use of temptation is as follows. What our soul has received is unknown to all save God—is unknown even to ourselves; but it is manifested by means of temptations: so that it may be no longer unknown what kind of persons we are, but rather that we should also know ourselves and be aware, if we will, of our own faults and give thanks for the good results manifested to us of temptations. That temptations, when they come, come to make it plain to us of what sort we are, or to “make known” the hidden things “in” our “heart,”¹⁰⁷ is established by the saying of the Lord in Job and what is written in Deuteronomy, as follows: “Dost thou think that I have answered thee save that thou mayest appear righteous?”¹⁰⁸ and in Deuteronomy thus, “He humbled thee and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna,” and led thee in “the wilderness, wherein were biting serpent and scorpion and thirst,” in order that “the things in thy heart might be made known.”¹⁰⁹

And if we wish also to have reminders from history, we should know that the mind of Eve did not become easily persuaded and feeble when she disobeyed God and listened to the serpent: but rather it was proved to be so beforehand, the serpent approaching her for this very reason, that his own insight perceived her weakness.¹¹⁰ Neither did wickedness first arise in Cain when “he slew”¹¹¹ his brother (for even before that “God which knoweth the heart”¹¹² “had not respect unto Cain and to his sacrifices”¹¹³); but his badness came to light when he killed Abel. Again, had not “Noah drunk of the wine” which he had tilled and “become drunken” and had he not “been uncovered,” neither, on the one hand, would the hastiness of action of Ham and his impiety towards his father, nor, on the other, the grave and respectful behaviour of his brothers to their parent, have been manifested.¹¹⁴ And the plot of Esau against Jacob seemed to have as its pretext the taking away of “the blessing”¹¹⁵; but before this his soul had the “roots” of being a “fornicator” and “profane person.”¹¹⁶ And we should not have known the splendour of Joseph’s self-control, who was prepared against the assaults of any desire, had not his mistress become enamoured of him.¹¹⁷

Therefore, in the times between successive temptations, we ought to take a firm stand against what is impending, and prepare ourselves for anything that may possibly happen, so that, whatever it may be, we shall not be proved unready, but shall be made manifest to have disciplined ourselves with the utmost care. For that which is lacking through human weakness, though we do everything within our power, “God will supply,”¹¹⁸ who “maketh all things to work together for good¹¹⁹ to them that love” him, “to them whom according to”¹²⁰ his infallible foreknowledge he has foreseen what they shall be in themselves.

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