I recently read the church father Origen's "Treatise on the
Passover", as it is translated and annotated by Robert J. Daly, S.J. In
this post, I'll be drawing from Daly's comments and some of what Origen
says in his treatise to discuss Origen's rejection of the idea that the
Passover was a type of Jesus Christ's passion.
Origen didn't
believe that the Passover was a type of Jesus Christ's passion? That's
somewhat unusual for a Christian, isn't it?
Maybe, but Daly says
that, in Origen's mind, there were differences between the Passover and
the passion of the Christ. First of all, the Passover lamb was offered
by people who were holy, whereas Jesus Christ was killed by criminals
and the sinful. Second, according to Origen, the roasting of the lamb
is fulfilled in the Christian life, not in Christ's passion. Daly
states that, for Origen, "the Christians, who have the true
circumcision, eat the flesh (=Word of God), which is now possible
because it has been roasted with the fire of the Holy Spirit" (pages
98-99). Origen contrasts these true Christians with the Jews, who
symbolically "eat the flesh raw, following only the letter of
Scripture", and heretics, who symbolically cook the flesh with water
rather than roasting it in that they "mix strange doctrine with the
Scripture" (Daly's words on pages 98-99). For Origen, the roasted lamb
relates to how Christians partake of the Word of God, not Christ's
passion. And, third, Origen believed that Jesus regarded the serpent
lifted up in Numbers 21, not the Passover, as the type of his passion.
Origen also takes care to clarify that the pascha (Greek for Passover) does not have its name because it relates to Christ's pathos, or suffering. Rather, according to Origen, the feast in Hebrew is called fas,
which has the meaning of "passage." I like what Origen says on page
27: "And should one of us in conversation with Hebrew people too rashly
mention that the passover takes its name from the suffering of the
Savior, he would be ridiculed by them as one totally ignorant of the
meaning of the word." A know-it-all Christian being taken to school by a
Jew who tells him that he doesn't know what he's talking about. I love
it!
So the Passover means a passage. How does that relate to
Origen's understanding of the festival? On page 101, Daly says that
Origen's spiritual interpretation of the Passover is that Christ passed
over to his Father (presumably after his resurrection), and that souls
are saved through Christ (which may mean that they pass into a state of
salvation).
I'm hesitant to say, however, that the sacrifice of Christ has nothing
to do with Origen's interpretation of the Passover festival, for Origen
mentions it in his treatise, and he appeals to I Corinthians 5:7, which
affirms that "Christ, our paschal lamb, has been sacrificed" (page
28). Origen may be against limiting the Passover to the
passion, as Daly says on page 87: "His apparent concern [is] to
counteract an excessively narrow interpretation of the passover in terms
of the passion..."