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Origen on government and church
citizens
"Christians are benefactors of
their country more than others. For they train up citizens, and
inculcate piety to the Supreme Being; and worth, to a divine and
heavenly city, to whom it may be said, 'Thou hast been
faithful in the smallest city, come into a great one [Luke 19:17],
where 'God standeth in the assembly of the gods, and judgeth the
gods in the midst,' and He reckons there among them, if thou no more
'die as a man, or fall as one of the princes' [Ps 82:1, 7].
"Celsus also urges us to 'take office in the
government of the country, if that is required for the maintenance
of the laws and the support of religion.' But we recognize in each
state the existence of another national organization founded by the
Word of God, and we exhort those who are ambitious of ruling
we reject; but we constrain those who, through excess of modesty,
are not easily induced to take a public charge in the Church of God.
And those who rule over us well are under the constraining influence
of the great King, who we believe to be the Son of God, God the
Word.
"And if those who govern in the Church, and
are called rulers of the divine nation - that is, the Church - rule
well, they rule in accordance with the divine commands, and never
suffer themselves to be led astray by worldly policy. And it is not
the purpose of escaping public duties that Christians decline public
offices, but that they may reserve themselves for a diviner and more
necessary service in the Church of God - for the salvation of men.
And this service is at once necessary and right. They take charge of
all - of those that are within, that they may day by day lead better
lives, and of those that are without, that they may come to abound
in holy words and in deeds of piety; and that while thus worshipping
God truly, and training up as many as they can in the same way, they
may be filled with the word of God and the law of God, and thus be
united with the Supreme God through His Son the Word, Wisdom, Truth,
and Righteousness, who unties in God all who are resolved to conform
their lives in all things to the law of God." (chapter 74-75)
Origen: Against Celsus in The
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Scribners, 1926, pp. 667-68.
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