Commentary on James

Origen of Alexandria (185–253)

If you count it all joy when you fall into various temptations, you give birth to joy, and you offer that joy in sacrifice to God.

We who do not follow our Lord with complete and perfect faith but yet have withdrawn from foreign gods dwell in a no-man's land. We are cut down by the foreign gods as deserters, but because we are unstable and unreliable, we are not defended by our Lord.

The soul gradually ascends to the heavens after the resurrection. It does not reach the highest point immediately but goes through many stages during which it is progressively enlightened by the light of Wisdom, until it arrives at the Father of lights himself.

If someone dies in his sins he has not truly believed in Christ, even if he has made a profession of faith in him, and if faith is mentioned but it lacks works, such faith is dead, as we have read in the epistle which circulates as the work of James.

You shall rejoice in the morning, that is, in the world to come, if you have gathered the fruits of righteousness by weeping and labor in this world.

Since evil forms a friendship with the world and virtue a friendship with God, virtue and evil cannot coexist.

See also

• More works by Origen of Alexandria

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