Numbers 29 - Continuing on with this reprise of the sacrificial offerings throughout the
year:
· New Years Day--a sacred assembly, no work and the trumpet
shall be sounded. The offerings shall
consist of one bullock, one ram and seven lambs with cereal and libations; plus
the sin offering, this all in addition to the New Moon and Daily Offerings.
· The Day of Atonement--there shall be a sacred assembly and no
work. The people shall “mortify
themselves” and offer one bullock, one ram, seven lambs etc. and one goat, the
sin offering.
· The Feast of Booths—the most popular of feasts--a sacred
assembly and no work. Then for seven days celebrate a pilgrimage feast,
offering thirteen bullocks, two rams, fourteen lambs and cereal offerings plus
the one goat. On the second day twelve
bullocks, two rams, fourteen lambs and one goat shall be offered together with
cereal and libations. On the fourth day
and each day thereafter the offerings shall be the same except that the number
of bullocks shall decrease by one each day, continuing until the seventh
day. On the eighth day, there shall be a
solemn meeting and one bullock, one ram, seven lambs and one goat.
Numbers 30 - Moses continues
giving instructions especially with respect to vows and oaths. The chapter
emphasizes the sanctity of a man’s oath.
The other focus concerns the oaths of women--while a woman is in her
father’s household or married, her father or husband may by his disapproval of
any vow or oath she has made, release her from it without incurring the
displeasure of the Lord. But if a woman
is on her own, a widow or independent of her father’s household, she has
capacity to bind herself as a man may.
Origen (185-254 AD)
De Principiis (First
Principles)
Book One
3 – Many saints
“participate in the Holy Spirit,” a “sanctifying power, in which all are said
to have a share who have deserved to
be sanctified by His grace.” Origen is a proponent of seeing faith proven by “works.”
Origen
compares participation in the Holy Spirit with participation in a science,
discipline or art like medicine. Those who are part of some “art” like this
cannot be thought of as “a body” – it is more like a
“communion” in an intellectual realm that “subsists and exists in a
peculiar [unique?] manner. . .”
4 – Origen then turns to
how the Gospel uses the term “Spirit.” “We find, without any doubt, that He
[Jesus] spoke these words to the Samaritan woman, saying to her, who thought,
agreeably to the Samaritan view, that God ought to be worshipped on Mount
Gerizim, that ‘God is a Spirit.’ For the Samaritan woman, believing Him to be a
Jew, was inquiring of Him whether God ought to be worshipped in Jerusalem or on
this mountain; and her words were, ‘All our fathers worshipped on this
mountain, and ye say that in Jerusalem is the place where we ought to worship.’
To this opinion of the Samaritan woman . . . the Savior answered that he who
would follow the Lord must lay aside all preference for particular places, and
thus expressed Himself: ‘The hour is coming when neither in Jerusalem nor on
this mountain shall the true worshippers worship the Father. God is a Spirit,
and they who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.’ . . . He
called God a Spirit, that He might distinguish Him from bodies; and He named
Him the truth, to distinguish Him from a shadow or an image.”
5 – Having put to rest the
notion that God might be conceived of as some kind of “body,” he says, “God is
incomprehensible, and incapable of being measured. For whatever be the
knowledge which we are able to obtain of God, either by perception or
reflection, we must of necessity believe that He is by many degrees far better
than what we perceive Him to be.”
It
is the same as if a person’s eyes were particular sensitive to light and were
not able to even look at a small spark, were then forced to look up at the sun.
“So our understanding, when shut in by the fetters of flesh and blood, and
rendered, on account of its participation in such material substance, duller
and more obtuse, although, in comparison with our bodily nature, it is esteemed
to be far superior, yet, in its efforts to examine and behold incorporeal
things, scarcely holds the place of a spark or lamp. But among all intelligent, that is, incorporeal beings, what is so
superior to all others—so unspeakably and incalculably superior—as God, whose
nature cannot be grasped or seen by the power of any human understanding, even
the purest and brightest?”
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