Origen: The Bride as the Purified Gentile Church

Consistent with his exegetical method, Origen begins the Commentary on the Song of Songs by outlining his understanding of the literal sense of the passage (II.1).⁶

He speaks in the voice of the Bride to explicate the basic meaning: that the Bride is beautiful despite being black. At this point in the narrative, the Bride responds to the daughters of Jerusalem, who apparently have disparaged her beauty because of her dark complexion. She retorts that her black skin conceals an inner beauty, just as the black tents of Qedar and the black curtains of Solomon conceal inner beauty. In Origen's imaginative reconstruction of this text, he expressly associates the Bride's blackness with ugliness. The Bride herself implicitly affirms the correlation of black skin with ugliness by attributing her beauty to an internal rather than an external state, as Origen puts it: “I am indeed dark (fusca)—or black (nigra)—as far as my complexion goes, O daughters of Jerusalem; but, should a person scrutinize the features of my inward parts, then I am beautiful (formosa)”.⁷ Thus, she shifts the aesthetic locus from her external hue to her internal state of virtue. By transposing the context of her beauty from a surface condition to a spiritual condition, she betrays her internalization of their negative assessment of her bodily blackness.⁸At the same time, however, she supplants these negative attitudes and associations by denying their ultimate significance in determining her aesthetic status.

Origen proceeds from the literal level of the text to the mystical, which also coheres with his standard hermeneutical procedure.⁹

As he enunciates in the Prologue, the Bride in the story represents the Church,¹⁰ but in this passage she represents more specifically “the Church gathered from among the Gentiles” (ecclesiae personam tenet ex gentibus congregatae).¹¹ The daughters of Jerusalem represent the Jews who “despise and vilify her for her ignoble birth,” in other words, they degrade Gentile Christians because of their inferior ancestry. According to this mystical interpretation, the aspersion “black” refers not to skin color but to the state of being unenlightened by the wisdom of the patriarchs and particularly by the Mosaic law. As with his literal exegesis, “black” (nigra) here has an unmistakably negative resonance. Blackness symbolizes for Origen a particular sort of spiritual opacity. Although the Gentile church (ecclesia ex gentibus) cannot boast of Jewish descent and Mosaic enlightenment (illuminatio Moysis), it nonetheless shares with the Jews an innate capacity for divine enlightenment. As Origen writes, “But I have my own beauty, all the same. For in me too there is that primal thing, the Image of God (imago Dei), wherein I was created; and, coming now to the Word of God, I have received my beauty.”¹² Origen regards divine ancestry as more fundamental than human ancestry. Since God created all humans, regardless of race, in the image of God, the Gentile church can reflect divine beauty through the Word of God. The Gentile church may lack the ancestral pedigree and exterior signs of enlightenment, but close inspection shows its truly authentic and salvific illumination.

Later, when Origen draws further symbolic parallels between the Bride, the queen of Sheba, and the personified Ethiopia of Psalm 67, he characterizes “Ethiopia,” before its conversion, as the “black one” who “has been darkened with exceeding great and many sins and, having been stained (infectus) with the inky dye of wickedness, has been rendered black and dark (niger et tenebrosus).”¹³

Origen's typology operates under the assumption that the blackness of the Bride, the queen of Sheba, and Ethiopia signify spiritual opacity. In his exegesis the quality of blackness denotes sin, wickedness, and spiritual deficiency.¹⁴ Consequently, the Bride only becomes beautiful when she transforms her blackness into fairness or whiteness, which denotes spiritual enlightenment. Thus, Ethiopia represents the Gentile sinners who offer “confession and repentance” to God and subsequently, it is implied, become beautiful by becoming white.¹⁵ Origen's exegesis clearly intends to use categories of color symbolically, but the racial implications of his commentary require careful nuance and critical reflection; I shall take up that task in the final two sections.

In his exegesis of Song 1:6, Origen continues to develop these soteriological themes and symbolic frameworks. In this verse the Bride expresses her shame over her deformed condition of blackness (nigredine) or darkness (infuscatione): “It is not a natural condition in which she was created,” Origen argues, “but something that she suffered through force of circumstance.”

¹⁶

In the very next sentence Origen qualifies his assertion by remarking that the passage obviously does not refer to “bodily blackness” (nigredine corporis) but to the soul's blackness. J. Christopher King explains: “When the Bride speaks of her blackness … Origen interprets her words asomatically.”¹⁷

Whereas the physical blackness of the “Ethiopian race” (gentem Aethiopum) results from prolonged exposure to the sun's “fiercer rays” (107), spiritual blackness results from the “Sun of Justice” (sol iustitiae,

).

¹⁸

The light of the “spiritual sun” (sol spiritalis) affects the obedient and disobedient differently. For the obedient and upright, it causes illumination (illuminat), but for the disobedient, the sun “must needs look askance”—thereby scorching the soul and making it black.¹⁹

Origen correlates the positive illuminating effect of the sun to spiritual enlightenment and the negative burning effect of the sun to spiritual darkening: “The sun has twofold power: it enlightens the righteous; but sinners it enlightens not, but burns.”²⁰

The symbolic contrast between darkness and light continues in his exegesis of Song 1:6, though with an emphasis on the soul's illumination.

By uniting with Christ, the soul becomes purified from sin and gradually recovers its beauty: “Once she [the Bride or soul] begins to … cleave to Him [the Bridegroom or Christ] and suffer nothing whatever to separate her from Him, then she will be made white and fair (dealbata et candida).”²¹

Since spiritual blackness occurs through neglect and sloth, one must transform it through industry, in other words, through purification. Salvation then occurs in the movement away from darkness into ever-brightening light: “When all her blackness has been cast away, she will shine with the enveloping radiance of the true Light.”²² Thus, Origen's exegesis of 1:6 reinforces the symbolic framework that he developed in his exegesis of 1:5. Whereas his primary typological referent for the Bride in the Song of Songs remains the Gentile church, he also identifies her with the individual soul. These two typologies do not appear inconsistent or mutually exclusive for him, because his allegorical approach allows him to discover multiple symbolic meanings that need not cohere with each other. As Origen delves deeper into mysteries of the text, his symbolism becomes increasingly multivalent and theologically complex.

Origen treats Song 1:5 in his First Homily, and many of the themes that surfaced in his commentary echo here.²³

In this homily Origen puzzles over the simultaneous ascription of blackness and beauty to the Bride. He takes it to be self-evident that the two are antithetical: “But the question is, in what way is she black and how, if she lacks whiteness, is she fair?”²⁴ Here again Origen associates blackness with sin and whiteness with beauty. He presupposes the same symbolic framework that he constructed in his commentary. The Bride represents the Gentile church purified from sin, and her beauty, according to Origen, results from the divine gift that follows repentance: “She has repented of her sins, beauty is the gift conversion has bestowed; that is the reason she is hymned as beautiful.”²⁵ She retains her beauty, then, despite her blackness, which represents the vestiges of sin that remain following conversion: “She is called black, however, because she has not yet been purged of every stain of sin, she has not yet been washed unto salvation.”²⁶ So the beauty of the Gentile church consists in its conversion to Christ, while its blackness consists in the continued tinge of sin in the church. Blackness represents the stain of sin that must be washed away through the purification of baptism. According to Origen, this symbolic nexus explains how the Bride can be simultaneously black and beautiful: “Intelleximus, quomodo et nigra et formosa sit sponsa.”²⁷

For Origen, then, blackness clearly connotes a negative predicate that describes the state of the Gentile church before conversion. Salvation, consequently, he may metaphorically express as the gradual transformation from darkness (sin) to whiteness (purity): “Nevertheless she does not stay dark-hued, she is becoming white.”²⁸

The process of purification uses blackness and whiteness as primary symbols. In true homiletic fashion, Origen then applies the black and white dualism to the individual soul: “But if you do not likewise practice penitence, take heed lest your soul be described as black and ugly.”²⁹ Blackness indicates the shameful quality of sin in the Gentile church and in the individual soul, as he mentioned above. Since it is “a forbidding hue,” it engenders ridicule and causes the Bride shame, as he writes, “ ‘Look not at me, for that I am blackened.’ She apologies for her blackness.”³⁰ Just as darkness represents the absence of light in the physical world, so in the spiritual realm darkness indicates the absence of spiritual light: “The Sun has looked down on me. With full radiance His bright light has shone on me, and I am darkened by His heat. I have not indeed received His light into myself.”³¹ As we noted previously, Origen argues that the light of Christ can either darken or lighten the soul, depending on its receptivity. A permeable soul absorbs the light of Christ through repentance and thereby becomes beautified by illumination. The opaque soul repels the light of Christ, which results in spiritual darkness and ugliness. In section three Origen's portrayal of blackness in his commentary and homily on Song 1:5 will be analyzed further.

Gregory of Nyssa: The Bride as the Beautified Soul

Gregory of Nyssa's fifteen homilies on the Song of Songs follow the same hermeneutical trajectory that began with Hippolytus of Rome (b. 170–75C.E.), whom most scholars agree composed the first Christian allegorical interpretation of the Song of Songs.³²

Origen, however, receives the credit for giving the allegorical reading of the Song its classic expression.³³ In fact, Gregory acknowledges Origen's exposition in his prologue and situates his commentary alongside it: “Although Origen laboriously applied himself to the Song of Songs, we too have desired to publish our efforts.”³⁴ Their commentaries, though similar in hermeneutical and theological approach, differ in symbolic emphasis. Gregory identifies the Bride primarily with the individual soul, while Origen identifies her mainly with the church. Quasten remarks:

Much like Origen, however, Gregory posits that the Song has deeper levels of meaning beyond the literal storyline.

³⁶

When understood properly, it functions as a paradigmatic text for the transmission of both philosophical and theological knowledge: “Once again the Song of Songs (

) is presented to us as a guide for every type of philosophy and knowledge of God (

).”

³⁷

Gregory operates with a twofold conception of the text that corresponds to the twofold levels of meaning. The exterior or literal level appears easily apprehensible by everyone. Conversely, the interior or symbolic meaning requires purification from sin as a necessary precondition for accessing its meaning: “All these things can be found in the literal meaning if we only prepare ourselves to enter the Holy of Holies (

) after having been purified from the filth (

) of shameful thoughts by the bath of the Word (

).”

³⁸

Just as entry into the Holy of Holies was forbidden to the unclean, so entry into the mystical knowledge of God is forbidden to the sinful.³⁹

Those who have cleansed themselves from sin have the capacity to apprehend the mysteries hidden within the story.

Once the purified soul perceives that a figurative narrative runs parallel to the literal story (though on a hidden, mystical level), the true spiritual meaning can emerge. Gregory depicts the Bride in Song 1:5 as a teacher instructing her pupils about the mysteries of God. Her self-description as “black and beautiful” (

) discloses not her self-perception or complexion but rather the nature of divine love. For Gregory, the Bride represents the soul, and the predication of blackness denotes its sinfulness: “I have become dark through sin (

).”

⁴⁰

The Bride's blackness signifies the “repulsiveness” that results from the soul's wicked deeds. Consequently, in harmony with Origen, Gregory explicitly characterizes blackness as the antithesis of beauty. Something makes the Bride beautiful despite being black: “Although I am black, I am now this beautiful form, for the image of blackness has been transformed into beauty (

).”

⁴¹

When juxtaposing their commentaries, one sees that Gregory and Origen employ similar hermeneutical methods and interpretive categories in their exegesis of this verse. Both employ symbolic interpretations and utilize racial categories to describe the spiritual state of the soul. Moreover, blackness represents their principal symbol for spiritual sinfulness, repulsiveness, and ugliness, which indicates the quality of the soul that the Bridegroom must either overlook or transform.

According to Gregory, the fundamental theological meaning of this verse is not humanity's sinfulness but rather of God's “immense love for mankind.”⁴²

In her sinful condition the Bride remains unsuitable for marriage, but her Bridegroom graciously transforms her ugliness into beauty. Gregory delineates the salvific process by which the soul becomes beautiful through the interrelated concepts of incarnation and atonement:

Gregory delineates the nature of divine love, which deigns to enter into the human condition and assume humanity's sinfulness for its salvation. The Bride's beauty metaphorically expresses the soul's salvation from sin, and by imitating Christ the sinful soul grows in beauty. Gregory, like Origen, associates the soul's blackness with its past sin: “My former life has created this dark, shadowy appearance (

).”

⁴⁴

Although the soul's past sins impinge upon its present existence, it nevertheless remains beautiful on the grounds that it abides “loved by righteousness.”⁴⁵

The traces of sin indelibly affixed to the soul do not mar its beauty, since these traces only indicate a sign of its past life, not its present reality.

Gregory posits a theological link between Song 1:5 and Rom 5:8: “But God proves his love for us in that while we were sinners Christ died for us.” Both God's love and humanity's sinfulness constitute the central features of both texts, he avers. Gregory expounds Rom 5:8 using the racial categories of Song 1:5: “Although we were darkened through sin, God made us bright (

) and loving through his resplendent grace.”

⁴⁶

Here Gregory applies the duality of darkness and light to soteriological transformation. The gloom of night (i.e., sin) has darkened our souls, although they are “light by nature” (

), and stand in need of spiritual illumination. Salvation means the process whereby the soul becomes beautiful by internalizing Christ's resplendent grace. Gregory illustrates the soteriological import of Song 1:5 using Paul's conversion: “Paul, the bride of Christ, had become radiant from darkness.”

⁴⁷

Hence, just as the Bride's blackness transformed into beauty, so Paul, “a blasphemer, persecutor, insulter, and black in color (

),” became illuminated, in effect made spiritually light/white, by Christ. This transformation from darkness to light, in other words, from sin to salvation, occurs in the cleansing of baptism, which symbolizes the “bath of regeneration” that washes away the soul's “dark form” (

). Gregory argues, then, that Paul conceives of salvation as the enlightenment of the darkened soul: “Paul also says that Christ entered the world to enlighten those who were dark.”

⁴⁸

Hence, Gregory correlates Paul's explicit soteriology in Romans with the implicit soteriology of Song 1:5.

Gregory adduces another scriptural passage to elucidate his notion of the soul's salvific enlightenment. In Ps 87:4 the citizenry of the “heavenly Jerusalem” includes Ethiopia and other foreign peoples.

⁴⁹

The demographics of the city of God, Gregory avers, will be multi-ethnic and multi-national. Interestingly, he comments that “the Ethiopians become light in color” in the heavenly city, a change which symbolically marks their salvific transformation. When applied to the narrative, Gregory argues that this passage reveals the Bridegroom's goodness in accepting his black Bride. When read allegorically, however, it testifies to the goodness of Christ, who receives the “blackened soul” and “restores its beauty by fellowship with himself (

).”

⁵⁰

Salvation, according to Gregory, consists of the beautification of the soul that ensues from its purification from sin. But the negative metaphysical or spiritual status of blackness entails that the soul's beauty requires illumination or whitening. By conceiving of salvation as the process of “becoming light” or white, he makes blackness an evil quality both spiritually and physically. Although Gregory only draws a correlation between blackness and sin on a spiritual level, it nevertheless tends to reinforce racially prejudiced opinions. He may, thus, inadvertently provide transcendental legitimization for prejudicial views, since the material world ought to reflect truths in the spiritual realm. In the final two sections, I shall develop this critique and advance a theological solution.

After explicating verse five, Gregory proceeds to expound on the closely interconnected verse six. Apparently the Bride, not originally black, became black by exposure to the sun: “Do not gaze at me because I am dark, because the sun has gazed on me” (Song 1:6). Allegorically this verse accounts for the origin of evil, which the pigmentation of the Bride symbolically represents. Just as the Bride originated white, so the soul originated pure of sin. Moreover, just as the Bride became dark by exposure to the sun, so the soul becomes sinful by succumbing to temptation: “The cause of darkness is not ascribed to the Creator, but its origin is attributed to the free will of each person.”⁵¹

Blackness, then, does not appear “natural,” either spiritually or physically. Gregory focuses not on the literal level but on the spiritual implications that follow, namely, the theological anthropology that it suggests: “Human nature was an image of the true light, far removed from any darkness: it gleamed by imitation of the archetype's beauty.”⁵² The natural light or white condition of the soul, then, corresponds to its condition as originally pure and enlightened by God. But by their exercise of free will, souls become “burned” by the sin that results from yielding to temptation, which renders it ugly: “The sun burns the bright surface of the body by the assault of temptations and blackens its form in ugliness,”⁵³ The anthropology that he develops from Song 1:6, therefore, reinforces the negative association between blackness and sinfulness. Blackness, he argues, results from a perversion of the original white, pure condition of the soul.

Gregory returns to the theme of the Bride's beauty in his fourth homily. Before commenting on the passionate panegyric in verses 15–16 of chapter one, Gregory pauses to reflect once more on the nature of spiritual beauty and corruption, a topic which he introduced in his exegesis of Song 1:5. He compares the soul's purification from sin and return to primal beauty to the purification of adulterated gold through fire. In the beginning human souls remained bright by virtue of their pure reflection of God: “Human nature was golden at the beginning and shone by reason of its resemblance to the undefiled good.”

⁵⁴

But a “foreign matter” became mixed with the soul and resulted in its defilement and adulteration. The advent of sin vitiated the soul's ability to reflect God's light. Verse five, he observes, symbolically indicated this problem: “However, it [the soul] became discolored and blackened by the admixture of vice as we have heard the Bride say at the beginning of the Song of Songs: her neglect to tend the vineyard made her black [1:5].”⁵⁵

Sin, then, represents the failure of the soul to continue in its natural and proper good. In its sinful state the soul becomes “discolored and blackened” (

), since impurities have adulterated its golden or bright hue. The categories implied here cohere with Gregory's earlier ones. A healthy, pure soul remains golden and bright, while an unhealthy, impure soul becomes discolored and blackened. The source of the darkening of the soul, consistent with the symbolic matrix outlined above, comes from sin.

As before, Gregory does not place the weight of his allegorical interpretation on the sinfulness of the blackened soul. On the contrary, he accentuates the solution, not the problem, gleaned from Song 1:5. Mired by sin and diminished in its capacity to reflect the divine, the soul stands in need of grace, just as the Bride needs beautification. Not willing to put her away quietly, God restores her original state of beauty, which corresponds to God's redemption of the soul:

A spiritually black soul, deformed, unnatural, and defiling, requires salvation or beautification, namely, the return to the pristine beauty of the soul by the removal of the grime of sin. To illustrate the soul's purification, Gregory returns to the analogy of the goldsmith. Just as adulterated gold needs to undergo multiple purifications by fire to restore it to its unalloyed state, so the sinful soul requires repeated purifications, before one can cleanse it from all stain of sin and restore it to its natural state of beauty: “So too the attendant of the blackened gold, i.e., the Bridegroom, has brightened the soul by a kind of refining process through the application of his remedies.”⁵⁷ So Gregory develops here the themes of divine love and salvation as beautification, which involve a change from darkness to brightness through the analogy of the refinement of gold.

In summary, then, salvation, for Gregory, means the restoration of the soul's original state. Put in the terms of the Song, salvation means beautification, and beautification entails changing from black to white: “The Song teaches by these words about the restoration of beauty which the Bride gained by approaching the true beauty from which she has departed.”⁵⁸

The Origenistic theme of the fall and return of souls informs Gregory's soteriology. Beauty forms Gregory's central soteriological category, which he deploys throughout his commentary. In his exegesis of Song 1:15: “Behold, you are fair, my companion,” Gregory alludes to Song 1:5 and succinctly articulates his theological anthropology and hamartiology, namely, the soul's primal beauty and its corruption through sin: “Formerly you were not fair. Having strayed from the archetypal beauty by association with vice, you became ugly.”⁵⁹ The misuse of free will, he asserts, causes sin. Beauty remains the symbol for salvation, and ugliness remains the symbol for sin. Furthermore, beauty and ugliness correspond to whiteness and blackness, which constitute the defining features for each. So for Gregory the story of the Bride conveys deep anthropological and soteriological truth. He emphasizes not the soul's ontological dilemma (sin), but the divine love as expressed through its beautification (salvation).

In his interpretation of Song 1:5, Gregory consistently posits a symbolic matrix, wherein the Bride's blackness represents the soul's sinfulness. At first the soul possessed a beautiful quality expressed by the metaphor of whiteness or brightness. But once sin corrupted its original beauty, it developed an ugly quality expressed by the metaphor of darkness or blackness. Since sinfulness and temptation lurk outside of God's original creation, ugliness must ultimately have a satanic origin, although that begs the question of the origin of Satan.

⁶⁰

At any rate, darkness, for Gregory, is antithetical to beauty; I have noted the detrimental implications of this symbolism for racial discourse and will expand on them momentarily. Moreover, Gregory considers the quality of blackness unnatural, since souls originated “golden” or bright, and their salvation consists of returning to that state. At bottom, then, the passage speaks to the nature of sin and salvation: “The Song of Songs then speaks about our transformation from a good color (

) to blackness (

).”

⁶¹

Gregory, however, cautions against interpreting the words in the Song “very precisely,” recommending instead a symbolic hermeneutic.⁶²

One must read the racial categories presented in Song 1:5 allegorically, not literally, in order to avoid detrimental misapprehensions and misapplications.

Black Theology and the Soteriological Foci of Song 1:5

We must now ask whether or not Origen and Gregory's allegorical interpretations withstand the searching critiques of black theology. But before we embark on this stage of the argument, we must raise an important methodological question: is it fair to evaluate their exegesis from a modern hermeneutical and theological perspective? We must bear in mind that modern racism and a “black theology,” sensitive to the problem of racism and exploitation in recent history, did not exist in antiquity in the same way that it does for contemporary society. From the outset, then, we must vigilantly avoid anachronistically assessing their racial discourse by standards that they could not possibly meet. As I mentioned in the introduction, all exegesis remains deeply contextual, and so we cannot expect Origen and Gregory to treat this racially charged material with the critical nuance of a modern exegete. They attended to the social and theological problems of their time and particularly to Jewish-Christian relations and the doctrine of salvation. In light of this, I would consider it unfair and misguided to subject them to modern critical standards.

Although we must avoid anachronistic judgments, we may nonetheless ask probing questions about the racial implications and undercurrents of their exegesis. Can one justify their use of racial metaphors? Does their treatment of this verse promote or reinforce racial prejudices? I submit that Origen and Gregory interpret Song 1: 5 soteriologically, not racially, which demonstrates both their ability to transcend these racial categories and their appropriation of negative black symbolism. For Origen, the condition of blackness denotes, not a negative physical state, but a negative spiritual state. He does not equate black pigmentation with ugliness, because the quality of blackness constitutes simply a metaphorical description of the soul's sinful state: it in no way indicates or promotes any anti-black sentiment. It would not occur to him to make an aesthetical judgment of colored bodies, since he seeks only to ascertain the spiritual sense of blackness. In fact, he plainly avers: “She [the Bride] is not speaking of bodily blackness.”⁶³

The darkness of the Bride functions merely as his point of entry for reflecting on the purification of the Gentile church and the soul from a state of sin to a state of salvation. His employment of racial categories was a matter of textual necessity rather than personal preference. Given the presence of these categories, however, he does not use them as an occasion to legitimize racial stereotypes but rather to see in the narrative profound ecumenical truths about the movement from sin to salvation. Origen thus transcends these racial categories by transposing the context from the physical to the spiritual. True beauty for him remains a condition, not of the body, but of the soul.

But this explanation does not imply that Origen's exegesis is completely free of negative racial symbolism. In his Homilies on Jeremiah Origen adduces Song 1:5 within a wider commentary on Jeremiah 13:11. Just as the linen mentioned in this verse appears dark at the beginning but becomes bright through effort, so the soul appears dark at the start of its purification but eventually becomes cleansed: “We are dark at the beginning in believing—hence in the beginning of the Canticle of Canticles it is said, I am very dark and beautiful, and we look like the soul of an Ethiopian at the beginning.”

⁶⁴

What does Origen mean by looking like

?

⁶⁵

He seems to suggest that the souls of Ethiopians, not simply the Bride, correspond to their skin color, with the implication that black people have black souls. Although the absence of the definite article suggests that he means all Ethiopians, it seems more plausible, given his explicit reference to Song 1:5, that he limits the ascription of a blackened soul to the Bride. In any case, this condition of blackness precedes the soul's purification through baptism and enlightenment: “Then we are cleansed so that we may be more bright according to the passage, Who is she who comes up whitened (Song 8:5)?”⁶⁶

Blackness, as the color of the earth, must become more white and bright (

), before the soul becomes worthy “to cling to God” (

), which coheres with his notion of the progressive purification of the soul. In contrast to his commentary, however, he seems to draw a more explicit correspondence between black skin and a black (i.e., sinful) soul.

Origen's exegesis of Song 1:6 evinces the most racially offensive material in his commentary, although he does not expressly disparage black skin. While expounding on the allegorical meaning of this verse, he parenthetically discusses the natural origin of physical blackness. He comments that “the Ethiopian race” became black through prolonged exposure to the intense rays of the sun. Originally, he tacitly argues, white Ethiopians became black, departing from their natural hue, only after being “scorched and darkened.” Once darkened, the Ethiopians transmit their “congenital stain” to their progeny.⁶⁷

To classify blackness as a natural deformity rather than as an expression of divine creativity reveals a parochial view of blackness. In these deliberations Origen presupposes whiteness as the natural condition of humanity and blackness as an anomalous state that arises afterwards. These assumptions make black pigmentation an ailment that one must overcome, if one can invert the analogy to spiritual blackness to apply to physical blackness. By making blackness a negative physical quality, Origen reveals the extent to which he has internalized the ethnocentric views of his socio-historical context. The theologian must then ask how this ethnocentrism informs his theology and later theology as well. These opinions shape his allegorical interpretation of the Bride's blackness and explain why spiritual blackness has negative symbolic connotations.

On a more promising note, however, Origen's mystical interpretation posits an anthropology that negates racial and ethnic differences. He attempts to express the fundamental unity of humanity despite these distinctions, as I alluded to above: “For in me too there is that primal thing, the Image of God, wherein I was created; and, coming now to the Word of God, I have received my beauty.”⁶⁸

His theological anthropology constitutes a salutary starting point for understanding the theological significance of race and ethnicity. If God created all humans in the image of God, then each person, regardless of his or her racial or ethnic identity, reflects (albeit imperfectly) the beauty of divinity. Skin color cannot diminish or enhance this inner beauty. Moreover, although one's dark or light hue might comprise a feature of one's physical beauty, the real locus of beauty lies in the state of the soul, which all share equally. As one grows in Christ, the soul becomes more beautified and less marred by the effects of sin, which thus deepens the correspondence between one's created capacity and existential reality. Hence, Origen's universal anthropological ground for salvific purification transcends racial categories by privileging spiritual unity over physical differentiation. Frank Snowden affirms that Origen exhibited no hostile opinions against blacks and actually fostered a “highly favorable view of blacks.”⁶⁹ Nevertheless, Origen does appropriate an ancient view of race even in his allegorical interpretation: “In his language of spiritual blackness and whiteness Origen's adaptation of the Greco-Roman back-white imagery is clear, but equally clear is his indebtedness to classical themes of black-white contrast.”⁷⁰ In this way Origen overcomes anti-black sentiments latent within these polarities.⁷¹ But he does not, pace Snowden, entirely wrest himself free of all negative attitudes. Nevertheless, he makes great strides in that direction.

Gregory also employs racial categories in his homiletic exegesis of the Song but, like Origen, he uses them not to promote or reinforce racism but to illustrate deep spiritual truth. He probes beyond the surface meaning, and, as with Origen, does more than merely equate blackness with sin. The soul's blackness only marks the beginning of the knowledge disclosed by this verse. For Gregory, the essential point remains not the sinfulness of the soul but the love of God who transforms the soul's ugliness into beauty: “The Bride further speaks to her pupils of an amazing fact about herself in order that we might learn of the Bridegroom's immense love for mankind who added beauty to the beloved [Bride] through such love.”⁷²

More than simply diagnosing the problem, Gregory's exegesis celebrates the solution to sin: the beautification of the soul through Christ. God demonstrates the depth of divine love by loving humanity despite their sin and by emptying Godself for its amelioration. This verse, then, far from merely appropriating negative and antiquated assumptions about blackness, uses the given racial categories of the narrative to illustrate and to extol the magnitude of God's love. He transforms what one might justifiably perceive as a relic of ancient bigotry into an ode to God's love for lost souls. Thus, Gregory shifts the focus from the negative connotations associated with black skin to the spiritual reality of the sinfulness of humanity and the salvation afforded by God.

The theological affirmation of God's love combines with his soteriological emphasis on the soul's beautification. Gregory expresses his soteriological viewpoint through the analogy of the Bride's transformation from blackness to beauty, which corresponds to the soul's transformation from sin to salvation. He characterizes the soul's purification as an exchange, whereby Christ imparts his beauty to the soul and assumes the sin of the soul.⁷³

Two important passages underpin his soteriology: the Suffering Servant song in Isaiah 53 and the hymn to Christ in Philippians 2. He does not explicate the mechanics of this exchange between the soul and Christ, but the main lines of his conception appear clear. God the Son descends into the human condition, assumes humanity's sinfulness, and purifies the soul from sin by filling it with his beauty and making it lovely.⁷⁴ He enlightens the previously “black in color” souls.⁷⁵

Though tempting, it would be anachronistic to cast Origen and Gregory as nascent black theologians. But it would also be anachronistic to cast them as anti-black. The situation is more complex than either option suggests. Origen and Gregory exhibited favorable attitudes toward blackness, but they also reflected negative attitudes.⁷⁶

I submit that they transcended these categories by denying their ultimate significance and by utilizing them to convey profound soteriological truth. Nevertheless, for the modern reader, the association between blackness and sin and whiteness and salvation remains problematic. One can mitigate the force of this objection by highlighting their shared sense of a common theological anthropology, whereby the souls of all people, regardless of skin color, reflect “the image of God” (as Origen writes) and share an “archetypal beauty” (so Gregory), before they fall into sin. Moreover, with Snowden, one could praise them for their ecumenical and global conception of salvation: “Origen and his exegetical disciples made it clear that all men, regardless of the color of their skin, were called to faith, and in their interpretations they employed a deeply spiritualized black-white imagery.”⁷⁷ The problem remains, however, that symbolic associations between blackness and sin carry over to the physical realm and engender negative racial attitudes. They certainly did not intend this—and Snowden correctly notes that “skin color did not give rise to a marked antipathy toward blacks and did not evoke negative reactions in the domain of social behavior”—but it nevertheless follows as an unintended consequence.⁷⁸

Origen and Gregory of Nyssa: The First Apostles of Blackness?

Black theology raises salient criticisms about the stigma attached to blackness and the concomitant fusion of the physical with the moral and ontological. Within the context of the patristic period, Robert Hood remarks that the church appropriated the dominant cultural attitudes toward “blacks and blackness”: “During the formative years of the Christian church in the Roman Empire, blackness not only had a distinctive negative connotation, but also was personalized as the devil.”⁷⁹

The church expressed spiritual categories in terms of shade and color polarities, where light and white signified spirit and divine goodness, and dark and black signified materiality and evil. Hood further comments that these categories filtered into the patristic exegesis of Song 1:5, which intentionally deviates from the Septuagint nuance of the verse because of a widespread uneasiness about the correlation between blackness and beauty:

Hood extols Origen as the “first apostle of blackness” because he transforms blackness into a positive witness to salvation in his commentaries and homilies on the Song of Songs.⁸¹

Hood's insight into Origen could equally apply to Gregory, who also redeployed black imagery to positive ends. In contrast with Hood, Frank Snowden argues that we have no evidence of racial prejudice in the ancient world: “The ancient world did not make color the focus of irrational sentiments or the basis for uncritical evaluation … nothing comparable to the virulent color prejudice of modern times existed in the ancient world.”⁸² Snowden rightly affirms the fact that “the ancients did not fall into the error of biological racism; black skin color was not a sign of inferiority,” but, conversely, Hood rightly affirms that we do have evidence of negative connotations associated with blackness.⁸³ After studying Origen and Gregory's interpretation of Song 1:5, we may conclude that Hood's thesis about the early church's attitude toward blacks seems too pessimistic, while Snowden's appears too optimistic—the truth lies somewhere in between. Origen and Gregory at once exhibit negative attitudes toward blackness and positive attitudes toward the salvific import of black imagery. Our analysis shows that while we cannot classify Origen and Gregory as “the first apostles of blackness,” we may nonetheless recognize their positive employment of the racial categories inherent in this verse, despite the fact that the very use of these categories involves problematic assumptions. For Origen the black Bride corresponds primarily to the Gentile church and his central metaphor for salvation is purification. For Gregory the Bride corresponds primarily to the soul and his central metaphor for salvation is beautification. For both the racial categories in Song 1:5 are a gateway to profound soteriological truth, not racism.