The answer
Trigg summarizes Origen’s view thus: “How is it that the church is in such a sorry state? Has God failed to provide the church with worthy leaders? By no means. But the church sometimes fails to give such persons their proper place of honor and responsibility.”1647
Origen says, “For it frequently happens that he who deals in an humble and abject interpretation and knows earthly things has the preeminent rank of a priest or sits in the chair of a teacher, while he who is spiritual and so free from earthly things that he ‘judges all things and is judged by no one’ either holds a lower rank of ministry or is relegated to the common multitude.”1648
Fr. Tadros Yacoub Malaty
Notes
1647 Joseph W. Trigg, “The Charismatic Intellectual: Origen’s Understanding of Religious Leadership.” Church History 50, no. 1 (1981): 5–19: p. 14.
1648 Origen, Homilies on Numbers 2.1 (7.9.22–27), quoted in Joseph W. Trigg, “The Charismatic Intellectual: Origen’s Understanding of Religious Leadership.” Church History 50, no. 1 (1981): 5–19: pp. 14–15.