Adolf Harnack · 23 of 25

I. The Doctrine of God and its unfolding.

THE DOCTRINE OF GOD AND HIS SELF-UNFOLDINGS OR CREATIONS. The world points back to an ultimate cause and the created spirit to an eternal, pure, absolutely simple, and unchangeable spirit, who is the original source of all existence and goodness. so that everything that exists only does so in virtue of being caused by that One, and is good in so far as it derives its essence from the One who is perfection and goodness. This fundamental idea is the source of all the conclusions drawn by Origen as to the essence, attributes, and knowableness of God. As the One, God is contrasted with the Manifold; but the order in the Manifold points back to the One. As the real Essence, God is opposed to the essences that appear and seem to vanish, and that therefore have no real existence, because they have not their principle in themselves, but testify: “We have not made ourselves.” As the absolutely immaterial Spirit, God is contrasted with the spirit that is clogged with matter, but which strives to get back to him from whom it received its origin. The One is something different from the Manifold; but the order, the dependence, and the longing of that which is created point back to the One, who can therefore be known relatively from the Manifold. In sharpest contrast to the heretical Gnosis, Origen maintained the absolute causality of God, and, in spite of all abstractions in determining the essence of God, he attributed self-consciousness and will to this superessential Essence (in opposition to Valentinus, Basilides, and the later Neoplatonists). The created is one thing and the Self-existent is another, but both are connected together; as the created can only be understood from something self-existent, so the self-existent is not without analogy to the created. The Self-existent is in itself a living thing; it is beyond dispute that Origen with all his abstractions represented the Deity, whom he primarily conceived as a constant substance, in a more living, and, so to speak, in a more personal way than the Greek philosophers. Hence it was possible for him to produce a doctrine of the attributes of God. Here he did not even shrink from applying his relative view to the Deity, because, as will be seen, he never thinks of God without revelation, and because all revelation must be something limited. The omnipresence of God indeed suffers from no limitation. God is potentially every. where; but he is everywhere only potentially; that is, he neither encompasses nor is encompassed. Nor is he diffused through the universe, but, as he is removed from the limits of space, so also he is removed from space itself. But the omniscience and omnipotence of God have a limit, which indeed, according to Origen, lies in the nature of the case itself. In the first place his omnipotence is limited through his essence, for he can only do what he wills; secondly by logic, for omnipotence cannot produce things containing an inward contradiction: God can do nothing contrary to nature, all miracles being natural in the highest sense — thirdly, by the impossibility of that which is in itself unlimited being comprehended, it follows that the extent of everything created must be limited — fourthly, by the impossibility of realising an aim completely and without disturbing elements. Omniscience has also its corresponding limits; this is specially proved from the freedom of spirits bestowed by God himself. God has indeed the capacity of foreknowledge, but he knows transactions beforehand because they happen; they do not happen because he knows them. That the divine purpose should be realised in the end necessarily follows from the nature of the created spirit itself, apart from the supporting activity of God. Like Irenæus and Tertullian Origen very carefully discussed the attributes of goodness and justice in God in opposition to the Marcionites. But his exposition is different. In his eyes goodness and justice are not two opposite attributes, which can and must exist in God side by side; but as virtues they are to him identical. God rewards in justice and punishes in kindness. That it should go well with all, no matter how they conduct themselves, would be no kindness; but it is kindness when God punishes to improve, deter, and prevent. Passions, anger, and the like do not exist in God, nor any plurality of virtues; but, as the Perfect One, he is all kindness. In other places, however, Origen did not content himself with this presentation. In opposition to the Marcionites, who declared Christ and the Father of Christ to be good, and the creator of the world to be just, he argued that, on the contrary, God (the foundation of the world) is good, but that the Logos-Christ, in so far as he is the pedagogus, is just.

From the perfect goodness of God Origen infers that he reveals or communicates himself, from his immutability that he always reveals himself. The eternal or never beginning communication of perfection to other beings is a postulate of the concept “God”. But, along with the whole fraternity of those professing the same philosophy, Origen assumed that the One, in becoming the Manifold and acting in the interests of the Manifold, can only effect his purpose by divesting himself of absolute apathy and once more assuming a form in which he can act, that is, procuring for himself an adequate organ — the Logos. The content of Origen’s teaching about this Logos was not essentially different from that of Philo and was therefore quite as contradictory; only in his case everything is more sharply defined and the hypostasis of the Logos (in opposition to the Monarchians) more clearly and precisely stated. Nevertheless the personal independence of the Logos is as yet by no means so sharply defined as in the case of the later Arians. He is still the Consciousness of God, the spiritual Activity of God. Hence he is on the one hand the idea of the world existing in God, and on the other the product of divine wisdom originating with the will of God. The following are the most important propositions. The Logos who appeared in Christ, as is specially shown from Joh. I. 1 and Heb. I. 1, is the perfect image of God. He is the Wisdom of God, the reflection of his perfection and glory, the invisible image of God. For that very reason there is nothing corporeal in him and he is therefore really God, not αὐτόθεος, nor ὁ Θεὸς, nor ἄναρχος αρχή (“beginningless beginning”), but the second God. But, as such, immutability is one of his attributes, that is, he can never lose his divine essence, he can also in this respect neither increase nor decrease (this immutability, however, is not an independent attribute, but he is perfect as being an image of the Father’s perfection). Accordingly this deity is not a communicated one in the sense of his having another independent essence in addition to this divine nature; but deity rather constitutes his essence: ὁ σωτὴρ οὐ κατὰ μετουσίαν, ἀλλὰ κατ᾽ οὐσίαν ἐστί Θεός (“the Saviour is not God by communication, but in his essence”). From this it follows that he shares in the essence of God, therefore of the Father, and is accordingly ὁμοούσιος τῷ πατρί (“the same in substance with the Father”) or, seeing that, as Son, he has come forth from the Father, is engendered from the essence of the Father. But having proceeded, like the will, from the Spirit, he was always with God; there was not a time when he was not, nay, even this expression is still too weak. It would be an unworthy idea to think of God without his wisdom or to assume a beginning of his begetting. Moreover, this begetting is not an act that has only once taken place, but a process lasting from all eternity; the Son is always being begotten of the Father. It is the theology of Origen which Gregory Thaumaturgus has thus summed up:εἷς κύριος, μόνος ἐκ μόνου, Θεὸς ἐκ Θεοῦ, χαρακτὴρ καὶ εἰκὼν τῆς θεότητος, λόγος ἔνεργος, σοφία τῆς τῶν ὅλων συστάσεως περιεκτικὴ καὶ δύναμις τῆς ὅλης κτίσεως ποιντική, ὑιὸς ἀληθινὸς πατρός, ἀόρατος ἀοράτου καὶ ἄφθαρτος ἀφθάρτου καὶ ἀθάνατος ἀθανάτου καὶ ἀἴδιος ἀϊδίου. (“One Lord, one from one, God from God, impress and image of Godhead, energetic word, wisdom embracing the entire system of the universe and power producing all creation, true Son of a true Father, the invisible of the invisible and incorruptible of the incorruptible, the immortal of the immortal, the eternal of the eternal”). The begetting is an indescribable act which can only be represented by inadequate images: it is no emanation — the expression προβολή is not found, so far as I know — but is rather to be designated as an act of the will arising from an inner necessity, an act which for that very reason is an emanation of the essence. But the Logos thus produced is really a personally existing being; he is not an impersonal force of the Father, though this still appears to be the case in some passages of Clement, but he is the “sapientia dei substantialiter subsistens (“the wisdom of God substantially existing”) “figura expressa substantia: patris” (express image of the Father’s substance”), “virtus altera in sua proprietate subsistens” (a second force existing in its own characteristic fashion “). He is, and here Origen appeals to the old Acts of Paul, an “animal vivens” with an independent existence. He is another person, namely, the second person in number. But here already begins Origen’s second train of thought which limits the first that we have set forth. As a particular hypostasis, which has its “first cause” (πρῶτον αἴτιον) in God, the Son is “that which is caused” (αἱτιατόν), moreover as the fulness of ideas, as he who comprehends in himself all the forms that are to have an active existence, the Son is no longer an absolute simplex like the Father. He is already the first stage of the transition from the One to the Manifold, and, as the medium of the world-idea, his essence has an inward relation to the world, which is itself without beginning. As soon therefore as the category of causality is applied — which moreover dominates the system — and the particular contemplation of the Son in relation to the Father gives way to the general contemplation of his task and destination, the Son is not only called κτίσμα and δημιούργημα, but all the utterances about the quality of his essence receive a limitation. We nowhere find the express assertion that this quality is inferior or of a different kind when compared with that of God; but these utterances lose their force when it is asserted that complete similarity between Father and Son only exists in relation to the world. We have to acknowledge the divine being that appeared in Christ to be the manifestation of the Deity; but, from God’s standpoint, the Son is the hypostasis appointed by and subordinated to him. The Son stands between the uncreated One and the created Many; in so far as unchangeableness is an attribute of self-existence he does not possess it. It is evident why Origen was obliged to conceive the Logos exactly as he did; it was only in this form that the idea answered the purpose for which it was intended. In the description of the essence of the Logos much more heed continues to be given to his creative than to his significance. Since it was only a teacher that Origen ultimately required for the purpose of redemption, he could unfold the nature and task of the Logos without thinking of Christ, whose name indeed he frequently mentions in his disquisitions, but whose person is really not of the slightest importance there.

In order to comply with the rule of faith, and for this reason alone, for his speculation did not require a Spirit in addition to the Logos, Origen also placed the Spirit alongside of Father and Son. All that is predicated about him by the Church is that he is equal to the other persons in honour and dignity, and it was he that inspired both Prophets and Apostles; but that it is still undecided whether he be created or uncreated, and whether he too is to be considered the Son of God or not. As the third hypostasis, Origen reckoned him part of the constant divine essence and so treated him after the analogy of the Son, without producing an impressive proof of the necessity of this hypostasis. He, however, became the Holy Spirit through the Son, and is related to the latter’s the latter is related to the Father; in other words he is subordinate to the Son; he is the first creation of the Father through the Son. Here Origen was following an old tradition. Considered quantitively therefore, and this according to Origen is the most important consideration, the Spirit’s sphere of action is the smallest. All being has its principle in the Father, the Son has his sphere in the rational, the Holy Spirit in the , that is in the Church; this he has to rule over and perfect Father, Son, and Spirit form a τρίας (“triad”) to which nothing may be compared; they are equal indignity and honour, and the substance they possess is one. If the following is not one of Rufinus’ corrections, Origen said: Nihil in trinitate maius minusve dicendum est cum unius divinitatis fons verbo ac ratione sua teneat universa” (“nothing in the is to be called greater or less, since the fountain of one divinity holds all his parts by word and reason”). But, as in Origen’s sense the union of these only exists because the Father alone is the “source of deity” (πηγὴ τῆς θεότητος) and principle of the other two hypostases, the Trinity is in truth no homogeneous one, but one which, in accordance with a “subtle emanation idea”, has degrees within it. This Trinity, which in the strict sense remains a Trinity of revelation, except that revelation belongs to the essence of God, is with Origen the real secret of the faith, the mystery beyond all mysteries. To deny it shows a Jewish, feeling or at least the greatest narrowness of conception.

The idea of createdness was already more closely associated with the than with the Logos. He is in a still clearer fashion than the Son himself the transition to the series of ideas and spirits that having been created by the Son, are in truth the unfolding of his fulness. They form the next stage after the Holy Spirit. In assuming the existence of such beings as were required by his philosophical system, Origen appealed to the Biblical doctrine of angels, which he says is expressly acknowledged in the Church. With Clement even the association of the Son and Holy Ghost with the great angelic spirits is as yet not altogether avoided, at least in his expressions. Origen was more cautious in this respect. The world of spirits appears to him as a series of well-arranged, graded energies, as the representative of created reason. Its characteristic is growth, that is, progress (προκοπή). Growth is conditioned by freedom: “omnis creatura rationabilis laudis et culpæ capax: laudis, si secundum rationem, quam in se habet, ad meliora proficiat, culpæ, si rationem recti declinet” (“every rational creature is capable of meriting praise or blame — praise, if it advance to better things according to the reason it possesses in itself, blame, if it avoid the right course”). As unchangeableness and permanence are characteristic of the Deity, so freedom is the mark of the created spirit. In this thesis Origen goes beyond the assumption of the heretical Gnostics just as much as he does in his other proposition that the creaturely spirit is in no sense a portion of the divine (because it is changeable ); but in reality freedom, as he understands it, is only the capacity of created spirits to determine their own destiny for a time. In the end, however, they must turn to that which is good, because everything spiritual is indestructible. Sub specie æternitatis, then, the mere communication of the divine element to the created spirit is not a mere communication, and freedom is no freedom; but the absolute necessity of the created spirit’s developing itself merely appears as freedom. Yet Origen himself did not draw this conclusion, but rather based everything on his conception that the freedom of naturæ rationabiles consisted in the possibilitas utriusque, and sought to understand the cosmos, as it is, from this freedom. To the naturæ rationabiles, which have different species and ordines, human souls also belong. The whole of them were created from all eternity; for God would not be almighty unless he had always produced everything; in virtue of their origin they are equal, for their original community with the Logos permits of no diversity; but, on the other hand, they have received different tasks and their development is consequently different. In so far as they are spirits subject to change, they are burdened with a kind of bodily nature, for it is only the Deity that is without a body. The element of materiality is a necessary result of their finite nature, that is, of their being created; and this applies both to angels and human souls. Now Origen did not speculate at all as to how the spirit world might have developed in ideal fashion, a fact which it is exceedingly important to recognise; he knows nothing at all about an ideal development for all, and does not even view it as a possibility. The truth rather is that as soon as he mentions the naturæ rationabiles, he immediately proceeds to speak of their fall, their growth, and their diversities. He merely contemplates them in the given circumstances in which they are placed (see the exposition in περὶ ἀρχῶν II. 9. 2).