Origen's Subordinationist Trinity By Alvan Lamson 1865
We now proceed to Origen's views of the Son and Spirit. Like the preceding Fathers, he regarded the Son as the first production of the Father; having emanated from him as light from the sun, and thus partaking of the same substance; that is, a divine. He believed, however, that God and the Son constituted two individual essences, two beings. This belief he distinctly avows in more than one instance, and the general strain of his writings implies it. He disclaims being of the number of those "who deny that the Father and Son are two substances"; and proceeds to assert that they "are two things as to their essence, but one in consent, concord, and identity of will." He quotes the Saviour's words, "I and my Father are one," which he explains as referring solely to unity of will and affection; and refers, in illustration, to Acts iv. 32: "And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and one soul." Again: from the circumstance that Jesus is called "light" in the Gospel of John (i. 4, 5, 9), and, in his Epistle (1 John i. 5), God is said to be "light," some, he observes, may infer that "the Father does not differ from the Son in essence." But this inference, he proceeds to say, would be wrong; for "the light, which shines in darkness, and is not comprehended by it, is not the same with that in which there is no darkness at all." The Father and the Son, he then says, are "two lights." This, surely, is not the reasoning of a Trinitarian. Once more: he expresses his disapprobation of the hypothesis that "the Spirit has no proper essence diverse from the Father and Son," and adds, "We believe that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three essences, or three substances."
Let us next hear what he says of the inferiority of the Son. Jerome, who had access to several of his works which are now lost, or have come down to us in a corrupt and mutilated form, accuses him of saying that "the Son was not begotten, but made"; that, "compared with the Father, he is a very small light, which appears great to us on account of our feebleness." Again: Origen, he says, "takes the example of two images, a larger and smaller; of which one fills the world, and becomes in some sort invisible by its magnitude; the other falls within the limits of distinct vision. To the former he compares the Father; to the latter, the Son." He attributes, continues Jerome, "perfect goodness" only to the " Omnipotent Father," and does not allow "the Son to be good" (that is, in an absolute sense), "but only a certain breath and image of goodness."
But let us listen to Origen himself. In his commentaries on John, he pronounces "God the Logos," or Son, to be "surpassed by the God of the universe." Commenting on John i. 3, "All things were made by him," he observes, that the particle by or through (DIA), is never referred to the primary agent, but only to the secondary and subordinate; and he takes, as an example, Heb. i. 2, "By whom also he made the worlds," or ages. By this expression, he says, Paul meant to teach us that "God made the ages by the Son" as an instrument. So he adds, in the place under consideration, "If all things were made (DIA) through the Logos, they were not made (UPO) by him" (that is, as the primary cause), "but by a greater and better; and who can that be but the Father?" Again: Jesus is called the "true light"; and in "proportion as God, the Father of truth, is greater than truth, and the Father of wisdom is more noble and excellent than wisdom, — in the same proportion," says Origen, "he excels the true light." Again: the Son and Spirit, he says, "are excelled by the Father, as much or more than they excel other beings." — "He is in no respect to be compared with the Father; for he is the image of his goodness, and the effulgence, not of God, but of his glory and of his eternal light; and a ray, not of the Father, but of his power, and a pure emanation of his most powerful glory, and a spotless mirror of his energy." Again: "The Father, who sent him (Jesus), is alone good, and greater than he who was sent."
Again: Origen contends that Christ is not the object of supreme worship; and that prayer, properly such, ought never to be addressed to him, but is to be offered to the God of the universe, through his only-begotten Son, who, as our intercessor and high priest, bears our petitions to the throne of his Father and our Father, of his God and our God. On this subject he is very full and explicit. "Prayer is not to be directed," he says, "to one begotten,—not even to Christ himself; but to the God and Father of the universe alone, to whom also our Saviour prayed, and to whom he teaches us to pray. When his disciples said, 'Teach us to pray,' he taught them to pray, not to himself, but to the Father, saying, 'Our Father, who art in heaven.' For if the Son," he continues, "be different from the Father in essence, as we have proved in another place, we must either pray to the Son, and not to the Father, or to both, or to the Father alone. But no one is so absurd as to maintain that we are to pray to the Son, and not to the Father. If prayer is addressed to both, we ought to use the plural number, and say, 'Forgive, bless, preserve ye us,' or something like it; but as this is not a fit mode of address, and no example of it occurs in the Scriptures, it remains that we pray to the Father of the universe alone." He adds, "But as he, who would pray as he ought, must not pray to him who himself prays, but to Him whom Jesus our Lord taught us to invoke in prayer (namely, the Father), so no prayer is to be offered to the Father without him; which he clearly shows when he says (John xvi. 23, 24), 'Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he shall give it you. Hitherto ye have asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full.' For he does not say, 'Ask me,' nor 'Ask the Father,' simply; but, 'If ye shall ask the Father in my name, he shall give it you.' For, until Jesus had thus taught them, no one had asked the Father in the name of the Son; and what he said was true: 'Hitherto ye have asked nothing in my name.'" And again: "What are we to infer," asks Origen, "from the question, 'Why call ye me good? There is none good but one, — God the Father.' What but that he meant to say, 'Why pray to me? It is proper to pray to the Father alone, to whom I pray, as ye learn from the Scriptures. For ye ought not to pray to him who is constituted by the Father high priest for you, and who has received the office of advocate from the Father, but through the high priest and advocate, who can be touched with the feeling of your infirmities; having been tempted in all respects as ye are, but, by the gift of the Father, tempted without sin. Learn, therefore, how great a gift ye have received of my Father; having obtained, through generation in me the spirit of adoption, by which ye have a title to be called the sons of God and my brethren, as I said to the Father concerning you, by the mouth of David, "I will declare thy name to my brethren; in the midst of the assembly I will sing praise to thee." But it is not according to reason for a brother to be addressed in prayer by those who are glorified by the same Father. Ye we to pray to the Father alone, with and through me.'"
This we take to be sound Unitarianism. Indeed, the question of the impropriety of addressing the Son in prayer could not have been better argued by the most strenuous advocate for the divine unity at the present day.
We have thus shown, as we think, conclusively, that Origen believed God and the Son to be two essences, two substances, two beings; that he placed the Son at an immense distance from the Infinite One, and was strongly impressed with the impropriety of addressing him in prayer, strictly so called; that he viewed him, however, as standing at the head of all God's offspring, and with them, and for them, as his younger brethren, whom he had been appointed to teach and to save, offering prayer at the throne of the Eternal. Still Origen does not hesitate to apply the terms "creature" and "made" to him, and asserts that he was begotten, not from an inner necessity, but "by the will of the Father, the first-born of every creature."
To the Spirit, Origen assigned a place below the Son, by whom, according to him, it was made. To the Spirit the office of redeeming the human race properly pertained; but, it being incompetent to so great a work, the Son, who alone was adequate to accomplish it, engaged.* The Father, he says, pervades all things; the Son, only beings endowed with reason; and the Holy Spirit, only the sanctified, or saved.
We have reserved for the last place a very remarkable passage relating to the comparative rank of the Father, Son, and Spirit. It contains a plain and direct assertion, and is enough of itself to decide the question respecting Origen's opinions. He says, "Greater Is The Power Of The Father Than That Of The Son And The Holy Spirit; And Greater That Of The Son Than That Of The Holy Spirit; And Again, The Power Of The Holy Spirit Surpasses That Of Other Holy Things." Such language needs no comment.
We now proceed to Origen's views of the Son and Spirit. Like the preceding Fathers, he regarded the Son as the first production of the Father; having emanated from him as light from the sun, and thus partaking of the same substance; that is, a divine. He believed, however, that God and the Son constituted two individual essences, two beings. This belief he distinctly avows in more than one instance, and the general strain of his writings implies it. He disclaims being of the number of those "who deny that the Father and Son are two substances"; and proceeds to assert that they "are two things as to their essence, but one in consent, concord, and identity of will." He quotes the Saviour's words, "I and my Father are one," which he explains as referring solely to unity of will and affection; and refers, in illustration, to Acts iv. 32: "And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and one soul." Again: from the circumstance that Jesus is called "light" in the Gospel of John (i. 4, 5, 9), and, in his Epistle (1 John i. 5), God is said to be "light," some, he observes, may infer that "the Father does not differ from the Son in essence." But this inference, he proceeds to say, would be wrong; for "the light, which shines in darkness, and is not comprehended by it, is not the same with that in which there is no darkness at all." The Father and the Son, he then says, are "two lights." This, surely, is not the reasoning of a Trinitarian. Once more: he expresses his disapprobation of the hypothesis that "the Spirit has no proper essence diverse from the Father and Son," and adds, "We believe that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three essences, or three substances."
Let us next hear what he says of the inferiority of the Son. Jerome, who had access to several of his works which are now lost, or have come down to us in a corrupt and mutilated form, accuses him of saying that "the Son was not begotten, but made"; that, "compared with the Father, he is a very small light, which appears great to us on account of our feebleness." Again: Origen, he says, "takes the example of two images, a larger and smaller; of which one fills the world, and becomes in some sort invisible by its magnitude; the other falls within the limits of distinct vision. To the former he compares the Father; to the latter, the Son." He attributes, continues Jerome, "perfect goodness" only to the " Omnipotent Father," and does not allow "the Son to be good" (that is, in an absolute sense), "but only a certain breath and image of goodness."
But let us listen to Origen himself. In his commentaries on John, he pronounces "God the Logos," or Son, to be "surpassed by the God of the universe." Commenting on John i. 3, "All things were made by him," he observes, that the particle by or through (DIA), is never referred to the primary agent, but only to the secondary and subordinate; and he takes, as an example, Heb. i. 2, "By whom also he made the worlds," or ages. By this expression, he says, Paul meant to teach us that "God made the ages by the Son" as an instrument. So he adds, in the place under consideration, "If all things were made (DIA) through the Logos, they were not made (UPO) by him" (that is, as the primary cause), "but by a greater and better; and who can that be but the Father?" Again: Jesus is called the "true light"; and in "proportion as God, the Father of truth, is greater than truth, and the Father of wisdom is more noble and excellent than wisdom, — in the same proportion," says Origen, "he excels the true light." Again: the Son and Spirit, he says, "are excelled by the Father, as much or more than they excel other beings." — "He is in no respect to be compared with the Father; for he is the image of his goodness, and the effulgence, not of God, but of his glory and of his eternal light; and a ray, not of the Father, but of his power, and a pure emanation of his most powerful glory, and a spotless mirror of his energy." Again: "The Father, who sent him (Jesus), is alone good, and greater than he who was sent."
Again: Origen contends that Christ is not the object of supreme worship; and that prayer, properly such, ought never to be addressed to him, but is to be offered to the God of the universe, through his only-begotten Son, who, as our intercessor and high priest, bears our petitions to the throne of his Father and our Father, of his God and our God. On this subject he is very full and explicit. "Prayer is not to be directed," he says, "to one begotten,—not even to Christ himself; but to the God and Father of the universe alone, to whom also our Saviour prayed, and to whom he teaches us to pray. When his disciples said, 'Teach us to pray,' he taught them to pray, not to himself, but to the Father, saying, 'Our Father, who art in heaven.' For if the Son," he continues, "be different from the Father in essence, as we have proved in another place, we must either pray to the Son, and not to the Father, or to both, or to the Father alone. But no one is so absurd as to maintain that we are to pray to the Son, and not to the Father. If prayer is addressed to both, we ought to use the plural number, and say, 'Forgive, bless, preserve ye us,' or something like it; but as this is not a fit mode of address, and no example of it occurs in the Scriptures, it remains that we pray to the Father of the universe alone." He adds, "But as he, who would pray as he ought, must not pray to him who himself prays, but to Him whom Jesus our Lord taught us to invoke in prayer (namely, the Father), so no prayer is to be offered to the Father without him; which he clearly shows when he says (John xvi. 23, 24), 'Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he shall give it you. Hitherto ye have asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full.' For he does not say, 'Ask me,' nor 'Ask the Father,' simply; but, 'If ye shall ask the Father in my name, he shall give it you.' For, until Jesus had thus taught them, no one had asked the Father in the name of the Son; and what he said was true: 'Hitherto ye have asked nothing in my name.'" And again: "What are we to infer," asks Origen, "from the question, 'Why call ye me good? There is none good but one, — God the Father.' What but that he meant to say, 'Why pray to me? It is proper to pray to the Father alone, to whom I pray, as ye learn from the Scriptures. For ye ought not to pray to him who is constituted by the Father high priest for you, and who has received the office of advocate from the Father, but through the high priest and advocate, who can be touched with the feeling of your infirmities; having been tempted in all respects as ye are, but, by the gift of the Father, tempted without sin. Learn, therefore, how great a gift ye have received of my Father; having obtained, through generation in me the spirit of adoption, by which ye have a title to be called the sons of God and my brethren, as I said to the Father concerning you, by the mouth of David, "I will declare thy name to my brethren; in the midst of the assembly I will sing praise to thee." But it is not according to reason for a brother to be addressed in prayer by those who are glorified by the same Father. Ye we to pray to the Father alone, with and through me.'"
This we take to be sound Unitarianism. Indeed, the question of the impropriety of addressing the Son in prayer could not have been better argued by the most strenuous advocate for the divine unity at the present day.
We have thus shown, as we think, conclusively, that Origen believed God and the Son to be two essences, two substances, two beings; that he placed the Son at an immense distance from the Infinite One, and was strongly impressed with the impropriety of addressing him in prayer, strictly so called; that he viewed him, however, as standing at the head of all God's offspring, and with them, and for them, as his younger brethren, whom he had been appointed to teach and to save, offering prayer at the throne of the Eternal. Still Origen does not hesitate to apply the terms "creature" and "made" to him, and asserts that he was begotten, not from an inner necessity, but "by the will of the Father, the first-born of every creature."
To the Spirit, Origen assigned a place below the Son, by whom, according to him, it was made. To the Spirit the office of redeeming the human race properly pertained; but, it being incompetent to so great a work, the Son, who alone was adequate to accomplish it, engaged.* The Father, he says, pervades all things; the Son, only beings endowed with reason; and the Holy Spirit, only the sanctified, or saved.
We have reserved for the last place a very remarkable passage relating to the comparative rank of the Father, Son, and Spirit. It contains a plain and direct assertion, and is enough of itself to decide the question respecting Origen's opinions. He says, "Greater Is The Power Of The Father Than That Of The Son And The Holy Spirit; And Greater That Of The Son Than That Of The Holy Spirit; And Again, The Power Of The Holy Spirit Surpasses That Of Other Holy Things." Such language needs no comment.
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