III. Историческая судьба учения Оригена о Св. Троице
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In 231 Origen had to leave Alexandria forever. One Alexandrian council sentenced him to expulsion from this city, another - to deprivation of the priesthood 872. It is not clear how the fathers of the councils motivated their verdict; There is no doubt that even during Origen’s lifetime the question of his Orthodoxy was raised, and he wrote about this to Fabian, Bishop of Rome, and many others, 873 but it is not known whether the purity of Origen’s doctrine of the Holy Trinity was questioned, as well as whether the question of his Orthodoxy was raised at the Alexandrian councils.
This whole storm that arose against Origen, however, did not have important consequences for the glory of his name. In Alexandria itself, the position of catechist in the catechetical school is successively occupied by students of Origen - direct or mediocre 874, and his name is surrounded by such a brilliant aura that for the hardworking, gifted Pierius they cannot find a name more honorable than “younger Origen” 875.
The successors of Origen's dogmatic view were his successors in the rank of catechete, Dionysius the Great, Pierius and Theognostus.
The time of activity of Dionysius the Great, already in the rank of bishop of Alexandria, coincides with the era of special revival and successful propaganda of Sabellianism, the fight against which gave him great fame. He conducted his polemics with more energy than with tact and prudence: having set his task to illuminate with all possible force the difference between the Father and the Son, Dionysius thought to achieve his goal like that inexperienced gardener who, straightening a crooked young tree, bends it in the opposite direction 876. In one of his letters, Dionysius made the following expressions: “The Son of God is a creation and a thing that happened. He is not the Father's own Son by nature and is as different from Him in His essence as a vine from a winegrower, or a ship from a ship's carpenter. As a creation, He was not before He came into being” 877. This letter caused great excitement. The harsh expressions of Dionysius became known in Rome, and aroused an objection from the bishop of that city, Dionysius.
Heir to the firm and decisive theological language of Tertullian, in a special letter he speaks out against the Sabellians, but no less strongly against those who stand in diametric opposition to them and divide the Holy Trinity into three hypostases alien to each other, as if into three special deities 878, and demands that the Son of God be confessed to be consubstantial with the Father 879. Dionysius with all his energy rebels against confusing the birth of the Son of God with creation, seeing in the latter view a denial of the eternal existence of the Word. “It is not unimportant, but the greatest blasphemy to call the Lord made by hands in any sense. But if the Son came into being, then there was no time when He did not exist. But He always was, if He is the Word, Wisdom and Power. And all these are properties of God, therefore, if the Son came into being, then these properties once did not exist; therefore, there was a time when God was without them, which is completely absurd" 880.
Dionysius of Alexandria responded to the Roman with the work “Explanation and Defense” 881. He says that his views were conveyed to the Bishop of Rome in a one-sided, false light. True, he did not use the name “consubstantial”; but it’s not even in St. Scripture. However, he has nothing against the meaning of this expression and has already proven his agreement with it by comparing the relationship of the Son of God to the Father with the natural human relationship of a son to his father, as well as with the relationship of a plant to a root, a river to a source; and father and son are naturally homogeneous, and plant and root are co-essential with each other 882. Not only does he not believe there is a sharp division between the Father and the Son, but on the contrary, he is convinced that the Father, as a Father, is inseparable from the Son, that they are united with each other so closely that to call the Father means to already mention the Son, without even mentioning His name 883. The Father can never be without the Son, nor the Son without the Father, just as the human mind cannot be for a moment without a word and the word without the mind, but the mind is, as it were, a hidden word and the word is the manifested mind 884.
Dionysius called the Son creation only in passing and focused with special attention on those names that more accurately express the relationship of the Father and the Son as consubstantial 885; Moreover, he did not mean the special relationship of the creator to the creature, but the general one - cause to effect, combining with the name “creator” that broad meaning that allows us to call both the sage the creator of his own word, and man the creator of his own internal actions 886. For Dionysius, the eternal existence of the Son of God is beyond any doubt. Sunshine and day are contemporary with the appearance of the sun, and this connection between them is not external, but based on their very nature: light cannot help but shine; That is why it is thought of as light, because it shines. So the Son is co-eternal with the Father. There never was a time when God was not the Father; as Word, Wisdom and Power, Christ eternally coexists with the Father, because it is impossible to think that God at first did not have these qualities, did not bring them out of His being, was, as it were, barren (ἄγονος), and then gave birth to or adopted them (ἐπαιδοποιήσατο).
God is eternal light, has not begun and will never cease. From Him proceeds and coexists with Him the eternal radiance, beginningless and always occurring, His Son 887. And if Dionysius called the Father and the Son essentially alien to each other, if he said that the Son did not exist before He was born: then he meant to point out the fact of an indisputable, real difference between Them. “In the beginning there was the Word, but He who spoke the Word was not the Word, for the Word was with God. The Lord is Wisdom; therefore, He who produced Wisdom was not Wisdom. Christ is the truth; but it is written: “Blessed is the God of truth.” A river flows from a source; however, neither the source is called a river, nor the river a source; both have different names and actually exist as different forms. The word develops from the mind, and does not come to it from the outside; but both have their own special place and meaning in the spiritual life of a person: the mind exists immanently in the heart of a person; the word has an element of movement, energy: it opens the mind through the organs of speech.
The Son is co-eternal with the Father: since the parent exists, the begotten also exists; however, They both exist without merging with Themselves, and the Father is logically before the Son. “The Son is eternal, but has existence not from Himself, but from the Father. God is always the Father, and the Son is not just eternal, but since the Father is eternal, the Son is also eternal and coexists with Him as the radiance of light” 888.
In the views of Dionysius it is not difficult to notice the influence of Origen. It is true that in his epistle Dionysius, in defining the difference between the Father and the Son, goes as far as Origen never went: “there was no Son before He came into existence,” is such an unfortunate expression, which in its literal meaning calls into question the eternal existence of the Word, and even if it should indicate only the logical primacy of the existence of the Father, it diverges too noticeably from the subtle and careful way of Origen’s presentation. But, despite this, in general, Dionysius is faithful to his teacher’s system both in its light and shadow sides. Thus, the existence of the Son, according to Dionysius, is presupposed by the very existence of the Father; the Son appears not only co-eternal with the Father, but also ἀειγενής, that is, eternally occurring, always being born. But, along with this, one can notice the same predominance of the idea of the difference between the Father and the Son over the thought of Their unity, the same starting point in the view - the doctrine of the Son as begotten - and the same sharpness of the conclusion, inexplicable from the exact meaning of this premise - i.e.
the same features that we saw in Origen's system. Even when Dionysius, apparently, is so firmly and quickly directed towards the doctrine of consubstantiality, the Origenian view stands with all clarity in his consciousness that the Father of Wisdom is not Wisdom, and the divine properties in the Father and in the Son appear with that specific certainty, by virtue of which they are conceived as two different forms of being. Finally, the name “creation”, with its elastic meaning, was hardly chosen completely by chance to express the relationship between the Father and the Son.
In his apology, Dionysius of Alexandria agrees in form to accept the doctrine of consubstantiality, with which, according to him, he never disagreed in spirit. However, it does not find access to the theology of Pierius. He speaks of the Father and the Son as two natures, two beings. Even those who had an unfavorable view of Origen did not find an Arian meaning in these words of Pierius 889; but, in any case, they are characteristic because they show that Origen's indifference in the choice of the words “being” and “hypostasis” continues in Alexandrian theology; that the “younger Origen” did not completely abandon the idea of the difference between the Father and the Son and in essence, assumed by Origen and exaggerated by Dionysius. In the person of Theognostus, Alexandrian theology, apparently, finally stands on the ground pointed to by Dionysius of Rome. Theognostus directly calls the Son a being who did not come from outside, not from something that does not exist, but who came from the being of the Father 890.
However, in his theology there were many elements that revealed in him a disciple of Origen: in the system of Theognostus there was something that seemed to be a doctrine of the creation of the Son; like Origen, he limited the area of special activity of the Son only to rational beings 891.
There is also a whole area in which the dependence of Dionysius, Pierius and Theognostus on the theology of Origen is beyond doubt: they all subordinate the Holy Spirit to the Son 892.
At the end of the 3rd century. and the beginning of the 4th century. signs of an anti-originistic movement are again revealed. St. Methodius of Tyre polemicizes against Origen's teaching on creation and resurrection 893. Pamphilus and Eusebius of Caesarea, deep admirers of Origen, write an apology in defense of him from various criticisms. The apology lists nine charges of dogmatic errors leveled against Origen: it was said that he taught:
a) that the Son of God is unborn;
b) that He came from the Father in the emanative (gnostic) sense;
c) that He is not God, but a simple man - in the sense in which the monarchian dynamists asserted this 894;
d) that Origen represented the incarnation of the Son of God docetically;
e) that he preached two Christs;
f) that he rejected the literal historical meaning of biblical events;
g) that he denied future punishments for sinners and held incorrect ideas about the resurrection of the dead,
i) relocating them to other bodies.
From this list it is clear that the cosmological and eschatological ideas of Origen, against which Methodius was armed, provide a lot of food for other accusers of Origen; on the contrary, his teaching about the Holy Trinity is touched upon here only weakly. And the internal contradiction in the criticisms borrowed from this area shows how low the dogmatic competence of the environment from which they came. And in fact, Origen was accused by many who not only never read his works, but could neither read nor correctly understand them 895. Such people formed their view of Origen’s teachings not on the basis of any internal shortcomings in the very content of his views, but judged him by some inaccurate and obscure phrase. Therefore, one cannot think that in attributing to Origen the ideas of the dynamists that Christ is not God, but a simple man, these people are based on a deep study of the meaning of Origen’s view of the divinity of the Son or on the actually existing formal similarity of his proposed solution to the question of monarchy with the theories of the dynamists.
The positive meaning of the accusation that Origen calls the Son of God unborn is apparently that the Son, according to Origen, was created and, as such, cannot be the Father’s own Son. In response to this accusation, Pamphilus proves primarily that the Son of God is a natural Son, and not an adopted son 896. But in expressing such an accusation against Origen, his opponents hardly proceeded from a clearly recognized requirement - to think of the Son as consubstantial with the Father; at least Pamphilus, setting out the positive content of Origen’s dogmatic teaching about the divinity of the Son, does not take the trouble to prove that the Son, according to Origen, is consubstantial with the Father.
All these features of the anti-Origenistic movement in this era deprive it of interest for the history of Origen’s teaching on the Holy Trinity. And if the appearance of such opponents of Origen as those with whom Pamphilus polemicizes is not without historical significance, then, on the other hand, from their attitude towards Origen it is clear what an unfavorable view of him was formed in the minds of people of a certain order, and how strong was their dislike towards Origen. He was accused by many who were familiar with the content of his teachings only by hearsay; There was no shortage of those who were ready to extol some of his views to the skies, but only until they knew the name of their author: it was enough for them to know that these were the views of Origen, as they already recognized them as heretical and did not find enough words to condemn them 897. Obviously, a well-known class of people had already formed for whom the opinion that Origen was a heretic was not subject to any doubt. They were ready to attach themselves to any anti-Origenist movement and, with numerical superiority, drown out the voices of the Origenists.
However, in the first half of the 4th century. the name of Origen was still surrounded by his traditional glory: he was glorified throughout the entire universe 898. But this bright halo belonged to the past - not to the future. The time of the integral influence of Origen's dogmatic system on the minds of theologians has already passed and has given way to cautious use of it. The apparent reason for this is the emergence of Arianism.
By its origin, Arianism does not stand in a causal connection with Origenism: Arius called himself a Lucianist, that is, he recognized that he owed his theological education not to the Alexandrian school, but to the Antiochian one; Eusebius of Nicomedia was also a Lucianist 899. However, Origenism did not remain outside of any historical contact with Arianism; its affinity with the latter can be traced at all phases of its development 900.
At first, Arianism appears in the form of polemical opposition to the teachings of Alexander, bishop of Alexandria. “Always God,” he said, “always the Son; together the Father, together the Son... The Son coexists with God; Not for a single briefest moment that human thought can imagine does the Father precede the Son (in being). The Son is from God Himself” 901. These words contain two thoughts: the co-eternity of the Son with the Father - without the slightest shade of denying the causal dependence of the Son on the Father - and the birth of the Son from the very being of the Father - without any admixture of any emanative ideas 902. Arius misunderstood the first thought and, through tendentious conclusions, distorted the meaning of the second. Alexander teaches that the Father does not precede the Son for a moment: this is not, thought Arius, what all Eastern theologians preach: they say that the Father precedes the Son without beginning 903. In the doctrine of the eternity of the Son, Arius sees the recognition of Him as beginningless, and this leads to the assumption that the Son is unborn.
From this point of view, Alexander’s teaching appeared to Arius in a very strange light: it led either to the assumption of two unborn, i.e., two principles 904, or, if only one God the Father is confessed to the unborn, to the denial of the reality of the birth of the Son, and at the same time His difference from the Father. In the first case it was a denial of the monarchy, in the second it was a modification of the Sabellian idea of the Son-Father 905. No less erroneous seemed to Arius the idea that the Son is from the Father Himself, i.e., as he understood quite correctly, from the essence of the Father. If the Son is from God Himself, then before His birth He was part of the Father’s being, either merging with Him to the point of indifference, as a part with the whole, or at the moment preceding His birth, retaining some specific characteristics that distinguish Him from the Father, i.e., existing before His birth. In both cases, the simplest being of God appears to be complex, divisible at the birth of the Son, and, under the first assumption, also changeable.
In a word, the doctrine of birth from a being is not free from emanative connotations and leads to the idea of the materiality of the being of God 906.
In contrast to such a teaching as Alexander’s view seemed to Arius, he developed his own 907. God is an unconditionally simple and spiritual being, the one beginningless creator of everything that exists, unchangeable and immutable. The Son was really born from the Father, and not only in an imaginary way; The Father is truly the beginning of the Son, and therefore He is not unborn; He is not without beginning and, therefore, not co-eternal with the Father. True, He was born before time from the Father, created and founded before the ages, but before He was born He did not exist. It cannot be said that before His birth He existed in the Father and was then born, nor that He came into being through a modification of a part of the Father’s being, nor, finally, that He came from some other ready-made material. Consequently, His birth is the first moment of His existence: He was born without previously existing, was not born from the being of the Father, came from nothing.
With such a concept, it is natural that Arius prefers to call the act by virtue of which the Son has His being not birth - this word could very easily evoke emanative ideas - but creation. “Before all times and ages, God brought into being one single one, creating by His own will the unchangeable and immutable, the perfect creation of God, but not as one of the creations, birth, but not as one of the births, and in the very communication of existence to Him, He communicated to Him all the divine glory. But having given Him possession of everything, the Father did not deprive Himself of His unbornness: He has it in Himself, for He is the source of everything. But the Son is perfect (full) God, the only begotten.”
This was the original content of the Arian view. Both in its polemical and positive parts, it half repeats the views of Origen and half denies it. The whole polemic of Arius against birth from a being seems to be only a further development and improvement of the objection made against this doctrine in his time by Origen. Like the latter, Arius does not see anything other than the crudest emanatism in the idea of birth from a being and polemicizes against it using the same means as Origen, supplementing his argument with only one more absurdity, the idea that the Son was born already existing before His birth.
The positive result of this polemic in Arius, as in Origen, is the idea of the birth of the Son, which brings this act closer to creation, but not to the point of complete identification of them: the Son is not born from the being of the Father, the Father brings Him into being according to His will, but creates Him alone; as a result of this divine act, a creature is born, unlike other creatures: the Son is God’s perfect creation, by His very nature not subject to change, a perfect God, who along with life received from the Father all divine glory, except for that determination that constitutes an inalienable property of the Father, incommunicable to anyone else - except His unbornness: the Father could not communicate this property of His to the Son, just as he could not cease to be the first cause of all things.
But on the other hand, Arianism represents a complete negation of Origenism. Arius could not understand the dual meaning in the idea of the beginning - the difference between the beginning as a principle, as a cause, and the beginning as the first moment of being, as a point of departure - and, denying the originlessness of the Son in the sense of independence from cause, or unbornness, he came to the idea that the Son is not co-eternal with the Father, that there is, so to speak, a chronological difference in existence between the Father and the Son. Instead of the sublime doctrine of the beginningless and always present birth of the Son, Arius offers the doctrine of the only pre-temporal birth of the Son. The Son was born before the world, before all ages and times, but not from eternity; He was not there before He was born, and therefore there was no time when He was not.
Apparently, starting from the soil of Origenism, Arius here adheres to the view of the most ancient Christian writers, who believed that the Son was born of the Father before the creation of the world, and expressing the idea that there once was no Son, Arius has a completely satisfactory precedent in a similar expression by Dionysius of Alexandria or even Tertullian. But in reality he differs from all the ancient writers. None of them would say that the Son did not exist before he was born - did not exist in the sense in which Arius believed. To the famous Arian question: Did God give birth to a Son who already exists or does not exist? 908 The ancient writers would have answered: yes, existing; because before the Son, the Word exists in the Father, and birth is not the first moment of the existence of the second Person.
On the contrary, Arius denies this difference between the Word and the Son, between Λόγος ἐνδιάθετος and Λόγος προφορικός, no less decisively than Origen, and, like the latter, believes that the existence of the Son is revealed by His birth from the Father; according to Arius, the Son at this moment is not only born or created, but also founded: before this, in the strict sense of the primary instant, there was no guarantee of the existence of the Son: God gave birth to Him non-existent 909. Moreover: He came into being in the fullest, absolute sense from non-existents, ἐξ οὐκ ὄντων. Contemporaries with a remarkable understanding of the essence of the matter turned this expression into a name for strict Arians “ἐξουκόντιοι” 910. This expression not only denies the pre-existence of the Word to the Son, not only introduces a moment of non-existence into His existence, but - what is most important - shows the difference in the entire structure of view, in the very soil on which, on the one hand, the Arians stand, on the other - all their opponents, and with them all the ancient writers. Let us compare, for example, the views of Arius and Origen.
Both of them deny that the Son is born from the being of the Father, and neither one nor the other of them thinks that the Son is created from pre-existing matter: however, according to Arius, the Son comes from non-existents, Origen does not think this; for Arius, between the being of the Father and the external world, which at the moment of the birth of the Son still does not exist, or that “nothing” from which everything is created, there is nothing in between; for Origen, this average is conceivable: this is the power or will of the Father Himself. True, Arius also recognized that the Son was created by the will of the Father; but the fact that, despite this, the Son came from non-existents shows that the similarity of the views of Arius and Origen at this point is purely illusory: Origen could say that the Son is from the Father or from (ἐκ) His will - in a sense in which Arius would never agree to repeat these words, admitting only that the Son is by the will of the Father. This will for Origen is something existing, ὄν, for Arius it is οὐκ ὄν; for the former it is reality, for the latter it is simply a state.
The existence of the begotten Son for Arius is a completely new fact, having no foundations, no roots in the previous one; for Origen and all others it is, so to speak, a modification of what is already (logically) previously given, a clarification of what is necessarily presupposed, an actuality closely and deeply connected with the potentiality that determines it. According to their somewhat mystical, not entirely clear view, God is wise, but does not have wisdom in Himself as a quality, although we cannot imagine without it, and therefore He is certainly the Father of hypostatic Wisdom, the Son. God is all-perfect, but His definition as the Father constitutes an integral moment in the concept of Him as perfect: the concept of God would lack content, it would be resolved into a simple idea of Being, if He were not the Father of the Son.
The consequences of such a concept of God for the doctrine of the Son are quite clear: no matter how inaccurate the expressions of the ancient writers about the Son were, even if they called Him created and His existence was derived not from the essence, but from the will of the Father: insofar as they represented God as wise and the Son as His Wisdom, in their concept of God there was a moment, the disclosure of which should have led to the consciousness of the necessity of the birth of the Word and to the conviction that the Word is his own, natural Son Father and, as such, cannot be a creature. On the contrary, Arius’ concept of God was simpler, rationally clear and meaningful: God is all-perfect, even conceivable without any relation to the Son, as μονώτατος; Wisdom and the word and all other definitions of His essence are already contained in Himself. The existence of the Son is in no way predetermined by the essence of the Father, is not predestined in Him, at least with greater clarity than the existence of the world itself; in such a concept of God there is no motive for His internal self-revelation in the Trinity.
“The Son is not in the Father by nature: He has another, His own word of His being and another His own wisdom, with which He created the world and this Word,” that is, the Son 911. This view tore all the threads connecting the Son with the very essence of the Father: the Father and the Son are not only not consubstantial, but also alien to each other, beings sharply differentiated from one another 912. There was insufficient grounds for distinguishing the Son from a number of other beings. Thus, the concept of the Son as originating from the non-bearing, as it is revealed in Arius's "Θάλεια", should have led to various amendments to the view that Arius originally expressed, and a change in tone to a lower one.
First of all, the Arians are trying to eliminate all those expressions of St. Scriptures that give insight into the special relationship of the Son to God. He came from God, but in the same sense in which everything comes from God 913. He is born, but it is written: “Who gave birth to the drops of dew?” If He is called the Son, then it is also said: “I have begotten and raised up sons.” So, from this name one should not conclude the unity of the essence of the Father and the Son 914: He is not the Father’s own, natural Son; He is only a creation adopted by God, a Son in name only 915. Further, He is called Word and Wisdom, but only in an improper sense, καταχρηστικῶς, κατ ’ ἐπίνοιαν, according to His relation to verbal beings and wise ones through Him; but the true word and true wisdom of God is not the Son, but that property by which the Son was created 916. One cannot conclude any natural relationship of the Son to the Father from the fact that He is called the power of God: even the locust is called in Scripture the great power of God, and the Son is only the first among many created powers 917.
Previously, Arius called the Son the perfect only-begotten God: now he is content with less exalted expressions about the divinity of the Son. He is not the true God, but God only in name. He, like other gods, is only a deified creation, and the source of His divinity is the same as that of the others - the communion of the deity of the Father; but due to the strict distinction between the essence of the Son and the essence of the Father, this communion cannot be the communion of the very essence of the Father - the Son participates in the deity only by grace 918. Alien to the essence of the Father, the Son is naturally not only not equal to Him, but also dissimilar to Him in all respects, both in essence and in his properties 919. The Father is completely unchangeable: the same cannot be said about the Son: by His nature He is changeable, like all of us; He is the same rational-moral being as all others, therefore, free, with the ability to choose between good and evil, and if He remains as He is, then by His free will, and as long as He wants 920. The knowledge of the Son is not absolute: He does not know the Father perfectly, cannot comprehend Him in Himself.
The Father is God invisible to everyone, both for those who came into being through the Son, and for the Son Himself, and if it is said about him that He sees the Father, then it is not in the full and strict sense, but “only to the extent possible.” He knows the Father, but only in part, in proportion to the means possessed by His nature, which is not consubstantial and not involved in the Father. And since the knowledge of the Son in no area is absolute, and He does not even know His own being perfectly, then, naturally, if everything that the Son proclaims to us about God is inadequate to the concepts themselves 921. Of course, there cannot be unity of glory between the Father and the Son 922. This idea of the Son leaves room for the following questions: what is the purpose of bringing into existence such a Son, who did not exist and was not presupposed by the very being of the Father? On what is based the preeminent position accorded to the Son? Finally, what can establish unity between such different beings as the Father and the Son? The Arians answered the first question with a dualistic opposition between God and the world.
The purpose of His existence is not in the very essence of the Son, but in the world 923. “God did not create us for the Son, but Him for us.” “Desiring to produce created nature and seeing that it cannot endure the influence of the hand of the Father Himself, the direct creation from Himself, God first creates and creates one only one and calls Him Son and Word, so that then through His mediation it would be possible to create everything else.” Thus, the Son is a creation, but not as one of the creations. The basis for such a difference lies, however, not in the essence of the Son - from this side He is a creation, like others - and not even in the absolute will of God Himself, but in the morally free will of the Son. That glory, which, according to the original view of Arius, is given in the very hypostasis, in the very being of the Son, is in reality deserved by Him, and constitutes only a reward for His free feat and moral perfection 924. “God foresaw how morally high (καλός) the Son would be, and gave Him in advance the glory that He later earned as a man by His virtuous life on earth.”
There was no special election of the Son here: if Peter and Paul had reached the same height of moral perfection as Christ, then they would have been sons of God in a sense no less excellent than Christ. – Thus, the Arian theory presents in a strange light the entire existence of the Son of God before His incarnation. He is the most chosen of creations, the only one who came directly from the one, the Word and Wisdom, although in an improper sense, the mediator in the creation of the world; but none of these advantages belong to Him in the full sense: by His essence He has no positive right to them, He has not yet earned them by His free activity; exalted above all, He does not have a strong support for His greatness, and the incarnation - even before sin appeared - is already necessary, first of all, for the Son Himself. – The unity of such a Son with the Father, obviously, can only be weak.
“Since the Son,” said the Arians 925, “wants the same thing as the Father, and does not differ from Him either in concepts or in decisions (neither in the field of knowledge, nor in the field of activity): then He and the Father are one.” But, given the possibility of changing the free will of the Son, such unity of Him with the Father does not have an unshakable support: it is more an accident than a necessary fact.
Origen's view is very bright and sublime when comparing it with the teaching of Arius: the difference between them is radical and essential. With all this, there is no shortage of points where Arianism apparently comes into contact with Origenism and seems to be a further development of it. Thus, the Arians with all determination deny the true deity of the Son: He is God only in name, deified by the sacrament of grace. Origen was far from such a sharp denial, but he also admitted that the Son is God deified by the participation of the divinity of the Father, that only the Father is the true God. If Arius asserts that the Son is in all respects unlike the Father, then Origen also says that the Son is in no respect comparable to the Father; Of course, this view of Arius is carried out more consistently in his system than in Origen. If, according to Arius, the Father is invisible to the Son, then Origen also held this opinion.
The first thought that the Son knows the Father to the best of the capabilities of His nature, so limited, however, that He does not even know His own being perfectly, and His knowledge of God never rises to adequate concepts; Origen has no talk of such a limitation on the self-knowledge of the Son; He knows the Father adequately, and, nevertheless, the Father recognizes Himself higher, more perfectly, more clearly than the Son knows Him, and even the plan of world government is not cognized by the Son in all its details with the height that characterizes the absolute knowledge of the Father. There cannot be unity of glory between the Father and the Son, according to the teachings of Arius; it does not exist in the strict sense in the teachings of Origen: to glorify the Son in exactly the same way as the Father would mean ὑπερδοξάξειν of the first; to offer prayer to Him in the same high sense of the word as to the Father would mean falling into sin out of ignorance. The unity of the Father and the Son, both Arius and Origen, believe in Their like-mindedness and the identity of Their will, although these words in the latter have a meaning that is undoubtedly deeper than in the former.
According to Arius, the Son is the mediator between the world and God; Outside of this purpose, His existence has no purpose. In general, Arius’s idea of the Son as a mediator is so low that in Philo’s “Logos” and in Plotinus’ “mind” - in their relation to the first principle - one can see more Christian than in this system. Origen's teaching about the Son, who in Himself has the purpose of His existence, is so sublime that on this side no comparison with Arianism is possible; but to what extent in the doctrine of the divine mediator Origen himself comes close to Philo and Plotinus, to what extent he is not free from the subordinationist idea that in the very essence of the Son lies the opportunity for Him to reveal Himself in the world, while the Father appears to be transcendental in the most unconditional sense, and this is considered as a feature of His superiority over the Son: to this extent Arianism comes into contact with Origenism. Finally, according to Arius, the divine glory with which the Son is invested is a reward for His virtuous life on earth.
This is a view that, even from Origen’s point of view, can be called monstrous; but if we consider it not in this specific manifestation of it, but in its basis, then its meaning is that the divinity of the Son depends on His own will, on its active manifestations. And Origen himself was hardly completely free from such an idea: and in his words, the Son “would not have been God if he had not remained in constant contemplation of the depth of the Father.” In general, Arius’s view expresses, on the positive side, the same idea that Origen pointed out on the negative side.
Arianism in the form in which it appears in “Θάλεια” reaches the extreme limit of its development, anomaeism. Neither Aetius nor Eunomius, obviously, could add anything in content to the idea that “the Son is in all respects unlike the Father”; they could only give it a new form. In the person of these representatives of Arianism, it is locked in the dialectical opposition of the unborn and the born. Everything that Aetius and Eunomius said rests on the petitio principii, constitutes a consistent conclusion from the unproven and unacknowledged assumption that unbegotten is the essence of the Father, and begotten is the essence of the Son 926. Immutable in His essence, God obviously could not transform from the unborn into the begotten, that is, give birth to the Son from His essence 927. In the highest degree simple and indivisible, the Father is completely unborn, with His whole being, 928 so that there is not a single part in Him that would potentially 929 or actually 930 be born, therefore, in the being of the Father there is not a single element that could, as begotten, without changing its essence, become the Son.
The Father always recognizes Himself as the unborn; Consequently, He would not have been conscious of Himself if He had been born on any side. Likewise, the Son, as begotten, could not be conscious of parts of His being if he were essentially involved in the unborn Father. Consequently, both the birth from a being and the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father are equally unthinkable 931. The basis of all these arguments is the idea that hypostasis and being in God are indistinguishable, so that the unborn existence of the Father determines His very being. Only in this mixture of theological concepts and the dialectical opposition of the unborn and the born, unparalleled in Origen, although in the latter it is far from the consciousness with which the Anomeans take it as the basis of their reasoning, can one see the points of contact between Origenism and Anomeanism.
The gradual clarification of the principles of Arianism in the sense of extreme anomaeism led to the separation from the ranks of strict Arians of a special party, which, having a negative attitude towards both opposing views - both to the fact that the Son is consubstantial with the Father, and to the fact that He is unlike the Father in all respects, chose the middle path and settled on the formula: the Son is in everything like the Father, is similar to Him 932. These moderate Arians, Semi-Arians, or Homiusians had much in common with the defenders of the Nicene symbol; the first looked at them as brothers who, while agreeing with them in the content of their doctrine, differ from them in the form of its expression 933 and only due to a lack of consistency do not accept the word “consubstantial.”
For the Omiusians, the difference between being and hypostasis was not clear 934, and against the word ὁμοούσιος they supported polemics mainly because they feared that it might lead to ταυτοουσία, to the identity of the essence of the Father or the Son in the sense of the Sabellian merging of Them into one hypostasis 935 . But the Semi-Arians recognized the complete similarity between the Father and the Son: for them the Son is the perfect and unchangeable (ἀπαράλλακτος) image of the Father - His divinity and being, His council, power and glory 936. Against the Arian teaching that there was a moment when there was no Son, the Semi-Arians rebelled with all their might. God,” they wrote 937, “is the Father not in time, but above time and every human concept, and the Son is born of the Father, perfect from the perfect, before all times and ages, before every mentally imaginable moment. While speaking out against the birth from a being, because they assumed a material connotation in this view, they at the same time uttered anathema against those who thought of the Son as created in the usual sense of the word 938.
They believed 939 that neither the concept of birth nor the concept of creation, taken separately, gives a correct and complete idea of the act due to which the Son has existence: each of them is one-sided; That's why St. Scripture uses them one next to the other; for example: “The Lord created Me... first of all He begets Me,” or “The first-born of all creation.” For the most complete understanding of this divine act, it is necessary to abstract from the concept of birth the sign of passion and the emanation process - the division of essence, and from the concept of creation - the moment of formation from some substance objectively given outside the creator itself - and then combine into one the remaining signs of both concepts, namely the impassivity and immutability of the creator and the likeness, similarity in essence between father and son. This necessity of combining two concepts, birth and creation, is not only subjective in nature, but also objective; This unification is required not only by the limitations and fragmentation of human understanding, but also by the very essence of the divine act 940.
In God, different types of activity, different energies are conceivable. On the one hand, in Him there is power, ἐξουσία, - that energy by virtue of which He is the creator of creatures - and there is, on the other hand, a special energy by virtue of which He is the Father of the Son. In the birth of the Son, not only creative energy is manifested, but also not only generative energy: it is an act of complex nature; it combines both activities, however, with a predominance of the second. The difference between these energies is that the creative has a more external character relative to the very essence of God (ἐξ – ουσία), and the giving birth is more immanent to it. Therefore, the Semi-Arians said that God is the Father of the Son not only by virtue of His power, not only ἐξουσί ᾳ μόν ῃ, but also by His essence, οὐσί ᾳ, and the Son is from the Father in essence, κατ ’ οὐσίαν 941. Thus, the Semi-Arians take a point of view intermediate between the Orthodox and strictly Arian: the Son, in their view, is not from the essence of the Father, but from (from) the Father in essence. They also occupy an intermediate position in another question about the relationship between the Father and the Son.
The Semi-Arians distinguish in God His own word, as ἐνέργειαν λεκτικήν, from His hypostatic Word, the Son, and believe that the Son cannot be understood by every word of God: this would lead to the conclusion that God has many sons 942. This reflects the convergence of the semi-Arians with the rational point of view of Arius. But, on the other hand, they believe that God is simply wise, not having wisdom as a quality in Himself - otherwise He would be complex - and gives birth to Wisdom from Himself not as a quality, but as a hypostasis of the Son 943. – From all that has been said, it is clear that the Semi-Arians could not, together with the Arians, recognize the Son of God as alien to the Father. They think that the Arians took the wrong road, starting in their concept of the Son of God from the concept of sons by grace: this means judging the proper meaning of a word by its improper use. Those are sons only in name and honor; and the Only Begotten is the Father's own natural Son, the Son essentially from the Father, the only Son to whom this name is applied in the exact sense 944.
The Son is not equal to the Father: the all-wise God is higher than the Wisdom of the Son 945; All definitions of the Father are characterized by a moment of originality and originality; in the Son, everything is marked by the character of similarity, dependence, subordination 946. It seems that the Semi-Arians denoted the relationship of the Father and the Son by divinity by means of difference and Θεὸς ὁ Θεὸς 947 . The One God is actually the Father, but in His deity the deity of the Son and the Spirit is assumed: the Semi-Arians “confess that there is one Divinity, embracing everything through the Son in the Holy Spirit - they profess one deity, one kingdom and one beginning” 948.
Semi-Arian dogmatics has an undeniable affinity with Origen's: it can be observed both in its general tone, remarkably elevated when compared with strict Arianism, and in many details. Just like Origen, confusing hypostasis and being, just like him, polemicizing against birth from being, they come to Origen’s view of this divine act as one in which birth and creation come into contact. The starting points of the Semi-Arians and Origen were probably different: the former assumed a plurality of energies in God, the latter probably started from the idea of God as unconditionally simple and unified; but this difference is not reflected in the result itself. The remarkable idea of birth as an act of the Father's being is reminiscent of Origen's view of the birth of the Son as the activity of the entire power of the Father. The idea that the Son is from the Father in essence, although not from the essence of the Father, can be recognized as the exact formula of the teachings of Origen.
It is not known whether the Semi-Arians maintained the doctrine of the unceasing birth of the Son of God, but, like Origen, they taught about birth from eternity, they represented the Son as the natural Son of the Father, the hypostatic Wisdom of God, who is above wisdom; and finally, the distinction between Father and Son as ὁ Θεὸς and Θεὸς, if not accidental, seems to be a direct borrowing from the dogmatics of Origen.
Strict Arians and Semi-Arians obviously differed very seriously among themselves in their doctrine; They were united only by a negative attitude towards the doctrine of the birth from a being and the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father. But there was one more question, closely connected with this common ground of theirs, regarding which all Arians of all factions spoke with remarkable agreement: this is the question of the Holy Spirit. All Arians, remaining faithful to the subordinate basis of their view, decisively subordinated the third Person of the Holy Trinity to the first two and derived His existence from the Father through the Son. Both sides of this doctrine constitute a simple conclusion from their basic assumption: if the Father and the Son are essentially different from each other; if the only advantage of the Son over other creatures is that the Father creates Him alone, Himself directly, in order to then create everything through Him: then the Holy Spirit, obviously, does not belong to the number of those who received being from the Father directly, does not have this advantage, which alone distinguishes the Son from all others. Therefore, St.
The Spirit has existence through the Son and in the order of creatures, and therefore differs significantly not only from the Father, but also from the Son. The Arians said: “if everything came into being through Him (the Word) and without Him nothing began to be, then, consequently, the Spirit is from among the creatures” 949. “Keeping in everything the teaching of the saints,” wrote Eunomius 950, “and knowing from them that He (the Holy Spirit) is third in dignity and rank, we believe that He is third in nature, came into existence by the command of the Father and the action of the Son, is honored in third place, as the first and greater than all, the only creation of the Only Begotten, but has no deity and creative power.” Likewise, the Semi-Arians claim that “St. The Spirit, whom divine Scripture calls the comforter, came from the Father through the Son” 951; and when disputes arose about the Holy Spirit, the Homiusians, together with the Anomeans, recognized Him as official, third in rank and dissimilar in essence 952. – It is not difficult to notice that in the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, the Arians are close to Origen: the Arians base their idea that the Holy Spirit came through the Son on the same place of St. Scripture, which Origen also pointed to; and the look that St.
The Spirit is subordinate to the Father and the Son, and remained with remarkable tenacity in the school of Origen.
From Arianism to Justinian
Thus, in the content of the Arian doctrine there were points of contact with the doctrine of Origen, but not all Arian parties stand in the same relation to it; we can say that the view of the extreme Arians is as far from Origen’s as the teaching of the moderate Arians is close to it. Probably, this logical similarity of their views also determined the actual attitude of the Arians towards Origen: the Homiusians could use his works with greater success than the Anomeans. Historical information about the attitude of the Arians to Origen is very scarce, but they partly confirm this assumption. The Eunomians also referred to Origen's writings 953; but Aetius treated him with disdain 954. And the moderate representative of the Arians at the beginning of the 5th century was distinguished by his special commitment to Origen. Presbyter Timothy, who contributed greatly to the purification of the Arian doctrine from its crude extremes. This gifted interpreter of St.
Scripture, distinguished by his remarkable theological erudition, familiar even with the Hebrew language, “breathed Origen” and constantly referred to him as an authority in confirmation of his views, so that for some it seemed extremely strange how he could remain an Arian with such love for Origen, who everywhere teaches about the eternal birth of the Son of God 955.
This attitude of the Arians towards Origen had no influence on the judgment of the most remarkable representatives of Orthodoxy about him. For Athanasius the Great, Origen remains an ancient witness to the Nicene truth 956. For Basil the Great and Gregory the Theologian, the study of the exegetical works of Origen was a preparatory school for the fight against the Arians, apparently of an Anomean direction. Using the writings of Origen, they gave a strong answer to the objections of the Arians, and when the latter referred to Origen, they proved to them that they misunderstood his doctrine 957. But one might think that not all defenders of the Nicene doctrine held this view of Origen. It is true that in the teachings of Origen there were many such elements that were easy to use against the Arians; This is the doctrine of the eternal birth of the Word, His closest relationship to the Father, and even the very view of Wisdom as created, far from the meaning that the Arians gave to this name. But, on the other hand, in Origen’s system there were many points that were apparently favorable to the Arians.
And one of the Orthodox who wanted to use Origen had to begin by defending him from this side against the Arian attacks, the result of which could only be the discovery that he taught not like the Arians, but also not quite like the fathers of the Council of Nicaea. Therefore, for many of the defenders of Orthodoxy, it was more important to reject Origen’s authority in matters controversial between them and the Arians than to take advantage of some of his data. However, even those Orthodox Christians who used Origen were far from defending his teaching about the Trinity in all particulars. Yes, St. Athanasius does not at all hide the fact that in the writings of Origen there are passages favorable to the Arians: He only believes that these latter do not express the true views of Origen himself, that in them he speaks from the point of view of his opponents, that, finally, one should see in them only polemical experiments, and not the dogmatic teaching of Origen. Basil the Great ignored Origen's incorrect opinions just as little, recognizing his ideas about the Holy Spirit as not entirely sound 958.
Eustathius of Antioch, Marcellus of Ancyra and Apollinaris of Laodicea, zealous fighters against the Arians, are known as polemicists against Origen; True, they did not direct their objections against his teaching about the Holy Trinity, 959 but it is difficult to expect that they treated him quite favorably in their disputes with the Arians, and, perhaps, the fact that Athanasius V. simply refers to Origen as a witness of the truth, and the famous Didymus of Alexandria (†394) should have already written apologetic scholia for the work “On beginnings" 960.
Thus, the glory of Origen begins to darken during the very period of the struggle against Arianism. In the subsequent era, this situation does not change for the better. The end of the practical struggle with the Arians did not lead to a moderate and impartial attitude towards Origen; on the contrary, its direct consequences, complicated by some extraneous circumstances, aroused a strong movement against Origen.
In the history of theology, the Arian disputes were of great importance. More than half a century of struggle with various Arian factions kept theological thought in its most intense state. Its intensified activity produced such important results that this era can be considered the final moment in the history of the dogma of the Holy Trinity: its essential aspects were clarified with satisfactory completeness and expressed in precise formulas, as unchangeable boundaries within which the subsequent development of theological thought should be kept. Through this, the external character of theology changed significantly: the hesitant, vague expressions of the theologians of the pre-Nicene era gave way to firm and clear language.
The generation of theologians that replaced the leaders of the Nicene era was placed by history itself at a higher phase of the development of dogmatics than the one of which Origen was a brilliant representative: the latter’s doctrine of the Trinity for them lost its vital and practical significance; there was no incentive to return to the stage already experienced from the highest form of the view of the fathers of the 4th century, in any case, more understandable for the theologians of the 5th century than the one to which Origen adhered. Thus, due to the simple course of historical events, such a luminary of the past as Origen had to fade before the majestic and even brighter images of the fathers of the 4th century; this would have happened even if Origen’s view in its content was identical in everything to the teaching of the fathers of the Nicene era, if this latter did not differ from him in anything, except for the higher development of the form and greater illumination of the content of the dogma.
It really wasn't like that. Origenism, obviously, had many points of contact with Arianism - and not only in the phrase, but also in the meaning itself, and this made the boundary that separated Origen from subsequent theologians even sharper. There is a side in which Arianism stands in the same relation to Origenism as the teaching of the fathers of the Nicene period: this is the definiteness of the theological concepts of Arian dogmatics in contrast to the indecisive language of Origen, and in this aspect Arianism had a particularly unfavorable influence on the fate of Origen’s dogmatics. Before the consciousness of the theologians of the 5th century. it stood as a fact that was still too living, not yet far removed into the realm of the historical past and so recently full of formidable significance, so that for many of them an objective attitude to the teachings of Origen was possible: the majority, probably, could only look at it through the prism of Arianism, substituting certain and clear concepts of Arian systems in place of related, but far from identical in meaning, expressions of Origen.
This was, in essence, not a study of Origen’s views, but his identification with the ready-made data of the Arian doctrine, and this shadow that the specter of Arianism cast over Origen’s teaching about the Holy Trinity had a fatal significance for his entire system and for the glory of his name. This is confirmed by the history of Origenistic disputes.
The first phase of these disputes began in 394. in Palestine and ended in 404. the deposition of St. John Chrysostom. The characters in this story were John, the Bishop of Jerusalem, Rufinus and the Nitrian monks as supporters of Origen, and the opponents of the Origenists were Epiphanius of Cyprus, Jerome, Theophilus of Alexandria and the monks of the monastery.
Epiphanius of Cyprus was all his life a sincere opponent of Origen, in whom he saw the predecessor of Arius. At the head of Origen's dogmatic errors, Epiphanius places the doctrine that the Son does not see the Father, and the Holy Spirit does not see the Son, that both the Son and the Holy Spirit are creatures and are not consubstantial with the Father. This is followed by a presentation of Origen's anthropological and eschatological views. At the same time, attention is drawn to the significant fact that Epiphanius gives only a few pages in his work to the refutation of Origen’s first errors relating to his teaching about the Holy Trinity; on the contrary, he refutes anthropology and eschatology in all details 961.
Jerome, formerly an admirer of Origen, subsequently joined his opponents and conducted polemics against John of Jerusalem and Rufinus with all the fervor of a convert. In his opinion, Origen is the father of Arianism and, together with Arius, was condemned at the Nicene Ecumenical Council. That the fathers of the council did not pronounce a formal condemnation against him and did not even mention his name, this, according to Jerome, does not change the essence of the matter at all: the fathers of the council condemned, of course, Arius, but along with him all those who think that the Son is not from the essence of the Father; the verdict is pronounced on Arianism, but implicite and on its source, the teachings of Origen. To think otherwise means to assume that the Nicene fathers did not condemn either the Marcionites, or the Valentinians, or the Manichaeans, because formally these heresies were not mentioned at this council 962. At the head of Origen’s errors, Jerome puts the fact that “he thought badly about the Son, even worse about the Holy.
Spirit,” and then points out his anthropological and eschatological views, as well as the fact that by excessive use of the allegorical method in explaining scripture, he weakens the historical authenticity of the events conveyed there 963. It is noteworthy that Jerome, like Epiphanius, puts Origen’s teaching about the Holy Trinity in the foreground, but speaks about it with truly laconic brevity: there is not the slightest attempt to clarify at least the slightest difference between Origen’s views and the Arian ones; without going into any further reasoning, Jerome identifies both.
On the contrary, he becomes generous with detail when he moves on to other errors of Origen; Jerome's presentation of them looks quite coherent; The very attack on the allegorical method was made from the side in which it comes into contact with Origen’s anthropology, and in the direct interest of clarifying this latter: in fact, only with the help of such allegories could Origen at least partially agree with his Christian view, and his eschatology constitutes a logical conclusion from anthropology.
Theophilus of Alexandria joined the anti-Origenistic movement for reasons completely unrelated to the question of Origen’s teachings. Possessing an understanding too subtle not to feel that the works of Origen represent such a luxurious meadow, in which if there are thorns, then there are many beautiful flowers 964 - Theophilus was the least sincere anti-Origenist, but, despite this, or perhaps because of this, he acted with particular energy against the writings of Origen. Consistently in three Easter messages, he warned the Christian world against being carried away by the views of Origen, this hydra of heresies, this exegete, who with his allegories obscured and distorted the literal meaning of St. Scriptures. Among the many misconceptions of Origen, in the first epistle, Theophilus also points out that, in his opinion, one should pray only to the Father, but not to the Son, and in the second, that the Holy Spirit does not affect irrational beings; but neither one nor the other misconception is put in the foreground.
Theophilus speaks in particular detail about the anthropological views of Origen and the Christological and eschatological views that flow from them 965. The third message speaks exclusively about the origin of bodies according to Origen.
One part of Egyptian monasticism was especially hostile against Origen, the hermitage monks 966, who were ready to act with brute force against everything that is called Origenistic. It should be noted, however, that the works of Origen were hated by them not because they contained non-Orthodox ideas about the Holy Trinity, but because they preached the Orthodox teaching about God as the purest incorporeal spirit, while these monks represented Him anthropomorphically.
As for the Origenists, it is not clear that they defended Origen’s errors in the field of the doctrine of the Trinity. The Nitrian monks differed from the monks, as far as is known, only in that they recognized God as incorporeal. John of Jerusalem did not even think of defending Origen’s opinion that the Son does not see the Father and the Holy Spirit does not see the Son: he gave these words of Origen the meaning that the Holy Trinity is invisible 967. Rufinus did not hold any views inconsistent with the teachings of the Council of Nicea, and in his confession of faith he only admitted that he had no definite convictions on the question of the origin of souls 968; therefore, if he shared any of Origen’s opinions, it was precisely the anthropological ones.
During this period of dispute in 969, Origen, his disciples and his writings were condemned at the Council of Alexandria in 399. under the chairmanship of Theophilus. The decision of the Council of Alexandria was accepted by the fathers of the Jerusalem Council and the Roman Church in the person of Pope Anastasius. St. Epiphanius, having condemned the works of Origen at the Council of Cyprus, appeared in Constantinople to persuade John Chrysostom to a similar decision. He agreed to enter into communication with Chrysostom only after the latter had condemned the books of Origen. Epiphanius managed to persuade some of the bishops who were in Constantinople to such a decision by the power of his moral influence, but the majority refused to sign such a definition, and Theotimus, Bishop of Tomsk, objected to Epiphanius that he preferred not to insult the memory of those who had long since died in piety, that it seemed impious to him (βλάσφημον) to condemn those whom their fathers had not condemned. Then he read one passage from the works of Origen, which was recognized by everyone as useful for the church, and not at all worthy of condemnation.
Thus, Epiphanius's attempt was not successful in Constantinople; and when Theophilus arrived there and personally led an intrigue against St. Chrysostom, the matter of Origen's books was completely forgotten 970.
The initiative in condemning the works of Origen belonged to the Council of Alexandria; others accepted his decision as a fait accompli; Therefore, the importance of the question of the grounds on which such a decision was made by the fathers of the Council of Alexandria is understandable. The message of the council 971 lists the various opinions of Origen, such as, for example, that bodies will one day turn into nothing, and people will exist as pure spirits; that the various orders of angels were not created by God, but appeared as a result of their greater and lesser moral perfection; that astrology makes it possible to predict the future; that magic, if it exists, is not evil; that during the incarnation of the Savior, His sinless human soul descended with Him; that one day the Lord will undergo redemptive suffering for evil spirits 972. But it is characteristic that all these opinions are listed - so to speak - after the council decision has been drawn up.
“In the presence of many fathers from almost all of Egypt,” the message says, “the books of Origen were read and condemned by common consent. For when it was read from the work “On Principles” that the Son in comparison only with us is truth, but in comparison with the Father it is a lie; that, further, insofar as Peter and Paul differ from the Savior, so much less is the Savior than the Father; then, that the kingdom of Christ will one day end, and the devil, cleansed from all sinful filth, will be adorned with equal honor and submit with Christ - and from another book “On Prayer”: “we should not pray to either the Son or the Father together with the Son, but only to the Father”: then we stopped our ears and condemned both Origen and his disciples unanimously.” The following are listed the opinions of Origen already cited above.
The dogmatic side of this whole movement is quite clear. No Origenist defends Origen’s erroneous opinions about the Holy Trinity; Origen's opponents in their polemical writings dwell primarily on his anthropological and eschatological views; Moreover, from Jerome’s words it becomes clear that it was Origen’s eschatology, the idea of the complete liberation of the soul from the burden of the body, that aroused the most lively sympathies among the masses of Origenism’s adherents, that it was from this side that he became popular 973. But the conciliar definition was pronounced mainly on the basis of Origen’s teaching about the Holy Trinity. Its weak points, which were so easy to interpret in a purely Arian sense, apparently represented a strong and convenient weapon for combating Origenism in its content of interest to the masses. Instead of fighting the false foundations of Origen’s entire anthropology, opponents of Origenism choose a simpler path that more accurately leads to the goal: they resort to the authority of the first ecumenical council.
Instead of arguing that Origen’s well-known eschatological conclusion is false, anti-Origenists prefer an argument that is more understandable to the masses and therefore more compelling: Origen is a heretic because his teaching is Arian; therefore, all his books are condemnable and his anthropology is false. Given this state of the issue, it was obviously impossible to expect a detailed analysis of Origen’s views in their similarities and differences from the Arian ones.
In the interval between the first and last phases of the anti-Origenistic movement, the excitement of minds on the question of Origen did not cease completely. Proof of this is the appearance of a five-volume work by an unknown author in defense of Origen that has not reached us, which was read by Photius 974. The fifth volume collected reviews from various writers in favor of Origen; the fourth volume consisted of quotations from his own writings, with which the author proved the groundlessness of the complaints against Origen. The number of these indictments (κεφάλαια) increases to fifteen. They said that Origen taught
a) that one should not pray to the Son;
b) that He is not just good;
c) that He does not know the Father as He knows Himself;
d) that intelligent beings can inhabit the bodies of dumb ones;
e) that transmigration of souls is possible;
f) that the soul of the Savior was formerly the soul of Adam;
g) that the punishments of sinners are not eternal;
h) that there will be no resurrection of the flesh;
i) that magic is not evil;
i) that the course of events depends on the position of the stars;
j) that the Only Begotten will one day cease to reign;
k) that angels appeared into the world as a result of the fall, and not to serve others;
l) that the Father is invisible to the Son;
n) that the cherubim are concepts (ἐπίνοιαι) of the Son 975 and
o) that (He, as) the image of God, in relation to the One whose image He is, due to the fact that He is the image, is not the truth. The high importance of this volume for our question is obvious. Of the fifteen points, at least five are directly taken from the doctrine of the Trinity, and apparently the charges were drawn up with a skillful hand: so they are not similar to those with which Pamphilus dealt. In each of them, specific features of Origenism are noticeable, captured with such a depth that the anti-Origenists of the previous period did not reach: there is not even a reference to the fact that Origen calls the Son of God a created or serving being - a common accusation against Origen, which loses its sharpness due to the undoubted difference in the meaning of these words between Origen and the Arians. Questions about the knowledge of the Son, about the difference between His goodness and the goodness of the Father, about His relationship to the Father as an image of the truth - are formulated here in a way that not a single opponent of Origen posed them in polemical works.
The author’s apologetic methods, apparently, were more scientific than those of Pamphilus: Photius says that his defense for the most part consists not in refuting the accusations, but in confirming them 976, which probably means that he did not adhere to Pamphilus’ method - against the accusation, present quotations from Origen with the opposite content, without at all finding out what gave rise to the accusation itself - but cited the very passages on which it is based on. His defense, at least on some points, was quite successful. His general view of Origen is that in the doctrine of the Trinity he is completely Orthodox, and only in the fight against the Sabellians was he not careful enough in expressions, and in some other dogmatic points his writings were damaged by heretics - Photius puts the orthodoxy of the apologist himself in the doctrine of the Trinity above doubt, but he agreed with Origen on the question of the pre-existence of souls and tried to prove it view, as well as the transmigration of souls, by biblical and patristic testimonies 977. Thus, this Origenist did not share Origen’s erroneous opinions about St.
Trinity, but was sympathetic to his anthropology.
The condemnation of Origenism under the Emperor Justinian, as a historical fact, is extremely obscure and not explained in detail 978. It is only recognized that it took place not at the fifth ecumenical council of 553, but at the local (σύνοδος ἐνδημοῦσα) Council of Constantinople in 544. In the monuments that have come down to us, the condemnation of Origenism is given in two forms: one type is represented by nine anathematisms formulated by Justinian in his letter against Origen, addressed to the Patriarch of Constantinople Mina and sent to all other patriarchs and bishops for signature; The fifteen anathematisms against the Origenists, attributed to the fifth ecumenical council, but not belonging to it, are distinguished by a slightly different character.
In the cathedral anathematisms, the name of Origen is not mentioned, and they are all directed at his followers, the Palestinian monks 979. The views condemned by the council represent an extreme conclusion from the anthropology and eschatology of Origen and have the appearance of one complete whole: the pre-existence of souls and the general restoration (ἀποκατάστασις) - these are the extreme points of this circle of views. Originally, the Origenists thought, there was an enada of disembodied minds, indistinguishable from each other either in essence, or in energy, or in their unity with God the Word. But having had enough of divine contemplation, this monad turned to the worse: it disintegrated into separate individuals with all their diversity: cherubim and seraphim and all orders of angels appeared; the sun, moon and stars appeared, these intelligent beings of the highest order. But this did not end the disintegration: in some spiritual beings the fire of divine love cooled (ἀποψυγέντα) to such an extent that they became souls (ψυχαί), for which coarser bodies are needed; people appeared.
But this is not the last limit of moral decline; people turned into demons. But one pure spirit was not involved in this universal fall: out of the whole enad, only he preserved the original divine love and was not satiated with divine contemplation; he alone remained the mind. He is called Christ and King and with his creative power he ordered the already existing elements of the material world. This mind, being in the image of God and united with God the Word before all ages, is Christ in the proper sense and God in the improper sense - due to its unity with God the Word, who is Christ in the improper sense according to His unity with the mind. This mind-Christ, out of its mercy for the human race, exhausted itself in the last days and became everything to everyone: it put on different bodies, bore different names; for cherubim he became a cherub, for angels an angel, for people a man 980. The consequence of this redemptive exhaustion of the mind will be a general restoration.
After the resurrection, Christ had an ethereal and spheroidal body: the same will be the case for all bodies. But the process of spiritualization goes even higher: Christ was the first to lay aside his material body; in the same way, there is no time and everyone will lay down their bodies. The final judgment will be the destruction of material nature; bodies will turn into nothing, and everyone will become pure spirits. But then everything - heavenly powers, people, the very spirits of evil - will be united with God the Word as immutably as the mind-Christ was united with Him; then the division of individuals by name and number will end: everything will merge in the indivisible and indifferent unity of enad, in the unity of essence, being, power, knowledge. But then the kingdom of Christ will come to an end, because everyone, like Christ, will be at the right hand of God. Thus, the final goal of the world is to restore the order that existed in the beginning. – This is the teaching condemned by the fathers of the council: it is a distortion of the anthropology, Christology and eschatology of Origen with an admixture of some semi-pantheistic element.
Justinian's anathematisms are of a different nature. They are directed against these sections of Origen’s teaching in its pure form: there is no talk of enad with the absence of any sign of individuality; God the Word Himself incarnates, moving along with the human soul into the human body formed in the womb of St. Virgo; restoration is expected after the temporary punishment of sinners. Moreover, anathema is declared to Origen’s opinion that the power of God is not limitless and God created as many creatures as were sufficient for His providence. Finally, the anathema is directed directly against Origen and his wicked dogmas.
And the whole message as a whole is quite wonderful. The emperor's view of Origen is the gloomiest: in his opinion, brought up on pagan fables, Origen deliberately tried to introduce these errors into the Christian church, covering them up to seduce the inexperienced with interpretations of St. Scriptures; he maliciously propagated pagan, Manichaean and Arian opinions. “Who, first of all, dared to blaspheme the Holy Trinity - to say that the Father is greater than the Son, the Son is greater than the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit is greater than other spirits; that neither the Son can see the Father, nor the Holy Spirit the Son; that the Son Himself and the Holy Spirit are creatures; that in relation to the Father the Son is the same as we are in relation to the Son?... He invented various degrees in the Holy Trinity, wishing through this to introduce polytheism; he expressed a monstrous thought (τερατευόμενος) that the very power of God is limited (περιγραπτή).” The emperor then proceeds to present Origen's anthropology with its Christological and eschatological consequences and refutes these views in detail, contrasting them with the testimony of St. fathers.
Finally, as a few examples of the many and immeasurable blasphemies (ἀμέτρων βλασφημιῶν) of Origen, twenty-four quotations from the books “On the Principles” are appended, and six of them relate to the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. Finally, anathematisms follow, none of which are directed against Origen’s views in the area of this dogma.
The meaning of the second and final phase of the anti-Origenistic movement, its purely theological side, is the same as at the end of the 4th century. It was necessary to condemn the anthropology of Origen with the points of his theology related to it, because only this side of his system was of interest at that time, 981 and it is impossible to prove that even one Origenist of that time in the doctrine of the Holy Trinity in the close sense held any non-Orthodox views: both the Origenists and their opponents in this regard were equally faithful followers of the Council of Nicaea. As a matter of fact, Justinian had no need to touch upon this side of Origen’s teaching: in itself it was of so little interest to him that he considered it unnecessary to even demand an anathema against it.
And if he introduced these opinions into the circle of his polemics, it was precisely because they had to act in the most impressive way: there was no need to refute them in detail; it was enough to leave them without explanation, and with their appearance, the Arian shades of their content, they would make an impression in harmony with the gloomy coloring of the emperor’s general view of Origen.
Thus, the shadow side of Origen’s teaching about the Holy Trinity during the period of dogmatic disputes about Origenism never constituted the religious conviction of the Origenists themselves, was never considered by their opponents with at least some sign of impartiality, but was always a strong weapon in their hands in their struggle with other departments of Origen’s theology.
A review of the history of Origenism usually ends with the question: was Origen condemned at the fifth ecumenical council? The fact is that the eleventh anathematism of this council reads as follows: “If anyone does not anathematize Arius, Eunomius, Macedonius, Apollinaris, Nestorius, Eutyches and Origen, with their wicked writings, and all other heretics condemned and anathematized by the holy, conciliar and apostolic church and the aforementioned four holy councils, and all like those named above to heretics who thought or are thinking and remained to the end in their own wickedness: let such be anathema" 982. Regarding this anathematism, it is thoroughly noted that the name of Origen is completely out of place here - after Eutyches; that, probably, the name of Dioscorus stood here; that none of the four ecumenical councils anathematized Origen; that the fifth council did not even ask the question about it; that Pope Gregory, in the letter in which he recognizes the fifth council, does not utter an anathema against Origen 983. All this leads one to think that an error has crept into the text of the anathematism.
But from the canonical side, this does not lead to important consequences: the sixth and seventh ecumenical councils undoubtedly anathematize Origen 984.
Judgments of scientists about the doctrine of Origen
The question of the meaning of Origen’s teaching about the Holy Trinity moved from the basis of theological disputes to scientific ones. Along with unfavorable judgments about Origen, more moderate ones were also expressed: there are up to twenty-five names of more or less remarkable theologians of the 7th-17th centuries who had a more or less favorable opinion about Origen 985. The significance of these reviews is not high: at a time when Origen’s works were not published in greater or less completeness, it was difficult to form a completely solid judgment about him.
Of greater importance are the scientific works on Origen, which appeared around the half of the 17th century. The impetus for the investigation of the question of Origen was given by two works: these were “Annales ecclesiastici” by Cardinal Caesar Baronius (Romae. 1588 sq.) and “De theologicis dogmatibus” by the Jesuit Dionysius Petavius (Paris. 1644–1650). Both of these Catholic scholars speak extremely unfavorably of Origen; his teaching seems to them to be perfect Arianism. The Littych Jesuit Peter Galloa (P. Halloix (Halloxius) leodiensis) came out to defend the teachings and moral character of Origen, who in 1648 published his work “Origenes defensus”, “Origen Defended, or the life, virtues and teachings of Origen adamantus, presbyter, lover of Jesus.”
This work has its significance for clarifying the moral character of Origen and the fate of his teaching; but as an experience in defending Origen’s teaching about the Holy Trinity, it has no value: the author could use Origen’s works only in Latin translations, and the varying degrees of their reliability escaped his attention. In his defense of Origen in this regard, he limits himself to writing out sixteen passages from his conversations in the translations of Rufinus or Jerome with content opposite to the views that Petavius attributed to Origen 986. Galloa makes no attempt to find out what relation these quotations should have to those on which Petavius based his judgment, and why those passages, and not these last, should be the basis for evaluating the teachings of Origen, and yet considers his position so firm that Justinian’s unfavorable reviews of Origen’s teaching on the Holy Trinity, based on the letter of the text of the books “On the Elements,” without any reasoning calls deceitful (mendacia).
In 1679 “Origeniana” by Peter Daniel Huet, Bishop of Avranches (P. D. Huetius abrincensis), the famous publisher of the Greek text of Origen’s exegetical works, was published. This remarkable monograph examines in detail the life of Origen, his teaching and the fate of him and his writings. In the section devoted to Origen’s teaching on the Trinity, Huet touches only on controversial points and, without going into broad generalizations, with deep erudition he collects, both from the works of Origen and from other writers, everything that could explain the literal meaning of this passage. Hue's view of Origen's teaching is moderate: without justifying it on all points, recognizing that in his view the difference in the Hypostases of the Holy Trinity also contains some difference in their essence, that he represented the Son as less than the Father not only in the sense of dependence on Him, but also in the sense of limiting the goodness and knowledge of the Son, he proves that these views of Origen do not have an Arian meaning, that he, for example, does not consider Son of the created, that some subordinate ideas are common between Origen and other writers.
This moderate judgment did not satisfy subsequent scientists, and they sided with Galloa’s point of view. George Bull (Bullus), an Anglican priest and subsequently Bishop of St. David, in his “Defensio fidei nicaenae” (Defensio fidei nicaenae. Oxf. 1865) proves that Origen thinks about the Holy Trinity in complete agreement with the teachings of the fathers of the Council of Nicaea. Bull's techniques are more scientific than Galloa's; he no longer considers it possible to base a judgment on Latin translations, but chooses his books against Celsus as the norm for Origen’s views, as a work that is free from suspicion of any deliberate corruption. As a result of this choice, a significant part of the passages that cast a shadow on the teachings of Origen were not included in Bull's review. He touched on some of Hue's comments, but left others without consideration. So, for example, he says nothing on the question of the knowledge of the Son.
In the places he examines, he uses every feature that shows that Origen’s view was sublime as evidence that he recognized the Son as completely equal to the Father, and where Origen’s subordinationism is revealed, Bull sees only the dependence of the Son on the Father by hypostasis. – Finally, in the work “On the Divinity of Christ” (De divinitate Christi) by the Benedictine Prudentius Maran (in the first half of the 18th century), the apologetic tendency reaches its extreme limit. In his remarks against Huet, Marant examines in detail each controversial point and defends Origen on all points.
Let us consider some studies about the teachings of Origen that have appeared in this century.
Neander. General history of the Christian religion and church (August Neander, Allgemeine Geschichte der christlichen Religion und Kirche. Hamburg. 1828). In Neander's condensed essay, only the most important points of Origen's teaching about the Word are grouped. Neander accepts the subordinate distinction between Father and Son in Origen's system as given, inherited from Neoplatonic philosophy and strengthened under the influence of monarchianism. Neander is not interested in exploring the starting point of this subordinationism. The Son is the mediator between the absolute God and the deified beings. In the necessity of the objective existence of truth there is also given the logical necessity of the existence of the Word. It is born eternally and not in time, because God is above time, not from the being of the Father, but according to His will. This idea was adopted by Origen to avoid emanatism.
The Neoplatonic element of Origen's system, the infinite superiority of existence (ὄν) over the mind (νοῦς), - predetermined his attitude to the doctrine of the consubstantiality of the Father and the Son: to contrast the monarchians, the hypostatic difference between the Father and the Son with the unity of Their essence is sufficient, and Origen is not unaware of such a solution to this question 987, but the entire internal connection of his system, the idea of the incomparability of the absolute God with anyone else leads Origen to the idea that the Father and the Son are different in essence, and the opinion that only the Father should pray is only a practical conclusion from it.
Thomasius. Origen. On the history of dogmas. (G. Thomasius, Origenes. Ein Beitrag zur Dogmengeschichte. Nürnberg. 1837). Thomasius gave the most detailed comparison of Origen's teachings with Neoplatonic philosophy, and this did not go unnoticed in his presentation. A very important point in the difference between the Father and the Son, the unconditional simplicity and unity of the first and the ideal plurality of the second, is posited by Thomasius as the basis of the relationship between Them: the existence of the Son is necessarily presupposed by the very unity of the Father, who, as a living God, is conceived only as revealing; thus in the Son the fullness of the Father's divinity is revealed: He is God only through the Son 988. The relationship between the Father and the Son is just as close according to their other definition: God is the purest spirit, and His life is pure thinking, and the Son is His hypostatic Wisdom, the system of His ideas. Thus, the relationship between the Father and the Son is essential, and Origen recognizes them as consubstantial, and if he denies the birth of the Son from the essence of the Father, it is only in order to reject any sensory idea.
For this purpose, the likening of the birth of the Son to the origin of the will from the mind is introduced, moreover, in such a way that the Son is conceived as the very objectifying will of the Father, and this comparison is complemented by the essential relation of radiance in the light. If Origen admits that birth, like creation, is an act of the omnipotent will of the Father, then only in the sense that God gives birth to the Son not as a result of physical, forced necessity. In the birth of the Son, a sign was given of both His complete unity with the Father and His subordination to the Father. The Son is God from God, He is a truly divine being, and His dependence on the Father is the only point of His rapprochement with created beings and at the same time the only moment of the Father’s superiority over Him.
The difference between the presentation of Neander and Thomasius is visible at first glance: in the first it is the unity of the Father and the Son that is poorly revealed, and the subordination of the Son is presented as essential and together as the main thought of Origen’s system; according to Thomasius, on the contrary, it is dominated by elements that establish the unity of the Father and the Son, and subordinationism, which, however, has only a secondary significance in it, is only hypostatic. But Thomasius himself admits that his presentation is somewhat one-sided, that it excludes those data that do not agree with the basic element of Origen’s system, such as, for example, his opinion that only the Father is good simply and in the proper sense; that He is the primal light, which is higher than the true light; that He is higher than truth itself; that His self-consciousness is purer and superior to the knowledge of the Son. “All attempts by Origen’s defenders to eliminate the obvious disagreement between these passages and his other views are refined and strained (gezwungen).
We must, therefore, recognize the fact that Origen here contradicts himself, and this contradiction has its basis in the insufficiency of his view of the relationship between the Father and the Son: representing the first exclusively as an absolute, for himself (für sich) existing, the second as a derivative, the first as a prototype, the second as a reflection, Origen could easily come to the point that he began to recognize the Son as lesser in all respects. In these words Thomasius provides a means for a correct assessment of the direction he followed in the exposition of Origen's doctrine: it is obvious that a synthesis cannot be of high logical value, in order to carry out which it is necessary to eliminate so many details. On the other hand, these words are interesting as an authoritative recognition of the extent to which the material from which Origen’s teaching is composed is rebellious, if in order to streamline it it is necessary to transfer the question from logical to psychological soil.
Baur. Christian doctrine of the Trinity and the Incarnation in its historical development. (Ferd. Christ. Baur, Die christliche Lehre von der Dreieinigkeit und Menschwerdung in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung. Tubingen. 1841 Bd. I). According to Baur, Origen's teaching about the Trinity is full of insoluble contradictions that do not limit, but destroy each other. On the one hand, such absolute definitions as Αὐτολόγος, Αὐτοσοφία are attached to the Son, which are conceivable in Him only under the condition of His hypostatic identity with the Father; on the other hand, Origen’s main task was to maintain the hypostatic difference between Them, which, in his view, can only be given along with the subordination of the Son to the Father. This is where the order of thoughts originates, which ends with the position that the Father is above wisdom, which deprives the concepts of Αὐτολόγος, Αὐτοσοφία of their absolute meaning.
Further, substantiating the existence of the Son in the being of the Father, Origen draws the conclusion that the Son was born from eternity; but, clarifying the image of His origin from the Father, in order to eliminate emanative ideas, Origen turns to the idea of birth according to the will of the Father, but along with this idea, he also allows a comparison of the act of birth, not free from emanatism, with the origin of radiance from light, and even considers will itself as an emanation from the essence of the Father. Here, apparently, a deep thought is expressed that the immanent relationship of the Father and the Son is based on the fact that God distinguishes Himself as willing from Himself. But since there are no solid grounds for asserting that such an idea of the will for Origen means more than a simple comparison, then in the idea of birth by will, the connotation that will is the cause of the existence of the Son clearly appears. And in this case, it is not clear why the birth of the Son should be eternal. Thus, this only valuable point in Origen’s theology does not have completely solid foundations.
One can reach such a conclusion only by eliminating any correlation between the views of Origen under consideration. In reality, none of the opposites exhibited by Baur have the acute character that is attributed to them. Thus, the definition of the Son as Αὐτολόγος, giving Him the meaning of a source, at the same time designates Him as a special hypostasis, because, according to Origen, the Father Himself is above the Word and therefore is not the Word. The expression: The Son was born by the will of the Father is so rare in Origen that it cannot shake the doctrine of the eternity of the Word, which is organically fused with his entire system, and, moreover, through the idea of the origin of the will from the mind, it is placed in too close a connection with the relation of radiance to light for one to think that under these forms thoughts of such a different order are hidden. All of Baur’s sympathies are directed, however, to another, only supposed point of Origen’s teaching, the weakest point in the whole system and at the same time, according to Baur, the deepest view.
He believes that Origen cannot maintain with logical consistency the distinction between the Son and the world, that the latter must take the place of the former; and with the high meaning that Origen attributed to the finite, who believed that God Himself is not unlimited - otherwise He would be unknowable to Himself - the immanent relation of the absolute God to the finite world becomes a necessary condition for divine self-consciousness. This Hegelian commentary on the teachings of Origen does not have any solid point of support in it. The idea of developing self-awareness through distinguishing oneself from the opposite is alien to the era of Origen; Moreover, if God, according to Origen, is concrete, then there is no need for this object different from Him to be a finite, limited world: to clarify divine self-consciousness even from this point of view, the animate hypostatic Wisdom, the Son, is sufficient.
Meyer. The doctrine of the Trinity in its historical development. (Georg August Meier. Die Lehre von der Trinität in ihrer historischen Entwickelung. Hamburg und Gotha. 1844. Bd. I). The meaning of Origen's teaching on the Trinity, according to Meyer, lies in ordering and partly in the elimination of foreign elements, of which there are still many in his system. He made an attempt to develop his system from what was given in Christian consciousness. The believer recognizes himself as existing, rational and sanctified in the church: Origen, following in this case the method of Western Christian thinkers, seeks an objective basis for this fact of religious consciousness in the existence of three hypostases, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Origen firmly maintains the distinction between Them, albeit in a subordinationist sense, and reveals the doctrine of three spheres of specific activity of each of the Persons. But, not completely freed from the remnants of pagan philosophy, Origen could not achieve a completely satisfactory result: Origen does not understand the very starting point of his view in a purely Christian sense, so that the Son is not so much God the Savior as a mediator in the communication of truth.
These foreign elements declare themselves even more strongly by the fact that they deviate Origen’s thought onto the path paved by philosophy, which set out from the abstract to the particular. As a result, in Origen’s teaching about the Trinity one can observe two methods of view: in one case, thought starts from the concept of God in Himself, in the other, from the concept of His relationship to the world. In the first case, God is the Being, the Son is the Logos. But both being and thinking are predicates of one divine being, and therefore only with effort Origen maintains the hypostatic distinction of the Son. From this point of view, the Son is conceived as Word, Wisdom, life - integral definitions of the Father's being - and therefore the birth of the Son is eternal and continuous. In the second case, the hypostatic difference appears in full force: God is not an individual property of the divine nature, but its entire fullness, and the Son is the mediator between God and the world.
The distinction between the Son and the Father is given all the more fully because, in contrast to emanative ideas, Origen denies birth from a being and replaces it with the concept of the origin of the will from the mind. There is much that is arbitrary in this illumination of Origen’s teaching. It is impossible to prove that this fact of Christian consciousness was the starting point of Origen in his doctrine of the Trinity. It is equally difficult to admit that there is such a significant difference between the two methods of viewing indicated by Meyer. On the contrary, thoughts of both orders stand in interaction with each other: even the distinction between the immanent Trinity and the Trinity of revelation in Origen is not clearly drawn, and in Wisdom the moment of relation to the world is already very clearly given, just as Origen clarifies the hypostatic difference between the Father and the Son mainly in the concepts of Wisdom and the Word.
Dorner. History of the development of the doctrine of the Face of Christ. (Isaak A. Dorner, Entwicklungsgeschichte der Lehre von der Person Christi. Stuttgart. 1845. Bd. I). Origen had two tasks ahead of him: to express in his teaching the true deity of Christ and to maintain in all its strength His hypostatic difference from the Father. Apparently, both sides are developed to the utmost in Origen: the Son has everything that is in the Father, and yet subordinationism is so strong that the unity of the Divine is preserved only because the highest God is not the Son, but only one Father. Dorner proves that between these two opposites there is a medium that completely reconciles them: it is in Origen’s very concept of God. God is absolutely one, a monad, an unconditionally simple, predicate-free unity, and at the same time God is living and active; therefore, this unity must be fully revealed in the Son. The most natural representation of this revelation is the birth of the Son from the being of the Father. But in order to retain the idea of a personal difference between the Father and the Son, it seemed necessary to think of Him as a portio ex summa.
Given the concept of God that Origen developed, this view was impossible for him: God is absolutely one; no quantitative relationships are conceivable in Him. Apparently, Origen could only place the Son in the order of creatures. However, he pointed out an image that completely resolved this difficulty: in the physical realm, communion is possible only through the reduction of a given object; This is not the case in the spiritual realm: science can be assimilated by many in its entirety; a spiritual object can be reproduced several times, but remain entirely the same. Thus, in the Son the fullness of divinity is revealed, and the Father remains entirely equal to Himself. We can therefore say that everything that the Father has is also in the Son. Origen offers such an idea of the birth of the Son under the image of the procession of the will from the mind. This is not an origin by will or through the will: will, desire, as a single moment of divine life, with the highest simplicity of the Father’s being, is inconceivable in Him.
The will is the very fullness of the divinity of the Father κατ ’ ἐνέργειαν, conceived in its actuality, and it is hypostatically realized in the Son. This entire order of ideas clarifies the relationship between the Father and the Son in the sense of their consubstantiality and equality; but there is a side to the same view on which subordinationism in Origen's system is based. God, according to his teaching, is not a simple abstraction, devoid of content, like the first principle in Neoplatonic philosophy: He is an all-containing unity, and it cannot be said that it itself is objectified in the Son; it is repeated in Him, but also remains complete in the Father. Therefore, in the Son, the Father is not conscious of Himself, but contemplates His image, so that the self-consciousness of the Father and the Son is not the same. There is a side in the being of God that is incomprehensible to the Son: this is the definition of God as the first principle, as the One who is above being and wisdom.
The Son completely possesses the fullness of divinity, but the divine properties have their own definiteness in Him: He possesses them as energy, presupposing the existence of the highest principle - as an image, but by no means as the very beginning, the Father. Thus, subordinationism in the teachings of Origen does not at all have the meaning that the entire fullness of divinity is not given in the Son, but only the meaning that the Son is not the first principle. And if subordinationism strongly asserts itself in Origen’s system, Dorner explains this by one important flaw in his concept of God: it is close to the Neoplatonic concept of “being” (ὄν); non-spiritual properties predominate in it, such as love and goodness, but the physical category of the absolute, and in this attribute Origen believes the highest and innermost in God. Thus, in the Son is all the fullness of divinity, all the glory, but the highest definition in God is incommunicable to the Son.
Therefore, the question of the consubstantiality of the Father and the Son in Origen can only have a conditional formulation: if the being in God is the fullness of His properties, then the Son is consubstantial with the Father; if by being one should understand this ὄν, then the Son is a different being than the Father.
Dorner did a lot to clarify the bright side of Origen's teachings. In his theory of the duplication (Verdoppelung) of the deity, the basis for which is in the doctrine of Origen, although there it is not at all developed with such clarity, Dorner created a strong counterbalance to Origen's undoubtedly negative attitude towards the doctrine of birth from a being. Moreover, having clarified the moment of energy, relevance, in Origen’s concept of the will, Dorner illuminated the doctrine of birth from the will or the birth of the will in such a way that this view of Origen ceases to be a support for a strictly subordinationist interpretation of his doctrine. Finally, the relationship of the Father to the Son with their difference as the beginning and image and unity in the complete possession of the deity is described by Dorner with such completeness that many of Origen’s subordinationist opinions are resolved through this, apparently, to perfection. But did Dorner really propose a new, untested method for explaining Origen's system, for the agreement of its heterogeneous elements? His main idea is the difference in God between ὄν and His glory, as if between the center and its periphery.
Translated into ordinary dogmatic terminology, this ὄν, this bearer of all divine properties, is what Origen calls ὑποκείμενον, something between hypostasis and essence. Consequently, if, according to Dorner, Origen’s subordinationism has its basis in the fact that ὄν in God is incommunicable, then this means that Origen’s subordinationism is purely hypostatic, based on the fact that God could not communicate His personal properties to the Son; and indeed, the consciousness of God as the supreme principle is the consciousness of the Father as a hypostasis. And in this case, Dorner does not leave the realm of those concepts in which Thomasius and even such apologists of Origen as Bull and Maran revolve; The form, but not the very content of the theory, has changed. Those difficulties that Thomasius was unable to resolve are not resolved by Dorner, that is, the opinions of Origen, limiting the perfections of the Son in the sphere of what Dorner calls the glory or fullness of the deity, were not eliminated by him and for the most part remained completely unaffected.
Redeppenning. Origen. An account of his life and his teachings. (Ernst Rud. Redepenning, Origenes. Eine Darstellung seines Lebens und seiner Lehre. Bonn. 1846. Bd. II). This monograph offers an explanation of Origen's teaching about the Holy Trinity that is generally similar to that given by Dorner. The main flaw in Origen's view, according to Redepening, is that he too decisively presented the hypostatic difference between the Father and the Son before His incarnation: Origen conceives them as two individuals, and only this can explain his view that the Father is as much higher than the Son as the Son is higher than the world. Due to such certainty of Their hypostatic difference, the Father, as an absolute Person, Unpersönlichkeit, necessarily rises above the Son, as dependent on Him in His personal existence. In connection with this dependence, Redepening raises the question of the consubstantiality of the Son. Origen did not deny it, but he never recognized it in its full meaning: by consubstantial, he means the full participation of the Son in everything that the Father has, but not equality in the form of possession 990. The Son has perfect communion with the Father in all the fullness of divinity (Gottesfülle), but not equality in His divinity (im Gottsein) - not consubstantial.
Thus, the Son, according to Origen, is both consubstantial and non-consubstantial with the Father. These two concepts are considered in Redepening's presentation as equal. The consubstantiality of the Son is expressed in the fact that He is born eternally through the will of the Father, but in a sense approaching birth from a being, He is the natural Son of the Father; but since the Son is the second God, since He is different from the Father both in essence and as an individual, and does not possess either His absolute immortality or His absolute goodness, then He is a different being than the Father. Viewed from the point of view of creatures, the Son is immeasurably exalted above all and is thought of in perfect unity with God; but when compared with the Father, the Son is deeply subordinate to Him.
In assessing the teachings of Origen, Redepending does not take the ecclesiastical point of view: he would like the hypostatic difference between the Father and the Son to be less real than as it is presented by Origen; From the real difference of hypostases, Redepening concludes to the difference of beings. From a church-dogmatic point of view, this conclusion is unfair; but this logical leap is the only way to explain some of Origen’s views from the fact of the difference between the Father and the Son as two hypostases. This is a technique that only Redepenning clearly applied to the interpretation of Origen, but which all those who set out to explain all of Origen’s opinions from the concept of the difference between the unborn and the begotten must have unconsciously resorted to. Having taken such a wrong step, Redepening can find out more about Origen than the more consistent Dorner.
True, Redepenning has not yet drawn all the possible conclusions from his position - he stopped at explaining the non-existence in the sense of the difference between the beginning and what depends on it - but his idea that the Father and the Son possess the same fullness of perfections, but not in that form, with the difference im Gottsein - obviously can have a wider application: it can generalize all those particular views of Origen, from which it follows that in the Father the divine properties are more substantial than in the Son. The teaching of Origen as presented by Redepening no longer has the purity in which it appears in Dorner: the latter admits the duality of Origen’s views implicite, the former recognizes it clearly. According to Redepening, Origen represented the Son as both consubstantial and non-consubstantial with the Father.
But Redepenning admits the first with such limitations that the difference between consubstantial and non-existent things turns out to be far from decisive, and the obvious preponderance of concepts in which non-subsistence is given over their opposites, as well as the fact that the consubstantial Son appears in the whole world only when comparing Him with created beings, shows that this duality of representation in Redepenning’s presentation does not have a sufficiently solid basis and is almost resolved in such unity that the results of Redepenning's research become almost the opposite of Thomasius's presentation.
Kuhn. Christian doctrine of the Divine Trinity. (J. Kuhn, Die christliche Lehre von der göttlichen Dreieinigkeit Tübingen. 1857). This Catholic theologian considers essential subordinationism to be the main idea in Origen’s system. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit differ from each other not only as hypostases, but also as different beings. This does not deny that the Son and the Holy Spirit are truly of divine nature, but it only assumes that They differ from the Father more than just hypostatically. The speculative basis of this subordinationism is the concept of God the Father, who rises above everything that exists, above all the sublime definitions of the Son; hence follows His complete incomparability with the Father. Kuhn's general view is basically similar to that expressed by Dorner: Kuhn gave only another name for the specific certainty with which the fullness of divinity is revealed in the Son and the Holy Spirit, and justified this name with a number of passages from the writings of Origen. The firmness with which Kuhn's general presentation is carried out distinguishes him from Schwane (Jos. Schwane, Dogmengeschichte der vor Nicänischen Zeit. Münster.
1862), which compares the various views of Origen without any mediation between them, and the objectivity of the view places Kuhn high above the apologetically tendentious presentation of some other Catholic theologians, such as Moehler (Moehler, Athanase le Grand et l'église de son temps en lutte avec l'arianisme. Paris. 1840).
Boehringer. Church of Christ and its witnesses. Origen. (Friedrich Böhringer. Die Kirche Christi und ihre Zeugen. Stuttgart. 1874. Bd. V. Origenes). Boehringer's goal is to restore Origen's system as it is given in his works, preserving, as far as possible, even the external features of his presentation. This task excludes a strict distinction between the doctrine of the immanent Trinity and the revealed Trinity, and Beringer’s main view of the Son according to the teachings of Origen establishes an even closer connection between these dogmatic departments. Boehringer sees in the Son a mediator between God and the world and from here he clarifies the heterogeneous elements of Origen’s teaching. Contemporary philosophy did not allow the possibility of direct relations between God and the world, between the simple and unchangeable - and the multitude of changeable objects. The mediator was supposed to be a truly divine being, so that through him real communication with God would be possible - but, on the other hand, divine not in the absolute sense, but to the extent that is accessible to human perceptibility.
Thus, in the very concept of a mediator, a sign is given of both his unity and his difference from God, his coordination with Him and subordination to Him. In Origen’s system, both sides of the concept of the Son are developed: in the doctrine of His eternal hypostatic existence, the highest expression of His unity with the Father is given, although the eternal existence of the Son as a hypostasis is clarified more from the concept of Him as Wisdom than from His relationship to the Father as the Son; but, in turn, subordinationism is deeply rooted in Origen’s system. Therefore, both Arius and Athanasius the Great could subsequently refer to it with equal right. Boehringer himself does not place a high value on the results of applying the idea of a mediator to the doctrine of the Son of God in the sense of that era: the concept of a lower or middle divine is internally untenable; the idea of a limited deity contradicts the concept of God. Likewise, according to Boehringer, the very existence of the Son in His difference from the world does not have solid speculative foundations in Origen’s system.
– Boehringer’s point of view is novel: while other writers tried to explain the heterogeneous components in the teachings of Origen from their cause, putting it in the fact of the birth of the Son, Boehringer illuminates them from the point of view of their purpose, thus replacing the objective basis with a subjective one. But does the new principle have an advantage over the generally used one? It is broader than the concepts of unbornness and birthfulness, taken in a strict sense, and, therefore, a larger amount of data can be brought under it; but at the same time it is elastic to the point of indeterminacy. How much and in what way exactly the divine nature of the mediator should be limited is not clear from the concept of him. Moreover, in Origen’s system there is one view that can lead to the complete elimination of subordinationism from this concept. The Logos, while remaining the same in essence, as ideally plural, can be applied to the various needs of created beings.
Consequently, the Logos in His essence can be absolutely perfect, like the Father, and, nevertheless, mediate between Him and the world. Thus, the idea of the Word as a mediator reveals more the coloring that the era contemporary with Origen imposed on his theology, rather than the logical connection of its content. After this there is no firm basis for distributing Origen's data into two different orders, as was done by Boehringer.
Over the course of the present century, Western theological science has tested various ways of interpreting the doctrine of the Son of God in Origen's system and has come to far from the same results. In this teaching they see either duality or unity, the latter sometimes under the dominance of subordinationist views, sometimes with a direction in the spirit of Nicene Orthodoxy. The principle of Origen's teaching is believed either in the concept of the Father and the Son as hypostatically different from each other, then in the concept of the Son as a mediator, or in the view that the Father is above everything that exists, unfortunately left in the shadows in the most significant phenomena of theological literature. If it is possible to discern something common in the heterogeneous ideas about Origen, then this is a moderate judgment in the spirit of Hue: extreme views in the spirit of Petavius and Maran do not have significant representatives. Such a study, in which all of Origen’s opinions about the relationship of the Persons of St. would be taken into account.
The rich Western theological literature does not represent the Trinity, and the reason for this lies not in the arbitrariness of researchers, but primarily in the very data of Origen, which, according to one of the most careful scientists, does not lend itself to logical generalization.
Euseb. h. With. 6, 36. πλείστοις ἄρχουσιν ἐκκλησιῶν , περὶ τῆς κατ ’ αὐτὸν ὀρθοδοξίας . Wed. footnote No. 427.
It was Dionysius († 265) in 233–248. (Eus. h. p. 6, 29. ε ἷ ς καὶ ο ὗ τος τῶν Ὀριγένους γενόμενος φοιτητῶν), then Pierius and Theognostus (p. 282). Wed. Schaff, S. 423.
Phot. cod. 119. φιλοπονίας καὶ εὐφυ ΐ ας καὶ τῆς ἐν πλήθεσιν ὁμιλίας τέρψιν παρέχειν σύν ὠ φελεί ᾳ, ὥ στε καὶ νέον ἐπονομασθῆναι Ὠ ριγένην [Hieron. catal. With. 76. Origenes junior]˙ ἦ ν γὰρ τότε ἐν τοῖς ἀξιολογωτάτοις Ὠ ριγένης .
Athanas. de deсr. nic. syn. n. 26. θεούς τρόπον τινὰ κηρύττουσιν , εἰς τρεῖς ὑποστάσεις ξένας ἀλλήλων παντάπασιν κεχωρισμένας μεμερισμένας ὑποστάσεις καὶ θεότητας τρεῖς ) διαιροῦντες τὴν ἁ γίαν μονάδα ...
Athanas. deer. nic. syn. n. 25. ώμης ˙ "...ὃ προφέρουσιν ἔγκλημα κατ ’ ἐμοῦ ψεῦδος ὄν , ὡ ς οὐ ? ὄνομα τοῦτό φημι μὴ εὑρηκέναι που τῶν ἁ γ ί ων γραφῶν , ἀλλὰ γε τὰ ἐπιχειρήματά μου τὰ ἑξῆς, ἃ σεσιωπήκασι, τῆς διανοίας ταύτης οὐκ ἀπ ᾴ δει. ... τερον ε ἶ ναι τοῦ ὅ θεν ἐβλάστησε , καὶ πάντως ἐκείν ῳ καθέστηκεν ὁμοφυές ". de sent. Dionys. › ""
de deсr. n. 26. μέγιστον μὲν ο ὖ ν, ( πλάσιν τινὰ καὶ ποίησιν ) λέγειν τὸν Κύριον. ? ... σαι τοῦ Θεοῦ τυγχάνουσιν. Εἰ τοίνυν γέγονεν ὁ Yἱ ό ς, ἦ ν ὅ τε οὐκ ἦ ν ταῦτα ˙ ἦ ν ἄρα καιρός, ὅ τε χωρὶς τοῦτων ἦ ν ὁ Θε ό ς. Ἀτοπώτατον δὲ τοῦτο.
de sent. D.n. 13. τὰ βιβλία (n. 23. δ ’) Ἐλέγχου καὶ Ἀπολογίας .
ib. n. 17. ... πλησίον. Πατέρα ε ἶ πον , καὶ πρὶν ἐπαγάγω τὸν Yἱὸν ἐσήμανα καὶ τοῦτον ἐν τῷ Πατρί ... μήτε ἀπηλλοτρίωται Πατὴρ Yἱοῦ ᾗ Πατὴρ .
ib. n. 23. τερος λοιποῦ κεχωρισμένον εἰληχ ὼ ς τόπον , ὁ μὲν ἐν τ ῇ καρδί ᾳ, ὁ δὲ ἐπὶ τῆς γλώττης καὶ τοῦ στόματος οἰκῶν τε καὶ κινούμενος ˙ οὐ μὴν διεστήκασιν , οὐδὲ καθάπαξ ἀλλήλων στέρονται , οὐδέ ... ... οὐ δὲ ἔξωθέν ποθεν συν ἐκείν ῳ (τῷ νῷ) γενόμενος, βλαστήσας δὲ ἀπ ’ αὐτοῦ.
ib. n. 18. παραδείγματα ... ε ἶ τα τοῖς ... προσφυεστέροις ἐνδιέτριψα .
ib. n. 20. λέγοιτο. Παρ ’ ἕ λλησι γὰρ ποιηταὶ καὶ τῶν ἰδίων λόγων οἱ σοφοί ˙ n. 21. [n. 23... οὐ ποιητήν, ἀλλὰ Πατέρα τὸν Θεὸν αὐτοῦ λέγω.
ib. n. 15. οὐ γὰρ ἦ ν , ὅ τε ὁ Θεὸς οὐκ ἦ ν Πατ ή ρ ... ἀεὶ τὸν Χριστὸν ε ἶ ναι, Λόγον ὄντα καὶ Σοφίαν καὶ δύναμιν. Οὐ γὰρ δὴ τοῦτων ἄγονος ὢ ν ὁ Θε ό ς, ε ἶ τα ἐπαιδοποιήσατο. Ἀλλ ’ ὅ τι μὴ παρ ’ ἑαυτοῦ ὁ Yἱ ό ς , ἀλλ ’ ἐκ τοῦ Πατρὸς ἔχει τὸ ε ἶ ναι ... Ἀπαύγασμα δὲ ὢ ν φωτὸς ἀϊδίου, πάντως καὶ αὐτὸς ἀ ΐ διός ἐστιν ... τοῦτῳ γὰρ καὶ ὅ τι φῶς ἐστι τῷ καταυγάζειν νοεῖται φῶς οὐ δύναται μὴ φωτίζον ε ἶ ναι . Εἰ ἔστιν ἥ λιος , ἔστιν αὐγή , ἔστιν ἡμέρα ... Ὁ δὲ γε Θεὸς αἰώνιόν ἐστι φῶς ο ὔ τε ἀρξάμενον ο ὔ τε λῆξόν ποτε ˙ οὐκοῦν αἰώνιον πρόκειται , καὶ σύνεστιν αὐτῷ τὸ ἀπαύγασμα ἂ ναρχον καὶ , ἔστι καὶ τέκνον ... Ἀλλ ’ εἰσὶν ἄμφω , καὶ εἰσὶν ἀε ί. Μόνος δὲ ὁ Yἱὸς ἀεὶ συν ὼ ν τῷ Πατρί ... n. 16. Ἀεὶ ὁ Θεὸς Πατὴρ ἦ ν, καὶ ὁ Yἱὸς οὐχ ἁ πλῶς ἀ ΐ διός ἐστιν , , καὶ σύνεστιν αὐτῷ ὡ ς τῷ φωτὶ τὸ ἀπαύγασμα .
ib. n. 25. ἐν ἀρχ ῇ ἦ ν ὁ Λόγος ˙ ἀλλ ’ οὐκ ἦ ν Λόγος ὁ τὸν Λόγον προέμενος ˙ ἦ ν γὰρ ὁ Λόγος πρὸς τὸν Θε ό ν . Σοφία γεγένηται ὁ Κύριος ˙ οὐκ ἦ ν ο ὖ ν σοφία ὁ τὴν σοφίαν ἀνείς. (3 Esdr. 4:4) ὁ Θεὸς τῆς ἀληθείας. ib. n. 18. καὶ ποταμόν, ἀπὸ πηγῆς ῥ έοντα ἕ τερον σχῆμα καὶ ὄνομα μετειληφέναι ˙ μήτε γὰρ τὴν πηγὴν ποταμόν , μήτε τὸν ποταμὸν πηγὴν λέγεσθαι, καὶ ἀμφότερα ὑπάρχειν. Footnote No. 884 and Footnote No. 887.
Phot. cod. 119. εὐσεβῶς πρεσβεύει ˙ πλὴν ὅ τι οὐσίας δύο καὶ φύσεις δύο λέγε ˙ τῷ τῆς οὐσίας καὶ φύσεως ὀνόματι , ὡ ς δῆλον ἔκ τε τῶν ἐπομένων καὶ προηγουμένων τοῦ χωρίου , ἀντὶ τῆς ὑποστάσεως καὶ οὐχ ὡ ς οἱ Ἀρεί ῳ προσανακείμενοι χρώμενος .
de deсr. nic. s. n. 25. ἐκ μὴ ὄντων ἐπεισήχθη , ἀλλ ’ ἐκ τῆς τοῦ Πατρὸς οὐσίας ἔφυ ὡ ? (ἐστιν), ο ὔ τε ἀλλότριον, ἀλλὰ ἀπό ῤῥ οια τῆς τοῦ Πατρὸς οὐσίας.
Phot. cod. 106. ἐπιστατεῖν , καὶ ἄλλ ’ ἄττα , ὥ σπερ Ὠ ριγένης , ἐπιφέρει τῷ Yἱῷ ... λόγ ῳ καὶ οὐ δόξης ταῦτα προτιθείς .
Phot. cod. 119. δογματίζει (Πιέριος). ὑποβεβηκέναι γὰρ αὐτὸ τῆς τοῦ Πατρὸς καὶ Yἱοῦ ἀποφάσκει δόξης . cod. 106. τίθησι μὲν ( Θεόγνωστος ) ἐπιχειρήματα , τὴν τοῦ ἁ γίου ἀποπειρώμενος , τὰ δ ’ ἄλλα ὥ σπερ Ὠ ριγένης ἐν τῷ περὶ ἀρχῶν , ο ὕ τω καὶ αὐτὸς ἐνταῦθα παραληρεῖ. Basil. M. ep. 9, 2. Διονύσιος ), ἥ κιστα πρεπούσας τῷ Πνευματι , τῆς προσκυνουμένης αὐτὸ θεότητος ἐξορίζων , καὶ κάτω που τ ῇ κτιστ ῇ καὶ λειτουργῷ φύσει συναριθμῶν. In his apology, Dionysius wrote (de sent. D. no. 17): ... καὶ τοῦ Yἱοῦ ) ἐστι τὸ Πνεῦμα , μήτε τοῦ πέμποντος , μήτε τοῦ φέροντος δυνάμενον στέρεσθαι. Apparently, here we are not talking about the sending of the Holy Spirit in the narrow sense, but about the procession; in this case, Dionysius's view is closer to Tertullian's "per Filium" than to Origen's "διὰ τοῦ Λόγου".
Epiph. h. 64, 11. Phot. cod. 235.
Migne, s. gr. t. 17 col. 578. Prima (criminatio) illa est, quod aiunt eum innatum dicere Filium Dei. Secunda... per prolationem, secundum Valentini fabulas, in subsistentiam venisse Filium Dei... Tertia, quae his omnibus valde contraria est... secundum Arteman vel Paulum samosatenum, purum hominem, id est non etiam Deum dicere Filium Dei.
ibid. col. 546. Pamph. apol. praeterea etiam illud est invenire, quod nunquam tales sunt excusatores ejus, qui nec graecam noverint linguam: alii omnimodis imperitï ... aut si accident ut etiam legerint (libros ejus), non continuo etiam tantae eruditionis fuerint, ut altitudinem sensus ejus assequi Quiverint... Multos invenias, quos si interroges in quibus libris, aut in quibus locis dicta sint haec quae arguunt, confitentur se quidem nescire ea de quibus affirmant, nec legisse unquam, audisse autem alios dicentes. Ex quo cuivis plena ridiculi sententia eorum videbitur, cum de his judicant, atque ea condemnant, quae nec discere quidem prius ac nosse potuerunt.
ibid. ut eorum praejudicata vesania facilius declaretur, accidere solet... ut nomine in codice non praetitulato legatur aliquid ipsius quasi alterius tractatoris. Quod tamdiu placet et laudatur, et omni admiratione habetur, quamdiu nomen non fuerit indicatum. At ubi Origenis cognita fuerint esse quae placebant, statim displicent, statim haeretica esse dicuntur: et... usque ad inferos demerguntur.
Socr. h. e. 4, 26. οἰκουμένης ἐφήπλωτο ˙ ὧ ν ἀσκηθέντες κ . τ. λ.
Epiphan. h. 69, 6. ep. Ari ad Eus. nic. συλλουκιανιστὰ ἀληθῶς Ἐυσέβιε .
To characterize Arianism in the first stage of its development, the following are important: a) the letter of Arius to Eusebius of Nicomedia (Epiph. h. 69, 6. Theodoret. h.e. 1, 5) about his break with Alexander of Alexandria and b) the letter of Arius and his supporters to Alexander (Athanas. de Synod, n. 16. Epiph. h. 69, 7) - of a conciliatory nature. To present the views of Arius in their further development, the source is: a) excerpts from his “Θάλεια” in Athanasius V; b) the letter of Eusebius of Nicomedia to Paulinus of Tyre (Theod. h. e. 1, 6); c) Alexander of Alexandria's district letter to the bishops (Socr. h. e. 1, 6) and d) to the Byzantine bishop Alexander (Theod. 1, 4).
Ari ad Euseb. ? ἅ μα Πατ ή ρ, ἅ μα Yἱ ό ς. Συνυπάρχει ὁ Yἱὸς ἀγεννήτως τῷ Θεῷ, ἀειγενής, ἀγεννητογενής ˙ ο ὔ τ ' ἐπινοί ᾳ, ο ὔ τ ' ἀτόμ ῳ τινὶ προάγει ὁ Θεὸς τοῦ Yἱοῦ ... ἐξ αὐτοῦ τοῦ Θεοῦ ὁ Yἱ ό ς . Ἀγεννήτως and ἀγεννητογενής hardly really belong to Alexander. Dorner, I, 813. das ist natürlich arianische Consequenzmacherei.
Alex, ad Alex. ep. τέλειον Yἱ ό ν, ἐμφερῆ τῷ Πατρὶ ... μόν ῳ τῷ ἀγεννήτ ῳ ... ... λαμβανέτω ο ὔ τε γὰρ τὸ ἦ ν, ο ὔ τε τὸ ἀεὶ ... ταὐτόν ἐστι τῷ ( τὸ ἀγέννητον δίωμα ) φυλακτέον , μηδένα τοῦ ε ἶ ναι αὐτῷ τὸν αἴτιον ?? ... ἀλλ ’ ἐκ τοῦ ὄντος Πατρὸς οὐ κατὰ τάς τῶν σωμάτων ὁμοιότητας ταῖς τομαῖς ἢ ταῖς ἐκ διαιρέσεων ἀπο ῤῥ οίαις .
Ari ad Euseb. er. ?? τοῦ Yἱοῦ ἀνάρχως ...
ibid. πρὶν γεννηθ ῇ, ἤ τοι κτισθ ῇ, ἤ τοι ὁρισθ ῇ, ἢ τα θεμελιωθ ῇ, οὐκ ἦ ν ˙ Ἀγέννητος γὰρ οὐκ ἦ ν . Διωκόμεθα δὲ, ὅ τι εἴπομεν ˙ Ἀρχὴν ἔχει ὁ Yἱ ό ς, ὁ δὲ Θεὸς ἄναρχός ἐστι. Ar. ep. ad Alex, οὐ δὲ γάρ ἐστιν ἀ ΐ διος ἢ συνα ΐ διος , ἢ συναγέννητος τῷ Πατρί ˙ οὐ δὲ ἅ μα τῷ Πατρὶ τὸ ε ἶ ναι ἔχει , ὥ ς λέγουσι τὰ πρ ό ς τι, δύο ἀγεννήτους ἀρχὰς εἰσηγούμενοι.
Ar. ep. ad Α l. γεννήσαντα δὲ οὐ δοκήσει , ἀλλ ’ ἀληθεί ᾳ... οὐδ ’ ὡ ς " ὡ ς Σαβέλλιος ὁ τὴν μονάδα διαιρῶν υἱοπάτορα ε ἶ πεν .
ibid. οὐδὲ τὸν ὄντα πρότερον ὕ στερον γεννηθέντα ἢ ἐπικτισθέντα εἰς Yἱόν ... καὶ εἰ τὸ Ἐκ Πατρὸς ἐξῆλθον (Joh. 15:28), ὡ ς μέρος τοῦ ὁμοουσίου [suprä ὡ ς Μανιχαῖος μέρος ὁμοούσιον τοῦ Πατρὸς τὸ γέννημα εἰσηγήσατο ] καὶ ὡ ς προβολὴ ὑπ ό τινων νοεῖται , ? αὐτούς ... τὰ ἀκόλουθα σῶματι πάσχων ὁ ἀσῶματος Θε ό ς . Wed. footnote no. 566.
ibid. ὥ στε τρεῖς εἰσιν ὑποστάσεις, Πατ ή ρ, Yἱ ό ς, καὶ ἅ γιον Πνεῦμα. Καὶ ὁ μὲν Θεὸς [ὡ ς μονὰς καὶ ἀρχὴ τῶν πάντων ] αἴτιος τῶν ναρχος μόνον ἀληθινὸν ]˙ ὁ δὲ Yἱ ό ς , ἀχρόνως γεννηθεὶς ὑπὸ τοῦ Πατρὸς ... μόνος ὑπὸ μόνου. Ar. ep. ad Eus. ὅ τι ὁ Yἱὸς οὐκ ἔστιν ἀγέννητος , οὐδὲ μέρος ἀγεννήτου , κατ ’ οὐδένα τρόπον [Eus. ad Paulin. ep. ἢ ὑπ ’ αὐτοῦ ἢ θεμελιωτὸν οὐκ ἂ ν εἴη , ἐξ ἀρχῆς ἀγέννητον ὑπάρχον ]˙ ἀλλ ’ ο ὔ τε ἐξ ὑποκειμένου τινός ˙ ἀλλ ’ ὅ τι θελήματι καὶ βουλ ῇ ὑπέστη πρὸ χρόνων καὶ πρὸ ανων ἀναλλοίωτος ... ἐστίν. Ο ὕ τως δὲ εἴπομεν , καθότι οὐδὲ μέρος Θεοῦ ἐστιν , οὐδὲ ἐξ ὑποκειμένου τινός. Ar. ep. ad Α l. , ?? γέννημα , ἀλλ ’ οὐχ ὡ ς ἓ ν τῶν γεννημάτων ...
τὸ ζ ῇ ν καὶ τὸ ε ἶ ναι παρὰ τοῦ Πατρὸς εἰληφότα , καὶ τάς δόξας συνυποστήσαντος αὐτῷ τοῦ Πατρὸς ˙ οὐ γὰρὁ Πατὴρ δούς αὐτῷ ?? ἐν ἐαυτῷ ˙ πηγὴ γὰρ ἐστι πάντων .
Athan. With. ar. or. 1, 22... ὄντος πεποίηκεν, ἢ τὸν ὄντα; ὄντα ο ὖ ν αὐτὸν πεποίηκεν ἢ μὴ ὄντα .
Ath. ad episc. Aeg. et Lib. n. 12. φασί ˙... καὶ αὐτὸς ... οὐκ ὢ ν πρότερον γέγονεν. ὁ γὰρ ὢ ν Θεὸς τὸν μὴ ὄντα Yἱὸν πεποίηκε τ ῇ βουλ ῇ, ἐν ᾗ καὶ τὰ πάντα πεποίηκε. Cfr. Alex. ep. ad episc. cat. Socr. h. e. 1, 6.
Athanas. de syn. n. 31. Socr. h. e. 2, 45.
Athan. ad er. Aeg. et Lib. n. 12. προστιθέασι δὲ καὶ τοῦτο, ὅ τι "Οὐκ ἔστιν αὐτὸς ὁ ἐν τῷ ?? καὶ ἄλλη ἡ ἐν τῷ Πατρὶ ἰδία αὐτοῦ σοφία , ἐν ᾗ σοφί ᾳ καὶ τοῦτον τὸν Λόγον πεποίηκεν. Socr.
Athan. With. ar. or. 1, 6. ἀπεξενωμέναι καὶ ἀπεσχοινισμέναι [Alex, ad cat. ξένος τε καὶ ἀλλότριος καὶ ἀπεσχοινισμένος ἐστὶν ὁ Λόγος τῆς τοῦ Θεοῦ οὐσίας ], καὶ ἀλλότριοι , καὶ ἀμέτοχοί εἰσιν ἀλλήλων αἱ οὐσίαι τοῦ Πατρὸς καὶ τοῦ Yἱοῦ καὶ τοῦ ἁ γίου Πνεύματος , καὶ , ὡ ς αὐτὸς ἐφθέγξατο , ἁ νόμοιοι πάμπαν ἀλλήλων ταῖς τε οὐσίαις καὶ δόξαις εἰσὶν ἐπ ’ ἄπειρον ... ὁ Λόγος ἀλλότριος μὲν καὶ ἀνόμοιος κατὰ πάντα τῆς τοῦ Πατρὸς οὐσίας ἰδιότητός ἐστι τῶν δὲ γενητῶν καὶ κτισμάτων ἴδιος καὶ ε ἷ ς αὐτῶν τυγχάνει.
Athan. de syn. n. 17. πρὸς δὲ τοῦς ἀρειανούς ἔγραψε (“ Τί μέμφεσθε Ἀλεξάνδρ ῳ τῷ πάπ ᾳ λέγοντι ἐκ τοῦ Πατρὸς τὸν Yἱ ό ν ;... μὴ φοβηθῆτε ... λεχθείη ἂ ν καὶ ὁ Yἱὸς ἐκ τοῦ Θεοῦ, ο ὕ τως ὥ σπερ καὶ τὰ πάντα λέγεται (1 Cor. 11:12) ἐκ τοῦ Θεοῦ "Euseb ad. Paul. ἐστιν ἐκ τῆς οὐσίας αὐτοῦ ... πάντα δι ' ἐκ τοῦ Θεοῦ ( αὐτοῦ ). ὄντων ὑπέστη καὶ αὐτ ό ς .
Euseb. Ad Paul ἂ ν ἐκ τῆς οὐσίας τῆς πατρικῆς αὐτὸν γεγονότα καὶ ἔχειν ἐκ τοῦτου ταυτότητα τῆς φύσεως, γινώσκομεν ὡ ς οὐ περὶ αὐτοῦ μόνου τὸ γεννητὸν ε ἶ ναί ψησιν ἡ γραψή, ἀλλὰ κ. τ. λ. Joh. 38:28. Isai. 1:2.
Ath. de sent. D.n. 23. ?? καὶ ὗ τος Yἱ ό ς, ὡ ς κτίσμα. c. ar. or. 1, 9 ex Thal, ὀνόματι μόνον λέγεται Λόγος καὶ σοφία καὶ χάριτι λέγεται Yἱὸς καὶ δύναμις . de synod, n. 15. ex Thaliä ἤ νεγκεν εἰς Yἱὸν ἑαυτῷ τόνδε τεκνοποιήσας .
ep. ad ep. Aeg. n. 12. αὐτὸς δὲ ο ὗ τος ὁ Κύριος κατ ’ ἐπίνοιαν λέγεται Λόγος διὰ τὰ λογικά, καὶ κατ ’ ἐπίνοιαν λέγεται Σοφία διὰ τὰ σοφιζόμενα. Alex, ad cathol. καταχρηστικῶς δὲ Λόγος καὶ Σοφία, de syn. n. 15. p. ar. or. 1, 5. ex Thal, σοφὸς δὲ ἐστιν ὁ Θε ό ς , ὅ τι τῆς σοφίας διδάσκαλος αὐτ ό ... ἰδίας σοφίας ) μετέχοντα ὠ νομάσθαι μόνον Σοφίαν καὶ Λόγον .
c. ar. or. 1, 5. ? δύναμις τοῦ Θεοῦ , ἀλλὰ μία τῶν λεγομένων δυνάμεών καὶ αὐτ ? [de syn. n. 18. verba Asteriï αἱ καθ ’ ἕ καστον ὑπ ’ αὐτοῦ ( τοῦ Θεοῦ ) κτισθεῖσαι , ὧ ν πρωτότοκος καὶ μονογενὴς ὁ Χριστός ] καὶ ὅ μοιαί εἰσι τῷ Yἱῷ περὶ ὧ ν καὶ Δαυὶδ ψάλλει (Ps. 23:10). Cfr. ep. ad. ep. Aeg. n. 12.Cfr. Origen. in Joh. t. 1, 42 (footnote no. 659). This place in the Barberini Codex has the following note: αὐτ ό ς ἐστιν ἡ σοφία , οὐκ ἄλλη ἡ σοφία καὶ αὐτὸς ἐν αὐτ ῇ˙ ο ὔ ? ὕ τως ἕ λλην ὑπάρχεις .
c. ar. or. 1, 9. ex Thal, οὐκ ἔστιν ἀληθινὸς Θεὸς ὁ Χριστός , ἀλλὰ μετοχ ῇ καὶ αὐτὸς ἐθεοποιήθη. ib. n. 6. μετοχ ῇ χάριτος , ὥ σπερ καὶ οἱ ἄλλοι πάντες , ο ὕ τω καὶ αὐτὸς λέγεται ὀνόματι μόνον Θε ό ς .
de syn. n. 15. ex Thal, ἴδιον οὐδὲν ἔχει τοῦ Θεοῦ καθ ’ ὑπόστασιν ἰδιότητος ˙ οὐ δὲ γάρ ἐστιν ἴσος, ἀλλ ’ οὐδὲ ὁμοούσιος αὐτῷ. c. ar. or. 1, 6. Πατρὸς τὸν Yἱόν.
With. ar. or. 1, 9 ex Thal, οὐκ ἔστιν ἄτρεπτος ὡ ς ὁ Πατ ή ρ , ἄλλὰ τρεπτός ἐστι φύσει ὡ ς τὰ χτίσματα, n. 5. ?? ἐστὶ τρεπτός , τῷ δὲ ἰδί ῳ αὐτεξουσί ῳ, ἕ ως βούλεται , μένει καλός ˙ ὅ τε μέντοι θέλει , δύναται τρέπεσθαι καὶ αὐτὸς ὥ σπερ καὶ ἡμεῖς, τρεπτῆς ὢ ν φύσεως. Alex, ad cat. ἠ ρώτησε γοῦν τις αὐτοῦς , εἰ δύναται ὁ τοῦ Θεοῦ Λόγος τραπῆναι ὡ ς ὁ διάβολος ἐτράπη ˙ καὶ οὐκ ἐφοβήθησαν εἰπεῖν ˙ ναὶ δύναται ˙ τρεπτής γὰρ φύσεώς ἐστι, γεννητὸς καὶ τρεπτὸς ὑπάρχων. There are two attempts to reconcile this opinion of Arius with his own teaching about the immutability of the Son: a) He is immutable in His pre-temporal existence, but changeable in His temporal existence after the incarnation (Kuhn, II, 362. unveränderlich nach seinem vorzeitlichen Sein... und veränderlich nach seinem zeitlichen Sein inwiefern er als Geschöpf (was er als Gott nicht konnte) Mensch geworden ist); b) He is unchangeable in the moral sense and changeable in the physical sense (Schaff, S. 944. Dieser Widerspruch lasst sich indes allenfalls lösen durch die Unterscheidung zwischen moralischer und physischer Unveränderlichkeit). The letter of the text does not support the first explanation and refutes the second: Arius (footnote no. 907) did not say that the Son became unchangeable, but that God created (ὑποστήσαντα) Him so.
de syn. n. 15 ex Thal, ὁ Θεὸς ἀόρατος ἄπασι , τοῖς τε διὰ Yἱοῦ καὶ αὐτῷ τῷ Yἱῷ ἀόρατος ὁ αὐτ ό ς . Ῥ ητῶς δὲ λέξω , πῶς τῷ Yἱῷ ὁρ ᾶ ται ὁ ἀόρατος ˙ Τ ῇ δυνάμει ᾗ δύναται ὁ Θεὸς ἰδεῖν ἰδίοις τε μέτροις ὑπομένει ὁ Yἱὸς ἰδείν τὸν Πατέρα, ὡ ς θέμις ἐστίν [p. ar. or. 1.6 ex Th. ο ὔ τε ὁρ ᾷ ν ο ὔ τε γινώσκειν τελείως καὶ ἀκριβῶς δύναται ὁ Λόγος τὸν ἐαυτοῦ Πατέρα, ἀλλὰ καὶ ὃ γινώσκει καὶ ὃ βλέπει ἀναλόγως τοῖς ἰδίοις μέτροις ο ἶ δε καὶ βλέπει, ὥ σπερ καὶ ... τὸν κρείττονα ἐκ μέρους ὑμνεῖ. Συνελόντι εἰπεῖν , τῷ Yἱῷ ὁ Θεὸς ἄ ῤῥ ητος ὑπάρχει ˙ ἔστι ? λεγομένων κατὰ τε κατάληψιν συνίει ἐξειπεῖν ὁ Yἱ ό ς . Ἀδύνατα γὰρ αὐτῷ τὸν Πατέρα τε ἐξιχνιάσαι ὅ ς ἐστιν ἐφ ’ ἑαυτοῦ (καθό ἐστιν). [Alex, ad cat. ὡ ς ἔστιν]...
Τίς γοῦν λόγος συγχωρεῖ τὸν ἐκ Πατρὸς ὄντα αὑτὸν τὸν γεννήσαντα γνῶναι ἐν καταλήψει; δῶλον γὰρ ὅ τι τὸ ἀρχὴν ἔχον τὸν ἂ ναρ χον, ὡ ς ἔστιν, ἐμπερινοῆσαι, ἢ ἐμπεριδράξασθαι οὐχ ο ἷ όν τέ ἐστιν. Cfr. With. ar. or. 1, 9. ep. ad ep. Aeg. n. 12.
syn. n. 15. ἀνεπίμικτοι ἑαυταῖς εἰσιν αἱ ὑποστάσεις αὐῶών ˙ μία τῆς μι ᾶ ς ἐνδοξοτέρα δόξαις ἐπ ’ ἄπειρον.
ad ep. Aeg. n. 12.Cfr. c. ar. or. 1, 5 ex Thal, οὐχ ἡμ ᾶ ς ἔκτισε δι ’ ἐκεῖνον , ἀλλ ’ ἐκεῖνον δι ’ ἡμ ᾶ ς . [Alex. ep. ad cat. καὶ οὐκ ἂ ν ὑπέστη, εἰ μὴ ἡμ ᾶ ς ὁ Θεὸς ἤ θελεν ποιῆσαι ]. c. ar. or. 2, 24. δυναμένην αὐτὴν μετασχεῖν τῆς τοῦ Πατρὸς ἀκράτου χειρὸς καὶ ? ἕ να καὶ καλεῖ τοῦτον Yἱὸν καὶ Λόγον, ἵ να, τούτου μέσου γενομένου, ο ὕ τω λοιπὸν καὶ τὰ πάντα δι ' αὐτοῦ γενέσθαι δυνηθ ῇ.
ep. ad ep. Aeg. n. 12. p. ar. or. 1, 5. (footnote No. 920). διὰ τοῦτο γὰρ καὶ προγινώσκων ὁ Θεὸς ἔσεσθαι καλὸν αὐτ ό ν, ?? τῆς ἀρετῆς ἔσχε μετὰ ταῦτα, ὥ στε ἐξ ἔργων αὐτοῦ, ὧ ν προέγνω ὁ Θε ό ς, τοιοῦτον αὐτὸν νὐν γεγονέναι πεποίηκε. With. ar. or. 1, 37... μισθὸν τῆς προαιρέσεως [n. 38. τῶν ἔργων ἔπαθλον καὶ προκοπῆς ] ἔλαβε . Alex. ep. ad Alex. (Isai. 1:2) ), ἐξειλέχθαι αὑτὸν ἀπὸ πάντων , οὐ γὰρ φύσει καὶ κατ ’ ἐξαίρετόν ... φύσεως (ἀρετῆς τε καὶ κακίας ἐπιδεκτικόν), διὰ τρόπων ἐπιμέλειαν καὶ ἄσκησιν μὴ τρεπόμενον ἐπὶ τὸ χεῖρον, ἐξελέξατο ˙ ὡ ς εἰ καὶ Παῦλο τοῦτο βιάσαιτο καὶ Πέτρος , μηδὲν διαφέρειν τούτων τὴν ἐκείνου υἱότητα .
c. ar. or. 3. 10. τοῖς νοήμασιν ο ὔ τε τοῖς κρίμασιν ἀντίκειταί ἐστι σύμφωνος αὐτῷ, τὴν ταὐτότητα τῶν δογμάτων καὶ τὸν ἀκόλουθον καὶ συνηρτημένον ῇ τοῦ Πατρὸς διδασκαλί ᾳ ἀποδιδούς λόγον ˙ διὰ τοῦτο αὐτὸς καὶ ὁ Πατὴρ ἕ ν εἰσιν .
τὸ συνταγμάτιον τοῦ ἀνομοίου Ἀετίου (Epiph. haer. 76, 11) p. 9. ? Yἱοῦ εἰδοποίησιν.
With. 7. εἰ δὲ ὅ λος ( ὁ Θεὸς ) ἐστὶν ἀγέννητος , οὐκ οὐσιωδῶς εἰς γένεσιν διέστη, ἐξουσί ᾳ δὲ ὑπέστησε γέννημα.
With. 11. ?? τὴν γέννησιν ἔξωθεν προσλαβ ὼ ν ἠ νδρώθη . ἐστιν ὁ προσέλαβε.
With. 12. μέρους ἐπὶ Θεοῦ βλασφημίας τύπον καὶ ὕ βριν ἐπέχοντος ], γέννημά ἐστι, καὶ οὐκ ἐξ ὧ ν ὁ ἀγέννητος αὐτὸ ἐγέννησεν.
With. 13. γεννητῆς φύσεως οὐκ ο ἶ δεν ἑαυτόν, ὁ δὲ Yἱ ό ς, γεννητῆς ?? ἂ ν εἴη τὸ ὁμοούσιον ψεῦδος , τοῦ μὲν γινώσκοντος ἐαυτὸν ἀγέννητον, τοῦ δὲ γεννητόν; With. 39. οὐσίαν παρατείνειν περιαγόμενος ὑπὸ γενέσεως καὶ ἀγεννησίας . With. 40. δὲ γεννητοῦ φύσει ἀτελευτήτως διαμένειε , εἰ μὲν δὴ ατελῆ φύσει γινώσκει αὐτ όν, ἀγνοῶν δηλονότι τὴν ἀγέννητον μετουσίαν. οὐ γὰρ ο ἷ όν τε αὐτὸν περὶ ἑαυτοῦ καὶ ἀγεννήτου οὐσίας γνῶσιν ἔχειν καὶ γεννητῆς.
Monuments of the creed of the Semi-Arians, in addition to a) the symbols of the Council of Antioch in 241 (Athanas. de syn. n. 22–26; the second of them - n. 22; cfr. Epiph. h.73, 2. 25), are the following: b) the message of the Council of Ancyra in 358. (Epiph. h. 73, 2–11); c) the message of the semi-Arian bishops of 358. (Epiph. h. 73, 12–22); d) third Sirmian formula 358g. (Ath. de syn. n. 8; Epiph. h. 72, 22); e) statement of faith of the Council of Seleucia in 359. (Ath. de syn. n. 29; Epiph. h. 73, 25) and e) conversation of Meletius of Antioch 361. (Epiph. h. 73, 29–33). Epiph. h. 73, 25. ... τινων τὸ ἀνόμοιον Yἱοῦ πρὸς Πατέρα ˙ τοῦτου χάριν τὸ ὁμοούσιον ὡ ς ἀλλότριον τῶν γραφῶν ἐκβάλλομεν ˙ τὸ δὲ ἀνόμοιον ἀναθεματίζομεν. n. 22. Yἱὸν τῷ Πατρὶ κατὰ πάντα . Κατὰ πάντα δὲ οὐ μόνον κατὰ τὴν βούλησιν , ἀλλὰ κατὰ τὴν ὑπόστασιν, καὶ κατὰ τὴν ὕ παρξιν, καὶ κατὰ τὸ ε ἶ ναι, ὡ ς Yἱὸν κατὰ τάς θείας γραφάς.
Epiph. h. 73, 12.
Epiph. h. 79, 9. The ῤῥ ητον ἐξ αὐτοῦ ἀπαθῶς γνησιότητα, n. 11. , ἀνάθεμα ἔστω. Regarding the difference between ὅ μοιος and ταυτοούσιος, see n. 15. Πατέρα, μήτε τὸν Yἱὸν αὐτὸν ἑαυτῷ ε ἶ ναι ὅ μοιον, ἀλλὰ Yἱὸν ε ἶ ναι ὅ μοιον τῷ Πατρὶ , καὶ ἐν τῷ κατὰ πάντα ὁμοιον ε ἶ ναι τῷ Πατρὶ Yἱὸν ὄντα, καὶ οὐ Πατέρα, ἐξ ο ὗ κ. τ. λ.
(Ath. de syn. n. 23): τῆς θεότητος, οὐσίας τε καὶ βουλῆς καὶ δυνάμεως, καὶ δόξης τοῦ Πατρὸς ἀπαράλλακτον εἰκόνα .
Epiph. h. 73, 11. Yἱοῦ, καὶ μὴ ὑπὲρ χρόνους, καὶ κατὰ (f. παρὰ) πάσας ἀνθρωπίνας ἐννο ί ας ... ἀ . ἔ. n. 15. (see footnote No. 935) καὶ πάντων λογισμῶν , καὶ χρόνων , καὶ αἰώνων ἐκ τοῦ Πατρὸς ὁμοιότητος (ἐξ αὐτοῦ) γεννηθείς.
Epiphan. h. 73, 11. Yes ὡ ς μόνην τὴν ἐξουσίαν λαμβάνων καὶ κοινοποιῶν αὐτὸν πρὸς τὰ λοιπὰ ποιήματα, καὶ οὐ λέγων ἀληθῶς ἐκ Πατρὸς γνήσιον Yἱ ό ν, ἀνάθεμα ἔστω. Wed. footnote no. 928.
n. 4. ὡ ς γὰρ ἀπὸ τοῦ κτίσματος, πάντων ἐκβεβλημένων [n. 3. τοῦ τε ἔξωθεν ὑφεστῶτος καὶ τοῦ ὑλικοῦ ], παρελήφθη ἡ ἀπαθὴς μὲν τοῦ κτίζοντος , τελεία καὶ ο ὅ αν ἠ βούλετο καὶ ἡ παγία ?? ἐκβεβλημένων τῶν σωματικῶν πάντων , παραληφθήσεται μόνη ἡ ὁμο ί ου καὶ κατ ’ οὐσίαν ζ ῴ ου γενεσιουργία [n. 20. εὐσεβὴς γνησιότης τοῦ Θεοῦ ]. Cfr. n. 7.
n. 4. πολλὰς γὰρ ἐνεργείας ἔχων ὁ Θεὸς ... n. 5. νοεῖται , ἀλλὰ καὶ ἰδίως , καὶ μονογενῶς γεννητικήν , καθ ’ ἣ ν Πατὴρ Μονογενοῦς ἡμῖν νοεῖται .
n. 11. (footnote no. 937) n. 6. Πατέρα μὲν ἐξ ἑαυτοῦ γεγεννηκότα... οὐσίαν ἐκ τοῦ Πατρ ό ς [n. 5. οὐσιωδῶς ] μονογενῆ ὑποστάντα . Cfr. n. 5.
n. 12. ? ... ... ἐνέργειαι ˙ ὁ δὲ Yἱὸς Λόγος ὤ ν , οὐχὶ ἐνέργεια λεκτική ἐστι τοῦ Θεοῦ, ἀλλ ’ Yἱὸς ὢ ν οὐσία ἐστίν.
n. 6. νοεῖται , ἀλλ ’ ἀσυνθέτως αὐτὸς ἐστι σοφὸς οὐσί ᾳ˙ ο ὔ τε μήτε ἡ σοφία ἐστὶν ὁ Yἱὸς ἕ ξις νοεῖται [n. 30.ex serm. Meletii. ἐνθύμημα τοῦ Πατρὸς ]˙ ἀλλὰ ἡ σοφία οὐσία ἐστὶν ἀπὸ σοφοῦ οὐσίας .
n. 5. λεγομένων Yἱῶν ἔννοια τῷ Μονογενεῖ ἁ ρμόζειν ... ὁ Μονογενὴς νοηθήσεται ... κυρίως (Yἱὸς), n. 12. ὡ ς ἐκ τοῦ Θεοῦ ἔχων γνησίως [n. 18. κατὰ φύσιν ] τὸ ε ἶ ναι .
n. 30.ex serm. Mel. Λόγος καὶ σοφία καὶ δύναμις τοῦ ὑπέρ σοφίαν καὶ δύναμιν.
n. 16. ? n. 17. Joh. 5:19. ὁ γὰρ Πατ ή ρ, πνεῦμα ὤ ν, αὐθεντικῶς ποιεῖ ˙ ὁ δὲ Yἱ ό ς, ? ἐν ὁμοιώματι κινήσεως ὁ Yἱ ό ς , ὑπουργικῶς , καὶ οὐ ταυτόν , ὡ ς ὁ Πατὴρ αὐθεντικῶς.
n. 9. ὅ μοιος τῷ Πατρὶ κατὰ τὴν θεότητα ... μὴ μέντοι τὸν αὐτὸν ε ἶ ναι, καθὸ Θεὸς ὤ ν, ο ὔ τε μορφή ἐστι τοῦ Θεοῦ, ἀλλὰ Θεοῦ ˙ ο ὔ τε ἴσα ἐστὶ τῷ Θεῷ , ἀλλὰ Θεῷ ˙ ο ὔ τε αὐθεντικῶς ὡ ς ὁ Πατ ή ρ.
n. 16. ὁμολογοῦσι γὰρ ( οἱ ἀνατολικοί ) μίαν ε ἶ ναι θεότητα , καὶ μίαν ἀρχὴν.
Epiph. h. 69, 18. ο ὗ τοι δὲ βούλονται αὐτὸ ε ἶ ναι [n. 17. ὑποδεέστερον, καὶ ] κτίσμα κτίσματος [n. 52. ὑπὸ ἄρα, φασί, καὶ τὸ Πνεῦμα ἐκ τῶν ποιημάτων ὑπάρχει.
Basil. M. adv. Eun. 3, 5. ἐνεργεί ᾳ δέ τοῦ Yἱοῦ γενόμενον , τρίτ ῃ χώρ ᾳ τιμώμενον ὡ ς πρῶτον καὶ μεῖζον ἁ πάντων , καὶ μόνον τοιοῦτον τοῦ Μονογενοῦς ποίημα , θεότητος καὶ δημιουργικῆς δυνάμεως ἀπολειπόμενον.
Epiph. h. 73, 16. γνωρίζοντες.
ib. n. 1. Πατρὸς καὶ Yἱοῦ ὑπάρχον. Soz. h. e. 6, 22. ὁμοιούσιον τὸν Yἱὸν ε ἶ ναι λέγοντες ˙ ἀμφότεροι γὰρ διακξει καὶ τ ῇ τιμ ῇ, καὶ τ ῇ οὐσί ᾳ ἀλλοῖον τὸ Πνεῦμα ἰσχυρίζοντο.
Socr. h. e. 4, 26 (footnote No. 898). ὧ ν ἀσκηθέντες δυνατῶς ἀπήντων πρὸς τούς ἀρειανίζοντας, καίτοι τῶν ἀρειανῶν τὰ Ὠ ριγένους βιβλία εἰς μαρτυρίαν , ὡ ς ᾤ οντο, τοῦ ἰδίου καλοῦντων δόγματος, αὐτοὶ ἐξήλεγχον καὶ ἐδείκνυον μὴ νοήσαντας τὴν Ὠ ριγένους σύνεσιν. Next we talk about Eunomia. Cfr. Sozom. h. e. 6, 17. τὰς Ὠ ριγένους δόξας, α ἷ ς μάλιστα ἐπηρείδοντο (Arians).
Socr. h. e. 2, 35. ὁ Ἀέτιος ... πολλὰ χαίρειν φράσας (prorsus aspernaretur) τοῖς περὶ Κλήμεντα, καὶ Ἀφρικανόν, καὶ Ὠ ριγένην.
Socr. h. e. 7, 6. ?
Socr. h. e. 4, 25; Wed footnote No. 432.
Epiph. h. 64. See footnote No. 453; footnote No. 569; footnote No. 576. Origen's teachings are discussed in 69 chapters (nn. 4–72; col. 1065–1198); the analysis of misconceptions regarding the dogma of the Holy Trinity takes only 6 chapters (4–9; col. 1075–1086).
Hier. er. 84 (65) n. 4 quomodo, inquit, damnabimus, quos synodus nicaena non tetigit? Quae enim damnavit Arium, damnasset utique et Origenem... Quanquam latenter Origenem fontem Arii percusserunt.
Hieron. ep. 84 (65) ad Pamm. et Oc. n. 7. “dicite eum male sensisse de Filio, pejus de Spiritu s.” (cf. footnote no. 443); b) that he preached the wicked opinion of the fall of souls from heaven; c) that he only verbally acknowledged the resurrection of the flesh, but in fact rejected it; d) that he believed that after many centuries there would be a restoration of everyone to one state, so that Gabriel would be the same as the devil, Paul - the same as Caiaphas.” In lib. With. Joann, hieros. n. 7 Jerome lists the following eight errors of Origen:
a) he taught that the Son cannot see the Father, nor can the Spirit of the Son (footnote No. 463);
b) that souls are imprisoned in bodies, as if in a prison, and before man lived in paradise, they dwelt with heavenly powers;
c) that the devil and demons will one day repent and finally reign with the saints;
d) that by leather clothes he means the human bodies with which Adam and Eve were clothed after the Fall and expulsion from paradise;
e) that he most openly denies the resurrection of the flesh and the bodily organism and the difference between the sexes;
f) that in the interpretation of paradise he allows so much allegorical that it undermines the historical authenticity of the story: by trees he means angels, by rivers - heavenly powers;
g) that by water above the firmament he means holy forces on high, and under water on earth and underground - dark demonic ones (footnote No. 863);
h) that he claims that after the fall man completely lost the image and likeness of God in which he was created.
Socr. h. e. 6, 17. This comparison was used by Theophilus himself when they learned that after the overthrow of Chrysostom he was reading the works of Origen, which he himself had condemned before. For the reason why Theophilus attacked the anti-Origenists, see Socr. h. e. 6, 7. Sozom. h. e. 8, 11. 12.
For the Easter Epistles of Theophilus, see Hieron. er. 96 (ap. 401) 98 (ap. 402) et 100 (ap. 404). The first letter lists the following errors of Origen:
a) Christ will not reign forever;
b) the devil will one day be restored to his dignity;
c) souls can repeatedly inhabit bodies;
d) Christ will one day be crucified to atone for demons;
e) The son should not pray;
f) magic is not evil. In the second message:
a) bodies were created as a result of the fall of souls;
b) the ranks of angels arose as a result of the moral weakening of some of them;
c) The Holy Spirit does not influence what is not endowed with reason;
d) souls are cold spirits;
e) the human soul of Christ exhausted itself and became incarnate, and not the Son of God;
f) she is as closely united with the Son as the Son is with the Father;
g) God created as many creatures as he could control.
Cp. Halloix, Origenes defensus. Leodii. 1648. p. 335. Huet., Origen. 1. 2, 3, 18. (Migne. t. 17 col. 1109). Schaff, K. G. S. 989. The dislike of the hermitage monks towards Origen was, one might say, hereditary: one pious abbot, Pachomius, considered Origen the forerunner of not only Arianism, but even the Meletian schism - and bequeathed to his students not to read Origen’s works. He himself, having found some of his writings, immediately threw it into the water. “If I had not known,” said Pachomius, “that the name of God is used in Origen’s books, I would have burned them in the fire.”
Hieron. With. Joh. hieros. nn. 8. 9.
Rufini apologia ad Anastas, n. 6.
Mansi, concil. t. 3 p.m. 979 sq. Socr. h. e. 6, 7. 9. 10. 12. Soz. h. e. 8, 11. 14.
Socr. h. e. 6, 15. Sozom. h. e. 8, 17.
Mansi, t. 3 p.m. 981 (footnote no. 599; footnote no. 815; footnote no. 830).
Sulpit. Sever, dial. 1 p. 3. 1. s. ar. Bull. (col. 1327). locus ille [last point] vel maximam parabat invidiam.
Hier. er. 84 (65) ad Pam. et Os. n. 6. qui verbo tenus resurrectionem fatentes, animo negant. Solent enim mulierculae eorum mammas tenere, ventri applaudere... et dicerë Quid nobis prodest resurrectio, si fragile corpus resurget?
Phot. cod. 117 (footnote no. 394; footnote no. 430; footnote no. 599; footnote no. 788).
What this accusation is based on, even Gue could not find out. Orig. 1.2, 2, 5, 37 col. 892.
Phot. cod. 117. ὡ ς ἐπὶ πλεῖστον, ἀλλὰ συνηγορία τῆς κατηγορίας.
This approximately determines the terminus ad quem for the appearance of the apology: it is incredible that this free opinion was held by an author who lived after Justinian.
The documents related to this story are as follows:
a) Justinian’s letter to Mina, with 9 anathematisms against Origen (Migne, s. gr. t. 86 col. 945–990);
b) Justinian’s letter to the council with a proposal to condemn the Palestinian Origenists and outlining their teaching (ib. col. 991–994);
c) 15 anathematisms compiled on the basis of this message, incorrectly attributed to the fifth ecumenical council (Mansi, t. 9 p. 396–399);
d) libellus of the former Origenist, Bishop Theodore of Scythopolis, given to the emperor around 553. with 12 anathematisms against Origen, of which 9 are literally copied from the letter to Menas, and 3 represent only some resemblance to the anathematisms of the cathedral. Evagrius (h.e. 4, 38) already attributes the condemnation of Origen to the fifth ecumenical council; but Valesius (nota ad h. 1) proves that it was pronounced earlier at a local council. Cfr. Mansi, t. 9 p.m. 121 sq. Schaff, K. G. S. 998. From the biography of St. Sava, compiled by Cyril of Scythopolis, it is clear that the Orthodox monks presented several points extracted from the writings of Origen, with a request to the emperor for their condemnation (Mansi, t. 9 p. 703–708), which followed at the council of Mina. The testimony of Liberatus agrees with this (breviar. p. 23 I. ar. Mansi p. 657). Thus, the message to Mina was compiled on the basis of this note from the Palestinian monks. But Cyril of Scythopolis says that after this a deputation headed by Abba Conon came to Constantinople and presented the emperor with a note in which the wickedness of the Origenists was exposed.
The Emperor ordered that it be considered at the fifth ecumenical council. The testimony of Evagrius (h.e. 4, 38) is in complete agreement with these data. Then, and to this day, the emperor’s letter to the council and the council’s anathematisms against the Origenists have been preserved. Thus, it turns out that they belong to a council that is not identical with either the fifth ecumenical council of 553 or the local council of 544.
Cfr. anath. 9. ὁ παρ ’ αὐτοῖς λεγόμενος νοῦς , ὃ ν ἀσεβοῦντες λεγουσι κυρίως Χριστ ό ν .
Thus, Cyril of Scythopolis directly says that at the fifth ecumenical council, the wicked teachings about the pre-existence of souls and the resurrection were anathematized (Origen. 1. 2, 4, 2, 14 col. 1711). Eutyches, Patriarch of Constantinople, once himself shared the opinion of the Origenists about the resurrection (Mansi, t. 9 p. 647. Huet. Orig. 1. supra cit. n. 16 col. 1175). St. Barsanuphius (about 540) one brother asks about Origen's teaching about the pre-existence of souls and universal restoration (Migne, s. gr. t. 86 col. 892). Leontius of Byzantium (about 600) considers Origen's errors to be his subordinationism (de sect. act. 10 n. 4. Migne, t. 86 col. 1264. ὑπόβασιν ἔλεγε τοῦ Yἱοῦ ), the doctrine of the pre-existence of souls and of universal restoration, and the last two points speaks in more detail than the first.
Halloix, Orig. def. p. 377. 373. Schaff, K. G. S. 1046.
See Act 18 of the Sixth and Act 7 of the Seventh Ecumenical Council.
Huet. Orig. 1. 2, 4, 3, 18–21 col. 1177–1182.
For some of these passages see footnote paragraph No. 474 et seq., footnote paragraph No. 481 et seq.
Neander refers to in Joh. t. 10, 21 (see footnote No. 686).
S. 110. Denn Vater ist Gott nur durch den Sohn.
S. 283. 284. in jeder Beziehung als geringer.
II, 90. in der Art es zu besitzen.