8. But since He is called by the apostle not only the brightness of His glory, but also the_express figure of His person or subsistence,” it does not seem idle to inquire how there can be said to be another figure of that person besides the person of God Himself, whatever be the meaning of person and subsistence. Consider, then, whetherfhe Son of God, seeing He is His Word and Wisdom, and alone knows the Father, and reveals Him to whom He will (2.e. to those who are capable of receiving His word and wisdom), may not, | in regard of this very point of making God to be understood and acknowledged, be called the figure of His person and subsistence; that is, when that Wisdom, which desires to make known to others the means by which God is acknow- ledged and understood by them, describes Himself first of all, it may by so doing be called the express figure of the person of God. In order, however, to arrive at a fuller understand- ing of the manner in which the Saviour is the figure of the person or subsistence of God, let us take an instance, which, although it does not describe the subject of which we are treating either fully or appropriately, may nevertheless be seen to be employed for this purpose only, to show that the Son of God, who was in the form of God, divesting Himself [of His glory], makes it His object, by this very divesting of Himself, to demonstrate to us the fulness of His deity. For instance, suppose that there were a statue of so enormous a size as to fill the whole world, and which on_that_ account could be seen by_no one; and that another statue were 1 Luke vi. 42. 2Heb. & 8. Substantise vel subsistentia.
26 ORIGEN DE PRINCIPIIS. [Boox r.
formed altogether resembling it in the shape of the limbs, and in the features of the countenance, ang _in form and material, but without the same immensity of size, so that those who were unable to behold the one of enormous pro- portions, should, on seeing the latter, acknowledge that they had seen the former, because it preserved all the features of its limbs and countenance, and gven the very form and material, so closely, as to be altogether undistinguishable from it; by some such similitude, the Son of God, divesting Himself of His equality with the Father, and showing to us the way to the knowledge of Him, is made the express image of His person: so that we, who were unable to look upon the glory of that marvellous light when placed in the great- ness of His Godhead, may, by His being made to us bright- ness, obtain the means of beholding the divine light by looking upon the brightness. This comparison, of course, of statues, as belonging to material things, is employed for no other purpose than to show that the Son of God, though placed in the very insignificant form of a human body, in consequence of the resemblance of His works and power to the Father, showed that there was in Him an immense and invisible greatness, inasmuch as He said to His disciples, ‘‘ He who sees me, sees the Father also;” and, “I and the Father are one.” And to these belong also the similar ex- pression, “The Father is in me, and I in the Father.”
9. Let us see now what is the meaning of the expression which is found in the Wisdom of Solomon, where it is said of Wisdom that “it is a kind of breath of the power of God, and the purest efflux of the glory of the Omnipotent, and the splendour of eternal light, and the spotless mirror of the working or power of God, and the image of His goodness.” * These, then, are the definitions which He gives of God, pointing out by each one of them certain attributes which belong to the Wisdom of God, calling wisdom the power, and the glory, and the everlasting light, and the working, and the goodness of God. He does not say, however, that wisdom is the breath of the glory of the Almighty, nor of Cuap. 1. ] ORIGEN DE PRINCIPIS. 27 the everlasting light, nor of the working of the Father, nor of His goodness, for it was not appropriate that breath should be ascribed to any one of these; but, with all propriety, he says that wisdom _ is the breath of the power of God. Now, by the power of God is to be understood that by which He is strong; by which He appoints, restrains, and governs all things visible and invisible; which is sufficient for all those things which He rules over in His providence; among all which He is present, as if one individual. And although the breath of all this mighty and immeasurable power, and the vigour itself produced, so to speak, by its own existence, proceed from the power itself, as the will does from the mind, yet even this will of God is nevertheless made to become the pow 1 Another power accordingly is produced, which exists with properties of its own,—a kind of breath, as Scripture says, of the primal and unbegotten power of God, deriving from Him its being, and never at any time non-existent. For if any one were to assert that it did not formerly exist, but came afterwards into existence, let him explain the reason why the Father, who gave it being, did not do so before. And if he shall grant that there was once a beginning, when that breath proceeded from the power of God, we shall ask him again, why not even before the beginning, which he has allowed; and in this way, ever demanding an earlier date, and going upwards with our interrogations, we shall arrive at this con- clusion, that as God was always possessed of power and will, there never was any reason of propriety or otherwise, why He may not have always possessed that blessing which He desired. By which it is shown that that breath of God’s power always existed, having no beginning save God Him- self. Nor was it fitting that there should be any other beginning save God Himself, from whom it derives its birth. And according to the expression of thie apostle, that Christ 1“ Hujus ergo totius virtutis tante et tam immense vapor, ct, ut ita dicam, vigor ipse in propria subsistentia effectus, quamvis ex ipsa virtute velut voluntas ex mente procedat, tamen et ipsa voluntas Dei nihilominus Dei virtus efficitur.”
28 ORIGEN DE PRINCIPIIS. [Book 1.
“is the power of God,” it ought to be termed not only the breath of the power of God, but power out of power.
10. Let us now examine the expression, “ Wisdom Is the purest efflux of the glory of the Almighty;” and let us first consider what the glory of the omnipotent God is, and then we shall also understand what is its efflux. As no one can be a father without having a son, nor a master without pos- sessing a servant, so even God cannot be called omnipotent unless there exist those over whom He may exercise His power; and therefore, that God may be shown to be almighty, it is necessary that all things should exist. For if any one would have some ages or portions of time, or whatever else he likes to call them, to have passed away, while those things which were afterwards made did not yet exist, he would un- doubtedly show that during those ages or periods God was not omnipotent, but became so afterwards, viz. from the time that He began to have persons over whom to exercise power; and in this way He will appear to have received a certain increase, and to have risen from a lower to a higher con- dition; since there can be no doubt that it is better for Him to be omnipotent than not to be so. And now how can- it appear otherwise than absurd, that when God possessed none of those things which it was befitting for Him to possess, He should afterwards, by a kind of progress, come into the possession of them? But if there never was a time when He was not omnipotent, of necessity those things by which He receives that title must also exist; and He must always have had those over whom He exercised power, and which were governed by Him either as king or prince, of which we shall speak more fully in the proper place, when we come to dis- cuss the subject of the creatures. But even now [ think it necessary to drop a word, although cursorily, of warning, since the question before us is, how wisdom is the purest efHux of the glory of the Almighty, lest any one should think that the title of Omnipotent was anterior in God to the birth of Wisdom, through whom He is called Father, seeing that Wisdom, which is the Son of God, is the purest efflux of the Crap. 11. | ORIGEN DE PRINCIPIS. 29 glory of the Almighty. Let him who is inclined to entertain this suspicion hear the undoubted declaration of Scripture pronouncing, “In wisdom hast Thou made them all,”? and the teaching of the gospel, that “by Him were all things made, and without Him nothing was made;”? and let him understand from this that the title of Omnipotent in God cannot be older than that of Father; for it is through the Son that the Father is almighty. But from the expression “glory of the Almighty,” of which glory Wisdom is the efflux, this is to be understood, that Wisdom, through which God is called Omnipotent, has a share in the glory of the Almighty. For through Wisdom, which is Christ, God has power over all things, not only by the authority of a ruler, but also by the voluntary obedience of subjects. And that you may understand that the omnipotence of Father and Son Is one and the same, as God and the Lord are one and the same with the Father, listen to the manner in which John speaks in the Apocalypse: “ Thus saith the Lord God, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.”* For who else was “ He which is to come”’ than Christ? And as no one ought to be offended, seeing God is the Father, that the Saviour is also God; s0 also, since the Father is called omnipotent, no one ought to be offended that the Son of God is also called omnipotent. For in this way will that saying be true which He utters to the Father, “ All mine are Thine, and Thine are mine, and I am glorified in them.” * Now, if all things which are the Father’s are also Christ’s, certainly among those things which exist is the omnipotence of the Father; and doubtless the only-begotten Son ought to be omnipotent, that the Son also may have all things which the Father possesses. “And I am glorified in them,” He declares. For “at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and every tongue shall confess that the Lord Jesus is in the glory of God the Father.”® Therefore He is the efflux of the glory of God in this respect, that He is 30 ORIGEN DE PRINCIPIIS. [ Book rf.
omnipotent—the pure and limpid Wisdom herself —glorified as the efflux of omnipotence or of glory. And that it may be more clearly understood what the glory of omnipotence is, we shall add the following. God the Father is omnipotent, because He has power over all things, t.e. over heaven and earth, sun, moon, and stars, and all things in them. And He exercises His power over them by means of His Word, because at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, both of things in heaven, and things on earth, and things under the earth. And if every knee is bent to Jesus, then, without doubt, it is Jesus to whom all things are subject, and He it is who exercises power over all things, and through whom all things are subject to the Father; for through wisdom, 7.e. by word and reason, not by force and necessity, are all things subject. And therefore His glory consists in this very thing, that He possesses all things, and this is the purest and most limpid glory of omnipotence, that by reason and wisdom, not by force and necessity, all things are subject. Now the purest and most limpid glory of wisdom is a convenient expression to distinguish it from that glory which cannot be called pure and sincere. But every nature which is con- vertible and changeable, although glorified in the works of righteousness or wisdom, yet by the fact that righteousness or wisdom are accidental qualities, and because that which is accidental, may also fall away, its glory cannot be called sincere and pure. But the Wisdom of God, which is His only-begotten Son, being in all respects incapable of change or alteration, and every good quality in Him being essential, and such as cannot be changed and converted, His glory is therefore declared to be pure and sincere.
11. In the third place, wisdom is called the splendour of cternal light. The force of this expression we have explained in the preceding pages, when we introduced the similitude of the sun and the splendour of its rays, and showed to the best of our power how this should be understood. To what we then said we shall add only the following remark. That is properly termed everlasting or eternal which neither had a beginning of existence, nor can ever cease to be what it is.
Ciap. 11. | ORIGEN DE PRINCIPIIS. ol And this is the idea conveyed by John whien he says that “ God is Light.” Now His wisdom is the splendour of that light, not only in respect of its being light, but also of being everlasting light, so that His wisdom is eternal and everlast- ing splendour. If this be fully understood, it clearly shows that the existence of the Son is derived from the Father, but not in time, nor from any other beginning, except, as we have said, from God Himself.
12. But wisdom is also called the stainless mirror of the évépyera or working of God. We must first understand, then, what the working of the power of God is. It is a sort of vigour, so to speak, by which God operates either in crea- tion, or in providence, or in judgment, or in the disposal and arrangement of individual things, each in its season. For as the image formed in a mirror unerringly reflects all the acts and movements of him who gazes on it, so would Wisdom have herself to be understood when she is called the stainless mirror of the power and working of the Father: as the Lord Jesus Christ also, who is the Wisdom of God, declares of Himself when He says, “The works which the Father doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise.”’ And again He says, that the Son cannot do anything of Himself, save what He sces the Father do. As therefore the Son in no respect differs from the Father in the power of His works, and the work of the Son is not a different thing from that of the Father, but one and the same movement, so to speak, is in all things, He therefore named Him a stainless mirror, that by such an ex- pression it might be understood that there is no dissimilarity whatever between the Son and the Father. How, indeed, can those things which are said by some to be done after the manner in which a disciple resembles or imitates his master, or according to the view that those things are made by the Son in bodily material which were first formed by the Father in their spiritual essence, agree with the declarations of Scrip- ture, seeing in the Gospel the Son is said to do not similar things, but the same things in a similar manner?
- It remains that we inquire what is the “ image of His 32 ORIGEN DE PRINCIPIIS. [Book 1. goodness;” and here, I think, we must understand the same thing which we expressed a little ago, in speaking of the image formed by the mirror. For He is the primal goodness, doubtless, out of which the Son is born, who, being in all re- spects the image of the Father, may certainly also be called with propriety the image of His goodness. For there is no other second goodness existing in the Son, save that which is in the Father. And therefore also the Saviour Himself rightly says in the Gospel, “There is none good save one only, God the Father,” that by such an expression it may be under- stood that the Son is not of a different goodness, but of that only which exists in the Father, of whom He is rightly termed the image, because He proceeds from no other source but from that primal goodness, lest there might appear to be in the Son a different goodness from that which is in the Father. Nor is there any dissimilarity or difference of goodness in the Son. And therefore it is not to be imagined that there is a kind of blasphemy, as it were, in the words, “ There is none good save one only, God the Father,” as if thereby it may be supposed to be denied that either Christ or the Holy Spirit was good. But, as we have already said, the primal goodness is to be understood as residing in God the Father, from whom both the Son is born and the Holy Spirit proceeds, retaining within them, without any doubt, the nature of that goodness which is in the source whence they are derived. And if there be any other things which in Scripture are called good, whether angel, or man, or servant, or treasure, or a good heart, or a good tree, all these are so termed cata- chrestically,' having in them an accidental, not an essential goodness. But it would require both much time and labour to collect together all the titles of the Son of God, such e.g. as the true light, or the door, or the righteousness, or the sanctification, or the redemption, and countless others; and to show for what reasons each one of them is so given. Satisfied, therefore, with what we have already advanced, we go on with our inquiries into those other matters which follow. 1 Abusive.
Crap. m1. | ORIGEN DE PRINCILPIS. 30 CHAPTER III. ON THE HOLY SPIRIT.
1. THE next point is to investigate as briefly as possible the subject of the Holy Spirit. All who perceive, in what- ever manner, the existence of Providence, confess that God, who created and disposed all things, is unbegotten, and re- cognise Him as the parent of the universe. Now, that to Him belongs a Son, is a statement not made by us only; although it may seem a sufficiently marvellous and incredible assertion to those who have a reputation as philosophers among Greeks and Barbarians, by some of whom, however, an idea of His existence seems to have bcen entertained, in their acknow- Jedging that all things were created by the word or reason of God. We, however, in conformity with our belief in that doctrine, which we assuredly hold to be divinely inspired, believe that it is possible in no other way to explain and bring within the reach of human knowledge this higher and diviner reason as the Son of God, than by means of those Scriptures alone which were inspired by the Holy Spirit, z.e. the gospels and epistles, and the law and the prophets, according to the declaration of Christ Himself. Of the existence of the Holy Spirit no one indeed could entertain any suspicion, save those who were familiar with the law and the prophets, or those who profess a belief in Christ. For although no one is able to speak with certainty of God the Father, it is nevertheless possible for some knowledge of Him to be gained by means of the visible creation and the natural feelings of the human mind; and it is possible, moreover, for such knowledge to be confirmed from the sacred Scriptures. But with respect to the Son of God, although no one knoweth the Son save the Father, yet it is from sacred Scripture also that the human mind is taught how to think of the Son; and that not only from the New, but also from the Old Testament, by means of those things which, although done by the saints, are figur- atively referred to Christ, and from which both His divine ORIG. C 34 ORIGEN DFE: PRINCIPIIS. [Loox t.
nature, and that human nature which was aaa by Ilim, may be discovered.
2. Now, what the Holy Spirit is, we are taught in many passages of Scripture, as by David in the fifty-first Psalm, when he says, “ And take not Thy Holy Spirit from me;”! and by Dammiel, where it is said, “'The Holy Spirit which is in thee.”? And in the New Testament we have abundant testimonies, as when the Holy Spirit is described as having descended upon Chirist, and when the Lord breathed upon His apostles after His resurrection, saying, “ Receive the Holy Spirit;”° and the saying of the angel to Mary, “The Holy Spirit will come upon thee;”* the declaration by Paul, that no one can call Jesus Lord, save by the Holy Spirit.” In the Acts of the Apostles, the Holy Spirit was given by the impo- sition of the apostles’ hands in baptism.° From all which we learn that the person of the Holy Spirit was of such autho- rity and dignity, that saving baptism was not complete except by the authority of the most excellent Trinity of them all, ze. by the naming of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and by joining to the unbegotten God the Father, and to His only- begotten Son, the name also of the Holy Spirit. Who, then, is not amazed at the exceeding majesty of the oly Spirit, when he hears that he who speaks a word against the Son of man may hope for forgiveness; but that he who is guilty of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit has not forgiveness, either in the present world or in that which is to come!‘ 3. That all things were created by God, and that there is no creature which exists but has derived frou Him its being, is established from many declarations of Scripture; tliose assertions being refuted and rejected which are falsely alleged by some respecting the existence either of a matter co-eternal with God, or of unbegotten souls, in which they would have it that God implanted not so much the power of existence, as equality and order. For even in that little treatise called Lhe Pastor or Angel of Repentance, composed by Hermas, we * Ps. Te tL. 2 Dan. iv. 8. 3 John xx. 22. 4 Juke i. 35. 51 Cor. xii. 3. © Acts vill. 18. ‘Cf. Matt. xii, $2 and Luke xii. 10.
Caap. 111. ] ORIGEN DE PRINCIPIIS. 35 have the following: “ First of all, believe that there is one God who created and arranged all things; who, when nothing formerly existed, caused all things to be; who Himself con- tains all things, but Himself is contained by none.”' And in the book of Enoch also we have similar descriptions. But up to the present time we have been able to find no state- ment in holy Scripture in which the Holy Spirit could be said to be made or created,” not even in the way in which we have shown above that the divine wisdom is spoken of by Solomon, or in which those expressions which we have dis- cussed are to be understood of -the life, or the word, or the other appellations of the Son of God. The Spirit of God, therefore, which was borne upon the waters, as is written in the beginning of the creation of the world, is, I am of opinion, no other than the Ifoly Spirit, so far as I can understand; as indeed we have shown in our exposition of the passages themselves, not according to the historical, but according to the spiritual method of interpretation.
4. Some indeed of our Diels aoe have observed, that in the New Testament, whenever the Spirit_is named neiied wtioug that adjunct which denotes quality, the oly Spirit is to be is to be understood; as e.g. in the expression, “ Now the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, and peace;””* and, “Seeing ye began in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect in the flesh?”* We are of opinion that this distinction may be observed in the Old Testament also, as when it is said, “ Ie that giveth Tis Spirit to the people who are upon the earth, and Spirit to them who walk thereon.”’ For, without doubt, every one who walks upon the earth (ze. earthly and corporeal beings) is a partaker also of the Holy Spirit, receiving it from God. My ae master also used to say that those two seraphim in Isaiah, which are described as having each six wings, and calling to one another, and saying, “ Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts,”® were to be understood of the only- begotten Son of God and of the Holy Spirit. And we 1Cf. Herma Past. Vis. v. Mandat. 12. 2 Per quem Spiritus Sanctus factura esse vel creatura diceretur. ale Vices * Gal. Wi, Q) Isa. xlii. 5. © Isa. vi. 3.
o6 ORIGEN DE PRINCIPIIS. [Boor t.