Roman Montero's collection of quotations from ante-Nicene Church Fathers & their (non-)orthodoxy /Ρόμαν Μοντέρο: Η συλλογή αποσπασμάτων προνικαϊκών εκκλησιαστικών πατέρων & η (αν-)ορθοδοξία τους

 

 

What follows will be a series of quotations from ante-Nicene Church Fathers that are directly about Christology and Theology proper. My contention is that none of these Fathers could be considered orthodox by later trinitarian standards, and all of them posit things that put them squarely in the ontological subordinationist Christological camp, and a broadly unitarian Theology proper.

To begin with, we have Justin Martyr:

I shall attempt to persuade you, since you have understood the Scriptures, [of the truth] of what I say, that there is, and that there is said to be, another God and Lord subject to the Maker of all things; who is also called an Angel, because He announces to men whatsoever the Maker of all things— above whom there is no other God — wishes to announce to them. (Dialogue with Trypho, 56)

Justin goes on to explain that this “other God” is the angel who appeared to some of the characters in the Hebrew Bible as God (the creator)’s representative. And he Identifies that other god with “The Word”, or “Wisdom”:

I shall give you another testimony, my friends, from the Scriptures, that God begot before all creatures a Beginning, [who was] a certain rational power [proceeding] from Himself, who is called by the Holy Spirit, now the Glory of the Lord, now the Son, again Wisdom, again an Angel, then God, and then Lord and Logos; and on another occasion He calls Himself Captain (Dialogue with Trypho, 61)

. . .

But this Offspring, which was truly brought forth from the Father, was with the Father before all the creatures, and the Father communed with Him; even as the Scripture by Solomon has made clear, that He whom Solomon calls Wisdom, was begotten as a Beginning before all His creatures and as Offspring by God (Dialogue with Trypho, 62)

So, Justin Identifies Christ (The Logos) as Wisdom, the Word, another god, and an Angel, subject to the maker of all things. In chapter 61, Justin he explicitly identifies this individual with Wisdom of Proverbs 8. Justin Martyr thought of the Logos as a different god than the creator, and he thought of the Logos as subject to the creator God, and as the first born, and in fact, first made of creation (as it says in Proverbs 8). We also have Tatian:

God was in the beginning; but the beginning, we have been taught, is the power of the Logos. For the Lord of the universe, who is Himself the necessary ground (ὑπόστασις) of all being, inasmuch as no creature was yet in existence, was alone; but inasmuch as He was all power, Himself the necessary ground of things visible and invisible, with Him were all things; with Him, by Logos-power (διὰ λογικῆς δυνάμεως), the Logos Himself also, who was in Him, subsists. And by His simple will the Logos springs forth; and the Logos, not coming forth in vain, becomes the first-begotten work of the Father. Him (the Logos) we know to be the beginning of the world. But He came into being by participation, not by abscission; for what is cut off is separated from the original substance, but that which comes by participation, making its choice of function, does not render him deficient from whom it is taken. For just as from one torch many fires are lighted, but the light of the first torch is not lessened by the kindling of many torches, so the Logos, coming forth from the Logos-power of the Father, has not divested of the Logos-power Him who begot Him. I myself, for instance, talk, and you hear; yet, certainly, I who converse do not become destitute of speech (λόγος) by the transmission of speech, but by the utterance of my voice I endeavour to reduce to order the unarranged matter in your minds. And as the Logos, begotten in the beginning, begot in turn our world, having first created for Himself the necessary matter, so also I, in imitation of the Logos, being begotten again, and having become possessed of the truth, am trying to reduce to order the confused matter which is kindred with myself. For matter is not, like God, without beginning, nor, as having no beginning, is of equal power with God; it is begotten, and not produced by any other being, but brought into existence by the Framer of all things alone. (Tatian, Address to the Greeks, 5)

Tatian here distinguishes from God being the necessary ground of all being, and the Logos being an aspect of him which comes forth into the world as a distinct entity as “the first-begotten work” in creation. The Logos, as a hypostasis, is the beginning of creation, prior to which it is not a hypostasis but merely an aspect of God. Tatian uses the illustration of a torch lighting another torch; so we have a high Christology, but still the Logos as distinct from the father has a beginning, he comes into being, he is “begotten in the beginning.” This Logos then “begets” the world, (in this sense it would be very easy to argue that Tatian thinks of the begetting of the Logos as being similar to the creation of the world), whereas it is only God who has no beginning whatsoever.

Then there is the second century apologist Theophilus:

For he that is created is also needy; but he that is uncreated stands in need of nothing. God, then, having His own Word internal within His own bowels, begot Him, emitting Him along with His own wisdom before all things. He had this Word as a helper in the things that were created by Him, and by Him He made all things. (Theophilus, Autolycus, 2.10)

This statement from Theophilus could certainly be interpreted in a way that is favorable to Trinitarianism; however, it does seem as though Theophilus conceives of the begetting of the Son as being posterior to his having the word “within his own bowels.” We therefore have the Word being eternal in some sense, in terms of it being internal to God, but also coming into being as a distinct entity, i.e. as a person, a helper. Interestingly however, and against the general consensus of the early Church Fathers, Theophilus does not equate the word With Wisdom. Next up we have Clement of Alexandria, who was the Alexandrian forerunner to Origen, he did tie the son to the Wisdom of proverbs 8:

For ignorance applies not to the God who, before the foundation of the world, was the counsellor of the Father. For He was the Wisdom in which the Sovereign God delighted. Proverbs 8:30 For the Son is the power of God, as being the Father’s most ancient Word before the production of all things, and His Wisdom. (Clement of Alexandria, The Stromata 7.2)

Wisdom from Proverbs 8 was the Son for Clement of Alexandria. A little further he says:

Now the energy of the Lord has a reference to the Almighty; and the Son is, so to speak, an energy of the Father. (Clement of Alexandria, The Stromata 7.2)

We can pin point his Christology a bit more with some other passages:

what is oldest in origin, the timeless and unoriginated First Principle, and Beginning of existences — the Son — from whom we are to learn the remoter Cause, the Father, of the universe, the most ancient and the most beneficent of all (Clement of Alexandria, The Stromata 7.1)

. . .

And it is the name of God that is expressed; since, as the Son sees the goodness of the Father, God the Saviour works, being called the first principle of all things, which was imaged forth from the invisible God first, and before the ages, and which fashioned all things which came into being after itself. (Clement of Alexandria, The Stromata 5.6)

Since God the father is called “the remoter cause,” and since all things came into being after the “imaging forth” of the Son. I think it is fair to say that, although Clement of Alexandria considers the Son to be a kind of “energy” of the Father, he would still conceive of him as coming into being.

Tertullian is the Church Father who is the one who first actually used the term trinity, namely, in his Against Praxeus:

As if in this way also one were not All, in that All are of One, by unity (that is) of substance; while the mystery of the dispensation is still guarded, which distributes the Unity into a Trinity, placing in their order the three Persons— the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost: three, however, not in condition, but in degree; not  in substance, but in form; not in power, but in aspect; yet of one substance, and of one condition, and of one power, inasmuch as He is one God, from whom these degrees and forms and aspects are reckoned, under the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.  (Tertullian, Against Praxeus, 2)

Tertullian does not, however, actually believe in the Trinitarian doctrine as later orthodoxy defines it. On the development of the Logos Tertullian says:

I am led to other arguments derived from God’s own dispensation, in which He existed before the creation of the world, up to the generation of the Son. For before all things God was alone — being in Himself and for Himself universe, and space, and all things. Moreover, He was alone, because there was nothing external to Him but Himself. (Tertullian, Praxeus, 5)

He then goes on to explain that God had “reason” within himself because he is rational, not describing reason as a person but rather just as an aspect of God. Then out form that comes the word:

Now, while He was thus planning and arranging with His own Reason, He was actually causing that to become Word which He was dealing with in the way of Word or Discourse. (Tertullian, Praxeus, 5)

Which is in some sense a person:

Thus, in a certain sense, the word is a second person within you, through which in thinking you utter speech, and through which also, (by reciprocity of process,) in uttering speech you generate thought. The word is itself a different thing from yourself. Now how much more fully is all this transacted in God, whose image and likeness even you are regarded as being, inasmuch as He has reason within Himself even while He is silent, and involved in that Reason His Word! I may therefore without rashness first lay this down (as a fixed principle) that even then before the creation of the universe God was not alone, since He had within Himself both Reason, and, inherent in Reason, His Word, which He made second to Himself by agitating it within Himself. (Tertullian, Praxeus, 5)

The point is Tertullian seems to be making is that the Son began to exist as a person. God was in the beginning alone, and only when he began to create could there be said to be another person, prior to which there was only God’s “reason” as reason, in other words an attribute. Tertullian also applies Proverbs 8 to the Logos:

The Son likewise acknowledges the Father, speaking in His own person, under the name of Wisdom: The Lord formed Me as the beginning of His ways, with a view to His own works; before all the hills did He beget Me. For if indeed Wisdom in this passage seems to say that She was created by the Lord with a view to His works, and to accomplish His ways, yet proof is given in another Scripture that all things were made by the Word, and without Him was there nothing made; John 1:3 as, again, in another place (it is said), By His word were the heavens established, and all the powers thereof by His Spirit — that is to say, by the Spirit (or Divine Nature) which was in the Word: thus is it evident that it is one and the same power which is in one place described under the name of Wisdom, and in another passage under the appellation of the Word, which was initiated for the works of God Proverbs 8:22 which strengthened the heavens; by which all things were made, John 1:3 and without which nothing was made. (Tertullian, Praxeus, 7)

Which puts the Logos under those things which God made. He repeats his insistence on subordinationism later on, insisting that the distinction is even in substance:

I am, moreover, obliged to say this, when (extolling the Monarchy at the expense of the Economy) they contend for the identity of the Father and Son and Spirit, that it is not by way of diversity that the Son differs from the Father, but by distribution: it is not by division that He is different, but by distinction; because the Father is not the same as the Son, since they differ one from the other in the mode of their being. For the Father is the entire substance, but the Son is a derivation and portion of the whole, as He Himself acknowledges: My Father is greater than I. John 14:28 In the Psalm His inferiority is described as being a little lower than the angels. Thus the Father is distinct from the Son, being greater than the Son, inasmuch as He who begets is one, and He who is begotten is another; He, too, who sends is one, and He who is sent is another; and He, again, who makes is one, and He through whom the thing is made is another. (Tertullian, Praxeus, 9)

Now it is true that as we have seen in his discussion of the Trinity Tertullian in some places talks about God and the Son being alike in substance; however, it is important to understand that the term “substance” is not necessarily univocal. Later Trinitarian theology gave the term “substance” a slightly more specific definition, however in Tertullian’s writings he seems to just use the term to mean a spiritual being. This does not mean that we have some kind of ontological equality, we know this because Tertullian also says that angels have the same substance as God:

How comes it to pass that God should be thought to suffer division and severance in the Son and in the Holy Ghost, who have the second and the third places assigned to them, and who are so closely joined with the Father in His substance, when He suffers no such (division and severance) in the multitude of so many angels? Do you really suppose that Those, who are naturally members of the Father’s own substance, pledges of His love, instruments of His might, nay, His power itself and the entire system of His monarchy, are the overthrow and destruction thereof? (Tertullian, Prexeus, 3)

If the angels share substance with the Father, then we cannot say that the fact that the Father and Son share substance points to anything analogous to later orthodox Trinitarian theology; all it means is that they are both spiritual beings. However, the Father is the “entirely” of the substance, everything below him is a derivation. Tertullian has a hierarchical ontology, his trinity is only economic, not ontological:

In like manner the Trinity, flowing down from the Father through intertwined and connected steps, does not at all disturb the Monarchy, while it at the same time guards the state of the Economy” (Tertullian, Against Praxeus, 8)

Therefore the “Monarchy” is the absolute authority and supremacy of the Father, whereas the economy of God’s actions is trinitarian, through the Son and by the Spirit, but of whom are subordinate to God the Father and who come into being as distinct entities. Tertullian makes his belief that the Father comes into being absolutely clear in another polemical text, Against Hermogenes:

Because God is in like manner a Father, and He is also a Judge; but He has not always been Father and Judge, merely on the ground of His having always been God. For He could not have been the Father previous to the Son, nor a Judge previous to sin. There was, however, a time when neither sin existed with Him, nor the Son; the former of which was to constitute the Lord a Judge, and the latter a Father. In this way He was not Lord previous to those things of which He was to be the Lord. But He was only to become Lord at some future time: just as He became the Father by the Son, and a Judge by sin, so also did He become Lord by means of those things which He had made, in order that they might serve Him. (Tertullian, Hermogenes, 3)

. . .

Let Hermogenes then confess that the very Wisdom of God is declared to be born and created, for the special reason that we should not suppose that there is any other being than God alone who is unbegotten and uncreated. For if that, which from its being inherent in the Lord was of Him and in Him, was yet not without a beginning — I mean His wisdom, which was then born and created, when in the thought of God It began to assume motion for the arrangement of His creative works — how much more impossible is it that anything should have been without a beginning which was extrinsic to the Lord! But if this same Wisdom is the Word of God, in the capacity of Wisdom, and (as being He) without whom nothing was made, just as also (nothing) was set in order without Wisdom, how can it be that anything, except the Father, should be older, and on this account indeed nobler, than the Son of God, the only-begotten and first-begotten Word? (Tertullian, Hermogenes, 18)

. . .

They did not even mention any Matter, but (said) that Wisdom was first set up, the beginning of His ways, for His works. Proverbs 8:22-23 Then that the Word was produced, through whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made. John 1:3 Indeed, by the Word of the Lord were the heavens made, and all their hosts by the breath of His mouth. (Tertullian, Hermogenes, 45)

God was always God, but not always Lord, why? Because there was not always creation, nor was he always Father, why? Because there was not always the Son, here Tertullian as is pre-emptively taking the Arian side in the Arian controversy against Athanasius. He then says that the Wisdom of God is born and created, why? Because there is no other being unbegotten and uncreated than God (which means in this context Wisdom, which is the Son, is not that God). Tertullian then gives his theory where the thought of God comes into being at the beginning of God’s creation as Wisdom/The Word. This unbegotten and uncreated God is older and nobler than the Son of God. 

Irenaeus, the great Heresy hunter, was also an ontological subordinationist putting the Father as the one God who is creator:

Thus then there is shown forth One God, the Father, not made, invisible, creator of all things; above whom there is no other God, and after whom there is no other God. And, since God  is rational, therefore by (the) Word He created the things that were made; and God is Spirit, and by (the) Spirit He adorned all things: as also the prophet says: By the word of the Lord were the heavens established, and by his spirit all their power. Since then the Word establishes, that is to say, gives body and grants the reality of being, and the Spirit gives order and form to the diversity of the powers; rightly and fittingly is the Word called the Son, and the Spirit the Wisdom of God. Well also does Paul His apostle say: One God, the Father, who is over all and through all and in its all. For over all is the Father; and through all is the Son, for through Him all things were made by the Father; and in us all is the Spirit, who cries Abba Father, and fashions man into the likeness of God. (Irenaeus, Demonstration, 5)

Here the one God is the Father, who words through the Word and by the Spirit. this by itself can fit with a hierarchical kind of orthodox Trinity, however Irenaeus also posits a beginning of the Son:

So then we must believe God in all things, for in all things God is true. Now that there was a Son of God, and that He existed not only before He appeared in the world, but also before the world was made, Moses, who was the first that prophesied says in Hebrew: Baresith bara Elowin basan benuam samenthares. And this, translated into our language, is: “The Son in the beginning: God established then the heaven and the earth.” This Jeremiah the prophet also testified, saying thus: Before the morning-star I begat thee: and before the sun (is) thy name; and that is, before the creation of the world; for together with the world the stars were made. And again the same says: Blessed is he who was, before he became man. Because, for God, the Son was (as) the beginning before the creation of the world (Irenaeus, Demonstration, 43)

He makes an even clearer ontological distinction a bit later:

So then the Father is Lord and the Son is Lord, and the Father is God and the Son is God; for that which is begotten of God is God. And so in the substance and power of His being there is shown forth one God; but there is also according to the economy of our redemption both Son and Father. Because to created things the Father of all is invisible and unapproachable, therefore those who are to draw near to God must have their access to the Father through the Son. (Irenaeus, Demonstration, 47)

So the Son is as the beginning of creation, in other words, he is not eternal. In his Against Heresies book 2 he says:

For consider, all you who invent such opinions, since the Father Himself is alone called God, who has a real existence, but whom you style the Demiurge; since, moreover, the Scriptures acknowledge Him alone as God; and yet again, since the Lord confesses Him alone as His own Father, and knows no other (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 2.28.4)

The only God is the Father. He repeats the same thing more or less in Against Heresies 1.9.2, 3.11.1, and 4.1.1. He, along with almost all the other Fathers, also appeals to Proverbs 8 in describing Christ’s nature:

Truly, then, the Scripture declared, which says, First of all believe that there is one God, who has established all things, and completed them, and having caused that from what had no being, all things should come into existence (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 4.20.2)

. . .

I have also largely demonstrated, that the Word, namely the Son, was always with the Father; and that Wisdom also, which is the Spirit, was present with Him, anterior to all creation, He declares by Solomon: God by Wisdom founded the earth, and by understanding has He established the heaven. By His knowledge the depths burst forth, and the clouds dropped down the dew. Proverbs 3:19-20 And again: The Lord created me the beginning of His ways in His work: He set me up from everlasting, in the beginning, before He made the earth, before He established the depths, and before the fountains of waters gushed forth; before the mountains were made strong, and before all the hills, He brought me forth. And again: When He prepared the heaven, I was with Him, and when He established the fountains of the deep; when He made the foundations of the earth strong, I was with Him preparing [them]. I was He in whom He rejoiced, and throughout all time I was daily glad before His face, when He rejoiced at the completion of the world, and was delighted in the sons of men. Proverbs 8:27-31. There is therefore one God, who by the Word and Wisdom created and arranged all things (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 4.20.3–4)

. . .

Therefore the Son of the Father declares [Him] from the beginning, inasmuch as He was with the Father from the beginning (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 4.20.7)

Therefore, although the Word was always with God from the beginning, he himself is created, he is the beginning as it were. This is confirmed earlier when Irenaeus defines the existence of the Logos:

But if Christ did then [only] begin to have existence when He came [into the world] as man, and [if] the Father did remember [only] in the times of Tiberius Cæsar to provide for [the wants of] men, and His Word was shown to have not always coexisted with His creatures; [it may be remarked that] neither then was it necessary that another God should be proclaimed, but [rather] that the reasons for so great carelessness and neglect on His part should be made the subject of investigation. (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 4.6.2)

So the Logos always coexisted with his creatures, i.e. creation. This Logos reveals God, through creation:

For by means of the creation itself, the Word reveals God the Creator; and by means of the world [does He declare] the Lord the Maker of the world; and by means of the formation [of man] the Artificer who formed him; and by the Son that Father who begot the Son. (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 4.6.6)

And again:

For the Son, being present with His own handiwork from the beginning, reveals the Father to all; to whom He wills, and when He wills, and as the Father wills. Wherefore, then, in all things, and through all things, there is one God, the Father, and one Word, and one Son, and one Spirit, and one salvation to all who believe in Him. (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 4.6.7)

Irenaeus had a very high Christology, but it was still a subordinationist one.

Another early Church Father is Origen (since Origen’s on First Principles has survived mostly in its Latin translation, whose translator, Rufinus, explicitly changes the text to make Origen’s Christology orthodox, and he admits to doing so, we will stick with Origen’s work which we have in the Greek in looking at his Christology) who wrote a commentary on John:

This meaning of the term beginning, as of origin, will serve us also in the passage in which Wisdom speaks in the Proverbs. God, we read, created me the beginning of His ways, for His works. Here the term could be interpreted as in the first application we spoke of, that of a way: The Lord, it says, created me the beginning of His ways. One might assert, and with reason, that God Himself is the beginning of all things, and might go on to say, as is plain, that the Father is the beginning of the Son; and the demiurge the beginning of the works of the demiurge, and that God in a word is the beginning of all that exists. This view is supported by our: In the beginning was the Word. In the Word one may see the Son, and because He is in the Father He may be said to be in the beginning. (Origen, John, 1.17)

. . .

In addition to these meanings there is that in which we speak of an arche, according to form; thus if the first-born of every creature Colossians 1:15 is the image of the invisible God, then the Father is his arche. In the same way Christ is the arche of those who are made according to the image of God. For if men are according to the image, but the image according to the Father; in the first case the Father is the arche of Christ, and in the other Christ is the arche of men, and men are made, not according to that of which he is the image, but according to the image. With this example our passage will agree: In the arche was the Word. (Origen, John, 1.19)

Notice in the first paragraph the citation of Proverbs 8 in reference to the Logos. Also notice that the origin of the Logos in God, the Logos having his beginning in the Father, is made analogous to the works of the demiurge. So, God is the beginning of all things in that he is the beginning of the Son who is the beginning of all things. The use of the term demiurge is interesting, given its usage in Platonism and middle Platonism as the in between being that connects the world to the highest reality, the Platonic God. If there is an analogy between the begetting of the Son and the creation through the Son of the world, then what we have is a hierarchy of being, starting with God, through the Logos, to creation, the Logos is not God, and is in fact dependent on God for his existence, just like creation is brought into being, the Logos is brought into being.

In the second paragraph we have the same dynamic. The beginning of all things in the Christ is analogous to the beginning of Christ in the Father. We also have a hierarchy of being presented through the metaphor of the image: the Son is the image of the father, but we are the image of the Son.

At this point we have two options if we are to follow Origen: We can reject creation ex-nihilo, something which Origen does not do (Origen, First Principles 2.3); or we can accept ontological subordinationism. If the beginning of the Son in the Father is analogous to the beginning of creation in the Son, and one desires to hold on to the idea that the Son is eternal, then creation must also be eternal, not eternal only in terms of existing eternally in the past (one can believe the universe is infinite in the past and still believe in creation ex nihilo), but eternal in the sense of not having his being contingent on a necessary being (God). The other option is the obvious one, God is the only necessary reality, everything else is contingent, including the Son, no matter how high you put the Logos—and I think Origen pus the Logos at the highest possible level without ending up at Nicean Christology—you still have ontological subordinationism.

A little further on Origen writes:

But Christ is demiurge as a beginning (arche), inasmuch as He is wisdom. It is in virtue of His being wisdom that He is called arche. For Wisdom says in Solomon: Proverbs 8:22 God created me the beginning of His ways, for His works, so that the Word might be in an arche, namely, in wisdom. (Origen, John, 1.22)

Continuing the tradition of applying Proverbs 8 to the Logos.

In book two Origen writes something which complicates the issue:

He did not come to God, and this same word was is used of the Word because He was in the beginning at the same time when He was with God, neither being separated from the beginning nor being bereft of His Father. And again, neither did He come to be in the beginning after He had not been in it, nor did He come to be with God after not having been with Him. For before all time and the remotest age the Word was in the beginning, and the Word was with God. Thus to find out what is meant by the phrase, The Word was with God, we have adduced the words used about the prophets, how He came to Hosea, to Isaiah, to Jeremiah, and we have noticed the difference, by no means accidental, between became and was. (Origen, John, 2.1)

Here it may seem as though Origen is declaring that the Logos is eternal. However, what Origen’s point here is about the Logos’s relationship to God: the Logos was always with God, he was never separated from God at all time; in fact, before time. The point here is that the Logos was with God prior to all creation and did not come to be with God at some point in time. In fact (as you read later on in Origen, John, 2.1), Origen claims that it is the Logos’s relationship with God that makes John able to call him God. In the next chapter of book 2 Origen follows Philo in distinguishing the Logos from God by the use of the article:

He uses the article, when the name of God refers to the uncreated cause of all things, and omits it when the Logos is named God. (Origen, John, 2.2)

He then goes on to further clarify his Christology:

Now there are many who are sincerely concerned about religion, and who fall here into great perplexity. They are afraid that they may be proclaiming two Gods, and their fear drives them into doctrines which are false and wicked. Either they deny that the Son has a distinct nature of His own besides that of the Father (ἰδιότητα υἱοῦ ἑτέραν παρὰ τὴν τοῦ πατρὸς), and make Him whom they call the Son to be God all but the name , or they deny the divinity of the Son, giving Him a separate existence of His own, and making His sphere of essence fall outside that of the Father (ἢ ἀρνουμένους τὴν θεότητα τοῦ υἱοῦ τιθέντας δὲ αὐτοῦ τὴν ἰδιότητα καὶ τὴν οὐσίαν κατὰ περιγραφὴν τυγχά νουσαν ἑτέραν τοῦ πατρός), so that they are separable from each other (ἐντεῦθεν λύεσθαι δύναται). To such persons we have to say that God on the one hand is Very God ( ὅτι τότε μὲν αὐτόθεος ὁ θεός ἐστι); and so the Saviour says in His prayer to the Father, John 17:3 That they may know You the only true God; but that all beyond the Very God is made God by participation in His divinity, and is not to be called simply God (with the article), but rather God (without article). And thus the first-born of all creation, who is the first to be with God, and to attract to Himself divinity, is a being of more exalted rank than the other gods beside Him, of whom God is the God, as it is written, The God of gods, the Lord, has spoken and called the earth. It was by the offices of the first-born that they became gods, for He drew from God in generous measure that they should be made gods, and He communicated it to them according to His own bounty. The true God, then, is The God, and those who are formed after Him are gods, images, as it were, of Him the prototype. But the archetypal image, again, of all these images is the Word of God, who was in the beginning, and who by being with God is at all times God, not possessing that of Himself, but by His being with the Father, and not continuing to be God, if we should think of this, except by remaining always in uninterrupted contemplation of the depths of the Father. (Origen, John, 2.2)

This section here shows how nuanced and careful Origen is in his Christology. He juxtaposes two positions: 1. The Son does not have his own being (or nature or existence) distinct from the Father, and thus make the Son God; 2. The deny the divinity of the Son and place his existence outside the sphere of the Father, or give him a separate existence. Origen’s solution is that God is AutoTheos, God in himself, whereas the Logos is made God by participation. So, his existence is not separate from the Father, he is not like creation which is undivine and alienated from the Father; but he is not AutoTheos. However, as we saw before, we have the same hierarchy of being. The Logos is made God through participation in God, the Logos is in this sense divine, but he is the firstborn of creation, the first to be with God; after the Logos you have other gods who are made gods getting their divinity from God through the Logos.

Now, the Logos is said to be with the Father at all times, this does not mean that the Logos does not come into being, is not part of creation, because, as Origen recognizes, time itself is part of creation and God transcends time (Origen, First Principles 3.5.3), which is why, for Origen, there is an analogy between the Logos’s origin in in God and creation’s coming to be through the Logos. In fact, later on in book 2 Origen makes this explicit:

We consider, therefore, that there are three hypostases, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit; and at the same time we believe nothing to be uncreated but the Father. We therefore, as the more pious and the truer course, admit that all things were made by the Logos, and that the Holy Spirit is the most excellent and the first in order of all that was made by the Father through Christ. (Origen, John, 2.6)

In Origen’s polemic against Celsus we get further confirmation of his position:

For the Son of God, the First-born of all creation, although He seemed recently to have become incarnate, is not by any means on that account recent. For the holy Scriptures know Him to be the most ancient of all the works of creation (Πρεσβύτατον γὰρ αὐτὸν πάντων τῶν δημιουργημάτων ἴσασιν οἱ θεῖοι λόγοι,); for it was to Him that God said regarding the creation of man, Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness. (Origen, Celsum, 5.37)

Origen clearly, again, puts the Son of God on the creation side of the creation/creator divide. Origen is following Philo here in claiming that man is made in the image of the Logos, who himself is made in the image of God. Origen here confirms his position on a hierarchy of being, and the analogy between the generation of the Logos and the creation of man. Later on, in Contra Celsum 5.58, Origen speaks of Jesus as the Angel of God, who was helped out of the tomb by another angel, the argument Origen was countering was the idea that the fact that Christ received help from other angels was somehow unworthy of the Son of God; but for my purpose what is relevant is that the Son of God is the angel of God, in the same category as other angels.

In Contra Celsum book 6, however, we get confirmed Origen’s nuance when it comes to the nature of the Logos:

For no one can worthily know the uncreated and first-born of all created nature like the Father who begot Him (Οὔτε γὰρ τὸν ἀγένητον καὶ πάσης γενητῆς φύσεως πρωτότοκον κατ’ ἀξίαν εἰδέναι τις δύναται ὡς ὁ γεννήσας αὐτὸν πατήρ), nor any one the Father like the living Logos, and His Wisdom and Truth. (Origen, Celsum, 6.17)

The English translation I’m using is by Frederick Crombie from the Ante-Nicean collection (edited by Roberts, Donaldson, Cox), and in that translation ἀγένητον is translated as uncreated, which is a strange translation, since γίνομαι is not the usual word used for create,  κτίζω is the usual choice. In fact, Jesus is explicitly μονογενὴς in John, as Origen obviously understands. However right after that, he says that the Logos id the first born of all things of a generated nature (γενητῆς φύσεως), and that the Father generated him (ὡς ὁ γεννήσας αὐτὸν πατήρ). So what’s going on here? I think the answer, consistent with the rest of Origen’s Christology and Theology, is that there is a hierarchy of being as well as a hierarchy of generation. The point is not that the Logos is not created at all, but rather that the Logos is not created in the same way that man is created, in relation to man he is “unbegotten”, since his existence comes directly from the Father, through direct participation in his uncreated divinity, whereas all of mankind is posterior to the first-born of all creation, the rest of creation gets its being, not through participation through the Father (the only AutoTheos), but from the Son. In the last book of Origen’s book against Celsus, he again makes it clear what the Son’s relationship to God the Father is:

We worship, therefore, the Father of truth, and the Son, who is the truth; and these, while they are two, considered as persons or subsistences, are one in unity of thought, in harmony and in identity of will. So entirely are they one, that he who has seen the Son, who is the brightness of God’s glory, and the express image of His person, has seen in Him who is the image of God, God Himself. (Origen, Celsum, 8.12)

The Son and the Father are two substances, but one in the sense that they are one in thought and harmony of will.

And it is He whom we call Son of God— Son of that God, namely, whom, to quote the words of Celsus, we most highly reverence; and He is the Son who has been most highly exalted by the Father. Grant that there may be some individuals among the multitudes of believers who are not in entire agreement with us, and who incautiously assert that the Saviour is the Most High God; however, we do not hold with them, but rather believe Him when He says, The Father who sent Me is greater than I. We would not therefore make Him whom we call Father inferior — as Celsus accuses us of doing — to the Son of God. (Origen, Celsum, 8.14)

. . .

For we who say that the visible world is under the government to Him who created all things, do thereby declare that the Son is not mightier than the Father, but inferior to Him. And this belief we ground on the saying of Jesus Himself, The Father who sent Me is greater than I. And none of us is so insane as to affirm that the Son of man is Lord over God. But when we regard the Saviour as God the Word, and Wisdom, and Righteousness, and Truth, we certainly do say that He has dominion over all things which have been subjected to Him in this capacity, but not that His dominion extends over the God and Father who is Ruler over all. (Origen, Celsum, 8.14)

Origen explicitly excludes those who assert that the Son is the Most High God, meaning Origen would, it seems, anathematize Trinitarians had they been around (although here it most likely seems as though he is referring to Modalists since I don’t think there were any actual Trinitarians around, but the statement he makes applies equally to Trinitarians). He then says clearly that the Son is inferior to the Father, and certainly not vice versa, the Son has dominion over all things, but not over God and Father.

Novation, in his treatise named “On the Trinity” in chapter 31 writes:

Thus God the Father, the Founder and Creator of all things, who only knows no beginning, invisible, infinite, immortal, eternal, is one God; to whose greatness, or majesty, or power, I would not say nothing can be preferred, but nothing can be compared; of whom, when He willed it, the Son, the Word, was born, who is not received in the sound of the stricken air, or in the tone of voice forced from the lungs, but is acknowledged in the substance of the power put forth by God, the mysteries of whose sacred and divine nativity neither an apostle has learned, nor prophet has discovered, nor angel has known, nor creature has apprehended. (Novatian, On the Trinity, 31)

Therefore it is only the Father who is the creator of all things, and has the absolute attributes of the highest or “one” God, and it is the will of this Father on which the Son depends, the Son was born “when” the Father willed it. He goes on:

He then, since He was begotten of the Father, is always in the Father. And I thus say always, that I may show Him not to be unborn, but born. But He who is before all time must be said to have been always in the Father; for no time can be assigned to Him who is before all time. And He is always in the Father, unless the Father be not always Father, only that the Father also precedes Him — in a certain sense — since it is necessary — in some degree — that He should be before He is Father. Because it is essential that He who knows no beginning must go before Him who has a beginning; even as He is the less as knowing that He is in Him, having an origin because He is born, and of like nature with the Father in some measure by His nativity, although He has a beginning in that He is born, inasmuch as He is born of that Father who alone has no beginning. He, then, when the Father willed it, proceeded from the Father, and He who was in the Father came forth from the Father; and He who was in the Father because He was of the Father, was subsequently with the Father, because He came forth from the Father — that is to say, that divine substance whose name is the Word, whereby all things were made, and without whom nothing was made. For all things are after Him, because they are by Him. And reasonably, He is before all things, but after the Father, since all things were made by Him, and He proceeded from Him of whose will all things were made. (Novatian, On the Trinity, 31)

So the Son is “always” with the Father, but “always” in the sense that he is with the Father in all time, time being created through the Son, not in the sense that they have metaphysical parity, or that he is not “caused.” The Son is posterior to the Father, though not in the sense that the Father existed in a temporal realm previous to the begetting of the Son, since the temporal realm is not prior to the Father begetting the Son. Nevertheless, the Son has a beginning, the Father does not, and the Son depends on the Father’s will. Moving on Novatian writes:

In which kind, being both as well only-begotten as first-begotten of Him who has no beginning, He is the only one, of all things both Source and Head. And therefore He declared that God is one, in that He proved Him to be from no source nor beginning, but rather the beginning and source of all things. Moreover, the Son does nothing of His own will, nor does anything of His own determination; nor does He come from Himself, but obeys all His Father’s commands and precepts; so that, although birth proves Him to be a Son, yet obedience even to death declares Him the minister of the will of His Father, of whom He is. Thus making Himself obedient to His Father in all things, although He also is God, yet He shows the one God the Father by His obedience, from whom also He drew His beginning. And thus He could not make two Gods, because He did not make two beginnings, seeing that from Him who has no beginning He received the source of His nativity before all time. For since that is the beginning to other creatures which is unborn — which God the Father only is, being beyond a beginning of whom He is who was born — while He who is born of Him reasonably comes from Him who has no beginning, proving that to be the beginning from which He Himself is, even although He is God who is born, yet He shows Him to be one God whom He who was born proved to be without a beginning. He therefore is God, but begotten for this special result, that He should be God. He is also the Lord, but born for this very purpose of the Father, that He might be Lord. He is also an Angel, but He was destined of the Father as an Angel to announce the Great Counsel of God. (Novatian, On the Trinity, 31)

The phrase “God is one” is not a trinitarian phrase, but rather, a unitarian phrase, God is one and that one is the Father. The Son is God, but his divinity is derivative, it comes from his obedience to the Father and his doing the work of God. Therefore:

The true and eternal Father is manifested as the one God, from whom alone this power of divinity is sent forth, and also given and directed upon the Son, and is again returned by the communion of substance to the Father. God indeed is shown as the Son, to whom the divinity is beheld to be given and extended. And still, nevertheless, the Father is proved to be one God; while by degrees in reciprocal transfer that majesty and divinity are again returned and reflected as sent by the Son Himself to the Father, who had given them; so that reasonably God the Father is God of all, and the source also of His Son Himself whom He begot as Lord. Moreover, the Son is God of all else, because God the Father put before all Him whom He begot. Thus the Mediator of God and men, Christ Jesus, having the power of every creature subjected to Him by His own Father, inasmuch as He is God; with every creature subdued to Him, found at one with His Father God, has, by abiding in that condition that He moreover “was heard,” briefly proved God His Father to be one and only and true God.

Therefore, we have an economy, God the Father is the one God of all, the Son is God of all else since he functions as a mediator between God and man, and God the Father, the one God, subjects all to the Son.

From the above quotations it seems clear that the vast majority of ante-Nicene Church Fathers, and thus, most likely, the majority of Christians which at that time were considered orthodox, would not have been considered orthodox in later generation with the development of trinitarian theology.


Source:
musingontheology.wordpress.com, "The Ante-Nicene Fathers on Christology and Theology," May 5, 2021.