Saturday, February 20, 2021

Jesus as "a god" in Origen's Homilies on the Psalms

In his homilies on the psalms, Origen wrote the following, wherein he called Jesus “a god”:

 

If in descending, he had descended also to the angels—for he came from the summit of the heavens—perhaps he was formed in accord with the place. And just as in this life he was transformed before those who ascended with him to the mountain and appeared most glorious Mt 17.2, Mk 9.2-3, Lk 9.29), he would have been formed in descending from the Father. Since “in the beginning was the logos, and the logos was near God, and the logos was a god,” in descending from the Father he did not remain the same as he was at first “in the beginning near God.” For the lower regions did not have room for him, but, just as for me he became a human being, so alongside some he became an angel and alongside some a throne, a lordship, a ruler, a power (Col 1.16), and alongside each the Lord becomes what each can take in. (Psalm 15 Homily 2 in Homilies on the Psalms: Codex Monacensis Graecus 314 [The Fathers of the Church; trans. Joseph W. Trigg; Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2020], 72-73)

 

On the rendition of John 1:1-2, Joseph W. Trigg, the translator, offered the following note:

 

I have translated this verse unconventionally in order to convey Origen’s reading. The Greek language employs the definite article with what we would call proper nouns, including names. In his Commentary on John, written while he was in Alexandria, Origen discussed the passage in detail. See esp. Comm. Jo. 2.2.13. Origen argued that the evangelist deliberately used theos, “god,” without the definite article, ho, to distinguish the divinity of the logos from ho theos, “God.” We find this distinction between God as ho theos and God’s logos as theos without the article in Philo. See On Dreams 1.229-230. (Ibid., 72 n. 98)

 

Here is the section from Origen’s commentary on John (Book II chapter 2) referenced above:

 

We next notice John's use of the article in these sentences. He does not write without care in this respect, nor is he unfamiliar with the niceties of the Greek tongue. In some cases he uses the article, and in some he omits it. He adds the article to the Logos, but to the name of God he adds it sometimes only. 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. Does the same difference which we observe between God with the article and God without it prevail also between the Logos with it and without it? We must enquire into this. As the God who is over all is God with the article not without it, so "the Logos" is the source of that reason (Logos) which dwells in every reasonable creature; the reason which is in each creature is not, like the former called par excellence The Logos. 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, 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, so that they are separable from each other. To such persons we have to say that God on the one hand is Very God (Autotheos, God of Himself); and so the Saviour says in His prayer to the Father, "That they may know Thee 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, hath 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. (ANF 9:323)

 

In his Psalm 67 Homily 1, Origen wrote the following, wherein he continues to call Jesus “a god”:

 

Since I know the Savior and my Lord is a god—“In the beginning was the logos, and the logos was near God, and the logos was a god”—I say, especially because in Hebrew the first article is not employed, that it could be read as “Let a god rise up, and let his enemies be scattered.” For before the Savior suffered, “the kings of the earth stood by, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against his Christ” (Ps 2.2). After his rising up, those gathered together were scattered and fled before his face, and they vanished “as smoke vanishes and wax melts before the face of a fire” (Ps 67.3). So they were destroyed, defeated first by Christ’s death, second by his rising up and life. (Homilies on the Psalms, 147)