The
reference to δυναμις in the Dialogue with Heraclides is the briefest of the discussions
in the three texts but in some way the most interesting. In their conversation,
Origen asks Heraclides about his understanding of Christian belief on the
nature (and number) of God(s):
Origen: The Father is God?
Heraclides: Completely.
Origen: The Son is different from the
Father?
Heraclides: How could the Son exist if he were
the same as the Father?
Origen: Though the Son is distinct from the
Father, he is also God?
Heraclides: He is also God.
Origen: And in their unity there are two
Gods?
Heraclides: yes.
Origen: We confess two Gods?
Heraclides: Yes. The power is one. (Dialogue
with Heraclides 2:15-27)
This brief
passage has not received the attention it deserves. Quasten, for one, correctly
emphasizes it, but his interpretation of “δυο θεοι, μια δυναμις” is misleading: “It is the same
formula of later theology,” he says, “two persons but one nature.” Leaving
aside the question of “later theology,” what is frustrating about Quasten’s
statement is his leap form “one power” to “one nature.” Quasten is on to something,
but he doesn’t give it away. He supplies the “one nature” phrasing that a
modern reader might expect but without explaining how “one power” functions as
a virtual synonym for “one nature.” (Scherer sees a dependence of Origen’s μια δυναμις formula in 1 Cor 1:24, and he notes
the precent in Hippolytus’ δυο προσωπα εδειξεν of Against the Heretics 13,
and the subsequent use in Ambrose In Luc II, 66, “esti personis duo,
potestate unum sunt”)
In the
dialogue, the formula “two Gods, one power” serves as doctrine that both Origen
and Heraclides can agree upon. Origen has taken pains to establish the real distinction
between the Father and the Son and that both the Father and Son are αυτος θεος.
The equal reality and divinity of the two being agreed upon, Origen then
accepts Heraclides’ statement of divine unity: there s only one power. Unlike
other formulations based on power (for example, Wisd. 7:25, Heb. 1:3, and 1 Cor
1.24), this statement does not identify the power with the Son, or with any one
Person at all. Power is that common ground of both Gods. It is only in this
passage that Origen does not associate δυναμις with either
the Father or the Son individually, or with the Father and the Son in a mechanism
of generation or participation (that is, power from power). (Michael René Barnes, The Power of
God: Δυναμις in Gregory of Nyssa’s
Trinitarian Theology [Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University
of America Press, 2001], 113-14)
