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)
