Most
attention [in Origen’s Commentary on John] is devoted to the designation
of Jesus as the “Word,” for, as mentioned earlier, Origen is particularly
concerned about those who refrain from investigating “the meaning of what is
indicated by the term ‘Word,’” so that they do not have to affirm the
independent subsistence of the Son (ComJn. 1.125, 151). He also notes
how others hesitate to apply the term “God” to the Son, lest they fall into
ditheism (ComJn. 2.16). In reply, Origen points out how John was very careful
in his use of articles with the noun “God,” using an article when it refers to
the uncreated cause of the universe, but omitting it when referring to the Word
as “God” (ComJn. 2.12-15. Cf. supra 57-8). There is, therefore,
only “one true God” (Jn 17:3), the “God of gods” (ps 49:1, LXX), of those, that
is, who are made gods by participation in him. However, while there are many to
anarthrous noun “god” can be applied the “Firstborn of every creature” (Col
1:15) is more honored than them all, for “it was by his ministry that they
became gods, for he drew from God that they might be deified” (ComJn
2.17). It is only through the mediation of the Word, who alone knows the Father
and reveals him to men, that others participate in divinity, so that the Word
is “the minister of deity to all the other gods” (ComJn 2.19). Origen
explains the term “Word” in a similar manner, differentiating between the
absolute sense in which it is applied to the Son, and the way in which human
beings share in this aspect of Christ: “He is called ‘Word’ because he removes
everything irrational from us and makes us truly rational beings who do all
things for the glory of god” (ComJn. 1.267. The definition of “rational”
[λογικος] here is totally shaped by the word [λογος] of God. Cf. ComJn.
2.114: “we could also say that the saint alone is rational.”). Unless they have fallen away to so-called
words, which are totally foreign to the Word, human beings share in this
aspect of Christ in varying degrees, depending on whether they know the Word as
he is with God, or as flesh, or only through others who have partaken in the
Word (ComJn. 2.22). As we have seen, Origen is emphatic that the proper
understanding of Christ as Word entails being able to see the divinity of
Christ, rather than remaining at the level of the flesh or letters. Thus some
aspects such as Word, Truth and Wisdom, pertain to Jesus as he is in his divinity,
with the Father. Others, however, are ones that Jesus has taken upon himself
for the benefit of those yet unable to contemplate his divinity, such as Physician
and Redemption (ComJn. 1.123-4). The path to knowing God begins with the
elementary aspects, such as Door, so that one may enter on the Way, in which
one is led by Jesus as Shepherd, and ruled by him as King, and benefit from him
as Lamb, until we also come to know the Father (ComJn. 19.39), Being
himself all these aspects, “our Savior is the whole of the steps” to God (ComJn.
19.38). (John Behr, Formation of
Christian Theology, 2 vols. [Crestwood, N.Y.: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press,
2001], 1:182-83)
Origen
thus emphasizes the transcendence of the Father, such that there are no others
besides him as members of the same class, yet at the same time he wants to ensure
that the essence (ουσια)
of the Son, even if it cannot unequivocally be stated to be the same as the Father’s,
at least is not considered as separate from that of the father, so that the divinity
of the Son is affirmed. In the Commentary On John, Origen tries to hold
these two keys elements together through the notion of participation. Origen points
out, as we have seen, that in Scripture it is the Father alone who is “the one
true God” (Jn 17:3) and “the God of gods” (Ps 49:1, LXX0, and so is referred to
as “the God” (ο θεος). All the other beings called “god” in
scripture, designated by the noun without an article, are “made by god by participation
in his divinity” (ComJn. 2.17: παν δε το παρα το αυτοθεος μετοχη της εκεινου θεοτητος
θεοποιουμενον ουχ “ο θεος” αλλα “θεος” κυριωτερον αν λεγοιτο). This is especially the case for “the
Firstborn of all creation” (Col 1:15), who as “the first to be with God,
drawing divinity into himself,” is more honored than any other god (ComJn
2.17. In ComJn. 13.219, commenting on Jn 4:32, “I have meat to eat of
which you do not know,” Origen describes Christ as “being eternally nourished
by the Father who alone is without need and sufficient in himself.”). Again,
this must not be understood in crude materialistic terms, as if “participating in
God” meant receiving a share of something, some divine “stuff.” The Son’s
participation in God, and so his unity with him, is conceived by Origen in
active, rather than substantial terms (Cf. CC 8.12: “They are two things
in subsistence [δυο την υποστεσει πραγματα],
but one in mental unity, in agreement and in identity of will”), though it is
the activity of the Son, revealing the Father, that is, as Williams notes, his “essence,”
in the sense of the form, or definition of the Son’s existence (Williams, Arius,
142-3). It is by knowing the Father, or as Origen puts it, by his “unceasing
contemplation of the depths of the Father” that the Son partakes of his
divinity and so is “God” (ComJn. 2.18). And it is “by this ministry than
the others becomes gods,” for Son has “drawn from God to deify others,” sharing
ungrudgingly with him in his goodness (ComJn. 2.17). Although now only
the Son knows the Father, it is possible for all those who have “the
contemplation of God as their only activity” to be “formed in the knowledge of
God” and so “become sons” (ComJn. 1.92). Such reflection on the Son’s participation
in God and in his ministry towards others is perhaps a more abstract way of
stating what we have seen worked out in Origen’s reflections on Scripture and
the Gospel, that it is in the abasement of the Cross that the Son appears as “more
divine and truly in the image of the Father” (ComJn. 1.231) and that
through Passion he is one with the Word (ComJn 32.325), revealing the
father and explaining the deeper meaning of Scripture, so that those who devote
themselves to the contemplation of its spiritual sense can also come to know
God as Father. For Origen, there is no part or aspect of the Son, clothed in
flesh in the letters of Scripture, which does not, when contemplated in its spiritual
sense as the eternal World of God, reveal the Father. So, for all that he
underscores the distinct subsistence of the Son, Origen never considers the Son
in isolation from the Father, for the very “essence” of the Son is to reveal
the Father. By speaking of the Son as divine “by participation,” Origen avoids
any suggestion that the father and Son should be thought as two independent
first principles, the error of ditheism, and also avoids making the essence of
the Son, as an individual to be other than the Father (cf. ComJn. 2.16).
He is able to affirm both the transcendence of the Father as “the one true God”
and also the divinity of the Son who reveals the Father.
However,
whether Origen manages in this way to affirm satisfactorily that the divinity
of the Son is not only not different than that of the Father, but the very
same, so that it is indeed the Father who is revealed, is debatable. As the one
who reveals the Father, the Son seems to end up in a mediating position between
a transcendent God and creation. Being the first to “draw divinity into himself,”
the Word is “more honorable” than all the other gods besides him (ComJn.
2.17), and for them he is a “minister of divinity” (Com.Jn. 2.19). When
explaining Christ’s statemen that “the Father is greater than I” (Jn 14:28) and
his refusal to be called “good” (Mk 10:18), Origen suggests that “the Father
exceeds the Savior as much as, or even more than, the Savior himself and the Holy
Spirit exceed the rest” (ComJn. 13.151). Yet it is not as having some
lower form of divinity, in a materialistic sense, that the Son is mediator, but
rather because he is the son who reveals God. Thus, prior to emphasizing
the transcendence of the Father indicated by Mark 10:18, Origen explicitly
affirmed that it would be “perfectly legitimate and true” to apply the title “good”
to Christ, but that he “graciously offered it up to the Father and rebuked the
son who wished to praise the Son excessively,” for the Son always points to the
Father (ComJn. 13.151). Nevertheless, Origen was later accused of having
taught that the Son is not “good” in an absolute sense (cf. Photius, Bibl.
117). He was also accused of having taught that the Son “does not know the
Father as himself,” though it is clearly essential for Origen that the Son does
know the Father, so that he can reveal him and be the medium and model for our
relationship with the Father (Ibid. Nautin refers to this charge in FP 4.4.8,
which would again connect it to comments made by Origen on Jn 14:28 [Origène,
120-2]). Again, Origen’s point is to emphasize the Father’s transcendence by
asserting that the Father knows himself in a manner which is beyond the way in
which the Son knows the Father, even though the Son’s knowledge of the Father
is complete or perfect (cf. ComJn. 32.345, 350). Origen’s tendency to
obliqueness when speaking of the “essence” of the Father and the Son, suggests
that he was aware of the difficulties of using participatory language to explain
the relationship. Some of his later writings seem to indicate a tendency to
lessen the gap between the Father and the Son, and in a few fragments he affirms
the divinity of the Son in his essence, though the overall vision remained the
same (Cf. ComMatt. 15.10. Williams [Arius, 142-3] points to two passages,
which are probably later than the Commentary on John, in which Origen
asserts that the Savior is God “not by participation but in essence” [the selecta
in Psalmos on Psalm 134; in the edition of Lommatsch, 13, 134.19-20], and
that the Son is “He Who Is in his very essence” [a fragment on the Apocalypse,
TU 38, 29). (Ibid., 188-91)
