Sunday, October 2, 2022

John Behr on Origen's Christology

  

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)