left its mark. Rome condemned Origen, the ally of Hippolytus; Rome was invoked against Dionysius of Alexandria; (Rome and) the West formulated the éueovcrov at Niczea; Rome received Marcellus; Rome rejected the tpets bmoatacers and supported the Eustathians at Antiochj; it was with Rome rather than with the prevalent theology of the East that Athanasius felt himself one. (Cf. also Harnack, Deg. 1, p. 622 sgg.) Monarchianism was too little in harmony with the New Testament, or with the traditional convictions of the Churches, to live as a formulated theology. The ‘naive modalism’ of the ‘simplices quae major semper pars credentium est’ (Tert.) was corrected as soon as the attempt was made to give it formal expression 3", But the attempt to do so was a valuable challenge to the comception of God involved in the system of the Apologists. To their abstract, transcendent, philosophical first Principle, Monarchianism opposed a living, self-revealing, redeeming God, made known in Christ. This was a great gain. But it was obtained at the expense of the divine immutability. A God who passed through phases or modes, now Father, now Son, now Spirit, a God who could suffer, was not the God of the Christians. There is some justice in Tertullian’s scoff at their ‘ Deum versipellem.’
The third great name associated with the end of the second century, that of Clement, is important to us chiefly as that of the teacher of ORIGEN, whose influence we must now attempt to estimate. Origen (185—254) was the first theologian in the full sense of the term; the first, that is, to erect upon the basis of the rule of faith (Preface to de Princ.) a complete theological system, synthesising revealed religion with a theory of the Universe, of God, of man, which should take into account the entire range of truth and knowledge, of faith and philosophy. And in this sense for the Eastern Church he was the last theologian as well. In the case of Origen the Vincentian epigram, absolvuntur magistrt condemnantur discipuli (too often applicable in the history of doctrine) is reversed. Ina modified form his theology from the first took possession of the Eastern Church; in the Cappadocian fathers it took out a new lease of power, in spite of many vicissitudes it conquered opposing forces (the sixth general council crushed the party who had prevailed at the fifth); John of Damascus, in whom the Eastern Church says its last word, depends upon the Origenist theology of Basil and the Gregories, But this theology was Origenism with a difference. What was the Origenism of Origen? To condense into the compass of our present purpose the many-sidedness of Origen is a hopeless task. The reader will turn to the fifth and sixth of Bige’s Bampton Lectures for the best recent presentation; to Newman’s A7zazs (I. § 3), especially the ‘apology’ at the end); to Harnack (ed. 1, pp. 510—556) and Loofs (§ 28); Shedd (vol. i. 288—305, should be read before Bigg and corrected by him) and Dorner; to the sections in Bull (Defens. ii. 9, ili. 3) and Petavius (who in Zin. I. iv. pursues with fluent malignity ‘omnigenis errorum portentis infamem scriptorem’); to the Origeniana of Huet and the dissertations of the standard editors; to the article ORIGENIST CONTROVERSIES, and to the comprehensive, exact, and sympathetic article ORIGEN in the Dictionary of Christian Biography. The fundamental works of Origen for our purpose are the de Principiis, the contra Celsum, and the de Oratione; but the exegetical works are necessary to fill out and correct first impressions. _ The general position of Origen with regard to the Person of Christ is akin to that of Hippolytus and Tertullian. It is to some extent determined by opposition to Gnosticism and to Monarchianism. His visit to Rome (Eus. Z. Z., vi. 14) coincided with the battle of Hippolytus against Zephyrinus and his destined successor: on practical as well as on doctrinal points he was at one with Hippolytus. His doctrine of God is reached by the soteriological rather than the cosmological method. God is known to us in the Incarnate Word; ‘his point of view is moral, not...pseudo-metaphysical.’ The impassibility of the abstract philosophica! idea of God is broken into by ‘the passion of Love’ (Bigg, p. 158). In opposition to the perfection of God lies the material world, conditioned by evil, the result of the exercise of will. This cause of evil is antecedent to the genesis of the material universe, the «a7 a Boa?) do mov; materiality is the penalty and measure of evil. (This part of Origen’s doctrine is markedly Platonic. Plotinus, we read, refused to observe his own birthday; in like manner Origen quaintly notes that only wicked men are recorded in Scripture to have kept their birthdays; Bigg, 203, note; cf. Harnack, p. 523, note.) The soul (yuxh as if from yixerbat) has in a previous state ‘waxed cold,’ i.e, lost its original integrity, and in this condition enters the body, i.e. ‘is subjected to vanity’ in common with the rest of the creature, and needs redemption (qualify this by Bigg, pp. 202 sgg-, on Origen’s belief in Original Sin). To meet this need the Word takes a Soul (but one that has never swerved from Him in its pre-existent state: on this antinomy Bigg, 190, note, 199) and mediante Anima, or rather mediante hac substantia anime (Prin. II. vi.) unites the nature of God and of Man in One. (On the union of the two natures in the Oedv@pwros, in Lzek. iii. 3, he is as precise as Tertullian: we find the Aypostatic Union and Communicatio Zdiomatum formally explicit; Bigg, 190.) The Word ‘deifies’ Human Nature, first His Own, then in others as well (Cels. iii. 28, va yévnrat Geta: he does not use GeororetoOar; the thought is subtly but really different from that whicb we found in Irenzus: see Harnack, p. 551), by that perfect apprehension of Him 87ep fv mply yévntat odpt, of which faith in the Incarnate is the earliest but not the final stage (applying 2 Cor. v. 16; cf. the Commentary on the Song of Songs).; What account then does Origen give of the beginning and the end of the great Drama of existence? He starts from the end, which is the more clearly revealed; ‘ God shall be all in all.’ But ‘the end must be like the beginning;’ One is the end of all, One is the beginning. From 1 Cor. xv. he works back to Romans viii.: the one is his key to the eternity after, the other, to the eternity before (Bigg pp. 193 sg.). Into this scheme he brings creation, evil, the history of Revelation, the Church and its life, the final consummation of all things.
A 3° But only at Aquileia was the rule of faith adapted by the insertion of ivzpassibilis.
XXvi PROLEGOMENA, CHAPTER IL, § 3 (2).
The Universe is eternal: God is prior to it in conception, yet He was never other than Creator. But in the history of the Universe the material world which we know is but a small episode. It began, and will end. It began with the estrangement of Will from God, will end with its reconciliation: God, from Whom is the beginning of all, ‘will be all in all.’ (For Origen’s eschatology see Bigg, 228—234.) From this point of view we must approach the two-sided Christology of Origen. To him the two sides were aspects of the same thing: but if the subtle presupposition as to God and the Universe is withdrawn, they become alternative and inconsistent Christologies, as we shall see to have actually happened. As God is eternally Creator, so He is efernally Father (Bigg, 160, note). The Son proceeds from Him not as a@ part of His Essence, but as the Ray from the Light at cannot be rightly or piously said that He had a beginning, #y bre vd« Hy (cf. De Princ. i. 2, iv. 28, and ifr.
p. 168); He is begotten from the Essence of the Father, He is of the same essence (Suoobows) (Fragm. 3 12 FHeb., but see Bigg, p. 179), there is xo wnlikeness whatever between the Son and the Father (Princ. i. 2, 12). He was begotten éx Tod beAhuatos tod Marpds (but to Origen the @¢Anua was inherent in the Divine Nature, cf. Bigg, 161, Harnack, p. 534 against Shedd, p. 301, note) of dy mpoBoAy or emanation (Princ. iv. 23, 1. 2. 4), as though the Son’s generation were something that took place once for all, instead of existing continuously. The Father is in the Son, the Son in the Father: there is ‘coinherence.’ On the other hand, the Word is God derivatively not absolutely, ‘O déyos Hv mpds T dy Bedv, Kal Ocds Hv 6 Adyos. The Son is @eds, the Father alone 6 @eds. He is of one ovcla with the Father as compared with the creatures; but as contrasted with the Father, Who may be regarded as éwéxeiva ovclas*, and Who alone is adrébeos, abroayabds, &Andivds Geds, the Son is 6 debrepos Deds (Ceéls.
v. 39, cf. Philo’s Sevrepevwy Oeds). As the Son of God, He is contrasted with all yevnrd; as contrasted with the Ingenerate Father, He stands at the head of the series of yevyyrd; He is weratd rijs tod ayev[y]nrou kat THs Tay yevnrav ovcews?. He even explains the Unity of the Father and the Son as moral (500 TH bwocTdoe mpdypata, év 88 TH Spovola Kal rh radrérqts tod Bovdnuatos, Ce/s. viii. 12). The Son takes His place even in the cosmic process from Unity to Unity through Plurality, ‘God is in every respect One and Simple, but the Saviour by reason of the Many becomes Many’ (on John i. 22, cf. Index to this vol., s.v. Christ). The Spirit is subordinated to the Son, the Son to the Father (€Adrtwv mapa tev matepa 6 vids...Er BE Frtov To Tvedpa Td Gyiov, Princ. I. 3, 5 Gk.), while to the Spirit are subordinated created spirits, whose goodness is relative in comparison with God, and the fall of some of whom led to the creation of matter (see above). Unlike the Son and the Spirit they are mutable in will, subject to tpoxewf, capable of embodiment even if in themselves immaterial. — f The above slender sketch of the leading thoughts of Origen will suffice to show how intimately his doctrine of the Person of Christ hangs together with his philosophy of Religion and Nature. That philosophy is the philosophy of his age, and must be judged relatively. His deeply religious, candid, piercing spirit embodies the highest effort of the Christian intellect conditioned by the categories of the best thought of his age. Everywhere, while evading no difficulty, his strenuous speculative search is steadied by ethical and religious instinct. As against Valentinian and the Platonists, with both of whom he is in close affinity, he inexorably insists on the self-consciousness and moral nature of God, on human freewill. As against all contemporary non-Christian thought his system is pure monism. Yet the problem of evil, in which he merges the antithesis of matter and spirit, brings with it a necessary dualism, a dualism, however, which belongs but to a moment in the limitless eternity of God’s all-in-allness before and after. Is he then a pantheist? No, for to him God is Love (iz Zzek. vi. 6), and the rational creature is to be made divine and united to God by the reconciliation of Wi// and by conscious apprehension of Him. The idea of Will is the pivot of Origen’s system, the centripetal force which forbids it to follow the pantheistic line which it yet undoubtedly touches.
The ‘ moral’ unity of the Father and the Son (see above, tavrérns BovAnuaros and ék Tod PeAnuatos) is Unity in that very respect in which the Creator stands over against the self-determining rational creature. Yet the immutability, the Oneness of God, must be reconciled with the plurality, the mutability of the creature; here the Logos mediates, 514 7& moAAG yiverat ToAAG: but this must be from eternity:—accordingly creation ts eternal too. Here we see that the cosmological idea has prevailed over the religious, the Logos of Origen is still in important particulars the Logos of the Apologists, of Philo and the philosophers. The difference lies in His co-eternity, upon which Origen insists without wavering. The resemblance lies in the intermediate3 position ascribed to Him between the &yévvnros, (6 Oeds), and the yeynrd; He is, as Hypostasis, subordinate to the Father.
Now it is evident that the mere intellectual apprehension of a system which combines so many opposite tendencies, which touches every variety of the theological thought of the age (even modalism, for to Origen ¢he Father is the Movds, the avrd@eos, while yet He is no abstraction but a God who exists in moral activity, s¢pra) and subtly harmonises them all, must have involved no ordinary philosophical power. When we add to this fact the further consideration that precisely the fundamental ideas of Origen were those which called forth the liveliest opposition and were gradually dropped by his followers, we can easily understand that in the next generation Origenism was no longer either the system of Origen, or a single system at all.
In one direction it could lend itself to no compromise; in spite of the justice done by Origen to the fundamental ideas both of modalism and of emanative adoptionism (cf. Harnack, pp. 548, note, and 586), to Monarchjanism in either form he is diametrically opposed. The hypostatic distinctness of Son and Spirit is once for all made good for the theology of Eastern Christendom. We see his disciples exterminate Monarchianism in the East. On the left wing Dionysius refutes the Sabellians of Libya, on the right Gregory Thaumaturgus, Firmilian, and their brethren, after a long struggle, oust the adoptionist Paul from the See of Antioch. But its influence on the existing Catholic theology, however-great (and in the East it was very great), inevitably made its way in the face of opposition, and at the cost of its original subtle consistency. The principal opposition came from Asia Minor, where the traditions of theological thought (see above, on Ignatius and Irenzeus, below on Marcellus) were not in sympathy‘ with Origen. We cannot demonstrate the existence of a continuous theological school in Asia; but 1 See Newman’snote d7. p. 186, where the additions in brackets seriously modify his statement in the text. Also cf. za/fr. ch. iv. § 3, and Bigg, p. 179, note 2.
Chalcedonists of the sixth century, but is probably a ‘ consequenzmacherei’ from the above; see*Caspari Ate u. V. Quellen, p. 60, note. But xrioma was sometimes applied to the Son in a vague 2 Cels. i. 34, cf. Alexander’s peottevouca pious Movoyerns. | Sense, on the ground of Prov. viii. 22, a text not used in this way But observe that the passage insisted on by Shedd, 294, erepos | by Origen.
Kar ovglayv kat VTOKELMEVOY 6 Vids TOD Tarpds, does not bear 4 Compare the strong Origenist rejection of Chiliasm, the the sense he extracts from it. ovata here is not ‘essence’ but ‘hypostasis.’ be 2 3 The formula xriopa o vids is ascribed to Origen by the antispiritualism of Origen as contrasted with the realism of Asia Minor, the Asiatic origin of Roman Monarchianism, of Montanism.
ANTECEDENTS OF ARIANISM: PAUL AND ‘LUCIAN.
iS (270— 300) certainly speaks with the voice of Ignatius and Ireneus. He deals with Origen much as renzeus dealt with the Gnostics, defending against him the current sense of the regula Jjidei, and especially th literal meaning of Scripture, the origination of the soul along with the body, the resurrection of the re ti the Foner sense, and generally opposing realism to the spiritualism of Origen. But in thus opposing Origen: fat) os not oo re by him (see Socr. vi. 13). He, too, isa student of Plato (with ‘little of his style or e J a realism ° is speculative.’ He no longer defends the Asiatic Chiliasm, his doctrine of the Logos is coloured by Origen as that of Irenzeus was by the Apologists. Ze legacy of Methodius and of his Origenist contemporaries to the Eastern Church was a modified Origenism, that is a theology systematised on the intellectual basis of the Platonic philosophy, but expurgated by the standard of the regula fide’. This result was a compromise, and was at first attended with great confusion. Origen’s immediate following seized some one side, some another of his system; some were more, some less influenced by the ‘ orthodox’ reaction against his teaching. We may distinguish an Origenist ‘ right’ and an Origenist ‘left.’ Ifthe Origenist view of the Universe was gi h coeternity of the S d Spirit wi;: i i eee eternity he Son and Spirit with the Father was less firmly grasped. Origen had, if we may use the expression, ‘levelled up.’ The Son was mediator between the Ingenerate God and the created, but eternal Universe.
If the latter was not eternal, and if at the same time the Word stood in some essential correlation to the creative energy of God, Origen’s system no longer implied the strict coeternity of the Word. Accordingly we find Dionysius (see below, p- 173 sgg.) uncertain on this point, and on the essential relation of the Son to the Father. More cautious in this respect, but tenacious of other startling features of Origen, were Pierius and Theognostus, who presided over the Catechetical School at the end of the century 5.
as On the other hand, very many of Origen’s pupils, especially among the bishops, started from the other side of Origen’s teaching, and held tenaciously to the coeternity of the Son, while they abandoned the Origenist paradoxes’ with regard to the Universe, matter, pre-existence, and restitution. Typical of this class is Gregory Thaumaturgus, also Peter the martyr bishop of Alexandria, who expressly opposed many of Origen’s positions (though hardly with the violence ascribed to him in certain supposed fragments in Routh, Red. iv. 81) and Alexander himself. It was this ‘wing’ of the Origenist following that, in combination with the opposition represented by Methodius, bequeathed to the generation contemporary with Nicza its average theological tone. The coeternity of the Son with the Father was not (as a rule) questioned, but the essential relation of the Logos to the Creation involved a strong subordination of the Son to the Father, and by consequence of the Spirit to the Son. Monarchianism was the heresy most dreaded, the theology of the Church was based on the philosophical categories of Plato applied to the explanation and systematisation of the rule of faith. This was very far from Arianism. It lacked the logical definiteness of that system on the one hand, it rested on the other hand on a different conception of God; the hypostatic subordination of the Son was insisted upon, but His true Sonship as of one Nature with the Father, was held fast. In the slow process of time this neo-Asiatic theology found its way partly to the Nicene formula, partly to the illogical acceptance of it with regard to the Son, with refusal to apply it to the Spirit (Macedonius). To the men who thought thus, the blunt assertion that the Son was a creature, not coeternal, alien to the Essence of the Father, was a novelty, and wholly abhorrent. Arius drew a sharper line than they had been accustomed to draw between God and the creature; so did Athanasius. But Arius drew his line without flinching between the Father and the Son. This to the instinct of any Origenist was as revolting as it would have been to the clear mind and Biblical sympathy of Origen himself, In theological and philosophical principles alike Arius was opposed even to the tempered Origenism of the Nicene age, The latter was at the furthest remove from Monarchianism, Arianism was 77 i¢s essential core Monarchian; the common theology borrowed its philosophical principles and method from the Platonists, Arius from Aristotle. To anticipate, Arianism and (so-called) semi- Arianism have in reality very little in common except the historical fact of common action foratime. Arianism guarded the transcendence of the divine nature (at the expense of revelation and redemption) in a way that ‘semi-Arianism,’ admitting as it did inherent inequality in the Godhead, did not. They therefore tended in opposite directions; Arianism to Anomceanism, ‘semi-Arianism’ to the Nicene faith; their source was different. ‘Aristotle made men Arians,’ says Newman with truth, ‘Plato, semi-Arians’ (Arians 4, p. 335, note): but to say this is to allow that if Arianism goes back to Lucian and so to Paul of Samosata, semi-Arianism is a fragment from the wreck of Origen, The Origenist bishops of Syria and Asia Minor had in the years 269—272, after several efforts, succeeded in deposing PAUL of Samosata from the See of Antioch. This remarkable man was the ablest pre-Nicene representative of Adoptionist Monarchianism. The Man Jesus was inhabited by the ‘ Word,’ i.e. by an impersonal power of God, distinct from the Aéyos or reason (wisdom) inherent in God as an attribute, which descended upon him at His Baptism. His union with God, a union of Will, was unswerving, and by virtue of it He overcame the sin of mankind, worked miracles, and entered on a condition of Deification, He is God é« mpoxomijs (cf. Luke ii. 52) by virtue of progress in perfection. That is in brief the system of Paul, and we cannot wonder at his deposition. For the striking points of contact with Arianism (two ‘Wisdoms,’ two ‘ Words,’ mporoma: cf. Orat. c. Ar, i. 5, &c.) we have to account®, The theology of Arius is a compromise between the Origenist doctrine of the Person of Christ and the pure Monarchian Adoptionism of Paul of Samosata; or rather it engrafts the former upon the latter as the eee ee XXvii eee ee XXvii 5 The position of Eusmsius of Czsarea is at the ‘extreme left’ of the Origenist body. (‘A reflex of the unsolved problems of the Church of that time,’ Dorner.) It is as though Dionysius instead of withdrawing and modilying his incriminated statements, had involved them ia a haze of explanations and biblical phrases which left them where they were. But this is not so much Arianism as confusion. ‘All is hollow and empty, precarious and ambiguous. With a vast apparatus of biblical expressions and the use of every possible formula, Monotheism is indeed maintained, but practically a created subordinate God is inserted between God and mankind’ (Harnack, p.648). See also Dorner, Lehre der Pers. Chr. Pt. 1, pp. 793798. The language quoted by Ath. below, p. 459, was doubtless meant by Eusebius in an Origenist sense. 6 The theological genesis of Paul’s system is obscure. The theory of Newman that he was under strong Jewish influences ,is largely based upon the late and apparently quite erroneous tradition that his patroness Zenobia was a Jewess; see p. 296, note 9*, and Gwatkin, p. 57, and note 3. Harnack regards him as the representative of ‘archaic’ EHast-Syrian adoptionism such as pervades the ‘ Discussion of Archelaus with Manes 3’ see Routh, RedZ. v. especially pp. 178—184. But Paul would not have spoken of Mary as ‘ Dei Genetrix,’ p, 128; 1 cannot see more in these ‘Acta’ than a naive adoptionism homologous to the ‘naive modalism’ of much early Christian language, but like it not representative of the entire view of those who use it; we must also note that the statements of ‘ Archelaus’ are coloured by reaction against the docetism of ‘ Manes;’ but Paul may well have taken up this naive adoptionism, and, dy strict Aristotelian logic, developed it as the exclusive basis of his system. Whether Paul’s use of the idea of the Logos betrays the faintest influence of Origen is to me, at least, extremely uncertain.
XXViii PROLEGOMENA, CHAPTER II, § 3 (2).
foundation principle, seriously modifying each to suit the necessity of combining the two. This compromise was not due to Arius himself but to his teacher, LucrAN the Martyr. A native himself of Samosata, he stood in some relation of attachment (not clearly defineabie) to Paul. Under him, he was at the head of a critical, exegetical, and theological school at Antioch. Upon the deposition of Paul he appears not so much to have been formally excommunicated as to have refused to acquiesce in the new order of things. Under Domnus and his two successors, he was in a state of suspended communion?; but eventually was reconciled with the bishop (Cyril?)
and died as a martyr at Nicomedia, Jan. 7,312. The latter fact, his ascetic life, and his learning secured him widespread honour in the Church; his pupils formed a compact and enthusiastic brotherhood, and filled many of the most influential Sees after the persecution. That such a man should be involved in the reproach of having given birth to Arianism is an unwelcome result of history, but one not to be evaded’. The history of the Lucianic compromise and its result in the Lucianic type of theology, are both matters of inference rather than of direct knowledge. As to the first, whatever evidence there is connects Lucian’s original position with Paul. His reconciliation with Bishop Cyril must have involved _a reapproachment to the formula of the bishops who deposed Paul,—a thoroughly Origenist document. We may therefore suppose that the identification ot Christ with the Logos, or cosmic divine principle, was adopted by him from Origenist sources. But he could not bring himself to admit that He was thus essentially identified with God the eternal; he held fast to the idea of mpoxown as the path by which the Lord attained to Divinity; he distinguished the Word or Son who was Christ from the immanent impersonal Reason or Wisdom of God, as an offspring of the Father’s Wil/, an idea which he may have derived straight from Origen, with whom of course it had a different sense. For to Origen Will was the very essence of God; Lucian fell back upon an arid philosophical Monotheism, upon an abstract God fenced about with negations (Harnack 2?, 195, note) and remote from the Universe. It was counted a departure from Lucian’s principles if a pupil held that the Son was the ‘perfect Image of the Father’s Essence’ (Philost. ii. 15); Origen's formula, ‘ distinct in hypostasis, but one in will,’ was apparently exploited in a Samosatene sense to express the relation of the Son to the Father. Te only two points in fact in which Lucian appears to have modified the system of Paul were, firstly in hypostatising the Logos, which to Paul was an impersonal divine power, secondly in abandoning Paul’s purely human doctrine of the historical Christ. To Lucian, the Logos assumed a body (or rather ‘Deus sapientiam suam misit in hunc mundum carne vestitam, wii infra, p.6), but itself took the place of a soul?; hence all the tamewa) aégers of the Gospels applied to the Logos as such, and the inferiority and essential difference of the Son from the Father rigidly followed.
The above account of Lucian is based on that of Harnack, Dogmg. ii. 184, sgg. It is at once in harmony with all our somewhat scanty data (Alexander, Epiphanius, Philostorgius, and the fragment of his last confession of faith preserved by Rufin. in Eus. #. Z. ix. 9, Routh, Rell. iv. pp. 5—7, from which Harnack rightly starts) and is the only one which accounts for the phenomena of the rise of Arianism, We find a number of leading Churchmen in agreement with Arius, but in no way dependent on him. They are Eusebius of Nicomedia, Maris, Theognis, Athanasius of Anazarba, Menophantus; all Lucianists; The first Arian writer, Asterius (see below), is a Lucianist. (The Egyptian bishops Secundus and Theonas cannot be put down to any school; we do not know their history; but they are distinguished from the Lucianists by Philost. ii. 3.) It has been urged that, although Arius brought away heresy from the school of Lucian, yet he was not the only one that did so. True;