Notes
NOTES
INTRODUCTION
1. Civ. Dei XI.10: Et haec trinitas unus est Deus; nec ideo non simplex, quia trinitas.
2. An extensive coverage of the state of scholarship can be found in Steven J. Duby, Divine Simplicity: A Dogmatic Account (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 34–53, 179–234; Jordan P. Barrett, Divine Simplicity: A Biblical and Trinitarian Account (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2017), 3–34; Jonathan M. Platter, Divine Simplicity and the Triune Identity (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2021), 9–30. In what follows, I offer a more focused review of the debate, stressing specific points discussed by systematic and philosophical theologians I wish to engage with through the historical account offered in this book.
3. I should clarify that here I have in mind Protestant theologians reacting against “classical theology” from Dorner onward. It is evident that Protestant theologians from an earlier period (“Protestant scholastics”) were chief proponents of divine simplicity in their own right. See Duby, Divine Simplicity.
4. Isaak A. Dorner, A System of Christian Doctrine, trans. Alfred Cave and John S. Banks, vol. 1 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1883), 195.
5. Ibid., 197.
6. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley, vol. 1 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010), 283.
7. Robert W. Jenson, Systematic Theology: The Triune God, vol. 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 111. It is worth emphasizing that Jenson’s approach to the subject is much more complex, as is evident from the discussion by Platter in Divine Simplicity and the Triune Identity, 104–35. Platter argues that the “logic of divine simplicity” is actually operative in Jenson’s own Trinitarian theology, despite his critical remarks on the “classical” form of the doctrine.
8. Dorner, A System of Christian Doctrine, 195.
9. Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 283.
10. Jenson, Systematic Theology, 111.
11. My review of philosophical criticisms of divine simplicity here should be supplemented by the more extensive discussion in Duby, Divine Simplicity, 42–53, 186–93.
12. For instance, see William Hasker, Metaphysics and the Tri-Personal God (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 55–61. On the incompatibility between the Trinity and divine simplicity more generally, see James E. Dolezal, “Trinity, Simplicity and the Status of God’s Personal Relations,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 16, no. 1 (January 1, 2014): 79–98; Duby, Divine Simplicity, 40–41, 207–11.
13. “But . . . it would appear that the concept of divine simplicity was adopted too readily by some Christian writers who did not pause to consider its implications. Thus we find Athanasius arguing that God, being perfectly simple, cannot possess a multiplicity of accidents; but it is not clear why the same argument should not be used to exclude a diversity of divine characteristics (which Athanasius upheld), or even a trinity of persons.” G. C. Stead, Divine Substance (Oxford: Clarendon, 1977), 187. Stead captures the heart of the worry shared by modern theologians: If divine simplicity is used to rule out the proper distinct realities of the attributes, then why not the distinction between the Trinitarian persons as well?
14. G. C. Stead, “Divine Simplicity as a Problem for Orthodoxy,” in The Making of Orthodoxy: Essays in Honour of Henry Chadwick, ed. Rowan D. Williams, 255–69 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 266.
15. A lot of ink has been spilled recently defending the “classical” doctrine. In addition to the works of Duby and Barrett mentioned above, see also James E. Dolezal, God without Parts: Divine Simplicity and the Metaphysics of God’s Absoluteness (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2011); D. Stephen Long, The Perfectly Simple Triune God: Aquinas and His Legacy (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2016); Christopher A. Franks, “The Simplicity of the Living God: Aquinas, Barth, and Some Philosophers,” Modern Theology 21, no. 2 (2005): 275–300; Stephen R. Holmes, “‘Something Much Too Plain to Say’: Towards a Defence of the Doctrine of Divine Simplicity,” Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie 43, no. 1 (2008): 137–54; Thomas Joseph White, “Divine Simplicity and the Holy Trinity,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 18, no. 1 (January 1, 2016): 66–93; Pui Him Ip, “Re-imagining Divine Simplicity in Trinitarian Theology,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 18, no. 3 (2016): 274–89. On the other side, besides the systematic theologies discussed in my brief reception history, many are adamant that the “classical doctrine” is untenable today. See R. T. Mullins, “Simply Impossible: A Case against Divine Simplicity,” Journal of Reformed Theology 7, no. 2 (January 1, 2013): 181–203; Paul R. Hinlicky, Divine Simplicity: Christ the Crisis of Metaphysics (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2016).
16. On this front, Gavin Ortlund has made a helpful contribution drawing on Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and John of Damascus. See Gavin Ortlund, “Divine Simplicity in Historical Perspective: Resourcing a Contemporary Discussion,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 16, no. 4 (2014): 436–53.
17. Rowan D. Williams, “Newman’s Arians and the Question of Method in Doctrinal History,” in Newman after a Hundred Years, ed. I. T. Ker and Alan G. Hill, 263–85 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990), 265.
18. The term “doctrinal ecology“ was coined by Williams to describe what Newman was doing in the book on Arianism. See ibid., 284–85. See also Williams’s elaboration on this term in his introduction to Newman’s discussion on ante-Nicene Trinitarian language in the Arians of the fourth century in John Henry Newman, The Arians of the Fourth Century, ed. Rowan D. Williams (Notre Dame, IN: Gracewing, 2001), xli–xlii.
19. Williams, “Newman’s Arians,” 283.
20. Hence I am not claiming that modern scholarship has failed to engage with divine simplicity’s doctrinal history. In fact, plenty of scholars have done so, engaging with the sources in the patristic (Barrett, Ortlund, Stead, and Platter), medieval (Dolezal and Long), and early modern periods (Duby). My claim in this book, however, is that knowledge of the specific ante-Nicene developments charted in this book, which hitherto have received little attention, is crucial for making sense of later developments well documented in previous scholarship.
21. Barth and Pannenberg were right to sense that it is possible to conceive a richer notion of simplicity and immutability theologically. See Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, trans. G. W. Bromiley and Thomas F. Torrance, vol. 2, Part 1 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1957), 458, 460–61; Wolfhart Pannenberg, “The Appropriation of the Philosophical Concept of God as a Dogmatic Problem of Early Christian Theology,” in Basic Questions in Theology, vol. 2, 119–83 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1971), 180. But in my view, they did not appreciate that such a view is possible within the Platonic framework of patristic theology. This idea is what I go on to develop in this book.
22. This term is frequently used in the modern literature on divine simplicity. Throughout this book, I prefer the term “Monarchianism” in order to sidestep some of the complex historical questions regarding the relationship between different groups in the ante-Nicene period that had been identified as displaying tendencies to oppose affirmations of “Trinitarian” distinctions. See chapter 4 for further details on this point.
23. Hasker, Metaphysics and the Tri-Personal God, 59–60.
24. A persuasive case on prosopological exegesis as the original context for Trinitarian thought has been made recently by Matthew W. Bates in The Birth of the Trinity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).
25. Stead, Divine Substance, 90–97, 180–89; G. C. Stead, Philosophy in Christian Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 120–35; Stead, “Divine Simplicity as a Problem for Orthodoxy”; Pannenberg, “Philosophical Concept of God.”
26. Lewis Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 273–301; Andrew Radde-Gallwitz, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and the Transformation of Divine Simplicity (Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2009); Andrew Radde-Gallwitz, “Gregory of Nyssa and Divine Simplicity: A Conceptualist Reading,” Modern Theology 35, no. 3 (July 2019): 452–66.
27. Elsewhere I have argued that the emergence of divine simplicity in Christian theology might be best understood as part of the emergence of Christian theological arguments. See Pui Him Ip, “Athenagoras of Athens and the Genesis of Divine Simplicity in Christian Theology,” in Studia Patristica C, ed. Hugh A. G. Houghton, Megan L. Davies, and Markus Vinzent, 61–70 (Leuven, Belgium: Peeters, 2020).
28. Lewis Ayres and Andrew Radde-Gallwitz, “Doctrine of God,” in The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Studies, ed. Susan Ashbrook Harvey and David G. Hunter, 864–85 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 874–75.
29. Cited in Christoph Bruns, Trinität und Kosmos: Zur Gotteslehre des Origenes (Munster: Aschendorf, 2013), 19.
30. ComJn II.75; CCels. VIII.12; PArch I.2.2.
31. ComJn XIII.228–34; PArch I.2.6; CCels. VIII.12.
32. ComJn I.283; ComMt XV.10; PArch I.2.6, I.2.12–13.
33. ComJn II.12–18; XIII.151–53. See also Origen’s highly suggestive inquiry into whether God the Father is glorified in a greater manner in his self-contemplation than in the Son. ComJn XXXII.350.
34. PArch I.2.11, IV.4.1; HomJe IX.4.
35. ComHe, quoted in Pamphilus’s Apol. 99. This point is controversial since we have the text only in Rufinus’s Latin translation. See R.P.C. Hanson, “Did Origen Apply the Word ‘Homoousios’ to the Son?” in Épektasis: Mélanges patristiques offerts au cardinal Daniélou, ed. C. Kannengiesser and J. Fontaine, 293–303 (Paris: Beauchesne, 1975). Against Hanson, Mark Edwards has defended the use of the term homoousios in these fragments as genuine. See Mark J. Edwards, “Did Origen Apply the Word Homoousios to the Son?,” Journal of Theological Studies 49, no. 2 (October 1, 1998): 658–70. For a review of the wider debate on the term homoousios, see Pier Franco Beatrice, “The Word ‘Homoousios’ from Hellenism to Christianity,” Church History 71, no. 2 (June 2002): 243–72, 251–52.
36. Simonetti spoke of the development in Trinitarian theology after Origen simply as “50 anni di controversie origeniane.” Manlio Simonetti, La crisi ariana nel IV secolo (Rome: Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, 1975), 11–24. See also the insightful analysis in Rowan D. Williams, Arius: Heresy and Tradition, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002), 131–48.
37. Bruns, Trinität und Kosmos, 17–18 (my translation).
38. Ibid., 19–20. On Ramelli’s argument, see Ilaria L. E. Ramelli, “Origen’s Anti-Subordinationism and Its Heritage in the Nicene and Cappadocian Line,” Vigiliae Christianae 65, no. 1 (2011): 21–49. Elsewhere I have discussed critically Athanasius’s claim that Origen anticipates Nicene “anti-Arianism” in Pui Him Ip, “‘Arianism’ Ante-Litteram in Origen’s Peri Archōn 4.4.1,” Journal of Theological Studies 72, no.1 (April 2021): 247–78.
39. Mark J. Edwards, review of Trinität und Kosmos. Zur Gotteslehre des Origenes, by Christoph Bruns, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 66, no. 2 (April 2015): 390–91.
40. See R.P.C. Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God: The Arian Controversy, 318–81 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006), 361–70, for a summary.
41. Though the work by Samuel Fernández has gone a long way toward addressing this. See Samuel Fernández, “La generación del Logos como solución al problema monarquiano, según Orígenes,” in Multifariam: Homenaje a Los Profesores Anneliese Meis, Antonio Bentué y Sergio Silva, edited by Samuel Fernández, J. Noemi, and R. Polanco, 193–229 (Santiago, Chile: Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, 2010). Bruns’s Trinität und Kosmos also situates Origen in his third-century context despite regarding the Alexandrian as forefather of Nicene theology.
42. See ComJn II.16, XXXII.183–97; ComTt, quoted in Pamphilus, Apol. 33; ComRm VIII.5.9.
43. Though Origen should not be naïvely identified as a “Platonist.” See Mark J. Edwards, Origen against Plato (London: Routledge, 2017).
CHAPTER 1
1. Stead, “Divine Simplicity as a Problem for Orthodoxy,” 256.
2. “The doctrine of divine simplicity became conventionalised; attempts were still made to define and defend it, but in the main it was protected from attack by the elusive character of the term ‘simple,’ which could mean either ‘excluding all differentiation’ or ‘comprehending all differentiation’ or merely ‘not composite,’ ‘not constructed out of parts.’” Ibid., 93–94.
3. The argument is summarized in Stead, “Divine Simplicity as a Problem for Orthodoxy.” The detailed analysis is found in Stead, Divine Substance, 90–97, 180–89; see also Stead, Philosophy in Christian Antiquity, 120–35.
4. See ἁπλοῦς in G.W.H. Lampe’s A Patristic Greek Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon, 1961), 187. See also the useful survey of the use of the term from the Septuagint to post-Apostolic Christian literature in Joseph Amstutz, ΑΠΛΟΤΗΣ: Eine Begriffsgeschichthche Studie zum jüdisch-christhchen Griechisch (Bonn: Peter Hanstein, 1968).
5. Stead, Philosophy in Christian Antiquity, 132.
6. As far as I know, Amstutz is the only one who has taken note of the significance of this passage for understanding the philosophical origin of divine simplicity. He calls this passage “die maßgebende Stelle.” See Amstutz, ΑΠΛΟΤΗΣ, 54, n. 76.
7. Plato’s attitude toward traditional mythology is complex. For a helpful discussion of the gods in traditional Greek religion that forms the background to this passage, see Gerd van Riel, Plato’s Gods (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2013), 25–30. As Rick Benitez has argued, Plato’s discussion about the gods may not be straightforwardly read as a “demythologization” exercise. In fact, Plato could well be crafting a “philosophical mythology.” See Rick Benitez, “Plato and the Secularisation of Greek Theology,” in Theologies of Ancient Greek Religion, ed. Esther Eidinow, Julia Kindt, and Robin Osborne (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 301–16.
8. Rep. 379a: Oἷος τυγχάνει ὁ θεὸς ὤν, ἀεὶ δήπου ἀποδοτέον, ἐαν τέ τις αὐτὸν ἐω ἔπεσι ποιῇ ἐάν τε ἐω μέλεσιν ἐάν τε ἐω τραγῳδίᾳ.
9. Rep. 379a–b: Οὐκοῦν ἀγαθὸς ὅ γε θεὸς τῷ ὄντι τε καὶ λεκτέον οὕτως.
10. Rep. 380a–b.
11. Rep. 380d: Ἆρα γόητα τὸν θεὸν οἴει εἶναι καὶ οἷον ἐξ ἐπιβουλῆς φαντάζεσθαι ἄλλοτε ἐν ἄλλαις ἰδέαις, τοτὲ μὲν αὐτὸν γιγνόμενον καὶ ἀλλάττοντα τὸ αὑτοῦ εἶδος εἰς πολλὰς μορφάς, τοτὲ δὲ ἡμᾶς ἀπατῶντα καὶ ποιοῦντα περὶ αὑτοῦ τοιαῦτα δοκεῖν, ἢ ἁπλοῦν τε εἶναι καὶ πάντων ἥκιστα τῆς ἑαυτοῦ ἰδέας ἐκβαίνειν. Translations from LCL 237, slightly modified.
12. See the commentary on Proteus and Thetis in James Adam, ed., The Republic of Plato, edited with critical notes, commentary and appendices, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1902), 120.
13. Rep. 380d.
14. On Plato’s relation with traditional mythologies, see the complexities mentioned in note 7 above.
15. Apart from the works of Ayres and Radde-Gallwitz, which I shall discuss below, see also Mark Sheridan, Language for God in Patristic Tradition: Wresthng with Biblical Anthropomorphism (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2015), for an account of how early Christian language of God functions in this manner.
16. Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy, 279.
17. Ibid., 14.
18. See Ibid., 281, 286–87, for some examples. A particularly important case is the generation of the Son, which must be understood “within the bounds of the divine simplicity.” This point will play a significant part in this book.
19. Ibid., 287.
20. Radde-Gallwitz, Basil of Caesarea, 19–37.
21. Ibid., 20.
22. Ibid., 6.
23. This is to take up a suggestion by Sheridan in Language for God, 59.
24. This is made clear in the concluding statement of the argument for premise 6. Rep. 381c: Ἀδύνατον ἄρα, ἔφην, καὶ θεῷ ἐθέλειν αὑτὸν ἀλλοιοῦν, ἀλλ᾽, ὡς ἔοικε, κάλλιστος καὶ ἄριστος ὢν εἰς τὸ δυνατὸν ἕκαστος αὐτῶν μένει ἀεὶ ἁπλῶς ἐν τῇ αὑτοῦ μορφῇ. It is impossible for a god to wish to alter himself; this is not to say a god could not change himself.
25. This has potential ramification for the contemporary debate on the incompatibility between divine simplicity and divine freedom. According to Socrates, a simple god is perfectly free to choose to be different than to remain self-same. But such a god would not do so because it would be absurd for a divine being to choose to be greater or lesser than themself. Divine immutability, connected to simplicity, is therefore not as incompatible with the “infinite plenitude of ever new possibilities” that is entailed by divine freedom, as Pannenberg requires (Pannenberg, “Philosophical Concept of God,” 161) so long as the “ever new possibilities” we are speaking of that are opened to the divine are understood to be possibilities that are perfectly consistent with who the god is. From this consideration, one could develop a response to the critique against divine simplicity developed in Mullins, “Simply Impossible.”
26. The alert reader will have noticed that this supposes that a god has a soul. This highlights an idiosyncrasy of Platonic theology in which “deities” are likely to be perfect souls. See van Riel, Plato’s Gods, chap. 3.
27. Rep. 382d–e.
28. Rep. 382e: Κομιδῇ ἄρα ὁ θεὸς ἁπλοῦν καὶ ἀληθὲς ἔν τε ἔργῳ καὶ ἐν λόγῳ, καὶ οὔτε αὐτὸς μεθίσταται οὔτε ἄλλους ἐξαπατᾷ, οὔτε κατὰ φαντασίας οὔτε κατὰ λόγους, οὔτε κατὰ σημείων πομπάς, οὔθ᾽ ὕπαρ οὔτ᾽ ὄναρ.
29. James Adam, in a perceptive comment, also reinforces this conclusion. Ἁπλοῦν is “one of the watchwords of Plato’s state (370b and c, 374a–d, et al.)” in that every ideal citizen is supposed to focus on a single task according to each individual’s nature, that is, becoming ἁπλοῖ. The parallel between divine simplicity and the simplicity of the citizens reflects in Plato a kind of theology that is concerned to make “the gods a reflection of the type of human character he [i.e., Plato] desired to foster.” Adam, The Republic, 1:119, n. 27. This observation is apt because, as many scholars have pointed out, Plato’s theology in Book 2 of The Republic is no doubt concerned with the effect of theology on the formation of the guardians. See David Sedley, “Plato’s Theology,” in The Oxford Handbook of Plato, ed. Gail Fine, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 627–44 (especially 627–28). I shall return to the intrinsic connection in ancient thought between God’s simplicity and the simplicity that characterizes the perfect human life when I turn to Philo (chapter 2) and Origen (chapter 5).
30. For a summary, see van Riel, Plato’s Gods, 119–21. For the literature on this topic, see 61–64.
31. “It is true that in the earlier stages of the theory of Forms theological concerns are mostly irrelevant to the metaphysical exigencies of the arguments. Nevertheless, once Plato begins to engage in natural theology seriously, it quickly becomes clear that the metaphysical and the theological paths merge.” Lloyd P. Gerson, God and Greek Philosophy: Studies in the Early History of Natural Theology (London: Routledge, 1990), 62.
32. Van Riel writes: “Plato’s metaphysical principles (the Good and the Forms) may be termed ‘divine,’ but they are not ‘gods.’ Plato’s gods are individuals, meaning individual souls, who are bound to their position by the fate-like laws imposed by his metaphysical principles.” Van Riel, Plato’s Gods, 119. Van Riel argues throughout that it could well be an anachronistic reading of Plato, first suggested by Aristotle, that led to the identification.
33. Rep. 476a–b: Καὶ περὶ δικαίου καὶ ἀδίκου καὶ ἀγαθοῦ καὶ κακοῦ καὶ πάντων τῶν εἰδῶν πέρι ὁ αὐτὸς λόγος, αὐτὸ μὲν ἓν ἕκαστον εἶναι, τῇ δὲ τῶν πράξεων καὶ σωμάτων καὶ ἀλλήλων κοινωνίᾳ πανταχοῦ φανταζόμενα πολλὰ φαίνεσθαι ἕκαστον.
34. Rep. 479e.
35. Constance C. Meinwald, Plato (London: Routledge, 2016), 233.
36. This connection between the simplicity of God and the requirement for the forms explains why “the functions of calling God simple and of saying that one should not attribute contradictory statements to (the same) God got mapped onto one another,” as highlighted by Radde–Gallwitz, Basil of Caesarea, 20–22. If the language of simplicity was conceived as integrally connected to the nature of forms, then it makes sense that ancient writers recognize the same impossibility for contrary states to arise in God, as in the case of forms. Theologically, it seems to me that the language of God’s “uncontradictable Life” is on track to capture the essence of the idea of simplicity. See Franks, “The Simplicity of the Living God.”
37. See Gerson, God and Greek Philosophy, 57–65. Gerson also maps out how later Platonists utilized the latent possibility for the connection between the Form of the Good and God. See Lloyd P. Gerson, “From Plato’s Good to Platonic God,” International Journal of the Platonic Tradition 2, no. 2 (January 1, 2008): 93–112.
CHAPTER 2
1. Pannenberg, “Philosophical Concept of God,” 131.
2. Scholars of ancient philosophy dispute the usefulness of the label “Middle Platonism.” Here I follow the minimalistic interpretation of Zambon by taking the label to specify the period of development in Platonism between the end of the Academy to Plotinus. See Marco Zambon, “Middle Platonism,” in A Companion to Ancient Philosophy, ed. Mary Louise Gill and Pierre Pellegrin, 561–76 (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 561–62.
3. For Pannenberg, the sense of divine immutability due to God’s trustworthiness, faithfulness, and constancy is to be found only in the language of Scripture and does not come from the philosophical doctrine of immutability. See Pannenberg, “‘Philosophical Concept of God,’” 161–62, 180. Despite this negative judgment, Pannenberg does not fall into an uncritical wholesale acceptance of the “Hellenization thesis” commonly accepted by Protestant writers. He actually offers a sophisticated analysis as to why the philosophical concept of God had to be appropriated by Christian theologians in the early centuries. His technical term for this appropriation is “linkage,” intending to contrast it with the classical “Hellenization” model in the wake of Adolf von Harnack (see especially 134–40).
4. In the Middle Platonic period, Platonists had various schemes to relate different first principles in their system. To avoid confusion, unless otherwise stated, whenever I use the term “first principle” in this chapter I am speaking of the highest principle. My claim is that it is the identification of the simple deity as the highest first principle that led to the rise of further metaphysical qualifications of divine simplicity in this period.
5. John M. Dillon, trans, Alcinous: The Handbook of Platonism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), xiii–xiv. The identity of the author of this text has been subjected to scholarly speculations. Some scholars in the past have identified the author as “Albinus,” following the suggestion of J. Freudenthal, but most scholars today accept the conclusion of John Whittaker, who argues for Alcinous as the author of the treatise. See Dillon, ix–xiii, for a review of this matter. But as a result of this scholarly dispute, in what follows some of the older literature cited will still retain the name “Albinus.”
6. See Ilsetraut Hadot, Arts libéraux et philosophie dans la pensée antique (Paris: Études augustiniennes, 1984); Pierre Hadot, “Les divisions des parties de la philosophie dans l’Antiquité,” Museum Helveticum 36, no. 4 (1979): 201–23.
7. Boys-Stones has helpfully supplied a schema that situates Alcinous’s position alongside those of other Middle Platonists. See George R. Boys-Stones, Platonist Philosophy 80 BC to AD 250: An Introduction and Collection of Sources in Translation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 150–59. See also Henny Fiskå Hägg, Clement of Alexandria and the Beginnings of Christian Apophaticism: Knowing the Unknowable (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 71–133, for a helpful comparison of Alcinous’s theology with that of two other Platonists from this period, Atticus and Numenius.
8. I do not cover the Aristotelian background here since it is well known. The relevant Aristotelian discussions related to the concept of divine simplicity are found in Phys. VIII.10 (on the nature of the unmoved mover), Met. Δ (on mereology), and Met. Λ (esp. Λ.7–8, on the simplicity of the supreme first principle). A detailed discussion of Aristotelian theology in these texts is found in Gerson, God and Greek Philosophy, 82–141. See also Paul L. Gavrilyuk, “Plotinus on Divine Simplicity,” Modern Theology 35, no. 3 (2019): 442–51, for a helpful discussion of the importance of Aristotelian considerations in this period. On Aristotelian mereology in Met. Δ, see Kathrin Koslicki, The Structure of Objects (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 122–64.
9. On this term, see André-Jean Festugière, La Révélation d’Hermès Trismégiste IV: Le Dieu inconnu et la gnose (Paris: Lecoffre, 1944), 95, n. 5.
10. Here it seems that Alcinous takes himself to be simply supposing the Platonic commitment to the existence of forms.
11. Dillon, Alcinous, 102.
12. See the parallels with Aristotle’s argument for the nature of the unmoved mover in Met. Λ, 1071b3ff up to the concluding statement at 1073a13.
13. What is at play here is likely to be a hierarchy of deities in which the primal god, or “God,” is identified as the supreme deity. See Dillon, Alcinous, 102–3. On the general issue regarding counting gods in Platonism in this period, see the bibliography in Boys-Stones, Platonist Philosophy, 161–62.
14. Did. 10,164.39–41.
15. Scholars have debated whether Alcinous identifies the primal God as the principle even higher than the first intellect. See Jaap Mansfeld, “Three Notes on Albinus,” in Studies in Later Greek Philosophy and Gnosticism (London: Variorum Reprints, 1989), 6: 61–80 at 61–67. Mansfeld persuasively argues that Alcinous did not admit a higher principle superior to the first intellect. But he is surely right in saying that Alcinous’s conception of the highest principle in his hierarchy of entities is not without its problems.
16. The question concerning the status of the intellect in the Platonic systems of this period is extremely complex. A sense of this can be gleaned from the variety of positions encountered in the bibliographical essay in Boys-Stones, Platonist Philosophy, 160–68. Thus Alcinous’s position on God’s relation to the intellect reflects his peculiar brand of systematic Platonism and so cannot be regarded as reflecting a “representative” position in the Middle Platonic period. Platonists like Numenius of Apamea can differentiate the first god from a second intellect (see ibid., 156–57).
17. I make no claim to interpret Alcinous as a monotheist. Alcinous could have conceived of multiple deities (see note 13 above). But the conclusion I am drawing from Alcinous’s Did. 10 about divine simplicity is, strictly speaking, the conclusion he draws only for his primal God.
18. Dillon, Alcinous, xxvii–xxviii.
19. My translation.
20. Radde-Gallwitz, Basil of Caesarea, 5–6.
21. The exact mechanics of how Alcinous’s God can be the single, simple, unifying principle of all forms remains unclear. In the Middle Platonic period, there were many proposals by Platonists as to how God should be related to the forms. See Boys-Stones, Platonist Philosophy, 150–59. But Alcinous’s statement was surely due to the fact that he held God to be what Boys-Stones has called the “form of all paradigmaticism.” For a speculative interpretation of Alcinous as referring to the One, thus anticipating Plotinus, see Knut Kleve, “Albinus on God and the One,” Symbolae Osloenses 47, no. 1 (January 1, 1972): 66–69. See, however, the critique of Pierre Louis and John Whittaker, trans., Alcinoos: Enseignement des doctrines de Platon (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1990), 103–4, n. 188. Louis and Whittaker are unconvinced by Kleve’s argument.
22. Dörrie et al. suggest a similar conclusion. According to them, here Alcinous is warning against interpreting the multiple divine attributes as possessing independent existence, requiring God to participate in them in order to possess these qualities. This would invalidate Alcinous’s position that God is the supreme first principle, who is self-grounding. Dörrie et al. conclude that for Alcinous, the multiple attributes “mit Gott selbst eins sind,” which entails that they are not “real” (in the sense that they do not possess independent existence apart from God: “Alles in Gott ist Gott”). Heinrich Dörrie et al., Der Platonismus in der Antike: Grundlagen, System, Entwicklung; Die philosophische Lehre des Platonismus: Theologia Platonica. Bausteine 182–205: Text, Übersetzung, Kommentar, vol. 7.1 (Stuttgart–Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 2008), 332.
23. As many scholars have highlighted, it is not obvious how to interpret the significance of Alcinous’s divine attributes, both positive and negative, given his strong commitment to the claim that God is beyond opposite pairs. For my purpose here, which is to illustrate the philosophical considerations underlying the connections between simplicity and its neighboring ideas, I shall not go into this debate even though it is relevant to the question of divine simplicity and its implications for theological epistemology. For a masterful account that helps one to make sense of Alcinous’s theory of divine attributes, see Jaap Mansfeld, “Compatible Alternatives: Middle Platonist Theology and the Xenophanes Reception,” in Knowledge of God in the Graeco-Roman World, ed. R. van den Broek, Tjitze Baarda, and Jaap Mansfeld, 92–117 (Leiden: Brill, 1988).
24. As Dillon has noted, Alcinous is probably following a trend of giving an “ontological interpretation” to the logical exercises in Plato’s Parmenides. See Dillon, Alcinous, 109.
25. On the argument based on geometry, see Michel René Barnes, “‘Shining in the Light of Your Glory’: Finding the Simple Reading of Scripture,” Modern Theology 35, no. 3 (2019): 418–27, 420, n. 4.
26. Phae. 78c (translation from LCL 36, slightly modified).
27. Ibid. 92b-c.
28. Ibid. 92e–93b.
29. Alcinous’s application of the term ἀκίνητος to God alludes to Aristotle’s Met.Λ. But given the parallels here, it seems likely that Alcinous saw the term as grounded on the argument found in The Republic.
30. Harry Austryn Wolfson, Philo: Foundations of Religious Philosophy in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, vol. 2 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962), 94–164; Francesca Calabi, God’s Acting, Man’s Acting: Tradition and Philosophy in Philo of Alexandria (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 13–16, 17–38.
31. For a more detailed discussion of Philo’s doctrine of divine immutability in this work, see Wilhelm Maas, Unveränderlichkeit Gottes: Zum Verhältnis von griech-philosophischer und christhcher Gotteslehre (Munich: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1974), 87–124.
32. Philo’s Greek text of this passage is found in Deus 20. English translation from LCL 247.
33. Nikiprowetzky helpfully suggests that Deus 20–50 is primarily concerned with the question of God’s repentance, whereas Deus 51–69 is concerned with the question of God’s anger. See V. Nikiprowetzky, “L’exégèse de Philon d’Alexandrie dans le De Gigantibus et le Quod Deus,” in Two Treatises of Philo of Alexandria: A Commentary on De Gigantibus and Quod Deus Sit Immutabilis, ed. David Winston and John M. Dillon, 5–75 (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1983), at 27. My division of Philo’s two theological discussions follows this outhne.
34. David Winston and John M. Dillon, Two Treatises of Philo of Alexandria: A Commentary on De Gigantibus and Quod Deus sit Immutabilis (Chico, California: Scholars Press, 1983), 284. This does not mean, however, that Philo never disagrees with how this pattern is to be applied to ancient literature. See Howard Jacobson, “A Philonic Rejection of Plato,” Mnemosyne 57, no. 4 (January 1, 2004): 488.
35. Deus 22. This argument has a Stoic background. See ibid., Two Treatises of Philo of Alexandria, 284.
36. See the discussion on Gig. 49, where Philo also comments on this Scriptural passage, in Winston and Dillon, Two Treatises of Philo of Alexandria, 261–62. This rendering of Deut. 5:31 captures Philo’s meaning (see Dillon and Winston, 287).
37. Deus 24–25.
38. Ibid. 26–27.
39. Philo’s Greek text of this passage is found in Deus 51. English translation from LCL 247.
40. Ibid. 52.
41. Ibid. 55.
42. Ibid. 56. The question of how to interpret Philo’s claim that God has no needs of “properties” is complex. For a detailed discussion, see Calabi, God’s Acting, Man’s Acting, 17–38.
43. Leg. All. 2.1: Ὁ θεὸς μόνος ἐστὶ καὶ ἕν, οὐ σύγκριμα, φύσις ἁπλῆ, ἡμῶν δ᾽ἕκαστος καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ὅσα γέγονε πολλά· οἷον ἐγὼ πολλά εἰμι, ψυχὴ σῶμα, καὶ ψυχῆς ἄλογον λογικόν, πάλιν σῶματος θερμὸν ψυχρὸν βαρὺ κοῦφον ξηρὸν ὑγρόν· ὁ δὲ θεὸς οὐ σύγκριμα οὐδὲ ἐκ πολλῶν συνεστώς, ἀλλ᾽ ἀμιγὴς ἄλλῳ.
44. Deus 56–57: οἱ δἑ συμβάσεις και σπονδὰς πρὸς σῶμα θέμενοι Oὐ λογισάμενοι ὅτι τῷ μὲν ἐκ πλειόνων συνόδου δυνάμεων γενομένῳ πλειόνων ἔδει μερῶν πρὸς τὴν τῶν καθ’ ἕκαστον χρειῶν ὑπηρεσίαν, ὁ δὲ θεὸς ἅτε ἀγὲνητος ὢν καὶ τὰ ἄλλα ἀγαγὼν εἰς γένεσιν οὐδενὸς ἐδεήθη τῶν τοῖς γεννήμασι προσόντων.
45. The synthesis between the self-consistent simple deity of The Republic and the simple first principle of metaphysics might also have something to do with the identification of the Good and the One in Middle Platonism. I have not treated this topic, but see Hägg, Clement of Alexandria, 90–93; Zambon, “Middle Platonism,” 569–70.
46. These two aspects are, of course, one in God, following the logic already set out by Alcinous, because God is the supreme first principle in whom there can be no contraries. In Philo we thus gain greater clarity than in Alcinous concerning the relationship between the metaphysical and the ethical sense of simplicity in the case of God.
47. “Dieser Aspekt der Gotteslehre [= ἁπλότης Gottes] ist schließlich für Philon nicht eine bloße metaphysische Randbemerkung, sondern ein wesenthches Element seiner geisthchen Lehre.” Amstutz, ΑΠΛΟΤΗΣ, 54 (my translation).
CHAPTER 3
1. There is no doubt that divine simplicity has a central place in Irenaeus’s theology. See Anthony Briggman, God and Christ in Irenaeus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 90–99. In what follows, my exposition of Irenaeus’s account largely focuses on its polemical dimension. But as John Behr has argued recently, Irenaeus’s approach goes much deeper than simply affirming divine simplicity as a metaphysical principle. For Irenaeus, God’s simplicity is perfectly reflected in the one divine economy as “a symphony of salvation.” See John Behr, “Synchronic and Diachronic Harmony: St. Irenaeus on Divine Simplicity,” Modern Theology 35, no. 3 (2019): 428–41.
2. Stead, Philosophy in Christian Antiquity, 108, 131–32; Stead, Divine Substance, 109, 163–64, 187–89. For a recent account, see Briggman, God and Christ in Irenaeus, 95–97.
3. To my knowledge, only a few scholars have taken note of this, mostly in recent Irenaeus scholarship. See Pannenberg, “Philosophical Concept of God,” 166–68; Jackson Lashier, Irenaeus on the Trinity (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 86–89, 92–148 (esp. 130–47); Briggman, God and Christ in Irenaeus, 121–36 (esp. 127ff). My conclusions are largely in agreement with Lashier and Briggman.
4. The most detailed account of Valentinianism to date is Einar Thomassen, The Spiritual Seed: The Church of the “Valentinians” (Leiden: Brill, 2008). Following Joel Kalvesmaki, I find the term “protology” helpful as it indicates how in their theories Valentinians sought to account for everything beginning from a πρῶτος. See Joel Kalvesmaki, The Theology of Arithmetic: Number Symbolism in Platonism and Early Christianity (Washington, DC: Harvard University Press, 2013), 4.
5. The term “Valentinian” refers to what Irenaeus conceived to be a follower of Valentinus, a second-century Christian teacher whose teachings may not agree with those of the followers. The discrepancy between the Valentinians and Valentinus himself on doctrine is well established. As Thomassen has remarked, it is important to remember that this is a “heresiological” term, as the “Valentinians” would never have referred to themselves by the term. See Thomassen, The Spiritual Seed, 4–5. In Adversus haereses, Book 1, Irenaeus himself recognizes that there are variations among the teachings of the “Valentinians.” For the purpose of our study, “Valentinianism” remains a good term because it reflects how certain doctrines—especially the emission of the aeons from God the Father—were associated by subsequent Christian theologians with the followers of Valentinus. So in what follows, I speak of the “Valentinians” not as a term referring to the genuine teachings of the Valentinians but to capture the “heresiological” perspective of the authors examined in this book (i.e., Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Origen) who considered the teaching of emission (prolatio) to be “Valentinian.”
6. Haer. II.13 and II.17.
7. Grande notice refers to the opening chapters of the work (Haer. I.1–8). See François M. M. Sagnard, La gnose valentinienne et le témoignage de Saint Irénée, Études de philosophie médiévale 36 (Paris, 1947), 31–50, 140–232.
8. Haer. I.1. It is worth noting that there are internal debates among Valentinians on whether at the head of the emission of aeons is a monad or a dyad. Moreover, it is also debated whether the First Father is gendered or not. See Kalvesmaki, The Theology of Arithmetic, 52–60. Once again, I present the dyadic version because it is the one that is criticized by Irenaeus in Haer. II.13 and II.17.
9. This account is based on Irenaeus’s report in Haer. I.1–2, 4–5. For an account drawing on all available sources, see Thomassen’s and Kalvesmaki’s works cited above.
10. For the Pythagorean background, see Kalvesmaki, The Theology of Arithmetic, 50–51.
11. “Irenaeus believes the principle of divine simplicity bears on the question of the emission or production of aeons.” Briggman, God and Christ in Irenaeus, 118.
12. In Haer. II.13 Irenaeus argues against the first stage of Valentinian protology, namely, the emission of the aeons in the primary ogdoad. In II.17 he then turns to argue against the second stage, namely, the emissions of the rest of the aeons in the Pleroma. His argument in both chapters, however, retains the same shape.
13. On the philosophical background of Irenaeus’s definition of simplicity, see Briggman, God and Christ in Irenaeus, 92.
14. My analysis thus agrees with Lashier, who, in his more comprehensive study on Irenaeus’s Logos theology, also highlights these points. See Lashier, Irenaeus on the Trinity, 136–42 on (contemporaneity), 142–45 (on inseparability), and 145–47 (on consubstantiality).
15. For the justification of translating the Latin efficabiliter as “distinctly,” see Briggman, God and Christ in Irenaeus, 128, n. 76. As Briggman notes, following the suggestion of Adelin Rousseau, this Latin term likely corresponds to the Greek term ἀποτελεστικῶς.
16. Haer. II.17.3.
17. As Barnes has highlighted, Irenaeus’s critique of spatiality is based on his understanding of God as Spirit since Irenaeus’s conception of “spiritual” reality seems to be characterized by intellectuality and simplicity. See Michel René Barnes, “Irenaeus’s Trinitarian Theology,” Nova et Vetera 7 (2009): 67–106, at 76–78. Barnes’s point is further developed in greater detail and situated within Irenaeus’s anti-Valentinian polemic by Lashier, Irenaeus on the Trinity, 86–90. See also a recent defense of the connection between spirituality and simplicity in Briggman, God and Christ in Irenaeus, 99–101. This sets Irenaeus on a trajectory against the attribution of corporeal qualities to God similar to that we have seen in Philo and Alcinous. However, there are also significant differences between Irenaeus and the Middle Platonic theology inherited by Christian writers such as Justin. On this point, see Jackson Lashier, “Irenaeus as Logos Theologian,” Vigiliae Christianae 66, no. 4 (January 1, 2012): 341–61.
18. This association is presupposed by Irenaeus throughout Book 2. See Haer. II.3.2 (composite = changeable and transitory), II.7.6 (composite = earthly and perishable things vis-à-vis spiritual things), II.13.3 (composite = made up of body and soul), II.13.5 (composite = corporeal), and II.17.7 (composite = ensouled, i.e., made up of body and soul).
19. In this argument Irenaeus is determined to interpret the Valentinian language of emission uncharitably. But as Antonio Orbe has suggested, the Valentinians were unlikely to fall into such basic errors, namely, to associate animal-like generation to God. Given the philosophical sophistication of their systems, it is more probable that they would be as keen as Irenaeus to prevent the application of animal-like generations to the divine Pleroma. See Antonio Orbe, Hacia la primera teología de la procesión del Verbo, 2 vols. (Rome: Aedes Universitatis Gregorianae, 1958), 1:389, 2:648–49. In light of Orbe’s comment, we must be careful to take Irenaeus’s argument at face value to conclude that the Valentinians themselves understood prolatio in a corporeal sense. However, what is significant to note about Irenaeus’s argument is that it provides a standard response to rule out the theological plausibility of Valentinian protology. As we shall see, exactly the same kind of anti-Valentinian argument is rehearsed by Origen.
20. Haer. II.13.1–4.
21. Irenaeus’s analysis of emission based on the analogy of the human mind is by no means unique, as it is a constant theme among Christian writers (including Gnostics) in the early centuries. Moreover, different writers draw on the analysis of the human mind for opposite reasons. Irenaeus uses the analysis to highlight the discontinuity between the activities of the divine mind and those of the human mind, whereas Justin (Dial. 61) and Tertullian (APrax. 5–6) draw on the same analysis to stress instead the analogy between the two. See Orbe, Hacia, 1:363–86.
22. Haer. II.13.1: de aliquo in cogitatu dispositae qualeslibet motiones . . . et in cogitationem conterminatae. We shall see what Irenaeus means by this phrase in the detailed breakdown of the different stages of mental activities below.
23. Ibid., II.13.2.
24. Ibid., II.13.1.
25. Ibid. II.13.2: Vnum autem et idem est omnia quae praedicta sunt, a no initium accipientia et secundum augmentum adsumentia appellationes.
26. Ibid. Irenaeus also accuses the Valentinians of getting the order of mental activities wrong. See ibid., II.13.1. Again, Irenaeus is perhaps reading the Valentinians’ account uncharitably to suggest that their aeons are emitted as though there was a separation between the stages of mental activities in a sense appropriate only to animal generation secundum corporis amissionem.
27. Ibid., II.13.2.
28. Ibid., II.28.4. See also II.13.3–4.
29. Irenaeus is not often considered a “negative” theologian, but here we have a clear instance of his negative theology. For Irenaeus, divine transcendence is best preserved by making a clear distinction between the divine Mind and human minds.
30. Haer. II.17.4: eiusdem . . . substantiae cum sint cum principe emissionis ipsorum.
31. Irenaeus did not analyze the metaphor of rays from the sun in relation to consubstantiality. Instead, he relates this metaphor to the necessity of a receptacle in emission (ibid., II.13.5). But here I simply offer a plausible reconstruction of Irenaeus’s reasoning for consubstantiality, a point made clear from this chapter.
32. Ibid., II.13.3–4, II.17.3, 5–6 (rejecting the possibility of passion arising in the Pleroma), II.17.5, 8–11 (rejecting the possibility of ignorance arising in the Pleroma).
33. Ibid., II.17.4 (emphasis added).
34. “Because the source and product are constituted of the same simple substance, a substance not subject to temporal differentiation, the substance of the product cannot be said to come to be in any temporally defined way.” Briggman, God and Christ in Irenaeus, 134.
35. There is, however, one way Irenaeus thinks we can differentiate the relative temporal status of the generated lights after their recombination: with respect to the process of lighting. When the lights are recombined, the only difference marker left between them is that some had been lit before others. It is difficult to determine what Irenaeus means precisely. But perhaps he is thinking of something like this: if two lights, A and B, are recombined, they are no longer two lights qua lights. This is because they are consubstantial. As a result, there will be no relative temporal ordering between them qua lights once they are recombined. However, A and B retain one way in which they can be distinguished as two: with respect to their relative order of generation. Given that (say) A is generated before B, after recombination we can still identify A as generated temporally before B even though they have now become one light (and so it is impossible to differentiate their relative temporal status qua lights). It is unclear what Irenaeus means by this, but perhaps we can speculate. If we turn to the recombined light, we cannot point to one part and say that it is generated earlier than another part. This is because, qua light, the recombined light is one and the same. However, what we can say is that this recombined light is lit now, whereas the lights used in the recombination were lit earlier. In other words, it is still possible to analyze the relative temporal status not of the various lights used in the recombination but of those and the newly recombined light. Perhaps this is what Irenaeus wishes to suggest by insisting that the only way to distinguish between A and B when they are recombined is with respect to their order of generation.
36. “For how can one aeon be called younger or older among them, since the light of the whole Fullness is one?” Haer. II.17.5.
37. Haer. II.13.3: simplex et non compositus et similimembrius et totus ipse sibimetipsi similis et aequalis est, totus cum sit sensus et totus spiritus et totus sensuabilitas et totus ennoia et totus ratio et totus auditus et totus oculus et totus lumen et totus fons omnium honorum, quemadmodum adest religiosis ac piis dicere de Deo. Scholars have noted that Irenaeus’s language of divine simplicity echoes that of the pre-Socratic philosopher Xenophanes. See Robert M. Grant, Gods and the One God (Philadelphia: Westminster John Knox Press, 1988), 89–90; Eric F. Osborn, Irenaeus of Lyons (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 38–43; Briggman, God and Christ in Irenaeus, 92–94; Mansfeld, “Compatible Alternatives,” 112–14.
38. Haer. II.13.9: Et neque sensum uita antiquiorem aliquis potest dicere, ipse enim sensus uita est; neque uitam posteriorem a sensu, uti non fiat aliquando sine uita is qui est omnium sensus, hoc est Deus.
39. Ibid. II.13.9.
40. This is not to deny that there are also significant dissimilarities between Irenaeus and Middle Platonic theology, as Lashier has highlighted. See note 17 above.
41. Haer. II.28.2–3. If Mansfeld is correct, then Irenaeus might even have considered God as beyond positive qualification such as simplicity. See Mansfeld, “Compatible Alternatives,” 113–14.
42. For a discussion of this, see Barnes, “Irenaeus’s Trinitarian Theology,” 74–75.
43. Lashier has pointed out that Irenaeus’s affirmation of divine simplicity in Haer. II is primarily a reaction against the Valentinian affirmation of the emitted aeons as “distinct entities.” Lashier, Irenaeus on the Trinity, 86–87. If this is right, then it is possible to argue that Irenaeus’s theology better aligns with the so-called “Monarchian” theology since Irenaeus’s understanding of divine simplicity implies the possibility of dissolving the distinction between the Son and the Father through a process of reunion into a single being, a process analogous to Irenaeus’s account of lights recombined into one light. From this perspective, reading Irenaeus as a “proto-Trinitarian” (as I do here) amounts to doing great violence to his original intentions. In Reinhard M. Hübner (with Markus Vinzent), Der Paradox Eine: Antignostischer Monarchianismus im zweiten Jahrhundert (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 197–98, Hübner set out such an interpretation: “Er [Irenaeus] bestreitet, daß er [Logos] als ein aliud neben dem Vater existiert.” Lashier is unconvinced, however, that Irenaeus can be interpreted in this manner. See Lashier, Irenaeus on the Trinity, 145–46. In my view, Irenaeus is ambiguous on this point so that a “Monarchian” reading such as Hübner’s is equally forced as claiming that Irenaeus conceives of the Logos as a distinctive “second person.”
CHAPTER 4
1. Hübner (with Vinzent), Der Paradox Eine, 198 (my translation).
2. For a brief history of Monarchianism, see Gustave Bardy, “Monarchianisme,” in Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique, ed. Alfred Vacant, E. Mangenot, and Emile Amann (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1929), vol. 10.2: 2193–2209. Bardy offers a helpful historical narrative as well as engaging with most of the critical questions surrounding Monarchianism. The Monarchian controversy stood at the center of the doctrinal context in the third-century Roman Church. This is because two popes—Zephyrinus and Callistus—were both Monarchianis of some sort. See Ronald E. Heine, “The Christology of Callistus,” Journal of Theological Studies 49, no. 1 (1998): 56–91. Heine’s essay offers an excellent reconstruction of Callistus’s theology that is representative of the state of Roman theology in the third century. Heine also provides an insightful reconstruction of the Stoic philosophical background of Monarchianism, as well as a helpful characterization of third-century Monarchian contexts (both Asian and Roman). On Roman Monarchian theology more generally, see the reconstruction in Markus Vinzent, “From Zephyrinus to Damasus: What Did Roman Bishops Believe?,” in Studia Patristica LXIII, ed. Markus Vinzent, 273–86 (Leuven, Belgium: Peeters, 2013).
3. On the problem caused by the notion of “identity” for Trinitarian theology, see Hasker, Metaphysics and the Tri-Personal God, 59.
4. What I am concerned about here is not whether the modern worry is theologically or philosophically warranted. My concern is rather with showing that the modern formulation of the problem is unhelpful for appreciating the historical shape of the problem in the ante-Nicene period. For my attempt to address the modern problem theologically, see Ip, “Re-Imagining Divine Simplicity in Trinitarian Theology.”
5. I have taken this term from Matthew W. Bates, who in turn borrowed it from Marie-Josèphe Rondeau. The term refers to the exegetical task of identifying the prosopa—roles or persons—in a dramatic setting. In a given Scriptural passage, can we identify correctly the distinct roles or persons in play so as to make sense of the passage? Throughout this section, I characterize the Monarchian controversy as a debate about prosopological exegesis in this sense. See Bates, The Birth of the Trinity, especially 31–34. Prosopology as a technique is firmly rooted in classical philology. See Bernhard Neuschäfer, Origenes als Philologe, 2 vols. (Basel: Reinhardt, 1987), 1:263–76. See also Peter W. Martens, Origen and Scripture: The Contours of the Exegetical Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 58–59. For examples of ante-Nicene usage, see Lewis Ayres, “Irenaeus vs. the Valentinians: Toward a Rethinking of Patristic Exegetical Origins,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 25, no. 2 (Summer 2015): 153–87.
6. Gen. 1:26, 18–19, 21:12; Ps. 44:2, 7–9 (LXX); Ps. 109:1 (LXX).
7. See Michael Slusser, “The Exegetical Roots of Trinitarian Theology,” Theological Studies 29 (1988): 461–76. Slusser shows (466–68) that the issues related to prosopological exegesis in the Monarchian controversy were anticipated by Justin Martyr in the Dialogue with Trypho. My perspective on Monarchianism offered here is significantly in debt to the article by Slusser, who writes: “It was a method of literary and grammatical analysis of Scripture that provided the early Christian thinkers with a way to talk about God in a Trinitarian fashion” (475).
8. Adolf von Harnack, History of Dogma, trans. Neil Buchanan, vol. 3 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1907), 1–118. On the historiography of this distinction and its problems, see Xavier Morales, “‘Modalism’—Critical Assessment of a Modern Interpretative Paradigm,” in Studia Patristica CXXIII, ed. Markus Vinzent (Leuven: Peeters, 2021), 237–48.
9. I have argued that this distinction, while terminologically unhelpful, does indeed refer to the heresiological construct found among anti-Monarchians in the early third century. The division is present, for instance, in the heresiological schema found in a fragment of Origen’s Commentary on Titus, reproduced in Pamphilus’s Apol. 33. See Ip, “‘Arianism’ Ante-Litteram.”
10. See Heine, “The Christology of Callistus.”
11. Bardy, “Monarchianisme,” 2194–95.
12. In doing so, I exclude the psilanthropists and adoptionists, who are traditionally referred to as “monarchians” of some sort. See Samuel Fernández, “Verso la teologia Trinitaria di Origene: Metafora e linguaggio teologico,” in Origeniana Decima: Origen as Writer, ed. Sylwia Kaczmarek and Henryk Pietras (Leuven, Belgium: Peeters, 2011), 457–73. In my view, a major reconstruction of the categories that clarify the historical interrelation(s) among the three groups specified by Fernández remains urgently needed.
13. CN 2.3.
14. APrax. 2.
15. CN 2.
16. By the time Hippolytus wrote Contra Noetum, this term was already controversial (see Justin Martyr, Dial. 55–62). While Hippolytus did not explicitly attribute a technical use of the term ἕτερος to Noetus, from the key passages (Ex. 3:6, 20:3; Bar. 3:36–38) used by Noetus we can learn that the term was central to his conception of monotheism. The fact that the use of ἕτερος was under question is further supported by the careful explanation offered by Hippolytus in CN 11.1. According to Hippolytus, when he uses the term ἕτερος, he does not mean two gods. This clarification suggests that Hippolytus anticipates that Noetus would object to the term due to its violation of monotheism.
17. CN 3.2.
18. In all but one of our contemporary sources, these two passages were mentioned and received a full treatment from anti-Monarchians. See CN 7; APrax. 20; Trin. (Novatian) 27.1, 28.2. The only source that did not mention these passages, namely, Pseudo-Hippolytus’s Refutatio omnium haeresium, deliberately withholds the exegetical character of Monarchianism in order to portray the teaching as originated from the philosophy of Heraclitus. See Heine, “The Christology of Callistus,” 60.
19. CN 7.1; APrax. 22; Trin. (Novatian) 27.1–2.
20. CN 7.4; APrax. 24; Trin. (Novatian) 28.2–30.
21. A good illustration of this is John 2:19: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” Origen reports a Monarchian interpretation that attempts to read this passage in conjunction with 1 Cor. 15:15, a passage that suggests God was the one who raised Christ, in order to conclude that the prosopon speaking in John 2.19 is the Father himself. See ComJn X.246. This example illustrates how Monarchians will look for possibilities to interpret a given passage so that the meaning is compatible with the presupposition that there is only one divine acting and speaking subject in Scripture.
22. I do not deal with the Holy Spirit here because it lies outside the scope of this study, which is primarily concerned with the Father-Son relation.
23. Mark DelCogliano, “The Interpretation of John 10:30 in the Third Century: Anti-Monarchian Polemics and the Rise of Grammatical Reading Techniques,” Journal of Theological Interpretation 6 (2012): 117–38.
24. This is by no means the only exegetical technique the anti-Monarchians used to refute Monarchianism. See Ibid., 125–32, for other examples.
25. APrax. 12; Trin. (Novatian) 27.
26. APrax. 12.
27. CN 7; APrax. 22; Trin. (Novatian) 27.
28. CN 7.1.
29. Ibid. 7.2–3. Here we have a problematic usage of “substance” that lies beyond the scope of this chapter. But it reveals one of the most crucial yet trickiest issues in Trinitarian theology: Does the affirmation of “one substance” deny any distinction between the Father and the Son, ending up with the Monarchian position? Hippolytus’s statement here seems to suggest that this is the case, whereas Tertullian is happy to use, to denote the unity between the Father and the Son, una substantia, which will respect the distinction between the two (APrax. 2, 12). See Ernest Evans, ed., Tertullian’s Treatise against Praxeas: The Text Edited, with an Introduction, Translation, and Commentary (London: S.P.C.K, 1948), 39–45.
30. APrax. 22.
31. Trin. (Novatian) 27.2.
32. Ibid., 27.4.
33. Ibid., 27.5.
34. The Son as persona is the sense of his distinct existence that Tertullian needs to preserve in his account of generation. See APrax. 7: “Whatever therefore the substance of the Word was, that I call a Person, and for it I claim the name of Son; and while I acknowledge him as Son I maintain he is another beside the Father (secundum a patre).” Thus persona for Tertullian captures his anti-Monarchianism, as indicated by the phrase secumdum a patre in the last sentence.
35. APrax. 8.
36. Hübner, of course, argues that Irenaeus’s rejection of Valentinian emissions obviously leads to a commitment to Monarchianism. See Hübner (with Vinzent), Der Paradox Eine, 197–98. But I prefer to interpret Irenaeus as ambiguous on this point because Hübner’s interpretation requires a huge amount of speculative redating of second-century documents, on which much doubt has been cast by scholars. See the reviews of Hübner’s Der Paradox Eine by Mark J. Edwards in Journal of Theological Studies 52.1 (2001): 354–56; by Michael Slusser in Journal of Early Christian Studies 9.3 (2001): 407–8; by Allen Brent in Journal of Ecclesiastical History 53, no. 1 (2002): 114–17; and by Wolfram Kinzig in Theologische Literaturzeitung 131, no. 9 (2006): 1015–18.
37. APrax. 8.
38. See the fascinating exploration in Orbe, Hacia, 2:584–603. Orbe argues that this distinction is equivalent to the distinction between κατὰ μερισμόν and κατὰ ἀποκοπἠν in Tatian, Orat. V. While Orbe’s thesis is conjectural, what seems clear is that in the ante-Nicene period there is a theological awareness of two kinds of “distinctions” that could result from the process of generation: one that preserves unity between the generator and the generated and another that compromises this unity.
39. APrax. 9.
40. Ibid., 8.
41. Ibid.
42. In fact, it is hardly probable that Tertullian was committed to divine simplicity along the lines of Middle Platonic theology. This is indicated by his lack of use of simplicitas/simplex in relation to God. The only entries on these terms in René Braun, Deus Christianorum: Recherches sur le vocabulaire doctrinal de Tertullien, 2nd ed. (Paris: Études augustiniennes, 1977), is found in the context of the soul (147, n. 2) and the simplistic interpretation of Scripture (261, 266).
43. Monarchia is Tertullian’s primary way of speaking about the lack of divisions in God. See APrax. 3–4, 8.
CHAPTER 5
1. See Robert M. Berchman, From Philo to Origen: Middle Platonism in Transition, Brown Judaic Studies 69 (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1984), 123–27; Peter Widdicombe, The Fatherhood of God from Origen to Athanasius (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 22–25. While he does not recognize the ethical sense of simplicity, Widdicombe rightly highlights the close connection in Origen between God as the good and the metaphysical notion of God as “he who is“ (ὁ ὤν) (26).
2. As in Philo, as I noted at the end of chapter 2.
3. This synthesis is so striking that Alfons Fürst has recently called it “das metaphysisch-ethische Einheitsdenken des Origenes” (Origen’s metaphysical-ethical doctrine of oneness). See Die Homilien zum Ersten Buch Samuel, trans. Alfons Fürst (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2014), 31–59.
4. See Berchman, From Philo to Origen, 113–64, for a detailed analysis of Origen’s doctrine of the first principles.
5. Identifying Origen as a Platonist is controversial. See Edwards, Origen against Plato, for an argument against calling Origen a Platonist. But, for a different perspective on the question, see Ilaria L. E. Ramelli, “Origen and the Platonic Tradition,” Religions 8, no. 2 (February 2017): 1–20. My perspective is more aligned with Ramelli’s than with that of Edwards here, although, of course, by using the label “Christian Platonist” I am indicating that Origen is not exactly the same sort of “Platonist” as pagan Platonists, a point stressed by Edwards. Scholars also debate whether Origen’s philosophical theology is to be aligned with Middle Platonic or Neo-Platonic tendencies. See Berchman, From Philo to Origen, 113–17, for a review of the debate. In my view, Berchman’s situation of Origen as “Middle Platonic” is helpful. Among many things, this approach sheds light on Origen’s insistence on God as a simple intellectual existence. Further, Origen’s early philosophical theology as set out in PArch I.1 seems to align with Middle Platonic theology as found, for example, in Alcinous (Did. 10). Nonetheless, as we shall see in the next chapter, there is an anti-Monarchian strand of Origen’s exegetical theology that stresses the differentiation between the Father and the Son in a way that resembles the Neo-Pythagorean (e.g., Numenius, fr. 11 [des Places]) hierarchical understanding of the archai. This strand of Origen’s theology bears resemblance to Neo-Platonism.
6. See George E. Karamanolis, The Philosophy of Early Christianity (London: Routledge, 2014), 60–116.
7. Origen expresses uncertainty as to whether God is to be identified as mind or whether he transcends mind (e.g., CCels. VII.38). See Widdicombe, The Fatherhood of God, 34–43, for a discussion of this problem.
8. As Boys-Stones has highlighted, Platonists at Origen’s time conceived of God as the “same sort of thing as a form,” hence obviously incorporeal. See Boys-Stones, Platonist Philosophy, 147.
9. The solution is found in PArch I.1, where Origen identifies the term “invisible” (ἀόρατον) in Scripture as equivalent to ἀσώματον. See also PArch II.3.6. The conclusion of his inquiry on this problem is given in PArch IV.3.15.
10. Guy Stroumsa argues that while the latter appear frequently in Origen’s corpus for their literal reading of Scripture, including language that applies physical properties or motions to God, the former are more likely to be Origen’s target. See G. Stroumsa, “The Incorporeality of God,” Religion 13, no. 4 (1983): 346–47. This identification is also made by Berchman, From Philo to Origen, 259, 276–80, and Edwards, Origen against Plato, 57.
11. For a good summary of the principles in Stoic physics, see A. A. Long and D. N. Sedley, eds., The Hellenistic Philosophers, vol. 1: Translations of the Principal Sources with Philosophical Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 270–72. See, for instance, the report of Stoic physics found in Alexander of Aphrodisias’s On Mixture in Brad Inwood, Stoics Reader: Selected Writings and Testimonia, trans. Lloyd P. Gerson (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2008), 95 (Text 67).
12. For an overview of this issue, see Ricardo Salles, ed., God and Cosmos in Stoicism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 6.
13. Michael J. White, “Stoic Natural Philosophy (Physics and Cosmology),” in The Cambridge Companion to the Stoics, ed. Brad Inwood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 130.
14. CCels. I.21 (translation from Chadwick, slightly modified).
15. CCels. VI.69.
16. Berchman, From Philo to Origen, 276–77; White, “Stoic Natural Philosophy,” 133–38.
17. CCels. VI.71: “Because Celsus has not comprehended the doctrine about the Spirit of God . . . he takes into his head the notion that when we say ‘God is spirit,’ there is in this respect no difference between us and the Stoics among the Greeks who affirm that God is spirit that has permeated all things and contains all things within itself.”
18. On the Stoic interpretation of “spirit” (pneuma), see Inwood, Stoics Reader, 93–96.
19. CCels. VI.71.
20. Ibid., I.21, III.75.
21. Ibid., IV.14.
22. Ibid., I.21. See also PEuch XXI.2.
23. “Let us grant, again, that we turn away others from Stoic physicians because they think that God is corruptible [φθαρτὸν], and affirm that His essence is a material substance [τὴν ούσίαν αὐτοῦ λεγόντων σῶμα], which is entirely changeable and subject to alteration and transformation [τρεπτὸν δι’ ὅλων καὶ ἀλλοιωτὸν καὶ μεταβλητὸν], and believe that at some times everything is destroyed and God alone left (Chadwick).
24. Rep. 380d.
25. Ibid., 380d–386c.
26. CCels. IV.14. This strategy of interpreting anthropomorphic language in Scripture as divine pedagogy closely resembles what we find in Philo’s Deus. See, for example, Deus 60–69.
27. CCels. IV.12. The verb Origen uses to describe the Christian interpretation is τροπολογέω, a key verb in the Origenian vocabulary that is closely related to ἀλληγορέω. See Lorenzo Perrone, ed., Origenes: Die neuen Psalmenhomilien; Eine kritische Edition des Codex Monacensis Graecus 314, trans. Lorenzo Perrone (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2015), 11 (esp. n. 28). As Robert Lamberton has noted, the verb τροπολογέω appears extensively in Origen’s corpus but “has virtually no existence in Greek outside the literature of Hellenizing Judaism and of Christianity.” Robert Lamberton, Homer the Theologian: Neoplatonist Allegorical Reading and the Growth of the Epic Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 62.
28. See also PEuch. XXIII.
29. CCels. I.21. As we shall see, these passages will also be important in Origen’s discussion of the ethical sense of divine simplicity.
30. Ibid., IV.14.
31. Ibid., VII.38.
32. PArch I.1.6 (translation from Behr, slightly modified): “Now mind, to move and operate, needs no bodily space, nor sensible magnitude, nor bodily shape or colour, nor does it need anything else whatever of things proper to bodies or matter.”
33. E.g., Alcinous, Did. 10.165,16–19; Clement of Alexandria, Str. V.11–12.
34. On the method of abstraction, see Raoul Mortley, “The Fundamentals of the Via Negativa,” American Journal of Philology 103, no. 4 (1982): 429–39. See especially Henny Fiskå Hägg, Clement of Alexandria and the Beginnings of Christian Apophaticism: Knowing the Unknowable (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 71–133, for a helpful survey of Middle Platonic negative theology.
35. PArch I.1.6 (translation from Behr, slightly modified).
36. Ibid.
37. According to Origen, only the divine nature has the privilege to exist entirely without bodies and association with material substance. See PArch I.6.4, I.7.1, II.2.2, II.9.1, IV.3.15, IV.4.8.
38. Ibid., IV.3.15.
39. Ibid., I.1.8.
40. Ibid., II.4.3.
41. This two-step process reflects the explicit methodological approach in this work, stated in PArch praef. 10.
42. In my view, Origen’s basic understanding on this topic remains consistent throughout his works. The examples discussed in this part of the chapter will provide evidence for this claim, since I draw on a variety of writings across genres and times of composition.
43. SelGn (PG 12: 112), my translation.
44. Philoc. V.2–3.
45. The term θεώρημα in this context refers to the multiple Scriptural titles of Christ discussed in detail in Books 1 and 2 of Origen’s Commentary on John. See ComJn I.244.
46. Philoc. V.4, 13–16 (translation from FoC 80, slightly modified).
47. Philoc. V.4, 16–20.
48. John 5:39.
49. Origen makes this point on the basis of his reading of Ps. 39:7 (LXX) as spoken by Jesus himself: “In the volume of the Book it is written of me.” Origen provides numerous other examples to argue that Scripture itself utilizes the sense of the one book that goes beyond its literal meaning of numerical oneness. See Philoc. V.5.
50. Dan. 7:10. See Philoc. V.5–7 for Origen’s full argument on the point that one can find in Scripture the opposition between the one and many, understood in the ethical sense.
51. HomEz 9.1.
52. Ibid., 9.2.
53. Philoc. VIII.2.
54. Ibid., VIII.3, 1–9.
55. Hom1S I.4, 8–14: Nos, qui adhuc peccatores sumus, non possumus istum titulum laudis acquirere, quia unusquisque nostrum non est unus, sed multi. Intuere namque mihi illius uultum nunc irati, nunc iterum tristis, paulo post rursum gaudentis et iterum turbati et rursum lenis, in alio tempore de rebus diuinis et uitae aeternae actibus consulentis, paulo post uero, uel quae ad auaritiam uel quae ad gloriam saeculi pertinent, molientis. Vides, quomodo ille, qui putatur unus esse, non est unus, sed tot in eo personae uidentur esse, quot mores, quia et secundum scripturas “insipiens sicut luna mutatur” (translation from Christian Hengstermann, made available to the author through private communication, slightly modified).
56. Hom1S I.4.
57. HomLv V.12.9, 127–29.
58. PEuch XXI.2 (italics mine).
59. The view of corporeality espoused by Origen’s contemporary Numenius of Apamea. See Numenius, fr. 4a and 4b (des Places).
CHAPTER 6
1. ComJn I.119.
2. According to G. C. Stead, the differentiation between an absolute simple first God and a “second” God who is one-many became necessary due to the need to explain how the simple God could govern the world of change and multiplicity. Such a differentiation subsequently gained support from a particular reading of Plato’s Parmenides and was eventually passed down to the Christian writers. See Stead, Divine Substance, 93–94, 164, 186–87; Stead, “Divine Simplicity as a Problem for Orthodoxy,” 262.
3. Numenius, fr. 11 (des Places).
4. Eric F. Osborn, The Emergence of Christian Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 53.
5. Stead, Divine Substance, 187.
6. See Pan. 64.4, 2–4.
7. Ilaria L. E. Ramelli exemplifies this trajectory of interpretation. See Ramelli, “Origen’s Anti-Subordinationism”; Ilaria L. E. Ramelli, “Origen, Greek Philosophy, and the Birth of the Trinitarian Meaning of Hypostasis,” Harvard Theological Review 105, no. 3 (2012): 302–50. The most recent comprehensive treatment of Origen’s Trinitarian theology, Bruns, Trinität und Kosmos, recognizes Origen’s own third-century contexts, but the agenda of the author is still set by the “retrospective” question, as pointed out by Mark Edwards in his review of the book in the Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 66, no. 2 (2015): 390–91.
8. Here I am following a trajectory dominant in Spanish and Italian scholarship. See Orbe, Hacia, 1:387–452; Simonetti, La crisi ariana nel IV secolo, 11–15; Fernández, “La generación del Logos”; Fernández, “Verso la teologia trinitaria di Origene.” This point is also made by Henri Crouzel, Théologie de l’image de Dieu chez Origène (Paris: Aubier, 1956), 111–12, but Crouzel does not develop it further. In English scholarship, the only one to my knowledge who has developed the thesis of an anti-Monarchian function in Origen’s doctrine of the three hypostases is Alastair H. B. Logan, in “Origen and the Development of Trinitarian Theology,” in Origeniana Quarta, ed. Lothar Lies (Innsbruck: Tyrolia, 1987), 424–29. Williams briefly mentions Origen’s anti-Monarchianism in passing. See Williams, Arius, 143.
9. ComJn II.16 (ET: Heine, slightly modified).
10. ComTi apud Pamphilus, Apol. 33 [7], 40–50.
11. ComRm VIII.5.9.
12. The exact identities of Origen’s opponents in these reports are difficult to determine. Several possible known targets could be associated with these reports. First, Origen could have in mind Beryllus of Bostra since his teaching, summarized by Eusebius in HE VI.33.1, resembles a Monarchian position. Second, Origen could be thinking of the unknown Monarchian group attacked in Dialogue with Heraclides. On this group, see Henry Chadwick and J.E.L. Oulton, eds., Alexandrian Christianity (Philadelphia: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006), 430–34. Third, Origen could be thinking of the Roman Monarchians he met during his visit to Rome. The most detailed modern treatment with respect to the Roman side of the question is Heine, “The Christology of Callistus.” Origen could be referring to Callistus’s theology or to Sabellian theology, which utilizes more technical terminologies. See also Stephen E. Waers, “Wisdom Christology and Monarchianism in Origen’s Commentary on John,” Greek Orthodox Theological Review 60, nos. 3–4 (2015): 96–98. Waers offers a clear introduction and a detailed survey of the literature, once again with respect to the more restricted question on the relation between Origen and Roman Monarchianism. On the difficult but important question concerning Origen’s historical relation with Monarchianism, see Fernández, “La Generación Del Logos” especially 194–98. For a more detailed argument for identifying these two groups as Origen’s most likely polemical targets in his Trinitarian thought, see Ip, “‘Arianism’ Ante-Litteram.”
13. This group consistently appears in Origen’s heresiological reports. See also ComJn XXXII.193 and DialHe 4.
14. I am convinced that this is a crucial doctrinal detail that unites the two groups in Origen’s mind. This is supported by Ronald Heine’s detailed work, too. See Heine, “The Christology of Callistus,” 71. As Heine points out here, the difference between modalist (“Monarchian” in my terms) and adoptionist (“psilanthopist” in my terms) tendencies likely lies in the manner in which the historic Christ “became” (in time) divine. The Monarchians saw the divine and the human as having come together at Jesus’s conception, the psilanthropists at Jesus’s baptism. However, both positions share the common denial of a pre-existent Son of God before the historic Christ. Wishing to avoid ditheism, Monarchians argue that before the incarnation there was only one divine ὑπόστασις, the Father himself. There was no pre-existent divine Son because the Son became divine through conjoining with the Father’s divine Spirit in the incarnation. Wishing to avoid ditheism, too, psilanthropists agree with the first group concerning the existence of only one divine ὑπόστασις. But for them, there was no pre-existent divine Son because it was during his baptism that the divine Spirit of the Father entered into the man Jesus.
15. Origen’s “subordinationism,” most evident in his Commentary on John, has received a detailed treatment by Giovanni Hermanin de Reichenfeld. This author calls what I term Origen’s hierarchical understanding of the Father-Son relation an “ontological subordinationism of priority,” indicating that differentiating between the divine persons in no way indicates an ordering of perfection; that is, when Origen affirms one divine person is “greater than” another, he simply indicates the ontological dependence of one on the other and in no way implies a difference in divine perfection. See Giovanni Hermanin de Reichenfeld, The Spirit, the World and the Trinity: Origen’s and Augustine’s Understanding of the Gospel of John (Leuven: Brepols, 2021), 39–59 (on the Father-Son relation), 59–71 (on the Holy Spirit). In what follows, I largely agree with Hermanin de Reichenfeld’s thesis, though I prefer to avoid the terminology “subordinationism” and emphasize more than Hermanin de Reichenfeld does the “anti-Monarchian” context of Origen’s approach. These differences aside, my analysis in this chapter (and the next) should be read in conjunction with de Reichenfeld’s work since he completes the picture I offer by discussing the Holy Spirit’s relation with the Father and the Son.
16. It will become apparent that my argument has been significantly shaped by the speculative yet illuminating analyses in Orbe, Hacia, 1:437–48. While following Orbe’s analysis of Origen’s anti-Monarchian commitments (1:431–37), nevertheless my analysis of the ἐπίνοιαι in the main body of this chapter set out an alternative approach to the speculative philosophical approach offered by Orbe to fill in the content of Origen’s hierarchical account of the Father-Son relationship.
17. For a more comprehensive analysis of Origen’s anti-Monarchian passages, see Antonio Orbe, “Origenes y los Monarquianos,” Gregorianum 72, no. 1 (1991): 39–72. It will become clear, though, that I judge Origen’s anti-Monarchianism to be a far more important factor in his Trinitarian theology than Orbe would allow.
18. On the doctrine of three hypostases, see also ComJn II.75; HomLv XIII.4. As we shall see in the next chapter, Origen also prefers to steer clear of Monarchianism by speaking of the unity between the Father and the Son in terms of their harmony of mind and will, a key emphasis in CCels. VIII.12. See Orbe, Hacia, 1:438. On this theme, see ComJn XIII.228–34; PArch I.2.6. It makes sense that this theme assumes prominence in Origen since this model of unity grounded in harmony of mind, will, and act is clearly an anti-Monarchian strategy, as seen in Hippolytus (CN 14), Tertullian (APrax. 3) and Novatian (Trin. XXVII.4).
19. This debate between Monarchians and anti-Monarchians concerning the mode of reference of divine names has had an enduring significance in the development of patristic Trinitarian theology. In the fourth century it evolved into the debate between the Cappadocians and the Eunomians. On this debate, see Mark DelCogliano, Basil of Caesarea’s Anti-Eunomian Theory of Names: Christian Theology and Late-Antique Philosophy in the Fourth Century Trinitarian Controversy (Leiden: Brill, 2010).
20. Καἰ τὸ πολλούς φιλοθέους εἶναι εὐχομένους παράσσον, εὐλαβουμένους δύο ἀναγορεῦσαι θεούς καὶ παρὰ τοῡτο περιπίπτοντας ψευδέσι καὶ ἀσεβέσι δόγμασιν, ἤτοι ἀρνουμένους ἰδιότητα υἱοῦ ἑτέραν παρὰ τὴν τοῦ πατρὸς ὁμολογοῦντας θεὸν εἶναι τὸν μέχρι ὀνόματος παρ’αὐτοῖς υἱὸν προσαγορευόμενον, ἣ ἀρνουμένους τὴν θεότητα τοῦ υἱοῦ τιθέντας δὲ αὐτοῦ τὴν ἰδιότητα καὶ τὴν οὐσίαν κατὰ περιγραφὴν τυγχάνουσαν ἑτέραν τοῦ πατρός, ἐντεῦθεν λύεσθαι δύναται. From ἣ ἀρνουμένους τὴν θεότητα τοῦ υἱοῦ. Origen describes a second position.
21. ComJn II.149.
22. Orbe, Hacia, 1:431–32. Subsequently, Orbe draws the connection between Origen’s anti-Monarchianism and the theology of Eunomius. If Origen indeed had the Father-Son distinction κατ’ οὐσίαν in mind in his polemic against the Monarchians, then by emphasizing that the Son’s essence (οὐσία) is other than that of the Father, the Eunomian logic is somewhat “Origenian.” For Eunomius’s theology, see Richard Paul Vaggione, Eunomius of Cyzicus and the Nicene Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). As shall become clear, I am not entirely convinced about Orbe’s claim here.
23. ComJn II.150–54.
24. Ibid., X. 246 (Heine translation slightly modified).
25. See the suggestive conjectures in Orbe, “Origenes y los Monarquianos,” 45–48; Orbe, Hacia, 1:436–37.
26. Unfortunately, we have little evidence beyond the heresiological reports that the Monarchians themselves indeed formulated their position in these technical terms. As Le Boulluec and Nautin have argued, Origen often presents an abstract and oversystematized account of heresy that might not reflect the true positions of his opponents. ComJn X.246 might simply reflect an instance of this at work. See Alain Le Boulluec, La notion d’hérésie dans la littérature grecque, IIe-IIIe siècles, vol. 2: Clément d’Alexandrie et Origène (Paris: Études augustiniennes, 1985), 519–42; Pierre Nautin, Lettres et écrivains chrétiens des IIe et IIIe siècles, Collana patristica e del pensiero cristiano 2 (Paris: Cerf, 1961), 216.
27. In PEuch XV.1 we have another testimony to the use of ὑποκείμενον in the context of Origen’s anti-Monarchian critique: “For if, as is shown elsewhere, the Son is different from the Father in person and in subject (ἕτερος . . . κατ’ οὐσίαν καὶ ὑποκείμενόν ἐστιν ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ πατρὸς), we must pray either to the Son and not to the Father, or to both, or to the Father alone.” See also ComMt XVII.14. When commenting on Matt. 21:46, Origen attempts to safeguard this verse from οἱ συγχέοντες πατρὸς καὶ υἱοῦ ἔννοιαν καὶ τῇ ὑποστάσει ἕνα διδόντες εἶναι τὸν πατέρα καὶ τὸν υἱόν. Here Origen is likely referring to the Monarchians, who took this verse to support the claim that there was no pre-existing divine Son of God who possessed a distinct individual existence. He then qualifies the Monarchian view further with reference to ὑποκείμενον: τῇ ἐπινοίᾳ μόνῃ καὶ τοῖς ὀνόμασι <μόνοις> διαιροῦντες τὸ ἓν ὑποκείμενον (GCS 40, 623, 15–16). It seems safe to conjecture that there must be some intrinsic connection between the affirmation of one ὑπόστασις and one ὑποκείμενον either in the original Monarchian view or in Origen’s polemical portrayal of this view.
28. The most illuminating attempts remain the ones offered by Orbe and Simonetti. Orbe suggests that Origen thinks the term “Spirit” (πνεῦμα) was conceived as the first generic ὑποκείμενον common between the Father and the Son. This ὑποκείμενον is, in turn, was individualized by different properties (ἰδίοτητες), which is how Origen differentiates the Father and Son. This position was developed in Orbe, Hacia, 1:431–48. Simonetti is of the opinion that Orbe’s position is a bit overly speculative. His own position is that Origen did not rely on postulating a common ὑποκείμενον that was then individuated differently in order to differentiate the Father and the Son. Rather, Simonetti argues that Origen thinks it is the distinct properties that serve to identify and characterize a particular individual being. Hence, the Father and the Son are distinguished by the unique properties each possesses, and they are two ὑποστάσεις and (perhaps) οὐσίαι. See Manlio Simonetti, Studi sulla cristologia del II e III secolo (Rome: Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, 1993), 109–23. Both Orbe and Simonetti attempt to arrive at a systematic understanding of Origen’s use of these terms. These analyses are suggestive and illuminating, but in what follows I shall take a less speculative approach since, in my view, while Origen was no doubt a systematic writer, he was nowhere as systematic as the accounts of Orbe and Simonetti suggest. It will become clear that my understanding is somewhat closer to that of Simonetti than to that of Orbe.
29. ComJn XIII.151.
30. CCels. VIII.14.
31. ComMt XV.10.
32. ComJn XIII.152.
33. Ibid., II.123.
34. See Heb. 2:9.
35. John 14:6.
36. ComJn II.163.
37. Ibid., II.167–70.
38. Ibid., II.166.
39. Ibid., II.11–12. For a detailed analysis of Origen’s anti-Monarchian approach to these verses, see Ronald E. Heine, “Stoic Logic as Handmaid to Exegesis and Theology in Origen’s Commentary on the Gospel of John,” Journal of Theological Studies 44, no. 1 (1993): 90–117.
40. ComJn II.12.
41. Origen is perhaps following Philo in making this distinction between God and “The God” since this is already found in Somn. I.229–30.
42. ComJn II.14.
43. Ibid., II.14–5.
44. Ibid., II.12, 18.
45. Ibid., II.17.
46. One possible schema to capture the precision of Origen’s understanding here is provided by Hermanin de Reichenfeld, The Spirit, the World and the Trinity, 45–46. According to de Reichenfeld, we can say that Origen possesses an ontological “subordinationism of priority.” What this phrase indicates is that Origen thinks the Father and the Son are two distinct ontological entities, yet both of them share the same set of attributes “at the same level, but the attribute of the second are completely derived from the first.” Ontological subordinationism of priority, in this schema, does not necessarily imply “ontological subordinationism of superiority,” which implies that the Father possesses the same set of attributes (e.g., goodness) as the Son but in a more perfect way. De Reichenfeld’s schema offers systematic clarity, but I have doubts that within Origen’s Platonic framework it is possible to make the differentiation between superiority and priority in the way de Reichenfeld intends. For it seems that in Platonic philosophy that which is prior with respect to an attribute (hence, the source and form of it) already entails a sense of possessing the attribute in the most perfect way. For it is the precise purpose of the theory of forms to identify the difference between perfect instances of something (e.g., the form of goodness) and an imperfect instance of something (e.g., particular goods). It is thus unclear to me whether de Reichenfeld’s schema would be intelligible in Origen’s philosophical understanding.
47. Origen has in mind the mention of “gods” in Ps. 50:1 (LXX): “The God of gods, the Lord has spoken.”
48. Origen is not systematic when it comes to the description of the Son’s possession of the absolute patrological titles. Sometimes, as in the case of divinity, he speaks of the Son participating in the Father. Other times, as in the case of goodness, he speaks of the Son as the image of the Father (ComMt XV.10; ComJn XIII.234). What is clear, however, is that with respect to the absolute patrological titles, the Son’s possession of these qualities is derived from their source, namely, the Father himself.
49. Otras, solo virtualmente (tanquam in causa) contenidas en la substancia del Padre (Orbe, Hacia, 1:442).
50. See ComJn I.104–5, II.20.
51. The most detailed discussion of this distinction is found in ComJn I.247–51, II.125–26.
52. ComJn II.125: “We must know, however, that the Savior has some things not for himself, but for others, and that he has some things for himself and for others. And we must inquire if he has some things for himself and for no one else” (Χρὴ μέντοι γε εἰδίναι ὅτι τινὰ ὁ σωτὴρ οὐχ αὑτῷ ἐστιν ἀλλ’ ἑτέροις, τινὰ δὲ αὑτῷ καὶ ἑτέροις· ζητητέον δὲ εἴ τινα ἑαυτῷ καὶ οὐδενί).
53. See ComJn I.120–24.
54. Ibid., XXXII.322.
55. See also ibid., XXVIII.157–70. Ibid., XXVIII.159: “And since he who dies is a man, but the truth, and wisdom, and peace, and justice, and him of whom it is written, ‘The Word was God,’ were not man, the Word which was God, and the truth, and wisdom, and justice did not die, for the Image of the invisible God, the Firstborn of all creation does not admit of death.”
56. On this point, see also ComMt XV.10. See also Origen’s discussion of the formal causation in ComJn I.104–5, where he elaborates on this analogy based on the language of “image.”
57. Ibid., I.243–46.
58. Ibid., I.244.
59. Ibid., I.246.
60. Ibid., II.21–31.
61. Ibid., II.20.
62. Ibid., II.28–31.
63. This is a common charge made by Origen against the Epicureans and even the Aristotelians. See CCels. III.75.
64. ComJn II.32–33.
65. Ibid., VI.37–39.
66. Ibid., VI.38.
67. Ibid., VI.40.
68. Ibid., I.241–42.
69. Ibid., XX.239: “But I wonder whether to have stood in the truth is something single and simple, and not to have stood in it is something complex and manifold” (Ἀλλ’ ἐφίστημι μήποτε ἓν μέν τι καὶ μονοειδές ἐστιν τὸ ἑστηκέναι ἐν τῇ ἀληθείᾳ, ποικίλον δέ τι καὶ πολύτροπον τὸ μὴ ἑστηκέναι ἐν αὐτῇ).
70. ComJn II.40.
71. Thus Origen already anticipates the idea that some aspect of Christ will come to an end in the eschaton. This idea was developed more fully by Marcellus of Ancyra in the fourth century. See Joseph T. Lienhard, Contra Marcellum: Marcellus of Ancyra and Fourth-Century Theology (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1999), 64–66.
72. ComJn I.120–24.
73. Ibid., I.120
74. Ibid., I.121
75. Ibid., I.122
76. P. Tzamalikos argues that of all Christological titles, only “Wisdom” and “Word” are not subject to becoming. See P. Tzamalikos, Origen: Cosmology and Ontology of Time (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 37. Tzamalikos’s position is based on a careful analysis of the sense in which Wisdom and Word were always (and thus did not become) in God. Tzamalikos’s analysis is illuminating, but in my view, further analyses are needed to substantiate a further differentiation between Wisdom and Word from the rest of what I have called “absolute Sonship titles” (truth, justice, and power). It seems clear to me that Origen also considers these titles as free from “becoming.”
77. ComJn I.123.
78. It seems clear that Origen’s intuition is that while the absolute titles will remain, the soteriological titles assumed “for us” will not.
79. ComJn II.112–32.
80. Ibid., II.128: “If indeed ‘life’ and ‘light of men’ are the same—for the Scripture says, ‘What was made in him was life, and the life was the light of men’—and the light of men is the light of some, and not of all spiritual beings, but is the light ‘of men’ insofar as the light ‘of men’ is specified, he would be also the life of those men of whom he is also the light. And, insofar as he is life, the Savior would be said to be life not for himself, but for those others of whom he is also the light.”
81. ComJn II.129.
82. Ibid., VI.103–8
83. This diagram is an expansion of the one found in Orbe, Hacia, 1:443. Orbe’s diagram focuses mainly on a strict comparison between the Father and the Son at the level of essence (οὐσία). I have added a third category of titles that will become important in my critical engagement with Orbe’s view.
84. ComJn I.62, VI.105. The Father is the one who is immutable and unchangeable (ComJn VI.193).
85. Ibid., VI.193, 295.
86. Ibid., II.17–18.
87. Hence, Origen seems to accept that “the gods” refers to the heavenly bodies—the sun, moon, and stars, and so on. In ComJn II.25 Origen argues from Deut. 4:19–20 that when God “assigned to all the nations” the host of heavens as their gods, he did so on the one hand to indicate that the Israelites should worship the greater god, namely, “The God” himself. On the other hand, however, God assigned the heavenly bodies for the nations to worship because, according to Origen, this is still better than for them to worship idols made by the hands of men. Origen thought that the sense in which the heavenly bodies are “more divine” than idols made by men justifies the application of “god” to them as the third order in the hierarchy of divinity. On the heavenly bodies as “rational beings,” see Alan Scott, Origen and the Life of the Stars: A History of an Idea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).
88. “God the Word is the minister of deity to all the other gods.” ComJn II.19.
89. ComJn II.27.
90. Ibid., II.20–21.
91. John 17:3.
92. It is important to emphasize that figure 6.1 offers only a partial account of Origen’s hierarchical understanding of divinity given that the Holy Spirit is missing. Τhe Holy Spirit will fit into figure 6.1 as the third item on the list below the Son. Moreover, there should also be an additional line dividing the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit from the remaining items on the list. Properly speaking, in Origen’s system the Holy Spirit is both divine and created. On the one hand, the Holy Spirit is perfectly divine as he eternally participates in the paternal source of divinity through the Son. On the other hand, the Holy Spirit belongs to “all things” that were created through the Logos (cf. John 1:3; ComJn II.72f.). It is therefore the Holy Spirit who sits at the boundary between God and creation. See Hermanin de Reichenfeld, The Spirit, the World and the Trinity, 59–71, 111–51.
93. Orbe, Hacia, 1:446.
94. ComJn I.119.
95. An ontological characterization of the Father-Son distinction is one that is grounded in the strict comparison between these characteristics of the Father’s οὐσία and the characteristics of the Son’s οὐσία.
96. ComJn I.52.
97. “And it is not extraordinary if, as we have said before, the Savior being many good things has conceived in himself things which are first and second and third” (ComJn I.112, italics mine). Here Origen is clearly referring to the discussion in ComJn I.51–62.
98. ComJn I.119.
99. On this point see ComJn I.246, 251 (on wisdom), ComJn II.22–23, 28–31, 33 (on Word), ComJn VI.38–39 (on truth).
100. Philoc. V.4. See my discussion in chapter 5.
101. See CN 3.2. This is also Tertullian’s charge against the Monarchians throughout Adversus Praxean Liber.
102. My conclusion, then, resonates with the one made by Crouzel long ago, namely, that “he [Origen] seems to reduce the Logos-God to his role as mediator.” Crouzel, Théologie de l’image, 127 (my translation).
103. In fact, in my view there are a number of further plausible conjectures we can make on the basis of the data we have examined in the schema above. First, Orbe’s point can be construed not as an interpretation of how the Father’s simplicity is contrasted with the Son’s complexity in ComJn I.119, but as a reconstruction of the sense in which Origen holds that the Father and the Son are distinct κατ᾽οὐσίαν. This distinction is set out such that whereas the Father’s οὐσία possesses only one kind of property, the Son’s οὐσία possesses two kinds. Interpreted this way, Orbe’s argument is quite plausible. Further, the same argument can be used to elaborate on the content of what it means for “Fatherhood” to be a distinct ἰδίοτης from “Sonship.” For the details of Orbe’s reconstruction, see Orbe, Hacia, 1:440–48.
CHAPTER 7
1. Crouzel, Théologie de l’image, 83–98 focuses on image; Widdicombe, The Fatherhood of God, chap. 3, focuses on Fatherhood. The analysis that is most sensitive to the polemical contexts surrounding Origen’s account is found in Orbe, Hacia, 1:431–52, and Orbe, Hacia, 2:674–92. In my opinion, though, Orbe’s discussion is overly concerned with the connection between Origen and Arianism.
2. Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy, 20–30; Williams, Arius, 131–48; Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God, 61–70.
3. Many have analyzed the polemical contexts of Origen’s Wisdom Christology based on John 1:1–2 in ComJn. See Ronald E. Heine, Origen: Scholarship in the Service of the Church (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 89–103; Waers, “Wisdom Christology.” Though as far as I know, we do not have a sustained analysis of PArch I.2 interpreted primarily in the light of Origen’s third-century contexts. This is unfortunate because it is in this chapter of PArch that we find Origen’s most detailed analysis of Wis. 7:25–26. My perspective has been anticipated by Alastair H. B. Logan in “Origen and Alexandrian Wisdom Christology,” in Origeniana Tertia, ed. Richard Hanson and Henri Crouzel (Rome: Edizione dell’Ateneo, 1985), 123–29, where he writes: “The question then arises: was this all simply Origen’s own theologizing on the basis of Sap [= Wis.] 7, 25–6 regarded by him as Scripture or as complementing the more acceptable scriptural text like He[b]. 1,3, developed to answer threats from Gnostics and Modalists?” (128). Logan’s second option is the possibility explored in this chapter.
4. PArch I.2.6, IV.4.1.
5. I find persuasive Tzamalikos’s argument concerning Rufinus’s lack of understanding concerning Origen’s use of temporal language with respect to the Son. See P. Tzamalikos, Origen: Cosmology and Ontology of Time (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 9–18. Further evidence of Rufinus’s lack of reliability when it comes to the Son’s generation is discussed in R. P. C. Hanson, “Did Origen Teach That the Son Is ek tēs ousias of the Father?,” in Origeniana Quarta, ed. Lothar Lies (Innsbruck: Tyrolia, 1987), 201–2; and Rowan D. Williams, “Damnosa Haereditas: Pamphilus’ Apology and the Reputation of Origen,” in Logos: Festschrift für Luise Abramowski zum 8. Juli 1993, ed. Christoph Markschies, Hanns Christof Brennecke, and Ernst Ludwig Grasmück, 151–69 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1993), at 164–66.
6. The dating of Origen’s encounter with Roman Monarchianism locates it well within his Alexandrian period. See Waers, “Wisdom Christology,” 96–98.
7. This is the conclusion reached by scholars such as Nautin and Heine after careful evaluation of the evidence. See Ronald E. Heine, trans., Origen: Homilies on Genesis and Exodus (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2002), 30–39.
8. Tzamalikos, Origen, 10–11.
9. In this sense, Tzamalikos suggests that one should treat the PArch as an “ancillary” source. Tzamalikos, 14.
10. PArch IV.4.1.
11. Ibid., I.2.6; ComJn XX.157–9.
12. Orbe, Hacia, 2:674–5.
13. Samuel Fernández, ed., Orígenes: Sobre los principios (Madrid: Editorial Ciudad Nueva, 2015), 185, n. 41; Cécile Blanc, ed., Origène: Commentaire sur saint Jean (Paris: Cerf, 1982), 233–34, n. 4.
14. CRuf. II.19 (emphasis added).
15. On the background of Jerome’s anti-Origenist sentiments more generally, see Elizabeth A. Clark, The Origenist Controversy: The Cultural Construction of an Early Christian Debate (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 121–51.
16. PArch IV.4.1 (translation from Butterworth, emphasis added). The Greek text is given by Fr. 31 (Koetschau) apud Eusebius, CM I.4.
17. PArch I.2.6 (translation from Behr, slightly modified).
18. As Orbe has noted, it is necessary to distinguish between the Valentinians’ actual account of probolē and the ones that were summarized and critiqued by the “eclesiasticos.” This is because the heresiological accounts are often not accurate. See Orbe, Hacia, 2:677.
19. PArch I.2.6, IV.4.1.
20. Pierre Nautin, Origène: Sa vie et son oeuvre (Paris: Beauchesne, 1977), 170. Nautin believes that the dialogue with Candidus occurred before the composition of PArch due to the fact that PArch witnesses the topics discussed in the dialogue. This order of composition, of course, must be taken as conjectural and hence taken with caution. But the evidence suggests that it is perfectly plausible that the discussion in PArch on probolē is connected to Origen’s dialogue with Candidus.
21. Ibid., 370–71.
22. Further evidence of this is available. The language of Origen’s critique of materialistic generation in PArch also resembles the one in which Tertullian identified as “Valentinian.” Tertullian actually identifies this view as belonging to Valentinus himself. Again, it is important to be cautious about the accuracy of the heresiological report. As many scholars have pointed out, the views of Valentinus and the Valentinians bear a complex relationship that goes far beyond the simple reality of the followers reciting the views of the founder of a school. See Thomassen, The Spiritual Seed. Nevertheless, according to Tertullian, the Valentinian view “secludes” (discernit) and “separates” (separat) the projections (προβολὰς) from their originator (ab auctore). See APrax. 8. The language in Tertullian’s report agrees well with that of one found in Origen’s PArch I.2.6 and IV.4.1.
23. ComJn XX.157–9.
24. This phrase is from Orbe, Hacia, 2:677.
25. ComJn XX.157.
26. Thus I share the view of Hanson in “Did Origen teach that the Son is ek tēs ousias of the Father?”
27. In drawing a parallel between Jerome’s report and Origen’s teaching in ComJn, I have made the assumption that the Latin substantia corresponds to the Greek ousia. It is worth noting that substantia could also be translated as hypostasis, as suggested by Pamphilus, Apol. 100, where we find the expression ex substantia dei in the context of discussing Origen’s comment on Heb. 1:3, a passage in which we find hypostasis instead of ousia in the Greek. Tertullian, in APrax. 7, also uses substantia to refer to that which individuates a person of the Trinity. So there is a possibility that substantia in the discussion of the Son’s generation in PArch can be translated as hypostasis instead of ousia. But given that Origen clearly rejects the phrase ἐκ τῆς οὐσίας in ComJn XX in the context of the Son’s generation from the Father, and given that we do not find any instances in Origen’s writings in which he rejects an analogous phrase involving hypostasis instead of ousia in the context of generation, in my view it is not unreasonable to make the assumption that substantia indeed translates ousia in the context of Origen’s anti-Valentinian polemic.
28. That is, after 233–34, when Origen left Alexandria for Caesarea. For the dating of Origen’s ComJn XIII–XXXII, see Ronald E. Heine, ed., Origen: Commentary on the Gospel According to John, Books 13–32 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1993), 4–19.
29. Orbe argues that even though we do not possess any evidence that this is indeed a Valentinian interpretation of John 8:42b, given that Origen was engaging in a close critique of a Valentinian exegesis of John 8:42a in ComJn XX.135–51, it seems that “undoubtedly he speaks against the Valentinians.” Orbe points to a further piece of evidence in Tertullian’s APrax. 22, where he seems to allude to the Valentinian interpretation of John 8:42b: “‘If God were your father you would have loved me, for I came forth and have come from God’ (John 8:42b) (howbeit they [the Father and the Son] are not separated, though he said he was come forth, as some [Valentinians?] seize upon the chance that this saying gives them).” The phrase et tamen non separantur suggests that Tertullian indeed has the Valentinians in mind given that he has used similar terms to describe the Valentinian views in APrax. 8. I think Orbe’s argument is convincing in the absence of further evidence. Orbe, Hacia, 2:677.
30. To be precise, in Origen’s case it is the Father’s simplicity that is in question.
31. See Heine, “The Christology of Callistus” and the references therein. Though it is necessary to point out that the account provided here, following Heine, might simply represent a polemical portrayal of Monarchian theology on the part of the “Logos-theologians” such as Origen and the author of the Refutatio (Pseudo-Hippolytus).
32. Ps. 44:2 (LXX). Heine illuminatingly suggests that this tradition is not restricted to the Monarchians because some “orthodox” Logos-theologians also utilize Ps. 44:2 (LXX) in their accounts of the Son’s generation. See Heine, “The Christology of Callistus,” 64–65, for the references. In an illuminating essay Rowan Williams has written on how Origen was “misread” by both defenders and attackers in the fourth century. See Rowan D. Williams, “Christological Exegesis of Psalm 45,” in Meditations of the Heart: The Psalms in Early Christian Thought and Practice; Essays in Honour of Andrew Louth, ed. A. Andreopoulos, Carol Harrison, and Augustine Casiday, 17–32 (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2011). Williams develops this point further in a recent essay, arguing that Origen intends to “correct” some of his orthodox predecessors’ readings of the psalm in the discussion of the passage in ComJn I.280–88. See Rowan D. Williams, “On Not Misreading Origen,” Modern Theology, “Re-thinking Origen” special issue, forthcoming 2022.
33. ComJn I.151.
34. Heine, “The Christology of Callistus,” 64. According to Heine, this disagreement, in turn, is based upon two different philosophical frameworks on the Logos (Middle Platonic and Stoic). Heine convincingly shows that the Monarchians follow the Stoics by treating “Logos” as a category of speech, not ontology (66). The anti-Monarchians, following the Middle Platonists, treat “Logos” as the “second God,” thus endowing it with independent existence (67).
35. APrax. 7. Tertullian himself also draws on Ps. 44:2 (LXX), but he does not consider the verse to imply what the Monarchians believe, that the Son was generated from the Father as an “uttered word.”
36. ComJn I.280–88. For a detailed discussion, see Ronald E. Heine, “Origen on the Christological Significance of Psalm 45 (44),” Consensus 23, no. 1 (1997): 21–37 (especially 28–31). It is well known that the first two books of Origen’s ComJn are largely structured by anti-Monarchian concerns. Origen’s argument against the exegesis of Ps. 44 (LXX) forms part of this overall anti-Monarchian argument. See Heine, “Stoic Logic as Handmaid to Exegesis and Theology in Origen’s Commentary on the Gospel of John,” 92–100.
37. While I believe that Origen’s thought in this section is modified by Rufinus to a point beyond repair, once again, I see no reason to think that these similarities are inauthentic.
38. See ComJn I.123, 153, 266. This point is convincingly argued in Waers, “Wisdom Christology.” By “de-centering” Waers refers to the fact that in ComJn I Origen de-emphasizes “Logos” as the pre-eminent title of Christ, and stresses “Wisdom” instead as the supreme title of Christ.
39. PArch I.2.2: Nemo tamen putet aliquid nos insubstantiuum dicere, cum eum dei sapientiam nominamus.
40. Translation from Butterworth.
41. Here I do not wish to get into the scholarly debate on whether Origen made explicit use of the key term ὁμοούσιος for the following reasons. There is no doubt that “consubstantiality” invokes the crucial Greek term. According to Pier Franco Beatrice, in Gnostic literature the Greek term has three important senses: “(1) identity of substance between generating and generated; (2) identity of substance between things generated of the same substance; (3) identity of substance between the partners of a syzygy.” See Pier Franco Beatrice, “The Word ‘Homoousios’ from Hellenism to Christianity,” 249. In chapter 3 we saw senses (1) and (2) in Irenaeus. Currently we find no scholarly consensus as to whether Origen used the term himself or in what sense he had a notion of consubstantiality. It is well known that Pamphilus’s Apology preserves for us fragments of Origen’s lost Commentary on Hebrews, which, according to Rufinus’s Latin translation, made use of the term ὁμοούσιος. Few other texts exist to provide further evidence that Origen used the term in a Trinitarian context: (1) a fragment on the Psalms (see Lampe’s Patristic Lexicon under ὁμοούσιος), (2) two recent fragments edited and translated by Tzamalikos (see Appendix II in P. Tzamalikos, Anaxagoras, Origen and Neoplatonism: The Legacy of Anaxagoras to Classical and Late Antiquity, 2 vols., Arbeiten zur Kirchengeschichte 128 (Berlin: Walter De Gruyter, 2016).) Scholars, however, are divided as to whether our sources provide solid evidence that (1) ὁμοούσιος was a part of Origen’s Trinitarian terminology and (2) ὁμοούσιος was used in a way similar to its Nicene and post-Nicene usages. See the introduction.
For the purposes of my argument, what I shall demonstrate is that Origen had a notion of consubstantiality in the sense of equality of nature between generating and generated (e.g., Beatrice’s first sense). In this precise sense, I suggest that there is a parallel in Origen’s Trinitarian discussion of the generation of the Son to Irenaeus’s discussion of generation in Book 2 of Adversus haereses. This parallel provides evidence for my overall claim in this chapter that divine simplicity serves as a principle of unity that shapes the “grammar” of generation, as seen first in Irenaeus’s “proto-Trinitarian” discussion and also in a more explicitly Trinitarian discussion in Origen. Thus, in my view, and for the purpose of my argument, whether Origen used the Greek term ὁμοούσιος is not as important as the fact that he had a notion of consubstantiality as an equality of nature between generating and generated in his account of the Son’s generation. This is because the claim that Origen had a notion of consubstantiality can be more securely established from the texts, as I shall demonstrate in this chapter, than the terminological claim that he made explicit use of the term ὁμοούσιος.
42. Haer. II.13.8.
43. The interpretation offered in what follows on the meaning of this phrase further develops the position first articulated by Orbe, Hacia, 1:398–407. Whereas Orbe sees Origen’s account of the Son’s generation tanquam a mente voluntas as attempting to find a via media between Valentinian emissions and Arianism ante litteram (according to which the Son is the product of the Father’s will), I argue that the second target of Origen’s account is better identified as Monarchians. For a detailed treatment of this identification, see Ip, “‘Arianism’ Ante-Litteram in Origen’s Peri Archōn 4.4.1.”
44. See the entry on θέλημα in Lampe, Patristic Lexicon, 620.
45. Arius taught that the Son came into being by the Father’s will, thus treating the Son as the effect of the Father’s will. See Williams, Arius, 101–2, lines 20–30.
46. Origen elaborates on this use of the διὰ in ComJn II.70–2 when he explains that John 1:3 (“All things were made through him”) makes clear that the Word is an instrumental cause of “all things,” standing in the second position to the Father, who is the primary and greater cause. Hence, “all things” are made by (ὑπὸ) the Father (cause in the first position), not by the Word, but through (διὰ) the Word (cause in the second position).
47. ComEp. Fr. 1, 10–11.
48. Ibid., Fr. 1, 12–18.
49. ComJn XIII.230 (emphasis added).
50. John 5:19–20.
51. ComJn XIII.234 (translation from FoC 89, slightly modified and emphasis added).
52. Thus Origen is not saying here that the Son’s subsistence is guaranteed by the efficacy of the will of his Father. If this were the case, then we would have an “Arian” doctrine whereby the Son’s subsistence is the result or effect of the Father’s will, akin to how creatures were caused ex nihilo by the efficacy of the divine will. Rather, as Orbe has insightfully commented, Origen’s point is that there is something in the simple nature of the divine mind that means that the very act of the Father’s will in his mind acquires, in the specific case of the procession of the Son, a subsistent reality so real that humanly, speaking, it is normally possible only in the case of probolē. The point Origen wishes to highlight is not the efficacy of the divine will in ensuring the subsistence of the Son but rather the mysterious nature of the act of will (voluntas) in a simple being where it can acquire a distinct subsistence on its own that does not divide the mind. See Orbe, Hacia, 1:402–4.
53. PArch I.2.6 (translation from Behr, slightly modified).
54. As the next paragraph indicates, Origen is thinking of 1 Cor. 1:24, where Christ is said to be a power of God. This is why he turns to making the case that besides being “the breath of the power of God,” the Son of God is a subsisting power of God in his own right—“a power proceeding from the power” (PArch I.2.9).
55. “El misterio está en que una «voluntas» en sí (humanamente) incapaz de subsistir, adquiera en la processión divina del Logos una subsistencia tan real (aunque de superior índole) como la que adquieren los animales en virtud de la prolatio. . . . En Dios tal misterio no puede extrañar, según Orígenes, por la índole singular de la procesión «tanquam a mente voluntas». Pues el Hijo no nace por simple efecto de la voluntad divina, sino que proviene como ejercicio volitivo (= «voluntas») de la Mente misma de Dios.” Orbe, Hacia, 1:402 (my translation).
56. For an illuminating analysis of the mechanism of divine production, see Michel René Barnes, The Power of God: Δύναμις in Gregory of Nyssa’s Trinitarian Theology (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2001), 115–20.
57. ComJn XIII.228.
58. CCels. VIII.12 and ComJn XIII.228 highlight that Origen’s account of the Son as identical to the Father’s will is an anti-Monarchian move, as is clear from the fact that he utilizes the identity of wills to interpret the two key Monarchian texts, namely, John 10:30 and John 12:45.
59. I offer this as a hypothetical consideration that would be impossible, strictly speaking, if the Father were simple. This is because the simple Father could generate only that which is perfectly one in nature with himself, as we have seen in Haer. II.17.2. As a result, if God did indeed generate a Son who did not do the complete will of God, then the Son once again would have a separate existence from that of the Father. Consequently, the generation of such a Son would divide the Father and violate his simplicity. Given the commitment to the Father’s simplicity, it would be quite impossible for Origen to imagine the Father generating a Son who would not do the complete will of the Father.
60. “Indeed, not only the Father comes first, but he is the only one who performs the acts of will in-himself and according-to-himself. So, while the Father acts in the Son and the Son needs the Father to be God, the Father does not need the Son to be God. But the Son is the only means through which the will of the Father is active in the world, for the perfection of the Father does not allow him to deal with the multiplicity. Therefore, the Son does not lack the attributes of the Father. The majesty of the Father towards the Son is to be found in the Father’s will and power. As a matter of fact the Father acts in the Son, but the Son does not act in the Father; equally, while the will of the Father is the will of the God, the will of the Son is the will of the Father. The Son acts, wants and does what the Father acts, wants and does for necessity, for the Son’s actions and will are completely derived from the Father.” Hermanin de Reichenfeld, The Spirit, the World and the Trinity, 57. It is clear that de Reichenfeld and my foregoing analysis are largely in agreement up to the sentence “The Son acts, wants and does what the Father acts, wants and does for necessity.” It seems to me, however, that despite Origen’s wish to emphasize the utter dependence of the Son’s will on the Father’s will, by saying that the Son “by necessity” does the Father’s will misses Origen’s anti-Monarchian emphasis that the Son through the Father comes to be a free hypostasis willing the “complete will of the Father.”
61. Haer. II.17.2.
62. Ibid., II.17.4.
63. In other words, pure goodness cannot give rise to evil, pure justice to injustice, etc.
64. See note 41 above.
65. The classic study that offers comprehensive coverage of this theme in Origen remains Crouzel, Théologie de l’image.
66. The link between language about image and will in Origen offers a key reason to suspect that the introduction of language about nature and substance in the Latin text came from Rufinus’s editorial hand. It suggests that Rufinus might not have properly grasped that the purpose of Origen’s use of language about will is to avoid the Monarchian connotations associated with language about unity of substance (cf. ComJn X.246).
67. Ibid., XIII.228.
68. PArch I.2.12.
69. According to Irenaeus, what is simple must generate that which is “of one form, in every way equal and similar” to itself (Haer. II.17.2). Once again, in light of passages such as ComJn XIII.152–54, the language of nulla omnino dissimilitudo perhaps belongs to Rufinus and not to Origen. But Origen’s point is not unrecoverable because, in the line before, Origen explains what he means by the unity between the Father and the Son: “there is one and same movement . . . in all they do.” The unity at the level of act is clearly witnessed in Origen’s Greek writings, as I have shown.
70. PArch I.2.8. This metaphor forms part of Jerome’s case against the orthodoxy of Origen’s teaching in Epistle 124.
71. PArch I.2.8. The Son as the accessible image of the Father who is inaccessible to creatures is a persistent theme from the rest of Origen’s extant Greek writings. The crucial passage is ComJn XIX.34–39. According to Origen, “The Father is not seen otherwise than by seeing the Son . . . it is impossible, however, to behold God apart from the Word” (XIX.35). Similarly, “It is impossible, however, for the God of Wisdom to be apprehended apart from the leading of Wisdom” (XIX.36). In other words, Origen thinks the Father’s greatness is such that creatures could approach him only through the image and mediator, the Son. We find other similar passages in ComJn: the Son is the way to the Father (VI.103–8); one is to come after him so that we might come to the Father (VI.191–2); it is through the Son that the Apostles came to see God (XIII.153).
72. ComJn VI.295, XIII.151–53; XIII. 234; ComMt XV.10.
73. Haer. II.17.4.
74. PArch I.2.7: Deus lex est secundum Iohannem. Splendor ergo huius lucis est unigenitus filius, ex ipso inseparabiliter velut splendor ex luce procedens et inluminans universam creaturam.
75. Ibid., I.2.4.
76. Tzamalikos, Origen, 10–2. For specific points at which Tzamalikos points out the issues in Rufinus’s translation, see the entries on Rufinus in the index.
77. On this point, see also ComJn I.204. Origen thinks it is inappropriate to use the term “come to be” to describe the Son’s being “in the beginning” (cf. wisdom) and his being with the Father (John 1:1). Rather, John uses the verb ἧν in his Gospel in order to indicate that “he [the Son-Logos] does not come to be ‘in the beginning’ from not being ‘in the beginning,’ nor does he pass from not being ‘with God’ to coming to be ‘with God,’ for before all time and eternity ‘the Word was in the beginning,’ and ‘the Word was with God’” (ComJn II.9). This stands in contrast with “life” (John 1:4), “which comes into existence after the Word” (ComJn II.129). This is clarified by the fact that life “was made” in the Word (ComJn II.130–31). Origen thinks that John 1:4 describes a logical ordering between “life” and “Word” that does not exist between “Word” and “in the beginning,” as well as between “Word” and “with God.”
78. In PArch I.2.7.
79. “All monarchians, i.e. modalists as well as adoptianists . . . have seen the ‘Son’ only in the historical Christ.” Heine, “The Christology of Callistus,” 71.
80. Heine, “The Christology of Callistus,” 66–68.
81. We find this formula in ComRm I.5.1 and PArch IV.4.1. One of the biggest questions concerning Origen’s theology remains whether he did in fact give theological weight to this expression, which clearly teaches the opposite of what was supposedly Arius’s teaching. In my view, by treating “Arian-like” opponents of Origen as Monarchians, the conjecture set out here could potentially lead to a new resolution of this question (and whether there were indeed already any “Arians” ante litteram in the third century opposed by Origen, as postulated by Orbe, Hacia, 1:398–407). I have argued elsewhere that Origen’s teaching on eternal generation can be situated in light of his anti-Monarchian and anti-psilanthropist polemics. See Ip, “‘Arianism’ Ante-Litteram in Origen’s Peri Archōn 4.4.1,” for an exploration of this line of inquiry.
EPILOGUE
1. Williams, “Newman’s Arians,” 283.
2. See Khaled Anatolios, Retrieving Nicaea: The Development and Meaning of Trinitarian Doctrine (Grand Rapids, M: Baker Academic, 2011), 1–13.
3. Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy, 274–78.
4. Decr. 23.
5. CAr. I.28: “It is not necessary to compare the generation of God with the nature of men, or to think that his Son is part of God, or that generation signifies any passion. . . . Having an unsettled nature, men beget passionately, waiting for the right time because of the weakness of their own nature. It is impossible to say this about God, for he is not composed of parts but is impassible and simple; he is without passion and indivisibly Father of the Son.”
6. Trin. (Hilary), VIII.43: “Afterwards He [Christ] had said that ‘as the Father had life in Himself, so He had given the Son to have life in Himself’ (John 5:26), wherein He signified that by virtue of the mystery of the birth he possessed the unity of the same nature. For when He says that He has what the Father has, He means that He has the Father’s self. For that God is not after human fashion of a composite being, so that in Him there is a difference of kind between Possessor and Possessed; but all that He is is life, a nature, that is, complete, absolute and infinite, not composed of dissimilar elements but with one life permeating the whole.” See also ibid., IX.61.
7. Ibid., IX.72: “In God is no variability, no parts, as of a composite divinity, that in Him will should follow inaction, speech silence, or work rest, or that He should not will, without passing from some other mental state to volition, or speak, without breaking the silence with His voice, or act, without going forth to labour.”
8. Basil, Eun. II.29; Gregory of Nyssa, Eun. II.359–86, 445–560.
9. Radde-Gallwitz, Basil of Caesarea. Radde-Gallwitz’s reading, however, has been criticized by Richard Cross, “Divine Simplicity and the Doctrine of the Trinity: Gregory of Nyssa and Augustine,” in Philosophical Theology and the Christian Tradition: Russian and Western Perspectives, ed. David Bradshaw, 53–65 (Washington, DC: Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 2012). RaddeGallwitz’s earlier work needs to be read in light of the revision recently made by the author. See Radde-Gallwitz, “Gregory of Nyssa and Divine Simplicity.”
10. Civ. Dei XI.10.
11. “God however is indeed called in multiple ways great, good, wise, blessed, true, and anything else that seems not to be unworthy of him; but his greatness is identical with his wisdom (he is not great in mass but in might), and his goodness is identical with his wisdom and greatness, and his truth is identical with them all; and with him being blessed is not one thing, and being great or wise or true or good, or just simply being, another.” Trin. (Augustine), VI.8.
12. Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy, 278–301.
13. Urk. 1.3, 6.3.
14. Athanasius: Decr. 11, CAr. I.28, Syn. 52; Hilary: Trin. II.11, VIII.43, IX.61; Eusebius: DE IV.3, V.1, ET I.6.1–5, II.14.3–8; Gregory Thaumaturgus, Phil. 6–8.
15. The absolute primacy attributed to the Father is clear from the fragments of the Thalia. See especially S1–5, the contrast between Father and Son in S5–10, and the use of the term the “higher one” (ho kreittōn) in S25–30. For the fragments, see Williams, Arius, 101–3.
16. See especially the fragments of Thalia, S5–10, 25–30. Williams, Arius, 102–3.
17. Lionel R. Wickham, “The Syntagmation of Aetius the Anomean,” Journal of Theological Studies 19, no. 2 (October 1, 1968): 532–69.
18. Eunomius, Apol. 7.
19. This puzzling phenomenon has been noted by Ayres and Radde-Gallwitz, but they do not provide an account of how these traditions developed and formed opposing theological trajectories. See Ayres and Radde-Gallwitz, “Doctrine of God,” 874–75.
20. My approach in what follows is closely aligned with the project currently being undertaken by Samuel Fernández. Fernández wishes to re-narrate the fourthcentury Trinitarian controversy (traditionally known as the “Arian” crisis) as a subsequent (“second-episode”) development of the “Monarchian” crisis in the second and third centuries, thus offering an account of the historical development of patristic Trinitarian theology that bypasses the usual abrupt break in classical accounts between the ante-Nicene and post-Nicene periods. For a glimpse of Fernández’s approach, see Samuel Fernández, “¿Crisis arriana o crisis monarquiana en el siglo IV? Las críticas de Marcelo de Ancira a Asterio de Capadocia,” in Studia Patristica LXVI, vol. 14: Clement of Alexandria/The Fourth-Century Debates (Leuven, Belgium: Peeters, 2013), 203–8. A more detailed account is found in Fernández’s plenary lecture for the XVIII International Conference on Patristic Studies in Oxford, August 19–24, 2019, titled “Arian or Monarchian Crisis in the Fourth Century? Reevaluating the Evidence towards the Next Centenary of Nicaea (325–2025).”
21. See the heresiological catalogue found in ComJn 32.190–3 and the fragment of ComTi reported by Pamphilus in Apol. 33. For my detailed argument, see Ip, “‘Arianism’ Ante-Litteram in Origen’s Peri Archōn 4.4.1.”
22. In my view, the ambiguity concerning the kind of Father-Son distinction Origen proposes to counter Monarchianism (i.e., whether the alternative of all the key distinctions rejected by the Monarchians should be affirmed; see chapter 6 above), and with what terminologies such an anti-Monarchian distinction should be understood (i.e., whether anti-Monarchianism entails the affirmation of three hypostaseis, idiotētes, ousiai, hypokeimena, etc.), serves as one of the primary causes of confusion in post-Origenian theology. This is exemplified by the dispute between Dionysius of Rome and Dionysius of Alexandria. The two Dionysii could not agree on what constitutes a heretical understanding of Trinitarian distinctions. Dionysius of Alexandria thinks that the distinction καθ’ ὑπόστασιν constitutes the only appropriate language to use to understand the Father-Son distinction vis-à-vis Monarchianism (more specifically, Sabellianism). See fr. 11 in Charles L. Feltoe, trans., The Letters and Other Remains of Dionysius of Alexandria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1904), 195–96. However, Dionysius of Rome believes that his Alexandrian namesake seems to imply tritheism (i.e., the affirmation of a distinction καθ’ ὑπόστασιν between Father and Son is equivalent to affirming three gods). See the Roman bishop’s letter in Feltoe, 176–82. For a detailed analysis of the controversy between the two Dionysii, see Simonetti, Studi sulla cristologia del II e III secolo, 273–97. In my view, Simonetti’s account of post-Origenian theology remains the most convincing one available. See Manlio Simonetti, “The East after Origen,” in History of Theology, vol. 1: The Patristic Period, ed. Angelo Di Berardino and Basil Studer OSB, trans. Matthew J. O’Connell, 192–204 (Collegeville, MN: Michael Glazier, 1996), for a brief summary in English.
23. For example, see Williams, Arius, 101–3, especially S1–4, 15–20, 25–30, and 40–41.
24. See Alexander of Alexandria in Urk. 4b.14 and Athanasius in Syn. 34–35.
25. One piece of evidence of this is found in Athanasius’s discussion of the language of “image of God” in Col. 1:15 and Heb. 1:3. Athanasius makes no mention of the Origenian discussion of image as different from the source. A comparison of his CAr. II.33–34 and Origen’s PArch I.2.6 and I.2.12–13 and his ComMt XV.10 will reveal this contrast clearly. I have further highlighted the discontinuity between Athanasius and Origen in Pui-Him Ip, “Origen against Origen? The Paradoxical Legacy of Origen in Athanasius’ Exegesis of Prov. 8:22 in Contra Arianos II,” in Perspectives on Origen in the History of His Reception, ed. Alfons Fürst, Adamantiana 21 (Muenster: Aschendorff, 2021), 117–32.
26. This point perhaps helps explain why Arius felt the need to clarify that his theology does not lead to this position. See Urk. 1.3, 6.3.
27. Arius: Urk. 1, 6; Athanasius: Decr. 11, CAr. I.28, Syn. 52; Eusebius: DE IV.3, V.1, ET I.6.1–5, II.14.3–8; Hilary of Poitiers: De Trin. V.31, VII.11.
28. I put the terms “Arian” and “Eusebian” in quotation marks because I recognize that these terms are to some extent caricatures or imaginary realities created through, primarily, Athanasius’s polemics. On this see David M. Gwynn, The Eusebians: The Polemic of Athanasius of Alexandria and the Construction of the `Arian Controversy’ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). On “Eusebian” theology more generally, see Mark DelCogliano, “Eusebian Theologies of the Son as the Image of God before 341,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 14, no. 4 (2006): 459–84.
29. In Eun. (Basil), I.7 Basil seems to contradict Origen’s discussion in ComJn 1.119: “Though our Lord is one in substance, and one substance, simple and not composite, he calls himself by different names at different times, using designations that differ from one another for the different conceptualizations.” Origen instead (as we have seen in chapter 6) thinks that the different names (epinoiai) make the Son multiple and not simple, thus differentiating him from the Father. Basil affirms the simplicity of the Son also in Eun. I.23. Moreover, what is simple for Basil is the divine substance/nature (Eun. II.29, 32). Similarly, for Augustine it is the nature of the Trinity that is simple. See Civ. Dei XI.10.
30. The importance of this point for Origen has been masterfully set out in Hermanin de Reichenfeld, The Spirit, the World and the Trinity, 39–59. De Reichenfeld calls this distinction an “ontological subordination of priority” to differentiate it from the distinction between God and creation based on an “ontological subordination of superiority.” See also John Behr, “‘One God Father Almighty,’” Modern Theology 34, no. 3 (July 1, 2018): 320–30.
31. Anatolios, Retrieving Nicaea, 104.
32. John Henry Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, 6th ed. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989).
33. This evolution has been ably documented by Benjamin J. King, Newman and the Alexandrian Fathers: Shaping Doctrine in Nineteenth-Century England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 181–217.