Origen

Question 1

Origen devotes PA 1.2. to a discussion of Christology. He begins, in PA 1.2.1, by establishing what “we must know” first; what is it that “we must know”?

Answer 1

• Christ has a human nature (substance) and a divine nature (substance)

Question 2

What is “our first task” according to Origen?

Answer 2

• Who is the Son of God?

o Means it hasn’t been settled around 205CE

Question 3

What is Origen’s preferred name for the Son of God?

Answer 3

Wisdom = Son of God

Question 4

According to Origen Wisdom, therefore, must be believed to have been begotten ______.

Answer 4

…beyond the limits Oof any beginning that we can speak of or understand. (Similar to Irenaeus)

Question 5

Origen issues a warning to those who would assign “a beginning to the Word of God or the Wisdom of God”. What is the logical implication of such a denial against which Origen warns?

Answer 5

• Origen says that if you deny that the Son of God is eternal aren’t you also saying the God is not eternal? How can the father be eternal if the son is not eternal?
• Eternal generation: Origen states that there is no point in which the son was not distinguishable; God’s nature is always diverse and one.

Question 6

What are two illustrations that Origen highlights to explain how “the unbegotten God becomes Father of the only-begotten Son”.

Answer 6

1. Brightness begotten from light
2. Image of the invisible God

• Both meant to establish that the Son is Son by nature and has what the father has, “son” is not just a title

Question 7

What analogy does Origen say helps to explain how the Son is the “image” of the Father, thereby helping to explain the nature of their relationship?

Answer 7

A father and son.

Question 8

To what does Origen compare the generation of the Son from the Father?

Answer 8

willing

• Since the existence of the son is dependent on the will of the father; the existence must be eternal.
• If wiling action comes out of the mind, willing/generation doesn’t affect unity

Question 9

Is Origen’s logic hierarchical?

Answer 9

Yes.

• 1.3.5 – doesn’t think of them as being equal to each other but rather subordinate to each other. Father>Son>HS
• 1.3.6-7 – the activity of each one corresponds to the power each one has. For example the HS has the least power and therefore the smallest sphere of activity (ie. Make the church holy)

Question 10

What does Origen say about the role of the Son in the origin of the Holy Spirit?

Answer 10

If you accept that “all things were made through him” you must also accept that the HS too was made through the Word since the Word is older than he.

• The HS is the greatest of all created things

Question 11

List the four point of Origen’s Idea of Eternal Generation?

Answers the weaknesses of 2-Stage Logos Theology

Answer 11

1. The son is a separate being because he is by definition generated. (Brightness)
2. His existence is eternal because that generation happened beyond the liits of any beginning. (How can you not have brightness with light?)
3. The idea of generation production is illustrated by immaterial analogies (invisible image of God)
4. The eternal existence of the Son secures the eternal existence of the Father

Question 12

According to Origen, “of all the marvelous and splendid things about him (Jesus),” what is the “one that utterly transcends the limits of human wonder and is beyond the capacity of our weak mortal intelligence to think of or understand”

Answer 12

How God could become incarnate

Question 13

Origen - What is it that baffles and strikes with amazement the “human understanding with its narrow limits”

Answer 13

Challenge is to understand how these two beings, human and divine, are one.

Question 14

While acknowledging that he must “pursue [his] contemplation with all fear and reverence”, what does Origen “seek to prove”

Answer 14

How the reality of each nature exists in one and the same person

Question 15

Origen discusses the soul of Jesus. He explains why the Son of God was united to his particular soul in contrast to some other soul, what is his explanation?

Answer 15

His soul was attached to it’s “author,” in an inseparable union with the wisdom and word of God

Question 16

Origen - In what capacity did Jesus’ soul act in his person and why was it necessary for it to act in that capacity?

Answer 16

Because God is a spiritual being it can’t just be connected to a material body.

This soul, then, acting as a MEDIUM between God and the flesh (for it was not possible for the nature of God to mingle with a body apart from some medium), there is born, as we said, the God-man the medium being that existence to whose nature it was not contrary to assume a body

Question 17

As a “reward for its love” the union between the Word of God and his soul is unique. Indeed, if “the grace of the Spirit was not given to it (his soul) as to the prophets”, then what did his soul possess that secured its union with God?

Answer 17

‘In him dwelleth all the fulness of the godhead bodily.

Question 18

On what ground does the existence “in Christ (of) a rational soul… constitute a difficulty”?

Answer 18

on the ground that in the course of our discussion we have often shown that souls are by their nature capable of good and evil

The possession of a souls jeopardizes Jesus’ sinlessness

Question 19

Origen provides an illustration of the change of Jesus’ soul from one that is pure and sinless by will to one that is pure and sinless by nature. Jesus’ soul is like what when it “was for ever placed in the word, for ever in the wisdom, for ever in God?

Answer 19

like a piece of iron in the fire

-Jesus has a post-resurrection soul; incapable of sin

Question 20

Origen rules out the difficulty constituted by the existence “in Christ (of) a rational soul”. At the end of PA 2.6.5 he writes, “…we must believe that there did exist in Christ a human and rational soul, and yet not suppose that it had any susceptibility to or possibility of sin.” What is the logical basis for this position? That is to say, what does Origen say happened to Jesus’ soul to make it so that it was no longer susceptible to sin?

Answer 20

“was by the influence of long custom changed into nature”

• The habit of doing good (for the soul) eventually changes the nature of the soul so that it can no longer do evil
• Able not to sin > Not able to sin

Question 21

Origen - How does Jesus’ soul stand as an intermediary between the Word of God and other souls?

Answer 21

• Jesus’ soul functions not only as the medium but also the medium and intermediary between the Son of God and every other human being.
• The divine qualities that Jesus’ soul receives come to all other human beings who have faith by means of their natural union with the soul
• Spiritual son > Created perfect soul (spiritual) > material body
  o Jesus’ soul acts as an intermediary to imperfect souls

Question 22

What happened to Jesus’ “mortal body, and the human soul which it contained”?

Answer 22

by their unity and intermixture, they received the highest powers, and after participating in His divinity, were changed into God

Question 23

What happened “to that mortal quality of the body of Jesus”?

Answer 23

It changed into one that was ethereal and divine

Question 24

What’s the problem with Origen’s argument?

Answer 24

Problem is that Origen eventually deprives the human nature of Christ with this idea; not taking the humanity as seriously as he should.
This affects future over simplification of Christology.