Section II

CHAPTER FIRST.

THE CONFUTATION OF THE NEW FORM OF EBIONISM AND FATRIPASSIANISM BY THE CHURCn.

I. The Struggle with the New Form of Ebionism.

When the Theodotians and Artemonites tried to surround their innovation with the nimbus of antiquity, and to represent it as the doctrine of the Apostles and the doctrine of the Church down to the days of Victor, an old work, attributed, after the example of Photius, to the Roman presbyter Caius (Cod. 48), answered them drily, but yet correctly,—" One might perhaps believe them, if the Holy Scriptures, above all else, did not stand in the way.¹ But there exist also works of brethren, reaching up to a time earlier than Victor, written against heresies, and addressed to heathens; as, for example, those of Justin, Miltiades, Tatian, Clement, and many others; in all of which Christ is designated God (iv ol? a/rcaai OeoXoyelrcu 6 Xpurros). For who is not acquainted with the writings of Ireneeus and Melito, and the rest, who proclaim Christ as God and as man 1 How many psalms and hymns, moreover, have been composed by believing brethren, from the beginning to the present time, which glorify the Logos of God, the Christ, by lauding Him as God?"

¹ Older ,writers, like Eusebius (H. E. 5, 28), Nicephorus (4, 21), and Theodoret (Haer. fab. 2, 5), were not acquainted with the name of the author of the work. It bore, however, the title of "The Little Labyrinth."

And how many more witnesses the author might have cited against them, we have already shown. In fact, the assertion of the Artemonites, that theirs was the primitive Christian doctrine, was so baseless, that the only witnesses to whom they could at all appeal, namely, the older and proper Ebionites, would have been held in horror by them; partly because of their Jewish tastes, which sorely clashed with their own classical culture (Euseb. H. E. 5, 28); and partly because these newer Ebionites coincided with the Church in recognising the supernatural birth of Christ. Complaints were made of their arbitrary treatment of the Scriptures, of the erasures and alterations they made in their copies of the Biblical text: they were charged with swerving from and throwing it into confusion; with paying more attention to Aristotle and Euclid, to syllogistic forms and geometry, than to the investigation of the contents of the Sacred Scriptures. The Church felt that theirs was a foreign, a worldly spirit: "They speak like men who are of the earth, and know not Him who is from above." Their minds were open to worldly science, but not to religion: their system, therefore, did not grow out of an interest in religion, in Christianity; but their views and their copies of the Scripture were cut and shaped in agreement with principles foreign to Christianity. We are not informed that they employed dogmatical arguments in defending and establishing their own views, and in combating the prevailing doctrine: for this reason, it was only just that they should neither attain wide diffusion, nor be greatly regarded by the Church. Much as Tertullian wrote about the Trinity and Christology, he passes over this heresy, although contemporary, in perfect silence: he does not appear to have been at all acquainted with it;^l on the contrary, he speaks as though in his day the divinity of the Person of Christ were already accepted as beyond all doubt.²

¹ The only mention made of it is in the catalogue of heresies at the close of the work, "de prascr. Haer." (c. 53), which is of doubtful genuineness. , ' De carne Christi 1: Examinemus corporalem substantiam Domini, de spiritah' enim certum est. "Spiritalis substantia " is equivalent, with Tertullian, to "divina substantia." Compare Apol. 21; de orat. 1; adv. Marc. 1, 19; 3, 6. 16; 4, 21; adv. Prax. 26.—" Spiritus" with him by no means denotes merely the Holy Spirit; but he applies the term also to the divine nature. Compare Tertullian, ed. Semler, 1825, T. vi. 572; and John iv. U; Bom. i. 4; 2 Cor. iii. 17. See Note QQ, page 391, Vol. I.

Not till the second half of the third century did this tendency find a vigorous representative in Paul of Samosata. In his hands it excited far more attention; for the state of the Church, when he appeared, was far more favourable to the introduction of his theory, than at the time when the monarchian heresies were rife. At the present time (as we have shown in the introductory remarks to this third chapter), the mind of the Church was powerfully occupied with the question of the equalization of the Logos with the Father, and of the expulsion of subordinatian elements from the conception of the Son. The patripassian form of Monarchianism must, therefore, have worn a greater appearance of affinity to the doctrine of the Church; and it was really a consequence of the continuous and necessary struggle carried on with this heresy, in the persons of the men who from time to time attempted its revival, that the Church took so strong a turn in the opposite direction, that is, towards the assertion of the distinction between Christ and God, and that a door was thus opened not merely to preludes of Arianism, but even to Ebionitical teachings. For this reason, the struggle with Paul shall be narrated at a later period.

II. The Struggle with Patripassianisrn.

During the period of the development of the doctrine of the Church, which extended from the end of the second to the middle of the third century, the part played by Ebionism is scarcely worthy of notice; but the case was somewhat different with Docetism. There was a closer affinity between it and Patripassianism, and that, not merely at the commencement in the hands of Marcion, but even later also, in those of Beryll: indeed, one may in a certain sense say, that Patripassianism was the continuation of Docetism, under a more orthodox garb. At the same time, we must be careful to remember, that the principle of Docetism had already been negatived by the mind of the Church; and Tertullian did but, as it were, collect together the manifold and rank forms of Docetism, in order to pronounce on them the final judgment of the Church. The reasons assigned by Tertullian for his condemnatory judgment may be taken as the expression of the general view, to which the Church had been led in the course of the struggle. But the after effects of the Docetical error VOL. II. E

were far from being rooted out by that condemnation. All that it really did, was to lighten the labour of the Church; for the future, all that was needed was to bring to light the Docetical root of an opinion, and the Church at once, unhesitatingly gave the required decision.

The Docetical aspect of Gnosticism is discussed by Tertullian, particularly in the work, " de carne (or humanity) Christi." Marcion, says he, denies both the birth and the flesh of Christ, in order that the one may not testify to the other; for the one stands or falls with the other. "Thou hast cut away portions of the Gospel, cries Tertullian, in which, according to a letter of thine, and the confession of thy followers, thou thyself didst formerly believe. Thou showest thus, that the faith rejected by thee is the older; and that thy present faith is of yesterday." Marcion did not intend to deny the sufferings of Christ; but how absurd to leave the sufferings and death standing, and to deny the birth and the human body !" Thou leavest the crucifixion untouched; but how could God suffer without human flesh? Or was His suffering a mere show 1 If so, He might as easily have consented to the show of birth and childhood, and there is therefore no need for thee to deny them." (Compare above, Epoch Second, Section First.) Apellcs attributed to Christ a solid body, but supposed it to be compounded of sidereal elements. What, then, are we to understand by His mother and His brethren in the Gospel, if, though He had a human body, He was never born? Christ must then be classed with the appearances of angels, who also, according to Tertullian, gave themselves solid bodies, though they were never born. But the cause of the appearance in the two cases is a different one. No angel ever appeared with a view to being crucified, to dying, and to being raised to life again. Christ, however, having been sent to die, must needs also be born, in order that He might be able to die (de carne Christi 6). This is the "mutuum debitum" between "nativitas" and "mortalitas," that whatever dies must be born, and whatever is born must die. Why do wo everywhere discover in His body the signs of its earthly origin? Nowhere did men regard it with astonishment; nothing of heavenly brilliance clung to it, that it should be despised and derided. Tertullian saw the dualistic element which lay in this tendency; and acutely shows, not only that Apelles must needs abide by a "caro peccatrix," if the prince of matter (praeses igneus) is the prince of the world, and if the world be a "delictum;" for the world is one: but also, that he cannot represent our earthly world as made partaker of redemption, if he hold that the exaltation of Christ involved the annihilation and dissolution of the humanity He had assumed. According to another theory, the soul of Christ gave rise to His body; the soul became flesh; His flesh, therefore, was not like that of other men, for, as it was derived from the "anima," it was soulical flesh (caro animalis). These latter teach that He did not need to assume our flesh, inasmuch as He only came to redeem our soul. "Why, then, did His soul become that which He had no need to redeem, to wit, flesh; nay more, flesh of a different kind from ours, and which therefore cannot serve us? Nay more, if His soul were made flesh (carnea facta), it was not such a soul as ours; but was converted into a fleshly soul, such as neither required redemption, nor could aid in the work of redemption. They say, His soul became a body, in order that we might see it born, die, and rise again; and in order that the soul might look upon and recognise itself (that is, probably, its own history, or the momenta of the inner process through which it itself passes) in Christ, as the symbol of this inner history.¹ But the body of Christ concealed His soul; how, then, can the soul have been manifested in it? For that purpose, they must surely devise another body, capable of making the invisible visible." This argument plainly cannot hold its ground. The following, however, may :—" They have reduced the soul itself to flesh; what, then, remains to be revealed 1 Furthermore, the main point is not, that the soul should know itself through Christ (as though it were already perfect in itself, and only lacked the consciousness of its perfection), but that it should know Christ in itself. The soul is not in danger because it has not perfect self-knowledge, but because it has not the knowledge of Christ." At the same time, therefore, he protests against a theory of redemption which requires merely a process of knowledge, and not a real and religious transformation through Christ; which confounds religion with a theoretical process; and which, consequently, has no need of the humanity of Christ,save as its history is the symbol of a spiritual truth.

¹ C. 11: Not the "effigies animae" was giren by or in Christ, says Tertullian, but its "salus."

This passage is in other respects remarkable, as showing that Tertullian attributed to Christ a true human soul. (C.10: "Ut animam salvam faceret in se ipso, suscepit animam Christus, quia salva non esset, nisi per ipsum, dum in ipso.") Others endeavour to show that one of the pure, heavenly natures, which Christ (that is, the eternal Christ) is supposed to have assumed, might supply an organ qualifying Him for historical activity;—an organ which matter and weak human nature appeared to refuse. They say accordingly,—" Angelum gestavit ut satellitem fortem, cum quo salutem hominis operaretur." In support of which, they appealed to passages where Christ is designated an angel. Tertullian, however, simply replied,—An angel is often a messenger, an ambassador. At the same time, Isaiah does not say that an angel or a messenger redeemed them, but the Lord Himself. It would, therefore, involve a shortening of the work of redemption, to represent an angel as the Redeemer. It is true, they say,—Christ, in the angel. But that is superfluous, or too much. If He redeemed through the angel, what part did the angel take; and vice versa" 1 But it is also too little. For the angels did not need to be redeemed: to men, not to them, was redemption promised; and men would then come short. How could He further be made lower than the angels, if He were an angel and not a man? The Valentinians, lastly, invent a kind of spiritual body. They suppose that Christ stood amongst the angels invested with an earthly body, and was not born of the Spirit, nor of God, but of the will of the man.¹ Consequently His body was of God, of the Spirit. "Were it of the earth," say they, "how could He be unperishable? Why was His body not dissolved into earth, if it was like ours? Or if we Christians are so entirely like Him, even in relation to the body, why do not we, like Him, rise again, and ascend into heaven, without undergoing corruption? If we attribute flesh at all to Christ, we must attribute to Him sinful flesh, and must suppose that He then annihilated it, and laid it aside." To this Tertullian replies,—We say that neither did He lay aside His flesh, nor was His flesh sinful in essence.

¹ Undoubtedly with reference to the ancient reading os iytmih, instead of o7 iym»riiwu«, John i. 10.

Unquestionably He assumed our flesh, in which dwell sin and guilt, and that not merely in appearance; but had Christ therefore " caro peccatrix T" No ; He made our flesh His own by the act of assumption; and by making it His own, He made it sinless." In proof that to the reality of the flesh, generation from the seed of a man was not necessary, he reminds them of Adam. As, in his case, earth was converted into flesh, even so was the Word of God able to pass over into the material of the same flesh, without the intervention of the seed of a man. "Vacabat viri semen apud habentem Dei semen." Converting his defence into an attack, he goes on to say,—" They believe that He died (c. 15), and yet they represent that which died as having been born of the unperishable. They desire a man united with God (hominem Deo mixtum), and yet they deny the man: for a man who has not our body, a body taken from human nature, is a mere appearance. "Caro ex hominis carne erat sumenda;" therefore He cannot have given Himself a body out of Himself. This the Valentinians themselves also, strictly speaking, grant; for they confess that He was born of the Virgin. And what can this mean, if He did not receive from the Virgin the body which He bore when He came forth out of her womb? It would then be much simpler to say,—He received a body of a spiritual kind, apart from Mary. "Sine causa eo se intulit, unde nihil extulit. Sed non sine cause descendit in vulvam, ergo ex illa accepit." Though this line of argumentation goes back merely to the fact of Christ's birth, which was recognised even by his opponents, Tertullian did not fail at the same time to recognise the idea which was connected therewith.

Without doubt, says he, the seed of a man was not necessary to the Person of Christ: had He been entirely, and in every respect, like us—entirely and solely the Son of man—He would not have been the Son of God. But He lacked nothing that was necessary to constitute Him entirely one of us. To this the seed of a man was not necessary, as Adam proves. On the other hand, however, a mere creation (as in Adam's case), or self-generation, or self-conception, was not enough; but He must needs stand in blood-relationship to the already existent race. To Mary must belong, not indeed that which she conceived, but what she bore; she must communicate to it her own blood. It was necessary that Christ should be the fruit, and not merely the guest, of her womb. Whoso denies that He was a blossom and fruit of the royal stem of David, denies not merely the root to the branch, and to the blossom, and to the fruit; but also the fruit to its root; in order that the root may not be able to claim the glory of Him who was destined to be its blossom and fruit. In this case, it is necessary to go back through all the members (of the human race) to the beginning. All participate in this blossom and fruit, and its nature is no other than Adam's; for, indeed, He is the second Adam. Accordingly, we must either say, that men have the same spirit-like flesh as the second Adam, or else that the body of Christ, not having sprung from a spiritual stem, was not a spiritual body. Tertullian was not satisfied without declaring, in the strongest terms, his conviction of the reality of the connection between Christ and our race. "Adhaesit utero, avulsus est; ex utero est per illum nervum umbilicarem adnexus origini vulva>." He asserts a concarnatio, a convisceratio of Christ with our race. Ex humana matrice did He derive the substantia for His caro (c. 17). That is the new birth which He was appointed to bring: a man was born in God (in Deo); and in this man, God also was born; for He assumed the flesh of the old stem without the old seed, in order that, in the power of the new seed, that is, of the Spirit, He might recreate the old flesh, after having atoned it, by the exclusion of the old impurity. At the same time, that entire new birth (novitas) was formed out of the old material, as is the case with all, in such a manner, namely, that, by a wise arrangement, the Lord was born of a virgin. "In virginem adhuc Evam irrepserat verbum aedificatoriuni mortis. In virginem aeque introducendum erat Dei verbum extructorium vitae."

Nor must we overlook the circumstance, that, when distinguishing between conception and birth, Tertullian designates the former alone, not the latter, virginal. After the birth, the womb of Mary was no longer that of a virgin, but was in all respects like that of any other mother; thus bearing witness to the reality of the human body of Christ, which broke loose from her. "Virgo Marise et non virgo; peperit enim quae ex sua carne; non peperit, quae non ex viri semine. Virgo, quantum a viro, non virgo quantum a partu. Si virgo concepit (if she conceived as a virgin) in partu suo nupsit, ips«t patefacti corporis lege." Hence the Apostle says,"Nonex virgine sed ex muliere editum filiumDei" (Gal. iv.).

llis opponents, however, appealed especially to two considerations, and these Tertullian then proceeds to examine more carefully (c. 3, 4). These considerations were,—1. It is impossible for God to be born and become flesh; 2. It would be unworthy of Him. Marcion, in particular, raised both these objections; but they really lay at the basis of all Docetical and dualistic Ohristologies. Had He been born, and had He truly assumed a man, He would have ceased, thinks Marcion, to be God, losing what He was in that He became what He previously was not. "Converti enim in aliud finis est pristini." Tertullian answers,—The fixed, immoveable being of God runs no risk. It is true everything which stands far from God, and God from it, is subject to the law, that if its nature undergo an alteration, it can no longer remain the same as it was before. But God differs from man precisely in this respect, that of Him the contrary holds good; that is, He is able to convert Himself into whatever He wills, and yet to remain what He is. In order to understand his meaning, we must take into consideration his doctrine of the Trinity, and particularly the mode in which he defines the distinction between the Son and the Father; and to this point we shall immediately direct attention. Tertullian demands, and that on religious grounds, that in recognising the unchangeableness of God, we shall not deny the possibility of His undergoing any process whatever, but merely such a process as purely finite creatures undergo, change in whose nature involves the loss of that which they had previously been. This latter thought is unquestionably, to some extent, akin to certain features of Patripassianism, though expressed in a trinitarian form. All depends on the will of God: was it His will to be born? For, if He willed it, nothing could prevent it, not even His nature. And that He willed it, is clear; for otherwise He would not have chosen to appear as a man. Who thinks of denying, when he sees a man, that he has been born? If the thing itself, the being man, has been displeasing to God, He would not have been disposed to assume the semblance of a man. If any one object,—He was satisfied with His self-consciousness; I answer,—It was better even for His own self-consciousness, that He should really be what He willed to seem to be.

He enters into a still more detailed examination of the second objection (c. 4). The Valentinians ask,—" Ergo Dei filius in tantum humilitatis exhaustus?" Apelles assures, "carnem habere ignominiam;" Marcion (compare " de carne Christi" 4; "adversus Marc." 3, 10), "aspernatus est Christus carnem illam, ut terrenam et stercoribus infersam." Marcion he meets with the apt reply,—He is ever preaching up the "lenitas dei," and the "benignitas dei," and will not hear of the stern God, who is distant from the world. And yet, when this God really descends to the world, he complains that it is unworthy of God, that it is a "pusillitas." But what you blame as unworthy of God, the Son of God has in Himself, in that He unites God and man; for He has God in Himself, in His power, and man in His weaknesses (pusillitatibus). The entire disgrace of my G(5d, as you term it, is the sanctuary of that grace which is the salvation of men. "Deus pusillus inventus est, ut homo maximus fieret. Ex aequo agebat Deus cum homine ut homo ex aequo agere cum Deo posset." If God despised man, why did He not also despise the appearance of a man 1 why did He assume the image (simulacrum) thereof ?" Nullius rei dedignandae imago dignanda est." If He played the part of a man, why did He not play it throughout, but omit, for example, its beginning, birth? Because a true birth was unworthy of God! In that case, declaim against those holy, awe-inspiring works of nature; draw thy sword against everything that thou art; cast down the origin of the body and of the soul; call the womb of thy mother a cloaca; and become the foe and persecutor of the workshop, wherein that great being, man, is brought forth (adv. Marc. 3, 10; de carne Chr. 4) 1 How canst thou still continue to love any one? Thou doest not love thyself; for thou hatest man, who is subject to birth. And yet see to it, whether thou art displeasing to thyself, or whether thou wast originated in any other way. Christ, at all events, loves the man, who is in impurity, and is doubled up in his mother's womb, who is born in a manner which the modesty of woman counts holy, with whom his mother plays at her breast. For the sake of this man, He descended from on high; He humbled Himself even unto death, the death of the cross. So much did He, without doubt, love him, whom He has dearly bought. But if He loved him, surely He must also love his birth and his flesh. For nothing can be really loved, unless we love that through which it is what it is. Or take away birth, and still show me a man. Take away flesh, and show me him whom God redeems. If this constitutes the man whom God bought, because He loved him, thou convertest that which God did into something of which He should be ashamed. But if Christ be the Creator of nature, He acts rightly in loving His possession. By the transformation of birth, by a heavenly new-birth, He restored the flesh from all its sufferings; He illuminated the blind, renewed the palsied, awakened the dead to life,—and yet He ought to be ashamed of having been born into the flesh! (" de carne Christi" 4).

In the last instance, however, it is invariably the atonement which leads Tertullian to attach so much importance to the reality of the humanity of Christ. A Docetical Christ would have been a vain pretence, a lie: he therefore exhorts his opponents to believe (" de carne Christi" 5) that God would rather become man than lie, appearing to be what He was not, not willing to be what He is. If His human personality were a mere appearance, so also were His human acts and works; and, therefore, the sufferings of Christ deserve no faith. The murderers of Christ are thus excused; for in reality He suffered nothing at their hands, and the entire work of Christ is overthrown. "Totum christiani nominis et pondus et fructus, mors Christi negatur, quam tam impresse apostolus demandat, utique veram, summum eam fundamentum Evangelii constituens (adv. Marc. 3, 8). Nonne vere crucifixus est Deus? vere mortuus et crucifixus?" "Did a mere phantom suffer, "quod vacabat a sensu passionum Dei V Then is our faith a lie, and our hope a phantom. Oh, spare the only hope of the entire world! Why dost thou destroy the necessary reproach of the faith? Whatever is unworthy of God, is for my benefit: willing am I to be shameless and blessed as a fool, and I require the material thereto. God's Son was crucified; I am not ashamed (to avow it), for it is worthy of shame: and the Son of God died; it deserves all faith, because it is foolish. He was laid in the grave, and rose again: it is quite certain, because it was impossible (" de carne Christi" 5).¹

¹ Those whose nerves are too weak to bear the utterances of such a ^-*npoipopix of faith, will find a tonic in the preceding chapter, where he speaks of the divine folly, which confounds and puts to shame the wisdom of the world, and where the ethical nature of God, love, is made the standard of the truly reasonable.

So rich Lad been the development of Tertullian's intellect, relatively to the truth of the humanity of Christ. No preceding writer can compare with him in this respect; no one plunges into the act of incarnation with such love and admiration, and at the same time with such penetration; no one took the 6ame pleasure, as much speculative as religious, in conjoining the most glaring contradictions, the furthest extremes, in Christ, in order that he might behold in His complete concarnation and convisceration (concarnatio et convisceratio) with our race, on the one hand, the magnitude of the divine love, and, on the other hand, the exaltation of mankind. To the reality of the incarnation he considered it to belong, as did also Origen (Hom. in Lucam 14), that Mary, after the birth of Jesus, should no longer be a virgin, but a mother (Gal. iv.).

But also as regards the divine aspect, he did not remain inactive. In narrating the course taken by the doctrine of the Logos, we have found, as might have been anticipated from the circumstance of the point of departure being the Person of the historical Christ, that in the doctrine of the pre-existence of the Son, which had been clearly laid down almost at the commencement of the process, there was strictly included the momentum, that the Son possessed a personality of His own, independent of the Father; gradually, however, the efforts made to exclude subordinatian elements from the conception of the Son, and to exhibit Him as a participator in deity, led to His personality being no longer so strictly distinguished from that of the Father, as it was in the incarnation. Clemens Alexandrinus, in particular, furnished us an example of this; but it appeared still more distinctly in his predecessors. The definition of the Son, as a mere attribute, was a constant temptation to dissipate His hypostasis. For if the Son is the Wisdom of the Father (Ratio, Xoyo<;, ao<pla), or His power (virtus, verbum), either the Father by Himself is without wisdom and power, or the Father and Son are identical, even as a man is identical with His reason and His wilL That the Fathers desired to establish a deeper distinction between the Father and the Son, than that between a subject and its attributes, could not indeed be denied; for they gave these attributes again the form of a subject in the Son; and they supposed themselves to have hit upon that deeper distinction, which Christology required, when they had declared that a divine subject, and not a mere divine power, dwelt in Christ. But still they fell very far short of supplying that which was necessary actually to establish and secure the personality of the Son.

Tertullian entered on this inheritance; and his opposition to the gnostic doctrine of the ./Eons, which wore to him a mythological and pantheistic appearance, must have strengthened his antipathy to the introduction of distinct and separate forms into the inner sphere of the divine nature, and his tendency to give the unity the predominance over the distinctions. "Valentine," says he (adv. Prax. 8), "rends his £eons, his probolas loose from the Father, and sets them at such a distance from Him, that they no longer know Him. But our Son knows the Father, and is in the bosom of Him, whom He reveals. For who knows what is in God, save the Spirit who is in Him? Ever was the Word with the Father and in God." This, however, is but one aspect of the matter. If we are minded thoroughly to understand Tertullian's peculiar doctrine of the Trinity, we must remember that his strong realism would naturally lead him to insist much more vehemently on the reality of the incarnation of the Son, than did Clement. As he gazed on the incarnate Logos, he felt certainly convinced of His personality. For it was not a mere impersonal power, but a divine subject, that had become man in Christ (Note 14). When, therefore, Patripassianism arose, which he justly deemed tainted with Docetism (adv. Prax. 11, 23), and brought to light the consequences of neglecting the distinction between the Father and Son, his realistic principles naturally impelled him to assert more strongly, that the divine which had appeared in Christ was a distinct subject; whilst at the same time he avoided infringing on the essential equality of Father and Son, which ho recognised along with his predecessors, and in which he saw the true element of Patripassianism. These, then, are the factors out of which we must endeavour to construct and understand Tertullian's remarkable doctrine of God.

The following is the mode in which he endeavoured to reconcile the equality of the Father and Son, with the Son's possession of a distinct personality. To two Gods he objects as strongly as the Monarchians (adv. Prax. 13); he desires but one God. Consequently, a double or triple hypostasis seems an impossibility; in which case, the personality of the Father must be coneluded to be that of the Son also, and the distinction between the two to be a mere name. This he would be ready to concede, but for that "dispensatio, quam CEconomiam vocamus." But if the distinctions relate solely to God's revelations, to His manifestations of Himself,-we arrive merely at different works of God, and not at distinctions in the divine being. The Trinity is thus reduced to a mere name or appearance, and denotes, strictly speaking, simply one and the same God engaged in different works; which works themselves, considered in relation to God and not merely in relation to man, must be pronounced to be momenta of one and the same work. Against such a view Tcrtullian protests (adv. Prax. 13). How, then, can he secure objective and real distinctions in God Himself? By regarding the deeds of God as modes of the divine being, by bringing the divine essence into greater nearness to the world, by attributing finitucle and growth to God Himself in one aspect of His being, and by representing to himself the fellowship of man with God as more intimate than it was commonly held to be. Human souls he deemed to be of divine substance; humanity he held to have been from the beginning an object of the love of God, and destined to be exalted and transferred into the divine nature, through Christ. Again, he believed that it was involved in the eternal idea of humanity from the very beginning, that its history, and the history of the Son of God, should be interwoven with each other; and that, consequently, the Son of God was eternally related to and incorporated with humanity. When God created Adam out of the earth, He looked on the image of the future Incarnate One; and, creating Adam in His likeness, God created him in His own likeness. (De resurr. earn. 6:—Quodcunque limus exprimebatur Christus cogitabatur homo futurus. Id utique, quod finxit, ad imaginem Dei finxit illum, scilicet Christi. Ita limus Me jam tunc imaginem induens Christi futuri in carne, non tantum Dei opus erat, sed et pignus.)

But let us enter into details. "Seeing that the Patripassians," says he (adv. Prax. 5), "regard the two as one, so that one and the same stands both for Father and Son, we must investigate the entire question concerning the Son, whether He is, who He is, and how He is. According to some, His genesis is referred to in the Hebrew text (Gen. i. 1), 'In the beginning, God made for Himself a Son.' Supposing, however, that this be not certain, I am influenced by other considerations, derived from the inner nature (dispositione) of God, which He had before the creation of the world till the generation of the Son. For God was before all things; He was solitary; He was world, place, and everything to Himself. Solitary, because nothing besides Himself had outward reality; and yet, again, not solitary even then, for with Him was His Reason which He had in Himself. For God is a rational being: Reason existed in Him earlier (than the world); and so everything is from Him. This Reason is His intelligence (sensus), designated Logos amongst the Greeks, —a term which is usually not quite appropriately translated 'Word' (sermo). For, strictly speaking, we cannot say that the Word was in the beginning with God; for Reason in God is older than Word, inasmuch as Word subsists through Reason, Reason is its substance, and it is the revelation of Reason." In these words, Tertullian would appear entirely to deny the existence of a distinction between Father and Son, in the inmost sphere of the divine being; for Reason, which he unquestionably conceived to be something substantial (corpus in his language, although spiritus), is the Father Himself: Word, on the contrary, which, as spoken being, contains, at all events, the first beginning of a distinction, he refuses to admit into the inmost divine sphere, treating it as the secondary, which the primary precedes, as the beginning (of that which is distinct from God in Himself), not as that which is prior to all beginnings. And plainly, those who translated Logos by "Word," and represented the Word as existing in the beginning, and not as first constituting the beginning by its own rise, were far more decidedly than Tertullian on the way to introduce the Word itself into the inner nature of God, and to give it a place alongside of the Father, however imperfect might be the result. And, as though with the feeling that he was just on the point of quitting the path trodden by the Church, he proceeds to say, as it were retracing his steps,—" Yet that lack of precision (namely, to represent the Word as equally eternal with Reason, or to identify the two) is of little consequence; for, even if God had not yet sent forth the Word from Himself (miserat), He had it within Himself, with and in His reason, quietly meditating and ordering what He designed shortly to express in word. Consider thyself a copy of God, a rational being, animated by divine substance. Dost thou not see that, when thou quietly, through thy reason, communest with thyself, the same thing takes place in thee? Thy reason takes up a position over against thee, by means of words, at every movement of thought, at every pulsation of thine intelligence. Whatever thou thinkest or perceivest, becomes a word in thee, and in the word is thy reason itself. In thy soul thou must speak, thou canst not avoid it; and when thou speakest, the word in thee becomes another than thyself, as it were one who speaks with thee; in the which, notwithstanding, there dwells the same reason, which enables thee to speak when thou speakest. Thus there is, as it were, another than thyself, a second, the word in thee, through which thou speakest when thinking, and through which thou thinkest when speaking. After the same manner also, God, in virtue of His reason, quietly thinking and ordering, made the reason, word, which, in speaking, He set in motion. If thou art a copy of God, how much more perfect must this take place in the Archetype! for He, even when He keeps silence, has Reason in Himself, and in Reason the Word. So far, therefore, it is true, that, even before the creation of the universe, God was not alone, seeing that He had in Himself Reason, and in Reason the Word, which, by an inner act, He constituted a Second, another self." Tertullian endeavours thus to give fixity to that eternal distinction in God, which, so long as the Logos was deemed equivalent to Reason, continued a completely precarious and uncertain thing, by inweaving the word, to wit, the objectification of reason, with reason itself. This interesting passage sets further before us an effort to show how there may be a duality in God, from the necessity, immanent in all active, spiritual beings, to effect a self-diremption into word and thinking reason. Spirit, in order to be actually rational spirit, must not merely think, but must also have an object which is thought,—the object for the subject. That which is thought, again, must, on the one hand, be itself rational, or else it is not a thought of reason; on the other hand, as something thought, it must be different from the thinking reason. Only in that it is fixed as other than the reason, can it be termed thought, and can reason be said to have accomplished its thinking activity; but this other thing is fixed in and by means of a word,—be the word even inner and quiet. It is clear, therefore, that Tertullian was already on the traces of those who, at a later period, tried to show that the Trinity is the eternal process of the divine self-conscionsness, confronting itself with itself. But from what has been advanced, it is equally clear, that Tertullian did not keep God's thought of the world and His thought of Himself apart; or, rather, he still puts the self-consciousness of God quite into the background. If the thought of God, which He sets over against Himself, and in which He sets Himself over against Himself, is not God Himself, but the world, then either no distinction is effected in God's being itself,—namely, when the world is clearly distinguished from God, and the pretended foundation laid for the Trinity turns out to be a mere distinction between the God who thinks the world and the world thought by God; or—and to this alternative Tertullian necessarily inclined—that which is thought is God Himself, in altereity; though, at the same time, owing to the circumstance of its being also immediately the world, or the principle of the world, there is the danger of confounding the mundane with the trinitarian process;—in which case, it is evident that an immanent Trinity can never be arrived at. Further, it cannot be regarded as an accident that Tertullian, in this entire section, never speaks of Father and Son, but solely of God, who is eternally "rationalis" and "tacite cogitando" Himself in Himself, constitutes Himself "sermonalis." Herein is decidedly involved, what he also expressly confesses, namely, that there is no place for a real, hypostatic Sonship in the inner, eternal essence of God: all that he has tried to point out, is the existence in God of an eternally active potence of Sonship. God is the Thinking One; the Word in God is His thought absolutely, in fixed objective form, though still confined to the inward sphere. As the thought of God, He is the sum of the thoughts of the world, or the idea of the world; and had Tertullian rested here, he would have had no alternative but to follow the example of heathen philosophers, and call the world the Son of God, so far as it is the external realization of the idea of the world: plainly, however, an hypostasis of the Son would then be out of the question. For, on the one hand, the eternal idea of the world was not conceived in hypostatical separation from, but in unity with, God; and, on the other hand, the realization of this idea is so characterized by discerption, that it no longer represents a real unity, to which the predicate personal could be applied.

Here, however, we must take into consideration, that when Tertullian taught that the inner Word was the thought of God absolutely, under the impulse of His Christian consciousness, he treated, though not clearly and definitely, God Himself, and not merely the world, as the content of the divine thought. Not that he represented God as placing Himself, so to speak, over against Himself, even apart from the world and the idea of the world; for that would have involved an actual inner, and not merely a potential, Sonship: but he viewed God, considered as the object of His own thought, solely in and with the idea of the world. We are now in a position to understand the further course of his entire theory.

In the first place, the heathen opinion, that the world is immediately the Son of God, is set aside; for, on the contrary, God, as the object of His own thought, is tear e^oyrjv the Son of God, so soon as He attains positive reality in the actual world. In the first instance, He has a mere ideal existence in the inner essence of God, like the world-idea itself; but in this world-idea is involved that when it arrives at actuality, it will still have, in that actuality, the God who was incorporated with its idea, to wit, the Word, and in the manifestation of the Word, the archetype become a reality, God amongst men, the Head of humanity, with a view to whose future realization God created Adam. And because the manifestation of God Himself is thus interwoven with the idea of the world, and all the divine thoughts necessarily become realities, not only is the world a progressive actualization of the thought to which God gives objective existence over against Himself; but this same historical process through which the world passes, involves in itself, and requires for its own completeness, that the Word (the thought) of God, so far as God Himself is its subject-matter, should have its history and actuality in the world; and that, abandoning its hidden, tranquil, ideal existence, it should progressively manifest itself, until, standing in the midst of humanity as the Son of God, it give full objective reality over against God, to all that the divine thought embraced within itself, that is, therefore, to God Himself who is its subject-matter. Thus, in the actuality of the God-man, of the Son, an adjustment (Ausgleichung, a squaring up) takes place between God as thinking, on the one side, who now for the first time can in the full sense be termed Father, and, on the other side, the thought of God, whose inmost substance is God Himself;—primarily, it is true, in the form of a conception, a potence; but in due time as actual Son and God-man, possessed, like the Father, of objective existence and personality.¹

The only difficulty yet remaining, is to account for Tertullian's not representing the Word as having first attained realization in the man Jesus, who formed the top-stone of that history, whose mission it was to subject the entire Word to Himself; and why, on the contrary, he taught that the procession of the Word from God, or, as he terms it, the generation of the Son, took place prior to the creation of the world. The key to the matter is contained in the account given above. God, objectively realized amongst men in Christ, is the climax of the idea of the world, is that goal, that final aim which gives unity to the world, and completion to the Word, that is, to the self-objectification of God. Now the absolute aim, even prior to its full realization at the end, must be more than a mere conception, it must be a real mundane potence. Hence Tertullian represents God as first of all giving utterance to this potence, when the time came for the world assuming a real shape; and thus the pre-mundane Son of God entered on an actual, though still imperfect existence, and the one God became Father and Son. But that world-potence, although endowed with power, spirit, and wisdom (sermo fultus, structus virtute, spiritu, sapientia), was not as such sufficient to itself: it manifests, indeed, a certain reality, energy, for the Son creates the world; but He creates it with an eye to its idea, or to its future form as the God-man; and therefore this first appearance of the Son in the form of a person was not a renunciation of the goal, that is, of the incarnation, but the means and preparation thereto. And during the entire period from the creation onwards, Tertullian represents the Son as governed by the thought, that something was still lacking to His full idea, until the incarnation had taken place; and that it behoved Him to prepare the way for this incarnation. He prepared, He trained Himself, for the incarnation. For this reason, He appeared so frequently to the patriarchs, to Moses and others; ¹ See Note and Appendix II. for the German of this passage.—Tk. VOL. II. E

as it were testing Himself, in sympathy with the sufferings and tears of men, and in loving intercourse with them (adv. Marc. 2, 27; adv. Prax. 14, 16). The Son of God, says he, revealed Himself from the beginning. "Ipse enim et ad humana semper colloquia descendit, ab Adam usque ad Patriarchas et Prophetas —ordinem suum praestruens ab initio semper, quem erat persecuturus in finem. Ita semper ediscebat, et Deus in terris cum hominibus conversari non alius potuit (such seems to be the right reading) quam sermo qui erat caro futurus." These His revelations from the beginning stand, therefore, in the closest relation to His incarnation; in the former, the Son of God had already an eye to the latter. He then proceeds to say,—" Ediscebat (scil. quae erat persecuturus), ut nobis fidem sterneret ut facilius crederemus, filium Dei descendisse in seculum, si et retro tale quid gestum cognosceremus. Sic etiam adfectus humanos sciebat jam tunc, suscepturus etiam ipsas substantias hominis, carnem et animam; interrogans Adam quasi nesciens: ubi es Adam? poenitens, quod hominem fecisset, quasi non praesciens, etc., cf. c. 30." The heretics who blame such things as unworthy of God, and misuse them for the degradation of the Creator, do not know that they pertained to the Son, who was destined one day to take upon Himself hunger, thirst, tears, birth, yea, even death itself. (Compare the "de carne Christi" 6.) But the Son reveals Himself more fully first in the flesh (adv. Prax. 14).

"With wisdom or reason," says he (adv. Prax. 6), " God first impregnated His works, to wit, ideally, in the depths of His Spirit" ("in sensu," equivalent to Augustine's "memoria"); "afterwards, however, thou shalt know it, as it stands in its distinctness alongside of Him, for it says, 'When He created the heavens, I was by Him.' Now, when God willed to bring into visible existence that which He had ordered within Himself, as it were in inward dialogue with reason, with wisdom, according to its various forms and substances, He first put forth the Word itself (ipsum primum protulit sermonem), which was the vehicle of reason and wisdom, in order that the universe might be created by the same by which it had been conceived, nay more, by which, regarded ideally in God (quantum in Dei sensu), it had already been made. For one thing still failed the universe of things, to wit, an appearance coram in suis speciebus atque substantiis." C. 7: "Tunc igitur ctiam ipse Sermo speciem et ornatum suum sumit, sonum et vocem, cum dicit Deus; Fiat lux! Haec est nativitas perfecta Sermonis, dum ex Deo procedit, conditus ab eo pritnum ad cogitatum, in nomine Sophiae dehinc generatus ad effectum. Ex inde eum parent sibi efficiens, de quo procedendo Alius factus est primogenitus, ut ante omnia genitus, Unigenitus, ut solus ex Deo genitus, proprie de vulva cordis ipsius. Sermo in Sophiae et in rationis et in omnis divini animi et spiritus nomine filius /actus est Dei, de quo prodeundo generatus est." We must have the Sermo as substantivum, "in re, per substantiae proprietatem ut res et persona quaedam videro possit, et ita capiat, secundus a Deo constitutus duos efficere, Patrem et Filium,Deum et Sermonem." Now this Word, which was found in the form of God, did not deem it robbery to be equal with God. It appeared at the end of the times, in order to reveal, or to accomplish fully, what was in the Father's mind. The Father works ideally (sensu agit); the Son's office was to give external, real existence to all that the Father inwardly thought (in sensu sentit, c. 14). In Him is set before us the principle of objectivity (c. 15, fin.).

But of this the Son is capable, not merely because in the Word also dwelt reason, wisdom, and power,—" totus animus Dei,"—but also, and principally, because He has in Himself the momentum of finitude, is in one aspect connected with the world. For this reason, He was able to work in the world, to constitute it a reality, and finally, to appear as the First-born within its limits. The Father is only the Infinite One: division, limit, finitude, lie outside of Him; His relation thereto is solely that of the thinker. And even when finitude is the object of His thought, as it unquestionably is, in the idea of the world, He thinks it as a finitude united again with Himself (in Christ and the Holy Spirit eternally). For in the entire divine worldidea cogitated by the Father, is contained also the union of the world with, its eternal return into, God. But the Son superintends the course of the world through time; He leads it, hovering over it, as the archetype and principle wherein it subsists, until He enter into it in complete actuality.

From this it naturally follows, that Tertullian must have regarded the Son as eternally destined to become incarnate, and as capable of appearing in the flesh. The Father is not only not seen, but He cannot make Himself visible; He is "inaccessibilis," He alone has immortality, unchangeableness: no man can see God and live. The nature of the Son was, from the beginning, otherwise constituted; it was capable of appearing. He would not have become visible at the end of the days, had He not been visible from the beginning. To Him we must ascribe "mortalitas," "accessibilitas;" and this is, in Tertullian's view, so important a distinction, that he deduces from it the existence of a duality in God, of a "Deus invisibilis et invisus," and a "Deus visibilis et visus" (adv. Prax. 14, 15). "It is true, the Son also is invisible," says he, linking on again to Irenaeus, "so far as He is the Word and Spirit of God; and, prior to the incarnation, He was visible merely in visions, enigmas, and similitudes.¹ As Spirit, the Word cannot be seen, 'nisi imaginaria forma.' All religion, therefore, was symbolical and shadowy prior to the coming of Christ; for in the flesh the Son became for the first time visible, from face to face. His body, it is true, veiled His glory, and it could not be beheld save by those who were exalted above their usual consciousness.² This, however, happened to the three selected Apostles on the mountain; this happened afterwards to Paul; and at His second coming the Lord will be seen by all (adv. Prax. c. 14, 15). Nevertheless, the incarnate Word entered into visible existence through the incarnation; and now we have an actual person, whom we have seen, and heard, and handled."

¹ Moses alone appears to have been an exception; for to him the promise was given,—With him will I speak face to face, visibly, with others by dreams and in a glass darkly. But even this promise was not fulfilled till a later period, on the mount of transfiguration (Matt. xvii.). During his earthly life, like the prophets and patriarchs, he did not see Him face to face, but merely in a glass and in enigmas, Bo that he knew that God's face was nigh at hand.

2 At this point Tertullian's view shows traces of montanistic influences: in the place of the process through which men are conducted from a mere historical to a saving faith, which knows Christ in truth, he sets ecstasy; he fails to carry out the beautiful beginnings of an objective, historical accomplishment of the work of redemption, which he had made, in his teachings, relative to Christ's connection with our race; and even partially retraced his steps, so far, namely, as he now represented the body merely as a veiling, and not also as a revealing, of the Logos.

We see, accordingly, that Tertullian recognises a threefold filiatio:—1. The eternal, inward one, which is shut up in God. This he designates Sonship, not in itself, but solely with reference to the second and third stages: strictly speaking, its name is Sermo or Sophia. This is the real potence of Sonship, which was eternally in God, though it had not yet assumed an independent form; impersonal, but already a personific principle, and, as it were, eternally on the point of breaking forth from its inner divine root into an existence alongside of God, which, though not yet including the world, included the real potence of the world, as also the potence of God-manhood. 2. This coming forth to the creation of the world: Tertullian designates it, in particular, the "generatio of the Son," of the "secunda persona" (adv. Prax. c. 6). It would be eternal if he had taught an eternal creation; but as it is, it is to be conceived as occurring in time.¹ 3. Finally, the third stage is that in which the Son became man, and stood over against God in the form of a visible personality.

This doctrine of the distinction between the God who cannot, and the God who can, become visible; the God who is generated, and the God who is ungenerated, he employs in the most various ways against the Patripassians. Both cannot be predicated of one and the same being, as though they were but two aspects; consequently, we cannot rest in the abstract unity, the "singularitas Dei." In accordance herewith, those passages of the New Testament are explained, which speak of beholding God, and of divine appearances. This he confirms by means of passages from the New Testament, which refer to the distinction between the Father and the Son. He asks,—What meaning can Monarchians attach to the prayers of Christ to the Father, to His sending, to His cry, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" All the finitude, all the passibility, which the Patripassians attributed to God in general, or to the Father, he transfers to the Son; without, however, entirely denying the passibility of God, as might at first sight have been expected.

¹ Adv. Hermog. 3. Here he denies that God had been always Dominus, and therefore that the world, or something in it, has existed eternally. "Non ideo pater et judex semper, quia Deus semper. Nam nee pater potuit esse ante filium, nee judex ante delictum. Fuit autem tempus cum ei delictum et films non fuit, quod judicem et qui patrem dominum (al. Dcum) faceret." Conf. Novatian de Trin. 31.

That same religious interest, which found so inadequate an expression in Patripassianism, and which led to the work of atonement heing regarded as God's sympathy with, and participation in, the sufferings intended for us, moved Tertullian, when he spoke without bias, to make use of such terms as "crucifixus, passus, mortuus est Deus."'

We find him, however, at the same time giving expression to thoughts apparently of an opposite character, which must have strengthened the opposition raised against Patripassianism. He had, it is true, partially ensured the unchangeableness and impassibility of God by the view he took of the idea of the Father; but to have represented the Son as mere finitude, visibility, and passibility, would have been Ebionitical. Consequently, it was necessary to distinguish two aspects of the Son, —one eternal, invisible; the other visible, and subject to the process of finitude. The former he terms, tear e^o^v, the divine aspect, or God in the Son; and, accordingly, he is able to say, towards the end of his work against Praxeas (c. 27 ff.), without inconsistency, though differently from before (see the "de carne Christi" 3),—God is immutable; consequently He undergoes no process, no conversion: and. that which he had previously treated as an objection of Marcion's against the orthodox doctrine—" transfiguratio interemtio est pristini"—he now himself adopts in reference to the divine, that is, to the unalterable, in God Himself. This unalterableness was unquestionably endangered by Patripassianism; for, according to it, the Father, to wit, the final ground, Himself comes forth and subjects Himself to change and finitude;—unless it went on to distinguish more plainly between God as He is in Himself, and God as He is turned towards the finite; in other words, unless it accepted the distinction laid down by Tertullian in his doctrine of the Son.

¹ For example, "de carne Christi" 5. Special prominence is given to that aspect of the Son on which He is turned towards finitude, in the passage above adduced, adv. Prax. 16 :—The Son not merely created the world, but is the One who, throughout its entire history, has accomplished the divine work in and for it; He has been the judge, the revealer. The passage concludes with the following words,—Such things "haeretici reprehendunt, quasi Deo indigna, ignorantes, haec in Filium competisse, qui etiam passiones humanas et sitim et esuriem et lachrymas et ipsam nativitatem ipsamque mortem erat subiturus, propter hoc minoralus a Putre modicum citra angelos."

In accordance therewith, Tertullian was able to say,— "The Word of God also abides eternally, perseverando in sua forma." But defective is it, that he supposes himself able to bring this immoveable, unalterable One, the Son of God, immediately, and without any connecting link of thought, into union with the human in Christ. And the consequence thereof is, that he converts the incarnation into a being and dwelling in the flesh, or into a being clothed with flesh. (Adv. Prax. 27: Quem (sc. Sermonem) si non capit transfigurari, consequens est, ut sic caro factus intelligatur (Joh. i. 14) dum fit (al. sit) in carne et manifestetur.) To this point he allows himself to be driven by his fear of the theory of conversion; as though the incarnation of the Word were not itself a condition of its abiding in its nature, and as though he had not elsewhere usually taught that the Word was eternally destined to become incarnate, and that the full realization of Sonship was only possible through the incarnation.¹ "There would be no longer two substances," he proceeds to say, "but one, a kind of mixture of spirit and flesh, as electrum is a mixture 'ex auro et argento,' if He had been converted into flesh. He would be neither God nor man; for He would have ceased, through the conversion, to be that which He was; and He would not be man, for He who was Sermo could not be truly man. He would, therefore, be neither the one nor the other, but a third something. On the contrary, "videmus duplicem statum, non confusum sed conjunctum, in una persona Deum et hominem Jesum. Et adeo salva est utriusque proprietor substantia, ut et spiritus res egerit in illo, i.e., virtutes et opera et signa, et caro passiones suas functa sit." Both substances remain "in statu suo (that is, immoveable) distincte agentes. Neque caro spiritus fit, nee spiritus caro. In uno plane esse possunt: ex his Jesus constitit ex carne homo, ex spiritu Deus." As he refused to allow the Patripassians to say, "compassus est Pater Filio," because sympathy is a suffering, whereas the Father is impassible; so also does he affirm the latter of the Son, "ex ea conditione qua Deus est." And yet, precisely at this point, the idea of sympathy, as something ethical, might have led him to the recognition of a suffering and a participation in finitude, which involved no curtailment of God's infinitude; that is, to the idea of a participation, grounded in an act of love, that is, in a "virtus."

¹ Compare the passage cited from the " de resurr. carnis," page 60.

The finite, it is true,

could not drag Him into suffering; nor could His nature, His </>uai?, in itself be liable to suffering, as the heathenish and, in part also, the patripassian conception of God represents. At the same time, however, His <f>vai<; could not be a limit to His love and the manifestation thereof, but love, as the inmost essence of God, must have power over His <j>v<ri<;; and if the will of the former be seriously to sympathize with, and truly to participate in, finitude, the latter may not throw any hindrance in the way. To the above declaration, that the "Spiritus" worked in Him the " virtutes" and the "signa," and the flesh suffered (a formula which we often meet with at a later period, and which we find also in Hippolytus, but which, if it be not supplemented, destroys the unity of the person in both aspects), he adds, forgetting the doctrine of the participation of the Son in finitude and suffering, which he had elsewhere laid down,—" If the distinction utriusque substantiae ceased to exist, in a third being perhaps, then would have done et spiritus carnalia, et caro spiritalia ex translatione;" as though the work of redemption were anything apart from the participation of the divine in the human, and as though he himself had not also regarded it in all other cases as a work accomplished in common by both " substantiae." He had opposed to the Patripassians the capability of the Son to make Himself visible,—that is, surely, to become finite and passible,—with the design of proving it to be necessary that the Father, to whom absolutely no suffering and no process can be attributed, should be another than the Son: now, however, he makes no allusion to this distinction, and retains only the difference, that the Son was born and begotten of the Father, and the Father unbegotten. Without doubt he meant, in any case, to recognise in the Son an aspect turned towards, and accessible to, finitude; but so far was he from having conciliated this with his conception of the divine nature, that he again denies it entirely to the divine nature, even of the Son. In that case, however, the sufferings of Christ were merely finite sufferings, and the incarnation was simply the origin of a man. For the Word either had or bore the man Jesus as His garment; but the Son of God was not really the Son of man. Still, it would be unfair to judge him solely from this chapter, in which polemical zeal caused him to forget himself, and to strike into a path which his living conception of God would not permit him further to pursue. At other times (for example, in the chapter immediately following), he shows himself to be penetrated by the conviction, that the entire "novitas" of the "nativitas" rested upon the circumstance, that the human was taken into the divine, and that the divine transported itself into the human, with its being and not merely with its activity, without being swallowed up therein. We shall find that the anxiety to ward off a pagan conception of God drove Hippolytus and others to cling very firmly to the pure eternity and immoveability of the divine essence, after the manner of the later Jews; instead of representing God as standing in that more positive relation to finitude, which was required by the idea of the incarnation. Tertullian saw with particular clearness the importance of insisting on a distinction of the Son from the Father; for, according to Patripassianism, there was either no divine selfconsciousness, apart from Christ, but the Father was solely and entirely in Christ, and the rest of the world destitute of a personal God;¹ or else the Father must be held to have been in Christ merely as a power, and not with His entire personality;— in which latter case, Patripassianism would have been already on the point of passing over into Ebionism. The reason why Tertullian was so undecided and vacillating in his teachings regarding that which distinguishes and unites Father and Son, was, probably, apart from the undoubted difficulty of the question, that he had not advanced so far as clearly to deduce from ethical principles (which alone suffice in this connection), how far it was possible, or not, for the Word to participate in finitude and sufferings. At first he attributed finitude to the Word or Son immediately, physically, and not ethically,—that is, not as the result of a loving act of will (see pp. 68 f.); and the deeper ground of this course is to be found in his above noticed supposition, that the Son was directly connected and interwoven with the world, in so far as He became a person for the first time, at, and for the sake of, the creation of the world.

¹ Adv. Prax. 16:—"How could the almighty God, the invisible, the unapproachable One, who grasps the entire world in His hand like a nest, in quo omnis locus, non ipse in loco, qui universitatis extrema linea est, ille altissimus in paradiso deambulare, quaerens Adam, et arcam post introitum Noe claudere, etc.? Scilicet et haec nee de Filio Dei credenda, fortasse non credenda de patre, licet scripta, quem illi in vulvam Mariae deducunt, et in Pilati tribunae imponunt, et in monumentis Joseph recludunt."

And if we trace the matter to its final roots, we shall find that the fault lay in his doctrine of the Trinity. He recognised no act of self-objectification, by which God's self-knowledge was mediated prior to any creation; but what He knew, what He thought, though not merely the world, was still only God so far as He passes over into the world.

If, then, we can concede him merely a partial victory over Patripassianism, to the extent, namely, to which he showed that the Son must be distinguished from the Father, in Himself and not merely in Christ,—the latter was allowed even by Patripassians (adv. Prax. 27: Filium carnem esse, i.e. hominem, i.e. Jesum, patrem autem Spiritum, i.e. Deum, i.e. Christum),—how do his views stand related to the monarchy of God? How does he reconcile the duality, and subsequently the triplicity, of the persons, to which he is led by the divine revelations, with that unity of God which he maintained inviolate?

He preserves the unity, in the first place, by asserting the equality of the nature of the persons, nay, even the identity of their substance. The Son is designated "Filius Dei" and "Deus ex unitate substantiae. Nam et Deus Spiritus" (Apol. 21). An Arian Subordinatianism was, therefore, foreign to his mind; at that price he did not desire to purchase the unity of God. All, Father, Son, and Spirit, are one, because all are of one through the unity of their substance (adv. Prax. 2, 4). According to Tertullian, all have one essence,—that is, one power, one reason and wisdom. But that which gives rise to a plurality in God is the "ordo" (adv. Prax. 19), the "ceconomia," which has not merely subjective, but also objective significance (c. 11). The words in which Tertullian here gave expression to his meaning are remarkable;—he says, Difference and number are not in God, so far as He is conceived in His eternal, immoveable being (in statu), but merely so far as He is regarded in motion (in gradu; as it were, whilst passing on from one form or stage of revelation to another). "CEconomiae sacramentum unitatem in trinitatem disponit,—tres non statu, sed gradu. Unus Deus, ex quo et gradus isti et formae et species in nomine Patris, Filii et Spiritus sancti deputantur" (adv. Prax. 2). That is, we are to understand by the Trinity, not merely a threefold work, a threefold activity, but a movement of God Himself. When a ray proceeds forth from the sun, it is a part of the whole (portio ex summa); but the sun will be in the ray, for the ray is a ray of the sun, and does not break loose from the substance thereof, but merely dilates itself. So is Spirit of Spirit, God of God, like a light kindled at a light. Entire and unaffected remains the ground of a substance (matrix materiae), even though thou shouldst make use of its kind for several branches; so is that which springs from God,—God and God's Son are both one. Thus did Spirit constitute another of Spirit, God another of God, not in point of number, but of form (modulo alterum, non numero, gradu non statu, et a matrice non recessit, sed excessit). That ray of God, having entered into a virgin, and made itself flesh in her womb, was born as a man united with God (Apol. 21). "I do not desire two suns," he goes on to say (adv. Prax. 13), employing the same image, "but Christ I can call God, as does Paul in Rom. ix. 5. Even a ray of the sun, considered by itself, I call Sun: for example, when I say, ' There is sun;' but I do not, therefore, at once designate the sun, from which the ray proceeds, Ray. Two forms of existence, of one and the same substance (species, formae, effigies, moduli unius et indivisse substantiae), I acknowledge, as of the sun, so of God, when I view Him in connection with the oeconomia."

In the second place, he retains firm hold of the unity, through the intimate connection which he recognises as existing between the different persons. He does not regard them as three men, merely united by one generic idea, between whom there may otherwise be infinite differences; but they are physically and ethically so one, that they may be constantly termed one God. (Adv. Prax. 4: Filium non aliunde deduco, sed de substantia Patris, nihil facientem sine Patris voluntate.) Every originator, says he, is in a sense a father; everything originated is therefore a son. "Nee frutex tamen a radice, nee fluvius a fonte, nec radius a sole discernitur, sicut nee a Deo Sermo. Radix et frutex duae res sunt, sed conjunctae, duae species indivisae, duae formae cohaerentes. Et tertius a radice fructus e frutice, et tertius a fonte rivus ex Flumine, et tertius a sole apex ex radio. Ita Trinitas per consertos et connexos gradus a Patre decurrens et Monarchies nihil obstrepit et CEconomiae statum protegit (adv. Prax. 8). Alium patrem, alium filium dico, sed non diversum, separatum;" "distinctio," he affirms, and " distributio," but not "diversitas" and "divisio." "Modulo," that is, through a different mode of existence, each is different from the other two; but they are equal to each other, as in existence, so also in this, that as the Father constitutes the Son a Son, so the Son constitutes the Father a Father:—the Father does not constitute Himself His own Son, as the Patripassians teach. (Adv. Prax. c. 10: vanissimi isti Monarchiani ipse se, inquiunt (Pater) Filium sibi fecit. Atquin Pater Filium facet, et Patrem Filius." According to Tertullian, God was not Pater, but merely Deus, prior to the existence of the Son. "Et qui ex alterutro fiunt, a semetipsis sibi fieri nullo modo possunt, ut Pater se sibi Filium faciat et Filius se sibi Patrem praestet; quae instituit Deus, ipse etiain custodit. Habeat necesse est Pater Filium, ut Pater sit, et Filius Patrem, ut Filius sit. Aliud est autem habere, aliud esse.) And, indeed, the true element in the Valentinian JEons (probolae), is that the "Word is produced from God and made His Son. "Haac erit probola veritatis, unitatis custos" (c. 8). Connecting the two together, we arrive at an unity, which is not an abstract "singularitas," but admits of distinctions, an " unitas ex semetipsa derivans trinitatem," which is confirmed instead of being destroyed thereby (c."3). The "unitas irrationaliter collecta haeresim facit," the "trinitas rationaliter expensa veritatem constituit."

This trinitarian conception of God is opposed, on the one hand, to Heathenism, which clings to-a multiplicity, without reducing it to unity (c. 13); and to Judaism, on the other hand (c. 31). The belief of the Jews in one God, is of such a nature as not to admit of the Son, and after Him, of the Spirit, being reckoned to God. For what difference would there be between us and them,—what would become of the work of the Gospel and of the substance of the New Covenant, which does not suffer the law and the prophets to extend farther than John the Baptist,— if from his day onwards the Three in whom we believe, Father, Son, and Spirit, do not constitute one God? The novelty of the Christian religion consists in the fact, that God willed to be believed in as One after a new fashion, to wit, through the Son and the Spirit; so that now He who was formerly merely proclaimed by Son and Spirit, but was not known, is known in mundane actuality, in His persons.

This view undoubtedly includes a speculative element, to which the later doctrine of the Church was long in attaining, viz., the conception of the Three Persons as inwardly connected (as consertos, cohaerentes). But the type of development to which he subjects the Trinity takes again a turn unfavourable to the doctrine of the Trinity, and thus he reaped the fruit of that immediate interweaving of the Son with the world, to which allusion has been made above. He shows, it is true, that there was a necessity for the objectification of the reason in the Word, which was its vehicle; but he does not explain why this objectification should be limited to a triplicity;—for, so far as we can see, new branches might be continually produced. Because he did not posit the Trinity as an actuality even of the inner essence of God, but merely as a possibility, he found himself, like the Patripassians, unable to say,—God is a Trinity, and cannot be conceived of otherwise;—all he could say was,—God wills to be a Trinity, really indeed, but still only in the world. Hence also this Trinity is threatened with extinction, so soon as the world is perfected and returns into God, and the Son shall have given up all to the Father. Indeed, he goes so far (adv. Prax. 4) as to say,—" The Monarchy continues so truly unshaken, although the Trinity is imported into it, that the kingdom will actually be given up again to the Father by the Son. The Trinity, however, appears thus to be reduced to a mere movement of God in history, unless he meant perhaps to say, that the ever-abiding and essentially existent unity undergoes discerption in the world, and in the forms of the divine existence in the world; the sole end thereof, however, being that the divine persons, who are rendered distinct in the course of history, and also continue permanently distinguished, may afterwards be reduced to a more complete unity." He says further,—The CEconomia, or the trinitarian existence of God, is posited "in tot nominibus, in quot Deus voluit" (c. 4) : a formula which is thoroughly patripassian; but the corrective thereof was concealed, not only in Tertullian's doctrine of the necessary objectivity of the " Sermo," but also partially in his doctrine, that not merely a single potence of God, of which there might be an infinite number, but "totus animus Dei," was in the " Sermo;" that in the revelation of Christ, therefore, the inmost essence of God was declared to the world,—the "Filius" having been born, "de vulva Patris," out of the heart of the Father (c. 5). Lastly, owing to the somewhat physical character of his view of God, he applies inappropriate physical categories to the Son,—such, for example, as that of the part and whole: which, however, should be set rather to the account of his mode of expression, than of his mode of thought. "Portio totius cessura erat in Filii nomen." The Son is " substantiva res, ut portio aliqua totius (c. 26). Pater tota substantia est: Filius vero derivatio totius et portio" (c. 9) ; from which might logically be deduced a still stronger Subordinatianism than that which is involved in the doctrine of the later generation of the Word to personal existence, to wit, an Ebionitical view of Christ. It may undoubtedly be replied,—" Portio," in Tertullian's usage, is also a designation of equality (cf. Index Latinit. Tert., ed. Semler, s. h. v.); that he considered the entire sun to be in the rays; that the Son knows the Father entirely, and also His generation; and, even more, that Tertullian, describing the relation between the Father and Son in a quantitative manner, gives an opposite view, when he says,—The sun expands itself in the rays; or the Son is the river, the Father the fountainhead. Too much stress, however, must not be laid on this aspect of the images; but it must be acknowledged that he leaves the Son in a certain dependence on the Father, although he represented Him as equal in essence, as most intimately conjoined with the Father; and as, indeed, constituting the Father, Father. Tertullian refers Christ's words, "The Father is greater than I," neither to the humanity, nor to the state of self-abasement, but to the Son in Himself. It would be, indeed, totally opposed to Tertullian's meaning, to regard the Son as a mere partial revelation of God: from Ebionism or Arianism he must be pronounced free; for his total view of the Son rather implies that he regarded Him and the Spirit as different modes of the existence of the one God, who dwelt in His entirety in each of them. The more evident is it, however, that the term "portio" was badly chosen; and that, by giving occasion to the use of physical categories, it really disguised Tertullian's proper meaning. Notwithstanding the important defects of his system, the fulness of Tertullian's Christian consciousness, and the vigour of his mind, unquestionably lent him a very great influence on the development of doctrine in the Church, and enabled him to give a new turn to the tendency which had prevailed since the time of Justin Martyr.

At that time, it is true, the hypostasis of the Logos was exalted to the rank of pure divinity; but the price paid was an increasing obscuration of the hypostatical distinction. Tertullian, now provoked by Praxeas, struck into the opposite path, and laid again energetic hold on the neglected momentum of the hypostatic pre-existence of the Logos; with the feeling that Patripassianism was threatening to substitute an ethnic for the Christian conception of God. The positive doctrine laid down by him may have its weak points; but it has also, as we have seen, both religiously and speculatively considered, its excellences; and as regards the latter, he pursued a course of his own, independent of Irenaeus and others. As the point of most importance, and which gave a direction to the course of the subsequent development, may be mentioned in this connection his doctrine of the "Filiatio." Inasmuch as the Father also is reason, the word Logos no longer satisfied Tertullian as a designation of the hypostasis of the divine in Christ, although it accurately expressed the nature thereof, its true divinity (and herein we see the man who clearly discerned the true tendency and work of his age). The other meaning, also, which was attached to the Logos by the Church, to wit, "Word," expressed, not His hypostasis, but at the utmost the objectification of reason; that is, it contained the hint of an hypostasis, but not the hypostasis itself. And Tertullian not merely clearly saw the inadequacy of existing terms, but endeavoured to find better ones. The new point which he brought to light, and which constituted an epoch in the future history of Christology, was his designation of the personal element in the higher nature of Christ by the name Son; and his endeavour to lay bare more fully the genesis of the Sonship, and its relation to the divine essence, with which, so long as he was merely termed Logos, He was too completely identified. This was undoubtedly an important stroke; and, as we shall see, it met with the approbation of the Church. The age of Logology was nowsucceeded, in consequence of his labours, by the age of Sonship. Not that Logology was by any means set aside; but it was reduced to its proper, that is, to a lower rank, because of its inability adequately to convey and to preserve the Christian thought: and, indeed, we find that John, though he began with the Logos, ended with the term fiovoyevry;. The New Testament expression, "Son of God," had, it is true, naturally been often enough employed at an earlier period, but without a determinate, dogmatic idea being connected therewith; very frequently it served merely to designate the entire Christ, or even His official dignity. Justin Martyr applied it also to the hypostatic Logos, but not constantly. Henceforth, however, whereas Logos marks in the first instance the impersonal nature, the word "Son" is employed, in a specifically dogmatic sense, to express the personality of the Logos and His possession of an objective existence of His own, distinct from that of the Father. On the history of the doctrine of the Trinity, this new turn had an important influence, although much that was transitory was connected with it. But even on Christology had the development of the idea of Sonship a favourable influence, owing to its suggesting and giving occasion to the attempt to view the revelation in Christ, not as something external and foreign to the divine in Christ, but as the full exhibition of the entire idea of Sonship, which lay originally in the Son.

Closely related to, and dependent on, Tertullian, though giving a superficial version of his master's system, was Novatian. He says ("De Trinitate" 29, 30),—Because God alone is termed good by Christ, it does not follow that He also was not good. In Christ alone dwelt the Holy Spirit, entirely and perfectly, "nee in aliqua mensura aut portione mutilatus, sed cum tota sua redundantia cumulate distributus et missus, ut ex illo delibationem quandam gratiarum ceteri consequi possint, totius sancti Spiritus fonte in Christo remanente, ut ex illo donorum atque operum venae ducerentur, spiritu sancto in Christo affluenter habitante." Christ is God and Lord. The unity is not thereby affected. God the Father is the Orderer and Creator of the universe, but unoriginated, invisible, infinite, immortal, eternal, the one God, to whose majesty, greatness, and power nothing can be compared, much less preferred. But out of Him has a Son been born, the Word; not like a sound which strikes the air, or a tone of the voice, but in the substance of a power produced by God. As to the time, Novatian employs the words,—The Father brought forth the Son quando voluit (c. 31). Nevertheless, he says,—He was always in the Father, and the Father was never without Son; but the "always" he does not use in the absolute sense. Because the procession of the Son took place before time and the world began, time cannot be applied thereto. And in so far we may, or rather must, speak of an "always." Strictly speaking, however, He who has no origin must, in some way, precede Him of whom He is the source and origin. He had no intention of representing the Son as a creature; but still the Father is really to him the One God. The Son, it is true, knows the Father, and the secret of His own birth, which no apostle, nor prophet, nor any creature knows. He is God, but God born. "We will not have two unbegotten ones," says he; "consequently, not two Gods." Clearly, therefore, he regards the Father alone as " sensu eminenti" God, and the one God; whereas Tertullian had endeavoured to show that the unity constituted out of triplicity was the more perfect. The Father is alone "omnium rerum piincipium et caput." The Son is the ^u Unigenitus et Primogenitus" of the Father; but, notwithstanding His birth from the Father and not from another,— notwithstanding that He also is God, He showed the unity of God by subjecting Himself to the Father " in morigera obedientia" and by being "minister voluntatis paternae." He was born in order to be God and Lord, for the Father has subjected all things to Him. But the time comes when the Son "auctoritatem divinitatis rursus ad Patrem remittit." So that it follows from all, that the Father is the one true and eternal God, "a quo solo haec vis divinitatis emissa etiam in filium tradita et directa rursum per substantiae communionem ad Patrem revolvitur. Gradatim, reciproco meatu illa majestas atque divinitas ad Patrem, qui dedcrat eam, rursum ab ipso illo filio missa revertitur et retorquetur;" and the Father is the principle of all things, even of the Son; the Son is God of all the rest, and accordingly Mediator between God and man (c. 31). In what has been just adduced we can scarcely fail to discover a Subordinatianism even still stronger than that of Tertullian. Both asserted the unity of the substance of the Father and the Son; both viewed Christ during the period of His mediatorship as God; both take up a position of antagonism to the Monarchians; but neither was able to confute them. The Monarchians were unable to establish the existence of distinctions in God; but Tertullian and Novatian, though they acknowledge and start with the distinctions, do not assert the divinity of Christ so clearly as the Monarchians. The reason whereof was, that the VOL. II. F

former had not really transcended the point of view of the latter. As the Patripassians rested satisfied with the work of revelation, so their two opponents felt the need of the Trinity solely for the work of redemption. Relatively thereto, they believed it necessary that the Son should have an hypostasis, but not otherwise. And as the revelation was not eternal, there remained a point " a parte ante," in respect of which the antagonists were essentially at one with each other. Prior to His generation for the creation of the world, the Son had not a personal existence in God. In this respect, both parties were agreed; nay, they were even further agreed, with the exception of some opposed elements in Tertullian's system, that the existence of the Son or the time of His origin, depended on the will of the Father. And so, as soon as a mediator ceases to be necessary, the personality, or, at all events, the deity (auctoritas divina), of the Son will be endangered. The Trinity then threatens to sink down to a mere oeconomy, as in the systems of those whom they opposed. Irreconcilable, indeed, therewith was the Christian consciousness, which regarded Christ not as a transient revelation, not as a mere power; from which, however, all that follows is, that from the Christian consciousness must proceed the impulse to ever fresh efforts to secure for the doctrine of the Trinity a more satisfactory form, and to point out eternal and not mere arbitrary, both as to number and existence, distinctions in the nature of God Himself. This would require, it is true, that the two Persons, Father and Son, should renounce that exclusiveness towards each other attributed to them in the systems of these teachers of the Church. If the Son must again give up His deity or power, in order that the Father may possess it entirely; or if Christ be the ruler of the world in the stead of the Father, and no way be found of allowing both, together with the Holy Spirit, to participate in the entire work, each in His own way, then must the unity of God be purchased with the subordination or the merely momentary existence of the hypostases. We have already hinted that this relation of exclusiveness arose from the obscuration introduced by the application of physical categories; for in the $>\hti<;, not only qualities, but even individuality of being is characterized by exclusiveness. This physical exclusiveness is only a feeble reflection of the fixed, ineffaceable limits and distinctions which rule in the domain of spirit. But in the domain of spirit, exclusiveness is not necessary to the maintenance of distinctions, as in the finite, material world. There, on the contrary, as Tertullian already vaguely felt, distinctions confirm unity; for an unity evolved out of distinctions is more compact and self-sufficient. This we may learn even from a comparison of organic with inorganic nature. In the domain of spirit, the unity is not an abstract identity or continuity, but one that posits and confirms distinctions.

As belonging to the same African school, we might further mention Cyprian. His sphere was the practical, and he produced nothing new in the domain of Christology; but as a prince of the Church, whose mind was bent above all things on the attainment of unity, and who left aside everything that was singular or still unfixed, we may fairly regard him as the truest representative of the doctrine regarding the Person of Christ, generally held about the middle of the third century. With his distinct and individual character, he may be taken as the embodiment of the Christological Symbolum of his age. For this reason, however, it will be more fitting first to listen to the voice of a man who took an active part in the dogmatical struggle of the period,—to wit, Hippolytus, of the Oriental Church, who combated Patripassianism in its very home.

As has been already remarked by others, Hyppolytus has hitherto been unjustly neglected by writers on the history of dogmas,—a course, in excuse for which may be pleaded the possible doubts as to the genuineness of several of the works attributed to him, but which is not thereby justified. (Note 15.)

What arguments he advanced against the Patripassianism of Noetus, we shall see below. Beron, however, who undoubtedly spoke of the Logos as the manifested aspect of the Father (see page 29), he answered to the following effect:—So far are we from being able to assume a conversion of the Deity into a man, or a icevmais, by which that which was identical (ravrov) with the Father became identical with humanity, that we cannot even predicate movement, much less change and conversion, of God. The divine will (Fragm. 1), by which God created and moves all things, remains itself unmoved. For the infinite in no way admits of the idea of motion, seeing that there exists neither place to which, nor anything about which, it might move. To that which is infinite and immoveable in its essence, movement would be already conversion. The Son of God, therefore, in becoming incarnate, underwent no conversion of any kind, but merely assumed circumscription by the natural flesh, for our sake; He himself, however, remaining without flesh (Si^a aapicbs) and apart from all circumscription. So impossible is it that a conversion of deity into humanity, or of humanity into deity, should take place, that God and man cannot even be compared with each other. They are erepcxpvels. Between the Creator of the universe and the creature, between the infinite and the finite (t£ airelptp, To ireparbv), between the unlimited and the limited, no sort of comparison can be instituted; for they are not merely relatively but essentially (apwrucw) different. What the divine was before, that it remained after the incarnation, essentially infinite, unlimited, impassible, incomparable, unchangeable, and immoveable (avaXXouorov, arpeirrov), possessed of all power in itself, and so forth. To the ethnic changeableness of God, which was connected with pantheistic elements, is here therefore opposed His absolute immoveableness. But where God's airupov, arpeirrov, is treated as it is by Hippolytus,—where even permission, in its distinction from act and operation, is excluded from God, on the ground of His unchangeableness, as we shall shortly see,—there the world is kept impersonal, and God alone is, strictly speaking, allowed to have reality. It appears, therefore, that Hippolytus, in the fundamental idea of his theology, is chargeable with approximating in another way to pantheism, through raising a too hasty opposition to Patripassianism. It may be well indeed to say, that God cannot suffer through finitude (Fragm. 3: ov irej>vKe irepvypd<peaOai yevryrfj <f>vaei To Kara (f>vaiv wyevrjrov), even though it grew into one whole together with Him, by means of the conception which seizes hold on all understanding (irepir/pd(povaav avWrjyfnv).¹ But it is not good to take the love of the Son, its power, and the unity of the -Person of Christ so little into account, as to maintain that the divine, in its immoveableness, infinitude, and so forth, and the human, as being of a totally different substance, cannot be at all compared with each other. Not only is there a f orgetf ulness of the doctrine of the divine image; but with such premises the doctrine of Christ can only assume an imperfect form. It will, nevertheless, be instructive to examine the Christological theory of Hippolytus more carefully.

¹ " . . . . wenn sic audi mil ihm zu einem Ganzcn zusammenwuchs durch die alien Vcrstand gefangennehmende Empfangniss."

Let us examine, first, what he teaches regarding the divine aspect of the Person of Christ; secondly, his view of the incarnation; and, thirdly, his conception of the union of the divine and human in Christ.

I. Patripassians of the school of Noetus, who appealed to the same passages as Praxeas,—to wit, Exod. iii. 6, xx. 3; Baruch iii. 36; Isa. xlv. 5; Rom. ix. 5; John xiv. 9,—arrived at the conclusion that Christ was the Father Himself, that. He was the Son, was born, suffered, and raised Himself from the dead. In reply, he urged that, in order to withstand Theodotus, who looked only at the humanity of Christ, we must not look solely at His deity, and attribute to Him the entire deity (c. Noet. 3, 11). Both are equally one-sided (jiovoicaikov). "Who will deny that God is one 1 But shall we, therefore, at once set aside the oeconomy," which introduced distinctions into Him? If Christ be God, say they, and God is one, the sufferings which befell Christ must be attributed to the Father also. But the one God, in whom we are compelled to believe, is, on the contrary, unbegotten, airaOr)<;, aBdvaros, and doeth all things as and when He wills (c. 8). This self-identity of God is held so firmly by Hippolytus, that he is unwilling to admit even of the distinction of willing and not-willing in God (Fabr. ii. 45). The Aoyos rov 0eov also is airaOry;, and solely through the flesh is He passible. It was not, therefore, as in the case of Tertullian, the desire to constitute God a participator in finitude that led Hippolytus to the distinction of the Son (ylbs, frequently 7rat ? Qeov), but partly the passages of Scripture, which distinguish the Son from the Father, and partly the need of retaining firm hold of the personal indwelling of God in Christ as the unity of God. How, then, does he accomplish the task? He says (c. 10),—" Whilst God was still alone, and had nothing with Himself that was contemporary, He willed to create the world. Thinking, willing, and uttering the idea of the world, He created the world; and soon that which was created was with Him, as He had willed it. It is enough for us to know that nothing was contemporary with God; nothing was besides Himself. But He, although existing alone, existed in plurality (itoxv<; %v); for He was neither without the Logos nor the Sophia (0X07o?, aaocf>o<;), without power or counsel: all was in Him, and He was Himself the All (to "rrav). When it was His will, He showed His Logos as He willed, at the times afore appointed by Him, and through Him created all things, creating all things through the Word, through Wisdom ordering all things in beauty. As the Prince of that which then came into existence, as the counsellor and master-workman, He brought forth the Logos. The Logos, whom He bore in Himself, He made visible. This was His own intellect (vou?), invisible at first to the growing world, and at an earlier period visible only to Himself. In that He uttered the first word, and produced light out of light, He sent forth for creation its Lord (irporjice rfj Ktiosi Tov icvpiov), to the end that the world, seeing Him through His manifestation, might be delivered. And so there stood another alongside of God" (c. 11). "I have no intention of teaching," he goes on to say, "two Gods, but merely two irpoaayrra, the preservation of the olicovofila (c. 11, 14), Light of light, water from the fountain, a ray from the sun. For He is one force out of the whole; but the Father is the whole" (c. 11). Christ in His divine aspect is iravroKparcop (c. 6); everything is made by Him; He alone is of the Father (c. 11). Paul ventures to say, "He is God over all;" and justly, for He Himself declared that all things were given up to Him (c. 6). As, according to John xvii. 22, we are not to be one with each other and with God in Christ as to our personality (kclto. Ttjv oialav, Perscinlichkeit), but as regards &vvafu<; and BiAOeais T?}? 6fiocf>povla<; (that is, without doubt, so far as there dwells in us the like divine power, and as we are animated by the same disposition); so did He confess that He was in the Father Zwafiei, SiaOeaei. For the Son (0 Hat?) is the one understanding of the Father. Coming forth into the world, God's 1/0Os is set before men as the Son of God (7rat? Beov; compare also "de Chr. et Antichr." c. 3,—6 Tov Qeod 7rat?, o iraXai X07o?). Do we, then, teach a plurality of Gods, which have come into existence in the course of time 1 By no means. All runs back again into one. The Logos is the Father's Voxk, ao<pia, X07o? itself, one and the same Swa/iis with that of the Father (fila Svvafus irarp^a, c. 8, 6,11). As regards the Svvafus, it is one God. But as regards the oeccnomy, its manifestation is threefold (eV^Betft?, c. 8). The oeconomy, because it is an harmonious one (oUovofua avfi<fxovlas), leads back to one God, for God is one. He who commands is the Father; He who obeys is the Son; He who enlightens is the Holy Ghost. The Father is over all, the Son is through all, the Holy Ghost is in all (Eph. iv. 6); and it is impossible for us to assume one God, unless we really believe in Father, Son, and Spirit. The Jews boasted of the Father; but they never got as far as thankfulness (that is, they never had a childlike spirit, a real Father), for they did not recognise the Son. The disciples knew the Son; but not in the Holy Ghost, and therefore they denied Him (c. 14).

Consequently, besides the equality of substance and the sameness of will and thought, it is their common origin from the Father, and the identity of the work with which the three irpoawrra are occupied, each in its own way, that is to preserve the unity of the deity, notwithstanding the plurality of the irp6amnra. The Father wills or speaks; the Son accomplishes; the Holy Spirit enables the mind to apprehend Christ's work, and gives the necessary enlightenment (awert^ei, <pavepow, c. 14). Two different things are therefore connected, but not united. The greater the stress laid on the latter point, that is, on the identity of their work, the more is the basis withdrawn on which the three hypostases rest: the triplicity then relates, not to God's inmost essence, but merely to His manifestations, to His work. Hippolytus has, on this ground, been charged with Sabellianism, but unjustly.¹ For he claims divine worship for each of the three, and must therefore have conceived them to be bypostatical (c. 13; compare Theoph. 10). On the other hand, the more he insists on the triplicity of the irpoaayira, and, in particular, as regards the second irpoaayrrov, assigns the precise moment, when the Understanding or Word of God was begotten as His Son, and was set into the world as an Krepos over against God, the more distinctly do we perceive that he has but one means of guarding the unity of God, to wit, Subordinatianism. The power of unity is in the Father, from whom everything, even the olieovofiia, proceeds, and to whom, as the irav, the Son is related as a mere ray to the sun, or as a part of the whole.

For example, by Hanell.

He has, it is true, subjected all things to the Son, but not Himself; on the contrary, He commands, whereas the ''

Son obeys; nay more, He called the Son, His own vou?, to an hypostatical existence alongside of Himself, because He willed, and just rolien He willed. A clear line of demarcation separates this doctrine of the Son from Arianism; for, according to it, the Son is equal in substance to the Father, and is not a creature, but begotten by God prior to all creation. But though eternal as to His essence, He was not eternal as to His personality. His essence was the divine understanding, the divine wisdom, the divine power itself; the theologumena of the divine Word and the divine Wisdom were united in Him; but because the Father Himself cannot be without power and wisdom (aXcKyo?, aaoifxjs), Hippolytus, like Tertullian, ends with identifying, at all events, the eternal aspect, or the essence, of the Son with the Father; although, on the other hand, he broke the first ground for an eternal distinction of the Father from the Son, by teaching that the Father carried Him in Himself prior to His generation. This thought, however, if the potence of the Son in God was the vow, the acxpia, of which, be it remembered, the Father could not be conceived destitute, could not be further followed out, without encroachment on the Father; unless the divine vovs were represented as in some way doubling itself, and, whilst abiding in the Father, to use Tertullian's expression, as objectifying itself in the Word. Wisdom and power, however, are not, in his view, hypostatical, but predicates of the Father Himself: they become hypostases outside of God, in the world. We may therefore briefly say,—With one foot, Hippolytus, like all the Church teachers of his time, still stood on the ground of his patripassian opponents; and yet built up a subordinatian system, as it were, on Sabellian foundations.

Not distinctions which exist merely for the mind of the beholder, but real and objective ones, were sought. Eternal distinctions of essence, however, were not arrived at. The wisdom and word of Omnipotence, considered as an activity or as an attribute, must appertain also to the Father: hence the Son, who is the Wisdom of the Father, is constantly on the point of going back out of His hypostasis, which He owes solely to the will, not to the essence, of the Father, into His essence, which is undistinguishably one with the essence of the Father, whose hypostasis alone is fixed and established.

Hippolytus gave more definite expression to this temporality of the Sonship than even Tertullian. The Only-begotten One, says he, was indeed perfect Logos prior to the incarnation, but not yet perfect Son.¹ Who was in heaven, save the Logos without humanity, who was sent in order to show that He who was on earth is also in heaven? The Logos took the name which was customary amongst the children of men, the expression of tender love (c. 15) ; and from the very beginning (for example, by Daniel), although He was not yet man, allowed Himself to be called Son of man, because He was destined to become man, and to be set forth as a perfect Son (c. 4). (Note 16.) His Sonship, therefore, was a growing one, and first attained completion at the incarnation. With the Sonship, however, was connected His personality, which, out of consideration for the redemption in Christ (c. 10) indeed, he represented the Logos as attaining, even prior to the incarnation; but which he must have been inclined to derive from finitude, if the only place he had for it was one outside of the divine sphere. If God is absolutely arpeKros (2, 45), immoveable (c. Ber. Fragm. 1), and if the divine Logos, notwithstanding, first became an hypostasis or Son in time, the hypostatical in Him cannot have pertained to God. The essence of the Logos, indeed, cannot by any means be described as a creature and finite; but His personality certainly :—the latter, so far as it began in time, and gradually advanced from imperfection to perfection; the former, in so far as not the essence of God is conceived to be trinitarian, but His understanding is held to have been constituted by Him into an independent hypostasis, as and when He willed (see above, and c. Noet. c. 16). This birth of the Son, who out of the Logos of the Father, and in the Father, was constituted Son, is, like His birth in the flesh, a mystery; the result and product of which is before our eyes in Christ, without our being able to understand the process. The understanding thereof is reserved for the saints, who shall behold the face of God. And a still greater mystery than the incarnation is the birth of the Son out of God, which took place (Ps. ex. 3) before the morning star (c. 16).

¹ C. 15:—Oirt ydp cUrapxos xxl xxff iccvrir 6 Ao'yof rfotios i» vlis, xuhai rfatiof uv Ao'yof fiotoymiis, etc., C. 4.

So much only he held to be certain, that the Logos continued one with the Father even after He had become a Person or a Son (a^copioro? rod Ilarpos; c. Noet. c.18; Theophan. c. 7), and fulfilled all things notwithstanding His hypostasis (Fabr. 2, 45). He is airep!r/pcnrro<;, dicardXrjirro<; (Theophan. 2). He terms Him fu>voyevrj<; Qeov X07o? (2, 29), X070s Tov irarpos -rrpb irdmotv yeyewrjfih/o<; (de Christo et Antichr. c. 11), or 'rrpb alaovcov fu>voyevrj<; (de Charism. T. 1, 246). In his commentary on Genesis (Fabr. 2, 29), he appears to go even still further. The words of Christ,—namely, John xvii. 5, "Father, glorify Me with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was,"—he explains in the following manner,—del yap fjv ev Tj? Bo^y Oeoirpenrel, rco iStip avvvirdpyotv yevvr)rOpt irpb iravrb<; al&vos Ka\ j^povov Kal ri}? Tov Koctp-ov /cara/3oX^s; which reminds us of Irenaeus. This passage cannot indeed prove that Hippolytus recognised the existence of the distinction of Father and Son in the eternal divine essence; for it would clash with all that we have hitherto advanced: but it does show that the apparently Arian elements in his system were there, so to speak, against his will. That there ever was a time when the Son as yet existed not, it would have been impossible for him to affirm, if for no other reason, because he believed that time began with the world, and that the world was created by the Son, who was not a creature, but a Son. At the very same time, however, he unsuspectingly lays down the proposition, that the Logos was not eternally a person (that is, Son), and represents His actual Sonship, His hypostatical existence, as following upon His substantial existence in the Father, as the Father's power and wisdom; or, what is to the same purpose in his eyes, he taught that the Father was at first alone, in company solely with a plurality of attributes, and that when He willed He set the Son over against Himself (c. Noet. 10). The bringing forth of the Logos to light (Beucvvvai, ib.), who was eternally present in the divine essence, but visible only to the Father, was, in the view of Hippolytus, His bringing forth, or generation' (yewav), as the hypostasis of the Son, so that He henceforth stood over against the Father as an eVepo? (c. 10, 11).

¹ I have tried here to render into English the play between the German words zeigen and zeugen; to Bhow, and to beget. They might be otherwise translated—" the producing" (i.e., to view) of the Logos, was His "production" (i.e., generation).—Tr.

This hypostasis of the Son is not merely the Creator of the world (irdvrcov fyfuovpyos, Theoph. 2; c. Noet. 10), but also the Lord, King, and Judge of all heavenly and earthly things, and things under the earth (de Chr. et Antichr. 26). He keeps visible and invisible things together, and in a good condition (2, 29). The Logos or Son is the principle of all revelation; the Word spake (1. c. 31) and dwelt in the prophets; in that He became His own messenger in them, He spake concerning Himself (eV Tovtok TroXtreuo/iei/o?), showing the Word which was destined to appear among men (c. Noet. 11). As Hippolytus did not deem the prophets in particular, to whom Moses belonged (1, 246), to have been themselves active at the moment of revelation (compare " de Chr. et Antichr." 2,—opydvcov Biicqv ijwafiivov ep^oire? iv eairroi? del Tov Xdyov, a>? irXtjicrpov, oY oi> Kivovfievoi dinryyeWov ravra direp i)OeXev 6 @eo?; c. 12, where he terms the prophets "Christ's eyes;" and c. 2, where he terms them "our eyes"), he was able to say that Christ sojourned already in them; and, as he appears to have done after the example of Theodoret (Fabr. 1, 267), to distinguish three forms of the irapovala of Christ, of which theirs* was undoubtedly His walking with the prophets, or His appearance to them (compare on Gen. iii. 8, Fabr. 2, 22); the second, His walking in the prophets, when they became, as it were, forms under which He, for a time, manifested Himself; the third, the incarnation, when He perfectly and permanently assumed humanity, and lived a thoroughly human life. This third he again distinguishes, in the usual manner, into the advent of the Redeemer in humiliation, and His advent in glory (de Chr. et Antichr. 44).

II. We confine our attention, in the first instance, to the incarnation. The Father sent the immortal Son and Logos into the world; and He, entering into man and begetting us anew to immortality of the soul and of the body, breathed into us the breath of true life, and clothed us with an imperishable panoply (Theoph. 8). What the holy Virgin conceived was the Logos, the First-born of God, who descended upon her from heaven; and a man, who was formed in her womb as her first-born, in order that the first-born Logos of God might exhibit Himself in union with a first-born man (1, 267). Both substances, the divine and human, must He receive, as it were, as a pledge of His ability to appear in the character of Mediator, both of the two natures and of God and man (1, 266). The protoplast Adam, the Logos sought out in the Virgin; the spiritual Adam sought out the earthly in the mother. He became a helper of vanquished man, by becoming like him (1, 269). The act of incarnation itself Hippolytus describes as follows:—The only-begotten Logos of God, God of God, humbled Himself, voluntarily abasing Himself to that which He was not, and invested Himself with this dishonourable flesh of ours (2, 29, Keichnoicev eavrbv KaOel<; iOeXovrrj<; eavrbv eh onrep Ovk fy, real rijv aBo^ov To.vrtjv adpica ruiireayero). At the same time, as the Logos of God, the glory of God belonged essentially and inalienably to Him, even after the act of incarnation. But His humanity participated also, to a certain extent, in this glory. He gives the following explanation of the passage Isa. xix. 1, "Behold, the Lord cometh on a light cloud:"—The Lord is the Logos; the light cloud is the purest of all tents, enthroned in which our Lord Jesus Christ entered into life (1, 271). And on Ps. xxviii. 1, he remarks,—'" The ark of imperishable wood was the Redeemer. For His incorruptible tabernacle, which was unaffected by the rottenness of sin, was thus signified. The Lord was sinless, was of the wood which knows no corruption, as to His humanity; that is, He was inwardly out of the Virgin and the Holy Spirit, and outwardly out of the Logos of God, covered as with the purest gold" (1, 2C8). We find in other writers also a reference of the ark of the covenant to the humanity of Christ (for example, Iren. Fragm. p. 342, Ed. Mass.). But whereas Irenasus gives the image the application,—the ark was inwardly gilt, and outwardly covered with gold; and in like manner the body of Christ was inwardly adorned with the Logos, and outwardly guarded by the Holy Ghost,—Hippolytus here takes Christ's humanity as corresponding to the wood of the ark, that is, as the inner portion, surrounded by the uncircumscribed Logos, and as having been, as it were, fitted for union with the Logos, by the purifying and glorifying power of the Holy Ghost. On Gen. xlix. 11 (Fabr. 2, 24), " In wine washeth he his garments,"—he remarks, "Through the Holy Ghost and the word of truth, He will purify His flesh." Akin to this is another passage, which sets the incarnation in a still more determinate relation to the Logos. Prov. ix. 1 ff. he explains (1, 282) as follows:—" Christ, the wisdom and power of God the Father, built for Himself a house, to wit, He took the adpfccoais from the Virgin for a temple. 'She set up seven pillars;'—these, according to Isaiah, are the seven powers of the Holy Ghost, which descended on Christ. 'She mixed wine in her cup;' that is, the Redeemer united His deity, the pure wine, with the flesh, in the Virgin, and was born of her as God and man, without commixture. 'She spread her table;' that is, she communicated the knowledge of the Holy Trias." Doubts may be entertained as to the genuineness of the next sentence, which explains the table to signify the Holy Eucharist, in which the precious, sacred body of Christ is daily sacrificed on the mystical divine table, in commemoration. In another simile, borrowed from weaving, he depicts the various factors which worked together in the Person of Christ as follows:—When as yet the Logos of God in Himself was destitute of flesh, He took upon Himself holy flesh out of the holy Virgin, and wove for Himself, as it were, a bridal garment in His sufferings on the cross (through His death of love, the glory which encompasses Him and His redeemed ones). The sufferings which He endured on the cross were the loom; the warp was the power of the Holy Ghost; the woof was His holy flesh which was woven in with the Spirit; the weaving thread is the loving grace of Christ, which binds in one that which was dissevered; the Logos was the shuttle; the master weavers were the patriarchs and prophets, who wove for Christ His precious robe, His coat without seam; through them the Logos passed like a shuttle, weaving by them what the Father willed. These artificial allegories, which are very much to the taste of Hippolytus, show that he conceived the Logos to be the properly moving principle, as of all revelations, so also of the incarnation; and although he assigns to the Holy Spirit His work in connection therewith, he really represents the Logos as building for Himself His own tabernacle. Indeed, he says, —" He raised His own body from the dead by the power of the Father" (i&oyovei rbv vabv eavrov, 2, 27). Nevertheless, he insists, and repeatedly asserts, that the material, consecrated by the Holy Ghost, for the temple in which Christ was to be enthroned, was taken from the Virgin. He would not have been a Mediator had He not, in the man Jesus, assumed a man of our race. He lived through human conditions (c. Noet. 18; de Chr. et Antichr. 26, 46), the entire human stadium, and for this reason He is the arbitrator: He descended also into Hades, because it was His will to be counted among the dead (de Chr. et Antichr. 26 and 1, 269). "Let us believe, dear brothers," says he (c. Noet. 17), "that God the Word descended from heaven into the holy Virgin Mary; that He became flesh, assuming from her also a human, that is, a rational, soul (compare also the Fragment in Ang. Mai's Coll. Nov. 7,12; c. Beron. Fragm. 8, in Fabr. 1, 229 f.); that, in short, having become all that man is, with the exception of sin, He saves the fallen, and is able to confer immortality on those who believe in His name. Born of the Virgin and the Holy Ghost, He exhibited a new man, in that His heavenly nature was constituted of that which was of the Father as Logos; and, as far as concerns the earthly, He took a body from the old Adam, through the medium of the Virgin. He now, coming forth into the world, revealed Himself as God in a body; came forth as a perfect man."

III. But since Hippolytus, as we know, laid great stress on the unalterableness of God, and also represents the Son, who remains inseparable from the Father (the Father in the Son and the Son in the Father), as participating therein, even whilst He sojourned among men (c. Noet. 4), the question arises,— How did He reconcile the incarnation therewith? The idea of a humanity, possessed by the Logos already in heaven, must be rejected; there was a time when the Logos was not man (c. Noet. 4). Humanity exists in heaven, only since the paternal Logos presented a perfect man as a gift to God. Accordingly, He became what He was not before, without losing the divine essence and glory, which He had from the beginning (2, 29), consequently without conversion (c. Beron. Fragm. 1, in Fabr. 1, 225 f.; c. Noet. 17). But from this he deduces, further, that the incarnation did not affect His being, but solely His Having or Dwelling. It is frequently supposed that Hippolytus conceived the divine and the human to have stood in a very intimate relation to each other: as, for example, when he says (c. Beron. 1, 230),—p.rjSh> Oeiov yvfivbv o~d>fiarO<; eVepy17aa?, firjBe avOpamivov 6 airbs afioipov Oeo-rnros; or when he reckons the incarnation necessary to the perfection of the divine Sonship. But he does not carry these ideas out. Consistently with the mode of thought to which he mainly adhered, Hippolytus cannot properly say,— The Logos became or was man; but merely that He wore a man as a garment, or dwelt in him as in a temple. Stoxtj, £vsvfmi, vabs (de Chr. et Antichr. 11, 4; Theophan. 4, in Genes. xlix. 11; Fabr. 2, 24), are also standing expressions of his; and when he lays stress on Christ's having a human soul, it is merely for the sake of the completeness of the human nature, and has not at all the effect of freeing the humanity of Christ from its total dependence on the Logos. As we have seen, Hippolytus did not conceive the freedom of man to involve his being an independent agent; for that would have led to the recognition of the distinction between divine volition and divine permission, of the possibility of change in God. He was far, therefore, from supposing himself to be curtailing the human aspect of the Person of Christ, when he denied it a free human Ego and treated it as a selfless organ.¹ He gave the following account of the relation between the two natures during their conjunction :—The Swa/ws irarp&a¹ which dwelt in Him worked all that was an expression of power, the miracles, the resurrection, and the like; whereas to His humanity appertained weakness and suffering. By His weakness He was to prove Himself man (2, 45; c. Noet. 15); by His glory He exhibited Himself as God (c. Noet. 18; compare Fabr. 2, 28; 1, 218; and Theoph. 7).

The work against Beron is simply a fuller development of these ideas. Through His health-bringing incarnation (adptc&xu?), the Logos introduced into the flesh the activity of His own deity;—not that His deity was bounded by the flesh; and still less that it grew out of the essence of the humanity (Fragm. 1, 226).

¹ To this connection belongs the well-known passage, c. Noet. 15. After the words adduced above (,oirt -/iip &rxpxos xxi xxff ura i 'Kiyos, etc.), he proceeds to say :—So ov(f ti o<lp% xxS^' ixv,zn» l<x<* ^rav Ao'yo" Vtocrivxi iiiv»xro oix To h Aoyip 'nik ovarxai t ixiit.—2vatxois, be it observed, is not yet equivalent to personality. The sense is,—it had its subsistence in the Logos; He was the connective and vehicular force. This is thoroughly unobjectionable: he does not thus necessarily pronounce the humanity of Christ impersonal; although, in view of what has preceded and what remains to be adduced, there can be no doubt that Hippolytus would have defended the impersonality, had the question been agitated at the period at which he lived.

2 C. Noet. 6. 8. 10. 16. Beryll says, iivxfiis irxrpixi. The above phrase employed by his contemporary, Hippolytus, shows how little right Baur has to bring it forward in proof of Beryll's Ebionism. To Beryll's other expression also, ivvxfiis irxrpixij t/iiro?i/revo/il»ij, X.t.a., parallels may be found in the writings of Hippolytus (see c. Noet. 4; de charism. 1, 246). For the incarnation, he employs also the term iiriirifiix. Fabr. 2, 29.

That which is revealed through the flesh, can by no means be described as belonging to the flesh. In proof of which, he brings forward the illustration above mentioned, of the thought which is expressed by the tongue, but which neither springs from nor belongs to it, nor to the hand that records it (Fragm. 8; Fabr. 1, 229 f.; compare Fabr. 2, 29). For our salvation, and in order to give the universe a share in unchangeableness, the Creator of the universe incorporated with Himself a rational soul and a sensitive body (compare c. Noet. 17), drawn from the holy Mary, who was ever a virgin,¹ by an immaculate conception, without conversion. He thus became a man, who, being as to nature foreign to sin, was at once God and Word. For, as to His deity, He worked what was divine through His holy flesh, that is, such things as did not appertain to the nature of the flesh. As to His humanity, He suffered what was human, that is, such things as did not appertain to the nature of the deity, borne up by the deity (avayfj T7js Oe6rrjro<;; compare c. Noet. 15, in note 1, page 95); working nothing divine, without the body (yvfivbv ad>fiaros), and doing nothing human, without participation in deity (afioipov Oeortjros, Fragm. 8; Fabr. 1, 229 f.).

But if that which the divine nature worked pertained in no sense to the human, as its property; and if the latter was the mere passive organ of the former, wherein did the appearance of the Logos in Christ differ from His walking in the prophets? The distinction has already been mentioned: in Christ the union between the Logos and a man was not merely momentary, but permanent. By itself, the circumstance, that in the case of Christ the Logos first prepared for Himself a man, whereas, in the case of the prophets, the man was begotten by men, cannot constitute a difference; for Adam also was prepared by the hands of the Logos, and Hippolytus must consequently have put him on a level with Christ, had he regarded him as a prophet. If, then, the only difference were that between a momentary and a permanent indwelling of the Logos, the distinction between Christ and the prophets would manifestly be merely quantitative.

¹ This predicate probably signifies merely, that Mary remained, even after the birth of Jesus, ilyu ifii>.tus d»lpis. With this supposition accord well the words of Theoph. (c. 3),—" The Baptist made the unfruitful fruitful; Jesus made the Virgin unfruitful."

Christ would in reality have been nothing more than a longer continuing theophany. We might thus account for the title of his discourse, et? rd ciyia 9eo<f>dveia = hri<pdveia; as also for his saying therein (c. 7),—He appeared, He did not become manifest (hre<pavrj, Ovk i<f>dvrj). The last-mentioned words, however, refer to His self-abasement, in that at His baptism He took the appearance of subordination, He who had been always in the bosom of the Father; and assumed a human body for a garment, and therewith concealed His deity, in order to elude the snares of Satan. And the word Oeo<f>dveia had also, in the following century (see, for example, the "Theophania" of Eusebius, recently edited by Cramer), a wider signification, which included the incarnation of Christ. In the third century, too, the Feast of Epiphany bore also the name of Theophany. But as to the question, whether Hippolytus teaches a merely quantitative distinction between Christ's working and appearance in Jesus and in the prophets,—it cannot be denied, that so long as the humanity of Christ is merely regarded as a garment or a temple, so long as the Logos merely has, or is the vehicle of humanity, without being man; and, vice versa, so long as the humanity of Christ cannot be termed divine,—so long is there no incarnation, but merely theophanies; so long is that immanent union of the divine and human not logically demonstrated, which faith feels to be the essentially new element in Christianity. (Note 17.)

In reality, however, the very permanency of the indwelling of the Logos in this man, shows that we have to do with something more than a theophany. If it be certain that the Logos remains eternally clothed with humanity (c. Noet. 4), that He no longer works apart from it, its relation cannot be merely the accidental one of a garment or of a covering, but it must be intimately and essentially united with the Logos Himself. Hippolytus also felt this (see, for example, c. Noet. 15, compare note p. 89, and note 1, p. 95); and when he gives free and unbiassed expression to his Christian intuitions, he goes far beyond the meagre category of a garment;' nay, even beyond the merely organic comparison, according to whicn the humanity was related to the deity, as the tongue or the hand is to thought.

¹ Contra Beron, he says,—The union of the two natures is an <fyi/!iiwni» and cLfynros; the Logos had reserved for Himself a new and fitting method of so working what was divine and what was human, without that confusion of the natures -which he condemns in his opponent, that nothing divine took place without the body, and that the humanity in its activity participated in the divine (Fragm. 1, 8). This connects itself with the principle laid down above, that not even divine activity ever became the property of the humanity, by the following link:—It participated in the divine at every moment solely in consequence of communication of fellowship with the Logos.

For he aimed at showing that in Christ humanity had been renovated, and the first perfect man presented to God. "AvOpayrros iv avOpamois eyyevrfOrj avairXda<rcov Si eavrov Tov 'ASdfi. Man, formed of the earth, and bound with the bonds of death, He drew forth out of the lowest Hades—He who descended from above and bore aloft into higher regions that which was below: the herald, who brought the joyous message to the dead, became the Saviour of souls, the resurrection of the buried. The Logos became a helper to vanquished humanity; in the Virgin He sought out the Adam of the first creation, who was formed of the dust of the ground; He, the eternally living One, sought out him who, through disobedience, had fallen a prey to death. He who was nobly born desired, by His own obedience, to put the bondsman on the footing of a free man; He transformed him who was dissolved into dust, and had become the food of the serpent, into a diamond; He set forth Him who hung on the cross as the Lord of the conqueror, and was found as a conqueror through the wood of the cross (1, 269). Through death He vanquished death. In Adv. Jud. 3, Fabr. 2, 2, we read,—" For that which I have not robbed, says the Logos in Ps. lxxviii. (Hebr. lxxix.), that is, for the sin of Adam, which I did not commit, I suffered death." In i. 266, again,—" On His arms, stretched out on the cross, He bore the sins of Gentiles and Jews, and nailed them, along with Himself, to the cross." In the de Antichr. 61,— "His holy hands, which were extended on the cross, are the wings of the eagle in the Apocalypse of John, which delivered the woman in the desert. He spreads out the right and the left, inviting all who will believe in Him, and He covers them as a hen covereth her chickens." Again, in de Antichr. 11,— "Out of His side spring two fountains, one of water, the other

of blood, wherein the nations are washed and purified; and humanity forms, as it were, the bridal garment with which He is clothed." The humanity which belongs to Him is the Church (c. 59), the parturient woman (c. 61). Out of her heart she will not cease to bring forth the Logos, who is persecuted in the world by unbelievers." "She bears a Son," we read further, "who will feed all nations; to wit, ever bringing forth the man-child, the perfect Christ, the child of God (who is preached as God and man), the Church instructs all nations." In this passage, Christ is described as the inmost essence, as it were, the heart of the humanity renewed by God, and the incarnation as a continuous thing: and so we find him elsewhere not shrinking from the other view of Christ, as the sun with which the woman, the Church, is clothed, as with a garment. If the latter signifies that Christ, through his own person, wedded humanity with immortality, and that the Logos, descending into it from above, and encompassing it from without, transformed it, and set a perfect humanity before the Father in Himself (Theoph. 6, Fragm. on Ps. xxiv. 7, Fabr. 1, 268; c. Beron 2, 226 f.), the former, essentially connected as it is therewith, describes Him as the inmost vital principle and true substance of the humanity, as the principle of the birth of the divine-human life, which is ever continuing, and which diffuses itself through all nations. Theoph. c. 6,—" Christ caused Himself to be baptized; and He renewed the old man, and entrusted to him again the sceptre of sonship. Immediately were the heavens opened above Him, for the visible and the invisible were reconciled; the heavenly hosts were filled with joy; on earth all sicknesses were healed; the mystery was revealed; and enmity was turned to friendship.¹ Before His baptism, He stood like a bridegroom about to enter the heavenly bridal chamber, and the gates opened themselves to Him and to the Holy Ghost, which hovered downwards, and to the Father's voice, ' Thou art My beloved Son,' which rang through the universe."

¹ Similarly c. Beron, Fragm. 2: The God of the universe became man, in order that, by suffering through suffering flesh, He might deliver our entire race from the death to which it was sold; that, doing wonders by His impassible deity, He might lead men through the flesh to His immortal and blessed life, and might establish in immoveableness the holy ordinances of heavenly rational beings. The work of His oufixrxais was r i T5» Oxuk tis xvri» ii»xx:?x?.ximi:. (Similarly in de Chr. et. Antichr. 26.) The latter passage is like Origen:—The God of the universe became man 1»x T<& K«t' oipx»ois xyix rxyfixtx rur votpuv oiiaiut arofiuop irp&i; xrpttyix».

C. 2,—" The Creator of the universe (the Son) descended like rain, and divided Himself like a stream, which is without limits, and rejoiced the city of God." C. 7,—" He who was called the Son of Joseph, was the Onlybegotten One as to His divine essence, He hungered, who fed thousands; He was weary, who by His labours relieved the weary; He had not where to lay His head, and yet all things were in His hand; He suffered, and healed all by His sufferings; He suffered Himself to be beaten, and made the world free." C. 8,—" The immortal Logos came into the world in order to beget mortals again to immortality. When man becomes immortal, he becomes also God. But if he becomes God by being born again of water and the Spirit, he will be also a fellow-heir with Christ after the resurrection." These passages should suffice to show, that when he had to do with the practical, and wished to set forth the glory of Christianity, Hippolytus was by no means chary in the use of terms which declare the existence of the most intimate vital union between the divine and the human in the Person of Christ, and through Him between God and humanity in general,—expressions which stretch far beyond the strictly scientific results at which he arrived. The two are combined, in that he not seldom refers to the mystery which, after all inquiry, still encompasses the union of the divine essence with human nature.

In his first two books against the Jews, Cyprian lays down the principal momenta of the idea of the Person of Christ, as far as they had become clear down to his day, with scriptural proofs, as follows:—The entire Scriptures refer to Christ, and He is the key to their understanding; not till we believe in Christ can we understand them. Then we see that the old covenant was destined to give place to a new one, circumcision to baptism, the old temple to Christ, who is to be the house and temple of God, the old priesthood to the new eternal Priest (B. 1). This Christ is the First-born and the Wisdom of God, through which all things were made (Prov. viii. ix.; Col. i.; John xvii.); the Word of God (Sermo Dei, John i.); the arm and hand of God (Isa. 1. lix.; Ps. xcvii.). He is the Maleach Jehovah, the messenger of God, and God Himself (Rom. ix. 5, where 0eo?, which Tertullian read, is not adduced). But, besides being Son of God from the beginning, lie must needs be born the second time in the flesh (cum a principio Alius dei fuisset, generari denuo habebat secundum carnem); and the distinguishing feature of His birth (das Ausgezeichnete, signum) was to be His being born of a virgin, God and man, the Son of God and the Son of man at the same time (Num. xxiv.; Jer. xvii.; Isa. lxi.; Luke i. 35; 1 Cor. xv.), ex utroque genere concretus, ut mediator esse posset (2, 10). At His first advent, the Scriptures declared that He would be humbled and slain; He is termed the Lamb of God, and was presignified in the paschal festival; Isaiah (liii.) and Jeremiah foretold His sufferings. But He became the precious stone laid in the foundations of Zion (Tsa. lviii.), which shall grow to a mountain, to which all the heathen and the righteous shall come. He is the Bridegroom of the Church, which spiritually bears Him sons without number. For all power and might rest in His sufferings on the cross, and in the sign of the cross. This sign is redemption to all. After His death He was not to remain in the nether world, but to rise again on the third day (ab inferis). And then He received all power from the Father, and His might is everlasting (Dan. vii.; Apoc. i.; Matt. xxviii.). No one can come to the Father but by Him. He will come again as Judge, and be King eternally in His kingdom. All these titles, given to Christ, remind us of the ancient hymns, a specimen of which, from Clemens Alexandrinus, was given in the first volume (see page 182). At the same time, this collocation of Cyprian's sets clearly before us the essential features of the Christological portion of the Apostles' Creed.

We will now subjoin a few passages, in which he not merely repeats passages of Scripture, but develops more carefully his own idea of Christ. "We find, indeed, no precise"scientific definitions; but still we gain a picture of that which, Christ was to him. Special attention must be paid hereby to Cyprian's doctrine of the death of Christ and of the Eucharist. In his fiftysixth letter (ed. Basil. 1558, Epp. L. 4, 6), he says,—" How can the servant be unwilling to suffer, when his Lord suffered before him? how can he refuse to suffer for his sins, when He suffered for us, who knew no sin 1 The Son of God suffered in order to make us sons of God; and yet the children of men will not suffer in order to continue children of God." In the "De Ido1. vanit.," ed. c. Sep. 122 f., he says,— " The Word and the Son of God, whom all the prophets proclaimed as the enlightener and teacher of the human race, was sent as the steward of grace. He was the power of God—His reason, wisdom, glory; He entered into the Virgin,—He, a holy spiritual being, clothed Himself in flesh.¹ God constantly unites Himself with man (semper Deus cum homine miscetur). This our God, this Christ it was, who, as mediator between two, put on man, in order to lead him to the Father. What man is, Christ was resolved to be, in order that man might be what Christ is. The Jews also know of His advent:—but, it is true, only of His advent in glory. He must needs suffer, however, not that He might taste, but overcome death; and that, after the accomplishment of His sufferings, He might ascend up on high, to exhibit the power of the divine majesty, and to set the man whom He loved, whom He took upon Himself, whom lie redeemed, as a victor on the throne, at the right hand of the Father. We follow Him as our guide, as the Prince of light and Saviour, who promises heaven and the Father to those who seek and believe. What Christ is, we Christians shall be, if we have followed Christ." (Compare also Serm. 1, de Eleemos.) But especially does he regard Him as the revelation of pure love. In Sermo 3, "de bono patientiae," we read,—" We shall become perfect sons of the Father, if the long-suffering of God the Father abide in us, and if the divine image, lost in Adam, shines out of our actions. What a glory to be like God; what blessedness to have, in His virtue, something which is worthy of being compared with the divine I And this it is which Christ has not merely taught us by words, but fulfilled by deeds. As He said regarding Himself, He descended to do the Father's will; and therefore, amongst the other marvels of virtue on which He stamped the seal of divine majesty, He proved the longsuffering of God by the patience which He manifested. Descending from His heavenly glory to the earth, the Son of God did not count it a shame to take upon Himself the flesh of man, in order that, though Himself free from sin, He might bear the sins of others.

¹ "Came spiritus sanctus induitur." See my remarks on the other reading—" (hie)—carnem spiritu sancto cooperante induitur,"—vol. i. page 391;—where also the necessary explanation is given of the expression "Spiritus sanctus."

Laying aside for the time His immortality, He undertook even to be mortal, that He might die, the innocent for the salvation of the guilty."¹ Concerning the Eucharist, he says in the fifty-fourth Epistle (Ep. 2,1. c.), that he who is called upon to shed his blood as a confessor, ought previously to partake of the cup of communion in the Church. In the sixtythird Letter (Ep. 3), after mentioning the prophecies in the Old Testament relative to the Eucharist, and referring in particular Proverbs ix., where Wisdom is spoken of, which prepares her table and mingles her wine, to the Eucharist, as Hippolytus had done, he says, that "its blessing consists in the removal of all care, the awakening out of worldly sleep to the understanding of God, the forgetting of worldly conversation, the becoming drunk with divine wisdom, and the recovering from the intoxication of the world." Then he goes on to say (p. 39),—" As Christ bore us all, nay, as He bore even our sins, so are we to regard the water which is mixed with the sacramental wine as the people, the wine as the blood of Christ. But as the water is mingled with the wine in the cup, even so is Christ adunated with His people (adunatur), and believers are married and united with Him, in whom they believe. This marriage and union of the water and the wine in the cup of the Lord is of such a nature, that it can no more be dissolved and broken up. For this reason, the Church, the people of the faithful and persevering, can no more be separated from Christ, but must ever remain firm in the embrace of the divine love. Wherefore, no wine without water, nor water without wine; even as Christ is not without us, nor we without Christ. When both commingle and interpenetrate as in marriage, the spiritual and heavenly sacrament is accomplished. As, further, in the Eucharist many grains go to make the one bread, so is the people of Christians set before us as united: in Christ, the heavenly bread, we know ourselves to be one body, with which our race is connected and united.

As an antagonist of the Monarchians, Origen was more triumphant than either Tertullian or Hippolytus, mainly from the importance of his own positive teachings, and not merely because of the arguments he adduced against them. As he not merely brought a section to a close, but was the starting-point of the new development and the new struggles, which took place till the Council of Nice, we shall, for this reason, accord him the special attention which he deserves.

¹ Compare the beautiful further treatment of the same subject, page 138,1. c.

TRANSITION TO THE FURTHER DEVELOPMENT.

ORIGEN.

However different may have been the opinions entertained in all ages regarding the great Alexandrian Church teacher Origen, he cannot be denied the honour of having combined hearty love to the Church and its theology, with high scientific culture. He felt, as no one had felt before him, and as few have felt after him, the greatness and importance of the Trinitarian and Christological questions: with the candour of a noble and pure soul, he recognised the element of truth in preceding tendencies of the most different kind; and his richly endowed mind possessed resources and elasticity enough to overcome the difficulties which he thus threw in his own way, to combine views apparently antagonistic, and to make them subserve the progress of the Church. He did justice to the truth in Ebionism, by asserting the completeness of the humanity of Christ, in a manner unlike that of any preceding teacher; not contenting himself with the mere general recognition of the old canon in vogue even as early as the second century,—to wit, "it was necessary that Christ should assume the first-fruits of the whole of human nature, because He could only save that which He assumed,"— but assigning to each part of human nature an essential significance, relatively both to the purpose of redemption and to the possibility and reality of the incarnation. He allowed also the right of the other monarchian tendency, which denied to the higher nature of Christ any special hypostasis, in order to avoid the introduction of a schism into the divine nature, by endeavouring most carefully to preserve the unity of the Most High God. But he did this quite differently from Clemens Alexandrinus, who left the hypostasis of the Logos so far in the background, that he gave aid and countenance to Sabellianism. Origen, on the contrary, concurred with Tertullian and Novatian in the West, and with Hippolytus in the East, in asserting the particular hypostasis of the Son; his labours too in this direction bear a far more realistic stamp, and recognise more distinctly the basis of the faith of the Church. He made it his aim, so to connect the actual deity of the Son, conceived as a person, with the perfect humanity of Christ, as neither to give a low representation of the Son of God, nor an unworthy (for example, ethnic or polytheistic) one of God, that neither the loftiness of the Son of God might curtail the full truth of the man Jesus, nor the completeness of the humanity infringe on the deity (de princip. L. 2, c. 6, cf. in Levit. hom. 13, 4). This endeavour to exhibit the truth held by the Church, as the force which holds together the scattered elements of truth contained in the various heresies, and to show that these different and partial momenta, each of which becomes an untruth as soon as it aims to be the whole, are organic, and, in their proper place, essential, parts of the fully developed system of Christian doctrine, reveals not merely the liberality and greatness, the comprehensive and systematic character, of his mind, but also the love which had enabled him, notwithstanding his varied culture, to strike his roots deeply into the doctrine of the Church, and to take it and its spirit as the regulative of his Christian gnosis, and the goal and soul of his efforts.

All this is seen in his system on a grand scale; bur. it appeared expressly also in the man. However many ideas of a questionable character, and needing continuous agitation and discussion, he may have thrown out; however many ideas he may have laid down, either tentatively or positively; he never forgot—and herein consists his churchly character—the difference between that which was certainly believed by the Church and his own theological speculations; nor failed to demand unconditional recognition for the latter, whilst content that the former should be simply examined and tested. It is such an equilibrium of the fixed and the alterable as this that renders progress possible in the Church. This he takes as his point of departure in the doctrinal work "de principiis" (§ 1), when he remarks,—"All who believe in Christ are convinced that grace and truth were revealed through Him, and are to be found in the sacred books of the Old and New Testaments." But he did not rest satisfied with this general recognition of the material and formal aspect of the Christian principle. For, though this very general norm was enough in itself to distinguish Christians from those who are not Christians, it was insufficient relatively to (heretical) divergencies within the Church itself; that is, it was insufficient relatively to such as, whilst professing to recognise, at the same time diverged so considerably on, essential points of doctrine as really to violate that fundamental principle, and to reduce their recognition thereof to a mere seeming. For this reason, he endeavoured to lay down a standard, and to draw a clear fine separating the heretical from the orthodox. This plumb-line is, in his view, the "ecclesiastica praedicatio," also designated by him "ecclesiastica et apostolica traditio," which had been uninterruptedly the common property of the Church, and had combined within itself the "elementa ac fundamenta" of Christian truth, its public and necessary principles. It may be regarded, indeed, as an imperfection, that he treats these "fundamenta," that is, the Church's rule of faith, rather as a distinct authority alongside of the first-mentioned principle, than as a necessary development therefrom; but still he throws a clearer light on the common faith of the Church of his age, by setting specially before us the "Regula Fidei" of the period, or the summary of the fundamental and essential doctrines of Christianity, as an objective authority. This "Summa Fidei," agreeing substantially as it does with the "Regula Fidei," laid down by Novatian, Tertullian, and Irenaeus,¹ teaches, in harmony with all the older formulae, alongside of the unity of God, the deity of the Son; alongside of the pre-existence of the Son, His incarnation in the Virgin, and the essential features of His history—His sufferings, death, resurrection, ascension, and second coming to judgment. But whereas Irenaeus, in his two "Regular Fidei," which are substantially identical with each other and with that laid down by Tertullian in his "de vel. virginum" 1, as also Novatian, rested satisfied with these most general elements, which had not yet been determinately distinguished from the baptismal formula and the Apostolic Creed (which had gradually grown out of the baptismal formula), and recognised as doctrinal—we find, on the contrary, that the two other formulae of Tertullian (see note), and that of Origen, were constructed with a view not merely to give immediate expression to the faith of the Church, but also to set forth this faith in the form of dogma, as the summary of those fundamental doctrines which are the norm of all doctrine, and shut out that which is heretical.

¹ Compare Halm's "Bibliothek dcr Symbole trod Glaubensregeln der apostolisch-katholischen Kirche," 1842, pp. 63-78; Iren. adv. Hares. 1, 10; 1, 3,4, 2; Tertull. de veland. virgin. 1; adv. Prax. 2; de prascr. haer. 13; Kovatian de Trin. c. 1, 9, 29; Cyprian's "Ep. ad Magnum" and the "Libriadv. Jud."

Even as it is, the arrangement was still mainly determined by the baptismal formula of Matt. xxviii., and by the Apostolic Creed. The Regula Fidei also is trinitarian, and in its Christology specifies the chief momenta of the history of Christ. But that the doctrine of the Church was passing through a further development, we see plainly, when we find Tertullian placing alongside of the doctrine of the unity of God the "oeconomia," by which that unity became a trinity; or when he not merely mentions the "Filius Dei" in general, and more distinctly affirms the actuality of His incarnation, but also describes more particularly His relation to the Father: —" Unicum quidem Deum credimns, sub hac tamen dispensatione, quam olteovofilav dicimus, ut unici Dei sit et Filius, sermo ipsius, qui ex ipso processerit, etc." (adv. Prax. 2);— "Unum Deum esse, nee alium prater mundi conditorem, qui universa do nihilo produxerat per Verbum suum primo omnium emissum; id Verbum Filium ejus appellatum, in nomine Dei varie visum Patriarchis—postremo delatum ex Spiritu Patris Dei et virtute in virginem Mariam, carnem factum in utero ejus et ex ea natum egisse Jesum Christum etc." (de proescr. haer. 13).¹ Origen lays down the "certa linea et manifesta regula," which had formed the substance of the "ecclesiastica praedicatio" in relation to the Son, from the days of the Apostles, and by which, therefore, he also aimed to be guided, in the following terms :—" Species eorum, quae per praedicationem apostolicam manifeste traduntur, istaa sunt. Primo, quod unus Deus est.— Deinde, quia Jesus Christus, ipse qui venit, ante omnem creaturam natus ex Patre est.²

¹ In adv. Prax. is subjoined:—" Hanc regulam ab initio Evangelii decucurrisse, ctiam ante priores quosque haereticos, nedum ante Prax eam hesternum, etc.;" and in the "de praescr. hear." (c. 12) the above is described as a rule to which the Church holds in order to guard its truth against the assaults of heretics.

2 That Origen had a good right to lay this down as the doctrine of the Church from the days of the Apostles, and of the second century, even duriDg that portion of it when the development of the doctrine of the Logos endangered the hypostasis and the pre-existence of the Son, is clear not only from ,what is advanced above, but also from the testimony of Celsus. To the period from the close of the first century until Athenagoras and Ircriieus, the words of Origen apply, after what we have demonstrated above, almost still more directly; for the hypostatic pre-existence of the Son was recognised as distinctly during the age of the Apostolic Fathers and Justin, as in the New Testament writings themselves.

Qui cum in omnium conditione Patri ministrasset (per ipsum enim omnia facta sunt), novissimis temporibus se ipsum exinaniens homo factus incarnatus est, cum Deus esset, et homo factus mansit quod erat, Deus. Corpus assumsit nostro corpori simile, eo solo differens, quod natum ex virgine et spiritu sancto est. Et quoniam hie Jesus Christus natus et passus est in veritate, et non per phantasiam communem hanc mortem sustinint, vere mortuus, vere enim a mortuis resurrexit et assumtus est. Deinde honore ac dignitate Patri ac Filio sociatum tradiderunt Spiritum sanctum." That these words really express the collective, objective faith of the Church in his day, is clear,—if further evidence, besides his own testimony, which deserves perfect credit on the ground of his travels, his learning, and his honesty, be required,—from the abstinence, which induced him to leave his own doctrine of the generation of the Son and of the human soul of Christ entirely unnoticed, where his object was, not to set forth his own views, but the views held by the Church at large. But let us now pass on to the review of his own doctrine.

Tertullian had distinguished between God in Himself, who is immoveable (in statu), and therefore without distinctions, and God in movement (in gradu); assigning the Trinity to the latter. But in this way the Son was not merely ethically, but also as to His essence and origin, interwoven with finitude, if not with time; in this way, further, he approximated too closely both to the Valentinian irpofidkai s (prolationibus) and to the very Theopaschitism which he himself combated under the form of Patripassianism. The final result was the subordination of the Son to a degree which was incompatible with his own general view of the actual God, who had come near to us in Christ. Now, Origen denies every kind of physical emanation, of suffering, and of changeableness of God—not merely of the Father, but also of the Son j¹ though with no intention of thus laying hands on the oiKovofila. Herein we see the Alexandrian. His Trinity does not belong to the sphere of growth, not to that of the yevryra, but to the sphere of eternity. In his view, the Son was an eternal hypostasis, and God a trinity "in statu," and not first "in gradu." At the same time, it is to be remarked, that he does not regard the three hypostases as lifeless magnitudes, existing alongside of each other, without motion or activity; but represents the Trinity as an eternal process in God. Clement's doctrine of the Logos, who is co-eternal with God (in this respect, indeed, scarcely any longer hypostatical), on the one hand; and that of Tertullian and others, of the hypostatical Son, who is generated by a movement out of God Himself, on the other hand; he combines, by asserting in agreement with the latter, the procession of an hypostasis out of God Himself, and, in agreement with Clement, assigning that procession to eternity. And, indeed, consistency required this course to be adopted, if the Son, being divine as to His essence, were acknowledged to be identical with the eternal divine essence, and the divine were at the same time, with Hippolytus, defined to be unchangeable as to its essence. To this antagonism, therefore, to the patripassian conception of God; to the connection with Clement; and, finally, to the realistic doctrinal tradition of the Church, which had always tacitly assumed the divine aspect of the Son to be hypostatical, and which, since Tertullian, had been compelled to insist more strongly than ever on this point,—we may be said to owe the rise, at the present juncture in the history of the Church, of that most important principle, the eternal generation of the Son.

¹ C. Cels. 4, 16. In Rom. vii. 13:—" Inseparabilis a patre est per naturam et immortalitatem." C. Cels. 4, 5 :—K<j» o &tos ru» ohur rfi ixvrov ovjuy.ii av/xxru(Sx(v9i rp 'Iwov its Tov Tuv d»ipxirxv fitov, K&» 6 i» dpxft irpis ti» ©ei» Ao'yof, Qlis xxi Xvtos Uv, tpxmxi irpof iip&s, oix i^iipos yl»trxi, oioe xxrx"htbrii Tijv ixvrov tipuv. C. 14 :—bliruv rfi ovulu Arpcirros avyxxru.Puivu. The subject is ©eof, with special reference to the Logos (compare c. 16).—6, 62 :—El J' d»tytuxt i (Celsus, who charged Christians, because of their doctrine of the incarnation, with representing God as mutable) T«c 'tu» irpDtfrrruu ?.e£e/j—aii i xirof u (Ps. ci. 28; Heb. Vers. cii.)—tyu tlfii xxl avx riKho'iufixt (Mai. iii. 6), lupx &v, Oti oiius iifiut Qnuiv tirui p.eT«,;o, >»v e» Tu ©eji, ofr' tpyy Ovt 'rxmix. De Princip. 1, 2, 6:—" Observandura est, ne quis incurrat in illas absurdas fabulas eorum, qui prolationes quasdam sibi ipsis depingunt, ut divinam naturam in partes vocent, et Deum Patrem, quantum in se est dividant, eum hoc de incorporea natura vel leviter suspicari non solum extremse impietatis sit, verum etiam ultimae insipientiae." Compare § 10, 4, 28.

But, in conjunction with more external causes, we must not overlook the inner soul of the entire historical process, which, though, it is true, ever present, here more plainly manifested itself, as the leading impulse. This soul was the'conviction which possessed the Christian world, that in Christ it had attained to unity, not with a middle being and secondary God, but with God Himself —an unity, the archetype of which is set before us in the incarnation of Christ. This conviction,—call it mystical if we will; but whether mystical or not, it contained the kernel of Christianity,—never permitted the Church to regard the subordination of the Son as an end in itself, and as an independent dogma (as did Arianism). On the contrary, subordination was merely taught by the Church for a time; and during that time it was an auxiliary doctrine, whose object was to show that the truth in the general and ante-Christian conception of God, to wit, the divine unity, was not violated by the new conception of God set forth in Christianity. It must by no means, however, be regarded as indicative of a disposition to give up the elements which go to constitute the Christian trinitarian conception of God, and to reintroduce ante-Christian conceptions of God, as, for example, Arians, and on the whole Sabellians also, did (compare, for example, Tertull. adv. Prax. 13, 31). The work of transforming the ante-Christian conceptions of God, which the Church of the first centuries executed to the utmost of its ability, was greatly expedited by this proposition of Origen. The divine in Christ was removed into the eternal divine sphere, without therefore being represented as a mere power. Light cannot exist without giving light; it is never without brightness: even so, the Father cannot be conceived without the Son. (Note 18.) There never was a time when the Son was not.¹

¹ De princ. 1, 2, 2, 4; Anaceph. § 28 (de princ. 4, 28); c. Celsum 8, 12; in Joann. T. i. 32; Fragm. ad Hebr. from the Apology of Pamphilus in de la Rue's ed. iv. 697a, ad Bom. 1, 5. The expression ij» vzt oix >7», which at a later period became a watchword, is frequently discussed by Origen in these passages, but most decidedly rejected by him. Compare Note 18; Horn. in Jerem. ix. 4; o aurjip i)fiu» toQix iarl Tos Qct>v. "Etrri it ri aoQtx u-xiyxafiu Quris lililov. Y.i w» 6 aurr.p dll yc«vxzxi, etc. The fragment ad Hebr. runs as follows :—" Lux aeterna quid aliud est sentiendum, quam Deus Pater, qui mmquam fuit, quando lux quidem esset, splendor vero ei non adesset? Neque enim lux sine splendore suo unquam intelligi potest. Quod si verum est, nunquam est, quando Filius non Filius fuit—non erat quando non erat."

If it was a good thing for God to have a Son, why should He not have had this good eternally,—why should He have robbed Himself of it? These thoughts, recurring as they do frequently in the works of Origen, show us that he was already on the point of stabilitating the position of the Son in the divine sphere, by representing Him as involved in the eternal idea of God Himself (compare Anaceph. 4, 28). That Origen found it easier to give utterance to this eternity of the Son than others before him had done, because of his doctrine that creation also should be conceived as eternal, and that God never was without dominion and omnipotence, ought not to be denied: but it is equally perverse to derive his doctrine of the eternity of the Son from it, or even to identify the two.¹ Against the co-ordination or identification of the Son and the world, speaks already, that though he represents the world as existing always, he at the same time, and for that very reason, leaves it within the limits of time and subject to change, whereas the Son exists eternally above it, as an hypostasis with the Father. The eternal wisdom, which eternally hypostatizes itself as the Son, contains within itself, it is true, the logical seeds of all things, the world in the form of a conception; but the generation of the Son was not eo ipso the position of the world as an actuality. Neither in His inner wisdom and reason, nor in the wisdom which eternally became hypostatical in the Son, had the Father an object of His omnipotence and dominion; but He first became almighty through the Son, who realized the idea of the world.²

¹ As Baur does, in his altogether very free account of Origen's system (pp. 208 ff.). Origen was certainly acquainted with the doctrine that the world is the son of God, which some seek to fasten on him as a speculative ornament; for his books against Celsus show this. But he gave it up as ethnic to Celsus, and despised such ornaments. The truth he perceived it to contain, took the form in his mind, that the will, or the almighty love and the wisdom, of the Logos, are the constant medium through which the world is sustained.

^! De princ. 1, 2, 10: "Per Filium enim omnipotens rat Pater."

It is thus put beyond all doubt, that Origen exalted the Son above the sphere of creatures (in Joh. T. xiii. 25); and that the eternity of the Son is one thing, and His so-called eternal creation of the successive worlds a totally different thing. Hermogenes also taught that the world was eternal; but he did not, therefore, teach the eternal generation of the Son;—on the contrary, by means of the former, he dispensed with the necessity of the latter.¹ Origen proceeds in a different manner, because he attached an independent significance to the eternity of the Son. It was not merely because of the world, that he needed and laid down the doctrine; in other words, his aim in teaching the eternal generation of the Son, was, not simply to be able to conceive the creation of the world, which fell to the lot of the Son, as eternal. In general, the ground on which Origen claimed a Son, was not identical with that to which he traced back the existence of the world. A world exists because otherwise God would not be an almighty Ruler; the Son exists because Light, to wit, the Father, cannot be without brightness. For this reason, he was easily able to show that his doctrine of the eternal creation of the world did not infringe on the dignity of the Son.² The correct view will therefore be the following: Not for the sake of the doctrine of the eternal creation of the world, did he posit the eternal generation of the Son; but his conception of God was such as to require that both world and Son, although the conception of each stood otherwise equally firm, should be eternally posited, though without the violation of their logical relation; for, even on the supposition of the world's being eternal, he still deemed it to remain a creature, whereas he did not intend to represent the Son as an object of omnipotence,—as a creature. God, namely, Origen supposes, must be recognised as mutable, as needing progress from a defective to a more perfect condition; He would be deprived of His self-identity; if on the one hand the Son were not His image, and on the other hand, if the world were not, through the creative Son, the object of His dominion.

¹ As also Baur, p. 210, is unable to comprehend why Origen should posit an bypostatical Son alongside of an eternal world, it being in his view unnecessary.

^* De princip. 1, 2, 10.

When, however, we find Origen regarding it as an advantage for God to have not merely a world, but an eternal image of Himself, which the world cannot be (that image was rather destined to be the archetype of the world, and the world to be its copy), we must attribute it to the afore-mentioned Christian impulse, felt by the Church, to transform the conception of God, which had prevailed prior to the advent of Christ (Note 19). Had he been content with the ethnical idea of God, he would naturally have regarded the world as a satisfactory substitute for that image, which he deemed a divine good. But he refuses to hear anything of a natural God-manhood of our race, in any other sense than that of a susceptibility to union with God. In reply to the observation of Celsus,—el Tovto Xeyeis, ori ira? avOpayrro<; Karh. Oelav irpovoiav yeyov(o<;, ui'o? eVrt Geov, ri &v av akXov SuKpepgs (that is, thou agreest with us heathens),—he remarks (c. Celsum 1, 57),—" Many indeed have pretended to be sons of God,—as, for example, Judas Gal., Theudas, Dositheus, Simon Magus; but their work perished, their school is extinguished. Christians, on the contrary, who are freed from fear, Paul calls indeed sons of God; but each of them "rro\Xq> KaL ficucp^ Suupepei irambs Tov Sia rrjv dperrjv yprjfiar%ovrOs vlov rov Qeov, oris cocnrepel irtjyrj rts Kal apyfj raw rotovrmv rvyydvei." As he justly held physical participation in the Logos to be something meagre, because immediate, and not truly spiritual or ethical, he was necessitated to assume for the world the existence of an ethical mediator, in order that it might really participate in divine life; and for God Himself, the existence of an eternal perfect image of His ethical perfection, such as the world could not be, a»d whose place it could not supply. For, even apart from sin, Origen held it to lie in the essence of a rational creature, that it should connect itself, by free efforts, with the ethical perfection of God; and as such a conjunction must be preceded by a process in time, it follows that, prior to the termination thereof, even if nothing else hindered, the world would not supply to God that absolute ethical image of Himself, which notwithstanding He ought eternally to possess. It must accordingly be conceded, that Origen's doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son owed its origin, in the last instance, to the transformation of the conception of God brought about by the ethical appearance of Christ; although, as in all the great productions of the mind of man, other causes co-operated. These words of Origen gave expression to that which lay in the heart of the Church— to its inmost intent—to that fivariid) irapaZoam of the Church, which existed, not as a formulated doctrine, but as an intuition of faith. That he had found the word which the Church had sought, and that he thus met its unconscious yearnings, is evident from the results which followed on its utterance. The Church recognised it as its own; and whereas the other fruits of his labours were subjected to a criticism in many respects unjust, this determination immoveably held its ground. His doctrine of the eternity of creation, with much else, found no recognition; it served merely the purpose of a ferment: his doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son, on the contrary, attained, through its own weight, the position of a corner stone in the doctrinal edifice of the Church,—it was applied even as a plummet to further doctrinal works, and became a standard for the judgment of other parts of Origen's own system, which did not appear to harmonize with it.

Origen, however, was not content simply to regard the generation of the Son as an eternal act, which, being accomplished, was accomplished once for all. Tertullian, for example, still held it to be a single divine act, and naturally, therefore, treated it as a revelation, which had become an hypostasis, as a irpofidkrj of God; and, consequently, either as an emanation or as dependent on the will of the Father (de princ. 4, 28). Such a view not merely involved the introduction of mutability into God, contrary to Origen's conviction, but even the Son was not thereby brought into close connection with the divine essence. He would owe His existence to a single isolated, and not to an eternal, movement in God, essential to the very conception of the divine essence; for otherwise a single divine act would not have sufficed. Moreover, on the supposition that He originated in a single isolated act, the Son would be shut out too much from the essence and sphere of the Father; would be too independent, if it were meant to represent Him as God and not as creature; would be too far removed from the Father. Accordingly, we find Tertullian inclined to represent the Son as returning out of His independence into God at the close of the oifcovoijiia; and then it is difficult to see how His distinction from the Father can be preserved. Origen, on the contrary, in this connection also anxious to exclude both mutability and dead

² The German runs—" Der Sohn ist nieht gezeugt, sondern wird gezeugt von Gott in dem ewigen Heute." The distinction between "ist" and "wird" can scarcely here be rendered without paraphrase into English.— Tr.

cannot find God.

The Jews thirst after the Father, but despise the Son, and therefore they have not the Father. Heretics desire the Son, but not the Father, who is the lawgiver; or not the Spirit, who moved the prophets; and so they are without the Son and without the Father. On this ground he attributes all glory and all divine attributes, in common, to the Son and to the Father. That which is in God is in Christ Jesus (in Jerem. hom. viii. 2; iravra -yap, oaa Tov Qeov, rouuha ev ainm iariv 6 Xpioro-; ecm ao<p£a—SiW/us—Siicaioavvr) Tov Qeov, etc., in Joann. T. xx. 29, 30). When Celsus asked the Christian of the second century, Why do you honour a second God, in addition to the true one? Origen answered, He is one with God; and God, in generating Him, gave over all things into His hand (c. Cels. 8, 12, 13). Not alongside of, but in God, do we worship the Son (ib. c. 12). In particular, the Son knows all that the Father knows, for the Son is the truth, and the truth is an indivisible whole; if but one part failed, the entire knowledge of the Son would be defective (in Joann. T. i. 27) ;—iav Be rt? &?tj}, ^e' ifav orhrore iyvmafievov imo Tov rrarpos—eirLararai 6 acorrjp f)p.cov, Kox <pavraaia Tov Bot-a^eiv Tov irarepa diro<f>alvrjrai riva yivmaKOfieva vrrb Tov iro.rpb<; ar/voeurOai Oito Tov vlov, hrio~rareov, airbv (because He is the akijOeta, and dXijOeia is oXotcXijpo?) ovBev ak7jOes dyvoel (p?) 'iva Ijl>j Ako^q Xeiirovaa rj oXijOeia oh ov yivd>aicei. Or let some one point me out an object of knowledge which is not included in, but lies out beyond, the domain of truth. The case is the same relatively to the will. The Son is not merely the executor of the divine will, as though He worked outside of God, but the same will that is in the Father is an almighty and holy will in the Son.

In short, the Father possesses in the Son an absolute image of Himself.¹ "For no one, I believe, embraces the entire glory of the Father in Himself in copy, save the Son.

¹ In Job. T. xiii. 36,—uim thxt To ithnfix. To5 ®tov it r$ h~h.ruiuri Tow vlw xirupxKKtuvrov Tos h"hrifix~os Tow irxrpos tls To fimxiri elrxi ivo h\iiflxrX,

<tXA' h is'knfix. IIouco Christ said, "I and the Father are one;" therefore, "He that hath seen the Son hath seen the Father also." All the deeds of men are imperfect, but not those of the Son; He accomplishes the entire will of the Father, for To iihtm Tow Qtov ywoftitov h T£ »/$ -roiti 'zuvru, imp fioi\trui To' ii fi& Tow Qtov' fio»o; ii i viis ir&v To ii ftx mtti xupwou rav irxrp6c lioirtp xxl tUxv Kvtov. C. Cels. 8, 12; in Johann. T. xxxii. 18; compare Note 19.

He not only participates in wisdom, truth, reason, but is wisdom, truth, reason itself,¹ and all the wise are wise through their participation in Him." There can therefore be no doubt that Origen meant to attribute deity seriously, and not merely figuratively, to the Son. But as he maintained the eternity of the hypostasis of the Son so decidedly in opposition to the Monarchians,² he must needs consider how to reconcile the true element in the anteChristian conception of God, to wit, the divine unity, with his Trinitarianism. We have seen already that he endeavoured to secure this unity by bringing the Son, through the doctrine of the eternal generation, into closer proximity to the essence of the Father; in other words, he effected an adjustment between the disparate elements of Tertullian's system, with its temporal and almost mundane personality of the Son, on the one hand, and the eternity of His essence, on the other, by teaching that the generation or the personality of the Son was coeternal with the divine essence, and thus removing it out beyond the sphere of the world. In his view, both eternity and generation constitute the Father and the hypostasis (not merely the substance) of the Son, one essence. No less also the afore-mentioned common attributes of intelligence and volition, which can only appertain to an hypostasis. But precisely at the point at which enough seemed to have been done, a new danger arose. If Father and Son have absolutely everything in common, how are they distinguished the one from the other?

¹ Airoo,otpix, xvroxXnitix, ecvro'Aoyoj. C. Cels. 3, 41; Exh. ad Martyr. 47; in Joh. T. i. 11.

² He speaks against them, for example, in Joh. T. ii. 2, 6, 18, x. 21; C. Cels. 4, 5, 8, 12; in Matt. xvii. 14 ;—Oi »ofiitnio» iTvxi v^ip xinov Tovs rx^jtiin Qpovovvrus mpl xvrov, Qxvrxaix rail So%x£i/» xino» (Xpmriv)' oVoio/ tlatv ol QVyxJit>irris irstrpoj Kxi viov ff»vo/ack, xxl rri vxotjrxati ivu SioaVref itnxi Tov irxTipx xxl rot vliu rri iirmotx fii»fi xxl Toif ojifiouti iixipovmes To?» Viroxtifie»tm. On John ii. 2, see page 101. Still more explicitly in Joh. T. x. 21: they say fi<b tiixQipem T£ xpitpiip ro» vio» Tov %xrpo;, «AX' l» oi y.ovo» oimlx u/.'f.'x Kxi &iroxtifikr&r rv/xxvoinxs xy.Qoripovs Xxtol rivxs 'nritoixs o7«Qipovs, ov xuzx viriarxair, "htytaixi irxripx xxl vi6». The proof of their theory, drawn from the circumstance that the resurrection of Christ is now attributed to the Father and then to the Son, does not stand scrutiny; for both were active, the Son through the Father. For the rest, it is necessary to oppose to them the passages which prove the distinction between the Father and the Son, amongst which he reckons those which speak in a lower way of the latter.

Monarchianism appears to him as objectionable as Polytheism; and therefore, not merely interest for the unity of God, but even for the Son's own hypostasis, would seem to necessitate Origen to the adoption of determinations, fitted to secure both the one and the other.

This is the origin of the peculiar form of Subordinatianism which we find in Origen's system. He endeavoured to secure the unity of the essence of God, by means of the opposed principles of the equality and the subordination of the Son. The latter was intended to leave a place for an independent hypostasis of the Son; the former for His deity.

Let us now submit this form of Subordinatianism to a more careful examination. Above all, we must here refer to his wellknown distinction between Oeb<t and 6 0eo? (in Joann. ii. 2, 3). The Son has, indeed, actual Oeorrj<;; He is Oebs, tbepos r^v ISiorryra: but He is not originally 0eo?; the Father alone is the source of His deity.¹ For this reason the Father alone is avroOeos; He alone is the fieyiaros hrl iraat Oeo\ (c. Cels. 8, 14). The conception which the Father has of Himself is greater than that which the Son has of Himself. But the knowledge of the Son is not thereby made imperfect. No one who, like Origen (in Joh. T. i. 27, see above), knows that truth constitutes an indivisible, organic whole, could style the Son airroao<pta, avr&aXqOeia, if he did not attribute to Him absolute knowledge of the Father; and, indeed, otherwise He would not be the Father's perfect image or mirror. His meaning rather was:—The Father has one self-consciousness, the Son another; the Father is the ultimate principle (apyfj), not the Son; in His self-consciousness, therefore, the Son cannot, like the Father, appear to Himself as the Last, although, nay because, the Son really knows the Father as the final principle. The Father, therefore, is higher (tc/ietrTow); He is both the first beginning and the final goal of all things. Although, therefore, the Son is the representative of the Father to those who are still to be saved, is their God, and, so to speak, their Father, as the goal at which they are preliminarily to arrive, because He alone is the way to the Father; and although it is accordingly natural enough for these to direct far, He alone is to be worshipped; the Son and the Spirit are only to be worshipped in Him.

their prayers to the Son, it should be otherwise with the redeemed.

¹ In Joh. T. ii. 3, 6, 18, xiii. 25; c. Cela. 8, 14; in Joh. T. ii. 3. The Father alone is irjr/ri hirnros: in Bo

Christ continues to be their Mediator; but they pray to the Father through the Son, not, however, to the Son Himself.¹ Still more: it is the duty of a mediator to bring men to the Father, who is the first and the last. Christ, therefore, does not keep Christians near Himself, because otherwise they would not attain to direct participation in the Highest; for the Father alone, and not the Son, is the Highest. Christians rise above the Son also to the Father, the fu>va< ; or the evds (Note 20). Not that they become higher than the Son, or that the Son is lowered through the completion of His work; but His work itself would remain incomplete if He did not lead them out beyond Himself to the final source and goal, even to the Father. Naturally, too; for if the Most High God is not also in Christ, if He be merely the leader to the goal, or a means, those who arrive at full age must go out beyond Him, and, what is more, through Him: the only question then is, whether He can, strictly speaking, be the Mediator, the personal mediation of God and man, if the absolute and final aim be not in Him also, as it is in the Father. Origen himself often enough elsewhere treats Him as an end in Himself (for example, c. Cels. 6, 68); thus showing how far he was from considering the subordination of the Son to be an end in itself, and that, on the contrary, he intended thereby to show, on the one hand, that the Son had an hypostasis of His own, and, on the other hand, that the Most High God is in the last instance only One, to wit, the Father. But the passage in Joh. T. xiii. 3 is specially fitted to unfold the real sense in which he used the above expressions.

¹ Compare, respecting the knowledge of the Son, in Joh. T. i. 27; Anaceph. § 35. The apparent contradiction between these two passages Origen reconciled as follows:—The Son has true knowledge in its totality; He knows the Father also truly. But His knowledge of the Most High God is never Being, as in the case of the Father. In so far as He knows that He Himself and His knowledge have their ground in the Father, His knowledge is less perfect. For His knowledge of the Highest Being is never an immediate self-consciousness, but a mediate, reflective knowledge. Solely in this respect, however, is it less perfect. In every other respect higher knowledge is inconceivable (in Joh. T. xxxii. 17); His exaltation affected merely His humanity: i Ao'yos> iu dpxy irpos To» 0to» itis, ovx iirilixtrui Ro iixipvtyuHwou (de princ. 1, 2, 10).

His intention was neither to give a Docetical account of Christ's significance, as though all depended on the difference of the point of view; nor an Ebionitical, as though Christ could ever be surpassed: on the contrary, as the soul is dead, nay more, is nothing, without the Logos, even so the Church owes all that it has continually to Christ. It receives from Him, not merely the forgiveness of sin, but He is the irr)yrj £amtcoO Irofmitos; so that the inner sense freely opens itself, and man attains to the highest of all, to the knowledge of the Father (tt)? Biavoias uXXofievr)s, Kal tayiora Buirrafievrj<; Ukoxovow; T&> evKivrfnp Tovt<(> vBari <pepovro<; avrov, Tov aXkeaOai Koi. irq&av irrl To uvdnepov (that is, probably, to the Father and the knowledge of Him) eiri. rrjv alcoviov fyorjv).

But if the divine unity is to be secured by the Father's being the Most High God, and not the Son; and if the former is, notwithstanding, one only, the hypostasis of the Son would seem to be entirely excluded from the sphere of the divine, and to be relegated to the sphere of the creature. How is it consistent therewith to represent the unity of God, notwithstanding the hypostasis of the Son, as secured by the fact of the Son having all that the Father hath?¹ There appears here to be so glaring a contradiction in the system of Origen, that we can easily understand why, from of old, the most different opinions have been formed of it. In order to make him self-consistent, Maran has taken all pains, as far as possible, to deny the subordination; but his labour has been in vain. The orthodox opponents of Origen, on the contrary, and his Arian friends, have left the other aspect of his system out of sight, and have interpreted everything as much as possible in a subordinatian spirit. By recent writers the question has been put in the following form:—Does Origen derive the eternal generation of the Son from the essence, or from the will, of God? (Note 21.)

It is true, that mode of securing for the Son at once equality of essence with, and at the same time hypostatical distinction from God, which consists in regarding Him as a "portio" of the entire Deity, was riot open to Origen.

¹ Compare the passages quoted page 115 f.

He justly persisted in maintaining that the category of part and whole is not applicable to God; that God is an indivisible unity; that we cannot allow of a greater and a less in Him, because wherever He is at all, He is entirely and indivisibly (de princ. 1, 1, 6;—^u Non ergo aut corpus aliquod aut in corpore esse putandus est Deus, sed intellectualis natura simplex, nihil omnino in se adjunctionis admittens; utine majus aliquid et inferius in se habere credatur, sed ut sit ex omni parte fiova<; et ut ita dicam has et mens ac fons, ex quo initium totius intellectualis naturae vel mentis est." C. Cels. 1, 23 ;—0eos oiSk fiepos, ovBk '6\ov, eirel To Oxov Sk fiepav iariv. Compare c. 21, 4; 14, 6, 62). Accordingly, one may fairly say, that Origen's conception of God was such as to render it difficult for him to recognise the presence of the divine essence in the second hypostasis. In his eyes, as in Tertullian's, the Father is originally the entire Deity; nay more, not merely originally, but permanently: and He cannot constitute a part of Himself, His Son. There appears, therefore, to be no place for the Son save that of a creature. The case, however, does not stand thus. Instead of resorting to a quantitative division (through which the Father, who is originally the entire God, constitutes Himself one portion, another portion the Son, and a third the Spirit; on which supposition the Son, strictly speaking, would not have what the Father has, and either the nature of the Father would be changed, or, if He still continued to be the whole even after the generation of the Son, the hypostasis of the Son would be continually endangered), Origen adopts a different view of the mode of existence of the divine as a whole. This is one of the most important and luminous features of Origen's system. He saw that finite things are characterized by a certain exclusiveness: he who makes something external his property, by that act withdraws it from others; and so far as another is in possession, I am not in possession. But in the sphere of the spiritual and divine the case is otherwise. The art or science of any man is not lessened by its being in the possession of others; and as it is with wisdom, so is it also with goodness, with ethical perfection. They are indivisible, it is true, in the sense that no one can truly possess any portion thereof without possessing the principle of the whole; but this does not imply that only one individual can possess them. On the contrary, their nature is, to be principially indivisible and yet communicable; that is, they can be entirely possessed by more than one subject at the same time.

¹ I shall occasionally take the liberty of rendering the German word principiell (adj.) by the fresh-coined English adjective principial, instead of by the phrase "in principle," "as to principle."—Tit.

Applied to the case before us, this means,—Though he held a division of God to be impossible, he did not consider a duplication— "duae positiones" (Lev. hom. 13, 14)—or even a multiplication of the divine perfections, that is, their existence in several hypostases, to be impossible. (De princ. 1,1, 9 :—" Intelligenda est ergo virtus Dei, qua viget, qua omnia visibilia et invisibilia vel continet vel gubernat, etc. Hujus ergo totius virtutis tantse et tam immensae vapor et ut ita dicam vigor ipse in propria substantia effectus, quamvis ex ipsa virtute velut voluntas e mente procedat, tamen et ipsa voluntas Dei nihilominus Dei virtus efficitur. EJjicitur ergo virtus altera in sua proprietate altera in sua proprietate subsistens,—vapor quidam primae et ingenitae virtutis Dei, hoc quidem, quod est, inde trahens, non est autem, quando non fuerit.") He is thus able to attribute the entire fulness of the deity, and not merely one part thereof, to the Son, and consequently brings out more completely that inner or intensive equality of the Son with the Father, which Tertullian also aimed at when he asserted that the entire sun is in the ray. Tertullian, however, did not succeed like Origen; for in single passages, he described the distinction between the Father and the Son as a distinction between whole and part; in other, and these more standard, passages, however, it is true, he represents the entire divine essence as fixed under a determinate "forma, species, modulus," though the genesis and being of these f ormaa are directly interwoven with the world and history. But this new idea of a duplication, or multiplication, of the fulness of the deity in several hypostases, brought also new difficulties. There appears to be a danger of putting the world on a level with the Son, inasmuch as the world also is susceptible of spiritual, ethical perfections, which may be termed divine. And as Origen's wish was to assign to the Son a distinctive position, which the world cannot share with Him, all depends on finding a principle of limitation. Such a limitation is set forth in his remarks "in Joh. T. xxxii. 18." It was not fitting that the Father should lack the good of having a perfect image of Himself; but it was only possible for one, not for many, fully to reflect the perfect glory of the Father in an image, and He who was this full reflection was the Son. The Son, moreover, is the medium through which the divine essence is communicated to all who participate therein. The indivisible unity and unchangeableness of God do not admit of the multiplicity and mutability of the world, being directly grounded in Him, that is, in the Father.¹ Equally impossible is it to conceive the world as existing independently, or as an atomistic multiplicity without unity. For this reason, the Son is the middle between God and the world;—in Him is, (1.) the idea of the world, or its eternal ideal unity; (2.) the principle of the actual world,—not, indeed, of an infinite multiplicity of objects, but still of the countless multiplication of freedom in many subjects, completely resembling each other. Therewith is given the possibility of an infinitely manifold world; freedom hypostatized in countless Egos is its real potence. (3.) And lastly, when the individual beings, through their freedom, diverge infinitely from each other, the Word, or the Logos, continues to be their common, connecting principle. He is the substance which runs through the whole world, its heart or reason, present alike in every man and in the entire world. The Son is the truth, the life, the resurrection of the creatures, He is the One, who lies at the basis of their manifoldness, however numerous may be His names, and various the modes in which He is regarded.² And however far freedom may go astray, however wide a field of action may be allowed it, as rational it is indissolubly connected with the Logos, who constantly manifests and maintains Himself, as the overarching (iibergreifend), omnipresent, and all-dominating power, in the development of the world.

What we have adduced, shows that he considered the Logos to be the only perfect divine image, the archetype of the world, and the real ground of its being, of its continuance, and of its participation in the divine, in rationality, and in goodness. The Holy Spirit is, at the utmost, the only other being whom Origen would put on the same level as the Son: this latter doctrine, however, was but little developed by him.

¹ Ritter 1. c. 294:—" He could not hesitate to maintain that God must not be conceived as the ground of a multiplicity of mutable things; for the ground of a multiplicity is itself a multiplicity of grounds, and the ground of a change is grounded after a mutable manner."

^* In Joann. i. 22; hom. in Jerem. 8, 2; de princ. 4, 28 (compare the painstaking work of Thomasius on Origen, p. 130).

Relatively to the world and revelation, Origen is unable to find expressions strong enough to glorify and exalt the Son, the First-born of creation, above all creatures, on the one hand; and profoundly to subordinate them to Him, on the other. And so certainly as he not merely recognised man's need of being united with the Most High God, but believed also that Christ alone met that need; even so certainly must the Son be the vehicle and communicator of veritably divine nature (de princ. 1, 2, 4, 6;—the likeness borne by the Son contains "naturae et substantiae Patris et Filii unitatem." In Levit. hom. 13, 4; in Num. 12, 1).

When Origen has in view the Most High God and His unity, he seems to lay down contradictory principles, and completely to forget what he had previously taught; but it only needs a deeper consideration of his conception of God, to free him from a reproach so unworthy of a systematical theologian, and to show that, and why, it was no contradiction for him, on the one hand, to attribute an equal divine essence to the Son; and, on the other hand, to subordinate Him so decidedly to the Father, as even to allow himself the use of an expression such as—The Son, as to His ovala, is other than the Father.¹

He regards the Father, as the eva<; or fiovas in absolute indivisibility and wholeness, infinitely exalted above all that is multifold and divided. Properly speaking, He is not truth and wisdom, spirit and reason, but infinitely higher than all these, out beyond being and substance (ovala).² In short, He is the utterly unutterable, incomprehensible One, or the Absolute. All truth, goodness, power, is derived from Him; but He is not adequately described by all these names. He is the Father of wisdom and of all good; but will, reason, wisdom, cannot, strictly speaking, be attributed to Him without an admixture of sensuous impurity.

¹ De orat. c. 15. The Son is tripos Tov ^xrpos xxr owrtxr and xxf virurruam. This may signify (compare in Joh. T. i. 23, p. 26),—In abiding objective reality, not merely momentary being or subjective seeming. (The more precise definition of this objective being different from the Father, is his Hiu oialxs iripiypxQj, here termed imarxais- But even so, the Son continues subordinated.)

² C. Cels. 7, 38,—eirUtivx tov xxl oinixs; de princ. 1,1, 6; see above; in Joh. ii. 18, xiii. 21, 23.

The Father alone can be this one, supra-substantial being. If, however, we wish catachrestically to apply to Him the expression ovala, then we must say that the essence of the Father is other than that of the Son. For the supra-essential as such cannot communicate itself, because it would thus renounce its abstract unity, simplicity. The Son is not supra-substantial, supra-essential (iiberseyend, uberwesentlich), but is through and through ivefr/eiu: the Father is the primary principle, in Himself purely ideal, shut up in Himself. Though the Son is the Father's perfect image, and has coeternally attracted to Himself all divine perfections (c. Cels. 8, 14), that in which these perfections inhere, which is their vehicle, can never become His: the Father alone remains the primal causality. When the Son makes Himself the object of reflection, He cannot regard Himself as the original, as the primal apyrj; otherwise He would be the Father, and not the Father's image, to which the Father must hold the relation of archetype. The Son may, indeed, be the archetype of the world, and thus imitate, in the lower sphere, the relation subsisting between the Father and Himself; but He can never Himself be the absolute archetype. Hence Origen was compelled to say, that the Son, in this respect, could not be compared with the Father; that the primal cause could only be one. This is the explanation of the comparison frequently made by him,—The Father is exalted above the Son, as the Son is above the world. Specially significant in this connection is the remark adduced above,—The self-consciousness of the Father is higher than that of the Son. For it implies, that the Father by no means beholds Himself in the Son, but that the self-consciousness of each is distinct. In the Son, the Father does not recognise Himself, but a derived being; and His knowledge of Himself is perfect independently of the Son. The duplication of which we spoke above is not a complete selfobjectification of God;—not only because the Son is merely the reflex, the image, in which, though the Father represents Himself, His knowledge of Himself is not supposed to depend on, or to be mediated by, the Son; but it is merely the fulness of the deity, the divine Bo^a that is duplicated. Light cannot do otherwise than shine, the living God cannot do otherwise than reveal Himself in an objective, adequate image; but still the Father abides ever in the ground, and the ground does not come forth in His revelation. The Father does, however, completely embody His fulness and glory in the image of Himself.

This will enable us to understand why, and how far, Origen subordinated the Son. He had no intention whatever of denying to Him the fulness of veritable divine powers, that is, divine essence ;¹ but he did not consider Him to be the primary ground. In the Son, therefore, is indeed the entire fulness of God—He proceeded forth from the divine essence: but He is God in a derived sense; the Father alone is the eternal ground of His being, and therefore also of the duplication of the divine power, goodness and wisdom, which exists in Him. From this we see clearly, that Origen approximated pretty nearly to principles laid down by the teachers of the Church many centuries after his time. For when they represented the Father,—as substantially they always did,—as the Monas, and not merely as a member of the Trinity, but as the whole, as the p%a irdcrry; OeorqrOs, it is identical with Origen's designation of the Father, as the sole irrjyrj irdarj<; OeoTqro<;_r and the Son as the 'rrrjyrj Oe6rrjro<; for the world.² In fact, all that Origen meant in teaching the subordination of the Son, was to preserve strictly to God the original causal relation referred to above. So far from the Son's coessentiality with God being thus excluded, such an equality of essence is required, when the causal relation appears in its absolute perfection as in the case of the Word, the perfect image of God. And, on the other hand, this equality of essence, if we limit it, with Origen, to the possession by the image of the fulness of divine perfections, does not exclude the subordination involved in the image being, not the original, but that which is grounded. On the contrary, this image, as being the most perfect possible effect, directs attention very surely to the most perfect possible cause, and in so far leads us out beyond itself.

¹ De princ. 1, 2, 4:—He is Son, not by adoption, but by nature. Compare the fragment from Pamphilus in de la Rue's Ed. vol. iv. 99. He cannot change to a less perfect condition, nor be exalted to a more perfect, ib. § 10, and in Joh. T. xxxii. 17; in Lev. hom. 13, 4: there is one will and one substance in the Father and the Son, but there are two << positiones," two distinct persons.—In the fragment of Pamphil. ad Ilebr. (de la Rue, iv. 6976) it is said, after Sapientia vii. 25:—" Vapor est (Alius) virtutis Dei et aporrhoea gloria? Omnipotentis purissima." As the "vapor de substantia aliqua corporea procedit, sic etiam ipse ut quidam vapor exoritur de virtute ipsius Dei. Sic et Sapientia ex eo procedens ex ipsa Dei substantia generatur."

² See note 1, page 117.

But notwithstanding His subordination, the Son belongs as truly to the divine sphere, or the divine being, as brightness does to light.

We may regard it, therefore, as proved, that in the system of Origen these two aspects do not contradict each other, that neither the one nor the other can be put aside, because both are equally rooted in his conception of God, and both are necessary to its full expression. He knows God as the living God, revealed in Christ, and communicating His divine, above all, His spiritual nature, His wisdom and ethical perfection. But, on the other hand, he refuses to allow that the divine ground passes entirely over into that which is grounded; for such an admission would have led him back to Patripassianism, which he had rejected, or to a kind of Pantheism. For this reason, he distinguishes between the communicable and the incommunicable in God, terming both, however, divine essence. The incommunicable in God, which he imagines to be the highest portion of the divine nature, is His primary, superessential, self-occluded being; the communicable is the fulness of His perfections, especially His spiritual essence. For it must be remembered, that, for example, moral unity with God is not, in his view, a mere external relation of resemblance, but implies a real participation in the ethical essence of God: so also as respects wisdom. Hence, when he attributes to the Son likeness, nay more, identity (javr6nj<;), of will with the Father, it means far more than is commonly supposed.¹ The incommunicable the Father cannot communicate even to the Son; but, more closely examined, this reduces itself entirely to the momentum of grounding (Begriinden), to the fact, that the Father is the primal dp^h, the Absolute. In the communicable, the world participates solely through the Son, in whom all of the divine that can be communicated has assumed an hypostatic form. We can understand, therefore, how he could say, at one time, that the Son, as the divine image, the unity of the nature or substance of the Father and of the Son, was set forth (de princ. 1, 2, 6); or (as in Joann. T. x. 21) could allow that Father and Son are one iv ovala, but not rco {rrroKeifJAvcp or rfj xnroardaei (compare Selecta in Ps.cxxxv. and note p. 125); and yet, at another time, say, The Son is not one with the Father as to substance.

¹ The Son is the expression of the entire will of the Father Himself, embodied in a person. Anac. § 28; in Joh. T. xiii. 36; c. Cels. 8, 12; de princ. 1, 2, 6; and the fragment from Pamphilus in de la Rue, iv. 99.

The former, when his attention was directed to the essence of the Son, which is derived from the Father, as a stream from its source, as a light from light; which is an outflow of the divine essence. The latter, when his eye was fixed on the essence of the Father, and that which distinguishes Him from the Son. If, for example, he regarded the momentum of grounding, as that which distin- . guishes the Father from the Son, or saw in the apyrj the essence of the Father (as he perhaps does once, catachrestically; see de orat. 15, and note 2 p. 123), he could scarcely avoid maintaining, that, in this respect, the Son cannot in any sense be put on a level with the Father. In the same manner, also, he says regarding the world, that it is of a different essence from the Son, in so far as it is in no respect the ground of His existence.¹ We can now also more definitely answer the question, whether Origen conceived the Son to have been posited by the will of the Father, as the world was posited by the will of the Son; or whether the relation between Father and Son was in this respect a more essential one.

It was impossible for Origen, when he spoke with precision, to say, that the Son was posited by the simple will of the Father; for he did not allow that either the will, or any other aspect of the simple essence of God, could undertake anything in particular by itself. It is true, the ground of the will, as of all the rest, is the supra-substantial Father; but the will itself belongs to the evepyeia of the divine essence, to the fulness of its So^a, which is hypostatized in the Son. For this reason, he could not properly say either of the wisdom or of the will, the power, the holiness of God,—The Son was posited by the Father's will or wisdom; he must rather say,—The Son is out of the will of the Father, or He is the expressed will and wisdom of the Father.

¹ We need not resort even to this expedient relatively to the passage adduced by Baur, in Joh. T. xx. 16. For his protestation here against the generation from the essence of the Father does not refer to the eternal generation of the Son, as a glance at the passage will show, but to the incarnation; and his opponents were such as Beron. Baur might more easily have made use of in Joh. T. ii. 18, J/fonixe -ij oialcf 6 xxriip Tow v/oS, because, whereas the Father is light itself, the Son is the light in the darkness. But this passage also is cleared up by the remarks made above. Compare note 1, page 134.

His doctrine of the eternity of the Son would thus be explained and established from a new point of view. And in point of fact this was his opinion. He styles the Son the Soul of God the Father,¹ that is, the principle of actuality, the evepyeia. Nay more, he frequently describes the Son in His relation to the Father, who is, it is true, the first principle, though by Himself He dwells in pure ideality, as the "voluntas ex Patre (mente) procedens." In Origen's view, there existed in God no actual will prior to the Son; the Son Himself was first this will. If, then, the Son is not posited by the will of the Father, but is Himself the existence of that entire divine fulness Karf ivepyeiav, which is in the Father in the form of principle, a fresh proof is given that the mode in which Origen conceives Him connected with the will of the Father, instead of robbing Him of His divine essence, as many fancy, ensures it to Him afresh. Nor is the world, like the Son, the divine will; but is posited by the will of the Father, that is, by the Son. The world was the object of the divine omnipotence and predestination, but not the Son (ad Rom. i. 5); for, on the contrary, as we have seen, the Father is first almighty through the Son. It is also further clear, that Origen could not at all shrink from the use of emanatistic expressions, although he endeavoured to rid them of their sensuous, temporal elements. The Son is not, like the world, a work and creature of the paternal will, but the ethical and intellectual emanation of God, the reflection of the Father's glory, which can no more be lacking than brightness to light. He is, therefore, eternally equal with the Father, and necessarily involved in His essence, though He, the hypostatical image, is not the originating principle of His own existence, but the Father who logically precedes all evipyeia (Note 22). From this, it is evident that Origen already approximated to the doctrine of an immanent relation between Father and Son. The Son is the form and image of God, eternally assuming an independent existence (fiopcf>rj Qeov; see note 1 p. 127); the hypostatical realization of His fulness (So^a); so far is He from being related to the Father, as something merely posited, that He eternally draws into Himself (in Joh. T. ii. 2; c. Cels. 8, 14), and exhibits, the deity of the Father.

¹ De princ. 2, 8, 4, 5.

But the existence of the Son presupposes, of course, not merely His having been once for all generated and grounded by the Father, but also that He continues to be united with the Father, and to behold the depths of the divine being (without which He would not be God's image). Separated from the Father, the Son could no longer be God (in Joh. T. ii. 2). Again, the Father is not merely the inner substance, the material or content which acquires shape in the Son, but remains something for and in Himself; for, though the generation of the image is a duplication of God's mode of existence, it is not a mere transformation of the archetype into the image. Such a transformation would be annihilation. The Father is, in his view, not simply divine vXtj, but a self-contemplative subject, who passes over into the Son with the fulness of His essence, but not as the primary ground (J3aOos). Origen did not regard the Father as identical with the void Neo-Platonic *Ov, the mere direipov;1 but as the most positive of all beings, as the highest, unmixed unity, without any distinction, neither blind nor motionless, but knowing and contemplating Himself (in Joh. xxxii. 18), eternally generating the Son, who is the causative principle of the many, and the connective principle of the manifold.

Leaving aside for the time, the question, whether this conception of God, which involves the apparently contradictory determinations laid down by Origen, be a sufficient one or not, let us consider the relation of the Son to the world. He stands to the world in a more direct relation than the Father. As we have seen, He is the truth and the soul of the world; in Him is all true reality, for only the rational can be said to have true reality.² Through Him, therefore, the true spiritual substance of the universe, the world, this infinite tfiov, is an organism; He is the 'fyyefioviKov, the reason in every soul. This substantial relation of the Son to the world, embraces not merely men, but also angels—nay, the whole universe, which can only have true reality so far as it also participates in spirituality, in the Logos.

¹ Whether in other respects he was quite free from the abstract "0», we shall see further on.

* We must understand it in Origen's sense, when he assigns to the Son the kingdom of the rational. As rational, the world belongs to Him; to the Father, so far as it points to a first cause. Compare Huet, "Origeniana" L c. 135.

At first sight, this wears the look of Pantheism. But he attributes to the world a relatively independent existence, as is clear from the one circumstance, of his representing freedom as the principle which posits the multiplicity of objects. The Son, therefore, does not continue alone possessed of being, but brings into existence an infinite number of subjects, of Egos, all alike free relatively to each other, and essentially connected, in common, with Him. No less again is the Son related in various ways to the different beings;—which cannot be said regarding the Father. Nor is it a mere result of our mode of apprehension, that one and the same Logos wears a different appearance to each different class, or each separate subject; but He in Himself is related to the many, He has objectively different modes of existence for different beings, without therefore ceasing to be the one Logos.¹ With all rational creatures, whatever paths they may take in the exercise of their freedom, He is present: He is wedded indissolubly to men as to angels, to Christ as to Paul. This he deduces even from the omnipresence of the Logos ;² but He is different in different beings. To this may perhaps be referred the thought, which repeatedly occurs:— What Paul says regarding himself, that he had become all things to all men, has held true in a much more divine manner of the Logos in all ages, for He became an angel to angels, and a man to men. Origen, however, by no means rests satisfied with this natural participation in the Logos. Even the lastmentioned thought implicitly attributes to the Logos a new form of existence, besides the immanent one in subjects. This is His objective appearance alongside of His creatures, particularly men. In His goodness and loving-kindness, He shows Himself to every one, according to his ability to apprehend Him. These differences of form also are not mere subjective seeming; but He appears objectively in the forms which are necessary for His rational creatures; and though these forms are inadequate to, or even partially conceal, Him, and in so far may be described as a mere seeming, they nevertheless serve the purpose of bringing Him objectively near to men.

¹ De princ. i. 1, 68; in Joh. T. i. 22; c. Cels. 4,16 ;—EiVi yxp hxQopoi olottl Tos hoyov fiopQxt, xxius ixcurrip ruv iis 'fxiarnp.n» dyofti»ur Qul»trxi i hiyos, uvxAoyov rji 1%t i roi ttauyofiivov, jj <t' ohiyo» irpoxoirrovros «j etri Xxihw. Christ is objectively all «»«/3*^oi up to the Holiest of all; He unites in Himself all the stages, all the momenta of truth: and to each one He gives to see that of Himself, for which he has an eye.

2 Ana. § 29. Although He is omnipresent, He is not " similiter in univereis. Plenius enim et clarius et ut ita dicam apertins in Archangelis est, quam in aliis Sanctis viris, etc."

This is the selfabasement to which the Logos consented, concealing so much of His divine brightness as men were unable to bear, and objectively revealing and setting before men so much as sufficed to enable them to rise by its means to the vision of His higher form, of his deity (irporjyovfievrj <f>vais, fiopc^rj).

For our purpose, however, Origen's doctrine of the condescension of the Logos to men, who occupy perhaps the lowest position in the ranks of the classes of rational beings,¹ is of the greatest importance. As is well known, Origen considered the human race to consist of souls, which, during their pre-existence, fell away from the Logos, through sin: the consequence of this apostasy was, that the lower powers of the yfri^i broke loose from their unity with the irvevfia (that is, the Logos), and made themselves falsely independent of the Logos, in whom alone it was possible for them to occupy their true position—the position, to wit, of integrant, but still subordinate, momenta of the true personality, which are fired as it were by the irvevfia. In consequence of this their first fall, men walk in bodies, forgetful of their origin, forgetful of the Logos. But the Logos could not forget them; and in order to remind them of Himself, the only true good, in order to enable them to approach Him, He assumed the form of man, in the state to which sin had reduced it—He took upon Himself a mortal body—He lived a truly human life, though without sin—He delivered men from the curse of sin and death, partly by doctrine and example, but mainly by His death—and He perfectly re-established the union of souls with Himself, and, through Himself, with the Father (in Joh. T. i. 23-29).

¹ These classes he represents, however, not as different races, but as stages within one and the same race of rational beings. Here also he is led by the thought, that reason is one, like truth. Hence he believed that the more perfect men become angels, even as, under the impulse of love, angels may become men. The essential feature of all is, not the body, but the spirit; and the spirit is of the same nature, essentially alike in all, though they may occupy different stages.

At this point, however, we must halt and ask:—How far did the Logos participate in the incarnation? Did He really enter into fellowship with mutable, suffering men 1 Both the idea of the incarnation and His work, which consisted not merely in teaching, but in divine-human deeds and sufferings, required that He should do so. His union with Christ must have been different from His union with men generally; the history of the man Christ, must in a certain sense have been His own history. Otherwise, the incarnation would have been really nothing new; inasmuch as the Logos was previously everywhere present. The new feature would be mere subjective seeming, if the Logos had not entered into a relation to this man, which had objective significance for Himself. But if the history of this man were in any sense the history of the Logos, the danger to which Patripassianism succumbed again reappears. In that case, it might appear advisable to adopt the expedient of saying,—The Logos remained, even in Christ, unchangeably what He had been previously and universally. Then, however, His appearance was a mere theophany, not an incarnation; the new element was at the utmost an act of manifestation, not a being and living of the Logos, in new unity with humanity.

Origen felt the difficulties attending both courses. In the Anaceph. (§ 30 f. p. 191), helays down the principle,—that two errors are to be avoided: firstly, that of keeping this divine element entirely or partially outside of Christ; secondly, the opposite error, of conceiving the deity so shut in by the humanity, as to be itself restricted and made finite through the limits of the body, deprived of its universality, rent asunder from the Father, and subjected to change and suffering.¹ In the solution of this problem, he was aided to some extent by the spiritual conception he had formed of the divine. As the divine cannot be divided, nor enclosed in space, but remains everywhere entire and identical with itself, no danger can be involved in saying even that the entire deity of the Son was in Christ.

¹ L. c.: Non ita sentiendum est, quod omnis divinitatis ejus majestas intra brevissimi corporis claustra conclusa est, ita ut omne Verbum Dei et sapientia ejus ac substantialis Veritas ac vita vel a Patre divulsa sit, vel intra corporis ejus coercita et conscripta brevitatem, nec usquam praeterca putetur operata. The two dangers to be avoided are rather—ut neque aliquid divinitatis in Christo defuisse credatur, et nulla penitus a paterna substantia, quaB ubique est, facta esse putetur divisio.

Those who suppose that a true incarnation would have been an unworthy coarctation of the Son of God within the limits of the body, and who therefore maintain that merely a part of the deity of the Son dwelt in Christ, whilst the other part was elsewhere or everywhere, do not understand the nature of an incorporeal and invisible substance; they fear that if it entered fully into the humanity of Christ, it would entirely lose its infinitude, and yet, by their division, they make it a corporeal and finite thing.

But should it even be premised, that no danger to the deity of Christ is involved in the supposition of its dwelling undividedly in His humanity, nothing more is thereby done than to show the general possibility of a punctual (punktuell) presence of the Logos, the possibility of His dwelling entirely and fully in the humanity of Christ, without either an Ebionitical attenuation of the divine, or a Docetical dissipation of the human. That such a presence, however, was not an incarnation, was not in reality more than a theophany, Origen must have felt; and all the more deeply, as he himself, when combating Patripassianism, could not often enough repeat,—The Son remained what He was, in that He became what He was not.¹ The incarnate Logos was like the sun, whose rays continue pure whatever may be the nature of the place on which they shine (c. Cels. 6, 73). The wisdom of God, which is His Only-begotten Son, is unchangeable in all things. In Him is the entire sum of essential good, which, as such, can undergo no change or alteration (de princ. 1, 2, 10). Even during His self-abasement, He lost no part of His evSaifiovla; He continued blessed, even whilst He was labouring and suffering for our salvation. Unchangeable in essence (ovala), God descended to men in providence and activity (irpovoia teal olicovofua) on their behalf.

It could not, therefore, escape him, that if the simple divine nature continued entirely by and in itself, and so also the human, no such a thing as an incarnation took place. Hence, we find a number of passages, in which, starting with the idea of the Logos, whom on other grounds he represented as more closely related to the world, its multiplicity and finitude, he evinces an inclination to bring the Son into the intimate union with the finite, required by the Christian consciousness.

¹ For other passages bearing on the unchangeableness of the Logos even during the incarnation, see in Joh. T. xxxiii. 17, and note 1, page 108.

Accordingly, he says (in Joh. T. ii. 18), the Son is different from the Father; for the latter is the light which is unapproachable by, and exalted above all conflict with, darkness. The Son, on the contrary, is the light which shines in the darkness, which battles with, suffers persecution from, but is not overcome by, the darkness.¹ Elsewhere he says,—" He left father and mother, that is, God the Father and the heavenly Jerusalem, His kingdom, and descended to us."^* From this it would seem that His incarnation involved a renunciation of His glory. So also, when Origen endeavours to exhibit the entire depth of His participation in our sufferings, he is frequently more concerned to assert that He notwithstanding retained His deity, that is, His love, unchanged, than that His blessedness and glory remained untouched. At such times, he does not shrink from the employment of those paradoxes and apparent contradictions, than which nothing is dearer to faith, because they alone seem to furnish an explanation of that actual contradiction which gnaws at the heart of a world created for God, and yet lying in destruction. "Christ," says he, " is both Priest and Sacrifice. He committed no sin, but He became sin for us through the flesh, in order that He might carry our sins and nail them to the cross. He who is immortal, dies; He who is incapable of suffering, suffers; He who is invisible, reveals Himself.

¹ Also de princ. i. 2, 8, maybe referred to this connection: "Ut autem plenius intelligatur, quomodo Salvator figura est substantiss Tel subsistence Dei, utamur etiam exemplo." After remarking,—this comparison may be incomplete, but it is merely intended to show us how the Son of God, who was in the form of God, intended by means of His very self-abasement to reveal to us the fulness of deity,—he goes on to say,—Verbi causa, Bl facta esset aliqua statua talis, quae magnitudine sui universum orbem terrse teneret, et pro sui immensitate considerari a nullo posset: floret autem alia statua, membrorum habitu ac vultus lineamentis, specie ac materia per omnia similis absque magnitudinis immensitate, pro eo, ut qui ilhuii immensam coneriderare atque intueri non possent, hanc videntes illam so vidisse confiterentur pro eo—quod omnia—prorsus indiscreta servaret: tali quadam similitudine exinaniens se Alius Dei, de aequalitate patris et viam nobis cognitionis ejus ostendens figura expressa substantiss ejus efficitur.— Filius Dei brevissimas insertus humani corporis formae ex operum virtutisquo similitudine patris in se immensam ac invisibilem magnitudinem designabat.

3 In Jerem. hom. 10, 7 : "lie fim To» h fiopipri Qtov virip,xfirrx, orru it r0(f oipatois, til xiirov ri» olxov iiripovpxvioj—til xinov oIxo» 6Vr« To» Quiv. KuruMtirit Tod Xlxxlpx, xxl rriv firrripx, rij» Atu ' Itpovauhnfi, xul ipxfrxi i/f To» ^tpiyua t roVoi<. nupiixxm Kvtov rw 'tyvx.*!» *h r«if x"px( ruu ixtpw.

By coming to become sin for us, He intensified and awakened evil. For through His love He made Himself visible in the flesh and displeasing to men, so that they killed Him" (in Lev. Hom. 3, 1). In Hom. Jerem. 8, 8 we read,—"Let our discourse be bold, and let us say,—The divine which entered into the world, humbled (emptied) itself, in order that the world might be filled by its emptiness. But though it had emptied itself, its emptiness was still wisdom. For divine folly is wiser than men. Had I been the first to make use of this word, 'divine folly,' how would my accusers have assailed me I But Paul himself terms apostolic wisdom divine folly. For, as compared with the supra-celestial, supra-mundane wisdom, that which became man (to hriBefirjaav) was mere divine folly, but yet wiser than men,—wiser not merely than the foolish, but also than the wise. It did not need the wisdom of God to put to nought the foolishness of the world; the weakness and the folly of God were sufficient. And so my Redeemer and Lord took upon Himself all contradictions (ivavria), in order, by means of contradictions (for example, the humiliation of the Son of God, His Kevmfia), to solve contradictions; in order that we might be made strong through the weakness of Jesus, wise through His divine folly, and, prepared in such a way, might rise to the wisdom and power of God Himself, that is, to Jesus Christ." What he means here is not, that merely one part or one power of the Logos became man, but the entire person of the Son. Nor again does he mean that, strictly speaking, the entire fulness of the glory of the divine Son became man, and was merely not recognised by the folly of the world;—that, consequently, His self-abasement was mere subjective seeming, which must then be recognised as such by faith. No; the incarnate One Himself was humbled, was emptied of His glory. One thing unquestionably was not given up, to wit, love, which retains its majesty even in the midst of humiliation, and that most certainly, when the humiliation, though voluntary, is still not a mere show. To this connection belongs also the remarkable passage from the Hom. in Jerem. i. 8, where he says,—"We cannot, indeed, say of Wisdom in itself, that it was ignorant, and acquired knowledge by learning; but it is certainly true of Wisdom as it was in the flesh; for Christ must needs learn to stammer and speak like a child with children (men)." Compare also de princ. 2, 6, 1.

These passages show that Origen was not so completely absorbed in his antagonism to Patripassianism, as to mistake the essentially Christian elements, which it concealed under coarser forms. The more pressing, therefore, became the question, how both interests were to be reconciled:—On the one hand, there was the unchangeableness of the Son of God, which, taken by itself, reduces the incarnation to a mere theophany; on the other hand, there was the not merely apparent, but living and genuine, union of the divine with the human nature, which threatened to mix up foreign elements with the conception of God, especially when we take into consideration that the union must embrace also the flesh of Christ. This now is the point at which a view can be gained of Origen's doctrine of the human soul of Christ in its full significance.

With the body, the divine nature could not directly unite itself, without subjecting itself, in a manner unworthy of God, to mutability and suffering. In order, therefore, not to be compelled to transfer sufferings to God, and yet, at the same time, to be able to maintain the possibility of a true union with humanity, we must note that the Logos assumed the soul of Christ directly; the body, however, indirectly, through the medium of the soul. But, having secured in the soul of Christ a means of carrying the incarnation through, even to the flesh, the importance he attached to that soul enabled him to assume the existence of a far more intimate relation between the Son and the humanity than Hippolytus, for example, had ventured to concede, and felt himself, consequently, able satisfactorily to meet the true aspect of the yearnings of Patripassianism. The perfect soul of Christ was as thoroughly able to participate in all the pains and woes of humanity, as to be completely united with the Son of God;—thus also did it give Him a share in the sufferings and works endured and performed by it, in His power.

Never before Origen had the human soul of Christ been seen to have so profound and integrating a bearing on the intellection of the incarnation of God. But, though we may grant that his system—laying, as it did, so great stress on freedom of choice, and concentrating therein, to a certain extent, the essence of human nature—was, in the highest degree, such as to necessitate the postulation, in particular, of the union of the Logos with a human soul, as unconditionally requisite to the full truth of the incarnation; whereas all the Fathers who preceded him evidently attached chief importance to the body, appearing frequently to see in it the real essence of humanity; it cannot be denied, that the very ground which powerfully impelled him to the development of the doctrine of a true human soul, was, in another aspect, the source of great difficulties. For, if all souls must be deemed originally equal, on the ground that it would have been an act of partiality in God not to make the worth of each dependent on the use to which it put its freedom, it would appear that the incarnation must, in the first instance, have been a purely tentative thing, and that the union could not, from the beginning, have related to the inmost centre of the human soul,—to wit, its freedom. It was not permissible for the assumptive divine activity to penetrate at once so completely to the inmost centre of human nature as to leave it no longer free. In that case, however, an opening would have been left for sin and apostasy, and the tendency to incarnation which had been initiated would have been arrested. Nay more, if freedom of choice permanently belongs to the essence of human nature, it would appear impossible for the God-man ever to constitute an unity, and necessary that He should ever continue a double personality. And, even supposing this unity were finally to be in some way brought to pass, the incarnation must apparently be attributed rather to human merit than to divine grace; for the God-man was at the first a man like others, and the union with the deity was the reward of His virtue, as the Ebionites teach. These difficulties his clear eye discerned quite well. Let us now see how he endeavoured to overcome them.

In order to set them aside, he goes back to his doctrine of the pre-existence of souls. Christ's soul also must be of like nature with ours:¹ however exalted Christ may have been above other men, however distinguished and unique was His appearance (so that even His body must have participated in the glory of the soul, although usually concealed), He could not have enjoyed this exceptional position from the very beginning, but must have attained it as the reward of His virtue.

¹ De princ. 2, 8, 4. In general, as in Tertullian, Bo also in Origen, wc find the expression: Christ had two natures, He was a aimivnt irpiyfiu (o. Cels. 2, 9, 24, 31). He first employed the term, it&vipuiros.

Now, had He earned this distinction on earth, the birth of Christ would have been in no respect peculiar, it would not have been an incarnation: His soul would have entered into the present world as one still accessible to sin; nay more, if it were David's seed, it must have been stained with sin.¹ Like all 6ouls, however, it pre-existed from the beginning of the world. By its decision for the good, and by its virtue, it was fitted for unflinchingly carrying out all the will and all the saving revelations of the Word and Wisdom. The Logos dwelt in an unique manner in this soul. At the commencement of creation, it is true, He was united with all souls; but this one alone clung to Him so closely, faithfully, and unchangeably, that it became one spirit with Him. (De princ. 2, 6, 3: Cum pro liberi arbitrii facultate varietas unumquemque ac diversitas habuisset animorum, ut alius ardentiore, alius tenuiore, et exiliore erga autorem suum amore teneretur, illa anima—(Jesu) ab initio creaturae et deinceps inseparabiliter ei et indissociabiliter inhaerens, utpote sapientiae et verbo Dei et veritati et luci verae, et tota totum recipiens, atque in ejus lucem splendoremque ipsa cedens, facta est cum ipso principaliter unus spiritus.) Hence the Son of God did not dwell in this soul merely as He dwelt in the souls of Peter and Paul; for neither of them was free from sin. But the soul which was in Jesus had chosen the good ere it knew the evil. Connected with the Word of God by an unspotted alliance, it alone was incapable of sin, and precisely because of its capability of entirely and perfectly receiving the Son of God. (De princ. 2, 6, 5: "Verum quoniam boni malique eligendi facultas omnibus praesto est, haac anima, quae Christi est, ita elegit diligere justitiam, ut pro immensitate dilectionis inconvertibiliter ei atque inseparabiliter inhaereret, ita ut propositi firmitas et affectus immensitas et dilectionis inextinguibilis calor omnem sensum conversionis atque immutationis abscinderet et quod in arbitrio erat positum longi usus affectu jam versum sit in naturam.")

¹ Ad. Rom. 1, 5. Even so, if sin had been the substance of our nature, Christ also would have been sinful, de princ. 4, 37.

Wisdom, truth, and life, it had made completely part of itself; it was the box of the precious ointment, the Apostles have the smell; in it was the entire fire of the Logos, and by His glow and heat it was pervaded in love as iron heated in the furnace; the Apostles had the warmth which streamed forth from it.¹ Hence also, both the reason and mode of its entrance into this world were, of necessity, completely different from other men. The reason was not punishment or chastisement for sins, committed during its pre-temporal existence; nor the practice of, and establishment in, good; but love to men. Having continued unchangeably in the Logos, even after men had fallen, and being united with Him by the tenderest love, this soul willingly became the organ by means of which He appeared on earth, and wrought out human redemption. The self-abasement of which the Apostle speaks (Phi1. ii.) is not seldom referred by Origen, as it would seem, to this soul of Christ, which gave up its glory, although not its connection with the Logos,² and entered into the fates and sufferings of the finite, into the condition which is the consequence of sin, but without being touched by the least breath of sin; for, even prior to its entrance into the world, it had become incapable of sin, through its perfect love to the Logos (Note 23). In dignity, it is true, it is inferior to the Only-begotten One, for it was created; but it, the most blessed and most exalted of all souls, was so distinguished, that it stood in the midst between God and the rest of mankind. Hence, also, the mission of accomplishing the work of redemption mainly devolved on it (ad. Rom. T. iii. 8).

¹ De princ. 2, 6, 6. The image of glowing iron, so frequently repeated at a later period, is here carried out by Origen in the following way:— "Ferri metallum capax est frigoris et caloris. Si ergo massa aliqua ferri semper in igne sit posita, omnibus suis poris omnibusque venis ignein recipiens—si neque ignis ab ea cesset aliquando, neque ipsa ab igne separetur, num quidnam dicemus hanc, quae natura quidem ferri massa est, in igne positam et indesinenter ardentem posse frigus aliquando recipere? Quinimo magis—eam totam ignem effectam dicimus, quoniam nec aliud in ea nisi ignis cernitur: sed et si qui(s) contingere atque attrectare tentaverit, non ferri sed ignis vim sentiet. Hoc ergo modo etiam illa anima, quae, quasi ferrum in igne, sic semper in verbo,—sapientia,—Deo posita est, omne quod agit, quod sentit, quod intelligit, Deus est, et ideo nec convertibilis ant mutabilis dici potest, quae inconvertibilitatem ex Verbi Dei unitate indesinenter ignita possedit. Ad omnes denique sanctos calor aliquis Verbi Dei putandus est pervenisse; in hac autem anima ipse ignis divinus substantialiter requievisse credendus est, ex quo ad caeteros calor aliquis venerit."

2 Anaceph. §. 32. ell. 31.

But, precisely for this reason, its mode of entrance into this world could not be the usual one. It was in God and in the Pleroma; thence it went forth at the bidding of the Father, and took from Mary the Virgin a true human body; and because, in the strict sense, those spirits alone can be designated men who have a mortal body (for those who have no body ought rather to be termed angels), we may fairly say, that Christ then first became man, although it be true that His soul, with which the Logos had been ever united, had the same nature as all other souls,—consequently, the same nature as the souls of men.

According to Origen, therefore, the incarnation was not accomplished in one act, but had a history, progressed from one stage to another, and fell into three main acts;—and this is a point of deep significance. The first two acts were played out ere time commenced; the third commenced with the earthly life of Christ. The first was the original and essential union into which the Logos entered with this soul, and which subsisted from the very commencement of its existence. But as this first union with the soul of Jesus was simply that which subsisted between the Logos and all souls, at the moment of their creation (otherwise, Origen's view of the divine righteousness would be violated, de princ. 2, 6, 3), it was not by itself any mark of distinction. Strictly speaking, it constituted merely the presupposition of the incarnation, and declared that human nature was susceptible thereto. To the actual realization of the incarnation, it was necessary that the union established, in the first instance, by the Logos, should be affirmed by the soul of Christ. It actually did decide for the Logos, and that with such sincerity and love, that it was completely taken up into the Logos, or even, as many passages teach, into His essence; in other words, the incarnation was perfectly accomplished as far as affects the soul. For, whereas previously the bond was dissoluble, by this second act an indestructible union was founded between the soul and the entire Logos. Origen did not intend thereby to shut out freedom; but to represent the freedom as one which can no longer choose the evil, as one that is bound and perfected by love (compare ad. Rom. L. v. 10). Equally far also is this perfect love, which includes freedom of choice as a momentum of itself, and no longer leaves it to occupy an isolated position (Note 24), from shutting out the incarnation from further progress: on the contrary, this perfect love in the soul of Christ is itself the living principle and motive of the assumption of a human body. The idea of incarnation, so far as it is the work of condescending love, arrived with this third act at its extreme limit; for, in order to be able to suffer and die on men's behalf, the Logos became flesh, by means of the soul of Jesus: even then, however, further development was not rendered impossible, but the movement now began to take a reverse direction. At first, the Logos learned to stammer in the man Jesus; the child Jesus had a truly human development, and participated thoroughly in human weakness, so far as it was not marked by sin. But this self-abasement of the Logos in the soul which had descended to earth, was intended to promote the glorification of humanity, primarily in this same man. Even on earth, the glory of His higher nature was communicated to the body (c. Cels. 3, 41), as the transfiguration proves: usually, however, it was not permitted to appear, but remained concealed, or was revealed as men needed it (c. Cels. 6, 77; 4,16; Tract. in Matth. xxxv. 100; hom. in Gen. viii. 8; in Joh. T. i. 34; ad Hom. L. i. 4). In His miracles was displayed the divine power of His entire person; His death is not to be conceived as mere passive suffering, but also as the work of His free will: His resurrection also was effected, not by the Father alone, but also by Himself (in Joh. T. x. 21). Finally, the entire Person of Christ, even His body, ascended up to heaven and was glorified. In reward for its condescension and love, His soul was then exalted, and admitted to a participation in the divine omniscience; which was not the case on earth (Tract. in Matth. xxx. 55). Its glory communicated itself also to the body of Christ. When He ascended into heaven, He took with Him His earthly body; and the heavenly powers were filled with amazement when they beheld humanity coming in Him into their midst. Elias and Enoch did not, strictly speaking, ascend to heaven; Christ, however, as He was the first-born from the dead, was also the first to raise flesh into heaven (Fragm. in Ps. xv.). And now there is no longer any difference between His humanity and His deity, the former having passed over into, and been entirely blended with, the latter.¹

¹ c. Cels. 3, 41:—To i»nro» xirrov auy.u, xxl Tij» d»ipxirluw l» uvrjf ^vyM» TJI irpos ixtito» ov fiint xoivuvlu, ci'A*x Kxi ituatl xxl dmixpuait rd ftiyiaru Qxfit» 'xpoaiihmQivxi, Kxl «jf Cksi»ov itir»tfos «i«oiM»ixff« tlf itov fAirufiefinixl»x:. Exv hj Ti$ irpaaxoirrti xxl iripl rov oufi,xro: xinov txXif r.uu* Xtyorrvn, tiritrnaxrx rolf iiri tur ' "EXhiirxr 'hiyofintols irtpl rris T£ iotx hoyu d-mlov Shrn, <xoivnrrxs dfiQioxofiirns iirotxs •' hnfuovpyof (Sov*trxi xvrrt irtpirttirxi, xx'i xoAXxxtf rAs fiiv irparkpxs ciirariitfii»riis, n-purro»xs hi Kxi hxQopovs dvxXxfifixuovms. Tract. in Matth. xixiv. 70.

These expressions are so strong, that at an early period Origen was suspected of holding the humanity to be a transient phenomena of the Logos.¹ It is inaccurate, indeed, to charge him with teaching that Christ laid aside His humanity: so far from that, he rather conceived it to have been constituted, as it were, a momentum of the Logos Himself, and regarded its passage into deity as its perfection. All human weakness was removed; divine power and glory took its place.

At the same time, we here come upon a defect which, on closer examination, we find running through Origen's entire system, and which leaves unsettled difficulties at all the chief points.

It is true he believed human nature to be destined for the divine, and incapable of attaining its truth, save in union therewith. But this divine is, strictly speaking, something which transcends human nature; and human nature must be exalted above itself, that is, must change its nature, in order to fulfil its destiny. Its ideal lies immediately in God, not in God's idea of man, of which unity with Him is an essential constituent. In order, therefore, to reach its goal, humanity must cease to be humanity, must pass into another substance, to wit, the divine, and be swallowed up by it. Accordingly, his theory exposed him to the danger of representing the perfection of humanity as the termination of its existence. The reverse aspect thereof is, that when he attributes independence to the man, he is compelled to exclude the action of God; as we find from his not regarding the decision for the Logos formed by the soul of Christ as the decision of the Logos Himself. At this point, therefore, the view he takes of Christ is really Ebionitical, notwithstanding its relating to His pre-temporal existence. It is an important defect of Origen's Christology, that when it aims to assert the full truth of the humanity of Christ, it does not entirely avoid Ebionism; and, on the other hand, when it sets forth the deity of Christ in its victorious, all-conquering might, it approximates too closely to Docetism, by representing the humanity as absorbed in the deity.

¹ Compare Huet's " Origeniaoa," in de La Rue's Ed. iv. 152.

An exactly similar fault characterizes also his doctrine of the Trinity. The common root of both defects is his peculiar conception of God. We have found that Origen's doctrine of the Son follows necessarily and clearly from his conception of God, according to which, the Son, who, at one and the same time, is eternally generated, and is being eternally generated (der ewig gezeugte und gezeugtwerdende), possesses all that is communicable of the divine essence (that is, volition and knowledge); and further, that he denies to the Son solely that which appears to him absolutely incommunicable, indivisible, and inconceivable in different hypostases, save on the condition of denying the unity of the ultimate, ungenerated, and generating ground. The consequence thereof was, that, contrary to his soteriological principles, the Son was shut out from the inmost sphere of the divine, and reduced to the rank of something secondary, almost to the rank of a creature. That which the Son did not possess, is represented as the inmost, the highest part of God; this the highest part of God, therefore, is incommunicable, exclusive. Here we come again upon the false idea of God, which teaches that something physical, the physical category of the Absolute, and not love and goodness, not His spiritual attributes, are the highest, the inmost, the proper being of God. Origen had not yet succeeded in entirely breaking loose from the *Ov of Hellenic philosophy; and the direct result thereof was the impossibility of the Son's being one with the Most High God. His primary and predominant tendency to set the essence of the Son, as far as possible, on an equality with that of the Father, fails because of this rigid *Ov, this dark remnant of the old heathenish view of the world, which transfers the inmost constituent of the conception of God to the sphere of the natural, where all things are characterized by exclusiveness. Everything would have assumed an entirely different position, had he regarded love and the spiritual attributes as constituting the inmost essence of God; for therein the Son might participate. Aseity, on the contrary, instead of being described as the inmost essence of God, in which it was impossible for the Son to participate, would then have denoted simply that which was distinctive of the Father, whilst the entire divine nature would have been recognised as belonging in common to the Father and to the Son. Origen, however, puts the matter as follows:—The Son could only participate in the inmost and highest part of the divine nature, so far as He entirely lost Himself in the One, Indivisible God, and ceased to be any longer Son; but so far as there is a difference between Him and the Father, the latter sets forth the entire and inmost divine essence, whereas the former remains excluded from this sphere. We remark, therefore, in Origen a phaenomenon which frequently reappeared at a later period, especially in the Mystics,— namely, because the divine, in its dissociation from all multiplicity, singularity, or determination, was conceived to be the Highest, whereas man in general, and the Christian in particular, demands that the very divine itself, and not merely a derivative divine, be accessible to him; he was compelled to speak of a going out beyond the image of God, to wit, the Son, into the depths of the divine nature, into the essence of the Father,—the effect of which naturally was, to threaten both the mediatorship of the Logos, and the historical significance of Christ. It is false, indeed, to regard it in Origen's sense as a mere subjective seeming j¹ he had, at all events, no intention of modalistically dissolving the hypostasis of the Logos and His history in the divine Monas; but still he by no means completely extricated himself from this error, for, according to his teaching, the inmost essence of the Most High God scarcely penetrates to the essence of the Son. In the Son, we know the Father solely according to His Bo^a, and to the divine substance thereunto appertaining, not according to His inmost essence. The world represents to him, as in another form to Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita, a divine hierarchy, all the members of which are rational in themselves, but in different degrees; and the higher stage, by stretching out its hand in aid of the lower, leads it out beyond itself to a higher. Those who cannot lay hold on Christ's external appearance are retained in connection with the Logos, by means of rational beings in whom He dwells more perfectly. The second class lays hold on the outward appearance of Christ, but does not understand the highest and alone true element in Him, into which His own humanity passed, after enjoying for a moment an individual existence. ¹ As notwithstanding Baur does, 1. c. p. 219.

The third class is led on through the humanity of Christ to His pure deity, and then knows Him no longer after the flesh. But even to be united with the Logos is not the highest attainment; for, inasmuch as He Himself is not in Himself the Highest, He directs us beyond Himself to the Most High God, the Father, to whom we are to enter into a relation of contemplation (Oia), as intimate as that of the Logos. Origen forgets not, indeed, to remark that perfect Christians owe their attainment of this highest stage to the Logos, that is, not merely to the eternal, but to the incarnate, Logos; and that there is no way to this height, save the way through the God-man and the Logos. In particular did he regard the death of Christ as the eternally operative means of reconciliation, which continues to be a necessary preliminary to the attainment of the highest stage,—a circumstance which leads us to form a favourable estimate of the depth of his Christian consciousness. His endeavours to exalt the sacrifice of Christ to an absolutely universal significance, to strip it of the limits of time and space, and to represent it as having been presented in heaven, were not dictated by a wish to dissipate His historical death, but rather, on the contrary, by a desire to set it forth as the central event of history and of the universe, as the point in which heaven and earth meet, and God and the world are reconciled. For this reason, though the sacrifice of Christ was presented on earth, he places it in heaven, and teaches that even the pious who lived prior to His advent, were counted among the reconciled, for its sake;—indeed, he represents the entire world as participating in its blessing. But if in Christ by Himself and in the Logos, we do not merely not possess the entire God (for even the Church does not suppose that), but not even the Most High God, then is merely a porch of heaven, and not heaven itself, come down to us, and thus we see clearly that the revelation of the highest in Christ can only be viewed as a modalistic shining into Him. At this same point, wc are not less instructively reminded also of the essential connection between Modalism and Subordinatianism. For when Modalism endeavours to conceive the revelation in Christ as a permanent, fixed thing, and not as a mere theophany, it falls into Subordinatianism; and so, on the other hand, all Subordinatianism unavoidably represents the truly divine as merely shining into the Son. Neither of them, consequently, possesses in Christ the absolute religion, and both are impelled to aspire beyond this revelation to a fanciedly higher and deeper mystery. This mystery is, it is true, empty enough; but its influence is pernicious, because it weakens the conviction that in Christ we possess the highest; it reduces His revelation from the rank of an absolute to that of a relative one; and it may turn away the eye from the mysterious treasures which are contained in Christ Himself, and which demand to be revealed to our consciousness (Note 25.)

The statement just given may show us that the attempt made by Origen, with a clear insight into the nature of his task, to free the momenta of truth, scattered through the systems of his predecessors, from the one-sidedness of heresy, and to unite them in one great whole, necessarily failed because of the imperfection of his conception of God. Origen therefore forms a knot in the history of doctrine. Many threads meet in him; his far-reaching mind saw that they must be united in one web; and, standing as it were at the cradle of the development of Christian doctrine, he, the first Christian dogmatician, lays down the problems which should busy the mind of the Church for a long period, but was himself unable to find the solution. The threads of thought, which, like so many lines, had converged towards a centre in his great mind, separate again still more widely from each other in quitting him; the various aspects which he aimed at uniting, did not find a form capable of embracing them all; and the more closely he brought them together, the more clearly was their permanent disharmony revealed. His attempt at effecting an union became, on the contrary, a watchword for the unchaining of antagonisms and the initiation of new struggles. This point now demands our attention.

Let us first cast a glance at the development of doctrine during this remarkable period, and at the three principal figures who acted the part of representatives of the Church. From the end of the second century and onwards, the teachers of the Church arrived at the common conviction, that, in order to secure doctrinally the hypostasis of the Logos, they must advance beyond the literal signification of the term, inasmuch as God in general is also Reason (X070?). Following Tertullian's example, the term "Son" was therefore adopted for a watchword. Hippolytus now says, the Son is out of the Logos; the Logos is the spiritual substance of God or of the Father Himself; so far is He from being Himself the Son, that logically the Logos precedes the Son,—a thought which is further carried out by Origen. A great part of Tom. i. in Joh., where he represents the apyi) of John (in which was the X07O?, that is, the fiovoyevrj<; or Son) as the divine aocpia. that is, as the vovs or X07o? of God Himself, out of which the Son then proceeds, is occupied with the development of this same thought. By means of the word Son, a clearer distinction was now drawn between the essence and the personality of the second hypostasis; but, at the same time, Sonship was understood at first to denote, not the essence, but merely the personality (for example, by Tertullian and Hippolytus); whereof the natural consequence was, that whereas, or because, the essence of the second hypostasis is eternal, its personality was conceived to be non-eternal. The temporal diremption, namely, was intended to aid in setting plainly forth and establishing the distinction between the eternal substance still undistinguished from the Father, and the personality. The less mature and ready mind of Tertullian (for example) was unable to discover any other means of mastering the distinction, than by fixing it in time. Without doubt, too, the watchword now chosen, "Son," brought with it the temptation to conceive the Sonship as having begun in time. At all events, one can easily understand that men like Clemens Alexandrinus and Irenaeus (the latter of whom had already begun to treat the doctrine of the Logos critically), who in the main rested satisfied with the word Logos, must have found it easier, yea, even more necessary, to affirm the eternity of the divine wisdom and reason (that is, the eternity of the Son, in their sense), than those who started with the word Son. The consequent commixture of the Son with finitude, which on the one hand brought Tertullian nearer to Patripassianism, and on the other hand involved him in contradiction with himself, seeing that he, notwithstanding, deemed the Son to be derived from the eternal essence of God, Hippolytus endeavoured to set aside by drawing a clear distinction between God, as the alone infinite, supra-infinite One, and the world. His determinism, however, reduced the world, nay, even the humanity of Christ, to selflessness; and he also subjects the hypostatic existence of the Son to the almighty will of God. His gaze was already directed away from the later manifested personality of the Son, back to His eternal essence; and he tried to establish a connection between the two, by means of the idea of the predestination of the personality of the Son. But the Son is plainly thus reduced to still greater dependence on the divine will; and that eternal essence is represented as belonging to the Father alone, and as communicated to the hypostatic Son, according to His will and counsel. Origen first rose decidedly above this point of view. He saw the contradiction between the supposition of an hypostasis, whose existence commences at a later time, on the one hand, and the attribution to it of an eternal divine essence, and the denial that it is a creature, on the other hand. He therefore combined the eternity of the divine essence with the fact of the genesis of the personality, by means of the doctrine of the eternal, that is, the eternally processive generation of the Son by the Father. Earlier writers had spoken much of the will of the Father in a way that equalized the Son and creatures, contrary to their intention; and Origen, in whose system the will plays so important a part, did not entirely escape this fault: at the same time, he described the Son as the hypostatized will of the Father, which proceeded forth from His wisdom, spirit, vow =X6yo<;. In harmony with the doctrine of the eternal generation, Origen thus brought the tendencies of Tertullian and Hippolytus to a certain sort of conclusion; but at the same time set himself into strong realistic antagonism to the men of the second century, who had viewed the Son more idealistically as the divine reason and wisdom, or, at the utmost, as the divine thought which is at the same time world-creative. It is evident, however, that the definition of the Son as Will, can, in itself, no more secure the distinction of His hypostasis from the Father, than the definition of Him as the Logos. For as the Father is, and must continue to be, Logos, Reason, so also is He Will,—a circumstance which might escape the attention of Origen, with his peculiar conception of God, but could not be concealed from the Church, holding, as it did, the Christian idea of God. The only means of averting that danger, was the idea of a diremption of the divine essence. We have seen, also, that Origen repeatedly approximated to this idea, but was unable fully to carry it out, because his conception of God was essentially opposed to such a diremption, and was interwoven with the Hellenic Absolute or "Ov. On the other hand, it deserves to be noted with approval, that he tried to assign to the will also a place in the humanity of Christ, although his efforts ended somewhat ebionitically. Still more does it deserve mention, that, primarily for the sake of securing the truth of the ethical development of the humanity of Christ, he represented the incarnation, not, after the universal custom in his day, as a fact once for all accomplished and concluded, but as a continuous, nay more, progressive one.

CHAPTER SECOND.

SABELLIANISM.

Sabellianism—taking the word in its doctrinal, not in its historical signification—is capable of assuming many forms, the attainment of an acquaintance with which is our present object. The essential feature, it is true, of all the forms of Sabellianism, is the Movapyla, the unity of God; but the assertion thereof was compatible with a recognition of the distinction between God as He is in Himself, and God as revealed. The relation between the two, however, may be very differently viewed. Sabellianism, in its earliest form, did not deem the unchangeableness of God, His freedom from processes of growth and from suffering, necessary to His absolute unity: on the contrary, the early Patripassians taught that God entered into change and suffering. That God Himself was present in His revelation, was maintained by them with such intensity, that they directly identified the two. They took for granted, it is true, that God still continued God; but how His subjection to suffering and processes of growth was compatible therewith, they did not further inquire: in other words, they did not define the inner essence of God to be that which continues ever the same, and permanently distinguish it from the sphere of that which He became. Noetus does this more distinctly than Praxeas. He distinguished God's permanent being in Himself and the revelations, in which He manifests Himself as He pleases. It is clear, however, that even so, the unchangeableness of God is not fully secured. For, in the act of manifesting Himself, He enters, according to Noetus, into externality and passibility. At the same time, he thus affirmed the objective truth of the revelations in harmony with the claims of the religious mind. But the speculative knowledge of God seems all the more strongly contradictory thereto, as, on the one hand, no motive is assigned why God should begin to reveal Himself, nor the revelation reconciled with His unchangeableness; and, on the other hand, the mode and number of God's revelations are not shown to be conditioned by His eternal essence. Beron and Beryll also neglected to give more attentive consideration to the divine unchangeableness, though, in a Christological point of view, they occupy higher ground.

Another more refined form of Monarchianism was that which, whilst aiming to exclude all suffering whatever from God, nevertheless held that God Himself was really present in His revelations under the form of deeds; and sought to reduce their indefined plurality within fixed limits. God would then be in all His revelations unalterably one and the same; the possibility of a difference of revelations being based on the distinction drawn between God's unchangeable inseity (Tnsichseyn) and His historical life in the world, and the attribution of the change of revelations solely to this latter.

A still more sublimated form of this tendency was, thirdly, that which not merely excluded suffering and change from God's essence, but, instead of His historical life, admitted solely the existence of a movement, which, as the movement of His will, was held to have nothing to do with His being. So far as revelation is regarded merely as a work, and not as a mode of the existence of God, all that is present therein, is undoubtedly His thought or will; He Himself, however, is not revealed, but remains withdrawn from the world. But as the Christian mind could never be content with the meagre description of Christ as a mere work of God, the expedient might be adopted of saying, that though the entire God was not present in the revelation, or in the actuality, yet a ray of the divine essence was. A merely quantitative distinction from Patripassianism,—a distinc'tion, too, which, in addition, pays an earnest-money to Ebionism,—is thus effected, but nothing more.

The final logical result of this tendency to give prominence to the abstract simplicity and immutability of God, would naturally be to transfer this abstract simplicity to the so-called revelation also. For, as the divine omnipresence itself forbids the separation of the will and work of God from His being, seeing that He continues present in both, the movement or change which was meant to be confined to them, falls back into His being. Consequently, if God be regarded as the abstractly simple One, we can no longer represent Him as active in the work of revelation; for if He were, especially on the supposition of different revelations, He must be brought under the limits of time. That, therefore, which is termed revelation, is a simple subjective matter: the objective God remains in His being and doing ever and eternally the same: He merely appears as a different being, be it that the objective medium through which He presents Himself to the consciousness, breaks the rays of His essence differently; or be it that the individual subject, at different stages, knows the divine, which is one and the same, and which presents itself always alike, more or less perfectly. In the former case, we should have a feeble remainder of an objective selfrevelation of God, in the sense, namely, of the world, and not God, being the cause of different aspects of the divine nature being revealed at different times; in the latter case, no objective revelation at all takes place, but the entire process of religion and revelation is dissipated, after a Pelagian (or deistic) fashion, into a simple matter of subjective human development:—so, indeed, that not even in the creation of the world is a place left for a revelation of God; for the creation of the world must be as incompatible with the abstract simplicity and unchangeableness of God as the act of the second creation. The entire mode of thought of early thinkers indisposed them for carrying this principle out to its logical results; but representatives of the second and third forms of Monarchianism made their appearance even as late as the third and fourth centuries.

We see thus, within this tendency, a gradual progress from a pantheistic principle, that is, a principle which commingles God and the world, to a deistic principle: these two extremes, however, are connected by the predominance given to the conception of God as substance, relatively to which the ethical aspect of God is thrown into the background, and which, from its unsatisfactory character, sways about between the extremes of a God who is immediately passible, and one who is separated from the world.

After these preliminary observations, let us return to the history. The result of the development of the Church, which since the days of Hippolytus and Origen had brought the doctrine of the immutability of the inner, divine essence decidedly to the foreground, had been to repress Patripassianism. About the middle of the third century, it withdrew from the scene; and only a few forlorn, anonymous voices were raised on its behalf: unless we take into consideration the pantheistic, dualistic movement which went forward almost outside of the limits of Christianity, and whose occurrence at this precise period cannot be regarded as accidental (Note 26).

But we have seen also, that even the system of Origen had not advanced beyond the idea of the abstract simplicity of God. If, as he maintains, the supra-essential God suffers within Himself no inner distinctions; and if, notwithstanding, on the other hand, the main matter is, that the Most High God should come forth and enter into fellowship with humanity; it appears more correct, with Sabellianism, to posit the latter, and, whilst retaining hold on the simplicity of God in Himself, to distinguish between the revealed and the hidden God, than, with Origen, to represent the Most High God as constantly hidden. And almost still more strongly than the interest in religion is the interest in science opposed to the reduction of the Son, after the example of Origen, to an uncertain middle being between God and the world.

Sabellius the Libyan, Presbyter of Plotemais in the Pentapolis, endeavoured to purify the patripassian system, and to bring it to far more complete development.¹ What had never at all before, or only very indefinitely, been done by earlier representatives of this tendency, he drew the Holy Spirit into the circle of his theory, and so laid down a doctrine of the Trinity of his own.

¹ Sources:—Athanaa. c. Arian. Orat. iv. c 2, 9, 13,14, 25, ell. 12, 22; de Synod. c. 16 ; Expos. Fid. c. 2; Epiphan. haer. 62; and the Anaceph.; Eusebius, H. E. 7, 6; Theodoret, haer. fab. 2, 9. Compare also Basilius, Ep. 210, 214; Ambrosius, de Fide 1, 1, 2; 4, 4, 6. Augustine constantly confounds him with the Patripassians, but communicates some interesting particulars in the Tract. in Joh. 36 ff., 53 I.e., iv. 725 ff. 731, 853. Hilarius, de Trin. 7, 39. Compare also Schleiermacher's Sammtliche Werke; Erste Abthcilung, Bd. i. pp. 485-575.

He thus reduced the indefinite plurality of the revelations of the one God to the number three, in agreement with the Church. His fundamental idea is the following:—That which in God is an unity, undivided and indistinguishable, separates into a plurality in the world, and in it alone. Only in virtue of the mundane aspect (Weltseite) can we speak of distinctions or of a plurality in God. These distinctions, it is true, are not mere names, or mere subjective seeming; but the divine Monas is really and objectively in them, so that a real objective something corresponds to the different revelations. For, though they are by no means distinguished from the divine unity, in which they are contained as momenta, and which is in them, the one form of revelation is not identical with the other; for example, law and incarnation are not the same: therefore, also, Father and Son, which according to Theodoret correspond to the above-mentioned two, are not the same. The Sabellians illustrated the relation between the divine unity and plurality by a reference to the relationship between the Holy Spirit and His charisms.¹ The Holy Spirit is one in the many gifts which He bestows, although the gifts themselves really differ from each other. But as the gifts can only be apprehended and appear, in their difference, through the addition of the world, even so the plurality in God. The question then arises,—Did Sabellius conceive this plurality to be the work of God, or (just as the differences in the charisms arise from the differences in the natural bases on which they are engrafted) the effect of the already existing nature of the world, which reflects the one divine ray in different ways, although it, for its share, strictly speaking, works undividedly always and everywhere, and is merely dividedly appropriated and reflected by the objective world? The former supposition woidd lead to a divine history, be it of the nature or of the deeds of God: the latter would characterize the differences in the revelations, as the mere effect of the world. Applied to the incarnation, the latter would lead to Ebionism; applied to the Holy Ghost, to Pelagianism: for it depended, for example, entirely on the man Jesus, how much of the divine unity appeared in Him.

¹ Athan. c. Ar., Orat. iv. 25,—(puo,i yap (2x/3eX?uoj)ua^tp iixipiaits x<zpioflcnuv «Vi, To ie Olvto wtvp.u, Qvtu xul 6 irurrip 6 xvros pctv fior/, ir'hurVntrui ii tls viot xxX iwivp.u.

There can scarcely be any doubt that Sabellius referred the differences in the revelations back to God Himself, and insisted on their being regarded not merely as different deeds and works, but as different modes of the existence of God, although undoubtedly in the world.¹ For the divine Monas is not, in his view, motionless, but living. If it keep silence, it is without operation; if it speak, it is active. So far as it speaks, it may be termed Logos, and that irpo<popuco<;; so far as it keeps silence, it answers to the Logos evSidOeros. Logos, therefore, in the language of Sabellius, means something different from Son, who is but one of the forms of the speaking God.² Epiphanius and Augustine also (in Joann. Tract. 53) designate the speaking of the Monas, deed or will. The Son is also called the arm which God stretches out for action: probably, too, the Spirit is represented in the same manner agreeably to older Church analogies; so that the image refers again to the entire God. The outstretched arm is God engaged in action; the arm drawn back is God in rest, in His inseity⁸ (Insichseyn). The arm denotes, therefore, that the revelation contains no new divine hypostasis; but simply that the Monas, besides its motionless inseity, is also to be viewed as active and living. What and how many movements and outstretchings of the arm, or revelations, pertain to God, is no more clearly indicated by this image than by the analogy of the charisms.

¹ To the question of Athanasius, c. At. 4, 14,—Whether the Monas expands itself for others or for itself? the answer may be given,—For others, but also for itself; it is itself that whereto it expands itself. This is not inconsistent with the charge brought against Sabellius, that, like Alius, he made men of greater consequence than the Logos, representing the Logos as proceeding forth from God for our sake. Athanasius himself (c. Ar. 4,11) affirms both of him. If, as they say, the silent God is powerless (d.mtipynros'), and first powerful when He comes forth on our behalf, we are the means of His completion, our origin contributes to His perfection. We therefore are higher than He, because our creation gives Him that which He did not yet possess: He needs us for His own existence.

³ The Logos is referred to the incarnation according to A than. 1. c. 22, ell. 20: He did not, however, first come into existence in Christ, but merely became a Son. The Monas as Logos creates the world, 1. c. 11:—TixTiw» li xri^im iipZxro. They Say:—To» Aoyov i» dpxy fi!» thou hoyot «l*A<3f, ire ii hnttpuirnat, rorx otofidaiui viof irpo ydp ri)s 'rxiQx»eixs fin ihui vliv cUChA "hoyot fiouor xxl uairtp i "hiyof oAp%, iyiuro oiix uv irpirtpo» aup%, ovrus 6 Ao'yo. vlis ylyomv ovx uv irpirepot vlof. The Logos, therefore, advanced to Sonship by degrees, as Tertullian taught.

⁸ After the analogy of "aseity."—Tb.

All that we learn is, that in the silent and motionless God, there is a potence of speech and action; and this potence Sabellius undoubtedly conceived to be eternal.

But now, as regards the relation between God's being and essence, on the one part, and His doing, on the other, there arises the question,—Whether the Monas continues outside of its doing and work, or whether its being is in the work, whether it is itself each of the movements? The latter is decidedly to be assumed, and the different revelations are different modes of existence, which the Monas assumes by means of its movements. In proof of this, we cannot indeed appeal to the aXrjp.ari^eaOai of Sabellius; for this word, by itself, might characterize the different a^rjfiarurfioix: as the result of the conjunction of the Monas with different parts of the world, through which the One appears as though it were diverse. But it is strikingly evident from the proposition, that the Monas expands itself to a trias (irXcirvverai, eKreiverai), even as the one Spirit exposes and diffuses its fulness in the multiplicity of charisms. This expansion, extension, also termed evolution, irXarvcrfibs, eteraai<;, avairXaafibs irpoadmcov (Athan. c. Ar. 4, 13, 14), is the positive ground of the rise of the Sabellian plurality or trinity; its antithesis is the avaroXrj, the withdrawal or constriction, which is a mere negative presupposition of a new ITXarva/io?. In order, namely, to accomplish a new act of revelation, or to assume a new form of existence, the Monas must undoubtedly recede from its full surrender to the previous mode, and must again collect itself, so as to be able to come forth in its entirety under a new shape. These two momenta^ which appertain to a divine revelation, Sabellius appears to have termed the divine SiAXe^is, dialectic (see Basil. Ep. 210, compare Note 29). Revelation may, therefore, progress intensively, and yet, extensively considered, the circles of the self-evolution of God may become ever narrower, as he unquestionably appears to declare, when he draws the parallel between body, soul, and spirit, and Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The general spirit of the system, however, requires stress to be laid on the fact, that all the forms of existence assumed by the Monas in the course of the process through which it passes, are of equal value, in so far as no one of them can fail, and in all of them the entire Monas is present after some manner or other.¹

But if it be taken as certain that the revelations are movements of the divine life itself, and that Sabellius does not distinguish the doing and work of God from His living being, his system must plainly be pronounced completely pantheistic, unless its Trinity presupposes a creation, and with the creation, the distinction of the world from God. For then the world is nothing more than a mode of existence which God assumes; whereas, on the contrary, if an already created world be taken as their scene and medium, the revelations may be regarded as different modes of the divine existence, without any danger of Pantheism: nay more, they must be so regarded, if God is not to be kept strange to, and at a distance from, the world, and the purpose of revelation to be frustrated. If Sabellius regarded creation also as a self-expansion of God out of straitness (airo arewmrro?), he must have designated this mode of existence either Father or Monas or Logos, not Son; for one of the charges most frequently brought against him, was that of denying the pre-existence of the Son and the Spirit. He can no more have termed that mode of existence Monas, than all the other modes of existence; for Sabellius regarded Monas, not as the individual mode of the divine existence, but as the unity which continues the same in all. If the relation between the Monas and the revelations is similar to that between the Holy Ghost and His charisms, it follows, that as the Holy Ghost cannot have a real existence in the world and reveal Himself, save by means of His charisms, so also the Monas can only come forth through the medium of one or the other of its modes of existence and actions, though it itself cannot be at all identified with a single action.

¹ According to the work " c. Sabellii Gregales," in Athan. Opp. 2, 37 ff. (in Basil. Opp. as the 27th Homily), the image of body, soul, and spirit is employed by the Sabellians as follows:—As man consists of different parts, and is notwithstanding one, even so the Trinity: it may be compounded— that they were willing to allow (c. 13)—but the parts together form the one divine hypostasis. Athanasius says :—Ovoe xvipxiro» ix rpiuv iirotouu aiWero», Tnevicu-cs, i}jvxiis, aufixros, Ovtu xxl Qti» xxixirtp xxxetvoi («'. e., the Sabellians) ray^fiuai.—T« yap Tov Avvhtov ftipn, xxl Tx xmovftiwov xt»nfcxrx irpos rnv xsv»itrtm xxl d»xKhnlura» ipiai» ovhifilxv i,frit xoitutlxv. Esrti xxi Tus cixootiKKti To piipos r i To xlvnfix xinov 6 irxrnp, dirorriKhuv Tod vio»; i To irvtvfix To iyio» i vlof ixirifimn tis rot xoafiot;

On one supposition alone could Sabellius refer the Monas to the creation,—the supposition, namely, that he regarded creation or the world, not as a single revelation, but as a living presence or existence of God in actuality. In that case, however, the distinction between the silent and the speaking God would be done away with as regards creation, and a coarse Pantheism be substituted in its place. Every form of the actualization of the being and life of God should rather, on the contrary, be conceived, if not as one of the Sabellian irpoaayrra, yet as something different from the Monas in itself. Only in consequence of a confusion of the Father with the Monas, therefore, could a single revelation, like the creation of the world, be reduced back to the Monas. It is quite possible that Sabellius may have made such a confusion (Note 27); it was a common fault of the Church teachers of this and even of a later period. The entire God, the- Monas, is undoubtedly designated Father in His relation to the world (Athan. c. Ar. 4, 22, Koivos irdvrav irarrjp), and does not bear this title solely in the Trinity. The Sabellians, therefore, may also have frequently used the word Father, without fault, for Monas. Be that as it may, so far as we know, the Sabellians never traced back the creation of the world to the Father, or to the Monas in itself. Legislation alone is attributed to the Father (Note 28). It cannot be at all historically shown that Sabellius referred one of his trinitarian Biaipiaeis, or the trinitarian irkarv<Tfiov<;, to the creation also. It is not even certain whether he believed creation in general to have been brought about by a self-extension of God. All that Athanasius says (c. Ar. 4, 13) is,—The Sabellians perhaps derived their doctrine from the Stoics, who represented God as contracting and expanding Himself with the creation of the world

Though it cannot be at all shown that Sabellius held the Monas or the Father to be the Creator of the world:—it seems certain rather, on the one hand, that his trinitarian distinctions first arise within the world which had come into existence in some other way, but do not refer to the creation; and equally certain, on the other hand, that the creation was ascribed to the Logos, whom Sabellius regarded as the Monas in life and motion. But how could he posit a particular deed of the Logos alongside of, and in addition to, the trinitarian revelation of God in the world? If the silent God is powerless, and the speaking God strong; if He could do nothing whilst silent, and began to create when He spake, that is, as the Logos (Athan. c. Ar. 4, 11); we have a hint which distinguishes the act of creation essentially from all the rest. Apart from the world, God cannot be, cannot be conceived; it would be to conceive Him powerless, whereas He is not fully conceived, unless conceived as iayyoirra, as speaking, or as in motion. Very similar was the judgment both of Origen and of Hermogenes, whom several older writers classed with the Sabellians. The distinction in God, on which is based the rise of the world, Sabellius deemed essential to Him; for God cannot lack power; God cannot, as to His essence, be merely the silent God; whereas the case is a totally different one with the other revelations of God in the world. They are not grounded in the nature of God, but are occasioned by the world, by its necessities. The condition of the world rendered them necessary or desirable. One of the most frequent accusations brought by the teachers of the Church against Sabellius, was that of representing God as appearing in the world, solely 77y>o? Tc\? e'/eoorore ;$>eta?, either as Father, as Son, or as Holy Ghost (Note 29). Therein was involved also the transitoriness of the single Sabellian irpoawrra. When the ypeia was once met, the irpoaanrov was no longer required. The need arises from sin, that is, from something which is not meant to be eternal; but if the ground of the existence of the irpoaama is ephemeral, they themselves also must be ephemeral. Such is the representation given by Gregory of Nyssa, in a passage hitherto unnoticed (A. Mai, Coll. Nov. T. 8, Appendix, p. 4). The Sabellians, says he, through reading such words as,—" I and the Father are one;" "Whoso seeth Me, seeth the Father also;" "When He shall have given up the kingdom to the Father and God,"—with too little acuteness of judgment, have fallen into godless error, olofievoi Sick fiev Xenrora^iav dvOpaireivrjv irpoeXrfkvOivai Tov vlbv eK rov irarpos wpoaKaipw avOis Be fierh rrjv BwpOaaiv rmv dvOpu>irivcov ifkrjp.fieX.rjpArcov dvaXeXvKora ivZvvcu re Kox avapAp.lyOo.i rm irarpl. The same follows also from Sabellius' notion, that God proceeds from one revelation or self-extension to another by resumption, which he appears to have figuratively described as a drawing in again of His outstretched arm (Aug. in Joann. 53, Opp. 4,

A more fully developed system than that of Sabellius seems to have been, would have been compelled to make greater efforts to bring the creation, that general work of the speaking God, which continues the same through all revelations, into connection with its doctrine of the Trinity, and, as the first and fundamental revelation, to co-ordinate it with the succeeding ones; in other words, to ascribe it to a irpoaunrov after the manner of those which followed. But, on the one hand, even the Church itself did not do this, so far as it ascribed the creation indifferently both to Father and Son; and, on the other hand, creation itself and its character furnished Sabellius with an occasion and starting-point for the assumption of certain distinctions in, and manifold revelations of, the undivided divine unity: consequently, the Trinity, in his view of it, presupposed creation as an already accomplished thing; and apart altogether from a Trinity, he necessarily attributed it to the speaking Monas, which he terms Logos. If the work of creation pertained to one member alone of the Sabellian Trinity, and not to the speaking Monas in general, then the Monas must be divided, independently of, and prior to, the creation, into a simple principle of the creation of the world, a principle of incarnation, and so forth;—that is, God would be distinguished in Himself. Sabellius, therefore, abode by the position,—The divine unity does not divide itself; wherever it is, it is in its entirety; as far as concerns the eternal essence of God, the sole distinction is that into a silent and a speaking God; but the world which exists through His word, gives occasion, by the differences in its constitution, not merely to three different acts of revelation, but, as was indicated above, to three different modes of existence of Himself, in the law, in the incarnation, in the Holy Ghost. (Note 30.)

From all this it would appear that the relation of the Monas to the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, is the following:—The Monas is the h/ wroiteifievov, the one hypostasis, which manifested itself, during the course of the history of religion, in those three in different ways. Out of its fulness and unity, which continue ever the same, it sets forth different things for the different needs of the world. But it is not led to this manifestation by inner distinctions of essence, but by the world. It is true, the world alone does not make the distinctions. Not that it and revelation in general are mere subjective representation; or that, as Ebionites might suppose, the one, indivisible, divine, which in itself stands related alike to all, is unequally apprehended by the world,—perfectly, for example, by the most virtuous man, Jesus. On the contrary, Sabellius recognised really different divine deeds and movements; but because these distinctions owe their existence solely to peculiarities of the world, which have not their ground in God, they are transitory, so far as the said peculiarities are transitory (Note 31); they do not contribute to the perfection of the divine essence; whereas that the silent God should speak, was necessary to the completion of the conception of God. The teachers of the Church, taking the opposite course, looked upon creation as in itself an accidental feature of the conception of God, and in no respect necessary to its complete intellection. By the Trinity, on the contrary, they deemed it to be perfected; and they would sooner have allowed, in opposition to Sabellius, that the oeconomic Trinity set forth essential momenta of the divine life itself (which, be it noted, is also of an ethical nature), than, in agreement with him, teach that the genesis of the world was the completion of God. Ath. c. Ar. 4,11:—Oirroi eXarrov T& Qeu>,17 rjfuv SiBocuriv. ^cHfiei<; yap Itoxkcikis Kcu aiayrra>vre<; fiev, evOvfiovfnevoi Be evepyovfiev, Stare ra eic rfj<; ivOvp.rjaem<; Kcu elBcoK.oiroia.aOai; these, however, Tov Seov aiwrr&vra fiev avevepyrjrov, Xakovvra Be Ia%ven/ Cujtov fiovXovrai' eiye auDircov fiev ovte r)BvvarO vroieiv, \a\a>v Be Krt^elv rjp^aro. 'Epea9ai yap avroix; BUaiov, el 6 X070? eV Tu> Qec o &v, reXeios r)v, coare ical iroteiv BwaaOai; El fiev ovv cn-eXr)s r)v, ev 6eco &v, yewrjOel<; Be reXeic; yeyovev, ijyuei? airiot. Tt)? reXetorr7rO? avrov, etye Bi r)fia<; yeyewryrav BC r)fia<; yap Kai To BvvacrOai iroieiv irpoaetXrjcpev el Be reXeio<; rjv ev Qeqi, Sxrre Kai iroielv BvvacrOai, irepirrrj fj yewrjai<; avrov, eBvvarO yap, ical ev irarpl av, Brjfuovpyelv coare r) oil yeyevvrjrat, r) yeyewrjrai ov Bi r)fia<;, att' on del eK Tov irarpos ecmv. 'H yap yewqai<; avrov ov rrjv fjfiS>v /eriaiv SeiKwaiv, aXXa To eic Tov Qeov elvai. This passage shows that the Sabellians spoke not merely of a X.070?, but also of a yewr)ai<; Tov X6yov; probably they identified this latter with the XaXelv of the Father. Like Tertullian and the Arians, they represent this yewrjai<; as taking place before the creation of the world, nay more, as taking place for the sake of the creation. In common with the former, they assume a process of growth, VOL. 11. L

a progressive hypostatization. But they differ from both in conceiving the yem>rjai<;, not as the origin of the hypostasis, but as the manifestation of the world-creative power. This passage, therefore, is an evidence, partly, that Monarchianism, about the year 260, had already assumed a form in many respects like the Trinity of their opponent Tertullian; and partly, also, that the Sabellians decidedly ascribed creation to the Logos.

Having investigated the relation of the divine Trias to the Monas, let us now take a glance at the relation of the members of the Trias to each other. It is clear, from what has been advanced above, that, as was frequently objected by the teachers of the Church, these three were never simultaneously, and, therefore, never properly speaking, members of the Trinity. During the period when God revealed Himself as Father, the Son did not yet exist; and during the period of the Holy Ghost, the Son and the Father no longer exist (cf. Montfaucon, Nov. Coll. T. ii. 2, Epiph. haer. 62, 1; and in Athan. c. Ar. Or. 4, 12). According to Epiphanius and Theodoret (haer. fab. 2, 9; compare Germanus Constantinop. de haeres. et Synodis in A. Mai, Spicileg. Roman. T. 7, 11, 12), to the Father was attributed legislation, to the Son the incarnation, to the Holy Ghost the inspiration of the Apostles, as also the quickening and animating of believers. The objective difference of these revelations is thus expressed and characterized with sufficient clearness (Note 32). But they employed two images in order to describe this relation with greater precision. Father, Son, Spirit, are analogous to body, soul, and spirit;—the three momenta or modes of existence of the one man. There is a similar trinity also in the sun. Firstly, there is its form in itself, its outward appearance (etSo?, cryjiiia iraarj<; Ttj<; v7ro<rra<re&>?, which is to be distinguished from the viroaraai s itself). This corresponds to the revelation of the law, which was a strange and purely objective thing; or, when the word Father is taken strictly, to the Father. Secondly, the pure disk of the sun makes its appearance for men, and enters into their sphere, in that it expands itself, as it were, to a circle of light and illuminates the earth. This corresponds to.the revelation of the Son. Lastly, the sun penetrates into things themselves, bringing warmth and light. This corresponds to the visits of the Holy Spirit. Both images connect the individual members of the Trias with each other, and both imply progress;—not, however, in the sense that those who have the Holy Spirit are more than those who have Christ; but merely in the sense, that the divine revelation or Monas penetrates ever more deeply into the existing world. The progress, therefore, is on the side of men, to whom one and the same God approaches constantly nearer through His different cryrjfiariafiovs. To God Himself the Trinitarian process (SiaXeft?) brings no progress. The sun does not first acquire enlightening and warming power, but has it from the beginning. Through the employment of special means (law, incarnation), the entire divinity comes ever more fully into activity. But although the entire divine essence is present in each of these a^fuiriafiol, each of them sets forth a different aspect of the objective divine essence, according to the requirements of men; and thus prepares the way for an increasing appropriation of God.

This, of course, implies that the incarnation of God, for which Sabellius employs also the expression evavOpcinrrjai<; rov X070U, could merely have the significance of a means to an end in his system; and that, as such, it might cease as soon as it had accomplished that for which it was brought into existence. He did not regard the Person of Christ as an end in itself; Christ is not the essential good, or, as Head and King, an essential part of the highest good, whose glorification we also have to subserve. But the Logos was born for our sake, and returns that He may be again as He was.¹ The reason thereof is, that the incarnation was occasioned solely by the world, and had not a necessary ground in God Himself, that is, in an inner distinction of the divine essence. Such a distinction did not exist in God, prior to His appearance on earth: "Before the appearance of Christ, there was no Son, but merely the Logos; and when the Logos became flesh, not having previously been flesh, the Logos became Son, not having previously been Son" (c. Ar. 4, 22).

¹ A than. c. Ar. 4, 12 (see following note), 4,25:—'Avxyxn it xxl irxviJiatoixi ri ovoy.u Tow vhv xxl Tov ir»ivfixros, Tejj xpetxs "x"hnoutuans xxl torxi Ao/xov dxpt irxiilis, T,* yitifitvx, iri fir i dhmiiix, ciM^' Ovofaxti ixebtlxin. He goes on then to say that this is the destruction of the Church and the world. Ilxvoftitov ii To5 ctofixros rov vlov X«t xvrovs, 'xxintrxi y.xl rov fitfXrfofiu.ros h xuf>is—x«i rt AxAhovdiiati «j aKpxvinfiis riis xrtaus. The latter would be true if the world owed its existence to the Son, and not to the Logos (Note 32).

The Son is an energetic, but still a transitory theophany. Sabellius must, therefore, have treated the human aspect of Christ as a mere accident; and so far from following up the efforts made by Origen, to ensure the full reality of the humanity of Christ, by giving prominence to His soul, we do not even know whether he acknowledged Christ to have had a human soul. It is, in fact, improbable that he did; for otherwise he could not so easily have persisted in maintaining that this revelation would cease—and cease not merely at the end of the days, but when Christ returned to the Father, and the Holy Spirit was revealed.¹

Sabellius was so far from sharing the Ebionism of elder writers, or of Paul of Samosata, that he rather affirmed that the Logos was clothed with the man Jesus. But when he then adds —" Not the Logos was the Son, but this man was the onlybegotten Son of God,"² the personality, contained as it is more completely in vto? than in X6yo<;_} would seem after all to be derived from the humanity alone; and this would lead to Ebionism, contrary to the fundamental view of Sabellius. It can only occasion confusion, however, to apply the modern idea of human personality directly to a period for which the attainment of this conception was still a task to be accomplished. The system of Sabellius, on the contrary, is such, as rather to require the denial of the personality of the man Jesus, if personality be taken in the modern sense. Personality, however, he held to be the realistic limit, annexed to the divine, as the true being; and he completely recognised the human personality in this sense, that is, as the limit set to the divine eicraais, agreeably to its own will, by the humanity of Christ. Prom the opposed Ebionitical tendency to represent the human personality as something positive, and not merely as a negation, which has a real existence, the system of Sabellius is free.

¹ Compare the passage from Epiph. in Note 29 ; Atban. c. Ar. 4,12:— E» ru ytytvnadxi xvrou exriodnfieu, kxl T/i yivnriaet xirrov avviotyixiv ri icriats, xtxrpixu ii fox y, oirtp irporipo» J».—Tlx~Airlpofiov,/ros Tow Xo'yow oiix virap^ii n xri'<r/f. (For boyov Sabellius probably said vlov); compare c. 22, 25; Ambros. de fide 4, 6,—" ut in Patrem Alius refundatur." Montfaucon, Coll. Nov. T. ii. p. 2, in "Eugenii Legatio ad Athan."

^* Atban. 1. c. 20:—' H aap%, ri» iQiptow 6 hoyos, xSrn iarfo 6 vios. ib.:— To» oLtipctiro» o» iQapeertv 6 Ao'yoff xvrov iivxi hkyovvt Tov viov Tow Qtov Toi» uouoyerii.

The unlimited God or Logos,—whom this system presupposes indeed to be in Himself an intelligent subject, and nothing more than the living Monas, but without being able to enter more deeply into the question of its inner personality, in consequence of being based on the category of substance,—appeared in Christ as limited, in a man, and in this sense as a person, or as a 1/1o?; whereas as X0709, He was not i/j'6?. If we ask then,—Does not Sabellius represent humanity as constituting the revelation in Christ personal ?—we may answer both in the negative and in the positive ; for, strictly speaking, both the divine and the human aspect constitute the personality, though each in a different way, or in a different sense. So far as the personality is taken to be something positive, which as positive must appertain also to God, the divine is the principle of the personality of the Son; though in no other sense than that in which the personal Monas is so in itself, and in each of its revelations. So far, however, as a limit and bound is to be conceived as attaching to this positive something,—and it must be allowed to attach to the human personality, consequently also to Christ,—so far is the humanity of Christ that which is limited, and which, by bounding or circumscribing the divine extension, constitutes it Son. The real meaning of Sabellius must therefore have been the following:— The Son resulted neither from the correspondent expansion of the Monas, nor arose solely through the man who was born of Mary; but from the conjunction of the positive and the negative—a conjunction to which God gave the prime impulse. For only on the supposition that the two were in some way united, can the divine have had an historical, not merely a Docetical, existence; and the human life of Christ have been, not merely human, but of a higher significance.¹

But if the conjunction of the two (rj afj.cpolv awoBosi) constituted the Son, the question at once arises,—Did the divine act of eternals undergo a modification or limitation, from the negativity of the finite, human aspect; or did it by its own deed subject itself to this limitation?²

¹ This is also the actual report which Athanasius gives of the Sabellians, 1. C. C. 21:—<l/«ai fiij To» Artpumt x«»" imni», o» iQipurn i xipios, oiAAai To ov»xfiiptripo», To'» rt Ao'yov xxl To» A»tpnrtu, thut vlot, avtnfifihu y&p dfiQtr=pu, Wof, 6if uvrol hiyovaiv, ovt>fix^trxl.

² Hilar. de Trin. 1,16 :—The Sabellian incarnation is " protensio potius in hominem, quam descensio." In order that the unity of God may remain unaffected by the "series ex solido in carnem deducta, dum usque ad virginem Pater protensus ipei sibi natus sit in Filium," that is, in order that God extending Himself as in an unbroken line might stretch Himself even unto Mary. lb. 1, 26:—Sabellius—"Deum verum operatum in corpore esse non ambigit."

In the former case, the existent world exercised an influence on God, and inasmuch as God Himself is present in His extensions, made God passible, or limited Him. This would involve attributing a false independence to the world, relatively to God, such as might harmonize with a deistic or an ethnic mode of thought, but not with Sabellianism. He must, therefore, have regarded this limitation, in which the Person of Christ originated, as itself again a deed of the Logos. It was by His own act that the Logos subjected Himself to limits and bounds, though He employed the world as a means; and the world could not have possessed the power to be a limit to God, save through God Himself. If, however, God posits limitation in Himself, and yet, on the other hand, the entire divine Monas is not absorbed in this ayrjfuiriap.bs,— because, although in itself indeed it is entirely therein, actually it is only therein in one aspect,—then a distinction is introduced into the inner essence of God, and the Monas must have posited in itself the determination through which it became Son. This limit now might be constituted by the principle of the vXrj in Christ, which would be transferred to God with a touch of dualism. Christ's humanity must then be judged to have been protruded from God's own essence, as the material circumscription of His spiritual eicraais; but this would be incompatible with the human birth of Christ, which Sabellius leaves untouched, and would lead back to the doctrine that God converted Himself into the man Jesus. Such a view Sabellius can have had no wish to adopt, inasmuch as he rejected what the earlier teachers of his tendency allowed, to wit, that God underwent suffering.¹ Consequently, unless he meant to sink back to a deistic or to a patripassian conception of God, it was necessary for him to suppose the distinction, by which God constituted Himself Son, to have been effected independently of all vXrj, whether in or out of God; that is, he must have supposed it to take place in the spiritual essence of God, in harmony with the doctrine of the Church.

¹ Augustine, indeed, brings this charge also against him. But as Epiphanius (haer. 62) expressly pronounces him innocent thereof, which he would not have done had he not been necessitated thereto, we must take for granted that Sabellius did not belong to the Patripassians, but forma a new knotty point in their series.

The only other alternative was, to lower the significance of Christ, and no longer to maintain that the positive something above referred to, and the basis of the personality of the Son, were the Monas itself (Note 33). But if the distinctions fall into the essence of God, they cannot have been successive, nor are they ephemeral, but must be simultaneous, as the Church teaches. Even at this point, therefore, we see that Sabellius cannot maintain his position. This will become still clearer, when we consider the opposite conclusions which may be drawn from his system.

In point of fact, there is by no means a lack of elements of an Ebionitical cast in the system of Sabellius. The one point alone, that he reduces the revelation of Christ to the rank of a mere means, and does not also regard Him as an end in Himself, is a degradation of Him, which approximates to Ebionism. If we remark further, that he designates the divine in the Son a ray (aicriva), which proceeds forth from, and returns to, the Monas,—for which reason, besides the common charge of confounding everything together, founded on his merging the hypostatic distinctions into the one hypostasis of the Father or the Monas, we find also the opposite charge of falsely separating (airOKOirrj) and dividing the divine essence, which necessarily leads to Subordinatianism or to the Hellenic form of Ebionism (Note 34) ;—if, finally, we consider how difficult for him, who refused to admit of any distinctions in God, must have been the question, whether the entire God was so present in the Son, that during His existence He was not active outside of Him;—we can well understand how he should again seek for expressions to lessen the importance of the revelation of the Son, and thus allow Ebionitical principles to gain a foothold. An intensive interest in religion might, indeed, have preserved him from such a false course; but, however coarse Patripassianism may have been in this respect, it was superior to Sabellianism. The latter was not a deepening of the interest in religion: on the contrary, its greater refinement seems to have been accompanied by religious superficiality; for if we ask what Sabellius supposed Christ to have accomplished, no passage can be pointed out in which the Passion of Christ is made the subject of consideration. In agreement with Patripassians, on the contrary, he appears in general to have formed a slight estimate of the significance of the sufferings of the God-man, even when he did not set them aside, and to have limited Christ's work principally to enlightenment and sanctification. This, at all events, seems to be implied by his employment of the image of the sun, and by his remarks on the activity of the warming and enlivening Holy Spirit.

Yet all this pertains to Sabellianism, as it were, contrary to its will, and in simple obedience to the law which binds extremes together—in the present case, the extremes of Ebionism and Docetism. It is interesting to take note of these Ebionitical features of the system, in order to see the comparatively short step from Sabellius to Paul of Samosata. Both agree in denying the pre-existence of the Son, and indeed the existence of hypostatical distinctions in general in God. They further agree also in their recognition of the distinction of the manifest and revealed God, alongside of His unity. The silent Monas of Sabellius answers to the X07o? evSidOero<; of Paul; the speaking, or the Logos of the former, to the Xd7os irpo<popiKO<; of the latter. And although Paul took the world for his point of view, and Sabellius the divine, they approximate to each other, in so far as Paul, on the one hand, conceives a divine power, even though impersonal, to have been at work in the man Jesus; and on the other hand, Sabellius, although he had no intention of denying the humanity of Jesus, did not really advance beyond a determinate and momentary exhibition of the power of God in Him (a stretching out of the hand of God). It is true he believed the entire God Himself to have been present in the exhibition of power, after a determinate manner; but neither this presence nor its particular character was grounded in inner distinctions of the divine essence; the occasion thereto was given entirely by the world; and as far as concerns God, it was solely His will, receiving its impulse from the world, and not His own essence, that called into existence the triple revelation, which is unquestionably to be termed a manifestation, a coming forth, of His essence. That which He wills in revealing, He also, it is true, becomes: His deed is also being, self-unfolding, but merely momentary being, and has solely the purpose of communicating to humanity that which it lacked.¹ The needs of the humanity having been met, it lives in unity with the indivisible Monas, and the Monas in unity with it: Christ henceforth has no significance whatever, nor even a bare existence.

To represent Christ as transitory, as a mere passing means to another end, contradicted the Christian consciousness in its very depths. For the Person of Christ does not stand in a temporary relation to the religion He founded, as do the founders of other religions, but is an eternally constitutive and integrant element thereof; and even the view taken by Paul of Samosata was more satisfactory in this respect, for he assigned to the man Jesus a permanent position, nay more, in reward for his virtue, a divine position after His exaltation. Whilst Sabellius taught that humanity would one day become the body of God, through the Holy Spirit, apart from the Person of Christ (see Note 31), Paul, on the contrary, left a place for Christ as the eternal Head of humanity. Herewith, however, is most closely connected something of still greater importance. Sabellianism could not look upon humanity and deity as reconciled and united at the very centre; and as to this matter, Paul and Sabellius occupy exactly the same position, though they arrive at it from opposite directions. Paul represents the humanity of Christ as the final cause of the deity which he attributes to Him; the divine, therefore, was an accident of the man Jesus. Sabellius reduces the humanity to an accident; it is curtailed and made transitory.

¹ The charge repeatedly brought by Athanasius against Sabellius, of recognising merely distinctions Xxt Wittwtt, that is, distinctions which are purely subjective, must consequently be explained in the light of what has been advanced above. Sabellius aimed to represent God as objectively different in His different revelations. He believed the divine communications to have as true an objective existence as the human needs. But it is unmistakeable, that if Sabellius had rigidly insisted on the indivisible unity of the Monas relatively to the sphere of revelation, he could not have believed that the different revelations were objectively different. In itself, and considered in relation to God, legislation and incarnation were one and the same, that is, the absolutely identical Monas was in both. This consequence, however, as we have seen, Sabellius does not draw. And he considered to be subjective representation, irpoaxiroiroitu, not the difference in the revelations themselves, bnt merely the hypostatic difference of the principle in each case.

But an union with an humanity which is an illusion, is itself an illusion. Consequently, according to the Sabellian view, that which is of the highest importance, that for which there is the greatest need, has not been effected. From the stand-point of Sabellianism, so long as humanity and deity in Christ are represented as standing in so exclusive a relation to each other, it is impossible to designate Christianity the absolute religion, especially when we remember that it leaves the rest of men but one choice, the choice, namely, between an impersonal existence and an imperfect union with God.

Instead of regarding the appearance of Christ as a mere momentary exhibition of divine power, the Christian Church sees in Him the eternal centre of regenerated humanity, in and through whom God is personally and actually united with men. It was compelled, therefore, to ground the divine in Christ in the eternal essence of God; and the category of the will of God showed itself to be inadequate. But if there is an eternal element in God Himself corresponding to the divine in Christ, and if the divine in Christ is not to be placed under the category of power, but under that of hypostasis, then the distinction between the divine in Christ, or the Son, and the Father, must be posited as simultaneous and eternal, and the polemic of the Church will, in this aspect, lay special stress upon the doctrine, that the divine which was in Christ was the pre-existent Son and a permanent hypostasis. As regards the other, the task of the Church would be to assert the full truth of the human aspect. During an entire century, however, this aspect was thrown into the background relatively to the former. In fact, the question of the Trinity, which engaged the attention of the entire succeeding period, was absolutely necessary as a basis for the accomplishment of the other task. For full justice can never be done to the humanity in Christology, until the self-limitation, the self-exinanition of God be recognised; but how could such an idea be seriously entertained, where the absolute unity of the divine Monas is maintained, and where, consequently, the entire Monas must thus abase itself?

The chief opponent of Sabellius, Dionysius of Alexandria, of the two chief defects of Sabellianism,—to wit, that it did not recognise the truth of the humanity, and therefore arrived at no real incarnation, and that it could not characterize the divine in Christ as an eternal determination of the essence of God,— appears to have taken notice almost solely of the latter. Indeed, the designation of the humanity of Christ as a mere garment, was long employed by the teachers of the Church without giving offence. And when Origen attempted to attain to a higher point by giving prominence to the free human soul of Christ, he did not succeed in his aim without making a step in the direction of Ebionism. Paul, however, to whom, be it remembered, this inheritance descended, and by whom it was increased, only served the purpose of causing the teachers of the Church to shrink from giving prominence to the free human soul of Christ. This aspect of the dogma, therefore, was left entirely untouched for the time; for, in fact, its day could not arrive until the necessary trinitarian presuppositions had been settled, the uncertainty of which laid open to question the very primary, that is, the objective, divine, foundations of Christology.

CHAPTER THIRD.

THE SCHOOL OF ORIGEN IN THE THIRD CENTURY, AND THE SUBORDINATIANISM OF DIONYSIUS OF ALEXANDRIA.

Before passing to the consideration of Dionysius of Alexandria, the most important follower of Origen, a few particulars must be mentioned, relative to the school of Origen in general. A great number of the first men of the East, during the second half of the third century, was educated by Origen, or by his writings. Apart from the exegetical schools of Egypt and Antioch, whose rise appears to have been due to his influence, and which were formed by Hesychius on the one hand, and Lucian and Dorotheus on the other (compare Neander's "Church History" ii. 1247), except Methodius, who at a later period became an opponent of Origen, we may enumerate, in this connection, Gregorius Thaumaturgus, and his brother Athenodorus; Pierius, with his brother Isidorus (Phot. Cod. 119), and Theognostus (cod. 106). Hierakas, also, was decisively influenced by Origen. At the beginning of the fourth century, we may mention Pamphilus and Eusebius of C&sarea.

It is not just, with Baur (1. c. p. 308 f.), to describe the entire school of Origen as subordinatian, in relation to the Son; still less is it just to charge them with letting go the predicate of Eternity. Respecting Pierius, who was styled a second Origen, Photius relates, that he taught evaefi&s concerning the Father and the Son; and that, although in one passage he termed them two ovalar; or <f>vaeis, instead of two hypostases, he did not use the terms in the Arian sense, as is clear from that which precedes and that which follows (t£ T7j? ovalas ical (pvaew; ovofiari, &>? Brfkov Ek re T&v eirofievcov ical irporffovfievmv rov y(opiov, ami rrjs u7roora«7eftr? ^aytej/o?). The honour and dishonour of the image (eucav), he considered to be also the honour and dishonour of the prototype. The Holy Ghost, however, he subordinated to the glory of the Father and the Son. Had Pierius denied the eternal generation of the Son, Photius would not have failed to charge him with it. There must have been a ground for the praise which he bestows on his doctrine of the Son. Least of all is it likely that he classed him amongst those who repeated the subordinatian element in Origen's system in a heightened form. The subordination of the Holy Spirit, at that time, does not warrant us in concluding that the Son also was subordinated:—indeed, Photius expressly contradicts it. For when he blames him as Bvaaefim Boyfiaritpma, on account of the subordination of the Holy Ghost, and praises his doctrine of the Son as eiaefifj, the praise must be grounded on the circumstance, that he did not subordinate the Son. And as he elsewhere reproaches Origen with subordinating the Son, it would seem probable that Pierius further developed rather that part of the system of Origen, which taught the equality of the Father and the Son, than that which bore a subordinatian character. According to Basilius (Ep. 210), the same line was adopted by another important disciple of Origen, Gregorius Thaumaturgus, who was even reproached with confounding Father and Son, after the manner of Sabellius.¹ In his panegyric of Origen (c. 4.), he designates the Logos the Source of all good, who alone can heal our defects, who is the Guide and Deliverer of our souls, the Creator and Ruler of the universe. In relation to the Father, he terms Him the irpanoyevrjs X07o? rov irarpbs; He Himself is the truth, the aofia, and the Swa/xft of the Father of the universe. Besides this, He is in Him, and completely united with Him, not aire^evafievos ainov, not too weak to attain to the Father; for which reason, it is wrong to suppose that He either cannot or will not lead everything to the praise of the Father; whereas, in fact, He alone can give to the Father the most perfect honour, on His own behalf, and on behalf of all things. For the Father has made Him one with Himself; so that we may almost say that the Father, through Him, goes out of Himself, in order to embrace and encompass Himself (oV ainov Fi6vov ov\l ainbs ainov (leg. ainov) etcrrepuov), and to a certain extent holds Him in like honour with Himself, and is held in like honour. Himself, therefore, being perfect and living, and animated by the highest reason (rov irpanov vov X07o? e/iy/rir^o? &v), He fits us completely for presenting worthy sacrifices of thanksgiving to God. That this is far enough removed from Arianism is self-evident, notwithstanding the decided colouring of Subordinatianism. He does not reckon Him as part of the Universe, but represents the Father, after having gone out of Himself, as it were, through the living Logos, as embracing Himself in the Logos. He terms Him further, indeed, according to Basilius, iroirjfia and KrUrfia; but this must not be so interpreted as to invalidate his previous statements. That he cannot have taught that the Son was of a different substance from the Father, is evident also from his being regarded as a patron of the Sabellians. He probably used these words in agreement with Proverbs viii., without intending thereby to call in question Origen's doctrine of the procession of the Son from God, by generation. It is probable, therefore, that, like his master, he combined emanatistic and subordinatian elements in his system (Note 35).

¹ Basil. Ep. 210, 5,—irxripx xxl vliv iiriniltf fifo ihxi iva, viroarxati Be i».

Theognostus endeavoured, in his "Hypotyposes" (jjitotv7raja6t?, adumbrationes), to show that the Father must have a Son, as also that we must conceive a Holy Spirit.¹ In the second discourse, he designates the Son a Kricrfia; for which Photius blames him severely; but as the work appears to have been written in the form of a dialogue, and as, according to Photius, in the last conversation, especially towards the close, he speaks more worthily of the Son, we may probably regard the idea, which suggested itself also to Photius, as well grounded, namely, that Theognostus wrote the passages which put the Son on a lower level, not in his own name, but in the person of another.

¹ A than. de decret. syn. Nicaen. c. 25; Phot. Cod. 106.—A than. Ep. 4 ad Serap. c. 9,11, he speaks against the supra-ordination of the Holy Spirii above the Son.

But even if this were not the case, Prov. viii. would prevent us allowing the words any weight, in opposition to the passage which Athanasius has preserved, and which is also found in the second book of his virorvirdxreis. "The essence of the Son," says he, "was not superadded from without (ovk e^coOev Ti's iariv ifevpeOelaa f\ rov vlov ovaia), nor was it introduced out of nothing, that is, into the Trinity (ovBe eK fifj oirrmv hreurrjyOrj), but was produced out of the essence of the Father (iic T% rov irarpos oLaUm e<f>v, a>s Tov C/kbto? To diravyaapu, cos Vscitos arfus), as brightness arises from light, and as vapour arises from water. The brightness is not the sun, nor the vapour the water; nor, again, is it anything foreign, but an diroppoua, an outflow from the Father's essence; which notwithstanding no more undergoes division than the sun, which remains the same, and is not lessened by pouring forth rays. Even so, the essence of the Father undergoes no alteration through having the Son for His image." Here, therefore, we find those emanatistic comparisons which Origen also employed, and which in his case were compatible with a certain degree of Subordinatianism. But we find no trace whatever of Arianism, of a surrender of the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son. From Arianism Theognostus is far removed, not merely by his doctrine of the essential equality of the Son, but also by his rejection of the idea that the Son was in any sense a mundane being: on the contrary, he polemicizes against those who represented the Son as having been produced out of nothing,—a doctrine which became a watchword of the Arians at a later period.¹

¹ According to Photius, he did not assume the existence of an eternal Sa», and cannot therefore have taught that the world was formed out of a fan in God, that is, out of the substance of God. Consequently, in this respect also, it must have been impossible for him to put the Son on an equality with the world. Agreeably to the prevailing views of the time, he believed the world to have been created out of nothing.

Besides Athanasius, Titus of Bostra also (Phot. Cod. 232), together with the two Gregories, held Theognostus in high honour. It would be interesting to know how he proved that the Father must have a Son. The very idea of such a proof, however, shows that he did not regard the existence of the Son as in any respect a matter of caprice or accident. What he then says concerning the essence of the Son, warrants us in presuming, that he aimed at discovering some sort of a necessity for a Son in the divine essence itself. If this be the case, he clearly cannot have given up the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son.

Christology must have been treated by him in detail, for the fifth and sixth sections of his "Hypotyposes" are devoted to the question of the incarnation of the Son. Photius found therein many Origenistic elements, which he deemed it proper to blame; but, as the worst point of all, he mentions his doctrine respecting the real omnipresence of Christ.¹ He is said to have taken special pains to demonstrate the possibility of an incarnation.

Methodius of Patara (compare his Opp. ed. Combefis. Paris, 1644, pp. 284-474), in his genuine writings, so far as we can discover from the fragments still extant, did not indeed apply the term ofioovaios to the pre-existent Son, as did the Roman Synod (I consider the work entitled " De Sym. et Anna" to be spurious); but still, probably accepted the doctrine of His eternal pre-existence, though not in the Origenistic form of eternal generation. He did not adopt Origen's explanation of the words, "This day have I begotten Thee," denoting the eternal to-day; but substituted for it another, to wit,—God willed to generate Him who was before the JiZoas, for the world also; that is, to reveal Him (1. c. 388,—rbv irpoovra ffirj irpb T&v aldovav iv Tot ? ovpavoi<; i(3ovKrjOrjv tan rc o Koap.<o ^ewrjaai o S«j iori, irpoaOev ar/Voovfievov yvcop/aai). His teachings appear to have much greater affinity with those of Tertullian and Hippolytus. There still remains between them, however, this important difference, that whereas the latter represented the hypostasis of the Son as originating contemporaneously with the creation of the world, and accordingly attached the highest significance to the matter of generation, relatively to the Son Himself, Methodius, on the contrary, made the entire significance of the 7ei/wjat? for the Son, to consist in its revealing Him to the world (probably in Christ); whilst He remained in Himself unchangeably what He was before the Eons.

¹ 'AirOrohfitf hiyti» Sti To» vti» Qxvrx^ofiidx xATvoi-e iv xKhais Tvtois xtpi'ypuQofiitov, fii»ti ii rf. l«ipya'u y.ii TipiypuQ6fiitt».

Christ did not first become Son at His baptism by adoption; nor will a time ever come when He will cease to be Son, but He is Son out of the limits of time, tunelessly (oop/ora?, aypovm, p. 387). Of the words, " In the beginning (iv apyfj) God created the heavens and the earth," his explanation is, that ap^fj is the divine wisdom. In harmony herewith, as with Prov. viii. 22, is John i. 1. For the ^,Ap^.yrj, out of which the Xo7of grew, is the Father (tjiv fiev yap dpyrjv a$> ^? avefiXdarrjaev 6 6pOOraro<; A6yo<;, Tov IIarripa Kcu. iroirjrrjv T&v oXav (f>ap.ev iv $ Tjv). On the contrary, the words,—" The same was in the beginning (iv uPX$) ^w*^tn GtocL"—signify that the Son shared the dominion with God (to i^ovaiaariKov Tov Aoyov, h elye irapa Tg> Uarpl Kcu irpo Tov Tov Koafiov el<; yeveaiv irapekOeiv, eoiice o-rjfiaiveiv, rrjv i^ovalav apyrjv elirdbv). After the beginningless beginning, the Father, He therefore becomes the beginning of the rest, through which all things were made (ovkovv apyrj, fiera Trjv iBlav avapypv dpyrjv, Tov Ilarepa avrbs T&v aXXav ylverai, Si ?5? anravra Srjfuovpyeirai, 1. c. 345). If the Son be said to be produced from the Father, the equality of His <pvai<;, His coessentiality, is affirmed in the strongest manner. Still, the passage adduced does not altogether exclude the possibility of Subordinatianism. The Son is not, indeed, said to have owed His origin to the will of the Father; but, at the same time, He is not said to have been coeternal with God. The highest predicate assigned to the Son, according to p. 388, is that of aypovos; the predicate avapyps is reserved for the Father. We must not, however, conclude therefrom, that he meant to teach regarding the Son, %v ore Ovk Tjv, for dpyrj does not necessarily denote origin in time (otherwise the word would be used in the context alternately in three different senses), but denotes the real ground:—the Father alone is the pi^a of the Son. Another passage also admits of being interpreted subordinatianally; though that is not necessarily its meaning:—De Creat. p. 344; "There are two creating powers: one which produces whatever it wills out of nothing, by its mere will,—this is the Father; the second, on the contrary, which, in imitation of what already exists, and gives to the world its beauty, order, and variety, is the Son, the Father's almighty and strong hand, by which He establishes beauty and order, after having called matter into existence, out of nothing." (Avo Be Bx/vdpxi s e<pafiev elvcu, 7rowrrt/ttW, Tjjv i^ Ovk 6vt(ov, yvfivqj rco fiovXtffiari, ^cb/ii? p.epiap.ov afia To (leg. T$3) OeXr]aai avrovpyovaav, b fiovXerai iroielv rvyyavei Be 6 irarrjp' Odrepov Be KaraKoafiovaav teal iroiKlXKavaav Kara fiifnjaiv r17? irporepas ra rjBrj yeyovora. Scttl Se 6 vlos r) iravroSwafios Kal Kparaid X^P ^r0v irarpbs, iv y fjwa r(f> "Kovqaai Ttjv vXrjv e^ Ovk Ovtow Karo.Kocrfiel.) When, therefore, Photius speaks of Arian adulterations by Methodius, what has been advanced above shows that they are, at all events, not discoverable in the fragments now extant. As to Christology, he refers the bride (" Song of Songs" iv. 7), amongst other things, to the humanity of Christ, for the sake of which He left the Father and came to the world, to bestow Himself upon her (the vvfi<prj is the aap^ apjoXvvros Tov miplov, r}<; yapiv KaraXei^ras Tov iraripa KarfjXOev ivravBa Kal irpoaeKoWrjOrj avrj) evavOpcoirrjcras, pp. 386 f.). Further, the queen who is placed at the right hand (Ps. xlv.), whilst God actually places Himself at the left, is the humanity of Christ adorned with virtue, as with a garment worked with gold, the unspotted blessed flesh, which the Logos carried with Him into heaven, and set at the right hand of the Father. The genuine fragments in our possession do not contain more precise ideas on the subject of Christology: one thing only deserves mention, that in the Sympos. Virg. p. 392, Christ is styled the Archetype of virginity. In the work entitled "De Sym. et Anna," the high estimate here put on virginity has already been developed into the doctrine of the eternal virginity of Mary.

With Dionysius of Alexandria (about A.d. 200) the case is otherwise than with the last-mentioned writers. That he was far from entertaining Ebionitical views, indeed, is clear from his relation to the First Antiocheian Council held against Paul of Samosata.¹ But it can scarcely be denied, that, for a time, the zeal with which he opposed the Sabellians, and endeavoured to lay down fixed distinctions between the Father and the Son, carried him to greater lengths in the matter of Subordinatianism, than those to which Origen went.

¹ Euaeb. H. E. 7, 27, 30, init., but specially from 7, 6.

In a letter to Ammonius and Euphranor against Sabellianism, which had spread so widely in Libya, that several bishops became its adherents, and the Son of God was scarcely preached any longer in the Church,¹ he said,—" The Son is a work and a creature of God, not appertaining to Him by nature, but in his essence as foreign to God as the vinedresser is to the vine, the shipbuilder to the ship; for, inasmuch as he was a creature, he did not exist prior to his creation." (Athan. 1. c. 4 :—IIoirjfia /cat yevrjrbv elvai rbv vibv Tov Qeov, firjre Se <pvaei tScov, dWA ^evov tear ovaiav avrov elvai rov irarpb^ coairep eariv 6 yecopybs 'nyio? rrjv dfiirekov, Koi o vairrrrjybs irpbs To Otmi^o?. Kal yelp co? iroirjfJM, &v Ovk fy irplv yevryrai.) He therewith attacks, consequently, both the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son taught by Origen and his school, and also that of the equality of the essence of the Father and the Son. Athanasius would fain, indeed, refer these words to the God-man, instead of to the Logos. In fact, on a subsequent occasion, Dionysius himself took partial advantage of this expedient :² for in the same passage of his later work, he deemed it necessary to justify his employment of those words, relatively to the Logos. But when he pleads that the Greeks were in the habit of styling the authors of books and the originators of ideas, their creators, although, strictly speaking, the writer or the thinker is their father, he is far from being excused; for the latter image is also subordinatian in tendency. Least of all does he thus justify the words—" He was not, ere He was brought into existence;" and there is scarcely a hair's-breadth between them and the Shibboleth of Arianism. Still less can the excuse pleaded by Athanasius be accepted, namely, that he did not intend to lay down a positive confession regarding Christ in that letter, but merely to controvert Sabellianism; that, for this reason, he simply laid down the opposite view with all possible emphasis, and by means of the passages of Scripture, which teach that Christ thirsted, hungered, suffered, prayed to the Father, and so forth, endeavoured to force from his opponents, the recognition of the personality of the Son, in distinction from that of the Father.

¹ Athan. de sententia Dionysii, c. 5.

² 1. c. 20, 22. He might avail himself of the expedient, with some show of justice, relatively also to the image of the vintner and the vine, which is evidently borrowed from the Scriptures, where it bears upon the relation of the Father to the God-man. His words, however, clearly referred the images to the pro-existent Son (see the quotation given in the text).

It is true, indeed, that the Church was led to acknowledge the necessity of a distinction of God from God, by the person of the historical Christ. But a man who, in his polemic against others, himself assailed the true deity of the Son (as he did in that concluding proposition), cannot have reserved for himself the right of positively confessing that deity, as Athanasius appears to take for granted. What he had to do, was simply to retract; and an open confession, that his polemical zeal had carried him away into false statements, would only have done him honour.

But however decidedly this is to he acknowledged, some excuse must still be discoverable for the omission of this confession, by a man of a so decidedly honourable a character. His mind was directed more to the practical than to the speculative; and, whilst possessed of a healthy feeling for the actual, he was endowed with but a small measure of scientific acuteness: hence, he did not fully grasp the consequences of the principles he laid down. Further, when we compare him with Arius, there can be no doubt that, in the main, his tendency and intention were very different from that of Arius. "Si duo faciunt idem, non est idem." The principle referred to, which formed the central and main feature of the Arian system, did not hold that position in the system of Dionysius; but was a wrong and premature deduction from the distinction which must be allowed to exist between the Father and the Son. He had no interest in denying the reality of the deity of the Son; and the actual infringement upon it, with which he is chargeable, was an unconscious one. In the very same letter in which he drew that Arian conclusion, he laid down completely contradictory principles. Instead of the words, ^evov Tt),j ovalas Tov irarpos, we find again the old image of the fountain and the stream, of the root and the stem (de sent. Dion. c. 18), and the new one of parent and child (de deer. Nic. Syn. 25); which decidedly imply the essential equality of the Son and the Father. It was possible for him, therefore, with some show of justice, to complain that his opponents had given a distorted version of his views. For, said he, they quote the first-mentioned words as expressive of my full and real views; whereaf, those comparisons, as being imperfect, I merely threw out in passing; and the more apt ones, such as those just mentioned, I treated in detail. In that therefore he did not feel the contradictions of his letter, it was the more necessary distinctly to charge him with his lack of doctrinal clearness, rendering him as it did, first incautious, and afterwards too ready to give way, and preventing him from seeing plainly that, as to the doctrinal principles actually laid down, if not as to his inmost meaning and tendencies, he had gone over to another point of view;—to confess which, would have been his duty, had he been capable of thinking with greater precision and acuteness.

By the letter to Ammonius and Euphranor he was unable to convince his opponents, as in the Nepotian controversy: on the contrary, Sabellians must have been confirmed in their own view, when they found that the view taken by their antagonist led to such results. His letter, in fact, did awaken opposition in the minds of some non-Sabellians; and some of them travelled to Rome for the purpose of laying the matter before the Dionysius there. Besides what has been just mentioned, they complained that he declined to term the Son equal in essence with the Father (ofiooiiaios). In his reply to this charge, the Alexandrian Dionysius (airoXcryia Kal eXfy^o?) says,—It is not correct to charge him with rejecting this word (c. 20). He states, that though he could not find the word in the Scriptures, he did find the sense; and with this sense his own opinion harmonized. With the greatest distinctness, he then declares that he viewed the Father as the eternal light, and the Son as the equally eternal brightness; because there cannot be light without brightness. He calls the Logos an airoppoia of God, as truly of like substance with Him as a human son is of like substance with his father (c. 22). When he says, the Father created all things, he does not mean to reduce the Son to the rank of a creature, but the Son is posited and meant along with and in the Father; that is, the word Father he considered to be of significance, not merely in relation to mundane beings, but also in relation to the divine nature itself (c. 15-21). In the main, therefore, he returns to the doctrine of Origen, as regards the eternity and essential equality of the Son. Nay more; Origen, as we have seen, was never able to lay down this essential equality with distinctness, because the incommunicable *Ov always appeared to him to be the properly divine; whereas Dionysius, in entire agreement with his more practical point of view, seems to have been no longer confused by the distinction between the*Oi/ and the $6!~a of God (Note 36). On the contrary, he believed the Father to be the root of all deity; that is, actually communicable as respects His Oeorrjs. If Origen said,—The Son is the Will, proceeding forth from the divine vovs; so Dionysius designates the Father the A.070? iyKeifievos, the necessarily and self-existent Reason, the Son, X07o? irpotnjB&v, the self-objectifying Reason, the self-manifesting Word, in which Reason is immanent,—the former, indeed, being the appearance of the latter (c. 23, Note 37). But as the Father and the Son are inseparable and indivisible from each other (dycopioroi dSiaiperot), even so is in their hands the Spirit; which can neither be emptied of Him who sends it, nor of Him who is its vehicle and bearer (c. 19).