Note (return) — Chapter VI

On the basis of this conception of redemption Origen developed his idea of Christ. Inasmuch as he recognised Christ as the Redeemer, this Christ, the God-man, could not but be as many-sided as redemption is. Only through that masterly art of reconciling contradictions, and by the aid of that fantastic idea which conceives one real being as dwelling in another, could there be any apparent success in the attempt to depict a homogeneous person who in truth is no longer a person, but the symbol of the various redemptions. That such an acute thinker, however, did not shrink from the monstrosity his speculation produced is ultimately to be accounted for by the fact that this very speculation afforded him the means of nullifying all the utterances about Christ and falling back on the idea of the divine teacher as being the highest one. The whole "humanity" of the Redeemer together with its history finally disappears from the eyes of the perfect one. What remains is the principle, the divine Reason, which became known and recognisable through Christ. The perfect one, and this remark also applies to Clement's perfect Gnostic, thus knows no "Christology", but only an indwelling of the Logos in Jesus Christ, with which the indwellings of this same Logos in men began. To the Gnostic the question of the divinity of Christ is of as little importance as that of the humanity. The former is no question, because speculation, starting above and proceeding downwards, is already acquainted with the Logos and knows that he has become completely comprehensible in Christ; the latter is no question, because the humanity is a matter of indifference, being the form in which the Logos made himself recognisable. But to the Christian who is not yet perfect the divinity as well as the humanity of Christ is a problem, and it is the duty of the perfect one to solve and explain it, and to guard this solution against errors on all sides. To Origen, however, the errors are already Gnostic Docetism on the one hand, and the "Ebionite" view on the other.792 His doctrine was accordingly as follows: As a pure unchangeable spirit, the Logos could not unite with matter, because this as μη ον would have depotentiated him. A medium was required. The Logos did not unite with the body, but with a soul, and only through the soul with the body. This soul was a pure one; it was a created spirit that had never fallen from God, but always remained in faithful obedience to him, and that had chosen to become a soul in order to serve the purposes of redemption. This soul then was always devoted to the Logos from the first and had never renounced fellowship with him. It was selected by the Logos for the purpose of incarnation and that because of its moral dignity. The Logos became united with it in the closest way; but this connection, though it is to be viewed as a mysteriously real union, continues to remain perfect only because of the unceasing effort of will by which the soul clings to the Logos. Thus, then, no intermixture has taken place. On the contrary the Logos preserves his impassibility, and it is only the soul that hungers and thirsts, struggles and suffers. In this, too, it appears as a real human soul, and in the same way the body is sinless and unpolluted, as being derived from a virgin; but yet it is a human one. This humanity of the body, however, does not exclude its capacity of assuming all possible qualities the Logos wishes to give it; for matter of itself possesses no qualities. The Logos was able at any moment to give his body the form it required, in order to make the proper impression on the various sorts of men. Moreover, he was not enclosed in the soul and body of Christ; on the contrary he acted everywhere as before and united himself, as formerly, with all the souls that opened themselves to him. But with none did the union become so close as with the soul, and consequently also with the body of Jesus. During his earthly life the Logos glorified and deified his soul by degrees and the latter acted in the same way on his body. Origen contrived to arrange the different functions and predicates of the incarnate Logos in such a way that they formed a series of stages which the believer becomes successively acquainted with as he advances in knowledge. But everything is most closely united together in Christ. This union (κοινωνια ενωσις, ανακρασις) was so intimate that Holy Writ has named the created man, Jesus, the Son of God; and on the other hand has called the Son of God the Son of Man. After the resurrection and ascension the whole man Jesus appears transformed into a spirit, is completely received into the Godhead, and is thus identical with the Logos.793 In this conception one may be tempted to point out all possible "heresies":—the conception of Jesus as a heavenly man—but all men are heavenly;—the Adoptianist ("Ebionite") Christology—but the Logos as a person stands behind it;—the conception of two Logoi, a personal and an impersonal; the Gnostic separation of Jesus and Christ; and Docetism. As a matter of fact Origen united all these ideas, but modified the whole of them in such a way that they no longer seem, and to some extent are not, what they turn out to be when subjected to the slightest logical analysis. This structure is so constituted that not a stone of it admits of being a hair's-breadth broader or narrower. There is only one conception that has been absolutely unemployed by Origen, that is, the modalistic view. Origen is the great opponent of Sabellianism, a theory which in its simplicity frequently elicited from him words of pity; otherwise he made use of all the ideas about Christ that had been formed in the course of two hundred years. This becomes more and more manifest the more we penetrate into the details of this Christology. We cannot, however, attribute to Origen a doctrine of two natures, but rather the notion of two subjects that become gradually amalgamated with each other, although the expression "two natures" is not quite foreign to Origen.794 The Logos retains his human nature eternally,795 but only in the same sense in which we preserve our nature after the resurrection.