Note 463 — LECTURE VII. THE UNSCRIPTURAL ORIGIN AND ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY. BY REV. JOHN HAMILTON THOM.

“It was in this mode of apprehending the Divine Being that the doctrine of the Trinity had its origin. The Logos of the first four centuries was in the view of the Fathers both an attribute or attributes of God, and a proper person. Their philosophy was, in general, that of the later Platonists, and they transferred from it into Christianity this mode of Conception. In treating of this fact, so strange, and one which will be so new to many of my readers, I will first quote a passage from Origen, the coincidence of which with the conceptions of Philo and the later Platonists is apparent. ‘Nor must we omit, that Christ is properly the Wisdom of God; and is therefore so denominated. For the wisdom of the God and Father of All has not its being in bare conceptions, analogous to the conceptions in human minds. But if any one be capable of forming an idea of an incorporeal being of diverse forms of thought, which comprehend the Logoi [the archetypal forms] of all things, a being indued with life, and having as it were a soul, he will know that the Wisdom of God, who is above every creature, pronounced rightly concerning herself; The Lord created me, the beginning, his way to his works.’”—Origen, Opp. iv. 39, 40,—quoted by Norton on the Trinity, p. 271-2.