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Translated by Frederick Crombie.
Origen Resources OnLine & in Print
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128 Pages
Page 102
3. The Only-begotten of God, therefore, through whom, as the previous course of the discussion has shown, all things were made, visible and invisible, according to the view of Scripture, both made all things, and loves what He made. For since He is Himself the invisible image of the invisible God, He conveyed invisibly a share in Himself to all His rational creatures, so that each one obtained a part of Him exactly proportioned to the amount of affection with which he regarded Him. But since, agreeably to the faculty of free-will, variety and diversity characterized the individual souls, so that one was attached with a warmer love to the Author of its being, and another with a feebler and weaker regard, that soul (anima) regarding which Jesus said, "No one shall take my life (animam) from me," [2148] inhering, from the beginning of the creation, and afterwards, inseparably and indissolubly in Him, as being the Wisdom and Word of God, and the Truth and the true Light, and receiving Him wholly, and passing into His light and splendour, was made with Him in a pre-eminent degree [2149] one spirit, according to the promise of the apostle to those who ought to imitate it, that "he who is joined in the Lord is one spirit." [2150] This substance of a soul, then, being intermediate between God and the flesh--it being impossible for the nature of God to intermingle with a body without an intermediate instrument--the God-man is born, as we have said, that substance being the intermediary to whose nature it was not contrary to assume a body. But neither, on the other hand, was it opposed to the nature of that soul, as a rational existence, to receive God, into whom, as stated above, as into the Word, and the Wisdom, and the Truth, it had already wholly entered. And therefore deservedly is it also called, along with the flesh which it had assumed, the Son of God, and the Power of God, the Christ, and the Wisdom of God, either because it was wholly in the Son of God, or because it received the Son of God wholly into itself. And again, the Son of God, through whom all things were created, is named Jesus Christ and the Son of man. For the Son of God also is said to have died--in reference, viz., to that nature which could admit of death; and He is called the Son of man, who is announced as about to come in the glory of God the Father, with the holy angels. And for this reason, throughout the whole of Scripture, not only is the divine nature spoken of in human words, but the human nature is adorned by appellations of divine dignity. More truly indeed of this than of any other can the statement be affirmed, "They shall both be in one flesh, and are no longer two, but one flesh." [2151] For the Word of God is to be considered as being more in one flesh with the soul than a man with his wife. But to whom is it more becoming to be also one spirit with God, than to this soul which has so joined itself to God by love as that it may justly be said to be one spirit with Him?
[2148] John x. 18. "No other soul which descended into a human body has stamped on itself a pure and unstained resemblance of its former stamp, save that one of which the Savior says, 'No one will take my soul from me, but I lay it down of myself.'"--Jerome, Epistle to Avitus, p. 763.
[2149] Principaliter.
[2150] 1 Cor. vi. 17.
[2151] Gen. ii. 24; cf. Mark x. 8.
Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/fathers/origen/principia.asp?pg=102
