Origen, ON THE PRINCIPLES (PERI ARCHON - DE PRINCIPIIS), Third Part, Complete

Translated by Frederick Crombie.

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This Part: 66 Pages

Page 57

30. Having, then, briefly restated these points regarding the nature of the Trinity, it follows that we notice shortly this statement also, that "by the Son" are said to be created "all things that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by Him, and for Him; and He is before all, and all things consist by Him, who is the Head." [2972] In conformity with which John also in his Gospel says: "All things were created by Him; and without Him was not anything made." [2973] And David, intimating that the mystery of the entire Trinity was (concerned) in the creation of all things, says: "By the Word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the Spirit of His mouth." [2974]

After these points we shall appropriately remind (the reader) of the bodily advent and incarnation of the only-begotten Son of God, with respect to whom we are not to suppose that all the majesty of His divinity is confined within the limits of His slender body, so that all the "word" of God, and His "wisdom," and "essential truth," and "life," was either rent asunder from the Father, or restrained and confined within the narrowness of His bodily person, and is not to be considered to have operated anywhere besides; but the cautious acknowledgment of a religious man ought to be between the two, so that it ought neither to be believed that anything of divinity was wanting in Christ, nor that any separation at all was made from the essence of the Father, which is everywhere. For some such meaning seems to be indicated by John the Baptist, when he said to the multitude in the bodily absence of Jesus, "There standeth one among you whom ye know not: He it is who cometh after me, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose." [2975] For it certainly could not be said of Him, who was absent, so far as His bodily presence is concerned, that He was standing in the midst of those among whom the Son of God was not bodily present.

[2972] Cf. Col. i. 16-18.

[2973] John i. 3.

[2974] Ps. xxxiii. 6.

[2975] Cf. John i. 26, 27.

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