Autor: Murray, John

Buch: The Problem of God: Yesterday and Today

Titel: The Problem of God: Yesterday and Today

Stichwort: Origenes: der Logos als Gott zweiter Ordnung

Kurzinhalt: The Father is the God; only of him does Origen use the definite article. The Logos is not the God; he is simply God, and he is God by emanation and participation in a Platonist sense ...

Textausschnitt: 37a In the East, Origen, the greatest genius of the third century and perhaps of any century, attacked the problem in higher terms. He made use of a concept borrowed from the most popular contemporary philosophy, Middle Platonism. It was the dyadic conception, derived from Plato himself. There is the One, the Goodness that is divine. There is also the Logos, which emanates from the One and participates in the One as the Image of the divine Goodness. The Christian doctrine of the Father and his Logos is then interpreted in terms of this Platonist scheme. The Father is the God; only of him does Origen use the definite article. The Logos is not the God; he is simply God, and he is God by emanation and participation in a Platonist sense. Therefore, he is a God "of the second order," as Origen calls him. He is a diminished deity, since emanation, in Platonist thought, involves some measure of degradation in the order of being. (Fs)

37a This, with drastic brevity, is Origen's answer to the pre-Nicene problem of God, the Logos in the Monarchy. The trouble is that it destroys the terms of the problem. In Origen's solution, the Logos is subordinated to the Father as an inferior god who does not merit and cannot properly be given the divine Name. This is contrary to the terms of the problem as set by Christian faith, which affirms the Logos-Son to be Kyrios, Lord, the bearer of the divine Name Pantokrator in an un-diminished divine sense. (Fs)

38a Origen himself, I should add, made this Christian affirmation with complete fidelity and great vigor. But he undertook a further task, which was to set forth a theological understanding of this affirmation. His failure, like Tertullian's, was of the order of understanding. The best philosophical instrument of understanding within Origen's reach-the Middle Platonist theory of the emanation of the Logos from the One-broke in his hands. It delivered only a subordinationist theory of the Logos. This is not an understanding of the Christian doctrine of the Logos. The Christian Logos is not subordinate or inferior to the Father; to attempt to understand him thus is not to understand him at all. Origen's genial speculations had an enormous influence on subsequent theological thought, but they left the pre-Nicene problem of God standing, still awaiting the construction of a theology that would be adequate to the problem. (Fs)