Carl W. Griffin and David L. Paulsen have shown that anthropomorphism, one of the most popular and equally biblical tenets of ancient Christianity, was spread out not only among the simpliciores (the simple) of the early ecclesia but also among its eruditi (its educated members), particularly such docti (learned) in Stoicism like Tertullian.Footnote 1 Following previous researchers, Griffin and Paulsen have also argued that Christian Platonizing authors, starting with Origen in the East and Marius Victorinus in the West, developed a sturdy campaign of promoting the doctrine of an incorporeal God. At a time when the clergy itself was largely conceiving God as a corporeal entity, the Christian Platonists were heavily employing the rhetoric of erudition in order to uphold an anti-anthropomorphist agenda.Footnote 2 Other scholars have noticed that Origen of Alexandria was the first (or among the first) to relate the anthropomorphist position to the uneducated members of the Christian community, the simpliciores.Footnote 3 Later on, Cassian, Socrates, Sozomen, and Palladius will communicate the events of the Origenist debate by means of the same distinction between simpliciores and eruditi. As Elizabeth A. Clark observes:
According to several fifth-century Christian writers—Socrates, Sozomen, and Palladius, all of whom sided with the alleged Origenists—the simple desert Monks were outraged by Theophilus of Alexandria's Festal Letter of 399 that championed God's incorporeality, a position in accord with that of Alexandria's most important theologian, Origen.Footnote 4
Griffin and Paulsen equally find several Augustinian pages in which the bishop of Hippo asserts that the “Church's educated men (docti)” cannot embrace anthropomorphism,Footnote 5 and he prefers to portray the less educated Christians as “whimpering babies,” “children,” or possessing a “childishness of mind.”Footnote 6
My study will continue and refine these investigations by emphasizing a special pre-Nicene doctrine, namely the theory of the noetic Form of God. I will argue in this paper that the doctrine of the noetic Form of God was a special theory designed by various authors of Jewish and Christian intelligentsia, from Philo to Origen, as a reaction to anthropomorphism. In point of fact, the theory about Jesus's noetic divine Form was elaborated by some of the most erudite and classical pre-Nicene writers such as Justin, Irenaeus, Clement, Tertullian, Origen himself, and Methodius. While rejecting anthropomorphism,Footnote 7 they did not interpret the biblical concept of the Form of God as a sensible entity among the things of the universe, but they transferred its reference to the intelligible dimension of creation. Occasionally, some of them even maintained that the divine Form is beyond any human comprehension. In addition, all Christian writers associated the Form of God with the metaphysical or divine dimension of Jesus Christ, an element which confers a genuine christological spin to our investigation. Anticipating the conclusion, we may avow that this Christology deserves a special examination also because of its distinct nuances and differences from the post-Nicene Christology of 
. After Nicaea, the anti-anthropomorphist supporters will disallow the doctrine of the noetic Form of God along with anthropomorphism.
However, the doctrine was sometimes defended even after Nicaea. Lewis Ayres has pinpointed the existence of certain post-Nicene “heretical” doctrines about a pre-existent Christ endowed with a glorious body or form of spiritual nature. Unfortunately all our information on this topic is collected exclusively from the opponents’ reports. Nonetheless, among the supporters of these doctrines we may count the erudite Apollinaris of Laodicaea, the Apollinarists, the Audians, some monks from Palestine, and the church of Corinth.Footnote 8 As Ayres shows, the pro-Nicene Christology of 
, with its emphasis on the equality of nature between the Logos and the Father, receives a widespread and strong acceptance in the 360s and 370s c.e. In this context, the theory of the noetic Form of Christ becomes exceedingly incongruous with the trend of the day, even to the point of exclusion.Footnote 9 No eruditus will defend this theory after the 370s. The Origenist controversy erupting after 399 c.e. represents a strong local reaction against the anti-anthropomorphist agenda at the moment when Theophilus, the erudite bishop of Alexandria, attempted to impose it against the anthropomorphist views defended by several monastic communities in Egypt.
In order to make clearer the goal of this paper, we should distinguish first between three positions: 1) The anthropomorphic vision of the Bible and Greco-Roman mythologies; 2) The anti-anthropomorphism of certain Jewish and Christian Hellenistic authors who equally assumed that God possesses a noetic Form which may be perceived by the intellect (in Christian context the theory was essentially Christological); and 3) The post-Nicene context in which the second theoretical position became problematic. The intention of this paper is to explore the second position in the pre-Nicene context.
The Noetic Form of God in its Hellenistic Setting
The origins of the pre-Nicene speculations on the intelligible (noetic) Form of God have to be explored in the larger Hellenistic context. In general, the roots of the anti-anthropomorphist standpoint may be traced back to ancient Greek philosophy. Xenophanes of Colophon (ca. 570–480 b.c.e.) is the first philosopher attested for taking a stance against the portrayal of the divine in human features. Later, the paradigm knew such prominent Jewish Alexandrian representatives as Aristobulus and Philo, and several Christian and non-Christian authors of the first three centuries c.e.Footnote 10 On the other side of the spectrum, the anthropomorphist standpoint has remained an appealing position to a considerable range of mystic writers until late in the Middle Ages.Footnote 11 The modern reader might be surprised to learn that the founding fathers of anti-anthropomorphism actually assumed that the divine subsists in a special form. Thus, Xenophanes, Parmenides, and Plato believed that God was endowed with a spherical shape.Footnote 12 Hence, according to these philosophers, the anti-anthropomorphist position was not necessarily a denial of the Form of God.
With Philo and the aforementioned pre-Nicene Christian authors, we reach a second stage in the history of the anthropomorphist debate, a stage in which this Greek philosophical dispute is transferred to a new culture and applied to a new collection of sacred writings, the Bible. These philosophically educated authors struggled indeed to reconcile their anti-anthropomorphist stance with the fact that the Bible itself includes several expressions referring to the Form of God, and the terms 
(Ezek 1:26 lxx) and 
(Phil 2:6) will become the classical vocabulary to denote the divine Form. However, their solution was not to develop a doctrine of a formless God but to reshape the traditional biblical theory about the Form of God into a doctrine about God's intelligible (noetic) shape.
The assumption of this new theory entailed a significant linguistic and conceptual leap from biblical anthropomorphist terminologies. A noetic or intelligible reality is not a sheer mental entity but a real individual object, although ontologically more subtle and refined than material things. The nature of the intelligible world involves several ontological levels and, thus, a certain complexity. For these Jewish and Christian authors, reality implies several degrees of corporeality, from the more material, dense, and visible entities of the sensible cosmos to the more spiritual and invisible (also perceptible by a purified intellect) inhabitants of heaven, to the perfectly immaterial nature of God.
From an epistemological angle, the diverse ontological levels between the most material and the most immaterial involve distinct modalities of perception, namely from the most sensible capacity of the corporeal eye to the most intelligible (noetic) faculties of apprehension of the human, angelic, and divine mind. Jewish and Christian eruditi designed this new paradigm of thought essentially by means of a linguistic framework of obvious Platonic inspiration. According to the new perspective—encountered almost everywhere in Philo and the aforementioned pre-Nicene authors—God, his glory, form, angels, and resurrected humans inhabit a noetic universe, different from the sensible one, invisible to the ordinary eye, and accessible only through intelligible (noetic) perception, the noesis.
Several Hellenistic documents witness the distinction between sensible and intelligible worlds and between sensible and intelligible perceptions. One of the earliest epitomes of this paradigm may be encountered in Hellenistic Judaism, in Aristobulus of Alexandria, a second-century b.c.e. Jewish writer. Challenging anthropomorphism, Aristobulus upholds that the well-versed commentator of the Bible will not engage in a mythic and anthropomorphist understanding of the text (
).Footnote 13 His position, a definite rejection of both anthropomorphism and literal interpretation of Scripture, is most likely aimed at certain anthropomorphists of his time, people who believed that God's power (
) was shaped in a particular form, most probably anthropomorphic.
Nevertheless, in spite of his professed anti-anthropomorphism, Aristobulus envisions God as a gigantic intelligible man inhabiting the noetic universe. The author takes over a pseudo-Orphic hymn and even makes some editorial adjustments to it. The hymn states that God is unseen by mortal eyes, but a certain Chaldean wise man, skilled in astronomy, discerned God with his intellect (
). The Chaldean—possibly Musaeus, Moses, or Abraham—had the vision of either Yahweh or Zeus enthroned on a heavenly golden throne, with his feet touching the earth and his hands the limits of the ocean. In this poem of obvious Greek origin, Aristobulus preferred to identify Yahweh with Zeus and describe him in these terms: “He is one (
)—self-completing (
), and all things completed by him,/ In them he himself circulates. But no one has seen (
) him/ With the souls mortals have, he is seen [only] by Mind (
).”Footnote 14 The text continues with a noetic vision of God: “Yes, he after this is established in the great heaven/ On a golden throne. He stands with his feet on the earth./ He stretches out his right hand to the ends of the ocean.”Footnote 15
However, Philo of Alexandria is the first to mention an intelligible Form of God. In De somniis 1.232, he refers to an archetypal Form of God (
), invisible to the souls in bodies (therefore to human beings) but accessible to the incorporeal souls serving in God's proximity.Footnote 16 We have to remember that 
represents a Jewish and Christian theophanic technical term denoting God's luminous countenance in heaven. Its origins may be found in Ezekiel's visionary account portraying God as “a figure like that of a man” (1.26).Footnote 17 A similar rejection of any description of God's 
reoccurs in De specialibus legibus, in a passage where Philo reports Moses's conversation with God and agrees that a human being cannot contemplate God's 
but only his divine glory: “I bow before Thy admonitions, that I never could have received the vision of Thee clearly manifested (
), but I beseech Thee that I may at least see the glory that surrounds Thee (
).”Footnote 18 Of course, this radiance is not the visible and sensible light but the invisible and intelligible one (
), mentioned for instance in De opificio 31.Footnote 19
A similar conception about the inaccessible Form of God (this time the word used is 
) appears in Josephus, who also concedes that the human mind cannot perceive this shape but only God's works:
By His works and bounties He is plainly seen, indeed more manifest than ought else; but His form (
) and magnitude (
) surpass our powers of description (
). No materials, however costly, are fit to make an image (
) of Him; no art has skill to conceive and represent it.Footnote 20
Another Hellenistic witness, the Hermetic Corpus, includes a passage conceiving of God as endowed with an incorporeal form (
), invisible to the ordinary eye. The nature of God, in this case, has a similar condition with Plato's ideas, which are incorporeal and invisible to the sensible eye. It is not clear in the text, however, whether the 
of a human being may discern this enigmatic incorporeal form: “Thus, if he [i.e., God] possesses any form (
) in him, it is one form (
), incorporeal (
), and not allowing visions (
). . . . Do not be surprised at the thought of an incorporeal form (
), since it is like the form of a word (
).”Footnote 21
In the next pages I will investigate the topic of the noetic Form of God in Christian settings. It will be helpful to notice that Christian authors associated this idea particularly with the Son and not with the Father, and, in this way, the whole discussion became christological.
Justin Martyr on Jesus's Form and the Shapeless Condition of the Father
At the very beginning of his Dialogue with Trypho, Justin Martyr admits that the Deity “cannot be seen by the same eyes as other living beings are. He is to be perceived by the mind alone (
), as Plato affirms.”Footnote 22 While defining God the Father as devoid of any shape and measure (
),Footnote 23 Justin opines that the Son possesses a form, namely the Form of God, and that human language is unable to offer an adequate description of it:
But neither do we use a multitude of sacrifices and garlands of flowers to honour those whom human beings formed and set up in temples and called gods, since we know that such things are dead and do not possess the form of God (
) . . . This we think is not only irrational but is also an insult to God, whose name, though his glory and form are beyond words (
), is given to things that are corruptible and need to be looked after.Footnote 24
Irenaeus on the Invisible Form and Measure of the Logos
One of the most fascinating Irenaean texts, Epideixis 34 assumes the existence of an “invisible Form” of the divine Logos: “He is Himself the Word of God Almighty, who in His invisible form 
) pervades us universally in the whole world.”Footnote 25 The term used for “form” (
) means “aspect,” “appearance,” “look,” “sight,” “image,” or “spectacle;” even “vision,” “phantom,” in a religious sense; or “theory,” “idea,” in a more philosophical meaning. Consequently, the term denotes a visually or mentally perceptible reality, and its meaning is sensibly different from “manner,” “way,” as Rousseau rendered it in his Greek retroversion while translating the entire phrase 
as “according to the invisible” (
) instead of “invisible Form.”Footnote 26
Irenaeus offers his interpretation of Gen 1:26—the biblical verse reporting God's intention to create Adam according to his own image and likeness—in a few distinct places, for example in Epid. 5, 11, 22, and 97. Epid. 11 deserves special attention since the author states in this chapter that Jesus made use of his Form (
) when he created Adam: “He gave his frame the outline of His own form (
), that the visible appearance too should be godlike (
).”Footnote 27 In a literal translation, as Smith emphasizes, the sentence means: “For the formation [i.e., of the human being] He outlined His own form, that also what would be seen should be deiform.”Footnote 28 The Armenian word 
is different from the well-known biblical vocabulary of “image” (
) and “likeness” (
) used in Gen 1:26–27, Ezek 1:26, and Phil 2:6. The word 
is a new term that simply means “form,” “shape,” “figure,” and “model,” being also used in geometry with the meaning of “geometric figure.”Footnote 29
Starting from Antonio Orbe's insights regarding the visibility of the Son, Juan Ochagavía has already pointed out that Irenaeus generally conceived of the notion of “image” as automatically implying a figure, a spatial shape.Footnote 30 Ochagavía draws the following logical conclusion consonant with the Irenaean thought about image: “From this citation we can conclude that, since an image presupposes some shape and external form circumscribed in space, also the Word, as Image of man, possessed an external form even before the Incarnation.”Footnote 31
Another remarkable Irenaean concept related to the divine Form of the Son is “measure” (mensura, 
). Most likely in the context of one of his polemics with the Gnostics, the author subscribed to the thought of an Elder who depicted the Son as the “measure of the Father”: “For God does all things by measure and in order; nothing is unmeasured with Him, because nothing is out of order. Well spake he, who said that the unmeasurable Father was Himself subjected to measure in the Son; for the Son is the measure of the Father, since He also comprehends Him.”Footnote 32 The logic of this position resides in a unique and reciprocal relationship between the Father and the Son, most likely an eternal interpenetration between the two, where the Father is completely uncognoscible and invisible, but only from human perspective, since the Son can comprehend the Father. To the contrary, the Son may be known or contemplated by the appropriate human mind. The idea is present as well in the famous Irenaean expression “for that which is invisible of the Son is the Father, and what is visible of the Father is the Son” (invisibile etenim Filii Pater, visibile autem Patris Filius).Footnote 33
The heavenly dimension of the Son is visible for the human being not by the means of ordinary eyes but by the means of noetic perception, with the intellect. In Adversus Haereses, Irenaeus asserts that the prophets contemplated God not directly but indirectly, in the pre-incarnate Christ, and this in an “invisible manner” (rationem invisibilem). They perceived the Logos in this way either as the Lord of hosts (therefore as the glorious humanlike figure which biblical theophanies portray surrounded by glory and angels),Footnote 34 or, using a biblical anthropomorphic expression, “just as any one might speak to his friend,” but only the back parts (Haer. 4.20.9). Irenaeus usually calls these visions “economies” (dispensations) and the “similitudes” of God. We have to notice as well that his discourse on the divine economies and the similitudes of God, which the prophets contemplated, prevents only the direct vision of the Father but never the contemplation of the Son. Thus in Haer. 4.20.9 we are told that, on the Mountain of Transfiguration, Moses and Elijah were finally allowed to see the Son face to face.Footnote 35
Consequently, while Orbe's and Ochagavía's thesis regarding the presence of the two-stage Logos Christology remains debatable, their criticism of Houssiau's position regarding the invisibility of the Son appears to be a sustainable view.Footnote 36 Commenting on several Irenaean passages, for instance Haer. 5.16.2, Orbe and Ochagavía conclude that the Logos possesses a pre-incarnate noetic visibility. Indeed invisible to the ordinary sensible eye, the heavenly Son is visible to the Father and to the noetic eye of the prophets.Footnote 37 Thus, the revelation of the pre-incarnate Son of God in his noetic nature does not undermine the centrality of the revelation in a human body, which remains a unique and central manifestation of God. In addition, according to Irenaeus and other pre-Nicene authors, incarnation is more than a revelatory moment. Described through a complex phenomenological vocabulary, it is the moment where the Son changes his glorious Form of God (or the garment of glory) for the form of the servant in order to defeat death and restore Adam's vestment of glory which the forefather lost in Paradise. The divine Image which created Adam ab initio as his earthly image comes to defeat death and re-create Adam as his glorious 
.Footnote 38
Another argument in favor of the thesis about the invisible form of the Logos is Irenaeus's opinion that Christ's incarnation in a human body implies a certain physical reflection or imitation of his divine Image. Thus, after asserting several times that the human being was molded by the hand of God according to God's Image, which is the Logos (e.g., Haer. 5.6.1 and 5.16.1), Irenaeus states that this truth was only affirmed before incarnation, but it was manifested in Christ's humanity.Footnote 39
We may return now to our first Irenaean passage, Epid. 34, regarding the form of the Logos in the universe, because it continues with a description of this invisible form as the shape of the cross inscribed in the whole universe:
And because He is Himself the Word of God Almighty, who in His invisible form (
) pervades us universally in the whole world, and encompasses both its length and breadth and height and depth—for by God's Word everything is disposed and administered—the Son of God was also crucified in these (
), imprinted in the form of a cross on the universe (
); for He had necessarily, in becoming visible, to bring to light the universality of His cross (
), in order to show openly through His visible form that activity of His (
).Footnote 40
In this passage, Christ manifests an invisible cosmic extension embracing the entire universe. Adelin Rousseau has compared the text with Haer. 5.18.3Footnote 41 and disclosed a key similarity, namely that, among all possible signs, the Logos chooses the cross for his passion particularly because he pre-existed in this special form before his incarnation, namely crucified in the universe in an invisible manner.Footnote 42
For Irenaeus, therefore, the realm beyond the visible and sense-perceptible universe is not totally invisible, immaterial, and deprived of any kind of substance and form. To the contrary, he conceives—as we will see later in Tertullian, Clement, Origen, and Methodius—of various degrees of visibility and substantiality between visible and sense-perceptible substance and complete immateriality. The fact that Christ is invisible before incarnation does not necessarily imply that his invisibility is absolute and formless.Footnote 43 The Son is visible from the Father's perspective. Likewise the Son's invisible presence in the universe in the form of the cross may presuppose a certain subtle substantiality distinct from the perfect immateriality of the Father.
Clement of Alexandria and Christ's Inaccessible Intelligible Form
The doctrine of a noetic Form of God finds one of its clearest illustrations in Clement of Alexandria. Clement asserts in Protrepticus that God himself and his 
(image, representation, statue) are intelligible (noetic), not sensible (aisthetic): “But for us God's image is intelligible, not sensible, made out of sensible matter. Indeed, the true and only God is intelligible, not sensible.”Footnote 44 In a different text, his Excerpta ex Theodoto, Clement replies to Theodotus's commentaries on the Johannine prologue concerning the titles of the Logos and formulates a general metaphysical principle: none of the existing realities (the Son included) are deprived of form and substance. He continues this statement and applies the principle to the Monogenes Son: “Whereas every existing thing is not bereft of substance, those bodies belonging to this universe do not have similar forms and bodies. . . . The Monogenes is peculiarly intelligible and possesses his proper form and substance, exceedingly pure and absolutely sovereign, and enjoys the power of the Father without mediation.”Footnote 45
Consequently, neither the pneumatic and intelligible beings (
), nor the Archangels, nor the Protoctists (the first created heavenly beings), nor even the Son himself can exist without form, shape, figure, and body (
).Footnote 46 The Alexandrian conceives, as well, of various degrees of corporeality among all these kinds of celestial entities. He shows that stars, for instance, are incorporeal and without form (
) compared to the earthly things. Stars are, however, measured and sensible bodies (
) from the perspective of the Son, as the Son is also measured and corporeal from the perspective of the Father.Footnote 47
The same theory about the universal hierarchy of beings is expressed in terms of materiality. It is not only human beings and all the creatures of the visible world that may be reckoned as material. Celestial realities, which enjoy a noetic nature, possess their own kind of material substance. The angels, for instance, as intelligible spirits (
), are not perfectly immaterial but enjoy a body consisting of a noetic fire (
). Clement additionally admits the existence of two types of intelligible light. The first type of light, purer than angelic brilliance, is simply called noetic (
), and the author informs his reader that angelic beings themselves ardently long to partake in this realm. However, the second type of intelligible light is the substance of the Son of God himself, which is a sort of light purer even than the noetic one. The author equally qualifies it—by means of a Pauline expression from 1 Tim 6:16—as the “inaccessible light” (
), and further identifies it with the “Power of God” (
) from 1 Cor 1:24.Footnote 48
The Alexandrian advances a final argument for the noetic Form of the Logos, this time from an epistemological perspective. Assuming the epistemic principle according to which both the seer and the seen cannot exist without form and body (
), Clement observes that the seven Protoctists always contemplate the Face of the Father, which is the Son. The Monogenes, therefore, has to possess a form and a body in order to allow the Protoctists the possibility to contemplate him.Footnote 49 The author concedes as well that the Protoctists do not perceive the Son by means of an ordinary epistemic capacity. They accomplish this extraordinary performance not by means of a sensible eye but by means of the noetic eye granted by the Father (
’ 
).Footnote 50
Tertullian on Christ's Invisible Form and Heavenly Body
Tertullian elaborates in his turn a doctrine of the Form of God in the context of his polemics against the Docetic and Gnostic visions of a purely spiritual Jesus.Footnote 51 In order to defend the corporeal condition of the incarnate Christ, Tertullian assumes that even Christ's pre-incarnate status inevitably involves body and form. Adversus Praxean 7, a passage speculating on the generation of the Son from the Father, is one of the most obvious defenses of Christ's noetic corporeality. The author endorses the thought that the Word receives a glorious form (specia) while being generated by God the Father in a divine (and, most likely, everlasting) manner.Footnote 52
Tertullian defends the idea of divine Form through an argument for God's substance. Assuming the metaphysical principle that “nothing may come from nothing,” the author maintains that the Son possesses a substance because he comes from the Father, who is a substance, and also because he produces all things of the universe not from void but from his own substance.Footnote 53 In the next step of his argument, Tertullian adopts another metaphysical principle, namely that a body, which requires a substance, always needs a form. Since God is Spirit and the Spirit presumes substance and body, God necessarily possesses a body and, consequently, a form (effigia). And Tertullian makes a direct reference to Phil 2:6 (
):
This for certain is He “who, being in the form of God (in effigie Dei constitutus), thought it not robbery to be equal with God” (Phil 2.6). In what form (effigie) of God? Of course he means in some form, not in none (utique in aliqua, non tamen in nulla). For who will deny that God is a body (quis enim negabit Deum corpus esse), although “God is a Spirit (etsi Deus spiritus est)” (John 4.24)? For Spirit has a bodily substance of its own kind, in its own form (spiritus enim corpus sui generis in sua effigie).Footnote 54
In the last passage of the chapter, Tertullian tackles an epistemological facet of the topic by affirming that invisible things (which are invisible only from the limited perspective of the human sight) are actually visible and possess body and form from God's perspective.Footnote 55 Proclaiming straightforwardly the corporeal nature of the metaphysical Christ and his spiritual body and form, Tertullian shares the same understanding of the concept of relative “invisibility” with Irenaeus and Clement. The author asserts that Christ's spiritual form is invisible only to the ordinary eye but remains visible to the Father, the prophets, and the apostles. The apostles, for instance, were able to see the wonderful glory of the Son on the Mount of Transfiguration, and what they contemplated was the glory “of the visible Son, glorified by the invisible Father” (gloriam . . . Filii, scilicet uisibilis, glorificati a Patre inuisibili).Footnote 56
His doctrine regarding spiritual bodies, as advanced for instance in Adversus Marcionem 5.10, is also Pauline theology quoted directly from 1 Cor 15:38 (corpora celestia) and 1 Cor 15:44 (corpus spiritale). This spiritual corporeality is one of an extraordinary nature, which cannot be apprehended by the earthly and sensible power of seeing. To the contrary, it pertains to the noetic and spiritual realm, and it is visible from the Father's perspective, as one can see in Adversus Praxean 7. In an analysis regarding the corporeal natures of the soul and of the resurrected body, Tertullian states that spiritual corporeality implies a different quality (qualitas).Footnote 57 He acknowledges therefore the reality of invisible bodies and describes the soul as such a substance. According to him, corporeality—whether visible or invisible—is a sine qua non condition of existence. Not having a body simply implies non-existence.Footnote 58
Tertullian applies the concept of form even to his doctrine of the Trinity, which he describes as one substance and three forms. The mystery of economy (oikonomiae sacramentum) reveals the “Father and Son and Spirit as three, three however not in quality but in sequence (non statu sed gradu), not in substance but in aspect (nec substantia sed forma), not in power but in [its] manifestation (nec potestate sed specie).” He continues by assuming that God is “one substance and one quality and one power, seeing it is one God from whom those sequences and aspects (formae) and manifestations are reckoned out in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.”Footnote 59 In his incarnation—which should be described as coming to be in flesh (fit in carne) rather than being changed or transfigured (non capit transfigurari) into flesh—the Logos remains unchanged in his divine substance and form: “And the Word of God abideth for ever, evidently by continuing in his own form (perseuerando scilicet in sua forma).”Footnote 60
Origen and the Noetic Form of the Logos
One of the most surprising occurrences of speculations on the theme of the Form of God may be found in Origen, the eminent archenemy of anthropomorphism. The term “form” (
) plays a central role in Origen's Christology, being frequently employed in the recurrent phrase the “Form of God.” The expression 
, which appears several times in his writings, is never used in the post-Nicene sense we may find in Athanasius, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, or Augustine, but with the traditional pre-Nicene meaning.Footnote 61 Moreover, since Origen never qualifies it as a metaphor or allegory, the expression cannot be an empty stylistic parlance.
In the Commentarium in evangelium Matthaei, for example, Origen equates divine Image (
), divine Form (
), and the figure of the Son of Man in both his protological and eschatological glory. One of the chapters envisions the economy of salvation as the coming of the Son of Man to a status of dishonor, without form (
) and beauty, in order to restore human beings to the conformity with the divine Image (
) and Form (
):
But He also comes [i.e., at the end of time] in glory (
), having prepared the disciples through that epiphany of His which has no form (
) nor beauty; and, having become as they that they might become as He, “conformed to the image of His glory” (
), since He formerly became conformed (
) to “the body of our humiliation,” when He “emptied Himself and took upon Him the form of a servant” (
), He is restored to the image of God (
) and also makes them conformed unto it (
).Footnote 62
If we try to understand this sentence in a post-Nicene way by equating 
and divine essence, this hermeneutical attempt will lead us to the absurd assertion that human beings will enjoy the divine essence in the eschaton. It is more reasonable, in conclusion, to interpret the Origenian 
in a rather Pauline and traditional pre-Nicene sense, namely denoting the protological condition of the Son of Man, which he re-assumed at the end of his earthly existence.
Rufinus usually translates 
as forma, as for instance De principiis 1.2.8 (erat in forma Dei) adequately confirms. It is worth noting that even the text of De principiis does not deny the existence of God's forma, therefore of 
. In all instances where Crombie's Ante-Nicene Fathers translation, for example, asserts that God does not have “form, color, and magnitude,” the original Latin words are habitus, color, and magnitudo.Footnote 63 I submit that forma and habitus actually belong to two distinct realms. While habitus (or schema, as in Princ. 2.10.2, which obviously renders the Greek 
, “form,” “shape,” “figure”) denotes the visible realm of matter and corporeality, forma Dei, as a divine title, belongs to the heavenly sphere.Footnote 64
Commentarii in evangelium Joannis includes a remarkable passage where the glorious Form represents the ontological status in which the Logos subsists in se, the way the Son exists within the Father:
When the Son is in the Father (
), being in the form of God (
) before he empties himself, God is his place (
), as it were. And if indeed one considers him who, before he emptied himself, is in the essential form of God (
), he will see the Son who has not yet proceeded (
) from God himself, and the Lord who has not yet proceeded from his place (
).Footnote 65
As we will see in the following Origenian texts, it is this divine Form of the Logos in himself that the author considers as the visual reality which the apostles contemplated on the Mountain of Transfiguration. While speculating, for instance, on the episode of the Transfiguration in his Comm. Matt. 12.36–37, Origen assumes that all those who reached perfection are able to contemplate realities belonging to the invisible realm, which are eternal (
). The author continues his thought by presuming that the Logos reveals himself not in a unique modality but in a large variety of ways according to the receiver's capacity of perception.Footnote 66 It is at this very moment that Origen raises a question concerning Jesus's form in the episode of the Transfiguration: “did he appear to them in the form of God in which he previously was (
), so that for those below he had the form of a slave but for those who had followed him to the high mountain after the six days he did not have that form, but the form of God?”Footnote 67 This rhetorical question will receive an obvious affirmative answer. The Logos indeed showed his human visible form (the form of a slave, or the form of his incarnation) to the beginners and the world, and he allowed exclusively the three advanced apostles to contemplate his invisible and eternal Form, his Form of God. On the Mountain of Transfiguration, “he is known in his divinity (
) and seen in the form of God (
. . . 
) according to their knowledge. It is before such as these that Jesus is transfigured, not before any of those below.”Footnote 68 The text plainly identifies, therefore, Jesus's Form of God revealed in the Transfiguration with his pre-incarnate status. In addition, a few previous chapters (12.31–33) identify Jesus's Form revealed in the Transfiguration with his eschatological and glorious condition, and even with the kingdom itself.
Several other passages illustrate the same doctrine about Jesus's divine Form revealed on the Mountain of Transfiguration exclusively to his advanced disciples. Contra Celsum 4.16, for instance, shows that Christ “was transformed when he went up a high mountain and showed his other form (
).”Footnote 69 Again, we are informed that the vision was accessible only to the advanced: “For the people down below had not eyes capable of seeing the transfiguration of the Word into something wonderful and more divine (
). They were hardly able to receive him as he was, so that it was said of him by those not able to see his higher nature (
).”Footnote 70
A different place in Contra Celsum similarly equates the Form which Christ revealed in the Transfiguration with the Form in which he existed before the incarnation. In addition, the text discloses Origen's belief regarding the purpose of human existence and the goal of the divine economy of the Logos: that is to contemplate the Logos in his glorious pre-incarnate condition, in his Form of God, and eventually become like the Logos and be transformed according to this divine appearance.Footnote 71 The Logos, therefore, pre-exists in a divine Form and assumes human form in order to lead humankind spiritually to access his glorious design: “But even while he tabernacled and lived among us he did not remain with his primary form (
). After leading us up to the spiritual ‘high mountain,’ he showed us his glorious form (
) and the radiance (
) of his clothing.”Footnote 72 It is also worth mentioning that Origen sometimes equates Jesus's surrounding glory with his divinity (
).Footnote 73
The passage opens, however, the subject regarding the epistemic capacities a human being should acquire in order to contemplate Jesus's divine shape. From an epistemological perspective, Origen acknowledges in various instances that ordinary cognitive capacities cannot perceive the Form of God. To the contrary, the visionary must enliven a special capacity—namely the 
/intellectus/mens, usually translated as mind, intellect, understanding—in order to transcend beyond the limits of the visible universe. Thus, Moses, the prophets, and the apostles actually did not see God in an ordinary way but rather perceived him in an intelligible manner, “noetically,” with a “perception of the mind” (sensu mentis).Footnote 74
Nevertheless, at the other end of the spectrum, we are familiar with an Origen who is an anti-anthropomorphist and champion of God's incorporeality, ineffability, and incomprehensibility.Footnote 75 He clearly states that the Trinity is the only perfectly immaterial reality: “We believe that to exist without material substance (materiali substantia) apart from any association with a bodily element (corporeae adiectionis) is a thing that belongs only to the nature of God (dei natura), that is, of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.”Footnote 76
From a modern expectation, if the metaphysical Christ is completely immaterial (because the Origenian discussion on the Form of God is again strictly christological), he cannot possess any type of form, since form implies materiality. But as we have seen in the above pages, in Origen's Hellenistic context it was not a contradiction, and we have to mention first Philo and Clement. It is possible therefore that Origen did not contradict himself, but he conceived of Jesus's exalted 
as purely immaterial or in such an exalted domain where human mind cannot easily make the distinction between pure asomatic condition and noetic somatism.Footnote 77
Methodius of Olympus and the Puzzling Nature of Jesus's Divine Form
Methodius deserves as well to be considered a special case alongside his enemy, Origen, since his writings give a similar puzzling status to Jesus's divine Form. On the one hand, it is exclusively God's nature (
) which is incorporeal and, thus, invisible (
), and Jesus shares this nature with God.Footnote 78 On the other hand, he shares with human beings a body of flesh and a body of glory, which are corporeal and, therefore, visible. There are several instances where Methodius considers that Jesus manifested his body of glory on the Mountain of Transfiguration, and this body of glory is his body of flesh transfigured for a few moments into a glorious pneumatic state. Nevertheless, this body of glory itself is a somatic and visible entity, although perceivable only with the help of noetic capacities.
Jesus shares, therefore, a certain corporeality with human beings and angels because he possesses a noetic body of glory visible by the advanced. According to Methodius, the human being was designed to become immortal, in a condition similar (although not identical) to such celestial powers as the angels, thrones, powers, and cherubim.Footnote 79 The author specifies that all these heavenly beings are endowed with noetic bodies (
).Footnote 80 Compared to the human constitution, the angelic nature consists of a purer substance, which is spiritual or pneumatic (
).Footnote 81 Human resurrected bodies are also considered pneumatic or spiritual (
).Footnote 82 Additionally, Methodius qualifies human souls as intelligible bodies (
), possessing a certain form (
).Footnote 83 According to Methodius, therefore, corporeality is extended to the noetic realm of souls, angels, and Jesus's body of glory, while God's nature remains an asomatic domain.
It is most likely that Methodius associates the concept of 
with corporeality, either sensible or noetic, and employs a distinct form-terminology for the asomatic realm of the divine. Thus, he equally assumes the existence of a godlike Shape (
), which is God's Image (
) and the image which the Logos communicates to the angels and the resurrected human beings because God fashioned all these creatures according to this exalted Shape. For this reason, Methodius also calls it the shape of the resurrection (
).Footnote 84 The Logos possesses therefore this divine Image, or Shape, but the text does not clarify whether this Shape is identical with his body of glory, and, therefore, to what extent this Shape is asomatic or somatic; or, whether its condition is so exalted at the confines between the two realms that it is almost impossible to make clear assertions regarding its somatic status.
A Pseudo-Clementine Axiom: A Formless God Cannot Be Seen
Commonly dated around 300–320 c.e., the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies are another pre-Nicene source including a Christology envisioning the Son endowed with a body of glory and a divine Form (
). The Form most likely possesses anthropomorphic limbs, which are designed not for a certain divine activity but for the sake of beauty and contemplation.Footnote 85 The text continues by evoking again the beauty of God's Form and by asserting that only the pure in heart may perceive it: “But He has the most beautiful shape (
) on account of man, that the pure in heart may be able to see Him (
), that they may rejoice because they suffered.”Footnote 86 Furthermore, the author declares as well that this Form is invisible while compared to human visible form, which is an image or copy (
) of God's archetypal Form (
).Footnote 87
The writer then creates an interesting counterargument as raised by a possible contender of the divine Form who might sustain that a form implies a shape (
) and, consequently, spatial existence. The author's surprising reply is to agree that the Son indeed possesses a shape, but that shape is infinitely communicated: “What, then, is there to prevent God, as being the Framer and Lord of this and everything else, from possessing figure and shape and beauty (
), and having the communication of these qualities proceeding from Himself extended infinitely?” Footnote 88
Another passage of the homily presents a vision of God as the cruciform structure of the universe, present everywhere in the world, as in Irenaeus's vision: “One, then, is the God who truly exists, who presides in a superior shape (
), being the heart of that which is above and that which is below twice, which sends forth from Him as from a centre the life-giving and incorporeal power (
).”Footnote 89
The next chapter emphasizes an epistemological aspect. The author asserts that only the 
may perceive God's 
and 
. God, who is beautiful, has to exist in a form since beauty cannot be manifest without a form. Moreover, if God did not have a form, human beings would not be able to see or contemplate him because the human mind is empty without apprehending a form:
What affection ought therefore to arise within us if we gaze with our mind on His beautiful shape (
)! But otherwise it is absurd to speak of beauty. For beauty cannot exist apart from shape (
); nor can one be attracted to the love of God, nor even deem that he can see Him, if God has no form (
).Footnote 90
The passage continues with a criticism of those who assert that God's existence does not imply a shape (
) and concludes with the epistemological assertion that if God was formless and shapeless, he could not be visible to anyone (
). In the end, the author re-asserts that “if the mind does not see the form of God, it is empty of Him” (
).Footnote 91
Arnobius of Sicca's Epistemic Abstention
We have to end our excursion with a remarkable passage from Arnobius of Sicca, a passage demonstrating that the idea of a divine Form was already problematic at the beginning of the fourth century. According to Arnobius, the human mind cannot answer the complicated questions regarding the existence and nature of such an exalted shape: “‘But if,’ they say, ‘you do not like our view, you point out, you tell us, with what form a god is endowed (qua sit deus praeditus forma).’ If you wish to hear an opinion which is the true one—God either has no form (formam), or if He is to be identified with some form, we certainly do not know what it is.”Footnote 92 Thus, like the ancient wise Skeptics, Arnobius assumes and recommends an abstention from judgments in what concerns this topic.
Concluding Remarks
The above investigation leads us to conclude that early Christian intelligentsia—such classical pre-Nicene authors as Justin, Irenaeus, Clement, Tertullian, Origen, and Methodius—sustained the existence of a noetic divine Form of Christ as a solution to the anthropomorphist dispute. While criticizing the anthropomorphist position, they transferred the divine Form (usually associated with Christ) to the intelligible and invisible dimension of reality. It is very likely that they took over and reshaped in their Christian context a philosophical response to anthropomorphism, a response already present in some Hellenistic settings, including as well Jewish intellectuals, for example, Aristobulus, Philo, and Josephus. Thus, the speculations on God's Form are no longer restricted to some apocryphal materials (and Tertullian is no longer a bizarre exception), but they are present in the writings of the aforementioned influential pre-Nicene authors.
Accordingly, our modern vision about the topic of the divine Form in pre-Nicene times, as well as certain aspects of the anthropomorphist debate, has to be, at least slightly, reconfigured. The anthropomorphist debate involves more complexity. It is no longer a debate between some eminent, philosophically-educated authors defending an abstract God and some mystics preserving a more primitive and literal hermeneutical tradition. To the contrary, while the authors educated in philosophy criticized the anthropomorphism of the simpliciores, their criticism did not imply a total rejection of the divine Form and a commitment to the doctrine of a perfectly formless divine Christ, as in post-Nicene times. Pre-Nicene authors, rather, elaborated a theory about a divine Christ endowed with a celestial Form, an exceedingly refined and spiritual shape. In calling it intelligible or invisible (to the ordinary eye), some of them even considered that only very special human epistemic capacities (such as the intellectual/noetic perception or the perception of reason) might be able to apprehend it. In essence, allowing for the existence of a divine Form, pre-Nicene Christology admits more flexibility in what regards the realm of the divine, which is not restricted exclusively to abstract and formless realities. Additionally, beauty and perfection require limits and bounds for the pre-Nicenes, and most likely infinity is not a divine attribute in their thought, but appeared in post-Nicene times.Footnote 93 Moreover, from an epistemological point of view, the notions of “visibility” and “invisibility” are not absolute but always relative to the perceiving subject, either God, angelic beings, or the human mind. Thus, Clement argues that Christ's divine Form may be invisible to the ordinary perception, but it is visible to the Father's eye and those whom the Father granted the noetic eye.
In the third century, educated Christian authors were still conceiving of the divine Christ as possessing a Form of God. In fact, from its very inception in Jewish Alexandrian intelligentsia—with Philo and Josephus—to Origen and Methodius, the doctrine of the noetic Form of God includes a certain logical tension in what concerns its ontological condition: it is always placed on the vague and blurry confines between noetic corporeality and pure immateriality, and between divine Form and divine simplicity.
Already at the beginning of the fourth century, as we can see in the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies and Arnobius, the doctrine has its contenders, and Arnobius asserts that the human mind is not able to answer the questions regarding the existence and nature of the divine Form. Later on, in 360s–370s, there is no eruditus to support the theory of the noetic Form of God. As seen before, Lewis Ayres has shown that the pro-Nicene Christology of 
, emphasizing Christ's equality with the Father, receives a large and strong acceptance in 360s and 370s. From now on, the divine dimension of Christ may no longer possess a Form and be accessed through noetic perception, but it belongs to the perfectly immaterial realm of the Father. The consciousness of an infinite God emerges as well in this period. As Lewis Ayres observes, the Nicene 
inherits and preserves several early Christian traditions, but it equally entails much theological innovation: “[I]n order to explore how the term 
came to serve as a marker of orthodoxy in the later fourth century we need to spend more time investigating ways in which the term could stand as a cipher for originally distinct theologies.”Footnote 94 It was in this uncertain context that pro-Nicene writers, starting already with Athanasius, would advance the hermeneutical solution of identifying the 
of biblical theophanies with the divine 
, a solution not present even in Origen's writings. The new meaning of this expression, nonetheless, was sensibly distinct from its pre-Nicene connotations.
