Origen’s Technical Meaning of

Origen, far from being a precursor of “Arianism,” as he was depicted during the Origenist controversy and is often still misrepresented today, was the main inspirer of the Nicene-Cappadocian line.Footnote ¹ The Trinitarian formulation of this line, which was represented above all by Gregory of Nyssa, is that God is one and the same nature or essence in three individual substances and that the Son is to the Father. Indeed, the three members of the Trinity share in the same Footnote ² This formulation was followed by Basil in his last phase; Didymus, Gregory of Nazianzus from 362 onwards; Evagrius; and numerous later authors.Footnote ³ Origen himself had already maintained both things: that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit have the same but are three different and Gregory of Nyssa closely followed him.Footnote ⁴ As I set out to argue, Origen’s thought represented a novel and fundamental theorization with respect to the communality of and the individuality of conceived as individual substances, in the Trinity. He influenced not only subsequent Trinitarian theology, but perhaps even “pagan” Neoplatonism. (Likewise, on the christological side, Annewies van den HoekFootnote ⁵ has insightfully demonstrated the importance of Origen in asking—and endeavoring to answer—the question of the unification of humanity and divinity in Christ, and Origen’s influence on later formulations.)

Of course, Origen did not use only in a technical Trinitarian meaning; for instance, he also used it in the sense of “foundation”;Footnote ⁶ of material or incorporeal “substance”;Footnote ⁷ of “existence”;Footnote ⁸ “constitution,” or “coming into existence”;Footnote ⁹ and of “reality” as opposed to “appearance”; “conceptuality” or “insubstantiality.”Footnote ¹⁰Comm. Jo. 10.37.246 shows the last meaning, reality vs. appearance or mere conceptuality, in the Trinitarian context: here Origen criticizes those who differentiate the Father and the Son conceptually but not in their substance

Origen, on the contrary, maintains that the Father is endowed with his own hypostasis or individual substance and the Son with his own, different from the Father’s. This is a conceptual and linguistic novelty that Origen introduced into the Christian theological field, I shall argue. That Father and Son each are made up of two distinct individual substances is repeated in Cels. 8.12, in which Origen opposes those who deny that they are “two different hypostases” This attestation is all the more important in that it is preserved in the original Greek and is not a fragment, nor does it come from a work of uncertain attribution. The same polemic against those who denied that the Father and the Son have two different individual substances is reflected in another important passage by Origen that is preserved in Greek: Comm. Matt. 17.14.Footnote ¹¹ Here Origen maintains that the Father and the Son are distinct both conceptually and in their individual substance. Of equal importance, both for its sure authenticity and for being preserved in Greek, is Comm. Jo. 2.10.75, in which Origen asserts that not only the Father and the Son, but also the Spirit are three different individual substances.Footnote ¹² In Fr. in Io. 37 Origen insists that the Spirit is a hypostasis, an individual substance, and not simply an activity of God. This also confirms Schol. Matt. PG 17.309.47, which is of uncertain attribution, and moreover introduces the concept of the identity of nature/essence between the Persons of the Trinity: the Father, the Son, and the Spirit “are one not for the confusion of the three, but because they have one and the same nature; their individual substances are three, perfect in all of them.”Footnote ¹³ In Comm. Jo. 2.23.149, indeed, Origen explains that the Father and the Son are the same in their essence or Footnote ¹⁴ but at the same time they are “not the same thing” evidently in that they are two different individuals, having different individual substances or

In another authentic passage preserved in Greek, Comm. Jo. 1.24.151, Origen criticizes adversaries who do not conceive of the Son as having an individual substance of his own, distinct from that of the Father, and who do not clarify what his essence is (his which Origen deems divine and common to the whole Trinity);Footnote ¹⁵ these theologians rather consider the Son to be a sort of emanation from the Father, consisting only in an empty name Footnote ¹⁶ and not in a personal, real, and individual substance Origen here may be attacking Valentinian conceptions. The same is stressed in Comm. Jo. 1.34.243: the Son, the Wisdom of God, is not a mere representation but “has a real substance of his own, an incorporeal and, so to say, living substance” It is notable that in the immediately subsequent chapter (1.35.253) Origen expressly criticizes “heretics” who, from their writings, seem to be again Valentinians. Origen further explores the individual substance of the Son in Comm. Jo. 1.39.292: Christ-Logos has its substance in the Wisdom of God, which is the principle of all.Footnote ¹⁷ The closeness to Sel. Ps. PG 12.1125.2 is manifest: here the individual substance of God’s Logos, that is, its very hypostasis, includes its being Wisdom.Footnote ¹⁸ In Comm. Jo. 2.35.215, the testimony of the Baptist concerning Christ is said to reveal Christ’s “preeminent hypostasis or individual substance” in that, qua Logos, Christ permeates the world, being in all rational souls. In Comm. Jo. 32.16.192–193, the divine hypostasis of the Son is said to be separated by some from Christ’s human aspects. In Comm. ser. Matt. 146.5, virtues are declared to be attached to Christ’s individual substance,Footnote ¹⁹ and in Princ. fr. 33, a reliable Greek fragment quoted by Athanasius in Decr. 27.1–2, to which I shall return, Origen affirms that Christ-Logos is the image, not of the nature of God generically, but “of the Father’s own ineffable and unspeakable individual substance.”Footnote ²⁰

There are several other references to Christ’s hypostasis in Greek passages from works of less certain authenticity or that have survived only in translation, but those I have adduced so far would suffice even in absence of the following. However, the correspondence between the former and the latter in the Trinitarian conception of especially in reference to the Son, seems to confirm the value of the following attestations. In Sel. Gen. PG 12.109.46 Origen is criticizing those who do not admit that the Son has a substance of his own, These adversaries base their argument on Jesus’s words, “The Father and I are one and the same thing,” which in Origen’s view does not imply that the Son has no individual substance of his own, distinct from that of the Father. In order to make it clear that with he means “individual substance,” in this case that of the Son, Origen adds as I shall show, the expression was common in the philosophy of his day and was used to specify that a substance was not to be taken generally, but was proper to some particular being. The dignity of the hypostasis of the Son is referred to in Sel. Ps. PG 12.1581.32: At the same time, the Son is said to be God by essence in Fr. Jo. 1. In Comm. Rom. 7.12.146–147 Origen criticizes haeretici who deny that the Father and the Son have the same essence or nature but are different in their proprietates: “male separant Filium a Patre ut alterius naturae Patrem alterius Filium dicant.” Origen opposes to this what he regards as the correct view: the “properties” of each Person of the Trinity should be considered to belong to each Person’s individual substance or while the essence or nature is common to both “Substantia uel natura” renders Rufinus in Adult. lib. Orig.1 explicitly states that Origen applied to the Father-Son relationship: Patrem et Filium unius substantiae, quod graece homoousion dicitur, designavit. In Fr. Jo. 123 the individual substance that is referred to is that of the Spirit, and here again the addition of is found, to emphasize that it is the substance proper to the Spirit alone, as distinct from God the Father; the polemic is against those who deem the Spirit simply “God’s energy or activity, without a substantial existence of its own”

The Dialogue with Heraclides, discovered on a Toura papyrus from the end of the sixth century and unknown from any other source before this find,Footnote ²¹ offers a stenographic record of a public discussion, part of which is highly relevant to the present investigation in that it is devoted to an assessment of the Father-Son relationship. First in a series of questions to Heraclides, and then in his own exposition, Origen clarifies how it is that the Father and the Son are two and distinct from one another, but at the same time they are one God. Although the key term does not pop up here—probably for the sake of simplicity and the lack of a philosophical context—Origen’s conception of two distinct hypostases in one and the same divine nature is clear and extensively illustrated. In 2.18 and 21–22 the Son is presented as distinct, from the Father,Footnote ²² and this distinction resides in the difference of the two. At the same time, both the Son and the Father are God, and yet they are not two Gods.Footnote ²³ Origen, who posited two hypostases, or better three if we take into consideration the Spirit as well, had to be careful not to give the impression of positing two or three Gods. Thus, in 2.30–31 he sets out to explain “in which respect the Father and the Son are two, and in which these two are one and the same God.” And in 3.20–4.9 his explanation makes it clear that his conception of two hypostases but one divine nature or essence countered both a kind of pre-“Arianism” or “adoptionism,” which denied the divinity of the Son, and what Origen himself calls which postulated only one divine hypostasis, that of the Father.Footnote ²⁴ The term appears only here among all extant works of Origen. It does not mean one single power or authority, but rather one single principle, one single This “heresy,” indeed, denied the hypostatic distinction between the Father and the Son, whereas Origen maintained three distinct hypostases in the Trinity, coinciding with the three of all. His very which opens with a treatment of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, and resumes this same treatment in Book 4 as a conclusion to the whole investigation, probably refers in its title to these three Footnote ²⁵ The three principles for Origen coincide with the three hypostases of the Trinity, but God is one, and the distinct hypostases share the same divine

In a fragment preserved by Pamphilus, Apol. 50, from Origen’s lost commentary on 1 Timothy, Origen criticizes those Christians who consider the Father and the Son to be one and the same hypostasis in an effort to avoid the accusation of ditheism:

What I have put in parentheses is a gloss by Rufinus, who first chose to translate with subsistentia, which is typical of him and already of Victorinus,Footnote ²⁶ and then to leave the very Greek term; finally, in his own gloss he translated with the Latin persona. Thus, Origen in this passage reaffirms that the Father and the Son are two different hypostases.

Also, is used by Origen to refer to the substance of each soul, for example in Cels. 6.26.Footnote ²⁷ Especially from Princ. 3.1.22 it is clear that for Origen, exactly as with the Trinity, rational creatures share in one and the same nature, but each of them has its own individual substance or hypostasis.Footnote ²⁸ Rational creatures’ individual substances are all distinct from one another, but they all share in the same nature. This parallel between humanity (or all rational creatures) and the Trinity on this score—i.e., each individual of each of these two natures has its own hypostasis or individual substance, but all individuals within the same nature share in one and the same essence—is the basis of Gregory of Nyssa’s so-called social analogy, which I deem inspired by Origen’s present conception.Footnote ²⁹ This is hardly surprising if Gregory drew inspiration from Origen for his core Trinitarian conception of The individuality of the substance of each rational creature and, in the specific case of human beings, of each soul, is emphasized in Sel. Ezech. PG 13.817.21: “Each soul has its own individual substance, which consists in its own rationale, and not a different one.”Footnote ³⁰ For Origen, this is true both of each soul and of each Person of the Trinity.

Origen’s idea that all human beings, and even all rational creatures, each one having its own nevertheless share in one and the same nature or essence was arguably formed and strengthened against the backdrop of his anti-Valentinian polemic. Whereas the Valentinians divided humanity into three different natures —i.e., material, animal, and spiritual, which also implied different behaviors and different eschatological destinies—Origen insisted that all humans and all rational creatures have the same and that their behaviors and eschatological destinies depend on each one’s free will. Both the Valentinian division of humanity into different and Origen’s treatment of against this conception are evident in Heracleon’s fragments and Origen’s criticism of his work.Footnote ³¹ The same and for all the souls is also asserted in a fragment preserved by Pamphilus (Apol. 33, from Origen’s lost commentary on 1 Timothy), in the framework of an anti-Valentinian argument, which, as usual, shows Origen’s concern for theodicy: “non omnes humanas animas unius eiusdemque dicunt esse substantiae sed diuersas naturas animarum, inter eas haereses numerandi sunt quae iniquitatem in Excelso loquuntur ac iniustitiam inaequalitatemque eius accusant.”

Thus, Origen’s distinct conception of as opposed to emerges manifestly both in his Trinitarian discourse and in his discourse on the rational beings, or logika: both the divine nature and the rational nature are divided into a multiplicity (respectively three or many) of individual substances or

The Lack of a Technical Theological Meaning for in the Writings of Theologians Prior to Origen (and Gregory of Nyssa)

Origen, as I have just shown, distinguished and clearly when speaking of the Trinity, thereby creating a technical terminology. In this, as I am going to argue next, he differs from earlier theologians—and from Athanasius and even the Fathers who issued the Nicene canons, who used the two terms rather interchangeably; this interchangeable use went on as far as the Cappadocians’ mature thought. An eloquent example of such interchangeability from Clement is Strom. 5.1.3.2; another from Irenaeus is Haer. 1.8.16.Footnote ³² In Irenaeus usually means substance in general, that of a whole category.Footnote ³³ Unlike Origen, Irenaeus never uses in the sense of “individual substance.” In Athenagoras a combined expression, is even found (Leg. 24.5). Neither does Tatian seem to have any distinctive usage of as “individual substance.” He employs this term in the sense of “substance”Footnote ³⁴ or “foundation.” God is the foundation and principle of all that came into existence (Or. 5.1);Footnote ³⁵ in Or. 6.2 Tatian is speaking of the resurrection, when the body’s substance visible only to God after one’s physical death, will be restored to its original state. In 15.3 seems to designate the category of the demons.Footnote ³⁶

But even after Origen, and before Gregory of Nyssa and the late phase of the Cappadocians, the technical distinction between and in the Trinitarian field failed to be perceived by many. Athanasius provides an interesting example in a remarkable quotation from Origen in Decr. 27.1–2. While Origen’s own text in this quotation displays the above-mentioned distinction, Athanasius’s words, which paraphrase Origen’s text, entirely overlooks that distinction, since is employed by him in the sense of

Athanasius quotes Origen verbatim, and in Origen’s own words means “individual substance;” for it is only the Father who is ineffable and impossible to name, not the Son, who reveals the Father. On the contrary, when in the introduction Athanasius says, in his own words, he uses in the sense of “substance,” but not of “individual substance,” which Origen distinguished for the three Persons of the Trinity. In Athanasius’s own words, and are synonyms. Indeed, he means that the Father and the Son have the same substance, and not the same individual substance. Athanasius uses the two terms interchangeably in his Tomus ad Antiochenos as well.Footnote ³⁷ The same indistinctive use of and different from Origen’s tech-nical distinction, is found in the earliest Nicene document, Eusebius’s Letter to his own Church, preserved by Socrates Hist. Eccl. 1.8 and quoted by Athanasius himself (Decr. 33).Footnote ³⁸ In § 4 Eusebius quotes the first credal formula proposed by the bishops. Then, he explains, Constantine introduced (§ 7). Thus, Eusebius quotes the second Creed issued by the bishops and the emperor, which, in the passage concerning the Son, explains that he was generated from the very essence or nature of the Father, and is of the same nature as the Father.Footnote ³⁹ Then, anathemas are appended against those who claimed that “there was a time when the Son did not exist,” that “before being begotten, the Son did not exist,” that he “came into being from non-being” as a creature and, most interestingly for the present argument, that the Son is “of a different hypostasis or ousia” from the Father Here does not indicate the individuality of the Father or the Son, but the “substance” or “essence” of all the Trinity—the meaning being that the Father and the Son have the very same substance—and is a synonym of Thus here, just as in Athanasius’s words and in Basil’s earlier usage,Footnote ⁴⁰ and are treated as synonyms, differently from what happens in Origen’s works.

Lack of Acknowledgment of Origen’s Innovation and of Investigation into Its Source(s)

Against the backdrop of the analysis conducted so far, the terminological and conceptual specificity of Origen stands out all the more clearly. This specificity and its import are due to the fact that Origen first introduced the use of as “individual substance” into Christian Trinitarian terminology. This is a remarkable innovation that laid the foundations of a consistent Trinitarian doctrine, and indeed proves fundamental in light of its Wirkungsgeschichte (reception history), especially in that it was inherited by Gregory of Nyssa and the orthodox Constantinopolitan formulation. But scholars have often failed to realize this innovation and, what is more, have left its intellectual background and roots in darkness. Even Jürgen Hammerstaedt’s foundational study does not pay to Origen and his sources of inspiration the attention they deserve.Footnote ⁴¹ Nor do many scholars who have studied the development of the hypostasis doctrine in later Christianity acknowledge the writings of Origen and his sources of inspiration—either in the past centuryFootnote ⁴² or in the latest years.Footnote ⁴³ The same is true also in connection with the Trinitarian concept of essence/substance Christopher Beeley takes a particular position regarding the relationship between and in the Trinity according to Gregory Nazianzen. Against a backdrop of causality and monarchy of the Father, divine unity is located “in the monarchy of the Father, by which the Father fully shares his being with the Son and the Spirit.”Footnote ⁴⁴ As noted by Christophe Erismann, John of Damascus posited as individual substance and as the essence of all members of a species. I observe this is Origen’s use; John inherited it via the Cappadocians and Maximus the Confessor.Footnote ⁴⁵

To my knowledge, only Alastair Logan has attempted to explain briefly what might have inspired Origen on this score, and has hypothesized that “gnostics,”Footnote ⁴⁶ especially “Valentinians,”Footnote ⁴⁷ first might have used this terminology in their Platonic exegesis.Footnote ⁴⁸

This is uncertain, however. First of all, let me point to Comm. Jo. 1.24.151, in which, as I have shown, Origen criticizes adversaries who deny that the Son has an individual substance different from that of the Father. If these adversaries were “Valentinians,” as is likely, this would suggest that there is more of an opposition than of a continuity between Origen’s notion of an individual for each Person of the Trinity and the Valentinian conception. Moreover, I have already observed that Origen’s technical use of to designate a nature that is one and the same for all Persons of the Trinity, and on the other hand one and the same for all rational creatures (whereas each divine Person and each rational creature has an individual substance of its own), developed in the context of his debate against “Valentinianism,” which divided humanity into three different natures or Thus, it is unlikely that there was a Valentinian notion of one and more for the divine nature just as for the human nature. Also, there is no evidence of a gnostic technical use of as “individual substance.”Footnote ⁴⁹ Marcellus of Ancyra may suggest this in a passage edited by Logan,Footnote ⁵⁰ but he uses the vocabulary of his post-Nicene times, and we cannot be sure that Valentinus used it. Marcellus is criticizing the Arians for their doctrine of three This is, of course, the doctrine that was eventually accepted by the church as “orthodox,” but Marcellus deemed it heretical and preferred to adhere to what has been defined as a “monoprosopic” view; in fact it was a “monohypostatic” view. In the passage under examination, Marcellus assimilates the Arians’ “heretical” doctrine to Valentinus’s “heretical” doctrine: the Arians “teach three hypostases just as Valentinus the heresiarch first invented in the book entitled by him On the Three Natures For he was the first to invent three hypostases and three Persons of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and he is discovered to have filched this from Hermes and Plato.” Marcellus uses and while the only thing that he literally quotes from Valentinus is the title of his book, On the Three Natures. This in fact referred to the three natures of human beings theorized by Valentinus, and and rejected by Origen. Marcellus, who ascribes to Valentinus the idea of three divine hypostases, which he himself rejects, states that Valentinus took it from Plato and Hermeticism. Remarkably, the association of and is not found either in “Gnosticism” or in Origen; it likely reflects Marcellus’s own fourth-century terminology.

Indeed, Origen never used as a synonym of in its Trinitarian meaning to designate a Person of the Trinity (whereas this usage is found in Hippolytus, roughly at the same time).Footnote ⁵¹ In its many occurrences in his writings, even when it refers to God, Christ, or the Spirit, means either “face/sight/presence,”Footnote ⁵² or “character” in a rhetorical-literary sense (the character who is speaking in a scene).Footnote ⁵³ In Sel. Ps. PG 12.1424.12 Origen means that the Son is “the face of the Father, as an impression of his individual substance,”Footnote ⁵⁴ and not “the Person of the Father.” He is the Father’s “face” in that he is the image of the Father’s substance (Heb 1:3; see below) and thus reveals the Father.Footnote ⁵⁵ The Son reveals the Father’s Person, but is not that Person. in Origen never means “Person” of the Trinity, at least never directly,Footnote ⁵⁶ unlike which designates each Person’s individual substance.

Moreover, Marcellus had a somewhat polemically motivated view of Origen’s Trinitarian thought, as is proved by his deeming Origen’s early works a basis for “Arianism,” especially for his idea that the Son is begotten by the Father’s will as a second hypostasis.Footnote ⁵⁷ On the basis of all the observations adduced so far, therefore, Marcellus cannot be considered a reliable source on Origen’s Trinitarian doctrine, its sources, and its aftermath. His assertion that it derives from “Valentinianism” is at best suspect.

The Sources of Origen’s Notion of The Philosophical Side

If the terminological and conceptual innovation of Origen in his notion of does not derive from Valentinianism, and given that no other suggestions seem to have been offered by scholarship so far, it is necessary to direct the present investigation elsewhere. On the basis of a systematic and complete examination of the use and meanings of the term in authors anterior to or contemporary with Origen, a Christian Platonist,Footnote ⁵⁸ I deem it very probable that Origen’s Trinitarian concept of as “individual substance” of each Person derives from Greek philosophy (besides the Bible, on which see below), and in particular from philosophers of the first and second century C.E.

Indeed, a methodical analysis, based on all extant linguistic evidence from the beginning of Greek literature to Origen’s time (first half of the third century C.E.), proves extremely fruitful. I shall not take into consideration here several meanings of that are well attested both in classical and in Judaic and Christian literature, but have only little to do with philosophical and theological concepts, such as “basement, foundation” of a building;Footnote ⁵⁹ “sediment” or even “excrement” or “abscess”;Footnote ⁶⁰ a kind of cloud (Diodorus Siculus, Bibl. hist. 1.38); the act of resisting or settling down (Aristotle, Mete. 368b line 12), of supporting,Footnote ⁶¹ or of lying in ambush (Sophocles, fr. 719). Also, means one’s wealth or property, especially in the LXXFootnote ⁶² and in papyri (POxy 1274.15), where it also means a document attesting property (POxy 237.viii.26). Other meanings are: “topic, subject” of a literary work, speech, etc.;Footnote ⁶³ “plan, intention” (Diodorus Siculus, Bibl. hist. 1.3, 1.28, 15.70, 16.32); “courage” (Polybius, Hist. 4.50.10, 6.55.2); or “hope” (Ezek 19:5; Ruth 1:12 [LXX]). Moreover, it was a technical term in Greek astrology and rhetoric, in the latter indicating the full expression of a concept (Hermogenes, De ideis 1.11).

But let me turn now to the philosophical side. The primary meaning of attested in philosophy is “substance,” which can be used in a generic or a very specific way. This meaning can also apply to material substances, such as a “dry substance” (Aristotle, Gen. an. 726a line 21: or wood (Theophrastus, Caus. plant. 5.16.4), or any other substance.Footnote ⁶⁴ One of the best attested meanings of is “substance” as “existence,” even “reality,” especially as opposed to “appearance” or “mental abstraction.” This is a relatively generic meaning and occurs very often from Hellenistic philosophy to Origen’s time (sometimes, as I have shown, this sense is used also by Origen himself).Footnote ⁶⁵ Notably, this is also the meaning attested for Gnosticism in the title of one of the most famous treatises from the Nag Hammadi library (NHC 2.4): the Hypostasis of the Archons, in which hypostasis (originally the Greek term, transliterated into Coptic) does not mean “individual existence,” as in Origen’s Trinitarian usage, but “reality” and “ontological consistence” as opposed to “fictitiousness.”Footnote ⁶⁶ The same meaning in Gnosticism is attested in Clement, Exc. 3.52.2: evil does not admit of any substance or ontological consistence per se.Footnote ⁶⁷ According to Hippolytus, Haer. 7.21.4–6, Basilides maintained that God, who is beyond being, gave substance to a seed of the cosmos, but he did not use in Origen’s Trinitarian sense. The seed, to which God “gave substance,” becomes the “foundation” of the cosmos; it is identified with the Sonship, which is said to have the same as the Father.Footnote ⁶⁸ Hippolytus is certainly one of the authors whom Eusebius had in mind when in his aforementioned Letter to his Church he, motivating the decision of the Nicene council, observed that was already used by some Christian bishops and writers,Footnote ⁶⁹ although it is not found in the Bible. In Irenaeus, Haer. 1.1.1, too, who is reporting gnostic ideas, the meaning of is “foundation of all,” not “individual substance.”Footnote ⁷⁰ The meanings attested in Gnosticism for do not include that of an individual substance and seem to be different from the technical Trinitarian meaning that the term bears in Origen.

The meaning “constitution” is also attested for for instance in the first century B.C.E. by Arius Didymus, Phys. fr. 2, in which both matter and form are declared to be indispensable “for the constitution of the body” Footnote ⁷¹ In the first century C.E. Cornutus allegorizes Zeus as the cause of the constitution and coming into existence of all realities.Footnote ⁷² Likewise, in the same epoch, Josephus C. Ap. 1.1 attests to the same meaning, by stating that the Jewish people is very ancient and had an independent origin.Footnote ⁷³ The same sense is testified to in the second century C.E. by Marcus Aurelius, repeatedly,Footnote ⁷⁴ and Alcinous.Footnote ⁷⁵ In Lucian, Par. 27, the meaning seems to be “coherent structure,” as is that of philosophy as opposed to different kinds of rhetoric.Footnote ⁷⁶

In Nicomachus—a first- to second-century C.E. author whom Origen knew very well, as attested by Porphyry— means both “substance” and “substratum, foundation”: “bodily and material realities imitate the nature of the eternal material substance that exists from the beginning ” (Intr. ar. 1.1.3). Here, means “material substance” or “material substratum” and designates the eternal, preexistent principle of matter. In Exc. Nicom. 7 seems to mean “structure, constitution”: “it is threefold, in that it receives its structure from the same, the different, and the essence, and, similarly to its structure it receives a treble differentiation into the rational, the irrational, and the physical part.” This applies to the soul and its threefold structure. The same is the case with another second-century Middle Platonist, Alcinous, in whose work I have already pointed out the meaning “origin” for In Did. 25.1, the soul is said to be an incorporeal essence “immutable in its constitution or substance” Immutability is a constitutive characteristic of the soul. On the contrary, “what is not” has no substance and no existence: (Did. 35.1). Again, the same meaning of in relation to the soul is found in another second-century Middle Platonist, Atticus, whose work survives only in fragments quoted by Eusebius and Proclus. In fr. 9.10, in turn quoted by Eusebius Praep. ev. 15.9, he claims that Dicaearchus in his psychology “has entirely destroyed the substance (or the structure) of the soul” Origen likely knew Atticus’s work, and I have argued elsewhere that Atticus and Origen held the same concept of the soul of God the creator.Footnote ⁷⁷

Now, among the meanings of in early imperial philosophy, the closest to Origen’s innovative application of to each Person of the Trinity is “separate, individual existence” or “separate substance of its own.” This meaning is found in several philosophical authors of the early imperial era whose works Origen either certainly or probably knew. It is on this usage in these authors that my research will now focus. The meaning “individual substance” for with the addition of the adjective interestingly emerges in Democritus, fr. 156, but one cannot be sure that it is not due to the early imperial source of the fragment, Plutarch:Footnote ⁷⁸ Democritus “called ‘something’ the body and ‘nothing’ the void, as though the latter, too, had a certain nature and a substance of its own” In Eudemus, fr. 150.2, seems to assume the meaning of “individual substance”; it designates each of “the three intelligible hypostases” identified with Ether, Eros, and Metis. However, the same proviso must be made: one cannot be certain that this was Eudemus’s own wording. A noteworthy fragment from Chrysippus (SVF 2.473) is reported by Alexander of Aphrodisias in De mixtione:Footnote ⁷⁹ “the soul, having its own substance just like the body that hosts it, extends through the whole of the body, but, while mixing with it, nevertheless it keeps its own substance ” Here the notion of an individual, separated substance of its own appears, but—differently from what can be seen in Origen, both in his Trinitarian usage and in reference to the logika—it is not distinctively conveyed by as differentiated from indeed, seem to be synonymic here, all the more so in that the same meaning is also conveyed, shortly after, by the third, equivalent expression All other uses of in Chrysippus mean “substance” or even “structure” or “existence,” and do not refer to an individual substance, proper to each representative of a species and different from that of every other representative.Footnote ⁸⁰ Notably, the expression in SVF 3.305 (virtues, inseparable from one another, belong to the soul’s directive part again parallels in 3.306, where the same concept is simply expressed with a different wording.

Philo’s use of is worth considering carefully, all the more so in that he is a philosopher-exegete with whose works Origen was notoriously well conversant. In Aet. 88 and 92 Philo insists on the idea of “a substance of its own”: the light or “has no substance per se but it derives from what precedes it, the coal and the flame … it has no substance of its own ” The light of the flame has no substance of its own. The concept, which here is denied in reference to the is that of an individual substance that originates from another but, from then on, is distinct from it. This is not dissimilar from Origen’s concept of the generation of the Son’s from that of the Father; each of them has a of his own.Footnote ⁸¹ What is different is that Philo feels the need to add specifiers to such as and to make it clear that he means the product’s individual substance, insofar as it is distinct from that of the producer. Origen usually will not add such specifiers in his Trinitarian terminology, since for him already means “individual substance” as distinct from which is the common essence of all the Persons of the Trinity. However, I have shown that even he sometimes adds to emphasize the notion of the individuality of a

Plutarch’s use of too, is worth exploring, being that of a Middle Platonist chronologically not far from Origen. But his conceptualization of is, interestingly, quite different. I have already cited above Adv. Col. 1109a, line 8 as a fragment from Democritus (fr. 156), which likely contains Plutarch’s own wording rather than a literal quotation from Democritus: Here the notion is, indeed, “a substance of its own”; however, and are used as synonyms—there is no question of an individual having a particular substance different from those of every other individual of the same species. In Pseudo-Plutarch we find in the sense of “substance” both in reference to bodily substanceFootnote ⁸² and in reference to things that “have a substance or subsistence of their own” as opposed to others that “are only apparent and have no subsistence of their own” Plac. philos. 894b, line 1). To specify this, the author felt the need to add to Moreover, here is understood in a material sense: an example of a thing that is is the rainbow, one of a thing that has a of its own is hail. A rainbow is considered to be merely apparent, while hail has material substance. The addition of to is also found in the anonymous second-century C.E. Middle-Platonic commentary on Plato’s Theaetetus 63: “Neither do the organs of sense-perception have a substance of their own.” It is not clear, however, whether an individual substance for each organ is meant. In 68 the notion of individuality is again attached to the concept of as is emphasized by the addition of the expressions and Footnote ⁸³

Numenius, the second-century Middle Platonist and Neopythagorean who was well known to Origen, as is attested both by Origen himself and by Porphyry, uses as ens geometricum, a geometrical entity.Footnote ⁸⁴ Since each geometrical figure is an entity of its own, the meaning of here seems to get close to that of “individual substance.” One of the authors who deserve the utmost attention in this connection is Soranus, a philosophical and medical author from the first half of the second century C.E. In his work, a special reflection is devoted to the constitution of a new individual substance from another individual substance.Footnote ⁸⁵ In Gyn. 2.27 Soranus observes that the new individual separates from the parent and constitutes “an individual substance of its own” so that it “enjoys an existence of its own” or “has its own individual substance” Gyn. 2.57; see also 4.5). Since previously meant “substance” or “existence” in general, rather than “individual substance,” Soranus here felt the need to add to convey the notion of a substance proper to a single being. In relation to Origen’s use of in reference to the Son and the Father, it is most interesting that here in Soranus the matter is of a child in respect to his or her mother, and how he acquires a substance of his own, different from that of his parent. Precisely this idea was transposed by Origen to the relationship between the Son and the Father, although, of course, Origen was concerned with the difference between the generation of the Son and the biological generation of humans and animals.Footnote ⁸⁶

Notably, Soranus, like Galen (who uses 159 times!),Footnote ⁸⁷ was also a philosopher and wrote a book On the Soul,Footnote ⁸⁸ now fragmentary, that was used by Tertullian in which he denied the immortality of the soul. Soranus was active in Alexandria and then in Rome, under Trajan and Hadrian, in the first four decades of the second century C.E. Origen probably had Soranus’s writings available, at least his work on the soul. Origen, too, as the Dialogue with Heraclides shows, discussed the question of the immortality of the soul, which he also denied in respect to the “real death” caused by evil. Origen was familiar with medical authors of his day, and seems to have read and followed Galen, for instance, on good health as being a result of a balance of humors, and the treatment of relevant disorders in Hom. Luc.1.Footnote ⁸⁹ Another interesting parallel with Galen is the following: just as Origen had his pupils study all the philosophical schools without becoming followers of one, in order to preserve their intellectual critical capacity,Footnote ⁹⁰ so did also Galen before him: he had his pupils study all the medical schools without becoming followers of one, in order to preserve their intellectual openness to rational argument.Footnote ⁹¹

Sextus Empiricus, too, the skeptic philosopher of the second/third century C.E., in Math. 9.338 expresses the notion of individual substance by means of A whole such as a human being, a plant, an animal, or an object, is “something else than the sum of its parts, and is conceived according to its own individual substance and essence ” Differently from Soranus, Sextus seems to treat and as virtual synonyms here. Sextus also uses in the widespread meaning of “substance” in general.Footnote ⁹² But he repeatedly presents the notion of individual substance conveyed by although usually with the addition of for example in Math. 2.219. Here Sextus is dealing with genera and species, which, in a hypothesis, are considered to be contents of thought but in the opposite hypothesis are considered to possess a substance of their own In 3.99 Sextus reflects again on the relationship between the whole and its parts: if the whole is merely the sum of its parts, it will have “no substance of its own” namely, no substance besides that of its parts. The same notion underlies 3.157: a number cannot be identified with the things that are numbered, but it has “a substance of its own” besides these things. If Sextus thought that each number had an individual substance, this would be very similar to Origen’s notion of an individual substance for each single representative of the same species. In Math. 8.161 Sextus is distinguishing things that are opposed to one another and things that are in a certain relation to one another; the former are “all those which are conceived in their own substance in an absolute way such as white/black or sweet/bitter.” In Math. 1.137 Sextus seems to assign an individual substance to each part or member: “parts are included in those things of which they are said to be parts, each of them occupying its own place and having its own substance ” But the most interesting passage for its similarity to Origen’s Trinitarian notion of is Math. 10.335–336:

This passage is crucial in that the issue is the generation of a substance from another substance; therefore, the situation parallels the generation of the Son from the Father and the problem of how to describe them in terms of their substances. Sextus’s argument could be read as suggesting the conclusion that the subject that generates remains in its individual substance, and the action of generating does not produce any alteration in it, not even in its qualities. This is what Origen maintained of the Father in the begetting of the Son. In Sextus’s discourse, it was possible to understand the producer’s individual substance as different from the individual substance of the product. This was certainly the way in which Origen understood the relationship between the Father and the Son. Sextus was an earlier contemporary of Origen; he lived circa 160–210 C.E., and he too, like Soranus and Galen, was both a physician and a philosopher. He seems to have lived in Alexandria. He also uses and as synonyms, but, like Origen, not when he means as “individual substance.” Thus, in Math. 10.335–336, in which has this technical meaning, he never replaces it with or This is because for him, just as for Origen, the generator and the generated have the same nature, but different individual substances.

Alexander of Aphrodisias is another philosopher certainly known to Origen (who very probably also inspired him in several respects)Footnote ⁹³ who deserves the utmost attention. In De Anima p. 19.19Footnote ⁹⁴ Alexander speaks of an independent substance, with both the nominal and the verbal expression of an independent substance. The soul and the spirit have different independent substances or and therefore it is inferred that the spirit cannot be described as a genus of the soul, since a genus has no independent substance of its own, but the spirit does have a substance of its own.Footnote ⁹⁵ This is not identical to Origen’s idea of a sharing of nature and a differentiation of individual but it is remarkable for the notion of a differentiation of On p. 88.7 Alexander is saying that the forms subsist ontologically per se, even without being conceived by an intellect;Footnote ⁹⁶ this is what it means that they have a “substance of their own” It is unclear, however, whether here Alexander is distinguishing the individual substance of each form. Alexander in De mixtione (pp. 216–17) is speaking of the Stoics; indeed, this passage is the same as Chrysippus’s fragment SVF 2.473, quoted above. I have already noticed that in this passage is close to both indicating the substance that is proper to the soul, in opposition to that of the body; these substances remain separate. Indeed, in Comm. in Met. (p. 83.32), Alexander uses as a synonymic couple. The expression (p. 110.13) probably means “in existence”Footnote ⁹⁷ and occurs again (on p. 230.26): “If they were beings and substances they would be in sense-perceptible bodies; for only these things are in existence but if they were not, they would not be substances either.” Only can be which may mean that only substances can subsist; indeed, they are also said to be existing beings. On p. 233.23, too, metaphysical form, nature, and substance seem to be virtual synonyms.Footnote ⁹⁸

On p. 180.4, corresponds to and indicates that the principles “have a substance of their own and exist per se” just as each individual being exists, unlike the genera and common species, which have no substance of their own—an idea that I have already pointed out in Sextus Empiricus—but exist only in being predicated. This passage is significant in that the substance is conceived as proper to each principle and to each of the beings, so that here seems to be understood as “individual substance.” This would be the same meaning as in Origen’s Trinitarian terminology: “individual substance,” each being in a species having its own distinct from that of the others. Genera and species do not have an individual substance but individual beings do (p. 18.12). The same concept underlies the following passage: “The principles become for them substances, and substances on their own, different from the others … for the substance of common species is not independent, ” (p. 234.33). It is notable that each principle becomes a substance of its own, different from the others. Again, however, and are close to each other, and the expressions and correspond to each other. On p. 199.20 Alexander is speaking of people who conceive mathematical entities by abstraction from sense-perceptible realities and do not ascribe to them “a substance of their own” It is not specified, but it seems to be probable, that each mathematical entity, just like each principle (see above), is considered to have its own individual substance.Footnote ⁹⁹ Finally, in In Analyt. Pr. (p. 4.10–13)Footnote ¹⁰⁰ there is an interesting differentiation, close to that drawn by Origen, between and the latter being paired with some things, such as matter and form, can be separated from one another only mentally and cannot subsist without one another in their actual existence but are different in their nature and essence Footnote ¹⁰¹ Here, therefore, the case is of realities with different but inseparable in their In the case of the Trinity, in Origen’s technical terminology, we find the opposite: three different but one and the same

A Revealing Comparison with Plotinus, and Porphyry’s Role: Origen’s Influence on Porphyry?

On the basis of the analysis that I have carried out, the philosophical background to Origen’s innovative notion of appears rich, and it seems probable that Origen did have at his disposal sources of inspiration in this respect in early imperial philosophical and medical authors. Plotinus is also very interesting with regard to the present investigation. He was a fellow disciple of Origen at Ammonius’s school and is considered to be the “inventor” of the three Neoplatonic hypostases.Footnote ¹⁰² Therefore, one might expect him to have a very innovative and specialized use of the term in his protology, comparable to that of Origen in the Trinitarian field. In fact, in Plotinus there are many occurrences of but, contrary to what one might suppose, these have general, rather than technical, meanings; they virtually never refer to the three hypostases of his triad of principles, the One, the Intellect, and the Soul. It seems to me that it was rather Porphyry who ascribed to Plotinus this technical meaning, as I shall argue.

Let me briefly analyze the use of in Plotinus’s work. Sometimes it is close in meaning to and denotes “substance.” Indeed, Plotinus at times seems to employ the two terms as synonyms, for instance in Enn. 6.4.9, in reference the production of a substance by the “first act.”Footnote ¹⁰³ In 6.2.4, the reference is to “an intelligible substance” that Plotinus describes as “truly being, or better One.” In Enn. 1.8.11 Plotinus is saying that privation is “not a substance per se” but is always found in something else.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ In 1.8.3 the meaning is “reality” or “substance”; Plotinus is asking: Which is the reality or substance in which aspects of evil are present without being different from that reality, but being that reality itself?Footnote ¹⁰⁵ In 2.9.1 Plotinus focuses on the distinction between “in theory” and “in fact” (implying the distinction between real existence and mere conceptuality or non-existence), speaking of the One, or the Good, against the gnostics: “If the gnostics say that the distinction between various Intellects is only theoretical and therefore not of substance, so that there is no distinction between substances, but only one substance], first of all they will have to renounce the plurality of substances” In Enn. 5.3.12 Plotinus is speaking of the procession of various operative powers or activities from the Intellect, which is one; these activities, remaining forever, will be considered to be substances these substances, precisely because they are substances and not simply modalities or qualities, will be different from the Intellect, from which they derive.Footnote ¹⁰⁶

Sometimes is a synonym of “existence,” for instance in 3.7.13, where Plotinus remarks that in case one should claim that time is “not in existence or subsistence” it is clear that one does not tell the truth in positing it, when saying “it was” or “it will be.” Likewise, in 1.4.9 it is argued that if the existence of wisdom is “in a substance, or better the substance” this substance does not perish. Similarly in 2.5.5, speaking of matter, Plotinus observes: “If you introduce actuality into those things that have being and substance in potency, you have destroyed the cause of their existence in that being for them was in potency.” Here, just as in the previous passage, “substance” is whereas means “existence.” The same is the case also in 1.8.15.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ In 6.4.9 means again “existence”: means “all that which has its existence from something else,” and likewise in 6.6.11–12, in which Plotinus is focusing on the henad or unit.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ Here does not designate the hypostasis of the One, but means “existence” much more generically. In 6.6.13, the meaning of is again “subsistence, existence,” not “hypostasis”: the One is necessary “for the existence of every substance” Footnote ¹⁰⁹ A lexical hue related to the meaning “existence” and found in Plotinus is “reality,” as opposed to non-existence, fictitiousness, and the like.Footnote ¹¹⁰ Another meaning of attested in Plotinus is “way of being,” exemplified for instance in 6.6.5, where indicates the way of being of the number, which makes it not a substance but an accident.Footnote ¹¹¹ Another meaning of which was already found in Greek beforehand, as I have documented above, is also attested in Plotinus, namely that of “constitution, production,” in this case production of a substance (5.5.3).Footnote ¹¹²

In 5.6.3, very interestingly, the notion emerges of an individual and autonomous substance or existence, however not in reference to one of the supreme principles, later called hypostases, but in a discussion concerning the parts of a compound: “One thing that is simple cannot constitute by itself that which is a compound of many elements, since none of these can have an individual substance or existence,” a Footnote ¹¹³ The use of in relation to the Good (the One) requires an especially careful consideration in order to establish whether it can indicate the hypostasis of the One/Good. In (6.8.13), Plotinus takes up Plato’s expression “the nature of the Good,” from Philebus (20d line 1, 54c line 10, 60b lines 4–10), changing into and immediately after he also speaks of the of the Good; therefore, it seems that and are almost synonyms and indicate the substance of the Good. As a consequence, although it refers to the Good, cannot be taken here as a technical term as in Origen, who has a clear distinction between and in the Trinity. Likewise, in 6.8.15 Plotinus uses in reference to the Good, which he describes as “first substance,” in the same way as in 6.6.10. Footnote ¹¹⁴ However, not even here can be regarded as the technical term “hypostasis,” being rather a synonym of or In particular, in 6.6.10 Plotinus is explaining that the first substance/nature/being/essence (not “hypostasis”) is that of the Good, while the others are those substances or beings that are not good by nature, but by accident.

Plotinus never uses to indicate a hypostasis in a technical sense, that is, to indicate his three first principles. He does not employ this term in the way Origen does, to designate the individual substance of one person different from the individual substance of every other within the same nature be the latter the divine or the human nature, or the rational nature of the logika. Indeed, in the case of Plotinus’s three principles, not only would it be improper to speak of Persons, like those of the Trinity or of humanity or the logika, but the relationship between the One, the Nous, and the Soul is not a relation of equality, whereas the Persons of the Trinity (and those composing humanity and the whole nature of the logika) are equal. This was already suggested by OrigenFootnote ¹¹⁵ and was then emphasized by Gregory of Nyssa, who knew Plotinus and was inspired by him in many respects (Gregory ascribed to the whole Trinity the characteristics of Plotinus’s One). These distinctions between Plotinus’s triad and Origen’s Trinity are clear, as are those between their respective terminologies.

But Porphyry, paradoxically enough,Footnote ¹¹⁶ would seem to be responsible for an assimilation. For it is arguably Porphyry who ascribed the technical use of (as “hypostasis,” in reference to the three principles), very similar to Origen’s technical use of the term, to Plotinus. In Vit. Plot. 25, indeed, Porphyry himself attests this usage in his well-known redactional workFootnote ¹¹⁷ he entitled Enn. 5.1 “On the three Hypostases that constitute the principles,” This title was obviously not given by Plotinus. Likewise, in Vit. Plot. 4, Porphyry repeats the title of Enn. 5.1; moreover, the title Porphyry has given to Enn. 5.3 reads again: It is especially in the famous title of Enn. 5.1 that the technical meaning of as “hypostasis” emerges. The One, the Intellect, and the Soul are the three principal Hypostases. This is much more Porphyry’s terminology than Plotinus’s.

But why did Porphyry introduce this innovation? Which examples or sources of inspiration did he have for such a conceptualization of as “hypostasis”? I suspect that he may even have been inspired by Origen, whose work he knew quite well, and by his technical use of which Porphyry transposed from the Trinity to Plotinus’s triad of first principles.Footnote ¹¹⁸ In fact, both the “hypostatic” meaning of which Porphyry ascribed to Plotinus, and the identification of the three hypostases with the or first principles of all that exists, make me suspect that Porphyry may have had in mind Origen’s Trinitarian technical terminology of and his philosophical masterpiece Footnote ¹¹⁹ For here Origen presents God the Trinity as the principle of all, and more specifically the three of the Christian Trinity as the of all reality.Footnote ¹²⁰

In Origen declares that he wants to work on and complete what is revealed in Scripture, and to apply to the latter the philosophical research and parameters of Greek philosophy (Princ. 1 pr. 9–10).Footnote ¹²¹ Thus, he begins by dealing with the first God, and in particular with the Father, the first the Son, who is presented as Wisdom and Logos, the seat of the Ideas; and the Spirit. Origen constantly bases his argument on Scripture and proceeds via rational deduction throughout his He immediately adds a treatment of the rational natures’ participation in the Good, that is, God, the fall, and the apokatastasis.Footnote ¹²² Thanks to such an application of philosophy to Scripture, Origen won for the Church the most culturally-demanding and philosophically-minded people, who often were attracted by various forms of Gnosticism. He made it impossible to accuse Christianity any longer of being a religion for simpletons and unlearned people. Therefore, he was esteemed as a philosopher by several non-Christian philosophers, such as Porphyry himself. Porphyry also wrote a Footnote ¹²³ in which he demonstrated the eternity of the second hypostasis, the Intellect. He surely knew both the homonymous work by Longinus, who was his teacher, and that by Alexander of Aphrodisias, whose writings were regularly read at Plotinus’s classes, which he attended. But he certainly knew Origen’s as well.

Indeed, Porphyry knew Origen’s thought and philosophical sources in depth. In a of his, preserved by Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 6.19.4–8, from the third book of Porphyry’s writing against the Christians,Footnote ¹²⁴ he described Origen as an excellent philosopher who reasoned as a Greek in metaphysical matters, although he lived as a Christian, therefore “against the law.” In this fragment Porphyry, after disapproving of the application of philosophical allegoresis to the Bible, states that the initiator of this hermeneutical method was Origen, whom he depicts as nevertheless illustrious for his writings. Porphyry states that he met Origen when he was young,Footnote ¹²⁵ that Origen’s parents were Greek, and that he received a Greek education, but then he embraced a “barbarian way of life.” Porphyry indeed draws a sharp opposition between Origen’s way of life which was Christian, and Origen’s philosophy, which was Greek. Ιn metaphysics and theology, according to Porphyry, Origen was a Greek philosopher, and he interpreted Scripture in the light of philosophy.Footnote ¹²⁶ A noteworthy list of Origen’s favorite philosophical readings follows (Hist. Eccl. 6.19.8), largely coinciding with the authors read by Plotinus and his disciples: Plato, Middle Platonists and Neopythagoreans, and Stoic allegorists. Porphyry regarded Origen as a convert to Christianity, a Christian in his life but a Greek philosopher in his metaphysics and theology.

Precisely because he considered Origen’s metaphysical principles to be Greek, Pophyry felt a profound continuity between Origen’s discourse on the three of all (that is to say, the Trinity) and Plotinus’s discourse on the three of all (i.e., his protological triad: the One, the Intellect, and the Soul). And, since Origen used in a technical sense for his own three Porphyry may indeed have applied this term to Plotinus’s three as well, although Plotinus’s triad presents considerable divergences from Origen’s Trinity, and although “” as I have pointed out, was not a technical term in Plotinus for an individual substance different from the other individual substances that share in the same essence or nor was it used by him in the sense of “hypostasis” proper, to designate specifically his three principles. The present supposition would gain even more strength if Origen the Christian and Origen the Neoplatonist, mentioned by Porphyry in his Vita Plotini and by later Neoplatonists, were in fact one and the same person. Interestingly, Porphyry attributes his own description of demonology in De abstinentia to “some of the Platonists”; indeed, this work is based on Origen’s work on the demons, which Porphyry mentions in his biography of Plotinus as a work of Origen the Neoplatonist.Footnote ¹²⁷

My suspicion that the technical use of hypostasis in Plotinus’s titles, created by Porphyry and inspired by Origen, is further strengthened by the fact that Porphyry himself, in his own linguistic use, did not employ in the aforementioned technical sense. For, in Porphyry’s own writings, means “existence, way of existence,” or seems to be nearly a synonym of Footnote ¹²⁸ These are the same meanings I have detected in Plotinus. Thus, in ascribing the technical notion of “hypostasis” to Plotinus’s three principles, Porphyry seems to have drawn, not on his own or Plotinus’s terminology, but on some other source of inspiration. I have argued that this source is probably Origen’s technical, Trinitarian meaning of which Porphyry then transposed to Plotinus’s triad of principles.

Of course, Porphyry would never have admitted that he had taken such a fundamental conception from Origen (given that Origen, albeit an excellent philosopher in his opinion, was nevertheless a Christian); he rather endeavored to refer Plotinus’s three hypostases back to Plato, as is revealed by the following passage from Book 4 of Porphyry’s History of Philosophy:Footnote ¹²⁹

Thus, Porphyry claims that Plato posited the three principles that were later theorized by Plotinus, and called them “hypostases,” and not only this, but that Plato even ascribed to these three principles one and the same divine Remarkably, this was not Plato’s own theological doctrine,Footnote ¹³⁰ nor even Plotinus’s interpretation of Plato (in Enn. 5.1.8 he does refer to the Second Letter and its “three kings” as a basis for his own three principles, but with no mention of hypostases!), nor any Middle Platonist’s doctrine or exegesis of Plato proper, but it rather resembles much more closely Origen’s view of the Trinity: God is the Good, the Son is the agent of creation, and the Spirit is the third principle; they all share the same divine but they are three different I am further confirmed in my suspicion by the fact that in his Porphyry criticizes the Johannine presentation of Christ as God’s Logos by reading it through the lenses of Origen’s understanding of the Son having the same as the Father but a different The fragment is reported by three Byzantine authors, but only one version was included in Harnack’s collectionFootnote ¹³¹ as fr. 86;Footnote ¹³² the two other versions come from Psellus.Footnote ¹³³ The most complete and relevant to the present argument is Psellus’s first quotation:

Now, Porphyry was reading John 1:1 with Origen’s interpretation of Christ-Logos in mind; therefore he argued that, if the Logos is it cannot have an let alone a divine and if it is it cannot have a of its own, separated from the Father. Porphyry’s parallel fr. 86 is also telling, in that it shows that he argues that Christ-Logos, being neither nor —exactly what Origen claimed (see below)!— cannot be a Logos at all.Footnote ¹³⁵ This conclusion is diametrically opposed to Origen’s and, I suspect, is aimed at refuting it. Indeed, among Christian authors, Theophilus, Autol. 2.22 had presented the Logos of God as a Logos that never separates from the Father, but he had no Trinitarian notion of as individual substance. But Origen had it, and Origen, precisely in a polemic with another imperial Platonist, Celsus, discussed John 1:1 in the light of the categories of logos and In Cels. 6.65 Origen refuses to apply the notions of logos or to Christ-Logos, since these can only be applied to human logos, whereas the divine Logos is superior; the divine Logos-Son can grasp God, and even reveal God, whereas the human logos cannot.Footnote ¹³⁶ In the same way, in fr. 118 on John, Origen applied the concept of logos not to Christ, but to the human rational faculty or over which Christ-Logos presides.Footnote ¹³⁷ Likewise in Comm. Matt. 11.2.12 Origen, interpreting the multiplication of loaves and fishes, speaks of logos and in reference to human reason: after equating the bread with the rational faculty that Jesus can expand in each person, he interprets the two fishes as the two kinds of this faculty, logos and logos In Schol. Apoc. 9, too, Origen refers the idea of logos to the human logos, and not to the divine Logos.Footnote ¹³⁸ Again, in Exp. Prov. PG 17.252.12 Origen applies the same notion of logos to the human rational faculty, and not to the divine Logos.Footnote ¹³⁹ The same line was followed by three Origenist theologians: Eusebius, who refused to apply the notions of logos and to Christ-Logos and blamed Marcellus for doing so;Footnote ¹⁴⁰ Athanasius, who even had the assimilation of Christ-Logos to the logos and included in anathemas (Syn. 27.3.8); and Gregory of Nyssa, who, like Eusebius, found this assimilation “Sabellian,” in that it denied the separate hypostasis of the Son.Footnote ¹⁴¹

Porphyry likely knew at least Origen’s and Contra Celsum, and probably even his Commentary on John, which included many philosophical treatments. Porphyry’s polemical fragment did not simply address John 1:1, but implied Origen’s notion of Christ-Logos as having the same as the Father but a of his own.Footnote ¹⁴² When Porphyry claimed that Christ-Logos, if it is neither nor is not even a logos, he clearly had in mind Origen’s thesis that Christ-Logos is neither nor since Origen was the only Christian supporter of this thesis then. Precisely Porphyry’s polemic and Origen’s interpretation were known to Eusebius—the author of an extensive refutation of Porphyry—who reflects them in Eccl. theol. 2.9.1. Here he posits the same problem of the individual subsistence of the Son-Logos as raised by Porphyry, and even uses the same notion and vocabulary of Christ-Logos from the Father as found in Porphyry’s objection; he turns it against Marcellus, but not to claim that Christ is a logos he rather asserts that Christ-Logos is similar to it.Footnote ¹⁴³

One last hint is found in the title and content of Eusebius’s Praep. ev. 11.21. Its title, chosen by Eusebius himself, exactly coincides with that chosen by Porphyry for Enn. 5.1: Footnote ¹⁴⁴ This cannot be accidental, all the more in that here, on the basis of the Platonic Second Letter 312d–e (the same that Plotinus cited in Enn. 5.1.8 to provide a basis for his doctrine of the three principles, but notably without speaking of hypostases, unlike Porphyry), Eusebius argues that Plato’s triad depends on the “Jewish oracles,” the Sapientia Salomonis. This theology was interpreted by “the exegetes of Plato,” i.e., Plotinus and Porphyry, as a reference to the three hypostases (“first god,” “second cause,” and “third god” or world soul), and by the Christian tradition as a reference to the Trinity. This tradition was represented by Clement, who interpreted the “three kings” of the Second Letter in reference to both the Trinity and the Platonic principles. But Eusebius knew that it was Origen who first spoke of the Persons of the Trinity in terms of hypostases, probably inspiring even Porphyry, who read Plotinus’s principles as individual substances in Origen’s sense, and who further tried to ascribe this novelty, not to Origen, but to Plato, who in fact did not anticipate it. Porphyry had the Second Letter in mind, that to which Clement, Origen, Plotinus, and then Eusebius referred. Clement, Origen, and Plotinus may have derived the interpretation of that letter from Ammonius; Eusebius was well acquainted with their, and Porphyry’s, exegesis of that letter. Now, Plotinus did not speak of hypostases in his exegesis of it, but Porphyry, inspired by Origen, did so in his history of philosophy and in the title he chose for Enn. 5.1, and Eusebius’s choice of his own title suggests that he was thinking precisely of Origen and Porphyry. Did he suspect any influence of the former on the latter?

On the basis of the analysis of the terminology in Plotinus and Porphyry that I have conducted, and of all the considerations I have expounded in the course of the present section, I do suspect a possible influence of Origen on Porphyry in respect to the technical meaning of as “hypostasis.” Porphyry might have even ascribed it to Plotinus under the influence of Origen, an influence that, however, he would have never acknowledged. This is why Porphyry attempted, rather, to trace this innovation back to Plato. This would not be the only example of Origen’s influence on Porphyry. For instance, Robert M. Grant has maintained that Origen’s Stromateis inspired many exegetical quaestiones in his work against the Christians.Footnote ¹⁴⁵

The Scriptural Side: Hebrews 1:3

In addition to the philosophical side, Scripture must necessarily be taken into consideration in an investigation into the sources of Origen’s technical conception of For, besides Greek philosophers, Origen’s thought was informed by the Bible, both the LXX and the New Testament, and he always buttressed his rational arguments, even in his philosophical masterpiece, with scriptural quotations and interpretations. In the New Testament, the meaning “confidence” for is found in Paul’s authentic letters, especially 2 Corinthians.Footnote ¹⁴⁶ But the most interesting passages for the present investigation belong to the Book of Hebrews. Here the sense “confidence” is found again, at least in 3:14; while in 2 Corinthians the connotation is always negative, here it is very positive, and as “confidence” assumes a meaning that is very close to “faith.”Footnote ¹⁴⁷ Indeed, in 11:1 appears in the very definition of “faith”: The expression is difficult to translate; the RSV, like the ASV, renders: “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for”; the KJV, like the Webster, is closer to Dante’s rendering, less ethical and more ontological: “Faith is the substance of things hoped for” (Dante had: “Fede è sustanza di cose sperate,” Par. 24.64). Likewise the Darby Bible: “Faith is the substantiating of things hoped for.” In his Latin version of Origen’s Commentary on Romans (4.6), Rufinus, adhering to the “ontological” line, translated in a quotation of Heb 3:14 as substantia. The same translation is found in the Vetus Latina and the Vulgate.Footnote ¹⁴⁸

But the passage from Hebrews that most of all seems to have influenced Origen’s Trinitarian use of is surely 1:3, in which the Son is described as (sc. of the Father).Footnote ¹⁴⁹ The Son is the effulgence of the Father’s glory and the expression, the express image, stamp, imprint, or exact representation, of the Father’s own substance. It is remarkable that this is precisely the passage on which Origen commented while asserting the coeternity of the Son with the Father in the aforementioned fragment quoted by Athanasius, to which I shall return in a moment. And in Heb 1:3 Origen found that a Person of the Trinity, in this case the Father, has a of its own. The Son is like the impression of the individual substance of the Father; thus, he must in turn have a of his own, different from that of the Father.

The notion of that emerges in Heb 1:3 is similar to that which I have pointed out in Philo. Indeed, there exist interesting convergences between Hebrews and Philo, whose works, according to some scholars, were known to the author of the letter.Footnote ¹⁵⁰ Most recently, Folker Siegert has claimed that, among New Testament writings, “the clearest evidence of at least indirect Philonic influence are the Epistle to the Hebrews and the Gospel of John.”Footnote ¹⁵¹ The former was addressed to Jewish Christians in Rome and, according to some scholars, its author may be Prisca, one of the first apostles and heads of churches; Siegert dates it before 68 C.E. and, while admitting that there is no evidence that Roman Jews possessed Philo’s writings at that time, he deems it safe to assume that the author of Hebrews, like other Jews in Rome, “may have learned of Philo’s teachings orally, even from hearing him directly.”Footnote ¹⁵² To the convergences already highlighted by scholars (for instance, in the conception of the Logos, in that of angels, in the interpretation of the Tabernacle, etc.) I add the present one concerning the concept of Even more specifically, just as Philo in the aforementioned passage in which he used in the sense of “individual substance” was speaking of the so is the author of Hebrews here speaking of the Son as an of the Father’s glory; and as such he also defines him as the expression of the Father’s individual substance. In the light of this previously unnoticed close parallel, I wonder whether the author of Hebrews even had Philo’s passage in mind while he was describing the Son in such terms. The correspondences are indeed striking, to the point of suggesting a dependence on Philo’s passage:

In this passage of Hebrews, whether or not influenced by Philo, Origen found a concept of as individual substance, furthermore one specifically applied to the Father and the Son. He then interpreted what he found in the New Testament concerning the of the Son and the Father in light of the philosophical use of in particular that found in the early imperial period.

In order to demonstrate that Origen’s Trinitarian notion of developed in connection with his exegesis of Heb 1:3, let me briefly analyze all extant passages in which he interprets this biblical verse.Footnote ¹⁵⁴ In Hom. Jer. 9.4 he quotes Heb 1:3 joined to Wis 7:26 in support of the eternal generation of the Son from the Father, just as the light always produces its splendor;Footnote ¹⁵⁵ he only quotes the first part of the verse, not the subsequent phrase containing Likewise in Comm. Jo. 13.25.153 he quotes the first part, combining it with Wis 7:25–26, and again in 32.28.353, within a reflection on the glory of God. The same theme occurs again in Comm. Rom. 2.5.59–63, in which Origen quotes the second part of the verse as well: Rufinus translated as substantia, and Origen interpreted the verse in reference to the generation of the Son as the irradiation of the glory of the Father, who is its source.Footnote ¹⁵⁶ The mediating role of Christ-Logos is clear in this description, in which Christ-Logos is the seat of all Ideas, therefore of all virtues, all capacities, etc. Rational creatures do not possess these virtues, capacities, and so on, but participate in them insofar as they participate in Christ-Logos.Footnote ¹⁵⁷ Likewise, in 4.8.111–117 the definition of Christ in Heb 1:3 is quoted entirely and is rendered as substantia.Footnote ¹⁵⁸ In Princ. 1.2.5, too, Origen joins Heb 1:3 to Wis 7:25–26: the Son’s individual substance is here rendered subsistentia by Rufinus as a translation of in line with his technical rendering (shortly beforehand, in the quotation from Heb 1:3, is rendered by Rufinus as substantia, but probably under the influence of the Vetus Latina).Footnote ¹⁵⁹ This is confirmed by Princ. 1.2.2, in which Origen speaks of the Son’s individual substance, identifying the Son with God’s eternal Wisdom. Origen thus counters a “monarchian” view of the Trinity, which denies that the Son had an individual substance; on the contrary, he claims that the Son-Wisdom is not “anything without substance” (aliquid insubstantivum), but “something that makes people wise: the Son of God is God’s Wisdom which subsists as an individual substance” (res aliqua quae sapientes efficiat: Filium Dei sapientiam eius esse substantialiter subsistentem). The last two words are of the utmost importance; the underlying Greek here likely was in any case, or a derivative was surely present in Origen’s syntagm. Origen clearly insists on the notion of the Son’s individual, independent, and real substance, his and develops this precisely while reflecting on the definition of the Son in Heb 1:3.

In Princ. 1.2.8 Origen focuses specifically on the explanation of the meaning of in Heb 1:3. In Rufinus’s translation, he comments on Heb 1:3, “figura expressa substantiae vel subsistentiae eius,” trying to determine “how the figure of the Father’s individual substance is said to differ from the individual substance or existence of God the Father” (quomodo alia praeter ipsam Dei substantiam vel subsistentiam … figura substantiae eius esse dicatur). Here Rufinus rendered as substantia et subsistentia, twice, probably feeling that substantia alone—as was translated in the Vetus Latina and then the Vulgate—could also render (indeed, Socrates, in a time very close to Rufinus’s, in Hist. Eccl. 3.7 noticed that “the more recent philosophers” used in the sense of therefore “substance, essence”); Rufinus wanted to avoid ambiguity in the light of Origen’s focus on as “individual substance.” It is noteworthy that in the passage under examination Origen conceives the Son as a that is different from the Father’s “alia praeter ipsam Dei substantiam vel subsistentiam” (here, Rufinus first quotes the Vetus Latina’s translation of substantia, then adds his own, more technical, version: subsistentia). The Son’s individual substance differs from that of the Father; however, it is an image of it and reveals it: “secundum hoc ipsum, quod intelligi atque agnosci facit Deum, figuram substantiae vel subsistentiae eius dicatur exprimere.”

The same is confirmed in Princ. fr. 33, from Athanasius Decr. 27, which I have quoted above in extenso and which supports my idea that Origen developed his Trinitarian notion of as “individual substance” in the context of his exegesis of Heb 1:3. In this core passage, Origen observes that the Son is the image, or expression, of the Father’s individual substance or hypostasis, which is ineffable,Footnote ¹⁶⁰ and furthermore insists on the coeternity of the Father’s and the Son’s individual substances. Here indicates the individual substance of the Father, not the common substance/nature of the Father and the Son, which Origen calls and this meaning, as I argue, was suggested by Origen’s reflection on Heb 1:3. Also, in Hom. Gen. 1.13 Origen is saying that the human being is made in the image of God, that is, Christ, who is “splendor aeterni luminis et figura expressa substantiae Dei,” that is to say, of the individual substance of the Father. Here substantia translates (Rufinus kept again the translation of the Vetus Latina, since this is a biblical quotation; this is why he did not use his technical subsistentia) and Origen interprets it as the Father’s individual substance, as is confirmed by the equation Deus = Pater in the immediately subsequent lines.

An interesting corroboration comes from a change in terminology in Cels. 7.17. Here, Origen paraphrases Heb 1:3, but transforms which in his own Trinitarian terminology is technical (the Father’s or the Son’s “individual substance”), into which is more apt to the debate with a Middle Platonist. Thus, the concept here is no longer the Father’s individual substance, of which the Son is the express image, but the nature of God altogether.Footnote ¹⁶¹ Indeed, Middle Platonic theology did not contemplate three Persons being one God, but a first and a second (and sometimes a third) God, the second functioning as a mediator.Footnote ¹⁶² But in the same work, when his argument requires this, Origen does introduce his Trinitarian terminology and distinction, interestingly again in connection with a discussion and quotation of Heb 1:3, in Cels. 8.12. Here Origen distinguishes between the individual substance of the Father and that of the Son: in their respective individual substance, the Father and the Son are two distinct beings, but in their concord they are one and the same thing.Footnote ¹⁶³

One of the most important attestations of Heb 1:3 in Origen, and one of the most relevant to my present argument, is found in Princ. fr. 33 quoted by Athanasius (Decr. 27), which I have already cited, since here Origen’s reflection on Heb 1:3 leads him to assert the coeternity of Christ-Logos with the Father (indeed, this is one of the main attestations of Origen’s use of the formula anti-“Arian” ante litteram; Origen himself imported it from the Greek philosophical debate into the christological field, as I hope to have demonstrated elsewhereFootnote ¹⁶⁴). Here, indeed, Origen argues that the Son, being the image of the individual substance of the Father, which is entirely ineffable, must necessarily exist eternally and have existed ab aeterno.Footnote ¹⁶⁵ That Origen attached the argument for the coeternity of the Father and the Son to his reflection on in Heb 1:3 is also confirmed by Princ. fr. 32.Footnote ¹⁶⁶

Two other passages are revealing. They come from Origen’s lost commentary on Hebrews,Footnote ¹⁶⁷ are preserved by Pamphilus, a reliable source, and focus on Heb 1:3. The first indicates that Origen was accused of positing two equal principles, precisely for his Trinitarian reflection on the relationship between the Father and the Son, each one endowed with an individual substance of his own, and exactly in connection with his exegesis of Heb 1:3 and Wis 7:25–26 and his postulation of the coeternity of the Son with the Father:

Origen was charged with the introduction of two equal and innate principles, as is also confirmed by Pamphilus Apol. 87: “they say he described the Son of God as innate” (dicunt eum innatum dicere Filium Dei). Such an accusation is easily understandable in the light of his distinction of two or individual substances, one of the Father and one of the Son. Marcellus of Ancyra, fr. 37, from Eusebius C. Marc. 1.4, accused Origen of regarding the Logos as a second substance, clearly because of Origen’s characterization of the Logos as a distinct hypostasis, different from that of the Father. Marcellus misunderstood Origen because he did not grasp the difference between and drawn by Origen in his technical terminology.

The second passage, too, Apol. 95–99, comes from the section on Heb 1:2–4 of Origen’s lost commentary on Hebrews. And it clearly shows—strongly confirming what I have argued—that it was precisely in commenting on Heb 1:3, in connection with Wis 7:25–26, that Origen reflected on, and established, the technical Trinitarian usage of the terms and and possibly also In Apol. 95 Origen supports the doctrine that the Son of God is God against “eos quos piget confiteri Deum esse Filium Dei,” and observes that human nature has nothing of divine substance (substantia) in itself. Here “substance,” translated substantia by Rufinus, does not mean the individual substance of each Person of the Trinity, but divine nature or essence; it must have been in Greek. In the same passage, substantia, subsistentia, and natura probably render, respectively, and In Apol. 99 Origen focuses on the generation of the Son from God’s substance, the divine essence or Footnote ¹⁶⁹ hence a communio substantiae between the Father and the Son. Here substantia clearly reflects Greek The Father and the Son are two distinct individuals who share in the same Therefore, the Son is (id est unius substantiae, as Rufinus glosses, thus giving the impression that the Greek term was indeed in Origen’s text) with the Father. Pamphilus’s conclusion in Apol. 100 summarizes: Filium Dei de ipsa Dei substantia natum dixerit, id est (quod est eiusdem cum Patre substantiae, Rufinus glosses again).Footnote ¹⁷⁰ Soon after, in Apol. 102, the term was surely introduced in the original Greek in Origen’s technical Trinitarian sense to designate the Son’s individual substance and existence, in a quotation from Princ. 1.2.6: “The Father’s will must be enough for the existence of what the Father wants [ad subsistendum hoc quod uult Pater] … the individual substance of the Son [Filii subsistentia] is generated by him.” Here subsistentia renders and ad subsistendum renders or a form of

It is clear, therefore, from all I have argued so far, that Origen’s reflection on the individual substances or of the Persons of the Trinity (for which Origen does not use the term as I have demonstrated) and their common divine nature and essence rests upon two main sources of inspiration: one philosophical and one scriptural, the latter mainly consisting in Heb 1:3. These sources should be considered to be intertwined, in that Origen read Scripture in the light of philosophy (especially Middle Platonism and proto-Neoplatonism). Moreover, Scripture itself was far from being impermeable to philosophy; in particular, Heb 1:3 reveals striking correspondences with Philo, as I have pointed out.

A remarkable confirmation of the importance of Heb 1:3 for the understanding of intra-Trinitarian relationships comes from a theologian who was deeply inspired by Origen, especially in his Trinitarian doctrine: Gregory of Nazianzus.Footnote ¹⁷¹ For he surely had in mind Origen’s reflection on Heb 1:3 and his theory of Christ’s when he listed and the two characterizations of the Son in Heb 1:3, among those of Christ that reveal the divinity of the Son (Or. 29.17), and again among the of Christ that imply that the Son has the same nature as the Father (Or. 30.20).

Apart from Heb 1:3 and the New Testament, Origen of course knew the use of in the LXX. Here, like in early Christian authors who were influenced by the Greek Bible, means the existence of an individual, thus the duration of his or her life, or its beginning, its origin, for instance in Ps 88(89):48; Ps 38(39):6;Footnote ¹⁷² Ignatius Phil. 12.3: “God is the cause of my birth and the Lord and preserver of my existence” This is a meaning that actually has to do with the notion of individual substance or existence; I deem it probable that Origen, who knew the Septuagint practically by heart, in addition to knowing many Greek philosophical sources, was indeed influenced by this usage as well.

From the examination I have conducted in the present section, it emerges that Origen’s specific notion of in the Trinitarian field developed not only on the basis of the influence of early imperial philosophy, but also in connection with his Scriptural exegesis, especially of Heb 1:3, whether or not the notion of in this passage was inspired in turn by Philo, another author well known to Origen.