В физике — умении о природе — Ориген придерживается мнения, что природа гварна и двойственна. Одну ее часть составляют разумные существа, разделяемые по характеру воплощения на ангелов, людей и демонов, а другую — телесная материя. Нынешний мир создан Богом как реакция на грехопадение разумных существ. Материальное разнообразие форм есть следствие греховного разнообразия пожеланий. Мир ограничен в пространстве и во времени, поскольку в противном случае он был бы непроницаем для Бога. Однако наш космос не единственный. Прежде сотворения и после конца света были и будут иные Вселенные, которые не идентичны друг другу, поскольку Сын Божий воплотился только в нашем мире. Ориген в духе своего времени придерживается концепции геоцентризма.

Ангелология Оригена вслед за ап. Павлом насчитывает пять чинов (у Дионисия Ареопагита — девять): престолы, господства, архонты (начальства), власти и силы. Все разумные существа одной природы и причастны идее разума, т. е. Сыну Божиему. Демоны — это падшие ангелы, а совершенные люди ничем не отличаются от ангелов. Разумные существа не рождаются н не умирают, но переселяются из одного тела в другое соответственно своим поступкам.

Этика Орнгена направлена на достижение совершенства. Ориген обращает внимание, что Бог задумал сотворить человека «по образу и подобию» Своем)’, однако сотворил его только по образу. Отсюда следует вывод о незавершенной природе человека, которая должна быть завершена. Этот проект в христианском богословии получил название «спасения».

Ориген. О началах (фрагменты)[139]

© А. И. Иваненко, примечания, 2009.

I. Теология Оригена Кн. 1, гл. 1.0 Боге

5.<… >Having refuted, as far as possible, any thought about the corporeality of God, we affirm, in accordance with the truth, that God is incomprehensible and invaluable. Even if we were given the opportunity to know or understand something about God, we must still believe that He is incomparably better than what we have learned about Him.< >

Kn. 1, ch. 2. About Christ

1. First of all, we need to know that in Christ is the nature of His Godhead, because He is the only-begotten Son of God; and what is human nature, which He has lately assumed according to the economy. In view of this, we must first consider what the only-begotten Son of God is. It is known that He is called by many and different names, depending on the circumstances and the concepts of those who name Him. Thus He is called Wisdom,141 as we find it in the words of Solomon: "The Lord had me as the beginning of His way, before His creatures, from time immemorial. I was born when there were no abysses, when there were no springs abounding in water. I was born before the mountains were raised, before the hills" (Proverbs 8:22, 24-25). He is also called the firstborn, or, as the Apostle says: "He who was born before all creation" (Col. 1:15). And yet the firstborn is not different in nature from Wisdom, but one and the same (with Her). Finally, the Apostle Paul says: "Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God" (1 Corinthians 1:24).

2. But let no one think that when we call the Son the Wisdom of God, we recognize Him as something not substantial, that we do not, for example, consider Him to be any rational living being, but some thing which can make (men) wise, and communicate to the minds of those who are made receptive to the properties and to the understanding of them. If, therefore, it is once properly accepted that the only-begotten Son of God is His Wisdom, existing substantially, then, in my opinion, our reason should no longer wander in conjectures such as whether the ύττόστασις, that is, the substance (substantia) of the Son, has something corporeal; for everything corporeal has either a form, or a color, or a size, but what sensible person would seek color or size in Wisdom as wisdom? God the Father could never, not for a single moment, certainly exist without giving birth to this Wisdom: so should everyone think and believe who only knows how to piously think and think about God. In fact, if God begat Wisdom that did not exist before, then He could not give birth to Her before He gave birth, or He could, but did not want to give birth. But this cannot be said of God: it is evident to all that such suppositions are both absurd and impious, for in both cases it is found that God either rose from a state of incapacity to a state of ability, or, supposing His ability, that He delayed and postponed the birth of Wisdom. That is why we always acknowledge God to be the Father of His only-begotten Son, begotten of Him and receiving existence from Him, but without any beginning, not only such as can be divided into any temporal extensions, but also such as is usually contemplated by the mind alone in itself, and which is seen, so to speak, by pure thought and spirit. Thus, it must be believed that Wisdom is born outside of any beginning, of which it is possible to speak or think. In this very hypostasis of Wisdom was all the power and destiny of the future creation, both that which exists from the beginning of the world and that which happens afterwards: all this was predestined and arranged in Wisdom by the power of foreknowledge.

In view of these creations, which were as it were foretold and foreordained in Wisdom Herself, Wisdom says through Solomon of Herself that She was created as the beginning of the ways of God, or that it contains in Herself the beginnings, or forms, or forms of all creation.

3. And so, when it is said that Wisdom is the beginning of God's ways, and that She was created, this, according to our understanding, means whose Wisdom contains in Itself the beginnings and predestination of all creation. Likewise, the name of Wisdom as the Word of God must be understood, namely, in the sense that Wisdom reveals to all other beings, i.e., to all creation, the knowledge of the mysteries and of all that is hidden within the Wisdom of God: it is called the Word because it serves as an interpreter of the mysteries of the spirit. Therefore it seems to me that the saying written in the Acts of Paul is correct: "This is the Word, a living being." As for John, he speaks even more sublimely and beautifully, when at the beginning of his Gospel he gives his own definition that the Word is God. He says: "The Word was God. It was in the beginning with God" (John 1:1-2). But whoever at the same time ascribes the beginning to the Word of God, or the Wisdom of God, evidently extends his impiety even to the unborn Father Himself, since then he will deny the truth that He was always the Father, and begotten the Son, and had Wisdom in all previous times or ages, in a word, in the course of all that can be denoted in any way in human language<. >

7. But since we have quoted Paul's saying that the Son is the radiance of the glory of God and the image of His hypostasis (substantiae), let us see what idea should follow from this saying. "God," according to John, "is light" (1 John 1:5). Thus, the only-begotten Son is the radiance of this light, which illuminates all creation and proceeds from Him inseparably, just as radiance proceeds from light. The work of light must be understood in accordance with the above considerations about the sense in which the Son is the way that leads to the Father, in what sense He is the Word who explains and offers to the rational creature the mysteries of wisdom and knowledge, in what sense He is truth, and life, and resurrection. Thus, through radiance it is known and felt what light itself is. It is a radiance that appears comparatively soft to the weak and fragile eyes of mortals and gradually prepares them to perceive the brilliance of the light itself, removing from them everything that obstructs their vision, according to the word of the Lord: "First take the beam out of your eye" (Luke 6:42). This radiance makes them capable of perceiving the glory of light and becomes, as it were, a kind of intermediary between people and light.