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Translated by Frederick Crombie.
Origen Resources OnLine & in Print
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128 Pages
Page 22
Whatever, therefore, we have predicated of the wisdom of God, will be appropriately applied and understood of the Son of God, in virtue of His being the Life, and the Word, and the Truth and the Resurrection: for all these titles are derived from His power and operations, and in none of them is there the slightest ground for understanding anything of a corporeal nature which might seem to denote either size, or form, or colour; for those children of men which appear among us, or those descendants of other living beings, correspond to the seed of those by whom they were begotten, or derive from those mothers, in whose wombs they are formed and nourished, whatever that is, which they bring into this life, and carry with them when they are born. [1964] But it is monstrous and unlawful to compare God the Father, in the generation of His only-begotten Son, and in the substance [1965] of the same, to any man or other living thing engaged in such an act; for we must of necessity hold that there is something exceptional and worthy of God which does not admit of any comparison at all, not merely in things, but which cannot even be conceived by thought or discovered by perception, so that a human mind should be able to apprehend how the unbegotten God is made the Father of the only-begotten Son. Because His generation is as eternal and everlasting as the brilliancy which is produced from the sun. For it is not by receiving the [1966] breath of life that He is made a Son, by any outward act, but by His own nature.
[1964] "Quoniam hi qui videntur apud nos hominum filii, vel ceterorum animalium, semini eorum a quibus seminati sunt respondent, vel earum quarum in utero formantur ac nutriuntur, habent ex his quidquid illud est quod in lucem hanc assumunt, ac deferunt processuri." Probably the last two words should be "deferunt processuris"--"and hand it over to those who are destined to come forth from them," i.e., to their descendants.
[1965] Subsistentia. Some would read here, "substantia."
[1966] Per adoptionem Spiritus. The original words here were probably eispoiesis tou pneumatos, and Rufinus seems to have mistaken the allusion to Gen. ii. 7. To "adoption," in the technical theological sense, the words in the text cannot have any reference.--Schnitzer.
Reference address : https://www.ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/fathers/origen/principia.asp?pg=22
