Origen and the Trinity
Origen of Alexandria was nothing if not influential. In spite of widespread resurgence of fascination with his theology, his doctrine of the trinity has not received the level of attention it deserves. Origen and the Trinity will be the first Anglophone monograph dedicated to a historically situated account of Origen's trinitarian doctrine. Apart from scholars who play down Origen's debts to Middle Platonism and gnosticism in order to cast him as a proto-Nicene theologian, as well as those who unjustly criticize Origen with anachronistic standards, my reading explains the presence in Origen's theology of dynamics that would become problematic in later eras. Those dynamics, I show, may have introduced a kind of instability into Origen's theology, but they also lent Origen his contemporary authority as a defender of Christian doctrine. Origen developed a "hierarchical" trinity in order to oppose monarchian theologies threatening to reduce Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to an indistinguishable, monistic deity. In this way, Origen used Middle Platonic schemes of "procession" to retain the biblical character of Christian faith in a God of "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit."