The Three Hypostases in Origen

Abstract Divine and human freedom are explored and highlighted as foundational structures for Origen’s proto-trinitarian theology. In a novel attempt to capture the outlines of a proto-trinitarian theology, the author of this chapter turns to Origen’s exegesis of Isaiah’s vision. Using clues from Origen’s commentary on Isaiah’s vision, he discerns the outlines of a Trinitarian schema of three distinct hypostases unified by a single soteriological trajectory. The Father is both self-contemplating intellect and ‘Unbegotten Freedom’; the Son is both passive Wisdom (at rest) in contemplation of the Father and active Word (eternal motion) in the expressiveness of the comprehensive richness of the One in the Many. The Holy Spirit rests in the Epinoia of the Son and engenders these virtues in souls of the saints in a process of sanctification. The old question of Origen’s subordinationism is mitigated by new understandings of the dynamic element of will in Origen’s ontology and anthropology, in both divine and human freedom.