Scripture and God in Christianity

God's transcendence and monarchia is preserved as the Son uses the powers and the rule given to
him by the Father. The Son will give it back to the Father at the end of this world period. Moreover,
as Grillmeier observes, "The Father is the guarantee of the unity of God, of the monarchia.
The Son is assigned the second and the Spirit the third place. Here Tertullian is thinking not of a
purely static threeness within God, the metaphysical Trinity, but of an economic, organic, dynamic
threeness i.e. for him the second and third persons proceed from the unitas substantiae because
they have a task to fulfill. Only the Father remains completely transcendent." 490 G. L. Prestige
views the same organic unity in Tertullian thought: " The unity constitutes the tiade out of
his own inherent nature, not by any process of sub-division, but by reason of a principle of constructive
integration which the Godhead essentially possesses. In other words, his idea of unity is
not mathematical, but philosophical; it is an organic unity, not an abstract, bare point." 491 It is
Tertullian who introduced the concept of 'person' in christology. He argued that the triune God is
one in substance and different in person: "You have two (Father-Son), one commanding a thing
to be made, another making it. But how you must understand "another" I Have already professed,
in the sense of person, not of substance." 492 Grillmeier observes that " Tertullian's particular contribution
to the problem of the unity of Christ is the introduction of the concept of person into
christology, and the christological formula thus formed, which already seems to point to the formula
of Chalcedon." 493
Origen also emphasized the derivative, intermediary and secondary role of Jesus. "As an act of
will proceeds from the mind without either cutting off any part of the mind or separated or divided
from it, in some similar fashion has the Father begotten the Son." 494 He differs from Justin
and Tertullian in saying that the Logos is the eternal self-expression of God and is of the same
substance as God, "The Father did not beget the Son once for all, and let him go after he was begotten
but he is always begetting him." 495 Origen's idea of the eternal generation of the Logos did
not mean that he made the Logos equal with God. In his treatise Against Celsus he clearly differentiated
between the Logos and the God by making the Logos subordinate to the latter and so declaring
him in some sense less than God and a "second God". 496 McGiffert commenting on Origen's
Logos Christology observes that there is marked subordinationism in Origen because he
was "always more interested in the subordination of the Son to the Father than his oneness with
him." 497 Kelly writes, that "the impact of Platonism reveals itself in the thoroughgoing subordinationism
which is integral to Origen's Trinintarian scheme." 498 Kelly further observes that "The
unity between Father and Son corresponds to that between light and its brightness, water and the
steam which rises from it. Different in form, both share the same essential nature; and if, in the
strictest sense, the Father alone is God, that is not because the Son is not also God or does not
possess the Godhead, but because, as Son, He possesses it by participation or derivatively." 499
Bigg observes that "We shall however wrong Origen, if we attempt to derive his subordinationism
from metaphysical considerations. It is purely Scriptural, and rests wholly and entirely upon
the words of Jesus, 'My Father is greater than I', 'That they may know Thee the only true God',
'None is Good save One'." 500
Kelly further argues that "It is not altogether fair to conclude, as many have done, that Origen
teaches a triad of disparate beings rather than a Trinity; but the strongly pluralist strain in his
Trinitarianism is its salient feature. The Three, on his analysis, are eternally and really distinct;
they are separate hypostases or even, in his crude-sounding language, 'things'. But he attempts to
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