Scripture and God in Christianity

meet the most stringent demands of monotheism by insisting that the fullness of unoriginate
Godhead is concentrated in the Father, Who alone is 'the fountain-head of deity'... The Son and
the Spirit are divine (in fact, he is remarkably reticent about the latter's status), but the Godhead
which They possess, and which constitutes Their essence, wells up and is derived from the Father's
being." 501 They are of secondary rank and merit secondary honour. Therefore " we should
not pray to any generate being, not even to Christ, but only to the God and Father of the universe,
to Whom our Saviour Himself prayed'; if prayer is offered to Christ, it is conveyed by Him to the
Father. Indeed, the Son and the Spirit are transcended by the Father just as much as, if not more
than, They Themselves transcend the realm of inferior beings; and if sometimes Origen's language
seems to contradict this, suggesting that the Son is God from the beginning, very Word,
absolute Wisdom and truth, the explanation is that He may appear such to creatures, but from the
viewpoint of the ineffable Godhead He is the first in the chain of emanations. This conception of
a descending hierarchy, itself the product of his Platonizing background, is epitomized in the
statement that, whereas the Father's action extends to all reality, the Son's is limited to rational
beings, and the Spirit's to those who are being sanctified." 502
Irenaeus and Clement of Alexandria were perhaps more traditionalists than philosophers looking
for intellectual interpretations to denote relationship between Father, Son and the Holy Spirit.
They differed with the apologists in their understanding of Logos Christology. To both, the Logos
who became incarnate in Jesus Christ was no less than God himself. Irenaeus in his famous
treatise Against Heresies argued that " the Logos who "existed in the beginning with God,"
"through whom everything was made," and who has always been humanity's companion is the
one who, in the last days, at the moment preordained by the Father, was united to the creature he
had shaped, and became a human being subject to hurt. Consequently, there is no place for the
objection of those who say, "If the Christ was born at that moment, then he did not exist prior to
it." We have shown that, since he has always existed with the Father, he did not begin to be
God's Son at that particular point." 503 He further argued that "it was impossible for a humanity
which had fallen under the domination of sin to lay hold on salvation. Therefore, the Son accomplished
the both things. Existing as God's Logos, he descended from the Father and became enfleshed
and humbled himself to the point of death and completed God's program for our salvation."
504 While emphasizing the salvation he maintained that "the Logos of God, our Lord Jesus
Christ, who on account of his great love became what we are that he might make us what he is
himself." 505 "How can they be saved unless it be God who wrought out their salvation on earth?
And how shall man be changed into God unless God has been changed into man?" 506 Therefore,
"The Logos of God became a human being, and the Son of God was made Son of man, so that
humanity, having received the Logos and accepted adoption, might become Son of God. The
only way in which we could receive incorruption and immortality was by being united with them.
But how could we be united with incorruption and immortality unless first of all they became
what we are, so that "that corruptible might be swallowed up by incorruption and the mortal by
immortality" [1 Cor. 15:53-54] and so we might receive adoption as son?" 507
To think of the Logos in derivative terms and to subordinate him to God or think of him as another
being as Apologists did, to Irenaeus, was detrimental to his saving work and hence impossible.
He identified the Logos or the Son with the Father completely. "Through the Logos
himself made visible and palpable the Father was shown forth although not all alike believed in
him. But all saw the Father in the Son. For the Father is the invisible of the Son, but the Son is
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