Annotation CLXXII

”All things were made through him.” — John 1:3

On the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Origen, in the second tome on John, seems to draw two errors from this clause: first, that the totality of creation was not made through the Word, except as through an instrumental cause, and through a lesser [being]; second, that the Holy Spirit is a thing made of the Word itself. For he expresses both thus: “The [phrase] ‘through which’ never holds the first place, but always the second: as in the epistle to the Romans Paul says,¹ ‘through whom we have received grace’; and, ‘which he had before promised through the prophets.’ And in the epistle to the Hebrews,² ‘he has spoken to us in [his] Son, through whom he also made the ages’ — teaching us that God made the ages through the Son, [namely] that through the only-begotten (who has that ‘through which’) the ages were made. So, then, in this place also, if all things were made through the Word itself, they were not made by the Word itself, but by [one] higher and greater than the Word is. And who is this, but the Father? But it must be considered — this being true, ‘All things were made through him’ — whether the Holy Spirit too was made through him. And I think it necessary that he who concedes the Spirit to have been made, and confesses that ‘All things were made through him’ is true, [should] concede and prove that the Holy Spirit was made by the Word, which [is] more ancient than it. But he who is unwilling to concede that the Holy Spirit was made through Christ, it follows that he says [the Spirit] was not made — [if] he judges that the [things] which are written in this gospel are true.” And below: “These [things] have been much and long proved for those who would see more plainly and openly, that, if all things were made through him, the Spirit too was made through the Word — [the Spirit] who, [as] one of all things, is understood [to be] inferior to him through whom [it] was made — even if certain words seem to draw us to the contrary side.”