Annotation CLXXXVIII

”God is a Spirit.” — John 4:24

Whether the Son and the Holy Spirit are inferior to the Father.

Origen, in the thirteenth tome of the commentaries on John, seems to make the Son and the Holy Spirit inferior to the Father, with these words: “We say that the Son, and the Holy Spirit, excel all [things] which are begotten — not by comparison, but by an eminent pre-eminence — [the Son] who is surpassed by the Father by as much, or by a greater, pre-eminence, as [that] by which he himself, and the Spirit, surpass the rest [of things], and [those] not any [common] ones. For he is the image of his goodness, and a splendor — not of God, but of his glory, and of his eternal light; and a vapor, not of the Father, but of his power; and a pure emanation of his most sovereign glory;¹ through which mirror [as] Paul and Peter, and [those] like [them], see God: [he] who says, ‘He that seeth me, seeth also my Father who sent me.’”