The metaphor of the sun, in which Plato (Republic 509b) compares the idea of the Good to the sun that dwells above the earth yet affects the phenomena occurring on it, was an inspiration for both heretical and orthodox theology in the first Christian centuries. The Gnostics, Clement of Alexandria and Origen all believed that God, like the Platonic idea of the Good, is radically transcendent in relation to the world, but at the same time is the cause of everything that exists in it. Unlike Plato, who believed that the idea of the Good is knowable and can be the subject of science, the Christian theologians of the first centuries believed that God was like a blinding light. This means that God, according to them, though intelligible, is unknowable in His essence. Therefore, God cannot be the subject of science. Another modification of the Platonic metaphor was the introduction of the element of sunlight, to which the philosopher from Athens did not refer. For the Gnostics, the rays of the sun were “eons” – spiritual beings that existed in the space between the first principle of all things and the material world. For Clement and Origen, the light that comes from the sun was the Son – the power and wisdom of God. In contrast to the Gnostics, who believed in the progressive degradation of the spiritual world through successive emanations, the Alexandrian Fathers believed that the Son possessed all the knowledge of God and therefore revealed to man the true God. Yet the revelation of God by the Son, and even the grace that assists human beings in the process of learning about God, do not give man complete knowledge of the essence of God. Thus the Gnostics, Clement and Origen, despite some doctrinal differences, all accepted the concept of the radical transcendence of God on the ontological and epistemological levels.

Many historians of ideas – philosophers and theologians – believe that the first thinker to introduce the concept of a positive understanding of the infinite­ness of God was Plotinus. In Greek philosophy, however, something infinite was understood as “unfinished” and therefore “imperfect”. All the same, according to many scholars, Christianity took the concept of the infiniteness of God precisely from the founder of neo-Platonism. One of the reasons for which researchers of the doctrines of the ancient world persist in this thesis even today is the fact that, in the writings of Origen – who lived at the time of Plotinus – we find the expres­sions which might give readers the impression that God’s power is finite, since God brought into existence a finite number of created beings. This article argues that this widely-held interpretation is wrong. Philo and Clement, a Jewish and a Christian thinker, both of Alexandria – from whose doctrines Origen borrowed abundantly – wrote of an infinite God before Origen did. In the surviving works of Origen, moreover, he nowhere states explicitly that God’s power is finite, although it is true that, according to him, God created a finite number of creatures. The con­troversial thesis of a finite God is found only in fragments written by ancient cri­tics of Origen’s teaching. A detailed analysis of Origen’s own original pronounce­ments on the nature, power and knowledge of God leads one to the conclusion that the fragments that have led many historians of ideas into confusion, either do not represent the views of Origen himself or present Origen’s teachings inaccu­rately. Moreover, in Origen’s surviving Greek writings, we find the term ¥peiron used in reference to God. This is precisely the term used by Greek philosophers to designate infinity. We may posit, then, that the concept of the infiniteness of God, positively understood, was born of the encounter of Greek philosophy with the Bible – that is, with the Jewish and Christian doctrines of the first centuries of the common era. Origen, who came slightly later, continued the thought of his predecessors and does not contradict them anywhere in his surviving works. What remains to be examined is the question of whether Plotinus himself made use of the work of Jewish and Christian thinkers in forming his doctrine of an infinite God, rather than those thinkers leaning on Plotinus, as is usually assumed.

No abstract

The medieval dispute over the absolute and the ordered, power of God (poten­tia Dei absoluta et potentia Dei ordinata) began with a tract by Peter Damian entitled De divina omnipotentia. One of the questions posed in this work was whether God could indeed do everything, including those things that God did not in fact do. The same question, and a similar answer, appears in Origen’s work Contra Celsum: God can do everything except that which is evil. The impossibi­lity of doing evil, however, does not diminish the omnipotence of God, because evil, is by its very nature, non-being. Beyond that, Origen, in numerous statements appearing in his exegetical works, distinguishes between the absolute power of God, which is infinite, and the power of God that creates the world and operates within it, which has a certain God-given limit – that is, this power is adapted to the abilities of the creatures who receive it. The purpose of this article is to show that, in the light of the distinction of the potentia Dei absoluta and the potentia Dei or­dinata, fragments of De principiis (II 9.1 and IV 4.8), in which a finite world and finite power of God are posited, can be interpreted in a new way. Many contem­porary scholars, on the basis of these fragments, conclude that Origen inherited from the Greek philosophers a negative understanding of infinity as something imperfect, but the analysis carried out in this article shows something different. In talking about a certain range of God’s power, which is available to creatures, or in which creatures participate only partially, Origen does not actually exclude the proposition that, in God himself, power – existing in an absolute way – can be infinite.

W czasach poprzedzających powstanie neoplatonizmu (I-III wiek przed Chr.) filozofowie zwani dziś medioplatonikami snuli rozbudowaną refleksję na temat możliwości poznania Boga oraz dróg prowadzących do zdobycia wiedzy o tym, co transcendentne. Zgodnie ze słowami Platona: „Znaleźć Twórcę i Ojca tego wszechświata jest rzeczą trudną, lecz znalazłszy Go, jest niemożliwe opowiadać o Nim wszystkim” (Plato, Timaeus 28c) medioplatonicy uważali, że Bóg, którego utożsamiali niekiedy z platońskim Jednem i Dobrem, jest poznawalny, lecz niewyrażalny. Choć poznaniu Boga towarzyszy trud związany z procesem intelektualnego i etycznego doskonalenia się, a to, co poznane w tym procesie, jest niemożliwe do wypowiedzenia w ludzkim języku, to jednak wiedza o Bogu i upodobnienie się do Niego jest celem wszelkiej filozofii platońskiej. Do podobnych wniosków dochodzili myśliciele żydowscy i chrześcijańscy tworzący w tym samym czasie, tacy jak Filon z Aleksandrii, Klemens z Aleksandrii czy Orygenes, zaliczani niekiedy również do grona filozofów medioplatońskich. W odróżnieniu od swych pogańskich kolegów, uważali oni jednak, że proces poznawania Boga przez człowieka będzie trwał w nieskończoność, a skończony ludzki umysł nigdy nie będzie w stanie objąć w zupełności tego, co nieskończone. Za nieskończoną bowiem uznawali istotę i moc Boga. Celem niniejszego artykułu jest ukazanie związku między nieskończonością a niepoznawalnością Boga, a zarazem wskazanie na różnice w tezach stawianych w tej kwestii przez medioplatoników pogańskich i tych, którzy przyjmowali Objawienie judeo-chrześcijańskie.