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For the Son is the Word, and therefore we are not to understand that anything in him is recognizable by the senses. He is Wisdom, and in wisdom there can be no suspicion of anything corporeal. (De Principiis I:2:6) [The Son] is the true Light which enlightens every man that comes into this...

Who that is capable of entertaining reverential thoughts or feelings regarding God can suppose or believe that God the Father ever existed, even for a moment of time, without having generated this Wisdom? For in that case we must say either that God was unable to generate Wisdom before he...

Wisdom as a "She" Both the Hebrew word for wisdom, chokmah, and the Greek word, sophia, are feminine nouns. That's meaningless to those of us who speak only English; however, in languages that give gender to nouns, writers have no choice but to refer to feminine nouns as "she" and "her." This...

Origen, c. AD 230 Since many saints participate in the Holy Spirit, he cannot therefore be understood to be a body, which being divided into corporeal parts, is partaken of by each one of the saints. Instead, he is manifestly a sanctifying power, in which all are said to have a share who have...

In what form of God? Of course he means in some form, not in none. For who will deny that God is a body even though "God is Spirit" [Jn. 4:24] For Spirit has a bodily substance of its own kind, in its own form. … Whatever, therefore, was the substance of the Word that I designate a Person, I...

This power and disposition of the Divine Intelligence is also set forth in the Scriptures under the name of Wisdom; for what can be better entitled to the name of Wisdom than the Reason or the Word of God?† Listen therefore to Wisdom herself, constituted in the character of a Second Person: "At...

God is rational, and Reason was first in him … This Reason was his own thought, which the Greeks call Logos, by which term we also designate Word [Tertullian is writing in Latin and used the word "Sermo"], and therefore it is now usual with our people, owing to the simple translation of [Logos]...

It cannot be said that the Lord is not willing to save humanity because of ignorance, as though he does not know how each on is to be cared for. Ignorance does nat apply to the God who, before the foundation of the world, was the Counselor of the Father. For he was the Wisdom in which the...

Irenaeus, AD 183 - 186 Learn then, foolish men [i.e., the gnostics], that Jesus who suffered for us, and who dwelt among us, is himself the Word of God. … He, the only-begotten Son of the only God, who, according to the good pleasure of the Father, became flesh for the sake of men. (Against...

But when God wished to make all that he determined, he begot this Word, uttered, the firstborn of all creation, not himself being emptied of the Word [or Reason], but having begotten Reason, and always conversing with his Reason. And this is what the holy writings teach us, as well as all...

Theophilus, AD 168 You will say ... to me: "You said that God cannot to be contained in one place; how do you now say that he walked in Paradise?" Hear what I say: The God and Father of all truly cannot be contained, and is not found, in a place ... but his Word, through whom he made all...

Tatian, c. AD 165 God was in the beginning, but the beginning, we have been taught, is the power of the Logos. For the Lord of the universe … since no creature was yet in existence, was alone. But, since he is all power, himself the necessary ground of things visible and invisible, with him were...

Since we find it recorded in the memoirs of the apostles that he is the Son of God, and since we call him the Son, we have understood that he proceeded before all creatures from the Father by his power and his will ... and that he became man by the virgin, in order that the disobedience which...

Then I answered, "I know that, as the word of God says, this great wisdom of God, the Maker of all things, and the Almighty, is hidden from you." (Dialogue with Trypho 38) In the fourty-fourth Psalm [LXX, in our Masoretic text, it's the 45th], these words are … referred to Christ: "My heart has...

Leningrad Codex of the Hebrew Scriptures Leningrad Codex of the Hebrew Scriptures For all things with which we are supplied, we bless the Maker of all through his Son Jesus Christ and through the Holy Spirit. (First Apology 67) But to the Father of all, who is unbegotten, there is no name...

"No one knows the Father but the Son, nor the Son but the Father, and those to whom the Son will reveal him" [Matt. 21:27]. The Jews, accordingly, being are throughout of the opinion that it was the Father of the universe who spoke to Moses [in the burning bush], though the One who spoke to him...

Justin Martyr, c. AD 150 Jesus Christ is the only proper Son who has been begotten by God, being His Word and first-begotten, and power; and, becoming man according to His will, He taught us these things for the conversion and restoration of the human race. (First Apology 23) And that God the...

Ignatius of Antioch, AD 110 Our God, Jesus Christ, was, according to the appointment of God, conceived in the womb by Mary, of the seed of David, but by the Holy Spirit. (Letter to the Ephesians 18) Do ye all come together in common, and individually, through grace, in one faith of God the...

Gregory the Wonderworker “There is one God. . . . There is a perfect Trinity, in glory and eternity and sovereignty, neither divided nor estranged. Wherefore there is nothing either created or in servitude in the Trinity; nor anything superinduced, as if at some former period it was...

Hippolytus “The Word alone of this God is from God himself, wherefore also the Word is God, being the being of God” (Refutation of All Heresies 10:29 [A.D. 228]). Pope Dionysius “Next, then, I may properly turn to those who divide and cut apart and destroy the most sacred proclamation of the...