Parenting & Family Quote by Origen

Origen is trying to do something daringly technical with devotional stakes: lock God’s goodness in place by insisting it isn’t a mood, a policy, or even a set of choices. “Wisdom of God” here is not a flattering attribute but a person - the Logos, “His only-begotten Son.” Once Wisdom is identified with Christ, immutability becomes the argument’s engine. If the Son cannot “change or alteration,” then God’s “good qualities” can’t be revised, bargained with, or contradicted by history. They are “essential” - not add-ons - so they can’t be “changed and converted” into their opposites.

That phrasing does cultural work in Origen’s world. Early Christians were battling rival theologies that made God either volatile (subject to passions, like pagan deities) or remote (so transcendent He can’t meaningfully touch matter). Origen’s move splits the difference: God remains unchangeable, yet intimately present through the Son who is eternally what God is. The subtext is pastoral as much as metaphysical: if divine goodness could be altered, worship becomes a gamble and salvation a temporary arrangement.

The payoff is the last line: “His glory is therefore declared to be pure and sincere.” Glory isn’t stage lighting or reputation management; it’s the public radiance of a character that cannot rot. In a late antique atmosphere thick with imperial propaganda and fickle patronage, “pure and sincere” reads like a theological critique of performative power: real authority doesn’t need reinvention. It simply is.