Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume IX/Origen on John/Origen's Commentary on the Gospel of John/Book I/Chapter 19

by Origen

19.  (4) of Type and Copy.

In addition to these meanings there is that in which we speak of an arche,^[1] according to form; thus if the first-born of every creature^[2] is the image of the invisible God, then the Father is his arche.  In the same way Christ is the arche of those who are made according to the image of God.  For if men are according to the image, but the image according to the Father; in the first case the Father is the arche of Christ, and in the other Christ is the arche of men, and men are made, not according to that of which he is the image, but according to the image.  With this example our passage will agree:  “In the arche was the Word.”

Footnotes

1. We must here reproduce the Greek word, as Origen passes to meanings of it which the English “beginning” does not cover.
2. Coloss. i. 15.