And again He says, that the Son cannot do anything of Himself, save what He sees the Father do. As therefore the Son in no respect differs from the Father in the power of His works, and the work of the Son is not a different thing from that of the Father, but one and the same movement, so to speak, is in all things, He therefore named Him a stainless mirror, that by such an expression it might be understood that them is no dissimilarity whatever between the Son and the Father. How, indeed, can those things which are said by some to be done after the manner in which a disciple resembles or imitates his master, or according to the view that those things are made by the Son in bodily material which were first formed by the Father in their spiritual essence, agree with the declarations of Scripture, seeing in the Gospel the Son is said to do not similar things, but the same things in a similar manner? (Book I, Chapter 2, Part 12)

If Jesus is just another prophet, how can Christianity claim any privilege over Moses, John the Baptist, Zoroastor, or Mithras?

What is the relationship of Jesus to God? What does it mean to be Father and Son? How is the relationship of Jesus to the Creator different than that of Paul or Susan or Bill?

Unless Jesus is worthy of worship, how can the church be distinguished from the synagogue?These were real questions in the second century.

In the generation before Origen the middle Platonists, especially in Syria, came to conceive of Plato's essential Oneness or Being (Ousia) as having two additional aspects: maker and that which is made. Numenius of Apamea speaks of the maker being the Nous or wisdom.

We can see a preexisting Platonic notion of the Trinity, already intellectually acceptable, being adapted to the needs of the early Church.