Page:Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature (1911).djvu/642

 stage prior to the dual condition in which that which is now dual was single. What, then, of the existence of the Word before It became the προβληθὲν γέννημα? Justin is content with the statements: (1) That "before all things," already "at the beginning," this projection had been effected, the two Persons were already distinct (cf. ib. 62, § 285 ; 56, § 276, τὸν καὶ πρὸ ποιήσεως κόσμου ὄντα Θεόν). (2) That besides this actual projection of the Λόγος there is a state which may be described as a condition of inner companionship with God the Creator (συνῆν). This precedence is never distinctly asserted to be temporal by Justin. In the Dialogue the συνών is stated to be eternal in exactly that sense in which the γέννημα is eternal, i.e. as being "before all things."

Justin does not appear to definitely pronounce on the question how the process of Begetting consists with the absolute eternity of the Personal Word begotten. There is no precise realization of a Λόγος ἐνδιάθετος and προφορικός. He hardly seems conscious of this difficulty in his two analogies of the thought and the flame; he is satisfied with expressing, by them, the unity, and yet distinctness, of the Father and the Son. He is content to state that this unity in difference existed from the very first, before all created things. His analysis seems hardly to have pressed back to the final question, which Arian logic discovered to lie behind all minor issues, i.e. was there a moment when the Father was not yet a Father? Such a suspension of analysis is not unnatural, since Justin, in the writings before us, hardly enters on the contemplation of the Nature of God in and to Himself. It is always as the source of all things—the Father, the Maker, the Lord of the Universe—that he presents God to us. It is God in His relation to His works that we contemplate. What He was in Himself before all His works does not seem considered, and it is therefore all the more sufficient to state that God came to the making of the world already dual in character. The moment at which creation was to begin found the Son already existent, as ὁ Θεός, in personal intercourse with the Father. With this he leaves us, only affirming that that character of paternity which constitutes the relation of God to the world had a prior and peculiar significance and reality in the relation that united the absolute God and His Word (cf. Apol. ii. 6, § 44, ὁ μόνος λεγόμενος κυρίως υἱός).

Justin's metaphysic, then, culminates in the assertion of this essential Sonship pre-existent to the creation. This being so, his language remains as indecisive on the ulterior question of the origin of the Sonship as is the language of Proverbs on the eternity of the Wisdom. In both cases the utmost expression for eternity that their logic had attained to is used. It is useless to press them for an answer to the puzzles of a later logic, which carried the problem back into that very eternity which closed their horizon. It was inevitable that the natural and unsystematized language used before the Arian controversy should be capable of an Arian interpretation. Since the Father is indeed alone ἀγένητος, the sole unoriginate fount of the Divine life, the expressions used about Him, and about the Son, must necessarily impute to Him an underivative, to the Son a derivative Being; and must, therefore, tend to class the Son rather with the rest of τὰ γενητά than with the sole ἀγενητόν. It could only be at the end of a most subtle and delicate reflection that Christian logic could possibly realize that it was bound, if it would be finally consistent with itself, to class the derived Being of the Son, by virtue of the absolute eternity of its derivation, on the side of τὸ ἀγενητόν rather than on that of τὰ γενητά. Justin, in the full flush of readiness to sweep in to the service of faith the dear and familiar language of his former Platonism, may have left himself unguarded and careless on this uttermost point of the philosophy of the Incarnation; but it will not easily be doubted—by any one who has observed how he develops the full divinity of the Son over all the ground which his logic covered with a boldness and a vigour that, in face of the inevitable obstacles, prejudices, misunderstandings excited by such a creed, are perfectly astonishing—what answer he would have given if the final issue of the position had once presented itself definitely to him.

Justin had also affirmed the moral unity of the Son with the Father. This is not stated to be the ground of the Unity. The analogies of the thought and of the flame, on the contrary, imply a unity of substance to be the ground of the κυρίως υἱότης, but it is introduced in order to explain the consistency of his belief with the reality of a single supreme Will in the Godhead (Dial. 56, § 274), and the explanation naturally led him to affirm the complete subordination of the Son to the will of the Father. The Son is the expression of the Father's mind, the δύναμιν λογικήν, which He begat from Himself. He is the interpreter of His Purpose, the instrument by which He designs. In everything, therefore, the Son is conditioned by the supreme Will; His office, His very nature, is to be ὁ ἄγγελος, ὁ ὑπηρέτης. All His highest titles, υἱός and λόγος, as well as others, belong to Him by virtue of His serving the Father's purpose and being born by the Father's Will (ἐκ τοῦ ἀπὸ τοῦ πατρὸς θελήσει γεγενῆσθαι, ib. 61, § 284 ). "I say that He never did anything but what the Maker of the world, above Whom there is no God at all, willed that He should do" (ib. 56, § 276). The Father is above all. Trypho would not endure to listen to Justin if he did not hold this (ib. 56, § 278 ). The Son is then subordinate, and perfectly subordinate, but this subordination is such that it can allow the Son to identify Himself utterly with the Father, as with Moses at the bush, and so to be called ὁ Κύριος and ὁ Θεός.

In the expression "born of the Father's Will" we are once more close to Arian controversy. Was there, then, a moment when the Father had not yet willed to have a Son? If so, how can the Son be eternal? Yet, if not, how was the Father's will free? Justin has no such questions put to him. He states this dependence of the Son for His very Being on the Will of the Father without anxiety as to His right to be named ὁ Θεός, and to receive