Page:Doctrine of the Lord in the Primitive Christian Church.pdf/17

10        DOCTRINE OF THE LORD. answering to the English term word. As in this instance: “By the word of the Lord were the heavens made, and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth.” The English term word was Logos in the Septuagint version. In John's Gospel, answering to the description of the birth of our Lord in Matthew and Luke, we find an ac- count of the Logos, in which it is at last said that the Logos was made flesh, and dwelt among us.

Among the Apostolic Fathers, for a century, and perhaps somewhat more, after Christ, we find little discussion of the subject of the Lord's Supreme Divinity. They were content with the belief that in the Person of Jesus Christ the divine and the human were united. They recognized the two na- tures, without attempting to investigate the manner in which the union of both were effected in the Person of the Lord. They distinctly asserted the real Godhead, and the real manhood, but left the subject treated only in this general manner. Of their acknowledgment of His real manhood there is no doubt, for they were familiar with the facts of His earthly life, his real birth by Mary, His growth from childhood upwards, His ministry, and death and res- urrection. These formed the common conviction of the Christian world. And of His real Godhead they are equally positive in their assertions. They rec- ognized the truth that He was the Creator of the world, “by Him all things were made,” and that He was to be its final Judge. It seems clear that