Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/847

Rh -, Logos lustin Philo. AUTHORSHIR] whence it cometh, and whither it goeth.” Here, though the words oidcv 776661’ Epxerai Kai. 7roi3 i;7ro'.-ya. (1';7i'a'.-ya. is a word specially disliked by Luke in his Gospel, and not used by Paul), being identical here and in John iii., do certainly, as Dr Sanday points out (Gospels, p. 275), imply “ an association of ideas,” yet, as the same writer remarks, the thought is different. Polycarp says, “The Spirit kiroweth whence it conieth;” John says, “We know not whence the Spirit cometh.” This indicates that Poly- carp is vaguely alluding to oral and traditional doctrines current in his province (familiar, perhaps, but by no means as yet authoritative), rather than quoting from 3. Gospel known to be writteir by one of the foremost of the apostles, the “ beloved disciple of the Lord.”1 But it is urged (1) that Justin has the doctrine of the Christian, as distiirguislrcd from the Alexandrian, Logos; (2) that he could not have had originality enough to develop this himself, and there- fore (3) he iriiist have borrowed this method of thought from the Fourth Gospel. And the following expressions are quoted: “ Jesus Christ is, in the proper seirse (i3i'ws), the only Son begotten of God, being His Vord (A6705), and F irst-born, and Power (llparrd-roicos ical Ai’»ua,u.is) ;” “ But His Son, who alone is rightly (icupiws) called Son, who before all created things was with Him and begotten of Him as His Vord, when in the beginning He created and ordered all things through Him,” &c.; “ Now, next in order to the Father and Lord of all, the first Power (who indeed may also be called Son) is the Vord, concerning whom we shall relate, in what fol- lows, how being made ﬂesh (o'aprco1ron)9£is) He became man ;” “The Vord of God is His Son” (Apol. I., xxiii., xxxii., lxiii.; Apol. II., x., quoted by Sanday, Gosjicls, p. 284; see also Light- foot’s Colossians, i. 15). But it can be shown (1) that all these thoughts were suggested, and many of these expressions actually used, by Philo in Alexandria (40 A.D. ), about a hundred years before Justin wrote; (2) that the personification of the Visdom of God (and Logos means Visdoin as well as Word) in the books ot' Proverbs and Wisdom rendered it necessary for orthodox Christians, who accepted these books, to identify this pcrsoniticd Wisdom with Christ; (3) that the generally recognized Messianic reference of Ps. lxxxix. 27, é-ycb -irpw-rd-ro.-my 0-/;a—o,u.ai a.i’m$u, leading to the comment, “ 1 will make King Messiah a F irst-born,” resulted in a recognition of “the First-borii” (6 Upw- ’1'(5'TOKOS, W13?) used absolutely, as a title of the Messiah (Lightfoot, Col. i. 15);'(4) that those elements of the Alexandriair theory of the Logos which are inconsistent with the Christian theory furnish no proof at all that the Christian theory was independent of the Alexandrian. It was inevitable that, when the Christians borrowed, they would adopt what was consistent, and discard what was in- consistent, with the belief in the incarnation of Christ. There is abundant evidence to prove these propositions. Even before Paul wrote the Epistle to the Colossians, and a fortiori before the composition of the Fourth Gospel, that instinct which compels men to set the First Cause of all at a distance from matter had impelled Alexandrian Judaism to adopt the belief that the supreme God did irot Himself directly and immediately create the world, or manifest Ilimself to iirarrkind, but indirectly and medi- ately, through some medium or mediator. The simplest and subtlest metaphor to express this mediateness was Vord—nrore especially in the Greek language, where 'ord (Ari-yos) might mean reason as well as speech, the word in the thought as well as the word in the sound. Mair manifests himself through deeds as well as words; but for the Supreme (with whom to speak is to do) the only necessary manifestation was the Word, the Logos. Dr Liglrt- foot has shown (Col. i. 16) that Philo sometimes regards the Logos as a merely passive instrument, so that he allows himself to use the simple iirstriiineiital dative (qt) to describe the relation of the Vord to the Creator (93 um’ 1-by mio’,U.ov sip-ya'§e-ro), "' which mode of speak- ing is not found in the New Testanrentz” and elsewhere Philo, even where he uses the prcpositional construction (53 at), expressly likens the world to a house, the Supreme to the builder, and the Logos to the b’p-yauou or tool (Of Cain and his Birth, eh. xxxv.). Moreover, as a. city, while as yet only existing in the conception of the architect, may be said to be the reason of the architect, so the world (regarded as perceptible only to the intellect) is said to be the Logos or reason of God busying itself in the work of creation (The 1 The writer is indebted to Dr Ilort for the suggestion that the transition may be from (1) “ thou knowcst not whence Ile cometli,” to (2) “He alone knoweth.”&c, and thence, the “alone” being underslood,to (3)“He knoweth,” &c. Yet, when all due weight is given to this suggcstioii, it will be ditﬁeult to deny that the context of John iii. 8 has little in common with the context iir Polyearp, “the Spirit is not to be deceived," and that Polycarp's words indicate rather a vague reminiscence of tradition than a quotation from a Gospel sup- ported by the authority of the apostle John. GOSPELS 823 IVo7'l¢l, vi.). Philo also describes the Logos as “the archetypal model, the idea of ideas.” These passages undoubtedly iirdicate a. great gulf between the Christian and Alexandrian Logos. But other passages abound, which Christians could adopt unchanged, applying them to the incarnate Christ; in particular, the passage quoted above (On Dreams, ii. 38), where the 'ord of God is de- scribed as “ the cup-bearer of God ;” and here follow words which would be fraught with cucharistic meaning for a Christian—“ the Master of the feast . . . . irot differing from the draught itself.” Again, the Vord is said (Who is the Hair, eh. xxxix.) to divide in equal portions among all that are to use it the heavenly food of the soul which Moses ealls manna ; and the Vord is ex- pressly said to be a Person in the following passage (Questions and Solutiovzs, 62)——-Question: “Why is it that He speaks as if of some other god, saying, He iirade man after the image of God, and not that He made him after His own image '?” Solu- tion: “Very appropriately aird without any falsehood was this oracular sentence uttered by God; for no mortal thing could have been formed on the siinilitude of the supreme Father of the uni- verse, but only after the pattern of the second Deity, who is the Vord of the Supreme Being.” Even where Philo describes the Vord as the instrument of creation, he speaks of it or Him as “the image (elxaiu) of God” (On Illonarchy, ii. 5) : “The Image of God is the Vord by whom all the world was framed (e‘8np.ioup-yeT'ro)." Furtlrcr, the Vord is frequently called by Philo the “First- begotten (-irpw-r6-youou) Sou ” and “ Eldest Son." The prophecy of Zechariah (vi. 12, according to the LXX.) “Behold a man, the East is his name,” which is twice applied by Justin (Dialogue, cvi. and cxxi.) to Jesus the Son of God, was applied with curious simi- larity and difference a. hundred years before by Philo, who, although he finds it inappropriate for “aman compounded of body and soul," sees in it a siirgnlar appropriateness to “that incorporeal Being who in no respect dilfers from a divine image. . . . . For the Father of the Universe has caused Him to spring up as the Eldest Son” (On the Confusion, &e., 24).“ Many of the very expressions which are sometimes used to show that the Logos of the Alexan- drians was impersonal are found applied to God in the Old Testa- rneiit, or to Christ in the N cw. For example, if Philo calls the world the “garment" of the Logos, the Psalmist also (Ps. civ. 2), appealing to the Lord his God, says, “Thou coverest Thyself with light as with a garment;’' or if the Logos is described by Philo as the “bond" which holds the world together, so also does Paul describe Christ as the Being in whom “all things eoliere” (-re‘: 1ra'u-ra. ¢ruue'¢r-rmceu, Col. i. 17). Nay, further, he attributes to the Logos that function of “reproving" or “eonvincing" (€Ae'-yxew) which is so strikingly assigned in the Fourth Gospel to the Spirit of the ascended Christ (Jo. xvi. 8), “And when He is come, He will reprove (e‘Ae'-ygu) the world of sin ;” eonrpare Philo—who also adds a remark that suggests the thought (Jo. i. 9) of “ the Light that liglrteth every man”——“ As long as the divi-ne Word has not come to our soul, all its actions are blameless; but when the priest, conviction (or “ reproval,” é'7t£')xos), enters our heart like a most pure ray of light, then we see that our actions are liable to blame” (On the Unchangeableness of God, 28). In the face of all these passages (and many others might be quoted) the difficulty would seem to be, at first sight, not to prove that the Alcxandrian theory of the Logos was the parent of the Christian theory, but to ﬁnd any difference between the two. The difference, however, is in reality very great, and very readily explained. Philo looked on the manifestation of God through the Logos as being the old inferior dispensation, while the new dispen- sation was to be the manifestation of the Supreme as 1-2: by, absolute Being. The Logos manifestation of Philo wasa manifestation of God through visible creatioir; the higher nrarrilcstation was to be independent of visible objects. The former was the nrariifestation of “God as man” —i.c.. as liable to anger, change, repentance, &e.; it was also (On the Uiiclzangcableness of God, xi.) an appeal to fear through rewards aird punishments, not strictly true, and not intended for the esoteric sage, but only for the unspiritual nriiltitude. The latter, on the other hand, was the rriarritestation of God as not man—a fatherly revelation, appealing to love. It followed that Philo not only did not identify his Logos with the Messiah, but would have regarded any such identification with one who had “ become flesh” as a degradation. It followed also that, although Philo declared the highest revelation to be a revelation of love, there was really no basis for love at all in it. Of God as -n‘: 6'11, Philo could not say that He was good, or holy, or loving, because He was superior to all goodness, holiness, and love : “ His existence indeed is a fact which we do comprehend concerning Him; but beyond the fact of His existence we can understand nothing" (On the lfnchangcablcncss of Goal, 13). 9 Sonic degree of uncertainty whellicr to call the Word a person or not appears to be inrplicd in the following passage (Qiiestions. 54) . " The expression ‘ one of us’ (Gen. iii. 22) indicates a plurality of beings. unless we are to suppose that God is conversing with his own virtues," but I'liilo seems to iircline to the personal theory.