the Father: for all things are manifested by the Word. . . . . The Father therefore has revealed Himself to all by making His Word visible to all: and conversely the Word showed to all the Father and the Son, since He was seen by all. And therefore the righteous judgment of God comes upon all who, though they have seen as others, have not believed as others. For by means of the creation itself the Word reveals God the Creator; by means of the world, the Lord who is the Fashioner of the world; and by means of His handiwork (man), the Workman who formed it; and by the Son, that Father who begat the Son."1 (3) The Distinctions in the Nature of God, or the Mediation and Mediator.-It was by a natural process of development that Christian philosophers, while acquiescing in the general proposition that Jesus Christ was the Logos in human form, should go on to frame large theories as to the nature of the Logos. It was an age of definition and dialectic. It was no more possible for the mass of educated men to leave a metaphysical problem untouched, than it is possible in our own days for chemists to leave a natural product unanalyzed. Two main questions | engaged attention: (i.) what was the genesis, (ii.) what was the nature, of the Logos. In the speculations which rose out of each of these questions, the influence of Greek thought is even more conspicuous than before. (i.) The question of the genesis of the Logos was mainly answered by theories which were separated from one another by the same broad line of distinction which separated theories as to the genesis of the world. The philosophers of the school of Basilides, who, as we have seen, had been the first to formulate the doctrine of an absolute creation, that is, of a creation of all things 1 Iren. 4. 6. 3, 5, 6; cf. Clem. Alex. Strom. 7. 2. out of nothing, conceived that whatever in their theory corresponded to the Logos was equally included with all other things in the original seed. Hence came the definite proposition, which played a large part in the controversies of the fourth century, that the Logos was made "out of the things that were not."1 But the majority of theories expressed under various metaphors the idea, which was relative to the other theory of creation, that in some way the Logos had come forth from God. The rival hypotheses as to the nature of creation were reconciled by the hypothesis that, though the world was created out of nothing, it was so created by the Logos, who was not created by God, but came forth from Him. The metaphors were chiefly those of the "putting forth" (poßoli, prolatio), as of the leaves or fruit of a plant, and of the begetting of a son. They were in use before the doctrine of the Logos had established itself, and some of them were originally relative, not to the Logos, but to other conceptions of mediation between God and the world. They were supplemented by the metaphors, which also were in earlier use, of the flowing of water from a spring, and of the radiation of light.2 That there was not originally any important distinction between them, is shown both by the express disclaimer of Irenæus and by the fact of their use in combination in the same passages of the same writers. The combination was important. The metaphors supplemented each other. Each of them contained an element 1 Cf. Hipp. 7. 21, 22; Schmid, Dogm. 52. in the theory which ultimately expressed the settled judgment of the Christian world. The main difficulty which they presented was that of an apparent inconsistency with the belief in the unity of God. The doctrine of the "sole monarchy" of God, which had been strongly maintained against those who explained the difficulties of the world by the hypothesis of two Gods in conflict, seemed to be running another kind of danger in the very ranks of its defenders. The Logos who reflected God and revealed Him to rational creatures, who also contained in himself the form and forces of the material world, must be in some sense God. In Athenagoras there is a pure monism: "God is Himself all things to Himself, unapproachable light, a perfect universe, spirit, force, logos." But in other writers the idea of development or generation, however lightly the metaphor might be pressed, seemed to involve an existence of the Logos both outside God and posterior to Him. He was the "first-born," the "first offspring of God," the "first force after the Father of all and the Lord God;" for "as the beginning, before all created things, God begat from Himself a kind of rational Force, which is called by the Holy Spirit (i.e. the Old Testament) sometimes 'the Glory of the Lord,' sometimes 'Son,' 1 Leg. 16; cf. Clem. Al. Strom. 5. 1; cf. Theophilus, 2. 22, for distinction of λόγος προφορικός as well as ἐνδιάθετος, denied by Clement (loc. cit.), but repeated in Tert. adv. Prax. 5; cf. Hipp. c. Noet. 10. See Zahn's note in Ign. ad Magn. 8. 2, on роe@ov in relation to eternal generation. 2 Philo applied the phrase "Son of God" to the world: cf. Keim, Celsus, 95. sometimes 'Wisdom,' sometimes Angel,' sometimes 'God,' sometimes 'Lord and Logos,' sometimes he speaks of himself as 'Captain of the Lord's host:' for he has all these appellations, both from his ministering to the Father's purpose and from his having been begotten by the Father's pleasure."1 It follows that "there is, and is spoken of, another God and Lord beneath the Maker of the universe."2 The theory thus formulated tended to ditheism and was openly accused of it. It was saved from the charge by the gradual formulating of two distinctions, both of which came from external philosophy, one of them being an inheritance from Stoicism, the other from Neo-Platonism. The one was that the generation. or development had taken place within the sphere of Deity itself: the generation had not taken place by the severing of a part from the whole, as though the Divine nature admitted of a division, but by distinction of function or by multiplication, as many torches may be 1 Justin, Dial. c. Tryph. 61 A, cf. 62 E, πроßλŋlèv yévvηpa; and Hipp. c. Noet. 8, 10, 16; Tatian, c. 5; Irenæus ap. Schmid, p. 31. 2 Justin, Dial. c. Tryph. 56 C, p. 180. 3 Hipp. 9. 12; Callistus, while excommunicating the Sabellians (cf. Schmid, 48; Weing. 31), also called Hippolytus and his party ditheists. For Callistus' own view, cf. ibid. 9. 11. See Schmid, p. 50; also p. 45 for Praxeas ap. Tert. 4 The Gnostic controversies in regard to the relation to God of the Powers who were intermediate between Him and the world, had helped to forge such intellectual instruments. 5 Justin, c. Tryph. 128: δυνάμει καὶ βουλῇ αὐτοῦ ἀλλ ̓ οὐ κατ ̓ ἀποτομὴν ὡς ἀπομεριζομένης τῆς τοῦ πατρὸς οὐσίας ; cf. Plotinus ap. Harn. Dogm. 493: Kaтà μeрiμòv où кat' άлотоμν in Tatian, 5, is different; cf. Hipp. c. Noet. 10. lit from one without diminishing the light of that one.1 The other was that the generation had been eternal. In an early statement of the theory it was held that it had taken place in time: it was argued that "God could not have been a Father before there was a Son, but there was a time when there was not a Son."2 But the influence of the other metaphors in which the relation was expressed overpowered the influences which came from pressing the conception of paternity. Light, it was argued, could never have been without its capacity to shine. The Supreme Mind could never have been without His Thought. The Father Eternal was always a Father, the Son was always a Son.* (ii.) The question of the nature of the eternally-begotten Logos was answered variously, according as the supra-cosmic or the transcendental idea of God was dominant in a writer's mind.5 To Justin Martyr, God is con 1 Justin, Dial. c. Tryph. 61 C, where the metaphor of "speech" is also employed. 3 For metaphor of light, cf. Monoïmus ap. Hipp. 8. 12; also Tatian, c. 5. There is uncertainty as to eternal generation in Justin; see Engelhardt, p. 118. It is not in Hippolytus, c. Noet. 10. Though implied in Irenæus (Harn. p. 495), it is in Origen that this solution attains clear expression, e. g. de princ. 1. 2 ff., though his view is not throughout steady and uniform. Emanation seemed to him to imply division into parts. But he hovers between the Logos as thought and as substance. For Clement and Origen in this connection, see Harnack, pp. 579, 581. 5 God unchangeable in Himself comes into contact with human affairs: 7 povoíą kaî tỷ oikovoμía, c. Cels. 4. 14. His Word changes according to the nature of the individuals into whom he comes, c. Cels. 4. 18. |