A. The Idea and its Development in Greek Philosophy.
But the theories which in the fourth century came to prevail, and which have formed the main part of speculative theology ever since, were the result of at least two centuries of conflict. At every stage of the conflict the conceptions of one or other of the forms of Greek philosophy played a decisive part; and the changing phases of the conflict find a remarkable parallel in some of the philosophical schools.
The conflict may be said to have had three leading stages, which are marked respectively by the dominance of speculations as to (1) the transcendence of God, (2) His revelation of Himself, (3) the distinctions in His nature.
(1) The Transcendence of God.—Nearly seven hundred years before the time when Christianity first came into large contact with Greek philosophy, the mind of a Greek thinker, outstripping the slow inferences of popular thought, had leapt to the conception of God as the Absolute Unity. He was the ultimate generalization of all things, expressed as the ultimate abstraction of number:[456] He was not limited by parts or by bodily form: “all of Him is sight, all of Him is understanding, all of Him is hearing.” But it is probable that the conception in its first form was rather of a material than of an ideal unity:[457] the basis of later metaphysics was first securely laid by a second form of the conception which succeeded the first half-a-century afterwards. The conception was that of Absolute Being. Only the One really is: it was not nor will be: it is now, and is everywhere entire, a continuous unity, a perfect sphere which fills all space, undying and immovable. Over against it are the Many, the innumerable objects of sense: they are not, but only seem to be: the knowledge that we seem to have of them is not truth, but illusion. But the conception, even in this second form, was more consistent with Pantheism than with Theism. It was lifted to the higher plane on which it has ever since rested by the Platonic distinction between the world of sense and the world of thought. God belonged to the latter, and not to the former. Absolute Unity, Absolute Being, and all the other terms which expressed His unique supremacy, were gathered up in the conception of Mind; for mind in the highest phase of its existence is self-contemplative: the modes of its expression are numerous, and perhaps infinite: but it can itself go behind its modes, and so retire, as it were, a step farther back from the material objects about which its modes employ themselves. In this sense God is transcendent (ἐπέκεινα τῆς οὐσίας), beyond the world of sense and matter. “God therefore is Mind, a form separate from all matter, that is to say, out of contact with it, and not involved with anything that is capable of being acted on.”[458]
This great conception of the transcendence of God filled a large place in later Greek philosophy, even outside the Platonic schools.[459] The history of it is beyond our present purpose; but we shall better understand the relation of Christian theology to current thought if we take three expressions of the conception at the time when that theology was being formed—in Plutarch, in Maximus of Tyre, and in Plotinus.
Plutarch says:
“What, then, is that which really exists? It is the Eternal, the Uncreated, the Undying, to whom time brings no change. For time is always flowing and never stays: it is a vessel charged with birth and death: it has a before and after, a ‘will be’ and a ‘has been:’ it belongs to the ‘is not’ rather than to the ‘is.’ But God is: and that not in time but in eternity, motionless, timeless, changeless eternity, that has no before or after: and being One, He fills eternity with one Now, and so really ‘is,’ not ‘has been,’ or ‘will be’, without beginning and without ceasing.”[460]
Maximus of Tyre says:
“God, the Father and Fashioner of all things that are, He who is older than the sun, older than the sky, greater than time and lapse of time and the whole stream of nature, is unnamed by legislators, and unspoken by the voice and unseen by the eyes: and since we cannot apprehend His essence, we lean upon words and names and animals, and forms of gold and ivory and silver, and plants and rivers and mountain-peaks and springs of waters, longing for an intuition of Him, and in our inability naming by His name all things that are beautiful in this world of ours.”[461]
And again:
“It is of this Father and Begetter of the universe that Plato tells us: His name he does not tell us, for he knew it not: nor does he tell us His colour, for he saw Him not; nor His size, for he touched Him not. Colour and size are felt by the touch and seen by the sight: but the Deity Himself is unseen by the sight, unspoken by the voice, untouched by fleshly touch, unheard by the hearing, seen only—through its likeness to Him, and heard only—through its kinship with Him, by the noblest and purest and clearest-sighted and swiftest and oldest element of the soul.”[462]
Plotinus similarly, in answer to the old problem, “how from the One, being such as we have described Him, anything whatever has substance, instead of the One abiding by Himself,” replies:
“Let us call upon God Himself before we thus answer—not with uttered words, but stretching forth our souls in prayer to Him, for this is the only way in which we can pray, alone to Him who is alone. We must, then, gaze upon Him in the inner part of us, as in a temple, being as He is by Himself, abiding still and beyond all things (ἐπέκεινα ἁπάντων). Everything that moves must have an object towards which it moves. But the One has no such object; consequently we must not assert movement of Him.... Let us not think of production in time, when we speak of things eternal.... What then was produced was produced without His moving: ... it had its being without His assenting or willing or being moved in anywise. It was like the light that surrounds the sun and shines forth from it, though the sun is itself at rest: it is reflected like an image. So with what is greatest. That which is next greatest comes forth from Him, and the next greatest is νοῦς; for νοῦς sees Him and needs Him alone.”[463]
But the conception of transcendence is capable of taking two forms. It may be that of a God who passes beyond all the classes into which sensible phenomena are divisible, by virtue of His being pure Mind, cognizable only by mind; or it may be that of a God who exists extra flammantia moenia mundi, filling the infinite space which surrounds and contains all the spheres of material existence. The one God is transcendent in the proper sense of the term; the other is supra-cosmic. In either case He is said to be unborn, undying, uncontained; and since the same terms are thus used to express the elements of both forms of the conception, it is natural that these forms should readily pass into each other, and that the distinction between them should not always be present to a writer’s mind or perceptible in his writings. But the conception in one or other of its forms fills a large place in later Greek philosophy. It blended in a common stream with the new currents of religious feeling. [The process is well illustrated by Philo.]
The words “I am thy God” are used not in a proper but in a secondary sense. For Being, quâ Being, is out of relation: itself is full of itself and sufficient for itself, both before the birth of the world and equally so after it.[464] He transcends all quality, being better than virtue, better than knowledge, and better even than the good itself and the beautiful itself.[465] He is not in space, but beyond it; for He contains it. He is not in time, for He is the Father of the universe, which is itself the father of time, since from its movement time proceeds.[466] He is “without body, parts or passions”: without feet, for whither should He walk who fills all things: without hands, for from whom should He receive anything who possesses all things: without eyes, for how should He need eyes who made the light.[467] He is invisible, for how can eyes that are too weak to gaze upon the sun be strong enough to gaze upon its Maker.[468] He is incomprehensible: not even the whole universe, much less the human mind, can contain the conception of Him:[469] we know that He is, we cannot know what He is:[470] we may see the manifestations of Him in His works, but it were monstrous folly to go behind His works and inquire into His essence.[471] He is hence unnamed: for names are the symbols of created things, whereas His only attribute is to be.[472]
(2) The Revelation of the Transcendent.—Side by side with this conception of the transcendence of God, and intimately connected with it, was the idea of beings or forces coming between God and men. A transcendent God was in Himself incommunicable: the more the conception of His transcendence was developed, the stronger was the necessity for conceiving of the existence of intermediate links.[473]
i. A basis for such a conception was afforded in the popular mythology by the belief in demons—spirits inferior to the gods, but superior to men. The belief was probably “a survival of the primitive psychism which peopled the whole universe with life and animation.”[474] There was an enormous contemporary development of the idea of demons or genii. They are found in Epictetus, Dio Chrysostom, Maximus, and Celsus. In the latter some are good, some bad, most of them of mixed nature; to them is due the creation of all things except the human soul; they are the rulers of day and night, of the sunlight and the cold.[475]
ii. A philosophical basis for the theory was afforded by the Platonic Ideai or Forms, and the Stoical Logoi or Reasons. We have already seen the place which those Forms, viewed also as Forces, and those Reasons, viewed also as productive Seeds, filled in the later Greek cosmologies and cosmogonies. They were not less important in relation to the theory of the transcendence of God. The Forms according to which He shaped the world, the Forces by which He made and sustains it, the Reasons which inhere in it and, like laws, control its movements, are outflows from and reflexions of His nature, and communicate a knowledge of it to His intelligent creatures. In the philosophy of Philo, these philosophical conceptions are combined with both the Greek conception of Dæmons and the Hebrew conception of Angels. The four conceptions, Forms, Logoi, Dæmons, and Angels, pass into one another, and the expressions which are relative to them are interchangeable. The most common expression for them is Logoi, and it is more commonly found in the singular, Logos.
(3) The Distinctions in the Nature of God.—The Logos is able to reveal the nature of God because it is itself the reflexion of that nature. It is able to reveal that nature to intelligent creatures because the human intelligence is itself an offshoot of the Divine. As the eye of sense sees the sensible world, which also is a revelation of God,[476] since it is His thought impressed upon matter, so the reason sees the intelligible world, the world of His thoughts conceived as intelligible realities, existing separate from Him.
“The wise man, longing to apprehend God, and travelling along the path of wisdom and knowledge, first of all meets with the divine Reasons, and with them abides as a guest; but when he resolves to pursue the further journey, he is compelled to abstain, for the eyes of his understanding being opened, he sees that the object of his quest is afar off and always receding, an infinite distance in advance of him.”[477] “Wisdom leads him first into the antechamber of the Divine Reason, and when he is there he does not at once enter into the Divine Presence; but sees Him afar off, or rather not even afar off can he behold Him, but only he sees that the place where he stands is still infinitely far from the unnamed, unspeakable, and incomprehensible God.”[478]
What he sees is not God Himself but the likeness of Him, “just as those who cannot gaze upon the sun may yet gaze upon a reflexion of it.”[479] The Logos, reflecting not only the Divine nature, but also the Divine will and the Divine goodness, becomes to men a messenger of help; like the angel to Hagar, it brings advice and encouragement;[480] like the angel who redeemed Jacob (Gen. xlviii. 16), it rescues men from all kinds of evil;[481] like the angel who delivered Lot from Sodom, it succours the kinsmen of virtue and provides for them a refuge.[482]
“Like a king, it announces by decree what men ought to do; like a teacher, it instructs its disciples in what will benefit them; like a counsellor, it suggests the wisest plans, and so greatly benefits those who do not of themselves know what is best; like a friend, it tells many secrets which it is not lawful for the uninitiated to hear.”[483]
And standing midway between God and man, it not only reflects God downwards to man, but also reflects man upwards to God.
“It stands on the border-line between the Creator and the creation, not unbegotten like God, not begotten like ourselves, and so becomes not only an ambassador from the Ruler to His subjects, but also a suppliant from mortal man yearning after the immortal.”[484]
The relation of the Logos to God, as distinguished from its functions, is expressed by several metaphors, all of which are important in view of later theology. They may be gathered into two classes, corresponding to the two great conceptions of the relation of the universe to God which were held respectively by the two great sources of Philo’s philosophy, the Stoics and the Platonists. The one class of metaphors belongs to the monistic, the other to the dualistic, conception of the universe. In the former, the Logos is evolved from God; in the other, created by Him.[485] The chief metaphors of the former class are those of a phantom, or image, or outflow: the Logos is projected by God as a man’s shadow or phantom was sometimes conceived as thrown off by his body,[486] expressing its every feature, and abiding as a separate existence after the body was dead; it is a reflexion cast by God upon the space which He contains, as a parhelion is cast by the sun;[487] it is an outflow as from a spring.[488] The chief metaphor of the second class is that of a son; the Logos is the first-begotten of God;[489] and by an elaboration of the metaphor which reappears in later theology, God is in one passage spoken of as its Father, Wisdom as its Mother.[490] It hence tends sometimes to be viewed as separate from God, neither God nor man, but “inferior to God though greater than man.”[491] The earlier conception had already passed through several forms: it had begun with that which was itself the greatest leap that any one thinker had yet made, the conception that Reason made the world: the conception of Reason led to the conception of God as Personal Reason: out of that grew the thought of God as greater than Reason and using it as His instrument: and at last had come the conception of the Reason of God as in some way detached from Him, working in the world as a subordinate but self-acting law. It was natural that this should lead to the further conception of Reason as the offspring of God and Wisdom, the metaphor of a human birth being transferred to the highest sphere of heaven.