[Footnote A: When one thinks of the mischief that may arise from such perversions of scripture by the application of Philo's principles of interpretation, we do not marvel that some of the Jews regarded the translation of the Seventy "to have been as great a calamity to Israel as the making of the golden calf.">[
Edersheim admits, however, that in the Talmudic canon, the interpretation where "any repetition of what had been already stated, would point to something new;" and holds that these are comparatively sober rules of exegesis. "Not so the license," he remarks, "which he [Philo] claimed, of freely altering the punctuation of sentences, and his notion that, if one from among several synonymous words was chosen in a passage, this pointed to some special meaning attaching to it. Even more extravagant was the idea that a word which occurred in the Septuagint might be interpreted according to every shade of meaning which it bore in the Greek, and that even another meaning might be given it by slightly altering the letters." Of Philo's further efforts at harmonizing the revelations of God to the Jews with the teachings of the Greeks, it will only be necessary to read the following quotation from an authority upon such subjects:
Philo's doctrine starts from the idea that God is "being" absolutely bare of all quality. All quality in finite beings has limitation, and no limitation can be predicated of God, who is eternal, unchangeable, simple substance, free, self-sufficient. To predicate any quality of God would be to reduce him to the sphere of finite existence. Of him we can only say that he is, not what he is, and such purely negative predictions as to his being appear to Philo * * * the only way of securing his absolute elevation above the world [that is, above and outside of the material universe]. A consistent application of Philo's abstract conception of God would exclude the possibility of any active relation of God to the world, and therefore of religion; for a being absolutely without quality and movement cannot be conceived as actively concerned with the multiplicity of individual things. And so, in fact, Philo does teach that the absolute perfection, purity and loftiness of God would be violated by direct contact with imperfect, impure, and finite things. But the possibility of a connection between God and the world is reached through a distinction which forms the most important point in his theology and cosmology. The proper being of God is distinguished from the infinite multiplicity of divine ideas or forces: God himself is without quality, but he disposes of an infinite variety of divine forces, through whose mediation an active relation of God to the world is brought about. In the details of his teaching as to these mediating entities, Philo is guided partly by Plato and partly by the Stoics; but at the same time he makes use of the concrete religious conceptions of heathenism and Judaism. Following Plato, he first calls them "Ideas," or patterns of all things; they are thoughts of God, yet possess a real existence, and were produced before the creation of the sensible world, of which they are the keys. * * * Philo maintains that the divine forces are identical with the "demons" of the Greeks and the "angels" of the Jews, i. e., servants and messengers of God, by means of which he communicates with the finite world. * * * Philo regards all individual "ideas" as comprehended in one highest and most general "idea" or force—the unity of the individual idea—which he calls the "logos" or "reason" of God, and which is again regarded as operative "reason." The logos, therefore, is the highest mediator between God and man, the world, the first-born son of God, the archangel, who is the vehicle of all revelation, and the high priest who stands before God on behalf of the world. Through whom the world was created.[A]
[Footnote A: Professor E. Schurer, of University of Giessen, art. Philo in Encyclo. Brit.]
In all this one may see only too plainly the effort to harmonize Jewish theology with Greek philosophy—an effort to be rid of the plain anthropomorphism of the Hebrew scriptures for the incomprehensible "being" of Greek metaphysics.
Thus the Jews—the people who had been chosen to be witnesses for God to the world—appeared to have grown weary of the mission given to them. Tired were they of standing in a position where their hands seemed to be raised against all men, and all men's hands against them. They had lost the spirit that had supported their fathers, and hence were searching out these cowardly compromises by which harmony could be shown to exist between the philosophy of the Gentiles and the revelations of God to their fathers.
God Revealed to the World in the Person of Jesus Christ.
This completes the survey I intended to make of this field. Nowhere have we found a knowledge of the true and living God. Nowhere a teacher who comes with definite knowledge of this subject of all subjects—a subject so closely related to eternal life, that to know God is said in the scriptures to be life eternal; and of course, the corollary naturally follows, viz, not to know God is not to possess eternal life. We can form no other conclusion from the survey we have taken of the world's ideas respecting the existence and nature of God, than that forced upon us—the world stood in sore need of a revelation of God. He whom the Egyptians and Indians sought for in their Pantheism, must be made known. God, whom Confucius would have men respect, but keep at a distance, must draw near. The "Alfader" of the Goths, undefined, incomprehensible to them, must be brought out of the northern darkness into glorious light. The God-idea that prevailed among the Greek philosophers must be brought from the mists of their idle speculations and made to stand before the world, He whom the Jews were seeking to deny and forsake must be revealed again to the children of men. And lo! when the vail falls from the revelation that God gives of himself, what form is that which steps forth from the background of the world's ignorance and mystery? A MAN, as God lives! Jesus of Nazareth—the great Peasant Teacher of Judea. He is God revealed henceforth to the world. They who thought God impersonal, without form, must know him henceforth as a person in the form of man. They who have held him to be without quality, must henceforth know him as possessed of the qualities of Jesus of Nazareth. They who have regarded him as infinitely terrible, must henceforth know him also as infinitely gentle. Those who would hold him at a distance, will now permit him to draw near. This is the world's mystery revealed. This is God manifested in the flesh. This is the Son of God, who comes to reveal the Father, for he is the express image and likeness of that Father's person, and the reflection of that Father's mind. Henceforth when men shall say, Show us the Father, he shall point to himself as the complete revelation of the Father, and say, "He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father also." Henceforth, when men shall dispute about the "being" and "nature" of God, it shall be a perfect answer to uphold Jesus Christ as the complete, perfect revelation and manifestation of God, and through all the ages it shall be so; there shall be no excuse for men saying they know not God, for all may know him, from the least to the greatest, so tangible, so real a revelation has God given of himself in the person and character of Jesus Christ. He lived his life on earth—a life of sorrow and of gentleness, its pathway strewn with actions fraught with mercy, kindness, and love. A man he was, approved of God among men, by miracles, and wonders and signs which God did by him. Being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, men took and by wicked hands crucified and slew him, but God raised him up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that he should be holden of it; and exalted him on high at the right hand of God, whence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.[A]
[Footnote A: This synopsis of the Christ's life is in Acts 2.]
Mark you, in all this there is not a word about the mysterious, ineffable generation of the Son of God from the Father, together with all the mysteries that men have gathered together in their learned disquisitions about God. No question is raised as to whether Jesus was made out of nothing or begotten by ineffable generation from the substance of the Father. Whether he is consubstantial, that is, of the same substance with the Father, or only of a similar substance. Nor is there any question raised as to whether Jesus was "begotten" before or after time began. All these and a hundred other questions arose after the Christian doctrine of Deity began to come in contact with the Greek and other philosophies. Jesus accepted the existence of God as a settled fact, and proclaimed himself to be the Son of God: offending the Jews, by so doing, for they saw that he made himself equal with God;[A] and being a man, held forth himself to be God.[B] Slow indeed were they to learn the great truth plainly revealed in Jesus Christ, that God is a perfect man. Such was Jesus Christ, and he was God manifested in the flesh. "Was," did I say? Nay, "is," I should have said; and such will he remain forever; a spirit he is, clothed with an immortal body, a resurrected body of tangible flesh and bones made eternal, and now dwelling in heaven with his Father, of whom he is the express image and likeness; as well now as when he was on earth; and hence the Father also must be a personage of flesh and bones, as tangible as the exalted man, Christ Jesus the Lord.