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.