And common as it is for English writers to give a feminine personification to Wisdom and Genius, Philo expressly says they are of the masculine gender (τῆς ἄῤῥενος γενεᾶς νοῦς καὶ λογισμὸς);[[278]] and the husband of the other faculties of the soul.
The divine attributes are, I think, uniformly represented by the pronoun she, in imaginative religious writers, like Bishop Taylor; mercy, justice, goodness, thus assume, in the works of that great man, the same form as Wisdom in the book of Proverbs; and it may be doubted whether, if the apostle John had written in the English language and with English feelings, the personification in his proem might not have presented itself in the same shape. Any one who will read over the passage, with this idea, will find, I think, that the figure, thus modified, appears by no means inconceivable. Have we not, in the peculiarity of our language to which I have alluded, one reason why English theologians appear to have felt more difficulty than foreign divines in seizing the true idea of the Logos; and why the disposition to consider it as an objective and absolute Person has been much more prevalent among all parties here, than on the Continent?
2. But a more important consideration, for the understanding of this Proem, is this: that the Apostle is not the originator of the conception respecting the Logos, but simply adopted it in the shape, towards which it had been organizing itself for centuries. Three successive states of the idea can be traced; in the Old Testament, it appears (in Prov. viii.) as a mere transient personification of Divine Wisdom; in the Apocryphal Books of Ecclesiasticus and of Wisdom, it presents itself in a more permanent and mythical character; and, in the writings of Philo, it assumes so embodied and hypostatized a form, as to perplex the simplicity of his Monotheism. From his writings, the whole Proem of his contemporary John (except where the Baptist and Jesus are mentioned by name) might be constructed. This coincidence in phraseology so remarkable, cannot be considered as accidental. Is it thought impossible that John should say of an attribute of God, that it was with him from the first? We reply, Philo does say so; calling Goodness the most ancient of God’s qualities; Wisdom older than the universe; Logos, the Assessor (πάρεδρος and ὀπαδὸς) of God prior to all creations, a needful companion of Deity, as the joint originator with him of all things.[[279]] And the Son of Sirach says, in his personification of Wisdom: “I am come out of the mouth of the most High, first-born before all creatures:” “He created me from the beginning, and before the world.”[[280]] Is it said that such a statement is unworthy of Revelation? We reply, it occurs in the writings of Solomon: “The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old;” “then I was by him as one brought up with him:”[[281]] where the feminine form (vv. 2, 3) totally excludes the idea of Wisdom being anything more than a personification. Is it thought impossible that an attribute of God should be called the only-begotten Son of God? We turn to Philo, and find this same Logos entitled the most Ancient Son of God (ὁ πρεσβύτατος υἱὸς θεοῦ), the First-begotten (ὁ πρωτόγονος). Is it inconceivable that, through this transforming energy of God, those who received it should be said to become Sons of God? Philo says, “If you are not yet worthy to be denominated a Son of God, be earnest to put on the graces of his First-begotten Logos,—the most ancient angel, and, we may say, an archangel of various titles:” “for if we are not prepared to be esteemed children of God, we may at all events be thus related to the most Holy Logos, his eternal Image; for the most Ancient Logos is the Image of God.”[[282]]
As all Theological considerations, suggested by heretics, are apt to be dismissed with mere expressions of surprise and contempt, I am happy to refer, in confirmation of the foregoing views, in the most essential particulars, to an Orthodox Writer, whose accurate and various learning, and sound and grave judgment, have given him a merited pre-eminence among the Commentators on the Gospel of John. I allude to Professor Lücke, whose “Commentar über das Evangelium des Johannes” I have had the opportunity, since the delivery of this Lecture, of consulting. I wish that I could lay before my readers the whole of his admirable history of the rise and progress of the idea of the Logos; but I must content myself with translating a few brief extracts.[[283]]
“The origin and germ,” he says, “of the theological Formula of the Logos, are furnished in the Canonical Hebrew Books (alluding to certain passages, especially Prov. viii. which he has been showing to be mere poetical personifications of Divine Attributes). It obtained its full development in the Jewish Theology, in the writings of the Alexandrine Philo. And, in an intermediate state of formation, we find it in the Greek Apocryphal books of the Old Testament.”
Lücke examines the conception in all these stages; and, from his analysis of Philo’s mode of thought, I extract the following:
“According to Philo, God, in his interior Essence, is inconceivable, occult, solitary (das absolute), self-comprised, and without relations to any other existence.... Although the absolute cause of all that is, God cannot, in his own essence, and immediately, operate on the universe, either in the way of creation, preservation, or government. Concealed in his absolute separation, God is manifest and an object of knowledge in the world, only through his Powers (δυνάμεις): these, external forces of God in the universe, apart from his absolute essence, are the necessary media of his presence in the universe.... These divine δυνάμεις Philo calls sometimes Ideas, sometimes Angels, sometimes Logoi. This identification of notions, powers, ideas, angels, logoi, which is frequent in the writings of Philo, is of great importance for the right apprehension of his doctrine of the Divine Logos. This Logos he considers in a twofold relation. Sometimes he regards it as inherent (immanent), and refers it to him as a capacity (facultativ); when it is the Divine νοῦς, analogous to the human. But this attributive conception gives way to that of the λόγος ἐνδιάθετος, as a living, energetic δύναμις, which tends to external action. Of this, Philo, in the spirit of Platonism, conceives as ἰδέα ἰδεῶν, the Ideal of things, the archetypal Idea, the pattern World, the νοητὸς κόσμος, which is extant in God as a reality, before all outward creations of the actual universe. In this sense the λόγος is the primary energy of God,—the ἐννόησις, the λογισμὸς θεοῦ λογιζομένου.
But, at the same time, the λόγος is also προφορικός; and, as a forming activity, goes forth out of God. But as this is only another relation of the Divine Logos, viz., relation to the world, so is it the product of the former; yet essentially one with it, like the οἶκος of the inherent Logos,—as human speech is the resident point of the idea, its form of manifestation. All living, active relations of God to the world, all his objective manifestations, are comprised in this emanated Logos. He forms the world or creates it, imprinting himself on matter as a Divine seal (σφραγὶς). And as he has created the world (or otherwise, God through him, δι’ αὐτοῦ,) so he preserves it; he is the indwelling and sustaining power, full of light and life, and filling everything with Divine light and life. So in the human world, he is both the natural divine power of every soul, the pure intellect, the conscience; and the bestower of wisdom, and the watch of virtue. He is the same with the Wisdom of God, the Holy Spirit of God in his objective manifestation in the world; partly because animating and inspiring men, particularly in the capacity of Prophetic Spirit.
“Hence the Logos is the eldest Creation of God, the Eternal Father’s eldest Son, God’s Image, Mediator between God and the World, the Highest Angel, the Second God, the High-priest, the Reconciler, Intercessor for the World and Men, whose manifestation is especially visible in the history of the Jewish people.”[[284]]
It ought to be added, that some able writers, as Grossman and Gfrörer, conceive that Philo invested his Logos with a real personality. The reasons for this opinion do not appear to me to be satisfactory. Even those who adopt it assign to this hypostasis a rank wholly subordinate, in Philo’s estimation, to the Supreme God: and Lücke strenuously maintains that both the Alexandrine philosopher and the apostle John apply the name God to the Logos only in a figurative sense (ἐν καταχρήσει). He considers the clause “the Word was God,” merely incidental, and unimportant compared with the preceding clause, “the Word was with God.” “John,” he observes, “sums up the purpose of the first verse in the words of the second; οὗτος ἦν ἐν ἀρχῇ πρὸς τὸν θεὸν. From his not taking up again the idea θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος, we must conclude, that he considered this position only an accessory. Thus the πρὸς τὸν θεὸν is evidently to be the more prominently marked assertion.” “John would say, the primeval Logos is πρὸς τὸν θεὸν; that is, is in such communion with God, stands in such relation to him, that he may be called θεός. Looking at the historical connection between the mode of expression in Philo and in John, there is no room for doubt, that θεὸς is to be taken in the sense in which Philo applies the name θεός to the ποιητικὴ δύναμις τοῦ θεοῦ,—and explicitly calls the λόγος God—ὁ δεύτερος θεός ; but to prevent misunderstanding, expressly subjoins that this is only ἐν καταχρήσει. Though John, as we have seen, understands by the Logos, a real Divine Person, he yet, as a Christian Apostle, held the monotheistic conception of God in a still higher degree, and an incomparably purer form (xvii. 3; 1 John v. 20) than Philo: and are we then at liberty to suppose, that by him, less than by Philo, the position θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος is meant simply ἐν καταχρήσει? It is true that the substitution for θεὸς of the adjective θεῖος is at variance with the analogy of New Testament diction: but must we not, with the Alexandrine Fathers, especially Origen, conclude that θεὸς without the article, is to be taken as marking the difference between the indefinite sense of ‘Divine nature,’ and the definite, absolute, conception of God, expressed by ὁ θεὸς? Thus would John’s θεὸς correspond with Paul’s εἰκὼν τοῦ θεοῦ. Such an accordance between the manner of Paul and of John is an advantage which must appear an equally desirable result of exegesis, whether we consider it in its dogmatical or its historical relations.”[[285]]