[83]. Vid. Huet. Concord. Ration. & Fid. Lib. II. cap. 3.
[84]. See Dr. Berriman’s Historical account, &c. page 94.
[85]. “Philo uses not the name for his derivative Being in the Godhead, which we see the other Jews of the time using in the Gospels. He speaks not of him, by his natural appellation of the Son of God. No! He takes up another title for him, which indeed was known equally to other Jews, or Philo could not possibly have adopted it; which was known equally to the Gentiles, as I shall show hereafter; but which was known only to the scholars of either. He calls him ‘the Logos of God.’ This is a name, that can be borrowed, together with the idea annexed to it, only from the Jews, or from the common ancestors of them and of the Gentiles; that answers exactly to the Dabar of Jehovah in the Hebrew Scriptures, and to the Memra of Jehovah in the Chaldee paraphrasts upon them; and signifies merely ‘the Word of God.’ This name has been since introduced into our religion, by one of the inspired teachers of it. And notwithstanding the ductility of the Greek language in this instance, which would allow it to be rendered either the Word or the Reason of God; yet the English Bible, with a strict adherence to propriety, and in full conformity to the ancient Christians and ancient Jews, has rejected the accidental signification, and embraced only the immediate and the genuine. Yet, even now, the name is confined in its use to the more improved intellects among us. And it must therefore have peculiarly been, in the days of Philo, the philosophical denomination of Him, who was popularly called the Son of God.
“The use of the name of Logos, or Word, by Philo and by St. John in concurrence, sufficiently marks the knowledge of the name among the Jews. But the total silence concerning it, by the Jewish writers of the three first Gospels; the equal silence of the introduced Jews concerning it, in all the four; and the acknowledged use of it through all the Jewish records of our religion, merely by St. John himself; prove it to have been familiar to a few only. It is indeed too mysterious in its allusion, and too reducible into metaphor in its import, to have ever been the common and ordinary appellation for the Son of God. Originating from the spiritual principle of connexion, betwixt the first and the second Being in the Godhead; marking this, by a spiritual idea of connexion; and considering it to be as close and as necessary as the Word is to the energetick Mind of God, which cannot bury its intellectual energies in silence, but must put them forth in speech; it is too spiritual in itself, to be addressed to the faith of the multitude. If with so full a reference to our bodily ideas, and so positive a filiation of the Second Being to the First, we have seen the grossness of Arian criticism endeavouring to resolve the doctrine into the mere dust of a figure; how much more ready would it have been to do so, if we had only such a spiritual denomination as this, for the second? This would certainly have been considered by it, as too unsubstantial for distinct personality, and therefore too evanescent for equal divinity.
“St. John indeed adopted this philosophical title, for the denomination of the Son of God; only in one solemn and prefatory passage of his Gospel, in two slight and incidental passages of his Epistles, and in one of his Book of revelations. Even there, the use of the popular instead of the philosophical name, in the three Gospels antecedent to his, precluded all probability of misconstruction. Yet, not content with this, he formed an additional barrier. At the same instant in which he speaks of the Logos, he asserts him to be distinct from God the Father, and yet to be equally God with him. ‘In the beginning,’ he says, ‘was the Word; and the Word was with God; and the Word was God.’ Having thus secured the two grand points relating to the Logos, he can have nothing more to say upon the subject, than to repeat what he has stated, for impressing the deeper conviction. He accordingly repeats it. His personality he impresses again, thus; ‘THE SAME was in the beginning with God.’ His divinity also he again inculcates, thus: ‘ALL THINGS WERE MADE BY HIM, and WITHOUT HIM WAS NOT ANY THING MADE THAT WAS MADE.’ Here the very repetition itself, of enforcing his claim to divinity, by ascribing the creation to him; is plainly an union of two clauses, each announcing him as the Creator of the universe, and one doubling over the other. And the uncreated nature of his own existence is the more strongly enforced upon the mind, by being contrasted with the created nature of all other existences. These were MADE, but he himself WAS; made by Him, who was with God, and was God. Nor would all this precaution suffice, in the opinion of St. John. He must place still stronger fences against the dangerous spirit of error. He therefore goes on to say, in confirmation of his personality and divinity, and in application of all to our Saviour: ‘He was in the world, and THE WORLD WAS MADE BY HIM, and the world knew him not; He came unto HIS OWN [PROPER DOMAINS,] and HIS OWN [PROPER DOMESTICKS] received him not.’ And he closes all, with judiciously drawing the several parts of his assertions before into one full point; and with additionally explaining his philosophical term, by a direct reference of it to that popular one which he uses ever afterwards: ‘and the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us; and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.’
“Yet, when such guards were requisite, what induced St. John to use this philosophical title at all? The reason was assuredly this. The title was in high repute, and in familiar use, among the refined spirits of the age; and his Gospel was peculiarly calculated for the service of such. The almost perpetual recurrence of the appellation in Philo’s works shows evidently the use and the repute in which it was, among the more spiritualized of the Jews. St. John therefore adopted it himself, for the more easy access to their conviction. It was also congenial, probably, of itself to the spiritualized state of St. John’s mind. He, who has dwelt so much more than the other Evangelists upon the doctrines of our Saviour; and who has drawn out so many of them, in all their spiritual refinement of ideas; would naturally prefer the spiritual term of relationship for God the Son and God the Father, before the bodily, whenever the intellect was raised enough to receive it, and whenever the use of it was sufficiently guarded from danger. These were two reasons, I suppose, that induced St. John to use it a few times. And these were equally (I suppose) the reasons, that induced him, with all his guards, to use it only a few.
“Nor let us be told, in the rashness of Arian absurdity, that we misunderstand St. John in this interpretation of his words. If reason is capable of explaining words, and if St. John was capable of conveying his meaning in words to the ear of reason; then we may boldly appeal to the common sense of mankind, and insist upon the truth of our interpretation. Common sense indeed hath already determined the point, in an impartial person, in an enemy, in a Heathen. I allude to that extraordinary approbation, which was given by a Heathen of the third century to this passage of St. John. ‘Of modern philosophers,’ says Eusebius, ‘Amelius is an eminent one, being himself, if ever there was one, a zealot for the philosophy of Plato; and he called the Divine of the Hebrews a Barbarian, as if he would not condescend to make mention of the Evangelist John by name.’ Such is Eusebius’s account of our referee. But what are the terms of his award? They are these. ‘And such indeed was the Logos,’ he says, ‘by whom, a perpetual existence, the things created were created, as also Heraclitus has said; and who by Jupiter, the Barbarian says, being constituted in the rank and dignity of a Principle, is with God and is God, by whom all things absolutely were created; in whom the created living thing, and life, and existence, had a birth, and fell into a body, and putting on flesh appeared a man; and, after showing the greatness of his nature, and being wholly dissolved, is again deified and is God, such as he was before he was brought down into the body and the flesh and a man. These things, if translated out of the Barbarian’s theology, not as shaded over there, but on the contrary as placed in full view, would be plain.’ In this very singular and very valuable comment upon St. John’s Gospel in general, and upon his preface in particular, we may see, through the harsh and obscure language of the whole, some circumstances of great moment. The bold air of arrogance in the blinded Heathen over the illuminated Divine must strike at once upon every eye. But the Logos appears, from him, to have been known to the philosophers of antiquity later than the Gospel; and known too as a perpetual Existence, and the Maker of the world. St. John also is witnessed by a Heathen, and by one who put him down for a Barbarian, to have represented the Logos as the Maker of all things, as with God, and as God; as one likewise, ‘in whom the created living Thing,’ or the human soul of our Saviour, ‘and’ even ‘Life and Existence’ themselves, those primogenial principles of Deity, ‘had a birth, and fell into a body, and putting on flesh appeared a man,’ who was therefore man and God in one; who accordingly ‘showed the greatness of his nature’ by his miracles, was ‘wholly dissolved,’ and then ‘was again DEIFIED, and is God,’ even ‘SUCH AS HE WAS, before he was brought down into the body and the flesh and a man.’ And St. John is attested to have declared this, ‘not even as shaded over,’ but ‘on the contrary as placed in full view.’ We have thus a testimony to the plain meaning of St. John, and to the evident Godhead of his Logos, a Godhead equally before and after his death; most unquestionable in its nature, very early in its age, and peculiarly forcible in its import. St. John, we see, is referred to in a language, that shows him to have been well known to the Grecian cotemporaries of Amelius, as a writer, as a foreigner, and as a marked assertor of Divinity for his Logos.”
Whitaker.
[86]. Vid. Forbes. Instruct. Hist. Theol. Lib. I. cap. 2 §. 8.
[87]. Vid. Curcell in Quattern. Dissert. de Voc. Trinit. personæ ge.