I. (a) At the beginning of the Book of Genesis there appear

to be intimations of the existence of a plurality of Persons within the One Essence of God. It is indeed somewhat remark- able that the full significance of the two wordsj, by which Moses describes the primal creative act of God, was not insisted upon by the primitive Church teachers. It attracted attention in the middle ages, and it was more particularly noticed after the re- vival of Hebrew Letters. When Moses is describing this Divine action, he joins a singular verb to a plural noun. Language, it would seem, thus submits to a violent anomaly, that she may the better hint at the presence of Several Powers or Persons, Who not merely act together, but Who constitute a Single Agent. We are indeed told that this Name of God, Elohim, was borrowed from Polytheistic sources, that it was retained in its plural form in order to express majesty or magnificence, and that it was then united to singular verbs and adjectives in order to make it do the work of a Monotheistic Creed‘. But on the other hand, it is confessed on all sides that the promulgation and protection of a belief in the Unity of God was the central
b 1 St. Pet. ii. 9. 1 Rom. xv. 4. J Gen. i. 1, O98 N13.
* Herder, Geist der Hebr. Poésie, Bd. i. p. 48. et ] E
50 Zhe tnner Life of God adumbrated in Genesis.
and dominant object of the Mosaic literature and of the Mosaic legislation. Surely such an object would not have been im- perilled for no higher purpose than that of amplification. There must have been a truth at stake which demanded the risk. The Hebrew language could have described God by singular forms such as El, Eloah, and no question would have been raised as to the strictly Monotheistic force of those words. The Hebrew language might have ‘amplified’ the idea of God thus conveyed by less dangerous processes than the employment of a plural form. Would it not have done so, unless the plural form had been really necessary, in order to suggest some complex mystery of God’s inner Life, until that mystery should be more clearly unveiled by the explicit Revelations of a later day? The analo- gies of the language may indeed prove that the plural form of the word had a majestic force ; but the risk of misunderstanding would surely have counterbalanced this motive for using it, un- less a vital need had demanded its retention. Nor will the theory that the plural noun is merely expressive of majesty in ods wna, avail to account for the plural verb in the words, ‘Let Us make man!’ In these words, which precede the final act and climax of the Creation, the early Fathers detected a clear intimation of a Plurality of Persons in the Godhead ™. The supposition that in these words a Single Person is in a dramatic colloquy with Himself, is less reasonable than the opinion that a Divine Speaker is addressing a multitude of in- ferior beings, such as the Angels. But apart from other con- siderations, we may well ask, what would be the ‘likeness’ or ‘image’ common to God and to the Angels, in which man was to be created®? or why should created essences such as the Angels be invited to take part in a Creative Act at all? Each of the foregoing explanations is really weighted with greater difficulties than the Patristic doctrine, to the effect that the verb, ‘Let Us make,’ points to a Plurality of Persons within the Unity of the One Agent, while the ‘ Likeness,’ common to All These Persons and itself One, suggests very pointedly Their participation in an Undivided Nature. And in such sayings as ‘Behold the man
1 Gen. i. 26. Cp. Drach, Deuxitme Lettre d’un Rabbin Converti aux Israelites ses Pires, Paris, 1827, p. 26.
m Cf, the references in Petavius, de Trinitate, ii. 7. 6.
Ὁ “Non raro etiam veteres recentioresque interpretes, ut ons de angelis intelligerent, theologicis potius quam exegeticis argumentis permoti esse videntur; cf....Gen. i. 26, 27, ex quo Samaritani cum Abenezra ho- minem ad angelorum, non ad Dei, similitudinem creatum esse probant.’ Gesenius, Thesaur. in voc. DT, 2.
[ Lect.
The priestly Blessing. 51
is become like One of Us°®,’ used with reference to the Fall, or ‘Go to; let Us go down and there confound their language ?, uttered on the eve of the dispersion of Babel, it is clear that an equality of rank is distinctly assumed between the Speaker and Those Whom He is addressing. The only adequate alternative to that interpretation of these texts which is furnished by the Trinitarian doctrine, and which sees in them a preparation for the disclosures of a later age, is the violent supposition of some kind of pre-Mosaic Olympus, the many deities of which are upon a level of strict equality with each other4. But if this supposi- tion be admitted, how are we to account for the presence of such language in the Pentateuch at all? How can a people, con- fessedly religious and intelligent, such as were the Hebrews, have thus stultified their whole religious history and literature, by welcoming or retaining, in a document of the highest possible authority, a nomenclature which contained so explicit a denial of the first Article of the Hebrew Faith ?
The true sense of the comparatively indeterminate language which occurs at the beginning of Genesis, is more fully explained by the Priestly Blessing which we find to be prescribed for ritual usage in the Book of Numbers". This blessing is spoken of as a putting the Vame of God§, that is to say, a symbol unveiling His Nature, upon the children of Israel. Here then we dis- cover a distinct limit to the number of the Persons Who are hinted at in Genesis, as being internal to the Unity of God. The Priest is to repeat the Most Holy Name Three times. The Hebrew accentuation, whatever be its date, shews that the Jews themselves saw in this repetition the declaration of a mystery in the Divine Nature. Unless such a repetition had been designed to secure the assertion of some important truth, a single mention of the Sacred Name would have been more natural in a system, the object of which was to impress belief in the Divine Unity upon an entire people. This significant repetition, suggesting
© Gen, iii. 22. Ὁ THN. LXX. ὡς εἷς ἐξ ἡμῶν.
P Gen, xi. 7.
4 Klose, De polytheismi vestigiis apud Hebreos ante Mosen, Gotting. 1830, referred to by Kuhn, Dogmatik, Bd. ii. p. 10.
τ Num. vi, 23-26. 8 Tbid. ver. 27.
ὁ “Nach der biblischen Anschauung und inbesondere des A. T. ist iiber- haupt der Zusammenhang zwischen Name und Sache ein sehr enger, und ein ganz anderer als im modernen Bewusstein, wo sich der Name meist zu einem bloss conventionellen Zeichen abgeschwiicht hat; der Name ist die Sache selbst, sofern diese in die Erscheinung tritt und erkannt wird, der ins Wort 7. Ausdruck des Wesens,’ Konig, Theologie der Psalmen, p. 266.
u E2
52 The vision of Isaiah.
without distinctly asserting a Trinity in the Being of God, did its work in the mind of Israel. It is impossible not to be struck with the recurrence of the Threefold rhythm of prayer or praise, again and again, in the Psalter¥. Again and again the poetical parallelism is sacrificed to the practical and theological object of making the sacred songs of Israel contain an exact acknowledg- ment of that inner law of God’s Nature, which had been shadowed out in the Pentateuch. And to omit traces of this influence of the priestly blessing which are discoverable in Jere- miah and Ezekiel *, let us observe the crowning significance of the vision of Isaiahy. In that adoration of the Most Holy Three, Who yet are One4, by the veiled and mysterious Sera- phim; in that deep self-abasement and misery of the Prophet, who, though a man of unclean lips, had yet seen with his eyes the King, the Lord of Hosts@; in that last enquiry on the part of the Divine Speaker, the very terms of which reveal Him as One and yet more than One >,—what a flood of almost Gospel light ¢ is poured upon the intelligence of the elder Church! If we cannot altogether assert with the opponents of the Lutheran Calixtus, that the doctrine of the Trinity is so clearly contained in the Old Testament as to admit of being deduced from it with- out the aid of the Apostles and Evangelists; enough at least has been said to shew that the Old Testament presents us with a doctrine of the Divine Unity which is very far removed from the hard and sterile Monotheism of the Koran. Within the Uncreated and Unapproachable Essence, Israel could plainly distinguish the shadows of a Truth which we Christians fully express at this hour, when we ‘acknowledge the glory of the Eternal Trinity, and in the power of the Divine Majesty worship the Unity.’
(8) From these adumbrations of Personal Distinctions within the Being of God, we pass naturally to consider that series of remarkable apparitions which are commonly known as the Theo- phanies, and which form so prominent a feature in the early history of the Old Testament Scriptures. When we are told that God spoke to our fallen parents in Paradise 4, and appeared
= Cf. Ps. xxix. 4, 5, and 7,8; xcvi. 1, 2, and 7, 8; cxv. 9, 10, 11; cxviii. 2-4, and 10-12, and 15, 16.
x On this subject, see Dr, Pusey’s Letter to the Bishop of London, p. 131.
Υ Isaiah vi. 2-8. 5 Tbid. ver. 3. a Tbid. ver. 5.
b Thid. ver. 8. ΘΗ Ἐς
4 Gen. iii. 8: ‘They heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.’
[ Lect.
Ψ
The Theophanies. 53
to Abram in his ninety-ninth year 8, there is no distinct intima- tion of the mode of the Divine manifestation. But when ‘ Je- hovah appeared’ to the great Patriarch by the oak of Mamref, Abraham ‘lift up his eyes and looked, and lo, Three Men stood by hims. Abraham bows himself to the ground; he offers hospitality; he waits by his Visitors under the tree, and they eath. One of the Three is the spokesman; he appears to bear the Sacred Name Jehovahi; he is seemingly distinguished from the ‘two angels’ who went first to Sodomj; he promises that the aged Sarah shall have a son, and that ‘all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in Abraham,’ With him Abraham intercedes for Sodom!; by him judgment is afterwards executed upon the guilty city. When it is said that ‘Jehovah rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from Jehovah out of heaven ™,’ a sharp distinction is established between a visible and an Invisible Person, each bearing the Most Holy Name. This distinction introduces us to the Mosaic and later representations of that very exalted and mysterious being, the mi yxdp or Angel of the Lord. The Angel of the Lord is cer- tainly distinguished from Jehovah ; yet the names by which he is called, the powers which he assumes to wield, the honour which is paid to him, shew that in him there was at least a special Presence of God. He seems to speak sometimes in his own name, and sometimes as if he were not a created person- ality, but only a veil or organ of the Higher Nature That spoke and acted through him. Thus he assures Hagar, as if speaking in the character of an ambassador from God, that ‘the Lord had heard her affliction®.’ Yet he promises her, ‘I will multiply thy seed exceedingly °,’ and she in return ‘called the Name of the Lord that spake unto her, Thou God seest meP.’ He arrests Abraham’s arm, when the Patriarch is on the point of carrying out God’s bidding by offering Isaac as a sacrificed; yet he asso- ciates himself with Him from Whom ‘ Abraham had not with- held his son, his only son.’ He accepts for himself Abraham’s obedience as rendered to God, and he subsequently at a second appearance adds the promise, ‘In thy seed shall all the nations of
9 Gen. xvii. 1-3: ‘The Lord appeared to Abram, and said unto him, Iam the Almighty God. ... And Abram fell on his face: and God talked
with him.’ £ Ibid. xviii. 1. s Ibid. ver. 2. h Ibid. ver. 8. 1 Ibid. ver. 17. J Compare Gen. xvili, 22 and xix. 1. LX X. ἦλθον δὲ of δύο ἄγγελοι. ® Gen. xviii. 10, 18. 1 Thid. vers. 23-33. m Ibid. xix. 24; cf. St. Justin, Dial. Tryp. c. 56. = Gen. xvi. II. ° Ibid. ver. Io, P Ibid. ver. 13. 4 Ibid, xxii, 11, 12.
u |
54 Lhe Theophanies.
the earth be blessed ; because thou hast obeyed My voice'.” He appears to Jacob in a dream, he announces himself as ‘the God of Bethel, where thou anointedst the pillar, and where thou vowedst a vow unto Mes. Thus he was ‘the Lord’ who in Jacob’s vision at Bethel had stood above the ladder and said, ‘I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac t.’ He was, as it seems, the Chief of that angel-host whom Jacob met at Mahanaim¥; with him Jacob wrestled for a blessing at Peniel; of him Jacob says, ‘I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved.’ When blessing the sons of Joseph, the dying Patriarch invokes not only ‘the God Which fed me all my life long unto this day,’ bet also ‘the Angel which redeemed me from all evil®. In the desert of Midian, the Angel of the Lord appears to Moses ‘in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush.’ The bush remains miraculously unconsumed ¥. ‘Jehovah’ sees that Moses turns aside to see, and ‘Elohim’ calls to Moses out of the midst of the bush%, The very ground on which Moses stands is holy; and the Lawgiver hides his face, ‘for he was afraid to look upon God*.” The Speaker from the midst of the bush announces Himself as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob®. His are the Mercy, the Wisdom, the Providence, the Power, the Authority of the Most High?; nay, all the Divine attributes®. When the children of Israel are making their escape from Egypt, the Angel of the Lord leads them ; in the hour of danger he places himself between the camp of Israel and the host of Pharaoh4, How deeply Israel felt the value of his protecting care, we may learn from the terms of the message to the King of Edom®. God promises that the Angel shall keep Israel in the way, and bring the people to Canaan f; his presence is a guarantee that the Amorites and other idola- trous races shall be cut offs. Israel is to obey this Angel, and to provoke him not; for the Holy ‘Name is in him}. Even after the sin of the Golden Calf, the promised guardianship of the Angel is not forfeited; while a distinction is clearly drawn between the Angel and Jehovah Himselfi, Yet the Angel is
¥ Gen. xxii. 18; cf. Heb. vi. 13, 14. 8 Gen, xxxi. II, 13. * Ibid. xxviii. 13. u Thid. xxxii. 1. Σ Ibid. xlviii. 15, 16. Υ Exod. iii. 1, 2. 5. Ibid. ver. 4. ® Thid. ver. 6.
> Thid. vers. 7-14. ¢ Ibid. vers. 14-16, ἃ Ibid. xiv. 19.
¢ Num, xx. 16, ! Exod. xxiii. 20; compare xxxii. 34.
Ε Ibid. xxiii. 23; cf. Joshua v. 13-15.
h Exod. xxiii, 21, 12972 OW 55.
i Ibid. xxxiii. 2, 3 ‘I will send an angel before thee... for I will not go up in the midst of thee; for thou art a stiff-necked people.’
[ LECT.
.
The Theophanies. 55
EEE ee
expressly called the Angel of God’s Presencek; he fully represents God. God must in some way have been present in him. No merely created being, speaking and acting in his own right, could have spoken to men, or have allowed men to act towards himself, as did the Angel of the Lord. Thus he withstands Balaam, on his faithless errand, and bids him go with the mes- sengers of Balak; but adds, ‘Only the word that I shall speak unto thee, that thou shalt speak.’ As ‘Captain of the host of the Lord,’ he appears to Joshua in the plain of Jericho. Joshua worships God in him!; and the Angel asks of the conqueror of Canaan the same tokens of reverence as had been exacted from Moses™, Besides the reference in the Song of Deborah ἃ to the curse pronounced against Meroz by the Angel of the Lord, the Book of Judges contains accounts of three appearances, in each of which we are scarcely sensible of the action of a created per- sonality, so completely is the language and bearing that of the Higher Nature present in the Angel. At Bochim he expostu- lates with the assembled people for their breach of the covenant in failing to exterminate the Canaanites. God speaks by him as in His own Name; He refers to the covenant which He had made with Israel, and to His bringing the people out of Egypt ; He declares that, on account of their disobedience He will not drive the heathen nations out of the land®. In the account of his appearance to Gideon, the Angel is called sometimes the Angel of the Lord, sometimes the Lord, or Jehovah. He bids Gideon attack the Midianite oppressors of Israel, and adds the promise, ‘I will be with thee.’ Gideon places an offering before the Angel, that he may, if he wills, manifest his character by some sign. The Angel touches the offering with the end of his staff, whereupon fire rises up out of the rock and consumes the offering. The Angel disappears, and Gideon fears that he will die because he has seen ‘the Angel of the Lord face to face?” When the wife of Manoah is reporting the Angel’s first appearance to herself, she says that ‘A man of God came’ to her, ‘and his countenance was like the countenance of the Angel of God, very terrible.” She thus speaks of the Angel as of a Being already
* Exod. xxxiii. 14; compare Isaiah Ixiii. 9.
1 In Josh. vi. 2 the captain of the Lord’s Host (cf. ch. v. 14) appears to be called Jehovah. But cf. Mill, Myth. Int. p. 354.
m Josh. v. 13-15; Exod. iii. 5; compare Exod. xxiii. 23.
n Judges v. 23. ὁ Ibid. ii. 1-5. See Keil, Comm. in loc.
P Judg. vi. 11-22. Keil, Comm, in loc, See Hengstenberg, Christol- Ἐν vol. iv. append. ili. p. 292. u
56 Who was the ‘Angel of the Lord’?
known to Israel. At his second appearance the Angel bids Manoah, who ‘knew not that he was an Angel of the Lord,’ and offered him common food, to offer sacrifice unto the Lord. The Angel refuses to disclose his Name, which is ‘wonderful 4,’ When Manoah offers a kid with a meat-offering upon a rock - unto the Lord, the Angel mounts visibly up to heaven in the flame of the sacrifice. Like Gideon, Manoah fears death after such near contact with so exalted a Being of the other world. ‘We shall surely die,’ he exclaims to his wife, ‘because we have seen God,’
But you ask, Who was this Angel? The Jewish interpreters vary in their explanations’. The earliest Fathers answer with general unanimity that he was the Word or Son of God Himself. For example, in the Dialogue with Trypho, St. Justin proves against his Jewish opponent, that God did not appear to Abra- ham by the oak of Mamre, before the appearance of the ‘three men,’ but that He was One of the Three*. Trypho admits this, but he objects that it did not prove that there was any God besides Him Who had appeared to the Patriarchs. Justin re- plies that a Divine Being, personally although not substantially distinct from the supreme God, is clearly implied in the state- ment that ‘the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah, brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven*®’ Trypho yields the point. Here it is plain that St. Justin did not sup- pose that a created being was called God on account of his mission; St. Justin believes that One Who was of the substance of God appeared to Abraham*. Again, the Fathers of the first Synod at Antioch, in the letter which was sent to Paulus of Samosata before his deposition, state that the ‘Angel of the
4 oxdn, ef. Is. ix. 6.
τ Judges xiii. 6-22. Cf. Keil, Comm. in loc. Hengst. ubi supra. Vi- tringa de Angelo Sacerdote, obs. vi. 14.
8 Cf. the authorities quoted by Drach, Lettres d’un Rabbin Converti, Lettre ii. p.169. On the other side, Abenezra, in Exod. iii. 2.
t With St. Justin’s belief that the Son and two Angels appeared to Abra- ham, cf. Tertullian. adv. Mare. ii. 27, iii. 9; St. Hil. de Trin. iv. 27. That three created Angels appeared to Abraham was the opinion of St. Augustine (De Civ. Dei, x. 8, xvi. 29). St. Ambrose sees in the ‘three men’ an adum- bration of the Blessed Trinity: ‘Tres vidit et unum Dominum appellavit.’ De Abraham, i. c. 5; Prudent. Apotheosis, 28. This seems to be the sense of the English Church, See First Lesson for Evensong on Trinity Sunday.
« Gen. xix. 24.
x Dial. cum Tryph. § 56, sqq. On the appearance in the burning bush, οἵ, Ibid. § 59-61; cf. too ch. 127. Comp. St. Justin, Apol. i, ο. oy
LECT.
Opinion of the earlier Fathers. 57
Father being Himself Lord and God, μεγάλης βουλῆς ἄγγελος ¥, appeared to Abraham, and to Jacob, and to Moses in the burning bush 2.’ It is unnecessary to multiply quotations in proof of a fact which is beyond dispute ἃ, .
The Arian controversy led to a modification of that estimate of the Theophanies which had prevailed in the earlier Church. The earlier Church teachers had clearly distinguished, asScriptuie distinguishes, between the Angel of the Lord, Himself, as they believed, Divine, and the Father. But the Arians endeavoured to widen this personal distinctness into a deeper difference, a difference of Natures. Appealing to the often-assigned ground > of the belief respecting the Theophanies which had prevailed in the ante-Nicene Church, the Arians argued that the Son had - been seen by the Patriarchs, while the Father had not been seen, and that an Invisible Nature was distinct from and higher than a nature which was cognizable by the senses®. St. Augustine boldly faced this difficulty, and his great work on the Trinity gave the chief impulse to another current of interpretation in the Church. St. Augustine strenuously insists upon the Scrip- tural truth4 of the Invisibility of God as God®. The Son,
¥ This gloss of the LXX. in Is. ix. 6 was a main ground of the early Patristic application of the title of the Angel to God the Son. ‘Although Malachi foretells our Lord’s coming in the Flesh under the titles of ‘the Lord,” “the Angel,” or “‘ Messenger of the Covenant,” (chap. iii. 1) there is no proof that He is anywhere spoken of absolutely as “‘ the Angel,” or that His Divine Nature is so entitled.’ Dr. Pusey, Daniel the Prophet, p. 516, note 1. * Mansi, Conc. i. p. 1035.
* Compare however St. Irenceus adv. Heer. iv. 7. § 4; Clem. Alex. Pied. i. 7; Theophilus ad Autol. ii. 31; Constit. Apostol. v. 20; Tertullian. adv. Prax. cap. 13, 14, and 15; St. Cyprian. adv. Judeos, ii. c. 5, 6; St. Cyr. Hieros. Catech. 10; St. Hil. de Trin. lib. 4 and 5; St.Chrysost. Hom. in Genes. 42, 48; Theodoret, Interr, v. in Exod. (Op. i. p. 121), on Exod. iii. 2. Cf. some additional authorities given by P. Vandenbroeck, De Theophaniis, sub Vet. Testamento, p.17, sqq; Bull, Def. Fid. Nic. lib. i. c. 1.
> e.g. cf. Tertullian. adv. Mare. ii. c. 27.
¢ St. Aug. Serm. vii. n. 4. The Arian criticism ran thus: ‘Filius visus est patribus, Pater non est visus: invisibilis autem et visibilis diversa natura est.’ 4 §t. John i. 18, &c.
9 ‘Tpsa enim natura vel substantia vel essentia, vel quolibet alio nomine appellandum est id ipsum, quod Deus est, quidquid illud est corporaliter videri non potest.’ De Trin, ii. c. 18, n. 35. The Scotists, who opposed the general Thomist doctrine to the effect that a created angel was the instrument of the Theophanies, carefully guarded against the ideas that the substance of God could be seen by man in the body, or that the bodily form which they believed to have been assumed was personally united to the Eternal Word, since this was peculiar to the Divine Incarnation. (Scotus in lib, ii, sent. dist. 8.) Scotus explains that the being who 1 |
58 Fudgment of St. Augustine.
therefore, as being truly God, was by nature as invisible as the Father. If the Son appeared to the Patriarchs, He appeared through the intermediate agency of a created being, who repre- sented Him, and through whom He spoke and acted. If the Angel who represented Him spoke and acted with a Divine authority, and received Divine honours, we are referred to the force of the general law whereby, in things earthly and heavenly, an ambassador is temporarily put in the place of the Master whe accredits him8. But Augustine further warns us against at- tempting to say positively, Which of the Divine Persons mani- fested Himself, in this or that instance, to Patriarchs or Prophets, except where some remarkable indications determine our con- clusion very decisively, The general doctrine of this great teacher, that the Theophanies were not direct appearances of a Person in the Godhead, but Self-manifestations of God through a created being, had been hinted at by some earlier Fathers,
assumes a bodily form, need only be ‘intrinsecus motor corporis; nam tune assumit, id est ad se sumit, quia ad operationes proprias sibi explendas utitur illo sicut instrumento.’ (Ibid. Scholion i.)
! «Proinde illa omnia, que Patribus visa sunt, cum Deus illis secundum suam dispensationem temporibus congruam presentaretur, per creaturam facta esse, manifestum est... Sed jam satis quantum existimo .. . de- monstratum est, ...quod antiquis patribus nostris ante Incarnationem Salvatoris, cum Deus apparere dicebatur, voces illee ac species corporales per angelos facte sunt, sive ipsis loquentibus vel agentibus aliquid ex persona Dei, sicut etiam prophetas solere ostendimus, sive assumentibus ex creaturd quod ipsi non essent, ubi Deus figurat? demonstraretur hominibus; quod genus significationum nec Prophetas omisisse, multis exemplis docet Scrip- tura.’ De Trin. iii, 11, n. 22, 27.
® ‘Sed ait aliquis: cur ergo Scriptum est, Dixit Dominus ad Moysen; et non potits, Dixit angelus ad Moysen? Quia cum verba judicis preco pronuntiat, non scribitur in Gestis, ille preco dixit; sed ille judex; sic etiam loquente prophet& sancto, etsi dicamus Propheta dixit, nihil aliud quam Dominum dixisse intelligi volumus. Et si dicamus, Dominus dixit ; prophetam non subtrahimus, sed quis per eum dixerit admonemus.’ De ἜΠΙΕ. ἯΙ, ὁ. 11, 5. 23.
h ‘Nihil aliud, quantum existimo, divinorum sacramentorum modesta et cauta consideratio persuadet, nisi ut temer® non dicamus, Quenam ex Trini- tate Persona cuilibet Patrum et Prophetarum in aliquo corpore vel simili- tudine corporis apparuerit, nisi cum continentia lectionis aliqua probabilia circumponit indicia. ... Per subjectam creaturam non solum Filium vel Spiritum Sanctum, sed etiam Patrem corporali specie sive similitudine mor- talibus sensibus significationem Sui dare potuisse credendum est.’ De Trin. ii. ὃ. 18, n. 35.
i Compare St. Ireneus adv. Her. iv. 20, n. 7 and 24: ‘Verbum na- turaliter quidem invisibile, palpabile in hominibus factum.’ Origen (Hom. xvi. in Jerem.) speaking of the vision in Exod. iii. says, ‘God was here beheld in the Angel.’
[ LECT.
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Had the Theophantes a purpose? 59
and was insisted on by contemporary and later writers of the highest authority*. This explanation has since become the predominant although by no means the exclusive judgment of the Church!; and if it is not unaccompanied by considerable difficulties when we apply it to the sacred text, it certainly seems to relieve us of greater embarrassments than any which it creates ™,
But whether the ante-Nicene (so to term it) or the Augustinian line of interpretation be adopted with respect to the Theophanies, no sincere believer in the historical trustworthiness of Holy Scripture can mistake the importance of their relation to the doctrine of our Lord’s Divinity. If the Theophanies were not, as has been pretended, mythical legends, the natural product of
the Jewish mind at a particular stage of its development, but
actual matter-of-fact occurrences in the history of ancient Israel, must we not see in them a deep Providential meaning? Whether in them the Word or Son actually appeared, or whether God made a created angel the absolutely perfect exponent of His Thought and Will, do they not point in either case to a purpose in the Divine Mind which would only be realized when man had been admitted to a nearer and more palpable contact with God than was possible under the Patriarchal or Jewish dispensations ἢ Do they not suggest, as their natural climax and explanation, some Personal Self-unveiling of God before the eyes of His creatures? Would not God appear to have been training His people, by this long and mysterious series of communications, at length to recognise and to worship Him when hidden under, and indissolubly one with a created nature? Apart from the specific circumstances which may seem to have explained each Theophany at the time of its taking place, and considering them as a series of phenomena, is there any other account of them so much in
k St. Jerome (ed. Vall.) in Galat. iii. 19: ‘Quod in omni Veteri Testa- mento ubi angelus primum visus refertur et postea quasi Deus loquens inducitur, angelus quidem veré ex ministris pluribus quicunque est visus, sed in illo Mediator loquatur, Qui dicit; Ego sum Deus Abraham, etc. Nec mirum si Deus loquatur in angelis, cum etiam per angelos, qui in hominibus sunt, loquatur Deus in prophetis, dicente Zaccharid: et ait angelus, qui Joquebatur in me, ac deinceps inferente; heec dicit Deus Omnipotens.’ Cf, St.Greg. Magn. Mag. Moral. xxviii. 2; St. Athan. Or. iii. c. Arian. § 14.
1 The earlier interpretation has been more generally advocated by English divines. P. Vandenbroeck’s treatise already referred to shews that it still has adherents in other parts of the Western Church,
™ See especially Dr, Pusey, Daniel the Prophet, p. 515, note 20; p. 516,
sqq. n|
60 Doctrine of the Kochmah or Wisdom.
harmony with the general scope of Holy Scripture, as that they were successive lessons addressed to the eye and to the ear of ancient piety, in anticipation of a coming Incarnation of God ?
(y) This preparatory service, if we may venture so to term it, which had been rendered to the doctrine of our Lord’s Divinity by the Theophanies in the world of sense, was seconded by the upgrowth and development of a belief respecting the Divine Kochmah or Wisdom in the region of inspired ideas.
1. The ‘Wisdom’ of the Jewish Scriptures is certainly more than a human endowment®, and even, as it would seem, more than an Attribute of God. It may naturally remind us of the Archetypal Ideas of Plato, but the resemblance is scarcely more than superficial. The ‘Wisdom’ is hinted at in the Book of Job. In a well-known passage of majestic beauty, Job replies to his own question, Where shall the Wisdom ® be found? He re- presents Wisdom as it exists in God, and as it is communicated in the highest form to man. In God ‘the Wisdom’ is that Eternal Thought, in which the Divine Architect ever beheld His future creation P. In man, Wisdom is seen in moral growth; it is ‘the fear of the Lord, and ‘to depart from evil.’ The Wisdom is here only revealed as underlying, on the one side, the laws of the physical universe, on the other, those of man’s moral nature. Certainly as yet, ‘Wisdom’ is not in any way represented as personal; but we make a great step in passing to the Book of Proverbs. In the Book of Proverbs the Wisdom is co-eternal with Jehovah; Wisdom assists Him in the work of Creation ; Wisdom reigns, as one specially honoured, in the palace of the King of Heaven; Wisdom is the adequate object of the eternal joy of God; God possesses Wisdom, Wisdom delights in God.
n The word ΤΌΣ is, of course, used in this lower sense. It is applied to an inspired skill in making priestly vestments (Exod. xxviii. 3), or sacred furniture generally (Ibid. xxxi. 6 and xxxvi. 1, 2); to fidelity to known truth (Deut. iv. 6; cf. xxxii.6); to great intellectual accomplishments (Dan. i.17). Solomon was typically 027: his ‘Wisdom’ was exhibited in moral pene- tration and judgment (1 Kings iii. 28, x. 4, sqq.); in the knowledge of many subjects, specially of the works of God in the natural world (Ibid. iv. 33, 34); in the knowledge of various poems and maxims, which he had either com- posed or which he remembered (Ibid. iv. 32; Prov. i. 1). Wisdom, as communicated to men, included sometimes supernatural powers (Dan. v.11), but specially moral virtue (Ps. xxxvii. 30, li. 6; Prov. x. 31); and piety to God (Ps. cxi. 10). In God nn nn is higher than any of these; He alone originally possesses It (Job xii, 12, 13, xxviii. 12, sqq.).
9 Job xxviii, 12. 72207. P Ibid. vers. 23-27. 4 Ibid. ver. 28.
[18 01.
The ‘Wisdom’ in the Hebrew Scriptures. 61
‘Jehovah (says Wisdom) possessed Me in the beginning of His way, Before His works of old. I was set up from everlasting, From the beginning, or ever the earth was, When there were no depths, I was brought forth 3 When there were no fountains abounding with water, Before the mountains were settled, Before the hills was I brought forth: While as yet He had not made the earth, nor the fields, Nor the highest part of the dust of the world. When He prepared the heavens, I was there: When He set a compass upon the face of the depth: When He established the clouds above: When He strengthened the fountains of the deep: When He gave to the sea His decree, That the waters should not pass His commandment: When He appointed the foundations of the earth: Then I was by Him, as One brought up with Him: And I was daily His Delight, rejoicing always before Him ; Rejoicing in the habitable part of His earth ; And My delights were with the sons of men,’
Are we listening to the language of a real Person or only of a poetic personification? A group of critics defends each hypo- thesis; and those who maintain the latter, point to the picture of Folly in the succeeding chapter’. But may not a study of .that picture lead to a very opposite conclusion? Folly is there no mere abstraction, she is a sinful woman of impure life, ‘ whose guests are in the depths of hell.’ The work of Folly is the very work of the Evil One, the real antagonist of the Divine Koch- mah. Folly is the principle of absolute Unwisdom, of consum- mate moral Evil. Folly, by the force of the antithesis, enhances our impression that ‘the Wisdom’ is personal. The Arians understood the wordt which is rendered ‘ possessed’ in our Eng- lish Bible, to mean ‘created,’ and they thus degraded the Wisdom to the level of a creature. But they did not doubt that this created Wisdom was a real being or person¥. Modern critics
® Prov. viii. 22-31. For Patristic expositions of this passage, see Peta- vius, de Trin. ii. 1.
8 Prov. ix. 13-18.
* The Arians appealed to the LXX. reading ἔκτισε (not ἐκτήσατο). On κτίζειν as meaning any kind of production, see Bull, Def. Fid. Nic. lib. ii. c. 6, sec. 8. In a note on Athan. Treatises, ii. 342, Dr. Newman cites Aquila, St. Basil, St. Gregory Nyss. and St. Jerome, for the sense ἐκτήσατο.
Ὁ As Kuhn summarily observes: ‘Das war iiberhaupt nicht die Frage in christlichen Alterthum, ob hier von einem Wesen die Rede sei, das war allgemein anerkannt, sondern von welcher Art, in welchem Verhiltniss zu a. es gedacht sei,” Dogmatik, ii, p. 29, note (2).
u
62 Lhe ‘Wisdom’ in the later Sapiential Books.
know that if we are to be guided by the clear certain sense of the Hebrew root x, we shall read ‘ possessed,’ and not ‘created,’ and they admit without difficulty that the Wisdom is uncreated by, and co-eternal with the Lord Jehovah. But they resolve Wisdom into an impersonal and abstract idea or quality. The true interpretation is probably related to these opposite mistakes, as was the Faith of the Church to the conflicting theories of the Arians and the Sabellians. Each error contributes something to the cause of truth; the more ancient may teach us that the Wisdom is personal; the more modern, that it is uncreated and co-eternal with God.
2. But even if it should be thought, that ‘the personified idea of the Mind of God in Creation,’ rather than the presence of ‘a distinct Hypostasis 9,’ is all that can with certainty be discovered in the text of the Book of Proverbs; yet no one, looking to the contents of those sacred Sapiential Books, which lie outside the precincts of the Hebrew Canon, can well doubt that something more had been inferred by the most active religious thought in the Jewish Church. The Son of Sirach, for instance, opens his great treatise with a dissertation on the source of Wisdom. Wisdom is from all eternity with God; Wisdom proceeds from God before any finite thing, and is poured out upon all His Works2. But Wisdom, ‘thus created from the beginning before the world,’ and having an unfailing existence, is bidden by God to make her ‘dwelling in Jacob, and her inheritance in Israel >.’ Wisdom is thus the prolific mother of all forms of moral beauty°; she is given to all of God’s true children4; but she is specially resident in the holy Law, ‘which Moses commanded for an heritage unto the congregations of Jacobe.” In that beautiful chapter which contains this passage, Wisdom is conceived of as all-operative, yet as limited by nothing ; as a physical yet also as a spiritual power; as eternal, and yet having definite relations to time ; above all, as perpetually extending the range of her fruitful
τ This both in Hebrew and (with one exception) in Arabic. Cf. Gesenius, Thesaurus, in 727 and 3. So, too, the Syr. ἄχ... Neither Gen. xiv. 19 nor Deut. xxxii. 6 require that 72) should be translated ‘created,’ still less Ps, cxxxix. 13, where it means ‘to have rights over.’ Gesenius quotes no other examples. The current meaning of the word is ‘to acquire’ or ‘possess,’ as is proved by its certain sense in the great majority of cases where it is used.
Υ So apparently Déllinger, Heidenthum und Judenthum, bk. x. part iii, 866. 2.
5 Ecclus. i. 1-10. ® Thid. xxiv. 9, Ὁ Thid. vers. 8-12.
¢ Ibid. vers, 13-18, 4 Ibid, € Ibid. ver. 23.
[ LEcT.
The ‘Wisdom’ and the ‘Word, 63
self-manifestationf. Not to dwell upon language to the same effect in Baruch 8, we may observe that in the Book of Wisdom the Sophia is more distinctly personal». If this Book is less prominently theocratic than Ecclesiasticus, it is even more ex- plicit as to the supreme dignity of Wisdom, as seen in its unique relation to God. Wisdom is a pure stream flowing from the glory of the Almightyi; Wisdom is that spotless mirror which reflects the operations of God, and upon which He gazes as He worksk; W.sdom is the Brightness of the Everlasting Light! ; Wisdom is the very Image of the Goodness of God™, Material symbols are unequal to doing justice to so spiritual an essence : ‘Wisdom is more beautiful than the sun, and above all the order of the stars; being compared with the light she is found before ita” Wisdom is more moving than any motion: she passeth and goeth through all things by reason of her pureness®.’ Her sphere is not merely Palestine, but the world, not this or that age, but the history of humanity. All that is good and true in human thought is due to her: ‘in all ages entering into holy souls she maketh them friends of God and prophets?.’ Is there not here, in an Alexandrian dress, a precious and vital truth sufficiently familiar to believing Christians? Do we not already seem to catch the accents of those weighty formule by which Apostles will presently define the pre-existent glory of their Majestic Lord? Yet are we not steadily continuing, with no very considerable measure of expansion, in that very line of sacred thought, to which the patient servant of God in the desert, and the wisest of kings in Jerusalem, have already, and so authoritatively, introduced us #
3. The doctrine may be traced at a stage beyond, in the writings of Philo Judeus. We at once observe that its form is altered ; instead of the Wisdom or Sophia we have the Logos or Word. Philo indeed might have justified the change of phrase- clogy by an appeal even to the Hebrew Scriptures. In the Hebrew Bocks, the Word of Jehovah manifests the energy of
£ Cf. especially Ecclus. xxiv. 5-8, 10-18, 25-28, and i. 14-17.
Ε Compare Baruch iii. 14, 15, 29-32, 35, 36, and the remarkable verse 37.
h Liicke, who holds that in the Book of Proverbs and in Ecclesiasticus there is merely a personification, sees a ‘dogmatic hypostatizing’ in Wisd. vii. 22, sqq. Cf. too Dahne, Alexandrinische Religiousphilosophie, ii. 13 4,&c.
i Wisd, vii. 25.
k Ibid. 26: ἔσοπτρον ἀκηλίδωτον τῆς τοῦ Θεοῦ ἐνεργείας. Ἢ Thid. ἀπαύγασμα φωτὸς ἀϊδίου, compare Heb. i. 3.
™ Ibid. εἰκὼν τῆς ἀγαθότητος τοῦ Θεοῦ, compare 2 Cor. iv. 4, Col. i. 15.
Ἰ Ibid, ver. 29. © Ibid. ver. 24, compare ver. 27. Ρ _Ibid, ver. 27. ih
64 The ‘Wisdom and the ‘Word?
God: He creates the heavens?; He governs the world™. Ac- cordingly, among the Palestinian Jews, the Chaldee paraphrasts almost always represent God as acting, not immediately, but through the mediation of the Memra® or Word. In the Greek Sapiential Books, the Word is apparently identical with the Wisdom ὃ; but the Wisdom is always prominent, the Word is rarely mentioned¥, Yet the Logos of Ecclesiasticus is the organ of creation Y, while in the Book of Wisdom the Logos is clearly personified, and is a minister of the Divine Judgment *.
4 Ps. xxxiii. 6. ma 127. * Ps, cxlvii. 15; Isa. lv. 11.
§ x10" or N17. Thus on Hosea i. 7, ‘I will save them by the Lord their God,’ the Chald, Paraphr. runs, ‘I will redeem them by the Word Jehovah their God.’
t Thus in Ecclus. xxiv. 3 the σοφία Θεοῦ uses the language which might be expected of the λόγος Θεοῦ, in saying that she came forth from the Mouth of the Most High. In chap. i 5 πηγὴ σοφιας λόγος Θεοῦ (om Tisch.) is prob- ably spurious. In the Book of Wisdom σοφία is identified on the one side with the ἅγιον πνεῦμα παιδείας (chap. i. 4, 5), and the πνεῦμα Κυρίου (ver. 7) ; πνεῦμα and σοφία are united in the expression πνεῦμα σοφίας (vii. 7; compare ix. 17). On the other side copia and the λόγος are both instruments of creation (Wisd. ix. 1, 2; for the πνεῦμα, cf. Gen. i. 2, and Ps. xxxiii. 6), they both ‘come down from heaven’ (Ibid. ver. 10, and xviii. 15, and the πνεῦμα, ix. 17), and achieve the deliverance of Israel from Egypt (cf. xviii. 15 with x. 15-20). The representation seems to suggest no mere ascription of identical functions to altogether distinct conceptions or Beings, but a real inner essential unity of the Spirit, the Word, and the Wisdom. ‘Es ist an sich eine und dieselbe gottliche Kraft, die nach aussen wirksam ist, aber es sind verschiedene Beziehungen und Arten dieser Wirksamkeit, wornach sie Wort, Geist, Weisheit Gottes gennant wird.’ Kuhn, p. 27. That the πνεῦμα really pointed to a distinct Hypostasis in God became plain only at a later time to the mind of His people. On the relations of the mm nn, the 727, and the ΓΤ 127 to each other, see Kuhn, p. 24.
« Kuhn has stated the relation of the ‘ Wisdom,’ ‘ Word,’ and ‘Spirit’ to God and to each other, in the Sapiential Books, as follows: ‘Die Unter- scheidung Gottes und Seiner Offenbarung in der Welt ist die Folie, auf der sich ein innerer Unterschied in Gott abspiegelt, der Unterschied Gottes niim- lich von Seinem Worte, Seiner Weisheit. Diese, wiewohl sie zuniichst blosse Eigenschaften und somit Sein an Sich seiendes Wesen, oder Kriifte und Wirksamkeiten Gottes nach aussen, somit dasselbe Wesen, sofern Es Sich in der Welt manifestirt, ausdriicken, erscheinen sofort tiefer gefasst als etwas fiir sich, unter dem Gesichtspunkt eines eigenen gottlichen Wesens, einer gottlichen Person. Unter einander verhalten sie sich aber so, dass einerseits Wort und Geist, desgleichen andrerseits Wort und Weisheit Gottes theils unterschieden, theils aber auch wieder wesentlich gleichbedeutend genommen sind, so dass ausser dem Hauptunterschiede Gottes von Seinem Andern noch ein weiterer, der Unterschied dieses Andern von einem Dritten hinzuzukom- men, zugleich aber auch die Identitat des ihnen (unter Sich und mit Gott) gemeinsamen Wesens angedeutet zu sein scheint.’ Lehre von Gottl. Dreieinigkeit, p. 23. ~ Υ Ecclus, xJui. 26... . χα Wisd, xviii. 15.
[ LECT.
Opposite elements in the mind of Philo. 65
In Philo, however, the Sophia falls into the background Y, and the Logos is the symbol of the general doctrine, for other reasons perhaps, but mainly as a natural result of Philo’s profound sym- pathy with Stoic and Platonic thought. If the Book of Wisdom adopts Platonic phraseology, its fundamental ideas are continuous with those of the Hebrew Scriptures”. Philo, on the contrary, is a hearty Platonist ; his Platonism enters into the very marrow of his thought. It is true that in Philo Platonism and the Jewish Revelation are made to converge. But the process of their attempted assimilation is an awkward and violent one, and it involves the great Alexandrian in much involuntary self-contra- diction. Philo indeed is in perpetual embarrassment between the pressure of his intellectual Hellenic instincts on the one side, and the dictates of his religious conscience as a Jewish believer on the other. He constantly abandons himself to the currents of Greek thought around him, and then he endeavours to set himself right with the Creed of Sinai, by throwing his Greek ideas into Jewish forms. If his Logos is apparently moulded after the pattern of the νοῦς βασιλικὸς ἐν τῇ τοῦ Διὸς picec—the Regal Principle of Intelligence in the Nature of Zeus—with which we meet in the Philebus of Plato®, Philo doubtless would fain be translating and explaining the nn. 135 of the Hebrew Canon, in perfect loyalty to the Faith of Israel. The Logos of Philo evidently presupposes the Platonic doctrine of Ideas; but then, with Philo, these Ideas are something more than the
Y Philo distinguishes between Wisdom and Philosophy: Philosophy or wise living is the slave of Wisdom or Science; σοφία is ἐπιστήμη θείων καὶ ἀνθρωπίνων καὶ τῶν τούτων αἰτιῶν (Cong. Qu. Erud. Grat. § 14, ed. Mangey, tom. i. p. 530). Philo explains Exod. xxiv. 6 allegorically, as the basis of a distinction between Wisdom as it exists in men and in God, τὸ θεῖον γένος ἀμιγὲς καὶ ἄκρατον (Quis Rer. Div. Her. § 38, i. p. 498). Wisdom is the mother of the world (Quod Det. Potiori Insid. § 16, 1. p. 202); her wealth is without limits, she is like a deep well, a perennial fountain, &. But Philo does not in any case seem to personify Wisdom; his doctrine of Wisdom is eclipsed by that of the Logos.
* Vacherot (Ecole d’Alexandrie, vol. i. p. 134, Introd.) says of Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus: ‘Ces monumens renferment peu de traces des idées Grécques dont ils semblent avoir précédé l’invasion en Orient.’ Ecclesiasticus was written in Hebrew under the High-Priesthood of Simon I, B.c. 303-284, by Jesus the Son of Sirach, and translated into Greek by his grandson, who came to reside at Alexandria under Ptolemy Euergetes.
® Plat. Philebus, p. 30. ‘There is not,’ says Professor Mansel, ‘the slightest evidence that the Divine Reason was represented by Plato as having a distinct personality, or as being anything more than an attribute of the Divine Mind.’ Cf. art. Philosophy, in Kitto’s Cycl. of Bibl. Litera. ture, new ed.
a F
66 elation of Philo’s Logos to his theosophy.
models after which creation is fashioned, or than the seals which are impressed upon concrete forms of existence». The Ideas of Philo are energizing powers or causes whereby God carries out His plan of creation®. Of these energetic forces, the Logos, ac- cording to Philo, is the compendium, the concentration. Philo’s Logos is a necessary complement of his philosophical doctrine concerning God. Philo indeed, as the devout Jew, believes in God as a Personal Being Who has constant and certain dealings with mankind; Philo, in his Greek moods, conceives of God not merely as a single simple Essence, but as beyond Personality, beyond any definite form of existence, infinitely distant from all relations to created life, incapable of any contact even with a spiritual creation, subtilized into an abstraction altogether tran- scending the most abstract conceptions of impersonal being. It might even seem as if Philo had chosen for his master, not Plato the theologian of the Timzus, but Plato the pure dialectician of the Republic. But how is such an abstract God as this to be also the Creator and the Providence of the Hebrew Bible? Cer- tainly, according to Philo, matter existed before Creation4; but how did God mouljd matter into created forms of life} This, Philo will reply, was the work of the Logos, that is to say, of the ideas collectively. The Philonian Logos is the Idea of ideas®; he is the shadow of God by which as by an instrument He made the worldsf; he is himself the intelligible or Ideal World, the Archetypal Type of all creations. The Logos of Philo is the most ancient and most general of created things} ;
» Cf. Philo, de Mundi Opif. § 44, tom. i. p. 30; Legis Allegor. i. § 9, tom. i. p. 47.
© De Monarchié, i. § 6, tom. ii. p. 219: ὀνομάζουσι δὲ αὐτὰς οὐκ ἀπὸ σκο- ποῦ τινὲς τῶν παρ᾽ ὑμῖν ἰδέας, ἐπειδὴ ἕκαστον τῶν ὄντων ἰδιοποιοϑσι, τὰ ἄτακτα τάττουσαι, καὶ τὰ ἄπειρα καὶ ἀόριστα καὶ ἀσχημάτιστα περατοῦσαι καὶ περιορῖ- ζουσαι καὶ σχηματίζουσαι καὶ συνόλως τὸ χεῖρον εἰς τὸ ἄμεινον μεθαρμοζόμεναι. Comp. the remarkable passage in De Vict. Offer. § 13, tom. ii. p. 261.
4 Tn one passage only does Philo appear to ascribe to God the creation of matter. De Somn. i. § 13, tom. i. 632. If so, for once his Jewish con- science is too strong for his Platonism. But even here his meaning is at best doubtful. Cf. Dollinger, Heid. und Judenth. bk. x. pt. 3, ὃ 5.
© De Mundi Opif. § 6; i. p. 5: ἰδέα τῶν ἰδεῶν ὁ Θεοῦ λόγος.
t Legis Allegor. iii. 31; i. p. 106: σκιὰ Θεοῦ δὲ ὁ λόγος αὐτοῦ ἐστιν ᾧ καθάπερ ὀργάνῳ προσχρησάμενος ἐκοσμοποίει, De Monarch. ii, § 5; tom. ii, 225; De Cherub. § 35, tom. i. p. 162.
8 De Mundi Opif. § 6, i. p. 5: ἡ ἀρχέτυπος σφραγὶς, ὅν φαμεν εἶναι κόσμον νοητὸν, αὐτὸς ἂν εἴη τὸ ἀρχέτυπον παράδειγμα... ὁ Θεοῦ Adyos. The λόγος is dissociated from the παράδειγμα in De Conf. Ling. c. xiv. i. 414.
b-Legis Allegor. iii. 61, i. p. 121: καὶ ὁ λόγος δὲ τοῦ Θεοῦ ὑπεράνω παντός ἐστι τοῦ κόσμου, καὶ πρεσβύτατος καὶ γενικώτατος τῶν ὅσα γέγονε. [
LECT.
Is the Logos of Philo personal ? 67
he is the Eternal Image of Godi; he is the band whereby all things are held together*; he fills all things, he sustains all things!, Through the Logos, God, the abstract, the intangible, the inaccessible God, deals with the world, with men. Thus the Logos is mediator as well as creator™; he is a high-priest and intercessor with God; he interprets God to man; he is an am- bassador from heaven®. He is the god of imperfect men, whc cannot ascend by an ecstatic intuition to a knowledge of the supreme God °; he is thus the nutriment of human souls, and a source of spiritual delightsP. The Logos is the eldest angel or the archangel4; he is God’s Eldest, His Firstborn Sont; and we almost seem to touch upon the apprehension of that sublime, that very highest form of communicated life, which is exclusive of the ideas of inferiority and of time, and which was afterwards so happily and authoritatively expressed by the doctrinal formula of an eternal generation. But, as we listen, we ask ourselves one capital and inevitable question: Is Philo’s Logos a personal being, or is he after all a pure abstraction? Philo is silent; for on such a point as this the Greek and the Jew in him are hope-
1 De Conf. Ling. § 28, i. 427. ‘Although,’ says Philo, ‘we are not ina position to be considered the Sons of God, yet we may be the children τῆς ἀϊδίου εἰκόνος αὐτοῦ, λόγου τοῦ ἱερωτάτου.
k De Plantat. § 2, 1. 331: δεσμὸν γὰρ αὐτὸν ἄῤῥηκτον τοῦ παντὸς ὃ γεννή- σας ἐποίει πατήρ.
1 De Mundo, § 2, ii. p. 604: τὸ ὀχυρώτατον καὶ βεβαιότατον ἔρεισμα τῶν ὅλων ἐστίν. Οὗτος ἀπὸ τῶν μέσων ἐπὶ τὰ πέρατα Kal ἀπὸ τῶν ἄκρων εἰς μέσα ταθεὶς δολιχεύει τὸν τῆς φύσεως δρόμον ἀήττητον, συνάγων πάντα τὰ μέρη καὶ σφίγγων.
m Quis Rer. Div. Her. § 42, i. p. 501: τῷ δὲ ἀρχαγγέλῳ καὶ πρεσβυτάτῳ λόγῳ δωρεὰν ἐξαίρετον ἔδωκεν ὁ τὰ ὅλα γεννήσας πατὴρ; ἵνα μεθόριος στὰς Td γενόμενον διακρίνῃ τοῦ πεποιηκότος.
Ὁ Tbid.: 6 δ᾽ αὐτὸς ἱκέτης μέν ἐστι τοῦ θνητοῦ κηραίνοντος ἀεὶ πρὸς τὸ ὄφθαρτον. πρεσβυτὴς δὲ τοῦ ἡγεμόνος πρὸς τὸ ὑπήκοον. Cf. De Somniis, § 37, i. 653; De Migr. Abraham, § 18, i. 452. De Gigant. § 11: ὁ ἀρχιερεὺς Adyos.
© Legis Allegor. ili. § 73, 1. 128: οὗτος [sc. ὁ Adyos] γὰρ ἡμῶν τῶν ἀτελῶν ἂν εἴη θεὸς, τῶν δὲ σοφῶν καὶ τελείων, ὃ πρῶτος, i.e. God Himself. Cf. § 32 and § 33, i. 107.
P Legis Allegor. iii. § 59, i. 120: Ὁρᾷς τῆς ψυχῆς τροφὴν ofa ἐστί ; Λόγος Θεοῦ συνεχὴς, ἐοικὼς δρόσῳ. Cf. also § 62. De Somniis, § 37, i. 691: τῷ γὰρ ὄντι τοῦ θείου λόγου ῥύμη συνεχὴς μεθ᾽ ὁρμῆς καὶ τάξεως φερομένη, πάντα διὰ πάντων ἀναχεῖται καὶ εὐφραίνει.
ᾳ De Conf, Ling. § 28, i. 427: κἂν μηδέπω μέντοι τυγχάνῃ τις ἀξιόχρεως dv υἱὸς Θεοῦ προσαγορεύεσθαι, σπουδαζέτω κοσμεῖσθαι κατὰ τὸν πρωτόγονον αὖ- τοῦ Λόγον, τὸν ἄγγελον πρεσβύτατον ὡς ἀρχάγγελον πολυώνυμον ὑπάρχοντα.
τ De Conf. Ling. § 14, i. 414: τοῦτον μὲν γὰρ πρεσβύτατον υἱὸν ὁ τῶν ὄντων ἀνέτειλε Πατὴρ, ὃν ἑτέρωθι πρωτόγονον ὠνόμασε, π|] F2
68 Philo’s indectsion.
lessly at issue. Philo’s whole system and drift of thought must have inclined him to personify the Logos ; but was the personified Logos to be a second God, or was he to be nothing more than a created angel? Ifthe latter, then he would lose all those lofty prerogatives and characteristics, which, platonically speaking, as well as for the purposes of mediation and creation, were so en- tirely essential to him. If the former, then Philo must break with the very first article of the Mosaic creed ; he must renounce his Monotheism. Confronted with this difficulty, the Alexandrian wavers in piteous indecision ; he really recoils before it. In one passage indeed he even goes so far as to call the Logos a ‘second Gods,’ and he is accordingly ranked by Petavius among the forerunners of Arius. But on the whole he appears to fall back upon a position which, however fatal to the completeness of his system, yet has the recommendation of relieving him from an overwhelming difficulty. After all that he has said, his Logos is really resolved into a mere group of Divine ideas, into a purely impersonal quality included in the Divine Being *. That advance
5 Fragment quoted from Euseb. Preep. Evang. lib. vii. ©. 13 in Phil. Oper. ii. 625: θνητὸν γὰρ οὐδὲν ἀπεικονισθῆναι πρὸς τὸν ἀνωτάτω καὶ πατέρα τῶν ὅλων ἐδύνατο, ἀλλὰ πρὸς τὸν δεύτερον θεὸν, ὅς ἐστιν ἐκείνου Λόγος. But the Logos is called θεός only ἐν καταχρήσει. Op. i. 655
* That Philo’s Logos is ποΐ a distinct Person is maintained by Dorner, Person Christi, Einleitung, p. 23, note i. 44, sqq. note 40; by Déllinger, Heid. und Judenthum, bk. x. p. iii. § 5; and by Burton, Bampton Lectures, note 93. The opposite opinion is that of Gfrérer (see his Philo und die Jiidisch-Alexandrinische Theologie), and of Liicke (see Professor Mansel, in Kitto’s Encycl., art. Philosophy, p. 526, note). Professor Jowett, at one time, following Gfroérer, appears to find in Philo ‘the complete personification of the Logos,’ although he also admits that Philo’s idea of the Logos ‘leaves us in doubt at last whether it is not a quality only, or mode of operation. in the Divine Being.’ (Ep. of St. Paul, i. p. 510, 2nd ed.) He hesitates in- deed to decide the question, on the ground that ‘the word “ person” has now a distinctness and unity which belongs not to that age.’ (p. 485.) Surely the idea (at any rate) of personality, whether distinctly analyzed or no, is a primary element of all human thought. It is due to Professor Jowett to call attention to the extent (would that it were wider and more radical!) to which he disavows Gfrérer’s conclusions, (Ibid. p. 454, note.) And I quote the following words with sincere pleasure: ‘The object of the Gospel is real, present, substantial,—an object such as men may see with their eyes and hold in their hands. . . . But in Philo the object is shadowy, distant, indis- tinct ; whether an idea or a fact we scarcely know. ... Were we to come nearer to it, it would vanish away.’ (Ibid. p. 413, Ist ed.; p. 509, 2nd ed., in which there are a few variations. ) Astudy of the passages referred to in Mangey’s index will, it is believed, convince any unprejudiced reader that Philo did not know his own mind; that his Logos was sometimes imper- sonal and sometimes not, or that he sometimes thought of a personal Logos, and never believed in one.
[ LECT.
Philo and the New Testament. 69
toward the recognition of a real Hypostasis,—so steady, as it seemed, so promising, so fruitful,—is but a play upon language, or an intellectual field-sport, or at best, the effort which pre- cedes or the mask which covers a speculative failure. We were tempted perchance for a moment to believe that we were listen- ing to the master from whom Apostles were presently to draw their inspirations; but, in truth, we have before us in Philo Judeus only a thoughtful, not insincere, but half-heathenized believer in the Revelation of Sinai, groping in a twilight which he has made darker by his Hellenic tastes, after a truth which was only to be disclosed in its fulness by another Revelation, the Revelation of Pentecost. This hesitation as to the capital question of the Personality of the Logos, would alone suffice to establish a fundamental dif- ference between the vacillating, tentative speculation of the Alexandrian, and the clear, compact, majestic doctrine concern- ing our Lord’s Pre-existent Godhead, which meets us under a somewhat similar phraseological form" in the pages of the New Testament. When it.is assumed that the Logos of St. John is but a reproduction of the Logos of Philo the Jew, this assump- tion overlooks fundamental discrepancies of thought, and rests its case upon occasional coincidences of language’. For besides the contrast between the abstract ideal Logos of Philo, and the concrete Personal Logos of the fourth Evangelist, which has already been noticed, there are even deeper differences, which would have made it impossible that an Apostle should have sat in spirit as a pupil at the feet of the Alexandrian, or that he should have allowed himself to breathe the same general re- figious atmosphere. Philo is everywhere too little alive to the presence and to the consequences of moral evil¥. The history
ἃ On the general question of the phraseological coincidences between Philo and the writers in the New Testament, see the passages quoted in Professor Mansel’s article ‘Philosophy’ (Kitto’s Encycl.), already referred to. I could sincerely wish that I had had the advantage of reading that article before writing the text of these pages.
Y ‘Gfrorer,’ Professor Jowett admits, ‘has exaggerated the resemblances between Philo and the New Testament, making them, I think, more real and less verbal than they are in fact.’ (Ep. of St. Paul, i. 454, note.) “ἢ est douteux,’ says M. E. Vacherot, ‘que Saint Jean, qui n’a jamais visité Alexandrie, ait connu les livres du philosophe juif.’ Histoire Critique de V’école d’Alexandrie, i. p. 201. And the limited circulation of the writings of the theosophical Alexandrians would appear from the fact that Philo himself appears never to have read those of his master Aristobulus. Cf. Valkenaer, de Aristobulo, p. 95.
W See the remarks of Μ. E, de Pressens¢, J ésus-Christ, p. 112.
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70 Contrasts between Philo and the Gospel.
of Israel, instead of displaying a long, earnest struggle between the Goodness of God and the wickedness of men, interests Philo only as a complex allegory, which, by a versatile exposition, may be made to illustrate various ontological problems. The priesthood, and the sacrificial system, instead of pointing to man’s profound need of pardon and expiation, are resolved by him into the symbols of certain cosmical facts or theosophic theories. Philo therefore scarcely hints at the Messiah, al- though he says much concerning Jewish expectations of a brighter future; he knows no means of reconciliation, of re- demption; he sees not the need of them. According to Philo, salvation is to be worked out by a perpetual speculation upon the eternal order of things; and asceticism is of value in assist- ing man to ascend into an ecstatic philosophical reverie. The profound opposition between such a view of man’s moral state, and that stern appeal to the humbling realities of human life which is inseparable from the teaching of Christ and His Apostles, would alone have made it improbable that the writers of the New Testament are under serious intellectual obligations to Philo. Unless the preaching which could rouse the con- science to a keen agonizing sense of guilt is in harmony with a lassitude which ignores the moral misery that is in the world ; unless the proclamation of an Atoning Victim crucified for the sins of men be reconcilable with an indifference to the existence of any true expiation for sin whatever; it will not be easy to believe that Philo is the real author of the creed of Christendom. And this moral discrepancy does but tally with a like doctrinal antagonism. According to Philo, the Divinity cannot touch that which is material: how can Philo then have been the teacher of an Apostle whose whole teaching expands the truth that the Word, Himself essentially Divine, was made flesh and dwelt among us? Philo’s real spiritual progeny must be sought else- where. Philo’s method of interpretation may have passed into the Church; he is quoted by Clement and by Origen, often and respectfully. Yet Philo’s doctrine, it has been well observed, if naturally developed, would have led to Docetism rather than to Christianity *; and we trace its influence in forms of theo- sophic Gnosticism, which only agree in substituting the wildest licence of the metaphysical fancy, for simple submission to that historical fact of the Incarnation of God, which is the basis of the Gospel.
® Dorner, Person Christi, i. 57 (Einleit.), Γ LECT.
Real function of the Alexandrian theosophy. γι
But if Philo was not St. John’s master, it is probable that his ' writings, or rather the general theosophic movement of which they are the most representative sample, may have supplied some contemporary heresies with their stock of metaphysical material, and in this way may have determined, by an indirect antagonism, the providential form of St. John’s doctrine. Nor can the general positive value of Philo’s labours be mistaken, if he is viewed apart from the use that modern scepticism has attempted to make of particular speculations to which he gave such shape and impulse. In making a way for some leading currents of Greek thought into the heart of the Jewish Revela- tion, hitherto wellnigh altogether closed to it, Philo was not indeed teaching positive truth, but he was breaking down some intellectual barriers against its reception, in the most thought- ful portion of the human family. In Philo, Greek Philosophy almost stood at the door of the Catholic Church; but it was Greek Philosophy endeavouring to base itself, however precari- ously, upon the authority of the Hebrew Scriptures. The Logos of Philo, though a shifting and incomplete speculation, may well have served as a guide to thoughtful minds from that region of unsettled enquiry that surrounds the Platonic doctrine of a Divine Reason, to the clear and strong faith which welcomes the full Gospel Revelation of the Word made Flesh. Philo’s Logos, while embodying elements foreign to the Hebrew Scriptures, is nevertheless in a direct line of descent from the Inspired doc- trine of the Wisdom in the Book of Proverbs; and it thus illustrates the comprehensive vigour of the Jewish Revelation, which could countenance and direct, if it could not absolutely satisfy, those fitful guesses at and gropings after truth which were current in Heathendom. If Philo could never have created the Christian Doctrine which has been so freely ascribed to him, he could do much, however unconsciously, to prepare the soil of Alexandrian thought for its reception; and from this point of view, his Logos must appear of considerably higher importance than the parallel speculations as to the Memra, the Shekinah, the doctrine of the hidden and the revealed God, which in that and later ages belonged to the tradition of Palestinian Judaism ¥.
¥ Compare Dorner, Person Christi, Einleit. p. 59, on the Adam Kadmon, and p. 60, on the Memra, Shekinah, and Metatron. ‘Zu der Idee einer Incarnation des wirklich Géttlichen aber haben es alle diese Theologumene insgesammt nie gebracht.’ They only involve a parastatic appearance of God, are symbols of His Presence, and are altogether impersonal; or if personal (as the Metatron), they are clearly conceived of as created
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72 Lelevancy of the foregoing considerations.
‘Providence,’ says the accurate Neander, ‘had so ordered it, that in the intellectual world in which Christianity made its first appearance, many ideas should be in circulation, which at least seemed to be closely related to it, and in which Christianity could find a point of connection with external thought, on which to base the doctrine of a God revealed in Christ2.’ Of these ideas we may well believe that the most generally diffused and the most instrumental was the Logos of Alexandria, if not the exact Logos of Philo.
It is possible that such considerations as some of the fore- going, when viewed relatively to the great and vital doctrine which is before us in these lectures, may be objected to on the score of being ‘fanciful. Nor am I insensible, my brethren, to the severity of such a condemnation when awarded by the practical intelligence of Englishmen. Still it is possible that such a criticism would betoken on the part of those who make it some lack of wise and generous thought. ‘Fanciful,’ after all, is a relative term; what is solid in one field of study may seem fanciful in another. Before we condemn a particular line of thought as ‘fanciful,’ we do well to enquire whether a pene- tration, a subtlety, a versatility, I might add, a spirituality of intelligence, greater than our own, might not convict the con- demnation itself of an opposite demerit, which need not be more particularly described. Especially in sacred literature, the im- putation of fancifulness is a rash one; since a sacred subject- matter is not likely, ἃ priori, to be fairly amenable to the coarser tests and narrower views of a secular judgment. It may be that the review of those adumbrations of the doctrine of our Lord’s Divinity, in which we have been engaged, is rather calculated to reassure a believer than to convince a sceptic. Christ’s Divinity illuminates the Hebrew Scriptures, but to read them as a whole by this light we must already have recognised the truth from which it radiates. Yet it would be an error to suppose that the Old Testament has no relations of a more independent character to the doctrine of Christ’s Godhead. The Old Testament witnesses to the existence of a great national belief, the importance of which cannot be ignored by any man who would do justice to the history of human thought. And
personalities. This helps to explain the fact that during the first three cen- turies the main attacks on our Lord’s Godhead were of Jewish origin. Cf. Dorner, ubi sup. note14. On the Rabbinical ascription of Divine attributes to the Metatron, as higher than all angels, see Drach, Harmonie, ii. p. 417. « Kirchen Geschichte, i. 3, p. 989. [ LECT.
Nations must have hopeina future. 53
we proceed to ask whether that belief has any, and what, bear- ing upon the faith of Ese Christendom as to the Person of her Lord.