In the beginning existed the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was a god.
1. John asserts that the Logos was with God in the beginning. In this proposition John does not affirm that the Logos was eternal, nor that he was created in the beginning; but only, that at the time this world was formed, the Logos then existed. Now if we compare the writings of Plato, Philo and the Philosophers in general, we shall find a double sense attached to the word Logos. The first merely conceptual or ideal, being nothing more than a personification of the wisdom or mind of the Deity. The second personal or substantial, being the appellative of the Son of God, when he became a real personal existence. Hence the distinction of the internal and external Logos. Whitby says: "The primitive Fathers very plainly and frequently affirm, that the Logos was strictly from all eternity, in the Father, but was produced or emitted before the creation of the world." In proof of which position he cites Justin, Athenagoras, Theophilus, Tertullian, Tatian, and Lactantius; and refers to Bull's Defence of the Nicene Creed.
Theodoret and Augustine are quoted by Corneil a Lapide, in proof that Orpheus and many of the Greek, Chaldean, and Egyptian philosophers called the supreme God, Nous or Mind, and his word, the offspring of the Mind, they denominated Logos. Let us hear Tertullian, in his Apology, addressing the heathen philosophers: "You philosophers yourselves, admit that the Logos, the word and reason, was the creator of the Universe; the Christians merely add: that the proper substance of the word and reason, is spirit; that this word must have been pronounced by God, and when pronounced, it was generated, and, consequently, it is the Son of God." "Thought, says Bossuet, which we feel produced as the offspring of our minds, as the son of our understanding, gives us some idea of the Son of God; for this reason, this Son of God, assumes the name of the Word, to intimate that he was produced in the bosom of the Father, as the inward voice arises in our souls when we contemplate truth."
John Benedict Carpsove and Professor Paulus, of Jena, have shown that besides the merely conceptual Logos, which was allowed to have always existed in the Father, Philo and many of the Jews and philosophers, attached the notion of personal subsistence to the Logos.— Dr. A. Clarke, on this passage, says: "after a serious reading of the Targums, it seems to me evident that the Chaldee term memra or word, is used personally in a multitude of places, and to attempt to give the word any other meaning in various places, would be flat opposition to every rule of construction." There is therefore one principle, in which Philosophers, Learned Jews, and the primitive Christian fathers were united: From all eternity the Logos existed, not personally, but as the reason and voice, or mind and word of God, but before the creation or commencement of time, Jehovah begot, or produced this word as a personal existence, his Son. In this latter sense, the Logos is here introduced by John, as existing with, not in God, at the beginning of time and creation; and hence John plainly teaches the personal pre-existence of Christ, as appears manifest from the whole scope of the passage, and several parts of his Gospel. The word beginning, therefore, has the same import here as in Gen.1.1.; and to interpret it to mean the beginning of the Gospel, is to divest the whole passage of force and meaning; for what propriety could there be in saying, Jesus existed when he began to preach? None! Therefore John says the Logos had life in him before he became man.
2. The Logos was a god. John does not teach that the Logos was God, in the absolute sense of the term; but in a subordinate sense. Those who contend for the supreme deity of the Logos, assert that the construction of the Greek, is such as warrants their conclusion; for say they, the word God, being the predicate of the proposition, should not have the article. Admitting this, we say, on the other hand, that had John intended to say the Logos was a god, no other form of expression could have been used, than that found in the original text: whereas had he intended to say the word is the supreme God, he could have used a different form, and have said ho theos en ho logos. Thus Origen, on this passage says: "when the word God is used to denote the self-existent being who is the author of the Universe, John places the article before it, but withholds the article when the Logos is called God." Eusebius contra Marcellum de eccles. Theol. L. 11, 17, observes that "the article is here omitted, that the Evangelist might teach a distinction between the Father and the Son; otherwise he might have said ho theos en ho logos, had he intended to call the Father and the Son the same being." See the first of these quotations in Rosenmuller, and the latter in Lampe, on this passage. Epiphanius also, cited by Pearson on the Creed, observes that if we say ho theos, God with the article, we mean the living and true God, but if we say theos, God without the article, we mean a heathen god. Hence the ablest Greek critics among the ancient fathers, who knew an hundred fold more about the construction and usage of the language than the modern critics, say John could have used the article in this phrase, had he intended to designate the Logos as the supreme God.
From what has been said it will follow, that John used the word God, when characteristic of the Logos, in a subordinate and relative sense; and this he might do, either as a Jew, following the usage of the holy Scriptures, or in imitation of the Grecian philosophers. The Hebrew Scriptures use the term God to denote beings of the Angelic order. Compare Psalm 97. 7, with Heb. 1. 6. Thus also in Psalm 86. 8, where the Hebrew says, "there is none among the gods like unto thee," the Chaldaic version says, there is none among the angels of heaven like unto thee." Jesus tells the Jews, "the law called them gods to whom the word of God came. John 10. 35. Hence we see the term god, used in the scriptures, in a subordinate sense; and we have reason to believe that it is so used in this introduction; for John could not intend to say the Logos was the same, as the God in whose presence he was.
3. All things animate or inanimate were made by the Logos. Against this proposition, two objections are made. 1. That out of about 300 instances, where the preposition dia with a genitive occurs, in the New Testament, not more than three can be found to denote the first or efficient cause: but uniformly this construction marks the instrumental cause of an action. Consequently the Father, and not the Son, is the Creator. 2. The verb egeneto never signifies to create. Now both these objections may be admitted, in their full force and extent, and yet the proposition; That all things were made by the Son, be true and perfectly maintainable. The ancient philosophers, as well as many very eminent modern writers on Cosmogony, have maintained a two-fold creation, or rather a creation and formation. A creation, strictly so named, in which the elements of things are called from nonentity into being: a formation, by which things receive their figure and adaptation for their destined use, in actual being: The first may be called a creation of essence, the second of forms of being. It is readily granted, that the scriptures uniformly describe the Father as acting through the agency of his Son: and if John contemplated the agency of the Logos in the formation of "things, his words and phrases are well adapted to express his meaning with caution and perspicuity. "What part belonged to the Son in Creation, says Rosenmuller, no mortal should dare to explain. The Ancients thus understood and believed; that the Father was the disposer of all things, but that in finishing what he had disposed, he used the agency of his Son." Lactantius de Sapien. L. 4, C. 9, says, the philosophers were not ignorant of the Logos, for even Zeno denominates the maker and disposer of the world, Logos. Philo, de Mundi Opificio, says, when the Deity decreed to form this mighty globe, he conceived the forms thereof, and afterwards constituted this intelligent world after the model he had conceived: and if it please any one to speak more openly, this archetype of the intelligible world, this idea of ideas was the Word of God." Hence the philosophers of that time and some of the Fathers, even Origen and Augustine, held the Son to be an inter-medium, if I may so say, between the Deity and the material world; as if some being more nearly connected with creation, than the eternal spirit, should be the agent in the formation of things. The Apostle Paul expressly declares all things visible and invisible were created in the Son, and by his agency, and for his use, Col. 1. 16. And again: by him God made the worlds, Heb. 1. 2. I know it is objected that the word AIWNAS of should be translated ages, but this need not be granted; for the same term is used in chap. 11. 3, of this epistle, to signify the material world: and Michaelis observes, in his notes on Pierce's Commentary, that the Jews, in their most solemn acts of devotion, address God as the Creator of the ages; doubtlessly meaning by the term ages, this system of the Universe. The Apostle Paul and the Evangelist John, therefore, clearly unite in the sentiment of the philosophers of their times, in ascribing the formation of all things to the Son of God, and hence they place him before all things, for this very reason. Surely there can be no more impossibility in Christ's agency in the forming of this world and man upon it, than in his raising the dead, calming the winds, and suspending the action of nature's laws. John tells us the world was made by the Logos. In this we believe him; but let those who say the world was not made, but only renewed or enlightened by the Logos, account for the inconceivable ignorance or wickedness of this enlightened and renewed world, in not knowing or acknowledging the Son of God!
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