Justin [Martyr], in what he teaches of the Logos, drew from other sources, and not from the sacred writings, or from primitive Christian antiquity.
The inference just stated, we conceive, would be authorized, were the evidence that Justin's sentiments respecting the Logos corresponded in their essential features with those of the later or Alexandrian Platonists far less satisfactory than it is. But this evidence is absolutely irrefragable. Look at the concessions of Trinitarians themselves. Few names stand higher in the Romish Church than those of Petavius and Huet, or Huetius: the latter, Bishop of Avranches, a learned man, and the original editor of Origen's Commentaries on the New Testament; the former, a Jesuit, profoundly versed, as his writings prove, in a knowledge of Christian antiquity. Among Protestants, Cudworth, author of the "Intellectual System," stands preeminent for erudition; and Mosheim, and many will add Horsley, the antagonist of Dr. Priestley, have no mean fame. Yet all these — and we might mention several others, all belonging to the ranks of Trinitarians — admit, in substance, the charge of Platonism brought against the Fathers. Horsley says expressly that the Platonizing Fathers were "the Orthodox of their age," and contends for "such a similitude" between the doctrine of the Fathers and Platonists "as speaks a common origin"; and Cudworth has instituted a very labored comparison to show that "there is no so great difference," as he expresses it, "between the genuine Platonic Trinity, rightly understood, and the Christian." Brucker, the historian of Philosophy, also a Trinitarian, gives in his learned work the result of a diligent examination of the writings of Justin, Tatian, Theophilus of Antioch, Athenagoras, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and others. His conclusion, in which he is fully borne out by his citations, is, that the taint of Platonism strongly adhered to these Fathers; and that, through their writings, the whole Church, in fact, became infected.
The great points of resemblance between the views of the Platonists and those of the Christian Fathers, and of Justin in particular, on the subject of the Logos, Son, or- second God, may be stated in few words. Plato had spoken of God, and his reason or logos, embracing the patterns or archetypes of things afterwards formed. The latter, sometimes called also the intellect of God, he pronounces "the divinest of all things," and admits it into the number of his primary principles. Whether he regarded it as having a real and proper subsistence, or as only an attribute represented as a person by a sort of poetical fiction, it is of no consequence to determine. It is acknowledged that he sometimes speaks of it in terms that, literally understood, (which, however, they probably were never intended to be,) would lead to the supposition that he considered it a real being, distinct from the Supreme God, or united with him only as proceeding from the fountain of his divinity. Certain it is that it was so explained by bis later followers of the Egyptian school, especially after they had become acquainted with the Oriental doctrine of emanations.
Of the opinions of this school, Philo, a learned Jew of Alexandria, who flourished soon after the Christian era, — and who has been called the Jewish Plato, from the striking resemblance of his opinions to those of the Athenian sage, — may be regarded as a fair representative; and his writings were the immediate source whence Justin and the Fathers derived their doctrine of the Logos. Fortunately, these writings, the bulk of them at least, have been preserved; and from them we may gather the sentiments of the Alexandrian Platonists of his time. He admits that there is one Supreme God; but supposes that there is a second God, inferior to him, and begotten of him, called his reason, Logos: the term, as we have seen, employed by Plato to designate his second principle. To this Logos, or intelligent nature, emanating from God, as he considers it, he attributes all the properties of a real being, and calls him God's "first-born Logos, the most ancient angel, as it were an archangel with many names." [De Confus. Ling., c. 28; Opp., i. 426, 427,, ed. Mang.] To this "archangel, the most ancient Logos, the Father omnipotent," he says, "granted the preeminent gift, to stand on the confines of both, and separate the created from the Creator; he is continually a suppliant to the immortal God in behalf of the mortal race, which is exposed to affliction and misery; and is also the ambassador sent by the ruler of all to the subject race; being neither unbegotten as God, nor begotten as man, but occupying a middle place between the extremes, being a hostage to both." [Quis Rerum Div. Hoeres, c. 42; Opp., i. 501, 502.] He applies the title "God" to him; not using the term, he is careful to say, in its highest sense. When used without the article, as here, he says, referring to the passage in Genesis on which he is commenting, it can be understood only in its secondary sense, the article being prefixed when the Supreme God is referred to. What is "here called God," he says, "is his most ancient Logos." [De Somniis, lib. i. c. 89; Opp., i. 655.] At other times, he speaks of him as the image of God; "the image of God," he says, "is his most ancient Logos"; [De Confus. Ling., c. 28; Opp., i. 427.] and, again, as the Reason of God, embracing, like Plato's Logos, the ideas or archetypes according to which the sensible world was framed. He calls God the fountain of the Logos, and the Logos his instrument, or minister, in forming, preserving, and governing the world; his messenger, and the interpreter of his will to man. [In a fragment preserved by Easebius, Philo remarks upon a passage in Genesis (ix. 6), which reads, according to the Septuagint version, "For in the image of God did I make man." "This divine oracle," he says, "is full of beauty and wisdom. For it was not possible that anything mortal should be formed after the image of the Most High, the Father of the universe; it could only be formed in the image of the second God, who is his Logos (or Reason). It was necessary that the stamp of reason on the soul of man should be impressed by the divine Logos; for the God above (or before, PRO) the Logos is superior to every rational nature; and it was not lawful that anything begotten should be made like Him who is above (hUPER) the Logos, and subsists in a form the most excellent and peculiar to himself."]
[Prap. Evang., lib. vii. c. 13, or Philo, Opp., ii. 625. The passage is taken by Eusebius from Philo's Questions and Solutions on Genesis. In the Armenian version of this work, published by Aucher in 1826 with a Latin translation, it is found in Sen*, ii. c. 62. — Ed.]
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