Origen achieved a synthesis with Greek philosophy which enabled Christianity to accept a belief in Immaterial Reality without a Docetic Christology, but it must be remembered that Origen was able to do this largely because he stood in the line of succession from the Fourth Gospel and Justin Martyr. He did not take the word Logos in the same sense as Justin had done, and he permanently changed, and indeed partly confused, Christian terminology by giving the meaning of immaterial to the words spirit and spiritual. They have in the main retained this meaning ever since, but students of the New Testament will do well to remember that this is not the meaning of the words in the original, and that Origen, though neither the first nor the last, is probably the ablest of the long line of theologians who have introduced metaphysics into Christian doctrine by a perverse exegesis of the words of Scripture. The Catholic Christianity which emerged from the struggle between Adoptionism and the Logos Christology was a curious combination of both. In the strict sense of Christology, Adoptionism was completely abandoned. Jesus was regarded as the eternal Logos who became man, not as the inspired {131} and perfect man who became God. But in the sphere of soteriology the legacy of Adoptionism can clearly be seen. The Christian became the adopted son of God, joint heir with Christ, and this remained part of Catholic teaching. It is not, however, really consistent with the Logos doctrine, and is logically part of Adoptionism. The incoherence introduced at this point was met by the splendid paradox of Irenaeus and Athanasius that God became man in order that man might become God. But splendid though this be, it remains a paradox, and it was diluted very considerably in later theology, which seems to have felt that the abandonment of Adoptionism in the sphere of Christology necessitated its abandonment in the doctrine of salvation. Thus, at least in popular theology, the grandiose conception of the apotheosis of humanity has passed into the far more mythological one of becoming an angel after death--a view very widely held, though perhaps never officially recognised. What part can either Adoptionism or the Logos Christology play in any modern form of thought? Adoptionism seems to me to have no part or lot in any intelligent modern theology, though it is unfortunately often promulgated, especially in pulpits which are regarded as liberal. We cannot believe that at any time a human being, in consequence of his virtue, became God, which he was not before, or that any human being ever will do so. No doctrine of Christology and no doctrine of salvation which is {132} Adoptionist in essence can come to terms with modern thought.