as "God and Lord," we meet with the idea everywhere. In Hebrews i. 8:
"But regarding the Son he saith: Thy throne, O God, is for ever and
ever" [------], and again in the Epistle to the Philippians, ii. 6, "Who
(Jesus Christ) being in the form of God, deemed it not grasping to
be equal with God" [------].(1) Philo, in the fragment preserved by
Eusebius, to which we have already referred,(2) calls the Logos the
"Second God" [------].(3) In another passage he has: "But he calls
the most ancient God his present Logos," &c. [------];(4) and a little
further on, speaking of the inability of men to look on the Father
himself: "thus they regard the image of God, his Angel Word, as himself"
[------].(5) Elsewhere discussing the possibility of God's swearing by
himself, which he applies to the Logos, he says: "For in regard to us
imperfect beings he will be a God, but in regard to wise and perfect
beings the first. And yet Moses, in awe of the superiority of the
unbegotten [------] God, says: 'And thou shalt swear by his name,' not
by himself; for it is sufficient for the creature to receive assurance
and testimony by the divine Word."(6)
It must be remarked, however, that both Justin and
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Philo place the Logos in a position more clearly secondary to God the
Father, than the prelude to the fourth Gospel i. 1. Both Justin and
Philo apply the term [------] to the Logos without the article. Justin
distinctly says that Christians worship Jesus Christ as the Son of
the true God, holding him in the second place [------],(1) and this
secondary position is systematically defined through Justin's writings
in a very decided way, as it is in the works of Philo by the contrast of
the begotten Logos with the unbegotten God. Justin speaks of the Word as
"the first-born of the unbegotten God" [------],(2) and the distinctive
appellation of the "unbegotten God" applied to the Father is most common
throughout his writings.(3) We may in continuation of this remark point
out another phrase of Justin which is continually repeated, but is
thoroughly opposed both to the spirit and to the terminology of the
fourth Gospel, and which likewise indicates the secondary consideration
in which he held the Logos. He calls the Word constantly "the first-born
of all created beings" [------] "the first-born of all creation,"
echoing the expression of Col. i. 15. (The Son) "who is the image of the
invisible God, the first-born of all creation" [------].
This is a totally different view from that of the fourth Gospel, which
in so emphatic a manner
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enunciates the doctrine: "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was
with God, and the Word was God," a statement which Justin, with Philo,
only makes in a very modified sense.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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