In Judaism, language had already been used which, taken literally, almost described such a mediator. Wisdom had been spoken of as God’s companion before creation and his assistant or agent in all that he had done.[89] In a passage of the Psalms the word of God had been called the maker of the heavens.[90] Language of this kind probably was merely the result of the inveterate tendency of the Jewish mind to express itself by means of personification and symbolism, and had no mystical significance. But the passage last referred to, derived of course from the formula of creation in the first chapter of Genesis, seems to have guided Philo in his difficulty. He made the “Word” of God the required mediator, God’s agent and representative in all his actions.[91] Philo’s conception of the Word is shrouded in the deepest mysticism. In language worthy of the Athanasian Creed, he asserts that it is neither created nor uncreated.[92] At one time he makes it distinct from God, at another a simple manifestation of God. These contradictions reveal his meaning only the more plainly. He regarded the Word as the modification of God which necessarily preceded creation, God the relative, while God the absolute remained outside it and yet not separate from it. Contradiction, of course, was inevitable. As a monotheist, for him there could be but one God; as a theistic philosopher, he had to push this God back from contact with the world. Hence he was compelled to imagine a manifestation of God, distinct from him and yet mystically one with him, to bear the burden of creation, and to represent the divine nature with all outside itself. On the theological system of Philo, which was widely diffused at the period of its greatest danger from the pressure of Paganism, Christianity now drew largely to avert its ruin. This product of Pagan mysticism was exactly what it needed at the time. It was in danger, through its deification of Christ, of losing its monotheism and of worshipping a human God. By identifying Christ with Philo’s Word, every difficulty was overcome. The doctrine of an incarnation of a divine being in a human form had already entered into Asiatic religion, and, in a more familiar shape, was a common feature of western Paganism. Christ, as the Word made flesh, could be raised to the level of God without destroying monotheism; the Jewish God, as the absolute and unknown, could be reduced to the position of a constitutional sovereign; by a mystery the impulses of the Church could be satisfied, and yet the purity of Christianity be preserved.