“Philo,” says Professor Kuenen, “gave the Church a formula commensurate with her ideas of her founder.”[93] But Philo really did much more. He gave the Church a means of reconciling conflicting tendencies within it, of satisfying at once the higher and the lower class of religious instincts. And by doing so he saved Christianity. If this means of reconciliation had not been provided, Christianity would have sunk to the level of Paganism, and would have fallen among the ruins of the empire. Still we must not conclude that the doctrine of the mystic union of the persons of the Trinity was, except in a secondary sense, derived from Philo. Primarily it was derived from the necessities of Christianity. By deifying Christ, the Church prepared the way for that doctrine and the dogma of the Incarnation depending on it. Before Philonism entered into Christianity, Christ was man made God; afterwards he was God made man; but before and after alike he was the object of Christian worship. The Church adhered closely to the philosophical basis of the doctrine. Christ, as the Word, was made the sole instrument of creation, God the relative; God the absolute, the Jewish God, was left in lonely supremacy, unnoticed except in the theological philosophy of Christianity. We can see the doctrine in its early shape best in the fourth gospel, which was written about the middle of the first half of the second century, in order to give it a basis in the life of Christ.[94] The gospel was probably composed in Asia Minor, where Gnosticism and the Asiatic fondness for mystery would naturally facilitate the development of the doctrine. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made by means of him, and without him was not anything made.”[95] That is, at the beginning of creation, the Word existed with and as God, and became the agent by whom all things were created. But of course to the Church the Incarnation was the most important fact. “The Word became flesh;”[96] Christ was God incarnate. The Church might now safely worship its founder. As God, the human Christ could be adored, while nominally monotheism was maintained.