chistory_logos
The word “logos” is from the Greek word logos meaning “word, speech, discourse, definition, principle, ratio, or reason.” The term is used in philosophy primarily to mean “reason.”
A. Heraclitus
The Greek philosopher Heraclitus (c. 540-475 B.C.) used the term logos to designate the controlling pattern in all things. Heraclitus held that all things are in flux, changing in such a way that it is not possible to step into the same river twice; for the waters of the river keep flowing on. He also held that change takes place by means of opposites; the flow of the river is produced by the constant emptying and constant filling of its waters at any place in the river. Similarly, night and day, good and evil, birth and death, and all other opposites produce the pattern of change. This pattern he called the logos, the controlling wisdom in things analogous to the power of reason in man. Man’s reason is part of the objective reason or logos of things.
Heraclitus emphasize the importance of change. It was natural that he selected fire as the single and original element, because fire is the quickest and most moble of all substances. The fire undergoes transformations in measure and in rhythm to produce the things in the world and the course of their history. Every day and every summer, the quantity of light, warmth, and combustion increases; every night and every winter, the quantity is reversed. And then there seems to have been also a cosmic periodicity in which cosmos follows cosmos in eternal succession. Accordingly, Heraclitus thought that strife was natural and life was a struggle. He wrote,
“War is the father of all, the King of all; some he set forth as gods, some as men; some made slaves, some free …. To God all things are fair and right and good, but men suppose some things wrong and others right.”
This view is possible because the original and everlasting fire is God who rules the world by wisdom. The world is governed by a Logos, a Reason, a Law, and this is the fire itself. This pantheism, as it may be called, is essentially one with the Milesian hylozosim: if all is to be explained by one substance, this substance must account for life and mind as well as for rocks and stars. But can anything visible and tangible provide a satisfactory explanation? Only Reason (logos) can provide that explanation.
B. Parmenides
In southern Italy, a school of philosophers, the Eleatics, developed this explanation. This school was dominated by Parmenides (c.515 B.C.-c.450 B.C.). He is probably the most important philosopher before Socrates, being the first to focus on the central problem of metaphysics, the problem of being. He held that “thought and being are the same thing”, and that “being is and it is impossible for it not to be; it is impossible that non-being is”. That is, being exists and non-being does not exist. Being is ungenerated and indestructible. It cannot come into being out of what does not exist. Neither can it cease to be, since being is not non-being. Hence being is eternal and unchanging. Change is impossible; for if anything changes, it ceases to be what it is and becomes what it is not; and since being cannot cease to be and non-being does not exist, change is impossible. And also movement is impossible; for if anything moves, it must occupy empty space where it was not; and since empty space is non-being and does not exist, movement is not possible. And there can be only one being. For if there were more than one being, these beings would have to be separated by empty space; since empty space is non-being and does not exist, they cannot be separated and thus they must occupy the same space; thus the many are one and being is one. Finally being is homogeneous and simple, not having parts; for if it has parts, then it would be many; but since being is one, it has no parts and thus is it simple and homogeneous. From this homogeneity, Parmenides argued that being is finite. Since being is homogeneous, it must be solid, and, like the surface of a sphere, being is “perfected on every side”, equally distance from its center at every point. Thus being must be finite. Parmenides’ student, Melissus of Samos (5th cent. B.C.), rejected his teacher’s conclusion that being is finite; being must be spatially and temporally infinite. For if being is finite, then beyond it there would be empty space; but since empty space is nothing, non-being, it does not exist and thus being occupies all space. Thus being is spatially infinite. Melissus, like Parmenides, rejected a void or vacuum, empty space, as impossible and non-existent, “for what is empty is nothing. What is nothing cannot be”.
It occurred to Parmenides that no matter how keen an observer’s eyes were, no matter how much water and fire he saw, if he talked nonsense, his theory could not be true. Truth must be tested not by the senses, but by reason and logic. Whatever cannot be thought, whatever is self-contradictory and inconceivable, cannot be. The previous philosophers had all asserted the inconceivable and impossible; in one way or another, they all said that what is not, is. The assertion that fire is water or that water is fire, is obviously false. Water simply is not fire. It is not a question of physics; it is a question of pure logic. Water means one thing and fire means something else. They are not equivalent concepts, and it is always false to say that one thing is a different thing; or that it is something that it is not. But is there not one predicate that is attributable to fire, and to water as well; that they are both existents or beings? Parmenides’ answer is negative for the same reason. The concept of existent or being is not the equivalent of the concept of water. and to speak the truth one must say water is not existent, non-being. But isn’t water water? Isn’t the two concepts here identical? Parmendies’ answer is once again negative because the is indicates existence, and since water is nonexistent, it is false to say that water is, regardless of the concept used as a predicate. Only what is, is. Being alone exists. The logic of his argument depends on his defining the verb to-be as meaning equivalence and existence. That A = A and A exists.
And it follows from this argument that there is only one Being. There is only one Being, that is homogeneous, indivisible, unchangeable, eternal, and solid. If Being is not one and that there are several Beings, then they must differ from each other. Now the point or points of difference must be with respect to Being or with respect to non-being. But how could they differ with respect to Being, since they are alike in being Being? Can likes differ in respect to their likes? And yet the differences should exist in some respect. Yet they cannot exist by reason of their non-being, for non-being is not, and would not permit of differences’ existing. It follows therefore that what people call many things are not different, but the same. Being therefore is not many, but one.
Indivisibilty and homogeneity are consequences of the non-exitence of difference. Similarly, it is unchangeable, for there is nothing for it change into. It is eternal, for it cannot have come from something else because something else, other than Being, is non-being, and non-being does not exist for Being to come from. Nor could it have come from the same thing, for the same thing is Being itself, which already exists and does not have to come into existence. Origin is therefore inconceivable.
Ex nihilo nihil fit (Latin, “Out of nothing, nothing comes”).
Since empty space is pure nothingness and cannot exist, Being must be solid, perfect on every side like a well-rounded sphere. A homogeneous body, without differences, could not be greater in one place and less in another. It is equal throughout, and only the spherical shape satisfied these requirments. Thus Parmenides brought to its logical conclusion the original theme of Thales that the world can be explained in terms of a single physical substratum.
From Anaxagoras (499-422 B.C.) through Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) the Greek word nous (mind) replaced the word logos to designate the controlling principle of the universe, and nous is an immaterial power while logos is the material power. The term logos was reintroduced into philosophy in the system of the Stoics. This Graeco-Roman School of philosophy was founded in 108 B.C. in Athens by Zeno of Citum. The name of the school was derived from the Greek name of the location where the school first met; the Greek word stoa meaning “porch”. It developed its greatest influence in Roman Empire where at one time it was the dominant intellectual system of thought. The Roman Emperor Marcus Antoninus Aurelius (A.D. 121-180) was a follower of Stoicism which he discovered at about age of 11.
Stoic philosophy is divided into three disciplines:
(1) logic which included epistemology,
(2) physics, and
(3) ethics which also included theology.
It is by its ethic that the school is best known, the Stoic resignation or apathia, by which one is encouraged to accept his situation in the world, and to view this as a reflection of the ultimate reason for things. To live according to reason means to simplify one’s life assuming that universal reason or logos is in control of the universe. The history of Stoicism is usually divided into three periods: Ancient Stoicism, Middle Stoicism, and New Stoicism.
Ancient Stoicism began with its founder Zeno of Citum (c.335-264 B.C.) and includes Cleanthes (331-232 B.C.) and Chrysippus (280-206 B.C.). In this period, the Stoic logic and epistemology was developed, as well as the Stoic physics. Their logic stressed the propositional calculus going beyond Aristotle’s logic of classes. The Stoic epistemology introduced the phrase “common notions” into philosophy. They held that all men apparently by virtue of common experience (since innateness is not stressed) to have a certain basic set of ideas in common. These basic ideas provide the starting point of knowledge. They are plural in number and come into play in the synkatatheses or acceptance of propositions as true. They relate to many areas, including our knowledge of the external world. The Stoic physics stressed the material and bodily nature of all things, and held that the world is determined. But this determination is an ordering of things according to the universal reason or logos which is in control of all matter. Following the Heracliteans, they held that fire was the primary element relating to all other elements, the whole exhibiting a harmonious tension. God was identified with this fire and the sun was God’s abode, the seat of the vivifying fire and intelligence of the universe. Thus God is a material being endowed with reason and extending throughout the universe. The Ancient Stoics also adopted the Heraclitean notion of the world year, a vast period of time at the end of which all things are consumed into fire, that is, into God, as the cycle of time moves to its end and a new beginning.
Middle Stoicism is that period of Stoic philosophy characterized by tendencies toward encyclopedism, syncretism, and pantheism. It includes the Stoic philosophers Panaetius (c. 180-110 B.C.) and Posidonius (c. 135-50 B.C.).
C. New Stoicism
The New Stoicism is that period of Stoic school of philosophy that coincided with the imperial period of the Roman Empire and includes among its leading philosophers Seneca (A.D. 3-65), Epictetus (A.D. 60-138) and Marcus Aurelius (A.D. 121-180). In this period the ethics of Stoicism was most completely developed and stressed. This set the image of Stoicism for all later generations. The Stoic emphasis on the control of the one’s life by reason led to a widening of the sense of public duty. It also led to the view that it is at times reasonable to take one’s own life. In a number of cases, including Seneca himself, public officials who were Stoics committed suicide at the point of real or apparent failure in matters of state. The Stoics of this period developed concept of natural law. It was the Stoic view of the operation of a universal reason (the logos) in all the details of the world process which made possible the conception of a standard of right beyond the positive law of a given society or nation. This lead to the conception of all men living in a cosmopolis, and that one is a cosmopolitan, that is, as one of the “people of the cosmos,” rather than of a given race or nation.
The Stoics reacted vigorously against the Platonic dualism of a transcendent world of ideas or intelligible forms, not perceptible by the senses but by the mind, and the ordinary world experienced by the senses. Whatever exist, they argued, must be a body and the universe as a whole must be through and through material. Yet within this material reality they drew a distinction between a crude, unformed passive matter, without character or quality, and the active, dynamic reason or plan or pattern (logos) which forms and organizes matter. This Logos they envisaged as spirit (pneuma) or fiery vapor; it was this all-pervading fire from which the cruder, passive matter emerged, and in the end it would be reabsorbed into that fire in a universal conflagration. Although more ethereal than the passive matter it informed, this Logos spirit was none the less material. This active principle or Logos permeates all reality as the mind pervades the human body, and they considered it to be God, Providence, Nature, the soul of the universe (anima mundi). Their conception that everything that happens has been ordered by Providence to man’s good was the basis of their ethical doctrine of submission to fate.
From the theological point of view, Stoicism is pantheistic materialism, a monism teaching that God or the Logos is a finer matter immanent in the material universe. But Stoicism also taught that particular things are microcosms of the whole, each containing within its unbroken unity an active and a passive principle. The former, the active principle which organizes and forms passive matter, is its logos. The Stoics spoke of “seminal logoi” (logoi spermatikoi), seeds, as it were, through the activity of which individual things come into existence as the world develops. All these “seminal logoi” are contained within the supreme, universal Logos; they are so many particles of the divine Fire which permeates reality. This leads to the Stoic view of human nature. The soul in man is a portion of, or an emanation from, the divine Fire which is the Logos. It is spirit or warm breath pervading the body and giving it form, character, organization. The soul, which is material itself, survives the body, but it is itself mortal, persisting at longest until the world conflagration. Its parts are, first, the five senses; then the power of speech or self-expression; then the reproductive capacity; and, finally, the ruling element (to hegemonikon), which is reason. The soul is the logos in man, and the Stoics made an important distinction between the “immanent logos” (logos endiathetos), which is his reason considered merely as present in him, and the “expressed logos” (logos prophorikos), by which they meant his reason as made known by means of speech or self-expression.
Both the Stoicism and, to even a greater extent, the Platonism which flourished in the first two Christian centuries show important deviations from their classical prototypes. Each had borrowed from the other, and indeed the intellectual attitude of great number of educated people in these centuries might be described as either a Platonizing Stoicism or a Stoicizing Platonism.
This borrowing went on between Judaism and Platonism, particularly at Alexandria in Egypt, where Jews of the Diaspora came in contact with Hellenistic ideas, particularly the philosophy of Plato. This special brand of Judaism at a earlier time produced the translation into Greek of the Old Testament called the Septuagint. Greek ideas had always attracted the Jews of this great cosmopolitan city, set at the frontiers between the East and West, and it was here that the most thoroughgoing attempt was made to interpret Jewish theology in terms of Hellenistic philosophy. The Hellenic Jewish apologist and philosopher, Philo (30 B.C.-50 A.D.), who was born in Alexandria, was the most notable exponent these tendencies. He was, as well as being a scholarly man with a decidedly mystical bent, was a considerable personage in the Jewish community at Alexandria and headed the delegation that it sent to the Emperor Gaius in A.D. 40 after the anti-Jewish rioting at Alexandria. Philo’s extensive writings include a Jewish apologetic, commentaries on the Pentateuch, and descriptions of Jewish monastic sects, including the Essences. Being convinced that the teachings of Moses anticipated the wisdom of the Greeks, especially Platonism and Stoicism, Philo interpreted allegorically the O.T. Scriptures in the attempt to demonstrate this. He was drawn to the Greek philosophers, especially Plato, accepting wholeheartedly the Platonic dualism between the ideal, or intelligible world of ideas, and the material world of the senses, but he maintained that all their best ideas had been anticipated in the Jewish Scriptures. His method of allegorizing Scripture by means of which he attempted to show that the truths set forth in the divinely revealed Scriptures were identical with those of the philosophers, was no novelty at that time; scholars had employed it for centuries to discover the hidden meanings in the poems of Homer and Hesiod, and with its help the Stoics enabled themselves to read their own metaphysical system out of the ancient myths. More that a hundred years earlier an Alexandrian Jew, Aristobulus, had used it to explain away the cruder anthropomorphism of the Pentateuch. For example, Philo used it to explain the story of Adam and Eve as a myth symbolizing the creation of the human earthy soul along with the intelligence, senses and passions, and the seduction of the intelligence by pleasure and its subjection to the material order, and the ways it can return to its original state. This is merely one example of his method by which, while adhering strictly to the letter of the Law, he can regard it as a divinely authorized veil covering a whole complex of Greek philosophical ideas which he found intellectually congenial. Among these was the concept of the Logos, or Word. Guided by the Middle Platonism which he so much admired, Philo taught that God is utterly transcendent; He transcends even virtue, knowledge and highest good and beauty, the eternal Forms which his revered master, Plato, had postulated. God is pure being (to ontos on), absolutely simple and self-sufficient, and can be described as “without quality” (apoios) which probably means that, by His transcendence, He cannot be included in any of the logical categories in which we classify finite beings. The question thus arose of God’s relation to the world. The contemporary Platonic solution was to interpose a hierarchy of divine beings between the Supreme Good, or God, and the material order, and to regard these as ruling, or even creating, the latter. Philo could not accept this, since nothing must interfere with the uniqueness of the Creator God revealed in the Scriptures. Instead Philo conceived of the intermediary powers (dunameis) which, though their status is somewhat confused, were not so much distinct beings but God’s operations considered in abstraction from Himself. Among these intermediaries the supreme and most important was the Logos, “the eldest and most akin to God”, as he calls it, “of the things that have come into existence.” The Logos has a double role;
(1) it is God’s agent in creation, and
(2) it is also the means by which the mind apprehends God.
Both ideas hark back to Stoicism. As we have noticed above the Stoic Logos (which also means reason or plan) was the rational principle immanent in reality, giving form and meaning to it; at the same time its reality was comprehensible to men because of the presence of the Logos in them. Philo has taken up this Stoic conception and linked it with his doctrine of divine transcendence. No doubt he was helped by the fact that in the Bible he read that God created the world by His word (Psa. 33:6; Isa. 55:11), and that it was by His word He revealed Himself to the prophets (I Chron. 17:3; 22:8; II Chron. 11:2; 12:7; Isa. 38:4; Jer. 1:2, 4, 11; 2:1; Eze. 1:3); and he was also acquainted with the Wisdom theology, according to which God first created Wisdom and then used her to create the world (Prov. 8:12-31). Later Jews, writing in Greek, combined the two conceptions, using the term “Logos” (Wisdom of Sol. 9:1f), which is now personified (18:10). There has been much discussion whether Philo regarded the Logos as a personal being, but his identification of the Logos with the Platonic world of Forms and archetypes, of which sensible reality is a copy, makes the personal concept of the Logos difficult. Philo, like the Middle Platonists, regarded the Logos simply as expressing the mind of the one God. Philo argued that just as in man (note the Stoic influences at work) there is a logos endiathetos (that is, the rational thought in the mind) and also a logos prophorikos ( that is, the thought uttered as a word), so the divine Logos is first of all the ideas and thoughts in God’s mind, and is then projected into formless, unreal matter, making it into a real and rational universe. Against this background, when Philo speaks of the Logos in personal terms as “first-begotten Son”, it is difficult to take this personification seriously.
In the Christian New Testament, this was no problem. In the prolog to the gospel of John, the Logos is identified with a person, Christ ( John 1:1– 14). There the Logos is clearly a person and not just a thought in God’s mind. Also the Logos is not just a intermediate being between God and the world, but the Logos is God (John 1:1) and is the agent of the creation of the world (John 1:3). He was not created by God but was in the beginning with God (John 1:1-2). This Christian concept of the Logos stands in mark contrast to the Greek concept of the Logos and makes it difficult to harmonize it with concept of the Logos in Graeco-Roman philosophy.
But the Christian Apologists of the second century attempted to do just that. In trying to frame an intellectually satisfying explanation of the relation of Christ to God, the solution they proposed was that, as pre-existent, Christ was the Father’s thought or mind, and that, as manifested in creation and revelation, He was its extrapolation or expression. In expounding this doctrine they used the concept of the divine Logos, or Word, with which they were familiar in later Hellenistic Judaism as well as in Stoicism.
Justin Martyr (c.105-c.165 A.D.), in particular, used as his starting-point the current maxim that reason (the “germinal logos” = logos spermatikos) was what related men to God and gave them knowledge of Him. Before Christ’s coming, men had possessed, as it were, seeds of the Logos and had thus been enabled to arrive at fragmentary facets of truth. Hence such pagans as “lived accordance with reason” were, in a sense, Christians before Christ. But now the Logos had now “took shape and become a man” in Jesus Christ; the Logos had become incarnate in His entirety in Him. Although Justin conceived of the Logos as the Father’s intelligence or rational thought, he argued that the Logos was not only in name distinct from the Father, as the light is from the sun, but was “numerically distinct too” (kai arithmo heteron). His proof, which he was particularly addressed to Jewish monotheism, was threefold. The Word’s otherness, Justin thought, was implied
1. by the appearances of God in the Old Testament (for example, to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre), which suggests that, “below the Creator of all things, there is Another Who is, and is called, God and Lord”, since it is inconceivable that “the Master and Father of all things should have abandoned all supercelestial affairs and made Himself visible in a minute corner of the world”;
2. by the frequent Old Testament passages (for example. Gen. 1:26: “Let us make man etc.” which represents God as conversing with another, Who is a presumably a personal being like Himself; and
3. by the great Wisdom texts, such as Prov. 8:22ff (“The Lord created me a beginning of His ways etc.”), since everyone must agree that the offspring is other than its begetter. So the Logos, “having been put forth as an offspring from the Father, was with Him before all creatures, and the Father had converse with Him”. And He is divine: “being Word and first-begotten of God, He is also God”. “Thus, then He is adorable, He is God”; and “we adore and love, next to God, the Logos derived from the increate and ineffable God, seeing that for our sakes He became man”.
Thus Justin argued for the otherness of the Logos or Word. According to Justin, before the incarnation there are two special functions performed by the Logos:
1. to be the Father’s agent in creating and ordering the universe, and
2. to reveal truth to men.
As regards the nature of the Logos, while other beings are “things made” (poiemata) or “creatures” (ktismata), the Logos is God’s “offspring” (gennema), His “child” (teknon) and “unique Son” (ho monogenes) “before all creatures God begat, in the beginning, a rational power out of Himself”. By this generation Justin means, not the ultimate origin of the Father’s Logos or reason (this he does not discuss), but His putting forth or emission for the purposes of creation and revelation and that as a result of the Father’s will.
B. Tatian
Tatian (late 2nd century A.D.), who was disciple of Justin’s, like his master spoke of the Logos as existing in the Father as His rationality and then, by an act or His will, being generated. Like Justin, too, he emphasized the Word’s essential unity with the Father, using the same image of light kindled from light. But Tatian put into sharper relief than Justin the contrast between the two successive states of the Logos. Before the creation God was alone, the Logos being immanent in Him as His potentiality for creating all things; but at the moment of creation the Logos leaped forth from the Father as His “primordial work” (ergon prototokon). Once born, being “spirit derived from spirit, rationality from rational power”, He served as the Father’s instrument in creating and governing the universe, in particular making men in the divine image.
The teaching of Theophilus of Antioch (late 2nd Century A.D.) followed similar lines, although he frankly used the Stoic technical terms appropriate to the underlying system of ideas. He wrote:
“God, having His Word immanent (endiatheton) in His bowels, engendered Him along with His wisdom, emitting Him before the universe. He used this Word as His assistant in His creative work, and by Him He has made all things. This Word is called First Principle because He is the principle and Lord of all things fashioned by Him.”
And dealing with the sonship of the Logos, he wrote:
“He is not His Son in the sense in which poets and romancers relate the birth of sons to gods, but rather in the sense in which the truth speaks of the Word as eternally immanent (endiatheton) in God’s bosom. For before anything came into being He had Him as His counselor, His own intelligence and thought. But when God willed to create what He planned, He engendered and brought forth (egennese prophorikon) this Word, the first-begotten of all creation. He did not thereby empty Himself of His Word, but having begotten Him consorts with Him always.”
Like Justin, Theophilus regarded the Old Testament theophanies as having been in fact appearances of the Logos. God Himself cannot be contained in space and time, but it was precisely the function of the Word Whom He generated to manifest His mind and will in the created order.
A rather fuller account is given by Athenagoras of Athens (late 2nd century A.D.). In a famous passage, after stating that the unoriginate, eternal and invisible God has created and adorned, and actually governs, the universe by His Word, he goes on to identify the Word as the Son of God. Repudiating the objection that there is something ridiculous in God’s having a son, he protests that God’s Son is not like the children of men, but is “the Father’s Word in idea and in actualization” (en idea kai energeia). It was by Him, and through Him, that everything was made, and the Father and the Son form a unity. “The Son being in the Father and the Father in the Son by the unity and power of divine spirit, the Son of God is the Father’s intelligence and Word (nous kai logos)”. To make his meaning even clearer, Athenagoras then points out that, while the Son is God’s offspring, He never actually came into being (ouch os genomenon), “for God, from the beginning, being eternal intelligence, had His Word (logon) in Himself, being eternally rational (aidios logikos)”. In support he quotes Prov. 8:22 without stressing the verb “created”. In a later chapter he speaks of “the true God and the Logos Who derives from Him”. And elsewhere he describes the Son as the Father’s “intelligence, Word, wisdom.”
In the broad sense the term, the “Alexandrian School” refers to any one of the intellectual traditions associated with Alexandria in Egypt from 310 B.C., when Ptolemy Soter founded a school and library at Alexandria, until A.D. 642, when Alexandria was captured by the Mohammedans (Islam) and its famous library with over 700,000 volumes was burned. In addition to the Hellenistic schools, including Neo-pythagoreanism and Neoplatonism, it included Jewish and Christian scholars, among the former is Philo Judeus, and among the latter is Pantaenus, Clement, and Origen.
A. Pantaenus
Pantaenus (d. 202 A.D.) is the earliest teacher of the Christian school at Alexendria concerning whom there is information. He was a teacher in the “catechetical schools” which was developed among Christians for the training of those outside the faith who were interested in becoming Christians.
Following Pantaenus, the president of Catechical School at Alexandria was Titus Flavius Clemens (called Clement of Alexandria), who was born about A.D. 150, perhaps in Athens, came to Alexandria in A.D. 202 or 203 and died there about A.D. 219. He sought to develop a systematic presentation of Christian wisdom in a true, as opposed to a false gnosis. Like Justin Martyr he treated Greek philosophy as a preparation for Christianity. The divine Logos has always illumined souls; but whereas the Jews were enlightened by Moses and the Prophets, the Greeks had their wise men, their philosophers, so that philosophy was to the Greeks what the Law was to the Hebrews. Clement thought that the Greeks borrowed from the Old Testament and distorted, from vainglorious motives, what they borrowed. He was firmly convinced that the light of the Logos enabled the Greek philosophers to attain many truths, and that philosophy was in reality simply that body of truths which are not the prerogative of any one Greek School, but are found in different measure and degree in different Schools, though Plato was indeed the greatest of all the philosophers. In addition he thought that philosophy is an aid in understanding Christianity. Indeed, the person who merely believes and makes no effort to understand is like a child in comparison with an adult; blind faith, passive acceptance, is not the ideal, though science, speculation, reasoning, cannot be true if they do not harmonize with revelation. He rejected any real positive knowledge of God; we know in truth only what God is not, for example, that He is not a genus, not a species, that He is beyond anything of which we have had experience or which we can conceive. According to Clement we are justified in predicating perfections of God, but at the same time we must remember that all names we apply to God are inadequate — and so, in another sense, inapplicable. Clement asserted the via negativa [negative way], so dear to the mystics, which reached its classical expression in the writings of the Neoplatonic Pseudo-Dionysius. Man’s anthropomorphic images of God misrepresent God. And yet, God is creator and a beneficent providence, the first-cause. Since creation included time, creation did not take place in time. The knowledge of God as creator comes to light through the Logos, through which the Absolute enters into the sphere of creation. It is the Logos that is the creative and guiding power, the inspirer of both prophets and philosophers, making manifest what is hidden in the nature of God. The Logos is both transcendent and immanent, as divine as God. The Absolute God has been made manifest by the Logos as the Son of God and the Son of God was the founder of the Christian faith. Thus Clement was a Christian Neoplatonist, who placed a heavy emphasis upon the doctrine of the Logos; his doctrine of the Logos reflected Plato’s supreme idea and the Stoic’s immanent principle.
C. Origen
It was Origen (c.185-c.254 A.D.), Clement’s pupil, who succeeded Clement at Alexandria. He attempted to develop a system of Christian philosophy on a larger scale, more complete than before. He was prodigious student, scholar of tremendous applications, voluminous writer, lover of the philosophers, an ascetic, and of fiery temper. Origen was a controversial churchman in and out of the good graces of the office of the Bishop.
Origen was born of Christian parents, probably in Alexandria, between A.D. 182 and 185. He studied under Clement in the Catechical School in Alexandria. During the persecution under Septimus Severus, in 202, Origen’s father, Leonidas, was captured and martyred. Origen wanted to die with his father but his mother prevented him fulfilling his wish by hidding his clothes. He was able to continue his studies after his father’s death by the generosity of a wealthy widow. The persecution had driven his teacher, Clement, from Alexandria, and in A.D. 203 he became, in spite of his youth, teacher and head of the catechical school. He held this position until the A.D. 215, when the Emperor Caracalla drove all teachers of philosophy from Alexandria. He was permitted to return to Alexandria, in probably in A.D. 216, and resumed his teaching. There followed a period of scholarly productivity. Origen’s labors in Alexandria was broken by a journey to Greece and Palestine in A.D. 230 and 231. While he was in Palestine, a friendly bishop in Caesarea ordained him as a presbyter, probably so he would be free to preach. This ordination of an Alexandrian layman was viewed by the Bishop of Alexandria as an intrusion on his jurisdiciton. As a result Bishop Demetrius held synods by which Origen was banished from Alexandria and deposed from the ministry. He had to abandon the headship of the Alexandrian Catechetical School because of the synodical action (about A.D. 231) that was directed against certain features of his doctrine and also against his ordination. He subsequently founded a school at Caesarea in Palestine, where Gregory Thaumaturge was one of his pupils. Origen died in A.D. 254 or 255, his death being the consequence of the torture he had to endure during the persecution of Decius in A.D. 250. Three hundred years later he was accused of Subordinationism, by Jerome and Epiphanius and condemned by some synods, such as the Synod of Constantinople in A.D. 543. In A.D. 553, he was declared a heretic at the Fifth Ecumenical Council at Constantinople.
Origen’s commitment to tradition was stronger than that of his teacher, Clement. Origen edited an authoritative text of the Old Testament scriptures, the Hexapla, containing the Hebrew with Greek transliteration and four versions translated into Greek. Besides his commentaries on certain New Testament gospels and letters, he wrote a monumental work on systematic theology, De Principiis. Under Clement and Ammonius Saccas, who was the teacher of Plotinus and taught at Alexandria in the first half of the 3rd century A.D., Origen learned the Platonic philosophy and set out to wed the Christian faith to it. His anti-Gnostic thought is seen in the guiding principle of his thinking that nothing is to be believed as unworthy of God. Thus, those Christian Gnostics, who would have difficulty believing that the world could have been created by a good God, he denounced. And to help him in his cause he allegorized the scriptures. In his use of allegorizing he made famous the three senses of interpretation:
1. the bodily, somatic, or literal meaning,
2. the psychic or moral meaning, and
3. the spiritual or allegorical meaning, which is highest of all.
All of Origen’s speculations were grounded in the belief that the scriptures were the standard or basis for all speculation. Origen’s God is less abstract than Clement’s, although incomprehensible apart from the revelation of the creative divine Logos or Sophia (wisdom) from God, the latter is subordinate to God and yet of the same substance (homo-ousios). Origen’s doctrine of subordination was later appealed to by the Arians, but they were unwilling to use the term “homoousios“, which term became the key-word in the Trinitarian controversy before, at and after the Council of Nicea (A.D. 325). The Son of God is eternally generated from God, so also is the third hypostasis in the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. The Son is the divine Logos joined to a created spirit which in turn was joined to a human soul in the man Jesus Christ. It is the Son of God through whom the nature of God is revealed and the way of salvation made known. All beings, archangels (with very fine bodies), angels down through man and to arch-fiends (with very coarse bodies), will ultimately be saved (universalism) in the Apocatastasis, when all things will return to their ultimate principle and God will be all in all. The physical world was created ex nihilo. Men have, as spirits, pre-existed. Origen held that evil is privation and non-being and that man by a premundane fall from grace led to them being clothed with a body. He regarded the story in Genesis of Adam’s sin and his explusion from the Garden as an allegory of this pre-mundane fall, pointing out that where Moses seems to be speaking of an individual he really has human nature as a whole in mind. He thus held that man having a material body is a sign of his sin and of his fall into sin, of having used the free will that God had given him, not for its intended purpose, but for evil purposes. Man retains his initial freedom, although hampered by the body, to turn toward God and goodness. Their acts depends not merely on their free choice but also on the grace of God, which is apportioned to them according to their conduct in the pre-embodied state. The common man can be expected only to follow the pathway of faith (pistis); but the educated man will rise to knowledge (gnosis) or to the level of philosophy. Here he will think through by deductive analysis the truth of the scriptures and tradition and go on through further processes of reasoning to new levels of truth.
Origen was the most prolific and learned of all Christian writers before the Council of Nicaea, and there is no doubt that he had every good intention of being and remaining an orthodox Christian; but his desire to reconcile the Platonic philosophy with Christianity and his use of the allegorical interpretation of the Scriptures to accomplish this, led him into some heterodox views. Thus, under the influence of Platonism or rather of NeoPlatonism, he held that God, who is purely spiritual, the One (monos or henas), who transcends truth and reason, essence and being, created the world from eternity and by a necessity of His Nature, God, who is goodness could never have been “inactive” not creating, since goodness always tends to self-communication. Moreover, he argued, if God had created the world in time, if there was ever a time when the world was not, God’s immutability would be impaired, which is an impossibility. Both these arguments are conceived in dependence upon NeoPlatonism. As evil is privation and non-being, and not something positive, God cannot be accused of being the author of evil. The Logos or Word is the exemplar of creation, the idea of ideas (idea ideon), and by the Logos all things are created, the Logos acting as mediator between God and creatures. The final procession within the Godhead is the Holy Spirit, and immediately below the Holy Spirit are the created spirits, who, through the power of the Holy Spirit are lifted up to become sons of God, in union with the Son, and are finally participants in the divine life of the Father. Souls were created by God exactly like one another, in quality, but their sin in the pre-existence state led to their being clothed with bodies, and the qualitative difference between souls is due to their behavior before their entry into the world. They had freedom of will on earth, but their acts depend not merely on their free choice but also on the grace of God, which is apportioned according to their conduct in the pre-embodied state. Nevertheless, all souls, and even the devil and the demons, too, will at last, through purificatory sufferings, arrive at union with God. This is the doctrine of the restoration of all things, whereby all things will return to their ultimate origin and God will be all in all. This view, of course, is a denial of the orthodox doctrine of hell.
From what little that has been said here concerning Origen’s thought, it should be clear that his attempt to fuse Christian doctrine with Platonic and NeoPlatonic philosophy led him into a denial of some of those doctrines. For example, the Son and Holy Spirit in the Trinity, though within the Godhead, are spoken of in a manner which indicates the influence of the emanationism of NeoPlatonic thought. The theory of the Logos as “Idea of ideas” and that of an eternal and necessary creation come from the same source, while the theory of pre-existence of souls is Platonic. Of course, the philosophical ideas which Origen adopted were incorporated by him into a Christian setting and framework, so that he might be considered the first great synthetic thinker of Christianity. Accordingly his ideas and influence was widely spread in succeeding centuries.
The Gospel of John begins with the words,
“1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God; 3 all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. 4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” (John 1:1-5).
“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father.” (John 1:14)
By using the Greek word logos, translated “Word” here, the Apostle John makes contact with Greek philosophy and shows his intention to address its concerns. The concept of the divine Logos or Nous dominated Greek philosophy. It is that which permeates the world and forms it into a Cosmos. It appears in the various systems of Greek philosophy: in Plato, Aristotle, and the Neoplatonists as the Nous, and in the philosophy of the Stoics as the Logos, in different setting, according as they placed the emphasis more on the secular, the cultural, scientific, artistic or philosophical aspects, or on the ethical and religious aspects of human life. They all have in common this reference to the divine Logos or Nous, as that which gives meaning and rationality to the man. The Logos is divine reason, immanent in our reason and in our rational thinking and doing, upon which the meaning of life is grounded. But the Logos or Word here in the Prologue of the Apostle John’s Gospel is not the Logos of Greek philosophy. There are three radical differences between them. [1]
1. First, the Biblical Logos is not an abstract principle, an “it”, as it is always in Greek philosophy, but a person;
2. Second, the Biblical Logos is not an immanent element of the human mind or soul, but is given to man from without from God in the historical revelation of the Logos-person becoming a human being; “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us,… full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14 NAS).
3. Third, and finally, the Biblical Logos is not a timeless, fixed truth, but a dynamic person who comes into history as the perfect historical revelation of God, “and we have beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father.” ( John 1:14 NAS).
The contrast between the Biblical Logos and the Logos of Greek philosophy could not be more stark. Some have even denied that the Apostle John even had this contrast in mind and that his background is entirely the Old Testament; “the Word of the Lord came to me” (Jer. 1:2; etc.). The English translation of the Greek word logos as “word” rather than “reason” seem to reflect this view. But that background does not mean that the Apostle John did not intend the contrast with the Logos of Greek philosophy. But the question of whether the Apostle John intended the contrast or not is beside the point. The difference between the Biblical Logos and the Logos of Greek philosophy is there.
Are these two related? The early second century Christian teachers and Apologists did think that they are related. But they related them in such a way that the distinctive Biblical and personal element is obscured if not lost completely. See in particular Origen. They depersonalize the logos to thoughts (reason) in God’s mind and obscured His existence distinct from the existence of the Father. Reason has usually been understood in Western philosophy either as an impersonal, universal and necessary principle operative in the natural and moral universe or as a human intellectual capacity of ratiocination by which man could arrive at the truth independently of faith. The former is the Greek (and particularly the Stoic) view and the latter is the modern view of the Enlightenment. Appeal to reason in either of these senses involves an appeal to a false god. Understood in this sense, the objection of Christian thinkers like Tertullian and Karl Barth is well taken. The Scriptures says, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” (Exodus 20:2) And this includes reason also. The danger of idolatry even among Christians cannot be emphasized enough.
Faith and reason can be combined by making faith the presupposition of reason. The operation of reason depends upon faith. Unless reason presupposes an ultimate commitment to the person Jesus Christ it will not function properly. For Reason, like all human activities, involves a commitment to something that has ultimate significance and supreme importance. This object of ultimate commitment is that person’s god. It may be self-interest, money, society, power, experience, nature, reason, science, family, state or some supernatural being. The term “god” need not refer to the personal God of the Christian religion. As Martin Luther put it in his Larger Catechism, “Whatever your heart clings to and confides in, that is really your God.” [2] Now, whatever is a person’s god will determine the quality of his whole life by furnishing him with an entire set of values which in turn will govern his specific moral and intellectual decisions. Therefore, the operation of reason will be governed consciously or unconsciously by one’s ultimate commitment. However, reason cannot properly operate unless this prior commitment is made to the true God. For the true God is the only proper ultimate criterion for the operation of reason. Since Jesus Christ is Reason Himself (ho logos) by whom all things were created, [3] He as the true God is thus the only proper ultimate criterion for human reason. Therefore, reason is a form of faith in a twofold sense: formally reason involves faith and materially the proper operation of reason presupposes faith in Jesus Christ.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Emil Brunner points out that
“there are three radical differences between the two. The first is that it is not an abstract principle, an ‘it,’ as it always is in Greek philosophy, but a person — ‘in Him, all things were made by Him and in Him was life.’ The second is to be seen in the fact that this Logos is not an immanent element of the human mind or spirit, but given to man by historical revelation as the secret of God’s essence and will. Finally, it is not a timeless, fixed truth, but the moving dynamism of history, the definite manifestation of that which in the end of time brings with it the victory of the divine will over the powers that threaten the meaning of life, thus completing the meaning of historical, earthly existence.”
Emil Brunner, Christianity and Civilization, Vol. I, 64
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1948).
[2] Martin Luther, “Large Catechism,” in
Luther’s Primary Works, 34
(London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1896).
[3] God created man in his own image Gen. (1:26, 27). What is this image? Scripture seems to suggest that the image of God lies in man’s freedom of choice. “Let us make men in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, etc.” (Gen. 1:26 RSV) Man’s lordship like God’s presupposes freedom of choice. The difference between them is that God’s freedom is unlimited and man’s is limited. An analysis of freedom of choice shows that the ability to choose entails a reference beyond the self to a criterion of decision. The ultimate criterion of all criteria for that person is his god. Man’s sin is that he has chosen false gods rather than the true God. This results in a decrease of freedom, a bondage to the idol. For the false god, being without freedom of choice, that is, impersonal, is a strait jacket on his freedom. The true God, on the other hand, since he is free, personal, fulfills man’s freedom and makes him truly free. Since Reason is a function of the person, it also presupposes freedom of choice.