The theory of the Timerus has a historical inter est in relation to our present inquiry, from the use that has been made of it at various times, both by defenders and assailants of Christianity, who have regarded it, however erroneously, as an anticipa tion of the teaching of the gospel. Philosophically, however, it is, literally interpreted, an exception to, rather than an instance of, the general tendency of the Platonic philosophy, and of Greek philosophy in general, to carry the search for a first principle up to a simple and impersonal abstraction. In opposition to this tendency, we find the Hebrew Scriptures pervaded throughout with the idea of a personal God, the Creator of the world, and the Ruler, in particular. of his chosen people. Yet it is intimated in various ways that this conception of personality, expressed, as it necessarily is, in terms properly denoting human attributes, though true, is but a partial and imperfect representation of the truth ; that the absolute nature of God rather lies behind this representation than is fully manifested by it. This intimation appears partly in those passages which dwell on the difference between the attributes of God and those of man : He is not a man that he should repent ;' am the Lord, I change not ;' my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways' (i Sam. xv. 29 ; Mal. iii. 6 ; Is. lv. 8) ; more directly in such places as Exod. xxxiii. 20-23, where Moses is permitted to see the back parts, but not the face of the Lord ; Deut. iv. 12 : Ye saw no similitude, only ye heard a voice ;' in the words of Zophar in the Book of Job (xi. 7) : Canst thou by searching find out God ? canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection ?' and in the confession of the patriarch himself in the same book (xxiii. 8, 9) : Behold I go forward, but he is not there ; and backward, but I cannot perceive him : on the left hand, where he doth work, but I cannot behold him : he hideth himself on the right hand, that I cannot see him.' The same distinction be. tween the hidden and the revealed God lies at the foundation of those passages of the Pentateuch, in which the Angel of the Lord is manifested as the divine Person, to whom especially is committed the economy of the old covenant*—passages which the general voice of the Christian Church has inter preted as relating to the Second Person of the Holy Trinity.'t The key being once supplied by these passages, we have less difficulty in acknow ledging a similar distinction in places which might otherwise seem susceptible of a different meaning, such as those in which the creation of the world is ascribed to the Word of the Lord (111, X6yor) (See Ps. xxxiii. 6 ; cxlvii. 15 ; cf. Ps. cvii. 20, quoted by Eusebius, Prap. Evang. vii. 12), and possibly also those in which the wisdom of God is described in language approaching to the attribu tion of a distinct personality (Prov. viii. 22,31 ; cf. Job xxviii. 12-28). The doctrine thus partially intimated in the canonical books of the O. T. is in a slight degree further elaborated in the apocryphal books of Ecclesiasticus and Wisdom, which pre sent somewhat more distinctly the personal repre sentation of wisdom suggested by the Proverbs ;:t.
and the latter of which has partially anticipated the use of the term Xóyos, afterwards so conspicu ous in Philo.* To us, reading the elder Scriptures by the light of a later revelation, it is natural to see in some at least of these obscure intimations, as well as in the more direct Messianic prophecies, a witness to dud a preparation for him who was more perfectly to be made known in the fulness of time. But, before this light was shed upon them, they were destined to receive a different interpretation by connection with the speculations of Greek philo sophy. The literature of Greece and Judea came in contact at Alexandria ; and the first known at tempt to accomplish their fusion is that ascribed to the Jewish Peripatetic Aristobulus, in the reign of Ptolemy Philometor (B.c. 180-146) ;-1- but the prin cipal extant specimens are to be found in the writ ings of the Jewish Platonist Philo, the date of whose birth may be placed about B. C. 20. Philo's system may be described as the result of a contact between the Hellenic theory of the absolute and the Jewish belief in God as represented in the O. T. In his religion Philo was a Jew, with all a Jew's reverence for the oracles of God committed to the charge of his people ; § but his philosophical studies attached themselves to those doctrines of the Platonic philosophy which, while dealing with the same great question, approached it from an op posite point of view. The result in his writings was an attempted combination of the two—the Greek philosophy supplying the fundamental idea, while the Jewish Scriptures, through the Septuagint trans lation, contributed, by means of an extravagant license of allegorical interpretation, much of the language and illustration of the system, besides imparting to it the apparent sanction of a divine authority.11 The leading idea of Philo's teaching
is the expansion of that thought of Plato's which forms the connecting link between the philosophy of Greece and the pantheism of the east—that thought which represents the supreme principle of things as absolutely one and simple, beyond per sonality and beyond definite existence, and as such immutable and incapable of relation to tem poral things.* In place of the God of the Hebrew Scriptures, who, even in his most hidden and mysterious nature, is never regarded as other than a person, Philo is led to substitute the Greek abstraction of an ideal good or absolute unity, as the first principle of a system in which philosophy and theology are to be reconciled and united ; and though he is unable entirely to abandon the language of personality which the Scriptures at every page force upon their readers, he is at the same time unable, consistently with his philosophical assumptions, to admit an immediate personal relation between the Supreme Being and the creature.t The medium of recon ciliation is sought in a development of the scriptural manifestation of the wisdom and the word of God, which.takes the place of the soul of the world as it appears in the 7'ionells, being represented as a second Cod—the connecting link between the first principle and the world ; in whom are concentrated those personal attributes which are indispensable to religious belief, and which are so conspicuously present in the Scripture theology.1: The following short summary of Philo's system will serve to exhibit those of its features which are most nearly related to'our present inquiry :§—The highest aim of philosophy, and the most perfect happiness, according to Philo, is the knowledge of God in his absolute nature, II in which he is exalted above all affinity to finite things, without qualities, and not to be expressed in speech.IS Such know ledge, though not fully attainable by any man, is nevertheless to be earnestly sought after, that it may be attained at least in that second degree in which we apprehend directly the existence of God, though falling short of a comprehension of his essence.* Even this amount, however, of direct knowledge is not to be gained by any effort of human thought, but only by God's revelation of himself ; and such a revelation is only possible in the form of an ecstatic intuition, in which the seer, himself passive, is elevated by divine inspiration above the conditions of finite consciousness, and becomes one with the God whom he contemplates.i. But this ecstatic vision is possible only to a chosen few ; for the many, who are incapable of it, there remains only that inferior and improper apprehen sion of God which can be gained through the means of derived and created existences, especially of his Word or Wisdom, who is the medium by which God is related to the world, the God of imperfect men, as the Supreme Being is the God of the wise and perfectl: This Word, or Logos, is described in various ways, some more naturally de noting an impersonal, others a personal being.§ He is the intelligible world, the archetypal pattern, the idea of ideas, II the wisdom of God, ¶ the sha dow of God, by which, as by an instrument, he made the world :** he is the eternal image of God,n the eldest and most general of created things :* be is the first-born of God, the eldest angel or arch angel,-I. the high-priest of the world4 the inter preter of God, § the mediator between the Creator and his creatures, the suppliant in behalf of mortals, the ambassador from the ruler to his subjects. II He is moreover the God in whose likeness man was made ; for the supreme God cannot have any likeness to a mortal nature he is the angel who appeared to Hagar," the God of Jacob's dream and the angel with whom he wrestled, tt the image of God who appeared to Moses at the bush, the guide of the Israelites in the wilderness. N This interposition of the Logos thus serves to combine the theology of contemplation with that of worship and obedience ; it endeavours to provide one God for those whose philosophical meditations aspire to an intuition of the absolute, and another for those whose religious feelings demand a personal object ; while at the same time it attempts to preserve the unity of God, by limiting the attribution of proper and supreme deity to the first principle only.