PIIILO
114
PHILO
historical Christ as the only high-priest. Thus the Alexandrian i»l«as formed a bridge to Christianity, lint we cannot regard the doctrine of a union of the Logos with humanity, in all the forma under which ii ap- peared, as a reflection in tin- tir-t place of Christianity, but must doubtless presuppose a tendency of this kind before the Christian sera. A yearning of the spiril goes real events an unconscious longing for that which i-- to come. This inn-r especially have been the case in thai greatest revolution which the- religious de- velopment of humanity experienced. It was preceded by an unconscious feeling of a revelation of the spiritual world to humanity— a longing which hastened to meet tin' new communications from God. It «as not difficult for those who regarded the Logos as the medium of revelation, by which God made himself cognizable to pious souls, and. on the other hand, who held the Mes- siah to be the highest of God's messengers, to suppose a particular connection between him and tic Logos. But, after all. this Jewish idea of the Logos is quite eclipsed by the ( Ihristian idea of the Messiah : with the Jews it is simply the hope of their miraculous restoration from all parts of the world to Palestine, through the agency of a superhuman appearance (o\f/ig) ; and even this super- natural phenomenon lias no legitimate place in Philo's system; it means nothing. Put again, his dualistic and idealistic view of the world absolutely excludes an incarnation, which is tin' central truth of Christianity (comp. Dorner, Person of Christ). His Christ, if he needed any. could have been at best hut a gnostic, do- Cetistic, fantastic Christ ; his redemption, hut ideal and intellectual He attained only an artificial harmony between God ami the world, between Judaism and hea- thenism; which hovered, like a "spectral illusion," an "evanescent fata morgana," on the horizon of dawning Christianity. Says SchatV. ■•It is a question not yet entirely settled whether Philo's Logos was a personal hypostasis or merely a personification, a divine attri- bute. While Gfrorer, Grossmann, Da hue. Llicke, Hitter, ami Semisch maintain the former view, Dorner (Ent- louMungsgeschichtt der Lehn von der Person Ckristi, 2d ed. i. •_'.'! sip) has latterly attempted to re-establish the other. To me, I'hilo himself seems to vibrate between the two views; and this obscurity accounts for the dif- ference among so distinguished scholars on this point" (Hist, of the Apostolic Church, p. 180). The eternal atonement, which I'hilo imagined already made and eternally being madt by his ideal Logos, could be • Efected onl\ by a creative act of the condescending love of God; and il is a remarkable instance of divine wisdom in history thai this redeeming act was really performed about the same time that the greatest Jewish philoso- pher and theologian of his age was dreaming of and an- nouncing to the world a ghostlike shadow of it.
Of his other philosophic speculations we have space only r < . refer to some of his ethical views. With him knowledge .and virtue are gifts of (..,.1. to he obtained only by self-abnegation on the part of man. A life of contemplation is superior to one of practical, political occupation, in other words, the business of man is to follow and imitate God (De Caritate, ii. 404, et pass.). The soul must siriV(. ,,, become the dwelling-place of Cod. his holy temple, and so to become strong, w hereas it was before weak, and wise, whereas before it was foolish ( //, Smnu. i. 23). The highest blessedness is to abide in God i rrepai tbSaipovlac re AkXivwc. cat aftpt- Troir lv finv<;i trrrjvcu). The various minor sciences serve as a preparatory training for the knowledge of God. Of the philosophical disciplines, logic and phys- ics are of little, worth. The highest Btep in philosophy is the intuition of God, to which the sage attains through divine illumination when, completely renounc- ing himself and leaving behind his finite self-conscious- Bess, he resigns himself unresistingly to the divine in- fluence.
It remains for us to notice the use that has l.een made of Philo's writings within the domain of New- Test, in-
terpretation. There are some Christian i xegetists who in their rationalistic tendency have gone so far as to account tor the character and style of some of the New- Test. Scriptures by referring their origin to Philo's writ- ings. (We here qi • largely from Kitto's Biblical <-,,.