The Pulpit Commentary — John — Volume 1 — Section 43

l\nd the Logos theory of the Fourth Gospel is missing "-a link which he finds in the J<Jpistle to the Hebrews and in some of PRul's EpisUes. Luthardt and Godet boldly repudiate the influence or the purely Alexandrine school upon the Fourth Gospel.I We must admit thnt there is o peculiar phraseology adopted by the author of the Fourth Gospel which demands some explanation, and which, to '.dissever altogether "root and brnnch " from tho Alexandrian school or thP.osophy and biblical interpreta- tion, is unrensonable and unnecessary. Luthardt and Weiss, Holeman, De Pressense, and mnny others have carried their sense of divergence between the two writers to an extreme. 'l'hus Luthardt says, "John would have written altogether the same, if neither Pinto nor Philo had ever discussed the Logos, or said one word on the subject." De Pressense "!mows not, in the history of human thought, contradictions more flagrant than exist between their doctrines. '!'hat which is with St. John a capital truth would be to the Jew of .Alexandria appalling blasphemy." These views are styled by Keim "puerilities and prejudices of which advancing science can take no note." The peculiar Johannine expressions to which reference has been made are first and foremost "Logos," then Life, Truth, Light, the Paraclete, the .Archon, the Pleroma, the Only Begotten (both .,,p,,,-ro-ro1tor and µovo-yevfir)-terms which, though not all of them exclusively peculiar to the Fourth Gospel, are interrelated there, and appear there as part of a system of thought descriptive of the Divine Ileing and his operations in the universe and his manifestation of himself to the world. Now, numerous writers boldly assert that " the fourth evangelist was a Christian disciple of Philo" (Reville, Revue de Dew; Mondes, May, 1866, p. 107), and the modern assault on the Fourth Gospel has drawn out a multitude of interesting verbal parallels with the phraseology of Philo. "\Ve do find there t, 0elos Ao-yos, t, Ao-yos 0eou, who is- spoken of also as el1<w11 0eoii, as .,,p,,,,,./,-yovos, fi.rstborn Son, even the t!px«pe6s, ll.v0p,,,.,,os 0eoii, the agency by which the world was created, and the like. A very natural conclusion at first sight is to im:igine the philosophy of the treatises Depl Xepou/31µ and Depl Ko<Tµ=of,u to be the source, the imme- diate forerunner, of the language of the Fourth Gospel, and thus to relegate the author, if not into the second century (for which, however, there would be no necessity), yet away from Palestine to Alexandria or Ephesus for his spiritual instruction. "\Ve must remind our.. readers of the plausibility of this view arising from the fact that Philo the Jew had endeavoured, with considerable eclectic force and some learned trifling, to blend into an organic unity the Platonic theory of ideas and knowledge, the Stoic ethics, and the Hebrew revelation, to make the Pentateuch teach or sustain the Hellenic specula- tions. As Thoma says, "The substance of Philo's system is the Jewish religion and the Greek philosophy, which may be blended as oil and water are, but only apparently so, for, superficially mixed, they flow separately side by side." Philo used the phraseo- logy of his philosophic school to allegorize, and so interpret, the ancient record~ of the faith. Just a.s Stoics had affected to find their teaching embodied in the poems of Homer, he had used this high-flown technicality to explain the various events in patriarchal history. Moreover, the same kind of place which Paul and the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews had assigned to "Christ," to" the Son," he had, at about the same time nnd date, ascribed to the " Divine Logos." Thus the " Rock in the wilderness," the "Bread from heaven," are explained by Philo as manifestations of the "Logos." Again, phrases corresponding with that in Heb. i. 1, 2 had been adopted by Philo, and 1 See, on the subject, Professor Jowett's 'Essay on St. Paul and Philo;' Hutton's Essay, •Historical Problems of the Fourth Gospel; ' Domer on 'History of Doctrine of the Person of Christ,' vol. i.; Canon Westcott, 'Introduction to the Study of the Gospels' and Intro- duction to 'Commentary ; ' Pye Smith, ' Scripture Testimony,' vol. ii.; Jules Simon, ':Ecole d'Alexandrie;' Gfrorer, 'Dus Jahrh. des Heils.;' and also 'Philo und das Jud. Alex. Theosophie;' Soulier, 'La Doctrine du Logos chez Philon d' Alexandria' (1876); Crosar l\Iorge.n, D.D., 'An Investigation of the Trinity of Plato nnd of Philo-Judrous' (1795; new edit., 1853) : Liddon (Bampton Lecture) on the Divinity of our Lord; 'Philonio.n Doctrine:' Jordan Bucher, 'Des Apostels Johannes Lehre vom Logos' (1856): Albrecht Thoma, 'Die Genesis des Johannis Evaugeliums' (1885), pp. 32-62: HilgenfelJ, 'Das Evangelium uud die Briefe Johannis noch ihrem Lehrbegriff durgestellt' (18¼9); Carl Siegfried, 'Philo von Alexandria uls Ausleger des olten Testaments an sich selbst uml nach eeinem geschichtlichcn Einfluss betrnctet' (1875): Uel,crweg, 'History of Philosophy,' Eng. trans. ; 'The Jewish-Alexandrian Philosophy,' vol. i. pp. 222; Bigg, 'Christian Pl11to11ists of Alexnudria' (Dampton Lecture, 18S6), pp. 7-26.  ,clviii INTRODUCTION TO ---------------------------------- by the authors of Wisdom and Ecclesi&Sticus, to denote either the " Logos," or the " Eternal Wisdom." Wherein, then, lies the difficulty? and why should we hesitate to acknowledge the Philonian origin for the Johanniue phraseology a.nd doctrinal system? On the folkwing grounds:- (1) Writers who nrge it appear to ignore the twofold connotation of the term" Logos." Strangely enough, the term was used to denote the " reason" of a proceeding, and "the method" or instrument by which such "reason" could be conveyed or carried into effect. It is ueed for the self-consciousness, for the rationality, of a per- son, and for the "word," the account, the process, of revelation by whioh a person nmy ca1Ty his ratiocination into effect. One and the same term is used in Greek to denote the '' reason " and the "word " of both God and man. The question arises- Which of these two divergent usages is that which Philo-Judrous and the Neoplatonio school generally adopted, and which do we find in the Fourth Gospel? We believe that it can be shown conclusively that the Logos of Philo corresponds with the arche- typal reason; and the Logos of John is the eternal self-manifestation, the creative energy the Di'l"ine personal nature, that was the Source of both life and light in man, and has been at length embodied, illcnl'!"'.ated, manifested, in humanity, full of grace and truth. (2) Notice shouid ~pecially be taken of the full Personality of the Word in the Fourth Goi,~~-a conception towards which the language of Wisdom touching a-otpla., and the language of the Epistle to the Hebrews touching the eternal Son, and the language of St. Paul in Corinthians and Colossians, had prepared the way. " The Word made flesh" is identical with the Son in the bosom of the Father, who bath declared him to the world. On the contrary, the Logos of Philo is not an hypostasis at all; in a vast number of passages Philo's Logos is identified with the ,c/"rµos "071T11«ls, the intelligible world, the Divine plan of the great .Architect, the idea after which the world was created or evolved. When the Logos is called the •11e~" of God, it is in the sense in which the power of God is shadowed forth in the creation of the world. The Logos between the cherubim (' De Cherubim,' p. 112) is the "plan," the "design," by which God acted in the creation and government of the world. "By his Logos, God tipxovra ,cal d-yaBb,, •i,,iu, is both Governor and Good." His designs concerning the several 1iarts of his creation are called his 11.&-yo,; by these was fashioned that incorporeal and archetypal world, composed of invisible ideas, which is in fact his 11.&.,,0$, Sometimes passages are quoted to show that Philo did approximate to the notion of a Divine J>ersonality corresponding with the angel of the Lord, as when he said that the angel who met Hagar and brought her back to Sarah was the Logos (' De Cherubim,' p. 108). But if his exposition be examined, it will be seen that by " Hagar" he did not mean the woman Hagar, or refer to an historic event in patriarchal history, typical or other- wise, but meant human arts and science, and that in her departing from Sarah he saw their severance from the true virtne. She, i.e. science, was brought back by the Divine Logos to her true allegiance. In like manner, though he says that Balaam was withstood by the Logos, on examination (ibid., ii. 4) Balaam is not the prophet of that name, but i11 "a foolish people riding on the ass of merchandise or agricultural pursuits, longing for a sword, a power of reason, to smite the failing beast of burden, and drawing forth its complaint more audibly than any voice, and revealing the Divine plan of life." All the historical characters are nothing more nor less than emblematic virtues, and the sum of the narratives becomes simply some phase of religious or metaphysical dogmatism. Again, it is the "archangel," the firstborn Logos, who throws." horse and rider into the sea." But what do these terms denote? The rider is the mmd; the horse represents tLe passions engaged in unholy warfare with true virtue. Philo never makes any reference whatever to the Messiah, or identifies him with the Logos. The notion of incarnation would have been abhorrent to him. Hence we see tLe most astonishing distinction between the use Philo made of this Platonic phrase in his attempt to deanthropomorphize the Old 'l'cstament references to God or the ministers in his revelation, and the use \Yhich the fourth evangelist made of the same term. With him the Logos becomes the historic Revelation of God, the Agency by which light has been given to men, and which at length, after ages of recorded activity, "came into the world." In that.flesh which the Logos became, and upon which Philonian meta- physics poured scorn, St. John says, "we saw his glory, th( glory au of the Owy Begotteo of the Father, full of grace 11,Ild truth,."  'l'liE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. JOH.'J'.