or not. Dorner, one of the latest and most competent authorities on this point, takes the negative side of the question. According to him Philo taught that the Logos was (1.) A faculty of God, the vovi or understanding, and also the power of God. The two are united ; thought and power. (2.) The Logos is the activity of God ; not merely the power of thought and of creating, hut also the actual activity of God in thinking and creating. God first created by thinking an ideal world, after which the actual world was to be fashioned. As a builder forms in his mind the plan of a city in all its details, before he carries that plan into execution ; and as the dwelling-place of that ideal city is the understanding of the builder, so the ideal world is in the mind of God, {. e., in the Logos. (3.) According to Philo the Logos is not only the think- ing principle which forms this ideal world, but the ideal world itself. (4.) This plenitude of ideas which constitutes the ideal world is the reality, life, and intelligence of the actual woi'ld. The latter is (or becomes) by the union of the ideal with matter, what it is. The koct/aos z/otjto? is realized in the koo-/aos 010-^17x0?. The Logos, thei'efore (or the divine intelligence and activity), is the life and intelligence of the actual world. He is the reason in all rational creatures, angels and men.^ According to Philo the Logos was on the one hand identical with God, and on the other identical with the world as its interior reality and life.
In the hands of the Platonizing fathers this doctrine was only modified. Some of them, as Origen.held that the Logos was a per- son eternally begotten of the Father ; according to Clemens Alex- andrinus. He was, as the Logos ivSidOero^, eternally in God as his wisdom, and therefore impersonal ; but as the Logos Trpo(popLK6<;, or united to the world as its formative principle, He became a person. In applying these philosophical speculations to the explanation of the doctrine concerning the person and work of Christ, there is no little diversity among these writers, so far as the details are con- cerned. In substance they agree. The eternal Logos or Son, became truly a man, and as such gave Himself as a sacrifice and ransom for the redemption of men. He also by his incarnation secures our recovery from the power of sin and restoiation to the image and fellowship of God. How this latter object is accom- plished is the mystical part of the theory. The Logos is the eter- nal Son of God ; but He is also the interior life and substance of the world. Rational creatures included in the world, are endowed
1 See Dorner's Entioick^ungsgeschichte der Lehre von der Person Ckrhti. 2d Edition Stuttgart, 1845. Introduction, pp. 26-42.
584 PART m. Ch. IX.— theories of the atonement.
with personality and freedom. Some of them, both angels and men, have turned away from the Logos which is their life. A renewed union of the divine with the human restores them to their normal relation. The original creation of man was imperfect. The divine element was not strong enough to secure a right de- velopment, hence evil occurred. A larger infusion of the divine element corrects the evil, and secures the restoration ultimately, according to Origen, of all rational creatures to holiness and God. The Logos is the Mediator, the High-Priest between God and man (or rather God and the world). One with God, He is also one with the world. He unites the two, and they become one. The system has a pantheistic aspect, although it admits the free- dom of rational creatures, and the separate existence, or an exist- ence as self of the world. The whole universe, however, God and world, is one vast organism in which God is the only life and the only reason, and this life and reason are the Logos. And it is by giving the Logos, the rational or spiritual element, renewed power, that the world of rational creatiires, who in the abuse of their freedom have turned away from God, are brought back not only to a real or substantial, but also to a cordial union with God, so that He becomes all in all.
In the beginning of the ninth century John Scotus Erigena anticipated most of the results of the highest modern speculation. Schelling and Hegel had him for a predecessor and guide. With him " Creator et creatura unum est. Deus est omnia, et omnia Deus." The creation is necessary and eternal ; the incarnation is necessary and eternal ; and redemption is necessary and eternal. All is process. An eternal unfolding of the infinite in the finite, and return of the finite into the infinite. Erigena, from his place in history and his relation to the Church, was forced to clothe his philosophy as much as possible with the drapery of Christianity ; this secured for him an influence which continued long after his death over later speculative theologians.
During the Middle Ages there was a succession of advocates of the mystical theory. Some of them following Erigena adopted a system essentially pantheistic ; others were theistic. The one class strove to reduce Christianity into a system of philosophy. They adopted the principle of Erigena, " Conficitur inde, veram esse philosophiam veram religionem, conversimque, veram religionem esse veram philosophiam." The two sources of knowledge are recta ratio and vera auctoritas. Both are divine as coming from God. Reason, however, as first, is the higher, and nothing is to