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THE ELDER AND YOUNGER SONS OF GOD
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THE ELDER AND YOUNGER SONS OF GOD
The Cosmic Logos is not the sensible cosmos, but the Mind thereof. This Philo explains at length.
“It is then clear, that He who is the generator of things generated, and the artificer of things fashioned, and the governor of things governed, must needs be absolutely wise. He is in truth the father, and artificer, and governor of all in both the heaven and cosmos.
“Now things to come are hidden in the shade of future time, sometimes at short, and sometimes at long distances. But God is the artificer of time as well. For He is father of its father; and time’s father is the cosmos, which manifests its motion as the genesis of time; so that time holds to God the place of grandson.
“For that this cosmos 2 is the Younger Son of God, in that it is perceptible to sense. The Son who’s older than this one, He hath declared to be no one [perceivable by sense], for that he is conceivable by mind alone. But having judged him worthy of the elder’s rights, He hath determined that he should remain with Him alone.
“This [cosmos], then, the Younger Son, the sensible, being set a-moving, has caused time’s nature to appear and disappear; so that there nothing is which future is with God, who has the very bounds of time subject to Him. For ’tis not time, but time’s archetype and paradigm, Eternity (or Æ on), which is His life. But
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in Eternity naught’s past, and naught is future, but all is present only. ” 1
YET GOD IS ONE
The Logos, then, is not God absolute, but the Son of God par excellence, and as such is sometimes referred to as “second, ” and once even as the “second God. ” Thus Philo writes:
“But the most universal [of all things] is God, and second the Reason (Logos) of God. ” 2
In his treatise entitled Questions and Answers, however, we read:
“But why does He say as though [He were speaking] about another God, ‘in the image of God I made “man”, ’ 3 but not in His own image?
“Most excellently and wisely is the oracle prophetically delivered. For it was not possible that anything subject to death should be imaged after the supremest God who is the Father of the universes, but after the second God who is His Reason (Logos).
“For it was necessary that the rational impress in the soul of man should be stamped [on it] by the Divine Reason (Logos), since God, who is prior even to His own Reason, transcendeth every rational nature; [so that] it was not lawful that aught generable should be made like unto Him who is beyond the Reason, and established in the most excellent and the most singular Idea [of all]. ” 4
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From this passage we see that though it is true Philo calls the Logos the “second God, ” he does not depart from his fundamental monotheism, for the Logos is not an entity apart from God, but the Reason of God. Nevertheless, this solitary phrase of Philo’s is almost invariably trotted out in the forefront of all enquiry into Philo’s Logos-doctrine, in order that the difference between this phrase and the wording of the Proem to the Fourth Gospel may be insisted on as strongly as possible for controversial apologetical purposes.
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That, however, Philo is a strict monotheist may be seen from the following passage, in which he is commenting on the words of Gen. xxxi. 13: “I am the God who was seen by thee in the place of God” 1—where, apparently, two Gods are referred to.
“What, then, should we say? The true God is one; they who are called gods, by a misuse of the term, are many. On which account the Holy Word 2 has, on the present occasion, indicated the true [God] by means of the article, saying: ‘I am the God’; but the [one so named] by misuse of the term, without the article, saying: ‘who was seen by thee in the place, ’ not of the God, but only ‘of God. ’ And what he (Moses) here calls ‘God’ is His Most Ancient Word (Logos). ” 3
THE LOGOS IS LIFE AND LIGHT
This Logos, moreover, is Life and Light. For, speaking of Intelligible or Incorporeal “Spirit” and “Light, ” Philo writes:
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“The former he [‘Moses’] called the Breath of God, because it is the most life-giving thing [in the universe], and God is the cause of life; and the latter the Light [of God], because it is by far the most beautiful thing [in the universe].
“For by so much more glorious and more brilliant is the intelligible [Light] than the visible, as, methinks, the sun is than darkness, and day than night, and the mind, which is the guide of the whole soul, than the sensible means of discernment, and the eyes than the body.
“And he calls the invisible and intelligible Divine Reason (Logos) the Image of God. And of this [Image] the image [in its turn] is that intelligible light, which has been created as the image of the Divine Reason who interprets it [that is, Light’s] creation.
“[This Light] is the [One] Star, beyond [all] heavens, the Source of the Stars that are visible to the senses, which it would not be beside the mark to call All-brilliancy, and from which the sun and moon and the rest of the stars, both errant and fixed, draw their light, each according to its power. ” 1
The necessity and reason of forming some such concept of the Logos is that man cannot bear the utter transcendency of God in His absoluteness. And applying this idea further to theophanies in human form, Philo writes:
“For just as those who are unable to look at the sun itself look upon its reflected rays as the sun, and the [light-] changes round the moon, as the moon itself, so also do men regard the Image of God, His Angel, Reason (Logos), as Himself. ” 2
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