more or less resembling his thought), and written from 53 to 64 A. D. or later, the figure of Jesus, receding into the distance of the past as Paul and his fellow-Christians reverently contemplate it, has grown less distinct, but at the same time grander. He is still sometimes referred to as a man, but more often as Lord; he is spoken of as sent from heaven, where he existed with God before the creation of the world; God is said to have created the world through his agency; he is regarded as in a sense divine, though still as subordinate to God.1

In the fourth Gospel, ascribed to the apostle John, but now believed to have been written by a later Christian, perhaps about 125 A. D., we find a yet more exalted view of Jesus. He is here identified with the Word, or Logos; and since this term plays so large a part in the following development of belief about Jesus, we must pause here to explain it. The conception is supposed to have grown up somewhat as follows: philosophers in the first century were accustomed to think of God as being, in his perfect wisdom and holiness, so far superior to this imperfect and sinful world that he could not be supposed himself to have had anything directly to do with the creation or with men. But Philo, a Jewish philosopher of Alexandria, discovered in the Old Testament certain passages seeming to refer to a sort of personified Wisdom, or Word, or Logos, through which as an intermediate being God had created the world and communicated with man." This Logos thus seemed to him to bridge the great gulf otherwise existing between God and his world. At the same time there was also in the Greek

1 See Romans 5:15; I Corinthians 15:21, 27, 45, 47; 12:3; 8:6; II Corinthians 4:5; 5:21; 12:8, 9; Colossians 1:15–17, 19; 2:9; Philippians 2:6, 7.

2 E. g., Psalm 33:6; 147:15; Isaiah 55:11; Jeremiah 23:29; Proverbs 8, 9.

philosophy of the period a belief that a divine Logos, or Reason,1 was manifested in the universe as a kind of worldsoul. These two views, then, the one Jewish and the other Greek, became more or less blended in Jewish and Greek thought from the end of the first century, and this Logos idea became widely accepted by both Jews and Greeks as one of the staple elements in their religious teaching, because it solved for them what they felt to be a critical religious problem-how sinful man might come into harmony with the perfect God.

Now the great purpose of the author of the fourth Gospel was to recommend the Christian religion to those who held this Logos view, by showing them that the Logos was none other than Jesus himself, the founder of that religion, who had been with God in the beginning, had been his agent in the creation of the world, and had at length taken the form of a human being, thus becoming one through whom the holy God and sinful men might be brought together. The Logos doctrine in this Gospel was the highest point reached in the development of the New Testament teaching about Jesus; but although it sometimes almost seems to make Jesus one with God, in other passages it makes it clear nevertheless that he was less than God, and derived his being, and all his power and authority, from him. It was directly from this Logos doctrine, however, that the development followed which in the fourth century ended in the fully developed doctrines of the Trinity and the Deity of Christ. That further progress of Christian thought we are now ready to follow.

2

1 The Greek word Logos meant both word, and reason.

2 See John 1:1-14; 14:6, 9, 11; 8:23, 58; 10:30. Also 14:28; 3:35; 5:19, 22, 26, 30; 7:16; 8:28; 17:21.

CHAPTER III

THE DEVELOPMENT OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE DOWN TO THE COUNCIL OF NICEA,

325 A. D.

In the last chapter we traced the development of the New Testament teaching about Jesus, and saw that there was a steady progress of thought which began by regarding Jesus as truly human, simply a man, and ended by regarding him as the Logos, in some sense divine, and little less than God; though there was as yet no doctrine of the Trinity, and no belief in the complete deity of Christ. But the Logos doctrine of the fourth Gospel furnished the germ out of which within the next two or three centuries those doctrines were to develop. We must now follow the steps which this further development took.

After all the immediate disciples of Jesus had passed away, and the Apostolic Age had come to an end with the close of the first century, there followed for something more than a hundred years what is known as the Age of the Apologists, during which Christians had to defend their new religion against the attacks of Jews or of Pagans, and were trying to prove it superior to the older religions. The writers who made this defense are known as the Apologists. Some of their writings have come down to us, and form the earliest Christian literature after the New Testament. They themselves were the earliest Christian theologians, trying to state their religious beliefs in systematic form; and

their writings therefore serve to show us how Christian doctrines were taking shape. The problem they were all earnestly trying to solve, in order to state the philosophy of Christianity in such a way that educated Greeks might accept it, was this: How was the Logos (now fully accepted as a fixed item in Christian thought) related to the infinite and eternal God on the one hand, and to the man Jesus of Nazareth on the other? They could not hope to see Christianity make much progress in the Greek world until this problem was satisfactorily solved. Yet it was a difficult problem, for the nearer they made him to God, the more unreal his human life seemed to be; while the more fully they recognized his humanity, the farther he seemed to be from God. It is these Apologists that take the next steps leading from the simpler teaching of the New Testament, far toward the doctrine of the Deity of Christ, as we shall now see by looking briefly at what four of the most prominent of them wrote.

Justin Martyr had been a Greek philosopher before his conversion to Christianity. As a Christian he wrote at Rome, some time after the year 140, two Apologies and other writings in defense of Christianity. In these he teaches that the divine Reason, or Logos, was begotten by God, as his first-born, before the creation of the world. Through him God created the world. He was a distinct person from God, and inferior to him, yet he might be worshiped as a divine being. He became a man upon earth in the person of Jesus.

Irenæus, who had been born in Asia Minor, went as missionary to southern Gaul, and there in 178 he became Bishop of Lyons. He wrote a book against heresies, in which he taught that the Logos existed before the creation of the world, and was God's first-born Son. The Logos was

thus truly divine, although distinct from God and inferior to him; and he became a man in Jesus, and suffered as a man, in order to bring mankind nearer to God.

Clement of Alexandria was born in the Greek religion, but after his conversion to Christianity he became the most eminent Christian philosopher of his time, and had great influence on the thought of the Eastern Church. In works written after 190 he teaches that the Logos was in the beginning with God, and was somehow God, and hence deserved to be worshiped; and yet he was below the Father in rank. In Jesus he became a man, that we might learn from him how a man may become God. Clement also took a further step toward the doctrine of the Trinity, when he spoke of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as a "holy triad."

Tertullian was born at Carthage about 150, and was a pagan in religion until middle life; but after his conversion to Christianity he became as influential in the thought of the Western Church as Clement was in the Eastern. In his writings he teaches that the Son (or Logos) existed before creation, and was of one substance with God, though distinct from him and subordinate to him. He was born upon earth as Jesus; and Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are mysteriously united into a trinity-a term which Tertullian was the first to introduce.

These four examples are enough to show what was going on in Christian thought during the century after the fourth Gospel appeared. There was a growing tendency, while still insisting that Christ was less than God, to regard him more and more as divine. Yet in this tendency there were two dangers. As theologians speculated upon the Logos, they were more and more losing sight of the human character of Jesus, and there was a fear lest Christianity should presently find itself worshiping two divine beings instead of