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existence in any modern version. Again, as a prophecy of the crucifixion, he quotes from Psalm xcvi. :—' Say among the nations that the Lord reigneth from the wood.' The words in italics, accepted by Justin as an inspired prediction of the death of the Messiah, and consequent proof of Christianity, are an interpolation, through which we learn how fictitious were the materials at the disposal of Justin for the evolution of his Christology.

Justin, unwilling to part with his favourite Platonism, adopts the impossible theory that the Athenian philosopher borrowed his system from Moses.1 Thus, in the Timæus, Plato speaks of the soul of the world, as impressed on the universe in the form of a χίασμα, or letter x. This,' says Justin, 'is borrowed from Moses; for when the Israelites were bitten by fiery serpents in the wilderness, the prophet, inspired by God, formed a brazen cross, by looking on which the sufferers were healed. Plato reading these things, and not clearly understanding the figure of the cross, said that the Power next to the first God was placed crosswise in the universe. And he speaks of a third (Divinity) because he read of Moses saying:-The spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.' Thus, the first of the Ante-Nicene Fathers discloses the Platonic source of Trinitarianism, as yet but embryonic in constructive Christianity.

Philo, in fusing Platonic with Hebrew theosophy, assumes that the Logos is the God of Israel; but Justin teaches that the Mosaic Jehovah, the Platonic Logos, and the Incarnate Christ, are personally identical, as

1 1 Apology lx.

the secondary God or angel, who, as the Minister of the Supreme Deity, came down to inspect the tower of Babel, shut up Noah in the ark, appeared to Abraham, Jacob, and Moses, and finally assumed the form of Jesus of Nazareth, in the great drama of Galilee.1

Justin also personifies the Word and Wisdom of Hebrew Scripture as the Christ, and detects, in the metaphorical flights of David and Solomon, the preexistence and divinity of the Son of Man.

The views of Justin respecting the Holy Spirit are too indefinite to identify his teaching with the later doctrine of the Trinity. His conclusions, in fact, establish the existence of two distinct gods, who preserve unity in divine administration, through the implicit obedience of the inferior Deity. Jesus, according to Justin, may be the Son, Wisdom, the Word, the Logos, the Lord, and even God, but he is also the Angel, ministering to the will of the Supreme Deity from whom he derives existence, power, and divinity, and could not therefore have claimed the divine equality, assigned to him in the Trinitarian mystery of later generations.

The deification of Jesus was, however, a merely speculative problem in the mind of Justin, evolved through arbitrary and fanciful interpretation of ambiguous passages in the Septuagint; for, in his controversy with the Hebrew, Trypho, he says:- There are some of our community who admit that Jesus is Christ, but maintain he is a man born of man. Now though I should fail to prove his pre-existence as the Son of God, it will be more correct to say that I am mistaken in this 1 Dialogue with Trypho cxxvii.

1

respect, than to deny that he is the Christ should he appear to be a man of men (άνθρωπος ἐξ ἀνθρώπων), and to have become Christ by election.'1

If some-which may be more correctly understood most-Christians of the age of Justin accepted the simple Humanity of Jesus, this was assuredly the primitive faith of Galilee; for how could men, who had once received, forget or deny the Divinity of the Messiah; and if the Galilean apostles had ever taught that Jesus was divine, in any other sense than man inspired by God, would not this marvellous revelation have been so clearly disclosed in the Logia of Matthew, as to spare philosophic piety the task of constructive divinity? Or, if the Godhead of Jesus had ever been an apostolic tradition, would not Justin have appealed to episcopal authority, rather than to Platonic Judaism, in confirmation of his theosophy? No fact stands out more prominently in the works of Justin than that he identified the Hebrew Messiah with the divine Logos of the Alexandrine school, in absolute independence of the fourth Gospel, the existence of which was unknown to him, unless we assume that he rejected its authority. In confirmation of these conclusions, we find Justin following Philo in giving to the Logos the title of Protogonos (IIpwróyovos, first-begotten), whereas Pseudo-John, as shown in the following chapter, borrows the title of Monogenes direct from the Valentinians.

Justin, although now a canonised saint, was in fact a Gnostic heretic in the second century, forming his convictions external to the school of Galilee, but posthumously enrolled among the orthodox of the fourth 1 Chap. xlviii.

century, when his works had been utilised in finally establishing the Divinity of Jesus.

Justin is followed by Athenagoras, an Athenian philosopher who became a convert to Christianity, and addressed an eloquent appeal to the Emperor Marcus Aurelius (about A.D. 176) in defence of the morality and religion of his fellow-Christians. He sustains the moral purity of the Gospel by citing Matthew; but his theology is simply Platonism engrafted on Christianity through the adoption of Jesus of Nazareth as the divine Logos.

CHAPTER V

THE GNOSTIC GOSPEL-THE DEIFICATION OF JESUS.

WHILST philosophers were vainly striving to reason on the incomprehensible, a contemporary of Justin conceived the bold design of publishing, in the name of an apostle, that famous fourth Gospel through which Jesus has been deified within the pale of orthodoxy. Antecedent constructors of Messianic divinity had courted failure and oblivion, by submitting their doctrines to the test of controversy; but the more sagacious author of the Gospel attributed to John, aware that he who would win theological success must speak as a voice from heaven, adopted the pious fraud of writing in the name of a Galilean apostle, and thus escaped companionship with contemporary heretics.

To establish the Divinity of Jesus, this unknown evangelist adopted a dogmatic formula- In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was Divine. The same was in the beginning with God. All things came into existence through him; and without him nothing came into existence. That which hath been made in him was Zoe (Life), and Zoe was the Phōs (Light) of men, and Phōs shineth in the darkness, and the darkness apprehended it not . . . And the Logos became flesh, and dwelt among us, full of Charis (Grace) and Aletheia (Truth). And we beheld