Scripture and God in Christianity

J.N.D. Kelly underlines the two most important points that were common among all the Apologists,
"(a) that for all of them the description `God the Father' connoted, not the first Person of the
Holy Trinity, but the one Godhead considered as author of whatever exists; and (b) that they all,
Athenagoras included, dated the generation of the Logos, and His eligibility for the title `Son',
not from His origination within the being of the Godhead, but from His emission or putting forth
for the purposes of creation, revelation and redemption. Unless these points are firmly grasped,
and their significance appreciated, a completely distorted view of the Apologists' theology is liable
to result. Two stock criticisms of it, for example, are that they failed to distinguish the Logos
from the Father until He was required for the work of creation,. and that, as a corollary, they were
guilty of subordinating the Son to the Father. These objections have a superficial validity in the
light of post-Nicene orthodoxy, with its doctrine of the Son's eternal generation and its fully
worked out conception of Hypostases or Persons; but they make no sense in the thoughtatmosphere
in which the Apologists moved." 484 Kelly further argues: "when, Justin spoke of Him
as a `second God' worshipped `in a secondary rank', and when all the Apologists stressed that His
generation or emission resulted from an act of Father's will, their object was not so much to subordinate
Him as to safeguard the monotheism which they considered indispensable. The Logos as
manifested must necessarily be limited as compared with the Godhead Itself; and it was important
to emphasize that there were not two springs of initiative within the Divine Being. That the
Logos was one in essence with the Father, inseparable in His fundamental being from Him as
much after His generation as prior to it, the Apologists were never weary of reiterating." 485
Grillmeier, on the other hand, argues that "The coming Arian struggles are no more than the consequence
of the error which was introduced at the time of the Apologists. The error lay in the fact
that the Stoic Logos was essentially monistic, and was understood in relation to the world. As
Middle Platonism and also Alexandrian Judaism overstressed the absolute transcendence of God,
his invisibility and his unknowableness, the Logos was too much restricted to the role of subordinate
mediator. God the Father was thought to have such an absolute transcendence that he
could not possibly deal actively with men (R. Holte). The danger of subordination was not far
off. This danger was increased by the idea which linked too closely together the procession of the
Logos and the creation of the world, the creation and redemption of man." 486
Church Fathers like Tertullian and Origen clearly maintained the apologists positions in regards
to Christ's relationship with God. Tertulian accepting Justin's mediatorial idea of Logos differentiated
between God and Jesus, the Word, by arguing,"by him who is invisible, we must understand
the Father in the fullness of his majesty, while we recognize the Son as visible by reason of
dispensation of his derived existence." 487 Tertullian in his treatise Against Praxeas explained that
the Logos first existed in God as his Reason and then was "made a second" to God, or "uttered"
as the Word through whom all the things were made. There is a crystal clear demarcation line in
Tertullian between God the Father and Logos emphasizing the mediatorial and secondary character
of Logos and his "derivation and portion", to use his terms, from the father's divine substance.
488 He observes that "With regard to him (the Logos), we are taught he is derived from
God and begotten by derivation so that he is Son of God and called God because of the unity of
substance." 489
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