The Campaigner

something perceptible by the external senses, in
accordance with a participation in which the other
things perceptible by the external sense were
created.
Simply this: that before the individual ideas of the
Mind exist — what he calls the "particular things perceptible
only to the intellect ' — there had to exist a
preexistent capability for ideas, or the generic Idea, from
which are derived the other ideas of the intelligible
world. This concept is the "idea of ideas," a higher-order
idea, which Philo names the logos, or Divine Reason.
Philo's idea of ideas is, simply, Plato's "hypothesis of
the higher hypothesis."
In Philo's pedagogical structure, the logos is
positioned "in between" God and Creation, between the
One and the Many, as a mediator or interlocutor. In
diagrammatic form, it might be pictured thus:
GOD (The One)
logos
logoi spermatikoi
The logoi spermatikoi, the "seminal reason-principles,"
or "seeds of the logos," are the differentiated ideas
generated from the idea of ideas.
There is nothing mystical about this concept. What
Philo is saying is that the principle of reason (the logos),
generated in the Mind of God, in turn generates the
ideas that lead to creation.
This concept of the logos laid the basis for the central
doctrine of Christianity, that of the Trinity. Consider the
following: In the mind of God, an idea exists. When that
idea is realized — when it is made potent — it is spoken
by God, that is, it becomes the Word (Logos). This
process of real generation is analogous to that
relationship that exists between Father and Son; indeed,
often Philo described the logos as the "Son of God."
The relationship to Christ, the Son of God, is already
obvious.
In the doctrine of the Trinity, the relation between the
Father and the Son is one of love. That love, itself,
becomes a generative, creative force that produces the
so-called Holy Spirit, which is the representation of the
Idea.
For Philo and for the early Christian doctors, this is no
more than a heuristic representation of the inner
workings of the creative mind. Here, God is meant to
represent the Mind itself. Inside that mind, the Father
represents the thinking, creative knower, the "I" of the
Mind. When the mind thinks about itself, using itself to
study the working of the Mind itself, then the knower
becomes also the known; that is, the "Thou" of the
Mind is the mirror against which the "I" tests its thought
processes, its hypothesis-forming processes, in order to
achieve Reason and scientific certainty. Then, in the
dialogue between the I and the Thou — between the
Father and the Son — knowledge is generated.
This is the basic doctrine of the Trinity, as stated even
more clearly by Plotinus, Origen, and St. Augustine in
centuries to come.
In the Christian era, immediately following Philo, the
logos-Trinity doctrine is adopted whole cloth. St. John's
famous Gospel, beginning with the sentence, "In the
beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God,
and the Logos was God," expresses the idea exactly. But
the Christians added a refinement to the idea, when John
further states, "And the Logos was made flesh, and dwelt
among us. For here, the Logos — Christ, the Son of
God — is made concrete, for all to see. The universal is
linked inextricably to the particular, God to Man; and
John includes in his famous introduction: "And you shall
become Sons of God."
That was the message of Philo Judaeus.
A drawing of a bas-relief
showing the Looting of the
Temple
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