A Source Book for Ancient Church History - Mirrors

(A) The Logos Doctrine 149of the divine element in Christ to God. That divine elementwas the Divine Word or Reason (Logos). It is characteristic ofthe doctrine of the Logos as held by the early apologists that,although they make the Word, or Logos, personal and distinguishHim from God the Father, yet that Word does not become personallydistinguished from the source of His being until, and inconnection with, the creation of the world. Hence there arose thedistinction between the Logos endiathetos, or as yet within thebeing of the Father, and the Logos prophorikos, or as proceedingforth and becoming a distinct person. Here is, at any rate, amarked advance upon the speculation of Philo, by whom theLogos is not regarded as distinctly personal.(a) Justin Martyr, Apol., I, 46. (MSG, 6:398.)In addition to the following passage from Justin Martyr, seeabove, § 20, for a longer statement to much the same effect.We have been taught that Christ is the first-born of God, andwe have declared above that He is the Word of whom everyrace of men were partakers; and those who lived reasonablyare Christians even though they have been thought atheists; asamong the Greeks, Socrates and Heraclitus, and men like them; [132]and among the barbarians, Abraham and Ananias, Azarias, andMissael [the “three holy children,” companions of Daniel, seeLXX, Dan. 3:23 ff.], and Elias [i.e., Elijah], and many otherswhose actions and names we now decline to recount because weknow that it would be tedious.(b) Theophilus, Ad Autolycum, II, 10, 22. (MSG, 6:398.)Theophilus was the sixth bishop of Antioch, from 169 untilafter 180. His apology, consisting of three books addressed toan otherwise unknown Autolycus, has alone been preserved