Logos-christology
Classical logos-christology had its origins with the Apologists of the second century, who needed an offensive against the Modalism of the orthodox. The Apologists labored to establish a personal difference between the Father and the Son. The dis-tinction began as an abstract thought, as was expressed by men like Athenagoras of Athens (which did no violence to the Modalistic views of the Lord’s church), when he presented the thought that the Son (logos) and the Holy Spirit were effuences (something that flows out) of God, flowing out and returning, like the rays of the sun. (The Modalistic views of Marcellus of Ancyra seem to have taken this tack.) However, the logos idea evolved and developed into a personal distinction from the Father. Also, those who accepted and promoted a logos-christology moved progressively through stages of subordinationism (such as was propagated by Justin, Origen and Arius), to what later became the Trinity of the Athanasian Creed (7th or 8th century). Logos Christianity stemmed from the need of Greco-Roman Christians to reconcile their faith with the widely accepted philosophical views of their culture. It was a Greco-Roman perspective on a Jewish theme. The fact that Christianity was a new religion seemed to be impeding its progress; Christian apologists overcame this difficulty by showing that Christianity had common ground with Judaism and philosophy. In this task one cannot underestimate the influence of one Philo of Alexandria, Egypt.
Philo, a contemporary of Christ and the apostles, was a Jewish philosopher of Alexandria who was a student of Plato and the Stoics. Greek philosophy had worked on the concept of God for several hundred years, and had transformed the ancient super-stitions of half-animal and half-human gods to an homogenized form of ‘principles’ and ‘energies.’ It was theorized that there is only one God who is God in Himself (in this it is suggested by Philo that the Greeks were influenced by Moses: i.e. the Shema, Deut 6:4), who could not touch or be touched by a created universe. This transcendent deity must, then, communicate through an intermediary that was called the logos. Since more will be said about Philo later, let it be sufficient here to say that he saw in the Greek logos the promised Hebrew Messiah. (The link between Plato's teachings and the Trinity as adopted by the Roman Catholic Church is so strong that Edward Gibbon, centuries later in his masterwork The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, referred to Plato as “the Athenian sage, who had thus marvelously anticipated one of the most surprising discoveries of the Christian revelation—the Trinity.”) Philo was a Jew, not a Christian; but a disciple of his by the name of Justin (called by Christians, Justin Martyr) embraced the thought of Philo con-cerning the logos and the Christ. Justin and other Christian apologists began to promote this logos-christology, of Philo and the Greeks, in their Christian circles. (Justin was a Platonic philosopher before he became a Christian and continued to wear his philosopher’s cloak as he preached his version of the Gospel. He saw Christianity as being the fruition of all true philosophies.) The doctrine of logos-christology is basically this:
God Himself is too holy and pure to become involved in the created world of matter: so a secondary entity was brought into being and called the logos, who created all things in behalf of God the first principle; this logos was called the second principle. This “second god” (as both Justin and Origen called Him) came to earth and was born of the virgin Mary and died for the sins of the world.
The latest offering of logos-christology is applying the term Christophany to Old Testament manifestations of the Deity. This has only happened since a publication by James Borland in 1978. The term “Christophany” is new enough that it is not listed in the Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary © 1981, although “Theophany” does appear. Many teachers of logos-christology hold that each and every manifestation of God in the Old Testament is a Christophany (a manifestation of the Logos, the second god-person and not God the Father). “The practice of the Greek Fathers from Justin Martyr, who identified the ‘angel of the Lord’ with the Logos, furnish excuse for conceiving also the theophanies of the Old Testament as christophanies.” In this newest posturing of the logos-christology, the Father is NEVER manifested in the Bible—only God the Son. In this writer’s mind, this positioning is now taking place because of the friction between Trinitarianism and Monarchianism in the form of the Oneness theology in America (includes Oneness Pentecostalism, but also New England Trinitarianism) and Barthianism in Europe. The debate has established that the Jesus of the New Testament is the God manifested in the Old Testament. Therefore, instead of the adherents of logos-christology conceding the debate, they have doubled down on their position to the point of denying the presence of God the Father in holy Scripture, apart from His agent—in their person of the Logos.
Here is the truth: Modalist apologists have proven that the God who speaks, and is manifested, in the Old Testament is in very fact Jesus of the New Testament. Now, Trinitarian apologists have tweaked, once again, their theology to accept that fact; but say that God the Father is too transcendent to associate directly with crea-tion, so He does so through the Logos (Word/Son), an intermediate person. Part of that tweaking is the new term “Christophany” which, in many circles at least, is replacing “Theophany.”
“The doctrines of the logos, ... and the Trinity, received their shape from Greek Fathers, who . . . were much influenced, directly or indirectly, by the Platonic philosophy ... . That errors and cor-ruptions crept into the Church from this source cannot be denied.”
The logos-christology does not take into account the Hebrews’ revelation of God. This was the mistake of the Apologists - possibly because they were anti-semitic. The Old Testament reveals one only God who brooked no other god-persons. The New Testament scriptures, then, should be viewed and interpreted through the lens of Old Testament revelation. The real question, then, is: What glasses are we to look through? The first century church of the apostles had only the Old Testament scriptures for its foundation. With and through these, they understood the person of Jesus. In short, they viewed Jesus through the glasses of the Old Testament. As a result, they worshipped Him as the Father incarnate in flesh. Consider this: With the coming of the Greek and Latin church fathers, Jesus began to be viewed through the lens of the Platoic/Philo Logos. So, then, entered the “logos-christology.”
The christology of the Imperial Church claims the Greeks as its headwater, not the Hebrew prophets. Hence, Modalism is the oldest and original orthodoxy of the Church, and as such is the true teaching of the apostles: because the first century christology was Hebraic, not Hellenic. One cannot help but recall the warning of Apostle Paul, when in A.D. 62 he wrote to the church of Colossae from a prison cell: “Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. And ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power.”
The priority and preeminent position of Monarchianism is underlined by the writing of the renowned Professor Adolf von Harnack (1851-1930): “The really dangerous opponent of the Logos Christology in the period between A.D. 180 and 300 was ... the doctrine which saw the deity Himself incarnate in Christ, and conceived Christ to be God in a human body, the Father become flesh.
Justin Martyr developed the first Christology (Philip Schaff, pg 549,History of the Christian Church Vol 2)
Irenaeus: the Father is the invisible of the Son, and the Son the visible of the Father.
The Two Dionysii,
According to J. N. D. Kelly, “... it is in the fourth char-acteristic phrase of the creed, the words ‘of one substance with the Father, homoousion to patri,’ that the full weight of the Orthodox reply to Arianism was concentrated” (E.C.C., 3rd Ed., p., 238). This word “homoousios” asserted the full deity of the Christ, and asserted that the Son shared the very being, or essence, of the Father. It was a strong word, to be sure. It was a word with which most were uncomfortable, but by it’s use Subordinationism was defeated. The word “homoousios” caused most of the bishops concern, because it had been, for generations, the watchword of the Modalist Monarchians. That this word was identified as Monarchian is seen from the account of the two Dionysii, a full sixty years before Nicæa. J. N. D. Kelly gives us the account:
“...current interpretation of “homoousios” was provided by the affair of the two Dionysii in the sixties of the third century. Bishop Dionysius of Alexandria, it will be recalled, had been put to much trouble by an outbreak of Sabellianism [Modalist Monarchianism] in the Libyan Pentapolis. [Meaning that the Monarchian orthodox in the Libyan Pentapolis were raising up in rebellion against the logos-christology of the Alexandrian bishop.] When he took forceful measures to eradicate it, the leaders of the ... group made formal complaint to the Roman pontiff, alleging among other things that the bishop of Alexandria declined to say that the Son was “homoousios with God.” There is little doubt that the Sabellians stood for that ancient [from the days of the apostles, themselves] and, in popular circles, at any rate, widely established brand of Monarchianism which regarded Jesus Christ as the earthly manifestation of the divine Being. To them the Origenist approach, with its distinction of the three hypostases and its tendency to subordinate the Son, was anathema. When they appealed to “homoousios” as their watchword, they meant by it that the being or substance of the Son was identical with that of the Father. The way in which they invoked “homoousios” in their complaint to the Pope is thus highly significant. It suggests, first, that it was already becoming in certain circles a technical term to describe the relation of the Father and the Son, and, secondly, that they expected it would be recognized and approved at Rome.”
Kelly goes on to say that Pope Dionysius writes to condemn the views reported to him, and that his reply took a markedly Monarchian line (E.C.C. 3rd Ed., p. 247).
Paul of Samosata
Along with this event of the two Dionysii, there is Paul of Samosata. In A.D. 268 Paul of Samosata was condemned by the synod at Antioch (populated by Subordinationists) on the strength of this very word. Paul invoked “homoousios” as his explanation of the oneness of the Father and the Son. For this very word he was condemned.
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