Philo & Christianity

 

From The Socratic Journey of Faith and Reason, section 37 below:  

Western Civilization was built on the transcendentals of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. In this blog you will get unique, comprehensive, and integrated perspective on how philosophy, theology and art built Western Civilization and why it is in trouble today. 

37. Philo’s Breakthrough with Logos – from Greek Abstraction to Living Being

In this post, I will discuss how Philo of Alexandria put Hebrew flesh and bone on the Greek abstract concept of logos. This made the idea of the logos so significant that, I would argue, it was the only word John could have used in chapter 1 of his Gospel. (Please see the previous post as background for this one).

Greek as the Bridge Between Judaism and Christianity

It is no accident that the New Testament was written in Greek. Greek was the language of philosophy. It came loaded with philosophical terms and ideas that the Greeks had been developing for over 400 years. And thus the Church Fathers eventually used it to develop Christian theology.

Paradoxically, the type of Greek in which the New Testament was written was Koine Greek. Koine (κοινή) Greek was “street Greek,” the parlance of the common person.[1]

 

Philo of Alexandria’s Concept of Logos and God’s Word

 

By attempting to bridge Hebrew and Greek thinking, Philo laid the foundation for Christian theology and philosophy.[2] And his logos was the intermediary between the two. In order to bridge the Hebrew and Greek world, he introduced the Greek concept of logos conceived by Heraclitus and the Stoics into Judaism. 

 

In the previous post, I mentioned that the logos represented both the idea of God’s inscrutable essence – His divine mind – and the manifestation of God’s existence in creation. Philo saw a parallel between this purely Greek concept and the Hebrew idea of God’s Word or utterance as found in the Hebrew Scriptures. ... In the same way, for the Hebrews, God’s utterance or His Word was a part of His inscrutable essence, but when He spoke, His Word affected creation itself, even bringing it into existence (Genesis 1) or “breaking to pieces the cedars of Lebanon” (Psalm 29).3 It is easy to see parallelism between God’s Word and the Greek Logos. Both the Hebrew Word and Greek Logos represented God’s ideas as well as His actions in creation. The logos then becomes a manifestation of God’s thinking-acting. For Philo, then, the eternal Logos is one and the same with God’s Word.

 

The Logos as the First Born Son of God

 

According to Philo, the logos had an origin. But at the same time, since logos was synonymous with God’s transcendent eternal thought, then its generation was eternal. This is obviously a paradox that the logos could be, at the same time, both first born and eternal. In post 36, I mentioned how the Stoics developed the concept of “eternal generation” and applied it to creation. Philo now applies the same to the concept of logos.[4]

 

Philo stated that the Logos was the first begotten Son of the uncreated Father:

“For the Father of the universe has caused him to spring up as the eldest son, whom, in another passage, he [Moses] calls the first-born; and he who is thus born, imitating the ways of his father, has formed such and such species, looking to his archetypal patterns.”[5]

(Conf. 63) 

 

...  In addition to being creator, in the vein of Heraclitus and the Stoics, the logos is the ordering and governing principle of the universe. It is the “glue” that holds the created order together. And this includes not just inanimate objects like the solar system, but our own bodies and souls. It connects our bodies and souls as well as ourselves with the created order. 

 

We can start to see how New Testament authors like St. Paul utilized these ideas in talking about Christ:

“He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation;  for in him all things were created…all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 

– Colossians 1:15-17 

 

Since the Hebrew language was not a philosophical language, the New Testament authors and theologians would have been hard pressed to describe these concepts were it not for the Greek language with its philosophical heritage. ...

 

... Apart from holding together and governing the created order, the logos also gives us our rationality as an extension of itself and by implication, God. This is how we can be created in the image of God – the Logos bridges the gap. It transverses the great divide between transcendence and immanence. It allows God to be God by remaining transcendent, while at the same time enabling God to be immanently involved with His creating through the Logos.