To meet this difficulty, God evolves from himself
a secondary God, the Logos,--yet without diminishing himself any
more than a flame is diminished when it gives birth to a second
flame. Thus generated, like light begotten of light (lumen de
lumine), the Logos creates the world, inspires the ancient
prophets with their divine revelations, and finally reveals
himself to mankind in the person of Christ. Yet Justin sedulously
guards himself against ditheism, insisting frequently and
emphatically upon the immeasurable inferiority of the Logos as
compared with the actual God (gr o ontws qeos).
We have here reached very nearly the ultimate phase of New
Testament speculation concerning Jesus. The doctrines enunciated
by Justin became eventually, with slight modification, the
official doctrines of the Church; yet before they could thus be
received, some further elaboration was needed. The pre-existing
Logos-Christ of Justin was no longer the human Messiah of the
first and third gospels, born of a woman, inspired by the divine
Pneuma, and tempted by the Devil. There was danger that
Christologic speculation might break quite loose from historic
tradition, and pass into the metaphysical extreme of Docetism.
Had this come to pass, there might perhaps have been a fatal
schism in the Church. Tradition still remained Ebionitish; dogma
had become decidedly Gnostic; how were the two to be moulded into
harmony with each other? Such was the problem which presented
itself to the author of the fourth gospel (A.
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