Life of St Athanasius the Great and Account of Arianism

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128 Pages (Part I)

Page 25

Another influence which during the same period led to a gradual formation of theology was the necessity of defending the Church against heathenism. If the Gnostics were 'the first Christian theologians' (Harnack), the Apologists (120-200) are more directly important for our present enquiry. The usual title of Justin 'Philosopher and Martyr' is significant of his position and typical of the class of writers to which he belongs. On the one hand the Apologists are philosophers rather than theologians. Christianity is 'the only true philosophy' (Justin); its doctrines are found piecemeal among the philosophers (logos spermatikos), who are so far Christians, just as the Christians are the true philosophers (Justin and Minuc. Felix). But the Logos, who is imparted fragmentarily to the philosophers, is revealed in His entire divine Personality in Christ (so Justin beyond the others, Apol. ii. 8, 10). In the doctrine of God, their thought is coloured by the eclectic Platonism of the age before Plotinus. God, the Father of all things, is Creator, Lord, Master, and as such known to man, but in Himself Unoriginate (agenetos), ineffable, mysterious (arretos), without a name, One and alone, incapable of Incarnation (for references to Justin and to Plato, D.C.B. iii. 572). His 'goodness' is metaphysical perfection, or beneficence to man, His 'righteousness' that of Moral Governor of the Universe (contrast the deeper sense of St. Paul, Rom. iii. 21, &c.). But the abstractness of the conception of God gives way to personal vividness in the doctrine of the 'visible God' (Tert. Prax. 15 sq.), the Logos (the subject of the O.T. 'theophanies' according to the Apologists) who was 'with' the Father before all things (Just. Dial. 62), but was 'begotten' or projected (probletheis) by the will of the Father (ib. 128) as God from God, as a flame from fire. He is, like the Father, ineffable (Christos, Just. Apol. ii. 6), yet is the angelos, huperetes of the Father. In particular He is the Father's minister in Creation: to create He proceeded from the Father, a doctrine expressly deduced from Prov. viii. 22 (Dial. 61, 129). Before this He was the logos endiathetos, after it the logos prophorikos, the Word uttered (Ps. xlv. 1 LXX; this distinction is not in Justin, but is found Theophil. ad Autol. ii. 10, 22: it is the most marked trace of philosophic [Stoic] influence on the Apologists).

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