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| Of the Various Ways in Which Christ is the Logos.
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42. Of the Various Ways
in Which Christ is the Logos.
As, then, from His activity in enlightening the world
whose light He is, Christ is named the Light of the World, and as from
His making those who sincerely attach themselves to Him put away their
deadness and rise again and put on newness of life, He is called the
Resurrection, so from an activity of another kind He is called Shepherd
and Teacher, King and Chosen Shaft, and Servant, and in addition to
these Paraclete and Atonement and Propitiation. And after the
same fashion He is also called the Logos,4646
| 4646 It is impossible to
render by any one English word the Greek λογος as used by Origen in the
following discussion. We shall therefore in many passages leave
it untranslated. |
because He takes away from us all that is irrational, and makes us truly reasonable, so
that we do all things, even to eating and drinking, to the glory of
God, and discharge by the Logos to the glory of God both the commoner
functions of life and those which belong to a more advanced
stage. For if, by having part in Him, we are raised up and
enlightened, herded also it may be and ruled over, then it is clear
that we become in a divine manner reasonable, when He drives away from
us what in us is irrational and dead, since He is the Logos (reason)
and the Resurrection. Consider, however, whether all men have in
some way part in Him in His character as Logos. On this point the
Apostle teaches us that He is to be sought not outside the seeker, and
that those find Him in themselves who set their heart on doing so;
“Say not4647
in thy heart, Who
shall ascend into heaven? That is to bring Christ down; or, Who
shall descend into the abyss? That is to bring Christ up from the
dead. But what saith the Scripture? The Word is very nigh
thee, in thy mouth and in thy heart,” as if Christ Himself were
the same thing as the Word said to be sought after. But when the
Lord Himself says4648
“If I had not
come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin; but now they have no
cloak for their sin,” the only sense we can find in His words is
that the Logos Himself says that those are not chargeable with sin to
whom He (reason) has not fully come, but that those, if they sin, are
guilty who, having had part in Him, act contrary to the ideas by which
He declares His full presence in us. Only when thus read is the
saying true: “If I had not come and spoken to them, they
had not had sin.” Should the words be applied, as many are
of opinion that they should, to the visible Christ, then how is it true
that those had no sin to whom He did not come? In that case all
who lived before the advent of the Saviour will be free from sin, since
Jesus, as seen in flesh, had not yet come. And more—all
those to whom He has never been preached will have no sin, and if they
have no sin, then it is clear they are not liable to judgment.
But the Logos in man, in which we have said that our whole race had
part, is spoken of in two senses; first, in that of the filling up of
ideas which takes place, prodigies excepted, in every one who passes
beyond the age of boyhood, but secondly, in that of the consummation,
which takes place only in the perfect. The words, therefore,
“If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have had
sin, but now they have no cloak for their sin,” are to be
understood in the former sense; but the words,4649
“All that ever came before me are thieves and robbers, and the
sheep did not hear them,” in the latter. For before the
consummation of reason comes, there is nothing in man but what is
blameworthy; all is imperfect and defective, and can by no means
command the obedience of those irrational elements in us which are
tropically spoken of as sheep. And perhaps the former meaning is
to be recognized in the words “The Logos was made flesh,”
but the second in “The Logos was God.” We must
accordingly look at what there is to be seen in human affairs between
the saying, “The Word (reason) was made flesh” and
“The Word was God.” When the Word was made flesh can
we say that it was to some extent broken up and thinned out, and can we
say that it recovered from that point onward till it became again what
it was at first, God the Word, the Word with the Father; the Word whose
glory John saw, the verily only-begotten, as from the Father. But
the Son may also be the Logos (Word), because He reports the secret
things of His Father who is intellect in the same way as the Son who is
called the Word. For as with us the word is a messenger of those
things which the mind perceives, so the Word of God, knowing the
Father, since no created being can approach Him without a guide,
reveals the Father whom He knows. For no one knows the Father
save the Son,4650
and he to
whomsoever the Son reveals Him, and inasmuch as He is the Word He is
the Messenger of Great Counsel,4651
who has the
government upon His shoulders; for He entered on His kingdom by
enduring the cross. In the Apocalypse,4652
moreover, the Faithful and True (the Word), is said to sit on a white
horse, the epithets indicating, I consider, the clearness of the voice
with which the Word of truth speaks to us when He sojourns among
us. This is scarcely the place to show how the word
“horse” is often used in passages spoken for our
encouragement in sacred learning. I only cite two of these:
“A horse is deceitful for safety,”4653
and “Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we will
rejoice in the name of the Lord our God.”4654
Nor must we leave unnoticed a passage
in the forty-fourth Psalm,4655
frequently quoted
by many writers as if they understood it: “My heart
hath belched forth a good word, I
speak my works to the King.” Suppose it is God the Father
who speaks thus; what is His heart, that the good word should appear in
accordance with His heart? If, as these writers suppose, the Word
(Logos) needs no interpretation, then the heart is to be taken in the
natural sense too. But it is quite absurd to suppose God’s
heart to be a part of Him as ours is of our body. We must remind
such writers that as when the hand of God is spoken of, and His arm and
His finger, we do not read the words literally but enquire in what
sound sense we may take them so as to be worthy of God, so His heart is
to be understood of His rational power, by which He disposes all
things, and His word of that which announces what is in this heart of
His. But who is it that announces the counsel of the Father to
those of His creatures who are worthy and who have risen above
themselves, who but the Saviour? That “belched forth”
is not, perhaps, without significance; a hundred other terms might have
been employed; “My heart has produced a good word,” it
might have been said, or “My heart has spoken a good
word.” But in belching, some wind that was hidden makes its
way out to the world, and so it may be that the Father gives out views
of truth not continuously, but as it were after the fashion of
belching, and the word has the character of the things thus produced,
and is called, therefore, the image of the invisible God. We may
enter our agreement, therefore, with the ordinary acceptation of these
words, and take them to be spoken by the Father. It is not,
however, a matter of course, that it is God Himself who announces these
things. Why should it not be a prophet? Filled with the
Spirit and unable to contain himself, he brings forth a word about his
prophecy concerning Christ: “My heart hath belched forth a
good word, I speak my works to the King, my pen is the tongue of a
ready writer. Excellent in beauty is He beyond the sons of
men.” Then to the Christ Himself: “Grace is
poured out on Thy lips.” If the Father were the speaker,
how could He go on after the words, “Grace is poured out on thy
lips,” to say, “Therefore God hath blessed thee for
ever,” and a little further on, “Therefore God, thy God,
hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy
fellows.” Some of those who wish to make the Father the
speaker may appeal to the words, “Hear, O daughter, and behold
and incline thine ear, and forget thy people and thy
father.” The prophet, it may be said, could not address the
Church in the words, “Hear, O daughter.” It is not
difficult, however, to show that changes of person occur frequently in
the Psalms, so that these words, “Hear, O daughter,” might
be from the Father, in this passage, though the Psalm as a whole is
not. To our discussion of the Word we may here add the
passage,4656
“By the word
of the Lord were the heavens founded, and all the power of them by the
breath of His mouth.” Some refer this to the Saviour and
the Holy Spirit. The passage, however, does not necessarily imply
any more than that the heavens were founded by the reason (logos) of
God, as when we say that a house is built by the plan (logos) of the
architect, or a ship by the plan (logos) of the shipbuilder. In
the same way the heavens were founded (made solid) by the Word of God,
for they are4657
| 4657 Reading τυγχάνομτας. | of a more divine
substance, which on this account is called solid;4658
| 4658 στερεός, of which the
στερἑωμα,
firmament, is made. | it has little fluidity for the most part,
nor is it easily melted like other parts of the world, and specially
the lower parts. On account of this difference the heavens are
said in a special manner to be constituted by the Word of God.
The saying then stands, first, “In the beginning
was the Logos;” we are to place that full in our view; but the
testimonies we cited from the Proverbs led us to place wisdom first,
and to think of wisdom as preceding the Word which announces her.
We must observe, then, that the Logos is in the beginning, that is, in
wisdom, always. Its being in wisdom, which is called the
beginning, does not prevent it from being with God and from being God,
and it is not simply with God, but is in the beginning, in wisdom, with
God. For he goes on: “He was in the beginning with
God.” He might have said, “He was with God;”
but as He was in the beginning, so He was with God in the beginning,
and “All things were made by Him,” being in the beginning,
for God made all things, as David tells us, in wisdom. And to let
us understand that the Word has His own definite place and sphere as
one who has life in Himself (and is a distinct person), we must also
speak about powers, not about power. “Thus saith the Lord
of powers, (A.V. hosts)” we frequently read; there are certain
creatures, rational and divine, which are called powers: and of
these Christ was the highest and best, and is called not only the
wisdom of God but also His
power. As, then, there are several powers of God, each of them in
its own form, and the Saviour is different from these, so also Christ,
even if that which is Logos in us is not in respect of form outside of
us, will be understood from our discussion up to this point to be the
Logos, who has His being in the beginning, in wisdom. This for
the present may suffice, on the word: “In the beginning was
the Logos.”
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