On this page
-
Text (1)
-
Untitled Article
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
him at one time representing two triads of different degrees of inferiority to the Supreme God , at the head of the first of Which the logos was , placed * at another , constituting a triad of God himself and two of his perfections * without at all introducing the logos ; and what we have seen of his meaning in attributing personal characters to divine perfections , will prepare us for understanding the language which has been so confidently appealed to by the Christian defenders of mystical notions respecting the nature of him who
is called the " Word of God . " We shall first state what appears to be the true meaning of Philo in using the term logos , and shall then take such farther notice as may seem requisite of the supposition of his having employed the term in two different senses , the one derived from the Platonic philosophy , the other from the religious traditions of his countrymen , and of the epithets he has given to his logos , which are supposed to prove its identity with the Messiah predicted in the Jewish Scriptures . First , then , we believe that the logos of Philo really signifies the Divine intelligence or
wisdorh , a property or attribute of the Divine Nature , not a real person , or distinct subsistence , arid has personal qualities ascribed to it only in the same sense in which other Divine perfections or energies , as the creative and governing powers , have a figurative personality ascribed to them by this fanciful writer . To bis Platonism , not to his religion , we attribute his doctrine on this subject . The following passage may be considered as a very clear expression of his real meaning :
€ S For God perceiving before-hand , by means of his Deity , that there could never be a good copy without a good pattern , nor any sensible object , such as not to deserve censure , unless it should correspond to an idea in the understanding as its archetype , having determined to form this visible world , first formed an intellectual one , that using as a model that which was incorporeal and most divine in its nature , he might complete the corporeal and newer one as an exact resemblance of the older ; -containing in it as many species of
sensible things as the other did of intellectual ( i . e . of those which existed in the understanding only ) . The world , which consists of ideas only , it would not be right in speaking or thinking to confine to any place , but we shall understand how it exists by considering a similitude taken from our own affairs . When a city is about to be founded b y the munificence of a king" , or of any ruler possessing sovereign power , ana adorning his good fortune by a disposition to' liberality , there comes some person , skilful in architecture , and having considered the advantages which the situation affords , first delineates
within himself almost all the parts of the intended city , its temples , gymnasia , &c . Then the images of each being impressed , as it were on wax , in his own mind , he thus forms an intellectual city , of which , exciting again the forms in the memory with which he is furnished by nature , and thus impressing them yet more strongly , like a good workman looking to his pattern , he begins to construct a proper union of stone and wood , conforming the material objects one to each of the immaterial ideas . And thus , in a great degree , are we to think concerning God , who having determined to found this great city , first conceived in his mind its forms , from which , having constructed &A intellectual worldhe made of it in sensible
, use as a pattern forming the world . In like manner , then , as in the case of the architect , the preconceived city has no external ^ existence , but is only impressed on the mind of the artificer , so neither has the ideal world any other place than the Divine word , ( logos , reason or intellect , ) which arranged all things—for what other place could there be among the divine powers fit for receiving , I will not say all ideas , but even any one of the simplest ? .... But if any one should wish to employ plainer wOtds > he would say , that the intellectual world ( the world of ideas existing only in the Divine ininti ) is nothing * different from the logos of God creiHmg the world t for neither is the intellectual city any thing
Untitled Article
466 &r . J . P . Smith * Scripture Testimony to the Messiah .
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1831, page 466, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2599/page/34/
-