The Silesian Horseherd. Questions of the Hour

The bridge which led across from Greek philosophy to Christianity was the Logos. It is remarkable how much this fundamental doctrine of Christianity fell, later on, into the background; how little it is understood, even by the educated of our own time, and how often, without giving it any consideration, they have cast it aside. In early Christian days this was probably a consequence of the practical and political development of the new religion. But the living nerve of the Christian religion, which was its closest bond to the highest spiritual acquisitions of the ancient Greek world, was thus severed. First, the Logos, the Word, the Son of God, was misunderstood, and mythology was employed to make the dogma, thus misconceived, intelligible. In modern times, through continued neglect of the Logos doctrine, the strongest support of Christianity has been cut from under its feet, and at the same time its historical justification, its living connection with Greek antiquity, has almost entirely passed out of view. In Germany it almost appears as though Goethe, by his Faust, is answerable for the widespread treatment of the Logos idea as something obscure, incomprehensible, mystical. Many, when reading the opening of the Fourth Gospel, “In the beginning was the Word,” say to themselves, “No one understands that,” and read on. He who does not earnestly and honestly make an effort to understand this beginning of the Gospel, shows that he is but little concerned with the innermost essence of Christianity, as clearly presented to us in the Fourth Gospel. He forgets that not only faith, but thought, pertains to a religion. It is no excuse to say, “Did not the learned Dr. Faust torment himself to discover what ‘the word’ here meant, and did not find it out?” He says in Goethe:—

“'Tis writ: ‘In the beginning was the Word’!I pause perplexed! Who now will help afford?I cannot the mere Word so highly prize,I must translate it otherwise.”

But this is just what he ought not do. It was not necessary to translate it at all; he only needed to accept the Logos as a technical expression of Greek philosophy. He would then have seen that it is impossible to prize the Word too highly, if we first learn what the Word meant in the idiom of contemporary philosophy. Not even to a Faust should Goethe have imputed such ignorance as when he continues to speculate without any historical knowledge:—

“If by the spirit guided as I read,“In the beginning was the Sense,” Take heed.The import of this primal sentence weigh,Lest thy too hasty pen be led astray.Is force creative then of sense the dower?“In the beginning was the Power.”Thus should it stand; yet, while the line I trace,A something warns me once more to efface.The spirit aids, from anxious scruples freed,I write: ‘In the beginning was the Deed.’ ”11

Had Goethe wished to scourge the unhistorical exegesis of modern theologians, he could not have done so better than by this attempt of an interpreter of the Bible, fancying himself illumined by the spirit, but utterly destitute of all knowledge of history. Knowledge of the history of the Greek philosophy of the first and second centuries after Christ is indispensable to the understanding of such a word as Logos—a word that grew up on Greek soil, and whose first roots reach far into the distant past of the Greek mind; and for that very reason not admitting of translation, either into Hebrew or into German. Like many other termini technici, it must be understood historically; just as logic, metaphysic, analytic, organon, etc., can only be apprehended and understood historically. Now it is, perhaps, not to be denied, that even now a majority of educated readers either perfunctorily repeat the first sentence of the Fourth Gospel, “In the beginning was the Word,” or believe that something lies buried therein that is beyond the depth of ordinary men. This, of course, is partially true, and it cannot be otherwise in religions which are intended not only for the young, but for the wise and learned, and which should be strong meat for adults, and not merely milk for babes. The fault lies chiefly in the translation, in that it should have been thought necessary to translate a word instead of permitting it to remain, what it was, a foreign word.

This becomes still worse when, as for instance, in certain Oriental languages, the newly converted Christian has to read, “In the beginning was the Noun or the Verb.” The correct translation would, of course, be, “In the beginning was the Logos.” For Logos is not here the usual word Logos, but a terminus technicus, that can no more be translated out of the lexicon than one would think of etymologically translating Messiah or Christ as the “Anointed,” or Angelos as “messenger” or “nuncio.” If we read at the beginning of the Gospel, “In the beginning was the Logos,” at least every one would know that he has to deal with a foreign, a Greek word, and that he must gain an understanding of it out of Greek philosophy, just as with such words as atom, idea, cosmos, etc. It is remarkable what human reason will consent to. Millions of Christians hear and read, “In the beginning was the Word,” and either give it no thought, or imagine the most inconceivable things, and then read on, after they have simply thrown away the key to the Fourth Gospel. That thought and reflection also are a divine service is only too readily forgotten. Repeated reading and reflection are necessary to make the first verse of the Fourth Gospel accessible and intelligible in a general way; but one cannot be a true Christian without thinking and reflecting.

An explanation of Logos in Greek philosophy is much simpler than is commonly supposed. It is only needful not to forget that for the Greeks thought and word were inseparable, and that the same term, namely, Logos, expressed both, though they distinguished the inner from the outer Logos. It is one of the most remarkable aberrations of the human mind, to imagine that there could be a word without thought or a thought without word. The two are inseparable: one cannot exist or be even conceived without the other. I believe that I have clearly shown in my Science of Thought that thought without word and word without thought are impossible and inconceivable, and why it is so. Here is the first key to a historical solution of the riddle at the beginning of the Fourth Gospel. We know that Greek philosophy after making every possible effort to explain the world mechanically, had already in the school of Anaxagoras reached the view that the hylozoic as well as the atomic theory leaves the human mind unsatisfied; and that it is necessary to posit as the origin of all things a thought or thinking mind that manifests itself in the universe. This was the nous, the mind, of Anaxagoras. He could just as well have called it Logos, for the word was in use even before the time of Anaxagoras, to express that reason, the recognition of whose all-pervading presence in the universe was the great step in advance made by the system of Anaxagoras. Even Heraclitus had divined the existence of reason in the universe, and had applied to it the name Logos. While the masses recognised in Moira or Heimarmenê only destiny, or fate, Heraclitus declared, that the essence of this Heimarmenê is the Logos, the Reason that pervades the world. This is the oldest expression of Hegel's thought, “What is, is rational.” We must not suppose, however, that Heraclitus considered this Logos as identical with his fire. He merely says that the fire is subordinate to the Logos, that it operates κατὰ τὸν λόγον, according to the Logos, or (as we should say) rationally.

Our knowledge of the entire system of Heraclitus is of course so fragmentary that we can only speak of this, as of many other points, with great caution. The same is true, although in a lesser degree, of the system of Anaxagoras. His nous, if we translate it by mind, is more comprehensive than Logos. We must not, however, suppose, that this nous bore a personal character, for Anaxagoras expressly states that it is a χρῆμα, a thing, even though he would have said that this nous regulated all things. Whether an impersonal mind is conceivable, was still at that time a remote problem. Even in Plato we cannot clearly determine whether he represented his nous as God in our sense, or as Sophia, wisdom, a word which with him often replaces nous. It is remarkable that in his genuine works Plato does not generally use the word Logos, and in Aristotle as well nous remains the first term, what we should call the divine mind, while Logos is the reason, the causal nexus, the οῦ ἔνεκα, therefore decidedly something impersonal, if not unsubjective.

Plato is the first who distinguishes between essence and being in the primeval cause, or, as we might say, between rest and activity. He speaks of an eternal plan of the world, a thought of the world, the world as a product of thought, inseparable from the creator, but still distinguishable from him. This is the Platonic world of “Ideas,” which lies at the foundation of the world perceivable by the senses, the phenomenal world. What is more natural or more reasonable than this thought? If the world has an author, what can we imagine as reasonable men, but that the thought, the plan of the world, belongs to the author, that it was thought, and thereby realised for the first time? Now this plan, this idea, was the inner Logos, and as every thought finds its immediate expression in a word, so did this one, which was then called the outer Logos. The outer was not possible without the inner, even as a word is impossible without mind and reason. But the inner Logos also first realises itself in the outer, just as the reasonable thought can only be made real in the word. This character of the Logos as thought and word, at once capable of distinction and yet undifferentiated and inseparable, is of the highest importance for Christian speculation; without an exact comprehension of it, we shall see that the relation of the Son to the Father as we find it explained by Clement and other fathers of the church, remains dark and misty. We have no concept without a word, and philology has shown us how every word, even the most concrete, is based on a concept. We cannot think of “tree” without the word or a hieroglyphic of some kind. We can even say that, as far as we are concerned, there is no tree, except in language, for in the nature of things there are only oaks or beeches, but not and never a tree. And what is true of tree is true of all words, or to speak with Plato, of all ideas, or to speak with the Stoics, of all Logoi. There are no doubt conjurers who pretend to be able to think without words, and even take no little pride in being able to perform this trick. They forget only too often that their inexpressible thoughts are nothing but obscure feelings, in fact, they do not even distinguish between presentation and idea, and forget that when we speak of words, we do not understand by them mere mimicry of sound or interjections, but only and exclusively intelligible words, that is, such as are based on concepts and are derived from roots. The old Greek philosophers, probably favoured by their language, appear never to have forgotten the true relation between Logos and Logos, and their thought finally resulted in a view of the world founded upon it. Although it is now the custom to speak slightingly of the later Platonists, we should always recognise that we owe to them the preservation of this, the most precious jewel out of the rich storehouse of Greek philosophy, that the world is the expression and realisation of divine thought, that it is the divine word expressed.

We cannot here enter into the various phases in which Plato and his followers presented these ideas. At times they are represented as independent of the Creator, as models, as golden statues, to which the creative mind looks up. Soon, however, they are conceived as thoughts of this mind, as something secondary, created, sometimes also as something independent, as much so as is the Son in relation to his Father. The whole Logos, with all ideas, became in this manner the first-born Son of the Creator, yet so that the Father could not be Father without the Son, or the Son without the Father, Son. All these distinctions, insignificant as they may appear from a purely philosophical point of view, demand attention because of the influence that they afterward exerted on Christian dogma, especially on that of the Trinity—a dogma which, however specifically Christian it may appear to be, must still in all its essential features be traced back to Greek elements.

It is certainly remarkable that Jewish philosophy also developed on very similar lines, of course not with the purity and exactness of the Greek mind, but still with the same object in view,—to bring the reason and wisdom recognised in nature into renewed connexion with their supernatural Jehovah. Through the Proverbs of Solomon and similar works the Jews were well acquainted with Wisdom, who says of herself (viii. 22 ff.): “The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was.… Before the mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought forth.… When he prepared the heavens, I was there: when he set a compass upon the face of the depth.… Then I was by him, as a master workman: and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him.” These and similar thoughts were familiar to Jewish thinkers (see Proverbs viii. and ix., Job xxviii. 12, Ecclesiasticus i. 4), and it was natural that, in coming in contact with Greek philosophy, especially in Alexandria, they should seek to recognise again this traditional conception of divine Wisdom in the Logos of Greek philosophers. We see this most clearly in Philo, a contemporary of Christ, of whom it is often difficult to say whether he reasons more as a Greek or as a Jew. While the Greeks had almost lost sight of the bridge between the world and God by abstraction, the Jews, through mistaken reverence, had so far removed the Creator above his creation that on both sides the need of mediation or a mediator was deeply felt. The Jewish God was little better than the Epicurean. If the Epicureans taught that there probably is a God, but that the world is of no concern to Him, so among the Jews of the first century gnostic ideas prevailed, according to which not the highest but a subordinate God created and ruled the world. The task of creation seemed unworthy of the supreme God. Philo therefore seized the Stoic idea of the Logos or Logoi in order to bring his transcendental God again into relation with the visible world. The most important attributes and powers of God were hypostatised as beings who participated in the creation and government of the world. Philo's God first of all creates or possesses within himself a world that is conceived, an invisible world,12 which is also called the world of ideas13 or the idea of ideas.14 These ideas are the types15 of all things, and the power by which God created them is often called Sophia or Epistêmê, wisdom or knowledge.16 This world of ideas in its entirety corresponds, as is readily seen, to the Greek Logos, the separate types to the Platonic ideas or the Stoic Logoi.

The entire Logos, or the sum of Ideas, is called by Philo, entirely independent of Christianity, the true Son of God, while the realised world of Christian teaching passes as the second Son. If the first Logos is occasionally called the image or shadow of God, the world of sense is the image of the image, the shadow of the shadow. More logically expressed, God would be the causa efficiens, matter the causa materialis, the Logos the causa instrumentalis, while the goodness of God is sometimes added as the causa finalis. At the same time we also see here the difference between the working of the Jewish and Greek minds. In the Old Testament and in Philo, the Sophia or wisdom of God becomes a half mythological being, a goddess who is called the mother, and even the nurse,17 of all beings. She bore with much labour out of the seed of God,18 as Philo says, the only and beloved visible Son, that is to say, this Cosmos. This Cosmos is called by him the Son of God,19 the only begotten,20 while the first Logos is the first-born,21 and as such often coincides with the Sophia and its activity.22 He is also called the elder son,23 and as such is distinguished from a younger son,24 from the real, visible world. But this divine Sophia may not, according to Philo, any more than God Himself, come into direct contact with impure matter. According to him this contact occurs through the instrumentality of certain powers,25 which in part correspond to the Greek Logoi, and which in his poetic language are also represented as angels.26 Philo says in plain terms that the eternal Logoi, that is the Platonic ideas, are commonly called angels.

We see by this in how misty an atmosphere Philo lived and wrote, and we may be certain that he was not the only one who in this manner blended the Jewish religion with Greek philosophy. In the Samaritan theology also, in Onkelos and Jonathan, traces of the Logos idea are to be found.27 If we now observe in the Fourth Gospel, somewhere in the first half of the second century, this same amalgamation of Christian doctrine with Platonic philosophy, only in a much clearer manner, we can scarcely doubt from what source the ideas of the Logos as the only begotten Son of God, and of the divine wisdom, originally flowed. Christian theologians are more inclined to find the first germs of these Christian dogmas in the Old Testament, and it is not to be denied that in the minds of the authors of some of the books of the Old Testament analogous ideas struggle for expression. But they are always tinctured with mythology, and among the prophets and philosophers of the Old Testament there is absolutely no trace of a truly philosophical conception of the Logos, such as confronts us as a result of centuries of thought among the Platonists and Neo-Platonists, the Stoics and Neo-Stoics. We look in vain in Palestine for a word like Logos, for a conception of the Cosmos as the expression of a rationally thinking mind, especially for the Logoi as the species of the Logos, as the primeval thoughts and types of the universe. It is difficult to understand why theologians should have so strenuously endeavoured to seek the germs of the Logos doctrine among the Jews rather than the Greeks, as if it was of any moment on which soil the truth had grown, and as if for purely speculative truths, the Greek soil had not been ploughed far deeper and cultivated more thoroughly than the Jewish. That Philo found employment for Platonic ideas, and especially for the Stoic Logos, nay, even for the Logoi, in his own house, and that other philosophers went so far as to declare the fundamental truths of Greek philosophy to have been borrowed from the Old Testament, is well known; but modern researches have rendered such ideas impossible. The correspondences to the Greek Logos that are found in the Old Testament are of great interest, in so far as they make the later amalgamation of Semitic and Aryan ideas historically more intelligible, and also in so far as—like the correspondences to be found among the East Indians and even the red Indians28—they confirm the truth or at least the innate human character of a Logos doctrine. But wherever we encounter the word Logos outside of Greece, it is, and remains, a foreign word, a Hellenic thought.

Jewish philosophers, while they adopted the word, only filled their old skins with new wine, with the natural consequence that the wine burst the old skins; but without spilling. For it was this which, in the hands of such men as the writer of the Fourth Gospel, as Hippolytus, Clement, Origen, and the best of the church fathers, gave them the strength and enthusiasm to triumph over the world, and especially over the strongholds of heathen religion, and even over Greek philosophy. Had the Fourth Evangelist wished to say that Christ was the divine Sophia or the Shekinah, or, as in Job, Wisdom as the fear of God, would he have said, “In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos became flesh, and lived among us, and we saw his glory, a glory as of the only begotten Son of the Father, full of grace and truth?” Why not take the facts just as they are, and why wish to improve that which requires no human improvement? The Christian doctrine is and remains what it is; it rests on an indestructible arch, supported on one side by the Old Testament and on the other by Greek philosophy, each as indispensable as the other. We forget only too readily how much Christianity, in its victory over Greek philosophy, owes to this very philosophy. Christianity could no doubt have achieved the moral and social regeneration of the people without these weapons of the Greek mind; but a religion, especially in the age of the downfall of Greek and Roman philosophy, must have been armed for battle with the best, the most cultured, and the most learned classes of society, and such a battle demanded a knowledge of the weapons which had been forged in the schools of Greek philosophy. We cannot therefore put too high a value on the Fourth Gospel for a knowledge of the intellectual movement of that day. It is true that a religion need not be a philosophy, but it must not owe philosophy any answer. Small as may be the emphasis that we now lay on the Logos doctrine, in that period it was the centre, the vital germ of the whole Christian teaching. If we read any of the writings of Athanasius, or of any of the older church fathers, we shall be surprised to see how all of them begin with the Word (Logos) as a fixed point of departure, and then proceed to prove that the Word is the Son of God, and finally that the Son of God is Jesus of Nazareth. Religious and philosophical are here closely related. If the Christian philosophers gain on the one hand the divinity of the Son of God, on the other hand they retain the rationality of the created universe. That “the ALL is Logos, is Word or Reason,” was at that time as much the battle cry of the prevailing philosophy as the contrary has now become the battle cry of the Darwinians, who seek to explain species, kinds, i.e. the Logoi, the divine ideas, as the products not of the originating Mind, but of natural selection, of environment or circumstance, of the survival of the fittest. And what is the fittest, if not the rational, the Platonic “Good,” that is, the Logos? Why, then, turn back to the stone age of human thinking, why again turn nature into wood, when for thousands of years Greek philosophers and Christian thinkers have recognised her as something spiritual, as a world of eternal ideas? How would such men as Herder, Schelling, and Hegel have smiled at such a view of the world! Yes, Darwin himself would be ashamed of his followers, for he saw, though not always clearly, that everything in this sphere presupposes something beyond, and in the loftiest utterance of his book he demanded an origin, yes, an originator. In the writings of the philosophical church fathers we constantly hear more of the Logos which was in the beginning, and through which all things were made, than of God, who in the beginning created heaven and earth.

And in this lies the great interest of the lost treatise of Celsus. Had he been an Epicurean, as Origen supposed, he would have had no personal interest in the Logos. But this Logos had become at that time to such an extent the common property of Greek philosophy, that the Jew, under whose mask Celsus at the outset attacked the Christians, could quite naturally express his willingness to acknowledge the Logos as the Son of God. Origen, it is true, says that the Jew has here forgotten his part, for he had himself known many Jewish scholars, no one of whom would have acknowledged such an idea. This shows that Origen did not know the works of Philo, who would certainly have offered no objection to such a doctrine, for he himself calls the Logos the first-born Son (υἱὸς πρωτόονος)29 When therefore Celsus, the heathen philosopher, admits through the mouth of the Jew that the Logos is the Son of God, he is merely on his guard against the identification of any individual with the Son of God and indirectly with the Logos, that is to say, he does not wish to be a Christian. At all events we see how general was the view at that time, that the whole creation was the realisation of the Logos, nay, of the Son of God; that God uttered Himself, revealed Himself, in the world; that each natural species is a Word, a Thought of God, and that finally the idea of the entire world is born of God, and is thereby the Son of God.