“Mark and Bev Tindall” <> wrote in message news:<>…

“Logos” (Greek) Reason; definition; word. “Logos” was identified by Greek theologians with the Wisdom of God in the Jewish scriptures or with the Word mentioned in the prologue of St John’s Gospel. p. 461

… Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria (C. 30 BCE – 45 CE) Philo was a Platonist and had a distinguished reputation as a rationalist philosopher in his own right. … He could see no incompatability with his God and the God of the Greeks. It has to be said, however, that Philo’s God seems very different from Yahweh. For one thing, Philo is embarrassed by the historical books of the Bible, which he tried to turn into elaborate allegories: Aristotle, it will be recalled, had considered history to be unphilosophical. his God has no human qualities: it is quite incorrect, for example, to dsay tha he is ‘angry’. All we can know about God is the bare fact of his existence. Yet, as a practising Jew, Philo did believe that God had revealed himself to the prophets. …Philo made an important distinction between God’s essence (ousia), which is entirely incomprehensible, and his activities in the world, which he called his

‘powers’ (dynameis) or ‘energies’ (energeiai). …Two of these powers were especially important. Philo called them the Kingly power, which reveals God in the order of the universe, and the Creative power, whereby God reveals himself in the blessing he bestows upon humanity.

Neither of these powers is to be confused with the divine essence (ousia), which remains shrouded in impenetrable mystery. They simply enable us to catch a glimpse of a reality which is beyond anything we can conceive. Sometimes Philo speaks of God’s essential being (ousia)

flanked by the Kingly and Creative powers in a kind of trinity. When he interprets the story of Yahweh’s visit to Abraham at Mamre with the

two angels, for example, he argues that this is an allegorical presentation of of God’s ousia – He Who Is – with the two senior powers. J [*editor of the OT - JPED] would have been astonished by this and, indeed, Jews have always found Philo’s conception of God somewhat inauthentic. Christians, however, would find him enormously helpful and the Greeks, as we shall see, seized upon this distinction between God’s unknowable ‘essence’ and the ‘energies’that make him known to us. They would be influenced by his theory of the divine Logos. Like the Wisdom writers, Philo imagined that God had formed a masterplan (logos) of creation, which corresponded to Plato’s realm of

forms. These forms were then incranated in the physical universe. Again, Philo is not always consistent. Sometimes he suggests that Logos is one of the powers; at other times he seems to think it is higher than the powers, the highest idea of God that human beings can attain. When we contemplate the Logos, however, we form no positive knowledge of God: we are taken beyond the reach of discursive reason to an intuitive apprehension which is ‘higher han a way of thinking, more precious than anything that is merely thought’. It was an activity similar to Plato’s contemplation (theoria). Philo insisted that we will never reach God as he is in himself: the highest truth we

can apprehend is the rapturous recognition that God utterly transcends

the human mind. … Philo shows that religious contemplation had much

in common with other forms of creativity. pp. 83-85

From Karen Armstrong’s ‘A History of God’ ( Vintage; London:1993)

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