LIFE THROUGH HIS NAME

How comforting to turn from such a view for a moment to the

reassuring words of 14:9, `He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father',

even though, at the same time, we must not forget the utter

transcendentalism of such passages as 5:37: `Ye have neither heard His

voice at any time, nor seen His shape'. As we realize the immensity of

the gulf that yawned between the far-off Platonist God, and the things

of time and sense, we may perhaps better understand why the Lord

uses the figure of Jacob's ladder as representing Himself in 1:51.

Philo uses the following names and titles in his description of the

Logos:

The `Son of God'; the `First-born Son' (protogonos, i. 414); the

`Image of God' (eikon Theo, i. 6); `God' (i. 655 de Somnus Theos);

`Second God' (ho deuteros Theos, Fragments ii. 625); `archetypal

man' (ho kat' eikona anthropos, i. 427). When one reads and listens to

many Christians today as they speak of the Lord Jesus Christ, one

wonders whether they have got any further than Philo's `Second God'!

Philo speaks of the `seamless robe', when referring to the

indissoluble texture of the universe, and it is surely no accident that

this apparently irrelevant detail is incorporated in 19:23, for we must

constantly bear in mind that the doctrine of the prologue is elaborated

and illustrated throughout the record of the Gospel. Philo refers to the

Divine Word as flowing like a river, which may be compared with

John's reference to the living water. He also speaks of the Logos as

the `Heavenly Bread,' which is parallel with the Gospel reference to

Christ as the Bread that came down from heaven.

In his Confessions (vii. ix.), Augustine has a fine comment on the

essential difference between philosophy and revelation:

`Thou procurest for me by means of one puffed up with most

unnatural pride, certain books of the Platonists, translated from

Greek into Latin. And therein I read, not indeed in the very words,

but to the very same purpose, enforced by many and diverse

reasons, that, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was

with God, and the Word was God: the same was in the beginning

with God; all things were made by Him, and without Him was

nothing made: that which was made by Him is life, and the life was

the light of men, and the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness

comprehended it not ... BUT THAT HE CAME UNTO HIS OWN ... but

as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the