In What Way the Logos is God. Errors to Be Avoided on This
Question.
We next notice John's use of the article in these sentences. He
does not write without care in this respect, nor is he unfamiliar with the
niceties of the Greek tongue. In some cases he uses the article, and in some he
omits it. He adds the article to the Logos, but to the name of God he adds it
sometimes only. He uses the article, when the name of God refers to the uncreated
cause of all things, and omits it when the Logos is named God. Does the same
difference which we observe between God with the article and God without it
prevail also between the Logos with it and without it? We must enquire into
this. As the God who is over all is God with the article not without it, so
"the Logos" is the source of that reason (Logos) which dwells in
every reasonable creature; the reason which is in each creature is not, like
the former called par excellence The Logos. Now there are many who are
sincerely concerned about religion, and who fall here into great perplexity.
They are afraid that they may be proclaiming two Gods, and their fear drives
them into doctrines which are false and wicked. Either they deny that the Son
has a distinct nature of His own besides that of the Father, and make Him whom
they call the Son to be God all but the name, or they deny the divinity of the
Son, giving Him a separate existence of His own, and making His sphere of
essence fall outside that of the Father, so that they are separable from each
other. To such persons we have to say that God on the one hand is Very God
(Autotheos, God of Himself); and so the Saviour says in His prayer to the
Father, "That they may know Thee the only true God;" but that all
beyond the Very God is made God by participation in His divinity, and is not to
be called simply God (with the article), but rather God (without article). And
thus the first-born of all creation, who is the first to be with God, and to
attract to Himself divinity, is a being of more exalted rank than the other
gods beside Him, of whom God is the God, as it is written,"The God of
gods, the Lord, hath spoken and called the earth." It was by the offices
of the first-born that they became gods, for He drew from God in generous
measure that they should be made gods, and He communicated it to them according
to His own bounty. The true God, then, is "The God," and those who
are formed after Him are gods, images, as it were, of Him the prototype. But
the archetypal image, again, of all these images is the Word of God, who was in
the beginning, and who by being with God is at all times God, not possessing
that of Himself, but by His being with the Father, and not continuing to be
God, if we should think of this, except by remaining always in uninterrupted
contemplation of the depths of the Father. (Commentary on the Gospel of John
2.2 [ANF 9:323])
