Saturday, November 21, 2009

(3) Jesus Unto Christ

Indeed early Christian philosophers, many known as the "Christian
Fathers," were oft classically trained, declaring over and over that
Jesus was the *Incarnation of the Logos.* They were harkening
back to the earlier Greek concepts of the Logos--as put:

• The Logos represents the heart of the cosmic pattern
and the source of existence, its emblem is the sun, which
is the source of life and light. 

• For the Greeks and Romans the "Invincible Sun" was
the master of all nature, creator and preserver of men. 

• Like God, the sun eternally gives forth from itself without
ever being diminished, thus establishing itself as the most
perfect symbol of the ineffable First Cause. 

• Commonplace in Hellenistic thought, if the sun can be
seen as the material reflection of the First Cause, by analogy
the First Cause can be represented as the Spiritual or
Intelligible Sun. 

• Philo refers to God as the Intelligible Spiritual Sun, and
the Logos his offspring, as the Son of God.

• "The Logos is God's Likeness, by whom the whole
kosmos was fashioned." [Philo Judaeus] 

• "We speak of God, of the Son, his Word, and of the Holy
Spirit; and we say that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are
united in power. For the Son is the intelligence, reason, and
wisdom of the Father, and the Spirit is an effluence, as light
from fire." [Athenagoras] 

• The nature of the Logos was also represented by the
natural principle of musical harmony. It is through the power
of harmony that all parts of creation are reconciled into a
greater whole.

• The Logos is in the arche, the Beginning, Source or Fount
of existence. As the underlying harmonic pattern of creation,
all things were made through the Logos, which contains the
principles of Life and Light.