begotten Him before all things (γέννημα ὑπὸ τοῦ Θεοῦ ἐγεγέννητο). The manner of this begetting is spoken of as a projection (τῷ ὄντι ἀπὸ τοῦ πατρὸς προβληθὲν γέννημα). Such is the Λόγος, called by Solomon the Wisdom, who co-existed with the Father at that moment when, at the beginning, by Him the Father made and perfected all things (Apol. ii. 6, § 44 E; Dial. 62, § 285 D). He it is Who is ὁ Θεός, ἀπὸ τοῦ πατρὸς τῶν ὅλων γεννγθείς, and Who is known as the Word, and the Wisdom, and the Power, and the Glory of Him Who begat Him (Dial. 61, § 284 A, B). The Son is the instrument of "Creation" (δἰ αὐτοῦ πάντα ἔκτισε); hence (in addition to His primal names, Λόγος, Υἱός) called Χριστός, κατὰ τὸ κεχρίσθαι τὰ πάντα δἰ αὐτόν; but this name is in itself of unknown significance, just as the title "God" is no real name, but rather expresses a natural opinion, inborn in man, about an unutterable fact. Christ's Being, therefore, as well as the Father's, is beyond all human expression, and is known only economically; for, if this is true of the title Χριστός, it can hardly but be true of the higher names, Λόγος and Υἱός. This Λόγος is identical with the Man Jesus, conceived through the will of the Father on behalf of man, named Jesus as being a Man and a Saviour. Justin holds, then, the entire Divinity of Him Who was born a Man and crucified under Pontius Pilate. Nothing can be more pronounced or decided than his position; it is brought to the front by the necessities of his arguments both with the Jew and the Gentile. He starts with this position, that he worships as God, a man Christ Jesus; it is this that he has to justify to the Gentile (cf. Apol. i. 21, 22, § 67). "In that we say," he says, "that the Word, Which is the first-begotten of God, has been born without human mixture, as Jesus Christ, our Master, Who was crucified and died, and rose again;" or, again, "Jesus Christ, Who alone was begotten to be the only Son of God, being the Word of God, and the first-born and the Power of God (πρωτότοκος καὶ δύναμις), became Man by the will of the Father, and taught us these things." He justifies the possibility of these statements to the emperors by appeals to Greek mythology, i.e. he is so fast bound to this belief that he has to run the risk of all the discredit that will attach to it in the minds of the philosophic statesmen to whom he is appealing from its likeness to the debasing fables which their intellectualism either rationalized or discarded. That Justin is conscious of this risk of discredit is clear from cc. 53 and 54 of the first Apology, with which we may compare the taunt of Trypho (Dial. 67, § 219 B). So again, in the Dialogue, it is the Christian worship of a man that puzzles Trypho; and the first necessity for Justin is to exhibit the consistency of this with the supreme monarchy of God. "First shew me," asks Trypho (ib. c. 50), "how you can prove there is any other God besides the Creator of the universe?" and this not in any economical sense, but verily and indeed (cf. ib. 55, § 274 C); and Justin accepts the task, undertaking to exhibit Jesus, the Christ, born of a virgin, as Θεὸς καὶ Κύριος τῶν δυνάμεων (ib. 36, § 254 E), to shew Him to be, at the same time, both Θεὸς καὶ Κύριος, and also ἀνὴρ καὶ ἄνθρωπος (ib. 59, § 382 C). The rigour with which this is posited may be tested by the crucial case of the appearance to Abraham at Mamre. Here, it is allowed, after a little discussion, that no angelic manifestation satisfies the language used by Scripture. It is certainly God Himself Who is spoken of. Justin undertakes to prove that this cannot be God the Father, but must be other than He Who created all things—"other," he means, "in number, in person, not in will or spirit" (ib. 56, § 276 D, ἕτερος, ἀριθμῷ λέγω ἀλλ᾿ οὐ γνώμῃ). So, again, he applies to this Divine Being the tremendous words delivered to Moses from the midst of the burning bush, and he will not suffer this to be qualified or weakened by any such subtle distinctions as Trypho attempts to draw between the angel seen of Moses and the voice of God that spoke. He insists, against any such subtleties, that whatever Presence of God was actually there manifested was the Presence, not of the Supreme Creator, Who cannot be imagined to have left His Highest Heaven, but of that Being Who, being God, announces Himself to Moses as the God Who had shewn Himself to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. To Him, therefore, apply the words "I am that I am." By these two cases, specimens of a hundred others drawn from Law and Psalm and Prophets, it will be seen how clearly the problem was present to Justin, and how definitely he had envisaged its solution so far as the O.T. was concerned; in direct collision with the Monotheism of the Jew, he defends himself, not by withdrawing or modifying his assertions, but by discovering the evidence for His dual Godhead in the very heart of the ancient Revelation itself; not in any by-ways or minor incidents, but in the very core and centre of those most essential manifestations of God to Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and Joshua, on the truth of which the whole fabric of Jewish faith and worship was reared.
Justin has next to consider in what relation these two Divine Beings stand to each other. Given the existence of a Second Person Who can so effectually identify Himself with the First as to be called ὁ Θεός, how can we conceive the harmony and unity of such a duality? Justin is clear that the distinction between the two Beings is real; it is a numerical distinction. The Word is no mere emanation of the Father, inseparable from Him as the light is inseparable from the sun. He is a real subsistence, born of the Father's Will (Dial. 128, § 358 B). The words used, therefore, to express their relation are words of companionship, of intercourse, of συνῆν, προσομιλεῖ (cf. ib. 62, § 285 C, D, where he brings out the fact of this personal intercourse as involved in the consultations at the creation of man). They are two distinct Beings, but yet must be One in order not to dissolve the absoluteness of the only Godhead. Such a unity may be pictured by the connexion between a thought and the Reason that thinks it, or by the unity of a flame with the fire from which it was taken. Each of these examples of the unbroken unity has the shortcoming that they compel us to think of a
