Philo's theology is the
philosophical treatment of Jewish tradition, just as Philo's legal
exegesis is the philosophical treatment of the Torah. While
maintaining and striving to deepen the conception of God's unity, he
aims at expounding to the reason how, on the one hand, that unity is
revealed in the world about us, and how, on the other, we may advance
to its true comprehension. It was, however, unfortunate that Philo
expressed his theology in the current language, which was vague and
inexact, and adapted certain foreign theosophical ideas to Judaism;
hence succeeding generations, paying regard to the pictorial
representation rather than to the principles of his thought, sought
and found in him evidence of theories of Divine government to which
Judaism was pre-eminently opposed. The first chapter of the Fourth
Gospel shows that gradual process of thought which finally made the
Logos doctrine the antithesis of Judaism. In the first verse we have a
thought which might well have been written by Philo himself: "In the
beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was
God." But in the fourteenth verse there is manifest the sharp
cleavage: "And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we
beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,
full of grace and truth.
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