JUSTIN MARTYR THE LOGOS

Justin Martyr (c. A.D. '55) speaks incautiously of the Logos as "a second god". But if challenged for his indiscretion, he has his lines of retreat well prepared. His defence is grounded in the double sense of the word "Logos". When one speaks, as one does have to speak, of God and his Logos as distinct from one another, one should remember that it is of God and his expressed Logos, his outgoing word, that one is speaking. And that Logos is also the inherent Logos, the internal Reason of God. They are not two different Logoi; the only difference is a difference of condition. God was never without his Reason and so the inherent Logos has always been with God and can be no more separated from him than a man's reason can be separated from the man himself. When the Logos goes out from God for the work of creation and revelation, there is no question of a new being coming into existence; it is the same Logos in a new guise. Nor is there any question of any detraction from the being of God. The outgoing of his Word does not denude him of his Reason; one torch can be kindled from another without diminishing the first.

[Logos (The Word) is the Son Jesus Christ.]

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