Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. I — G. R. S. Mead (1906)
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" For it is seemly that those who have founded a brotherhood for the sake of wisdom, should long to see Him ; and if they cannot do this, to behold at least His Image, Most Holy Reason (Logos)? and after him also the most perfect work in [all] things sensible, [namely] this cosmos.
" For the work of philosophy is naught else than the striving clearly to see these things." *
THE SONS OF GOD ON EARTH
And later on, in the same treatise (§ 28), Philo writes still more interestingly and instructively as follows :
1 This is the Kace of the Logos.
2 Cf. Ex. xxiv. 10. A.V. does not render this reading, but
LXX. gives " The place where the God of Israel stood."
3 Which here, as also above, Philo would equate with the " Place of God."
4 De Confus. Ling., § 20 ; M. i. 419, P. 333, 334 (Ri. ii.
268, 269).
" But they who have attained unto wisdom, are, as they should be, called Sons of the One God, as Moses admits when he says : ' Ye are the Sons of the Lord God,' 1 and 1 God who begat thee,' 2 and ' Is not He Himself thy father?'3 . . .
" And if a man should not as yet have the good fortune to be worthy to be called a Son of God, let him strive manfully to set himself in order according to His First-born Reason (Logos), the Oldest Angel, who is as though it were the Angel-chief, of many names ; for he is called Dominion,4 and Name of God, and Reason, and the Man-after-the-likeness, and Seeing Israel.
" And for this reason I was induced a little before to praise the principles of them who say : ' We are all Sons of One Man.' 5 For even if we have not yet become fit to be judged Sons of God, we may at anyrate be Sons of His Eternal Likeness, His Most Holy Reason; for Reason, the Eldest [of all Angels], is God's Likeness [or Image]."6
And so also we read elsewhere :
" But the Reason (Logos) is God's Likeness, by whom [sc. Reason] the whole Cosmos was fashioned." 7
This Divine Reason of things, then, was the means by which the Cosmos came into existence. And so we find Philo writing :
"But if anyone should wish to make use of naked terms, he might say that the intelligible order of things l is nothing else than the Eeason (Logos) of God perpetually creating the [sensible] world-order.
1 Deut. xiv. 1. A.V. : " Ye are the children of the Lord your God." LXX. : "Ye are the sons of the Lord your God."
2 Deut. xxxii. 18. A.V. : " God that formed thee." LXX. has the same reading as Philo.
3 Deut. xxxii. 6.
4 opx^> or Source, Beginning, as in the Proem to the Fourth Gospel.
5 Gen. xlii. 11.
6 De Confus. Ling., § 28 ; M. i. 426, 427, P. 341 (Ri. ii. 279).
7 De Monarch., ii. § 5 ; M. ii. 225, P. 823 (Ri. iv. 302).
THE CITY OF GOD
"For the Intelligible City is nothing else but the reasoning of the Architect determining in His Mind to found a city perceivable by the senses after [the model of] the City which the mind alone can perceive.
" This is the doctrine of Moses and not [only] mine. At any rate in describing the genesis of man he expressly agrees that he [man] was fashioned in the image of God. And if this is the case with the part — the image of the Image — it is plainly also the case with the whole Form, that is the whole of this sensible cosmos, which is a [far] greater imitation of the Divine Image than the human image is.
"It is plain, moreover, that the Archetypal Seal, which we call Cosmos which is perceptible only to the intellect, must itself be the Archetypal Pattern,2 the Idea of ideas, the Eeason (Logos) of God."3
And elsewhere also he writes :
"Passing, then, from details, behold the grandest House or City, namely, this cosmos. Thou shalt find that the cause of it is God, by whom it came into existence. The matter of it is the four elements, out of which it has been composed. The instrument by means of which it has been built, is the Eeason (Logos) of God. And the object of its building is the Goodness of the Creator." 4
And again :
1 Or the cosmos, which is comprehensible by the intellect alone.
2 Or Paradigm.
3 De Mund. Op., § 6 ; M. i. 5, P. 5 (Ri. i. 9).
4 De Cherub., § 35 ; M. i. 162, P. 129 (Ri. i. 228).
GOD'S SHADOW
" Now the Eeason (Logos) is the Likeness of God, by which the whole cosmos was made." 1
And still more clearly :