d Testament as the "angel of Jehovah."
Jesus, in reward for his perfect goodness, was admitted to a share in
the privileges of this Pneuma (Reville, p. 39). Here, as M. Reville
observes, though a Gnostic idea is adopted, Jesus is nevertheless viewed
as ascending humanity, and not as descending divinity. The author of the
"Clementine Homilies" advances a step farther, and clearly assumes the
pre-existence of Jesus, who, in his opinion, was the pure, primitive
man, successively incarnate in Adam, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob,
Moses, and finally in the Messiah or Christ. The author protests,
in vehement language, against those Hellenists who, misled by their
polytheistic associations, would elevate Jesus into a god. Nevertheless,
his own hypothesis of pre-existence supplied at once the requisite
fulcrum for those Gnostics who wished to reconcile a strict monotheism
with the ascription of divine attributes to Jesus. Combining with this
notion of pre-existence the pneumatic or spiritual quality attributed
to Jesus in the writings of Paul, the Gnosticizing Christians maintained
that Christ was an aeon or emanation from God, redeeming men from the
consequences entailed by their imprisonment in matter. At this stage
of Christologic speculation appeared the anonymous epistle to the
"Hebrews," and the pseudo-Pauline epistles to the "Colossians,"
"Ephesians," and "Philippians" (A. D. 130). In these epistles, which
originated among the Pauline Christians, the Gnostic theosophy is
skilfully applied to the Pauline conception of the scope and purposes of
Christianity. Jesus is described as the creator of the world (Coloss. i.
16), the visible image of the invisible God, the chief and ruler of the
"throues, dominions, principalities, and powers," into which, in Gnostic
phraseology, the emanations of God were classified. Or, according to
"Colossians" and "Philippians," all the aeons are summed up in him, in
whom dwells the pleroma, or "fulness of God." Thus Jesus is elevated
quite above ordinary humanity, and a close approach is made to ditheism,
although he is still emphatically subordinated to God by being made
the creator of the world,--an office then regarded as incompatible with
absolute divine perfection. In the celebrated passage, "Philippians"
ii. 6-11, the aeon Jesus is described as being the form or visible
manifestation of God, yet as humbling himself by taking on the form or
semblance of humanity, and suffering death, in