ssible to fill a volume with the discussion of the
development of the Logos doctrine after the time of Justin Martyr. All
that can here be done is to note how it passed from Rome to
Alexandria--from Justin to Origen--and to compare certain aspects of it
with Adoptionist Christianity, and to consider the position which
either of these Christologies can take in modern theology.

It is very doubtful whether Justin Martyr or the writer of the Fourth
Gospel had any concept of Immaterial Reality. To Justin Martyr, at
least, the Logos appears to have been a second God, and his
identification of Jesus with the Logos is much more like that of
Cornutus--_mutatis mutandis_--than anything else which we possess. But
however this may be, the Logos Christology was invaluable for Origen in
finding room in Christian theology for the identification of God with
Immaterial Reality. We may paraphrase rather than explain his teaching
by saying that he believed in the divinity and unity of Immaterial
{129} Reality, but thought also that diversity as well as unity could
be predicated of it; that man belonged on one side of his nature to
Immaterial Reality, and that, so far as he did so, he shared the
attribute of eternity. Like other thinkers, Origen failed to make
clear exactly what is the relation between the Immaterial Reality which
is eternal and changeless and the Material Reality which is subject to
change and time, and is the basis of phenomena. But in some way, he
believed, the Logos[21] was that power of Immaterial Reality which
stretches out and mingles with the world of matter. It is impossible
and undesirable to expound at length this general theory; it must
suffice to notice its bearings on Christology.

In the first place, it seems to have overcome the tendency of Logos
theology to produce Docetism. The earlier forms of this kind of
teaching which represented the Logos as a spirit who came down to
rescue humanity offered no real reason for maintaining the true
humanity of Jesus. It seems to have been the pressure of recognised
fact, which had not yet been forgotten, which made the writer of the
Fourth Gospel and of the First Epistle of John protest so strongly
against Docetism. The tendency of their teaching by itself was all the
other way, and the Acts of John, with their completely unreal humanity
of Jesus, are the natural, though no doubt unlooked-for, results of the
Ephesian school. But that is not the case with {