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Hence arose the fourth gospel, which was no more a conscious violation of historic data than Hugh Miller's imaginative description of the "Mosaic Vision of Creation." Its metaphysical discourses were readily accepted as equally authentic with the Sermon on the Mount. Its Philonian doctrines were imputed to Paul and the apostles, the pseudo-Pauline epistles furnishing the needful texts.
And the personification of Wisdom is still to a large extent poetical, it does not attain to separate metaphysical hypostasis; it is not thought of as being really personal. The Philonian conception, on the other hand, is metaphysical, but it contains many elements that are quite discordant and inconsistent with that which we find in Justin.
Here Jesus appears at the outset as the creator of the world, descended from his glory, but destined soon to be reinstated. The title "Son of Man" has lost its original significance, and become synonymous with "Son of God." The temptation, the transfiguration, the scene in Gethsemane, are omitted, and for the latter is substituted a Philonian prayer.
This inconsistency, which, as Erdmann remarks, may be explained by the fact that Philo makes God only the orderer of the world, and, furthermore, interposes an intermediate being, the famous Philonian Logos, we have thought it worth while to mention in this place, as it forms a connecting link between the Greek philosophers and the Alexandrian Fathers, and foreshadows, in some degree, the direction in which their thought was to be led.
In the middle of the second century, this Philonian theory was the one thing needful to add metaphysical precision to the Gnostic and Pauline speculations concerning the nature of Jesus. According to Justin, an impassable abyss exists between the Infinite Deity and the Finite World; the one cannot act upon the other; pure spirit cannot contaminate itself by contact with impure matter.
For once Maimonides in the last Rabbinic quotation actually hit upon a passage which owes its content to Alexandrian and possibly Philonian influence.
Indeed, as M. Reville well observes, it is part of the very notion of the Logos that it should be imperfect relatively to the absolute God; since it is only its relative imperfection which allows it to sustain relations to the world and to men which are incompatible with absolute perfection, from the Philonian point of view.
The author of the fourth gospel is, like Justin, a Philonian Gnostic; but he differs from Justin in his bold and skilful treatment of the traditional materials supplied by the earlier gospels. The process of development in the theories and purposes of Jesus, which can be traced throughout the Messianic descriptions of the first gospel, is entirely obliterated in the fourth.
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