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h the question of that great structure of formal dogma which the Church has built upon the foundation of Christ's teaching. A development undoubtedly it is; but, while we must not assume that every development which has historically taken place is necessarily true or valuable, it is equally unphilosophical to assume that, because it is a development, it is necessarily false or worthless. Our Lord himself did, indeed, claim to be the Messiah; the fact of Messiahship was what was primarily meant by the title 'Son of God.' Even in the Synoptists he exhibits a consciousness of a direct divine mission supremely important for his own race; and, before the close, we can perhaps discover a growing conviction that the truth which he was teaching was meant for a larger world. Starting from and developing these ideas, his followers set themselves to devise terms which should express their own sense of their Master's unique {169} religious value and importance, to express what they felt he had been to their own souls, what they felt he might be to all who accepted his message. Even to St. Paul the term 'Son of God' still meant primarily 'the Messiah': but in the light of his conception of Jesus, the Messianic idea expanded till the Christ was exalted to a position far above anything which Jewish prophecy or Apocalypse had ever claimed for him. And the means of expressing these new ideas were found naturally and inevitably in the current philosophical terminology of the day. With the fourth Gospel, if not already with St. Paul, there was infused into the teaching of the Church a new element. From the Jewish-Alexandrian speculative Theology the author borrowed the term Logos to express what he conceived to be the cosmic importance of Christ's position. He accepted from that speculation--probably from Philo--the theory which personified or half-personified that Logos or Wisdom of God through which God was represented in the Old Testament as creating the world and inspiring the prophets. This Logos through whom God had throughout the ages been more and more fully revealing Himself had at last become actually incarnate in Jesus Christ. This Word of God is also described as truly God, though in the fourth Gospel the relation of the Father to the Word--at {170} least to the Word before the Incarnation--is left wholly vague and undefined. From these comparatively simple beginnings sprang centuries of controversy culminating in
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