f the
operative power of reason, which at once preserves the unity and
unchangeableness of God in spite of the exercise of the powers residing
in him, and renders this very exercise possible._ (2) Though the
Apologists believed in the divine origin of the revelation given to the
prophets, on which all knowledge of truth is based, they could
nevertheless not be induced by this idea to represent God himself as a
direct actor. For that revelation presupposes a speaker and a spoken
word; but it would be an impossible thought to make the fulness of all
essence and the first cause of all things speak. The Deity cannot be a
speaking and still less a visible person, yet according to the testimony
of the prophets, a Divine Person was seen by them. The Divine Being who
makes himself known on earth in audible and visible fashion can only be
the Divine Word. As, however, according to the fundamental view of the
Apologists the principle of religion, i.e., of the knowledge of the
truth, is also the principle of the world, so that Divine Word, which
imparts the right knowledge of the world, must be identical with the
Divine Reason which produced the world itself. In other words, the Logos
is not only the creative Reason of God, but also his revealing Word.
This explains the motive and aim of the dogma of the Logos. We need not
specially point out that nothing more than the precision and certainty
of the Apologists' manner of statement is peculiar here; the train of
thought itself belongs to Greek philosophy. But that very confidence is
the most essential feature of the case; for in fact the firm belief that
the principle of the world is also that of revelation represents an
important early-Christian idea, though indeed in the form of
philosophical reflection. To the majority of the Apologists the
theoretical content of the Christian faith is completely exhausted in
this proposition. They required no particular Christology, for in every
revelation of God by his Word they already recognised a proof of his
existence not to be surpassed, and consequently regarded it as
Christianity _in nuce_.[428] But the fact that the Apologists made a
distinction _in thesi_ between the prophetic Spirit of God and the
Logos, without being able to make any use of this distinction, is a very
clear instance of their dependence on the formulae of the Church's faith.
Indeed their conception of the Logos continually compelled them to
identify the Logos and the