held, though perhaps never officially recognised.

What part can either Adoptionism or the Logos Christology play in any
modern form of thought? Adoptionism seems to me to have no part or lot
in any intelligent modern theology, though it is unfortunately often
promulgated, especially in pulpits which are regarded as liberal. We
cannot believe that at any time a human being, in consequence of his
virtue, became God, which he was not before, or that any human being
ever will do so. No doctrine of Christology and no doctrine of
salvation which is {132} Adoptionist in essence can come to terms with
modern thought.

The doctrine of the Logos is on a different plane. In the form in
which it is presented by Justin Martyr it is probably as unacceptable
as Adoptionism, but in the form presented by Origen the modern mind
constantly feels that the writer is struggling to express its own
thoughts, and is attracted to Origen not only by the recognition of a
common purpose, but by a consciousness of a common failure, for, at the
end, reality transcends thought and language, and the philosophy of
Alexandria was no more completely successful than is that of our world.

I have often felt in talking with younger men of the present day how
closely they have approached to the position of Origen and how tar they
are from him in method. If I may put into my own words the form of
thought which seems to animate them, it is something of this kind.
They feel that the world in which we live is the expression of some
great plan or purpose or pattern which is not yet complete, which shows
no sign of finality, but is ever growing in complexity; which resolves
itself again and again into simplicity, and then spreads out again on a
yet wider scale. The plan or purpose is not a dead mechanical thing;
the life which explains it is within and not without it. Men are
partly the result, but partly also the instruments or even agents of
this purpose. Wisdom is the right understanding of its nature; and
righteousness is the attempt to subordinate human purposes {133} to
this great purpose of life. For man is not only an effect, he is a
cause. When he acts, he brings into existence a new cause of which the
results will follow in accordance with the established laws of reality.
But there is a moment of choice, when he has it within his power to
decide whether he will act or not. If he choose right, his actions
will be taken up into the great web