Note 265 — Chapter III
Neil Buchanan translation
Footnote 265:
(return)
That is a very important fact which clearly follows from the Shepherd. Even the later school of the Adoptians in Rome, and the later Adoptians in general, were forced to assume a divine hypostasis beside the Godhead, which of course sensibly threatened their Christology. The adherents of the pneumatic Christology partly made a definite distinction between the pre-existent Christ and the Holy Spirit (see, e.g., 1 Clem. 22. 1), and partly made use of formulæ from which one could infer an identity of the two. The conceptions about the Holy Spirit were still quite fluctuating; whether he is a power of God, or personal, whether he is identical with the pre-existent Christ, or is to be distinguished from him, whether he is the servant of Christ (Tatian Orat. 13), whether he is only a gift of God to believers, or the eternal Son of God, was quite uncertain. Hermas assumed the latter, and even Origen (de princip. præf. c. 4) acknowledges that it is not yet decided whether or not the Holy Spirit is likewise to be regarded as God's Son. The baptismal formula prevented the identification of the Holy Spirit with the pre-existent Christ, which so readily suggested itself. But so far as Christ was regarded as a πνευμα, his further demarcation from the angel powers was quite uncertain, as the Shepherd of Hermas proves (though see 1 Clem. 36). For even Justin, in a passage, no doubt, in which his sole purpose was to shew that the Christians were not αθεοι, could venture to thrust in between God, the Son and the Spirit, the good angels as beings who were worshipped and adored by the Christians (Apol. 1. 6 [if the text be genuine and not an interpolation]; see also the Suppl. of Athanagoras). Justin, and certainly most of those who accepted a pre-existence of Christ, conceived of it as a real pre-existence. Justin was quite well acquainted with the controversy about the independent quality of the power which proceeded from God. To him it is not merely, "Sensus, motus, affectus dei", but a "personalis substantia" (Dial. 128).