the higher critics have made much destructive use, was noticed by the earliest commentators, but made the basis by them of a constructive theology.  The ruling and the creative attributes of God are outlined and contained in the highest mode of all, the Logos, “the reason of God in every phase and form of it that is discoverable and realizable by man.”  For by the Logos, God is both ruler and good.[225] This is the profound interpretation of the story in Genesis, that “God placed at the east of the garden of Eden the two Cherubim and a flaming sword, which turned every way to keep the way of the tree of life” (Gen. iv. 24).  The Cherubim are the symbols of the powers of majesty and goodness; the flaming sword is the Logos; “because,” says our author quaintly, “all thought and speech are the most mobile and the most ardent (i.e., the most intensive) of things, and especially the thought and speech of the only Principle."[226]

To correspond with the descending attributes of God we have the ascending dispositions of man towards Him, fear, love, and thirdly their synthesis in loving knowledge.  When we are in the first stage of religion we obey the law in hope of reward or fear of punishment; when we have progressed higher in thought, we worship God as the good Creator; when we have ascended one further stage, we surpass both fear and love in an emotion which combines them, realizing, as Browning puts it, that “God is law and God is love.”  In illustration of this scheme of Philo’s we may examine two passages out of his philosophical commentary.  In the first he is commenting upon the appearance of the three angels to Abraham as he sat outside his tent (Gen. xviii).[227] And, by the way, it may be remarked that the Midrash commenting on this passage notes that it begins, “And the Lord appeared unto Abraham,” and then continues, “And he lifted up his eyes and looked, and, lo, three men stood before him.”  Hence we may learn that it was really the one God who appeared to the Patriarch, and that the three angels were but a vision of his mind.  This is the dominant note of Philo’s interpretation, but he as usual elaborates the old Midrash philosophically.

“The words,” he says, “are symbols of things apprehended by intelligence alone—­the soul receives a triple expression of one being, of which one is the representative of the actual existent, and the other two are shadows, as it were, cast from this.  So it happens also in the physical world, for there often occur two shadows of bodies at rest or in motion.  Let no one suppose, however, that shadow is properly used in relation to God.  It is only a popular use of words for the clearer understanding of our subject.  The reality is not so, but, as one standing nearest to the truth might say, the middle one is the Father of the universe, who is called in Scripture the ‘Self-existent’; and those on either side of Him are the two oldest and chief powers, the Creative and the Regal.