THE CROSS OF THE LOGOS.
Having made clear the part played by Constantine in the prominence
given in his lifetime to the cross as a symbol of the Roman Empire and
therefore of what he made its State Religion, and having also shown
that while the Christian chroniclers of those days are silent
concerning the various forms of crosses placed by Constantine upon his
coins they went out of their way to allude to the so-called Monogram of
Christ as a cross, to claim it as such, and even to associate it with
the sun, let us now turn our attention again to the pre-Christian
cross.
So great was the veneration in which that phallic and solar symbol the
cross was held in the ages which preceded the birth and death of Jesus,
that the philosophers of those days even went so far as to declare that
the cross was the figure of the Life or Soul of the Universe.
Though it is a matter of very considerable importance, we Christians
for some reason or other ignore the fact that long before our era
commenced philosophers thus conceived the figure of the cross to be the
symbol of the _Logos_ of God.
Now although, following the Gospel of St. John, we have made it a main
article of our belief that the Logos, really the Thought _plus_ Speech,
of God, became about the year B.C. 4 specially incarnate in the person
of Jesus the Nazarene, we ought not to forget that, being the one Power
by which all that ever came into existence was created and all that
exists is sustained, the Logos in any case ever was, is, and will be,
incarnate in every sentient being.
As the Logos of God (or, as the Authorised Version of the Bible into
English most inadequately renders it in the first chapter of St. John's
Gospel, the _Word_ of God) was by the philosophers called the
"Intellectual Sun" and the "Light of the World",[59] being, as a
personification of the _Thought_ and _Speech_ of the All-Father, a
personification of Wisdom and Reason (which, in an even more real sense
than the emanations of the physical sun, form the "Light of the World,"
or, as the original text of the New Testament puts it, the "Light of
the _Cosmos_"), the fact that pre-Christian philosophers affirmed that
the cross was the symbol of the said "Light of the Cosmos," is
obviously one which every writer concerning the cross as a Christian
symbol ought in common honesty to deal with.
That pre-Christian philosophers did so affirm, can be seen by turning
to the _Timaeus_ of Plato, where, referring to the begetting of the
Universal Soul (whom Philo, another pre-Christian philosopher, speaks
of as the "Second God"; and as God's "Beloved Son," "Image,"
"Ambassador," "Mediator," and "First-Begotten"), Plato says
"Such was the whole plan of the Eternal God about the
God that was to be:--and in the centre he put the soul
which he diffused throughout the body:--and he made the
Universe a circle moving in a circle. Having these
purposes in view he created the world a blessed God:--he
made the soul on this wise--joined--at the centre like
the letter X."[60]
Concerning this pronouncement of the great Teacher he so revered,
Proclus wrote as follows
"Two circles will be formed, of which one is interior
but the other is exterior. One of these is called the
circle of the Same and one the circle of the Different,
or of the Fixed and of the Variable, or rather of the
Equinoctial Circle and of the Zodiac. The circle of the
Different revolves about the Zodiac, but the circle of
the Same about the Equinoctial. Hence we conceive that
the right lines are not to be applied to each other at
right angles but like the letter X, as Plato says, so as
to cause the angles to be equal only at the summit but
those on each side and the successive angles to be
unequal. For the Equinoctial Circle does not cut the
Zodiac at right angles. Such therefore in short is the
mathematical discussion of the figure of the (Universal)
Soul."[61]
Even the Fathers of the Christian Church admitted that their ideas of
the Son of God and of the cross being his symbol, were more or less
derived from pre-Christian philosophers. For we find Justin Martyr
remarking that Plato declared that
"The Power next to the Supreme God was figured in
the shape of the letter X upon the universe."[62]
And in another place this famous Father states that
"Whereas Plato, philosophising about the Son of God,
says God expressed him upon the universe in the shape
of the letter X, he evidently took the hint from Moses,
who took brass and made the sign of the cross and
placed it by the holy tabernacle, and declared that if
people would look upon that cross and believe they would
be saved."[63]
The value of all this evidence is so obvious that its mere parade is
almost sufficient.
It should however be pointed out that this cross {image "x.gif"}, being
avowedly adopted by the pre-Christian philosophers as the symbol of the
"Logos" or "First-begotten" of God in preference to the {image
"plus.gif"} because the zodiac or pathway of the Sun does not "cross"
the equator at right angles, was clearly a solar symbol. And it may be
added that though Justin Martyr is careful to claim this particular
solar cross as a symbol of the Christ, no one claims that Jesus was
executed upon an instrument so shaped; while the story that St. Andrew
was affixed to an instrument of execution so shaped, is admittedly a
worthless legend.
This claim of Justin Martyr that the solar cross of the philosophers
was a pre-Christian symbol of the Christ, is, when considered in
connection with the fact that nearly all the Fathers allude to the
figure of the cross, _any_ kind of cross, as a life-giving symbol from
time immemorial, significant of much.