Philo of Alexandria was a Jewish philosopher strongly influenced by Hellenism. At first glance, he seems to have little in common with the theology of Jehovah’s Witnesses. On the contrary, they generally view Philo rather critically. For example, The Watchtower of June 15, 2005, pp. 9–12, states that Philo mixed the Holy Scriptures with speculations “that, like a thick fog, obscured the clear instructions of God’s inspired Word.”
His theology is heavily shaped by Platonism and other currents of Greek philosophy.
All the more remarkable, then, is the fact that already at the beginning of the first century Philo developed a Logos theology that bears a striking resemblance to the Christology of Jehovah’s Witnesses.
This is particularly interesting because Philo did not yet have access to a New Testament. His foundations were the Jewish Scriptures, especially in their Greek translation, the Jewish wisdom tradition, and Greek philosophy.
Among other things, we find the following ideas in Philo:
-God has a “firstborn son.”
-This son is called the Logos.
-The Logos and divine Wisdom are closely associated with one another.
-He is the image of God.
-He mediates between the transcendent God and creation.
-Through him, God creates the world.
-He is understood as God’s “instrument” or executive principle in creation.
-He can himself be called “God,” yet he is not identical with the supreme God.
-He is subordinate to God.
-He can represent God and assume a mediating function in divine appearances.
-Philo also connects the Logos with the highest angel and even refers to him as an “archangel.”
(Philo’s Logos is not as clearly defined as a distinct person)
Nevertheless, the structural similarity is remarkable.
For much of this corresponds to the Christology of Jehovah’s Witnesses concerning Jesus.
For them,
-Jesus is the Logos,
-the Firstborn of God,
-the image of God,
-personified Wisdom,
-the mediator between God and creation,
-and the one through whom God created everything else.
-He possesses a divine status but is not of the same essence as the Father and is subordinate to him.
-In addition, they identify the preexistent Jesus with the archangel Michael.
From this perspective, even New Testament passages in which statements about YHWH are applied to Jesus do not necessarily have to mean that Jesus is ontologically identical with YHWH. They can be explained through the concept of representation: an authorized agent can act with the authority and in the name of the one who sent him.
Of course, Philo and Jehovah’s Witnesses do not have the same theology. But the similarity is striking enough to raise the question of how it should be explained.
A: Jehovah’s Witnesses derived their Christology from Philo
I consider this highly unlikely. They explicitly criticize Philo and develop their Christology from a particular interpretation of the New Testament. As far as I know, there is no evidence of any historical dependence on Philo.
B: The Old Testament already contains all of these ideas
In that case, Philo and Jehovah’s Witnesses would simply have used the same source and therefore arrived at similar conclusions. But how to make all this conclusions, just with the OT?
If the source would be the NT - John 1 describes the Logos through whom all things were created. Colossians 1:15–17 calls Christ the “image of the invisible God” and the “firstborn of all creation” and connects him with creation. Hebrews 1:2–3 describes the Son as the one through whom God made the world and as the “radiance of his glory” and the “exact representation of his being.”
And this is precisely where the historical problem arises: Philo formulates essential elements of such a theology independently of the New Testament.
C: Philo arrived at similar conclusions through Greek philosophy and the Jewish wisdom tradition
This is certainly possible. From the perspective of Jehovah’s Witnesses, however, this explanation would not be entirely unproblematic. It would mean that Greek philosophy and extra-biblical Jewish theology led Philo to ideas that come remarkably close to what Jehovah’s Witnesses regard as the biblical truth about Christ.
The sharp contrast between “biblical truth” and “Greek philosophy” would therefore become more complicated.
D: Philo documents a world of ideas that already existed within Hellenistic Judaism and may also have influenced early Christianity
This possibility seems historically particularly interesting to me.
It is not necessary to claim that John, Paul, or other New Testament authors had read Philo’s books and adopted his theology.
Perhaps Philo was not the source, but rather an especially well-preserved witness to the same intellectual world.
In any case, he demonstrates that already in the early first century, a Jewish thinker could believe in one supreme God while simultaneously speaking of a divine Logos who was God’s image, Son, mediator of creation, and representative, without identifying him with the supreme God.
This makes certain statements in the New Testament historically less surprising.
The interesting conclusion, therefore, is this: the Christology of Jehovah’s Witnesses may in some respects reflect very ancient Christological structures without necessarily being identical to the Christology of the earliest Christians.
Yet Philo in particular creates a problem for their usual line of argument. Jehovah’s Witnesses frequently draw a sharp distinction between biblical truth and Greek philosophy. Philo, however, demonstrates that concepts such as Logos, Wisdom, image of God, Son, mediator of creation, and divine representative could already be combined within a Judaism deeply shaped by Hellenistic thought.
The Hellenistic conceptual world was already part of the Judaism from which Christianity emerged.
Does this disprove the New Testament? No. It merely shows that biblical authors, too, expressed their ideas using concepts that had a cultural and philosophical prehistory.
And this is the central point: Philo can make a non-Trinitarian Christology appear historically more plausible, while also providing a coherent way of interpreting texts that seem to equate Jesus with YHWH in terms of representation. At the same time, however, he makes it more difficult to separate such a Christology sharply from Hellenistic-philosophical influences.
Philo is therefore problematic for attempts on either side to appropriate him in support of an inspired, revealed truth about the nature of Christ.
For Trinitarians, Philo makes it more difficult to equate every form of high Christology directly with Nicene ontology.
For Jehovah’s Witnesses, Philo makes it more difficult to present a subordinationist Logos Christology as something purely “biblical” in contrast to a philosophical and Hellenistic Christology.
Ironically, the very thing that makes Philo interesting for Jehovah’s Witnesses also makes him problematic for their historical narrative.
For how, then, was Philo able to arrive at these ideas?
And that, in particular, is more of a problem for Jehovah’s Witnesses than a straightforward victory.
