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is less than the whole, and in the second it loses its life and individuality, since a certain living being, which has in itself the center of life, cannot be thought of as infinite. This last consideration perfectly characterizes the Greek concept of deity; and it was so convincing that, under its obvious influence, Panaetius and Posidonius recognized the limitation of the Godhead, and, in order not to turn Him into a part of a larger whole, they denied the infinity of the external world of space. Philo rises above this limited conception, approaching Plato's transcendental ideal. Divinity is known by means of complete abstraction, by the negation of all created things, and only he finds God who has left his senses and his reason, who has left the whole world and himself. This is the path of negation and abstraction – negative theology (ἀποφατικὴ θεολογία), as it was later called.

But the Divinity is not a vacuous abstraction. In fact, Philo thinks of Him as the eternal fullness of being, and ascribes to Him, together with the Scriptures, the attributes of goodness, power, righteousness, and knowledge to an infinite degree. Only these attributes are not qualities of the Godhead, but His peculiarities. Since He is an all-real being, finite, limited beings can partake of His individual powers and be determined by them as qualities. The Godhead itself, having in itself a perfect fullness, cannot participate in anything or possess separate qualities and final determinations. Not partaking in anything, He gives everything from His fullness. Thus, it could be said that, according to Philo, the Godhead is not qualitative, but superqualitative, having in itself the potency or power of all qualities, i.e., absolute omnipotence.

For the first time in philosophy, this new concept of the Godhead was formulated, which formed the basis of all subsequent theology. The idea of absolute monotheism here finds its first philosophical expression, to which the speculation of the Greeks, which did not find in its religious experience an object corresponding to this idea, could not rise. The abstraction of Greek theology, which oscillated between pantheism and dualism, was partly reflected in Philo, as we shall see

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below. He himself, like his immediate predecessors, like Posidonius and the Neo-Pythagoreans, tries to mediate between God and the world, religion and philosophy, Platonism and Stoicism. And if he did not reach the final solution of this problem, his teaching is nevertheless the first attempt to formulate philosophically the concept of God Almighty, the Lord of Hosts, and to deduce from this concept its logical consequences, which were to be widely developed in the future.

Philo's God is transcendent, unconditionally different, infinitely distant from the world in His essence, and at the same time in His powers He is immanent in the world, inherent in it, as its life-giving spirit, as the world-ruling mind[165]. We find a similar view in many of Philo's predecessors who followed Posidonius, the Neo-Pythagoreans and in the treatise π κόσμου. Philo also follows in the footsteps of Posidonius, although he takes another step towards Platonism and in his "negative theology" reinforces the idea of the transcendence, the transcendence of the Godhead. In Its essence It is not covered by any concept or idea; and together He reveals Himself in His powers and in His word.

How then is the relation of the Divinity to the world, to the soul of man, to His own powers? Obviously, from eternity It has in Itself the foundation of Its powers, from eternity it possesses them. It contains in itself the source of Its revelation and creativity as pure activity or energy: action is inherent in Him with the same unconditional necessity as heat is to fire or cold to snow. But in this case, what is the object of the action of the Godhead, and why is all His revelation only an allegory? It is clear that His action, just like His revelation, presupposes some external and alien environment in which it manifests. Here is the boundary of Philo's worldview: at its very core the world

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appears to him as alien to God and, as it were, opposite to Him. The world was created by the Creator from pre-existing matter, formless, formless, inert, and passive.

Thus we find, as it were, in Philo a simple return to the former philosophical dualism: Moses, who had reached the summit of philosophy and had been taught by revelation many and profound truths of natural science, learned that it was necessary to distinguish in existence two causes, the active and the suffering: the first (τὸ δραστήριον αἴτιον) is the reason (νοῦς) of the universe, the purest and highest, the most excellent, virtue and knowledge, good and beautiful; the second, the passive cause (τὸ παθητόν) is soulless, that which has no spontaneous motion, but moves, is formed, and is animated by the action of Reason (De opif. m. 2). The active and the passive principle, God and matter, form, as it were, the two poles of Philo's world outlook. We have already seen that, according to the teaching of Wisdom, the world was created of "amorphous matter," and it seems that in the Jewish circles of Philo's time the dogma of the creation of the world from non-existence was still far from becoming widespread. Following Plato and Aristotle, Philo could have recognized this matter as pure and relative non-being; In fact, he, together with the eclectic Stoics and Platonists of his time, accepted the Stoic view of matter as formless and formless, inert, chaotic mass of matter. Thanks to this, Philo's dualism appears in a very sharp form; it undoubtedly expresses the idea of the unconditional transcendence of the Godhead, but in such a formulation the substance itself is, as it were, the limit, the external boundary of God. Philo himself feels this, and, softening his thought, speaks in places of God as the Creator of matter; in reality, however, as a careful examination of all the places where Philo speaks of matter shows, God's creativity refers only to communication