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

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Matter in itself is a corporeal essence (οὐσία), although it is devoid of any definite qualities. In creating the world, God "brings into being the non-existent, making the harmonious out of the discordant, quality out of the unqualified, similarity out of the dissimilar, identity out of differences, agreement and communion out of the disunited and disagreeable, equality out of inequality, light out of darkness" [172]. Creativity presupposes, firstly, the productive cause of a thing (τὸ ὑφ ̓ οὖ), secondly, the matter "from which" it is created, thirdly, the purpose "for which" it is created, and, finally, fourthly, the instruments "by means of which" it is formed. God is the productive cause, and if the instrument of creation consists in His Reason or Word, and the end or motive in His infinite goodness, then the material of creation is the substance external to God.

From this we fully understand why, from this point of view, the revelation of God in the world must necessarily appear limited. Philo insists that matter has no positive, independent meaning, and seeks to show that it, as purely passive, cannot limit divine action. On the one hand, he affirms the complete insignificance of creation and recognizes God as the only efficient cause, the producing cause of everything that exists. He constantly returns to the idea that nothing acts at all except God: to Him alone is reduced all action, all reality, and in the visible interaction of empirical causes the act of the one Deity is expressed. But on the other hand, Philo notes that the insignificance and imperfection of creation serves as an argument for atheists who deny Providence and

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who belittle the wisdom and power of the Creator. And he tries to show all the perfection of creation.