Athenagoras of Athens (c. 133-190)

Athenagoras of Athens (c. 133-190) was a very studious and careful philosopher. His famous treatise Legatio Pro Christianis is filled to the brim with allusions and quotations of philosophers, poets, historians and the Holy Scriptures. His wide breadth of knowledge permitted him to make a formidable and lasting defense of Christianity. He addressed this monumental treatise to the Emperors of his day, Marcus Aurelius and Commodus and to all philosophers. To Athenagoras, God is neither material nor corporeal but a simple and supreme Spirit free of composition and imperfection. (Athenagoras, Legatio Pro Christianis, 15.) He begins with a simple exposition of Christian monotheism,

"We acknowledge one God, uncreated, eternal, invisible, impassible, incomprehensible, who cannot be limited, who is apprehended by understanding alone and reason, who is encompassed by light and beauty and spirit and ineffable power." (Ibid. 10.)

He emphasizes the point by denying the eternity of matter and explaining that the Universe was created from nothing by the will of God "through the Logos." (Ibid. 6) All Christians teach "that matter is one thing and God is another, and they are separated by a vast chasm." (Ibid 4, 15.) He identifies the "one God, the Maker" with the Father, who created "all things by the Logos which is from him." (Ibid. 4.) Now, keenly aware that his pagan audience may be unaware of what he means by "Logos" he explains the distinction between the immanent Logos (λόγος ἐνδιάθετος) and the expressed Logos (λόγος προφορικός), a distinction which is found in all the Greek apologists.

"But if, in your surpassing intelligence, it occurs to you to inquire what is meant by the Son, I will state briefly that He is the first product of the Father, not as having been brought into existence (for from the beginning, God, who is the eternal mind (νοῦς), had the Logos in Himself, being from eternity instinct with Logos (λογικός)); but inasmuch as He came forth to be the idea and energizing power of all material things, which lay like a nature without attributes, and an inactive earth, the grosser particles being mixed up with the lighter. The prophetic Spirit also agrees with our statements. "The Lord, it says, made me, the beginning of His ways to His works." (Ibid. 10.)

Notice again how another early Father applies Prov. 8:22 to the pre-existent Logos and not to the incarnation. In harmony with the other apologists, Athenagoras teaches that the immanent Logos was in the intellect of God from eternity, but was expressed and came forth as a Son who is the first-born of God's creative acts. He does not seem to regard the Holy Spirit as a person, but instead he refers to it as "an effluence, as light from fire." (Ibid. 24.) He write elsewhere, 

"The Holy Spirit Himself also, which operates in the prophets, we assert to be an effluence of God, flowing from Him, and returning back again like a beam of the sun." (Ibid. 10.)

The personhood of the Holy Spirit is not ruled out in this passage, but without any other direct descriptions of the Holy Spirit in his writings this is by no means clear.