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Before the advent of Christianity, Jews referred to the word of creation, the manifesting, revealing God who communicates with humankind, or the divine operation as the "Word" (in Aramaic translations of the Bible, this is called "memra" hundreds of times). Similar concepts are found in many ancient pagan religions and also in Greek and Hellenistic (Jewish-Greek) philosophy; but there, the Word carries a very different meaning than it does for John. In Plato's philosophy, it refers to divine intellect as the repository of divine ideas (ideals), the abstract essence of things, and their archetype, and sometimes even the soul of the world.
In the Jewish-Greek philosophy of Philo (who may have drawn from the Old Testament's sacred books), "logos" is a vague and confusing concept, a sort of divine emanation or characteristic, the instrument of creation (demiurge), a mediator between God and the world, but not a separate entity, not incarnate, not a redeemer, not the Messiah. So, you can hardly put the Logos doctrine of Philo of Alexandria next to you, since there is nothing in common apart from the identity of the name, his Logos is not the Son, not Jesus. John assumes that his readers were somewhat familiar with the concept of "logos"; however, the idea of the Christian Logos could not have been taken from Jewish theology or Greek philosophy, but instead, was obtained from divine revelation.
Justin Martyr taught that
the prehuman Jesus was God, not an angel. Justin did say that Christ was called
an angel, but explained that this was because Christ, who was actually God,
took on the appearance of an angel. Thus, Justin writes that "the Father of
the universe has a Son; who also, being the first-begotten Word of God, is
even God. And of old he appeared in the shape of fire and in the likeness of an
angel to Moses and to the other prophets..." Elsewhere.
Justin calls Christ "both God and Lord of hosts” (that is, Jehovah). “God the Son of God.”
Justin not only believed that Christ was God; he
believed in a rudimentary form of the Trinity. Thus, he stated that Christians
worshiped God the Father, "the Son (who came forth from Him...), and the prophetic
Spirit.” That this meant that Christ and the Spirit were both God is implied
by his repeated statement that “we ought to worship God alone... to God alone
we render worship."
In short, although Justin Martyr did not use such
terms as “Trinity", and his philosophical explanations of the rela tion of
Christ to God were somewhat confused, he worshiped Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit, and he regarded Christ as Jehovah God.
Origen was eventually to be regarded as a heretic. Although the cause for this judgment was not his teaching on the Trinity, the church has always regarded Origen’s way of explaining the Trinity to be very helpful in some respects and flat wrong in others. Origen clearly believed in some form of the Trinity. Edmund J. Fortman demonstrates this fact with several brief quotations from Origen:
“We, however, are persuaded that there are really three persons [treis hypostaselsj, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit" (Jo. 2.6). For him "statements made regarding Father. Son and Holy Spirit are to be understood as transcending all time, all ages, and all eternity" (Princ. 4.28), and there is "nothing which was not made, save the nature of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit" (Princ. 4.35). "Moreover, nothing in the Trinity can be called greater or less" (Princ. 1.3.7).
Unlike the Witnesses, Origen believed that the Son was eternal and uncreated, and he definitely regarded the Spirit as a person.
Check the quotes
