"Boasts not in accomplishing anything through His own will or
might." (Ch. ci.)

Let the reader clearly understand that I do not lay any stress
whatsoever on these passages taken by themselves or together; but taken
in connection with the intimation of the Word and Sonship asserted in
St. John, and reproduced by Justin, they are very significant indeed.

St. John asserts that Jesus is the Word and the Only Begotten--that He
is "Lord" and "God," and equal with the Father as being His Son (v. 18);
but, lest men conceive of the Word as an independent God, he asserts the
subordination of the Son as consisting, not in inferiority of nature,
but in submission of will.

Justin reproduces in the same terms the teaching of St. John respecting
the Logos--that the Logos was the Only Begotten, God-begotten, Lord and
God. And then, lest his adversaries should assume from this that Christ
was an independent God, he guards it by the assertion of the same
doctrine of subordination of will; neither the doctrine nor the
safeguard being expressly stated in the Synoptics, but contained in them
by that wondrous implication by which one part of Divine truth really
presupposes and involves all truth.

We have now to consider St. John's teaching respecting the relation of
the Logos to man. One aspect of this doctrine is peculiar to St. John,
and is as mysterious and striking a truth as we have in the whole range
of Christian dogma.

It is contained in certain words in the exordium of the Fourth Gospel: