The charge was, that "they had no God." The answer is, "We
have a God;" and then Justin describes the God of Christians. Can the
army of angels be included in that description? If they are, then they
are made to share in the adoration, worship, homage, and reverence of
the one only God Most High; if they are not, then Justin does not answer
the objectors[35].
[Footnote 35: And surely if Justin had intended to represent the
holy angels as objects of religious worship, he would not so
violently have thrust the mention of them among the Persons of
the ever-blessed Trinity, assigning to them a place between the
second and third Persons of the eternal hypostatic union.] {109}
To evade this charge of impiety, some writers (among others, M. Maran,
the Benedictine editor of Justin,) have attempted to draw a distinction
between the two verbs in this passage, alleging that the lower degree of
reverence expressed by the latter applies to the angels; whilst the
former verb, implying the higher degree of worship, alone relates to the
Godhead. But this distinction rests on a false assumption; the two words
being used equally to convey the idea, of the highest religious
worship[36].
[Footnote 36: For example, the first word ([Greek: sebometha]),
"we reverence," is used to mean the whole of religious worship,
as well with regard to the true God, as with reference to Diana
[Acts xviii.
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