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LOGOS (X4os)
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See also:LOGOS (X4os) , a See also:common See also:term in See also:ancient See also:philosophy and See also:theology. It expresses the See also:idea of an immanent See also:reason in the See also:world, and, under various modifications, is met with in See also:Indian, See also:Egyptian and .See also:Persian systems of thought. But the idea was See also:developed mainly in Hellenic and See also:Hebrew philosophy, and we may distinguish the following stages: 1. The Hellenic Logos.—To the See also:Greek mind, which saw in the world a Khu os (ordered whole), it was natural to regard the world as the product of reason, and reason as the ruling principle in the world. So we find a Logos See also:doctrine more or less prominent from the See also:dawn of Hellenic thought to its See also:eclipse. It rises in the See also:realm of See also:physical See also:speculation, passes over into the territory of See also:ethics and theology, and makes its way through at least three well-defined stages. These are marked off by the names of Heraclitus of See also:Ephesus, the See also:Stoics and See also:Philo. It acquires its first importance in the theories of Heraclitus (6th See also:century B.c.), who, trying to See also:account for the aesthetic See also:order of the visible universe, See also:broke away to some extent from the purely physical conceptions of his predecessors and discerned at See also:work in the See also:cosmic See also:process a X&yos analogous to the reasoning See also:power in See also:man. On the one See also:hand the Logos is identified with yvcwµt7 and connected with SiK71, which latter seems to have the See also:function of correcting deviations from the eternal See also:law that rules in things. On the other hand it is not positively distinguished either from the ethereal See also:fire, or from the a apµdvri and the avayKrl according to which all things occur. Heraclitus holds that nothing material can be thought of without this Logos, but he does not conceive the Logos itself to be immaterial. Whether it is regarded as in any sense possessed of intelligence and consciousness is a question variously answered. But there is most to say for the negative. This Logos is not one above the world or See also:prior to it, but in the world and inseparable from it. Man's soul is a See also:part of it. It is relation, therefore, as See also:Schleiermacher expresses it, or reason, not speech or word. And it is See also:objective, not subjective, reason. Like a law of nature, objective in the world, it gives order and regularity to the See also:movement of things, and makes the See also:system rational .3 The failure of Heraclitus to See also:free himself entirely from the physical hypotheses of earlier times prevented his speculation from influencing his successors. With Anaxagoras a conception entered which gradually triumphed over that of Heraclitus, namely, the conception of a supreme, intellectual principle, not identified with the world but See also:independent of it. This, however, was vows, not Logos. In the Platonic and Aristotelian systems, too, the theory of ideas involved an See also:absolute separation between the material world and the world of higher reality, and though the term Logos is found the conception is vague and undeveloped. With See also:Plato the term selected for the expression of the principle to which the order visible in the universe is due is vows or 6ro4da, not Xi'yos. It is in the pseudo-Platonic Epinonris that Xoyos appears as a synonym for vows. In See also:Aristotle, again, the principle which sets all nature under the See also:rule of thought, and directs it towards a rational end, is vows, or the divine spirit itself; while X ryos is a term with many senses, used as more or less identical with a number of phrases, ou g'EKa, EVEpyeca, EVTEAEXEIa, ovvia, Eihos, µoplrii, &c. In the reaction from Platonic See also:dualism, however, the Logos doctrine reappears in See also:great breadth. It is a See also:capital See also:element in the system of the Stoics. With their teleological views of the world they naturally predicated an active principle pervading it and determining it. This operative ,principle is called both Logos and See also:God. It is conceived of as Material, and is described in terms used equally of nature and of God. There is at the same See also:time the See also:special doctrine of the Xlryos oirepisarix6s, the seminal Logos, or the law of See also:generation in the world, the principle of the active reason working in dead See also:matter. This parts into Xf'yor a'TrEptscTGKOI, which are akin, not to the Platonic ideas, but rather to the X6yor gvvXol of Aristotle. In man, too, there is a Logos which is his characteristic See also:possession, and which is EvbraOeros, as See also:long as it is a thought See also:resident within his See also:breast, 3 Cf. Schleiermacher's Herakleitos der Dunkle; See also:art. HEaachrrU5 and authorities there quoted. but apo¢optsbs when it is expressed as a word. This,distinctiori between Logos as ratio and Logos as oratio, so much used subsequently by Philo and the See also:Christian fathers, had been so far anticipated by Aristotle's distinction between the See also:ate Xoyos and the Myos v Tn I/svx p. It forms the point of See also:attachment by which the Logos doctrine connected itself with See also:Christianity. The Logos of the Stoics (q.v.) is a reason in the world gifted with intelligence, and analogous to the reason in man.
2. The Hebrew Logos.—In the later Judaism the earlier anthropomorphic conception of God and with it the sense of the divine nearness had been succeeded by a belief which placed God at a remote distance, severed from man and the world by a deep chasm. The old See also:familiar name Yahweh became a See also:secret; its See also:place was taken by such See also:general expressions as the See also:Holy, the Almighty, the See also:Majesty on High, the See also: 3; See also:Psalm xxxiii. 6), as the executor of the divine judgments (See also:Hosea vi. 5), as healing (Psalm cvii. 2o), as possessed of almost personal qualities (See also:Isaiah Iv. 11; Psalm cxlvii. 15). Along with this comes the doctrine of the See also:angel of Yahweh, the angel of the See also:covenant, the angel of the presence, in whom God manifests Himself, and who is sometimes identified with Yahweh or Elohim (Gen. xvi. rr, 13; xxxii. 29-31; Exod. iii. 2; xiii. 21), sometimes distinguished from Him (Gen. xxii. 15, &c.; See also:xxiv. 7; See also:xxviii. 12, &c.), and sometimes presented in both aspects (See also:Judges ii., vi.; Zech. i.). To this must be added the doctrine of Wisdom, given in the books of See also:Job and See also:Proverbs. At one time it is exhibited as an attribute of God (Prov. iii. 19). At another it is strongly personified, so as to become rather the creative thought of God than a quality (Prov. viii. 22). Again it is described as proceeding from God as the principle of creation and objective to Him. In these and kindred passages (Job xv. 7, &c.) it is on the way to become hypostatized. The Hebrew conception is partially associated with the Greek in the See also:case of See also:Aristobulus, the predecessor of Philo, and, according to the fathers, the founder of the Alexandrian school. He speaks of Wisdom in a way reminding us of the See also:book of Proverbs. The pseudo-Solomonic Book of Wisdom (generally supposed to be the work of an Alexandrian flourishing somewhere between Aristobulus and Philo) deals both with the Wisdom and with the Logos. It fails to hypostatize either. But it represents the former as the framer of the world, as the power or spirit of God, active alike in the physical, the intellectual, and the ethical domain, and apparently objective to God. In the Targums, on the other hand, the three doctrines of the word, the angel, and the wisdom of God converge in a very definite conception. In the Jewish theology God is re-presented as purely transcendent, having no likeness of nature with man, and making no personal entrance into See also:history Instead of the immediate relation of God to the world the Targums introduce the ideas of the Memra (word) and the Shechina (real presence). This Memra (=Ma'amar) or, as it is also designated, Dibbftra, is a See also:hypostasis that takes the place of God when direct intercourse with man is in view. In all those passages of the Old Testament where anthropomorphic terms are used of God, the Memra is substituted for God. The Memra proceeds from God, and retains the creaturely relation to God. It does not seem to have been identified with the See also:Messiah.1 ' Cf. the See also:Targum of Onkelos on The See also:Pentateuch under ten. vii. 16, xvii. 2, xxi. 20; Exod. xix. 16, &c.; the See also:Jerusalem Targum on 3. Philo.—In the Alexandrian philosophy, as represented .by the Hellenized See also:Jew Philo, the Logos doctrine assumes a leading place and shapes a new career for itself. Philo's doctrine is moulded by three forces—See also:Platonism, Stoicism and Hebraism. He detaches the Logos idea from its connexion with Stoic See also:materialism and attaches it to a thorough-going Platonism. It is Plato's idea of the See also:Good regarded as creatively active. Hence, instead of being merely immanent in the Cosmos, it has an independent existence. Platonic too is the doctrine of the divine architect who seeks to realize in the visible universe the archetypes already formed in his mind. Philo was thus able to make the Logos theory a bridge between Judaism and Greek philosophy. It preserved the monotheistic idea yet afforded a description of the Divine activity in terms of Hellenic thought; the Word of the Old Testament is one with the Xoyos of the Stoics. And thus in Philo's conception the Logos is much more than " the principle of reason, informing the See also:infinite variety of things, and so creating the World-Order "; it is also the divine dynamic, the See also:energy and self-revelation of God. The Stoics indeed sought, more or less consciously, by their doctrine of the Logos as the Infinite Reason to See also:escape from the belief in a divine Creator, but Philo, Jew to the core, starts from the Jewish belief in a supreme, self-existing God, to whom the reason of the world must be subordinated though related. The conflict of the two conceptions (the Greek and the Hebrew) led him into some difficulty; sometimes he represents the Logos as an independent and even personal being, a " second God," sometimes as merely an aspect of the divine activity. And though passages of the first class must no doubt be explained figuratively—for Philo would not assert the existence of two Divine agents—it remains true that the two conceptions cannot be fused. The Alexandrian philosopher wavers between the two theories and has to See also:accord to the Logos of Hellas a semi-independent position beside the supreme God of See also:Judaea. He speaks of the Logos (I) as the agency by which God reveals Himself, in some measure to all men, in greater degree to chosen souls. The appearances recorded in the Old Testament are manifestations of the Logos, and the knowledge of God possessed by the great leaders and teachers of See also:Israel is due to the same source; (2) as the agency whereby man, enmeshed by illusion, See also:lays hold of the higher spiritual See also:life and rising above his partial point of view participates in the universal reason. The Logos is thus the means of redemption; those who realize its activity being emancipated from the tyranny of circumstance into the freedom of the eternal. 4. The See also:Fourth See also:Gospel.—Among the influences that shaped the Fourth Gospel that of the Alexandrian philosophy must be assigned a distinct, though not an exaggerated importance. There are other books in the New Testament that See also:bear the same impress, the epistles to the See also:Ephesians and the See also:Colossians, and to a much greater degree the See also:epistle to the See also:Hebrews. The development that had thus begun in the time of See also:Paul reaches maturity in the Fourth Gospel, whose dependence on Philo appears (I) in the use of the allegorical method, (2) in many coincident passages, (3) in the dominant conception of the Logos. The writer narrates the life of See also:Christ from the point of view furnished him by Philo's theory. True, the Logos doctrine is only mentioned in the See also:prologue to the Gospel, but it is presupposed throughout the whole book. The author's task indeed was somewhat akin to that of Philo, " to transplant into the world of Hellenic culture a revelation originally given through Judaism." This is not to say that he holds the Logos doctrine in exactly the same See also:form as Philo. On the contrary, the fact that he starts from an actual knowledge of the earthly life of Jesus, Numb. vii. 89, &c. For further See also:information regarding the Hebrew Logos see, beside Dr See also:Kaufmann Kohler, s.v. " Memra," Jewish Encyc. viii. 464-465, Bousset, See also:Die See also:Religion See also:des Judenthums (1903), p 341, and See also:Weber, Jiidische Theologie (1897), pp. 180-184. The hypostatizing of the Divine Word in the doctrine of the Memra was probably later than the time of Philo, but it was the outcome of a mode of thinking already common in Jewish theology. The same tendency is of course expressed in the " Logos " of the Fourth Gospel.
See also:LOGOTHETE
while Philo, even when ascribing a real See also:personality to the Logos, keeps within the See also:bounds of abstract speculation, leads him seriously to modify the Philonic doctrine. Though the Alexandrian idea largely determines the evangelist's treatment of the history, the history similarly reacts on the idea. The prologue is an organic portion of the Gospel and not a See also:preface written to conciliate a philosophic public. It assumes that the Logos idea is familiar in Christian theology, and vividly summarizes the See also:main features of the Philonic conception—the eternal existence of the Logos, its relation to God (srpdr rim O 6v, yet distinct), its creative, illuminative and redemptive activity. But the See also:adaptation of the idea to See also: The Word that became flesh subsisted from all eternity as a distinct personality within the divine nature. (2) Much greater stress is laid upon the redemptive than upon the creative function. The latter indeed is glanced at (" All things were made by him "), merely to See also:pro-vide a See also:link with earlier speculation, but what the writer is concerned about is not the mode in which the world came into being but the spiritual life which resides in the Logos and is communicated by him to men. (3) The idea of Tdyos as Reason becomes subordinated to the idea of Xiyosas Word, the expression of God's will and power, the outgoing of the divine energy, life, love and See also:light. Thus in its fundamental thought the prologue of the Fourth Gospel comes nearer to the Old Testament (and especially to Gen. i.) than to Philo. As speech goes out from a man and reveals his See also:character and thought, so Christ is " sent out from the See also:Father," and as the divine Word is also, in accordance with the Hebrew idea, the See also:medium of God's quickening power.
What John thus does is to take the Logos idea of Philo and use it for a See also:practical purpose—to make more intelligible to himself and his readers the divine nature of Jesus Christ. That this endeavour to work into the historical tradition of the life and teaching of Jesus—a See also:hypothesis which had a distinctly See also:foreign origin—led him into serious difficulties is a See also:consideration that must be discussed elsewhere.
5. The See also:Early See also: The completest type of See also:Gnosticism, the Valentinian, regarded Wisdom as the last of the See also:series of aeons that emanated from the See also:original Being or Father, and the Logos as an See also:emanation from the first two principles that issued from God, Reason (vows) and Truth. See also:Justin See also:Martyr, the first of the sub-apostolic fathers, taught that God produced of His own nature a rational power(H auiv See also:rum X07LKiiv), His See also:agent in creation, who now became man in Jesus (See also:Dial. c. Tryph. See also:chap. 48, 6o). He affirmed also the See also:action of the Xlyos airEpµarLKbs, (Apol. i. 46; ii. 13, &c.). With See also:Tatian (See also:Cohort. ad. Gr. chap. 5, &c.) the Logos is the beginning of the world, the reason that comes into being as the sharer of God's rational power. With See also:Athenagoras (.Suppl. chap. 9, Io) He is the prototype of the world and the energizing principle (iSea sal iv4pyeca) of things. See also:Theophilus (Ad Autolyc. li. to, 24) taught that the Logos was in eternity with God as the X6y0s evS .&TOS, the counsellor of God, and that when the world was to be created God sent forth this counsellor (ei u$ovXos) from Himself as the X6yos irpo4opls6s, yet so that the begotten Logos did not cease to be a part of Himself. With See also:Hippolytus (Refut. x. 32, &c.) the Logos, produced of God's own substance, is both the divine intelligence that appears in the world as the Son of God, and the idea of the universe immanent in God. The early Sabellians (comp. See also:Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. vi. 33; See also:Athanasius, Contra Arian. iv.) held that the Logos was a See also:faculty of God, the divine reason, immanent in God eternally, but not in distinct personality prior to the historical manifestation in Christ. See also:Origen, referring the See also:act of creation to eternity instead of to time, affirmed theeternal personal existence of the Logos. In relation to God this Logos or Son was a copy of the original, and as such inferior to that. In relation to the world he was its prototype, the iSea i&Ewv and its redeeming power (Contra Cels. v. 608; Frag. de princip. i. 4; De princip. 1. 109, 324). In the later developments of Hellenic speculation nothing essential was added to the doctrine of the Logos. Philo's distinction between God and His rational power or Logos in contact with the world was generally maintained by the eclectic Platonists and Neo-Platonists. By some of these this distinction was carried out to the extent of921 predicating (as was done by See also:Numenius of See also:Apamea) three Gods:—the supreme God; the second God, or See also:Demiurge or Logos; and the third God, or the world. See also:Plotinus explained the X6yoi as constructive forces, proceeding from the ideas and giving form to the dead matter of sensible things (Enneads, v. 1. 8 and See also:Richter's Neu-Plat. Studien). See the histories of philosophy and theology, and See also:works quoted under HERACLITUS, STOICS, PHILO, JOHN, THE GOSPEL OF, &C., and for a general See also:summary of the growth of the Logos doctrine, E. See also:Caird, See also:Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers (1904), vol. ii.; A. See also:Harnack, History of See also:Dogma; E. F. See also:Scott, The Fourth Gospel, ch. v. (1906); J. M. Heinze, Die Lehre vom Logos in der griech. Philosophie (1872); J. Reviile, La Doctrine du Logos (1881); See also:Aal, Gesch. d. Logos-Idee (1899) ; and the Histories of Dogma, by A. Harnack, F. Loofs, R. Seeberg. (S. D. F. S.; A. J. Additional information and CommentsThere are no comments yet for this article.
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