Logos

The word logos (from the root of the Greek verb lego, "to say") figures prominently in a number of Greek and Christian philosophical doctrines. Although the word's earliest meaning probably was "connected discourse," by the classical period it already had a wide variety of other meanings: "argument," "rational principle," "reason," "proportion," "measure," and others. For this reason, it is difficult to interpret the logos doctrines of philosophers and dangerous to assume a single history for these doctrines.

Heraclitus was the earliest Greek thinker to make logos a central concept. He urges us to pay attention to the logos, which "governs all things" and yet is also something we "encounter every day." We should probably emphasize the linguistic connections of logos when interpreting Heraclitus's thought. In our efforts to understand the world, we should look to our language and the order embodied in it, rather than to scientific or religious views that neglect this.

In the 3d century BC the proponents of Stoicism borrowed the idea of logos from Heraclitus (neither Plato nor Aristotle had given the term prominence) and used it for the immanent ordering principle of the universe - represented, at the level of language, by humankind's ordered discourse. Nature and logos are often treated as one and the same; but logos is nature's overall rational structure, and not all natural creatures have logos, or reason, within them. Humans are urged to "live consistently with logos."

In the New Testament, the Gospel According to Saint John gives a central place to logos; the biblical author describes the Logos as God, the Creative Word, who took on flesh in the man Jesus Christ. Many have traced John's conception to Greek origins - perhaps through the intermediacy of eclectic texts like the writings of Philo of Alexandria. More recently, however, scholars have emphasized that the Old Testament contains a doctrine of the Word of God; and in Aramaic paraphrases the "Word of God" takes on some of the functions of God. Later Christian thinkers clearly did incorporate the Stoic logos doctrine; logos was associated particularly with Christ and later, in Arianism, no longer identified with God.

Martha C Nussbaum

Bibliography
J Carey, Kairos and Logos (1978); W J Ong, Presence of the Word (1967).

Logos

Logos (Greek, "word,""reason,""ratio"), in ancient and especially in medieval philosophy and theology, the divine reason that acts as the ordering principle of the universe.

The 6th-century BC Greek philosopher Heraclitus was the first to use the term Logos in a metaphysical sense. He asserted that the world is governed by a firelike Logos, a divine force that produces the order and pattern discernible in the flux of nature. He believed that this force is similar to human reason and that his own thought partook of the divine Logos.

In Stoicism, as it developed after the 4th century BC, the Logos is conceived as a rational divine power that orders and directs the universe; it is identified with God, nature, and fate. The Logos is "present everywhere" and seems to be understood as both a divine mind and at least a semiphysical force, acting through space and time. Within the cosmic order determined by the Logos are individual centers of potentiality, vitality, and growth. These are "seeds" of the Logos (logoi spermatikoi). Through the faculty of reason, all human beings (but not any other animals) share in the divine reason. Stoic ethics stress the rule "Follow where Reason [Logos] leads"; one must therefore resist the influence of the passions-love, hate, fear, pain, and pleasure.

The 1st-century AD Jewish-Hellenistic philosopher Philo Judaeus employed the term Logos in his effort to synthesize Jewish tradition and Platonism. According to Philo, the Logos is a mediating principle between God and the world and can be understood as God's Word or the Divine Wisdom, which is immanent in the world.

At the beginning of the Gospel of John, Jesus Christ is identified with the Logos made incarnate, the Greek word logos being translated as "word" in the English Bible: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . . And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us . . ." (John 1:1-3, 14). John's conception of Christ was probably influenced by Old Testament passages as well as by Greek philosophy, but early Christian theologians developed the conception of Christ as the Logos in explicitly Platonic and Neoplatonic terms (see Neoplatonism). The Logos, for instance, was identified with the will of God, or with the Ideas (or Platonic Forms) that are in the mind of God. Christ's incarnation was accordingly understood as the incarnation of these divine attributes.

Robert S. Brumbaugh

Logos

The most usual Greek term for "word" in the NT: occasionally with other meanings (e.g., account, reason, motive); specifically in the prologue to the Fourth Gospel (John 1:1, 14) and perhaps in other Johannine writings (I John 1:1; Rev. 19:13) it is used of the second person of the Trinity. In ordinary Greek parlance it also means reason.

Johannine Usage