Logos

In Christian theology, the biblical term for Jesus as ‘the Word’ of God.

The concept of Logos has a long history with many meanings and uses, from the pre-Socratic philosophy of Heraclitus through to the present day. In classical Greek philosophy, Logos tends to mean both ‘word’ and ‘reason’, and is regarded as the governing, creative principle at work in structuring the cosmos.

In Christian theology the Logos is ‘the Word of God’, and the concept is used in various ways. The idea first appears in Scripture as God’s creative word, a word-act that brings everything into existence (see Gen. 1:3; Ps. 32:9). For the Old Testament prophets, the ‘word of God’ was God’s direct speech. Ezekiel, for example, writes that ‘the word of the Lord came to [him]’, and Jeremiah says that he speaks God’s words. In Old Testament wisdom literature, the ‘word’ of God is associated with wisdom: ‘O God of my Fathers and Lord of mercy, who has made all things by your word, and in your wisdom have formed man’ (Wisd. 9:1–2).

Most significantly, ‘the Word’ or the Logos is how St John refers to Jesus in the dramatic opening verses of his Gospel: ‘In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.’ Jesus is the image and mind of God in living and breathing form.

The resonance with some Greek thought has led scholars to speculate that St John’s concept of the Logos was influenced by Greek philosophy. In fact, the concept of Logos appears both in the Hebrew Scriptures (the Old Testament) and prominently in the writings of the Jewish philosopher Philo. Scholars now think that the theology in John’s Gospel owes more to Jewish thought than to anything else.

For some of the early Christian theologians – for example: Tertullian, St Athanasius, Clement of Alexandra and Justin Martyr – the idea that Jesus was God’s Logos, or the mind or image of God, provided the basis for understanding the two natures of Christ: the Logos was the divine Christ who became flesh in the human Jesus. This view of the incarnation tied in nicely with dualistic Platonic ideas about the relationship between form and matter, soul and body.

The weakness with this approach was that it owed too much to Plato and gave too little importance to the physical dimension of Christ, implying that Christ’s body was not an integral part of his identity but a temporary container for the eternal, divine Logos. Athanasius, for example, spoke about the Word ‘assuming a body’ in order to complete its work on earth. Alexandrian Logos theology also left little room for the desires and emotions that are also part of being fully human.

The prologue to John’s Gospel associates the Logos with a range of concepts: life, grace, light, truth, power and glory. This constellation of concepts cannot simply be reduced to the rational forms of Platonic philosophy. Furthermore, John’s Gospel insists that the Logos actually became flesh, rather than simply ‘assuming’ it. If John’s Gospel is followed through to its conclusion, the final ‘glory’ of the Logos is the crucifixion – an event focused upon Christ’s body and feelings.

Under the influence of Martin Heidegger (see below), twentieth-century Christian existentialists questioned the Alexandrian conception of the Logos as rational truth. Paul Tillich argued that the Logos is ‘ontological reason’, a Word that thinks and speaks out of the mystery of Being itself. The incarnation means that the Logos reveals itself not merely as an idea, but in the flesh of our historical existence.

THINKERS

St Athanasius (c. 296–373) argued for the central place of the concept of Logos in Christian theology: ‘by the direction, providence, and ordering of the Logos, the creation [is] illumined and enabled to abide always securely’ (Against the Heathen).

St Augustine (354–430) believed that Plato had already intuited the truth of the pre-existing Logos referred to in John’s Gospel. In ‘certain books of the Platonists … I read, not indeed in the very words, but to the very same purpose … that In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God … But that the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, I read not there … That He emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant … and became obedient unto death, and that the death of the cross … those books have not’ (Confessions, Book 7).

Martin Heidegger (1889–1976): an existentialist philosopher who argued that the Christian–Platonic conception of the Logos had been a philosophical mistake. Heidegger said that the emphasis upon truth as a rational Logos meant that Western culture had overlooked the basic question of human existence. Instead of allowing the truth of existence to show itself, we have tried to analyse ‘truth’ in the abstract. If we want to understand the Logos correctly, said Heidegger, we need to return to Heraclitus’ conception of the Logos as the ‘gathering’ and ‘calling’ of something more fundamental – namely, ‘Being’.

Karl Barth (1886–1968) put the concept of the Word of God at the centre of his theology. The Word takes three forms: (i) the incarnate Logos; (ii) the written Word of Scripture; (iii) the Word of God as preached by the Church.

Justin Martyr (100?–165?) pointed out that some ancient Greek thinkers – in particular, the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus – had argued that the Logos ‘governs all things’. Justyn saw Heraclitus as a Christian before Christ.

The Stoics (third century bc) also used the term Logos for the creative force in the cosmos.

IDEAS

The Alogi: a second-century sect who, among other things, rejected the Logos theology in John’s Gospel.

Logos spermatikos: the concept of the ‘seminal Word’ referred to by the Stoics and developed by Justin Martyr.

Logotherapy: a form of psychotherapy developed by Viktor Frankl (1905–97), a psychotherapist who regarded the desire for meaning as the primary force in human nature.

Logocentrism: a term coined by Jacques Derrida to describe the restrictive and controlling pattern of Western thinking, which operates in terms of fixed structures and hierarchies of meaning.

Alexandrian theology: a second-century school of Logos-theology associated with Clement of Alexandria, Origen and Athanasius. Clement was a philosopher-theologian who regarded classic Greek philosophy as a valuable grounding for Christian theology.

The Cosmic Christ: the idea (associated with Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, but with a heritage going back to the Logos-theology of the Church Fathers) of Christ as the incarnate meaning and purpose of the cosmos.

BOOKS

Wolfhart Pannenberg, Jesus: God and Man (Westminster/John Knox Press, 1982)

Henny Fiska Hägg, Clement of Alexandria and the Beginnings of Christian Apophaticism (OUP, 2006)