Logos

4. The Fourth 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 bear the same impress, the epistles to the Ephesians and the Colossians, and to a much greater degree the epistle to the Hebrews. The development that had thus begun in the time of 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 Christ from the point of view furnished him by Philo's theory. True, the Logos doctrine is only mentioned in the pro logue 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 form as Philo. On the contrary, the fact that he starts from an actual knowledge of the earthly life of Jesus, while Philo, even when ascribing a real personality to the Logos, keeps within the 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 preface written to conciliate a philosophic public. It assumes that the Logos idea is familiar in Christian theology, and vividly sum marizes the main features of the Philonic conception—the eternal existence of the Logos, its relation to God (ran TOP NOP, yet distinct), its creative, illuminative and redemptive activity. But the adaptation of the idea to John's account of a historical person involved at least three profound modifications:—(i) The Logos, instead of the abstraction or semi-personification of Philo, becomes fully personified. 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 provide a link with earlier specu lation, 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 X6-yos as Reason becomes subordinated to the idea of X6-yos as Word, the expression of God's will and power, the outgoing of the divine energy, life, love and 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 character and thought, so Christ is "sent out from the Father," and as the divine Word is also, in accordance with the Hebrew idea, the medium of God's quickening power.

What John thus does is to take the Logos idea of Philo and use it for a practical purpose—to make more intelligible to himself and his readers the divine nature of Jesus Christ.

5. The Early many of the early Christian writers, as well as in the heterodox schools, the Logos doctrine is influenced by the Greek idea. The Syrian Gnostic Basilides held (according to Trenaeus i. 24) that the Logos or Word emanated from the vas or personified reason, as this latter emanated from the unbe gotten Father. The completest type of Gnosticism, the Valen tinian, regarded Wisdom as the last of the series of aeons that emanated from the original Being or Father, and the Logos as an emanation from the first two principles that issued from God, Reason and Truth. Justin Martyr, the first of the sub-apostolic fathers, taught that God produced of His own nature a rational power, His agent in creation, who now became man in Jesus. With Tatian the Logos is the beginning of the world, the reason that comes into being as the sharer of God's rational power. With Athenagoras He is the prototype of the world and the energizing principle of things. Theophilus taught that the Logos was in eternity with God as the counsellor of God, and that when the world was to be created God sent forth this counsellor from Him self as the X6-yos rpoctopucOs, yet so that the begotten Logos did not cease to be a part of Himself. With Hippolytus 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 held that the Logos was a faculty of God, the divine reason, immanent in God eternally, but not in distinct personality prior to the historical manifestation in Christ. Origen, referring the act of creation to eternity instead of to time, affirmed the eternal 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 and its redeeming power.

In the later developments of Hellenic speculation nothing essen tial 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 of predicating (as was done by Numenius of Apamea) three Gods:—the supreme God; the second God, or Demiurge or Logos; and the third God, or the world. Plotinus explained the X6-yoe as constructive forces, proceeding from the ideas and giving form to the dead matter of sensible things.

See the histories of philosophy and theology, and works quoted under HERACLITUS ; STOICS ; PHILO ; JOHN, THE GOSPEL OF ST., etC., and for a general summary of the growth of the Logos doctrine, E. C,aird, Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers (1904), vol. ii.- A. Harnack, History of Dogma; E. F. Scott, The Fourth Gospel, eh. v.

(1906) ; J. M. Heinze, Die Lehre vom Logos in der griech. Philosophie (1872) ; J. Wyllie, La Doctrine du Logos 0880 ; Aal, Gesch d. (1899) ; and the Histories of Dogma, by F. Loofs, R.

Seeberg. (S. D. F. S.; A. J. G.)