LO'GOS (Gr. from lego, "I speak ") denotes the act of speaking; that which is spoken; the natural process gone through for the purpose of the formation of speech; the reason ing powers themselves--all the attributes and operations of the soul, in fact, as mani fested by the spoken word. It thus occurs in the classical writers under the manifold signifleations of word or words, conversation, oration, exposition, command, history, prose, eloquence, philsophical propositiou, system, reason, thought, wisdom, and the like. Theologically, the word logos, as occurring at the beginning of the gospel of St. John, was early taken to refer to the " second person of the Trinity, i.e., Christ." Yet what was the precise meaning of the apostle, who alone makes use of the term in a man ner which allows of a like interpretation, and only in the introductory part of his gospel; whether he adopted the symbolizing usage in which it was ernployed by the various schools of his day; which of their widely differing'significations he had in view, or whether he intended to convey a meaning quite peculiar to himself :—these are some of the innu merable questions to which the word has given rise in divinity, and which, though most fiercely discussed ever since the first days of Christianity, are far from having found a satisfactory solution up to this moment. The fact, however, is, that the notion of a certain manifestation or revelation out of the center of tile Godhead, as it were—which manifestation, as a more or less personified part of the deity, stands between the realms of the infinite and the finite, of spirit and matter—bas from times immemorial been the common property of the whole east, and is found expressed in the religions of the prim itive Egyptians, as well as in those of the Hindus and Parsecs. This notion of an embodiment of divinity, as "word" or "wisdom," found its way, chiefly from the thne of the Babylonian exile, into the heart of Judaism, which in vain endeavored to recon cile it with the fundamental idea of the divine unity. The apocryphal writers chiefly pointed to the " wisdom"—of which Solomon (Prov. viii. 22) says that it had dwelt with God from the beginning, and Job (xxviii. 20), that it had assisted in the creation— as the emanation of God, which emanation was supposed to be bodily to a certain, how ever minute, degree. Thus, Sirach (xxiv. 1, 23) understands the " spirit of God " (Gen. i. 2) to be a kind of veil or mist, and speaks (i. 1, 9) of the " wisdom that is of the Lord and is with the Lord, everlasting," and that " it was created before all things, and known unto him" (ib.).
This wisdom, or word of creation, which, according to Sirach's view, formed and developed the chaos, further manifested itself—visibly—by a direct and hnmediate influence upon one select people, Israel, through which it wished further to influence all mankind. A nearer acquaintance with this doctrine in all its bearings at once solves the old riddle of certain Targumie interpretations, which have puzzled a host of investi gators. Thus, versions like that of Targum Jerushalmi to Gen. i. 1, " with wisdom, God created heaven and earth," and the constant use of the term Memra (word) instead of God or Jehovah, become clear at once (see TARGUM, VEnsioxs). No less must many
passages in the Talmud and Midrash assume an entirely different aspect, if that prev alent mode of thought and speech is taken into consideration.
In the earlier Platonic schools, again, Logos, scil., of God, was the common term for " plan of the cosmos "or "divine reason," inherent in the deity. The later schools, how ever, more prone to symbol and allegory in philosophical matters, called Logos a " hypos tasis of divinity," a substance, a divine corporeal essence, as it were, which became out wardly visible—a separate being, in fact, which, created out of the Creator, became " the Son of the Creator." But above all, we have, for the proper consideration of the usage in the days of the apostles, to examine the Judmo-Alexandrian views on this point. Pltilo, who is their best representative, makes the Logos the all-comprising essence of spiritual powers (daimons, angels), which alone acts upon the universe. In this sense, the Logos stands as the divine reason., the power of all powers, the spirit of God, and his representative, between him and all else. Nay, he goes so far as to call it the archangel, who executes the behests of God to man; the high-priest, who prays for man, and interferes on his behalf, before the throne of the Almighty; and he finally speaks of Logos as " the second God " (De Somn. i. 655), and the " providence " (fate, fortune) which watches over the destinies of mankind and separate nations (Quod Deus, i. 298). These con ceptions, which, lie says, came to him in a trance, he does not allow, however, to be in the least derogatory to the strictest belief in the oneness, invisibility, and pure spiritual ness of God, such as it is taught in the Jewish creed.—This characterizes sufficiently the general vagueness and haziness of philosophical and theological parlance and specu lation in the Alexandrine schools, which, obviously unconscious of the palpable con tradictions uttered in one breath, mixed up pure thought and visions, Scripture with eastern aud western philosophy and theosophy, monotheism and polytheism, heaping systems upon systetns, and dreams upon dreams.
If the apostle did not himself, to a certain degree, stand under the influence of some of the popular ideas connected with the term under consideration, it would, at any rate, seem most natural that he made use of it, as of one conveying a certain vague, yet com monly recognized transcendental notion of a divine emanation to the minds of his con temporaries. This opinion, however, is far from being unanimously adopted. Thus, some investigators hold that John, irrespective of the parlance of his day, used the word logos for Legontenos, i.e., he of whom it has been spoken, the promised one; others identify it with " doctrine;" while a third notion (held among others by Calvin and Luther) would make it equal to monologue, conversation.
For th6 person of the Logos as the mediator ceEon, Demiurgos, etc.), and the re spective relation between him and the other persons of the divine trias, we must refer to the articles CHRIST, GNOSTICS, TRINITY.