By: Blake Schaper

Εν αρχη ην ο Λογος, και ο λογος ην προς τον Θεον, και Θεος ην ο λογος.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word.

“Word” is how we usually translate λογος (logos) in the immortal lines from the gospel of John, but the story behind this Greek word is so much richer. The apostle John was well-versed in the Hellenistic philosophical traditions. He wrote his gospel for a more learned audience. Heraclitus, the Stoics, Aristotle, and Philo of Alexandria all define the meaning of logos in special ways. Understanding their insights show more of John’s conception of the nature of Christ.

John’s Gospel was written for both a Jewish and Greek audience, what scholars call the Johannine community. Though not formally educated, John’s writing shows an eclectic knowledge of philosophical traditions.

Additionally, many of the Jewish people in John’s world were Hellenized, and some gentile Greeks converted to Judaism. Both of these groups studied the ancient works of the Greek philosophers, enough that discussion about them would be understood by a general audience. Thus, it is safe to assume that John’s narrative appeals to those Greek concepts.

John’s gospel seeks to explain the identity of Jesus as the son of God and part of the Holy Trinity, which can be seen through some exegesis of the word logos.

Heraclitus, an ancient Greek cosmologist, saw logos as the underlying framework of reality itself, by which all opposites and other things are connected. Heraclitus saw it as a reality “common” to all men, even though it may not be seen at first by your average man.

“Though this Word (λογος) is true evermore, yet men are as unable to understand it when they hear it for the first time as before they have heard it at all,” Heraclitus wrote, echoing John’s lines of the darkness not comprehending the light.

The logos as a universal framework of reality is a concept easily accepted by the Christian worldview — it was God’s word who created the cosmos as we know it.

The Stoic movement took Heraclitus’s ideals of logos as the reality that permeates the universe, and came to make the word describe God Himself. This can be seen most clearly when Zeno of Citium, in the Lives of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laerius, explained the difference between Stoic matter and logos: “That which is acted upon is unqualified substance, [is] matter; that which acts is the logos within it, [is] God.”

In light of this, when John says “The λογος became flesh and dwelt among us,” he is likely referring to the Stoic tradition, affirming both Christ’s humanity and His divinity.

Aristotle generally applied the logos in a more practical sense, using it to connote the use of logical argument in a speech. But in his Politics, Aristotle asserted that the logos as something special that God gave man: a knowledge of right and wrong, something that dwells in humans:

“Man is the only animal whom she [nature] has endowed with the gift of speech. And whereas mere voice is but an indication of pleasure or pain, and is therefore found in other animals… the power of speech [logos] is intended to set forth the expedient and inexpedient, and therefore likewise the just and the unjust. And it is a characteristic of man that he alone has any sense of good and evil, of just and unjust, and the like, and the association of living beings who have this sense makes a family and a state.”

It is logos that dwells in man and guides him to the higher ideals, that draw him right action and to God. A Christian reader might see parallels to the Holy Spirit.

A surprising meaning of logos comes from Philo of Alexandria. Philo was a Hellenistic Jew who synthesized Greek and Jewish thought. After all his studies, Philo concluded that man could approach God on his own, and stated that there must be an intermediator. As he said in his writings:

“For there are, as is evident, two temples of God: one of them this universe, in which there is also as High Priest his firstborn, the divine Word (logos), and the other the rational soul, whose priest is the real man; the outward and invisible image of whom is he who offers the prayers and sacrifices handed down from our fathers”

Philo implies the logos as an intermediator between God and man. Since the dawn of Christianity, apologists have seen this as a vision of the necessity of Christ.

When John uses the Greek word logos, he does not just mean “word.” He means an ultimate reality that defines things together, a higher reason that is found in every man, a mediator between God and humanity, and even God Himself. Through understanding the deeper meaning of logos, we get a greater understanding of God’s character.

Blake Schaper is a sophomore majoring in mathematics and economics and minoring in journalism and art history. He enjoys researching topics about biblical exegesis, Christian history, and art criticism.