Logos (Christianity)

Name or title of Jesus Christ
the word Logos in Christianity specifically

In Christianity, the Logos (Λόγος) is a name or title of Jesus Christ, seen as the pre existent second person of the Trinity. In the Douay–Rheims, King James, New International, and other versions of the Bible, the first verse of the Gospel of John reads:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. In these translations, Word is used for Λόγος, although the term is often used transliterated but untranslated in theological discourse. According to Irenaeus of Lyon (c. 130–202), a student of Polycarp (c. pre 69–156), John the Apostle wrote these words specifically to refute the teachings of Cerinthus, who both resided and taught at Ephesus, the city John settled in following his return from exile on Patmos. While Cerinthus claimed that the world was made by "a certain Power far separated from  Almighty God", John, according to Irenaeus, by means of John 1:1 5, presented Almighty God as the Creator"by His Word." And while Cerinthus made a distinction between the man Jesus and "the Christ from above", who descended on the man Jesus at his baptism, John, according to Irenaeus, presented the pre existent Word and Jesus Christ as one and the same. A figure in the Book of Revelation is called "The Word of God", being followed by "the armies which are in heaven" (Rev 19:13–14).

Certain references to the term logos in the Septuagint in Christian theology are taken as prefiguring New Testament usage such as Psalm 33:6, which relates directly to the Genesis creation narrative. Theophilus of Antioch references the connection in To Autolycus 1:7. Irenaeus of Lyon explained Psalm 33:6 as that the "One God, the Father, not made, invisible, creator of all things  created the things that were made  by [the] Word" and "adorned all things  by [the] Spirit." He added, "fittingly is the Word called the Son, and the Spirit the Wisdom of God." Origen of Alexandria likewise sees in it the operation of the Trinity, a mystery intimated beforehand by the Psalmist David. Augustine of Hippo considered that in Psalms 33:6 both logos and pneuma were "on the verge of being personified".

The first extant Christian reference to the Logos found in writings outside of the New Testament belongs to John's disciple Ignatius ( 35–108), Bishop of Antioch, who in his epistle to the Magnesians, writes, "there is one God, who has manifested Himself by Jesus Christ His Son, who is His eternal Word, not proceeding forth from silence," (i. e., there was not a time when he did not exist). In similar fashion, he speaks to the Ephesians of the son being "possessed both of flesh and spirit; both made and not made; God existing in flesh; true life in death; both of Mary and of God; first passible and then impassible".

Irenaeus (c. 130–202), a student of the Apostle John's disciple, Polycarp, identifies the Logos as Jesus, by whom all things were made, and who before his incarnation appeared to men in the theophany, conversing with the pre Mosaic Patriarchs, with Moses at the burning bush, with Abraham at Mamre, and elsewhere, manifesting to them the unseen things of the Father. After these things, the Logos became man and suffered the death of the cross. In his Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching, Irenaeus defines the second point of the faith, after the Father, as this:

The Word of God, Son of God, Christ Jesus our Lord, who was manifested to the prophets according to the form of their prophesying and according to the method of the dispensation of the Father: through whom all things were made; who also at the end of the times, to complete and gather up all things, was made man among men, visible and tangible, in order to abolish death and show forth life and produce a community of union between God and man. Irenaeus writes that Logos is and always has been the Son, is uncreated, eternally coexistent and one with the Father, to whom the Father spoke at creation saying, "Let us make man." As such he distinguishes between creature and creator, so that

He indeed who made all things can alone, together with His Word, properly be termed God and Lord: but the things which have been made cannot have this term applied to them, neither should they justly assume that appellation which belongs to the Creator. Again, in his fourth book against heresies, after identifying Christ as the Word, who spoke to Moses at the burning bush, he writes, "Christ Himself, therefore, together with the Father, is the God of the living, who spoke to Moses, and who was manifested to the fathers." According to Irenaeus, John wrote John 1:1 5 to refute errors proclaimed by Cerinthus. The latter taught "that the world was not made by the primary God, but by a certain Power far separated from him. He represented Jesus as having not been born of a virgin, but as being the son of Joseph and Mary according to the ordinary course of human generation." Furthermore, Cerinthus made a distinction between "Jesus, the Son of the Creator" and "the Christ from above" and said that "after [Jesus'] baptism, Christ descended upon him in the form of a dove from the Supreme Ruler." But, after "Christ departed from Jesus  Jesus suffered and rose again."

The mixing of pagan and Christian thought was characteristic of Alexandrian learning and featured in the works of Cyril of Alexandria and Didymus the Blind. In the Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit (also known as the Gospel of the Egyptians), a text from early Christian Gnosticism, the Logos appears as a divine emanation or aeon of the great spirit or Monad and mingles with the primordial Adam.

The First Council of Constantinople of 381 decreed that the Logos is God, begotten and therefore distinguishable from the Father, but, being God, of the same substance (essence). Photinus denied that the Logos as the Wisdom of God had an existence of its own before the birth of Christ. Post apostolic Christian writers struggled with the question of the identity of Jesus and the Logos, but the Church's doctrine never changed its claim that Jesus was the Logos. Each of the first six ecumenical councils defined Jesus Christ as fully God and fully human, from the First Council of Nicea (325) to the Third Council of Constantinople (680–681). Christianity did not accept the Platonic argument that the spirit is good and the flesh is evil, and that therefore the man Jesus could not be God. Neither did it accept any of the Platonic beliefs that would have made Jesus something less than fully God and fully human at the same time. The original teaching of John's gospel is, "In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God. And the Logos became flesh and dwelt among us." The final Christology of Chalcedon (confirmed by the Third Council of Constantinople) was that Jesus Christ is both God and man, and that these two natures are inseparable, indivisible, unconfused, and unchangeable.

For Fausto Sozzini, Christ was the Logos, but he denied his pre existence; He was the Word of God as being His Interpreter (interpres divinae voluntatis). Nathaniel Lardner and Joseph Priestley considered the Logos a personification of God's wisdom.

The Koine Greek term logos is translated in the Vulgate with the Latin [[Dei verbum#Contents of Dei verbum. Both logos and verbum are used to translate דבר ([[dabar (Hebrew word)) in the Hebrew Bible. The translation of the last four words of John 1:1 (θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος) has been a particular topic of debate in Western Christianity in the modern period. The debate mostly centers over the usage of the article ὁ within the clause, where some have argued that the absence of the article before θεός ('God') makes it indefinite and should therefore result in the translation, "and the Word was a god". This translation can be found in the New World Translation of the Jehovah's Witnesses, and the Unitarian Thomas Belsham's 1808 revision of William Newcome's translation. Greek scholars such as Jason BeDuhn have also argued against the traditional translation, going as far as to state that:

Grammatically, John 1:1 is not a difficult verse to translate. It follows familiar, ordinary structures of Greek expression. A lexical (interlinear) translation of the controversial clause would read: "And a god was the Word." A minimal literal (formal equivalence) translation would rearrange the word order to match proper English expression: "And the Word was a god." The preponderance of evidence, from Greek grammar, from literary context, and from cultural environment, supports this translation, of which "the Word was divine" would be a slightly more polished variant carrying the same basic meaning. Both of these renderings are superior to the traditional translation which goes against these three key factors that guide accurate translation. The NASB, NIV, NRSV, and NAB follow the translation concocted by the KJV translators. This translation awaits a proper defense, since no obvious one emerges from Greek grammar, the literary context of John, or the cultural environment in which John is writing. (Jason BeDuhn, Truth in translation)

Others, ignoring the function of the article altogether, have proposed the translation, "and God was the Word", confusing subject and predicate. Colwell's rule dictates that in this construct, involving an equative verb as well as a predicate nominative in the emphatic position, the article serves to distinguish subject (the Word) from the predicate (God). In such a construction, the predicate, being in the emphatic position, is not to be considered indefinite. Therefore, the most common English translation is, "the Word was God", although even more emphatic translations such as "the Word was God Himself" (Amplified Bible) or "the Word  was truly God" (Contemporary English Version) also exist. According to the Eastern/Greek Orthodox Bible translation, "and the Word was [what] God [was]", the footnote for this verse explains the difficulty:This second theos could also be translated 'divine' as the construction indicates "a qualitative sense for theos". The Word is not God in the sense that he is the same person as the theos mentioned in 1:1a; he is not God the Father (God absolutely as in common NT usage) or the Trinity. The point being made is that the Logos is of the same uncreated nature or essence as God the Father, with whom he eternally exists. This verse is echoed in the Nicene Creed: "God (qualitative or derivative) from God (personal, the Father), Light from Light, True God from True God  homoousion with the Father." Although word is the most common translation of the noun logos, other less accepted translations have been used, which have more or less fallen by the grammatical wayside as understanding of the Greek language has increased in the Western world. Gordon Clark (1902–1985), for instance, a Calvinist theologian and expert on pre Socratic philosophy, famously translated logos as 'logic': "In the beginning was the Logic, and the Logic was with God and the Logic was God." He meant to imply by this translation that the laws of logic were derived from God and formed part of creation, and were therefore not a secular principle imposed on the Christian world view. Some other translations, such as An American Translation (1935) and Moffatt, New Translation, render it as "the Word was divine". The question of how to translate Logos is also treated in Goethe's Faust, with lead character Heinrich Faust finally opting for die Tat, ('deed' or 'action'). This interpretation owes itself to the Hebrew דָּבָר (dabar), which not only means 'word', but can also be understood as a deed or thing accomplished: that is, "the word is the highest and noblest function of man and is, for that reason, identical with his action. 'Word' and 'Deed' are thus not two different meanings of dabar, but the 'deed' is the consequence of the basic meaning inherent in dabar." The concept of Logos also appears in the Targums (Aramaic translations of the Hebrew Bible dating to the first centuries AD), where the term memra (Aramaic for 'word') is often used instead of 'the Lord', especially when referring to a manifestation of God that could be construed as anthropomorphic.