(6.) Liicke concludes that, such being the develop- ment of the doctrine of the Logos when John wrote, al- though there is no evidence that he borrowed his views from Philo, yet it is impossible to doubt the direct his- torical connection of his doctrine with the Alexandrian. jMeyer thinks that if we suppose John's doctrine entire- ly unconnected with the Jewish and Alexandrian phi- losophy, we destroy its historic meaning, and its intelli- gibleness for its readers. It must be admitted that the term Logos seems to be chosen as already associated iu
LOGOS
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LOHE
many minds with a class of ideas in some degree akin to the writer's, and as furnishing a common point of tliouglit and interest with tliose speculative idealists ulm constantly used it while presenting them with new trutli.
(7.) But any connection amounting to doctrinal de- peiuknce of John upon Philo is utterly contrary to the tenor of Philo's own teaching; for he even loses the crowning feature of Hebrew religion, the moral energy expressed in its view of Jehovah's holiness, and with it the moral necessity of a divine teacher and Saviour. He becomes entangled in the physical notions of the heathen, forgets the wide distinction between God and the world, and even denies the independent, absolute being of God, declaring that, were the universe to end, God would die of loneliness and inactivity. The very universality of the conception, its immediate working on all things, would have excluded to Philo the belief that the whole Lo(jos, not a mere part or effluence of his power, became incarnate in Christ. "Heaven and earth cannot contain me," cries his Logos, " how muck less a hum in btiuf/.'' On the whole, it is extremely doubtful whether I'hilo ever meant formally to repre- sent the Logos as a person distinct from God. All the titles he gives it may be explained by supposing it to mean the ideal world, on which the actual is modelled. At most, we can say that he goes beyond a mere poetic personification, and prepares the way for a distinction of persons in the Godhead. See Philo.
(8.) John's connection with the doctrines of the later Jews, though less noticed, is at least as important as that with Philo. In the apocryphal books, as we have seen, the idea of the Logos was overshadowed by that of the divine Wisdom; but it reappears, jirominently and def- initely, in the Targums, especially that of Onkelos. Tliese were written, indeed, after John's Gospel (Onke- los, the earliest, wrote not later than the '2d century A.D.), yet their distinguishing doctrines certainly rest upon ancient tradition. They represent the Word of God, the Memrah, iTiTS^^ or Dihur, TlHI, as the per- sonal self-revealed God, and one with the Shekinah, HD'^D":?, which was to be manifested in Messiah. But it would be absurd to claim that John borrowed his idea of Jlessiah from the Jews, who in him looked for, not a spiritual revelation of God in clearer light, to save men from sin by suffering and love, but a national deliverer, to gratify their worldly and carnal desires of power; not even for the divine Word become Jksh, and dwell- ing among men, but for an appearance, a vision, a mere display, or, at most, an unreal, docetic humanity.
(9.) The contrast between John's Logos and Philo's appears in several further particulars. The Logos here is the real personal God, the Word; who did not begin to be when Christ came, but was originally, before the creation, " with God, and was God." He made idl things (ver. 3). Philo held to the original independent exist- ence of matter, the stujf, v\i], of the world, before it was framed. John's Logos is holy light, which shines in moral darkness, though rejected by it. Philo has no such height of mournful insight as this. This Logos became man in the person of Christ, the Son of God. Philo conceives of no incarnation. Thus John's lofty doctrine of the Messiah is not in any way derived from Jewish or (inostic speculations, but rests partly on pure (Jhl-Testament doctrine, and chieliy on what he learned from Christ liimself. His testimony to this forms the historical part of his Gospel.
3. Theological Bearing of the Term The word '• Lo- gos" is therefore evidently '• employe<l bj^ the evangelist John to designate the mediatorial character of our Re- deemer, with special reference to his revelation of the character and will of tlie Fathij. It appears to be used as an abstract for the concrete, just as we find the same writer employing light for enlightener, life for life-giver, etc.; so that it ])roperh' signities the speaker or inter- pretcr, than which nothing can more exactly accord
with the statement made (John i, 18), 'No man hath seen God at any time; the only-begotten, who is in the bosom of the Father, hath declared him,' i. e. communi- cated to us the true knowledge of his mind and charac- ter. That the term is merely expressive of a divine at- tribute, a position which has been long and variously maintained by Socinians, though abandoned as untena- ble by some of their best authorities, is in total repug- nance to all the circumstances of the context, which distinctly and expressly require personal subsistence in the subject which it describes. He whom John styles the Logos has the creation of all things ascribed to him ; is set forth as possessing the country and people of the Jews ; as the only-begotten (Son) of the Father ; as as- suming the human nature, and displaying in it the at- tributes of grace and truth, etc. Such things could never, with the least degree of propriety, be said of any mere attribute or quality. Nor is the hypothesis of a personification to be reconciled with the universally ad- mitted fact that the style of John is the most simply historical, and the furthest removed from that species of composition to which such a figure of speech proper- ly belongs. To the Logos the apostle attributes eter- nal existence, distinct personality, and strict and proper Deity — characters which he also ascribes to him in his first epistle — besides the possession and exercise of per- fections which absolutely exclude the idea of derived or created being" (Buck, s. v.). See Chhistology.