those Hellenists and Hellenistic Jews, on the one hand, who were vainly philosophizing on the relations of the finite and in- finite; to those investigators of the letter of the Scriptures, on the other, who speculated about the theocratic revelations, John said, by giving this name Logos to Jesus: ‘The unknown Me- diator between God and the world, the knowledge of whom you are striving after, we have seen, heard, and touched. Your philosophical speculations and your scriptural subtleties will never raise youto Him. Believe as we do in Jesus, and you will possess in Him that divine Revealer who engages your thoughts’ ” (Godet).
But John’s doctrine is not Philo’s, and does not depend upon it. The differences between the two are pronounced. Though both use the term Logos, they use it with utterly different meanings. In John it signifies word, as in Holy Scripture generally; in Philo, reason ; and that so distinctly that when Philo wishes to give it the meaning of word, he adds to it by way of explanation, the term pjya, word.
The nature of the being described by Logos is conceived by each in an entirely different spirit. John’s Logos is a person, with a consciousness of personal distinction; Philo’s is im- personal. His notion is indeterminate and fluctuating, shaped by the influence which happens to be operating at the time. Under the influence of Jewish documents he styles the Logos an “archangel;” under the influence of Plato, “the Idea of Ideas ;” of the Stoics, “ the impersonal Reason.” It is doubtful whether Philo ever meant to represent the Logos formally as a person. All the titles he gives it may be explained by supposing it to mean the ideal world on which the actual is modelled.
In Philo, moreover, the function of the Logos is confined to the creation and preservation of the universe. He does not identify or connect him with the Messiah. His doctrine was, to a great degree, a philosophical substitute for Messianic hopes. He may have conceived of the Word as acting through the Mes- siah, but not as one with him. He is a universal principle. In John the Messiah is the Logos himself, uniting himself with humanity, and clothing himself with a body in order to save the world.