“Let me give you, then, a dream in return for a dream:-Methought that I too had a dream, and I heard in my dream that the primeval letters or elements out of which you and I and all other things are compounded, have no reason or explanation you can only name them, but no predicate can be either affirmed or denied of them, for in the one case existence, in the other non-existence is already implied, neither of which must be added, if you mean to speak of this or that thing by itself alone. In Plato’s Thaetatus, for example, “logos” is considered by Socrates to mean the description of a thing, including all the names given to it, concerning the question of what constitutes knowledge: This concept provided the basis for the Stoic ethical system. Those who were governed by passions and emotions, however, were thought to have turned away from the universal logos and to have become bestial in their behavior. By extension, the logos within human beings enabled them to move in harmony with the logos of the universe. This sense of logos was most fully developed by the Stoics, who taught that the universe was permeated with the logos that gave order and rationality to all things….There was a logos within each person (human reason) and a logos that pervaded the universe (a rationality that governs the universe). Heraclitus appears to have associated it with fire and to have linked it with reason in human beings.
Thus, the logos is the divine logic that gives order to the universe. While logos can be a very general term, meaning simply “word, account, explanation or thing,” the philosopher Heraclitus (c.535-475 B.C.) used it in the sense of an ordering principle for the universe. “The word logos, however, also had a rich tradition in Greek thought. The Archaeological Study Bible explains, concerning the Stoic logos spermatikos : For Greek philosophy, a sampling of uses and commentary will help to give a picture of the sense of the term. John uses the LXX generally in his Old Testament citations, the notion of “logos” was a common usage, given the diaspora and the prevalence of Koine Greek. In the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, the term is used to signify instances of “the word of the Lord.” By the time St. The term “logos” has a varied sense in the history of Greek language, signifying logic, mathematical principles, rhetoric, sentences, definitions, dialectic, propositions, etc., in Plato and Aristotle. John’s Prologue not only demonstrates crucial theological truths, it also elucidates truths concerning the doctrine of Creation as a recapitulation of the Genesis narrative, presupposing not only the deity of Christ, but also the traditional doctrine of Creation as a historic event. Christ’s assumption of human nature includes the raising of man’s rational faculty, as well as his soul and body, as the purifying of his nous sees Christ more clearly in all of created reality, leading to the direct vision of God, or theoria. The text is, in part, an apologetic and thus presupposes the usage of the faculty of man’s reasoning, especially since in Orthodox theology deification includes the totality of man’s being being healed and raised. John’s usage of the text as an apologia is a rebuke to those in schism in Protestant and evangelicalism, too.
As we will see, the dogmatic interpretation of this text is correct and demonstrates that only within Orthodox Tradition is the proper balance preserved – from both the empty speculations of unbelieving “scholarshIp” and the equally dangerous irrational, fideistic approach of many within the Church. The Prologue is not merely an apologetic against both Judaism and Hellenism, but in fact contains the totality of Orthodox Christology and Triadology in seed form. Indeed, while many have sought to read the Johannine Prologue as employing and utilizing Greek philosophical sources, the concept of both Logos (and “logoi”) are biblical concepts, though at times implicit. John’s usage of the term “Logos” has long been debated, yet forms a consistent pattern within the confines of Scripture. 3 All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.4 In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.”
“1 In the beginning was the Word (Logos), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
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