What does Logos mean?

Robinrohan, That is true. But I think John's purpose is to show that what Christ is is what is needed by man because whatever man has has been damaged. Notice the phrase "And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it." (1:5) Here the darkness has a definite negative sense to it. Something is even opposing the light from shining.Even John the Baptist, a sure servant of God, is said not to be that light, but only to testify to it (1:8) The light enlightens every man who comes into the world. So if Reason is a possibility, John is saying whatever "reason" we come into the world with is darkness and even death.Receiving this Reason is a matter of it being born or begotten into a person (1:13). This lays the groundwork for John to convey the discussion about being born again in chapter 3. And Nicodemus was surely a reasonable and even upright man. Whatever he had could not compare to the Logos which he must receive into him by a second birth.This message has been edited by jaywill, 04-27-2006 09:18 AM

I suppose you are referring to the damage caused by the Fall? Not only man's moral sense but his reasoning abilities have been damaged. Or perhaps there's such a thing as "moral reasoning"?

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God does not "exist."---Paul Tillich, Christian theologian

Yes, dreadfully so.Man does have something like a break system. If he does apply the breaks he can regulate somewhat how much he slides down the path of his descent into corruption. If he does not apply his breaks he will descend lower and lower into corruption.This message has been edited by jaywill, 04-29-2006 04:32 PM

RevDG,I don't know if you'll see this response, but I've only now gotten around to looking up some of the references in your link at:Gospel of JohnIrenaeus actually quotes Ptolemaeus as making use of the Gospel of John, not Cerinthus, as I mistakenly said earlier. Irenaeus quotes quite a bit of the 1st chapter, and he gives the Valentinian (Ptolemaeus was a Valentinian, it appears) interpretation of that chapter. It doesn't sound like the Valentinians had any different version of John than Irenaeus did. They just interpreted it differently (very differently).Helms is quoted at the site as mentioning "...the oddity of people who purportedly deny that 'Jesus Christ came in the flesh' citing a gospel that declares 'the Word became flesh.'"I, personally, don't see how that's so odd. Surely we can look around and see how people interpret any text any way they want. They don't have to change the text to change the interpretation. Irenaeus says that Ptolemaeus expounds Jn 1:14 this way:

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[Ptolemaeus] styles him Son, and Aletheia [truth], and Zoe [life], and the "Word made flesh, whose glory," he says, "we beheld; and His glory was as that of the Only-begotten given to him by the Father, full of grace and truth."

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Irenaeus objects to the terminology "given to him by the Father," saying that John really said "of the Father." But otherwise, both he and Ptolemaeus seem to be quoting the same thing. There's a hundred ways, in my opinion, to quote that passage while still believing that neither the Word nor any other aeon was actually "made flesh," especially when you claim that all your teachings had to be passed on secretly, which was standard among gnostics.Anyway, looking at all this, I can't agree with Helms. We have no record of a different Gospel of John, so it seems speculation to suggest there used to be a different edition. No "orthodox/catholic" father suggests that the gnostics messed with the Gospel or had a different edition. Instead, Irenaeus gives gnostic interpretations of the edition we have.According to Epiphanius (in the 4th or 5th century), there were people claiming John was a gnostic work by Cerinthus, but they had to be referring to the edition we have, or he would have said they had an "edited" copy. It appears to me that the gnostics were doing just fine using the edition we have.Let me add, they used Paul as well. Irenaeus talks about the Valentinian interpretation of Paul's letters, but no one is saying there were other editions of Paul, except one--Marcion's. Marcion edited Paul, and we all know about that, and his edition is quoted, and the "catholics" accuse him of editing it.So, my thought is, modern gnostics will surely argue that the Gospel of John might have been produced by a gnostic section of the church, or even that the "John" who wrote it was a gnostic, but the argument that there was a different edition seems real unlikely to me.On the whole subject, in order to be honest, I have to point out that the most significant thing I see is that the Gospel of John is not quoted by Ignatius or Polycarp, who were appointed as elders by "the apostles," according to Papias, and by the apostle John specifically, according to tradition. There are clear quotes in Justin, c. AD 150, and we have a fragment of John from AD 120, but no quotes from Ignatius or Polycarp is significant. (Polycarp may quote 1 Jn at one point; it's a word for word quote, but it might not be a quote, just a statement that's the same.)If tradition is correct, and Polycarp and Ignatius were appointed by John, then it seems very unlikely that they both (especially Ignatius) would ignore an anti-gnostic Gospel written by their mentor. So either the tradition would have to be wrong, or the Gospel wasn't written by the apostle John.The whole things is so doggone complicated, because there's other issues. I don't see any indication that anyone before AD 150 would have considered apostolic writings Scripture. For example, the Letter of Barnabas, written probably right at AD 130, only quotes the OT as Scripture, though it does quote the NT, too. So quoting John's Gospel would not have necessarily been considered Scriptural proof of anything when they wrote their letters. Most Gospel quotes in that time period were given as "the Master said," not as though the Gospel being quoted was Scripture.No wonder scholars speculate so much. Sigh...

How do you think about Peter refering to Paul's letters apparently as Scripture which some people were twisting along with "the rest of the Scriptures?""... our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given to him, wrote to you, Also in all [his] letters, speaking in them concerning these things, in which some things are hard to understand, which the unlearned and unstable twist, as also the rest of the Scriptures ..." (See 2 Peter 3,15,16)Do you think that the phrase "the rest of the Scriptures" indicates that the Apostle Peter considered at least some of Paul's letters Scripture?

Exactly! There were so many influences going on in the Roman Empire of those early centuries and the documentary record is so incomplete that I think we just don't know and short of excavating some hidden well preserved complete library we'll never know.People have their needs and their milieus and will interpret these books to fit their preference. That is to be expected. This is why I don't believe any religion is revealed. I'm interested in understanding which is a less literal approach to being.On the other hand it is an interesting journey through intellectual history to try and track these notions down.lfen

Hello to everyone! I went through what has been posted so far and I have something to say. I am Greek and the word that is used by John is "" which means "the one and only son". The word "‘" has the following meanings in english: just, mere, nothing but, nothing sort of, only, solely. The "" part comes from the word bear.

please see message 67!

What do you mean by "with the way greek is limited"? You are talking about one of the richest languages in the world. Please explain further in case I have not understood well what you are saying.

Welcome. I look forward to your contributions on the subject.I believe that it was under God's soverieghty that He chose such a rich language to convey the crucial gospel message of the New Testament.

I forgot about this. I don't think too many scholars think Peter wrote 2 Peter, but whether he wrote it or not, it's certainly early enough to apply to what I said. It's definitely referring to Paul's letters as Scripture.

I found this last night. It seemed interesting on the topic of what Logos means. This is very typical of early Christian writing.

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That we are not atheists, therefore, seeing that we acknowledge one God...by whom the universe has been created through His Logos...I have sufficiently demonstrated. [I say "His Logos"], for we acknowledge also a Son of God. Nor let any one think it ridiculous that God should have a Son....the Son of God is the Logos of the Father, in idea and in operation; for after the pattern of Him and by Him were all things made, the Father and the Son being one. And, the Son being in the Father and the Father in the Son, in oneness and power of spirit, the understanding and reason (nous kai logos) of the Father is the Son of God. But if, in your surpassing intelligence [this is not sarcastic, it's written to the emperor, whom Athenagoras praises as a thinker and philosopher] it occurs to you to inquire what is meant by the Son, I will state briefly that He is the first product of the Father, not as having been brought into existence (for from the beginning, God, who is the eternal mind (nous) had the Logos in Himself, being from eternity instinct with Logos (logikos); but inasmuch as He came forth to be the idea and energizing power of all material things...The prophetic Spirit also agrees with our statements. "The Lord," it says, "made me, the beginning of His ways to His works."

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That's from A Plea for the Christians by Athenagoras, written in AD 177.Here's a very similar passage a couple decades later from Tertullian in Against Praxeas (ch. 5). This is kind of long, because he has so much to say on logos, reason, and word, it seemed worth posting it all. I bolded the part that directly discusses the interpretation of the word "Logos."

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For before all things God was alone...He was alone, because there was nothing external to Him but Himself. Yet even not then was He alone; for He had with Him that which He possessed in Himself, that is to say, His own Reason [Latin - rationalis]. For God is rational, and Reason was first in Him; and so all things were from Himself. This Reason is His own Thought (or Consciousness) which the Greeks call logos, by which term we also designate Word or Discourse and therefore it is now usual with our people, owing to the mere simple interpretation of the term, to say that the Word [latin, sermonen] was in the beginning with God; although it would be more suitable to regard Reason as the more ancient; because God had not Word from the beginning, but He had Reason even before the beginning; because also Word itself consists of Reason...Not that this distinction is of any practical moment. For although God had not yet sent out His Word, He still had Him within Himself, both in company with and included within His very Reason, as He silently planned and arranged within Himself everything which He was afterwards about to utter through His Word. Now, whilst He was thus planning and arranging with His own Reason, He was actually causing that to become Word which He was dealing with in the way of Word or Discourse. And that you may the more readily understand this, consider first of all, from your own self, who are made "in the image and likeness of God," for what purpose it is that you also possess reason in yourself, who are a rational creature, as being not only made by a rational Artificer, but actually animated out of His substance. Observe, then, that when you are silently conversing with yourself, this very process is carried on within you by your reason, which meets you with a word at every movement of your thought, at every impulse of your conception. Whatever you think, there is a word; whatever you conceive, there is reason. You must needs speak it in your mind; and while you are speaking, you admit speech as an interlocutor with you, involved in which there is this very reason, whereby, while in thought you are holding converse with your word, you are (by reciprocal action) producing thought by means of that converse with your word. Thus, in a certain sense, the word is a second person within you, through which in thinking you utter speech, and through which also, (by reciprocity of process,) in uttering speech you generate thought. The word is itself a different thing from yourself. Now how much more fully is all this transacted in God, whose image and likeness even you are regarded as being, inasmuch as He has reason within Himself even while He is silent, and involved in that Reason His Word! I may therefore without rashness first lay this down (as a fixed principle) that even then before the creation of the universe God was not alone, since He had within Himself both Reason, and, inherent in Reason, His Word, which He made second to Himself by agitating it within Himself.

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Whew, rough reading, but if a person really wants to look at the word Logos, and how it was applied in the church, and whether it should be reason or word or something else, it would be worth grasping Tertullian's explanation of the difference between reason and word. Notice that he says it is Reason that the Greeks call Logos and that Word is what is "now usual" owing to the "mere interpretation of the term."

This is similar to what I quoted from Matthew Henry in Message 60

To me the word of God is all those things.The word, "word" is mentioned 962 times in the bible. A quick glance at all the times it was used, and a lot of it refers to the word of God, or God's holy word, etc.When you give someone your "word" it is usually more than just a word.word up.