ALOGOI

The name given to heretics who denied the divinity of Christ as the Logos, as in St. John's Gospel, Epistles, and the Apocalypse. They were first named by epiphanius of constantia (Panarion 51; Ancor. 13.5). They were mentioned by irenaeus (Adv. haer. 3.11. 9–17) as Montanists misusing the Johannine teaching on the Paraclete. Eusebius (Hist. eccl. 3.28.1) and Hippolytus (Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte 1.2:241–247) described the Roman priest Gaius in the reign of Pope zephyrinus (199–217) as attributing the Johannine writings to the Gnostic Cerinthus. A type of enthusiastic spirituality, the Alogoi doctrine was current in the West in the 2nd and 3rd centuries; the necessity of defending the Johannine writings then is evident in Hippolytus and the muratorian canon (lines 16–26). The name Alogoi has a double meaning: men denying the Logos, and lacking reason.

Bibliography: a. grillmeier, Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, 10 v. (2d, new ed. Freiburg 1957–65) 1:363–364. c. schmidt and j. waynberg, eds. and trs., Gespräche Jesu (Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur 3d ser. 13; 1919) 420–452. a. bludau, Die ersten Gegner der Johannesschriften (Biblische Studien 22; Fribourg 1925). g. bareille, Dictionnaire de théologie catholique 1.1:898–901. a. wikenhauser, Einleitung in das Neue Testament (3d ed. Freiburg 1959).

[f. x. murphy]