LOGOS

The word Logos (λόγος) has various meanings in Greek: reckoning, account, explanation, reason, narrative, saying, term, word, etc. But it is the use of this word in the expression, λόγος θεο[symbol omitted], "Word of God," as employed in the Johannine writings of the New Testament, that makes it a term of prime theological significance.

1. In the Bible

For a better understanding of this term as used by St. John it is necessary to begin with a consideration of its similar usage in the works of philo judaeus, who preceded the author of the Fourth Gospel in the employment of this expression.

Logos in Philo. Like most of his thought, Philo's theory of the Logos was a combination of Biblical and Greco-philosophic themes. The developing poetical personification of the word of god in the Old Testament [cf. Ps 32 (33).4, 6; 106 (107).20; 147 (147B).15; Wisdom 18.15–16] was the basis for his synthesis. This Biblical personification was augmented in the Targums of the post-Biblical period, works whose contents go back far into the Old Testament oral traditions. In these homiletically expanded translations of the Old Testament the term Memra (Aram. memrā’, corresponding to Heb. dābār, "word") was often used as a synonym for the divine name Yahweh. Originally, this was intended to safeguard the transcendence of the divine name, especially when this was used in anthropomorphic contexts. [see anthropomorphism (in the bible).] Thus the Targum of Genesis 3.8 says that Adam and Eve, "heard the sound of the Memra walking in the garden." From this use of Memra for Yahweh's anthropomorphic seeing, hearing, feeling, becoming angered, etc., the Memra becomes a poetic intermediary between Yahweh and His people. The result is that from its usage as a word created to guard the divine transcendence, it becomes a term that intensifies the divine immanence. The Memra becomes God's instrument in creation and in history, and in the ruling of both. Here the theme of personified Word and personified Memra meet and unite. It is difficult to decide the exact line between poetics and metaphysics in these personifications.

Thus Philo would have found the poetic personification of the word (dābār ) of Yahweh not only in the Old Testament itself, but united with the rabbinical theories on the Memra in contemporary Judaic tradition. This supplied the Biblical stratum for Philo's theories on the Logos. The Greco-philosophic concept was a combination of the Logos of Heraclitus and the Stoics with the idea world of Plato; it is no wonder that the Logos theory of Philo defies organization into perfectly coherent unity.

Logos as Image of God. The Platonic thesis of the idea world was equated by Philo with the Logos. Plato considered the visible, sensible world an image (εἰκών) of the idea world (Timaeus 92); Philo knew from Genesis1.26 that man was created "according to the image" (κατ' εἰκόνα) of God and he took this to mean that man was the image of the Image (εἰκὼν εἰκόνος) of God. The Image, then, must be the Logos (De opificio mundi 25). This understanding of the Logos as Image of God seems to be accepted by Philo as a first principle, and this is his ordinary way of describing the relation of the Logos with God: "the Image of God is the Logos through whom the whole universe was framed" (De specialibus legibus 1.81); "the divine Logos is Himself the Image of God, chiefest of all beings intellectually perceived, placed nearest, with no intermediary distance, to the truly Existent One" (De fuga et inventione 101); "it well befits those who have entered into comradeship with knowledge to desire to see the Existent if they may, but, if they cannot, to see at least his Image, the most holy Logos" (De confusione linguarum 97). The Logos, then, is the Image of God; it is the personified divine Reason binding creation to the divine.

Logos Image as Wisdom. At times Wisdom (σοφία) seems greater than Logos (De fug. et inv. 109; legum allegoriae 1.65; 2.49; De somniis 2.242); at other times Logos seems superior to Wisdom (De fug. et inv. 97). In reality, however, Logos and Wisdom are but two terms for the same divine Reason as intermediary for creation (Leg. all. 2.86; De fug. et inv. 51, 101; De migratione Abrahami 40 and De som. 185; De fug. et inv. 109 and De cherubim 125–127; De con. ling. 146 and Leg. all. 1.43). Logos is Wisdom, but this latter term is more "feminine" and can be used for divine Reason in a receptive role, e.g., as mother of creation (De fug. et inv. 109; Leg. all. 2.49).

Logos Image as Divine "Man." In an allegory on Genesis 42.11 Philo explains, "You have all enrolled yourselves as children of one and the same Father, who is not mortal but immortal—God's man, who being the Logos of the eternal…" (De con. ling. 41). In another allegory, on Zechariah 6.12, he identifies the "man" with "the Incorporeal One who differs not a bit from the divine Image" (ibid., 62). Thus the Logos who is the Image of God, the personified divine Reason (νο[symbol omitted]ς), can also be called Wisdom (σοφία) and Man (ἄνθρωπος), divine Man.

Logos Image and the World. The same Logos who is Image (εἰκ[symbol omitted]ν) with regard to God is Model (παράδειγμα) in relation to the sensible world (κόσμος). The Platonic theory that the sensible world is the visible image of the idea world (De con. ling. 172) is incorporated into Philo's synthesis by the equation of the Logos and the idea world: "the world discerned only by the intellect is nothing else than the Word of God when He was already engaged in the act of creation" (De op. mun. 15–25). Thus, for Philo, the material universe is the image of the Logos, which is itself the Image of God.

Logos Image and Mankind. Since the world is the image of the Logos, what of man who is himself part of this world? Man has reason (νο[symbol omitted]ς), whereby he is a very special part of the universe. This reason of man's, "which is in the true sense and full sense man, is the image of the Logos, the cast, as it were, of the Image of God" (Quis reum divinarum Heres 230–31; cf., De fug. et inv. 68; De op. mun. 69). Whatever the term used for man's reason, whether νο[symbol omitted]ς, or λόγος, or Ψυχή, or some of their derivatives, it is always through this faculty that man is the image of the Logos (Quod det. pot. insid. sol 82–84; De fug. et inv. 69; Quis rer. div. Her. 234; De mutatione nominis 223; De spec. leg. 1.171; Leg. all. 3.95; De spec. leg. 1.81; 3.207; De plantatione 5). It is here that Philo's Biblical conceptions seem to break through his philosophical framework. At times the Logos intermediary fades from the picture and man becomes directly the Image of God by himself (De spec. leg. 3.207; De somniis 1.74; Quod. det. pot. insid. sol 82–83; De decalogo 134). It should be noted that this is never said of the world itself, but only of man.

For Philo, then, the Logos is the poetic personification of divine Reason, the Image of God. Logos is also termed, at times, divine Wisdom and divine Man. The sensible world is the image of the Logos as the creational mind of God, but this point is not too fully developed by Philo; it was possibly too un-Biblical. Finally, man, through his reason, is the image of the Logos, which is divine Reason; it is reason that makes man most perfectly and fully man. Philo's Biblical heritage, however, often makes him ignore the Logos's role in this last point, and he speaks of man as the Image of God Himself.

Logos in St. John. The term Logos appears as a technical term in the Johannine writings. Leaving aside the detailed problems of authorship, it will be here presumed that Revelation, 1 John, and John stem from the same theological mentality and may be studied together.

Logos in Revelation 19.13. The general context of this passage is the eschatological judgment (19.11–21;20.7–15) and salvation (21.1–22.5) of mankind. The judgment is shown as a battle (19.11–21; 20.7–10), after which sentence of condemnation is passed on the vanquished evildoers (20.11–15). In this battle the forces of the just are led by a Rider on a white horse among whose many names is that of "The Logos of God." This vision is of Christ as the eschatological Victor and Judge. It is obvious that the title Logos in such a context owes nothing to Philo. It is also clear from the description of the Rider in Revelation 19.11–16 that the seer bases his vision on the Old Testament conception of the Logos of Yahweh as an avenging force in history. The destruction of Egypt, whereby Israel was liberated from bondage (Ex 12.23), was later described (Wisdom 18.14–16) as a visitation of the wrathful Logos of God—the Logos as sword of Yahweh (see also Rv 19.15 and 1 Chr 21.16). Thus, the Old Testament theme of God's judgment and God's visitation in wrath (Is 11.4; Ps 2.9) is here given to the Logos as eschatological Victor and Judge. The Logos of God exterminates the unjust.

Logos in 1 John. The problem of chronological sequence of 1 John and John is still disputed; for the present purpose, it is presumed that 1 John preceded John. The prologue of the Epistle describes Christ as the "Logos of life." This sudden and unexplained title probably means that the first readers of 1 John were already familiar with the oral catechesis that lay behind the later writing of John 1.1–18. In Deuteronomy the Law was preached as a source and way of life, and at times it was simply termed "the word" (dābār: 4.1–2; 32.47). The revelation of Yahweh in the Law was the word that gave life to Israel; so 1 John sees the incarnate Christ as the full and perfect revelation and communication of divine life to mankind (1 Jn 1.2; 5.20; Jn 14.6; see also Jn 1.17). The Logos of God vivifies the just.

Logos in John 1.1–18. In his magnificent prologue John mentions the Logos four times under this title; the term is used here without any genitival qualifications. The functions of the Logos as eschatological avenger (Revelation) and as revelatory vivifier (1 John) are here overshadowed as the Logos appears in the fullness of both being and function.

In the Old Testament the hymns to personified Wisdom in the sapiential literature followed a three-point schema: Wisdom was with God from all eternity; Wisdom was with God at creation; Wisdom has come down with gifts to mankind (Prv 8.22–35; Sir 1.1–35; 24.5–31; Wis 9.9–12). In John 1.1–18 the Logos is described in this same pattern except that it is done in inverse parallelism: the Word with God (1–2, 18); the Word at the old and new creation (3, 17); the gifts that the Word brings to men, centered on divine sonship through the Incarnation (4–16). But despite the Wisdom framework, John terms Christ the Logos and not the Wisdom of God. In this, John is reverting to the earlier word-of-Yahweh theology of the Old Testament while including in the term all the activity in creation and history attributed to Wisdom in the sapiential books.

The Logos appears immediately as eternal, already existing when God came to create the world. He was both distinct from the Father ("with God," where the divine name has the definite article, ὁ θεός) and yet one with God ("was God," where God, θεός, lacks the definite article). The Logos's preexistent divine being is at the height of the descent that terminates in the Logos becoming flesh and giving to the people of God a new Tent in which the divine can dwell (1.14).

Logos in Philo and in St. John. One can hardly state that John did not know the thought of Philo on the Logos; yet it is equally difficult to show any real dependence on it or influence from it. The two syntheses described above have their common roots deep in Biblical and rabbinical thinking on the word and the Memra of God, and this is sufficient to explain their similarities. Their differences arise from the fact that Philo depends on Plato to help him develop the theme of the Logos, whereas John develops the theme from what the Spirit reminds him concerning what he had heard, seen, and felt of the Logos become flesh.

Bibliography: philo judaeus, Philo, tr. f. h. colson and g.h. whitaker, 10 v. (Loeb Classical Library; London-New York-Cambridge, Mass. 1929–62). É. brÉhier, Les Idées philosophiques et religieuses de Philon d'Alexandrie (2d ed. Paris 1925). m. e. boismard, St. John's Prologue, tr. Carisbrooke Dominicans (Westminster, Maryland 1957). j. starcky, Dictionnaire de la Bible, suppl. ed. l. pirot et al. (Paris 1928–) 5:465–75, 479–96. Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Bible, tr. and adap. by l. hartman (New York 1963), from a. van den born, Bijbels Woordenboek 1364–68.

[d. m. crossan]

2. Theology of

Because it is decidedly Trinitarian in its historical and logical implications, the present question is intimately connected with christology as well (see god [son]). By way of an introductory definition, the latter may be taken to designate a particular way of understanding and expressing the reality-activity of Jesus of Nazareth—this in terms of a definite function attributed to Him; in the present case, that of Logos, or Word. To view Him in such a perspective is to adopt a frame of reference that was originally Biblical, however much it may have been developed in the course of subsequent Christian thought. Consequently, the proclamation of Jesus as the preexisting, divine, creative Logos on the part of the postapostolic Church had its source not directly and certainly, not exclusively in Hellenistic philosophy but rather in the Jewish-Christian Scriptures. The development of this faith and its understanding in the long ages of meditation on the mystery of God's Word is the subject under consideration here; in other words, the theology of the Logos in the postapostolic Church.

Precondition. The diversity found in the ways Jesus is presented in the New Testament is a fact. One of those Christic theologies—indeed a most important one—is that of the Logos. Preexistent and intimately related to the Father eternally; divine; the Guide or Word of all creation; incarnate among men in time—such is Jesus as Logos according to the Scriptures, especially in the Johannine corpus (Jn ch. 1; 1 Jn ch. 1).

Faith in Jesus—which was also faith concerning Jesus—was formulated in diverse, if mutually compatible, ways within the New Testament, that of the Logos being numbered among them. In view of this, one might consider antecedently probable the occurrence of a similar situation in later times as well. Such was in fact the case.

Of relevance here are such efforts insofar as they terminated in new modes of presenting the Logos doctrine and its implications. These were attempts on the part of individuals or the magisterium to express the same Biblical faith concerning Jesus in terms more immediately familiar to men of post-Biblical times. Implicit in the whole phenomenon were a consciousness and conviction on the part of the Church. It was aware that its mission to preach the one gospel of and concerning Jesus to all men would entail retaining its truth undiluted, though adapted to vastly different mentalities. The Church also came to the conviction that professing the faith in union with all other believers no more involved the necessity of adopting a particular philosophical system than it involved the necessity of conforming one's eating habits to certain dietary prescriptions of the Mosaic Law.

Realization as Continuation. A most noteworthy characteristic found in the early theology of the Logos was that it involved the homogeneous development of a Biblical truth. If in the New Testament Jesus as Logos had truly transcendent qualities, He was nevertheless presented as very much endowed with a cosmic function at once illuminative and productive (see word, the). His preexistence with the Father was clearly asserted, but even more in focus were the implications this had regarding the entire universe in its relation of dependence on Him. In this, the scriptural perspective was one of transient or functional interpersonalism. It was this aspect that was elaborated further when Christian apologists came into contact with an intellectual milieu concerned with a logos as the explanation of all order and rationality in the world.

Striking evidence of this is present in the ideological connection they made between the creative word of Elohim in the first chapter of Genesis and Jesus as Logos in the prologue of the Fourth Gospel [Theophilus of Antioch, Autol. 2.10, Patrologia Graeca, ed. J. P. Migne, 6:1066; Tatian, Orat. 5, Patrologia Graeca 6:814–818; Justin, Dial. 61, Patrologia Graeca 6:614–615; Justin, 2 Apol. 6, Patrologia Graeca 6:454; Tertullian, Adv. Praxean 5, Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorum 47:232–33; Clement of Alexandria, Str. 6.7.58.1, Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte (Stählin) 461; Clement of Alexandria, Str. 6.5.39.2, Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte 451; Origen, Hom. 1 in Gen. 1, Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte (Baehrens) 6.1:1–10]. The grammatical and exegetical presuppositions this involved were commented on by later Fathers too (Hilary, Tract. in Psalm. 2, Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorum 22.2:39; Jerome, Liber heb. quaest. in Gen. 1.1, Corpus Christianorum. Series latina 67: 3).

It was a common thing for such writers to distinguish between the eternal reason or mental word of God and its external utterance (Theophilus in the place cited; Justin in the place cited in the Dial.; Tertullian in Adv. Praxean 6–8, Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorum 47:233 and following; Hippolytus, Noët. 10, Patrologia Graeca 10:818). Here one cannot but note the definite resemblance with the λόγος ἑνδιάθετος-προφορικός of contemporary philosophy, particularly Stoicism. The immanent procession of the Logos in the Godhead and His temporal mission are closely connected; the creativeredemptive οἰκονομία is not divorced from that within the Deity. If the unified picture thus obtained is a decided advantage, there is a difficulty as well. Saving cosmic process threatens to become a necessary element in the divine origin of the Logos. Such theological endeavors were not enthusiastically received by all even at the time (Irenaeus, Haer. 2.28.6; Harvey 1:355).

In effect, these efforts to describe the origin of the Logos from the Father were motivated by a desire to win a sympathetic hearing for the faith. Despite its mysterious character, the doctrine of Jesus as Logos was not without any affinity with elements of non-Christian thought prevalent at the time. There was a willingness on the part of the Fathers in question to search out examples or images from daily life to show that the origin of the Logos from God the Father (ὁ θεός) was not totally unlike anything man could encounter in the world of his experience. In this way one understands better the intention behind their use of such images as the origin of the external word by which man expresses one already in his mind and also the case of the fire giving rise to another without diminution on its own part.

To put it another way, these Fathers used natural analogues to illustrate one aspect of the Jesus-Logos profession—His distinction from the Father and His creativeilluminative-redemptive relation to the world from the very beginning. Examples from the realm of created being could not but limp when applied to the clarification of a mysterious communication of life from Father to Son-Logos in the Godhead. In this case, the distinction between an eternal word in the mind of God and one uttered in time could be understood to make the Logos temporal in the strict sense and therefore not equal to the Father. Such a procedure errs on two counts.

First, it attributes to the writers in question the intention of doing a great deal more than offering helps to understand the meaning and implications of the faith concerning Jesus-Logos. It assumes they thought they had discovered the real equivalent of this mystery in the everyday life of man. There is not the slightest indication that this was the case; they distinguished between this faith and their attempts to render it more intelligible [Justin, Dial. 48, Patrologia Graeca 6:579, 582; Tertullian, De praescr. haer. 7.12–13, Corpus Christianorum. Series latina 1:193; Origen, Princ., praef., 2–4, Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte (Koetschau) 5:8–10]. Second, it also takes for granted that these Fathers, besides considering their examples completely adequate, saw as well and immediately the consequences to which the latter would lead. In this case that would amount to the temporal generation of the Son, or utterance of the Word. Such a view is clearly anachronistic.

It also overlooks the fact that these same authors insisted on the Word-Son's equality in dignity with the Father [Justin, 1 Apol. 63, Patrologia Graeca 6:426; Athenagoras, Leg. 10, Patrologia Graeca 6:907, 910; Theophilus, Autol. 2.22, Patrologia Graeca 6:1087; Origen, Princ. 5, Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte (Koetschau) 5: 10]. In other words, neither of the two Biblical poles indicating the mystery of Christ as Logos was forgotten. It was very difficult to find the formula to express both simultaneously; emphatic assertion of one seemed to exclude the other. The distinct character of the Logos-Son was presented by use of such examples; His divinity was not for that fact being questioned—at least according to the intent of the authors involved. It may be another question to ask whether there is objective compatibility between the assertion that the Word is not fully generated as Son until time begins and that He is nevertheless always God in the full sense. The way one understands what is meant by God will have much to do with determining the answer. It has been suggested that a philosophical theory of participation (the Logos being God by sharing in the Father's substance) and an intellectual attitude at once realist and acritical (permitting partial appropriation of the divine reality by the Word-Son) may have influenced men such as Origen and Tertullian respectively in the systematic replies they gave [B. Lonergan, De Deo Trino 1: Pars dogmatica (Rome 1964) 45–48, 54–62, 93]. One thing is sure: this era of Christian thought included efforts to achieve a limited understanding of the Biblical doctrine of the Logos as dependent on the Father. Involved was a willingness to use a non-Biblical distinction between immanent word in God's mind and Son or Logos arising fully with reference to creation. Nor is there any doubt that in the minds of those who so reasoned, this was compatible with asserting the transcendence-divinity of the Word.

Realization as Diversity of Perspective. Even in noting the definite continuity the postapostolic theology of the Logos has with the Biblical presentation, one sees that marked differences have appeared as well. The most obvious is this: a growing preoccupation with preexistence. This was definitely among the Biblical data, but there the reason for its introduction was the central, temporal function of the Word. It was almost as if to say that what the Logos incarnate does for man in time is only one part of the truth; that with the Father He has actually been preparing for this from all eternity. That prior state of existence becomes very much the center of attention as Christian reflection on the mystery increases. This was a logical development; it is perfectly understandable that in a culture very much concerned with the supertemporal, the pretemporal aspect of Christ would come sharply into focus.

To put this more concretely, the contrast between the relation of the Logos to the Father and that of other realities (τὰ πάντα) to the same Father became an object of direct concern. That such a contrast exists and is Biblical, there can be no doubt. How it is to be accurately expressed is something else. Sooner or later someone was bound to ask the question whether Jesus in His preexistent state was God or creature in the strict sense. If the first, then the Logos might seem to be no more than another name for the Father (modalism), and no real dependence of Jesus on the Father could antedate the Incarnation. Then, too, it would be the Father who suffered (patripassianism), or else merely the man Jesus, no more a son than the rest of His followers (adoptionism). But if the second, then assertions that before His human birth He was as Logos equal to the Father would appear to be mistaken piety and in reality blasphemous. Such a mode of considering Jesus-Logos was expressed most explicitly and forcibly in the 4th century by arius (see arianism). One major difficulty was that he and his followers accepted the entire New Testament. This made it difficult for bishops such as Alexander and later St. athanasius to show them that asserting the creaturehood of the Logos was at variance with the apostolic faith.

Frustrated and not entirely happy with the alternative such circumstances forced them to accept, the Catholic bishops at the Council of nicaea i introduced into the structure of a preexisting creed elements asserting the divinity of the Son. He is begotten and not made (in counterdistinction to the invisible beings proposed as made by the Father), originating from the latter's own being and not from something else or from nothing, consubstantial[H. Denzinger, Enchiridion symbolorum, ed. A. Schönmetzer, 125–26; cf. Ortiz de Urbina, El símbolo niceno (Madrid 1947) 25–61]. No one can deny that this dogmatic formulation deals with an aspect of the mystery of Jesus as Logos; nor can there be serious question that it views His preexistence in a new frame of reference. The assertions of the Creed of Nicaea I were made contingently in history because of the Arian challenge. They would, however, have been true of the Logos-Son in relation to the Father whether or not there was ever a world to create, sustain, redeem. This is a definitely new turn in the exposition of the Logos doctrine.

Nature of the Development in Question. The aim of the present study is not to discuss the nature of dogmatic development in general. Still, to ask what precisely took place in this transformation is hardly something indifferent in a consideration of Logos theology.

The first thing is that the progress from the Bible to Nicaea I cannot be reduced to one of deducing a conciliar conclusion from scriptural premises. That is not to say that any laws of deductive reasoning are violated; they are not. But the phenomenon in question was simply not an example of that sort of thought process. This should be clear from the fact that the assertion that would serve as conclusion (conciliar definition of consubstantiality) views Jesus as Son-Logos in a very different frame of reference than is the case with strictly Biblical premises. This would be very much like having four terms in a syllogism. To put it more concretely, the Bible sees Jesus as Logos related to the Father before time—His divinity appears there insofar as He is, in His activity, on the Father's side of the dichotomy between God and τὰ πάντα. In terms of creative function rather than strict metaphysical identity of nature, He is associated with the Father. To speak of a unity of being involving consubstantiality may very well be an equivalent way of stating this doctrine. It is not, however, to remain within the Biblical perspective or frame of reference, nor is it to come to a logical conclusion from two strictly Biblical premises. It is to see the compatibility of what is said about Jesus in relation to the Father in the scriptural exposition with that which the Council of Nicaea I asserts. The former is in terms of function regarding men and their salvation; the latter deals rather with being in a manner that more closely approximates the systematic and metaphysical.

Clearly a cultural transformation is involved as well. The Semitic becomes Hellenistic. Still the relation of the Logos to the Father was created by neither though variously expressed by each. It was presupposed by both and was there to be formulated in different but non-exclusive ways. The development in question implied more than a change from one culture to another. Consequently, the truth communicated by both will remain when they have left no more than traces of themselves in human history. When man in a religion based on a real divine revelation attempts to theologize, he makes use of the cultural instruments within his reach. What happened in this case was that a Greek culture served to express the answer to a question inspired by a Greek mentality about a revealed relation between Logos and Father. That there are abundant traces of the Hellenistic Weltanschauung in the reply should come as no surprise. One has only to recall that recourse to such a mode of thought and expression was had by the Church because a real question about the faith did not seem to be answerable otherwise at the time.

In comparing the doctrine of Jesus as Logos-Son in Bible and conciliar documents of the 4th and 5th centuries, it may serve a useful purpose to say that the same relation is viewed from two different perspectives. In the first the mode of presentation is concrete and historical; the other is systematic, abstracted from and contrasted to cosmic process, and much closer to what could be termed logical-metaphysical. This is by no means to imply that the transit from the first to the second was from the imperfect to the perfect. It is simply asserted that the transit was required at the time to make the Christian message concerning Jesus as Logos relevant, or so at least it seemed to the principals involved. That introduced theological considerations as well as articles of faith.

Nor is it in any way indicated that the prior mode may not in other circumstances be called for in doctrinal pronouncements. If many subsequent examples of the latter imitated the method introduced at Nicaea I (Enchiridion symbolorum 150, 250–51, 301–02, 426), no one can deny (prescinding from the question of definitions) that Vatican Council II in the first chapters of its constitutions on the sacred liturgy and Church treated of Christ as Son and Logos in a way far more akin to the Biblical than to that of these earlier Councils [Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy 5, Acta Apostolicae Sedis 56 (1964) 99; Dogmatic Constitution on the Church 2–5, Acta Apostolicae Sedis 57 (1965) 5–8].

Strictly Theological Consequences. The previous consideration involved a theology of the Logos that was formulated pari passu with a development of faith. There was, however, as well, a development of Logos-theology that did not find for itself a definitive approbation of the Church in a doctrinal pronouncement. It rather dealt with scriptural, patristic, and magisterial expressions of the faith and sought to unify them for the purpose of their assimilative understanding. This attempt characterized the Middle Ages in western Europe. It had its inspiration in Augustine's notion that man is the image of God insofar as he has in his psychological life created representations of the Trinitarian processions of knowledge and love (Trin. 12.6.6, 15.11.20; Patrologia Latina, ed. J. P. Migne, 42:1001, 1072).

The doctrinal data concerning the Logos—His origin by way of generation; His reality as a relation opposed to paternity and passive spiration; His personal character; His ability to be sent temporally into the world— seem often to be merely juxtaposed in the Scripture and magisterium. Medieval theologians made an effort to see these aspects of the mystery as one unified whole (cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae 1a, 27–44). This involved a theologizing that started out with the hypothesis that something not altogether unlike the human process of knowing was found in the Trinity. In the light of it the data in question fell into an intelligible pattern. Thus, reflection on the faith concerning Christ as Logos led to the discovery of something with regard to theological method in general. In confrontation with the certainty of Christian faith, theology has the function not merely of repeating old formulas (however true and authentically guaranteed) and of searching for new ones, but also to see the old and new as interrelated and forming one intelligible whole. This shows that theology at least under one of its aspects is a science far more like the natural ones than has often been suspected.

If contemporary theology has turned, like the magisterium itself in Vatican Council II, to a consideration of the Logos in salvation history, modern concerns have made themselves felt in the process. Distinct personal relations to the Logos, Spirit, and Father in the just are one [see P. de Letter, SJ, "The Theology of God's Self-Gift," Theological Studies 24 (1963) 402–22]. Another is the question of divine consciousness in the Word [see jesus christ (in theology) (special questions),¹⁰]; this is closely connected with inquiry concerning the new aspect of perfection that the revelation of the Logos within the Godhead opens to man [B. Lonergan, SJ, De Deo Trino 2: Pars systematica (Rome 1964) 186–93, 208–15]. Finally, the question has been raised as to whether assuming that any Divine Person could have become man does full justice to the implications of the fact that only the Son-Logos did [K. Rahner, SJ, "Natur und Gnade," Fragen der Theologie Heute (Zurich, Cologne 1958) 218–19].

See Also: consubstantiality; filiation; generation of the word; jesus christ in theology; nicene creed; processions, trinitarian; son of god; jesus christ, articles on; trinity, holy, articles on.

Bibliography: c. huber, Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, ed. j. hofer and k. rahner, 10 v. (2d, new ed. Freiburg 1957–65) 6:1125–28. j. barbel, Christus Angelus (Bonn 1941). o. cullman, Die Christologie des Neuen Testaments (Tübingen 1957), tr. s. c. guthrie and c. a. m. hall (rev. ed. Philadelphia 1963). a. grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition, tr. j. s. bowden (New York 1965). k. rahner, "Chalkedon: Ende oder Anfang?," a. grillmeier and h. bacht, Das Konzil von Chalkedon: Geschichte und Gegenwart, 3 v. (Würzburg 1951–54) 3:3–49. p. mcshane, "The Hypothesis of Intelligible Emanations in God," Theological Studies 23 (1962) 545–68.

[c. j. peter]