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Logos

The Greek "λόγος" or Logos means "the Word", but, from its use in the Gospel of John, it has come to be understood as another name of Jesus Christ which defines his nature. See Christology. Some translations of the Gospel of John into Chinese have used the word "Tao" to translate the word "Logos" into that language.

The word was used by Heraclitus, one of the pre-eminent Pre-Socratic Greek philosophers, to describe human knowledge and the inherent order in the universe, a background to the essential change which characterizes day-to-day life. Logos as the inherent rationality of the universe is also something of a precursor to the concept of the collective unconscious described Carl Jung, as this fragment from Heraclitus suggests:

"One must follow what is common; but, even though the Logos is common, most people live as though they possessed their own private wisdom." (Fr.2) The common is what is open to all, what can be seen and heard by all. To see is to let in with open eyes what is open to view, i.e. what is lit up and revealed to all. The dead (the completely private ones) neither see nor hear; they are closed. No light (fire) shines in them; no speech sounds in them. And yet, even they participate in the kosmos. The extinguished ones also belong to the continuum of lighting and extinguishing that is the common kosmos. The dead touch upon the living sleeping, who in turn touch upon the living waking. (Fr. 26)

By the time of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, Logos was the term used to describe the faculty of human reason and the knowledge men had of the world and of each other. Plato (who had many mystical tendencies) engaged in the conceit of describing Logos as a living being in some of his dialogues. Aristotle, who studied under Plato and who was much more of a practical thinker, first developed the concept of logic as a depiction of the rules of human rationality.

The Stoics understood Logos as the animating power of the universe, which further influenced how this word was understood.

See also: Rhema
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