logos

Term in Greek, Hebrew, and Christian philosophy and theology. It was used by Greek philosophers as the embodiment of ‘reason’ in the universe. Under Greek influence the Jews came to conceive of ‘wisdom’ as an aspect of God's activity. The Jewish philosopher Philo (1st century AD) attempted to reconcile Platonic, Stoic, and Hebrew philosophy by identifying the logos with the Jewish idea of ‘wisdom’. Several of the New Testament writers took over Philo's conception of the logos, which they identified with Christ, the second person of the Trinity.

In Greek philosophy, especially in Heraclitus of Ephesus and Anaxagoras and among the Stoics, logos is the divine reason immanent in the cosmic process. Their systems are forms of pantheism, involving no transcendent god and teaching that this truth or reality (half hidden, half revealed in the visible world) can be found in the self. In the Septuagint (Greek translation of the Old Testament) logos signifies the uttered word or wisdom of God expressed in creation, providence, and revelation. Philo and the Alexandrian–Jewish school combined these two originally separate meanings. Philo's logos may be said to correspond to Plato's idea of the Good endowed with the creative activity or universal causality of the Stoics.