In the Beginning: The Logos of Philo as Background to John's Prologue

When Saint John the Evangelist began his Gospel with " En arch hn o lógoV," he introduced into Christianity a somewhat enigmatic concept--Jesus Christ as logos. For centuries, Christians have sought to understand what John meant by calling Christ the logos, and it has been discovered that the implications of this term are far-reaching and complex. The description of a personified logos is not simply poetry, it is a philosophical statement, full of metaphysical and cosmological claims that have great significance for our conception of the nature of Christ.

The breadth of this is often missed on account of English translations which always render logos as "the Word," a translation in the tradition of the Latin Vulgate's use of "Verbum." Logos may be accurately translated "word" in the many other places in the New Testament where it refers merely to a spoken utterance which has no essential being, but in the philosophical passages of the Prologue, this translation is inadequate to relate the full implications of logos, which John obviously thinks of as more than a mere spoken word. Erwin R. Goodenough says of the Vulgate's use of Verbum, "of all the scores of nuances in the Greek term, that is one of the few meanings which Logos never has." Since there is no English equivalent for logos, the first step in exploring the meaning of the term is to speak of the concept of the Logos by itself, rather than infecting our understanding of the concept with inadequate modern translations.

In order to ascertain the full meaning of John's use of Logos, we can explore the sources from which he drew the idea. Heraclitus first used the term Logos as a philosophical concept in the fifth or sixth century BC, but by the time of the New Testament the concept had evolved considerably. Just because the term originated in Heraclitus and other Greeks, that does not necessarily mean that John's Logos philosophy originated there. In fact, it is probable that the seedling of his Logos idea was first implanted in his mind by the philosophy in which he lived--Jewish religion. The Scriptures, with which John would have been quite familiar, suggest that there is power in a "word"--in both the curses and blessings of human words, and the creative and revelatory role of God's words. It is likely that when John encountered the Greek word logos, and began to form his Logos philosophy, his thinking was influenced by these foundational ideas in the Scriptures.

Recently, there has been increased interest in the Targums as background to the Prologue with the discovery in 1955 of the Targum Neofiti I to the Pentateuch, which enhances the role and identity of the "Word" of the Lord. A part of the Targum contains a description of sacred history divided into four sections, called "The Four Nights;" in its account of the first night, which is creation, the Targum records that: "The world was without form and void and darkness was spread over the face of the abyss and the Word of the Lord was the light, and it shone; and he called it the First Night." This increased role of the Word and implication of its independent essence is an elaboration of the Word's position in Scriptures and is more like the Logos described by John. If the Targum Neofiti I were from the first century, as its principal editor, A. Diez Macho, asserts, then this is the kind of sacred writing that John would have heard read in the synagogues. However, if it is not from the first century--but from as late as the third, as some scholars believe--then obviously any connection with John is impossible.

John's thought emerged, as did Christianity as a whole, from a Jewish religious background, and so we should consider how it may have influenced his Logos philosophy. Still, the nature of John's Logos is so different from the Jewish notions of the "word" that it cannot be explained by his Jewish background alone. While Judaism sees the "word" of God as inherently dependent on God, without any life or reality in itself, John thinks of the Logos as having a certain individuality and separateness from God.

Rudolph Bultmann, suggested that the source of the Logos in the Gospel of John was not the apostle's idea at all, but was a Gnostic hymn redacted into the text. This theory, which is still supported by many, claims that after the completion of the Gospel, the hymn was added to the beginning of the book, thus creating the poetic prologue. Therefore, when searching for the meaning of the Logos, one should look to Gnosticism. Unfortunately for Bultmann, the only basis for this view is his own speculation. Samuel Sandmel points out that, "Bultmann's view rested on the assumption that there did exist a pre-Christian, non-Christian gnosticism. Critics of Bultmann noted correctly that we have not inherited any such Gnostic literary precursor to the prologue to John, and that Bultmann was quite unable to cite such a precursor."

Assuming then that John the Apostle wrote the Prologue, we can consider what sources besides the sacred writings would have shaped his Logos idea. The effect of Hellenism on the ancient world was immense, as Greek ideas permeated all aspects of culture within the Roman Empire. Everyone, including John, was affected by this cultural force. It is most likely that John's ideas, based on Judaism and then shaped by his experience with Christ, were also influenced by Greek thought. This is reflected in his Logos philosophy, which is neither fully Greek nor entirely Hebrew.

Philo of Alexandria, a hellenized Jew who wrote several decades before John, did a similar thing, developing a world view that was a coherent mix of Hebrew and Greek ideas. Standing midway between the Scriptures and Greek philosophy, Philo produced a philosophy which saw the Logos as John did, as "the rational principle in the universe, its meaning, plan or purpose, conceived as a divine hypostasis in which the eternal God is revealed and active." Philo's Logos philosophy is very useful in considering John's for two reasons. First, it is possible that John was actually influenced by Philo's Logos philosophy, and, second, Philo's extensive writing provides us a picture of how a Jew living amongst Hellenism may have interpreted things said in the Scriptures. That is why "there is rather universal agreement, within the controversies, that the Logos prologue is better illumined by an understanding of the Logos idea in Philo than by any other non-New Testament writing."

And understanding John's Logos is important. The early Church fathers emphasized it to the extent that the "Logos Christology," advocated most by Origen, was the predominant school of thought in the early centuries. "Thanks to the influence of Origen the Logos Christology established itself everywhere in the third century. It had become the universally acknowledged presupposition of further Christological thought. Even Arius accepted the concept of the Logos." It seems hardly incidental that this same Origen is credited with preserving much of the works of Philo, and, in fact, "must have possessed copies of most [of Philo's] works in his private library"

Philo of Alexandria

It is ironic that the writings of Philo, that were influenced by Greek and Jewish ideas, were ignored by Greeks and Jews through the centuries and were preserved by Christians. They were kept by Christians because they believed that Philo's works did help explain John's Logos, and, therefore, Christ. As Philo's works were treasured and passed down through generations of Christians, so were stories about the alleged historical connection between Philo and Christianity, tales which culminated in the deeming of Philo as a sort of "honorary Church father." David Runia notes in his excellent survey, Philo in Early Christian Literature, "It is by no means rare that extracts from his works in the Byzantine Catenae are headed with the lemma . . . Philo the Bishop." The stories of Philo's relationship to Christianity evolved over the centuries. Eusebius was the first to record any connection between Philo and Christians, though it is likely that the tales of such a connection pre-date him: in his Ecclesiastical History written in the fourth century, he said that Philo was a witness to the way of life of the first Christians in Egypt and that he met Peter in Rome during the reign of Claudius. Eighty years after Eusebius, Jerome iterated much of this, but added that Philo and Peter had actually formed a friendship while in Rome. In the Acta Johannis, from the fifth century, it is reported that Philo discussed the law with the apostle John, who entered Philo's house and healed his leprous wife, causing Philo to ask forgiveness for his anti-Christian ideas and be baptized. An Armenian translator in around the sixth century recorded that Philo was among the Alexandrian Jews whose dispute with Stephen led to the apostle's condemnation and martyrdom. Finally, in the ninth century, Photius reported that Philo was indoctrinated into Christianity, but fell away from the faith out of anger and grief.

This conception of "Philo the Christian" lingered until the seventeen century, when the orthodoxy of his beliefs were questioned and he was labeled as a mere Platonist, thereby losing his status as "honorary Church father" While we cannot be sure, the way these accounts of Philo build on each other suggests that the stories of Philo's Christianization are legendary in nature. It is likely that they originated "from the desire of early Christian apologists to relate the beginnings of their movement to important and distinguished representatives of Greco-Roman society, including famous members of the Jewish communities of the time."

What little we know of Philo from trustworthy sources is less dramatic. Philo leaves very few autobiographical passages in his works, and Josephus mentions him only once. Still, some basic facts of his life can be derived from the sources we have. Since Philo describes himself as an "old man" when writing about events in AD 40, it can be assumed that he was born about 25 BC, and since he lived long enough to write two long treatises, we can suppose that he died between AD 45 and 50. We know from his works that he traveled to Jerusalem to in order to pray and offer sacrifices, so it is possible, though merely hypothetical, that he could have had contact with followers of Christ in the city. In Antiquities of the Jews, Josephus says that Philo was a part of an embassy of Jews that appealed to Caius concerning some conflict with the Greeks in Alexandria. Since it is the most substantial source of biographical information about Philo, we should consider Josephus' description in its entirety:

Philo, the principal of the Jewish ambassage, a man eminent on all accounts,

brother to Alexander the alabarch, and one not unskilful in philosophy, was ready

to betake himself to make his defence against those accusations; but Caius

prohibited him, and bade him begone: he was also in a rage, that it openly

appeared he was about to do them some great mischief. So, Philo, being thus

affronted, went out, and said to those Jews that were about him, that they should be

of good courage, since Caius's words indeed shewed anger at them, but in reality

had already set God against himself.

This brief mention tells us much about Philo--he was a man of prominence, respected and renowned for his philosophy, devoutly religious, and dedicated to the idea that God was the ruler of all.

Much more is known about Philo's brother Alexander, whom Josephus mentions several times, describing him as "a principal person among all his contemporaries, both for his family and his wealth" and "eminent for his piety." Alexander is said to have lent Herod Agrippa two hundred thousand drachmae and is credited with providing the silver and gold plates which covered the nine gates of the temple at Jerusalem--a great testimony to his wealth, since "even allowing for Josephus' exaggeration in dimensions, that gift must have been incredibly valuable." The fact of Alexander's wealth reflects on his brother Philo, who must have also been quite wealthy. It is likely that the brothers, along with their father, enjoyed the privilege of Roman citizenship, since the immense wealth and political position of Alexander was unlikely to have been gained without a significant inheritance of money and prestige.

Philo's academic and philosophical environment is essential to his Logos philosophy. In fact, the way in which Philo the Jew arrived at his idea of Logos is as revealing and important to the Christian as the concept itself. For, while we can only guess whether John was affected directly by Philo's ideas, we can assume with much more confidence that the Evangelist was subject to the same world views as Philo, and that his thinking may have developed along the same lines.

Although Philo leaves us "no single, exhaustive, and systematic discussion" of his philosophy, we have a considerable body of his writing, which shows him to be both a devout Jew and a skilled student of Hellenism. While it is debatable whether he knew Hebrew, he certainly was well acquainted with the Septuagint (in which he would have found the word logos used in speaking of the powerful voice of God which made the world). Philo was equally familiar with Greek literature, history, poetry, and drama, and he knew Greek philosophy, particularly the Stoics, Socrates and Plato, as well as the religious teachings of his ancestors. Philo wove these two sources of knowledge into a single philosophy, reading "Plato in terms of Moses, and Moses in terms of Plato."

From this academic milieu, and as a result of it, Philo derived his concept of Logos, an idea that permeates his writings, being used over 1300 times. As a Jewish theist, Philo believed in an utterly transcendent God who created the world, but was not contained within it--a notion that was supported by the Scriptures and Greek philosophy, particularly Plato: "It was easy enough for Philo to find in the Old Testament itself support for his strenuous insistence, in Platonic vein, upon the unity and transcendence of God, and his rejection of any approach to anthropomorphism." His Platonic insistence on divine transcendence was based on the assumption that matter was evil, which made it logically impossible for God to have come into contact and formed matter in the act of creating the world. On the other hand, Philo had to explain the immanence of God made clear in the Scriptures. To reconcile the problem of two divine natures, Philo used a philosophical concept found in Plato and the Stoics: the Logos. Using this term, which was already an established philosophical idea yet was ambiguous enough for him to mold to his own purposes, Philo could maintain the transcendence of God without sacrificing the divine immanence.

Philo's idea of the Logos had scriptural precedence, and correlates with the portrayal of the "word of God" in the Scriptures. The "word" of God, which Philo's Greek version translated the "logos" of God, is said to be a means of (1) creation: "By the word of the LORD the heavens were made" (2) governing the world: "He hurls down hail like crumbs--who can stand before his cold? He sends out his word, and melts them; he makes his wind blow, and the waters flow" (3) prophecy and revelation: "The words of Jeremiah . . . to whom the word of the LORD came..." and (4) Law and covenant: "The LORD said to Moses: Write these words; in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel." Philo not only noticed the emphasis on the word of God, but considered its unique and powerful nature. He writes: "whereas the voice of mortal beings is judged by hearing, the sacred oracles intimate that the words of God are seen as light is seen; for we are told that 'all the people saw the Voice,' not that they heard it. Thus, the Voice is not the "impact on air made by the organs of mouth and tongue, but virtue shining with intense brilliance, wholly resembling a fountain of reason."

Philo also found in the Scriptures the prominence of Wisdom, which he related to the Logos. Though he did not stress the Wisdom literature, only explicitly referring to it fifteen times, we can assume that he was familiar with the Wisdom theology that held that God first created Wisdom and then created the rest of the world through her. Wisdom is not the same as God, but was put forward by him at the beginning of creation, giving "form and reality to the world we know, and passing into holy souls mak[ing] them friends of God and prophets." At the same time, Wisdom is a possession of God, who gives it freely and graciously to his creation. Philo identified the Logos so closely with the scriptural Wisdom that he often used the two words interchangeably.

When Philo assimilated Greek philosophy into this thinking, he did not do so carelessly, but instead filtered pagan notions through his own Jewish convictions, casting out the unfit. He rejected Aristotle's concept of God because it denied the Scriptural assertion that God was the creative power, not just the motive or cause of the world; he rejected Stoicism because it disagreed with the Scriptural idea of God as an incorporeal being. Plato he embraced, as he found in Platonic philosophy a God that was both incorporeal and Creator. Likewise, he used a Greek idea for a Jewish purpose. By utilizing the Logos, and connecting it with the world of Forms, or "intelligible world" (an expression which he originated), he was able to proclaim his God and religion as not only logically possible, but philosophically vital.

Philo's Logos

Philo understood God's transcendence and holiness in terms of the sacred laws which commanded the separation of clean and unclean things. He declared, "Separate, therefore, my soul, all that is created, mortal, mutable, profane, from they conception of God the uncreated, the unchangeable, the immortal, the holy and solely blessed" The obvious question is how a God who is separate from the corruptible material creation could have created it. Philo answers this question by introducing a tool which God used in the act of creation: "For when out of that confused matter God produced all things, He did not do so with His own handiwork, since His nature, happy and blessed as it was, forbade that He should touch the limitless chaotic matter. Instead He made full use of the incorporeal potencies well denoted by their name of Forms." These "incorporeal potencies" are the Logos, "which he used as an instrument and thus created the world." The term "instrument," which he borrowed from Aristotle, is crucial in Philo's understanding of the relation between God and Logos, because it subordinates the Logos to God in the work of creation. The Logos is not to be thought of as creator, nor even as a co-creator with God. Instead, it is a tool used by God in the creation; God is the reason that the universe has come into being, and the Logos of God is simply the means "though which it was constructed." However, Philo believes that the Logos was only needed for certain parts of the creation work. In considering the Genesis account, he notes the order of creation: the heavenly bodies and angels, the plants and animals, and then man. On the creation of the heavenly bodies and angels, which are virtuous and incorruptible, he says, "it was most proper to God, the universal Father, to make those excellent things by himself alone, because of their kinship to Him." The same is true for plants and animals, which are neutral in terms of virtue. However, in the creation of mankind, which is "of a mixed nature" and is "liable to contraries, wisdom and folly . . . good and evil," the Logos was utilized; God could only create the rational soul, and the Logos was necessary to make man's body and irrational soul.

The reason that the Logos could be used as an instrument was because it is the ideal model of God. Philo states that God was aware that a "beautiful copy could never exist apart from a beautiful model, and that no objects of perception would be faultless which were not fashioned in the likeness of an archetype conceived only by the intellect." Therefore, God "first formed that one which is perceptible only to the intellect, in order that, being able to use a pattern wholly God-like and incorporeal, he might make the material world, a younger creation, the precise image of the earlier, older one." This concept of creation is thoroughly Platonic. In Timaeus, Plato postulates that "it is wholly necessary that this Cosmos should be a Copy of something" and that the Creator, "seeing that that Model is an eternal Living Creature, He set about making this Universe, so far as He could, of a like kind." Plato here speaks of the "Architect" who makes the world based on the his perfect Model Philo uses the same imagery--calling God the architect and the Logos the model. Just as "the city prefigured in the architect's mind held no place externally but was stamped in the soul of the artisan, so too the intelligible world could have no other location than the Divine Logos, which established the world order." Philo's cosmology is based on this idea, put forward by Plato three centuries prior, that a perfect model of the Divine was needed in creation because "nothing that resembles the imperfect would ever become fair."

Since the Logos was used by God as the Divine Model, Philo says, it is "itself an image of God, the most senior of all things intelligible, set nearest, with no interval between, to the alone truly Existent." He concludes that man was not made in the image of God himself, but rather is made as "an image of an image" after "the archetypal seal," which is the intelligible world, or, "the very Logos of God." This concurs with Philo's assumption of the immateriality of God and excludes the possibility that man's irrational tendencies are proof that God is somehow irrational. In fact, Philo explains the dual nature of man by asserting that the earthly man is "not the offspring of God," but the "heavenly man" is formed after the image of God.

This understanding of the Divine Logos led Philo to think of it also as a mediator between God and man, which "marshals himself between, like a vowel amid consonants, that the universe may produce a harmony like that of literary art, for he mediates and moderates the threatenings of the opponents through conciliatory persuasion." In this way, the Logos is like Wisdom, a gift of God which is provided to man solely on account of God's goodness. The Logos stands between the creature and the Creator and is "both suppliant of ever anxiety-ridden mortality before the immortal and ambassador of the ruler of the subject." Philo attributes the statement in the Scriptures that "I was standing between the Lord and you" to the Logos, which is "neither unbegotten as God, nor begotten as you, but midway between the two extremes." The Logos' is to serves as a pledge to both God and man, "to the Creator as assurance that the creature should never completely shake off the reins and rebel, choosing disorder rather that order; to the creature warranting his hopefulness that the gracious God will never disregard his own work."

Like the high priests of Judaism, God's use of the Logos as mediator has three distinct purposes. The first is to forgive sins; Philo says, "It is necessary that he who is consecrated to the Father of the world should employ His son most perfect in virtue as an advocate for the forgiveness of sins." The second is to be a "minister of gifts," supplying the creation with those things which only God possesses. The third is to draw men "from earthly affairs to [God]." In these functions the Logos may work in the form of an angels, a suggestion Philo makes at least seventeen times in his writings; he says, for example, of Jacob's encounter with a divine being, that "Jacob, having come to Sense-perception, meets not now God but the divine Logos." The goal of all these interactions with men is to enliven their rational minds and to help them see God--for this is the "beginning and end of happiness."

The Logos not only mediates God's will to mankind, but sustains God's creation by control of the natural world. "This world," Philo says, "is the Megalopolis, the Great City, and uses a single constitution and a single law, and this is the Logos of Nature which enjoins what is to be done, and prohibits what is not to be done." Philo sees the Logos at work in the three primary laws of nature: the law of opposites, the law of harmony of the opposites, and the law of the perpetuity of the species. By the law of opposites, the Logos divides all things into two equal and opposite parts. By the law of harmony of the opposites, the Logos holds all the elements in their place, so that the waters will not invade the land, nor will fire take over the sky. By the law of the perpetuity of the species, the Logos assures the continuance of the creation by providing that a seed will grow into the appropriate plant and the animals will reproduce. In this way, the Logos enacts the providence of God upon earth, carrying out the promise in Jeremiah that it is "the LORD who gives the sun for light by day and the fixed order of the moon and the stars for light by night."

Philo calls the Logos "the bond of all that exists," that "holds all things together and binds them into a whole, preventing them from being loosened or separated." This view of God is based not only on the Scriptures, but on Plato's Timaeus, in which the world-soul binds the universe together; "Plato's terminology almost certainly helped Philo to spell out his cosmology and provided him with the term desmos (bond) to describe the Logos." With this bond, God controls the world, using his Logos to unite his two powers of Goodness, by which "he engendered all that is," and his Sovereignty, by which "he rules what he has engendered."

The Logos "pours the sacred measures of true gladness" and "is himself the undiluted drink, the gaiety, the seasoning, the effusion, the cheer, and, to make poetic expression our own, the ambrosian drug of joy and gladness." For Philo the Jew this all culminates in the covenantal law revealed to Moses. When the Israelites were seeking that which "nourished the soul," Philo declares, "they learned and discovered that it was the word of God, the Divine Logos, from which all forms of instruction and wisdom flow in perpetual stream." This instruction is like the manna from heaven, the "heavenly nourishment," contained in the sacred records as God's way of sending from above "ethereal wisdom." Here, Philo returns to the Wisdom theology of the Scriptures, which declares that true wisdom is found by those whose "delight is in the law of the LORD." When Philo recounts the record that "'Abraham' did 'all my law,'" he notes that the law spoken of is "evidently nothing else than the Divine Logos commanding what we ought to do and forbidding what we should not do, as Moses attests to by saying 'he received a law from his words.' Therefore, if "the man of virtue does the law, then surely he does the Logos, so that, as I said, the Divine logoi are the wise man's actions." This "doing the law" is not for Philo only behaving in a certain way. It is using the rational mind to attempt to catch sight of the image of God, an act that is possible solely because, "Every man, in respect of his mind, is intimately related to the divine Logos, being an imprint of fragment or effulgence of that blessed nature."

Philo's Logos concept is the key to his entire understanding of God. It is the tool of creation, the image of God, the mediator, the power of God's providence, the law expressed in the covenant, and is even called by Philo a "second God." It functions almost as if independent of God, yet is at the same time necessarily tied to him, and it is the immanent and knowable extension of the holy transcendent God of the Hebrews. It is the meaning, plan and purpose of the universe, the thought of God, the order of the universe, and God himself revealed to humankind.

Philo and John

In his Confessions, Augustine says that he read in some of the works of the Platonists: "that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. By him were all things made, and without him was not anything made . . . But that the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us I did not read there." Here, Augustine describes the most significant difference between the Logos of Philo and the Christian Logos spoken of in John--the incarnation. Philo attributes to the Logos a certain life, and personifies it with such labels as the "high priest" and "son of God," but he still does not consider the Logos a person.

Much has been made of Philo's treatment of Moses, whom he describes as a partner with God, and "not a man," but "one contiguous with both extremes." Philo even says that Moses "was named god and king of the whole nation, and entered, we are told, into the darkness where God was." Some have suggested that Philo thought of Moses as the Logos incarnate, or at least a Logophany, but we must conclude that Philo would have denied this interpretation. His Platonic influences would have made it impossible for him to accept the idea that the Divine Being with God could assume human flesh. In fact, "as an exponent of philosophical dualism, Philo would have viewed with repugnance the doctrine that 'the Word became flesh.'" This is the most essential and inescapable difference between the Logos of Philo and that of John. To Philo, the Logos is an idea, while to John it is the person and event of Jesus Christ, who assumed human, earthly, irrational flesh.

Still, there are incredible similarities between the two Logos philosophies. Every assertion John makes about the Logos in his prologue, with the sole exception of its incarnation, has a parallel idea in the writings of Philo. John shares with Philo the idea that the Logos was active in the creation of the world, but gives it a larger role. Whereas Philo believes that the use of the Logos was necessary only in the creation of the irrational and material things, John says that "all things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being." Both authors also share similar notions of the Logos as a mediator which stands as God before men, urging them to seek God and bestowing on them heavenly gifts, called by John "grace upon grace." But John's Logos has greater significance as a mediator, as it comes to man by taking on human form. Also, Philo and John both conceive of the Logos as a source of revelation and divine power in the world--a light that "shines in the darkness" and cannot be overcome by the darkness.

Both agree that it is only by communion with the Logos, the "son of God," that men may fully become children of God; for Philo this communion means living a contemplative life, while for John it means receiving and believing in Jesus Christ. Likewise, both attribute to the Logos the responsibility of convicting men of sin and reconciling them to God. Philo says that it is "the Logos that brings man to repentance and salvation by entering the soul and making man aware of his sins and bidding them be cleared our in order that the Logos might be able to perform the necessary work of healing." John obviously concurs, as shown in his recording of Jesus' statement that "he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God."

Conclusions

With all these similarities, one could assert that there is an actual connection between Philo and John, and that John merely adapted Philo's Logos to describe the incarnated Christ which came from God. Unfortunately, such a conclusion would be based either on questionable historical accounts or mere modern speculation. It is questionable whether John would have had direct access to the elite circles in which Philonic philosophy existed, though he may well have been influenced by the "popular folk echoes of the motifs of the philosophical schools that spilled over into the common mind." Regardless of the extent to which John was influenced by Philo of Alexandria, we gain a wealth of information from the consideration of the background and content of Philo's Logos philosophy which helps us appreciate and discern the rich implications of the Logos in the Prologue.

We can also surmise that Philo and John were faced with some of the same difficulties, and developed their Logos philosophies in response to those issues. If the problem of God's transcendence and the influence of Greek thinking made such an impression on Philo the Jew during the first century, it is not unlikely that the same factors would have affected John the Jew during the same century. In seeing how Philo dealt with these problems, we may guess how John solved them. If nothing else, Philo's Logos doctrine illustrates how a strictly monotheistic Jew may have held the belief in a divine Logos without sacrificing the idea of having one God. "It also shows how a Jew, in the New Testament era, could speak of an association between the Logos and a particular man in a way that at times sounds like incarnational language and at other times maintains absolutely the separate identity of the Logos and the particular man in question." This tension present in Philo--of the relation between God and his Logos--is the exact sort of tension that surfaced in the Christological and Trinitarian controversies in the Early Church. Questions remain even today, and so it is helpful to consider Philo, in order to shed some light on the difficult, yet essential, doctrine of the co-existence of God and the Logos.

We may also hypothesize, as many have before us, about the providential control of God--though our guesses on such mysterious issues remain mere human guesses. In doing so, we may come to believe that God had his hand on the philosophies of the ancient world, and prepared in them concepts which would allow men to understand the significance of the coming of his son, Jesus Christ. Considering the frequency with which Philo used the term Logos, we can surmise that the concept was familiar to popular philosophy, and "many in John's audience, Jews and Greeks alike, would likely have heard of Philo, and thus, from the first, would have had their understanding of what Jesus was shaped in part by what Philo said the logos was."

So, when John penned his Prologue describing Jesus Christ in the terms of the pagan philosophy of the predominant culture of the known world, it was no less profound and dramatic an event than Peter's rooftop vision and consequent conversion of Cornelius. And as Paul declared in Athens, so John announced when he wrote of the Logos being incarnate in Christ--"What therefore you worship . . . this I proclaim to you" --and by this, the great Evangelist opened the doors of Christianity not only to Jews and Hellenistic Jews, but to the entire known world.

Bibliography

EDITIONS OF PHILO'S WORKS

Philo. Translated by F. H. Colson and G. H. Whitaker. 10 vols. The Loeb Classical Library. London: William Heinemann, 1929.

The Contemplative Life, The Giants, and Selections. Translated by David Winston. The Classics of Western Spirituality. Ramsey, NJ: Paulist Press, 1981.

BOOKS

Clark, Gordon H. The Johannine Logos. International Library of Philosophy and Theology: Biblical and Theological Studies. N.p.: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1972.

Dodd, C. H. The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1965.

Drummond, James. Philo Judaeus. 2 vols. Edinburgh: Williams and Norgate, 1888.

Fairweather, William. Jesus and the Greeks. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1924.

Goodenough, Erwin R. An Introduction to Philo Judaeus. 2d ed., rev. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1940; reprint, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1962.

Laporte, Jean. "Philo in the Tradition of Biblical Wisdom Literature." In Aspects of Wisdom in Judaism and Early Christianity, ed. Robert L. Wilken, 103-141. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975.

Runia, David T. Philo in Early Christian Literature: A Survey. Jewish Traditions in Early Christian Literature. vol. 3. Assen, Netherlands: Van Gorcum, 1993; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993.

Sandmel, Samuel. Philo of Alexandria. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979.

Schürer, Emil. The Literature of the Jewish People. Translated by Peter Christie and Sophia Taylor. New York: Schocken Books, 1972.

Tamura, Yoshiyuki. "A Study of the Logos in The Gospel of John." M.A. thesis, Wheaton College, 1971.

Williamson, Ronald. Jews in the Hellenistic World: Philo. Cambridge Commentaries on the Writings of the Jewish and Christian World 200 BC to AD 200. vol. 1, no. 2. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

Wolfson, Harry Austryn. Philo. 2 vols. 2d ed. rev. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1948.

ARTICLES

Argyle, A. W. "Philo, the Man and His Work." The Expository Times. 85 (1974): 115-117.

Freedman, David Noel, ed. The Anchor Bible Dictionary. New York: Doubleday, 1992. s.v. "Logos," by Thomas H. Tobin.

New Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1967. s.v. "Logos," by D. M. Crossman.

Wilkinson, Loren. "Cosmic Christology and the Christian's Role in Creation." Christian Scholars Review. 11/1 (1981): 18-40.