Greek speech, word, reason or proportion. The word is the real and dependent expression of the acts. This is valid not only for the powerful and creative word of God, Gn 1, 3; Ps 33, 6, but also for the human word. The word implicitly implies the will of God, Is 55, 10 ss., and seeks the prophet or tries to be found by the prophet, even becoming eaten by him, Jr 15, 16.
Digital Bible Dictionary, Grupo C Service & Design Ltda., Colombia, 2003
Source: Digital Bible Dictionary
(Verb, Word).
Term used only by St. John on three occasions where it appears that Christ and Logos are strictly identical: Joh 1:118, 1Jn 1:1, Rev 19:13.
See “Christ.”
Christian Bible Dictionary
Dr. J. Dominguez
http://bible.com/dictionary/
Source: Christian Bible Dictionary
†¢Verb.
Source: Christian Bible Dictionary
type, ABEC DOCT
see, INCARNATION, GNOSTICISM, JESUS CHRIST
vet, (gr.: “verb, living word”). A designation of the Lord Jesus used by John in the preamble to his Gospel, and mentioned in Lk. 1:2. This term, which appears constantly in the NT, and is translated “word, saying, speech”, is translated in the different RV revisions as “Word” in the passages to which it refers to the Lord Jesus Christ. (a) his eternal existence: “In the beginning he was the Word”; “all things were made through him” (John 1:1, 3). (b) his essential deity: “The Word was God.” (c) his own personality: “The Word was with God” (Jn. 1:1). As “Logos”, the Lord Jesus is the substance and expression of the mind of God with respect to man; and the term covers what was on earth for man: life, light and love, cf. also Rev. 19:13. The “logos” denotes that which is “intelligent and intelligible.” The same term gr. (translated “the word”) is used to express the Scriptures and the truth proclaimed (Acts 16:6; 17:11; Gal. 6:6; Phil. 1:14; 1 Thess. 1:6; 1 Pet. 2:2, 8; 3:1; 2 Pet. 3:7; 1 John 2:7; Rev. 3:8). Bibliography: For an in-depth study of the “Logos” doctrine, the following works are recommended: Carballosa, EL: “La deidad de Cristo” (Pub. Portavoz Evangélico, Barcelona, 1982); Flores, J.: “The Eternal Son” (Clie, Terrassa, 1983); Lacueva, F.: “The Person and Work of Jesus Christ” (Clie, Terrassa, 1979). (See also INCARNATION, GNOSTICISM, JESUS CHRIST, etc.)
Source: New Illustrated Bible Dictionary
Literally “word”, “idea”, “verb” (in Latin, verbum). In general, it alludes to a Platonic concept that developed among the Gnostics of the first century and was later picked up and expanded by the Neoplatonists who followed “Plotinus” (205-270).
There are two long thousand times that the verb to speak, to say, to think, to devise is used in the New Testament. And there are hundreds of words, sayings, ideas, using the root of “lego”. Specifically, there are 334 times that the form “logos” is expressed alluding to an idea or word, saying, locution or term.
Of these, only three texts make reference in the New Testament to Jesus, the Verb or Word of God, and the “Verb”, the “Logos”, is identified with his Person: Jn 1.1 and 2.14; 1. Jn. 1.1; and Apoc. 19.13. The common denominator of the three texts, within the mystery of his identity, is the confession of the divinity of Jesus, the recognition of his identification with the divinity or with an operation only attributable to God himself.
– In the Apocalypse (19.13) he is identified with the “victorious and powerful Word of God, the “Logos” of God.
– In 1 John (1.1) it is seen rather as the origin of life, as the source of creation, as if it were the word pronounced by God with which everything began to exist.
– In the Gospel of John everything begins with the claim that in the beginning there was the Word, the “Logos”, the one who later became flesh and lived among us. It is the deepest text, the one that reflects Christ as the Word or the divine idea, the way of presenting himself as equal to the Father on the one hand, origin, and different on the other, the Son of God.
It is normal that this third text has been the most commented on by the ancient Fathers and by the theologians of all times, since it represents the summit of all Christian doctrine.
That is why the text is so decisive in the education of the faith and it is the mysterious focus of light and love in which the Church has drunk the message that it transmits for two millennia and will continue to announce until the end of time to all men. . (See Father God 3.2)
Pedro Chico González, Dictionary of Catechesis and Religious Pedagogy, Editorial Bruño, Lima, Peru 2006
Source: Dictionary of Catechesis and Religious Pedagogy
(v. Incarnation)
(ESQUERDA BIFET, Juan, Dictionary of Evangelization, BAC, Madrid, 1998)
Source: Dictionary of Evangelization
SUMMARY: I. The term “Logos” outside of Christianity: 1. In Hellenism; 2. In Judaism: a. The word in Scripture, b. Personification of the Word of God in the wisdom books, c. The Word in the Targum, d. In Philo of Alexandria; 3. In Gnosticism.-II. The mystery of the eternal and incarnate Logos in the Christian revelation: 1. In the Prologue of Saint John; 2. In 1 Jn 1,1.–11I. Jesus as the eternal and temporal Word of the Father.–IV. the SS. Trinity from the analysis of Jesus as Word: 1. In the theology of Saint Augustine; 2. In Saint Thomas Aquinas.
The term Logos has a long cultural and religious history. It will be studied here in its various senses, but in a Dictionary of the Christian God, the concept will obviously be privileged in the NT revelation and in Christian theology. The Christian revelation, in the Gospel of Saint John, speaks of the mystery of God mentioning the Logos, whom he calls God and of whom he says “became flesh” (n 1, 1.14). It is the data of this revelation that interests us. However, we search in the past of the term logos inside and outside the OT antecedents for its formulation and its process.
I. The term “Logos” outside of Christianity
1. “LOGOS” IN HELLENISM. Logos in the Greek language acquired varied and rich meanings: word, speech, calculation, number, narration, foundation, expressed theme, reason, inner law. In classical Greek logos meant word from Homer. As a written, read word, it can be seen in Plato. The Stoics gave it the philosophical meaning of the rational principle of the universe, identifying it with Zeus: “The Universal Law, which is orthós logos, right reason, which invades everything, is the same as Zeus, supreme guide of the government of the universe”. Through this text we see that Stoicism approaches popular religiosity in the form of pantheism, as in the hymn to Zeus by the poet Cleanthes who calls him “the only and eternal logos of all things”. One more example in this sense: “Fate is the cause of all beings, the project (logos) according to which the cosmos is directed.” That is why the saying became popular: “act according to the logos”, or Natural Law.
But the universal Logos was also participated in things, it was the logos spermatikos. The logos, as reason, law, interior thought, not pronounced, was called logos endiathetos, internal logos, distinguishing itself from the logos prophorikós, logos pronounced and not only thought.
There is agreement among most authors that the Johannine Logos does not depend on the Hellenistic concept. It is enough to look at the introductions to the Gospel of Saint John that have been suppressing or substantially diminishing the theme of the relationship between the logos of Greek philosophy and Christian revelation. “It would be misleading to suggest that in order to understand the Prologue one must first understand the Greek use of logos.” It cannot be claimed that Saint John knew Stoicism, for example, in such a way that he could somehow influence his concept of logos. We are with H. Kleinknecht; when he says: “Hellenistic logos speculation is something fundamentally different from the New Testament Logos.”
2. IN JUDAI SAINT. a. The word in Scripture. The term logos usually translates in the Septuagint version to the Hebrew darar, although in the prophetic books it is usually translated dar by the Greek rhéma. Dabar does not have a philosophical or esoteric meaning in the OT, it is the communication of God who speaks to the patriarchs or the prophets addressing his people. Sometimes the expression darar, word, in the absolute sense, is used, calling the ten commandments déka lógous, “the ten words” (Ex 34, 28), here with a sense of alliance norms. But usually we find the expression “word of God”. This is said 221 times out of the 241 that darar appears in the OT.
The prophets can speak the word of God because they have previously drunk or eaten the word. The phenomenon of logophagy is very interesting to teach us that the word of God is free, a gift from God, not a human achievement (Cf. Jer 1, 6.9; 15, 16; Ez 2, 8-9; 3, 1) . The word of God is in the ears or on the lips, but it must go to the heart (cf. Dt 30, 14; Jer 15, 16; Ez 3, 10). The prophet is such because he identifies himself spiritually with the word of God, he lives its tension, his point of view, he participates in its energy. The word of God is not only locution, it is an event, that is why it is often said that the word of God happens. It is an effective, creative word (cf. Gen 1, 3; Ez 37, 9), it is a word, in its entirety, revealing and saving. That is why the human response is obedience and faith.
b. Personification of the word of God in the Wisdom books. There are some texts that personify in some way the word of God in the psalms: “His word sent to heal them” (Ps 107, 20), or in the prophets: “So will my word be, the one that comes out of my mouth, that does not she will return to me empty, without having done what pleased me and not accomplished what I sent her for” (Is 55, 11). But where a greater tendency to the personification of the word is shown is in the Wisdom books. This word comes in the form of wisdom, it is like the inner word of God: “Yahweh created me, the first of his way, before his oldest works. From eternity I was founded, from the beginning, before the earth” (Prov 8, 22-23). In Ecclesiasticus 24, 3 the Wisdom of God says: “I came out of the mouth of the Most High.” Thus it identifies with the word of God. Eclo 24, 8b-9 says: “… and he said to me: “Put your tent in Jacob, enter the inheritance of Israel”. Before the ages, from the beginning, he created me, and forever I will stand.” In the text of Prov and in the last of Eclo we find the language used in the Prologue of Saint John to speak of the Logos. Both allude to the beginning; in Eclo we talk about “putting up the shop”. Although Jn 1, 1-5 refers to Gén 1, 1-5, the expression in the beginning found in Jn 1, 1 also comes from the citations of Prov and Eclo. Another wisdom text that may have favored the presentation of the Logos in the Prologue of Jn is Wisdom 7, 22 – 8, 1. The Logos of the Prologue has a position that recalls that of Wisdom in that wisdom passage. In Wis 9, 1-2 appear together Word and Wisdom, Logos and Sophia, giving us a clue…