while Philo, even when ascribing a real personality to the Logos, keeps within the bounds of abstract speculation, leads him seriously to modify the Philonic doctrine. Though the Alexandrian idea largely determines the evangelist’s treatment of the history, the history similarly reacts on the idea. The prologue is an organic portion of the Gospel and not a preface written to conciliate a philosophic public. It assumes that the Logos idea is familiar in Christian theology, and vividly summarizes the main features of the Philonic conception—the eternal existence of the Logos, its relation to God (πρὸς τὸν θεόν, yet distinct), its creative, illuminative and redemptive activity. But the adaptation of the idea to John’s account of a historical person involved at least three profound modifications:—(1) the Logos, instead of the abstraction or semi-personification of Philo, becomes fully personified. The Word that became flesh subsisted from all eternity as a distinct personality within the divine nature. (2) Much greater stress is laid upon the redemptive than upon the creative function. The latter indeed is glanced at (“All things were made by him”), merely to provide a link with earlier speculation, but what the writer is concerned about is not the mode in which the world came into being but the spiritual life which resides in the Logos and is communicated by him to men. (3) The idea of λόγος as Reason becomes subordinated to the idea of λόγος as Word, the expression of God’s will and power, the outgoing of the divine energy, life, love and light. Thus in its fundamental thought the prologue of the Fourth Gospel comes nearer to the Old Testament (and especially to Gen. i.) than to Philo. As speech goes out from a man and reveals his character and thought, so Christ is “sent out from the Father,” and as the divine Word is also, in accordance with the Hebrew idea, the medium of God’s quickening power.
What John thus does is to take the Logos idea of Philo and use it for a practical purpose—to make more intelligible to himself and his readers the divine nature of Jesus Christ. That this endeavour to work into the historical tradition of the life and teaching of Jesus—a hypothesis which had a distinctly foreign origin—led him into serious difficulties is a consideration that must be discussed elsewhere.
5. The Early Church.—In many of the early Christian writers, as well as in the heterodox schools, the Logos doctrine is influenced by the Greek idea. The Syrian Gnostic Basilides held (according to Irenaeus i. 24) that the Logos or Word emanated from the νοῦς, or personified reason, as this latter emanated from the unbegotten Father. The completest type of Gnosticism, the Valentinian, regarded Wisdom as the last of the series of aeons that emanated from the original Being or Father, and the Logos as an emanation from the first two principles that issued from God, Reason (νοῦς) and Truth. Justin Martyr, the first of the sub-apostolic fathers, taught that God produced of His own nature a rational power(δύναμίν τινα λογικήν), His agent in creation, who now became man in Jesus (Dial. c. Tryph. chap. 48, 60). He affirmed also the action of the λόγος σπερματικός, (Apol. i. 46; ii. 13, &c.). With Tatian (Cohort. ad. Gr. chap. 5, &c.) the Logos is the beginning of the world, the reason that comes into being as the sharer of God’s rational power. With Athenagoras (Suppl. chap. 9, 10) He is the prototype of the world and the energizing principle (ἰδέα καὶ ἐνέργεια) of things. Theophilus (Ad Autolyc. ii. 10, 24) taught that the Logos was in eternity with God as the λόγος ἐνδιάθετος, the counsellor of God, and that when the world was to be created God sent forth this counsellor (σύμβουλος) from Himself as the λόγος προφορικός, yet so that the begotten Logos did not cease to be a part of Himself. With Hippolytus (Refut. x. 32, &c.) the Logos, produced of God’s own substance, is both the divine intelligence that appears in the world as the Son of God, and the idea of the universe immanent in God. The early Sabellians (comp. Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. vi. 33; Athanasius, Contra Arian. iv.) held that the Logos was a faculty of God, the divine reason, immanent in God eternally, but not in distinct personality prior to the historical manifestation in Christ. Origen, referring the act of creation to eternity instead of to time, affirmed the eternal personal existence of the Logos. In relation to God this Logos or Son was a copy of the original, and as such inferior to that. In relation to the world he was its prototype, the ἰδέα ἰδεῶν and its redeeming power (Contra Cels. v. 608; Frag. de princip. i. 4; De princip. i. 109, 324).
In the later developments of Hellenic speculation nothing essential was added to the doctrine of the Logos. Philo’s distinction between God and His rational power or Logos in contact with the world was generally maintained by the eclectic Platonists and Neo-Platonists. By some of these this distinction was carried out to the extent of predicating (as was done by Numenius of Apamea) three Gods:—the supreme God; the second God, or Demiurge or Logos; and the third God, or the world. Plotinus explained the λόγοι as constructive forces, proceeding from the ideas and giving form to the dead matter of sensible things (Enneads, v. 1. 8 and Richter’s Neu-Plat. Studien).
See the histories of philosophy and theology, and works quoted under Heraclitus, Stoics, Philo, John, The Gospel of, &c., and for a general summary of the growth of the Logos doctrine, E. Caird, Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers (1904), vol. ii.; A. Harnack, History of Dogma; E. F. Scott, The Fourth Gospel, ch. v. (1906); J. M. Heinze, Die Lehre vom Logos in der griech. Philosophie (1872); J. Réville, La Doctrine du Logos (1881); Aal, Gesch. d. Logos-Idee (1899); and the Histories of Dogma, by A. Harnack, F. Loofs, R. Seeberg. (S. D. F. S.; A. J. G.)
LOGOTHETE (Med. Lat. logotheta, Gr. λογοθέτης, from λόγος,
word, account, calculation, and τιθέναι, to set, i.e. “one who
accounts, calculates or ratiocinates”), originally the title of a
variety of administrative officials in the Byzantine Empire, e.g.
the λογοθέτης τοῦ δρόμου, who was practically the equivalent
of the modern postmaster-general; and the λογοθέτης τοῦ στρατιωτικοῦ, the logothete of the military chest. Gibbon defines
the great Logothete as “the supreme guardian of the laws
and revenues,” who “is compared with the chancellor of the
Latin monarchies.” From the Eastern Empire the title was
borrowed by the West, though it only became firmly established
in Sicily, where the logotheta occupied the position of chancellor
elsewhere, his office being equal if not superior to that of the
magnus cancellarius. Thus the title was borne by Pietro della
Vigna, the all-powerful minister of the emperor Frederick II.,
king of Sicily.
See Du Cange, Glossarium, s.v. Logotheta.
LOGROÑO, an inland province of northern Spain, the smallest
of the eight provinces formed in 1833 out of Old Castile; bounded
N. by Burgos, Álava and Navarre, W. by Burgos, S. by Soria and
E. by Navarre and Saragossa. Pop. (1900) 189,376; area,
1946 sq. m. Logroño belongs entirely to the basin of the river
Ebro, which forms its northern boundary except for a short
distance near San Vicente; it is drained chiefly by the rivers
Tiron, Oja, Najerilla, Iregua, Leza, Cidacos and Alhama, all
flowing in a north-easterly direction. The portion skirting the
Ebro forms a spacious and for the most part fertile undulating
plain, called La Rioja, but in the south Logroño is considerably
broken up by offshoots from the sierras which separate that
river from the Douro. In the west the Cerro de San Lorenzo,
the culminating point of the Sierra de la Demanda, rises 7562 ft.,
and in the south the Pico de Urbion reaches 7388 ft. The products
of the province are chiefly cereals, good oil and wine
(especially in the Rioja), fruit, silk, flax and honey. Wine is the
principal export, although after 1892 this industry suffered
greatly from the protective duties imposed by France. Great
efforts have been made to keep a hold upon French and English
markets with light red and white Rioja wines. No less than
128,000 acres are covered with vines, and 21,000 with olive
groves. Iron and argentiferous lead are mined in small quantities
and other ores have been discovered. The manufacturing
industries are insignificant. A railway along the right bank of
the Ebro connects the province with Saragossa, and from
Miranda there is railway communication with Madrid, Bilbao
and France; but there is no railway in the southern districts,
where trade is much retarded by the lack even of good roads.
The town of Logroño (pop. 1900, 19,237) and the city of Calahorra
(9475) are separately described. The only other towns
with upwards of 5000 inhabitants are Haro (7914), Alfaro (5938)
and Cervera del Río Alhama (5930).
LOGROÑO, the capital of the Spanish province of Logroño, on the right bank of the river Ebro and on the Saragossa-Miranda de Ebro railway. Pop. (1900) 19,237. Logroño is an ancient walled town, finely situated on a hill 1204 ft. high. Its bridge of twelve arches across the Ebro was built in 1138, but has frequently been restored after partial destruction by floods. The main street, arcaded on both sides, and the crooked but highly picturesque alleys of the older quarters are in striking contrast with the broad, tree-shaded avenues and squares laid out in modern times. The chief buildings are a bull-ring which
