Philo’s and John’s Logos
The following excerpt is taken from Michael F. Bird’s Jesus Among the Gods: Early Christology in the Greco-Roman World, published by Baylor University Press, Waco, TX in 2022], pp. 164-170. This is from section II. Jesus and Intermediary Figures, 4. Jesus and the “In-Betweeners”: Comparing Early Christologies and Intermediary Figures. All emphasis will be mine.
Concerning the similarities between the Philonic and Johnannine Logoi, we can say the following:
(a) Eternal and preexistent. The Logos is co-eternal with God and preexists the created realm. Philo makes this clear with the Logos sharing in the immortality and eternality of God (Conf. 41). John accents preexistence at several points by placing the Logos with God in the beginning (John 1.1-2), with Jesus sharing in God’s own name and self-existence (John 5.26; 8.58), and possessing a glory before the creation of the world (John 17.4 [sic]).
(b) Heightened proximity. The Logos is close to God in a way that no other intermediary figure is ever described. Philo declared the Logos to be the divine image and therefore the nearest one to God with no intervening figure between them (Fug. 101), which corresponds to John’s remark that the Word was with/ towards God with nothing between or beside (John 1.1, 18).
(c) God and with God. The Logos is part of the divine executive yet distinguishable from God. Both Logoi are identified with God and God’s actions, yet they never act independently of God, and they do not compromise God’s unity and oneness. Philo declared there to be “one true God,” and the Logos can appear in his place because the title “God” is given to his “chief Word” (Somn. 1.229-30). Philo contends that the “God” and “Lord” whom Abraham saw at Mamre (Gen 18.1) was none other than the “Holy Logos” (Abr. 70-71; Mut. 16-17). That corresponds with the Johannine Jesus’ remark that Abraham had a vision of his own day and even of him, precisely because Jesus is the “I am” who was before Abraham (John 8.56-58). John thus claims that Abraham encountered a heavenly being, the divine Logos, whom Moses also encountered as a heavenly figure bearing the divine name, and with whom Jesus is identified.127 Philo also says that Moses calls the Logos “God” as the divine Creative power (Fug. 97; QE 2.62,68), and he even labels it a “second God” (QG 2.62). John designates the Logos as “God” in a strong sense and attaches the title to the risen Jesus too (John 1.1; 20.28). In fact, Thomas’ attribution of the titles “Lord” and “God” to the risen Jesus is parallel to Philo dividing the Logos into two parts, the creative (God) and sovereign powers (Lord) within the one true God (Fug. 95; 103; cf. QG 2.16; QE 2.62, 68; Abr. 121; Mos. 2.99-100; Her. 165-66). Justin too identifies the Logos as “another God and Lord under the Creator of all things” (Dial. 56.4), and Origen is also comfortable with describing Jesus as “a second God” even though he qualifies it (Cels. 5.39; 6.61; 7.57). Philo, John, Justin, and Origen all have a strong belief in one God and maintain that the Logos is not an independent deity; nonetheless, they do struggle for conceptual clarity in how to precisely explain that the Logos is intrinsic to God’s being while functionally distinct and derivative.
(d) Demiurge. The Logos is God’s instrument of creation. Philo and John both identify God as the Creator, yet the act of creation is undertaken through the Logos, even though neither of them applies the term demiourgos to the Logos (Sacr. 8; Cher. 127; Fug. 95, 97; Opif. 20; 24; Migr. 6; QE 2.68; Leg. all. 3.96; Her. 119; Spec. leg. 1.81). John is clear that God creates “all things” through the Logos and nothing “apart from him” (John 1.3). This Johannine language meant very different things, as the debates between the proto-orthodox and Gnostics illustrate. For the former, this meant that the Logos was not part of creation and not an ordinary intermediary, for the latter, the Logos was at best the curator of the pleroma.
(e) Light and life. God’s Creative work through the Logos abounds in life and light. Philo says as much in his narration of the creation story (Opif. 24, 30, 33). John’s Logos is the bearer of life and light for ail people (John 1.4) and so John associates the Logos with God’s role as life-giver and revealer in creation.128
(f) Adoption. The Logos makes people children of God. Philo identifies the Logos as the agent of adoption, for while not everyone is learned enough to be considered “sons of God” (Deut 14.1), even so, he contends that everyone willing to put aside polytheism and pleasures can take their place under “God’s firstborn, the Word … For if we have not yet become fit to be thought sons of God yet we may be sons of his invisible image, the most holy Word” (Conf. 146-47). John is analogous in his claim that receiving the Word, believing in him, gives one the power to become children of God, begotten of God and not of human procreative process (John 1.12-13).
(g) The Logos with and in human beings. The Logos comprises the heavenly archetype of human existence. In regard to Gen 1.27, “Let us make man in our image,” Philo discerns in the plural pronoun “us” not an angelic assembly, but God and his Logos. He argues, “nothing mortal can be made in the likeness of the most high One and Father of the universe but only in that of the second God, who is his Logos” (QG 2.62). Humans were created according to an archetypal seal, which corresponds to the divine image, which is the Word of God (Opif. 24-25; Conf. 147; Leg. all. 3.96; QG 1.4). The Logos is, then, the archetype of humanity, with the titles “man according to the image of God” (Conf. 146) and “the true man” (Somn. 1.215). Philo does make the interesting allegorical interpretation of Lev 16.17 with the high priest offering sacrifices as “not a man, but the word of God” (Fug. 108). John’s testimony is far stronger than this with the Word becoming flesh and identifying with the human life of the man Jesus of Nazareth (John 1.14).
(h) Exclusive mediator. Philo believes that the Logos fulfills a role like Moses in Deut 5.5 (LXX): “I stood between the Lord and you.” The Logos is the “chief messenger” who “pleads with the immortal as supplicant for afflicted mortality and acts as ambassador of the ruler to the subjects” (Her. 205-6). In regard to Exod 23.20-21, the angel whom God sends before the Hebrews is the Logos who is “judge and mediator” (QE 2.13) or “mediator and arbitrator” (QE 2.68). The Logos is also the “interpreter and prophet” of the divine will (Deus 138). God’s transcendence is such that none can see God in his essence, but only his Word as he dispatches it, the “angel of his Logos” (Somn. 1.65-69, 239). Matching this is a strong emphasis on the Logos as the exclusive revelation of God (Somn. 1.18; 3.13; 8.19; 14.7-9; 16.3; 17.24) and a special mediator (Somn. 1.51; 14.6; 15.5), which parallels similar Johannine assertions (John 1.18; 3.13; 14.6; 17.3).
(i) Philo and Christian tradition. Philo describes the Logos with terms that were to have currency in Christian circles (esp. Conf. 146). Labeling the Logos as “son of God” coalesces with early Christian tradition, particularly acute in John, where Jesus is the Son of God par excellence with a messianic vocation and unique filial relationship to God the Father. Likewise, his designation of the Logos as “firstborn” corresponds to Col 1.15, which was frequently married to Johannine christological discourse in the second century. Even the titles “Beginning” and “name of God” popped up in Gnostic and proto-orthodox narratives for Jesus as well. In addition, it was very common among a diverse range of authors to describe the Logos as an angel, as Philo does at several points. Philo anticipates in his Logos many of the christological titles that were to be used in apostolic and sub-apostolic Christology, and he intimates the Platonic possibilities that emerge when the Logos is situated as the primary actor in a hierarchy of subordinate powers where God is supreme, but kept at arm’s length from creation.
The Philonic and Johannine Logoi intersect most acutely at the point of postulating a supreme cosmological and intermediary agent who traverses the universal and the particular of creation and révélation.130 They demonstrate how philosophical traditions could be interrogated and applied to biblical exegesis in such a way as to cogently explain Gods movement towards the world without forfeiting divine transcendence. They both exposit God’s revelation in his creation with a view to attaining true knowledge of God’s being through the Logos.131
Yet, for ail the many similarities between Philo and John on the Logos, it is the differences that remain stark.
(a) God, Logos, and creation. To put it simply, Philo’s Logos explains creation, whereas John’s Logos explains God. 132 Unlike Philo, John’s Logos is not a divine form, intellect, archetype, or imprint impressed upon creation and creatures; rather, it belongs intrinsically to the one God and is sent into creation. Philo separates the invisible and visible worlds via the Logos, whereas John unites them in the Logos. Philo’s Logos is imprinted upon the physical world, whereas John’s Logos enters the physical world and is the Savior of the world. Philo’s Logos begets a cosmos and other powers, as do some Gnostic Logoi. But in Johannine and proto-orthodox discourse, the Logos does not generate anything; instead, the cosmos is addressed by the Logos rather than expressed within it.133
(b) Relationship with God. Philo’s Logos is close to God, as close as any entity can get, between a divine hypostasis and an archangel. The Logos constitutes God’s creative and sovereign power in heavens of which there is an equality with God (Her. 166), and no other being can be equal in honor with God (Conf. 170). Similarly, John accents the Logos’ parity with God as cocreator and Jesus’ own oneness and equality with God (John 5.18; 10.30). Even so, while Philo and John both attribute to the Logos a sense of subordination (QG 2.62; John 14.28), Philo’s subordination is premised on a cosmic Platonic hierarchy, whereas the Johannine Jesus’ subordination is rooted in his messianic obedience to the Father’s redemptive will. In addition, even though Philo and John both call the Logos “God,” there are more features of divine sovereignty attributed to John’s Logos in the prologue and to Jesus in the narrative, not the least in the receipt of worship and divine prerogatives in salvation and judgment.131
(c) Mediation without participation. Philo’s Logos is explicitly described as a “mediator,” even a cosmic priest, because it is neither “uncreated” as God nor “created” as humanity (Her. 206; Fug. 101; Somn. 1.215; QE 2.13, 68). It exists genuinely between both types of being and operates between the two realms. In contrast, John’s Logos participates in God’s God-ness and in the form and flesh of humanity. The Johannine Logos is a mediator and priest precisely because he participates in God’s being and human nature. Philo’s Logos might better be understood as a cipher or conduit between the noumenal and phenomenal horizons rather than comprising an actual mediator.135
(d) Incarnation. Philo regards the Logos as the archetype of humanity, sometimes a divine personification, otherwise a supreme angelic figure, but nothing here is analogous to incarnation nor even conducive to it. In fact, Philo stresses much the opposite: “Let no one represent the [divine] likeness as one to bodily form; for neither is God in human form, nor is the human body God-like” (Opif. 69). If that is not enough, regarding Caligula’s divine pretentiousness to deity, he charges, “Sooner could God change into a man than a man into a god” (Legat. 118). Elsewhere, he says “to declare the created uncreated, the mortal immortal, the destructible indestructible” is “blasphemy” as it tries to make “man” into “God” (Mut. 181). In which case, John 1.14 would be blasphemous to Philo because the unbegotten God cannot himself ever be begotten without forfeiting his immutable and impassible essence. Celsus, in fact, made the very same objections (Cels. 4.14, 18). True, Philo would agree with John that “no one has ever seen God,” but he would either balk or treat as blasphemous the following claim that “it is God the only Son, who is close to the Fathers heart, who has made him known” (John 1.18).136 For John, the ineffable and imperceptible divine being becomes knowable and perceptible exclusively in the Word/Son. Thus, despite some minor terminological affinities, “in Philo, the Logos is never fully personal, certainly never incarnate, and never the object of faith and love.”137
Finally, what should also be taken into account is how the Johannine Logos was diversely appropriated and augmented by Christian authors. John the Seer accents the worshipability of Jesus the Word and his proximity to God the Father even as he engages in an angelomorphic Christology. The Epistula Apostolorum similarly describes the Logos as divine but amiable to adopting angelic form. Justin deploys angelic types from the Septuagint to explain the Logos’ preexistence in Israel’s sacred history. Irenaeus can offer a robust intensification of Johnannine Logos Christology even as he identifies Christ with one of the cherubim. Justin and Origen define the Logos as definitively divine, but still subordinate to the Father. Athenagoras, Theophilus of Antioch, Tatian, and the author of Diognetus consider Jesus to be God’s Word, the instrument of creation, who sits on the divine side of the God-creature dichotomy, and is set apart from other intermediaries. Many Gnostics distinguished the Logos of God from the Logos of creation. Indeed, there were considerable variations within Gnostic schemes as to the Savior’s proximity to God the Father within the cosmic pleroma. The Johannine Logos was generally interpreted by Gnostics cosmologically, that is, in light of a stark separation between the true God and the pleroma contrasted with the demiurge and his creation.138 The overall impression is that Johns Logos generated diverse yet intensified identifications of Jesus as a divine figure by the proto-orthodox and heterodox alike.
To conclude, the Logos Christology of the early church, beginning with the evangelist John, was significant in several respects: (1) It demonstrates a convergence between Jewish discourses about divine Wisdom and a messiah with a Christian Son of God tradition in a way that resources and resonates with Middle Platonic and Stoic philosophy. John’s Logos has affinities with Heraclitus, Cornutus, Philo, or Plutarch. Yet John’s identification of the Logos as becoming the man Jesus is without parallel, and his Christology is of such a character as to imply that Jesus is one with the God of Israel and he is an “uncreated” deity.139 (2) Logos Christology in ail its varieties, often combined with angelomorphism or pleromatic exegesis, attempted to offer a conceptually coherent account of how God is to be identified with the man Jesus of Nazareth by identifying Jesus with the preexistent Logos. (3) Notwithstanding the questions that Logos Christology threw up for interpreters, such as whether the Logos was 100 percent divine or only 99.9 percent divine, Logos Christology represented the most serious and sublime effort of the church to know its own mind and to explain its own kerygma to itself. Logos Christology was the attempt to explain what it meant to say that “God sent his Son” (Gal 4.4; Rom 8.3), that “God was in Christ” (2 Cor 5.19), and that the Son is “the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being” (Heb 1.3).140
137 McHugh, John 1-4, 94. Cf. Evans, Word and Glory, 104; and Frey, “Between Jewish Monotheism,” 207. According to Dunn (Christology in the Making, 243 [italics original]), John “has taken language which any thoughtful Jew would recognize to be the language of personification and has identified it with a particular person, as a particular person, that would be so astonishing: the manifestation of God become man! God’s utterance not merely come through a particular individual, but actually become that one person, Jesus of Nazareth!” Boyarin (“Gospel of the Memra,” 261) notes: “I would like to propose that what marks the Fourth Gospel as a new departure in the history of Judaism is not to be found in its Logos theology at all but in its incarnational Christology, and that that very historical departure, or rather advent, is iconically symbolized in the narrative itself. When the text announces in v. 14 that ‘the Word became flesh,’ that announcement is an iconic representation of the moment that the Christian narrative begins to diverge from the Jewish Koine and form its own nascent Christian kerygma.” (Ibid., p. 169)
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