Below is the OP for a topic I launched on the subject.
I was developing some thoughts on the Logos as more than a person but a reason, or meaning.
Curious about your thoughts. Thanks.
Let me give you one to two of my notes regarding this topic. Because, you developing some thoughts on the logos as more than a person is actually how the Greek Philosophy would take this verse. the question in John 1 is whether or not you want to take this as a Jewish expression or a Greek one.
Greek historical backgrounds: As a philosophical term, logos meant the ‘world-soul’, the soul of the universe. This was an all-pervading
principle, the rational principle of the universe. It was a creative energy. In one sense, all things came from it; in another, men derived their wisdom from it. These concepts are at least as old as Heraclitus (6th cent. BC): the logos is “always existent” and “all things happen
through this logos.”
Later Hellenistic thought: Philo of Alexandria, the Jewish philosopher of the early 1st century, frequently mentions the logos (it appears over 1400 times in his writings), but he is really concerned with his Platonic distinction between this material world and the real, heavenly world of ideas. It was the Stoics who actually developed the concept of logos. They abandoned Plato’s heavenly archetypes in favor of the thought (closer to Heraclitus) that the Universe is pervaded by logos, the eternal Reason. They were convinced of the ultimate rationality of the universe, and used the term logos to express this conviction. It was the ‘force’ (!) that originated and permeated and directed all things. It was the supreme governing principle of the universe. But the Stoics did not think of the logos as personal, nor did they understand it as we would. understand God (i.e. as a person to be worshiped).
John, then, is using a term that would be widely recognized among the Greeks. But the ‘man in the street’ would not know its precise significance, any more than most of us would understand the terms ‘relativity’ or ‘nuclear fission’. But he would know it meant
something very important.
The rest of the Fourth Gospel, however, shows little trace of acquaintance with Greek philosophy, and even less of dependence on it.
John, in his use of logos, is cutting across the fundamental Greek concept of the gods: they were detached, they regarded the struggles and heartaches and joys and fears of the world with serene, divine lack of feeling. John uses logos to portray a God so involved, so caring, so loving and giving that he becomes incarnate within his creation.
Finally, the Jew will remember that ‘by the Word of the Lord the heavens were made’; the Greek will think of the rational principle of which all natural laws are particular expressions. Both will agree that this Logos is the starting point of all things.”