Handbook for Bible Students

“L” Entries

Law. Universality of Moral.—The ten commandments, while given primarily to the Hebrews, are of universal application. We shall never get beyond the necessity of knowing and keeping them.—“Syllabus for Old Testament Study,” John R. Sampey, D. D., LL. D., p. 51. Louisville, Ky.: Baptist World Publishing Company, 1908. HBS 319.1

Logos, Meaning of.—The term Logos, then, denotes neither here nor anywhere else in the writings of John the “reason,” but always the “Word,” who is with God and comes into the world with the function of making known the thoughts and purposes of God. The Word is not an abstract revelation made to the world, but something greater, transcending the earthly sphere and belonging to that of the divine life. More exactly, the Word is a person communicating with God as with one of the same nature, then assuming a fleshly form and proclaiming, without loss of his supernatural being or unequaled closeness to God, that which he has seen of the Father and the Father’s counsels.—The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, Vol. VII, art. “Logos,” p. 12. HBS 319.2

Logos, John’s and Philo’s.—When it is assumed that the Logos of St. John is but a reproduction of the Logos of Philo the Jew, this assumption overlooks fundamental discrepancies of thought, and rests its case upon occasional coincidences of language. For besides the contrast between the abstract ideal Logos of Philo, and the concrete personal Logos of the fourth evangelist, ... there are even deeper differences, which would have made it impossible that an apostle should have sat in spirit as a pupil at the feet of the Alexandrian, or that he should have allowed himself to breathe the same general religious atmosphere.—“The Divinity of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,” Henry Parry Liddon, M. A., p. 68. London: Rivingtons, 1868. HBS 319.3

Logos, Revealed in Flesh.—The fourth Gospel essays a mightier problem, viz., to connect the person and the history of Jesus, on the one hand, with the inmost being of God, and, on the other, with the course and end of the universe. HBS 319.4

1. The idea and purpose of the writer can best be understood through the prologue which introduces the history. He begins at a higher altitude than the ancient seer who saw God “in the beginning” create the world, for he attempts to define the sort of God who created. Eternity was not to him a solitude, nor God a solitary. God had never been alone, for with him was the Logos, and the Logos was at once God, and “in the beginning face to face with God” ([Greek words transliterated as follows] [houtos aan en archaa pros ton theon]). And he was organ of the Godhead in the work of creation: “all things were made by him.” And the life he gave he possessed; in him the creation lived, and his life was its light. But this light was confronted by a darkness which would not be overcome, though it was not possible that the Logos should consent to have his light overcome of the darkness. In brief but pregnant phrases the author describes the method and means which the Logos used in this supreme conflict. His relation to the creation never ceased; at every point and every moment he was active within it. In this way he stood distinguished from the prophet or preacher, who had his most recent type in the Baptist. HBS 319.5

John was a man sent from God for an occasion; before it he had no being, after it he had no function; his sole duty was to be a witness, to testify concerning the Light, “in order that all men through him might believe.” Over against this ephemeral witness bearer, who appears, lives his brief day, does his little work, and then departs, stands the true, the eternal Light. He shines forever and everywhere; illumines all men, even though they be held to be heathen. With threefold emphasis the idea is repeated: “He was in the world,” did not enter or come to be within it, but abode in it, was as old as it, is as young as it, unaffected by birth, untouched by death. He was, and had always been, for “the world was made by him;” man-no selected people simply, but collective Man-was made by him, and how could he desert the work of his own hands? But it had deserted him: “the world knew him not.” The peoples loved the darkness and knew not the Light. Even those who claimed to be the elect were blind. “He came unto his own, and his own received him not.” The children of the covenant, the heirs of the promise, had been no better than the heathen: the Logos who lived and worked in their midst they did not know. But in one respect they had greater excellence: sight was granted to some, a remnant saw and believed, and he of his grace gave them the right to “become children of God.” And this adoption came not of blood or descent or act of man; it was “of God.” It was a vain boast to say, “We have Abraham to our father;” the only title to divine sonship came of divine grace. HBS 320.1

And now there arrived the supreme moment in human experience: the Logos, who was Creator and uncreated Light, who had never ceased to be related to all men or to be without his own even among the Jews, “he became flesh.” The phrase is peculiar; he does not say, as in the case of John, [Greek words] [egeneto anthropos apestalmenos para theou], “there came a man sent from God;” but he says, [Greek words] [ho logos sarx egeneto], “the Word became flesh.” There is no break in this continuity; it is the same Word who was with God, who was God, who made the worlds, who was the true Light, who shone in the darkness, who continued to shine among the heathen, who visited his own, and graciously made those who believed sons of God, who now becomes flesh.—“The Philosophy of the Christian Religion,” Andrew Martin Fairbairn, M. A., D. D., LL. D., pp. 451-453. New York: George H. Doran Company, copyright 1902. HBS 320.2

Logos, Translated by “Son” in John’s Gospel.—Translated by “Son” in John’s Gospel. [Greek word] [Logos] is one of the dark terms we owe to Heraclitus; from him it passed into the school of the Stoics, and was there stamped with their image and superscription. In the Hellenism of Alexandria it played a great part, and was made by Philo a mediator between God and the universe, with a vast variety of names and functions: he conceived it now as abstract, now as personal; described it now as archangel, now as archetype; here as the Idea idearum which is ever with God, there as “the everlasting law of the eternal God, which is the most stable and secure support of the universe.” Philo’s logos is now the image of God, now his eldest or first-born Son, and again the organ by which he made the world. Here God is light, and the Word its archetype and example; and there God is life, while all who live irrationally ([Greek word] [alogos]) are separated from the life which is in him. HBS 320.3

It is not to be doubted, then, that John neither invented his transcendental terms nor the ideas they expressed. But he did a more daring and original thing,-he brought them out of the clouds into the market place, incorporated, personalized, individuated them. He distinctly saw what the man who had coined the terms had been dimly feeling after,-that a solitary Deity was an impotent abstraction, without life, without love, void of thought, incapable of movement, and divorced from all reality. But his vision passed through the region of speculation, and discovered the Person who realized his ideal. Logos he translated by Son, and in doing so he did two things: revolutionized the conception of God, and changed an abstract and purely metaphysical idea into a concrete and intensely ethical person.—“The Philosophy of the Christian Religion,” Andrew Martin Fairbairn, M. A., D. D., LL. D., pp. 454, 455. New York: George H. Doran Company, copyright 1902. HBS 320.4

Lord’s Supper, Early Interpretation of.—The Christian church attached from the beginning a high and mysterious import to the bread and wine used in the Lord’s Supper, as the symbols of the body and blood of Christ, to be received by the church with thanksgiving (Eucharist). It was not the tendency of the age to analyze the symbolical in a critical and philosophical manner, and to draw metaphysical distinctions between its constituent parts, viz., the outward sign on the one hand, and the thing represented by it on the other. On the contrary, the real and the symbolical were so blended that the symbol did not supplant the fact, nor did the fact dislodge the symbol. HBS 321.1

Thus it happens that in the writings of the Fathers of this period we meet with passages which speak distinctly of signs, and at the same time with others which speak openly of a real participation in the body and blood of Christ. Yet we may already discern some leading tendencies. Ignatius, as well as Justin and Irenaus, laid great stress on the mysterious connection subsisting between the Logos and the elements; though this union was sometimes misunderstood in a superstitious sense, or perverted in the hope of producing magical effects. Tertullian and Cyprian, though somewhat favorable to the supernatural, are nevertheless representatives of the symbolical intrepretation. The Alexandrian school, too, espoused the latter view, though the language of Clement on this subject (intermingling an ideal mysticism) is less definite than that of Origen. In the apostolical Fathers, and, with more definite reference to the Lord’s Supper, in the writings of Justin and Irenaus, the idea of a sacrifice already occurs; by which, however, they did not understand a daily repeated propitiatory sacrifice of Christ (in the sense of the later Roman Church), but a thank offering to be presented by Christians themselves. HBS 321.2

This idea, which may have had its origin in the custom of offering oblations, was brought into connection with the service for the commemoration of the dead, and thus imperceptibly prepared the way for the later doctrine of masses for the deceased. It further led to the notion of a sacrifice which is repeated by the priest (but only symbolically), an idea first found in Cyprian. It is not quite certain, but probable, that the Ebionites celebrated the Lord’s Supper as a commemorative feast; the mystical meals of some Gnostics, on the contrary, bear only a very distant resemblance to the Lord’s Supper.—“A History of Christian Doctrines,” Dr. K. R. Hagenbach, Vol. I, pp. 287, 288. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1880. HBS 321.3

Lord’s Supper, Controversy Concerning.—A new reaction of the old antagonism between the Alexandrian and the Antiochian schools, in the doctrine of the person of Christ, reappeared in the controversy between the Lutheran and Reformed churches on the dogma of the Lord’s Supper. Luther, in disputing with Zwingli, in order to establish the presence of the body of Christ in the Supper, had asserted the omnipresence of his human nature, but afterward had not attached so much importance to this point. When, after the middle of the sixteenth century, the dispute was revived, Brenz again brought forward this proposition, and the zealous Lutherans have since advocated the doctrine of the ubiquity of Christ’s body. Zwingli and Calvin asserted, on the contrary, that although Christ, as to his person, is present everywhere, yet in his human nature he cannot be omnipresent. Melanchthon and his school also declared themselves against this doctrine.—“Lectures on the History of Christian Dogmas,” Dr. Augustus Neander, Vol. II, pp. 652, 653. London: George Bell & Sons, 1882. HBS 321.4

Lord’s Supper, Luther’s Views of.—Luther, at first in opposition to the Catholic Church, had here given prominence to the subjective element. Combating the efficacy of the opus operatum, he made everything dependent on faith. From this point he could attain to a mere symbolical conception by which the dogma of the mass would have been at once annihilated. When he first occupied himself with these inquiries, the thought actually occurred to him whether the bread and wine at the Supper had not a mere symbolical meaning. “If any one,” he writes, “five years before could have informed me that in the sacrament there is nothing but bread and wine, he would have rendered me a great service. I have suffered sore temptations respecting it.” But as it was now important for him to maintain the objective in the doctrine of the sacraments, and moreover, as the enemy of allegorical interpretation, he wished to understand the words of the institution literally, he came to the conclusion to reject the doctrine of transubstantiation, but to hold firmly that the body and blood of Christ were truly present in the bread and wine. In his treatise on the “Babylonish Captivity of the Church,” where he first occupies himself with this subject, he calls transubstantiation a scholastic subtle fiction. An expression of Pierre d’Ailly had led him to perceive that the Schoolmen had already remarked the contradiction of this doctrine to Holy Writ; he acknowledges that it drove them to a forced interpretation of the words of the institution, and then says, “Truly, if I cannot succeed in knowing how the bread can be the body of Christ, yet I will bring my understanding captive under the obedience of Christ. As iron and fire are two substances, and yet when mixed are one glowing substance, so it is with the connection of the body and blood with the bread and wine.” Luther persisted in this tendency. His doctrine continued to be, that the body and blood were with, in, and under the bread and wine, and that both believers and unbelievers received them.—Id., pp. 694, 695. HBS 322.1

Lord’s Supper, Views of Reformers Concerning.—While the Reformers made common cause in their opposition not only to the doctrine of transubstantiation, but especially to the sacrifice of the mass, and the withholding of the cup from the laity, all of which they rejected as unscriptural, they still differed widely in their opinions concerning the positive aspect of the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper. Different interpretations of the words of the institution were at short intervals advanced by Carlstadt, Zwingli, and Ocolampadius. Luther opposed all these in his controversial writings, and in the Colloquium of Marburg (October, 1529), and even to the close of his life he insisted upon the literal interpretation of the words of the institution of the Supper; and, as a consequence, upon the actual reception with the mouth of the glorified body of Christ, present in the bread, and of his real blood. In accordance with his views, the authors of the symbolical books of the Lutheran Church declared the doctrine of the real presence of Christ’s body and blood in the eucharist (consubstantiation), and along with it (in part) that of the ubiquity of his body, to be the orthodox doctrine of the church. The Reformed had never denied a presence of Christ in the eucharist, though they did not expressly emphasize it. But they looked for this presence, as one which testified itself to faith, not in the bread, and interpreted the reception of Christ in the ordinance, not as that of his body received by the mouth, but as a spiritual participation. Calvin, in particular, after the example of Bucer, emphasized this spiritual participation, and thus made the Lord’s Supper not a mere sign, but a pledge and seal of divine grace imparted to the communicant. Thus there always remained this important difference, that even in Calvin’s view it is only the believer who is united with Christ in the sacrament; and that the body of Christ, as such, is not in the bread, but in heaven, from whence, in a mysterious and dynamic way, it is imparted to the communicant; while, on the contrary, Luther, from the objective point of view, maintained that the unbelieving also partake of the body of Christ, though to their own hurt, in, with, and under the bread. The view of Schwenkfeld, resting upon a perversion of the words of institution, had but slight influence. The most prosaic view is that of the Socinians, Arminians, and Mennonites, who, in connection with their more negative opinions on the nature of the sacraments, regarded the Lord’s Supper merely as an act of commemoration. And lastly, the Quakers believed that, in consequence of their internal and spiritual union with Christ, they might wholly dispense with partaking of his body. [The Westminster Confession is in harmony with the views of Calvin; the Independents and Baptists adopted substantially the theory of Zwingli. The Church of England, particularly in the catechism, laid more stress upon the real presence, and in its earlier formularies upon the idea of the eucharistic sacrifice.]-“A History of Christian Doctrines,” Dr. K. R. Hagenbach, Vol. III, pp. 148-150. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1881. HBS 322.2