50 Key Concepts in Theology

Karl Barth (1886–1968) put the concept of the Word of God at the
centre of his theology. The Word takes three forms: (i) the incarnate Logos;
(ii) the written Word of Scripture; (iii) the Word of God as preached by the
Church.
Justin Martyr (100?–165?) pointed out that some ancient Greek thinkers
– in particular, the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus – had argued that the
Logos ‘governs all things’. Justyn saw Heraclitus as a Christian before Christ.
The Stoics (third century bc) also used the term Logos for the creative
force in the cosmos.
IDEAS
The Alogi: a second-century sect who, among other things, rejected the
Logos theology in John’s Gospel.
Logos spermatikos: the concept of the ‘seminal Word’ referred to by the
Stoics and developed by Justin Martyr.
Logotherapy: a form of psychotherapy developed by Viktor Frankl
(1905–97), a psychotherapist who regarded the desire for meaning as the
primary force in human nature.
Logocentrism: a term coined by Jacques Derrida to describe the
restrictive and controlling pattern of Western thinking, which operates in
terms of fixed structures and hierarchies of meaning.
Alexandrian theology: a second-century school of Logos-theology
associated with Clement of Alexandria, Origen and Athanasius. Clement was
a philosopher-theologian who regarded classic Greek philosophy as a
valuable grounding for Christian theology.
The Cosmic Christ: the idea (associated with Pierre Teilhard de Chardin,
but with a heritage going back to the Logos-theology of the Church Fathers)
of Christ as the incarnate meaning and purpose of the cosmos.
BOOKS
Wolfhart Pannenberg, Jesus: God and Man (Westminster/John Knox
Press, 1982)
Henny Fiska Hägg, Clement of Alexandria and the Beginnings of
Christian Apophaticism (OUP, 2006)

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