# The Logos: reason, the Word, and the defence of life

The idea of the Logos, the hidden reason ordering the world: from Heraclitus and the Stoics through Philo and the Gospel of John to Justin Martyr's logos spermatikos, and the early-Christian rejection of Roman infant exposure.

*This story part of: Religion and ideology*
*The Stoics: virtue, reason, and the life in accord with nature parallel this story*

## c. 501 BCE — Heraclitus and the Logos of the cosmos

Heraclitus taught that a single Logos, an ordering reason, ran through all change in the world, though most people lived as if asleep to it. It was the first great use of logos as the hidden order behind appearances.

## c. 301 BCE — The Stoics make the Logos divine reason

The Stoics described the Logos as a rational, fiery principle pervading the cosmos, of which each human mind held a spark. Living well meant living in accord with this universal reason.

## c. 30 — Philo of Alexandria bridges Logos and Scripture

The Jewish philosopher Philo fused Greek thought with the Hebrew Bible, casting the Logos as a mediating power between the transcendent God and the created world. His synthesis shaped later Christian theology.

## c. 100 — The Didache forbids abortion and infanticide

The Didache, an early Christian manual of teaching, explicitly forbade abortion and the killing of newborns, setting the young church against practices widely accepted in the Roman world.

## c. 100 — The Gospel of John: 'In the beginning was the Word'

John's Gospel opened by identifying the Logos, the Word, with God and declaring that it became flesh in Jesus. It carried a Greek philosophical term into the heart of Christian faith.

## c. 150 — Justin Martyr and the logos spermatikos

The apologist Justin Martyr argued that a seed of the Logos, the logos spermatikos, was scattered in all people, so that Socrates and other Greeks had glimpsed the truth. Reason itself, he held, pointed toward Christ.

## c. 155 — Justin Martyr condemns Roman infant exposure

In his First Apology, Justin Martyr attacked the common Roman practice of exposing unwanted infants, arguing it was murder and that many exposed children ended up in slavery or brothels. Early Christian writers made rejection of exposure and infanticide a mark of the faith.

## c. 177 — Athenagoras defends nascent life

Athenagoras of Athens, in his Plea for the Christians, called abortion murder and rejected the charges of infanticide and cannibalism levelled at Christians. Like Justin Martyr, he tied the new faith to a defence of the unborn and the newborn.