Studying the Bible is one of the most important and vital practices that a Christian can develop. Although it can never replace sitting under the preached Word of God weekly on the Lord's Day, it can serve as an extremely useful discipline to help you know God and love him more.
We live in an era of unprecedented access to not only the Bible, but to theological works of all kinds. Knowing how to access these works and being able to do so in an effective manner is sometimes a challenge. At the Reformed Brotherhood, we have found that one of the most useful options is Logos Bible Software.
We have said since the very beginning of the show that Logos "powers" the Reformed Brotherhood, and I (Tony) have been using the software for over a decade now. Logos has been an active sponsor of the show in the past, and likely will be again, and as our listeners know... we don't recommend products we don't actually use.
Logos recently released a major version update which incorporates a number of new features. They provided us with a copy so we could get used to it and recommend it to all of our listeners. I wanted to provide a quick resource that highlights some of the best features of the software, which will help you to study God's Word along with the Church most effectively.
For the purposes of this review, I am using Logos 10 with a Reformed Gold base package. This means that some of the features I mention are not available to others using a different base package. Some of these features already existed in previous versions, so I will point out new features to Logos 10 when they occur.
One of the most difficult things to do when reading large books is to make progress. One often sits down and reads a few pages, and feels as though the rest of the book is insurmountable. For my own part, this often leads to me reading the first 50-100 pages of a 600-700 page book multiple times.
With Logos, you can take any book you own and generate a customized reading plan. This applies to whole books, as well as portions. There are also many preset reading plans that can be applied to the Bible to power your daily Bible reading.
In addition to utilizing this feature to structure your reading of individual works, you can also combine reading plans together. This is especially useful when you are studying for something specific.
For example, if I was preparing to present a lecture on the subject of Christology, I could identify key sections of major theology works that address the subject and enter them into a custom reading plan starting today and progressing through a week before my lecture. Logos would divide up the plan into a reading plan on the schedule I determine. If I get off my schedule, Logos gives me the ability to adjust my plan to the current day, or I can read multiple sessions to catch up.
The single most powerful element of Logos is the fully indexed library. When you purchase a book in Logos, it isn't just a simple digital book. Although various books are indexed to various levels, every word of the book becomes searchable. Additionally, many resources are keyed and cross-linked to other references.
This is especially true of Bible references.
This is most easily explained using an example:
Lets say that I was working on a paper on the sin against the Holy Spirit. Through a basic phrase search in Logos I arrive at a passage in Reformed Dogmatics, Volume 2, by Geerhardus Vos. Vos begins a treatment of this by referring to the passages in Matthew and Mark that speak about the sin against the Holy Spirit. I can simply hover over the linked references and a small window with the text of the verse references in my preferred translation will appear. This allows me to quickly see what referenced verses say without having to leave the text I am reading.
Further down in this section, Vos references Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion. I can hover over the resource to see an excerpt of the cited text. However, this excerpt is too long to read in a pop up box. Instead, I can click on the linked reference, and if I own an appropriate resource it will open directly to that book and resource. If I don't own that resource, it will provide me with a link to the purchase page of the resource, and if I decide I need the resource I can purchase it and have it available within a few minutes.
Logos has had an impressive search capacity for many versions. In Logos 10 they have really beefed up this search with a new feature called "All Search."
All search provides you with a structured search result that highlights different resources and features based on what you search for.
For example, if I search for "sin against the Holy Spirit" in the previous version, I am given excerpts from several books based that speak about the topic. After a few results a section called "Factbook" is displayed. This factbook is a collection of tools, resources, and definitions that Logos has assembled, and will be displayed in a search when the system can directly match your search to a topic. As you can see in the image below, the Factbook also gives you information to related subjects (in this case, it gives me prompts to study not only the Unforgiveable Sin, but Pneumatology as a whole, and the Holy Spirit's role in salvation.
The first search I did was just a basic word search, and although it came up with several matches that were appropriate, it also gave me several unrelated matches. I can make my search more specific by using a variety of search modifiers. For example, by simply adding quotation marks around my query it will make it an exact match search. There are a number of other search modifiers as well.
In addition to Searches and Factbooks, there are a number of built in "guides" in Logos. These guides are basically prebuilt collections of tools depending on what you're looking for. The one I use most frequently is the Passage Guide, but there are also Exegetical Guides and Theology Guides.
For example, if after studying about the sin against the Holy Spirit, I wanted to broaden my study to the whole chapter of Mark 3, I could open a Passage Guide to that chapter. This would automatically give me a set of useful links and information related to the verse or passage I entered.
You can also customize what these guides present to you to tailor it to your needs.
Previous versions of Logos had a variety of Text to Speech options in the main application. However, in version 10 this has been expanded to the mobile application. This allows you to turn basically any English resource you own into an audio book.
This is not the same as getting a book in Audible however. When you are using Text to Speech in Logos, the text is displayed on your screen with an indicator that moves along with the audio to show you where the system is reading. There are a variety of English speaker accents available.
Additionally, you can modify the speed to either increase it or decrease it depending on your needs. The time indicator generally tells you how much is left in the current section, at your set speed, which helps you know if you will get through the section in the time you have available. Finally, rather than a simple skip forward or backward option based on time, the system prompts you to skip forward or backward based on sentences. This is useful if you missed something or need to listen to it again.
This feature is hard to quantify just how significant it is.
In previous versions of Logos, only the digital resources that you owned were indexed and available. In some instances, the software might recommend to you a resource that you do not own, but it could only provide full results for digital resources.
Not anymore. Now, you can tell Logos that you own a physical copy of a book, and as long as that book exists as a Logos book, it will provide you results in All Search as though you owned the book in Logos. The only difference is that instead of providing you with a link to the digital resource, it will prompt you with information that helps you find the information in your physical books.
For example, if I was studying the Lordship Salvation controversy, and wanted to investigate the role of the intellect in saving faith, I could enter the search term "saving faith intellect." This would give me a number of results, including a Factbook entry and hits from my digital library (See All Search above).
However, because I have told Logos that I own a physical copy of Theoretical-Practical Theology, Volume 2 by Petrus van Mastricht, it also points me to page 14 in which he addresses the question "Does saving faith consist only in the assent of the intellect?"
One of the challenges that has been common for Logos users in the past is that previous versions of Logos were very resource intensive. An older laptop or low end computer was sometimes struggle to utilize all of what was available due to the extent of processing power that is needed to run such a powerful software.
I'm not sure what they did, but Logos 10 is super fast and responsive now. They have made several background adjustments that have improved resource efficiency, making the software more responsive and available on lower end computers.
Additionally, they have improved their mobile and web based applications. While these are not new, in the past there were sometimes significant differences between how the Mobile or Web Application functioned which made switching between platforms somewhat jarring. Although there are still differences, they have made strides to make the experience more uniform, making for a more seamless transition.
This is definitely not a new feature, but one that makes sense to identify. Logos exists for a wide variety of people in a wide variety of contexts. This is possible because there are an equally wide variety of packages available.
There are a number of base packages that one can purchase, as well as denominational collections that match the major theological traditions.
In addition to these packages, most resources can be purchased on an individual basis, and since the system is modular and dynamic, if you decide to upgrade to a higher level package later you won't have to pay for a book you already own when you do.
Logos is also very generous with free and discounted resources. Each month they provide a free book of the month (sometimes multiples), as well as significant discounts on individual books and collected topics. For example, I am writing this in late October 2022, and the topic of "Puritanism" is a featured topic, so a variety of resources related to Puritanism are available at a deep discount.
This dynamic and modular system allows a person to utilize the software in a way that fits both their need and budget, making it a great choice for anyone looking to study the Bible and other theological topics.
There are many other features and resources I could point out, but these are the big ones. A few more that come to mind:
Logos really is a comprehensive tool that can improve just about any element of your piety and practice. I cannot recommend it enough. If you are interested in purchasing a copy of Logos, please consider using our affiliate link to support the show while doing so. You can purchase any base package at a 30% discount by going to ReformedBrotherhood.com/logos.
Disclosure: The Reformed Brotherhood was provided with a copy of Logos 10 for review purposes.