Great word, logos. In John 1 it comes out, “word”. In the beginning was the word…
Logos also means… a lot!
How do you understand Logos?
In terms of John’s usage Logos is the the power of God in human form as opposed to the invisible power of the Holy Spirit. In Genesis God speaks the Universe into existence and Logos is those words. It is all very metaphorical and cerebral.
I am sure that there are more academic views that others here will reveal.
Richard
Thanks for the reply.
I might temporarily give up on discussion of nontheist Logos. Here’s why, briefly. Because most theists - you believe in an all-powerful, all-knowing and compassionate God - a God who identifes individual believers and answers specific prayers - without any consistent, rational, reasonable explanation.
Why such believers never seem to even attempt any consistent, rational reasonable explanation for the clear inconsistencies?
Why not? Spoiler: because there isn’t any!
Thanks for reading. -JB
There are issues here that go way beyond the “innocent” OP. If you want to go in the direction of answering Prayer it will have to be in private as it does not relate to science.
Richard
Welcome to the forum, John! Good questions. It goes to what faith is. Even at age 72, I am still learning and my faith evolving. I think much of what you see as inconsistencies, we as Christian see as mystery and also the consequence of living in a world governed by natural law, and tainted by sin.
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In terms of philosophy and science is one way. That the universe is even comprehensible is one of life’s greatest mysteries and the Logos provides a pathway for understanding it. Christopher Baglow (Faith Science and Reason: Theology on the Cutting edge) writes:
“The second Person of the Trinity, the Son, is given a special name in Scripture—he is called the Logos, a Greek word which literally means “Mind” or “Reason.” From this we see that the Christian faith begins with placing faith in the Reason of God—no wonder St. John Paul II calls upon believers to use their minds! Of the Divine Logos we are told that “all things were made through him,” (Jn 1:3) and “in him all things hold together” (Col 1:17). Like the scientific perspective then, the perspective of faith turned towards the universe begins with a vision of orderliness. Faith reveals that from all eternity the Son is God’s perfect wisdom, and so the universe is lawful, full of patterns that are intelligible. Scientists like Murray Gell-Mann marvel at the effectiveness of mathematics for describing the universe; but why should mathematical order be the foundational characteristic of reality? The Christian might respond, “because God is Truth, and so the universe reflects his wisdom”; in the words of Psalm 104: “Oh Lord, how manifold are thy works! In wisdom hast thou made them all . . . “(v. 24)
Baglow also writes: “Faith, then, reflects upon the orderliness of the universe just as science does. The more science understands the universe and its laws, the more the certainty of faith in the Son-Logos as the very source of reality is reconfirmed.”
That is my answer. Creator, Sustainer, Divine Wisdom, Eternal Mind and reason for the orderliness and comprehensibility of the universe.
Vinnie
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Thank you for your reply.
I like the privacy aspect:
Mat. 6:5, ~ don’t pray on the street.
But…, I respectfully disagree that the question of prayers answered or not is outside of science. Not entirely.
Just about anything we feel, think, say or do has an effect on our holistic being. More specifically, scientifically, alignment and synchrony of our brain. Spike chains. Various brainwave patterns for example.
Great Jewish saying: “God will provide but will God provide until God provides?”
- J. Boon
How you get the second third of the Trinity to pertain to understanding logos: it doesn’t. The very definition of ‘impertinence’. -J
Care to elaborate on the impertinence aspect? Jesus is called the Logos. It has a complex meaning in Greek.
Tha Lord Jesus has been called many things.
The word ‘logos’ predates Jesus. The association is a stretch at best.
In my view, if there’s anything that traditional faith in Jesus is NOT, it’s logical.
What’s logical, in the traditional sense of the word about blind faith?
For me, the best faith is faith that makes sense. Doesn’t require suspension of disbelief. Less or ideally no compromise with solid, verifiable reality.
Why not? Thanks for reading. Replies welcome. -JB
The origin is in Greek philosophy referring to rhetoric and rational discourse, which for the Greek philosophers was synonymous with order and knowledge. It certainly is not a term used in the OT or by Jesus but only by John identifying it with Jesus. In other words, it is a mistake to use this a doorway to import Greek philosophy into the Bible because I think John’s intent was rather to redirect the reverence the Greeks had for rhetoric and rational discourse to Jesus instead, saying Jesus is the real source of order and knowledge, not human rhetoric and rational discourse.
Now I certainly think this can be taken too far. Rhetoric and rational discourse has an important place in how human civilization functions. But neither should this be taken so far to make it as the Greeks did the source of all order and knowledge. And I think perhaps a balance can be seen in the foundations of modern science, where the order and knowledge comes from God’s creation – observation rather than just reason which can be shown actually misled the Greeks in a few things.
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Hi John,
My faith makes sense to me. If what you have heard does not make sense to you, then maybe you have heard some different things, or have not heard some of what I have come to believe. I started out in pre-ministerial, then dropped out to study mathematics, and later turned physicist, and eventually became a systems engineer. So my faith is in a lot of ways based on a change from my initial Christian upbringing, but still does include a belief that Jesus was real. One key aspect for me was understanding that God, as the creator of the universe, must exist outside that universe. Understanding enough physics to recognize that time and space are dimensions of this universe, then leads to starting to understand that any real God must exist outside of time and space.
The next big deal for me was to think of God as being infinite. Then I did a bit of mathematics. HMMM, human minds are finite; human understanding of God is finite. My knowledge of God is a finite subset of the totality of God. All human knowledge of God is a finite subset of the totality of God. What fraction do we know? Mathematically indistinguishable from 0% of the totality of God. So God’s mathematical truth for you to understand is that whatever you have learned about God is critically important to how you can possibly relate to God, but is in no way, shape, or form the totality of God. That also implies, just because I relate to God in a particular way doesn’t mean that is the only way God can relate to anyone else.
And then I get into a bit of evaluation of my Christian beliefs. As a systems engineer, I have to start with the top level, a question that really sets the context for a lot of the concern you seem to be expressing in this thread: Why would God bother to create this universe, and put us into it? Why not just create us in the place outside of this universe where He lives, and where the standard Christian theology (as I was taught) says we will end up after this life?
I have concluded that at least a part of the reason God did this was to allow us to have experiences that we cannot have in Heaven, experiences that will help us appreciate Heaven more. This includes putting us into a world where we do have the ability to make choices, and the choices we make do have real consequences.
From this fundamental worldview, I am able to fit a fairly basic Christian theology into a logical structure. I do admit that I have to make some different interpretations of the way the bible is sometimes interpreted, and have also found that I must acknowledge that God can (and if I am correct at all, God does) come to other people in different ways - that is, with a different, potentially even apparently contradictory partial finite revelation of Herself (pronoun used intentionally, to point out that God can choose to reveal whatever God wants, and the person to whom revealed can fit that revelation into his or her own understanding).
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Do you think that God has human traits (anthropomorphism)?
Yes and no. As I hold to the deity of Christ, I would say yes, as he was human and God. However, in the Old Testament, I think much of the anthropological language is used as a way of God accommodating to us as humans.
Perhaps a better question is do we as humans have traits of God?
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That explanation is perhaps not the full truth. Logos was an important concept for the learned Jews in Alexandria, even before the birth of Jesus. Especially in Alexandria, there were attempts to show that the Jewish fate was not in conflict with the valued Greek philosophy (Platonism). Modified use of words that were influential in both cultures or used in the Greek translation Septuagint were part of the philosophical use.
Logos might also have been used in a comparable sense as the word ‘memra’ in the local Aramean dialect, although these words have a bit different meaning.
It is possible that John got input from both the Jewish Logos theology and the local Aramean teachings about the Memra of God (like the explanations about creation in the Palestinian Targumin). This is just speculation but it would connect the Gospel of John to a rich set of teachings among the Jews of that time.
Edit:
The series ‘Chosen’ illustrating the life of Jesus includes a scene where Jesus and John are standing in front of the Torah scrolls in Samaria. Jesus asks John which of the scrolls and part he should chose for the teaching. In the discussion about the first scroll (Bereshit = Genesis), John uses the word ‘Logos’ and Jesus finds it a suitable word. This is of course imagination or at best, speculation, but I find the way how the series ‘Chosen’ tells the story of Jesus interesting. It is possible that Jesus knew the word ‘Logos’ and accepted it in the private discussions.
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No one can fully describe the infinite God in finite terms. So, Yes, I believe that there are many partial, finite descriptions of God which do include human traits. What this means is subject to interpretation! And there is the other fact that many human partial descriptions are not only subsets of the total infinity of God, but also have some distortions due to the uncertainties in understanding of languages, and due to the interpretations of the human reporting the description which are distorted by the finite understanding that that person has.
It is the truth. period.
Yes there were Hellenized Jews. We know that. I even see the effect of Hellenization on Jesus, for I think the cup referred to in Matthew 26:39 is the cup of Socrates.
Doesn’t change the fact that “logos” is not used in the OT or by Jesus, and thus making this some crucially important understanding of God in a lot of made up theology is far from warranted.
I certainly do not think this was the intent in John 1.
You seem to say that as if being Hellenized is some how heretical. It is no more heretical that incorporating atheistic science into your beliefs…
Philosophy is no more a religious study than science is, but it can still help us understand God and the world He created.
Richard
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That is an interesting interpretation. In the OT, there are many places using the expression ‘cup of x’. For example, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Psalms. No need to invoke Socrates here.
The Palestinian Targumins comment creation by telling that those creating were God, the Memra (word) of God and the Glory of God. Targumins were commentaries and explanations of the Hebrew scriptures to the language of the listeners that did not speak Hebrew. Although the Aramean commentary uses the Aramean word ‘Memra’, there is similarity to what John wrote. The Word of God participated in the creation. The Gospel of John just told that in the Greek language.
The ‘word (of God)’ is a common expression in the OT. Calling it ‘logos’ brings the risk of mixing Greek philosophy to the original messages but otherwise, nothing different from what the OT is teaching.
I agree that we should be careful that we do not mix Greek philosophy to the messages in the Hebrew Bible. That risk is always present when something is translated to a different language/culture, for example Greek or English. In the case of English, the risk is not so much Greek philosophy, it is mixing of the way of thinking (worldview) in English-speaking cultures to what the scriptures are telling.
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Why?
Richard