John, Logos, and Postmodernism: Logos
(printer material if you don’t like reading a screen for long periods of time)
I am a firm believer in two almost conflicting things when it comes to Bible study:
1) Anyone can pick up the Word of God and understand the vast majority of it to the point of living a fulfilled and Christ-centered faithful life without the aide of any study Bibles, commentaries, lexicons, or original language understanding. The parts which are difficult to understand even in our native tongues are not salvation nor sanctification significant.
2) However, learning to look through the eyes of the culture at the time provides an immense amount of insight and application for the here and now. The great thing is you do not have to be a scholar to learn these things, you only need to be scholarly in the sense of developing your desire to continually learn and your willingness to read or listen to the resources available.
Recently I started attending the men’s Bible study at New Horizon Vineyard (aka Church #4). We are diving into the book of John, and the discussion last week revolved around the prologue (John 1:1-18) and John’s clever use of the Greek word “logos” which translates to “word” in English: In the beginning was the logos, and the logos was with God, and the logos was God… and so on.
The whole concept of Logos is one of those areas that nicely illustrates what I mean. We successfully wrap our 21st century English speaking heads around Jesus being compared to the Word because we come to accept the Word of God (scripture) as God-Breathed. When the “Word becomes flesh” (v14) we clearly see that the Christ is the complete representation and fulfillment of the scriptures which has been around since the foundations were laid (v3), i.e. - God (which is also significant for our trinity doctrine). We see this type of play on words in our literature from the time we’re in elementary school in the form of metaphor. The theology that the prologue represents in English is solid, thus validating assessment #1 above.
Logos, however, reveals much more than our metaphoric understanding of the passage when we look through the lens of John’s culture. Understanding why the use of logos was such a genius move on John’s part will do nothing to enhance your theology or help you walk faithfully with Christ, but it can complement the application of your theology in everyday life (i’m growing tired of using the word “theology” in this post, but thesaurus.com doesn’t have any alternate entries and “world view” doesn’t really capture the right essence… anyway, i digress…).
The concept of logos in 1st century Rome transcended the various cultures represented during that time. The Jewish significance is similar to our metaphoric understanding, minus the emphasis on Jesus. The Word was God’s form of communication with His chosen people (the Jews), not only through the Mosaic Law and prophets, but as the creative force behind God’s will (see Genesis creation story, which I know wasn’t written in Greek, but the concept is the same).
Furthermore, logos had strong implications in the Greek-Stoic culture in which it represented the “principle of divine reason” (New Bible Commentary), that is the creative and natural force behind everything that existed. In effect, John unequivocally stated that Christ IS God (and therefore the Messiah) to his Jewish readers and Christ IS the essence of all divine reason which brings life into existence to the Greeks.
He was not supporting or even supplementing the philosophical views of the day, rather he was using his audiences’ philosophy to bring them to a deeper understanding of what he (and I) believed to be truth (similar to Paul’s “To an Unknown god” message in Athens: Acts 17).
Because of the Greco-Roman influence on the entire “civilized” world during this era, the significant fingers of logos undoubtedly stretched beyond just John’s immediate audience (Jews and Greek-culture gentiles). His word choice, then, is more than just a metaphor, it galvanized his audience and prepared them for a response to the purpose of his gospel, so that they “may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God” (20:31).
In such a self-proclaimed evangelistic piece, it was important for John to capture his audience from the beginning and and establish Christ as the focal point of truth. Logos certainly provided such an avenue. It’s remissive if I fail to note that logos isn’t the only culturally transcending term John uses throughout his gospel (light and darkness are other examples in the prologue), but logos is generally considered the most significant of the bunch.
None of this should affect your theology in any significant manner, but it does bring up an interesting question which was raised in the bible study and which I pose to you now (if you made it this far): What is our “logos?” What word or phrase transcends (or maybe could transcend) cultures in order to galvanize large groups of people?
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