The Christian Logos

Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος.

“In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.”-- St. John Gospel, Chapter 1 (100 A.D.)

“What does Jerusalem have to do with Athens?”-- Tertullian (c.160 – c.220 AD)

What is it about the Logos paradigm that St. John found coherent with the experiences of the first century Christian mystics? Within the concept of the Logos is the tension between g-d as named, and un-named because once g-d is named, the symbol becomes reified (an conceptual abstraction treated as a concrete entity) over time and the original meaning is codified, but forgotten.

The fullest development of the synthesis of 1st Century mystic Christianity and Greek thought can be found in the writings of Philo of Alexandria (20 BC – 50 AD). Philo, a Hebrew, studied both Jewish and Greek philosophy and was especially attracted to the concept of the Logos:

“He to knew and used and loved this ideas of the Logos, the Word, the Reason of God. He held that the Logos was the oldest thing in the world and that the Logos was the instrument through which God had made the world. He said that the Logos is the thought of God stamped upon the universe; he talks about the Logos by which God made the world and all things; he says that man’s mind is stamped also with the Logos that the Logos is that which gives a man reason, the power to think and the power to know. He said that the Logos is the intermediary between the world and God, between the begotten and the unbegotten, that the Logos is the priest which sets the soul before God” (Williams Barclay's Seventeen Volume "The Daily Study Bible Series," 1959, The Gospel of John, Vol. 1, p. 13).

The problem of naming g-d arises with the question of the deity of Jesus. Scottish Theologian William Barclay states the standard and now accepted interpretation in Critical Biblical literature of St. John Chapter One:

”...Greek, in which John wrote, had a different way of saying things from the way in which English speaks. When Greek uses a noun it almost always uses the definite article with it. The Greek for God is theos, and the definite article is ὁ. When Greek speaks about God it does not simply say theos; it says ὁ theos. Now when Greek does not use the definite article with a noun that noun becomes much more like an adjective; it describes the character, the quality of the person. John did not say that the Word was ὁ theos; that would have been to say that the Word was identical with God; he says that the Word theos –without the definite article—which means that the Word was, as we might say, of the very same character and quality and essence and being as God. When John said the Word was God he was not saying that Jesus is identical with God; he was saying that Jesus is so perfectly the same as God in mind, in heart, in being that in Jesus we perfectly see what God is like.” (Williams Barclay's Seventeen Volume "The Daily Study Bible Series," 1959, The Gospel of John, Vol. 1, p. 17).*

*I try to be consistent when I write "G-d," but leave the spelling "God" unchanged if other writers use it. 

According to this Christology Jesus has the same qualities, but not identical with G-d. There are different schools of thought in Christology regarding the divinity of Jesus: Nestorianism (the Human and Divine persons of Christ are separate), Eutychianism (Human nature absorbed in Christ’s Divine nature), and Chalcedonism ("two natures and that the one hypostasis of the Logos perfectly subsists in these two natures"). This question reappears time to time in history. In historical times of authoritarianism Christology emphasizes the Divinity of Christ, but during times of Liberalism the humanity of Christ is emphasized. This may be one of those historic times this Christology should be reexamined. When we name the g-ds, we name ourselves in an act of self-revelation:

“There is a paradox running through all the Gospels that Jesus makes no claims for himself in his own right and at the same time makes the most tremendous claims about what God is doing through him and uniquely through him. Men’s response to him is men’s response to God: men’s rejection of him is men’s rejection of God. And the fourth Gospel merely highlights this paradox (it does not, as is usually said, present quite a different picture of the claims of Jesus) when it combines the saying that ‘the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing’ with the uncompromising assertion, ‘No one comes to the Father, but by me’. Jesus never claims to be God, personally: yet he always claims to bring God, completely” (“Honest To God” by John A.T.Robinson, Westminster Press: 1963, p.73).