Logos

In John chapter 1...

"John is seen to be revealing Jesus Christ in all his cosmic glory; the Son of God from the beginning, the present and the future. You can't get a "bigger picture" than that. Jesus is revealed as the Logos of God; the Reason God created all things, the Reason all things exist, the Reason we have been formed if only we will be formed in him. In other words, John 1 is a Creation story that, like all good creations stories, starts from the beginning and explains everything.

We benefit by using the word Logos in the full philosophical context of the day, which John supersedes in a similar way to the Genesis supersession of the Ancient Near East myths. The term Logos was widely used in the Greco-Roman culture and in Judaism. And although it has many everyday meanings (such as word, speech, statement, discourse, refutation, ratio, account, explanation, reason), through most schools of Greek philosophy the term was used to designate a rational, intelligent and thus enlivening principle of the universe. To ancient people every phenomenon had to have an underlying factor, agent, or principle responsible for its occurrence; hence demons, principalities and power and the pantheon of the gods. The Logos was deduced from thinking about the universe as a living creature.

The 6th-century BC Greek philosopher Heraclitus was the first to use the term Logos in a metaphysical sense. Heraclitius asserted that the world is governed by a firelike Logos, a divine force that produces the order and pattern discernible in the flux of nature. The Logos accounts for how things are put together, and how they interact. He believed that this force is similar to human reason and that his own thought partook of the divine Logos.

What soul, then, has skill and knowledge? Even that which knoweth beginning and end, and the reason [logos] that informs all Substance, and governs the Whole from ordered cycle to cycle through all eternity. (Marcus Aurelius, V, 21 pp. 124-125)

Perhaps the most extensive accounting of The Logos was by Philo of Alexandria, a Hellenistic Jew who lived around the time of Christ. Philo wrote allegories of Old Testament books authored by Moses, interpreting them in the light of Greek philosophy. He used the term, logos, more than 1300 times in his writings, in many varied ways. Of particular note are his references to The Logos as the Divine Reason, by participation in which humans are rational; the model of the universe; the superintendent or governor of the universe; and the first-born son of God. Although there is no direct evidence that John ever read Philo (and it doesn't matter either way), its pretty obvious that the concepts he articulated were firmly in the mind of John when he wrote his gospel.

As therefore the city, when previously shadowed out in the mind of the man of architectural skill had no external place, but was stamped solely in the mind of the workman, so in the same manner neither can the world which existed in ideas have had any other local position except the divine reason [logos] which made them ... (Philo, On the Creation V20 p. 4)

...for God, like a shepherd and king, governs (as if they were a flock of sheep) the earth, and the water, and the fire, and the air and all the plants, and living creatures that are in them, whether mortal or divine; and he regulates the nature of the heaven, and the periodical revolutions of the sun and moon, and the variations and harmonious movements of the other stars, ruling them according to law and justice; appointing as their immediate superintendent, his own right reason [logos], his first-born son, who is to receive the charge of this sacred company, as the lieutenant of the great king; ... (Philo, On Husbandry XII 45 p. 178)

So in Greek thought we can boil Logos down like this:-

a conception or idea
the plan or model of the universe
the source of order in the universe, that by which all things come into being and all things come to pass
the source of human reason and intelligence
universal all-pervading enlivening force

John takes the Greek Logos on in the same way that Paul takes on the Unknown God and Moses takes on the ANE myths; John rewrites the script and elevates Jesus Christ as Stephen Hawking's "fire in the equations," and God's own reason "why the Universe goes to all the bother of existing." Its ultimate big picture language, and John's embrace of it shows that Christianity really does have all the answers."

By J Pogson

Modus Operandi part 3

When I think about the way God brought Israel back into being and compare it to the way he made life flourish I find there are striking parallels.

Science is the exploration of the universe God created, which includes trying to understand how it works. That last phrase is important to register. The universe works to patterns and rules - each of which have their own logical outworkings. The universe is in effect one enormous process.

It is through this enormous process that God works to guide and shape his creation - with us as the eventual consequence. This is where the parallel comes in with the way that God shaped the political processes to lead Israel back to life, and also the way in which we can understand God's hand on our lives. We can see the effect of it but really are unable to say specifically where it has worked

Think of our own creation. Each of us was made by God...

For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother's womb.
Psalm 139 V 13

We know how this happens: meiosis, fertilisation, mitosis, specialisation of cells etc; all processes through which God works. With this in mind we could expect that acts of 'special creation' i.e. that defy natural explanation are few and far between in the universe we live in. God is a potter.

Modus Operandi (part 2)

The Bible contains many varying prophecies about future events. One of the most striking is the prophecy that the people of Israel would be regathered to have their own nation once more (having initially been thrown out around 600BC). One of the prophets who foretold this was Ezekiel:

For thus says the Lord God: Behold, I, I myself will search for my sheep and will seek them out. As a shepherd seeks out his flock when he is among his sheep that have been scattered, so will I seek out my sheep, and I will rescue them from all places where they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness. And I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries, and will bring them into their own land. And I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, by the ravines, and in all the inhabited places of the country. I will feed them with good pasture, and on the mountain heights of Israel shall be their grazing land. There they shall lie down in good grazing land, and on rich pasture they shall feed on the mountains of Israel. I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I myself will make them lie down, declares the Lord God.

Chapter 34

This prediction was fulfilled dramatically in 1948 only THREE years after the horrors of the holocaust and the attempts to wipe the Jews out as a people. Such a turnaround is depicted graphically in the famous words of Ezekiel 37 where a valley full of dry bones is the scene of an incredible resurrection. No wonder the witness of the Jewish people has long been seen as proof of God's hand in the world He created. There is a famous story in which the Kaiser asks Bismarck, “Can you prove the existence of God?” Bismarck replies, “The Jews, your majesty. The Jews.”

But the point of this post is to think about how this happened. Ezekiel describes God as a Shepherd but it is impossible to show exactly where God acted. There must have been millions of seemingly random decisions and actions by politicians and people throughout the centuries that brought us to 1948. Nowhere can we say, 'This is where God did it!' It is impossible, yet the fact is that it happened. God shepherded the Jews back to their own land. His hand was unseen, yet its effect is undeniable. God is a potter, shaping the lives of his people.