A Degree of Obscurity Arising from the Ignorance of Contemporary Opinions of the Logos

I come now to a passage which is perhaps the one most readily cited against the Unitarian view of Christ, and which demands the fuller notice. I refer to the Proem or Introduction to St. John’s Gospel.105 That there is in it a degree of obscurity arising from our want of familiarity with the prevalent opinions of the time, may at once he admitted. To rectify and guard against the influence of these opinions, was in part the Apostle’s object. On the one hand was the Jewish or later Platonism, the leader of which was the celebrated Philo Judaeus, of Alexandria, and a contemporary of our Lord. On the other was Gnosticism, a heresy whose headquarters were at Ephesus; where, by the concurrent testimony of antiquity, the Apostle lived and wrote his Gospel. With the Gnostic opinions which prevailed throughout the regions of Greece and Asia Minor, where the new religion was spreading, the Apostle must, therefore, have been familiar; and Irenaeus—a pupil of Polycarp, who was a personal friend and disciple of St. John, and who flourished early in the second century—declares that the Evangelist wrote expressly to confute them. Between the Neo-Platonic and Gnostic systems there were some coincidences. While the former made the Logos—the Divine Reason or Intellect, in the passage before us translated Word—to be the great instrument in Creation, and gradually extended its significance to comprehend all Divine attributes employed or manifested in the Creation and Government of the world, the latter made it the Chief of the (Œons, supposed immortal spirits holding and exercising different functions or offices, themselves created, but still independent of the Supreme God. To correct these false notions was the purpose of the Apostle; by directing men’s minds to GOD Himself, as the Great and Original Source of all things, the Creator of all beings, Himself independent, they all dependent on Him. In this sense the Logos—“the Word” (the Wisdom, Power, Reason of God—Divine attributes employed in the Creation and Government of the world) “was with God”; inherent, that is, in Him, of course;—“was God,” because belonging to His essential nature. The syntax of the Greek language obliged him to seem at least to personify the “Logos” or Word; to speak of it figuratively as a person; because the Greek noun is in the masculine gender, and therefore requires the personal pronouns in apposition with it to be in the same gender; whereas our English noun “word,” by which it is translated, is in the neuter gender, and requires the neuter pronouns. Hence in the third verse of the passage under consideration it would be more agreeable to the English idiom to read “All things were made by it,” etc. In another work by this same Apostle, that which he has here called simply the Word, he there, in the opinion of many commentators, calls the Word of Life, and the Life.106 But while in the Greek the Word is masculine, Life is feminine; consequently by neither expression could he have intended to designate a proper person, but used simply a figure of speech, a personification.

In all languages, ancient and modern, the Prosopopoeia or Personification is a figure in frequent use. In the Book of Proverbs107 there is a remarkable personification of wisdom; the corresponding word to which in the Greek translation or Septuagint, is that in St. John’s Proem, λογος, Logos. A striking example occurs in the Apocryphal Book of the Wisdom of Solomon108; “Thine Almighty Word? leaped down from heaven from his royal throne, a fierce warrior, into the midst of a land of destruction.” The author of this book lived at or a little before the time of Christ, and wrote in Greek; and was doubtless acquainted with the Neo-Platonism of the period. In the passage referred to and in others,109 the noun translated in our version Word is in the original, Logos. The same remark holds of a passage in another Apocryphal Book, “Ecclesiasticus”110 where again we have a personification of Wisdom or the Logos, as in the passage cited above from “Proverbs.” In all these cases the Greek term Logos has been by our translators rendered Wisdom or Word interchangeably, as though these terms were synonymous or equally significant.

But look further on. In the fourteenth verse the Apostle says: “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth “dwelt” he means of course in Christ; in whom the Power and Wisdom of God were the credentials of his divine mission, and who was filled with God’s own mercy and truth for the salvation of men. In a parenthesis he adds—“and we beheld his glory”—underived glory? No: “the glory as of the only begotten of the Father.” Still more, with all that he has previously said, he proceeds in the eighteenth verse distinctly to affirm, that “no man hath seen God at any time; the only-begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared (revealed, made more clearly known, manifested,) Him.”111 Multitudes had seen Christ; and in Christ, His brightest manifestation, His chosen and anointed messenger and representative, they had seen in a high sense, in the only sense possible, the God who sent him.

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Author: Frederick A. Farley

Keywords: Trinity, Trinitarian, trinitarianism, Deity of Jesus, Deity of Christ, Jesus is God, Jesus is divine, Divinity of Jesus, divinity of Christ, Equal with God, Jesus equal to God, Logos, Word made flesh, Jesus is the Word, Tri-unity, Pre-existent word, Pre-existence, Pre-existent, God the Son, Divine logos, God became flesh, incarnation, incarnate

Bible reference(s): John 1:1-5

Source: Unitarianism Defined (Boston: Walker, Wise & Co., 1935).

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