
John 1.1-5.
I wrote about
John 1.1-5 KWL - 1 In the beginning is the word,
- and the word’s with God,
- and the word is God.
- 2 This word is in the beginning with God.
- 3 Everything comes to be through the word,
- and not one thing, nothing, comes to be without him.
- 4 What came to be though the word, is life.
- Life’s the light of humanity.
- 5 Light shines in darkness,
- and darkness can’t get hold of it.
“The word” which the author of John wrote of, exists at the beginning of creation, is with God, is God, and is the means by which everything is created.
And round 7
Why’d the author of John (and for convenience we’ll just figure he’s the apostle John; he probably was) use “word” to describe the pre-incarnation Jesus? You realize this passage is the reason so many Christians are hugely fascinated by the word “word,” and have written endless stuff about the Word of God—some of it extremely profound and useful, and some of it sour horsepiss. I grew up hearing a lot of both.
The John passage tends to get translated in past tense: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” as
Okay, now to the concept of
For centuries, Christians assumed lóyos comes from ancient Greek philosophy. Blame ancient
Ancient Greek philosophers had written a whole bunch of navel-gazing gibberish about the word lóyos. ’Cause they were exploring the nature of truth: What is it, how do we find it, how do we prove it, how do we recognize logical fallacies, and what’s the deal with words which can mean more than one thing? For that matter, what’s a “word” anyway? Is it just a label for a thing, or a substantial thing on its own? Maybe that’s why God can create things by merely saying a word.
Follow the Greek philosophers’ intellectual rabbit trails, and you’ll go all sorts of weird,
Now let’s practice some actual logic. John wasn’t a gentile; he was a Galilean Jew who grew up attending, and getting educated by, Pharisee synagogues. So let’s look at that culture: What’d Pharisees teach about what a memrá is and means? And it turns out Pharisees had a lot of interesting ideas attached to it.