God's expression of his eternal Word - a highly technical and precise diagram.
- God’s internal Word (logos) always existed within God.
- At some time just prior to creation, God expressed his Word, so that it was now a he, a helper, an agent alongside God.
- Having done this, through Wisdom (logos) God created the cosmos.
- This is contradictory: to be a power of a thing at and earlier time t1 and to be a thing with powers at a later time t2.
- For any x, if x ever came into existence, then x is not fully divine.
From 1, 2 and the first obvious truth, we infer that Jesus / the Son / the Word began to exist a finite time ago. From this plus the second obvious truth, we infer that this being is not fully divine. Thus, if you hold to the Logos christology, whether you realize it or not, you are a subordinationist - someone which thinks that the Son exists because of, and has a lesser status than God, that is, the Father. You deny that the members of the Trinity are fully equal.
Interestingly, this seems to have been a (the?) standard view among catholic intellectuals of this time period. It was not the only view, though, and it was controversial. Also interestingly, this basic scheme of divine creation via a newly “expressed” helper seems due not primarily to John, but to the very Hellenized Jewish theologian Philo of Alexandria, a rough contemporary of Jesus. (See the sources cited here.) Mainstream trinitarian thinking has left Logos theory behind, and Philo’s influence has been almost forgotten. Yet most theologians read John 1 and Proverbs 8 in almost the same way as Tertullian; they simply take the “expression” or “begetting” or “speaking” of the Word to be a timeless fact.
But is something like this the best way to read those chapters? I hope to get into that in a future series.
Comments 4
I think you’ll find that the Father wears a white bow-tie, otherwise called sub-fusc.:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_dress_of_the_University_of_Oxford
But really — I appreciate the humor.
Posted 20 Jan 2010 at 8:23 pm ¶Let us forsake philosophical ideas and deal with this mystery from a more simplistic point of view. Could it be that because God does “all things” by his word. Christ is called the Word (as a tiltle) because God does all things by him.
Posted 22 Jan 2010 at 5:43 am ¶In simplicity there abides many truths. Christ is called “bread” not because he is made of flour, but because he gives and sustains life. The title is defining his importance in God’s action in the creted world. ALL THINGS WERE MADE BY HIM. Without him there is no us.
Dale, are you sure that you’ve summarized the Logos theory accurately? Wouldn’t Tertullian, Irenaeus, and other late-2nd and early 3rd century catholic thinkers claim that there is no “some time just prior to creation”?
And therefore, does the theory entail that the Word was “a power of a thing at an earlier time t1″ and “a thing with powers at a later time t2″?
Posted 22 Jan 2010 at 9:12 am ¶Hi Ryan,
Excellent question. I thought that it was Augustine who pioneered the view that God created time along with the physical world. Of course, most Greek philosophers thought both time and the world were beginingless. I suspect that they were none too clear about this, but off the top of my head, I’m not sure what the guys we’re talking about thought about time and creation.
I’m out of the office and can’t look for the quotes now, but if I recall correctly, both of Tertullian and Irenaeus – surprisingly given later standards – do somewhere imply that there was a time before the Word was expressed. Wolfson calls this a “two-stage” theory. Orthodox theologians typically spin this by pointing out that the Word in their view was eternal – but this obscures the fact that it looks like the Word at stage 1 would not be another self alongside the Father.
Posted 23 Jan 2010 at 9:17 pm ¶Trackbacks & Pingbacks 1
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