Posted by In my last post I looked at an interesting way of understanding what it means for the person of Jesus to have been the ‘Word’ or ‘Logos’ from eternity past, as is indicated in the opening of the Gospel according to John. Today, I want to expand upon the same topic, and will again be quoting David Pawson and his excellent Bible commentary.
We saw in yesterday’s post that the word ‘logos’ can be translated as ‘the reason why’. So in John’s gospel, when the author says ‘In the beginning was the Word [logos]’ he was saying ‘In the beginning was the reason why’. So Jesus is ‘the reason why’ God created the universe.
This turns the eternal Jesus into a kind of abstract concept. But Christians talk about Jesus as being an eternal person. While seeing the eternal Jesus as ‘the reason why’ seems helpful and easy to understand, the phrase doesn’t actually encapsulate the personhood of Christ.
So how are we to understand the personhood of Jesus prior to the Incarnation?
Let’s see what Pawson has to say in respect of this problem:
The word [logos] has another phase in its history too, this time across the Mediterranean Sea from Ephesus in Alexandria, Egypt. Alexandria had a school which combined Greek and Hebrew thinking, in part because there were many dispersed Jews living in the city. This school, or university, was the location for the translation of the Old Testament into Greek by 70 scholars known as the ‘Septuagint’ or ‘LXX’. One of the Jews involved was a professor called Philo. In seeking to interpret Hebrew thinking into Greek, Professor Philo seized on the word Logos and said that the Logos was not to be spoken of as ‘it’ but as ‘he’. He was ‘personifying’ the Logos, rather in the way that in Proverbs wisdom is personified as a woman.
‘Unlocking the Bible’ by David Pawson (William Collins 2015, p903)
So we see from this snippet of history the origins of the personification of the logos. It seems that when Philo used the term ‘he’ to refer to the pre-incarnate Jesus, this is a figure of speech, rather than pointing to a physical embodied person. The analogy of wisdom personified in the book of Hebrews is helpful, as surely wisdom in reality doesn’t have a physical form.
So we might conclude that the pre-incarnate Jesus was a person, but only figuratively so.
Perhaps you have something to add which might help illuminate the difficult concept of Jesus existing as an eternal person? Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments below.
Perfect Chaos 
Simple… Spiritual, Father, Son, Holy Ghost, Always was and always will be.. Spiritually, he Speaks with a voice. Spirit does not “Physically” Exist but yet is WISE and powerful beyond comprehension both positively and negatively. Least we neglect the reality of the existence of the spirit of “Antichrist”?
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“Let Us make man in Our own Image.” All three personages of the Trinity are said to have existed eternally. Nobody knows the true essence of the God expressed in the Bible. There are many models of God and we humans are speculating on His nature, and why not? Below is a link worth watching as it describes various models:
Please take the time to watch it as several points are made clear as to the Christian view of the Biblical God.
Peace and love to all,
Dinos
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Hi Steven.
When the Holy Spirit impregnated one of Mary’s eggs, was human sperm used? Did the pre-existing spirit being immediately climb inside the developing cells as they started to form? Was this spirit being conscious alongside the developing embryo? Was the child that emerged from Mary a human? During Jesus’ life, did this spirit being communicate within and to Jesus? Was Jesus a real human or only appear to be one? Do humans pre-exist?
Such questions arise from a 21st century Western mind and are coloured by Trinitarian decisions that were made centuries later and were not current when these words were written.
What we really need to ask is what did these words mean to those Jewish mystics when they wrote them? I do not know but it suggests a most interesting topic for enquiry.
Did they mean that Jesus was the embodiment of an idea that had lived in God’s mind? I do not know.
Which forms of mysticism existed at that time with the group who adopted, created and developed this idea about the Logos? Why should their opinions be accepted?
I suggest it would be unwise to invoke any of Paul’s utterances inasmuch as the Johannine words were formed decades after Paul’s death. In any case, one would need to prove that Paul and the Johannine Community knew one another and that they had a common heritage and outlook. I think Paul’s mysticism was influenced by Stoicism . However I have not researched Jewish mysticism to have arrived at any position.
Doug
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Great write up about the concept of Logos. I fully believe that Logos is a person, conscious and splendidly alive.
I submit that we miss the obvious, namely that John called the Logos the “true light, that gives light to everyone”. But here we are not so much interested in physical sight as understanding.
It might help to call Logos the law of love, or of right relationship. And though it may be simple to understand that 1+1=2, it can be far more difficult to understand right relationship between persons.
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As others have noted, Logos is the Greek term from which we derive the English term logic. And I think this is very significant because we can easily understand how logic is a light. But more than that, it is in my estimation inseparable from consciousness. If not for our having been created in God’s image, and speaking the language of logic, I don’t see that anything would mean much of anything.
We should even take very seriously the idea that when John talked of the light of Logos, he was telling us about the light of Genesis 1. He was after all explicitly taking about the beginning.
In Jesus’ discourse with Nicodemus, he said, “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”
People have said that truth has a certain ring to it. And I think Jesus’ illustration here is a perfect depiction of what happens when we hear truth spoken but are struggling to integrate it with our preconceptions.
Peter once dressed himself as he chose. Logos is trying to do its work in us. Perhaps we’ve worn a particular philosophical garb that suited us. There is a death to self involved in allowing Logos to lead us to a much better though difficult understanding of reality.
Logos as logic should remind us of the simple things of God being wiser than the wisdom of man. The law of non contradiction is the most rudimentary of laws. All law must start there. There can be no light unless “your statement (logos) be yes, and your no no.”
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