Truth in Translation by Jason BeDuhn, p 114f:
“Though the concept defined by
the term logos is found in Greek,
Indian, Egyptian, and Persian philosophical and theological systems…It thus
underlies the basic Christian doctrine of the preexistence of Jesus…The
Stoics…define the logos as an active rational and spiritual principle that
permeated all reality. They called the logos providence [cp. Pro 8], nature, god and the soul of the
universe…Philo taught that the logos was the intermediary between God and the
cosmos, being both the agent of creation and the agent through which the human
mind can apprehend and comprehend God.”
Article on Logos from The New
Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. 7, 15th ed., p 449.
“In the first chapter of The
Gospel According to John, Jesus Christ is identified as ‘the Word’ (Greek
logos) incarnated, or made flesh…The identification of Jesus with the logos…was further developed in the early
church but more on the basis of Greek philosophical ideas than on Old Testament
motifs. This development was dictated by attempts made by early Christian
theologians and apologists to express the Christian faith in terms that would
be intelligible to the Hellenistic world and to impress their hearers with the
view that Christianity was superior to, or heir to, all that was best in pagan
philosophy. Thus, in their apologies and their polemical works, the early
Christian Fathers stated that Christ as the preexistent logos (1) reveals the
Father to mankind and is the subject of the Old Testament manifestations of
God; (2) is the divine reason in which the whole human race shares, so that the
6th-century-BC philosopher and others who lived with reason were
Christians before Christ; and (3) is the divine will and word by which the
worlds were framed.”
“Jesus: The Christ and Christology” in The New Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol.
22, 15th ed., p 370-71.
“Earlier forms of the [Apostle’s]
creed seem to have read: ‘Born of the Holy Spirit and of the Virgin Mary’. The
primary affirmation of [preexistence] is that the Son of God, the Word, had
become man or, as John’s Gospel puts it, ‘flesh’ (John 1.14). Preexistence and
Incarnation presuppose each other in the Christian view of Christ. Hence the
New Testament assumed his preexistence when it talked about his becoming man;
and when it spoke of him as preexistent, it was describing in the flesh.”
“It obviously follows from this admission that
Jesus was in the fullest sense a man, as much so as any other human being, that
He had not merely a human body, but a human soul, intellect, will. This was not
always recognized by the Church. Many of the earlier Greek fathers, Irenaeus,
for instance, and Athanasius obviously thought of Him simply as the Logos of
God residing in a human body. Later councils condemned this position in the
person of Apollinarius[1]…
It is equally unorthodox to
suppose that the human soul of Jesus pre-existed. There is simply no basis for
such a doctrine unless (with Origen) we say that all human souls exist before
their birth into the world: but that is not the usually accepted Catholic position.
St. Paul, indeed, believed in the preexistence of the heavenly Messiah or Son
of God without distinguishing between the human and the Divine or semi-divine
Christ but from the time when the Logos Christology was accepted by the Church
it has been held that what pre-existed was the Divine Logos, not the human
Jesus…
Such at bottom is the permanent
meaning of that doctrine of the Logos and the Holy Trinity in which this conviction
clothed itself under the influence of Greek philosophical conceptions and
terminology. The doctrine of the Logos grew up at a time when the Neoplatonic
idea of the transcendence of God, His aloofness from the world, His
inaccessibility to human thought or effort, had been pushed to a point which
made it seem impossible that He should express Himself in created things or
created minds without some sort of intermediary. The Reason or Thought or Word
of God, the thought concept, be it remembered, rather than the spoken word was conceived
of as such an intermediary. God gave birth to the Logos and the Logos gave
birth to the world. In the books of Proverbs and Wisdom the Logos, or rather
the Wisdom of God (which is practically the same conception), is personified in
a semi-poetic manner as the Assessor who stood at God's right hand in the
creation of the universe. In the Alexandrian Jew Philo the idea becomes more metaphysical.”
God
and Man, “Christ
as the Logos and the Son of God”, Hastings Rashdall, Oxford, 1930.
“There remained, indeed, the
problem of the relation between this ‘Word’ which was God and yet incarnate in
the human Jesus, and the Father-God, whose only begotten Son He was. Was this
Word personal or impersonal? If personal, how can we escape Polytheism? And if
the Logos be identified with the One God, what becomes of the distinction
between Father and Logos?”
[1] In his earlier days. In the
period when he wrote the De Incarnations
(before the Nicene Council) and almost as distinctly in the Orations against the
Avrans, there is no trace of any distinct recognition of a human soul in Jesus;
the Logos seems simply to take the place of the human soul. In his later days
(when the question began to be discussed) he did formally recognize the existence
of a human soul, but it may be doubted how far this admission really affected
his general way of thinking.
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