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Logos
00:26:26
“In the beginning was the Word.” The opening of John’s gospel applies an astonishing title to Jesus. Today, R.C. Sproul teaches that Christ is the eternal Logos: the source, sustainer, and purpose of everything that exists. Get lifetime digital...
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- [00:00]
Nathan W. Bingham
The ancient Greeks introduced the idea of science. They claimed there was an ultimate knowable truth, and they called it Logos.
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RC Sproul
The conviction of every scientist is that there is knowledge at the end of the tunnel of investigation, that the reality that we encounter is knowable science is possible, which is to say, knowledge is possible. If everything were chaos, you couldn't know anything.
- [00:32]
Nathan W. Bingham
Welcome to Renewing youg Mind. On this Wednesday, you're hearing portions of RC Sproul series Names of Jesus this week. Today we'll focus on Logos, and we're familiar with this thanks to the poetic beginning of John's Gospel. In the beginning was the Word or the Logos, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Don't forget that. If you'd like to study all 12 messages in this series, you can call us at 800-435-4343 or use the link in the podcast Show Notes to request lifetime digital access with your donation of any amount. This offer ends tomorrow, so be sure to respond today. Well, the word Logos carried with it a lot of philosophical baggage. So to help us understand its meaning, here's Dr. Sproule.
- [01:23]
RC Sproul
We continue now with our study of the person of Christ by looking at the titles that are used for him in the New Testament. So far we've looked at those titles that occur most frequently for Jesus in the biblical record. We've looked at the title Messiah or Christ that is so often used for him that we tend to think of it as his last name. We looked at the title Lord that is the name or the title that is above every name name. We've looked at the title Son of Man, which was Jesus own favorite. Now, the title that we're going to be looking at today is one that is almost obscure in the New Testament. So infrequently is it mentioned, but the way it is used and the context in which it is used has made it a title of the great importance and of great interest for biblical scholars. I'm thinking about the title Logos or Logos L O G O s, which is translated by the English word Word. And we encounter it in the opening verses, the prologue of the gospel according to St. John. You're familiar with it. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and so on. Well, as rarely as this title, Logos is used in the New Testament for Jesus, it became the chief focal point of interest in the work of the theologians of the first 300 years of church history. As the church reflected on the identity of Christ, on the nature of Christ, the intellectuals of the early Christians Christian community seized upon this title and gave almost exclusive devotion towards a probing of its significance. And that's because in the first few centuries of the Christian church existence, the church was engaged not only in a spiritual war with paganism, but but also in an intellectual battle of the highest magnitude with the legacies that were still alive going back to the golden age of Greece. Greek philosophy still dominated the intellectual landscape of that period. And so the early Christian apologists, those who were raised up by God to defend the truth claims of Christianity, looked to this title, Logos, as a kind of philosophical bridge for communication and dialogue with a pagan intellectual world. Well, what we want to look at today is why that happened. What is the significance of the use of this word Logos or Logos as it is given to Jesus as a title? Well, as I said, the simple translation of the word logos is the English word. Word. The word that appears in the English translations of it in the beginning was the word. The word was with God, and the word was God and so on. And the word became flesh and dwelt among us. Well, this little Greek word logos comes over into our language in a couple of significant ways. Maybe you've been engaged in the study of biology or zoology or psychology or theology, and all these ologies that we study in the academic world. Well, the distinction by which we define particular academic disciplines includes usually a root word with a suffix attached to it, and the suffix is this ology. Zoology is the study of animal life. Biology is the study of life in general from the Greek word bios, which is the word for life. Psychology is the study of the affections as the psuche or the psyche of man. Theology, theos. Logos is the study of God. And what that simply means is biology is a word or expression about life. Zoology, the same thing, psychology. And likewise, the second word that comes over into our language from this word logos is one that may be a little bit startling for you. Not that there's such a word derivation, but that there's any link to this idea, and it is the common word logic. I even read a translation once by a leading philosopher of our day who translated John 1 in this manner. In the beginning was the logic, and logic was with God, and logic was God. Now, this particular philosopher was not a Hegelian and was not trying to talk about the deification of reason, but his whole point was that within God himself dwells and resides an eternal inner coherency. God is not a God of chaos. He's not irrational. This isn't a mystery. Religion that we're engaged in in Christianity. But even within God himself there is consistency and unity of thought, such as characterized by our English word logic. Well, we speculate when we ask the question, why did John choose this word as a title for Jesus? We believe, of course, that he made that selection under the inspiration and superintendence of God the Holy Spirit. But that question to speculate on, the particular reason for its inclusion is one that has raised all kinds of conjectures in the history of the Church. For this reason that though the word Logos is the simple Greek word for word, it's one of those words that was loaded with philosophical and theological baggage in the ancient world, particularly in the Greek world, in Greek philosophical thought, the whole idea of Logos was extremely important. To understand that. Let me walk you through a very quick and simple introduction to ancient Greek philosophy. The ancient Greek philosophers, who were at the same time scientists, were asking some very significant questions in their philosophical research. The number one question they were asking was, what is ultimate reality? They were trying to probe the questions that metaphysics asks, not what is life like in this planet? What are the laws of biology, physics and astronomy that govern the natural sciences, but what lies above and beyond the scope of the natural realm? What is ultimate truth? Or oddly enough, the word they used in the Greek language to crystallize the essence of this quest for ultimate truth or reality was another Greek word that is the word arche. Arche. Now, we learn of that word in many ways in the English language, we get the prefix arch from the word arche. We have the word archangel, archbishop, arch, rival, arch, enemy. And what does that little word, due to the other word that it modifies, there are enemies and then there are archenemies, there are rivals and there are archrivals, there are angels, and then there are archangels, there are bishops and there are archbishops. Well, the word arche in Greek meant chief, head, or another word that seems utterly unrelated. Beginning, chief, head or beginning. So the boss angel, the chief of the angels, would be the archangel, and the head bishop would be the archbishop, and the chief rival would be the arch rival and so on. And so what the Greeks were looking for was the arche of all things, the supreme head, chief, truth or reality. Now, one of the ironies here is that I mentioned a moment ago that the word arche can mean chief, head, or beginning. The New Testament Book of John begins with these words in the Greek N R K ain H Logos NRK ain ho Logos in the arche. In the beginning was the word John. Almost certainly was self conscious in choosing the opening words to his gospel because they echo directly the exact opening words of the Septuagint version of the Old Testament. And you'll recall that the Septuagint is the Greek translation of the Old Testament scriptures. And the first verse of Genesis begins how nrk in the beginning, God. And so we have that strange irony associated with this. But the Greeks were looking for the arche truth, the arch truth, or the arche reality. The arch reality. That was their first quest. Their second quest was to solve the dilemma or the problem that assaulted their minds of the relationship between the one and the many. To solve the problem. The fundamental problem of universe. The word universe comes from a mongrelized form of two other unity and diversity. We look around at the world that we observe and we see a plethora of particular individual things. There are kangaroos and hippopotamus and pine trees and ducks and daffodils. There are roofs and cars and highways and trees. There are clouds. There are molecules of this and that. All this diversity that we try to learn about when we go to school. And the ancient Greek was asking this question, how do these things hold together? How can we make sense out of all this vast diversity of particular things that we encounter in normal daily experience? They were asking a question that was somewhat anticipated by a very well known and popular cosmologist, Carl Sagan. Do you remember when Professor Sagan had his very popular public broadcast program on television from which he then wrote a best selling book? And what was the name of the program and the book? The name was Cosmos. And Sagan said that the reason why he chose this title was to make a statement about reality, to make a statement about the universe, to make a statement about science. And this statement is that that which we're encountering, that which we're seeking to learn about in this process we call science, is not ultimately an experience of chaos where we are just bombarded by a jumbled mass of unrelated particular facts. That's chaos. But cosmos says that we live in a universe that makes sense, that is intelligible, that's knowable, that fits together, that is coherent. And even though we haven't been able to solve all of the mysteries, there remain anomalies that eat away at our favorite paradigms to explain the universe. Nevertheless, the conviction of every scientist is that there is knowledge at the end of the tunnel of investigation, that the reality that we encounter is knowable. Science is possible, which is to say knowledge is possible. If everything were chaos, you couldn't know anything, couldn't even know that it was chaos. You couldn't have the sense to identify it as chaos. So that's what the Greeks were about. They were trying to say, what is this ultimate truth that will explain how all things fit together? And they tried different things. One thought that the ultimate reality was water. Another one said it was air. Another one said it was fire. Another one said it was whatever. And some of them said, no, you can't reduce it to one. Remember Democritus, who was the father of the atomic theory? He said all of reality is made up of these tiny little individual units that we call atoms. Or another one, Empedocles said that everything is made up of little seeds that have the seminal power to germinate life. And so you had pluralists, who believed that ultimate reality could not be reduced to one single thing, and monist, who believed that everything was actually just the manifestation of one actual being. Now, those who advocated a form of pluralism, that is, that said that there were several substances that cohere together to make up particular things, like atoms, like seeds, like monads or whatever, they had this difficult problem. Like in early days, one of the earlier philosophers said, well, there are four basic substances, and you can't get beyond these four. Earth, air, fire and water. Then the next guy came along and said, but something has to make these come together, to unify them, to have coherence. So we've got to look beyond these four elements to the fifth element or the fifth essence. And what were they looking for? The quintessence. You've heard that word, the quintessence simply means the fifth essence, the essence that transcends the other four and makes sense out of them. Well, philosophers like the Stoics and like Heraclitus and others, another fellow before those two said that ultimate reality is given its unity, its order, its purpose, and its harmony by what he called the nous N o u s, which is not a noose like you put around your neck when you were hungry, but n o u s, which is simply the Greek word for mind. Now, this philosopher believed that there had to be some principle that ordered the universe. But for him, the noose was an impersonal abstract force, sort of like in Star wars, the force be with you. And then what came next on the scene with Heraclitus and with the Stoics was the idea of the logos. And the Greek philosophers developed this concept of logos, which concept pointed to the ultimate source of order and harmony in the universe. It shapes and determines the destiny, the goal and the purpose of all things. It makes all things fit together. Now, again, for these philosophers who used the word Logos, they had no concept of a personal God. This was still an abstract, impersonal force in Hellenistic religion and Hellenistic Judaism. In Alexandria, the philosopher Philo did speak about a personal force, something similar to the personification of wisdom that we find in the Old Testament. But it is John who takes this loaded philosophical concept and fills it with Hebrew meaning and announces something absolutely unthinkable. Two things unthinkable to the Greek. First, that the Logos is personal, and second, that it could be incarnate. And so he says of Christ, in the beginning was the Logos, the Logos was with God. So in that sense he's distinguished from God. But he goes on to say, and the Logos was God. He was in the beginning with God. Now listen to what he says. All things were made through him, and without him, nothing was made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. So that for the Jew, he looks to the eternal Logos, who is with God from all eternity in the beginning, who is Himself, the brightness of the glory of God, the expressed image or word or expression. God who creates all things. And the Scriptures teach us later that not only does he create all things and nothing was made apart from him, but all things are created for him and through him, and all things hold together in him. It is Christ who brings order out of chaos, who is the arche of all things, the ultimate truth, and the one who brings order, harmony and purpose to the creation. That the arche of God, who is the Logos of God, should become flesh and dwell among us was the supreme stumbling block to the Greek, because the Greek believed that anything physical, anything material, would automatically besmirch the spiritual realm. And so the Greek was more offended by the Incarnation than he was by the resurrection. But this is the astounding and dramatic announcement that John begins his gospel with, that the eternal Logos has become flesh and pitches his tent among his people. This is Emmanuel, God with us.
- [24:15]
Nathan W. Bingham
So much packed into the little title Logos. And that Logos is Jesus Christ. Thanks for listening to Renewing youg Mind Today. I'm your host, Nathan W. Bingham. From servant of the Lord to prophet and priest, this series covers more names of Jesus than we'll focus on this week. So I do encourage you to request access to all 12 messages when you give a donation of any amount@renewingyourmind.org or when you call us at 800-435-4-343. Your donation fuels the spread of Renewing your Mind around the world every day. And to thank you, we'll unlock the series in the free Ligonier app and we'll send you a copy of the Word Made the Ligonier Statement on Christology. Beautifully written, this short statement captures the person and work of Christ, and the accompanying affirmations and denials make clear what we believe and what we deny when it comes to Jesus Christ. Request this resource offer before it ends tomorrow by using the link in the podcast Show Notes or when you visit renewingyourmind.org Also, an entirely digital version of this offer is available for our global audience@renewingyourmind.org global. Thank you again for supporting this daily outreach of Ligonier Ministries. Jesus is our Savior. He is the Savior. But what exactly are we saved from? Don't miss tomorrow's episode as RC Sproul helps us understand the depths of Jesus as Savior. That'll be Thursday here on Renewing your Mind.
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RC Sproul
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