Alright, it's taken me five years to figure this out. No wait -- seven? Ten? A lifetime? Anyways, I think I finally figured it out. (But it wasn't even me... I just stole ideas from others, really -- see the footnotes at the bottom of this entry).1
I think the Word of God is a person, not a book.2 (As the book itself says). And to ascribe perfection to anything other than God is a form of idolatry.3 (Doctrine of innerrancy, I'm looking at you).
It seems to me that modern Christian theology of a conservative/evangelical/fundamentalist bent has elevated the Bible to the position of '4th member' of the Trinity, if that were possible . Their creed might as well be "I believe in the Father, Son, Holy Ghost... and Bible." (i.e. the Bible as the inerrant Word of God -- like I said, I think that position is already occupied by 2nd person of the Trinity).
More tomorrow.
1. If you display the following symptom -- an urge to insert footnotes into even your blog entries -- go see your doctor ASAP, because you have officially become infected with the spirit of academia. Generally fatal and incurable, this condition can at least be treated so as to reduce suffering. Whatever you do, do NOT keep typing.
2. I stole this idea from Karl Barth.
3. I stole this from some guy on youtube.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
can you unpack the person not a book thing? Are you referring to "the Word was with God" thing in your last line..I was always taught that referred to Jesus but you think it refers to the Holy Spirit?..
ReplyDeleteSorry if that was unclear.
ReplyDeleteNo, I definitely had Jesus in mind. We're both referring to the first chapter of John, I think, which describes the Word of God as eternally present alongside God, and then becoming flesh as Jesus.
I've always assumed that Jesus is the 2nd person of the Trinity since he comes second in that traditional list "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit," but maybe I'm just out to lunch on that one.
I guess in a sense, since Jesus is no longer physically with us, and the Holy Spirit could be described as a mediator of his presence, you could describe the HS as the Word too. But I only thought of that now.
Not sure if that answered your first question. (i.e. I'm not sure if your second question was separate from the first, or just explaining what you wanted 'unpacked'). If it didn't answer the question, let me know, and I'll try and do so!
er, not sure why I read "referred to the 2nd person of the trinity" to mean HS instead of Jesus. hehe. My bad. 2nd person def. is Jesus.
ReplyDeleteBut really, i was intrigued by your idea and wanted that unpacked in general.
Also, I've read somewhere that Wisdom seen in the OT could also have been the Word referred to (and became Jesus) something about the words Logos and Sophia..but Logos may have been used only to delineate from the gnostics who featured Sophia prominently in their ideas...I'd have to look it up again but anyway, ever read anything about that?
It's good for me to get challenged to explain this, I'd say. I think I realize now that the idea of the Word of God being a person, not a book, just really intuitively resonated with me, and I probably need to think about it more before I'd feel up to saying what exactly it means to me. But I promise I will do that, and probabaly just write a 'real' post about it.
ReplyDeleteIn Proverbs 8'Wisdom' (Sophia) gets personified and described as existing before creation, and as present while everything gets created. I think this is just a metaphoric way of getting across the point 'hey, God needed wisdom in order to create the world, so wisdom's really great, so you should try to get some,' but obviously Kaballah and the Gnostics ran with the idea of Sophia as some sort of being.
And the similarity between of the two descriptions have often provoked comment, and led some to equate the two.
That the Gnostics were into Sophia is news to me until your post. The argument about delineating from the gnostics would make some sense though, since some of the material in the book of John is definitely seen as a response/rebuttal to early gnosticism.
Though according to the blurb on wikipedia on the subject, it seems like Sophia and Logos (as Jesus) were often in some sort of relationship by the time full-blown Christian gnosticism came along. (Not surprisingly -- but depressingly -- given the time, the female principle was the 'lowest' emanation of divinity that somehow needed redemption through the male Logos. Sigh.). This makes me wonder if the gnostics adoption of Logos predated John? (If it did, this would seem to make this argument irrelevant -- why distinguish yourself from one gnostic concept in favour of another?). Or did their use of actually Sophia predate John, for that matter?
Either way I doubt Logos was used 'just' to dinstinguish from the gnostics, though that may have been part of it. By the time John was written, 'logos' had become a really loaded word (pun!) in Greek-Hellenic-Roman philosophy and mysticism. It started out as an ordinary word for 'word' (not in the a sense of individual words, but more like 'speech' or 'discourse,' maybe) and then drifted to mean the thought behind speech, and then, at least for some, the thought (i.e. principle, reason) behind... everything -- the universe, etc. So I think John was drawing on all of that, almost saying to Greek speakers (i.e. pagans) 'look, we have logos too! Jesus is the logos!' while doing it in a way that would remind Jews of Sophia from Proverbs.
And distinguishing from gnostics, perhaps! Apparently in more than just the obvious sense of saying Jesus/the Logos became FLESH people, and is not just some abstract spiritual principle, and by implication saying that material/the flesh is not evil, but good and redeemable.
Sorry for the length of this. My rusting Religion TA impulses have apparently been repressed too long.
And I should point out that none of this is for sure. A lot of this is just my opinion, based on bits of half-remembered and non-expert knowledge. (As one wonderful Greek pagan once said, the begining of wisdom is to realize you know nothing).