Christ the Logos
With the Christmas season at hand, who is Christ? In English, we describe Christ as the “Word Incarnate,” the Alpha and the Omega, the Son of God. In the Nicene Creed, Christ is described as follows:
I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the Only Begotten Son of God,
born of the Father before all ages.
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father;
through him all things were made.
For us men and for our salvation
he came down from heaven,
and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary,
and became man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate,
he suffered death and was buried,
and rose again on the third day
in accordance with the Scriptures.
He ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory
to judge the living and the dead
and his kingdom will have no end.[1]
In St. John’s Gospel, Christ is described in English as “The Word.”
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him: and without him was made nothing that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.[2]
The word is a weak translation of the Greek word Logos. The Greek word Logos has a much deeper philosophical meaning than the English word. The meaning of the Greek word logos takes up pages in a Greek-to-English dictionary. Logos was used to express the underlying rationality of the universe, reason, speech, words, and many other things, before it was used to describe the Second person of the Godhead in Christianity by St, John.
The Greeks and Logos
While we think of the Ancient Greeks as worshipers of many gods, starting with the pre-Socratics, the Greek philosophers concluded that there was one God and this God was a transcendent mind (Nous). Heraclitus has been credited as the first Greek philosopher to use the word logos. According to the pre-Socratics the universe was governed by universal principles that were called Logos. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and later Greek Philosophers expanded on this concept. It culminated as God as the unmoved mover in Aristotle. But all the philosophers had a problem that could not be solved through reason alone. If God was, as Aristotle thought, an omniscient, omnipotent, mind that existed in a state of unchanging perfection, why would he create the universe and man? He didn’t need it, nor could his existence be improved by it. Why would He engage in creation?
St. John in his Gospel adds to Greek thought and solves this dead-end in the philosophical tradition when he states that “In the beginning was the Word (Logos) and the Word (Logos) was with God, and the Word (Logos) was God.”[3] The Logos is the product of the transcendent mind, the logic of the perfect Nous. The Logos forms the second Person of the trinity in Jesus Christ. In Catholicism, Christ is the solution to the Greek quest for the creation of the universe and the ultimate reality. It is “through Him all things were made.” The underlying logic in the universe is the product of this transcendent mind and takes the form of the Son of God, Jesus Christ. The Love behind the perfect Nous and His Logos forms the third person in the trinity the Holy Spirit that spirals out from the Godhead. Of course, the divine nature of Christ and the creative act would be enough to worship Christ and celebrate Him, but there is an additional element of the Son of God that adds to His Glory. “He came down from heaven, and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man.”[4] It is for this that we celebrate Christmas and for what follows that we celebrate Easter. By doing so, God walked a
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