Since I've managed to do "science Friday" for two weeks in a row, why not "religion Sunday"? (Especially since I overslept and missed church this morning!)
The familiar - and extremely influential for English - King James Version gives the translation as:
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.
The Revised Standard Version (of which the Catholic Church is particularly fond) renders these two verses:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God[.]
The King James translation is actually better, because the Greek ho lógos is a masculine noun, but does not definitely refer to a person, as the English personal pronoun "he" does. In Christian theology, "the Word" in this verse is taken to be Jesus, in his role as the Second Person of the Trinity. The current Cathecism of the Catholic Church (1994) straightforwardly identifies the Word of John 1 with Jesus (paragraphs 241, 291).
The author of the Gospel of John also identified Jesus of Nazareth in some way with the logos. The notion that this passage refers to "the Second Person of the Trinity" in the sense that Christians understand it today would have been incomprehensible to the author of this Gospel and his readers/listeners. As late as the beginning of the fifth century [verify], violent clashes between the "Arians" and those who saw Jesus as an equal to God the Father were still occurring. The full-blown Christian notion of the Trinity didn't take firm form until later, and is still not agreed upon between Western and Eastern Orthodox Christians even today.
Logos was an important concept for the Stoic philosophers, a very influential school of thought in the Roman Empire. They understood logos as being a divine, vital principle animating the material world, as a striving toward understanding the divine and as the expression of tha understanding. The Stoics saw the human soul as a manifestation of logos.
Jesus becoming divine
Hans Küng focuses on this passage in Das Christentum (1994) as a key text in the early development of the Christian idea of the divinity of Jesus. He quotes Leonhardt Goppelt's reading of this passage, "The logos of the prologue becomes Jesus; Jesus is the logos become flesh, but not the logos as such."
The early Greek Church Father Origen (185-251) emphasized the Johannine concept of Jesus as the logos. But he also emphasized that Jesus the Son was subordinate to God the Father, a view which was at variance with the understanding of Jesus as part of the Trinity that later won general acceptance in Chrisitianity. Origen, like the philospher Plotinus, considered to be the founder of neo-Platonism, was a student of the philosopher Ammonios Sakkas, though Plotinus and Origen were not personally acquainted.
Origen saw the logos of John 1 as being Jesus, and understood the prologue as emphasizing the role of the logos in the form of (through?) Jesus as being to allow humanity access to the experience of God as light (De principiis 1:2:7):
According to John, "God is light." The only-begotten Son, therefore, is the glory of this light, proceeding inseparably from (God) Himself, as brightness does from light, and illuminating the whole of creation. For, agreeably to what we have already explained as to the manner in which He is the Way, and conducts to the Father; and in which He is the Word, interpreting the secrets of wisdom, and the mysteries of knowledge, making them known to the rational creation; and is also the Truth, and the Life, and the Resurrection,-in the same way ought we to understand also the meaning of His being the brightness: for it is by its splendour that we understand and feel what light itself is. And this splendour, presenting itself gently and softly to the frail and weak eyes of mortals, and gradually training, as it were, and accustoming them to bear the brightness of the light, when it has put away from them every hindrance and obstruction to vision, according to the Lord's own precept," Cast forth the beam out of thine eye," renders them capable of enduring the splendour of the light, being made in this respect also a sort of mediator between men and the light.
Origen also understood the logos to be an active, creative principle in the Person of the Son of God. From Contra Celsius 2:9 [Origen Against Celsus]:
For we assert that it was to Him [Jesus, to whom] the Father gave the command, when in the Mosaic account of the creation He uttered the words, "Let there be light," and "Let there be a firmament," and gave the injunctions with regard to those other creative acts which were performed; and that to Him also were addressed the words, "Let Us make man in Our own image and likeness; "and that the Logos, when commanded, obeyed all the Father's will. And we make these statements not from our own conjectures, but because we believe the prophecies circulated among the Jews, in which it is said of God, and of the works of creation, in express words, as follows: "He spake, and they were made; He commanded, and they were created." Now if God gave the command, and the creatures were formed, who, according to the view of the spirit of prophecy, could He be that was able to carry out such commands of the Father, save Him who, so to speak, is the living Logos and the Truth?
But in the following, it's clear that he also saw the logos as something more than Jesus, as well:
[A]ccording to our view, it was the Logos God, and Son of the God of all things, who spake in Jesus these words, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; "and these, "I am the door; "and these, "I am the living bread that came down from heaven; "and other expressions similar to these. We therefore charge the Jews with not acknowledging Him to be God, to whom testimony was borne in many passages by the prophets, to the effect that He was a mighty power, and a God next to the God and Father of all things. ...
For the soul and body of Jesus formed ... one being with the Logos of God. Now if, according to Paul's teaching, "he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit," every one who understands what being joined to the Lord is, and who has been actually joined to Him, is one spirit with the Lord; how should not that being be one in a far greater and more divine degree, which was once united with the Logos of God? [my emphsis]
In Contra Celsius 2:42, Origen also states that "the Logos had become the man Jesus." And in 3:23, he writes, "Christ was shown to be the first-born of all creation, who assumed a body and a human soul; and that God gave commandment respecting the creation of such mighty things in the world, and they were created; and that He who received the command was God the Logos." (my emphasis) Here again, while Origen understands Jesus to be the son of God, this phrasing seems to reflect a view that the Logos was a larger divine force of with which Jesus was infused, but which was not strictly identical to him.
This passage from 3:31 reflects even more clearly the notion that Jesus became the Son of God through the power of the Logos:
But since [Celsius] has charged us, I know not how often already, "with regarding this Jesus, who was but a mortal body, as a God, and with supposing that we act piously in so doing," it is superfluous to say any more in answer to this, as a great deal has been said in the preceding pages. And yet let those who make this charge understand that He whom we regard and believe to have been from the beginning God, and the Son of God, is the very Logos, and the very Wisdom, and the very Truth; and with respect to His mortal body, and the human soul which it contained, we assert that not by their communion merely with Him, but by their unity and intermixture, they received the highest powers, and after participating in His divinity, were changed into God. And if any one should feel a difficulty at our saying this regarding His body, let him attend to what is said by the Greeks regarding matter, which, properly speaking, being without qualities, receives such as the Creator desires to invest it with, and which frequently divests itself of those which it formerly possessed, and assumes others of a different and higher kind. And if these opinions be correct, what is there wonderful in this, that the mortal quality of the body of Jesus, if the providence of God has so willed it, should have been changed into one that was ethereal and divine? [my emphasis]
Origen's views are particularly noteworthy, not only because he produced "the first model of a scientific theology" but also because he was "the greatest philologist" of ancient Christianity, although he by no means always adhered to literal readings in his translations of the Scriptures. (Hans Küng, Grosse christliche Denker, 1994).
Other views of the logos
The German theologian Drewermann's own translation (Das Johannesevangelium [1997]) into German of John 1: 1-2 is:
Am Anfang steht worthafter Geist.
Denn worthafter Geist geht nach Gott.
Gott selber ist worthafter Geist.
Von Anfang an geht er nach Gott.
[In the beginning was word-like spirit
And the word-like spirit was like God.
God himself is word-like spirit
From the beginning onward he was like God.]
"Worthaft" is word-like, so "worthafter Geist" would be word-like spirit, or spirit in the form a word (or words).
He references verse one to Genesis 1:1 and to John 17:5. The latter refers to Jesus saying that he shared in the glory of God before the world existed.
Drewermann also notes that Goethe's Faust also agonized over the translation of this verse:
Geschrieben steht: "Im Anfang war das Wort!"
Hier stock' ich schon! Wer hilft mir weiter fort?
Ich kann das Wort so hoch Unmöglich schätzen,
Ich muss es anders übersetzen,
Wenn ich vom Geiste recht erleuchtet bin.
- Faust I, Studierzimmer)
[It is written, "In the beginning was the Word!"
Here I'm already getting stuck. Who will help me get farther along?
It's impossible for me to value the word so highly,
I must translate it different,
If I am correctly enlightened by the Spirit.]
Faust reflects a much later understanding, far removed from neo-Platonic understandings of the logos, and thoroughly accustomed to the later Christian doctrine that simply identified Jesus directly with the logos in this verse. Faust solves the problem to his own satisfaction by concluding that the logos actually represent action: "Im Anfang war die Tat!" (In the beginning was the deed!)
While Faust is reading this passage aloud and puzzling it out, speaking to himself, a poodle is in the room that has followed him home. Immediately after he hits upon this translation, the poodle begins to change form, taking shape as Mephistopheles. And Faust in alarm, calls upon "Salomonis Schlüssel," a medieval magic text to ward of threatening spirits. A "black magic" text, that is. A quick transition from the Bible and "In the beginning was the deed" to magical conjuring, which in the Christian understanding was an attempt by humans to manipulate God. An exercise in arrogance and hubris, in other words, and a risky one.
This innovative translation can be seen as Faust first concrete step in undertaking the spectacular risk of a pact with Mephistopheles.
Drewermann in says in Das Johannes-Evangelium: Bilder einer neuen Welt Erster Teil [2003]) that the introductory prologue to John's Gospel (1:1-18) is the reworking of a Gnostic hymn, which was converted into a statement about Jesus. It's not clear to me whether this is consistent with Küng's version of the likely derivation of the passage. Though scholars of the period differ in the weight they give various strands of influence on early Jewish mysticism, there is little question that Jewish mystical ideas of the day were related to similar influences and dealt with some related issues to that of the Gnostics. For instance, Gerschom Scholem wrote in Kabbalah (1974):
The position of Philo of Alexandria and his relationship with Palestinian Judaism is of especial weight in these controversies. In contrast to scholars like Harry Wolfson who see Philo [ca 10 BCE-50 CE; a Platonic Jewish philosopher] as fundamentally a Greek philosopher in Jewish garb, others, like Hans Lewy and Erwin Goodenough, interpret him as a theosophist or even a mystic.
Whatever the exact relationship of John's understanding of the logos to these other strands of religious thought, his understanding of Jesus was a critical step in the development of the Christian understanding of the relationship of Jesus to God. In religious terms, it doesn't invalidate the later interpretation of Jesus as the "Second Person of the Trinity" to recognize that the author of John understood it in a different (or incomplete) way. But it's important for more than one reason to see that the Christian doctrine of the Trinity did not, to borrow a pagan metaphor, spring full-blown into the world like Athena from the head of Zeus.
No comments:
Post a Comment