Don’t miss what the Gospel According to John means that “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” That truth has meanings far more profound than we may commonly grant it.
Because we translate John’s Greek God as Logos into God as the Word, we tend to associate God as the Word with the literal words of the scriptures. And that’s all well and good. The scriptures are the reliable, inspired, and inerrant word of God. The scriptures are the good book, treasured far beyond anything else ever written. But the scriptures have many words. And thinking of God as text, words, or in that sense Word can be an unduly limiting concept. God is much more than mere words. So, that’s the problem: John’s expression of God’s nature certainly wasn’t meant to limit God. It was surely instead meant to expand our understanding of God.
The Greek logos, though, or its plural form logoi, doesn’t just mean words. It also means reason, principle, or pattern. Think of the English word logic, drawn from logos. One cannot think without symbolic logic, using words to represent things. Indeed, cognitive scientists, artificial intelligence programmers, and robotics engineers increasingly recognize how closely reason, principle, and symbolic logic connect with human consciousness and being. You can’t think without using symbols to represent logic. Indeed, to recognize something as something takes logic. You think a chair is a chair whether a person recognizes it or not? Think again. More likely, that pile of sticks wouldn’t be a chair unless you or someone else named it so, giving it meaning through its purpose.
When God had the first human name the animals, God was doing more than giving us a cuddly koala. God was giving humans the ability to create categories and recognize patterns. God was introducing order into the world through his human agents. God was giving humans symbolic logic and, with that ability to speak and reason, a divinity that God alone owns and bestows. God is the One who is order, reason, pattern, category, principle, and logic. Without God’s logos gift, chaos, destruction, and death would reign, and all human consciousness would fail. God is the author of life precisely because he is Logos. Hold fast to God, for only in God are we capable of reason.
