Prophetic Theory part II: Logos Theology

We are well aware of Jesus as the Word of God in John’s Logos Theology:

John 1:1: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God

But how deep does it go?

What we are really asking is how often does Jesus put faith in him the same as faith in his Word.  What is His Word? What are the theological implications of the result?

Here is just a quick review of what we are talking about in a few unambiguous verses:

• John 1:14: And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.
• 1 John 1:1: That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life;
• Revelation 19:13: And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God.

Logos

Forget all the speculations about borrowing from Greek philosophy and a primary definition applied like “reason” or “Devine ordering principle of the universe.” Logos means “Word,” or “Word of God.” The same used here:

John 8:31-32: Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him , If ye continue in my word (logoV), then are ye my disciples indeed; And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. 

Hermeneutically there is no distinction made between Jesus, the Word of God and what is preached. The “Word of God” and Jesus are metonymies.

• Acts 5:42: And daily in the temple, and in every house, they ceased not to teach and preach Jesus Christ.
• Acts 26:22-23: Having therefore obtained help of God, I continue unto this day, witnessing both to small and great, saying none other things than those which the prophets and Moses did say should come: That Christ should suffer, and that he should be the first that should rise from the dead, and should shew light unto the people, and to the Gentiles.
• 2 Corinthians 4:5: For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus’ sake.
• 1 Corinthians 1:23: But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness;
• Philippians 1:15: Some indeed preach Christ even of envy and strife, and some also of good will:

Jesus does not distinguish between his word and the word of Yahweh, which is Yahweh himself.

• John 5:24: Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.
• John 8:31: Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed;And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
• John 8:37: I know that ye are Abraham’s seed; but ye seek to kill me, because my word hath no place in you.
• Revelation 3:8: I know thy works: behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it: for thou hast a little strength, and hast kept my word, and hast not denied my name.

The Word of God Acts as a Person

That God is also his Word, and his Word acted the same as that of a person, is well known in the Targums, which were widely read in the synagogues in Jesus day. These were Aramaic paraphrases of the Old Testament. They show how the theology of the day had matured to accept this truth, which Jesus taught was crucial to understanding the meaning of his person and the way of salvation.

Here are just a few examples from Ronning’s book: The Jewish Targums and John’s Logos Theology,

To preface, Ronning, sadly, does not speak about the Word as identified in a certain prophetic stream. The scholarship is wonderful, and this is an immensely important book, but it is interesting how much time is given to establishing the source of the idea in the minds of the Apostles of the singular person of Jesus as the Word but not what, if any, singular genre of the Word is a person of history. The “Word” is left as a general revelation. I contend that if we are willing to accept the Word of God as a person, then we must be willing to consider that “Christ” was used metonymically not for the entire corpus of the “Word of God” but specifically for the Messianically prophetic one. This is our scholastic blind spot, since the person Jesus being a certain kind of scriptural revelation, instead of a scriptural revelation symbolically meaning a certain person, closes both Jesus and Scripture off from the urge for an endless investigation into things which are unfinished, obscure, and controversial.

For now, it is our intention to make sense out of how this relationship with Christ was conceived and constantly used, to then apply our understanding to its inevitable conclusion.

The theories of influence on John’s Logos theology:

1. John’s “the Word” corresponds simply to the OT use of “the Word of the Lord.” The Word of God is already represented in the OT as a person (Ps. 33:6).
2. It came from the Wisdom Literature of Proverbs, Baruch, Sirach, and the Wisdom of Solomon, where wisdom is a person that dwells among men (Sir 24:4–8).
3. It came from the Logos of Philo. Here the Word is a person or a divine ordering principle of the universe, yet falls short of the Logos of John which became flesh. That it is thought as the “creative reason,” and this exists in man, is as far as Ronning goes in this direction.
4. It came from the Targums, the Aramaic translations of the OT used in synagogues at the time of Jesus. The LXX translates the Targums memra as logos. The Targums are rich in the use of two words: Memra (“word,” used as a circumlocution for the Tertrgrammaton, the divine name) and Dibbera (used in the MT for “the Lord”). The two words are used interchangeably, but close examination reveals that they are also used in some specialized sense. Memra in the Targums is used for the “full range of God’s activities in the world,” “conveying the being and doing of YHVH” (p.14). Dibbera is used more for divine speech, such as instances where God spoke directly to Moses. It is also used for the ten commandments, such as in Deuteronomy 4:12–13.

The use of these two words in the Targums for a divine person is astonishing. To cite just a few:

The Word is Messiah and God:

• Lev 26:12: the MT “says I will walk among you.” Tg. Neof says, “My Word will go among you.”
• Deu 26:17: Tg. Neofti says, “This day you have made the Word of the Lord your God to be King over you, so that he may be for you a savior God, [promising] to walk in ways that are right before him.” The KJV has: “Thou hast avouched the LORD this day to be thy God, and to walk in his ways, and to keep his statutes, and his commandments, and his judgments, and to hearken unto his voice.”
• Gen 28:21: Tg. Onqelos: “The Word of the Lord will be my God.” The ASV has: “and Jehovah will be my God.”
• Deu 4:24: The NASB says, “For the LORD your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.” Tg. Onq: “The Lord your God, his Word, is a consuming fire, a jealous God” (book pp 20,21).
• Exo. 19:17: NASB has, “And Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God…” In Tg. Onq: “…to meet the Word of God.” 

Creation:

• Deu 33:27: Tg. Onq: “The dwelling place of God is from the beginning, (when) through his Word the world was made.” Tg. Isa: “I am the Lord, who made all things; I stretched out the heavens by my Word.”

In the Garden:

• Gen 3:1: NIV: “Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made.” Tg. Neof: “….which the Word of the LORD had made.”
• Gen 3:8: NASB: “They heard the sound of the LORD God…” Tg. Pal. has “….sound of the Word of the LORD.”
• Gen. 3:10: We see, “He said, I heard the sound of You…” In Targum Neofti there is “…the sound of the Word.”

The Word as light, shining in darkness:

• Exo 13:21–22: Tg. Neof says, “The Word of the Lord led on before them during the daytime in a pillar of cloud to lead them on the way, and by night in a pillar of fiery cloud to give them light.”

It must be emphasized how pervasive this is in the Targum. Alfred Edershiem, in The Life and Time of Jesus the Messiah, counts in Targum Onkelos Memra used for God occurring 176 times, 321 times in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, and 99 times in the Jerusalem Targum.

YHVH

The divine name has been stripped of its specialized prophetic emphasis. The meaning is not “I am that I am.” The inference is God introducing Himself to man by way of underlining His sovereignty. The problem with “sovereignty” is that it only describes a state of Oneness and infinite power. There is nothing in it inferring love, faithfulness, or any particular kind of act to uniquely associate with Him which displays them. Ronning cites Alviero Niccacci, noting in the Targum that the first clause-initial of אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה “should be expected to express volition (a promise, etc.).” The second is then expected not to be future, but past-habitual. This renders it as “I will be who I have been.” This fits the context of God being known as the God who made and kept promises (prophecies) of the deliverance of the children of Israel from Egypt (Ronning P. 72). This agrees with the Targums, such as in Tg. Ps. J. on 3:14: “I am he who is and who will be.”

This fits perfectly with Targum Jerusalem:

Exodus 3:14: “And the Word of YHVH said to Moses: ‘I am He who said unto the world “Be!” and it was: and who in the future shall say to it “Be!” and it shall be.’ And He said: ‘Thus you shall say to the children of Isra’el: “I Am” has sent me to you.’”

There is no question as to the personification of the Word of God in rabbinic thought of the post- Babylonian era. But what does this mean? Well,  in our quotations of the scriptures of which the Targums translate as a person, it is obvious that these are in an overwhelmingly prophetic context. This is so of texts which speak of God is giving and securing his promises,  of the means of creation, of the means of the judgment of man in disbelief of His promises, of the protection of His name after giving His promises, of His word being King of the religious affections, of appointing His mouthpiece for His promises. Directly within His divine name is an expression of His principal identification as the prophetic word, his theophany among men, and, I believe, His intention to enflesh as the prophetic word.

• Acts 10:36: The word which God sent unto the children of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ: (he is Lord of all:)
• Revelation 19:10: And I fell at his feet to worship him. And he said unto me, See thou do it not: I am thy fellowservant, and of thy brethren that have the testimony of Jesus: worship God: for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.

Now, as I said, all of this is not in wide dispute. The problem we have is in taking Jesus as the Word of God and then nailing down a certain revelational nomenclature for the Word of God. We never do the latter because we can see the result and we don’t like it. We can see that this formula would mean that whatever the Word of God is, that is what Jesus is, and is the only way that he meant for us to take him. Jesus can be the Word of God as long as he is a Word of God that is diffuse enough in subject that it allows us to apply to him our own pet subject. We want the rules loosened. 

It’s a little more than interesting. If we think about it, what better explanation could we come up with for why Jesus was rejected by his countrymen? There is a pretty good consensus that Jesus was rejected because he was not the messiah that was expected or wanted. But that is the same general conceptual trap. But why is this explanation so rarely connected to the kind of scripture that was refused for his fulfillment, which could only be messianic prophecy? Well, obviously, it is because that would mean that the reason why he was accepted and believed was because of his alignment with the prophets, and we don’t want to have Jesus thought rejected and accepted on the basis of something about scripture that we are not impressed with very much, that we were not saved on, that we don’t know that much about, or that we even perhaps think is kind of a kooky thing and a kooky reason to believe in Jesus. If Jesus was to be thought a metonymy of messianic prophecy, this means that we are the Pharisees. It means that the verse “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life,” is not speaking of a Word about anything in the Word of God we wish, but it refers almost parabolically to the Word of messianic prophecy of Jesus.

Red Pill, Blue Pill

… take the red pill – you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes

The plot of the Movie “The Matrix” has been used innumerable times in sermons throughout the world since it came out, and with good reason. Like many Hollywood movies, its theme is taken by the influence of Christian theology, which theology has always taught that the entire world is living in a kind of dream world as to their condition and fate by the instigation of an evil presence. But I wonder if we have really applied the powerful analogy of this movie accurately to our present condition.

The “Matrix” is a computer program that acts as a psychological control system over the psychology of humanity. In this chimera, the people of this virtual world believe they are clean, whole, well fed, with nice possessions, a have a career and a propitious future.  Their real state since birth they have never known, and if they knew it they would probably choose to stay within the mirage. But if they knew it they would at least know the truth, and to some, that is the greatest value.

Morpheus, the leader of the those who have escaped the mirage, enters into to the dream state of one called Neo to appeal to his sense of loss, of unconscious experiential dystopia, of undefined dissatisfaction with the world he knows. He asks him to meet with him, and he gives him a choice in taking a red pill or a blue pill. One pill leaves him unchanged, the other pill shows him the truth: that the world that he thinks is really a nuclear wasteland ruled by machines.  That he is imprisoned with millions of others in an embryonic state attached to an intravenous machine that feeds him. He is one of the millions which the machines cultivate like a plant crop to supply the energy, like a battery.

He chooses the red pill, is released by Morpheus from the Matrix and enters a war between humans and the machines for control of humanity in which he moves in and out of that dream world to engage and defeat the evil.

Question: what is our Matrix? Is our idea of Christian sin and deception true and perfectly accurate, or is the Christian conception of sin and deception something that we are blind to and which controls our every thought and action? Is it possible that we remain trapped in an epistemic nightmare, both of our own choice and as a creation of a kind of Satanic mindset meant for our control, that we think is normal, given by God himself, and even Holy?

Jesus and the Transposition of Real Meaning

Let us accept the possibility, just for the sake now of argument, that our Matrix is a linguistic and rational blanching, an attempt to make acceptable something that is very dark and very deceptive about the nature of the danger Jesus warned against. The rabbit hole goes all the way through the Bible and emerges in a place that is an accurate view of what the world really is, but also one that we hate. The hole comes out where Jesus is not any kind of ideological construction that originated in the Matrix but came from the other world. The deception is in a very simple linguistic trick: flatten out a very specific, topical, technical thing, which is original, and makes it conform to the dream world where everything is subject to instant re-interpretation, where everything is negotiable, where everything can be transformed by our whim. In a word, make it a general thing instead of one thing.

But this is the whole nature of parable, is it not. A parable is not a deception like the Matrix, it just searches for and identifies the few people who want to break out of it.

Let’s just try this: transpose this idea of Jesus not as the Word of God, as that is that flattened conception, but as messianic prophecy itself. Just humor me.

Original:

 John 8:12-24 Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. The Pharisees therefore said unto him, Thou bearest record of thyself; thy record is not true. Jesus answered and said unto them, Though I bear record of myself, yet my record is true: for I know whence I came, and whither I go; but ye cannot tell whence I come, and whither I go. Ye judge after the flesh; I judge no man. And yet if I judge, my judgment is true: for I am not alone, but I and the Father that sent me. It is also written in your law, that the testimony of two men is true. I am one that bear witness of myself, and the Father that sent me beareth witness of me. Then said they unto him, Where is thy Father? Jesus answered, Ye neither know me, nor my Father: if ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also. These words spake Jesus in the treasury, as he taught in the temple: and no man laid hands on him; for his hour was not yet come. Then said Jesus again unto them, I go my way, and ye shall seek me, and shall die in your sins: whither I go, ye cannot come. Then said the Jews, Will he kill himself? because he saith, Whither I go, ye cannot come. And he said unto them, Ye are from beneath; I am from above: ye are of this world; I am not of this world. I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins: for if ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins. 

Transposed:

John 8:12-24 Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I [messianic prophecy of myself] am the light of the world: he that followeth me [messianic prophecy of myself] shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. The Pharisees therefore said unto him, Thou bearest record of thyself; thy record is not true. Jesus answered and said unto them, Though I bear record [messianic prophecy] of myself, yet my record [of fulfillment of those oracles] is true: for I know whence I came, and whither I go; but ye cannot tell whence I come, and whither I go. Ye judge after the flesh; I judge no man. And yet if I judge, my judgment [of those that do not those who motivate their religion on them] is true: for I am not alone, but I and the Father that sent me [to fulfill them]. It is also written in your law, that the testimony of two men is true. I am one that bear [prophetic] witness of myself, and the Father that sent me beareth [prophetic] witness of me. Then said they unto him, Where is thy Father? Jesus answered, Ye neither know me, nor my Father: if ye had known me [through these oracles], ye should have known my Father also. These words spake Jesus in the treasury, as he taught in the temple: and no man laid hands on him; for his hour was not yet come [as it is prophesied]. Then said Jesus again unto them, I go my way [by my obedience to the Father to fulfill the oracles], and ye shall seek me, and shall die in your sins: whither I go, ye cannot come. Then said the Jews, Will he kill himself? because he saith, Whither I go, ye cannot come. And he said unto them, Ye are from beneath; I am from above: ye are of this world; I am not of this world. I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins: for if ye believe not that I am he [from the prophets], ye shall die in your sins.

Stay with me, and you will see how far the rabbit hole goes.

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Prophetic Theory: Prophecy as Fact, part III

Prophetic Theory, part IV: The Art of God