Dabar in the Old Testament

In the bible the link between Jesus Christ and the universal connectedness and relationship is the incarnation of the divine word (dabar). The Old Testament makes use of two words as intermediary between God and creation: wisdom (hokma) and word (dabar). “The worlds were made by the word of God” (Ps 33:6). However, the word wisdom is made use of more frequently in the context of this creation. Recent biblical studies have given new insights into the centrality of wisdom in the ancient Hebrew tradition. Biblical scholarship has shown the importance of the figure of personified wisdom, particularly in the books of Job, Proverbs, Sirach and the Wisdom of Solomon. Wisdom is always closely associated with God’s work of creation. Wisdom is connected with the whole of creation; it is present with God at creation as a skilled co-worker (Prov 8:30; Wis 7:22; 8:6). It pervades and penetrates all things (Wis 7:24), renews all things (Wis 7:27). Wisdom “reaches mightily from one end of the earth to the other and orders all things well” (Wis 8:1).  Wisdom is at most times presented in the image of a woman, lady Wisdom, whose primary mode is relational (Job28; Prov 1:8-9; Sir 1:9-10; 4:11-19; Wis 6:11-12). Her connections extend to every part of reality. No aspect of reality is closed off from her. She exists as it were in a tapestry of connected threads, patterned into an intricate whole of which she is the centre.

In the book of Job the figure of personified wisdom occupies a central role. Chapter 28 is a hymn to Wisdom, with the theme “where shall wisdom be found” (28:12,20). Similarly, in the first nine chapters of Proverbs we find a series of poems in which Lady Wisdom looms large (1:20-33; 3:13-24; 4:5-9; 8:1-9:5). God “begot” or “created” Wisdom as the first born (8:22). In the book of Sirach Wisdom proclaims that she has come forth from God, born from God’s mouth as the Word of God. She speaks of her role in creation, of her exploration of the universe and of her sway over all nations. She comes to the earth like mist, as the breath of God covers the waters (24:3-7). God has placed her in every human being as the eye (olam) (Sir 17:8).

The book of Wisdom describes Wisdom as God’s power and as an emanation of the glory of God (7:25), living with God (8:3) and associated with all God’s works (8:4). Roland Murphy summarizes Wisdom as “a divine communication: God’s communication, extension of self, to human beings. And that is no small insight the biblical literatures bequeaths to us.” (“Wisdom Literature and Biblical Theology,” Biblical Theology Bulletin 24(1994:7).

Logos in Greek Philosophy

Heraclitus (c 535-475 BCE), was the first to make use of the concept of the Logos in Greek Philosophy. For Heraclitus, logos was the principle that ensured continuity in a world that was in the process of constant flux. It is the ground, word, speech, account, reason. Heraclitus used it as a technical term, as the principle of order and perception. Already here we see how the logos was a principle of relation, the principle that related the two moments of the reality in flux: the present and the past as well as the present and the future.

When we come to the Platonic world, we are told that the platonic ideas were located in the logos that acted in the physical world, on behalf of God. Justin the martyr who spoke of the logos spermaticoi (seeds of the Word) has said that Plato, in fact, lifted the idea of the logos from the Thora! (1Apo 59-60).

The Stoic Philosophers identified logos with the all-pervading divine animating principle of the universe. It is the divine principle implicit in the cosmos giving its order and meaning. Similar related ideas we come across in Indian, Egyptian and Persian Philosophical systems. The Indian scriptures, the Vedas, are believed to be the articulations of the Sages’ experience of the eternally resounding Vak, the divine revelation.

Jesus the Logos

However, it is in Christian thought that we come across the full flowering of the principle of logos, to explain the mystery of the Christ-event, integrating the Old Testament and Greek philosophy.

The Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria (ca 20 BCE – CE 50) adopted the Greek term logos into Jewish philosophy describing it as the intermediary between God and the cosmos, as the agent of creation and as the agent through which humans understood God.  No doubt, Philo was influenced by the hokma/dabar in the Old Testament.

Evangelist John writing towards the end of first century CE, continuing the early church’s search to understand deeper the person of Jesus Christ, takes the then prevailing cultural term logos and presents Jesus as the Incarnation of the eternal logos that existed from the beginning, i.e. the beginningless beginning, in contrast to the Old Testament description of the hokma/dabar that was God’s first creation.  John tells us how the logos was God and with the God, showing the universal connectedness and relationship of Jesus as the Incarnation of the biblical hokma/dabar.

The ancient Christian hymns such as Phil 2:6-11; Col 1:15-20, and Hebrews 1:3-4 identify Jesus with the biblical Wisdom. These hymns could have been sung well before the writing of the books in which they figure. Hence we could conclude that the identification of Jesus with divine wisdom could have occurred in the early post-Easter community. St. Paul speaks of Christ as the wisdom of God (1Cor 1:24). He is the pre-existent wisdom present from before all ages and in creation.

Scripture scholar Edward D Miller has pointed out how in John 1:1-5 we have four strophes, each making an assertion about Logos’ relation to something, and in each strophe to something different. Thus the first strophe is about Logos in his personal relation to God, the second is about his creative relation to the world, strophe three expresses the Logos in his incarnate relation to humans, and strophe four turns our attention to the Logos’ victorious relation to evil (Salvation History in the Prologue of John, Leiden: Bril, 1989, 91).

Through the prologue John makes history a theological category due to the salvific presence of the Word. Nowhere in the New Testament do we find the empirical historical reality so permeated by the divine as we do in John due to the presence of the Logos. Incarnation is in relation to and in continuity with the other three states of God’s saving activity in Logos. The pre-creation, creation, Incarnation and the present glorious state are the four stages of the activity of the Logos. The opening verses of the Johannine prologue, verses 1-4, presents us with an amazing and all-embracing universality, openness without boundary, hospitality without reservation, dialogue without discrimination, acceptance without conditions.

Due to this all-pervadingactivity of the Logos graphically narrated in the prologue, St. Augustine in his City of God approvingly quotes a Platonic philosopher who is reported to have said that the first five verses of the prologue must be written in gold and displayed in the most prominent places in every church (X, 29).

The prologue of John uses the language of the logos rather than that of the hokma/Sophia – wisdom. Yet what is said in terms of logos is very much dependent on what is said of wisdom in the Old Testament. Raymond Brown is of the opinion that John substituted Sophia with logos because the latter is masculine while the former is feminine (The Gospel According to John, NY: Garden City, 1966, cxxiv).

In the prologue, as well as in the early Christological hymns, we find a theological connection between God’s action in creation and Jesus Christ. Everything in creation bears the mark of the Word, the divine reaching out to the world. God had God’s salvific plan close to God from the beginning. All history and every single thing that happened took place through the mediation of the Logos. The world is the realm of the revealing Word. The Word that became flesh in Jesus of Nazareth is already with God in whom the entire divine mystery of salvation is already hidden. The whole creation stands bathed in the light of salvation through the Word.

There is a theological flow in the Johannine presentation of the Logos from his pre-existence to creation, accompanying it by bestowing it life and light, to the Incarnation of the same in Jesus of Nazareth with his ministry, until he is raised to the glory that he head from all eternity (Jn 17:5). The Word was from the beginning, en arche, outside the limits of space and time, neither of which existed then. The use of the past imperfect en, indicates how God’s Word was not an after-thought, but was from the beginning. That is to say the illumination, the revealing the light-giving work of the Word did not start just with Christianity or any other religion, but it is coeternal with God. It is the common patrimony of all religions. No wonder, most world religions have a theology of the Word expressed in different ways.

The Word pre-exists the story of humankind, though in relationship with the God (pros ton theon). Here John makes a distinction between the Absolute Mystery of God (the apara Braman, in terms of Indian Philosophy) and the Word, logos, (the Vak). The Word is spoken from the intimacy of God, it is revelatory. The main function of the Incarnate Word too is revelatory (Jn 12:45 & 14:6). The history of humanity can be weaved through from the pre-existence of the Word, to the life and light brought to every human person by the same Word through creation, and the Word that becomes Flesh in Jesus of Nazareth.  What is specific to the Christian community is the Incarnation with the ministry, where the Incarnate Word invites all “to come and see” (Jn 1:39), to follow him and thus reveal God who is with us, Emmanuel (Mt 1:23).

Logos is God’s presence and self expression. God communicates God’s self through God’s Word. The traditionally prevalent way to understand the Incarnation is in the context of sin. This is only one school. Here Jesus Christ is seen as the unique Saviour. The alternative is to see Incarnation flowing from God’s free love expressed through God’s Word through creation and Incarnation, as a continuous process. Incarnation is not dependent on a fall, it was part of God’s plan, the free self-communication of divine love.

The interesting fact is that according to the Hellenistic mind there could not be a greater contradiction than associating the logos with sarx (flesh). Yet, that precisely is that John does in the prologue: o logos sarx egeneto (the Word became flesh), making that affirmation the most influential New Testament affirmation in the history of Christian teachings. Sarx points to what is most ordinary in human beings, their frailty. John’s affirmation underlines the sharpness of the antitheses and the depth of the synthesis of logos and sarx. God’s Word has entered completely into our human existence.

Incarnation & the Mission of the Church

The logos that was from the beginning with God, becomes flesh, as a succession of events in history. The key point is his relationship with God. His food is to do the will of the Father (Jn 4:34), to remain in the Father as the branch and the vine (Jn 15:1-8 & 17:20-23).He can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father is doing (5:19). The term Father, the only absolute, occurs 120 times in John in contrast to the 64 times in the Synoptics.  All this effects a perfect transparency between the Father and the Word so that the Word can manifest the Father.

He is the hokma, divine wisdom, the divine plan for creation. God is revealed in the concreteness of this person. In him we have the experience of God in history. God’s attributes are to be experienced not apriori, but in human history through the Word made flesh. “We have heard it; we have seen it with our own eyes; felt it with our own hands and of this we tell, about the word of life.” (1Jn 1:1).

In the process of the doctrinal developments that came in the course of Greek inculturation the church lost sight of this biblical realism. For the Hellenistic mind Christ (Messiah) was only a proper name. For the Greeks a messiah who came to manifest the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and others operating in history, was not as important as the understanding of the person, substance and nature of Jesus Christ. The historical Jesus with his ministry of “the deeds of light” (Jn 3: 18-21), becomes peripheral. What was important was the correct academic expression of faith, in line with Greek philosophy that was accustomed to a God of Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Plotinus and others for whom God was the unmoved mover,  uninvolved in the material world. However, the focus of the prologue is the advent of the pre-existent logos into the world at a certain moment of time and the rest of the gospel is the narration of the activity of the Incarnate logos.

We need to return to the biblical understanding of Jesus Christ that the fourth evangelist has spelt out providing absolute universalism and openness, while realizing the significance of the Incarnation, to manifest God in the concrete (Jn 12: 45 and 14:9) through his ministry. While Jn 1:1-5 describes the work of the pre-existent logos, Jn 1:14 onwards is the narration of the work of the Incarnate Logos. The synoptic gospels in particular describe this ministry in terms of the divine reign which John presents as the deeds of light, passing from the deeds of evil. In both ways it is a process of historical transformation of the world while preserving the openness to the religions and cultures of the world.

The parabolic nature of Jesus’ life, ministry, death and resurrection, is the revelation of Gods compassionate love. World history is a love story, a narrative of God’s love for the world, always permeated by God’s creative and enlightening Word. No one is outside of this story, this narrative. In this narrative there are different points or milestones of events and persons: creation, exodus, covenant, Incarnation, Zorashter, Buddha, Socrates, Mohammed and many others, all of whom and which are integral to the logos.

In the fullness of time the logos pitches his tent among humans  by becoming flesh disclosing how humans are to approach God and neighbour within the spectre of relationality. The community of his disciples is the visible sacrament of this love story, to concretize what happened in Incarnation, always aware that the mystery of the logos is

Universal. That mystery belongs to all religions and they all belong to that mystery. In Christian terminology “the divine Word is the universal agent of all historical divine self-manifestation, even before his incarnation in Jesus Christ, that his historical incarnation transpires in view of its meta historical and universal operative presence as the resurrected Lord.” (Jacques Dupuis, Jesus Christ at the Encounter of World Religions, NY:Orbis, 1993, 243). The universality of this mystery cannot be localized exclusively in a point of time in history.

It is this vision and this mission of AJSC that has brought us together this morning, as a step in the creation of the divine household: Word-inspired to inspire the world.