And The Word Was Made Flesh Corrected

“... AND THE WORD WAS MADE FLESH”: THE THEOLOGY OF THE LOGOS Exordium: Among all the creatures on earth, man alone reserves the capacity for God. In fact, within man lies, according to Bernard Lonergan, “a region for the divine, a shrine for the ultimate holiness.” This thirst for God is in the very structure of man, i.e. it is anthropological. This is clearly expressed by man’s auto-transcendence. In all his activities and endeavours, man continually seeks to transcendence his immediate state and condition, his successes and achievements; at the end, he seeks to surpass and supersede himself. This upward striving points him to the Infinite, who alone can fill his inner yearnings. At the depth of his being he thirsts for God because he is not created for himself but for God. Hence, since the inception of the human race, man has been in the continual search for the divine, for the Unknown Reality that supports the known ones; for the ground of his being. He has been in constant craving for the infinite. He is not even free to secede himself from this yearning because it is an ontological one. Man, then, resulted to various avenues in answer to this inescapable thirst in him. This gave rise to the varied nature and mystery religions in the world. Nonetheless, one fact is evident: left alone to his own powers, man cannot discover the Divine, for a finite cannot fathom the Infinite. It can only happen the other way round: only the Infinite can reveal himself to a finite. This self-revelation of the Divine started with the call and choice of Abraham, and through him the people of Isreal as God’s own people. Yet, the revelation was mediated, incomplete and unsatisfying because it was as from a veil. God was wholly the ‘distant’ and the ‘transcendent.’ But when the appointed time came, as St. Paul opined in Gal. 4:4, God sent his son, born of a woman. Now, God chose to reveal himself directly, unmediated, to man. Thus, at the fullness of time, the Word was made flesh.

An Explication of the Logos Logos (Λογοσ) is a Greek word that has been historically fraught with varied connotations. Thus, it can be translated as science, discourse, study, reason and word. The 6th century BC Greek philosopher Heraclitus was the first to use the term, albeit in a metaphysical sense. He understood logos as the universal Reason, which is immanent in all things and which binds all things into a unity. After the 4 th century BC, Stoics developed logos as the active principle in reality. Furthermore, the JewishHellenistic philosopher, Philo Judaeus in the 1st century AD employed the term logos

in his effort to synthesize Jewish tradition and Platonism. He was the first to designate logos as mediating principle between God and the world. According to him, logos can be understood as God’s Word or the Divine Wisdom, which is immanent in the world. Finally, at the beginning of St. John’s Gospel, Jesus Christ is identified with the logos made incarnate. The Greek word logos was translated in the English Bible as Word: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God... And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us...” (Jn.1:1-3,14). In the view of most scholars, John’s concept of Christ as logos was probably influenced by Old Testament passages as well as by Greek philosophy, but early Christian theologians developed the conception of Christ as the logos in explicitly Platonic and Neo-platonic terms. For instance, the Logos was identified with the will of God, or with the Ideas (or Platonic Forms) that are in the mind of God. Accordingly, Christ’s incarnation was understood as the incarnation of these divine attributes. The Need for the Incarnation At this junction, questions of a different kind crop up: What was the need for the Incarnation? Was it one of those historical accidents? Could all have been the same without it? What difference did the Incarnation make? That is, why the Incarnation? According to Wolfhart Pannenberg in his Jesus – God and Man, the raison d'être of the Incarnation could be gleaned from the uniqueness of Jesus’ humanity. This is because in Jesus that which is man’s destiny as man has appeared for the first time in an individual and thus has become accessible to all others only through this individual. This uniqueness of Jesus’ humanity was illustrated further by Benedict XVI’s statement that Jesus is a being from and for. Jesus, in the fullest sense, is a man only insofar as his is for “the other.” This shows that man only comes to himself by moving away from himself. For only through “the other” and through “being” with “the other” does he come to himself. Now, “the other” cannot be anyone lest he causes man to lose himself. That Other is God: “Man is intended for the other, the truly other, for God; he is all the more himself the more he is with the entirely Other, with God. Accordingly, he is completely himself when he ceased to stand in himself, to shut himself off in himself, and to assert himself, when in fact he is pure openness to God.” (Introduction to Christianity, p.234-5) This already summarizes the “Why” of the Incarnation. First, it is a response to man’s fundamental questions – Who am I? What is the meaning of this life? What happens after this life? The Incarnation answers these nagging and irresistible fundamental questions by positing that man is not made for himself; he is only completely himself when he is pure openness to God, who is the meaning of his life. The second why follows from the first. The Incarnation reveals this God, who is the object of man’s search for meaning, to man in an unmediated way. In fact, this is the zenith of the Incarnation. For even apart from the redemption of man, the Word will still take flesh, the Word will still

become man, in order to reveal God to man. He is truly ‘the image of invisible God’ (Col.1:15). Jesus was not mistaken when he assured his apostle that “to have seen me is to have seen the Father” (Jn.14:9).

Implications of the Incarnation of the Logos The implications of the Incarnation of the logos are already evidenced in the different significances of the foregoing. If God has taken up for himself our humanity, then we ourselves have received in exchange a share of his divinity i.e. he had divinized our humanity. In the first place, it reiterates that all things were created in and through Christ, the Incarnate Word of God. According to the first chapter of the Book of Genesis, God created all things in and through his Word. If this is so, then, Christ is, and should be, the centre of creation; the focal point around which all creatures revolve. Precisely, it implies that without the centre, we are nothing. We cannot exist alone and independently. Jesus Christ himself admonished us categorically in this regard: “I am the vine and you are the branches. Whoever remains in me with me in him, bears fruit in plenty; for cut off from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). We cannot just be indifferent to Christ, for without him we are nothing. He is the Being that gives meaning and sense of purpose to our existence. Without him, we can be sure to labour in vain just as Ps. 127 reminds us. Secondly, the theology of the logos helps us to understand the Holy Scriptures as the Word of God in human language. This will easily safeguard us against the errors and reductionism of secularists and modernists, who try to reduce the Sacred Words in the Bible to mere human words. If the Christ has existed from eternity with the Father and only took flesh in time, then, the Word that existed from the beginning only incarnated in human language as recorded in the Bible in time. St. John bore glaring witness to this: “Something which has existed since the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our own eyes, which we have watched and touched with our own hands, the Word of life – this is our theme (1Jn.1:1). Acknowledging that the Bible is not a mere collection of human traditions and experiences will re-orient us to accord great respect and reverence for the Bible. Furthermore, it will illumine us to see the Bible as an invaluable source of guide and inspiration amidst the vicissitudes of our daily lives. Thirdly, the theology of the logos evidently proves that man can understand himself only in Christ because Christ represents not only what man is but also what man will be. It is Christ alone that the real mission, purpose and destiny of man dawned brightly. He is truly ‘the way, the truth and the life.’ It is in this light that Teilhard de Chardin referred to Jesus Christ as the Omega Point of the cosmic evolution. Thus, man cannot know nor realize himself except in and with Christ. Finally, the incarnation of the logos reminds us that we were all created in the image and like of God (cf. Gen.1:26-27), and in turn challenges us to the love and respect of

our neighbours. Little wonder Christ said: “In truth I tell you, insofar as you did this to one of the least of these brother of mine, you did it to me” (Mtt.25:40). St John also captures this aptly: “Anyone who says ‘I love God’ and hate his brother is a liar, since whoever does not love the brother whom he can see cannot love God whom he has not seen” (1Jn.4:20).

Conclusion In this write-up, we have tried to prove that Christ, the Word made flesh, is the answer to the long and deep-seated yearning for God in the minds of men of every epoch. Before his advent, man cannot stay without an aperture to God. Thus, he had tried various means of reaching to the divine; but he had been always unsuccessful to satisfy his quest for the finite cannot fathom the infinite. Then, at the appointed time, God sent his only eternal Son to reveal God to mankind; and the Word, which had existed from the beginning, was made flesh and dwelt among us. Hence, the incarnation of this eternal Logos exact many expectations from us. Prominently, it calls us to observe the suitable devotion and reverence for the Word of God in the Bible and exhorts us to the love of our neighbour. Finally, it warns us that apart from Christ, the centre of our being, we can do nothing.