Gospel of John 09.vp

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The Gospe l of John

2. Association with a concept of Greek religion with the person of Jesus of Nazareth. What is here being associated?

a. This is not an attempt to bring into Christian teaching about God the weird and unpersuasive ideas about paganism and idolatry.

b. Neither is this an effort to make Jesus palatable to the philosophers and religious inquirers of the day.

3. Contemporary use of the term logos : “The term was used technically in the Greek philosophy of this period, particularly by the Stoics, to denote the controlling Reason of the universe, the all-pervasive Mind which ruled and gave meaning to all things. LOGOS was one of the purest and most general concepts of that ultimate Intelligence, Reason, or Will that is called God” (Tenney, John , p. 62).

4. The risen Jesus of Nazareth is immediately portrayed in John’s Gospel as One who existed before time with God himself, equal with the person of God, John 1.1-5.

B. Traits of the Logos

1. The Logos is eternal (cf. “In the beginning” compare with Genesis 1.1). This refers to the “indefinite eternity which preceded all time, the immeasurable past.”

2. The Logos is a person : The logos was with God in the beginning, not as an impersonal principle but as a living, intelligent personality.