Let My People Think

Posts tagged ‘logos’

What is the Word of God? The answer might surprise you

Logos of GodThe Bible assigns a very special place to the “Word of God”. In fact, we even capitalize the word “Word”. Let’s take a deeper dive on this concept.

Often times, we equate the Word of God with the Bible, pretty much without thinking. After all, that’s the normal usage of the phrase, right? So, “studying the Word” turns to “reading the Bible”. “Flowing with the Word” becomes “knowing details about Biblical events” (culture, history, perhaps even Hebrew / Koine Greek, etc.)

Let’s take a close look at this notion. The Word of God is very important indeed:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1)

Let’s try to substitute this with the word “the Bible”, and see if this bears out:

“In the beginning was the Bible, and the Bible was with God, and the Bible was God.” (John 1:1)

There are a few problems with this. One, the first book of the Bible was likely penned in about 1500 BC, and the last book of the Bible was most likely penned shortly before 70 AD. The entire Bible was put together in its (more or less) final form no earlier than circa 367 A.D. Clearly, those 1800-1900 or so years happened long after “the beginning” of John 1:1.
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Bible Study, New Covenant

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Atonement – the deeper meaning behind the Christian Easter holiday

Atonement Salvador DaliGenerally speaking, there are about 8 or so atonement theories out there, with variants. To me, it’s easier to divide them into two groups.

One group of atonement theories postulate that the problems primarily stem from personal dimension of people (who are fundamentally perverse), and of God (who is fundamentally angry about people.) What Jesus did was more or less redirect the focal point of God’s anger to himself, thus getting us off the hook. The main idea is that of legal transaction.

The other group of atonement theories postulates that the problems to be solved are of systemic nature. They lie with both with human psyche individually (egotism) and socially (systemic oppression and scapegoating). There is also a cosmic dimension to the problem statement (decay and death). What Jesus did is he absorbed the individual, the social, and the cosmic sin (and therefore death), triumphed over them, and created a mechanism of being able to tap into the power to overcome all those.

I would submit to you that the second group of atonement theories has much more coherence and explanatory power. Also, the 2nd group is the one that leads you to living like a responsible, fully empowered representative of God in every area of life. It’s the only one that can underwrite consistently replicable results, and not just occasional haphazard “victories”.
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Just Thinking, New Covenant

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