The Language of God, Mind, and Logos

Conversation Side Conversation
21

I’m not sure…I am tracking with @Philosurfer’s conception here. It seems we are similarly resistant to reductive formulations of God, like “mind”, “theism”, “worldivew”, “divine idea”, and so on. Perhaps these terms have value in some context, but they are not usually the language of Scripture, and they certainly do not approach the significance of person of Jesus as an embodiment of who God is.

There is also a distinctions between words used as if they are synonyms here: “reason”, “intellect”, “heart”, “mouth” and so on. I wonder if at times we are mistaking the metaphor for that to which the metaphor applies.

It reminds me also of the nuance between God as designer, artist, engineer…well maybe he is somewhat like these things. He cannot be reduced to any of these description. Certainly, also, the analogy breaks down at some point. Where? I’m not sure we can ever be certain. I’m concerned that fixating on these things (such as we see in the “worldview” conceptions of Christianity) does great harm to our understanding…

I suppose my starting point is in the Language of Scripture. I’m thinking here of John and Genesis, where there is no mention of mind. It seems that the “word of creation” and the “word made flesh” are important and linked concepts. Once gain, they imply communication, and a link between intention and embodiment. It almost seems as if there is a contrast between “god’s word” and ours.

His creative word is efficacious, carrying power and authority ours does not. He says, “let the land give forth,” and the land does give forth. He speaks and it is done in the physical world, without question. Once again, this seems to indicate a two part dialogue. The word goes out, and received by an audience, who responds rightly. Breaking the link with “minds”, the land certainly does not have a mind, nor does the sea.

His word made flesh is Jesus, the perfect representation of his being. I see a statement of authenticity here. Jesus represents God fully, which means God’s word is not distorted in him. What Jesus does in the physical world reveals of God, and in this sense is communicative. Once again, the words of Jesus is heard and obeyed by the storms and the sea, an maybe even rocks. The land and sea, however, have no minds, once again breaking that link. The parallel to Genesis is striking. There is a real authority in his words not carried by ours. Real power.

I’m not saying I have this all figured out, but that some how thinking reductively or platonically about these concepts blows by the more important questions. That sort of philosophical view of God, the God of the philosophers (as a Lutheran might say, @Philosurfer), might be more of a distraction than we know.

I think these are the questions I am stuck on as well. There is an end to the analogy of a mind somewhere. God’s mind is not like our mind. And there is also an absurdity to what we know of Him in the Cross.

Yes. As I said, I see a much stronger connection to “dabar”, as @jongarvey puts it.

Sure, but we are remiss to think God is wine. God is water. God is…well with Jesus it is different. Jesus is the only exact representation of God’s very being.

That is the direction I am going. It is just so reductive of so many things. Even humans are more than just minds. Bodies are not merely tripods for brains which emanate minds. It is strange to emphasize this aspect to such a high level. What I’d expect, actually, is that if God has a mind, it is as incomprehensible to us as our minds are to our pets. In fact, it is probably even more incomprehnsible, to the point I’d start wondering if we are even talking about the same thing.

Is this ala Hume? I’m not sure the reference…

Yes, that is the direction I’m going. I’m wondering if it is even a category error to draw a connection between our mind and God’s mind. Perhaps not, but how can we know? What we do know is what God reveals, it is couched in different language than “minds”. It is couched in the language of “word”, in a way that even disconnects it from our natural understanding of “mind”. Even mindless things respond with worship and obedience to the word of God. Sure, God probably has some analogue of a mind, but I am very hesitant to link it to our ordinary understanding of a mind, or to even think about this independent of Revelation.

Now, I’m so far out on a limb here, that this is usually the place that most the reformed-funamdentalist-evangelicals are convinced I’m crazy. Then, a lutheran philosopher or theologian pipes in and tells me its has a some grounding in their tradition, and then they proceed to put it into better words than I. So, @Philosurfer, am I crazy here? How would you put this?

@jongarvey is there anything recoverable here? Or am I just speaking with too much ignorance?

22

One is a lot better off to go with a Thomist conception of analogy than the univocal ideas of Scotius or William of Ockham. The latter said that God has the same kind of “being” that we do, which makes words used of God pretty much comparable to us. Aquinas, however, by differentiating the way that God exists from us, makes all language about him merely analogical, BUT enables one to use those analogies with no fear of demeaning God.

So you can say God is not “a father” exactly as we use the term, but there is a real principle of fatherhood in him, which is even the source of all fatherhood, which we can usefully employ, knowing not to take it too far. Likewise of things like mind, will, wrath or many other such conceptions.

2 Likes
23

This also might point to embodied cognition as a corrective to…

For:

Against:

I seem some large strengths of this view, as embodiment may be a precondition for theory of mind and for language.

24

FWIW, here is (edited) portion of Thayer’s lexicon’s 2nd and 3rd meaning (the 1st has to do with speech. I’ve cut out extraneous stuff.

II. Its use as respects the mind, alone, Latin ratio; i. e.:

  1. reason, the mental faculty of thinking, meditating, reasoning, calculating, etc.: once so in the phrase ὁ λόγος τοῦ Θεοῦ, of the divine mind, pervading and noting all things by its proper force, Heb. 4:12.

  2. account, i. e. regard, consideration: λόγον ποιεῖσθαι τίνος, to have regard for, make account of a thing, care for a thins, Acts 20:24 R G (Job 22:4; Herodotus 1, 4. 13 etc.;…also λόγον ἔχειν τίνος, Acts, the passage cited Lachmann (Tobit 6:16 (15))…

  3. account, i. e. reckoning, score: δόσεως καί λήψεως (see δόσις, 1), Phil. 4:15…; εἰς λόγον ὑμῶν, to your account, i. e. tropically, to your advantage, Phil. 4:17; συναίρειν λόγον (an expression not found in Greek authors), to make a reckoning, settle accounts, Matt. 18:23; 25:19.

  4. account, i. e. answer or explanation in reference to judgment: λόγον διδόναι (as often in Greek authors), to give or render an account, Rom. 14:12 … also ἀποδιδόναι, Heb. 13:17; 1 Pet. 4:5; with the genitive of the thing, Luke 16:2; Acts 19:40 (R G); περί τίνος, Matt. 12:36; (Acts 19:40 L T Tr WH); τίνι περί ἑαυτοῦ, Rom. 14:12 L text brackets Tr text; αἰτεῖν τινα λόγον περί τίνος, 1 Pet. 3:15 (Plato, polit., p. 285 e.).

  5. relation: πρός ὅν ἡμῖν ὁ λόγος, with whom as judge we stand in relation (A. V. have to do), Heb. 4:13; κατά λόγον, as is right, justly, Acts 18:14 (A. V. reason would (cf. Polybius 1, 62, 4. 5; 5, 110, 10)) (παρά λόγον, unjustly, 2 Macc. 4:36; 3 Macc. 7:8).

  6. reason, cause, ground: τίνι λόγῳ, for what reason? why? Acts 10:29 (ἐκ τίνος λόγου; Aeschylus Choeph. 515; ἐξ οὐδενός λόγου, Sophocles Phil. 730; ; τίνι δικαίῳ λόγῳ κτλ.; Plato, Gorgias, p. 512 c.); παρεκτός λόγου πορνείας (Vulgate excepta fornicationis causa) is generally referred to this head, Matt. 5:32; …marginal reading);…

III. In several passages in the writings of John ὁ λόγος denotes the essential Word of God, i. e. the personal (hypostatic) wisdom and power in union with God, his minister in the creation and government of the universe, the cause of all the world’s life both physical and ethical, which for the procurement of man’s salvation put on human nature in the person of Jesus the Messiah and shone forth conspicuously from his words and deeds: John 1:1, 14; (1 John 5:7 Rec.); with τῆς ζωῆς added (see ζωή, 2 a.), 1 John 1:1; τοῦ Θεοῦ, Rev. 19:13 (although the interpretation which refers this passage to the hypostatic λόγος is disputed by some, as by Baur, Neutest. Theologie, p. 216f). …

2 Likes
25

I wouldn’t agree with that at all - maybe they were comparing styles of Greek, in that Hebrews is a lot more literary that most of the rest of the NT.

Philo’s project is essentially to assimilate Judaism to Greek philosophy. His “Logos” comes pretty much out of Plato.

Both John and the writer of Hebrews are mainstream Jewish in their approach: what you’d expect, the Bible as the inspired word of God for salvation.

there’s no sense of divine principle or demiurge in John - Jesus, the man, is being carefully placed as God himself, and yet distinct (ie its not yet Trinitarian, but it is an incredibly high Christology.

Remember that John really only uses Logos theology in ch1 a direct comparison with Genesis 1 - Jesus is clearly the word of power by which God creates. The fact that Jesus is, as it were, God’s speech is the closest he gets to Philo - but this is concretised because “the word became flesh” - in the man Jesus.

John’s use of “logos” remains related to that idea: he seems to fuse to some extent the gospel (the word) with Jesus himself in a number of ways, so that the gospel message is seen to be of the same potency as the word of creation by which the world was created. And for the same reason - it comes through the Logos. A completely different ball game from Philo.

As for Hebrews, offhand I can’t think of anything in it that smacks of philosophy - its OT exegesis all the way.

1 Like
26

Even though I do not know what hypostatic means, this definition is far richer than fixating on (to quote from earlier in the converstation)…

1 Like
27

the hypostatic union is the doctrine that divine and human attributes are combined in the one person, Jesus. It is part of the early credal way of delimiting orthodoxy against heresies.

1 Like
28

Well there you go. I’m on board with this.

I am very resistant to grounding conception of God in platonic or philosophical defiitions. God is not a worldview. He is not merely a “mind” or a “designer.” Instead, it seems central to our faith to ground our definiton and knowledge of God in Jesus.

In my understanding we are not even essentially “theists.” It is more that we follow the God we find by Jesus, and as are essentially followers of Him. This has some weak analogy to a philosophical definition of “theism”, but is not well described as “theism”. That is why I say I am not a “theist.”

Thanks @deuteroKJ. That was really helpful. What are your thoughts on: The Creative Word Made Flesh?

2 Likes
29

@jongarvey

One of these days you are going to cut me some slack…

If I say I read something… it is my subtle way of saying: “this is a serious idea that I didn’t just conjure up in my head”.

The paper below (with table of contents) was just ONE of the treatments on the topic of Book of Hebrews and Philo:

Philo and the Epistle to the Hebrews: Ronald Williamson’s Study after Thirty Years
By KENNETH L. SCHENCK
www.kenschenck.com ›
by KL SCHENCK

"On this broader level of consideration, a moderate consensus on the question of Philo and Hebrews does not seem too far out of reach. In fact, it is fairly close at hand—even if the right hand sometimes does not seem to know what the left is doing. The moderating position that places Hebrews and Philo in the same general stream of Hellenistic, perhaps even Alexandrian Judaism commands a great deal of support. Harold Attridge writes, ‘there are undeniable parallels that suggest that Philo and our author are indebted to similar traditions of Greek-speaking and –thinking Judaism.’ David Runia similarly concludes ‘the author of the Hebrews and Philo come from the same milieu in a closer sense than was discovered in the case of Paul. I would not be at all surprised if he had had some form of direct contact with Judaism as it had developed in Philo’s Alexandria.’ But perhaps Helmut Feld put it best when he noted that while the extensive discussion has not been able to prove that the author specifically knew Philo’s works, it has not disproved he knew Philo’s thought either. What is relatively certain, Feld claims, is that the author ‘in den exegetischen Methoden des hellenistischen Judentums gebildet war, und mit einer gewissen Wahrscheinlichkeit, daß er diese Bildung in Alexandrien erhalten hat.’ "

Table of Contents
Introduction
The Fundamental Differences
Eschatology
Allegory
The Extent of the Differences
The Cosmology/Psychology of Hebrews
Philo’s Eschatology
The Exegetical Methods of Hebrews and Philo
Hebrews, Philo, and Alexandrian Judaism
Fundamental Similarities
Hebrews and Middle Platonism
The Intermediary Realm
The Heavenly Tabernacle
Conclusion

32

This is music to my ears. I can’t even think of anything else to say, which in an uncomfortable position for a philosopher!

I’ll take a look at those embodied cognition articles. I know nothing about it, but I’ve been seeing books and anthologies in my inbox from philosophical presses exploring the implications of embodied cognition.

1 Like
33

It is going to be of rising importance. @cootsona is rightly heralding the rising importance of technology. Embodied cognition is becoming extremely important in AI, which brings us to the mirror of origins: trans-humanism.

Of course, as Christians, we know one of the most important answers to give is at the center of our faith. Jesus is what it means to be human in the best ways possible and imaginable. This call to the incarnation, to be in the word, seems to have strong connections to embodied cognition. We might call it incarnational cognition, well not yet.

There seems to be a real opportunity to explore soon with @Philosurfer, @CPArand, and @joel.oesch very soon in their office hours. @joel.oesch focuses on trans-humanism in his work. I’m curious how he thinks about embodied cognition.

34

George

I don’t think this really disagrees with what i said. The extract concludes that the writer may or may not have been familiar with Philo’s work and thought, but that there are indications of common background.

The reason that would matter is the question of authorship, and particularly there’s a good body of opinion that someone like Apollos, from Alexandria, would have been the ideal author. He was educated, fluent, and so would belong to the cultural stream of Jewish life in the city.

But his approach to religion is poles apart from Philo - all one has to do is read a chunk of Philo back to back with Hebrews to see the difference. I guess then comparing Paul with either would show that in style Hebrews is closer to Philo than to Paul, but in contexnt closer to Paul than Philo (hence there are still those who believe Paul was the author of Hebrews, maybe writing in Hebrew and translated, since there is such closeness of thought).

35

This is a curious statement with respect to creation.
So how exactly do you see Jesus role in creation…
What part of his “person” in addition to his mind is involved?

36

I can’t answer for Joshua, but here’s the start of my 7-part attempt at a christological view of creation. Enjoy.

But there is a semantic and linguistic issue here: the NT clearly says “God is spirit”. Yet the Bible’s anthropology also attributes a spirit (same word, ruach) to man as his inner component - and significantly, as the seat of his intellect and will (Jb 32:8), whence it is sometimes translated “mind.”

In biblical terms, then, to refer to God as “mind” is to refer to him as “spirit”, in accordance iwth the Bible’s own description of God.

Meanwhile, in English concepts like “reason”, the faculty of the mind, which once covered the whole “spiritual” aspect of man in his reasoning, imagining, willing and so on, have shrunk under the Enlightenment’s truncated worldview to some concept like “cold rationailty.”

The “reductionism” then is not in your wording, but in the restrictive nature of Enlightenment categories that has reduced pretty well everything in the world to not very much. See how it has tended to shrink even the glories of the human mind - once conceived as a divinely created microcosm extending to the ends of the universe - to the mere algorithmic functions of a neurological meat-computer. Maybe that’s the concept of “mind” that Joshua doesn’t want to attribute to God, but some of us don’t even want to attrribute it to people.

1 Like
37

You are ignoring the the influences …

If there weren’t affinities there would be no journal articles on the matter…

38

I just read Philo and Hebrews. They’re what the articles are about.

1 Like
39

Good. And someday you may read the article I quote and those in the same stream and make an important discovery or two.

While we cannot yet demonstrate the writer of Hebrews had read Philo… there would have been plenty of Church fathers who DID … and find in it a tool for further researching the fundamentals of their faith.

40

Oh, Philo certainly had some subsequent influence: the task of the apologists from the 2nd century was partly to reinterpret hellenistic philsophy in Christian terms, and Philo’s stoicism - and even more his Platonism - had already gone in that direction for Jews.

1 Like