Problems with Eugene Michael Jones' 'Logos'
Excerpted from Towards a critique of E. Michael Jones:
Where E. Michael Jones Errs Fundamentally As Well: Logos
In another fundamental area Jones errs as well.
The Gospel of John only in his prologue reveals Jesus Christ as the true Logos, the revelation of the Word and “wisdom” of Yahweh (Jn. 1:1, 14), in opposition to Greek philosophical misconceptions and half-truths.
Jesus Christ in the New Testament is proclaimed as “God’s mystery, Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” Col. 2:3).
The Logos concept after John’s prologue, practically disappears(1) and is henceforth completely subsumed into the proclamation [Kerygma] of Jesus Christ whom the Church proclaims as the revelation of OT Wisdom and as Salvation in all places and times.
Logos never plays any central role in the Catholic-Christian Proclamation and Meaning of history. The few Fathers who later mention it do not make it in any way central but use it mostly in an explanatory and / or polemical way. For them Logos is viewed in the Hebrew, not Hellenic, sense, since these contrasting concepts (the Hebrew and Hellenic) cannot easily be harmonized. But Jones confounds all this.
It is a misleading direction to advance the Logos as practically the Kerygma, as E. Michael Jones does, the central concept and Meaning of history—- and especially to merge it with Hegel’s erroneous and dangerous “World Spirit,” the telos or direction of history, as Jones seems to do in his lectures and writings to date.
The Johannine use of Logos has a Hebrew, biblical pedigree: cf. Ge.1:1, 11f; Jn. 1:3, and “the Word” of the LORD given to the Prophets. In Jones’ lectures it is primarily Hellenic, to date.
From Christs resurrection onwards the Gospel proclamation is not of a subordinate derivative philosophical concept(1) but is the revelation of a Person, Jesus Christ, God Incarnate, who by His suffering and death on the Cross and Resurrection takes away the sin of the world: that “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth” (Phil. 2:10 ). Jesus Christ as the true Logos or “Word” in the Johannine sense is in no small part a rejection of the Greek Logos, even if there are important points of convergence between Greek and Christian thought.
Jesus Christ. This is the Name the Church forever proclaims, the Name of Him who is the Way of salvation, the Name that heralds the Truth revealed. And it is this Name who is the Life, the Name in Whom the Church ever reasons with, and engages all, unto salvation from sin and spiritual death. Christians cannot dodge this Name without peril, even if it sounds more philosophically sophisticated to speak of logos, or any other overriding digressive concept.
John is telling us in passing, then, what is for the Christian (though not for unconverted skeptics ancient or current) an obvious truth, that God created all things, including all order and reason. Likewise St. Paul says, “He is before all things and in Him all things consist” (cohere, are held together). — Col.1:17. Salvation from sin, new creation in Christ, is true order. God is all true order, just as He is all truth, all holiness, all humility, light and love (“God is Love,” John tells us in his epistle), a message meant for all humankind, Jew and gentile. It is the very “Good News”.
But for John and Paul (and St. Thomas, for that matter) logos as a greek philosophical concept is, with all other partial, incomplete, truths, subordinate to the revelation of God, and of all reality, in Christ who is the Creator of all things visible and invisible. It is only the grace of God which awakens man to this truth. It is, as St. Paul teaches, “Christ and him crucified” who is the divine subject of the everlasting Christian proclamation, not any subordinate derivative philosophical concept. We preach a divine Person, Jesus Christ and him crucified, to all, never mere teleological order, and it is this which distinguishes Christians from the greeks.
Tradition
(1) Catholic Encyclopedia: “What is the precise value of this concept in the writings of St. John? The Logos has not for him the Stoic meaning that it so often had for Philo: it is not the impersonal power that sustains the world, nor the law that regulates it.
Neither do we find in St. John the Platonistic concept of the Logos as the ideal model of the world; the Word is for him the Word of God, and thereby he holds with Jewish tradition, the theology of the Book of Wisdom, of the Psalms, of the Prophetical Books, and of Genesis; he perfects the idea and transforms it by showing that this creative Word which from all eternity was in Godand was God, took flesh and dwelt among men.
This difference is not the only one which distinguishes the Johannine theology of the Logos from the concept of Philo, to which not a few have sought to liken it. The Logos of Philo is impersonal, it is an idea, a power, a law; at most it may be likened to those half abstract, half-concrete entities, to which the Stoic mythology had lent a certain personal form. For Philo the incarnation of the Logos must have been absolutely without meaning, quite as much as its identification with the Messias. For St. John, on the contrary, the Logos appears in the full light of a concrete and living personality; it is the Son of God, the Messias, Jesus. Equally great is the difference when we consider the role of the Logos. The Logos of Philo is an intermediary:
“The Father who engendered all has given to the Logos the signal privilege of being an intermediary (methorios) between the creature and the creator . . . it is neither without beginning (agenetos) as is God, nor begotten (genetos) as you are [mankind], but intermediate (mesos) between these two extremes “(Quis rer. divin. haeres sit, 205-06).
The Word of St. John is not an intermediary, but a Mediator; He is not intermediate between the two natures, Divine and human, but He unites them in His Person; it could not be said of Him, as of the Logos of Philo, that He is neither agenetos nor genetos, for He is at the same time one and the other, not inasmuch as He is the Word, but as the Incarnate Word (St. Ignatius, “Ad Ephes.”, vii, 2).
In the subsequent history of Christian theology many conflicts would naturally arise between these rival concepts, and Hellenic speculations constitute a dangerous temptation for Christian writers. They were hardly tempted, of course, to make the Divine Logos an impersonal power (the Incarnation too definitely forbade this), but they were at times moved, more or less consciously, to consider the Word as an intermediary being between God and the world. Hence arose the subordinationist tendencies found in certain Ante-Nicene writers; hence, also, the Arian heresy (see COUNCIL OF NICAEA).
The logos in ancient Christian literature
The Apostolic Fathers do not touch on the theology of the Logos; a short notice occurs in St. Ignatius only (Ad Magn. viii, 2). The Apologists, on the contrary, develop it, partly owing to their philosophic training, but more particularly to their desire to state their faith in a way familiar to their readers (St. Justin, for example, insists strongly on the theology of the Logos in his “Apology” meant for heathens, much less so in his “Dialogue with the JewTryphon”). This anxiety to adapt apologetic discussion to the circumstances of their hearers had its dangers, since it was possible that in this way the apologists might land well inside the lines of their adversaries.” — Catholic Encyclopedia
Reason and Wisdom
1 Cor. 1: 18- 25
“For the word of the cross [Kerygma], to them indeed that perish, is foolishness; but to them that are being saved, it is the power of God.[19] For it is written: I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the prudence of the prudent I will reject. [20] Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?
[21] For seeing that in the wisdom of God the world, by wisdom, knew not God, it pleased God, by the foolishness of our preaching [Kerygma], to save them that believe. [22] For both the Jews require signs, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: [23] But we preach Christ crucified [Kerygma], unto the Jews indeed a stumblingblock, and unto the Gentiles foolishness:[24] But unto them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. [25] For the foolishness of God [The Cross and Resurrection, Kerygma] is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men.”
Colossians 2:6-10
[6] “As therefore you have received Jesus Christ the Lord, walk ye in him; [7] Rooted and built up in him, and confirmed in the faith, as also you have learned, abounding in him in thanksgiving.[8] Beware lest any man cheat you by [Hellenic] philosophy, and vain deceit; according to the tradition of men, according to the elements of the world, and not according to Christ: [9] For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead corporeally; [10] And you are filled in him, who is the head of all principality and power”.
Many possess a great deal of knowledge, a few true ideas, and many publish their own books constantly. Fewer possess good judgement. I fear that Mr. Jones in exalting Logos (Order, Reason and Word) is alas being more self-referential than Christocentric. — SH, updated August 2021
I havent read Jones' book, but from what few talks on Logos he has given i got the impression that Jones was trying to convey that Logos is a universalist principle.
Do you think that Jones is trying to subvert Christianity with hermeticism? I have found that there are a lot of characters on the right who are secretly gnostics.