Logos

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Logos was a term used by philosophers, theologians, and politicians. The Greek concept of "logos"(λόγος)[1] is poorly translated into English as "word" when it's meaning is actually closer to "Right Reason" or "Law of Nature?" Similar to the Chinese conception of "tao" (道) the principles and ways of Nature? The philosopher Aristotle provided a definition of logos in his work Rhetoric, where he used logos to mean “reasoned discourse”. There other words which have had their meaning changed to sow confusion. See That word.

Logos

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

What does it mean to say the Logos was with God?

The word logos in the Greek does mean “word” but in Greek and throughout the Roman Empire the word logos[1] had another meaning in law and philosophy. Logos was what we would reference today as "right reason" and was commonly known in those days and used in the explaining what was real, what was true or actual in existence.

In the sixth century BCE Heraclitus seemed to introduce the idea of the Logos which was seen as the product of a rational divine intelligence or the "mind or will if the divine". If it was divine will it is not subject to man's opinion. If the logos is also Wisdom then some insight unto his opinion may be detected in the statement, “The wise is one only. It is unwilling and willing to be called by the name of Zeus.” Fragment 32.

Philo of Alexandria saw the Logos as an indestructible and unchangeable form of Wisdom and a mediator between the relationship of God and men. It is our quest to understand the Logos of God that draws us to the way of Christ who is equated with the Logos, The Word, in the Gospel of John.

The Stoic saw mankind as participant in divinely ordained universal community, and accepted the Logos as the foundational principle for human law and even morality.

Logos in Law

This idea of right reason or even divine will in relation to the idea of logos, especially as related to doctrines, is seldom if ever mentioned today. In fact, logos included the idea of Jus Naturale or Law of Nature. The Natural law, Right Reason, Divine Will, the Will of God, the Word of God or the Logos of Christ are often seen as convertible phrases. While that law preexisted mankind, man is subject to it just as he is subject to the laws of physics.

Understanding that law, how it works, and its limitation and powers allows mankind to seek "the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle". Declaration of Independence.

“Civil Law, Roman Law, and Roman Civil Law are convertible phrases, meaning the same system of jurisprudence.”[2]

Civil law and civil rights do not always stem from the legislators of society but may "not connected with the organization or the administration of government."[3] but not within the jurisdiction of the civil state. An individual, who becomes a member or person in a political society, also has civil rights, but the origin of those rights, being political, are rights “pertaining or relating to the policy or administration of government.”[4] So, “as otherwise defined, civil rights are rights appertaining to a person in virtue of his citizenship in a state or community. Rights capable of being enforced or redressed in civil action. Also a term applied to certain rights secured to citizens of the United States by the thirteenth and fourteenth amendments to the Constitution, and by various acts of Congress made in pursuance thereof.” [5]

But also the “The term republic, res publica, signifies the state independently of its form of government.”[6]

What does this have to do with the Logos of Christ?

Preaching the Logos

The only place in the Gospels where we see that Jesus "preached the word" is in Mark 2:2:

"And straightway many were gathered together, insomuch that there was no room to receive them, no, not so much as about the door: and he preached the word unto them."

The Greek term we see in the text for the word is logos, meaning right reason.

Christ preached the kingdom of God and gave us reasons why we should be seeking that form of government and those reasonable practices that we should pursue and not pursue in order to find that kingdom and the righteousness of God.

That government had its own daily ministration attending to the needy that operated through fervent charity with hope and by faith in what James would call pure Religion.

In this government He was proclaimed to be king and called the Son of God. This was controversial because Caesar was also called the Son of God. This accusation would frighten Pontius Pilate in John 19 when the Pharisees were trying to get Jesus convicted by Rome of a capital crime.

Tiberius Caesar was called the Son of God because he was the highest authority in the operation of the public religion of Rome which provided the free bread at the tables of welfare system of the Roman Empire.

Augustus Caesar had provided grain shipments to the Jews which the Pharisees received when he held the office of the Son of God in the Roman imperial cult.

The administration of the public religion of the Pharisees was funded by the Corban of the Pharisees but Jesus preached the Logos that their "Corban" was a practice or tradition which made the "word of God", the Right Reason" of God to none effect.

Mark 7:13 "Making the word of God of none effect through your tradition, which ye have delivered: and many such like things do ye."

The Logos of His Church

The Church legally defined as "one form of government".

A government being "the system by which" a people "is governed" with the purposes of those governments being to "make the people more secure and safe" concerning their "general welfare".

That government appointed by Christ. like most all governments, was created to not merely protect the "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" but to also secure their very soul.

This would mean that God's government is concerned with both the corporeal and incorporeal hereditaments of the individuals and individual families.

This is done by seeking the righteousness of God which includes caring about your neighbor, and their rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" as much as you care about your own.

The distinguishing characteristics of the government created according to the Logos of Christ is the means and method employed in securing the body of this peculiar people.

Edward Gibbon notes that one of the factors that preserved the integrity of the early Church in those days was that every congregation was “separate and independent,” and as yet not “connected by any supreme authority or legislative assembly.” [7] He also wrote "The union and discipline of the Christian republic, which gradually formed an independent and increasing state in the heart of the Roman empire. " This is the fifth cause of the growth of Christianity according to Edward concerning the decline of the Roman Empire.[8]

Historians Will and Ariel Durant quoted this reference to “the union and discipline of the Christian republic,” and also noted that “it gradually formed an independent and increasing state in the heart of the Roman Empire.” In general they saw "he reduced the early progress of Christianity from a miracle to a natural process; he removed the phenomenon from theology to history.”[9] They also wrote, "Among these secondary factors he listed “the pure and austere morals of the Christians” in the first century, noting as another cause, “the inflexible (and, if we may use the expression, the intolerant) zeal of the Christians.”

Those austere and inflexible morals included their refusal to accept or become accustomed to the covetous practices of benefactors and their clients providing benefits and dainties through the force of their exercising authority.

Christians were intent in abiding in His love and charity through faith in his Logos by doing what He said.

"If ye love me, keep my commandments." John 14:15 [10]

Logos in codes

The first line of Book I, Title XII, of the Roman Codes of Justinian states, “Concerning those who flee to the ecclesia [church] or raise a disturbance there.”[11]

There was a law allowing people to take refuge in churches. This was not new and has been practiced and respected for thousands of years before and after the code was first written. It has been called sanctuary, but its origins were far more judicial in nature and well understood in Roman law and the law of Israel. Book I, Title XII of the Roman codes deals with the rules concerning the law of sanctuary and the asylum state.

That Law in those codes existed when the Church had been the Ekklesia of Christ who was said to be the Logos.


Pathos ethos and logos

The words pathos, ethos, and logos are used in rhetoric as the concept of the three artistic proofs or modes of persuasion.

Pathos[12] is an appeal to emotion generating passion and is often more effective than either ethos or logos for many people.

Ethos[13] is appeal based on the character of the speaker while logos is an appeal to reason.

In the story of the assassination of Julius Caesar we see Antony and Brutus use rhetoric when they were speaking to the people. Brutus used his love for the people to win them over but Antony appealed to emotions. Neither of them really relied on reason (logos) to make a rational explanation.

The Greek term Logos has been said as "Reason that in ancient Greek philosophy and is the controlling principle in the universe."

The "divine wisdom" is said by some to manifest in the creation, government, and redemption of the world and often identified with the second person of the Trinity.

"I have given them thy word[1]; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world." John 17:14


Almost every system of law had a system of trial. The justice of those courts was dependent upon the people or the rulers or both.

There often was a separate system or jurisdiction for appeals to prevent injustice in common or administrative courts. The Romans had several systems of appeals, including the “the virgin priestesses of Vesta”.

The temples, including Vesta, provided services. In Vesta, young girls were picked for the training at the age of six from honorable families of freeman, and they served the temple of Vesta for a term of thirty years. They could not marry during their term of office, and they were free, emancipatio, from their families. They were very well paid and even pampered with privileges.

Behind the pomp there was a practical purpose. Their common duties beyond the burdensome rituals and ceremony of the temple was to keep many important records safe and secure, including every thing from wills to important government treaties.

They were the clerks of government and the supreme authority over the common clerks who worked for them in the temple and other buildings maintaining these vital records of society and government.

They could also own property, pass that property by will to any man or woman, testify in court without an oath, and exonerate criminals for any crime.

There was always a danger that local courts could cause a miscarriage of justice. It was important to provide some system of appeals to prevent an innocent man or woman from being abused by a miscarriage of justice due to negligence, bribes or prejudice.

In ancient Israel, people took refuge from injustice in the cities of refuge.[14] Refuge is translated from the Hebrew word miqalat [ טלקמ] which means a refuge or asylum.[15] It is from a root word qalat which means something is wrong, missing, deformed or handicapped. When you add the Hebrew letter Mem you add the concept of flow. In this case it is justice that flows from the provision of an asylum state.

In Israel, God’s kingdom on earth, the people were the Fountainhead of Justice.[16] There was no king, but each man was required to tend to the weightier matters of law, judgment, mercy and faith. If justice failed in the people, someone could appeal to the congregations of Levites [the Church in the wilderness and the ministers of the people and the servants of God] for justice.

The cities of refuge were civil powers of asylum or appeals courts for the purpose of protecting the people from injustice. The Levites served the people, but they were separate from the power of the state, which first rested in the hands of the people and eventually -- due to their rejection of God -- rested in the hands of the king, and his ruling bureaucracy, elected by the “voice of the people”.[17]

The Logos, the Letter

Cities of refuge were not hideouts for criminals. They were places to appeal to for justice when local systems failed. Simply taking asylum in the city of refuge would make every man a prisoner, even if he was innocent. This would not be just or merciful. If he was found innocent by those men of the “city of refuge”, could he leave that city without leaving the protection it offered? This was common in most societies and we see it codified by Justinian.

“The right of asylum might also be personal, that is to say, not connected with a place, but with a person. In this connection we find the so-called logos which was a letter or statement in writing granting the bearer exemption from molestation by public authorities. At first such letter or statement was probably granted to a person who had taken refuge in a sanctuary, but who wanted to go home or to some other place for the purpose of attending to some necessary matters.”[18]

The right of asylum might also be a persona connected to a person. This was like a hall pass which protected you where ever you went. The bondage of Egypt was the result of status, not a location. Egyptian territory extended all the way to Canaan. When Israel left Egypt they left a persona jurisdiction. When they came to new places, they kept themselves free from local persona jurisdiction by making “no covenants” with local inhabitants, applying for no benefits and maintaining an ecclesia or “church in the wilderness”.

The Levites were titular representatives to those who were not a part of their society. They could not make treaties, have a standing army, accumulate vast treasury or reserve funds[19] nor do anything that might return them to the bondage of Egypt.[20]

Christ appointed one Church to those who would serve His kingdom and bear fruit. There is one church because there is one logos and that logos is Christ. Those who got His baptism were set free from the persona jurisdiction of the Pharisees.


Tao Te Ching

Legend has it that Lao Tzu wrote the Book of the Way of Virtue, Tao Te Ching, and gave it away to buy a way through a narrow pass from his world to the west. When 24 Christian monks came from Persia to China in 635 AD they use the word "Tao" to express the Biblical concept of the "Word," or term "Logos" in the Greek.

Five centuries before Christ the Tao was considered to be the "mother of things". It was omnipoten, unchanging, and eternal. About the same time, the Greek philosopher Heracletus of Ephesus coined the word "Logos" which meant "word" to express not only "order" or "pattern" but to refer to "the underlying principle" or universal source of all things as an expression representing "the primal order" of the universe.

Lao Tzu saw the Tao, like the Logos of John as here from the beginning.[21]


The Higher Liberty

The Higher Liberty is an iconoclastic examination of Romans 13 and other specious teachings which are an indictment the modern Church revealing a fuller gospel of the Kingdom for this world and the next. The consistent warnings of the prophets throughout the entire Bible and the purpose of the Church appointed by Christ as one form of government shines new light on modern apostasy. The simple truth of how God made you to be free souls, serving Him in Spirit and in Truth may bear witness in your hearts and minds.

Much of what is in this book will allow you to see the truth of the gospel in comparison to those who do contrary to the ways of God and make His word to none effect and have brought you back into a bondage to the gods many of the world through damnable heresies. Arm yourselves with His truth that will set you free. chapter-by-chapter or Order


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Footnotes

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 3056 ~λόγος~ logos \@log’-os\@ from 3004; n m AV-word 218, saying 50, account 8, speech 8, Word (Christ) 7, thing 5, not tr 2, misc 32; 330
    1) of speech
    1a) a word, uttered by a living voice, embodies a conception or idea
    2) its use as respect to the MIND alone
    3) In John, denotes the essential Word of God, Jesus Christ, the personal wisdom and power in union with God, his minister in 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, the second person in the Godhead, and shone forth conspicuously from His words and deeds.
    • 4487 ρημα rhema can mean word or saying.
  2. ↑ Black’s 3rd p 332.
  3. ↑ “Civil rights are such as belong to every citizen of the state or country, or, in a wider sense to all its inhabitants, and are not connected with the organization or the administration of government. They include the rights of property, marriage, protection by laws, freedom of contract, trial by jury, etc.” See Right. In Constitutional Law. Black’s 3rd p. 1559.
  4. ↑ see also Political. Black’s 3rd p. 1375.
  5. ↑ Right. In Constitutional Law. Black’s 3rd p. 1559-D.
  6. ↑ Bouvier’s Vol.1. page 13 (1870).
  7. ↑ Gibbon, Edward. (n.d.). The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Vol. I. New York, NY: The Modern Library.
  8. ↑ Five causes of the growth of Christianity
    "Our curiosity is naturally prompted to inquire by what means the Christian faith obtained so remarkable a victory over the established religions of the earth. To this inquiry an obvious but unsatisfactory answer may be returned; that it was owing to the convincing evidence of the doctrine itself, and to the ruling providence of its great Author. But as truth and reason seldom find so favourable a reception in the world, and as the wisdom of Providence frequently condescends to use the passions of the human heart, and the general circumstances of mankind, as instruments to execute its purpose, we may still be permitted, though with becoming submission, to ask, not indeed what were the first, but what were the secondary causes of the rapid growth of the Christian church? It will, perhaps, appear that it was most effectually favoured and assisted by the five following causes:
    I. The inflexible, and, if we may use the expression, the intolerant zeal of the Christians, derived, it is true, from the Jewish religion, but purified from the narrow and unsocial spirit which, instead of inviting, had deterred the Gentiles from embracing the law of Moses.
    II. The doctrine of a future life, improved by every additional circumstance which could give weight and efficacy to that important truth.
    III. The miraculous powers ascribed to the primitive church.
    IV. The pure and austere morals of the Christians.
    V. The union and discipline of the Christian republic, which gradually formed an independent and increasing state in the heart of the Roman empire." Chapter 15. Fall In The West — The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
  9. ↑ — Rousseau and Revolution, Will et Ariel Durant p.801. fn 83 Heiseler, 85.
  10. ↑ John 14:21 He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.
    John 15:10 If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love.
    John 15:12 This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you.
  11. ↑ “De his qui ad ecclesias configiunt vel ibi exclamant.”
  12. ↑ 3806 πάθος pathos [path’-os] from the alternate of 3958; n n; TDNT-5:926,798; [{See TDNT 606 }] AV-inordinate affection 1, affection 1, lust 1; 3
    1) whatever befalls one, whether it be sad or joyous
    1a) spec. a calamity, mishap, evil, affliction
    2) a feeling which the mind suffers
    2a) an affliction of the mind, emotion, passion
    2b) passionate deed
    2c) used by the Greeks in either a good or bad sense
    2d) in the NT in a bad sense, depraved passion, vile passions
    For Synonyms see entry 5845 & 5906
  13. ↑ 1485 ἔθος ethos [eth’-os] from 1486 etho; n n; TDNT-2:372,202; [{See TDNT 212 }] AV-custom 7, manner 4, be wont 1; 12
    1) custom
    2) usage prescribed by law, institute, prescription, rite
    See Logos, pathos, and ethos
  14. ↑ Numbers 35:9 -15, Numbers 35:7; Joshua 21:41
  15. ↑ Strong’s 04733 miqlat in the sense of taking in; n m AV-refuge 20 1) refuge, asylum. From qalat meaning lacking, handicaped, deformed
  16. ↑ “Before the Norman conquest of England in 1066 the people were the fountainhead of justice. The Anglo-Saxon courts of those days were composed of large numbers of freemen... In competition with these non professional courts the Norman king, who insisted that he was the fountainhead of justice, set up his own tribunals.” Clark’s Summary of American Law. p 530.
  17. ↑ Numbers 8:14, Ezra 9:1, Nehemiah 10:28, 1 Samuel 8:
  18. ↑ Justinian Code, Annotated, By Fred H. Blume, Edited by Timothy Kearley, 2nd Ed., http://uwacadweb.uwyo.edu/blume%26justinian/
  19. ↑ Golden statue, like the gold calf, were public treasuries, or common reserve fund backing a central treasury or bank, Ærariuin sanctius.
  20. ↑ Deuteronomy 17:16...
  21. ↑ : Before heaven and earth existed
    There was something nebulous:
    Silent, isolated
    Standing alone, not changing
    Eternally revolving without fail
    Worthy to be the mother of all things.
    I do not know its name.
    I adore it as Tao.
    If forced to give it a name,
    I shall call it "breath."


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