His name to men, but not one used in heaven, surely.
If God became "Father" at the conception/incarnation of the Word, then I think you might be using the title "Father" anachronistically (which is okay), but might be a little confusing for those of us trying to figure out your theology.
Father is a term of address, not a name. There are references to God as spiritual father in the OT (
Psa 89:26). Father is related to God-human interaction and covenental relations. I was thinking specifically of Christ as the monogenes son of God, but the term of address is wider.
That is how I understand the "Word" as a synecdoche. Because it really isn't a name but more of a thought/plan in the mind and spoken as words. (Greek influence) That is how God created and the apostle John called the Son, Jesus Christ, the "Word" that was with God and was God. John was saying that the Word that was with God was simply an aspect of God himself that was used to create. A specific aspect of God's self spoken of in highlight for the whole. Not another person.
I could concede that the name "logos" is figurative, but not what it denotes. The gospels aren't about figures of speech. Christ said he had the Father's glory before the world was, which a figure of speech could not have.
Of course God is conceptually unknowable as invisible and there is also no reason not to infer God as complex in respect of life form. They is therefore no reason to disbelieve the literalness of the apostle or to try to superimpose a human gloss on it, like the JWs or Soccinians.
We're talking about concepts way outside the reach of mortals. That is why anyone who says that the Word is not literal life in some sense cannot ever prove it.
I explained this more specifically above in this post.
Would you compare them to emanations?
No. An emanation is something that goes out from God in heaven to form a new God in heaven. Here we're talking about things going from God to earth, i.e. changing jurisidictions. In the jurisdiction of the earth, nothing is God, because God is confined to the highest of heavens. So definitely not an emanation.
In the OT, the Jews didn't pray to God the Father nor did Jesus exercise the Father's power until he was incarnate. I'm interested in what the Word and Spirit were in the OT. What did they do? Was the Word, the angel of YHWH?
No. The Word wasn't the angel of YHWH. The Logos was confined to heaven and God's throne. Everything was put into effect by angels (Heb 1) or by the Spirit of God (Gen 1). The Logos was the origin of the words spoken by the angels and the de facto ruler over creation, weilding the power of the Father (John 1:1). The Spirit of God likewise revealed the words of the Logos to men.
It does, but they are not human persons and conceptually beyond humans to distinguish as in the form of God. Hence the reason for Deut 6:4 (God is one).
I agree that no one can fully comprehend God but we can try to comprehend the inspired written word that he gave us through prophets and apostles.
We can't go beyond what is written like the JWs do and pretend Christ was an angel. We can only make sense of what is written and for that we rely on the apostles without modification or deviation or any sort of gnosticism (life is too short for that).
Do you prefer one over the other? and why?
All the English translations treat the two phrases as substitutable (i.e. λόγος ἦν πρὸς
τὸν θεόν (Accusative) is anglicized as if it read λόγος ἦν παρά
τφ Θεφ (Dative)).
They seem to be synonymous: just different conventions.
The Greek does say 'God was the Word' in that order. "θεὸς" is without the article so the translators made "ὁ λόγος" the subject of the sentence (in the nominative) instead of "θεὸς". θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος John 1:1c
And yet because θεὸς comes first in John 1:1c, the emphasis is on θεὸς (irrespective of subject). John is saying God (impersonal) was the Word, rather than making a statement about the nature of the Word, which Trinitarians mistakenly suppose. John 1:1c is making a statement about the ruler of creation, which directly echoes Rev 3:14 (The Word being the ruler over God's creation - cf. my owner / CEO analogy).
I don't think the "Word" is as mysterious as you do. Reread Genesis chapter 1.
The Logos doesn't appear in the OT, ever. It is hidden by Deut 6:4. In Gen 1 it is the Spirit of God who is bringing things into being, in response to the (hidden) command of the Logos, through whom all things were made.
Note: the Logos is not "words" or a "word". It is the seat of God's creative power. The speech in Gen 1 is metaphorical.
God is spirit thus making him a spirit, even the unique Spirit of God. So when God's spirit moves or does something in a specific location or upon a specific individual, this is simply God actively doing something in a certain location when in fact the Spirit of God (which is God) is everywhere.
I don't agree. The Spirit of God is that "part" of God which goes out from heaven to the jurisdiction of creation. Jesus conceded the different jurisdictions in the Lord's prayer. That is why Gen 1 said that the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. It is deferring to the "Spirit of God" (
Rev 5:6) that goes out from God, and not to the throne of God. The Spirit of God is the instrument by which creation came about (and the instrument for all sorts of other things too).
Thank you for explaining what you could.
Now I know not to think of you as a Trinitarian. Are you alone in holding this view of God?
No. There are scholars such as Winer and John Alford (biblehub) who hold my views. In fact I think my view of God was very common in the English world, before the currect crop of hyper-trinitarians such as Wallace stole the show (at least in the USA). You have to grasp that there are two camps amongst those who hold to the deity of the Word and the Holy Spirit and the Father.
(1) There are those who concede that the bible accords the Father with the exclusive right to the title "ὁ θεὸς" (Winer, Alford, myself). These are biblical literalists who
don't manipulate Sharp's rule of grammar, to fuse God and Jesus into one amorphous Trinitarian synthesis per Origen and the Greek philosophers.
(2) There are the hyper-Trinitarians such as Wallace who communize a Trinity using crankly biblical scholarship, so as to fit in with all the Greek philosophers, and their orthodox Trinitarianism based on the Council of Chalcedon etc.