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Logos as FleshDid the Logos REALLY become a man?The De-Mystified Logos by Phil Maxwell July 2000; Revised August 2003
Verse 14 marks another point in which the interpretation of the word of God as a literal person develops into what seems to be another pillar of orthodox Christology – the incarnation doctrine. This is the theory that the word, representing the literal person of Christ, literally left ‘his’ place “with God” in heaven and became the fetus conceived in Mary’s womb to be born, raised, and die as a the man Yahshua only to return to His former place in heaven as the second of three persons in the Godhead. Key to this conclusion are the words, “the Word became flesh” (NAS, NIV) or “the Word was made flesh” (KJV). The Amplified Bible and Living Bibles go even further, stating, respectively, “the Word (Christ) became flesh (human, incarnate)” and “Christ became a human being”. It is important to keep in mind, as I mentioned earlier, the word 'logos' appears 326 times in the New Testament, and nowhere outside of John 1 is there even any question regarding the fact that the logos is a thing, not a person. To this point, I've given a lot of discussion to the concept of the logos in the minds of John's contemporaries. Although differences existed between the various philosophical and religious schools of thought on the logos, they all considered it to be the link between the infinite and the finite, the mediator between the omnipotent, self-existent God (or force) and man. In there minds, any and all means by which God manifested Himself was the logos. Thus, any revelation of God was also a manifestation of the logos, and vice- versa. With this in mind, it is easy to see how literary references to God and the logos were often used as virtual synonyms, but I won’t belabor this point beyond what I’ve already presented. My point is that Jn 1:14 does indeed speak of some sort of event or transition pertaining to the logos, but not in a way that contravened the thought associated with the logos in that time or that presented any unique concept of God or Christ. In other words, the means by which God manifested Himself to man – the word of God, not God Himself – had changed with the advent of Christ. John was simply affirming the point Yahshua had already made by saying, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but through Me” (Jn 14:6) and that the author of Hebrews also opened with by writing, “God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son” (Heb 1:1-2). So, to be clear, my dispute here is not with the identification of the man Yahshua as the logos, it is with the representation of the quick and powerful word of God – the logos – as God in a literal sense. Neither do I wish to challenge the notion that all that the logos represented is embodied now in the person of Yahshua, the man who was MADE both Lord and Christ and GIVEN all power in heaven and earth (Ac 2:36, Mt 28:18). This does not require us to believe that the logos was literally a person of any sort, much less God Himself or the man Yahshua the Messiah. It certainly does not require us to believe that God Himself – who is the invisible, Almighty, unchangeable Spirit (Nu 23:19) – actually became the man Yahshua through some sort of metamorphosis or “incarnation”. It merely means that the Father put all things under Christ (except Himself) and has chosen to manifest and reveal Himself exclusively through His beloved Son. According to the cultural mindset of John's day, that makes Christ the logos, Yahweh’s Prime Minister or Chief Executive Officer, if you will. It does not, however, make either the logos or the man Yahshua God Himself.
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