Archive for category First Thoughts
Clement of Alexandria on the Logos
Posted by Dallas Wolf in First Thoughts, Patristic Pearls, The Logos Doctrine (series), Theology on April 15, 2025
Clement of Alexandria (c. 150 – c. 215 AD), was a Christian theologian and philosopher who founded the Catechetical School of Alexandria. Among his pupils were Origen of Alexandria and Alexander of Jerusalem.
Excerpted from: Exhortation to the Heathen, By Clement of Alexandria.
You have, then, God’s promise; you have His love: become partaker of His grace. And do not suppose the song of salvation to be new, as a vessel or a house is new. For “before the morning star it was;” and “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Error seems old, but truth seems a new thing. (Chap. I)
But before the foundation of the world were we, who, because destined to be in Him, pre-existed in the eye of God before,–we the rational creatures of the Word of God, on whose account we date from the beginning; for “in the beginning was the Word.” Well, inasmuch as the Word was from the first, He was and is the divine source of all things; but inasmuch as He has now assumed the name Christ, consecrated of old, and worthy of power, he has been called by me the New Song. This Word, then, the Christ, the cause of both our being at first (for He was in God) and of our well-being, this very Word has now appeared as man, He alone being both, both God and man–the Author of all blessings to us; by whom we, being taught to live well, are sent on our way to life eternal. For, according to that inspired apostle of the Lord, “the grace of God which bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us, that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world; looking for the blessed hope, and appearing of the glory of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ.” This is the New Song, the manifestation of the Word that was in the beginning, and before the beginning. The Saviour, who existed before, has in recent days appeared. He, who is in Him that truly is, has appeared; for the Word, who “was with God,” and by whom all things were created, has appeared as our Teacher. The Word, who in the beginning bestowed on us life as Creator when He formed us, taught us to live well when He appeared as our Teacher; that as God He might afterwards conduct us to the life which never ends. He did not now for the first time pity us for our error; but He pitied us from the first, from the beginning. But now, at His appearance, lost as we already were, He accomplished our salvation. (Chap. I)
For into all men whatever, especially those who are occupied with intellectual pursuits, a certain divine effluence has been instilled; wherefore, though reluctantly, they confess that God is one, indestructible, unbegotten, and that somewhere above in the tracts of heaven, in His own peculiar appropriate eminence, whence He surveys all things, He has an existence true and eternal. (Chap. VI)
For if, at the most, the Greeks, having received certain scintillations of the divine word, have given forth some utterances of truth, they bear indeed witness that the force of truth is not hidden, and at the same time expose their own weakness in not having arrived at the end. (Chap. VII)
Note: In the above text, when you see “Word”, substitute the Greek word “Logos”. There is no English word that spans the same conceptual range.
Clement of Alexandria. The Works of Clement of Alexandria: The Stromata, On the Salvation of the Rich Man, Fragments, Pædagogus, and Exhortation to the Heathen. Kindle Edition.
Christian Theology: Greek East and Latin West Contrasted *
Posted by Dallas Wolf in First Thoughts, Patristic Pearls, Theology on April 8, 2025
Theology is at its best and purest stage when it is intuitive [noetic]; it is based on our spiritual instincts [nous]; its only logic is that best of all logic, when there is one single step, as it has been well said, from the premise to the conclusion.
Eastern Greek theology set out with the doctrine of God in His relation to man. Conversely, Western Latin theology adopted the opposite doctrine of man in his relation to God.
The difference is more than verbal, whether we make man or God the starting-point of our inquiries on this subject. Setting out with man [the Latin model], we have to take him as we find him, blind and insensible to spiritual things. We have to find an explanation for this strange fact – we have to begin with a theory of original sin, a tradition of the fall, and the problem of evil in general. We get out of our depth all at once in a kind of theodicee [theodicy], which lands us at last in a dilemma which no thinker has yet to overcome, and which J.S. Mill admitted to be logically insoluable. Either God is all-goodness, but not all-mighty, or He is all-mighty, but not all-goodness. Pelagians and Augustinians, Arminians and Calvinists, have beaten their wings against the bars of this cage ever since Latin theology replaced Greek [in the Latin West], as it did soon after Augustine’s day, and we are no nearer a solution than ever.
On the other hand, setting out, as the Greeks did, at the other end of the problem, all unfolds itself in a simple and natural order, and there is no room for these gloomy afterthoughts which have made earth a prison-house, and evil a kind of Manichaean partner with good in the government of the universe. Let us notice the order in which the early Fathers of the Alexandrian school [Greek] approached the problem. Their point of departure was the general Fatherhood of God, – of a God, let us add, who was not so much transcendent as immanent in the world [e.g., the Incarnation and His energaeia]. The opening verses of the Gospel of St. John is the key to all that is distinctively Hellenistic in contrast with the Latin or magisterial conception of God. The Logos is σπερματικόσ, or germ-like, in the world: that Logos in man becomes reason or thought in its two-fold manifestation of speech and action. At a loss for a Latin equivalent for the Greek Logos, the Latin mind lost hold of the primitive and deep significance of the thought that there was a Wisdom which was one with God, and yet had its habitation with the children of men.
The Latins, lacking the Logos doctrine, never could see the true grounds of the incarnation which were laid deep in the original and unchangeable relations of God to men… In this point of view Latin theology never has been “rational” in the sense that the early and best type of Greek theology harmonized reason and revelation. To the Hellenistic mind there was no strained reconciliation between reason and faith… The contrast between the two theologies, for which we have to thank Aquinas, the one known as natural and the other as revealed, never so much as occurred to Greek thought when at its best and earliest stage.
History may be said to contain two chapters, and only two – one in which man seeks after God and loses himself in the search; and a second, in which God seeks after man, and seeks, as the shepherd after the lost sheep, until He finds it.
* Excerpted from Alexandrian and Carthaginian Theology Contrasted, John B. Heard. T&T Clark, Edinburgh 1893. Brackets [ ] mine.
Apophatic and Cataphatic Theology: An Issue of Emphasis and Balance
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Contemplative Prayer (series), Ekklesia and church, Essence and Energies (series), First Thoughts, Hesychasm - Jesus Prayer, The Cappadocians, Theology on April 6, 2025
Overview
Apophatic and Cataphatic are two terms used in theology to describe different approaches to understanding God. The Eastern Orthodox and Latin West each use both types. The issue comes down to one of emphasis and balance: The Orthodox East is overwhelmingly Apophatic in approach, while the Latin West is predominantly Cataphatic.
Definitions
Apophatic theology (from Greek: ἀπόφημι apophēmi, meaning “to deny”) uses “negative” terminology to indicate what it is believed the divine is not. It means emptying the mind of words and ideas and simply resting in the presence of God. Apophatic prayer is prayer that occurs without words, images, or concepts. This approach to prayer regards silence, stillness, unknowing and even darkness as doorways, rather than obstacles, to communication with God. Apophatic theology relies primarily on experience and revelation.
Cataphatic theology (from the Greek word κατάφασις kataphasis meaning “affirmation”) uses “positive” terminology to describe or refer to the divine, i.e. terminology that describes or refers to what the divine is believed to be. Cataphatic prayer is prayer that speaks thoroughly, intensively, or positively of God: prayer that uses words, images, ideas, concepts, and the imagination to relate to God. Cataphatic theology relies heavily on logic and reason.
Background
Apophatic theology—also known as negative theology or via negativa—is a theology that attempts to describe God by negation. In Orthodox Christianity, Apophatic theology is based on the assumption that God’s essence is unknowable or ineffable and on the recognition of the inadequacy of human language to describe God. The Apophatic tradition in Orthodoxy is balanced with Cataphatic theology (positive theology) via belief in the Incarnation and the self-revealed energies of God, through which God has revealed himself in the person of Jesus Christ. However, Apophatic theology is the dominant traditional Eastern paradigm of an experiential, revealed theology, intimately linking doctrine with contemplation through purgation (catharsis), illumination (theoria), and union (theosis).
Clement of Alexandria (c. 150 – 215) was an early proponent of Apophatic theology with elements of Cataphatic. Clement holds that God is unknowable, although God’s unknowability, concerns only his essence, not his energies, or powers. According to Clement’s writings, the term theoria develops further from a mere intellectual “seeing” toward a spiritual form of contemplation. Clement’s Apophatic theology or philosophy is closely related to this kind of theoria and the “mystic vision of the soul.” For Clement, God is both transcendent in essence and immanent in self-revelation.
The Cappadocian Fathers (Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of Nazianzus (4th century)) were early exemplars of this Apophatic theology. They stated that mankind can acquire an incomplete knowledge of God in his attributes, positive and negative, by reflecting upon and participating in his self-revelatory operations (energeia). But, the essence of God is completely unknowable.
A century later Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (late 5th century) in his short work Mystical Theology, first introduced and explained what came to be known as Apophatic or negative theology.
Maximus the Confessor (7th century) maintained that the combination of Apophatic theology and hesychasm—the practice of silence and stillness—made theosis or union with God possible.
John of Damascus (8th century) employed Apophatic theology when he wrote that positive (cataphatic) statements about God reveal “not the nature, but the things around the nature.”
All in all, Apophatic theology remains crucial to much of the theology in Eastern Orthodox Christianity. The opposite tends to be true in Western Latin Christianity, with a few notable exceptions to this rule.
Cataphatic theology
In the Latin West a heavily Cataphatic theology, or via positiva, developed, which remains today in most forms of Western Christianity. This type of Cataphatic theology is based on using human reason to make positive statements about the nature of God. It slowly developed from the 5th to the 11th century, emerging as Scholasticism in the Medieval Period (11th-17th centuries). (see entries for Anselm and Thomas Aquinas, below)
Augustine of Hippo (354–430) significantly influenced scholasticism, emphasizing the integration of faith and reason. His ideas laid the groundwork for later Scholastic thinkers who sought to reconcile Christian theology with classical philosophy, particularly through dialectic reasoning. Augustine’s doctrines of the filioque, original sin, the doctrine of grace, and predestination found little support outside of the Western Roman Church. Within the Western Latin church, ‘Augustinianism’ dominated early theology.
Anselm of Canterbury (c. 1033 – 1109) is widely considered the father of Scholasticism, endeavoring to render Christian tenets of faith, traditionally taken as a revealed truth, as a rational system. Scholasticism prescribed that Aristotelian dialectic reason be used in the elucidation of spiritual truth and in defense of the dogmas of Faith.
Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225 – 7 March 1274) reflects the mature emergence of this new medieval Scholastic paradigm, which promoted the use of formal intellectual reason, putting it at odds with the predominantly Eastern revealed tradition of hesychastic contemplation. Aquinas’ Summa Theologica (1265–1274), is considered to be the pinnacle of Medieval Scholastic Christian philosophy and theology. The resulting ‘Thomism’ remains the foundation of contemporary Western Latin theology.
Early References to Apophatic Darkness in Christian Mysticism
Posted by Dallas Wolf in First Thoughts, Patristic Pearls, Theology on April 3, 2025
Gregory of Nyssa – from The life of Moses (ca. AD 380)
“luminous darkness” (or dazzling darkness)
(λαµπρός γνόφος)
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite – from The Mystical Theology (ca. AD 500)
“in the brilliant darkness of a hidden silence”
(τὸν ὑπέρφωτον τῆς σιγῆς γνόφον)
“the ray of divine darkness, which is above everything that is”
(τὸν ὑπερούσιον τοῦ θείου σκότους ἀκτῖνα)
Maximus the Confessor – from Two Hundred Chapters on Theology (ca. AD 633), 1.84, 1.85
“The great Moses, having pitched his tent outside the camp, that is, having established his will and intellect outside visible realities, begins to worship God; and having entered the dark cloud, the formless and immaterial place of knowledge, he remains there, performing the holiest rites.”
(Μωϋσῆς ὁ μέγας ἔξω τῆς παρεμβολῆς πηξάμενος ἑαυτοῦ τὴν σκηνήν, τουτέστι, τὴν γνώμην καὶ τὴν διάνοιαν ἱδρυσάμενος ἔξω τῶν ὁρωμένων, προσκυνεῖν τὸν Θεὸν ἄρχεται· καὶ εἰς τὸν γνόφον εἰσελθών, τὸν ἀειδῆ καὶ ἄϋλον τῆς γνώσεως τόπον, ἐκεῖ μένει τὰς ἱερωτάτας τελούμενος τελετάς.)
“The dark cloud is the formless, immaterial, and incorporeal condition containing the paradigmatic knowledge of beings; he who has come to be inside it, just like another Moses, understands invisible realities in a mortal nature; having depicted the beauty of the divine virtues in himself through this state, like a painting accurately rendering the representation of the archetypal beauty, he descends, offering himself to those willing to imitate virtue, and in this shows both love of humanity and freedom from envy of the grace of which he had partaken.”
(Ὁ γνόφος ἐστὶν ἡ ἀειδὴς καὶ ἄϋλος καὶ ἀσώματος κατάστασις, ἡ τὴν παραδειγματικὴν τῶν ὄντων ἔχουσα γνῶσιν· ἐν ᾗ ὁ γενόμενος ἐντός, καθάπερ τις ἄλλος Μωϋσῆς, φύσει θνητῇ κατανοεῖ τὰ ἀθέατα, δι᾿ ἧς τῶν θείων ἀρετῶν ἐν ἑαυτῷ ζωγραφήσας τὸ κάλλος, ὥσπερ γραφὴν εὐμιμήτως ἔχουσαν τοῦ ἀρχετύπου κάλλους τὸ ἀπεικόνισμα, κάτεισιν, ἑαυτὸν προβαλλόμενος τοῖς βουλομένοις μιμεῖσθαι τὴν ἀρετήν, καὶ ἐν τούτῳ δεικνύς, ἧς μετειλήφει χάριτος, τὸ φιλάνθρωπόν τε καὶ ἄφθονον.)
Kenosis: “… but emptied himself [ἐκένωσεν (ekénōsen)], taking the form of a slave,…”
Posted by Dallas Wolf in First Thoughts, Patristic Pearls, The Holy Trinity, Theology on March 31, 2025
Philippians 2:6-11 is probably one of the earliest Christian hymns ever recorded. Within the hymn are the words, “who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.” (Phil 2:6,7). This part of the hymn describes how Christ humbled himself in his divinity in obedience to the will and desire of God in an act of selfless sacrifice, even to death on a Cross, for the salvation and redemption of mankind. It is a powerful image.
The term kenosis comes from the Greek κενόω (kenóō), meaning “to empty out”. When talking about how Christ “emptied himself” in Philippians 2:7, the Greek word used is ἐκένωσεν (ekénōsen). It is the only time the word appears in the New Testament.
The fact that Christ was willing and able to “empty himself” in order to do the will of God the Father is key to His success as both savior and redeemer. Without this “kenosis”, He could not have done, or been either.
Woman Wisdom: Chokmah, Sophia, Wisdom in the Old Testament
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Ekklesia and church, First Thoughts, Theology, Women in Early Christianity on March 29, 2025
“Woman Wisdom” was well established in the Hebrew literature of the Old Testament long before the New Testament era. The patriarchal (some might say misogynistic) leaders of the post-Apostolic Christian Church, especially after the 2nd century, so completely suppressed this idea of the feminine personification of God, that they had to invent the cult of Mary in the 5th and 6th centuries to redress the obvious, embarrassing imbalance!
If you want to explore the beautiful ancient Hebrew tradition of the Feminine emanation of the Godhead (called Chokmah in Hebrew, Sophia in Greek, and Wisdom in English), try the following:
- Proverbs 1-9
- Wisdom of Solomon 7-9
- Sirach (AKA Ecclestiasticus) 24
In the interest of full disclosure, my male noetic intuition has always experienced both Wisdom (Chokmah) and the Holy Spirit (Ruach) as female. In case you think that’s in error or heretical, let me point out that in Hebrew both Chokmah and Ruach are feminine nouns.
Nous: Noesis and Dianoia
Posted by Dallas Wolf in First Thoughts, The "Nous" (series) on March 26, 2025
Noesis refers to immediate, intuitive understanding or insight, while dianoia involves discursive thinking, particularly in mathematical and technical contexts. Essentially, noesis is about direct apprehension, whereas dianoia is a more analytical and reasoned thought process.
In the Christian Latin West, the Enlightenment (17th – early 19th century) enthroned and focused almost entirely on the discursive, analytical, reasoning mind. So complete was that focus on the sensory, reasoning faculty (dianoia), that it literally came to define “mind” in the Western world. It still does.
The Greek East, although influenced heavily by the Enlightenment, did not lose their ancient distinction between noesis, direct apprehension, and dianoia, reasoned thought. To them, mind was “nous” (a term unknown in the West), and included both the noetic and the dianoetic faculties of the human mind.
In Eastern Christian culture, the noetic faculty is considered more mature than the dianoetic, because by noesis humans can instantly and intuitively apprehend God and truth of things spiritual whereas dianoia is focused on a dualistic understanding of the material, sensory world. It is no accident that noesis and dianoia both share the same Greek root; nous.
So, I guess one could say that both the Latin West and Greek East defined “mind” correctly; the West just lost the better half of theirs.
The Apostle Paul: Radical, Conservative, or Reactionary?
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Ancient Christian Manuscripts, Ekklesia and church, First Thoughts, Theology, Women in Early Christianity on March 21, 2025
The Apostle Paul is a controversial figure. More than half of the New Testament is written by him, about him, or in his name. There is a general consensus among contemporary scholars that the Apostle Paul did not write all 13 New Testament letters attributed to him.
Modern scholarship attributes seven of Paul’s 13 canonical letters as unquestionably authentic:
- Romans,
- Galatians,
- I Corinthians,
- II Corinthians,
- I Thessalonians,
- Philippians, and
- Philemon
Three others are generally considered deutero or (pseudo) – Pauline and are Pauline in theology, with a couple of notable exceptions, but are different in style and much more mainline and conservative in tone than the undisputed letters. They were probably written in the generation after Paul’s death by people very familiar with his teaching. The deutero (or pseudo)-Pauline letters are:
- Colossians,
- Ephesians, and
- II Thessalonians
The last three, the “Pastoral Letters”, are largely considered pseudepigrapha (a bible scholar’s politically-correct term for “forgery”) and were probably written around the beginning of the 2nd century and exhibit patriarchal, sexist, and reactionary social attitudes one would expect of an entrenched Greco-Roman cultural institution (exactly what the early Church was becoming by that time).1,2 The pseudepigraphical letters are:
- I Timothy,
- II Timothy, and
- Titus
What follows are estimates of the percentages of biblical scholars who reject Paul’s authorship of the six books in question:
- 2 Thessalonians = 50 percent;
- Colossians = 60 percent;
- Ephesians = 70 percent;
- 2 Timothy = 80 percent;
- 1 Timothy and Titus = 90 percent.2
In addition to judgments about entire letters, scholars also question the authorship of certain passages in the undisputed letters. Post-Pauline texts are those alleged to have been inserted into a letter after its composition and are generally called scribal “interpolations”.
Among the passages that some scholars label as interpolations are:
- Romans 5:5-7, 13:1-7, 16:17-20, 16:25-27;
- 1 Corinthians 4:6b, 11:2-16, 14:33b-35 or 36;
- 2 Corinthians 6:14-7:1; and
- 1 Thessalonians 2:14-16.2,3
Given the above, one could argue that there are really three “Pauls” in the New Testament:
- The Radical Paul of the seven undisputed authentic letters
- The Conservative Paul of the three deutero-Pauline letters
- The Reactionary Paul of the three pseudepigraphical Pastoral Letters
___________________________________________________________
- The First Paul, Reclaiming the Radical Visionary Behind the Church’s Conservative Icon, By Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan , 2009 HarperCollins, NY, NY
- Apostle of the Crucified Lord, A Theological Introduction to Paul & His Letters, by Michael J. Gorman, 2004 Wm. B. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, MI / Cambridge, UK
- The Authentic Letters of Paul, A New Reading of Paul’s Rhetoric and Meaning, by Arthur J. Dewey, Roy W. Hoover, Lane C. Mc Gaughy, and Daryl D. Schmidt, 2010 Polebridge Press, Salem, OR
St. Justin Martyr: Synthesizing Philosophy and Faith; the ‘Spermatikos Logos’
Posted by Dallas Wolf in Ekklesia and church, First Thoughts, Patristic Pearls, The Logos Doctrine (series), Theology on March 17, 2025
St. Justin Martyr (100 -166 A.D.), also known as Justin the Philosopher, was an early Christian philosopher and apologist (Defender of the Faith). He was a Samaritan, born in Flavia Neapolis, Palestine, located near Jacob’s well (cf., John 4). From an early age, he studied Stoic and Platonic philosophers. At the age of 32, he converted to Christianity in Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey), possibly in Ephesus. Around the age of 35, he became an iterant preacher, moving from city to city in the Roman Empire, in an effort to convert educated pagans to the faith. Eventually, he ended up in Rome and spent a considerable amount of time there, debating and defending the faith. Of all his writings, only three survive: First Apology, Second Apology, and Dialogue with Trypho. St. Justin Martyr was scourged and beheaded in Rome in AD 166, under the reign of Marcus Aurelius, along with six of his followers.
Unlike Tertullian (a 2nd century Roman Carthaginian Christian author), who was opposed to Greek philosophy and viewed it as a dangerous pagan influence on Christianity, Justin Martyr viewed Greek philosophy in a more positive and optimistic light. He believed that Christianity both corrected and perfected philosophy.
While Tertullian refused to build a bridge between faith and philosophy, Justin Martyr was, on the other hand, eager to build a bridge between the two – and the name of that bridge was Logos*.
Logos, a central concept in ancient Greek philosophy, represents the divine reason or rational principle that governs the universe. The concept of Logos predates philosophical Stoicism. However, the Stoics, beginning with Zeno of Citium in the 3rd century BC, developed it into a cornerstone of their philosophical system. This Greek term, often translated as “word,” “reason,” or “plan,” is fundamental to understanding Stoic philosophical cosmology and ethics. In Stoic thought, Logos is not just an abstract principle but an active, generative force that permeates all of reality. To the Stoics, Logos represented:
• Universal Reason: Logos as the rational structure of the cosmos
• Divine Providence: The idea that the universe is governed by a benevolent plan
• Natural Law: Logos as the source of moral and physical laws
• Human Rationality: The belief that human reason is a fragment of the universal Logos
After John the Gospel Writer declared Christ to be the Logos in the prologue to his Gospel (cf., John 1, “In the beginning was the Logos…”) in about AD 90, the idea of Christ as Logos reached full bloom in the second century A.D., thanks to Justin Martyr and other early like-minded Christian philosophers.
Justin embraced the term “Logos” because it was familiar to Christians and non-Christians alike. Justin, in discussing the Logos, uses the expression, ζωτικόν πνεύμα (zotikon pneuma), vital spirit, which imparted reason as well as life to the soul. Justin understood this ζωτικόν πνεύμα as the divine principle in man. For Justin, it is a participation in the very life of the Logos. Therefore, he calls it the σπερματικόσ λόγοσ (spermatikos logos), the ‘seed of the word’, or reason in man.
This was a powerful tool in the hands of apologists like Justin. For by “Christianizing” Greek philosophy and literature, and deeming it a forerunner to Christ, the Christian apologists could easily counter the claims of the pagans who maintained that the Greeks beat the Christians to the punch. After all, the pagans said, the truths that the Christians were proclaiming as new were being taught by Greek philosophers years (read: centuries) before.
Justin maintained that the whole of Logos resided in Christ, but that all people, regardless of time or religion, contained these “seeds” of logos. Justin states,
“We have been taught that Christ is the first-born of God, and we have declared above that He is the Word [Logos] of whom every race of men were partakers; and those who lived reasonably are Christians, even though they have been thought atheists; as, among the Greeks, Socrates and Heraclitus, and men like them;” (First Apology, Chapt. 46)
Justin declared that even the pre-Christian philosophers who thought, spoke, and acted rightly did so because of the presence of the spermatikos logos in their hearts. To Justin, there is only one Logos that sows the seeds of spiritual and moral illumination in the hearts of human beings. Justin applied the spermatikos logos to explain that Christ, as the Logos, was in the world before his Incarnation, from the beginning of time, sowing the seeds of the logos in the hearts of all people. In this way, Christ united faith and philosophy. To Justin, Christ is the ultimate source of all wisdom and knowledge, even among pagans. Justin writes:
“For each man spoke well in proportion to the share he had of the spermatic word [spermatikos logos], seeing what was related to it… Whatever things were rightly said among all men, are the property of us Christians… For all the writers were able to see realities darkly through the sowing of the implanted word that was in them.” (Second Apology, Chap. 13)
According to Justin, some virtuous pagans recognized the spermatikos logos within themselves and cultivated it to a large extent. These became the great thinkers such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Some, in the manner of Christ, like Socrates and Heraclitus, were even hated and persecuted for their beliefs and actions. Justin tells us the following:
“And those of the Stoic school — since, so far as their moral teaching went, they were admirable, as were also the poets in some particulars, on account of the seed of reason [the Logos] implanted in every race of men — were, we know, hated, and put to death — Heraclitus for instance, and, among those of our own time…others.” (Second Apology, Chap. 8)
People who came before the Incarnation of Jesus Christ all had the spermaticos logos, the “seed” of the Logos, implanted in them. Those Christians who came after the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus Christ had full access to all of Christ, the complete Logos. Those who came before saw through a glass darkly, but those who embrace Jesus Christ in the Christian era experience the fullness of revelation—faith and philosophy synthesized via Christ as Logos.
The Logos reveals all of God because He is God and we Christians had all the fullness of Logos because we had the revelation of Jesus Christ. The pagans did not have that. They had the spermatikos logos, but not the resurrected Christ.
Justin’s Logos was Jesus Christ himself portrayed against the backdrop of the Old Testament “Word of God” and Greek philosophy.
Contemporary Christians can easily agree with Justin Martyr that all people have within them the seeds of the Logos, the spermatikos logos. It is another way of saying that we all are created in the image of God and have an inherent knowledge of him and desire for Him.
Justin Martyr clearly represents an early, inclusive, universal Christianity encompassing all persons and religions; a time before the Church developed into an exclusive, parochial, competitive, religious institution.
Regardless of Tertullian’s fear that synthesizing faith with philosophy would “Hellenize” Christianity, Justin’s efforts ended up doing the precise opposite; faith ended up “Christianizing” Hellenism.
* “In Latin, such is the poverty of the language, there is no term at all equivalent to the Logos.” – John B. Heard. The same is true of English.
“Daily” Bread in the Lord’s Prayer? A Word Study
Posted by Dallas Wolf in First Thoughts, Patristic Pearls, Theology on January 9, 2025
Sources:
1. http://aramaicnt.org/articles/the-lords-prayer-in-galilean-aramaic/
2. Origen of Alexandria (c. 185 – c. 254): On Prayer (Περί Ευχής), Chapter XVII
The Lord’s Prayer is with little debate the most significant prayer in Christianity. Although many theological and ideological differences may divide Christians across the world, it is a prayer that unites the faith as a whole.
Within the New Testament tradition, the Prayer appears in two places. The first and more elaborate version is found in Matthew 6:9-13 where a simpler form is found in Luke 11:2-4, and the two of them share a significant amount of overlap.
The prayer’s absence from the Gospel of Mark, taken together with its presence in both Luke and Matthew, has brought some modern scholars to conclude that it is a tradition from the hypothetical “Q” source (from German: Quelle, meaning “source”) which both Luke and Matthew relied upon in many places throughout their individual writings. Given the similarities and unique character of the Matthaean and Lukan versions of the Lord’s Prayer may be evidence that what we attribute to the Greek of “Q” may ultimately trace back to an Aramaic source.
One of the trickiest problems of translating the Lord’s Prayer into Aramaic is finding out what επιούσιος (epiousios), usually translated as “daily”, originally intended. It is a unique word in Greek, only appearing twice in the all of Greek literature: Once in the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew, and the other time in the Lord’s Prayer in Luke.
This raises some curious questions that have baffled scholars. Why would Jesus have used a singular, entirely unique word? In more recent times, the bafflement has turned to a different possible solution. Jesus, someone known to have spoken Aramaic in a prayer that was originally recited in Aramaic, would not have used the Greek επιούσιος, at all. So, the question has evolved to “What Aramaic word was επιούσιος supposed to represent?” It would have to be something unique or difficult enough that whoever translated it into Greek needed to coin a word to express or preserve some meaning that they thought was important, or something that they couldn’t quite wrap the Greek language around.
The first question to answer is the meaning of the unique koine Greek word ἐπιούσιον (epiousion). To do this, we consult the writings of Origen of Alexandria. Origen was a third century native koine Greek speaker, head of the famed Catechetical School of Alexandria, the greatest theologian of the early church, and first to perform an exegesis of the Lord’s Prayer (ca. AD 240).
Origen begins: ”Let us now consider what the word epiousion, needful, means. First of all it should be known that the word epiousion is not found in any Greek writer whether in philosophy or in common usage, but seems to have been formed by the evangelists. At least Matthew and Luke, in having given it to the world, concur in using it in identical form.”
Origen concludes his in-depth discussion of epiousion, needful, by stating, “Needful, therefore, is the bread which corresponds most closely to our rational nature and is akin to our very essence, which invests the soul at once with well being and with strength, and, since the Word of God is immortal, imparts to its eater its own immortality.”
In Aramaic, the best fit for επιούσιος is probably the word çorak. It comes from the root çrk, which means to be poor, to need, or to be necessary. It is a very common word in Galilean Aramaic that is used in a number of senses to express both need and thresholds of necessity, such as “as much as is required” (without further prepositions) or with pronominal suffixes “all that [pron.] needs” (çorki = “All that I need”; çorkak = “All that you need”; etc.). Given this multi-faceted nature of the word, it’s hard to find a one-to-one Greek word that would do the job, and επιούσιος is a very snug fit in the context of the Prayer’s petition. This might even give us a hint that the Greek translator literally read into it a bit.
The Aramaic word yelip is another possible solution. It is interesting to note that it comes from the root yalap or “to learn.” Etymologically speaking, learning is a matter of repetition and routine, and this connection may play off the idea of regular physical bread, but actually mean “daily learning from God” (i.e. that which is necessary for living, as one cannot live off of bread alone).
Bottom line:
Origen’s understanding of epiousion in his context of needful certainly has no connection or relationship to a simplistic English translation of epiousion as “daily’. Nor is the translation of epiousion as “daily” supported by either hypothetical original Aramaic word çorkak or yelip.
In fact, a translation of epiousion as “daily” makes this petition in the Lord’s Prayer (Matt. 6:11) directly contradict Jesus’ lengthy admonition 14 verses later, starting at Matt 6:25:
25 “Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?
26 “Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?
31 “Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’
32 “For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.
33 “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.
The Gospel writers of Matthew and Luke both used the same totally unique Greek word solely in the context of the Lord’s Prayer. There were other frequently used koine Greek words available to express the simple idea of “daily”. Perhaps the unique use of epiousion was not accidental or coincidental, but needed to express the intent of the original Aramaic prayer. Origen may provide the best insight into the intended meaning of ἐπιούσιον as needful of the supra-essential Word of God.
First Thoughts 