The Logos According to the Gospels

A page from a medieval Bible: Johnbod

Until not long ago I thought I knew Christianity and had thoughtfully rejected it, then my podcast addiction led me to bump into information that suggested I knew nothing but shadows on a wall when it came to this important and complex religion. Because I regard myself as a truth seeker, and truly open-minded, for some months now I have been trying to unlearn my prior suppositions and learn what this religion actually is. An obvious starting point is the Gospels. I have relied on two translations, one is the New King James Version (NKJV) and the other is the Eastern Orthodox Bible (EOB). They are each translated from slightly different original manuscripts – the NKJV mostly derives from Greek manuscripts that were available in north-western Europe in the early 16th century, whereas the EOB is translated from different Greek manuscripts held in libraries in south-eastern Europe. In this post all of the quotes are from the text of the EOB.

The transitory world of men versus eternal life

A prominent theme in the Gospels is the juxtaposition between the everchanging worldly realm of men, of which death is an aspect, and that of God’s (Matt 16:23), which is associated with eternal life. The earthly realm is transitory (Luke 21:33), full of many distractions that are both pleasurable and unpleasurable (Luke 21:34), and it contains much evil (John 7:7). Whereas the realm of God has “many mansions” (John 14:2) but it “is not of this world” (John 18:36), even though it “is within you”, but it cannot be seen (Luke 17:21). Jesus explains (after exorcising a man) that it “is by the spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you” (Matt 12:28), which suggests the kingdom is a state of being that can be experienced in this life. This experience starts as something small (like a mustard seed) but if the seed grows within the fertile soil of a human heart it (allegorically) “becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air can come and find shelter in its branches” (Matt 13:32).

Note that “kingdom of God” is not a literal translation from the original Greek. According to the EOB a more literal translation is “rule of God”, “ruling power of God” or “reign of God” (at xvi). This connotes an experience of God’s power, whereas “kingdom” is more suggestive of a physical place that is elsewhere.

There is “more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous who need no repentance” (Luke 15:7) – so there is joy in God’s realm, and there is also the love of God (John 15:10). God is the spirit of truth (John 14:17), who can be compared to light (John 1:5). Not only is God good (Luke 18:19), God is perfect (Matt 4:48). God is also the maker of all things (John 1:3) and the giver of life (John 6:33-40), Thus God’s realm is one of truth, love, life and light, and it can be experienced internally (within the human soul, or heart) in this life and the next.

God is good?

The Gospels of Matthew and Luke speak of those who have known and yet rejected Jesus as being subject to “wrath” (Matt 3:7 and Luke 21:23), in a manner that appears to prophecy the destruction of the Jerusalem temple in 70 CE. However, on their own these passages are written in such a way as to suggest that it is not necessarily the wrath of God that is thus experienced, but rather the wrath of the Romans upon a people who are now no longer protected by God. Only in one place in the Gospels is “the wrath of God” described (John 3:36). This phrase is subsequently used again in Romans 1:18, Ephesians 5:6 and Colossians 3:6 – in each case it is described as something consequent upon people who act in a manner discordant with the logos of God, for they “suppress the truth … their senseless heart was darkened” (Rom 1:18-21). This “wrath” might be compared to a state in which light is not present and so darkness descends. As Jesus says “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life” (John 8:12). For those who do not walk in the light the “wages of sin is death” (Rom 6:23).

Another perspective on this might be gleamed from this saying of Jesus to his disciples:

“If your brother sins against you, rebuke him. If he repents, forgive him. If he sins against you seven times in the day, and comes back seven times, saying: ‘I repent!’ you must forgive him [Luke 17:3-4, see also Matt 18:21-22]”.

Thus the way of God is to be merciful to the repentant, but God also has high standards, and those who do not meet them fall away from the light and so darkness and death descend.

How to enter the realm of God

For those who keep the commandments of Christ there is joy and God will love them (John 15:10). Such people will experience the realm of God, but they should first be baptised by “water and spirit” (John 3:5) and have partaken in the flesh and blood of Christ (John 6:53-54). Entry to the kingdom is by a “narrow gate”, and “many will try to enter, but they will not be able” (Luke 13:24). To be successful on the path “endurance” and a heart of total honesty is needed (Luke 8:15). Those on the path must demonstrate they truly believe in the logos by following God’s commandments (Luke 11:28). The commandments are, as spoken by Jesus:

• Love God: the first and most important commandment is “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30).
• Love your neighbour: the second greatest commandment is “love your neighbour as yourself” (Mark 12:31); “love one another! Just as I have loved you, love also one another. This is how everyone will know that you are my disciples: if you have love for one another” (John 13:34-35).
• Be merciful: “be merciful, as even your Father is also merciful. Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn and you will not be condemned. Set free, and you will be set free. Give and it will be given to you” (Luke 6:36-38).
• Forgive when another repents: “If your brother sins against you, rebuke him. If he repents, forgive him” (Luke 17:3); “whoever is angry with his brother, without a cause, shall be in danger of the judgment” (Matt 5:22).
• Do not seek vengeance: “to whoever strikes you on your right cheek, present the other cheek as well … do good to those who hate you” (Matt 5:39-44).
• Covet not: “Beware! Keep yourselves from all covetousness, for a person’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions” (Luke 12:15).
• Do not store up your possessions: “Sell your possessions and give to those in need. Make for yourselves purses which do not grow old, a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief can reach and where moth cannot destroy. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Luke 12:33-34).
• Be diligent in the pursuit of truth: “Do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which remains to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For the Father has sealed [anointed] him” (John 6:27).
• Be honest and trustworthy: “Whoever is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much. Whoever is dishonest in very little is also dishonest in much. Therefore, if you have not been faithful with unrighteous mammon, who will entrust you with true riches?” (Luke 16:10-11); “do not swear at all! … Instead let your ‘yes’ be ‘yes’ and your ‘no’ be ‘no’” (Matt 5:34-37).
• Be humble: “everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted” (Luke 14:11); “Blessed are the meek” (Matt 5:4).
• Do not fret: “do not be anxious, saying ‘what will we eat?’ … do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself” (Matt 6:31-34).
• Suffer what there is to suffer and trust in Christ: “Anyone who desires to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me” (Luke 9:23); “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me because I am gentle and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls. Indeed my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matt 11:29-30).
• Pray and fast: Jesus explains to his disciples that to expel certain kinds of demons not only faith but also “prayer and fasting” is needed (Mark 9:29); “when you pray, enter into your inner room, and having shut the door, pray to your Father … when you fast … wash your face so that people may not see that you are fasting” (Matt 6:6-18).
• Pray correctly: “not what I desire, but what you desire [or will]” (Mark 14:36), St Maximos the Confessor explains “seek only those things that tend toward the knowledge of God … and the life of virtue … whoever asks … [for] other things … does not believe, and lacking faith he is concerned with divine things for the sake of his own glory” (Orthodox Christian Prayer Book at 220).
• Proclaim Jesus: “whoever confesses [acknowledges] me before men, the son of man will also acknowledge before the angels of God” (Luke 12:8).
• Engage in spiritual battle: “Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth! I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. Indeed I came to set a son against his father, a daughter against her mother … A man’s enemies will be members of his own household” (Matt 10:34-36); “the good news of the Kingdom of God is preached, and everyone enters into it with a struggle” (Luke 16:16).
• Be willing to endure persecution: “You will be hated by all for my name’s sake, but the one who endures to the end will be saved” (Mark 13:13).

Contrary to Luther’s position that “he who believes in Christ is saved … without works, by faith alone” (Art VI, Augsburg Confession), I could not find anything in the Gospels to directly support this position, unless faith is understood to connate adherence to Christ’s commandments, in which case “works” are faith manifest and so the two (“faith” and “works”) are inseparable. This is supported by Matthew 7:26 (“everyone who hears my words and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand”), and Mark 16:16-18, where it is made clear that though faith is essential it will be accompanied by outward manifestations that will be perceptible to others (so faith is not merely an internal experience) – in this context the manifestations of faith are listed, and they are so extraordinary that I suspect they should be regarded metaphorically: 

• the casting out of demons (a metaphor for being able to cleanse the soul), 
• the ability to speak new languages (a metaphor for becoming eloquent and persuasive), 
• taking up snakes (a metaphor for battling evil), 
• being immune from poison (a metaphor for being able to resist despair and rage), and 
• being able to heal the sick (a metaphor for being able to heal the souls of others).

Obstacles for the followers of Christ

A list of defilements that block the path to the realm of God are listed in Mark 7:20-23:

“What comes out of a person is what defiles that person … adultery, sexual immorality, murder, theft, greed [or covetousness], wickedness, deceit, lustful desires [or lewdness], an evil eye [to look at another with jealousy and evil intent], blasphemy [or slander], pride, and foolishness [or folly]. All these evil things come from within and make a person unclean.”

More defilements are listed in Mark 12:38, which broadly corresponds to Matthew 23:1-13 and Luke 45-47. In these passages religious people who make a posture of piety, but are in fact more concerned with their own elevated sense of self, are condemned, for they have inverted God’s values and are instead “mean-spirited, judgmental, greedy, ambitious, absorbed in externals, and blindly self-righteous” (The Orthodox Study Bible at 1313).

Death 

According to the Gospels, worldly people who have experienced the grace of God but reject Christ are subject to death (John 8:-24). They “will be brought down to Hades” (to Luke 10:15), which can be understood as the usual abode of the dead, and not necessarily a place of punishment. Allegorically, those who do not bear fruit on the vine of Christ are “withered … thrown into the fire, and burned!” (John 15:1-7), thus they are destroyed and reduced to ashes, and the burning may be experienced as a torment (Luke 16:24).

The introduction to the EOB notes that the “King James Version caused lasting confusion” by erroneously translating both “Hades” and “Gehenna” as “Hell” (EOB at xii ff). Hades can be understood by looking to the ancient Greco-Roman understanding of Hades, which was not wildly different to the ancient Germanic “Hel”. For Old English speakers translating “Hades” to “Hel” would have been a reasonable thing to do, but in subsequent centuries a shift in meaning occurred, as “Hel” became “Hell”. Hell in modern English is profoundly contaminated by ideas that derive from the “Gehenna of fire” (Mark 9:47).

“… Gehenna (the Valley of Hinnom) became a place of forbidden religious practice … [that a King of Judah put an end to, but centuries later by] Christ’s time, the valley had become a garbage dump that smouldered ceaselessly … (The Orthodox Study Bible at 1286)”

When fire burns it destroys (or transforms) – it does not continually hold what it is destroying in burning agony, rather the burning agony is the part of the transitory process of destruction.

“Do not be afraid of those who [can] kill the body but are not able to kill the soul. Rather, fear him who is able to destroy both body and soul in Gehenna [Matt 10:28].”

There is nothing in the Gospels which approximate to the statement that “ungodly men and the devils … will … be tormented without end” after death as Luther held (Art XVII, Augsburg Confession). A doctrine of this overwhelming significance would surely be more clearly stated by Christ if this was in fact his teaching. It is true that Jesus speaks of “eternal punishment”, in contrast to “eternal life” (Matt 25:46), but is not the permanent destruction of the soul an eternal punishment? Moreover, is it not self-evident that the loving God described by Christ is wholly inconsistent with the notion of a deity who would create a world system in which the vast bulk of humanity are destined to be “tormented without end”?

Other possibilities in relation to the doctrine of “eternal punishment” are that the fire is a metaphor for the suffering the human heart experiences when it is separated from the realm of God, or when the soul is united with the realm of God but rejects God so entirely that the soul experiences this union as a punishment (perhaps a little like being stuck in a bad marriage). Alternately, the Gehenna of fire may be one that purifies the soul (ancient Greco-Romans believed fire to be pure, which is why the Goddess of fire was thought to be a virgin), though the experience is transitorily painful, and once purified that soul has become so completely other than what it was that it can be said to have been destroyed (that is the “eternal punishment” aspect). This newly purified soul may now be ready for a new life (yes, I am hinting at the possibility of purgatory, or even something akin to Buddhist rebirth – which should not be confused with reincarnation or the transmigration of souls wherein the self continues – though no doubt most Christians would reject this proposition, even though they speak of being born again through baptism).

After the apocalypse

From what I can work out, according to the New Testament, the true followers of Christ will, upon death, like Christ, descend to Hades awaiting resurrection into the realm of God, which will occur after the second coming of Christ (Luke 21:27), though possibly the Saints, not least the Virgin Mary, experience the eternal realm of God prior to the second coming because their souls are so elevated. Once resurrected, “they do not marry … instead, they are like angels in heaven” (Mark 12:25).

For those who do not follow Christ the result will eventually be a fiery process of destruction, like Ragnarök, wherein the current world system is destroyed, only to be replaced by another, which will be partially populated by the virtuous who had dwelt in Hades (the parallels with Baldr and Hod emerging from Hel after Ragnarök are striking: see The Prose Edda at 77).

Interestingly, the Lotus Sutra of Mahayana Buddhism – which was contemporaneous with early Christianity, St Thomas likely encountered it in India – also speaks of a fiery end to our current world system (The Threefold Lotus Sutra at 255), though it says that Bodhisattvas will be saved, and so I wonder when Jesus says “I have not come to call the righteous, but the sinners to repentance” (Luke 5:32) is that because the righteous – who may be equated with Bodhisattvas – are already saved?

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth have passed away … The one who sits on the throne said … ‘Behold, I am making all things new … I will give freely from the spring of the water of life. To the one who overcomes, I will give these things … But as for the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic [this may include those who use drugs], idolators, and all liars, their part is in the lake that burns with fire and sulphur, which is the second death [Revelation 21:1-8].”

Conclusion

What I like about Christianity is that it holds out perfection as something that is real and possible to attain (similar to Buddhist enlightenment). The problem is that it also seems extraordinarily difficult – the path looks like one of ascetism to me. There are a great many people who call themselves Christian and take comfort in the notion they will go to heaven when they die, but from my reading of the New Testament most professing Christians won’t make the cut (for they do not truly follow Christ) – and I am not sure I could make the cut either, were I to plunge into baptismal waters. It would take a great deal of spirituality to love what I like to think of the as the Lord of the Cosmos (who I assume is approximate to the Christian God, the Buddhist Gohonzon, and the animating force of truth and creation) more than I love certain people. Though my head is often in the clouds, I am not that elevated, nor can I easily imagine being so, for the goal seems so lofty and I cannot help thinking that this religion, truly followed, is for the hard core. Unless or until I am hard core (which is to say I truly repent of the “things of men” with all my being) I will continue to observe this religion as an outsider – because Christ doesn’t like hypocrites, and neither do I.

Sources:

Augsburg Confession

britannica.com

Eastern / Greek Orthodox New Testament, Newrome Press, 2019 (EOB)

Orthodox Christian Prayer Book, Newrome Press, 2019

The Orthodox Study Bible, Thomas Nelson, 2008 (based on the NKJV)

The Prose Edda, Penguin Books, 2005

The Threefold Lotus Sutra, Kosei Publishing, 2011

Written by M' Sentia Figula (aka Freki), find me at neo polytheist and romanpagan.wordpress.com