John begins his gospel, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1, 1). This is news that persists to this day. We know, we’ve heard a lot, just like the sequel, but it can be absorbed today. Maybe if we just aren’t on the usual track.
When John describes these matters, the urban and cultural situation at the time reveals an important concept: the concept of Logos, which John uses here to attest to the meaning of a broad context. In his interpretation of the Bible, Logos = word. Then it was huge news. The religious and philosophical changes taking place in the culture were already ready by the time the Bible set out on its journey to conquer the world. The polytheistic belief in Greek philosophy was already weak and did not give people answers. At first the Romans took their own creed, otherwise existing as a copy of the Greek pantheon, and took seriously the “liberal” of the Greeks with suspicion. But with the coming of Christ, all traditional polytheistic beliefs were exhausted and lost their relevance. Parallel to this growing void of confession, eastern mystical religions are pouring into the Roman Empire, to fill the void in the “ancient deities”. As they say beautifully and symbolically, the throne of the West defeats the East, but the altar of the East defeats the West.
Then the Logos signify an earthly existence, a mind, and to some extent the idea that the Logos is the spirit that creates the world, is present in everything, controls everything, and sustains the entire universe. He might be kind of a person, but he appears pretty blurry. Just imagine: we are in a culture where ancient religions are starting to fade, lose their relevance, people are spiritually hungry where mystical religions flow from the East, and there is an idea and belief of Logos in the public consciousness like OK! Then John says: “In the beginning was the Word” (John 1:1), “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). It was a powerful statement at the time because it answers every question in just a few sentences and the fog immediately rises. It is a reaction to the weakness of ancient idols, to the mystical nebulae of the East, to the occult conjecture of the soul of the world (logos), and suddenly it appears sharp and contradictory: the Logos has become flesh. It was a Christmas message for an era that became an all-encompassing message.
I recently (about half a year ago) read a glossary from Ádám Szabados about how far behind public awareness of the true results of science is. It was about the fact that most people in Western civilization today are materialists and think that they are doing all this on an unquestionable scientific basis. They say there is nothing but material. But the scientific theories of Einstein and Bohr have long gone beyond the imagination of the scientist of classical matter. Both the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics talk about excited energy packets, their interactions, and that what we consider solids is just an aggregate state of billions of particles in constant motion. But that is already the past, science has gone further. This is because scientists have also discovered that these same particles, and the laws that govern them, are nothing but “information”. From this perspective, the whole universe is one vast web of information, big and small! Of course, besides, there is something that the tools of science cannot measure and monitor: the soul. An extended network of information such as energy, space and time – the universe – is far from it! Rather, the spiritual universe is greater, and this is what the Epistle of the Hebrews says: “The visible was created from the invisible” (Heb 11:3). Science can only “see” the “measurable,” but what comes of it is the larger, invisible universe, the spiritual realm.
Many scientists have already asked themselves: If information is of an intellectual (rather than physical) quality, where does the information come from? For information as an intellectual quality is nothing but something that has a soul, but much more than that: one can think of it and create it.
It is amazing how modern the concept of logos is! Well, even in the interpretation of John and his gospel, which also tells us who he is! Already in the first sentence: The Word was a person, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God Himself. And this word became flesh in the world that he created. For all his creation is with him, “All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made.” (John 1, 3). The person who conceived and created the world of information has come to the information network (the world). So who are we talking about?
It’s everything! Without it, the world will wither and wither, and there will be a clock in everything that counts down and eventually reaches zero and stops. It was not always so, that one day, according to the biblical news, nothing withered: “In him was life, and life was the light of people.” (John 1, 4). However, there is now an “expiration time code” in everything, including our bodies! Our time is up! How many of us have gone in the last two years, whether in covid or elsewhere! We are not waiting for a mythical or mythical hero, we are not dreamers, we are waiting for Christ, EVERYTHING! All that is good in life: it is from him. Everything dies without it. It has already come. He is now praying for us at the right hand of the Father, the center of great power. And suddenly, when the time comes, he will stand up and then there is silence, and then come back strong. We are not waiting for the end, but a good conclusion as promised.
