War Goddess.net - Part III: Logos and Nous, by Sannion

The Ivy-Covered Cross, by Sannion

Part III: Logos and Nous

John opens his Gospel with a beautiful hymn to the Logos, the creative power through which "All things were made; and without him was not any thing made that was made." (John 1:3) Heraklitos was the first philosopher to speak of the Logos, a formative and shaping power in the world. The concept was taken up by a series of Greek philosophers, finding it's most devoted advocates among the Stoics. For them, Logos was not just God acting upon the material world; it was identical with him. This pantheistic fusion of God and Logos anticipates the line of John, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." (1:1) John goes on to say that the Logos was "made flesh, and dwelt among us" as the man Jesus Christ (1:13) - something that no Stoic would have conceived of.

As early as Homer, another ordering principle was suggested - Nous, or Mind. Anaxagoras speaks of Nous in terms very similar to that of the Logos, for he calls it the "efficient cause of the general order in the universe." (Aristotle, Physics 203) Parmenides affirmed that all things are contained within Nous as within a membrane (On Nature) but Basilides tells us that Logos sprang from Nous, the first born of the Unborn Father. (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.24:3) What makes that especially interesting is that Macrobius says that Dionysos is the Material Mind or Nous itself, which he discerns from the God's name: Dionusos, he says, comes from Dios nous "the Mind of Zeus." (Saturnalia 1:18) This is bolstered by Plato in the Timaeus when he says that there is a Goblet of Dionysos which the souls are given to drink from, in order that they may imbibe the intelligence (noes) of all things. Yet more evidence that Jesus (Logos) may have sprung from Dionysos (Nous).

Part IV: Birth and Persecution

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