Questions regarding the Logos and the Incarnation

[TruthSeeker319]

Hello everyone, tonight in adoration I stumbled across two questions that rose from my heart while praying in thanksgiving about Christ’s life.

First question is about the nature of the Second Person of the Trinity, the Logos. What was the Logos before the incarnation?
What did he do?
What was he?

I also have a second question regarding this, but this one deals with time: how could the Second Person become man? God (outside of time) entered into time. Of course this means that there was a before incarnation Second Person, and then his nature changed when he became man (hypostatic union, etc). However, it seems to me that something can only pre-exist another thing in relation to time, but the pre-incarnate Logos (was?)(is?)(will be?) outside of time. I am so confused.

Please help.

 

[clem456]

The divine second person does not change. He assumes human nature in the fullness of time.

 

[Servant19]

Hello everyone, tonight in adoration I stumbled across two questions that rose from my heart while praying in thanksgiving about Christ’s life.

First question is about the nature of the Second Person of the Trinity, the Logos. What was the Logos before the incarnation?
What did he do?
What was he?

I also have a second question regarding this, but this one deals with time: how could the Second Person become man? God (outside of time) entered into time. Of course this means that there was a before incarnation Second Person, and then his nature changed when he became man (hypostatic union, etc). However, it seems to me that something can only pre-exist another thing in relation to time, but the pre-incarnate Logos (was?)(is?)(will be?) outside of time. I am so confused.

Please help.

I have answers to these questions but it goes beyond the bounds of Christian teaching to share them. I do not want anything to come across as prosthletyzing

.

 

[1ke]

Hello everyone, tonight in adoration I stumbled across two questions that rose from my heart while praying in thanksgiving about Christ’s life.

First question is about the nature of the Second Person of the Trinity, the Logos. What was the Logos before the incarnation?
What did he do?
What was he?

I also have a second question regarding this, but this one deals with time: how could the Second Person become man? God (outside of time) entered into time. Of course this means that there was a before incarnation Second Person, and then his nature changed when he became man (hypostatic union, etc). However, it seems to me that something can only pre-exist another thing in relation to time, but the pre-incarnate Logos (was?)(is?)(will be?) outside of time. I am so confused.

Please help.

The Logos is another name of God, the second person of the Trinity.

I would encourage you to pick up a copy of Theology for Beginners by Frank Sheed.

 

[carefullytread]

Remember that the Logos is the Word of God. If God is “the very act of ‘to be’ itself”, the Logos is “that which creates order out of chaos”. The Logos is writ large all over the Book of Genesis. It is the Word of God that creates after all.

A favorite passage of mine, because it hits all of the Trinity but in a pre-Trinitarian way, is Psalm 33:6

By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host.

And remember that in Hebrew, the Holy Spirit is equated with the Breath of God.

Orthodox (small ‘o’, just capitalized because it’s the first word in a sentence) Christianity teaches that the Word and God are consubstantial. Arian Christianity taught that God created the Logos first in order to create the world. For the Gnostic Christians, the Logos was the masculine partner of the feminine Sophia, wisdom.

It’s a very interesting historical development and part of the way to understand how Christians came to believe what they do about the Logos, and the Trinity more generally, is to understand the history of how different ideas were present in the early Church and why they were rejected.

The Nicene creed doesn’t say very much about God the Father, but has a long explanation of our Christology. Why? It’s because there weren’t lots of heresies surrounding who God the Father was, but many ideas about who Jesus was that were being rejected. The whole “begotten, not made” bit is specifically saying “We reject Arianism”.

Certainly worth researching!

 

[TruthSeeker319]

Thank you for all your answers.