The verses in John chapter 1 are supposedly to be speaking about Jesus. So what is implied here, according to Christology, is that since God created all things, then Jesus is God. However, there is a problem with this logic.
Genesis: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. (Gen 1:1)
John: All things were made by him [logos]; and without him [logos] was not any thing made that was made.
And the Word [logos] was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth. (Jn 1:3, 4)
Jesus himself said, …All power has been given me in heaven and upon earth. (Mat 28:18 – Darby)
Jesus: a Creation of God
The word “given” is the key word here. The past participle of the verb means something happened at some indefinite time BEGINNING in the past (grammatically speaking).
This means that before the time he was GIVEN the power, Jesus did not have all power. Therefore, Jesus had to be a creation of God, and not God himself. Since Jesus himself is a creation of God, then he couldn’t have created the heavens and the earth — God created the heavens and the Earth.
Thus:
- Jesus didn’t always have all power — he is not eternal.
- God gave the power to Jesus — he is not God.
- Jesus is not eternal and not God — he is a creation of God.
- Since Jesus is a creation and not God — he could not have created all things.
The Origin of the Concept of the Logos
The first chapter of John is the basis and the most “concrete evidence” that Trinitarians have of the triune god, or the belief that God and Jesus were one in the same substance, together with the Holy Spirit. However, the word that is translated into the “Word”, referring to Jesus is “Logos”.
In Heraclitus’ philosophy, the Logos was the everlasting Word [Logos] of God (around 400 BCE) according to which, all things are one. The underlying law of nature also manifests itself as a moral law for human beings. (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy – https://www.iep.utm.edu/heraclit/)
In the beginning was the Word [Logos], and the Word [Logos] was with God, and the Word [Logos] was God.
The same [Logos] was in the beginning with God.
All things were made by him [Logos]; and without him [Logos] was not any thing made that was made.
And the Word [Logos] was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth. (Jn 1:1-3,14)
The concept of the “Logos” is deep-rooted in Greek philosophy as far back as Heraclitus, a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher (535-c. 475 BCE)
Philo (20 BC – 50 AD), a Hellenized Jew, used the term Logos to mean an intermediary divine being, or demiurge. Philo followed the Platonic distinction between imperfect matter and perfect idea, and therefore intermediary beings were necessary to bridge the enormous gap between God and the material world.
The Logos was the highest of these intermediary beings, and was called by Philo “the first-born of God.” Stoicism was a philosophical school which flourished between the 3rd century BCE and about the 3rd century CE. It began among the Greeks and became the major philosophy of the Roman Empire before declining with the rise of Christianity in the 3rd century. Throughout their long tenure the Stoics believed that the major tenets of their philosophy derived from the thought of Heraclitus, the Greek philosopher.
According to Heraclitus: “The idea that all things come to pass in accordance with this Logos”
Philo wrote that: “the Logos of the living God is the bond of everything, holding all things together and binding all the parts, and prevents them from being dissolved and separated.”
The Platonic Ideas were located within the Logos, but the Logos also acted on behalf of God in the physical world. In particular, the Angel of the Lord in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) was identified with the Logos by Philo, who also said that the Logos was God’s instrument in the creation of the universe. This plainly shows that Greek mythology or philosophy was mixed in with the writings of the gospels.
The concept of the “Logos” did not originate with Christianity, but with Greek philosophy over 400 years before the birth of Jesus.
We know from the church fathers that the “correctors” and others inserted forgeries into the gospels. The idea of the “Logos” is very likely a piece of Greek philosophy interpolated by writers who were in one way or another responsible for giving us the gospel of John in the form it is in today.
We are told that the book of John, being so much different than the other (synoptic) gospels, and was subject to so much controversy that it was almost not admitted into the canonized version of the bible.
The book of John contains the greatest amount of the basic orthodox views of all the gospels and there is much doubt about who the actual author(s) of this book was.
As curious as this may sound the book of John was believed to have been written in Ephesus, which is the same city of Heraclitus, the Greek philosopher. This indicates the interpolation of Greek philosophy into the teachings of Jesus — years after his death.
Conclusion
According to Philo Jesus is the Logos it and, as it says in John chapter 1 he calls the Logos “the first-born of God”. If he is the first-born, then he is a creation of God. Therefore, Jesus is not eternal and cannot be God. If Jesus had been given all power — he didn’t always have the power. So he is a creation of God and could not have been the creator of heaven and Earth.
The idea of the “Word” in the first chapter of John about the Logos is absent in the other gospels; it is a Greek concept, foreign to the early Christians and is definitely not a part of the gospels taught by Jesus and the apostles. Theoretically, the Logos would be (translated) the Word, a concept which only exists in Greek philosophy.
In the beginning, it was God who created the heavens and the earth and not the man Jesus. Jesus is not a part of some theoretical trinity. With all the evidence that the Logos was obviously a part of Greek philosophy, it is very likely that the first chapter of John calling Jesus the “Logos” of God is an interpolation based on Greek philosophy inserted by Greeks.
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