I'm sure you mean there was never a time in which Jesus did not exist
.
WHOOOPS!!! Yes, indeed.
This is going to sound pathetic, but I have mild dyslexia, in that I sometimes say right when I mean left, and sometimes negate the wrong thing in a sentence. But I try to check for it. And to get a statement of Nicene theology backwards is, well, super-embarasssing.
There was indeed never a time in which Jesus did not exist.
My question is about Jesus, after his resurrection. Do you believe that the Logos has existence beside being in the body of Jesus? After all, the Logos is omnipresent, right?
Pretty much. A better and more accurate way to express it, which I will explain in detail, is that Jesus Christ is omnipresent, and always has been, because but has had a body since His incarnation.
The explanation for this is as follows:
Jesus Christ is the Logos, and Jesus is omnipresent
in or from* his divine nature. On that note, as you are doubtless aware, the Nicene Creed and Nicene Christianity asserts that Jesus Christ is fully human and fully divine.
Furthermore, the Christology of the Council of Ephesus, the Council of Chalcedon, St. Cyril, Mar Babai the Great, indeed, even Nestorius, who maintained the idea of a personal union in Jesus Christ uniting his humanity and divinity, Jesus Christ and the Logos are one person.
Now, according to the theology of both the Chalcedonian churches (Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, Lutheran, etc) and the Miaphysite churches, which is to say, the Oriental Orthodox (Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, Ethiopian, Indian), one of which, the Malankara Independent Syrian Church, is in communion with the Mar Thoma Syrian Church, which is a member of the Anglican Communion, we have the principle of
communicatio idiomatum, which means that because we believe that the human nature and divine nature of Jesus Christ are in hypostatic union, any attributes proper to one are communicated to the other. Thus, anything we can say about His divine nature or His human nature, we can also say about the other, which may seem paradoxical, and indeed, is paradoxical, but it is a beautiful paradox in the dispensation, or the economy of salvation, as the Greek theologians call it, because our salvation is a direct result of God the Son assuming our humanity and restoring it as the New Adam. This does not work with Nestorian Christology, which is what we want to avoid, as it prevents, among other things, the Theopaschite interpretation of the Passion, which is so beautiful and so preferrable to apthartodocetism.**
So, if we apply the vital principle of
communicatio idiomatum, we can say that the Son of Man is everywhere present in His humanity, and conversely, we can say that God exists in a specific human Person.
The other shared doctrine between the Chalcedonian churches and the Oriental Orthodox churches is a belief that when He became incarnate, our Lord’s humanity and divinity have been united without change, confusion, separation or division. So He is not a hybrid of God and man, but both God and Man at the same time, and there has not been any separation of His divinity and humanity “for the twinkling of an eye” as the Coptic Orthodox liturgy elegantly puts it, nor has there been a change in the relationship of His human and divine natures.
So, because of this, we can say, as I said in my initial answer to you, that yes, the Logos is omnipresent, but the Logos is Jesus Christ; Jesus Christ has had a human body and been fully human from the moment He was conceived in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary, but has also been fully God for all eternity, of the same essence as the Father who begat Him before all ages, and the Holy Spirit, Who proceeds from the Father*** eternally.
For decades I read the angel's words to the Virgin Mary the same way you do taking the Holy Spirit = the Power of God.
I need to apologize profusely for having inadvertently given the impression that that was my belief. I don’t believe the Holy Spirit is a “thing” like the “Power of God”, rather, I believe in God the Holy Spirit as the third person of the Holy Trinity, in an eternal union of perfect love with God the Father and God the Son. This is what I believe the Nicene Creed teaches in its Constantinopolitan revision of 381 (which is the version you would have heard in an Anglican church), when it refers to the Holy Spirit as the “the Lord, the giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father***, and is worshipped together with the Father and Son, and who spoke by the Prophets. I further believe that He is the Paraclete, sent by the Son into the world on Pentecost to dwell within the faithful believers, who have been grafted onto the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic church.
So, the Holy Spirit sent Christ into the World, by causing the conception of His physical Body in the Womb of the glorious Virgin Mary (of particular beauty is the Byzantine, Coptic and Syriac Orthodox hymnography concerning this, particularly the Khiak Psalmody read by the Coptic Church in Advent, which corresponds to the month of Khiak in the Coptic Calendar****). And Christ then sent the Holy Spirit into the World on Pentecost. The Holy Spirit facilitated the incarnation of our Savior, who then sent us the same Holy Spirit so as to help us preserve the Salvation Christ had secured for us through his destruction of death on the Cross and in His resurrection, and all of this was according to the will of the Father, who is the unoriginate source of the Godhead and whose love for us is infinite.
But the Power of God can also be understood to mean God the Father, as distinct from the HS.
Luk 22:69 But from now on, the Son of Man is seated at the right hand of the power of God.”
And the Power of God can be understood to mean the Son of God. Currently, this is my preferred interpretation.
1Co 1:24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
What do you think?
You’re not wrong in your preferred interpretation, although I would caution against an overly broad application of it. Rather, I think a purposeful, subtle interpretation is required that acknowledges Christ as the Word of God and the Power and Reason that overcame sin and death and the evil one through His passion.
So to that end, let us consider: The Holy Spirit is God, and as such, is omnipotent, but the Father and Son are also God, and also omnipotent. What St. Paul is talking about in 1 Corinthians 1:24 must be read in the context of 1 Corinthians 1:23 , the preaching of Christ crucified, which is to the Jews and Gentiles who have not accepted Christ a stumbling block, and madness, respectively, but to us, Christ is the incarnate Word of God, by whom all things were made (John 1:1-18), and the word Logos means, among other things, reason, and thus, Christ on the Cross embodied the Power of God, trampling down death by death, and the wise rationale of God in doing this, because it was by the rational will of God that Christ was Crucified.
Additionally, here are the relevant footnotes from the Orthodox Study Bible*****, which I particularly like:
1:18 Why is the message of the cross . . . foolishness to unbelievers? “It is a mark of them that perish not to recognize the things which lead to salvation” (St. John Chrysostom). We who bear witness to Christ must not be discouraged when those outside of Him mock, for so did once even Paul himself. Being saved, present tense, refers to the process by which the Cross transforms us with the power of God.
1:22 To those who request a sign, the Church offers one: the Cross! The Cross is to be adored, for wherever the sign may be, there Jesus will be.
1:24 Since Christ is the power and wisdom of God the Father—the brightness of the Father's glory (Hebrews 1:3), the substantial and perfect Image of the invisible God—where He is, there is the uncreated and saving grace of God. His Cross restores man to immortality and stirs up desire for the things of heaven.”
I want to thank you
@Andrewn for this intellectually stimulating reply, which has served as the basis for a tremendously interesting theological study.
Now, time for the footnotes:
* The sole difference really between Miaphysite and Chalcedonian Christology could, I would argue, be reduced to a question of whether our Incarnate Lord exists in a hypostatic union from the divine and human natures, which is the Miaphysite/Oriental Orthodox view, and the doctrine espoused by St. Cyril of Alexandria
contra Nestorius, or, alternatively, that our Lord exists in a hypostatic union in the divine and human natures, which was the view set out in the Tome of Leo, adopted by the Council of Chalcedon.
** Apthartodocetism is a non-Theopaschite interpretation of Chalcedon that is too complex to explain here, but I will post a thread if you desire; Emperor Justinian seemed to vacillate between Apthartodocetism and Theopaschitism. Note that Apthartodocetism is completely unrelated to Docetism, the first century heresy associated with Cerinthus, which several of the Apostles criticize implicitly in their epistles (for example, there is an anti-Docetist subtext in 1 Corinthians 1:23-24); whereas Docetism is contrary to the ChristianForums statement of faith, Apthartodocetism is not, but is a valid Nicene belief, but one which, like Nestorianism, Monothelitism or Iconoclasm, is one that most of the traditional churches reject.
*** It should be evident that I reject the filioque, as do all of the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Churches, and the Assyrian Church of the East, because the idea of double procession of the Holy Swpirit has a depersonalizing effect on our beloved Paraklete, Who is a divine person deserving the same worship as the Father and Son, and whose mysterious actions in this world, together with those of the Heavenly Host of Angels, serve to protect Christians from the machinations of the Evil One, and at the same time constitute the primary means by which we encounter and experience the grace of God.
**** The Coptic Calendar is the basis for the Julian Calendar; both measure the year as 365.25 days in length, which turned out to be slightly inaccurate (but the Gregorian Calendar is not perfectly accurate either). The main difference between the Coptic and Julian Calendar is that the former has a radically different configuration of months, including one very short month at the end of the year which varies in length like February.
*****My appreciation for the Orthodox Study Bible is derived from the fact that I love and follow the theology of the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox churches, and that I consider my present vocation as propagating Eastern and Oriental Orthodox spirituality into the Protestant world, after the example set by John Wesley.
