In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. (Gen 1:1)
It also says,
(Joh 1:3) All things were made by him [logos]; and without him [logos] was not any thing made that was made.
(Joh 1:14) 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.
This second verse is specifically speaking about Jesus, so what is implied here is that since God created all things, then Jesus is God.
However, there is a problem with this logic. Jesus himself said,
(Mat 28:18) …All power has been given me in heaven and upon earth. (Darby)
The word “given” is the key word here. The past participle of the verb means something happened at a definite time in the past. 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 God is eternal and obviously, Jesus was given the power by God. Since Jesus, himself is a creation of God, then he couldn’t have created the heavens and the earth (unless he did it with the power God gave him — but then he would be God).
- Jesus didn’t always have all power — not eternal.
- God gave the power to Jesus — is not God.
- Since not eternal and not God, he is a creation of God.
- Since he is a creation and not God he did not create all things, unless he was co-creator with the power God gave him.
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, together with the holy spirit. However, the word that is translated into the “Word”, refering to Jesus is “Logos”.
In Heraclitus’ philosophy the Logos was the everlasting Word of God (around 400 BC) acording to which all things are one.
The underlying law of nature also manifests itself as a moral law for human beings. (Internet Encylopedia of Philosophy – http://www.iep.utm.edu/heraclit/)
Joh 1:1 In the beginning was the Word [Logos], and the Word [Logos] was with God, and the Word [Logos] was God.
Joh 1:2 The same [Logos] was in the beginning with God.
Joh 1:3 All things were made by him [Logos]; and without him [Logos] was not any thing made that was made.
Joh 1:14 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.
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
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 also 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.”
Heraklitus
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.
We know from the church fathers that the “correctors” and others inserted forgeries into the gospels. Therefore, the idea of the “Logos” is extremely likely a fabrication inserted there by the Greeks philosophers who were in one way or another responsible for giving us the gospel of John in the form it is in today.
We also know that the book of John, being so much different than the other (synoptic) gospels, and was subject to so much controversy almost was not admitted into the cannonized 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 the same city of Heraclitus, the Greek philosopher.
Conclusion
Therefore, there is no trinity. Since there is no trinity, it was God who created all things and not Jesus. If Jesus is not God, then God created the heavens and the earth and not Jesus, since 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 extremely likely that the first chapter of John calling Jesus the “Logos” of God is a forgery based on Greek mythology and philosophy inserted by the Greeks.
Since we have no original manuscripts to compare the cononical gospel of John to, there is no way to prove one way or the other that the first chapter of John is ligitimate or not, as we only have copies of copies. But if it could be proven that John chapter 1 is a Greek fraud, then the strongest argument supporting the doctrine of the trinity would fall flat. One way or the other, since there is no way to definitely prove or disprove this, the only thing we have to lean on is belief — belief in what seems to be the most logically to be true.