The Authority of The Word in St. John's Gospel: Charismatic Speech, Narrative Text, Logocentric Metaphysics

Abstract

Few topics are as suited for a celebration of Walter Ong's intellectual accomplishment as the Logos, for the Word in its kaleidoscopic manifestations and intriguing transformations constitutes the center of his lifelong scholarly attention. A masterful practitioner of words himself, he has repatterned the entire paradigm of Logos and logoi toward a new synthesis, the relevance of which extends beyond the broad range of the humanities and social sciences to the so-called hard sciences that shape our technocratic world. The Logos of the fourth gospel has served as a forceful intellectual stimulus both in biblical studies and in philosophical, theological deliberations on language and metaphysics. We wish here to pursue the study of the Logos in these two areas of biblical exegesis and philosophical, theological reflection. Because Ong's work has awakened sensibilities that are all too often left dormant in academia, it is incumbent on us to honor him by thinking through the issue of the Logos in a novel manner.