“In the beginning was the Word.”
This is the powerful mysterious first sentence of St. John’s gospel, the most distinctive and spiritual of the four gospels.
Throughout the centuries, there have been many interpretations of its meaning. Some have said that because the Word is identified with God later in the passage, then it must be the manifesting power of God. Or that the Word is Jesus himself, because further down St. John writes “the Word became flesh.” Others have asserted that the Word is the“mediator” between the World and God (or the Visible and Invisible worlds). Others that the Word is simply the New Testament, “the Word of God,” which exists eternally outside Time. The more philosophically inclined have suggested that the Word is the Divine Will, or even Wisdom.
However, these interpretations are based on theological concepts that were developed later in Christianity. St. John wrote in Greek and must have had the Greek meaning in mind. “Word” is the English translation of the Greek “Logos,” which means both “Reason” and “Language” (well, words). But Reason and Language are actually related, and therefore this is how the early Christian philosophers such as Philo of Alexandria interpreted it: Logos is both the immanent reason or thought residing in the mind (logos endiathetos) and also the spoken word proceeding from thought – the Logos uttered (logos proforikos), i.e., language.
Abstract thought and its subsequent formulation into the abstraction of language could be said to distinguish man from animals. Language – words and sentences – is the defining characteristic of Man, and this is connected, as per Philo, with our rational thought. With this in mind, St. John’s Logos, in both of its related meanings, may be understood as the creation of Man qua rational being and capable of subsequently understanding the “Word of God,” i.e., the teachings of the New Testament expressed in language. So, whenever I see Michelangelo’s portrayal of the Creation in his majestic fresco in theSistine Chapel, where God extends his hand to create Adam, I see inthis effortless touch the making of rational Man, Homo sapiens sapiens – the first living being with the ability to both think and talk.
But all these allegoric phrases and symbols are not meant to be understood equally by everyone. Deep down, we read, listen, think for ourselves, and end up creating our own images. Some imagine the Creation as a huge explosion, the Big Bang, and may hold in their mind’s eye the image of a nuclear explosion. Others, like Michelangelo, imagine an anthropomorphic God creating a world out of nothingness or out of a part of himself.
I do not believe in the concept of a Personal God, i.e., that whatever Reality or Being or Principle lies behind the visible world is to be personified. I feel closer to the Buddhists in this respect. But having been raised Christian, and being immersed in the European Christian world (both Western and Eastern), I cannot but occasionally visualize the Absolute, the Ground of Being, as the “Old Man in the Heavens” who created this world. In these instances, I have my own image of theCreation as a composite of St. John’s famous sentence, the divine touch in Michelangelo’s fresco, and … of the modern technology of voice recognition that I have been following over the past twenty years! I think God extended his hand, said, “Let there be a World with Man init!” and a most advanced (well, … Divine) voice recognition system understood exactly what He meant and immediately materialized theorder! If I have Amazon’s Alexa opening my hotel room’s curtains and dimming the lights on command, God definitely had a much more advanced system! In my imagination, St. John’s Word is actually a literal word, setting off the Creation – probably it wasn’t even asentence but a single command, such as “Create!” or “Become!” God gave “a verbal order,” and a gargantuan creative power or cosmic machine or simply a set of beautiful natural laws created a world that could subsequently be understood, admired, and feasted upon by rational beings capable themselves of language. Millennia later, these beings would themselves create, albeit on a much smaller scale, voice recognition systems that would turn their commands into reality. Therefore, paraphrasing my own understanding of St. John’s famous phrase: “In the beginning was rational man and his strongest tool – language.”
My active imagination’s conception of a Divine Voice uttering a literal word is bolstered by two notables: Noam Chomsky and Helen Keller. The world-renowned intellectual Noam Chomsky is a linguist who has made great contributions to the field. In 1957, he proposed a theory of universal grammar in which he showed that humans have an innate, genetically determined language faculty that knows the rules of language. This explains why children pick up language with almost no guidance as to the rules of grammar. In other words, the ability to acquire language is already hardwired in our mental makeup. Theparents may trigger this innate mechanism, but the ability is already there and takes over the process of the acquisition of language. This is not dissimilar to Jung’s theory that all humans share a Collective Unconscious that is supposedly present within us at birth. The Word (i.e., language), according to Chomsky, is not actually “given” to us by society. It is there, as St. John says, at the very “beginning.”
But for me, the strongest proof of the connection between Logos and Language, Thought and Words, has been provided by Helen Keller, who was born blind, deaf, and mute. In her adult life, she would become the first and still the only person who, born with such an enormous disability, learned to communicate both in writing and verbally and who also managed to obtain a university degree. But where did she start in the first place? Or rather, how could she ever start? Her first teacher, Anne Sullivan, spelled words into Helen’s hand and tried to help the young girl relate letters and words with objects. At first, Helen thought her teacher was just playing agame, and although she memorized some symbols, she failed to understand what was truly going on. But on April 5, 1887, Anne took Helen to an old water mill, put Helen’s hand under the stream, and began spelling “w-a-t-e-r” into the palm of her other hand. This is how Helen describes in her biography what happened:
As the cool stream gushed over one hand, she [Anne] spelled into my other hand the word water, first slowly, then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten – a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that “w-a-t-e-r” meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free! There were barriers still, it is true, but barriers that could in time be swept away.
From the understanding of this single word, Helen Keller went on to master the English language, forever transcending her dark and mute world to become one of the twentieth century’s greatest figures. In this extraordinary passage, she also talks of the “consciousness of something forgotten,” which is in harmony with Chomsky’s theory. And she characterizes her first word as a “living word,” alluding to theability of language to give a new life to things. Language reorganizes the world anew and gives meaning to experience. Words are not just symbols corresponding to things or ideas. They define the whole experience of being human. Each new word that enters our vocabulary is accompanied by a new world of meanings, a new world of possibilities, a new life.
Most of our vocabulary is acquired at a young age, and we probably experience wonder with each new word we learn along the way – even if our wonder is not of the same order of magnitude as Helen Keller’s breakthrough. By the time we reach adulthood, we become jaded, and many even find it annoying to have to learn new words and improve their vocabulary. The magic of the acquisition of language seems to fade away, and the fascination with words is gradually relegated to thefew literary-minded individuals and professionals. (Of course, we always have the ability to reconnect with this magic by deciding to learn a new foreign language – a fascinating learning process that simulates to a great extent that of the acquisition of our mother tongue.) Yet we are fortunate to be living in an era where many great technological discoveries continually enter our life and lead to monumental changes in the way we work, communicate, and understand the world. Our forefathers may have been lucky to have experienced a single new discovery or invention in their lifetime; we experience one almost every year! And each one of these comes with anew word. Sometimes it is a new and strange word; sometimes it is afamiliar one that is used with a completely new meaning.
As someone who has turned 60, I have experienced a number of magical words that opened new worlds for me. Growing up at thebeginning of the space age, I found the most fascinating words of theera were “rocket” and “astronaut.” I was so mesmerized by the scenes of astronauts in their blazing uniforms walking on the moon that I had decided to become an astronaut – a dream I kind of materialized later in life! In high school, I recall the day someone first brought in a“calculator.” When I finally bought mine, I would carry it with me all day in school. Then there was the “Walkman,” the first small portable cassette player with headphones. This was the first instance of a device that we would carry with us wherever we went (who could have then conceived of an iPhone!). Now one could listen to his favorite music while walking or running, in the park, on trains and buses. Then came the word “computer.” I first encountered it in the university, where we learned to do some simple programming. A machine could for the first time be instructed to perform various custom-made tasks to serve its master. And of course, this was followed soon by the “mobile phone” and later on “the internet” and the “smartphone” that would allow us to have instant access to all human knowledge.
Each new word was accompanied by a family of other new words that revealed and delineated a new world. It seemed like every new technological and scientific discovery created a new universe of endless possibilities. And central to the creative act of each new Creation wasthe appearance, the utterance of the new word – a word (computer, internet, voice recognition) that carries with it a magic as big as that first creative act of Michelangelo’s divine touch in the Sistine Chapel. Most of you probably still remember Steve Jobs’ triumphant unveiling of the iPhone in 2007, when, before he uttered the word “iPhone,” he meticulously prepared it to make the new word sound even more magical. The new device had become one with the new word that would subsequently transform our lives forever.
In the beginning there is always a word. A literal word, which, written or uttered, springs forth a new world, a new universe, a new Creation. As we now enter and discover a new universe of possibilities ushered in by the new word “AI,” we need to go back to the basics and reconnect with the creative act of language. Being mindful of thegenerative power of new words, we may better identify these creative instances of our privileged life in this twenty-first century. And we can better explore the power inherent in each word before we delve into the new world that each one subsequently engenders.