“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him…In Him was life, and the life was the light of men….And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:1-4,14)
The key term is “Word,” which translates as the Greek Logos. The problem for us is that a word is something written and heard—but Logos is a great deal more. More than a sound, it is reason, the ability to think and communicate, which we share with divinity, marking us as different from all other creatures. Beyond even that, the gospel is explaining a glorious phenomenon—the Logos-Word is a Being, both divine and human, the Son of God Who “was in the beginning with God” and in all ways was God along with the Father and the Holy Spirit. The second glorious phenomenon is that the Son of God—Logos—“Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” Note that Word is capitalized to show it to be not a mere sound or set of letters. Note also the term “flesh.” The Word did not simply become a body and take up human nature or appear as a human being. “Flesh” is clearly having a corpus like our own, born as a human from the womb of a human mother. Incarnation is the proper term, and it is the reason for so many icons of the Theotokos [God bearer] holding in her arms the Son of God who is since His birth from Mary the Son of Man. Here is a profound mystery requiring understanding after reflection and meditation.
This profound doctrine of Christianity created many problems both in the early Church and in today’s world, with the prominence of Islam imposed in radical form on western civilization. The Orthodox Church is hardly a stranger to this religion, having been victimized by it for fourteen centuries. When the Florida minister announced a Koran-burning event, the Muslim world went ballistic, to use a common cliché. Also, why target a journalist in Denmark for death simply for having drawn a cartoon of their prophet Mohammed?
To understand both radical reactions, we must comprehend what the phrase “Word of God” means to them and to us. Jesus Christ as Son of God become Son of Man born from Mary the Mother of God as stated in the Prologue of St. John’s gospel is anathema to Muslims. To them the Word of God was revealed to the prophets of the Old Testament, even to Jesus Christ, who they accept as a worthy prophet; but in that God-Allah revealed His Word to Mohammed after Jesus, that Word is the last and ultimate revelation of God’s will. God’s Word to Mohammed’s mind conveyed in his writings is the ultimate communication. In that Mohammed wrote in Arabic, only that language is authentic. In the beginning of Islam, the attitude towards Judaism and Christianity was less rigid. They also were religions of the Holy Bible and worthy of respect; however, in time their attitude ossified, as we witness today.
The only expression of Allah’s words through Mohammed is in writing. Texts of the Koran became a dominant feature of the faith, hence calligraphy competed with and when possible eradicated the beauty of Orthodox Christian iconography, as we witness wherever Islam conquered Orthodox Christianity. The Koran for them is the Word of God, in stark contrast to Christianity, where Jesus Christ Himself is the Word of God. Western Christianity never developed the expression of the Incarnate Christ with such radiance, light and beauty as in Orthodoxy, not even in the Roman Catholic Church, and certainly not in all forms of Protestantism, who as iconoclasts align themselves with Judaism and even Islam.