Logopneumatika in Samaria

Sitting down with my Greek New Testament this morning, I continued my reading in the Gospel according to John. I have been studying and teaching this book rather intensely for the past two years, yet I feel that so much of its simple profundity escapes me. I cannot put it down.

I looked at the latter portion of John's account of Jesus' dealings with the Samaritan woman. This well-known story ends in a pleasantly shocking way: the Samaritan woman becomes the most effective evangelist in the church theretofore. After her conversation with Jesus at the well, she goes back into town and proclaims that she has found the Messiah, the Christ (John 4:29). According to the text, many believed her testimony about Jesus because of her word (dia. to.n lo,gon). God blessed the sharing of her faith.

The response was both immediate and widespread. These neophytes sought out the man himself to determine whether the word spoken by this ignominious woman was as true as they were hoping. The crowd found Jesus and asked him to stay for two days. He did so and thorugh his teaching, many believed because of his word (dia. to.n lo,gon).

Here, the word or the lo,goj is a message about a person that offers life and transformation through faith in its object. From John's prologue (John 1:1-14), we know that the ultimate embodiment of this word is Jesus Christ himself. He is the Word. And yet in God's gracious accomodation to human language, a Gentile woman with a sketchy past is able to speak a word about the Word. The Spirit uses her words about the Word to convert many more than even Peter or John had at that point in their respective ministries. The Spirit led these Samaritan believers to seek the Word himself and in seeking him, they found him trustworthy. They met the Word through the words of a lonely woman.

It is an act of grace that allows human words to mysteriously carry the message of the Word of God made flesh in Jesus Christ. The exact relationship of our words to that Word is unknown to us. I am convinced that univocity and equivocity are not adequate options. A sacramental metaphor is more true to this biblical narrative. The truth of the Word is not mechanically bound to our words, either transubstantially or mimetically. Rather, he is present in our words by the Holy Spirit working in and through them (sacramentally) to communicate truth and grace, law and gospel, condemnation and reconciliation to those who hear. God's method of revealing himself, both in the Bible and now, is logopneumatic. Both Word and Spirit operate to make the Godhead known to a human subject. Word without Spirit is mere data; Spirit without Word is chaos. Word and Spirit cooperating is life and transformation. This was clear at Samaria and it ought to be clear to us today who seek to do what the Samaritan woman did: speak words about the Word.