As we have seen in the two previous blogs, the Old Testament has some amazing stories that show God acting in ways we would not expect. Some might argue that the revelation of God in the Old Testament is fragmentary and distorted by the primitive nature of Israel’s response to God there. But while it is true that the New Testament provides the clearest revelation of God’s character, the clarity of the revelation in Christ only highlights the unpredictability of God as something essential and inherent to his character. John 1:1 is an example of such a text.

It is felt in some circles that the Christian use of Allah as a name for God is a mark of syncretism. And there is a certain appeal and logic to this position or few Christians would hold to it. Guilt by association, right or wrong, is a major way that people negotiate their way through the various spiritual options available to them. Christian apologetic literature, therefore, notes the associations of the term Allah with the paganism and polytheism of pre-Islamic Arabia to draw the conclusion that both Christian and Islamic use of the term is unacceptable. But the unpredictable God of the New Testament seems less concerned with guilt by association than most Christians are. An example of this is found in John 1:1: "In the beginning was the Word (logos), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (theos)."

By the time the Gospel of John was written, pagan philosophers such as Heraclitus and Plato had long used the Greek term logos (Word) as a name or title for a "second god" who functioned as the creator and sustainer of the world and then as a mediator between the great God (theos) and the created, material world. Philo, a Jewish philosopher in Alexandria and a contemporary of Jesus, applied this Greek term logos to the God of the Old Testament, the One who gave the law on Mount Sinai. For Philo the Word was a "second God," the high priest in the heavenly sanctuary, an intercessor with God, the lawgiver, the mediator of creation, the mediator of revelation, and the sustainer of the universe. Philo also called him God’s firstborn, his eldest son, the image of God, and the second Adam.

There are strong parallels between Philo and Plato, on the one hand, and the New Testament descriptions of Jesus, on the other. When John called Jesus "the Word," readers of the Gospel who had been influenced by Greek philosophy would have recognized the term as expressing everything they knew about Jesus. John, a disciple of Jesus (John 21:24), had no problem using this Greek term in order to communicate important truths about Jesus. John was contextualizing the message and actions of Jesus in terms that made sense in the Greco-Roman environment. John=s reference to logos is explicit and unmistakable. In saying this I do not mean to imply that John was dependant on the Greek concepts for his picture of Jesus. His world is still a Jewish world. But that did not prevent him from using this charged Greek concept (logos) to connect with his non-Jewish readers.

In a more general way the same pattern occurs with the biblical use of the Greek term for God, theos. In the pagan environment the term theos was used to denote a polytheistic totality of gods. Zeus was the father of the gods as well as the human race. One might expect that the God of the New Testament would encourage his people to stay as far away from this term as possible. Nevertheless, New Testament writers used that term for the true God some 1,300 times. The Muslim and Christian use of Allah may have some unfortunate associations in the Arabic language, but Muslims never use it in a polytheistic sense, it is only used with reference to the one true God. Even the English term "God" has plenty of associations with the paganism and polytheism of pre-Christian Europe. The Islamic world is not the only place where the choice of words for "God" is a challenge. Whenever a new language or culture is approached, a decision has to be made regarding what to call "God" in that culture. One has to choose between local words for God with all of their local connotations and bringing in an unfamiliar name for God, which brands genuine Christian faith as foreign or colonial in that culture.

Human language is an imprecise and problematic tool, but it is the tool God has chosen to reveal himself to the human race. The "unpredictable" God seems less concerned with "guilt by association" than many of his followers are.