For Goodwin, the title of ‘the Word’ (ho logos) is not a reference to Christ being the thought or counsel of the Father’s mind since this ‘inclines too much unto the Notion of Plato, and other Heathen Philosophers’ (Of the Knowledge, 60). Goodwin is not unaware that the logos title had been used before John’s time by various Greek philosophers. However, in Goodwin’s mind, John refers to Christ as ‘the Word’ (logos) not because of Greek influences but because of the evidence in the Old Testament itself.

As a result, both Philo and Plato, by using the terminology of ‘ho logos’, are guilty of stealing ‘their knowledge from the Jews, and vend[ing] it as their own’ (Ibid, 62). Goodwin shows that the title, ‘the Word’, was used by the Jews, as a reference to the Messiah, in the Aramaic Targums, what Goodwin called the ‘Caldee Paraphrasts’ (Ibid). So, for example, Goodwin quotes the Isaiah Targum (Isa. 45:17) which makes several references to the divine Word (Memra). Hence, ‘Israel is saved by the Memra of the LORD with an everlasting salvation’. The KJV, based on the Masoretic Text (MT) in the OT, reads: ‘But Israel shall be saved in the LORD with an everlasting salvation’ (Isa. 45:17). Moreover, the MT text of Hosea 1:7 (… and will save them by the LORD their God …) is transliterated by the Aramaic Targum as ‘I will redeem them by the Word of the Lord their God.’

Referring to Christ as ‘the Word’, then, is Christologically loaded in terms of his divinity because of how the Aramaic Targums make use of the title, ‘the Word’ (Owen, 21:354). Not only, then, does the immediate context of John 1 show that Christ is the divine Word who existed in eternity, but the very fact that John calls Christ ‘the Word’ is evidence in itself for the deity of Christ because of how the Jews would have understood such terminology.

You can find these sermons in Manton’s Works, volume 1.

Reformation Heritage Books sells the reprinted twenty-two volume set for an amazing price of only $250.

Google Books has the complete set. For volume 1 click here.

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