The Book of Genesis explains that God created the universe by His word alone, speaking the world into existence. As we read throughout the first chapter of Genesis, “God said, ‘Let there be … ‘” And as God reflected on the six days of creation, He looked upon his work, and “found it very good.”
The Gospel of St. John further explains that the Word through and by which the Father created the world is Christ, Himself. “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 came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be” (Jn 1:1-3a). The Greek word St. John uses is “logos,” which can be translated “reason” as well as “word.” By using the word “logos” to explain that the Father created the world by and through the Word, St. John is telling us that the universe is rational and true. Jesus, the eternal Logos through which the world was created, is “the way, the truth, and the life” (Jn 14:6).
From these first chapters of Genesis and the Gospel of John we discern that the world is formed and permeated by the Logos — the very reason and truth of God. This is another way of saying that the world is built upon and sustained by rational communication — the continual utterance of the Divine Word. Where truth is found, the Logos of God is found. Of course, this implies that falsehood is the absence of goodness and reason. Truth is necessary for an authentic, rational human community. Where truth fails, irrationality reigns, and public life is reduced to the imposition of violence by those who control the falsehood.
I thought about these aspects of the Christian revelation as I recently re-read George Orwell’s prescient novel, “1984,” which was published 75 years ago, in 1949. It could be argued that Orwell’s fictional predictions of a dystopian future have never been more relevant than they are now, especially his depictions of “Newspeak” and “Doublethink,” both of which are becoming the lingua franca of American political and public life.
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