Logos as a basis for creating gender neutral imagery of God

摘要

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the Greek expression Logos found in the Gospel of John, to discover if it is possible to expand the term in such a way that female, male and gender neutral imagery of God can be generated from it. This is done by enumerating the wide range of meanings that logos can concur, found in the different contexts of the Christian Bible and within Hellenism, including Gnostic texts. These different meanings of logos are examined in order to see in what way they can generate new images of God as related to the purpose. The results show that it is indeed achievable to produce such images from Logos, a term that has chiefly been regarded as a masculine one. This is mainly based on the fact that many of Logos qualities can be said to be gender neutral in terms of being widely described as superhuman; it is among other attributes called light, life and eternal. And equally important is the fact that it is a term whose background can be found in the undisputedly feminine Old Testament term Wisdom, which is a basis for generating female imagery of God from it. However, if based on grammatical gender and Hellenistic thought it generates male images of God. The term is thus concluded to be able to meet the purpose of female and gender neutral metaphors when portraying God to a fairly high extent, while also producing male imagery as has customarily been done.