Pope Benedict XVI recently addressed an academic audience at the University of regensburg on September 12th, 2006. The speech generated an enourmous amount of attention when the Pope referred to Islam and the Islam religious violence.

What many of us did not catch is that Pope Benedict XVI discussed the Book of Genesis and “in the begining was the logos…and the logos is God.”

Modifying the first verse of the Book of Genesis, John began the prologue of his Gospel with the words: In the beginning was the logos. This is the very word used by the emperor: God acts with logos. Logos means both reason and word– a reason which is creative and capable of self-communication, precisely as reason. John thus spoke the final word on the biblical concept of God, and in this word all the often toilsome and tortuous threads of biblical faith find their culmination and synthesis. In the beginning was the logos, and the logos is God, says the Evangelist.