It is hard for us to recognize the real significance of the distinction between the word used as the symbol of an idea, a sort of currency whereby we effect the transference of our concepts, and the word considered as a sign-post to indicate the presence of a real truth with which the hearer, if he has ears, may come into immediate and vital contact. We have so fallen into the habit of intellectualizing that we scarcely realize that originally a word was not an agreed symbol of an idea, but an emotional ejaculation, a sign of manifestation of being, as a cry of pain, of fear, of rage, of love. The word was not employed to convey an intellectual idea, but to carry the contagion of the being—manifestation. Even to-day when a dog yelps with pain we quiver with sympathy, but we watch unmoved the agony of a fish because a fish makes no sound. But for the most part we use the word as a sort of convenient currency wherewith to effect the transference of our concepts. In this sense the word is no more the bread of life than a dollar bill is a foodstuff in a time of famine.
However satisfactory this may be in the process of everyday existence, when essential values come into question, the word cannot be taken simply in its intellectual connotation, but it must be both used and understood in its creative or germinative aspect. In this aspect the word of God is conceived as seed. Paul explicitly describes his ministry as "sowing the spiritual grain." I Cor. 9:11.
"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 were made through Him and without Him was not anything made that now exists." John I.
All this means nothing if the word is merely a symbol. But it means everything if the word is not a symbol, but a sign, a manifestation of the presence of the creative power of God. This is just what the Stoic philosophers considered it when they called it "Logos Spermatikos," the germinative word. This is just what the old prophet considered it when he said, Is. 55:10, 11,
"For as the rain cometh down and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, and giveth seed to the sower and bread to the eater; so shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth. It shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it ahall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it."
This is just what Jesus considered it when he explained the parable of the sower, which is rightly called the parable of the Creative Logos:
"The sower sows the Word"
"The seed is the Word."
I will not belabour the point further. We may be so besotted with verbalization that it appears fanciful to us. Suffice to say that it was Paul's view, and we must take it into account if we are to begin to understand him. He always used the word as seed, not to transfer right ideas of thinking, of acting or of feeling even, but always and only to begin the "new creation," to start the growth of the new order of being.