The Gospel of John

CHAPTER 1

PROLOGUE

(John 1:1-18)

The prologue to the Fourth Gospel sets forth the theme of the whole work.57 The narrative as a whole spells out the message of the prologue-that in the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth the glory of God was uniquely and perfectly disclosed. This message, of course, is not peculiar to the Fourth Evangelist among the New Testament writers; it is summed up concisely in Paul's affirmation that "the God who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ" (2 Corinthians 4:6). The same parallel between the work of God in the old creation and his work in the new creation is drawn in the Johannine prologue.

The prologue is composed in rhythmical prose-hardly, as some have suggested, in poetry. It may have been originally a separate composition which has been integrated with the Gospel by having two preliminary sections of narrative dovetailed into it-verses 6-8 and verse 15, recording the beginning of the witness of John the Baptist. This and similar suggestions (such as that it was composed after the Gospel and then prefaced to it) are speculative at best. It is certainly the work of the Evangelist himself, if we may judge from the way in which it anticipates the various forms in which the main theme of the Gospel is presented in the chapters which follow. Several of the key words of the Gospel-life, light, witness, glory (for example)-appear in the prologue. But the most characteristic term in the prologue, the term "Word," does not reappear in the body of the Gospel in the sense which it bears in the prologue. Nevertheless, in what it says about the "Word," the prologue shows us the perspective from which the Gospel as a whole is to be understood: all that is recorded, from the banks of Jordan to the resurrection appearances, shows how the eternal Word of God became flesh, that men and women might believe in him and live.

1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

It is not by accident that the Gospel begins with the same phrase as the book of Genesis. In Genesis 1:1 "In the beginning" introduces the story of the old creation; here it introduces the story of the new creation. In both works of creation the agent is the Word of God.

No doubt the English term "Word" is an inadequate rendering of the Greek logos, but it would be difficult to find one less inadequate. In a version or commentary intended for scholars it might suffice to retain logos untranslated, but it will not really do to retain it in a work intended for the general reader, like James Moffatt's translation. Moffatt's translation of the Gospel begins with the statement, "The Logos existed in the very beginning," and this is justified by the observation that "'Logos' is at any rate less misleading than 'Word' would be to a modern reader." But if logos is not completely meaningless to an ordinary reader, it probably suggests something like "reason," and that is more misleading than "Word." A "word" is a means of communication, the expression of what is in one's mind. J. B. Phillips renders the clause "At the beginning God expressed himself," and he safeguards the personal quality which the Evangelist assigns to the divine self-expression by continuing, "That personal expression, that word, was with God.." Phillips agrees that his rendering is not one hundred percent accurate, but says that a number of his readers have told him that it does convey some positive meaning to them, whereas they find the rendering "word" (whether capitalized or not) too ambiguous.58

There is a famous passage in Goethe's Faust where Faust grapples with the translation of this clause, attempting to hit on the mot juste for logos, until at last he thinks he has found it: "Im Anfang war die Tat"-"In the beginning was the deed, the action."59 And while this is not the whole meaning, it is part of it. If we understand logos in this prologue as "word in action" we may begin to do it justice.

The term logos was familiar in some Greek philosophical schools, where it denoted the principle of reason or order immanent in the universe, the principle which imposes form on the material world and constitutes the rational soul in man. It is not in Greek philosophical usage, however, that the background of John's thought and language should be sought. Yet, because of that usage, logos constituted a bridge word by which people brought up in Greek philosophy, like Justin Martyr in the second century, found their way into Johannine Christianity.60

The true background to John's thought and language is found not in Greek philosophy but in Hebrew revelation. The "word of God" in the Old Testament denotes God in action, especially in creation, revelation and deliverance.

In the creation narrative at the beginning of Genesis we read repeatedly that "God said.and it was so." This can be expressed in other terms, as in Psalm 33:6, "By the word of the LORD the heavens were made." But when this latter form of language is used, the way is open to personify "the word of the LORD" and treat it as his agent or messenger. Similarly, alongside the statement that "the LORD said to Isaiah." (Isaiah 7:3) we may be told that "the word of the LORD came to Isaiah" (Isaiah 38:4). Again, the two statements are synonymous, but in the latter of the two "the word of the LORD" can be pictured as a messenger sent by God to the prophet.

An even more telling instance of this usage appears in Psalm 107:20. There men are portrayed suffering near-mortal sickness and crying to God for help, whereupon

he sent forth his word, and healed them,
and delivered them from destruction.

In a famous passage in the Book of Wisdom (18:14, 15) the angel of death which wrought such havoc in Egypt on the first passover night is identified with God's "all-powerful word" which "leaped from heaven, from the royal throne" into the doomed land, wielding the divine command as a "sharp sword:"

and stood and filled all things with death,
and touched heaven while standing on the earth.

Here the personification is more detailed and circumstantial than anything we find in the Hebrew Bible. But it is recognizably a development of the prophetic conception of God's word as his messenger, unerringly fulfilling his commission, as in Isaiah 55:11:

my word.that goes forth from my mouth
.shall not return to me empty;
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,
and prosper in the thing for which I sent it.

"In the beginning," then, when the universe was brought into existence, the divine Word by which it was brought into existence was already there. And the language which follows shows that our Evangelist has no mere literary personification in mind. The personal status which he ascribes to the Word is a matter of real existence. The relation which the Word bears to God is a personal relation: "the Word was with God."

This statement has profound theological implications, but these implications are not involved in the choice of the Greek preposition pros to denote "with." True, in literary Greek this is not a common sense of pros, but pros in this sense can be paralleled within the fourfold Gospel in the most ordinary and everyday context. When the Nazarenes say of Jesus in Mark 6:3, "are not his sisters here with us?," the Greek word translated "with" is pros. The Word of God is distinguished from God himself, and yet exists in a close personal relation with him. Moreover, the Word shares the very nature of God, for "the Word was God."

The structure of the third clause in verse 1, theos en ho logos, demands the translation "The Word was God." Since logos has the article preceding it, it is marked out as the subject. The fact that theos is the first word after the conjunction kai ("and") shows that the main emphasis of the clause lies on it. Had theos as well as logos been preceded by the article the meaning would have been that the Word was completely identical with God, which is impossible if the Word was also "with God." What is meant is that the Word shared the nature and being of God, or (to use a piece of modern jargon) was an extension of the personality of God. The NEB paraphrase "what God was, the Word was," brings out the meaning of the clause as successfully as a paraphrase can. "John intends that the whole of his gospel shall be read in the light of this verse. The deeds and words of Jesus are the deeds and words of God; if this be not true, the book is blasphemous."61

So, when heaven and earth were created, there was the Word of God, already existing in the closest association with God and partaking of the essence of God. No matter how far...