John 1:1-5

THE WORD IN HIS OWN NATURE

ἐν�. In the beginning. The meaning must depend on the context. In Genesis 1:1 it is an act done ἐν�; here it is a Being existing ἐν�, and therefore prior to all beginning. That was the first moment of time; this is eternity, transcending time. S. John insists on this and repeats it in John 1:2; the Λόγος in Gnostic systems was produced in time. Thus we have an intimation that the later dispensation is the confirmation and infinite extension of the first. Ἐν� here equals πρὸ τοῦ τὸν κόσμον εἶναι John 17:5. Cf. John 17:24; Ephesians 1:4; and especially ὃ ἦν�' ἀρχῆς in 1 John 1:1, which seems clearly to refer to this opening of the Gospel. Contrast ἀρχὴ τοῦ εὐαγγελίου Ἰ. Χρ. Mark 1:1, which is the historical beginning of the public ministry of the Messiah. Cf. John 6:64. The ἀρχή here is prior to all history. The context shews that ἀρχή cannot mean God, the Origin of all.

ἦν. Note the difference between ἦν and ἐγένετο. Εἶναι is ‘to be’ absolutely: γίγνεσθαι is ‘to come into being.’ The Word did not come into existence, but before the creation of the world was already in existence. The generation of the Word or Son of God is thus thrown back into eternity. Hence St Paul speaks of Him as πρωτότοκος πάσης κτίσεως (Colossians 1:16), ‘born prior to’ (not ‘first of’) ‘all creation.’ Cf. Hebrews 1:8; Hebrews 7:3; Revelation 1:8. On these passages is based the doctrine of the eternal generation of the Son: see Articles I. and II. The Arians maintained that there was a period when the Son was not (ἦν ὅτε οὐκ ἦν); but S. John says distinctly that the Son, or Word, was existing before time began, i.e. from all eternity.

ὁ λόγος. As early as the second century Sermo and Verbum were rival translations of this term. Tertullian (fl. A.D. 198–210) gives us both, but seems himself to prefer Ratio. Sermo first became unusual and finally was disallowed in the Latin Church. The Latin versions without exception adopted Verbum, and from it comes our translation ‘the Word,’ translations which have greatly affected Western theology. None of these translations are at all adequate; but neither Latin nor any modern language supplies anything really satisfactory. Verbum and ‘the Word’ do not give even the whole of one of the two sides of ὁ λόγος. The other side, which Tertullian tried to express by Ratio, is not touched at all. For ὁ λόγος means not only ‘the spoken word,’ but ‘the thought’ expressed by the spoken word; it is the spoken word as expressive of thought. Λόγος in the sense of ‘reason’ does not occur anywhere in the N.T.

The word is a remarkable one; all the more so because S. John assumes that his readers will at once understand it. This points to the fact that his Gospel was written in the first instance for his own disciples, who would be familiar with his teaching, in which the doctrine of the Logos was conspicuous.
But on what was this doctrine based? whence did S. John derive the expression? There can be little doubt that it has its origin in the Targums, or paraphrases of the Hebrew Scriptures, in use in Palestine, rather than in the mixture of Jewish and Greek philosophy prevalent at Alexandria and Ephesus. (1) In the Old Testament we find the Word or Wisdom of God personified, generally as an instrument for executing the Divine Will, as if it were itself distinct from that Will. We have the first faint traces of it in the ‘God said’ of Genesis 1:3; Genesis 1:6; Genesis 1:9; Genesis 1:11; Genesis 1:14, &c. The personification of the Word of God begins to appear in the Psalms 33:6; Psalms 107:20; Psalms 119:89; Psalms 147:15. In Proverbs 8:9 the Wisdom of God is personified in very striking terms. This Wisdom is manifested in the power and mighty works of God; that God is love is a revelation yet to come. (2) In the Apocrypha the personification is more complete than in the O.T. In Ecclesiasticus (B.C. 150–100) Sir 1:1-18; Sir 24:1-22; and in the Book of Wisdom (B.C. 100) Wis 6:22 to Wis 9:18 we have Wisdom personified. In Wis 18:15 the ‘Almighty Word’ of God (ὁ παντοδύναμός σου λόγος) appears as an agent of vengeance. (3) In the Targums, or Aramaic paraphrases of the O.T., the development is carried still further. These, though not yet written down, were in common use among the Jews in our Lord’s time; and they were strongly influenced by the growing tendency to separate the Divine Essence from immediate contact with the material world. Where Scripture speaks of a direct communication from God to man, the Targums substituted the Memra, or ‘Word of God.’ Thus in Genesis 3:8-9, instead of ‘they heard the voice of the Lord God,’ the Targums read ‘they heard the voice of the Word of the Lord God;’ and instead of ‘God called unto Adam’ they put ‘the Word of the Lord called unto Adam,’ and so on. It is said that this phrase ‘the Word of the Lord’ occurs 150 times in a single Targum of the Pentateuch. And Memra is not a mere utterance or ῥῆμα; for this the Targums use pithgama: e.g. ‘The word (pithgama) of the Lord came to Abram in prophecy, saying, Fear not, Abram, My Word (Memra) shall be thy strength’ (Genesis 15:1); ‘I stood between the Word (Memra) of the Lord and you, to announce to you at that time the word (pithgama) of the Lord’ (Deuteronomy 5:5). In what is called the theosophy of the Alexandrine Jews, which was a compound of Judaism with Platonic philosophy and Oriental mysticism, we seem to come nearer to a strictly personal view of the Divine Word or Wisdom, but really move farther away from it. Philo, the leading representative of this school (fl. A.D. 40–50), summed up the Platonic ἰδέαι, or Divine archetypes of things, in the single term λόγος. His philosophy contained various, and not always harmonious elements; and therefore his conception of the λόγος is not fixed or clear. On the whole his λόγος means that intermediate agency, by means of which God created material things and communicated with them. But whether this agency is one Being or more, whether it is personal or not, we cannot be sure, and perhaps Philo himself was undecided. Certainly his λόγος is very different from that of S. John; for it is scarcely a Person, and it is not the Messiah.

To sum up, the personification of the Divine Word in the O.T. is poetical, in Philo metaphysical, in S. John historical. The Apocrypha and the Targums serve to bridge the chasm between the O.T. and Philo: history fills the chasm which separates all from S. John. Between Jewish poetry and Alexandrine speculation on the one hand, and the Fourth Gospel on the other, lies the historical fact of the life of Jesus Christ, the Incarnation of the Logos.
The Logos of S. John, therefore, is not ‘the thing uttered’ (ῥῆμα); nor ‘the One spoken of’ or promised (ὁ λεγόμενος); nor ‘He who speaks the word’ (ὁ λέγων); nor a mere attribute of God (as σοφία or νοῦς). But the Logos is the Son of God, existing from all eternity, and manifested in space and time in the Person of Jesus Christ, in whom had been hidden from eternity all that God had to say to man, and who was the living expression of the Nature and Will of God. (Cf. the impersonal designation of Christ in 1 John 1:1.) Human thought had been searching in vain for some means of connecting the finite with the Infinite, of making God intelligible to man and leading man up to God. S. John knew that he possessed the key to the hitherto insoluble enigma. Just as S. Paul declared to the Athenians the ‘Unknown God’ whom they worshipped, though they knew Him not, so S. John declares to all the Divine Word, who had been so imperfectly understood. He therefore took the phrase which human reason had lighted on in its gropings, stripped it of its philosophical and mythological clothing, fixed it by identifying it with the Person of Christ, and filled it with that fulness of meaning which he himself had derived from Christ’s own teaching.

πρὸς τὸν θεόν. Πρός = ‘apud’ or the French ‘chez’; it expresses the distinct Personality of the Λόγος, which ἐν would have obscured. We might render ‘face to face with God,’ or ‘at home with God.’ So, ‘His sisters, are they not all with us (πρὸς ἡμᾶς)?’ Matthew 13:56. Cf. 1 Corinthians 16:7; Galatians 1:18; 1 Thessalonians 3:4; Philemon 1:13. Τὸν θεόν having the article, means the Father.

θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος. Ὁ λόγος is the subject in all three clauses. The absence of the article with θεός shews that θεός is the predicate (though this rule is not without exceptions); and the meaning is that the Logos partook of the Divine Nature, not that the Logos was identical with the Divine Person. In the latter case θεός would have had the article. The verse may be thus paraphrased; the Logos existed from all eternity, distinct from the Father, and equal to the Father.’ ‘Neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Substance.’