John 1:4

[See also the "General Considerations on the Prologue" in the comments of John 1:18.]

Vv. 4: “ In Him there was life, and the life was the light of men. ” A large number of authorities join with this verse the words ὃ γέγονεν (that which subsists), which we have united with the preceding verse; so already the Gnostic Heracleon, then Origen, the Syriac versions, the MSS. A C D (א B, have no punctuation), and the Latin Fathers. Several modern editors (Wetstein, Lachmann, Westcott, etc.), do the same. On this view, we can translate in three ways. Either, with Cyril of Alexandria: “That which exists...there was life in him” (in that existing being); or: “That which exists in him was living” (placing the comma after αὐτῷ); or finally: “That which exists, had life (was living) in him” (the comma before αὐτῷ). The first meaning is grammatically forced; the thought, moreover, is an idle one. Of the other two constructions, the simplest, the one also which gives the most natural meaning, is certainly the second. For the idea which needs to be determined and explained by the defining words ἐν αὐτῷ (in him), is not the subject, that which subsists, which is made sufficiently plain by John 1:3, but the predicate was life. This last interpretation, however, is also inadmissible. With this meaning, John would have said, not: was life (a far too strong expression), but: “ had life in him.” The expression ζωὴν ἔχειν is familiar to him in the sense of participating in life (John 3:15-16; John 5:24; John 6:47, etc.).

The words ὅ γέγονεν, therefore, cannot in any way belong to John 1:4; and the subject of the first proposition of this verse is, consequently, the word ζωή, life: “Life was in Him.” But what meaning is to be given to these words? Must we, with Weiss, apply the term life to the life of the Logos Himself. The Logos had life, as unceasingly in communication with the Father (John 1:1). But why return to the description of the nature of the Logos, already described in John 1:1-2, and after His first manifestation, the act of creation, had already been mentioned? Weiss answers that, as John 1:1-2, had prepared the way for the mentioning of the creative work (John 1:3), John 1:4 returns to the nature of the Logos in order to prepare for that which is about to be said in John 1:5 of His illuminating activity. But this alleged symmetry between John 1:4 and John 1:1 is very forced. There is constant progress, and no going backward. It is an altogether simple course to regard John 1:4 as continuing the description of the work of the Logos. The world, after having received existence through Him (John 1:3), gained in Him the life which it enjoyed. There is here a double gradation: first, from the idea of existence to that of life, then from “ through Him” to “ in Him.” Compare an analogous double gradation in Colossians 1:16-17: “All things have been created through Him (δἰ αὐτοῦ ἔκτισται)...; and they subsist in Him (ἐν αὐτῷ συνέστηκε).”

Life, indeed, is more than existence. It is existence saturated with force, existence in its state of normal progress towards the perfect destination of being. And this first gradation is connected with the second: It is through the Logos that the world exists; it is in intimate relation with Him (“in Him”) that it receives the life-giving forces by means of which it subsists and is developed. With the same meaning, Gess says: “The creation has not been abandoned by the Logos subsequently to the act of creation; but He penetrated it with forces which were able to make it prosper, make it move onward with success.” Some interpreters apply the term life here solely to the physical life (Calvin, etc.); others, to the spiritual life (Origen, Hengstenberg, Weiss). But this distinction is out of place in this passage. For, as the question in hand is as to what the Logos was for created beings, it follows from this fact that He communicates life to each one of them in a different measure, and in a form appropriate to its aspirations and capacities; to some, physical life only; to others, that life, and besides one or another degree of the higher life, Thus, the want of the article before the word ζωή (life), is very fully explained; the purpose being to leave this word in its most unlimited and most variously applicable sense. The reading ἐστι (is), instead of ἦν (was), in the Sinaitic and Cambridge manuscripts, has been wrongly adopted by Tischendorf, in his eighth edition; it is incompatible with the ἦν of the following clause. It is, undoubtedly, a correction arising from the interpretation of those who connect the words ὃ γέγονε with John 1:4; since this perfect γέγονε, being in sense a present, demands in the verb of the principal clause the present (is), and not the imperfect (was).

To what moment of history must we refer the fact declared in this proposition? Hengstenberg and Brucknerthink that the question is of a purely ideal relation; the first, in this sense: “The Logos must one day (at the moment of His incarnation) become the life, that is to say, the salvation of the world;” the second: “The Logos would have been the life of the world, had it not been for sin, which has broken the bond between the world and Him.” But these two explanations violate the sense of the word was, which must express a reality, as well as the was in John 1:1-2.

In the first editions of this Commentary, suffering myself to be guided by the connection between John 1:3 and John 1:4, I referred John 1:4, with Meyer, to the time which immediately followed the creation, to that moment of normal opening to life when the Word, no longer meeting any obstacle to His beneficent action in nature and in humanity, poured forth abundantly to every being the riches of life; these words designated thus the paradisaical condition. In this way, John 1:4 answered to Genesis 2, as John 1:3 to Genesis 1, and John 1:5 to Genesis 3 (the fall). The two imperfects was, in this verse, are in harmony with this view. I am obliged, however, to give up this view now, in consequence of a change which I have felt compelled, since the second edition, to make in my interpretation of John 1:5 (see on that verse). If the 5th verse is referred, as I now refer it, not to the fall and the condition which followed it, but to the appearance of the Logos at His coming in the flesh, and to the rejection of Him by mankind, the interval between John 1:4 (Paradise) and John 1:5 (the rejection of Christ) would be too considerable to be included in the simple καί, and, at the beginning of John 1:5. We must therefore necessarily extend the epoch described in John 1:4 to the whole time which elapsed from the creation (John 1:3) to the coming of Christ (John 1:5). During all that period of the history of humanity, the world subsisted and was developed only by virtue of the life which was communicated to it by the Logos. The Logos was, as Schaff says, “the life of every life.” Not only all existence, but all force, all enjoyment, all progress in the creation were His gift.

The meaning of the second proposition naturally follows from that which has been given to the first. If, as Weiss thinks, the first referred to the life which the Logos possesses in Himself, the second would signify that this same Logos, in so far as He possesses the spiritual life through the perfect knowledge which He has of God, became the light of men by communicating it to them. But John does not say in John 1:4 that the Logos was Himself the light of men; he makes the light proceed from the life which the Logos communicated to them. And this is the reason why he limits the word life in the second proposition by the article: That life, which the world received from the Logos become light in men, it opened itself in them and in them alone, in virtue of their inborn aptitudes, in the form of light.

Light, with John, is one of those extremely rich expressions which it is difficult accurately to define. It does not designate an exclusively moral idea, salvation, as Hengstenberg thinks, or holiness, the true mode of being, as Luthardt says; for in these two senses it could not be sufficiently distinguished from life. No more is it a purely intellectual notion: reason (Calvin, de Wette), for John could not say, in this sense: God is light, (1Jn 1:5). In this last passage, John adds: “And there is in him no darkness. ” If he means by this last term moral evil, the depravity of the will uniting with it the inward falsehood, the darkening of the intelligence which results from it, the light will be, to his thought, moral good, holiness, together with the inward clearness, the general intuition of the truth which arises from a good will; let us say: the distinct consciousness of oneself and of God in the common sphere of good, the possession of the true view-point with respect to all things through uprightness of heart, holiness joyously contemplating its own reality and thereby all truth. This inward light is an emanation of the life, of the life as moral life. Here is the explanation of the objective phrase: of men; for men alone, as intelligent and free beings, as moral agents, are capable of the enjoyment of such light. This word would certainly have a very natural application to the primitive state of man in paradise. But it can be extended to the human condition in general, even after the fall. God has continued to reveal to man “the end and the way” (Gess). From existence, as it appeared in man, determined by the consciousness of moral obligation, there has sprung up in all times and in all places a certain light concerning man, concerning his relations with God, concerning God Himself, and concerning the world; comp. as to the Jews John 7:17, and as to the Gentiles John 10:16; John 11:52; so also in Paul: Romans 1:19; Romans 1:21; 1 Corinthians 1:21; Acts 14:17. The various forms of worship and the indisputable traces of a certain moral sense, even among peoples the most degraded, are the proofs of this universal light emanating from the Logos. All the rays of the sentiment of the beautiful, the true and the just which have illuminated and which ennoble humanity, justify the expression of John (comp. John 1:10). It is this fundamental truth which was formulated by the Fathers (Justin, Clem. Alex.) in their doctrine of the λόγος σπερματικός. There is nothing more contrary to the idea of an original dualism which Baur and his school ascribe to John, than this expression: of men, which embraces all humanity without any distinction.