The Eternality and Deity of the Word: John 1:1-2

By David J. MacLeod

David J. MacLeod is Chairman of the Division of Biblical Studies, Emmaus Bible College, Dubuque, Iowa, and Associate Editor of The Emmaus Journal.

This is article one in a six-part series on “The Living Word in John 1:1–18.”

In the first eighteen verses of the Gospel of John, traditionally called the prologue,[1] the apostle John set forth major themes—the principal one being the Incarnation—that he developed later in the Gospel.[2] This portion of Scripture has immense apologetic value.[3] Dodd has written, “We may regard the Prologue as giving, in the barest skeleton outline, a philosophy of life, or Weltanschauung, which is to be filled in with concrete detail out of the gospel as a whole.”[4]

The history of philosophy and theology is the history of worldviews, in which people take some aspect of reality as they see it and deify it (the religious approach) or make it the cardinal point of an interpretive principle (the philosophical approach). John wrote his Gospel when many such worldviews were prevalent.[5] Today, as well, a wide variety of worldviews exist, and John’s prologue is an antidote to all of them. The Gospel of John presents a true understanding of who Jesus Christ is, so that readers may have the proper framework with which to interpret life and reality—that they may know God and walk in the light of His truth.

Many scholars have argued that John’s majestic prologue employs an early Christian hymn.[6] A number of questions relate to the hymn thesis,[7] on which students of the Gospel differ.[8] What is the literary genre of the passage, that is, is it poetry or prose? What kind of literary structure is employed?[9] Is it an original composition by John,[10] or did he integrate the work of another into his Gospel?[11] If the prologue employs a hymn,[12] which verses are the hymn, and which are John’s own composition?[13] The answers to these questions are somewhat speculative.[14] Scholars classify the prologue as poetry,[15] “rhythmical prose,”[16] or “hymnic prose.”[17]

The Word’s Striking Designation

In his prologue[18] John began with a clear allusion to Genesis 1. “In the beginning” (᾿Εν ἀρχῆ) corresponds to בְּאשִׁית (“In the beginning”) of Genesis 1:1.[19] John referred to the Word, who was in existence at the time of Creation. John did not refer to Him as “Messiah,” “Son of Man,” or even “Son of God.”[20] Instead, in seeking to draw his readers, both Gentiles[21] and Jews,[22] to faith in Christ, he began with a term that would spark their interest.

“Word” is an inadequate rendering of λόγος, but as Bruce wrote, “it would be difficult to find one less inadequate.”[23] The meaning of λόγος in John’s prologue has been at the center of controversy for many years.[24] One of the writer’s teachers said that people writing about the λόγος have probably written over one hundred thousand pages on what John meant by “word.”[25] Older Latin writers translated λόγος by verbum (i.e., the spoken word) or ratio (i.e., thought).[26]A word is a means of communication, an expression of what is in one’s mind. Phillips paraphrased the clause, “At the beginning God expressed Himself.”[27] Phillips agreed that his rendering was not fully accurate, but he said that a number of his readers found it more meaningful than “word.”[28] Bruce felt that “word in action” came close to doing λόγος justice.[29]

Even today for many people in the Middle East a word is more than a mere sound. It is an independent, power-filled existence. Decades ago Sir George Adam Smith, noted British Old Testament scholar, was traveling in the desert when he met a group of Muslims. They offered him their customary greeting, “Peace be upon you.” When they discovered he was a Christian, they hurried to return and ask him to give the blessing back! A word was something that could be sent out to do something and then brought back again.[30]

Among the Greeks the term λόγος had an interesting history.[31] It could be thought of as being within a person, that is, a thought or reason. Or it could refer to a thought as going forth from a person as speech. Among their philosophers it denoted something like the soul of the universe. It was creative energy. They spoke of λόγος σπερματικός, “seminal reason,” the creative force in nature. Heraclitus, sixth-century B.C. Greek philosopher, equated fire, God, and λόγος, seeing them as omnipresent, pantheistic wisdom that guided and controlled all things. The Stoics saw the λόγος as the supreme principle of the universe, the force that originated, permeated, and directed all things.

Greek philosophical usage, however, was not the background of John’s use of the term λόγος. Yet because of that usage it constituted a bridge word by which some unbelievers schooled in Greek philosophy became interested in Christianity. The average person might not have known the precise significance that philosophers attached to the λόγος any more than people today know all the details of nuclear fission or the theory of evolution. Yet they talked about it, and John’s teaching would captivate the interest of individuals reading John 1:1 and 14. The λόγος of God—the controlling power of the universe—became a man.[32]

After a long search for truth in the pagan philosophies, Justin Martyr (A.D. 100-165), one of the first Christian apologists, became a believer in Christ when he saw that Christ was the λόγος whom the philosophers were talking about.[33]

In any case the background of John’s thought and language is not found in Greek philosophy but in the Old Testament, as John’s quotation of Genesis 1 (“In the beginning”) makes clear. Repeatedly Genesis 1 has the words, “Then God said” (vv. 3, 6, 9, 11, 14, 20, 24, 26, 29). The “word of God” in the Old Testament denotes God in action, especially in creation (Ps. 33:6), revelation (Isa. 38:4), and deliverance (Ps. 107:20).[34] The term דָבָר (“word”) was sometimes personified and viewed as God’s agent or messenger, as in “The word of the Lord came [‘was,’ וַיְהי] to Isaiah, saying,” Isa. 38:4). When people were suffering a terrible illness and cried to the Lord for help, the psalmist likewise wrote, “He sent His word and healed them, and delivered them from their destructions” (Ps. 107:20).[35]

The Old Testament writers used literary personification in describing the word of God. However, John had something new to say, though he used familiar words to say it. The Word of God by whom the universe was made is a person.[36]

John’s prologue, then, is an introduction designed to arrest the attention of his readers, whether they were Palestinian or Hellenist, Greek or Roman. Noting the familiar word λόγος, the readers would think of a principle or divine power, or both, according to their background, but they would then be brought up short in amazement because it would soon be obvious that John was speaking about a person who is both God and man. For John the source of life was not a principle or a power, but a living being, a person—a divine person who became man.[37]

The Word’s Eternal Existence

“Mark begins his story of Jesus at Jordan, Matthew and Luke start at Bethlehem. But John goes back to the very beginning of history, even beyond it, as if to say, ‘There is only one true perspective in which to see the story—you must see it in the light of eternity.’ ”[38]

Verse 1 has three clauses, each of which tells the reader something about the λόγος. First, the λόγος is eternal in existence: “In the beginning was the Word” (᾿Εν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος).39 As Morris noted, “There never was a time when the Word was not.”[40]

Whereas Genesis 1:1 takes the reader back to the beginning of creation, John “lifts our thoughts beyond the beginning and dwells on that which ‘was’ when time, and with time, finite being began its course.”[41] Calvin says, “The Evangelist sends us to the eternal sanctuary of God and teaches us that the Word was, as it were, hidden there before He revealed Himself in the outward workmanship of the world.”[42]

The Word’s Distinct Personality

In the second line of verse 1 John wrote, “The Word was with God” (ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν). The preposition “with” (πρός) carries the two ideas of accompaniment and relationship.[43] Literally the phrase means “face to face with God.”[44] It expresses personal companionship, that is, the presence of one person with another.[45]

The Word, then, was “with God.” He was distinct from God, He had a personal relationship with God, and He was at home with God. All of this would be startling and new for John’s listeners and readers. They had thought of earlier descriptions of the Word as personifications, that is, no more than a literary device. Now they must recognize that John was asserting the actual personal existence of the Word. John rejected any idea that the Word became a person only at the time of Jesus’ birth.[46]

The Word’s Essential Deity

John’s third clause affirms the deity of the λόγος: “And the Word was God” (καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος).[47] John’s statement must not be watered down as in Moffatt’s translation, “the Logos was divine.”[48] One problem with that translation is that “divine” is an adjective, but the Greek text uses a noun (“God”).[49] Had John wanted to say “divine,” he could have used the Greek adjective θεῖος, a word that was available and is found elsewhere in the New Testament in Acts 17:29 and 2 Peter 1:3–4.[50] Another problem with the translation “divine” is that it demotes the λόγος to the state of a quasi-divinity, a condition between God and the creatures. This would conflict with the strict monotheism of the Scriptures.[51]

Also θεός cannot be watered down as in the Jehovah’s Witnesses translation “and the Word was a god.”[52] Members of that cult note that the word “God” is anarthrous (lacking the article) in the Greek text. Since John did not write “the God,” they conclude he meant “a god.” This translation, however, is erroneous for four reasons, as Harris points out.[53] First, a theological reason: If they took their own translation seriously, the Jehovah’s Witnesses would believe in polytheism (i.e., more than one God).[54] John’s monotheism makes this rendering impossible. The Bible teaches there is one God (Deut. 6:4). A monotheist could apply the singular θεός (“God”) only to the Supreme Being and not to an inferior divine being.[55]

Second, a literary reason: Elsewhere in John Jesus is called “God,” and in one of those verses (John 20:28, “My Lord and my God”) the article is used. The argument that John does not call Jesus “God” is therefore baseless.

Third, a grammatical reason: In their discussion of John 1:1 the Jehovah’s Witnesses betray their lack of understanding of Greek grammar. In the clause καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος the subject, although it follows the verb, is “the Word” (ὁ λόγος) because it has the article. The word “God” (θεός), which precedes the copulative verb ἦν, is an anarthrous predicate nominative. In his analysis of predicate nouns in Mark and John, Harner concluded that “anarthrous predicate nouns preceding the verb may be primarily qualitative in force yet may also have some connotation of definiteness.”[56] Harner’s paraphrase is to the point: “the Word had the same nature as God.”[57]

Fourth, a grammatical-theological reason: If John had used the article before θεός in this clause he would have been writing, “The Son was the Father.” But this would contradict the second clause of verse 1 in which he distinguished the λόγος from the Father. Sabellius, an early third-century A.D. heretic, denied the Trinity, the doctrine that three eternal persons coexist in the Godhead. Arguing that the Godhead has only one person, he said that “Father,” “Son,” and “Spirit” are different “modes” that the one person used in different eras. If John followed the view of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, he would have been saying, like Sabellius, that the Son is the Father.[58]

With this carefully crafted sentence John said that the Word is deity. Yet he did not say, “God is the Word,” that is, he did not say that all of deity is the Word. There is more to God than the Word. There is also God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. So, while the λόγος is not the Father, He has all the qualities that add up to the fact that He too is God. “The absence of the article indicates that the Word is God, but [He] is not the only being of whom this is true.”[59] “The Word has [His] whole being within deity, but [He] does not exhaust the being of deity.”[60] He was “essentially [God], though not He alone [God].”[61]

As Barrett wrote, “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.”[62]

John 1:1 is packed with theology, yet it is very practical. Boice suggested four reasons why it matters that Jesus Christ is God.[63]

First, it means that believers know what God is like. Is He the god of the philosophers like Plato and Immanuel Kant, the god of the mystics, or the god of new-age pantheism or panentheism? Or is He the God of the Bible? If Jesus Christ is God, then people can know what God is like. To know Jesus Christ is to know God, for Jesus said, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). If one wants to know what God is like, he should study the life and teachings of Christ in the Bible.

Second, it means that God was always like Jesus. Many have concluded that there is a great difference between the Lord Jesus and the God of the Old Testament. A little girl who was raised under the preaching of a liberal pastor was reading in the Old Testament a bloody story of the defeat of Israel’s enemies. Surely it was wrong for God to order that, she surmised. “Well,” she concluded, “that happened before God became a Christian!”

If the Word was with God before time began and if God’s Word is part of the eternal scheme of things, it means that God was always like Jesus. Sometimes people tend to think of God as stern and avenging and that Jesus changed God’s anger into love and altered His attitude toward the human race. The New Testament knows nothing of that idea. Does God the Father hate sin? Yes! Christ has always hated sin also. Does God the Father love sinners? Yes! Therefore Christ loves them also.[64]

Third, the truth that Jesus Christ is God means that His death for sin is of infinite value. His death is the only acceptable and sufficient sacrifice for sin. Because He is human and sinless, His sacrifice is appropriate and acceptable, and because He is God, His sacrifice is infinite in value.

Fourth, because Jesus Christ is God, it means that He is able to satisfy all the needs of the human heart. In Ephesians 3:18–19 Paul prayed that believers “may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge.” During the Napoleonic wars in Europe some of the emperor’s soldiers opened a prison that had been used by the Spanish Inquisition. In one of the many dungeons they found the skeleton of a prisoner chained to the wall. On the wall, carved into the stone with a sharp piece of metal was a crude cross. And around the cross were the Spanish words for the four dimensions in Ephesians 3:18–19. On one side was the word “breadth,” and on the other side was the word “length,” above was the word “height,” and below was the word “depth.” Left to rot away in chains, this persecuted believer comforted himself with the thought that God was able to satisfy every spiritual need of his heart.[65]

The Word’s Sapiential Identity

Most commentators assume that verse 2 (“He was in the beginning with God”) merely repeats verse 1, [66] stressing that the Word is eternal. However, it is likely that John meant more than that.[67] In this verse John answered a question prompted by certain mysterious elements of the Old Testament revelation. The Old Testament personified divine wisdom, that is, it sometimes spoke of wisdom as if it were a person. For example in Proverbs 8:22–31 wisdom speaks as the master craftsman through whom God created the earth. “The Lord possessed me at the beginning of His way, before His works of old. From everlasting I was established, from the beginning, from the earliest times of the earth … then I was beside Him” (vv. 22, 30). The λόγος of which John wrote is the wisdom described in Old Testament times.[68] Λόγος and wisdom alike became incarnate in Jesus Christ.

John 1:2 also answers the Creator’s rhetorical question in Isaiah 44:24: “I am the Lord, who made all things, who stretched out the heavens alone, who spread out the earth—Who was with me?” (RSV). John answered, in essence, “He—the λόγος, Christ—was with God the Father!” The Greek text uses a pronoun to emphasize the point: “This one (οὗτος) i.e., the λόγος, was with God.”[69]

When God said in Genesis 1:26, “Let Us make man,” to whom was He speaking? John answered, “This One, i.e., the λόγος, who was in the beginning with God!” And then there is Agur’s question about the transcendence of God: “Who has established all the ends of the earth? What is His name or His son’s name?” (Prov. 30:4).[70] Interpreters have puzzled over the identity of this figure.[71] In Agur’s words “the NT doctrine of the Son of God [was] announcing itself from afar.”[72] This one, the λόγος, according to John, is the Son of whom Agur spoke.

Conclusion

In the first stanza of his λόγος hymn John affirmed three truths about the λόγος. First, He existed eternally before the creation of the universe. Second, He coexisted eternally with God. Third, He is Himself of the same nature as God. In His nature He is essential deity.

John 1:1–2 focuses in several ways on the person and work of Christ as central to the Christian worldview. First, these verses proclaim “the finality of Jesus Christ.”[73] He alone is God come to earth. No other can stand alongside Him or take His place.

Second, these verses proclaim “the mystery of Jesus Christ.”[74] Since He is one with God in His being, He shares in the infinity and limitlessness of God. This does not mean that people cannot know Him, but it does mean they cannot have exhaustive knowledge of Him. Believers know Him, and yet there is always more to know. That is why worship is fundamental to understanding Christ.

Third, John 1:1–2 proclaims “the centrality of Jesus Christ.”[75] Because Jesus Christ is God incarnate, He must always be in the center of the believer’s approach to God, his thinking about God, and his relating to God (14:6). The French mathematician and theologian Blaise Pascal (1623–1662), said that the two leading principles of the Christian faith are that “Jesus Christ [is] the object of all, the center to which everything tends. Whoever knows Him understands all things.”[76]

Fourth, John 1:1–2 proclaim “the supremacy of Jesus Christ.” Since Jesus Christ shares the nature of God, believers “worship Him without cessation, obey Him without hesitation, love Him without reservation, and serve Him without interruption.”[77]

Notes

1. The prologue has been called a microcosm (Simon Ross Valentine, “The Johannine Prologue—A Microcosm of the Gospel,” Evangelical Quarterly 68 [October 1996]: 291-304); an adumbration (Kimberley D. Booser, “The Literary Structure of John 1:1–18: An Examination of Its Theological Implications concerning God’s Saving Plan through Jesus Christ,” Evangelical Journal 16 [spring 1998]: 13); and a “proleptic quintessence” (Adolf von Harnack, “Über das Verhältnis des Prologs des vierten Evangeliums zum ganzen Werk,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 2 [1892]: 191).
2. Important themes in the prologue that are developed later in the Gospel include life (1:4), light and darkness (vv. 5, 7–9), witness (vv. 7–8, 15), world (v. 10), belief and unbelief (vv. 11–12), glory (v. 14), and grace and truth (vv. 14, 17).
3. Ron Rhodes, The Counterfeit Christ of the New Age Movement (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1990), 213–20. The author of John “lived in a region in which many false doctrines had already arisen in the bosom of the Church” (Frederick Louis Godet, Commentary on the Gospel of John, trans. Timothy Dwight, 3d. ed. [New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1893; reprint, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1970], 1:213 [italics his]).
4. C. H. Dodd, The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953), 285.
5. H. Brash Bonsall lists the following: (1) Polytheism, the worship of gods, was countered in John by the Christian worldview and its doctrines of monotheism and the Incarnation. (2) The state cultus, the worship of the emperor, was countered by the truth of God, who became man and whose kingdom was not derived from the earthly realm (1:14; 18:36–37). (3) Hellenistic philosophy, with its esteem for reason and lofty ethics—but with no pardon for sinners—was countered by John’s doctrine of the λόγος, the Word of God, which meets the need of the heart as well as the head. (4) The mystery religions, with their fellowship secrets, cultic meals, water baptisms, and communion rituals with their deities or lords, were countered by the truth of God incarnate, who offers people the right to become children of God. (5) Occultism, with its superstition, spiritism, witchcraft, astrology, black magic, and necromancy, was countered by Christ, who brings light to these dark corners of the human psyche and confronts the power of Satan in whatever form it arises. (6) Incipient Gnosticism, with its belief in the evil of matter and its Docetic denial of Christ’s humanity, was countered by John’s assertion that the Son of God Himself became a man with a physical body. (7) Unbelieving Judaism, with its rejection of the claims of Jesus of Nazareth, was countered by John’s assertion that all who believe in Christ are made children of God. (8) Proto-Mandaism, with its reverence for John the Baptist as Messiah, was countered by John’s assertion that he was not the Light from God but was a witness to that Light (1:8, 20, 29, 34) (The Son and the Word [London: Christian Literature Crusade, 1972], 51–57). The view that says John was countering a form of proto-Mandaism should be treated with caution. J. A. T. Robinson rejects the notion that the followers of John the Baptist ever formed a distinct sect (“Elijah, John and Jesus: An Essay in Detection,” New Testament Studies 4 [July 1958]: 278-79). But see Godet, Commentary on the Gospel of John, 1:214; and Leon Morris, The Gospel according to John, New International Commentary on the New Testament, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 77–78 nn. 47–48.
6. Charles Augustus Briggs, The Messiah of the Apostles (New York: Scribner’s, 1895), 495–518; J. H. Bernard, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel according to St. John, International Critical Commentary (Edinburgh: Clark, 1928), 1:cxliv-cxlv; Joachim Jeremias, The Central Message of the New Testament (New York: Scribner’s, 1965), 71–90; Ernst Käsemann, “The Prologue to John’s Gospel,” in New Testament Questions of Today (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1969), 138–67; Jack T. Sanders, The New Testament Christological Hymns (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), 20–25, 29–57; Rudolf Bultmann, The Gospel of John, trans. George R. Beasley-Murray, R. W. N. Hoare, and J. K. Riches (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1971), 13–15; Ernst Haenchen, John, Hermeneia, trans. Robert W. Funk (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), 1:101, 125; Rudolf Schnackenburg, The Gospel according to St. John, trans. Kevin Smyth (New York: Crossroad, 1987), 1:224–26; George R. Beasley-Murray, John, Word Biblical Commentary (Waco, TX: Word, 1987), 3–4; and James D. G. Dunn, Christology in the Making, 2d ed. (London: SCM, 1989), 239–40.
7. Scholars generally agree that the verses of the prologue do not reflect the structure and rhythm of Greek poetry (D. A. Carson, The Gospel according to John [Grand Rapids; Eerdmans, 1991], 112). However, the prologue does use the parallelism of Hebrew poetry (Mathias Rissi, “John 1:1–18 (The Eternal Word),” Expository Times 31 [1977]: 394; Briggs, The Messiah of the Apostles, 496; and Bernard, The Gospel according to St. John, 1:cxlv). Jeremias, for example, points to the climactic parallelism (step parallelism) in verses 4–5, in which each line takes up a word of the preceding line (The Central Message of the New Testament, 73): “In Him was life, And the life was the Light of men, The Light shines in the darkness, And the darkness did not comprehend it.” Cf. Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel according to John, Anchor Bible (New York: Doubleday, 1966), 1:19.
8. Not all are convinced that John used an earlier “original hymn.” Herman Ridderbos wrote, “If this hypothesis can be maintained only if one contents oneself with a fragmented and vaguely contoured picture of this hypothetical hymn and is prepared to involve oneself in a maze of adaptations and interpretations of this hymn, then the question arises whether this hypothesis does not sink under its own weight…. For a long time now … forceful arguments have been advanced that … maintain the original unity of the prologue” (The Gospel of John: A Theological Commentary, trans. John Vriend [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997], 21). C. K. Barrett wrote, “The Prologue stands before us as a prose introduction which has not been submitted to interpolation and was specially written … to introduce the gospel—and, it may be added, to sum it up” (The Gospel according to St. John, 2d ed. [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978], 151). Barrett also wrote, “The Prologue is not a jig-saw puzzle but one piece of solid theological writing. The evangelist wrote it all” (The Prologue of St. John’s Gospel [London: Athlone, 1971], 27). Peder Borgen agreed. “The structure of the prologue of John must primarily be understood on the basis that it is meant to be an exposition of Gen. 1:1 ff. The question of poetry or prose is therefore of subordinate significance” (“Logos Was the True Light,” Novum Testamentum 14 [April 1972]: 129).
9. Herman Ridderbos, “The Structure and Scope of the Prologue to the Gospel of John,” Novum Testamentum 8 (April 1966): 180-201; Charles Homer Giblin, “Two Complementary Literary Structures in John 1:1–18, ” Journal of Biblical Literature 104 (1985): 87-103; Jeff Staley, “The Structure of John’s Prologue: Its Implications for the Gospel’s Narrative Structure,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 48 (April 1986): 241-64; Mary Coloe, “The Structure of the Johannine Prologue and Genesis 1, ” Australian Biblical Review 45 (1997): 40-55. On the possible chiastic structure of the prologue see R. Alan Culpepper, “The Pivot of John’s Prologue,” New Testament Studies 27 (1980–81), 1–31. See the criticisms by Beasley-Murray, John, 4. Jan G. van der Watt says the prologue has a number of complementary structures (“The Composition of the Prologue of John’s Gospel: The Historical Jesus Introducing Divine Grace,” Westminster Theological Journal 57 [1995]: 311-32).
10. Various attempts have been made to explain the origin of the theological concepts in the prologue. First, in 1923 Bultmann sought to show that the essence and function of the λόγος was the same as the essence and function of Jewish wisdom, sophia. The origin of the hymn of the prologue lay in the identification of John the Baptist as the incarnate, sophia-like Logos. When this concept was applied to Jesus, the hymn was correspondingly Christianized. Second (later, in 1971), Bultmann argued that the λόγος of John 1 is not to be understood from the Old Testament, because God’s Word did not become a “hypostasis” (i.e., a personified force which exists autonomously as a divine being) in the Old Testament. Nor may the λόγος be simply traced to sophia. Rather, both sophia and the Hellenistic λόγος go back to the same source, namely, the redeemer myth of Gnosticism. As later scholars have noted, however, Bultmann’s pre-Christian Gnostic redeemer is constructed from Gnostic texts that are later than the New Testament period and John’s Gospel. Furthermore the Gnostic redeemer was only a revealer and became a redeemer only when it was Christian Gnosticism. Also his assertion that the Word of God is never a hypostasis in the Old Testament is incorrect. In addition the contexts in which Gnosticism and John’s prologue speak of redemption contradict each other. In Gnosticism God and the world are dualistic opposites. In the Johannine prologue, on the other hand, all things have been made by the λόγος, who was with God and is God. The idea that a Gnostic “redeemer myth” is the starting point of Johannine Christology is today largely discredited. Third, Dodd argued that the prologue is to be understood against the background of various layers of Hellenistic syncretism. John did not write for Christians who needed a deeper theology but for non-Christians who were concerned about eternal life and the way to it and who might be ready to follow the Christian way if it were presented to them in terms that were intelligibly related to their previous interests and experience. Dodd saw the origin of the λόγος and other ideas in the prologue as being Judaism, but found the language to convey these ideas in Hellenistic thought, including Philo and the Hermetic literature (second and third centuries A.D., written in Greek in Egypt and attributed to Hermes Trismegistus) (Dodd, The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel, 8–9, 53, 73, 278). Dodd’s emphasis on Corpus Hermeticum founders on the shoals of anachronism because the documents postdate Christianity, because the vocabulary John shared with the Hermetica occurs in the Septuagint, and because John wrote at a time when Christianity was invading paganism, and paganism was not invading Christianity (G. D. Kilpatrick, “The Religious Background of the Fourth Gospel,” in Studies in the Fourth Gospel, ed. F. L. Cross [London: Mowbray, 1957], 43). Fourth, Rudolf Schnackenburg argued that John 1:14 was part of the original hymn and showed an anti-Gnostic tendency. The “Logos hymn stemmed from the very beginning of Christian circles” which knew nothing of a mythical redeemer, but only of “the eternal Son of God, who at one time became man—a real, flesh and blood man—in the person of Jesus of Nazareth” (“Logos-Hymns und johannischer Prolog,” Biblische Zeitschschrift [1957]: 94-95). Fifth, Lorenz Dürr concluded, after a survey of Sumerian, Babylonian, and Egyptian literature, that the hymn in John 1 was the end result of the process of hypostatization that moved from Genesis 1 to the Wisdom of Solomon 18:14–16. The author of the Gospel was influenced not by the figure of Hermes/Logos or the Stoic Logos, but by an idea that grew naturally out of the Old Testament and Jewish wisdom literature. John took up the Logos concept because it best expressed the essence and activity of Christ, the Son of God (Die Wertung des göttlichen Wortes im alten Testament und im antiken Orient [Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1938], 158–67). Sixth, Helmer Ringgren built on Dürr and argued that there was a progressive hypostatization of the Word in Judaism, constantly under the influence of foreign religions where the concept of a hypostasis was widespread. The prologue of John was merely the next stage in the process. It has been objected, however, that the Old Testament passages in which wisdom is personified can hardly be characterized as anything but poetic (Word and Wisdom: Studies in the Hypostatization of Divine Qualities and Functions in the Ancient Near East [Lund: Ohlssons, 1947], 150, 157–59, 171). Seventh, Jack T. Sanders saw elements of the Logos hymn (e.g., the hypostatization of divine qualities) in the heterodox Jewish Odes of Solomon and the Gnostic literature from Nag Hammadi, which, he argued, provided a matrix for the ideas found in John’s prologue. Increasingly scholars are finding such views untenable (The New Testament Christological Hymns, 29–57, 101–39). The Odes of Solomon postdate John and have Christian additions. The Nag Hammadi documents postdate John and could not have influenced the Fourth Gospel. Sanders, typical of the History of Religions school, seems driven by the view that no religious language or religious ideas contained in the New Testament are originally and authentically Christian (ibid., 42 n. 1). His approach to New Testament Christological hymns is naturalistic. Eighth, Leon Morris, representing historic, supernatural Christianity, acknowledged that when John used the term λόγος he was using a term widely recognized in the Greek-speaking world. The term would also resonate with readers familiar with the concept of the personification of wisdom. “Whatever their background they would not find John’s thought identical with their own. His idea of the Logos is essentially new” (The Gospel according to John, 102–11). As Ridderbos rightly asks, How could the pagan and syncretistic philosophy of the ancient world be the background for the concrete person and work of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, as He is depicted in the Fourth Gospel? (The Gospel of John, 28). See also Rudolf Bultmann, “The History of Religious Background of the Prologue to the Gospel of John,” in The Interpretation of John, ed. John Ashton (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986), 18–35; and idem, The Gospel of John, 20–31.
11. Carson pointedly observed, “The tightness of the connection between the prologue and the Gospel render unlikely the view that the Prologue was composed by someone other than the Evangelist” (The Gospel according to John, 111–12). If John used earlier material, possibly an early Christian hymn, he thoroughly integrated his own thought into it. From the literary point of view it seems that the prologue is a part of the structure of the Gospel and not merely an “introduction” added to an already fully thought-out Gospel (cf. Schnackenburg, The Gospel according to St. John, 1:221).
12. Several reasons suggest that John made use of a hymn. First, literary critics agree on the existence of rhythmical sentences and strophes (stanzas), though not exactly definable by meter and stress. Second, the structure reveals breaks and sudden switches, which are particularly clear in the two interruptions to include material about John the Baptist. Third, certain theological concepts are not found elsewhere in the Gospel, including the title λόγος, used in a Christological sense; the dwelling of the Logos among men (v. 14); His “fullness”; and His communication of grace (v. 16). See Schnackenburg, The Gospel according to St. John, 225–26.
13. Scholarly opinion is divided over which verses belong to what Jeremias termed the Urprolog, “original prologue” (The Central Message of the New Testament, 74). See Brown, The Gospel according to John, 1:3–4; and J. A. T. Robinson, “The Relation of the Prologue to the Gospel of St. John,” New Testament Studies 9 (1962–63): 126.
14. Commenting on the analysis of Bultmann, Käsemann remarked, “The solution is built up on a wealth of hypotheses and thus vulnerable on several different fronts” (“The Structure and Purpose of the Prologue to John’s Gospel,” 140).
15. For example, Jeremias, The Central Message of the New Testament, 72; Brown, The Gospel according to John, 1:18–19; Bultmann, John, 15; and Frank Kermode, “St. John as Poet,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 28 (1986): 3-16.
16. J. N. Sanders and B. A. Mastin, A Commentary on the Gospel according to St. John, Harper New Testament Commentaries (New York: Harper & Row, 1968), 67. See also Barrett, The Prologue of St. John’s Gospel, 13–14; F. F. Bruce, The Gospel of John (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983), 28; Haenchen, John, 1:125; and Carson, The Gospel according to John, 112.
17. Ernst Haenchen, “Probleme des johanneischen Prologs,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 60 (1963): 309, 333–34.
18. The literature on John’s prologue is extensive. In addition to the works cited in the previous notes, other works include M. E. Boismard, St. John’s Prologue, trans. Carisbrooke Dominicans (London: Aquin, 1957); Reginald H. Fuller, The Foundations of New Testament Christology (New York: Scribner’s, 1965), 222–27; Joachim Jeremias, The Central Message of the New Testament (New York: Scribner’s, 1965), 71–90; Elson Jay Epp, “Wisdom, Torah, Word: The Johannine Prologue and the Purpose of the Fourth Gospel,” in Current Issues in Biblical and Patristic Interpretation, ed. Gerald F. Hawthorne (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), 128–46; Craig A. Evans, “On the Prologue of John and the Trimorphic Protennoia,” New Testament Studies 27 (1980–81): 395-401; James M. Bulman, “The Only Begotten Son,” Calvin Theological Journal 16 (1981): 56-79; Ed. L. Miller, “The Logic of the Logos Hymn: A New View,” New Testament Studies 29 (1983): 552-61; John V. Dahms, “The Johannine Use of Monogenēs Reconsidered,” New Testament Studies 29 (1983): 222-32; D. A. Fennema, “John 1:18: ‘God the Only Son,’ ” New Testament Studies 31 (1985): 124-35; Frank Kermode, “St. John as Poet,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 28 (1986): 3-16; James Parker, “The Incarnational Christology of John,” Criswell Theological Review 3 (fall 1988): 31-48; Thomas L. Brodie, The Gospel according to John (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 133–35; and Gerard Pendrick, “ΜΟΝΟΓΕΝΗΣ,” New Testament Studies 41 (1995): 587-600.
19. Peder Borgen notes that other central terms of John 1:1–5 (θεός, φω̑ς, σκοτία) are also used in the Septuagint of Genesis 1:1–5. He notes a parallel to John’s exposition in the Jerusalem Targum on Genesis 3:24 (“Observations of the Targumic Character of the Prologue of John,” New Testament Studies 16 [1970]: 288-95, esp. 293–95).
20. Haenchen, John, 1:109–10. “The Evangelist uses the title λόγος and not υἱός here, because he wishes to carry his readers to the most absolute conceptions” (Brooke Foss Westcott, The Gospel according to St. John: The Greek Text with Introduction and Notes [London: John Murray, 1908; reprint, Grand Rapids: Baker, 1980], 1:6).
21. Merrill C. Tenney argues that John’s audience was Gentile. If “believe” in 20:31 is a present tense (πιστεύητε), then the readers were possibly believers who needed strengthening. If it is an aorist (πιστεύσητε), then this would suggest that the Gospel was addressed, at least in part, to a pagan constituency. John’s habit of explaining Jewish usages (e.g., “rabbi” in 1:38 and “Passover” in 6:4), translating Jewish names (1:41–42), and identifying the location of Palestinian sites (4:5; 5:2; 6:1) would suggest a Gentile audience (“The Gospel of John,” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, vol. 9 [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1981], 10).
22. John’s primary purpose was to evangelize both Jews and proselytes. John’s concentration on the questioning of the Jews might suggest that he was targeting Jewish readers along with Gentiles (Bruce, The Gospel of John, 13; and Carson, The Gospel according to John, 94).
23. Bruce, The Gospel of John, 29.
24. See the discussions by Bultmann, The Gospel of John, 19–31, and Dodd, The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel, 263–85.
25. Edwin A. Blum, “The Gospel of John, 1: The Christian World Life View, part 1” (cassette tape, Dallas, TX: Believers Chapel, 1973). For further discussion see Gerhard Kittel and A. Debrunner, “λέγω, λόγος,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. Gerhard Kittel, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley, vol. 4 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1967), 69–143, esp. 128–36; B. Klappert and Colin Brown, “Word,” in New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, ed. Colin Brown (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1986), 3:1081–1119, esp. 1114–17); Bernard, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel according to St. John, 1:cxxxviii-cxliv; Beasley-Murray, John, 6–10; and Morris, The Gospel according to John, 102–11.
26. Bonsall, The Son and the Word, 64–65.
27. J. B. Phillips, The New Testament in Modern English (New York: Macmillan, 1962), 186.
28. Bruce, The Gospel of John, 29.
29. Ibid.
30. William Barclay, The Gospel of John, Daily Study Bible, rev. ed. (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1975), 1:28.
31. Morris, The Gospel according to John, 102–3.
32. Ibid., 103; cf. Bernard, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel according to St. John, 1:cxlii; and James Montgomery Boice, The Gospel of John: An Expositional Commentary (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1975), 1:39–40.
33. Justin Martyr, The First Apology of Justin 5, in The Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1, ed. Alexander Robers and James Donaldson (1867; reprint, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1973), 164.
34. Bruce, The Gospel of John, 29; and Morris, The Gospel according to John, 104, n. 142.
35. Bruce, The Gospel of John, 30; cf. W. H. Schmidt, “דָּבַר,” in Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, ed. G. Johannes Botterweck and Helmer Ringren, trans. John T. Willis, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978), 120–25. In the inter-testamental period this personification (or hypostatization) is even more detailed (Book of Wisdom 18:15). The angel of death who destroyed the firstborn in Egypt on the first Passover is called God’s “all-powerful word”: “Thy all-powerful word leaped from heaven, from the royal throne, into the midst of the land that was doomed.”
36. “In my opinion all these personifications of Wisdom have a poetic character that can in no way be equated with the mode of existence of the Logos in John 1” (Ridderbos, The Gospel of John, 34).
37. Paul O. Wright, “Except through Me” (unpublished ms., 1982), 45.
38. A. M. Hunter, The Gospel according to John, Cambridge Bible Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), 15.
39. William Temple notes that ἐν ἀρχῇ combines two meanings: “at the beginning of history” and “at the root of the universe” (Readings in St. John’s Gospel, 1st and 2d series [London: Macmillan, 1952], 3). Similarly Karl Barth wrote, “This Word, unlike all other words, was not a created human word only relating to God and only speaking of God and about God. As word it was spoken where God is, namely ἐν ἀρχῇ, in principio of all that is, πρὸς τὸν θεόν, belonging to God, therefore itself θεός, God by nature” (Church Dogmatics 1.1, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley, 2d. ed. [Edinburgh: Clark, 1975], 401).
40. Morris, The Gospel according to John, 65.
41. Westcott, The Gospel according to St. John, 1:4 (italics his).
42. John Calvin, The Gospel according to St. John, trans. T. H. L. Parker (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1959), 1:8.
43. Morris, The Gospel according to John, 67.
44. A. T. Robertson, A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Research (Nashville: Broadman, 1934), 623.
45. Marcus Dods, “The Gospel of St. John,” in The Expositor’s Greek Testament (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1910; reprint, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970), 1:684. Bernard, however, denies that πρός with the accusative differs much from παρά with the dative, meaning no more than “existence along side of” (A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel according to St. John, 1:2). Boismard states that John was seeking to convey the idea of distinction from God and not closeness to God (St. John’s Prologue, 8). Also Carson argues that Dods and others claim too much in suggesting that John was trying to express a peculiar intimacy with πρός (The Gospel according to John, 116). Carson does concede, however, that πρός normally means “with” in the sense of one’s being with another, usually in some intimate relationship.
46. However, Dunn argues that there is no thought of the λόγος being a personal divine being until verse 14 (Christology in the Making, 243). Until then the λόγος was viewed as a personified action of God. See also J. A. T. Robinson, The Human Face of God (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1973), 10, 113–14, 180–85, 209–10, 213–14, 218; and idem, “Dunn on John,” Theology 85 (1982): 334. More accurately Westcott asserted that in this passage the “economic” Trinity is shown to correspond to the “essential” Trinity (The Gospel according to St. John, 1:5).
47. Two features of John’s use of θεός in verses 1–18 should be noted: (1) The term is anarthrous more often than in the rest of the Gospel. Throughout the Gospel θεός is articular six times out of seven, but here the ratio is reversed, with six of its eight occurrences lacking the article (1:1b, 6, 12, 13, 18 [twice]). (2) The first and last occurrences of the anarthrous θεός in these verses describe the λόγος, but the four intervening examples all signify God the Father (1:6, 12, 13, 18a). This forms an inclusio in which the anarthrous θεός is used first of the λόγος, then four times of God the Father, and then again of the λόγος. How does the deity of the λόγος compare with the deity of God Himself? John answered this question by using precisely the same term—the anarthrous θεός—to represent God four times in succession. He closed the inclusio by using the term once more to reaffirm the deity of the λόγος. In this way he vividly equated the deity of the λόγος with that of God the Father (Fennema, “John 1:18: ‘God the Only Son,’ ” 129).
48. James Moffatt, The New Testament: A New Translation (London: Hodder and Stoughton, n.d.), 136. See also Haenchen, John, 1:110–11.
49. Murray J. Harris rejects “divine” for two reasons: (1) Since θεός is bounded on either side by a use of τὸν θεόν (1:1b, 2) which clearly refers to “God” the Father, θεός most naturally is taken as substantival in verse 1c. (2) Linguistically, if 1:1 and 20:28 form the two Christological “bookends” of the Fourth Gospel, θεός in 1:1c, as in 20:28, is likely to be titular (Jesus as God [Grand Rapids: Baker, 1992], 68).
50. Morris, The Gospel according to John, 68, n. 15.
51. Godet, Commentary on the Gospel of John, 1:246.
52. New World Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures (New York: Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, 1950), 282, 773–77; cf. Bruce M. Metzger, “The Jehovah’s Witnesses and Jesus Christ,” Theology Today 10 (April 1953): 74-76.
53. Cf. Harris, Jesus as God, 57–71.
54. Metzger, “The Jehovah’s Witnesses and Jesus Christ,” 75; and Harris, Jesus as God, 60.
55. The plural θεοί is used in John 10:34 of mortals who received God’s Word (Harris, Jesus as God, 44, n. 99).
56. Harner, “Qualitative Anarthrous Predicate Nouns: Mark 15:39 and John 1:1, ” 87. James Hope Moulton wrote, “For exegesis, there are few of the finer points of Greek which need more constant attention than this omission of the article when the writer would lay stress on the quality or character of the object” (Prolegomena, vol. 1 of A Grammar of New Testament Greek, 3d ed. [Edinburgh: Clark, 1908], 83). Cf. E. C. Colwell, “A Definite Rule for the Use of the Article in the Greek New Testament,” Journal of Biblical Literature 52 (1933): 12-21. For a well-reasoned warning against the misapplication of Colwell’s rule to John 1:1 see Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar beyond the Basics (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 256–62. In arguing that θεός in John 1:1c is definite some scholars “have jumped out of the frying pan of Arianism into the fire of Sabellianism” (ibid., 258).
57. Harner, “Qualitative Anarthrous Predicate Nouns: Mark 15:39 and John 1:1, ” 87. Harris paraphrases the clause, “The Word was identical with God the Father in nature” (Jesus as God, 70).
58. Westcott, The Gospel according to St. John, 1:6; and Harris, Jesus as God, 64.
59. Barrett, The Gospel according to St. John, 156.
60. Temple, Readings in St. John’s Gospel, 5.
61. William Kelly, An Exposition of the Gospel of John (1898; reprint, Denver: Wilson Foundation, 1966), 12.
62. Barrett, The Gospel according to St. John, 156.
63. Boice, The Gospel of John, 1:24–27.
64. Ibid., 1:25–26.
65. Ibid., 1:26–27.
66. For example Godet, The Gospel of John, 1:248; Westcott, The Gospel according to St. John, 1:7; Bernard, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel according to St. John, 1:3; Beasley-Murray, John, 11; Carson, The Gospel according to John, 117–18; and Morris, The Gospel according to John, 70.
67. Bruce, The Gospel of John, 31–32, 64, n. 8.
68. Karl Barth protested against applying Proverbs 8:22 to Christ (Church Dogmatics 2.2.95). The Word, he argued, must be distinguished from wisdom and all other created realities. His argument seems to assume something like the Revised Standard Version translation, “The Lord created me at the beginning of His work.” The translation “possessed me” (NASB), of which Barth was aware, is to be preferred. The translation “created Me” (a) reflects the low Christological presuppositions of the Arian heresy, which Barth abhorred; (b) runs counter to the general meaning of the verb קָנָה, which is “get,” “acquire,” or “possess,” and not “create” (Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1953], 888–89); (c) ignores the context, which separates Wisdom from the Creation; and (d) fails to apply the New Testament analogy of Christ as the One who is the only begotten of the Father, and not made. The teaching of the rest of the New Testament must not be ignored here. Jesus used the phrase “the wisdom of God” as interchangeable with a simple reference to Himself (Matt. 23:34; Luke 11:49). And Paul said that all wisdom is in Him (Col. 2:3) and that He is “the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:24, 30). See J. Barton Payne, The Theology of the Older Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1962), 171, n. 18.
69. Westcott, The Gospel according to St. John, 1:7.
70. With perhaps a satirical tone Agur implied in Proverbs 30:2–3 that some people profess to know God perfectly and can give a full explanation of all that He does—“I am not one of these wise men” (Crawford H. Toy, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Proverbs, International Critical Commentary [Edinburgh: Clark, 1899], 521).
71. The “son” in Proverbs 30:4 has been identified as Israel, the demiurge, the Messiah, the Alexandrian logos, or the Son of God (ibid., 522).
72. J. D. Michaelis, quoted in Franz Delitzsch, Biblical Commentary on the Proverbs of Solomon, trans. M. G. Easton (1872; reprint, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, n.d.), 2:276–77.
73. Bruce Milne, The Message of John (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1994), 35.
74. Ibid.
75. Ibid., 35-36.
76. Blaise Pascal, Pensées 12, trans. H. F. Stewart (New York: Pantheon, 1950), 6–7.
77. Milne, The Message of John, 36.