John 1:1-5

FIRST SECTION

Christ in His Eternal Essence and Existence, and His Position between God and the World

John 1:1-5

(1) The Word (christ) In His Eternal Essence And Existence In Relation To God, John 1:1-2; (2) In His Relation To The Creation, John 1:3; (3) In His Relation To The World And To Man, Particularly In Their Original Constitution, John 1:4; (4) In His Relation To The World In Darkness, John 1:5.

1In the beginning was [in existence] the [personal, substantial] Word4 [the Logos], and the Word [the Logos] was with God [the Deity, the Godhead], and the Word 2[the Logos] was God [Himself]. The same was [existed] in the beginning with God. 3All things were made by [through] him; and without [except through] him was not anything made [ἐγένετο],5 that as [hath been] made [γέγονεν]. 4In him was 5[is]6 life [pure life]; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in [the] darkness; and the darkness comprehended [apprehended; Lange: suppressed7] it8 not.9

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

[John 1:1-2 contain the ante-mundane or præ-temporal history of the Logos, the mystery of the eternal, immanent relation of the Father and the Son before any revelation ad extra. This was a blessed relation of infinite knowledge and infinite love. It supplies the only answer we can give to the idle question, what God was doing before the creation of the world John 1:1 sets forth, in three brief sentences, three grand truths or divine oracles: the eternity of the Logos (in the beginning was), the personality of the Logos (was God), and the divinity of the Logos (was God); John 1:2 sums up these three ideas in one. The subject here touched lies far beyond human experience and comprehension; hence the extreme brevity with which the fact is simply stated in its quiet majesty. Yet these two lines give us more light than the thousands of words wasted by Philo, and the ancient and modern Gnostics and philosophers, on the transcendent mysteries of præ-mundane existence. Bengel calls the first verse “a peal of thunder from the Son of Thunder, a voice from heaven.” Augustine (Tract. 36th in Joh. Evang. §. 1) beautifully says: “John, as if he found it oppressive to walk on earth, opened his treatise, so to speak, with a peal of thunder; he raised himself not merely above the earth and the whole compass of the air and heaven, but even above every host of angels and every order of invisible powers, and reached to Him by whom all things were made, saying: ‘In the beginning was the Word,’ etc. To the sublimity of this beginning all the rest corresponds, and he speaks of our Lord’s divinity as no other.”—P. S.]

John 1:1. In (the) beginning. Ἐν , בְּרֵשִׁית, Genesis 1:1. Comp. the Introductory Observations, and Hölemann: De evangelii Joan. introitu. Different explanations:—1. Cyril of Alex.: the “beginning” is God the Father.10—2. The Valentinian Gnostics (according to Irenæus I. 8, 5): a distinct divine hypothesis between the Father and the Logos.—3. Origen: The divine Wisdom (σοφία).11—4. Theodore of Mopsuestia, and others: eternity.12—5. The Socinians [and some modern Unitarians]: the beginning of the gospel (in initio evangelii). [In Acts 11:15 the expression has this meaning, but here it is entirely inconsistent with John 1:3.—P. S.].—6. Meyer: [John parallelizes the beginning of his Gospel with that of Genesis, but] he raises the historical notion of the beginning which in Genesis 1:1 implies the beginning of time itself, to the absolute idea of præ-temporalness [or timelessness, Vorzeitlichkeit], as in Proverbs 8:23. [Here the Wisdom which is the fame with the Logos, says: πρὸ τοῦ αἰῶνος ἐθεμελίωσέν με, ἐν , κ. τ. λ., (‘from everlasting, in the beginning, before the earth was made’); comp. John 17:5,πρὸ τοῦ τὸν κόσμον εῖναι; Ephesians 1:4, πρὸ καταβολῆς κόσμου. Comp. also 1 John 1:1 and Revelation 3:14.—P. S.] We find an advance of the notion of the beginning primarily only in was (ἦν), and in the relation subsequently stated of the Logos to the eternal God, which unquestionably still further elevates, indirectly, the idea of the ἀρχή The ἀρχή. itself must ever refer to the primal generation or rise of things.13 But if in this ἀρχή the Logos already was (ἦν), then He was from eternity. [The same is said of God, Psalms 90:2, who was before the mountains were brought forth, etc., i.e. from everlasting]. The Logos was not merely existent, however, in the beginning, but was also the efficient principle, the ἀρχή of the ἀρχή (Colossians 1:18). The ἀρχή, in itself and in its operation, dark, chaotic, was, in its idea and its principle, comprised in one single luminous word, which was the Logos. And when it is said, the Logos was in this ἀρχή, His eternal existence is already expressed, and His eternal position in the Godhead already indicated, thereby. The Evangelist says not: In the beginning of the world, because he would make the beginning perfectly absolute; but he pre-supposes the reference to the genesis of the world.[14]

Was—Not became [ἐγέ ετο, comp. John 1:6; John 1:14] the Son of God, a κτίσμα, as Arianism taught. (Comp. Proverbs 8:23; Sir 24:3.) It cannot be said, He might have become, or been made, before the beginning; for becoming and beginning are inseparable.15

[The words: in the beginning was the Logos, clearly assert, as the best commentators now admit, the eternity of the Logos, but they imply at the same time His divinity, which is afterwards formally stated in the third sentence: was God. Metaphysically we cannot separate eternity, ab ante, from divinity, or predicate eternity of any creature. Luther felt this when he said: “That which was before the world and before the creation of all creatures, must be God.” On the basis of monotheism on which John stood, there is no room for a middle being between God and the creature. Before creation there was no time, for time itself is part of the world and was created with it. (Mundus factus est cum tempore, not in tempore). Before the world there was only God, and God is timeless or eternal. Hence the Arian proposition concerning Christ: There was a time (before creation) when He was not (ἦν ποτε ὅτε οὐκ ἦν), involves the metaphysical absurdity of putting time before the world, a creature before creation.—P. S.]

The Word.—[ὁ Λόγος, with reference to Genesis 1:3 : God said, etc. The living, speaking Word from whom the creative, spoken words emanate.—P. S.] The Word absolute, the one whole, all-embracing, personal manifestation of life; hence without the qualification: the Logos of God. It certainly includes also the divine reason or consciousness; though in the Scriptural usage λόγος never denotes the reason itself, but only the matured expression of the reason, word, speech, as a whole, the personal spiritual essence of God made, in its whole fulness, objective to itself,16 as its own perfect expression and image. And in this view the literal interpretation is entirely sufficient, but is supplied by the historical doctrine of the Logos (see above).

The exclusively verbal expositions, and the exclusively historical, are alike insufficient and incorrect: 1. the verbal, which explain ὁ λόγος as (a) ὁ λεγόμενος, the promised one (Valla, Beza, Ernesti, Tittmann, etc.); (b) ὁ λέγων, the speaking one (Mosheim, Storr, and others); (c) the gospel objectively considered, as the word of God: the subject of the gospel (alloiosis!), hence Christ; [so Hofmann, Schriftbew., I., p. 109ff. or, according to Luthardt: the word of God which in Christ (Hebrews 1:1) was spoken to the world, and the content of which is Christ (see, on the contrary, Meyer, p. 45, [pp. 58 and 59 in the fifth ed. of 1869.—P. S.]); 2. the historical, which would make either the Palestinian doctrine of the Wisdom [Σοφία, חָכְמָה] with the Word of God [מֵימְרָא or דִּבּוּרָא] of the Targums, or the Alexandrian Philonic doctrine of the Logos, or both, the proper root of the scriptural idea. This root is to be found in the manifestation of the consciousness of Christ, as it reflected itself in the intuition of John himself; the historical rise of the idea is due to the theological conceptions of the Old Testament (see above); and the expression itself was suggested by the Philonic doctrine of the Logos. Only this further discrimination must be observed: that the Philonic doctrine lays stress not on the word, but the reason, while John emphasizes the absolute, personal, perfect Word, the image of God, as the original of the world, the idea and life of the whole ἀρχή of things.

[Excursus on the Meaning and Origin of the Term Logos, and the Relation of John to Philo.—The Logos doctrine of John is the fruitful germ of all the speculations of the ancient Church on the divinity of Christ, which resulted in the Nicene dogma of the homoousion or the co-equality of the Son with the Father. The præ-existent Logos is the central idea of the Prologue, as the incarnate Logos or God-Man is the subject of the historical part of the Gospel. The Christ of idea and the Christ of history are one and the same. Logos signifies here not an abstraction nor a personification simply, but a person, the same as in John 1:14, namely, Christ before His incarnation, the divine nature of Christ, the eternal Son of God. God has never been ἄλογος, or without the Logos, the Son is as eternal as the Father. John is the only Writer of the New Testament who employs the term in this personal sense, as a designation of Christ, viz., four times in the Prologue (John 1:1; John 1:14, “the Word” simply and absolutely), once in his first epistle (John 1:1, “the Word of life”), and once in the Apocalypse (John 19:13, “the Word of God”), but in the last passage the whole divine-human person of Christ in His exalted state is so called.17 There is an inherent propriety in this application of the term, especially in the Greek language, where λόγος is masculine, and where it has the double meaning of reason and speech.18 Christ as to His divine nature bears the same relation to the hidden being of God, as the word does to thought. In the word of man his thought assumes shape and form and becomes clear to the mind, and through the same the thought is conveyed and made intelligent to others. So the Logos is the utterance, the reflection and counterpart of God, the organ of all revelation both with regard to Himself and to the world, ad intra and ad extra. God knows Himself in the Son, and through Him He makes Himself known to men. The Son has declared or revealed and interpreted God (ἐξηγήσατο θεόν, John 1:18; comp. Matthew 11:27).

The idea of such a distinction in God is in various ways clearly taught in the Old Test. Even in the first verses of Genesis we have already an intimation of the Word and the Spirit as distinct from, and yet identical with, God. Personal intercourse with Christ in the flesh and the inspiration of the Holy Ghost convinced John that Jesus was indeed the Word and the Wisdom of God, the Angel of the Covenant, Jehovah revealed (John 12:41), the centre and organ of all revelations (comp. the Introductory Remarks of Dr. Lange). The same idea, but in different form, we meet in Matthew 11:27; Hebrews 1:3; Colossians 1:15-19, etc. The term λόγος was suggested to John by Genesis 1:3, according to which God created the world through the word of His power, and by such passages as Psalms 33:6 : “By the word of the Lord were the heavens made,” where the LXX uses the very term λόγος for the Hebrew דבר, instead of the usual ῥῆμα. This seems to be sufficient to account for the form of expression, and hence many commentators (Hölemann, Weiss, Hengstenberg) deny all connection of John with the speculations of Philo of Alexandria. There is indeed no evidence that he read a line of the writings of this Jewish philosopher, who flourished about A. D. 40–50.

Yet, on the other hand, Philo was a profound representative thinker mediating between the O. T. religion and the Hellenic philosophy, and it is more than probable that some of his ideas had penetrated the intellectual atmosphere of the age before the composition of the fourth Gospel, especially in Asia Minor, where they stimulated the Gnostic speculations towards the close of the first and the beginning of the second centuries. Comp. the warnings of Paul, Acts 20:29 ff.; 1 Timothy 4:0, the errorists of Colosse, and the heretical gnosis of Cerinthus, who came into conflict with John in Ephesus, and who, according to Theodoret, studied first in Egypt. Apollos also, the learned Jew, came from Alexandria to Ephesus (Acts 18:24). It no more detracts from the apostolic dignity that John should have borrowed a word from, or at least chosen it with tacit reference to, Philo for expressing an original idea, than the general fact that the apostles appropriated the whole Greek language, which Providence had especially prepared to be the organ of the truths of the gospel. And inasmuch as John uses the term without any explanation, as if it were already familiar to his readers, the assumption of a connection with Philo, however indirect and remote, becomes more probable. Such a connection is asserted by Lücke, De Wette, Brückner, Meyer, Lange, Delitzsch,19 Alford, and others.

Philo’s doctrine of the Logos, in its relation to that of John, has been thoroughly ventilated by recent German scholars (see the literature in Lücke’s and in Meyer’s Com. p. 61). I shall briefly state the result in addition to the excellent remarks of Dr. Lange (p. 51). Philo, on the basis of the Solomonic and Apocryphal doctrine of the Wisdom and the Word of God, and combining with it Platonic ideas, represents the Logos (the Nous of Plato) as the embodiment of all divine powers and ideas (the ἄγγελοι of the O. T., the δυνάμεις and ἰδέαι of Plato). He distinguishes between the λόγος ἐνδιάθετος, or the Logos inherent in God corresponding to the reason in man, and the λόγος προφορικός, or the Logos emanating from God, like the spoken word of man which reveals the thought. The former contains the ideal world (the νοητδς κόσμος); the latter is the first begotten Son of God, the image of God, the Creator and Preserver, the Giver of life and light, the Mediator between God and the world, the second God,20 also the Messiah, yet only in the ideal sense of a theophany, not as a concrete historical person.21

But with all the striking similarity of expression, there is a wide and fundamental difference between Philo and John 1:0) Philo’s view is obscured by dualistic and docetic admixtures, from which John is entirely free. 2) He wavers between a personal and impersonal conception of the Logos (Keferstein, Zeller, Lange), or rather he resolves the Logos after all into an impersonal summary of divine attributes (so Dorner, Niedner, Hölemann, Brückner, Meyer); while in John He appears as a divine hypostasis, distinct from, and yet co-essential with, God. 3) Philo has no room in his system for an incarnation of the Logos, which is the central idea of the Gospel of John. His doctrine is like a shadow which preceded the substance. It was a prophetic dream of the coming reality. Lange compares it to the altar of the unknown God, whom St. Paul made known to the Athenians. It helped to prepare deeper minds for the reception of the truth, while it also misled others into Gnostic aberrations. “The grand simplicity and clearness of the Prologue” (says Meyer, p. 63, note) “shows with what truly apostolic certainty John experienced the influence of the speculations of his age, and yet remained master over them, modifying, correcting and making them available for his ideas.”

These ideas of Christ formed the basis of his belief long before he knew anything of these foreign speculations.22 But he seems to have chosen a form of expression already current in the higher regions of thought for the purpose of meeting a false gnosis of speculation with the true gnosis of faith. For the airy fancies about the Logos, as the centre of all theophanies, he substitutes at the threshold of his Gospel the substantial reality by setting forth Christ as the revealed God: thus satisfying the speculative wants of the mind and directing misguided speculation into the path of truth. A clear and strong statement of the truth is always the best refutation of error.—P. S.]

And the Word.—The clause: “In the beginning was the Word,” contains the whole theme. Now follows first the relation of the Logos to the eternal God, then, more at large, His relation to the temporal world.

Was with God.—[πρὸςτὸνθεόν, rather than παρὰ τῷ θεῷ, John 17:5.] Properly: with God, as distinct from and over against Him, in direction towards Him, for Him [in inseparable nearness and closest intercommunion, comp. John 1:18, “towards the bosom of the Father.”—P. S.].23 There is a similar phraseology in Mark 6:3, and elsewhere. On the antithesis in the eternal constitution of God, see above, and Proverbs 8:30; Wis 9:4. The doctrine of the Holy Ghost also is implied in this expression of the motion or posture of the Logos towards God, as well as in the further designation of the Logos: He was God. Starke: We must take good heed that we do not connect with the particle “with” the notion of place or space. The word denotes the most intimate and divine sort of relation to another.24

And the Word was [not the world, which did not yet exist, John 1:3, hence not man, nor angel, nor any creature, but] God.25—Θεός is the predicate, λόγος the subject;26 and in the Greek the predicate stands first, for the sake of emphasis. [Comp. John 4:24 : πνεῦμα ὁ Θεός.—P. S.] God [in the strict sense of the term], of divine nature and kind, was the Logos. Meyer shows how the omission of the article [before θεός] was necessary, to distinguish the persons or subjects, ὁ θεός and ὁ λόγος; and how, therefore, this expression is not to be taken in the sense of the θεός without the article [a God], the subordinate δεύτερος θεός, in Philo [p. 66].27 Likewise the translation in the adjective form: [= θεῖος], divine (Baumgarten-Crusius), would alter the idea. Tholuck cites Chemnitz: θεός sine artic. essentialiter, cum artic. personaliter. He refers also to Liebner: Christol. I, p. 165; the Letters of Lücke and Nitzsch, in the Studien u. Kritiken, 1840 and, ’41; Thomasius: Christi Person. II., §40.

[Θεός without the article signifies divine essence, or the generic idea of God in distinction from man and angel; as σάρξ, John 1:14, signifies the human essence or nature of the Logos. The article before θεός would here destroy the distinction of personality and confound the Son with the Father. The preceding sentence asserts the distinct hypothesis of the Logos, this His essential oneness with God. To conceive of an independent being existing from eternity, outside or external to the one God, and of a different substance (ἑτεροούσιος), would overthrow the fundamental truth of monotheism and the absoluteness of God. There can be but one divine being or substance.—P. S.]

John 1:2. The same was.—The first proposition characterizes the subject alone; the second declares the personal distinction of the Logos from God absolute; the third expresses the essential unity and identity of the divine nature. The clauses form a solemn climax: the Logos the eternal ground of the world; the Logos the image-like expression of God; the Logos God. The sentence now following combines those three propositions in one: This Logos, which was God, was in the beginning with God. [The emphasis lies on οὗτος this Logos who was Himself God, and no other Logos; and with οὗτος is contrasted πάντα, John 1:3, the whole creation without any exception was brought forth by this Logos. So Meyer.—P. S.] This completes the statement of the position of Christ within the Godhead; then follows His relation to the world.

John 1:3. All things were made through [δι’] him.—[From the immanent Word, the λόγος ενδιάθετος, John now proceeds to the revealed Word, the λόγος προφορικός. The first manifestation of the Logos ad extra is the creation.—P. S.] 1 Chronicles 1:17; 1 Chronicles 1:17; Hebrews 1:2; Philo, de Cherub. Ι. 162.28 [The Son is the instrumental cause, the Father the efficient cause, of the creation; comp. 1 Corinthians 8:6 and the difference between ἐκ and διά. The Son never works of Himself, but always as the revealer of the Father and the executor of His will.—P. S.] As the Evangelist means, that absolutely all that exists, not only in its form and totality, but also in its material and detail, was called into life by the Logos, πάντα, all, without the article, is more suitable [being more general and unlimited] than τὰ πάντα [which would mean a specific and definite totality, as in 2 Corinthians 5:18. The Socinian interpretation: ‘the ethical creation,’ or ‘all Christian graces and virtues,’ is grammatically impossible.—P. S.]29

And without him.—Not merely an “emphatic parallelismus antitheticus” [comp. John 5:20; John 10:28; 1 John 2:4; 1 John 2:27], though it is this primarily (see Meyer), but also a further direct statement of the negation contained in the previous clause. For Meyer [followed by Godet] in vain calls in question John’s intention to exclude by this negative sentence (as Lücke, De Wette, Olshausen and others have observed30) the Platonic and Philonic doctrine of the timeless matter (ὕλη). The argument that, since ἐγέντο and γέγονεν denote only a becoming which is subsequent to creation, therefore the ὕλη would not be included, seems itself to rest upon the unconscious notion of a præ-temporal ὕλη. The only question should be, whether ὅ γέγονεν could be said of the ὕλη; especially since the Evangelist does not distinctly enter upon the idea of the ὕλη in itself considered, and doubtless for very good reasons. A proposition so distinctly antithetic was undoubtedly expressed also with antithetic intent, and it would imply downright ignorance in the Evangelist to suppose him unacquainted with this antithesis so universally familiar to the ancient world. We should likewise remember, with Tholuck, that the sentence contains, on the other hand, the antignostic thought, that the orders of spirits also were made by the Logos. For Colossians 2:18 shows that the germ of the Gnostic doctrine of sæns was already known. Yet the strong οὗδὲ ἕν [not even one thing, prorsus nihil, stronger than οὐδέν, nothing] proves that the antihylic aim decidedly prevails. [There is great comfort in the idea that there is absolutely nothing in the wide world which is unknown to God, which does not owe its very existence to Him, and which must not ultimately obey His infinitely wise and holy will. Comp. Ewald in loc.—P. S.]

That hath been made.—Perfect: ὁγέγονεν. All created existence. The connection of this clause with the following: “That which was made, in Him it was life (had its life in Him),” has been advocated from Clement of Alexandria down, by eminent fathers like Origen and Augustine, and by some codices and versions. But, besides the mass of the codices, Chrysostom and Jerome are against this connection. It must be rejected for the following considerations: (1) that such connection would require ἐστί instead of ἦν after γέγονεν (Meyer); (2) that it would destroy the absolute idea of the ζωή which is expected here (see 1 John 1:1); (3) that it would cause the derived life in the creatures to be designated as the light of men; (4) that it would confuse the idea of the essential life itself here, and make the word equivocal.* Clement of Alexandria may have been led by his philosophy to separate somewhat the sentence: οὐδὲ ἕν, ὂ γέγονεν; then many followed him for the sake of the apparent profundity of his combination. On Hilgenfeld’s introduction of the Gnostic ζωή here, see the note in Meyer [p. 63]31.

John 1:4. In him was life.—[ζωή, the true life, the divine, immortal life (comp. John 3:15-16; John 6:27; John 6:33; John 6:35; John 6:40; John 6:47; Matthew 7:14; Matthew 19:16; Romans 2:7; Romans 5:10; Romans 5:17-18; Romans 5:21, and a great many passages), as distinct from βίος, the natural, mortal life (comp. the Greek in 1 John 2:16; 1 John 3:17; Mark 12:44; Luke 8:14; Luke 8:43; Luke 15:12; Luke 15:21; 2 Timothy 2:4).—P. S.] The translation: “was life,” is based on the absence of the article (De Wette, Meyer), But in Greek the omission of the article makes less difference than in German [and English]. To say [in English]: In Him was life, may mean: some measure of life. In the Greek it means, at least in this connection: the fullness of life, all life (Philo: πηγή ζωῆς).32 Hence Luther’s translation: war das Leben: was the life, is best. Meyer justly rejects the restriction of the idea to the spiritual life [ζωὴ αἰώνιος] (Origen [Maldonatus, Lampe, Hengstenberg] and others), or to the physical (Baumgarten-Crusius), or to the ethical (felicitas, Kuinoel).33 Nor is the life here to be at all divided into physical, moral and eternal. It is the creative life, the ultimate principle of life, which manifests itself in the operations of life in every province. This, however, excludes the thought that God called things into existence by an act of abstract, pure will in the Logos. The Word was as much an animating breath as it was a logical, luminous and enlightening volition. The life refers chiefly to the creative power and the power of manifestation, to the substance and the principles of things, as the light to their laws and forms; though primarily life and light still form a unity. Gerlach: “From creation he passes to preservation and providence, and ascribes these also to the Word, in virtue of the creative vital force dwelling in Him. All beings, however, not only stand in Him, but have their true, perfect life, attain their end, and enjoy the happiness and perfection designed for them, only in Him. Comp. on this full sense of life, eternal life, John 3:16; John 3:36,” etc.

And the life [the article ἡ refers to the ζωή just mentioned] was the light of men.—John passes from the relation of the Logos to the world at large to His relation to men. Here life kindles up into light. As God the Father is in the absolute sense life (John 5:26 : ὁ πατὴρ ἔχει ζωὴν ἐν ἑαυτῷ) and light (1 John 1:5 : ὁ θεὸς φῶς ἐστι), so is the Son likewise. Light is a figurative expression for pure, divine truth, both intellectual and moral, in opposition to darkness (σκοτία), which includes error and sin. Christ is not φῶς simply, but τὸ φῶς the only true light; comp. John 5:9; John 8:12; John 9:5. All nations and languages use light, which is the vivifying and preserving principle of the world, as a fit image of the Deity. Christ is not simply doctor veræ religionis (Kuinoel), but is here represented as the general illuminator of the intellectual and moral universe even before His incarnation. He is the φωσφόρος, the original bringer and constant dispenser of light to all men.34 Light and salvation are closely related; comp. Psalms 27:1 : “Jehovah is my light and my salvation;” comp. Isaiah 49:6—In the Logos was the life, and this life is the light. Observe, it is not said the Logos was the life. The personal God, the personal Logos, have not passed into the form of mere life, as Pantheism holds; branched out into extension and thought, as Spinoza has it; alienated Himself from Himself; emptied Himself of Himself, as idea, according to Hegel and the modern philosophy of nature. And as little has He, according to the abstract supernaturalistic notion, made a purely creature-life out of nothing. He has creatively revealed the life which was in Him, and has made it, as the vital spiritual ground of the creation, the light of men. We must, therefore, on the one hand, keep the continuity of His revelation: the Word, the life, the light; but on the other hand, observe the antithesis, which now appears between the life and the light, more exactly defined: nature and spirit. With the idea of the light, the Evangelist passes to mankind. It belongs therefore to the constitution of humanity to receive the life as light (see Romans 1:20; John 8:12), and in the light still ever to perceive the personal revelation of the personal Logos. The light is, unquestionably, the divine truth, ἀλήθεια (Meyer); not, however, primarily as theoretical and practical, but as ontological or essential, and formal, logical; then also, doubtless, as the truth of the origin of life (ideal, religious) and the end of it (ethical). Meyer most justly maintains that here is described the primal condition of mankind in paradise,35 not primarily the subsequent revelation of the Logos as λόγος σπερματικός in the heathen world, or as the principle of revelation in Judaism. And that the operations of that primal relation were not subsequently broken off, though certainly they were broken, is declared by the next verse itself, which thus forms a complete parallel to Romans 1:20.

John 1:5. And the light shineth.—[Comp. Isaiah 9:1; Matthew 4:16].—i.e., it still shines, even now. The darkness which entered was not absolute. If the light here, as is certainly the case, becomes the subject (Meyer against Lücke), Lücke, in his interpretation: And as the light shines the Logos, is still right, in so far as the light, rightly known, must be known as the manifestation of the personal Logos. Since the darkness has not been able to destroy the life, it has also not been able to destroy the light in the life, and shining inalienably belongs to the light.—It shineth.—Present: denoting continuous activity from the beginning till now. But it does not follow that the enlightening agency of the incarnate Word (λόγος ἔνσαρκος) is meant as well as of the Word before the Incarnation (λόγος ἄσαρκος). For where the λόγος ἔνσαρκος is known, the σκοτία is taken away. The Logos, however, even for the heathen and unbelievers, is still constantly active in all the world as ἄσαρκος round about the revelations of the ἔνσαρκος. De Wette groundlessly takes the present as a historical present, referring to the activity of the light in the old covenant.36

In the darkness.—The entrance of the darkness as a hostile counterpart to the light, i.e., the fall, is here presupposed; and it must be inferred that the primitive condition just described was not disturbed by any such darkness.37—The darkness, however, is not simply “the state in which man has not the Divine truth” (Meyer). As the light is truth, so the darkness is falsehood (John 8:44), the positive perversion of the truth in delusion, and the σκοτία denotes the total manifestation of sin as a total manifestation of falsehood, in its hostile workings against the light, together with its substratum, the kingdom of darkness in mankind, i.e., primarily in human nature, yet only in so far as human nature is submissive to and pleased with falsehood. We very much doubt whether John would have called mankind itself, as sinful, darkness.

Suppressed [?] it not.—[The aor. κατέλαβεν is used because John speaks of it as a historical fact.] Common interpretation: Comprehend [begreifen], understand (Luther [Eng. Vers., Alford, Wordsworth; but in this sense the vox media only is used, Acts 4:13; Acts 10:34.—P. S.]). (2) Meyer: apprehend [ergreifen], grasp. [So καταλαμβάνειν is used John 12:35 : ἵνα μὴ σκοτία ὑμᾶς καταλάβῃ; Mark 9:18; Romans 9:30; Philippians 3:12 f.; 1 Corinthians 9:24. The reason why the darkness rejected the light is indicated in John 3:19 and Matthew 23:37.—P. S.]38 (3) hinder, suppress; Origen, Chrysostom and others (Lange, Leben Jesu, III, p. 554), recently Hölemann. Meyer is obliged to concede that. this interpretation is grammatically correct39 (Herod. i. 46, 87, etc.); he calls it, however, false to the context. But an absolute negation of the penetrating activity of the light would be false to the context; for it would destroy the full meaning of both of the next verses and the whole Gospel. The Evangelist intends to declare the very advent of the Light in the history of the world, its breaking through all the obstructions of the ancient darkness, as it appeared continuously in the history of Abraham.

[This interpretation gives good sense, but disagrees with the connection and destroys the parallelism of John 1:5; John 1:10-11, which is quite obvious, although there is a difference in the choice of the verbs καταλαμβάνειν, γινώσκειν and παραλαμβάνειν as also in the object (John 1:5, αὐτό sc. τὸ φῶς, John 1:10-11, αὐτόν sc. τὸν λόγον.)

John 1:5. τὸ φῶς ἐν τῇ σκοτία φαίνει,

καὶ ἡ σκοτία αὐτὸ οὐκατέλαβεν.

John 1:10. ἐν τῶ κόσμῳ ἧν,

καὶ ὁ κόσμος αὐτὸς οὐκἔγνω.

John 1:11. εἰς τὰ ἴδια ἦλθεν,

καὶ οἱ ἴδιοι αὐτὸν οὐπαρέλαβεν.

The Gentiles, as well as the Jews (οἱ ἴδιοι), rejected the preparatory revelations of the Logos. Comp. Romans 1:20 ff. John speaks, of course, only of the mass, and himself makes exceptions (John 1:12). The meaning of καί here and John 1:10-11 is and yet, notwithstanding the light shining in the darkness. There is here a tone of sacred sadness, of holy grief, which must fill every serious Christian in view of the amazing ingratitude of the great majority of men to the boundless mercies of God.—P. S.]

DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL

[1. The Bible speaks of three creations—the first marks the beginning, (The second the central and turning point, the third the end, of the history of the world. The O. T. opens with the natural creation, the N. T. with the moral creation or incarnation, and the Revelation closes with a description of the new heavens and the new earth, where nature and grace, the first and second creation, shall be completely harmonized, and the perfect beauty of the spirit shall be reflected in a glorious and immortal body. The first words of the Gospel of Matthew: The book of generation, or genealogy, origin (βίβλος γενέσεως=מֵפֶר תּוֹלְדוֹת), reminds one of the heading of the second account of creation in Genesis 2:4 (אֵלֶּה תּוֹלְדוֹת Sept.: Αὕτη ἡ βίβλος γενέσεως οὐρανοῦ καὶ γῆς. The first words of the Gospel of John, In the beginning (ἐν ), contain an unmistakable allusion to the first words in Genesis (John 1:1, בְּרְאשִׁית, Sept.: ἐν ); and the third verse of the former: “All things were made by Him” (the personal Word), may serve as a commentary on the third verse of the latter: “God said (וַיֹאתֶר), Let there be light! And there was light.” The world was created by God the Father through God the Son. Comp. Psalms 33:6; Colossians 1:16; Hebrews 1:2; Revelation 4:11.—P. S.]

2. [In Lange, No. 1.] The fundamental cardinal ideas of this section are: The personal God (ὁ θεός); the Word or the Logos absolute, the beginning, the rise of things, the life, the light, men, the darkness, the shining of the light in the darkness, the irrepressible breaking of the light through the darkness: all belonging to the exhibition of the eternal advent of Christ. God is designated as personal by virtue of His Logos: the Logos, on His God-ward side, is designated as the full expression of the being of God in objective, personal correlation; in the Epistle to the Hebrews, the χαρακτήρ, c. John 1:3; in Paul, the image, εἰκών, Colossians 1:15. As the human word is the expression of the human mind, so the Word of God is the expression of His being, in focus-like central clearness and perfect concentration. But if, with reference to God, the Logos is single, He is, on the side toward the world, inexhaustibly rich and manifold, comprising the whole ideal kingdom of divine love, John 17:5; Ephesians 1:4. The Logos, as the expressed life of God, is the eternal ground of the temporal world. The beginning gives the becoming, the becoming gives the world. The ultimate cause of the world’s coming into being and continuing is the creating and upholding life in the Logos, as He contains the principles of life. The whole revelation of this life in the world was light for man, who was himself of the light, i.e., it was a spiritual element for his spirit. Even the encroaching darkness could not extinguish this light. In the midst of the darkness it shines (the bright side of heathenism), and through the darkness it breaks (the Old Testament revelation).40

3. [2.] The passage before us contains the ultimate data of the New Testament doctrine of the ontological Trinity.41 The Evangelist states an antithesis in the Godhead which refers primarily not to the world, but to God. The Logos was in the beginning; this is His eternity, which at once implies His deity. He was God, i.e., not a subordinate kind of deity (Philo, and the subordinationists), which, in view of the Biblical monotheism, is simply a self-contradiction in terms; not to say that the absence of the article with θεός emphasizes just the “divine being” of the Logos. With the divinity of the Logos as distinct from God (the Father), the antithesis in the Godhead is established. And at the same time is signified the unity of the speaking God and the spoken, i.e., the existence of the Spirit, which Schleiermacher (in his Dogmatik), misses in the passage. Considered as the unity of God with the Logos, it is contained in the term Logos; considered as the unity of the Logos with God, it is contained in the phrase πρὸς τὸν θεόν. Of the Spirit distinctly John had here no occasion to speak.42 But if the whole essence of God was concentrated as an object to itself in the Word, the eternal perfection of the divine consciousness in luminous clearness, unity, and certitude, is thereby declared, against all notions of a creaturely development in an originally crude divine being. In the eternal Logos lies the idea of the eternal consciousness, as well as its eternal concentration and revelation to itself: the idea, therefore, of the eternal personality, which, in its power of self-revelation, is the Lord; in its distinction, love; in its unity, the Spirit.

It may now be asked, why there is nothing said of Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and whether the ancient and modern distinctions between the eternal Logos of God and the coming of the Logos to be Son first in the creation (Marcellus, and in some measure Urlsperger), are not well grounded. It is to be observed, however, that the distinction between eternity and temporalness in Scripture is not the same as with these theologians. According to Scripture, time is not excluded or cut off from eternity, but embraced and penetrated by it, so that Christ says: “Before Abraham was, I am.” In the Logos is from eternity the essence of the Son, as in God is the essence of the Father, as in the relation of the two is the essence of the Spirit. The distinction of the two in our Evangelist, however, proceeded from his making an antithesis between the eternity which is before the world, and the eternity which, with the beginning of the world, enters into the world and comes under temporal conditions. If the eternity of God beyond the world be conceived in contrast with the world, the Son is called Logos; if it be conceived absolutely, the Logos is called the Son. And the church doctrine treats of the Godhead absolutely, as it is from eternity to eternity; therefore of the Son. The Son, as Logos, is from eternity; the Logos, as Son, passes from eternity into development, i.e., into the unfolding of the glories of the divine nature. On the development of the church doctrine of the Logos, see Dorner’s Entwicklungs-geschichte, etc. (History of Christology).

4. [3]. After the relation of the Logos to God follows first His relation to the world, as antithetic to the former. And the world is here viewed not as a finished cosmos, but in concrete totality: all things (πάντα); because the cosmos is properly the result and manifestation of the development of the things; τὸ πᾶν is the finished appearance of the πάντα as the Logos is their original source; because it should be distinctly remembered that the Logos is not merely architect of the form of the world (the demiurge of Philo), but also the producer of the material of the world, or rather of the life of the world, which reduces its subordinate, elementary forma to the material of the world. The question whether the creation of the world is from eternity, or arose in time, proceeds from an obscurity respecting the relation between the ideas of eternity and time. To conceive the world as arising in eternity, before time, incurs the absurdity of supposing a world, consequently a development (ein Werden) without time (i.e., also without rhythm or established succession). To conceive the world as arising in time, presupposes an existence of time before the world, i.e., a time without world. Time is the world itself in its unfolding. The world, therefore, arose with time, and time with the world, but upon the basis of eternity, which but reveals itself in all time.

5. [4]. “And without him was not any thing made,” Psalms 33:6. The absolutely dynamic view of the world; in opposition to materialism, which, in its anti-dynamic dealing, is the philosophy of the absolute impotence of the spirit, vexed with a remnant of spirit. In the statement that all things were made by the Logos (not out of Him, nor yet by Him as an instrument, but as principle), the creation is at the same time represented as a pure act of the eternal personality; in opposition to all theories of emanation. Both the doctrine of an eternal heterogeneous opposition between God or spirit and matter (pantheistic Dualism), and the doctrine of an eternal natural outflowing of all things from God (dualistic Pantheism), are here excluded (not to speak of the cabbalistic fancies concerning matter, as a shadow of God, a negation of God, which have emerged again even in our day). By the harmonious distinction in God, or His absolute personality, the discordant opposition in the world, the heathen view of the world, is denied. Gerlach: The by is not to be understood as if the Logos, the Word, were only the external architect; Paul expresses it; “In him43 were all things created,” and adds: “by him and for him,” Colossians 1:16.

6. [5]. But the next words: “In him was the life,” etc., with equal decision, contradict Deism, which sees in the world only an act and work of a God entirely outside and remote.44 The Logos is the life of the life, the operative, creative force, by which all things are. Yet the things have their life in Him, not He His life in the things. And the preservation of the world rests upon the same word as the creation, Hebrews 1:3; John 5:17.—The points of unity between the creation and the preservation of the world, in which the creation establishes the preservation, and the preservation reaches back to the basis of the creation, are vital principles, out of which the vital laws evolve themselves, Genesis 1:11; Gen 12:21, 28. The life is, however, before the light, nature before spirit; though even the natural light, as the first step of the separating (and liberating) process of the life, is a prophecy of the spirit, which, being of the nature of light, finds its essential light in the manifestations of the Logos.

7. [6]. “And the life was the light.” An intimation of the antithesis between spirit and nature. In man the revelation life of the Logos has appeared in the world as light. Consciousness is the light of being. But the life was the light of men, not merely as the source of life, in that the human spirit has its origin in the Logos; but also as the element of life, in that the clearness of the spirit subsists only through the in-working of the Logos. Without Him the light in man becomes itself darkness (Matthew 6:22),45 and the spirit, the πνεῦμα, itself becomes unspiritual flesh. But if the life itself was the light of men, the creation must have been, to the pure man, a transparent symbol, a perfectly intelligible likeness of divine things (Romans 1:20). And this thought is most gloriously carried out in the Gospel. Christ has made the light of men manifest in the life.

8. [7]. “In the darkness.” The Evangelist, writing as a Christian for Christians, can introduce the idea of darkness without further explanation, with no fear of being misunderstood. As he has not intended to give a cosmogony, so he considers it unnecessary here to treat of the beginning of sin. His subject is the Logos, who has appeared as the Christ. Accordingly he delineates first the eternal divine nature of the Logos and His congenial, friendly relations to the world and to mankind, and now comes to His hostile posture towards sin. And this he views in its deepest and most suggestive aspect, as an opposition of the light to the darkness. The sin which has come into the world is, above all things, darkness, self-darkening of the light of spiritual life in falsehood, John 8:44. And this darkness is not the sinful spirits, but sin, as the obscuration of the life, including the life itself, so far as it becomes one with sin. Hence: “shineth in the darkness;” not into the darkness. This darkness, as such, can be only broken through, destroyed, by the light, not transformed into light. But in this the power of the light has been made manifest, that it has not ceased to shine even in the darkness of the heathen world. Nay, the deeper the darkness, the more wonderfully does the light scintillate through it in obstructed, colored radiance, in the motley mythologies, usages and philosophemes of the heathen world, so far as they are symbolical and have an ideal substance: the λόγος σπερματικός [the word implanted, disseminated among men].46 John defines the relation between sin and the continual working of good in the world exactly as Paul does in Romans 2:13-14.

9. [8]. “Restrained it not.” The sense is: prevented it not from breaking through. Intimating the entrance of a historical advent in the active faith of Abraham. The historical beginning of the religion of active faith. [See my objections to this interpretation, p. 59. κατέλαβεν rather means here grasped, apprehended.—P. S.]

HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL

The life of Jesus Christ in time, the great disclosure respecting eternity: (1) Respecting His own eternal nature; (2) Respecting the personal being of God; (3) Respecting the origin of all things (particularly the antithesis of spirit and nature); (4) Respecting the nature and destiny of man; (5) Respecting the contest between the light and the darkness in the history of the world.—The word of Scripture concerning “the beginning:” (1) The Old Testament word in the New Testament light; (2) The New Testament word on the Old Testament basis.—The great beginning between eternity and time considered: (1) As the great distinction between eternity and time; (2) As the great union between eternity and time.—The three great words concerning Christ: In the beginning was the Word: (1) In the beginning was the Word; the divine nature of Christ; (2) In the beginning was the Word; the eternity of Christ; (3) In the beginning was the Word; the eternal operation and generation of Christ. Or, The Word was (1) Before the beginning (His relation to God); (2) For the beginning (His relation to the world); (3) In the beginning (His relation to things).—The Word which was in the beginning, a testimony (1) To the eternal Personality as the ground of all things; (2) To the eternal Spirit-Light as the law of all things; (3) To the eternal Love as the kernel of all things; (4) To the eternal life as the life of all things.—The Word in His exaltation overtime: He (1) In the beginning founded all things; (2) In the middle executed all things; that He may (3) In the end judge all things.—The import of the Word in God, illustrated by the word in man: (1) The expression and mirror of the personal nature (of the spirit, the reason); (2) The expression and signal of personal act.—The Word, as the bloom of the tree of life; or the gospel, a witness of its own spiritual nature: (1) Of the Word as the seed of the tree of life; (2) Of the Word as the heart of the tree of life; (3) Of the fruit of the tree of life, or life eternal—the Word in redemption, a transfiguration of the Word in creation.—The glory in the beginning: (1) The prototypal primal glory of God; (2) The archetypal glory of the Word; (3) The typical glory of the creation; (4) The antitypical glory of man.—The light in its rise; or: (1) The radiance of God and eternity; (2) The dawn of the world and time.—All things, etc., or the Christian doctrine of the creation: (1) The purification of the heathen doctrine (obviating the eternity of matter); (3) The deepening of the Jewish doctrine of the Shekmah (clearly pronouncing the personal life of love in God, as it enters into the world): (2) The glorification of the sound doctrine of scientific investigation (man the final cause of things, the God-Man the final cause of man); (4) The verdict of the Spirit respecting the derivation of the word from a non-spiritual source (materialism).—The Christian features in all things: (1) The creaturely instinct of dependence, as an impulse towards the upholding Word; (2) The natural self-unfolding instinct, as the impulse towards freedom (the liberty of the children of God, Romans 8:0.); (3) The cosmical, world-forming instinct, as art impulse towards unity; (4) The spiritual [æonic] instinct, as the impulse to rise into the service of the Spirit.—The unity and the difference between life and light: (1) In the Son of God; (2) In the world; (3) In man; (4) In the Christian life.—The life a light of men: (1) In man (consciousness); (2) For man; the works of God as the signs and words of God (symbolism); (3) Respecting man; Christ the life of the life.—The life and light, or truth and reality, inseparable: (1) Without reality truth becomes a shadow; (2) Without truth reality becomes a lie.—The great darkness which has spread over the bright world of God: The darkness (1) of falsehood; (2) of hatred; (3) of death.—The light in contest with the darkness, or the progress of revelation in the world of sinners: (1) The light shining in the darkness (the shaded, colored light); (2) The light breaking through the darkness.—The eternal foundations of the advent of Christ.—The divine Life of Christ, the mark of all life: (1) The mark of the original glory of the world; (2) The mark of the deep corruption of the world; (3) The mark of the great redemption and glorification of the world.—The wisdom of the Apostles and the wisdom of their time (or, of the ancient world).—Parallel passages: Genesis 1:0.: Psalms 8, 19, 104; Isaiah 40:0; John 17:0; Romans 8:0; 1 Corinthians 15:0; Ephesians 1:0; Colossians 1:0; 1 John 1:0; Revelation 1, 21, 22.

Starke:—God has revealed even His divine constitution and the inmost secret of His nature.—The Eternal Word is now become also ours. Through this Word God speaks with us, and we speak with God. The eternal Word speaks in us, through us, to us, with us.—Quesnel: The knowledge of the Son of God must be the first and the most excellent; without it all knowledge is nothing.—Nova Bibl. Tub.: See now many proofs of the divinity of our Jesus. He is God, the eternal Word, from eternity, in the beginning, before all creatures, the Creator of all things, the origin of all life, the source of all light.—If the Word of God was in the beginning, it is certain, that He also will be in future to the end (Lange). It is not said: the light was the life, but: the life was the light. The life is the source of the light, even in the kingdom of nature, etc. That no true illumination takes place, except the man is brought back by regeneration from spiritual death to spiritual life (Zeisius). Whose life Christ is, his light He is also.—No other darkness can withstand the light, but the darkness of man.

Mosheim: The person through whom God spoke to men, did not first arise when the world was made, but was already, that is, from eternity.—Rieger: This confessedly great mystery of the manifestation of God in the flesh continues as a standard at all times set up, under which all gather, that are born of God, and which all that are of the world pass by.—Lisco: From the Word, as the light, proceeds all that is true and good in mankind.—Gerlach, after Augustine: Sin, not indeed consists, but manifests itself, in coming of nothing, and bringing man to nothing (eternal death).—Braune: Thought is clear only in word: He came. This implies personality; the Personality, the Enlightener, came near to the Jewish people; in reference to men in general, it is said: He was.—Thus John, who lay on the bosom of the Lord, as the Lord is eternally with His Father, opens his view into the depths of the life of Jesus Christ from the beginning, till it rises into the heights of the same life in the bosom of the Father.

Heubner: The mystery of the incarnation of the Son of God: (1) The holiest, deepest of all mysteries, in virtue of the person; (2) The most beneficent of all; (3) The most certain of all.—Schleiermacher: What is it which meets us everywhere as truth, in all the utterances of the human mind, in all investigations, in all holy words of inspired men? Ever that which contains a hint of the redemption which was to come through Christ.

[Schaff: John 1:1-2. The transcendent glory of Christ, 1. His eternity (against Arianism): “In the beginning was the Word.” 2. His distinct personality (against Sabellianism): “The Word was with (in intimate personal intercommunion with) God.” 3. His essential divinity (against Socinianism and Rationalism): “And the Word was God.”—The fundamental importance of the doctrine of Christ’s divinity: it is the corner-stone of the Christian system, the anchor of hope. Without it His passion and death have no force against sin and Satan, and we are still lost.]

[Burkitt: “Until we acknowledge the eternity and divinity of Christ, as well as of God the Father, we honor neither the Father nor the Son. There is this difference between natural things and supernatural. Natural things are first understood, and then believed; but supernatural mysteries must be first believed, and then will be better understood.” (Pascal makes a similar remark.) “If we will first set reason on work, and believe no more than we can comprehend, this will hinder faith: but if after we have assented to gospel mysteries, we set reason on work, this will help faith.”—Hengstenberg: “The Logos was God;” this is the magic formula that drives away all doubt, anxiety and fear from the Christian. If God be for us, who can be against us?—Ryle: If Christ is so great, how sinful must sin be from which He came to save us?]

[Schaff: John 1:3. The creation is the work of the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit. This is intimated Genesis 1:1-3 : God (the Father) created … And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said (the Word).—The Scripture doctrine of creation differs—1) from Pantheism, which teaches an eternal world and confounds God and the world; 2) from Dualism, or the eternity of matter antagonistic to God (Parseeism, Platonism, Gnosticism, Manichæism); 3) from the emanation theory; 4) from Deism, which asserts the creation, but separates it from the Creator; 5) from Materialism, which makes matter the mother of the spirit, and is alike degrading to God and man.—Sin was not made by God, but is a subsequent corruption or perversion of what was made good. Sin is no essence, no creature, but something negative, a false direction of the will.—Christ’s part in the creation the basis of His redemption. Having made man, He had the deepest interest in him from the start.]

[Schaff: John 1:4-5. Christ, the source of all true life and light.—Out of Christ there is but death and darkness.—The antagonism of life and death, and the antagonism of light and darkness is not, 1) a metaphysical conflict (as in the Gnostic and Dualistic systems), but, 2) a moral conflict involving personal freedom and responsibility. It began in time and will end in time; life and light will conquer the field and swallow up death and darkness. 3. The antagonism culminates in God and Satan, in Christ and Anti-Christ, but goes on in every man. 4. It should fill us with holy grief, manly courage, and intense earnestness.]

[On the whole section. Bengel: John 1:1-2 refer to eternity, John 1:3 to creation, John 1:4 to the state of innocence, John 1:5 to the fall.—Ryle: Not a single word could be altered in the first five verses of John without opening the door to some heresy.—There are hidden depths in this passage which nothing but the light of eternity will ever fully reveal.—P. S.]

Footnotes:

John 1:1; John 1:1. [There is no doubt that Word (Vulg.: Verbum; Lath.: Wort) is the only proper translation here of Δόγος (from λέγω) for John never uses it in another sense, and here he plainly alludes to the account of Genesis that God in the beginning made the world through His word. But in the Prologue and in two other passages (1 John 1:1, ὁ Αόγος τῆς ζωῆς, and Revelation 19:13. ὁ Αόγος τον͂ θεον͂,—the passage 1 John 5:7 is spurious) he employs it in an altogether peculiar, personal sense to designate the præ-existent Christ, as is evident from John 1:14. The Greek favored this application, λόγος being masculine; and Ewald, boldly breaking through all usage, retains the masculine article in his German translation: der (instead of das) Wort. In classic Greek λόγος; has the double signification: word and reason, oratio and ratio; the former being the primary meaning according to the etymology. Both are closely related; word or speech is the λόγος προφορικός, the outward reason or thought expressed; reason or thought is the λὁγος ἐνδιάθετος, the inward speech. We cannot speak without the faculty of reason nor think without words in our mind, whether uttered or not. Hence the Hebrew phrase: to speak in his heart=to think. When λόγος signifies word, it refers not to the formal part, the mere name or sound of a thing (like π̔ῆμα, ἔπος, ὄνομα, νοκ, vox vocabulum), but to the material part, the thing itself, the thought as uttered, sometimes a whole discourse, sermo, or treatise (as in Acts 1:1). When it signifies reason, it may denote the subjective faculty, human or divine, which produces speech (so in Heraklitus), and hence the derivative terms, λογίζε αθαι, λογισμός, λογικός, which are applied to rational functions; but more frequently, and in the Bible almost exclusively, it refers to an objective reason to be given of, or for, any thing. Comp. such phrases as πρὸς λόγον, κατὰ λόγον, agreeable to reason, reasonable (in Plato, also Acts 18:14—this comes nearest to the sense of reason as a faculty); παρὰ λόγον. contrary to reason, improbable; λόγον τινος ἔξειν, or ποιεῖσθαι, rationem habere alicujus, to make account of, and λόγον διδόναι (ἀπέχειν, παρἐχειν), τινόςto give a reason, an account of a thing (comp. Acts 19:40; 1 Peter 3:5); also λόγον αἰτεῖν περί τινος, λαμβάειν ν̓πέρ τινος, to ask, to receive an account of a thing. For the faculty of reason the N. T. always employs other terms, as πνεν͂μα, νον͂ς, καρδία, σοφἰα. Hence we must object, with Zezschwitz (Profangräcität und Biblischer Sprachgeist, 1859, p. 33), to the trias, νον͂ς, λόγος, πνεν͂μα, as set up by Delitzsch in his Biblische Psychologie, retained in the second ed., 1861, p. 176. For the theological meaning of Logos as here used, see the Exeg. Notes.—P. S.]

John 1:3; John 1:3. Lachm. construes: ον̓δὲ ἕν, ὁ γέγονεν, etc., according to Codd. C.* D. L. etc. [Sin. D. al. read ον̓δὲν ὅ γέγ; but ον̓δὲ ἔν (ne unum quidem, not even the ν̔́λη), is more emphatic.—P. S.]

John 1:4; John 1:4. D. et al. (Lachm.) read ζωή έστιν. An exegetical hypothesis, see John 5:11. [Sin. D. and Codd. ap. Orig. sustain ἦν, and are followed by Tischend. in his 8th ed., but ὁ γέγονε ἐν αν̓τῷ is supported by A. B. C. E. F. L. O. al. Some MSS. and Versions connect the first sentence of John 1:4 with the last words of John 1:3, and punctuate ὁ γέγονε ἐν ̓τῷ (a phrase never used by John for to be made by), ζωὴ ἦν (the Valentinian Gnostics and Hilgenfeld); others put a comma after γέγονε (Clem. Alex., Orig., Lachm),—a forced and untenable construction. See Exeg. Notes.—P. S.]

John 1:5; John 1:5. [On the different translations and interpretations of καταλαμβάνειν see Exeg. Notes.—P. S.]

John 1:5; John 1:5. Some authorities read αν̓τόν [sc. λόγον, for αν̓τό,, sc. τὸ φῶς. See Tischend. Exodus 8:0—P. S.].

[9] [The symmetrical, almost poetic, or rather superpoetic, beauty of the Prologue will appear more fully from the following arrangement of its simple, short, abrupt and pregnant sentences:

THE LOGOS AND GOD.1. ̓Εν , καὶ ὁ Λόγος ᾖν πρὸ τὸν Θεός, καὶ Θεὸς ἦν ὁ Λόγος.

2. Ον̓͂τος ἦς ἐν .

THE LOGOS AND THE WORLD.3. ΙΙάντα δὶ̓ αν̓τον͂ έγένετο, καὶ χωπὶς αν̓τον͂ ἐγέντο ον̓δὲ ἕν ὁ γέγονεν.

THE LOGOS AND MANKIND.4. ̓Εν ας̓τῶ ζωὴ ἦν, καὶ ἡ ζωὴ ἦν τὸ φῶς τῶς τῶν .

THE LOGOS AND SIN.5. Καὶ τὸ φῶς ἐν τῆ σκοτίᾳ φαίνει, καὶ ἡ σκοτία αν̓τὸ ον̓ κατὲλαβεν.—P. S.]

[10][So also Marheineke (Dogm. p. 134). The Son is indeed called ἡ , Revelation 3:14, but not the Father. Philo and the Gnostics called the Logos ἀρχή, but the Father προαρχή, or abyss (comp. Jacob Böhm’s Urgrund, Abgrund). Besides, the corresponding term to προαρχή is Λόγος θεός, while “Father” requires “Son”.—P. S.]

[11][Origen (Com. in. Joan., in Delarue’s ed. Tom. IV. p. 19) makes τὸ εἶναι ἐν to be identical with τὸ εἶναι ἐν πατρί, which would lead to Cyril’s interpretation; but soon afterwards, p. 20, he explains that Christ was called the beginning because He is the Wisdom, and refers to Proverbs 8:22, where Wisdom says: “God made me the beginning of His ways—ἀρχὴν ὁδῶν αὐτοῦ εἰς ἔργα αὐτοῦ,"—a passage which figured very prominently in the Arian controversy.—P. S.]

[12][So also Chrysostom (In Joannem Hom. II., ed. Montfaucon, Tom. VIII. p. 13): τὸ γὰρ, ἐν , οὐδὲν ἕτερόν ἐστιν, ἀλλ̓ ἢ τὸ εἶναι , καὶ . Of modern commentators, Olshausen adopts this view: “Not in the beginning of creation, but in the primitive beginning, the Uranfang, i.e., from eternity.” This is a correct inference (see below), but not directly expressed. We can only speak of a beginning of finite or created existence—the existence of God has neither beginning nor end. Liddon (The Divinity of Christ, 4th ed., 1869, p. 28) somewhat modifies this interpretation after Meyer, in referring בְּרֵשִׁית, Genesis 1:1, to the initial moment of time itself, ἐν to the absolute conception of that which is anterior to, or rather independent of, time. Ewald: the first conceivable beginning.—P. S.]

[13][Hengstenberg quotes for this view Matthew 19:4; John 8:44, and other passages where ἀρχή likewise refers to the beginning of the world, or the creation. So also Brückner, Godet, etc.—P. S.]

[14][Comp. Bengel in loc.: “In eodem principio cœli et terræ et mundi (John 1:10; Genesis 1:1) jam erat Verbum sine ullo principio initiore suo. Ipsum Verbum est mere æternum: nam eodem modo Verbi ac Patris æternitas describitur.” Alford: “These words, if they do not assert, at least imply, the eternal præ-existence of the divine Word. For ἐν is not said of an act done ἐν (as in Genesis 1:1), but of a state existing ἀρχῇ, and therefore without beginning itself.” Brückner (in the fifth ed. of De Wette): “If the Logos was in the beginning of things, it follows that He had a being before all being.” Ewald: “The words, ‘In the beginning,’ etc., mean first of all that the Logos actually existed before the world or that there never could be conceived a time in which He was not already.” So also Godet.—P. S.]

[15]Bengel; “Erat Verbum, antequam mundus fieret.” Alford: “The existence of an enduring and unlimited state of being, implied in ἧν (the indefinite past), is contrasted with ἐγένετο in John 1:3, and especially in John 1:14.”—Meyer: “John reports historically, looking back from the later time of the incarnate Logos (John 1:14).” This is more correct than Olshausen’s exposition of ἧν as designating “the enduring, timeless existence of the eternal presence;” this would require ἐστί, as in John 8:58, πρὶν ̓Αβραὰμ γενέσθαι ἐγὼ εἰμί. (Chrysostom likewise takes ἦν here as denoting τὸ , because it is used of God.) But all these commentators agree that the was of the divine Logos is clearly distinct from the became or began to be of the creature, John 1:3, of the man John, John 1:6, and of the human nature of Christ, John 1:14. John suggests the idea of an (eternal) generation of the Logos from the substance of the Father (comp. the term μονογενὴς υἱός, John 1:18, and πρωτότοκος, Colossians 1:15, which differs widely from πρωτόκτιστος or πρωτόπλαστος), but not of the Arian doctrine of a creation of the Logos out of nothing. The Son must be as eternal as the Father, being as indispensable to the Fatherhood of God, as the Father is to the Sonship of the Logos.—P. S.]

[16][“Das persönliche geistige Wesen Gottes in absoluter Selbst-objectivirung.”]

[17][1 John 5:7 is spurious. Luke 1:20; Acts 20:32; Hebrews 4:12, are no proper parallels.—P. S.]

[18][On the grammatical sense of λόγος see Textual Note 1.]

[19][Bibl. Psychologie, secd. ed., p. John 178: “Dass die Johanneische Logoslehre nicht ausser Beziehung zur philonischen steht, ist ein unläuqbares Factum. Die apostolische Verkündigung verschmähte die bereits vom Alexandrinismus ausgeprägten Ideenformen nicht sondern erfüllte sie mit dem durch die neutestamentliche Erfüllungsgeschichte dargereichten Inhalt.”—P. S.]

[20][ὁ πρεσβν́τερος νὶὸς τον͂ πατρὸς, ὁ πρωτόγονος αν̓τον͂, εἰκὼν θεον͂ ,ἄγγελος πρεσβν́τατος, ἀρχάγγελος, the λόγος τομεν̓ς, δημιονργὸς δἰ ον̔͂ ὁ κόσνος κατεσκευάσθη, ὁ ͂ φωτός, ἀρχιερεν́ς, ἱκέτης, δεν́τερος θεός, and similar terms which show how nearly Philo, in speaking of the Logos, approached the teaching of St. John, although in fact he was nearer the later Gnostic speculations about the æons. He also says of the Logos that he was neither unbegotten (ἀγέννητον), like God, nor begotten (ἀγέννητος), like ourselves.—P. S.]

[21][Lücke, Alford and others go too far when they say that Philo did not connect the Logos with Messianic ideas.—P. S.]

[22][Meyer likewise distinctly asserts the independence of the matter of John’s Logos-doctrine, which rests on the O. T. and the teaching of Christ and the Holy Spirit. He arrives, by a purely exegetical process, substantially at the orthodox view, and thus sums up the result of his exposition of John 1:1 (p. 64): “Mithin ist nach Joh. unter ὁ λόγος. nichts anderes zu verstehen als die vorzeitlich (vrgl. Paulus, Col. I.15 ff.) in Gott immanente, zur Vollziehung des Schöpfungsactes aber hypostatisch aus Gott hervorgegangene und seitdem als schöpferisches, belebendes und erleuchtendes persönliches Princip auch in der geisttigen Welt wirkende wesentliche Selbstoffenbarung Gottes, diesem selbst an Wesen und Herrlichkeit gleich (vrgl. Paulus Phil. II. 6), welche göttliche Selbsloffenbarung in dem Menschen Jesus leiblich erschienen ist und das Werk der Welter-lösung vollzogen hat.”—P. S.]

[23][This sentence excludes Sabellianism, while the following declaration: “The Word was God,” excludes Arianism.—Bengel: “Ergo distinctus a Deo Patre. πρός denotat perpetuam quasi tendentiam Filii ad Patrem in unitate essentiæ. Erat apud Deum unice quia nil extra Deum tum erat.” Meyer: “πρός bezeichnet das Befindlichsein des Logos bei Gott im Gesichtspunkte des Verkehrs.” Brückner: “παρά hebt mehr die Räumlichkeit, πρός mehr die Zugehörigkeit des Beisammenseins hervor.” Alford: “Both the inner substantial union, and the distinct personality of the λόγος are here asserted.” Liddon (l. c. p. 229): “He is not merely παρὰ Θεῷ (John 17:5), along with God, but πρὸς τὸν Θεόν. This last proposition expresses, beyond the fact of co-existence or immanence, the more significant fact of perpetuated intercommunion. The face of the everlasting Word was ever directed towards the everlasting Father.” Owen: “With signifies a continual cleaving or adherence to the object towards which the relation of union is expressed, the closest union, together with distinct and independent personality.” Godet: “πρός exprime la proximite, la présence, le rapprochement mutuel, la relation active, la communion personelle.” He translates it, “en relation avec Dieu.”—P. S.]

[24][“Ubi amor, ibi trinitas.” God being love, He must be triune, a loving Father, a beloved Son, and the union and communion of both, which is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of love and communion.—P. S.]

[25][Meyer observes here (p. 65): “There is something majestic in the growth of the record of the Logos in these three brief, grand sentences.”—P. S.]

[26][Luther reverses the order, following closely the Greek: Gott war das Wort. So also the old English translation authorized by Henry VIII.—P. S.]

[27][Philo calls the Logos θεος only by misapplication, ἐν καταχρήσει, as he says; and he calls Him ὁ δεν́τερος θεός in the sense of a middle being between God and man.—P. S.]

[28][Philo justly distinguishes the efficient from the instrumental cause of the creation, the former he signifies by ὑφ' ον̓͂ the latter by δἰ ον̔͂: … τὸν θεὸν, ν̔φ̓ ον̓͂ (ὁ κόσμος) γέγονενν̔́λην δὲ, τἁ τέσσαρα στοιχεῖα, ἑξ ὦν σνςεκράθη ὄργανον δέ, λόγον θεον͂ ,δἰ ον̓́ κατεσκενάσθη. The Bible excludes the Platonic and Philonic doctrine of the ν̔́λη which is dualistic. It teaches that the world was made by God the Father (in answer to the question ν̔φ̓ ον̓͂), through the Son (δἰ ον̓͂) out of nothing (έξ ον̓͂), for His glory (δἰ ὅ).—P. S.]

[29][Meyer: “John might have written τὰ πάντα (with the article) as 1 Corinthians 8:6; Colossians 1:16; but he must not; comp Colossians 1:17; John 3:35, for his idea is: ‘All,’ in the unlimited sense; τὰ πάντα would express the idea: the totality of things existing.” Comp. Godet. Bengel observes on πάντα: “Grande verbum, quo mundus, i.e. universitas rerum factarum denotatur, John 1:10.”—P. S.]

[30][Also Alford: “This addition is not merely a Hebrew parallelism, but a distinct denial of the eternity and uncreatedness of matter as held by the Gnostics. They set matter, as a separate existence, over against God, and made it the origin of evil:—but John excludes any such notion.”—P. S.]

[31][Godet justly remarks that ζωὴ ἐ͂ιναι is too strong an expression for creatures instead of ζωὴν ἔχειν.—P. S.]

[32][Comp. Psalms 36:9 : “With Thee is the fountain of life; in Thy light we see light;” LXX: πηγὴ ζωῆς. Comp. also John 11:25 : “I am the resurrection and the life (ἡ ζωή);” and 1 John 1:1, where Christ is called the (personal) Word of life, τῆς ζωῆς.—P. S.]

[33][Olshausen, Brückner and Alford likewise take life in this comprehensive sense, that the Logos is the source of all life to the creature, not indeed ultimately, but mediately, comp. John 1:26; 1 John 5:11. So θάνατος, the opposite of ζωή, covers in John the physical and spiritual. Chrysostom (Hom. V, al. IV) refers ζωή mainly to the power of creation and preservation, but also to the resurrection. According to Olshausen ζωή designates the only real absolute being, the ὄντως εἶναι, of Deity, in contrast with the relative existence of the creature. Luthardt and Brückner: “Das in sich gesättigle, wahre Sein, welches zugleich die schöferische Lebenskraft schlechthin ist ohne Unterseheidung des Physischen und Ethischen.” Godet: “la santé vitale dans sa vigueur la plus intacte, le developement normal del’ existence” i.e. life in its normal and healthy condition, whether physical, or intellectual and moral, or supernatural and eternal.—P. S.]

[34][Chrysostom: ον̓κ εἶπεν, ἦν τὸ φῶς τῶν ̓Ιονδαίων, ἁλλὰκαθόλον τῶν .—P. S.]

[35][John 1:4 relates to the condition before, John 1:5 to the condition after, the fall. So already Bengel. Godet goes further, and discovers in life and light an allusion to the trees of life and knowledge in paradise. Ingenious, but not properly warranted by the text.—P. S.]

[36][Brückner likewise dissents here from De Wette. Alford: “This φαίνελ is not merely the historical present, but describes the whole process of the light and life in the Eternal Word shining in this evil and dark world; both by the O. T. revelations, and by all the scattered fragments of light glittering among the thick darkness of heathendom.” Hengstenberg, on the contrary (p. 33), denies all illumination of the heathen world as foreign to the mind of John, and explains that the Logos before the incarnation was virtually life and light, but did not manifest Himself as such before the incarnation, so that those who lived before Christ were excluded from life and light. But this would cut off even the saints of the O. T. Comp. against Hengstenberg John 1:9; Romans 1:18-24; Romans 2:14-15; Acts 14:16-17; Acts 17:27-28.—P. S.]

[37]As the σ κ ο τ ί α is not introduced here in its historical origin, Hilgenfeld (with the Baur school generally) has sought here to make ultimate opposites out of the light and darkness. Thus is the Gnostic filth everywhere brought in, just where the evangelist would sweep it out, as here by the preceding ον̓δέ ἕν.

[38][Meyer: “ον̓ κατέλαβεν, ergriff es nicht; nahm nicht Besitz davon; es ward von der Finsterniss nicht angeeignet, so dass sie dadurch licht geworden wäre; sie blieb ihm fern und fremd. “Ewald (p. 121) takes the same view, and finds besides in ον̓ κατέλαβεν the idea of guilt: “und die Finsterniss dennoch ihrerseits ergriff es nicht, eignete es sich nicht an, wie sie doch hätte thun können und sollen.”—P. S.]

[39][According to classic usage, but in the N. T. this meaning has no parallel. John would probably have used κατέχειν in this case, as Paul did, Romans 1:18; 2 Thessalonians 2:6-7.—P. S.]

[40] [Victor Strauss (Das Kirchenjahr im Hause, Heidelberg, 1845, p. 63) beautifully reproduces and expounds the Johanneau idea of the Logos in his relation to God and the world:

“Vor Anbeginn der Schöpfung und der Zeiten

Ist Gottes Eingeborner ewiglich,

Die Fülle selbst von Gottes Wesenheiten,

Das ew’ge Du, in dem des Vaters IchDes eignen Wesens Wesenheit besiegelt,

Den eignen Abgrund aufgedeckt in sich,

Die Hand die Gottes Tief’ ihm selbst entriegelt,

Sein Wille selbst in anfangloser That,

Sein Abglanz, der ihm selbst sich wiederspiegelt.

Das Wort, das er in sich geboren hatZum wahren Sein, drin Fülle der NaturenIn’s ungeschaffne Dasein ewig trat.

Da ist der Grund, aus dem die WeltewflurenHervorgesprosst zum Anbeginn der Zeit,

Als ew’ges Dasein ward zu Creaturen;Und Lebensfüll’ in reinster SeligkeitGing aus von Ihm in die Erschaffnen alle;Es war nur Licht, war Keine Dunkelheit”—P. S.]

[41][German divines properly distinguish since Urlsperger (who invented, not the distinction, but the terminology) between the ontological and the œconomical Trinity, or the Trinity of essence and the Trinity of revelation. The ontological Trinity is the Trinity of the Divine being before and independent of the world, the inherent threefold distinction in God, who both as absolute intelligence and as absolute will or love, is to Himself an object of knowledge and of love, and yet self-identical in this distinction. We have an analogy in our human self-consciousness which implies a union of the knowing subject and the known object; and in human love there is also a trinity—the loving subject, the beloved object, and the union of the two. The œconomical Trinity is the Trinity of God manifested in the world in the work of Creation and Preservation (as God the Father), Redemption (as God the Son), and Regeneration and Sanctification (as God the Holy Ghost). The Bible generally speaks of the Trinity as revealed, but this itself justifies by inference the assumption of the internal Trinity, since God reveals Himself as He actually is. There can be no contradiction between His being and His manifestation.—P. S.]

[42][The dispensation of the Spirit, His œconomical manifestation in the world with the whole fullness of His power, presupposed the atoning work and glorification of Christ, and did not appear before the day of Pentecost and the founding of the Christian Church. Comp. John 7:39.—P. S.]

[43][̓Εν αν̓τῶ; inaccurately translated by him in the English Version, and thus not rightly distinguished from δἰ αν̓τον͂ at the close of the same verse.—E. D. Y.]

[44] [Göthe thus refutes Deism:

“What were a God who only from withoutUpon his finger whirled the universe about?’Tis his within itself to move the creature;Nature in him to warm, himself in nature;So that what in him lives and moves and is,Shall ever feel some living breath of his.”—P. S.]

[45][More properly, without Him there were no light at all in man. In Matthew 6:22 the Lord speaks rather of a perversion, confusion, doubling of the vision by the carnal will, so that the light within becomes distorted and a source of positive error, than of an absence of the light itself. Such light-darkness, or dark-light, like the ignis fatuus, is a “greater” darkness than simple darkness itself.—E. D. Y.]

[46][Justin. Martyr applied the Platonic view of the relation of the νον͂ς to the νοερόν in man to the relation of the divine λόγος to the σπέρμα λογικόν, the human reason, and derived all the elements of truth which are scattered like seeds among the ancient heathen, from the influence of Christ before His incarnation. He recognized in the rational soul itself something closely related to the divine Logos, a germ or spark of the Reason of reasons, a λόγος σπερματικός, a σπέρμα τον͂ λόγον ἔμφντον. He regarded the heathen sages as unconscious disciples of the Logos, as Christians before Christ, and compared Socrates to Abraham. Apol. II. §13: “Each man spoke well in proportion to the share he had of the spermatic divine word (ἀπὸ μὲρονς τον͂ σπερματικον͂ θείον λόγον), seeing what was related to it. Whatever things were rightly said among all men are the property of us Christians …. All the [heathen] writers were able to see realities darkly through the seed of the implanted word that was in them (δια τῆς ἐνον́σης ἑμφν́τον τον͂ λόγον σπορᾶς).” Comp. 2. § 8, where, speaking of the Stoics and the poets, he says that their moral teaching in part was admirable on account of the seed of reason implanted in every race of men, δια τὸ ἔμφντον παντὶ γένει ͂ λόγον.—P. S.]