Some Reflections On John’s Prologue (Of the Father’s Love Begotten)
This time of year I am drawn again and again to the prologue of John’s Gospel. I never get tired reading through it slowly, contemplatively and prayerfully. At times I try to imagine what it must have been like for those early first and second century Christians to have heard it read in their assemblies for the first time or to have had the great gift of setting their eyes on a copy of it. What no doubt would have immediately caught their attention was the phrase “En archē ēn ho logos” (In the beginning was the Word). The Logos would have been somewhat familiar to both Jewish and Gentile believers. Logos was a term that was used by both Neoplatonists and Stoic philosophers, as well as, in Jewish wisdom literature. On the one hand it was used as a personified expression of God the Creator and on the other hand it was seen to be distinct from God. The Logos was associated with the ultimate Being as the ultimate yet distinct communication of that Being.
John must have known this and under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit used the term purposefully to say: “Here is the true Logos of God.” Indeed many of those Gentile and Jewish philosophers and pagan syncretistic religious promoters had their own ideas of the Logos but John out does them all.
As those early believers would read or have the text read to them they would have had no problem grasping the personal nature of the Logos. To them Logos would not have been a bare word but an entity closely related to God and yet distinct from God. What John presents that may have been new was what he writes in the first two verses (of course there were no chapter and verse divisions). “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. This one was in the beginning with God.”
The first claim John makes concerns the eternity of the Word. With this claim there is a clear allusion to Genesis 1:1 “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” The Word transcends time! The Word was there with God during the creation of the cosmos. The second claim that he makes is that there is a relationship that the Word has with God. “The Word was with God.” The fact of a relationship implies personality. This further means that there is some kind of distinction between the Word and God. These two claims concerning the Word John restates but does so by using a masculine singular demonstrative pronoun with emphasis: “This One was in the beginning with God.” Yet, John claims more and it is quite a claim. John claims that the Word was God.1 He claims that the Word is fully God. So the Word in one sense is distinct from God and sustains an intimate relationship with God and does so eternally or outside time. Yet in another sense the Word is God.
As the early believers would continue to make their way through the prologue they would have encountered more astounding claims about this Logos. Through Him all things were created (vs 3). He is the source of life (vs 4). As the source of life he is also the light for all people (vs 4). The light that He is shines in the darkness and the darkness has not been able to overcome it (vs 5). All of this points to transcendent, ethereal and breathtaking truth about the Logos and it would not have been lost on those early saints but would have underscored the Logos’ deity.
Yet in verse six they would have picked up on another amazing claim that pointed to the immanence of the Logos and his entrance into time and space. The man John the Baptist was sent by God to testify about the Logos whom now John calls the Light so that those who heard John’s testimony might put their faith in the Light (vss 6-7). John the Baptist was not that Light but only a witness to the Light (vs. 8). The true Light, the Logos, was coming into the world (vs. 9). In fact he was in the world that he made yet the world did not know him (vs. 10). No doubt by using “world” John means the world of human beings. He in fact came to his own people but they did not receive him (vs 11). Yet to those who did receive Him, he made them children of God (vss 12-13).
Those early believers would probably have been wondering how the Logos entered the world. How did the Logos who is the Life of humanity and the true Light enter this world? How did the One who was transcendent and infinite not only enter this world but engage with flesh and blood people with the purpose of being received by them so they might become by regeneration children of God?
Here is where all pagan and Jewish notions of the Logos would have fallen apart. They would never have conceived of the idea that the Logos would have involvement with human beings in the way that John claims He did. For many of them the very idea that the Logos or the Divine would come in contact with the material world was a scandal. For all things material or corporal were the source of evil. For the Gnostics the true God did not even create the world but a distant emanation or lesser deity, a demiurge did.
Yet John makes another amazing claim and uses a gutzy word. “The Logos became flesh.” What! The Logos who is eternally with God and is God became flesh? The word flesh (sarx) is a strong word. It denotes human nature as weak and dependent. The Logos did more than come into contact with limited, weak and dependent human flesh but actually assumed human flesh. Of course, what John is claiming here is that the Logos became a human being.
Then John makes another allusion to the Old Testament that underscores the deity of the Logos. The Logos that became flesh tabernacled among us and John and his companions and indeed many many more people set their eyes (they took note of and paid attention to) upon the glory of the Logos. The word “dwelt” is eskēnōsen and means to take up residence. The noun of the verb is used in the Septuagint to translate the Hebrew for tabernacle. The humanity which the Logos assumed was like the tabernacle in Exodus 40:34-35 in which the glory cloud that manifested Yahweh’s presence dwelt, what later Jewish commentators referred to as the šekīnah glory of the Lord. Here we have a clear declaration of the incarnation of the Logos.
Now John further elaborates on the nature of the glory of the incarnate Logos. For the first time in the prologue he identifies the Logos as the unique or only Son of God. The word he uses is monogenēs. John uses this word in 1:18; 3:16, 18 and in 1 John 4:9. Literally it means “only one of a kind” or “unique.” In these other verses it modifies the noun son (huios). Because it is used to modify Son i.e., God’s Son, it denotes the closest possible relationship that the Son sustains with God the Father. It was God the Father who sent his Son. The Logos did not become the Son when he was sent but was the “only begotten Son” or “the only one of a kind Son” who was with God in the beginning. It was the Son who was sent by assuming full human nature without sin. So the glory to which John and the other’s paid close attention was the glory of the Son who sustained an eternal relationship with God.
John continues his claims regarding the Logos/Son. John the Baptist witnessed to the fact that this one was superior to him because he existed before him. “The one who comes after me is greater than I am, because he existed before me” (vs. 15). The incarnate Logos/Son gives saving grace and there is no limit to this grace (vs. 16). Further, John identifies the incarnate Logos/Son as Jesus Christ who surpasses Moses and the law giving grace and truth (he fulfills the Law and the Prophets being the goal to which they aimed) (vs. 17). This is the first time that Jesus Christ is mentioned in John’s Gospel and all that John has said about him regarding his eternal existence and incarnation underscore our Savior’s glory and leads us to worship Him. Jesus the Christ is indeed a man but he is more. He is also fully God, who as the eternal Son shares intimate fellowship and glory with the Father.
Then those first and second century saints would have come to verse 18. What a declaration and claim with which John concludes this amazing prologue to his amazing Gospel! Now there is a textual variant that needs to be considered. In certain manuscripts we read: “No one has seen God at any time, the only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father that one has made Him known.” Other manuscripts have “the only begotten God” instead of the “only begotten Son.” Most New Testament scholars hold the view that of these two variants the one that reads “the only begotten God,” or “the only one, God himself” (NET) is the original. The difference comes down to one letter. It is either monogenēs theos or monogenēs huios. It would seem probable that the scribes would be inclined, due to context, to change theos (God) to huios (Son). If the original reading is “the only begotten God” it only underscores the deity of Christ.
What is true from the text’s overall thrust is that the Son is God and as such He and not the Father is indeed the only begotten God. The Father is not the unique Son or begotten Son or even begotten as the Father. The relationship that the Father has with the Son and the Son has with the Father is not temporal but eternal. The Son is the eternally “only-one-of-a-kind” Son of God the Father. While the term monogenēs does not directly indicate the idea of siring or generation, yet, because it is connected textually and hence theologically with Son (huios) the ancient church, I think, was correct when it stressed in the creeds that the Son was eternally begotten and not made or created. Contrary to Arius and his followers who proclaimed, “there was a time when the Son was not,” John’s prologue makes it clear that “there was not a time when the Son was not.” The relationship between the Logos/Son and the Father is eternal and it was the eternal Logos/Son who in time was conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the virgin Mary. At that time the Son assumed a new nature - a human nature and ever remains the sinless Theanthropos - God-Man - One person with two distinct natures.
There are only two final points to make about John’s claims regarding the eternal Logos who became flesh. First, as the only begotten God/Son he was eternally at the Father’s side or in His bosom. Of course this is figurative. The NET Bible captures the Greek text well: “who is in closest fellowship with the Father.” The eternal and deep intimacy the Son has had with the Father is what John underscores here. Second, it is due to such intimacy that the Son is, according to John’s final claim, “the one has made God known.” The Greek word here is exēgēsato and from this word the English word “exegete” is derived. This notion provides a good bookend for the prologue which begins with “in the beginning was the Word.” It is the Son who has been eternally so very near to and intimate with God the Father who can truly explain him and make him known to us. As the Logos incarnate He truthfully revealed the Father. So much so that Jesus could say: “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9).
It is no wonder that those early first and second century believers attributed to Jesus Christ the highest honor and praise. Yes, there was more to work out in terms of understanding all that the New Testament taught about Jesus Christ and His relationship with God. There was indeed more to work out from the Biblical texts concerning the Holy Spirit’s relationship with the Father and the Son. 2 Nevertheless, genuine believers from the apostolic age up to the fourth and fifth centuries understood that in spite of the interpretive challenges Jesus Christ was to be afforded genuine worship and when this was eventually clarified, through rigorous exegetical labors, it led to understanding and affirming the personality and deity of the Holy Spirit and hence to the truth of God as Triune.
Of the Father’s love begotten,
Ere the worlds began to be,
He is Alpha and Omega,
He the source, the ending He,
Of the things that are, that have been,
And that future years shall see,
Evermore and evermore!
At His Word the worlds were framèd;
He commanded; it was done:
Heaven and earth and depths of ocean
In their threefold order one;
All that grows beneath the shining
Of the moon and burning sun,
Evermore and evermore!
He is found in human fashion,
Death and sorrow here to know,
That the race of Adam’s children
Doomed by law to endless woe,
May not henceforth die and perish
In the dreadful gulf below,
Evermore and evermore!
O that birth forever blessed,
When the virgin, full of grace,
By the Holy Ghost conceiving,
Bare the Saviour of our race;
And the Babe, the world’s Redeemer,
First revealed His sacred face,
evermore and evermore!
O ye heights of heaven adore Him;
Angel hosts, His praises sing;
Powers, dominions, bow before Him,
and extol our God and King!
Let no tongue on earth be silent,
Every voice in concert sing,
Evermore and evermore!
Christ, to Thee with God the Father,
And, O Holy Ghost, to Thee,
Hymn and chant with high thanksgiving,
And unwearied praises be:
Honor, glory, and dominion,
And eternal victory,
Evermore and evermore! 3
1. You may have heard that a better translation of this would be “the Word was a god.” Advocates of this translation note that in the Greek text there is no definite article with the noun God (theos) and so John is claiming that the Word was in some sense divine but less divine than God.
Now, without going too deep into the grammatical weeds let me respond. Here is a transliteration of the clause: kai theos ēn ho logos. The ‘ho” is the definite article and it goes with “logos,” so it is translated “the Word.” The word “ēn” is translated “was” and is the imperfect tense of the linking verb “to be.” Both the words “theos” and “logos” are in what is called the nominative case. The nominative case is used when nouns are either functioning as the subject or as a predicate nominative. With linking verbs like “is” or “was” there will be a subject and something predicated (stated or identified) about the subject. In this clause the article identifies the subject “the Word” and this means that God is the predicate nominative and this is the reason that there is no definite article with it. In a sense “The Word” is being renamed or identified as God. To add an indefinite article with the noun God is a forced translation and completely slaughters the grammar of the clause. In addition a definite article is not necessary for there to be a definite idea connected with the noun. In verse 18 we read “No one has ever seen God.” In the Greek text there is no article with God but it is clearly definite. Throughout the prologue the noun God is referring to the God of the Old Testament.
The other reason that the indefinite translation “the Word was a god” won’t do is that it flies in the face of the Bible’s teaching that there is only One God. Biblical monotheism rules out the existence of multiple deities whether they are either equal to the true God or in some sense less than the true God. One might respond but what about those passages that use the word god and apply it to men (Psalm 82:6) or to the devil who is called “the god of this world” (2Cor. 4:4)? In these cases the title is used either figuratively or functionally but it is clear from the overall teaching of the Bible that there is only One God (Isa. 45:21; 46:9). While human beings have the capacity to put created things in the place of God, which is idolatry and is forbidden in the first commandment (Exo. 20:3; Deu. 5:7), these “functional gods” are not real but only underscore our sinful capacity to “worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator” (Rom. 1:25).
2. John will deal in depth with the relationship that the Holy Spirit sustains with the Father and with Christ in the Upper Room discourse. In those texts both the deity and the personality of the Holy Spirit are set forth. (John 14:16-17, 26; 15:26; 16:13)
3. Written by Aurelius Clemens Prudentius, 348-405 A.D.
