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VERSES 1–18

Augustine’s exordium and my commentary upon it might just as well introduce the exposition of any other book of the New Testament rather than John’s Gospel. That text reminds us of the basic elements in general biblical hermeneutics. Yet we have only to cast a glance at the first and clearly discernible section of the Gospel, its famous prologue in 1:1–18, to realize that it was neither by accident nor caprice that Augustine made his remarks in this context, and that with the apparently general considerations that we have appended to them we have in fact already approached our first, specific, and immediate exegetical task, namely, the exposition of the prologue.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word. He was in the beginning with God. Everything was made by him, and without him nothing that is was made. In him was life, and this life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not comprehended it.

There was a man sent from God who was called John. He came for witness, to bear witness to the light, that all might come to faith through him. He was not the light but bore witness to the light.

He was coming into the world as the true light that lightens everyone. He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came to his own home and his own people did not receive him. But those who did receive him, to them he gave the power1 to become the children of God, even to those who believed in his name. These were not born of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of a man, but of God.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, a glory as2 of an only-begotten of his Father, of one who is full of grace and truth. John bears witness to him, and cries, and says: This was he of whom I said, he who comes after me surpasses me, for he was above me from the very first. Of his fulness we have all received grace for grace. The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth are through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, but the only-begotten, God, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has manifested him.

In support of the statement that our introductory discussion of Augustine has led us on to the right track for an understanding of the prologue, I might make the general observation that in the prologue, too, there is a concern to make it clear to readers of the Gospel that they are in a specific situation in relation to it, that they are in some sense from the very first its prisoners. A word, no, the Word has been spoken which in principle, as the Word of the Creator, precedes and is superior to all that is (vv. 1–3). A light shines, namely, the life that was originally in the Word. It shines in the darkness for all people. It has always shone. It was in the world (vv. 4–5, 9–10). All people are from the very first hoi idioi, his own people (v. 11). It may be that they are darkness that does not comprehend the light (v. 5), cosmos that does not know it (v. 10), people who do not receive their Lord (v. 11). But this does not alter the fact that the light shines in the darkness (v. 5), that the world was made by him who is the light (vv. 3, 10), that these are from the very first his own people (v. 11). The dice have been cast concerning humanity once the Evangelist, even though he, too, is only a man, introduces his theme. He omits the sursum corda, the express appeal to readers with which Augustine finally brings to light the significance of the situation. He was able to omit it. For who will not hear it at the end of the prologue, unspoken though it is?

Nevertheless, there is a more specific relation between the thoughts of Augustine and the Johannine prologue. Those who have studied John’s Gospel more closely know what is the exegetical crux of the prologue. It is concrete and palpable in vv. 6–8 and v. 15. These verses deal with a John, John the Baptist, as is plain in the rest of the chapter. They tell us that the author wants to show us at once what is the relation of this John to the Word, to the light about which vv. 1–5 and vv. 9–13 speak, to the incarnate Word that is seen by us (v. 14), to Jesus Christ, as will at last be openly stated in v. 17. He, this John, is not himself this Word; he is a man sent by God (v. 6). He is not himself the light; he is a witness to it (v. 8). He bears witness that the one who comes after him surpasses him, as he is before him in principle (v. 8). But v. 7 makes the same point in a positive way. He, this John, has come to bear witness to the light that all might come to faith through him.

There can be no question but that these four verses, above all, cause difficulty to readers and expositors. Vv. 6–8 and v. 15 constitute an interruption which we should like to expunge in the interests of a smoother reading. If they were not there, then for all the other obscurities and ambiguities, understanding the prologue would be a relatively simple task. But they are in fact there, and there can be no doubt but that it is they that give the prologue the concrete appearance with which we have to reckon. They are important. The author has an urgent concern to say what they say. This is true even if, as Bultmann has assumed,3 they are to be viewed as marginal corrections or strengthenings which the author added to an older work that he adopted and revised. He certainly did not want to see the prologue go out and be read without these verses. In their concreteness, and materially in their significant relation to the real beginning of the Gospel in v. 19, they stand out strangely from the verses around them, and precisely in so doing they bring to light the practical purpose of the introductory statement. Whatever we may think about this purpose, whatever view we may take of the literary relation of these verses to the verses around them, whatever may be our position vis-à-vis the textual and historical4 questions raised by these verses, one thing is certain, namely, that the problem of the relation between revelation and the witness to revelation, which is the issue in Augustine’s exordium, is precisely what the author undoubtedly wanted to pinpoint in these verses (and not, perhaps, in these verses alone), his aim being to make readers of the Gospel aware of their situation and to put them in the right place in this situation.

He is speaking about John the Baptist as a witness to revelation. But only later, after the prologue, does he make this express distinction even though he, the author, is also called John, or wants to be called John, or is supposed to be called John according to the tradition. As though it did not matter much if there is a temporary confusion between the two Johns in the minds of readers, as though such a confusion or conflation might even be welcome, he first leaves a certain haziness around the name John which he removes only later. We follow a clue first noted by Franz Overbeck5 when we stress the remarkable proximity of the two Johns in the mind of the author. According to Overbeck this answers the question why the author wanted to be called John or to rely on the authority of John. Overbeck believed that in relation to Jesus the apostle John serves6 as another witness alongside the Baptist John. “As the Baptist is the witness of the Logos, the mediator between him and the world prior to the completion of his epiphany in the world, before the Logos is at the point of perfectly showing the world [by]7 himself the glory of God on earth, so John the apostle is the mediator for the Logos after his departure from the world.” “He is called John on account of his calling in the Gospel and the inner relationship of this calling to that of the Baptist in the whole economy of the divine light in the world according to the basic conception of this economy on which the whole of the Fourth Gospel rests according to the prologue” (p. 417).

As for the narrower issue of the name in the Fourth Gospel, one might question this hypothesis and still not affect the excellence of the observation on which it rests. There is in fact an inner relationship of calling between the two Johns. There is also perhaps—I am less certain of this—a parallelism, as Overbeck suggests, between the witness before and the witness after. One certainly cannot say that the Fourth Evangelist has only a negative or polemical interest in the one who bears his name. Note that in contrast to the Synoptists he is not content to assign to the Baptist merely the position of a forerunner in the sense of a prophet who simply predicts the Messiah, of one who proclaims him that is to come. No, with houtos ēn he at once stresses the Baptist’s word of witness (v. 15). He has him bear express witness to the one who has already come (vv. 26, 29ff., and then again in 3:27ff.). He is the first to point to the one who was then living unrecognized in the midst of Israel before there was ever a disciple or an “apostle” insofar as this word is to be distinguished from the term prophet. Note also that as compared with the Synoptics the Fourth Gospel enhances, as it were, the position of the Baptist by understanding and interpreting his function of preaching repentance and remission in direct reference to Jesus and claiming his baptism directly as Christian baptism (Overbeck, p. 419). The statement of Walter Bauer8 that the attitude of the Evangelist to the Baptist and his followers is to be regarded as one of “intentional contradiction” can hardly be viewed as a happy one in the light of these theses. But there is more. The Baptist is the man who in v. 32 bears witness to the descent of the Spirit upon Jesus from heaven. If the Evangelist now bears witness also to Jesus and his mission, he is not therewith opening a new, let alone an opposing, series. He is placing himself in the series that opens already with John the Baptist. To be sure, he is critical in relation to the Baptist. He shows reserve. He makes distinction. He sets him in his place. Yet we do not find criticism alone. Or, one might say, the criticism is positive. It is also—inevitably—criticism of himself in the same series. If the assumption is correct that according to the author’s intention we are to find in the unnamed disciple among those mentioned in v. 35 and v. 40 either the author himself or the one who vouches authoritatively for him, the one in whose name he speaks, then with the ambivalence that is fitting in this matter he is stating that the Baptist was his first teacher, his human master, through whose witness: “Behold, this is the Lamb of God” (v. 36), he was led to the eternal Word and light, to Jesus. By way of the Baptist he introduces himself, and he is at once on the most significant path to Jesus. And is he doing anything other, in writing the Gospel, than what this teacher of his has done? Does he have this teacher say anything less in v. 29, and especially in 3:35–36, than the sum of his own Gospel? Does he call himself, or his companions in 15:27, or the author, his later editor of 21:24, anything greater than simply a martyrōn. precisely as John the Baptist was? “I have greater witness than that of John,” says Christ in 5:36, but not his disciple! Often in the Gospel the words of Jesus as the incarnate Word are called martyrein or martyria. This fact obviously illuminates the relative dignity of him who in the prologue is called a mere witness, but who is set in contrast as such. Is it not noteworthy and significant, even if exegetically mistaken, that the entire exposition of the early church regarded vv. 16–18 as a continuation of v. 15, and therefore as the words of the Baptist rather than the words of the Evangelist, and that they could do so, things being as ambivalent as they are, with a claim to no little probability? What support have we even in v. 14 for excluding the Baptist from the hēmeis that is presupposed in the etheasametha? No, there is proximity or solidarity here. In Overbeck’s phrase, there is here an “inner relationship of calling.” In John the Baptist John the Evangelist—no matter how this may relate to the question of the name of the Gospel—recognizes and understands himself as well, and his own problematical status. Aware that I am probably trying to say something too precise to do justice to the complex material, but seeking to point in the direction in which, as I see it, the real significance lies, I might venture the paradox that John the Evangelist is wrestling with himself when he wrestles with John the Baptist; with himself, i.e., with his existence and function as the human witness who stands between revelation and humanity. He instructs his readers concerning his own relation to this subject when in the same context he instructs them concerning John the Baptist. He wants to make it clear what he, the Evangelist, does and does not do as such, what he can do and cannot do, what he is and is not. He does this by means of the one who for himself and his contemporaries is the great and most significant paradigm of the concept of the “witness,” namely, the figure of the Baptist.

Within this view, if the presuppositions are correct, there might be truth in all that Richard Reitzenstein9 and others, along the lines of the history of religion, say about the possible ecclesiastical significance of the treatment of the Baptist in the prologue and in the Gospel as a whole. It might well be that what is reckoned with here is a competing religion which goes back to a chronologically indeterminate form10 of Mandean thinking and which honors the Baptist as the revealer. In the last resort this theory might shed an interesting light on the problem of the genesis of the Johannine prologue. The troublesome phenomenon of a Baptist sect would then have provided the Evangelist with the occasion for bringing the prologue to this concrete climax. Yet in this very case too his own problem (and perhaps even his own biographical problem) would in fact have motivated him. And obviously this would have been a serious enough material problem for him to unfold it at the outset of the Gospel with a solemnity which ill accords with the almost complete disappearance of the question of the Baptist after ch. 3 if in fact the issue is merely one of ecclesiastical politics, of the Baptist sect. W. Bauer (op. cit., p. 14) undoubtedly claims far too much when he says that the depiction of the relation between Jesus and John is to be regarded “only as a practical one,” i.e., as a polemic against the Baptist sect. It is certainly practical in this very concrete sense but it is not only practical! I would rather say that through the transparency of what might have been a historical and ecclesiastical situation the author is speaking about the situation which arises, or is already present, when someone other than Christ himself, a man, but an authorized man, an anthrōpos apestalmenos para theou (v. 6), speaks about Christ. He is speaking about the claim and authority with which this necessarily takes place (cf. v. 7 with the unquestionable word of the editor in 21:24), but also about the danger of confusion that can arise, and therefore about the required criticism with which such a man must be differentiated from the one about whom he speaks. We find in 5:35 the complaint against the Jews that he, John the Baptist, was a burning and shining light but they were willing to rejoice in his transitory human light (agalliasthēnai pros hōran en tō̧ phōti) (Overbeck, p. 420). This is precisely what should not happen in the relationship of revealer, witness, and hearers that the Baptist typifies.

If the above observations are all correct, then Augustine’s exordium is not so remote from the text as it might seem to be at first glance. The Johannine prologue is not dealing with the general situation of humanity vis-à-vis revelation. It is dealing concretely with the question of the situation that arises when we hear a witness to revelation, when we lift up our eyes to the hills from which our help comes, and yet when we can expect help only from the Lord who made heaven and earth. All this casts at once a brilliant light on the distinctively radical way in which the Evangelist approaches his task. He knows what he is doing when he sets about the work. He is concerned to express this, to see to it that the place from which he speaks, from which he confronts his readers, is depicted both positively and negatively. As he perhaps in fact brings to light the hopeless confusion of witness and revealer of which that competing religion might have been guilty, as he honors the witness and yet draws the line by calling him a witness, he sets himself in his own place and his readers in theirs. More plainly than anywhere else in the Bible except in the parallel 1 John 1–4, which is probably by the same author or from the same circle, we are told here what the Bible is, namely, witness to revelation both in relation to revelation and yet also in distinction from it. What might at first seem to be exegetically very remote in the passage from Augustine is in fact typically Johannine. There is said in it by way of introduction something which has to be said by way of introduction to the exposition of all biblical books as such: the great Yes and No with which these books call us to themselves only to point us to the Lord, as the Baptist pointed his disciples. This is the radical procedure of the Gospel, or at least a distinctive example of it. For we have the prologue only in the light of what I have called his practical intention. I have anticipated because, led on the one side by Augustine and on the other by the present state of the religio-historical and literary-critical debate, I incline to the opinion that if in the total web of the prologue we lay hold of this one thread, we shall in fact find the guiding thread to an understanding of its content as a whole. The radius of the circle that this section draws is naturally much larger than has been expressed in our deliberations thus far. The question, or rather the answer, the insight with which the Evangelist approaches his task, is obviously not exhausted by his formula for the relation between Christ and John, between revelation and its witness. Nevertheless, one might say, and only in this light does the exordium of Augustine commend itself, that in the framework of a much more comprehensive consideration the purpose of the prologue achieves in that formula its most concrete form.

We shall now turn to the detailed exegesis of what must be regarded as the much more comprehensive material.

1. En archȩ̄ ēn ho logos. The order of the sentence lays the stress on en archȩ̄. It is correct to translate: “In the beginning was the Word,” but the usual emphasis on “the Word,” though what it may seem to be saying sounds profound, is not in keeping with the meaning of the statement. What was in the beginning, namely, the Word and not something else, is not the point here. Instead, something is being said about the Word. It was already in the beginning. It did not come into being or arise subsequently.11 En archȩ̄, in principio (Vulgate), in unmistakable allusion to Gen. 1:1, denotes the beginning of all being as it is posited by divine creation. The world that is distinct from God enters into existence en archȩ̄. The Logos also was en archȩ̄. This does not mean that the Logos itself is this archē. As may be seen from what follows, it does not belong to the world that is distinct from God, not even as its beginning, not even as the first and oldest link in the chain of created things. This, of course, is how Philo understood it: presbytatos tōn genesin eilēphotōn (W. Bauer, op. cit., p. 9). And this was how Prov. 8:22 viewed divine wisdom: kyrios ektisen me archēn hodōn autou. When it is said here that the Logos was en archȩ. it is distinguished from the beginning of the created world and therefore from this world itself. The same is true of the ap’ archēs that is used in the parallel 1 John 1:1 and also of the remarkable prōtotokos pasēs ktiseōs of Col. 1:12. The Logos was in, with, before, and above the totality of the created world. There is no space in this world that is not limited by it. There is no possibility of evading or escaping it; no more than of evading or escaping God himself. That “the Logos was in the beginning” means that he is as God. Only God, the Creator himself, was “in the beginning.” That he “was” in the beginning means that he is beyond the coming into being of what arises with the beginning. By him, in virtue of his being, there is a coming into being (v. 3). His being as such is not one that comes into being. It is not temporal; it is the eternal being that in principle precedes and encloses and originates all time. The Athanasians of the fourth century were right when they based on this ēn their thesis that there was no time in which the Logos was not.12 The text means precisely that the Logos was before all time.13

But how can there be a being in the beginning apart from and alongside the being of God? The first statement suggests this question, and the second statement answers it: kai ho logos ēn pros ton theon. There is no need to switch subject and predicate in this case. The natural stress undoubtedly falls on the pros ton theon. The saying is a statement about the Word; it was with God. No one was in the beginning (v. 1) apart from or alongside God. But the Word was not apart from or alongside God. The Word was “with God.” It belonged to God. The translation of Heinrich Holtzmann: “It was toward God,”14 is right in suggesting relationship but it is still misleading. W. Bauer correctly abandoned this translation and explanation. Ad te nos creasti, as Augustine puts it in a famous passage,15 obviously fits the creature, especially the human creature, but not an entity that is to be sought beyond the archē. That the Word was ad Deum would not be an answer to the question how far it was what only God can be, namely, en archȩ̄. The idea of Theodor Zahn16 about the intercourse with God or movement toward God in which the Logos was involved also leads us astray. The reason is the same; a being that was not en archȩ̄ might also have dealings with God. Pros ton theon has to define a being that was en archȩ̄. It has to explain how it could be this. W. Bauer was right when he took pros to mean “with” with no nuances. The statement forms what is, of course, the paradoxical answer to the question who could be en archȩ̄ outside and alongside God. The answer is that he could be this who was with God, who, belonging to God, with God, being after the manner of God, stood and essentially stands beyond the line that is drawn by the beginning of all things. The Word was “with God”—therefore it was in the beginning.

But how could it be pros ton theon, or belong to God? The third statement gives the answer: kai theos ēn ho logos. If in the first two sentences we were right to put the stress on the statements made about the Logos, we may assume that the situation is the same in the third sentence, that we must once again reverse the statement, that we have to recognize in theos, even though it comes first, the predicate (cf. 4:24: pneuma ho theos), that this is where the emphasis lies, that the Logos was God, i.e., of divine nature or essence. It has rightly been pointed out that the predicate that is here ascribed to the Logos is theos, not ho theos. But it is doubtful whether one does well to follow W. Bauer (op cit., p. 10) in recalling the loose, improper use with which Philo calls the Logos theos, or to think with Theodor Zahn of the occasional way in which ha’ elohim in the OT is not a proper name but is used for a category, e.g., spirits, angels, or even men. At any rate, we are advised to treat with caution the usual inference that the Logos is not here identified with God. A distinction must be made. The nature of the Logos is here identified with the nature of the entity called ho theos. The theotēs of this entity is unreservedly ascribed to the Logos. Significantly, the He denoted by the definite article is not identical with the Logos. The Logos, who is three times in this verse described with the definite article, seems perhaps to stand over against this He as a second He who is distinct from the first but who partakes of the same nature and is thus identical in nature. This would be certain if, as must first be shown, we had the exegetical right to assume that the Logos is indeed meant to be characterized as a He by the definite article. I need not say that in this case our position very definitely points us once again (we have already said something of the same relative to the en archȩ̄ ēn) in the direction in which Nicea and the Athanasian Nicenes would later go with their doctrine of the homoousion, of the essential unity of the different persons or hypostases of the Father and the Son. But if this is so, then the idea of a so-called reduced deity of the Logos, which according to Theodor Zahn is possible on the basis of this verse and is only excluded by v. 2, is already ruled out completely by v. 1. The thought reached with the third sentence in v. 1 is that the Logos can belong to God and can be in the beginning with God, not because he is the person who has the required nature, essence, or operation in the first instance, or, as we should say in the language of dogmatics, is in the mode of the eternal Father, but because he is the second person, who, as we should say, in the mode of the eternal Son shares the same nature with the person of the Father in the same dignity and perfection. One must admit that the verse makes sense when it is read thus, with the eyes of what has been called orthodoxy since Nicea. Every word in it is then intelligible in its own place.

We have inquired into the meaning of the three sentences of v. 1 without thus far showing any concern for the term around which they all revolve as around a common axis, the term ho logos. We have acted rightly to the degree that we have simply been studying the emphasis of the three sentences and have seen that in none of them does it fall on ho logos. We have also acted rightly to the degree that this concept (as a preliminary survey shows), although it is the subject of the three sentences of v. 1 which are so packed with content, obviously plays for the author the role of a locum tenens. It is simply the provisional designation of a place which something or someone else will later fill. That this apparently chief concept has the character of a quid pro quo will emerge, as we must show, from a correct exposition of v. 2. And it will be unequivocally plain at the very latest by the end of the prologue. In the prologue itself the term will recur only once, although then in the important statement in v. 14. Later, in the rest of the Gospel, it will never even be thought of explicitly. And in the rest of the New Testament there is only one place where it occurs unambiguously in the absolute use of John 1:1, namely, in the difficult verse Rev. 19:13, where it is said of the rider on the white horse that one of the diadems on his head bears his name, the name that no one knows (i.e., understands) except himself, and that this name, which all may read but only he can understand, this ideogram that he alone can solve, is ho logos tou theou. Here again the term holds a place representatively and in temporary concealment for another term, the true one, which the white rider himself knows, which consists of his very existence, as it were, and comes to expression in it. In the Gospel this relation is very clear. Already in the prologue ho logos is a substitute for Jesus Christ. His is the place which at one and the same time is occupied, reserved, and delimited by the predicates which are ascribed to the Logos, by the history which is narrated about him.

But whence and why and in what sense is the term Logos brought in for this purpose? This is the question that we must now answer. It is as well to realize that in asking about the whence and why and in what sense we have two different and not necessarily related questions. Historically and genetically, in asking whence the Logos is the subject of these preparatory statements, we are obviously saying that in using the concept the Evangelist, whether with or without outside stimulation, is borrowing a well-known term current in the popular philosophical and religious vocabulary of his day. That he took it from Philo has for a long time been for modern expositors a formula that supposedly meets all the facts. In opposition to this view both more conservative and more critical research has maintained and admittedly shown that John’s concept of the Logos is in important ways very different from Philo’s and certainly must be traced back to other sources. Again in opposition to this objection F. Overbeck (pp. 368ff.) has laid his finger on the point that Philo and John are very different writers, the one a philosopher, the other an Evangelist, so that the latter might well have adopted the Logos concept of the former and then, unconcerned about the special problems and systematizings of the former, freely used it in his own unphilosophical way and for his own purposes. Finally, investigations that are oriented to the history of religion have gone beyond the whole controversy by noting the role that the concept plays not only in Philo and the earlier and later philosophers of antiquity but also in the piety of the mysteries and in the popular religions of Hellenism. They have pointed out that in the age of Hellenism the name and functions of the Logos were assigned to the Greek Hermes, the Egyptian Thoth, and finally the Zoroastrian and Mandean deities of a personal, semi-personal, or impersonal character, the Mandean deities having been more closely examined only within the last decade. In answering the genetic question we thus face a whole ocean of possibilities within which it is a waste of time to seek the lost drop, i.e., the true source of John. First, we do not know at all in what specific form the Evangelist took over the concept, and second, we do not know to what reconstruction he subjected it when he did adopt it. How then can we know the decisive thing, namely, which of the various concepts he adopted? Especially as we do not know for certain that he did in fact “adopt” his concept, i.e., that he received a push in its direction from outside. Let us be content to assert that this at any rate is far more probable than the assumption that Theodor Zahn is making, if I understand him aright, namely, that with no such push from outside, with no reference to the ambivalent commonplace of his day, the Evangelist was led to the concept by inner necessity.

A more important and productive question is that of the meaning of the concept. In answering this question, of course, we turn, not to Philo or the Mandeans, but exclusively to John himself. That is to say, we rule out intrinsically possible meanings whereby the Logos is essentially and primarily a principle, whether in epistemology or in the metaphysical explanation of the world, e.g., as the supreme idea along the lines of Neoplatonism, as creative and ruling cosmic reason along the lines of Stoicism, or as the power of spirit mediating between God and the material world along the lines of Philo. If Philo in particular was the source of John, then, as Overbeck has shown, John has indeed used this source with a sovereign freedom that renders Philo virtually unrecognizable. The same is true of all the ancient philosophies, worldviews, and religions in which deities as principles of being or knowledge, as cosmic principles, are given the name logos or logoi. For there can be no doubt, as we see unmistakably from the cosmogonic role that is ascribed to the Logos in v. 3 and v. 10, that it is not for the sake of its significance in this regard that the Evangelist has taken up the term. Thus v. 3 recalls the mediating role of the Word in creation, but when we read it in the total context of the prologue it is obviously an episode, a subordinate element in the picture, past which the Evangelist strides on rapidly to his true goal, namely, that the Word is the bearer of life, of the life that was light, the light of humanity in the battle that it has constantly fought with darkness, the Word that today has appeared among us in the flesh, and as monogenēs, as theos, revealed to us the unknown God. No matter where the writer found his catchword, which is perhaps more than a catchword, this is the Johannine Logos: the Logos as the principle of revelation, not of being, as that which challenges all that is and all being by17 the divine address that is directed to humanity from person to person. Looking back at the genetic question, we are forced to say that if in relation to the use that John makes of the Logos concept we have to consider some stimulation from outside, then much more likely possibilities than Philo’s Logos are the Hellenistic concept of the hieros logos, i.e., of sacred and mysterious revelation in the cultus (W. Bauer, op. cit., 8), the Mandean deities, which primarily and essentially are bearers of revelation and are sometimes called “word,” and the Hermes and Thoth speculations and myths of the Greeks and Egyptians. But be that as it may, when we ask why John used the concept ho logos and not, e.g., the sophia of later Jewish speculation, we need not fail to answer. It was certainly not because, as W. Bauer (op. cit., 7) thinks, he wanted to equate the preexistent being about whom he planned to speak with a male person, and hence could not use sophia. Instead, it was because his interest focused on Jesus Christ, the content of his Gospel, for whom in this mysterious provisional way he substitutes this concept in the prologue, and who is for him the Revealer (and strictly only the Revealer according to Bultmann’s view). Everything else pales beside the fact that in him God is in the broadest sense speech, address, the Word that comes to us. In him as the Word is the life that is the light of men, as we read in vv. 4f. It seems to me to be making it all impermissibly pragmatic when Schlatter has it that the Evangelist is referring to the words from the lips of Jesus.18 For the Evangelist the Word is not just the words that Christ speaks but the Word that he is in his whole manifestation. The fact that he is the Word contains and sums up all that he is. For John, then, all the other things fade away which undoubtedly echo in the Logos concept, and of which we might still catch an echo if we have a taste for speculation. In John Logos means Word, and perhaps we do best not to add to this, not even perhaps to make the addition Creator-Word which recollection of Gen. 1:1 suggests. All the things that with historical justification we might read into ho logos in the light of contemporary ideas, all the things that with exegetical justification we might read into it in the light of v. 3 and v. 10, e.g., reason, meaning, principle, power, deed, etc., can only cause confusion. We think of the passage in which Goethe has his Faust (“We learn to value supraterrestrial things, we long for revelation”) expound the New Testament precisely at this verse: “It is written: In the beginning was the Word. Here I falter already. Who will help me? I cannot possibly value the word so highly. I have to translate it differently if I am truly to be enlightened by the Spirit.” He then considers the renderings “meaning” or “power,” but finally: “I suddenly see my way and confidently write: In the beginning was the deed.”19 But immediately after he has confidently written this, the devil appears. It would be better to stay with the fact that John calls the subject of his Gospel, his “hero” in the not wholly apt phrase of W. Bauer, “the Word.” The word is the unassuming but incomparably true form in which people simply impart themselves, no more and no less, to others. By the Word God, too, imparts himself to us. Because he is the Word of God, he is not just a word but the Word, the Word of all words. But the Word. In the simplicity and strictness, and precisely thus in the fulness of the Word, God reveals himself and has revealed himself. From the very first line John starts out from the fact that the Word is and has been given. This need not be proved. We can count on it with the certainty of an axiom. Hence no stress is laid on the threefold ho logos in v. 1. As an ideogram it can stand there like the inscription on the diadem of the white rider of Rev. 19, which can be read but not understood, like the x in the equation whose value will appear only when the equation is solved. The prologue first sets out the equation. It gives the unknown factor its place, its relation to the other numbers. What is the place of the Word in the economy of the whole complex of God, the world, humanity, the witnesses, believers? What role does it play? What is its path from him who speaks it to those who hear it? What is, what takes place, where it is spoken and heard? Finally, at the climax, who is the Word? But this brings us to the point where the concept has served its turn, where the reality of Jesus Christ that is concealed in the proclamation of the Evangelist takes its place with power, where the equation is solved: kai hautē estin ē martyria tou Iōannou, vv. 19ff. We have in v. 1 the beginning of this presentation. The Word is where God is. Hence it must belong to God and be of the same nature as God. No more and no less than God himself was and is needed if the Word is there, and is and will be spoken. He had to speak it. But he has spoken it. And he speaks it again. To this Word the human word of the Evangelist bears witness.

2. Houtos ēn en archȩ̄ pros ton theon. This, I think, is how we should place the emphasis. So far as I can see, this verse receives what might be called perfunctory treatment from almost all expositors. The commentaries tell us that it recapitulates, concentrates, confirms, and repeats v. 1. This obviously means that they can make neither head nor tail of it. They cannot tell us why this recapitulation is needed after three short, clear statements, or what purpose it serves. In fact, nothing beyond v. 1, or especially its second and third statements, seems to be said here, and the only surprise is why the third statement is not confirmed and repeated too. Theodor Zahn, who was struck by this, supposes that with the repetition of the two basic statements, namely, that the Logos was en archȩ̄ and pros ton theon, the final statement, namely, that he was theos, is safeguarded against the view (which, according to Zahn’s exposition, is not ruled out) that the Logos, like other divine hypostases, is a supreme creature. No, v. 2 answers according to Zahn, he, the Logos, was in the beginning with God. But apart from the dubious nature of the assumption regarding v. 1c, it is very doubtful whether the author would have offered such a safeguard by merely repeating v. 1a and v. 1b, statements which, if I understand him aright, Zahn thinks we are to elucidate in terms of v. 1c. Where does it leave us, then, if what is elucidated has to elucidate that which elucidates it? If we cannot follow Zahn, and find an answer to the riddle of the verse in the theory of mere recapitulation, there remains only one possibility which, surprisingly, only Schlatter (p. 2) among all the exegetes known to me takes into consideration. I have to regard it as the only possibility. Why should the houtos ēn merely refer back to ho logos? Can it not also point forward in some way? Is it arbitrary to hunt around in the prologue and to argue that another highly significant houtos ēn occurs in v. 15, in the saying of the Baptist, in which houtos ēn, although the name is not mentioned, undoubtedly refers to Jesus? In the whole development in vv. 1–18 the author obviously has Jesus Christ in view. He is referring to him. For him Jesus is the Logos, Jesus is the life, Jesus is the light that shines in the darkness. All expositors agree on this. Zahn and Schlatter and also Eduard Thurneysen20 have all emphasized this very strongly in their interpretations, even too strongly in my view (esp. Zahn with his too great historicizing). Fundamentally this view of the prologue is unquestionably correct. But it rests primarily on a hypothesis that arises irresistibly out of the total impression made by the section. Exegetically its correctness can be demonstrated only if the houtos of v. 2 does not refer back to the ho logos of v. 1c but is a first and purely indicatory filling of the place that is marked out by the term Logos and its predicates in v. 1. After the first and basic statements that define the place, John, on this view, is saying that he, this one, who in truth as little needs to be made known as a person as does the person that we here call ho theos—this one whom we all know, who has come to us all as the Word, who addresses himself to us all (the Evangelist immediately adopts here the attitude of John the Baptist with his pointing finger)—he was in the beginning with God, and all that has been said and is yet to be said is said about him. The author can thus rely axiomatically on the fact that the Word has been given and spoken because he is at once in a position to give the indication: houtos, “he there,” as Schlatter paraphrases the term. With his statement that the Word was in the beginning John looked back to the beginning of the Bible, to creation. But now he speaks about the Word that lends nature its law and its power. “He looks from the beginning of the Bible over to Jesus, and with this first statement he says how thankful he is to Jesus. In him he has so found the Word of God that he can receive it.” In my view, this is saying too much, but materially it catches excellently the meaning of the verse. I need not stress the point that the verse, interpreted thus, is no longer superfluous as in earlier expositions. One has to read it in very close connection with v. 1c. With a backward reference the meaning is that he, Jesus, as the Logos who was theos, who partook of the divine nature, was in the beginning, because as such he belongs legitimately to God. Hence the concrete pointing to Jesus with the remarkable discretion that is proper to the author tells us both who was in the beginning with God, because he was theos, and that his being theos, his being in the beginning with God, is true. The answer to both questions is that it was he. If we view v. 2 in this way, we need not be surprised that the statement in v. 1c is not repeated, for v. 2 is related to it. We are then forced exegetically to understand the theos ēn ho logos of v. 1c, as we have done, as an identification by nature of two distinct persons. For alongside the person denoted by ho theos the houtos that partakes of the same theotēs, the Logos, has also come in person.

3. If vv. 1–2 undoubtedly form a first closed circle in the presentation, the same applies to v. 3: panta di’ autou egeneto kai chōris autou egeneto oude hen ho gegonen. I thus accept this demarcation of the verse. It is debated whether there should not be a period after oude hen. If so, ho gegonen goes with what follows. W. Bauer (op. cit., p. 11) offers four arguments that seem to favor this reading. (1) The rhythm comes out better (as Loisy points out). (2) There are other instances of what might seem to be the strange ending of the sentence with oude hen (as Eduard Schwartz and Bauer himself argue). (3) Citations of the verse in patristic and heretical writings from the second to the middle of the fourth century predominantly give it in this form, as Zahn (pp. 708ff.) shows. (4) One suspects that putting ho gegonen at the end of this verse was a measure taken in the struggle against Arian and Macedonian exegesis. Against ending the sentence at oude hen, however, is the linguistic difficulty of the expression ho gegonen … zōē ēn, which one then has to swallow in v. 4 whether or not one puts a comma after autō̧, and which very early witnesses try to avoid by substituting estin for the awkward ēn, just as ouden often replaces oude hen, which is certainly surprising at the end of a sentence. Zahn (p. 52) finds in this variant reading a reason to reject the ending with oude hen in spite of everything that seems to support it. W. Bauer, after firmly deciding against this ending in Hand-Commentar (p. 34),21 comes out for textual corruption in Handbuch (p. 11). The question stands indeed on a razor’s edge. If I decide with Zahn for ending v. 3 with ho gegonen, I do so (not without awareness of the great weight of external arguments against it) for the internal reason that the ending with oude hen, i.e., the meaning that it gives to v. 4, namely, that what came into being was or is life in the Logos—in other words, cosmogonic speculation in natural philosophy (which is not present in v. 3 except as a possible deduction in the margin)—then acquires a breadth and significance and orientation which it cannot possibly have according to the whole approach of the rest of the prologue and the Gospel. Just consider what would be the complexion of vv. 4b–5 if the light to which they refer were equated with the life that for its part is unequivocally equated with everything created! What was created was or is life, and this life is the light of men! What would such equations mean? If we cannot think that the author indulged in such speculations—as the church fathers seem to have done—if we try definitely to derive the meaning of life in v. 4a from the fact22 that in v. 4b the light of men is named, with a reference to history and not to nature, if we are right to regard v. 3, and later v. 10, as an indispensable link, but only a link, an episode, in the whole train of thought, then, without ruling out the possibility of textual corruption, we shall believe that, even apart from linguistic arguments, to begin v. 4 with ho gegonen is not original but an ancient misunderstanding.

If, although not without some remaining uncertainty, we conclude v. 3 with ho gegonen, then both positively and negatively (cf. 1 John 5:12) the verse actually ascribes to the Logos what Philo ascribes to it as an essential function, what is also ascribed to Logos Hermes, to Logos Thoth, to the sophia of Prov. 8:30, to Athena and Isis, to Vohu Manah and Mithra in the Zoroastrian religion, and finally to the Mandean Hibil-Ziwa. By it, making use of it, working through it as a representative, God made the world. As we read later in v. 10: ho kosmos di’ autou egeneto. As we read in 1 Cor. 8:6: di’ hou ta panta. As we read in Col. 1:16a: en autō̧ ektisthē ta panta, and in 16d: ta panta di’ autou … ektistai. As we read finally in Heb. 1:2: di’ hou kai epoiēsen tous aiōnas. The dia in all these passages denotes the role of the means or, rather, of the mediator whose existence and function, in the mind of the author and of that insightful age, explain the unheard-of fact that the dark, lower world is possible and actual alongside the pure and lofty God. Through him and only through him, through the Revealer, is this possible. Natural and revealed theology do not disagree but agree on this point. So great is God that it is only the Revealer who can originally bind him and the world together. So great is the riddle of the world that only the Revealer can secure its original relation to God. So great is the Revealer that in him we see not merely a later, ad hoc fellowship between God and the world, set up merely for the purpose of redemption, but a fellowship that is original. There would be no point in trying to contest the fact that in thus connecting the Revealer and the Creator, the Evangelist and the other New Testament writers entertain a thought that is not, it would seem, uncommon in their day. We do not reduce the value or significance of the New Testament witness if we acknowledge with some astonishment that many of its most important statements may be heard everywhere in a more or less clear form, that the time (which is said to be “fulfilled” [Gal. 4:4]) seemed to have a general awareness of what needed simply to be given its proper name and proclaimed as a reality by the Christian church. By way of distinction, however, we need to say, of course, that the New Testament authors are not primarily interested in this thought, as to a large extent non-Christian parallels seem to be, for the sake of giving an answer to the riddle of the world. Nor are they primarily interested in it in order to develop some prior doctrine of God. Their primary interest is that in this thought they found, in relation to God and the world, the word which they needed to bring into focus the reality of the Revealer as they believed they knew it in23 Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ was their first concern, God and the world their second concern. I am not in a position to decide whether one can speak about a similar relation between God, the world, and the Revealer in any of the other speculations about the mediator. This is the relation, however, in the New Testament. The aim is to give Jesus Christ his place, and then to give God and the world their places. What Calvin rightly says about this verse applies to the other New Testament passages as well: haec practica est notitia.24

So much regarding the general meaning of the verse. Compared to the other New Testament passages mentioned it has three special nuances. First, it does not use ta panta but panta without the article. As a glance at passages like Rom. 8:28 and 1 Cor. 3:21 teaches us, and as the oude hen of the verse itself confirms, this means that the author is not looking at the world as a whole but at the world as the sum total of its individual parts. His point is that everything that has come into being, absolutely all things without exception, has come into being through the Logos. Again, he does not say that they were created, or that God created them, but egeneto, “they came into being.” The emergence of things is not seen from above but from below, in terms of themselves, as their own function. Yet this very quality of what they themselves do, their coming into being, is relativized. It is not their own. They have come into being not through themselves but through the Logos. Finally, the second and negative part of the saying underlines and sharpens it in a way that does not happen in the other New Testament sayings. Nothing, not one single thing, ne unum quidem, none of the many things that are (as the perfect gegonen is to be understood) came into being without the Logos, independently of him, or apart from him.

Supported by the establishment of these nuances, we obviously cannot be content with what we have said generally by way of understanding the thought. We must go on to ask in what further sense the Evangelist believed he had to say precisely this at this point. We might find many more or less true things stated in the verse. Thus Augustine25 took occasion to warn his listeners against the Manichean doctrine of an independent origin of evil, which seems tempting in view of the existences of flies and fleas. No, he cries, all things from angels to worms were created by the Word. We suffer evil, among other things from such insects, because we have offended God. According to Pfleiderer and Grill26 the Evangelist finds himself here in conflict with the Gnostic doctrine of aeons and archons. Of all such interpretations one might say that although the verse might have such meanings they are strangely remote from the context. Schlatter’s exposition is that with the Word that was with God we are given all that we need in relation to the world, for the Word is the power that made the world.27 The passage does contain this thought too, but it does not bring us any closer to its specific meaning. Nearer to the actual statement is the insight of Calvin that John, having taught the deity of the Word in vv. 1–2, now wants to show how the Word is at once at work in and with creation, how, emerging from its inconceivable being in God, it may be known in its works.28 Those are all looking in the same direction who think they see the point of the prologue in the anticlimax: The Word with God, the Word and the world, the Word among men, the Word itself flesh. That this anticlimax is present, and that here we are on the second highest rung of the ladder, we obviously cannot dispute. I should say that this anticlimax forms the framework of consideration, and that descending this ladder, with the valuable insights that it yields, undoubtedly forms the general purpose of the prologue. What seems to be arguable to me, however, is that the purpose of the prologue is exhausted by the descent of this ladder from rung to rung. We recall what we said about its practical purpose. The nuances that we have established in v. 3—the sharpening of the thought of ta panta di’ autou by the negative repetition, the climax with the individual panta and oude hen, egeneto instead of “they were created”—must all be given their due in our exposition. The obvious conclusion is that the author finds himself in a defensive posture, not against the idea that some entities other than the Logos might be the creative world principle, but against the idea that within the world itself, in the circle of what is made, there might be some29 entity whose coming into being is independent of the Logos, which evolves of itself and is thus, so to speak, immediate to God. No, he says, nowhere in the world is there any immediacy to God. Through the Logos not just some things, or many things, or most things, or almost all things, but all things came into being. He, as the one who was in the beginning, who did not himself come into being, who has his place with God and is himself God, stands on the other side of the boundary which is set for all being as such, i.e., for all that has come into being. How? In such a way that all of which it is said gegonen in no sense stands alongside him or is what it is chōris autou, without him. Everything that has come into being is completely different from him. Over against him it stands in that total relativity which can be expressed precisely and radically only by the di’ autou, by the concept of creation. This is how things are with all that is. It is related to God. It is something and not nothing. But it is something only as it is related to the Word. Its existence is conceivable only in the light of the Word. Its own function is lent it by the Word, by the Word that was theos. As I see it, the special point of the second little circle of the prologue that we find in v. 3 is to remind us of that boundary within which everything that is in the world finds itself. It does not have the same direct relationship to God as the Word does. Its own relationship to God is mediate, indirect;30 it depends upon the Word of God. We have to reckon with this from the very first vis-à-vis every entity in the world. We have to view and test every entity in this light. We have to appraise and place every entity accordingly. A criterion is obviously set up here. Why? To what end? Baldensperger31 replies: with a view to John the Baptist. Thus stated, this sounds rather blunt and improbable on a first hearing. The reference cannot be to John the Baptist alone, as we have seen in our introduction. But the clue that Baldensperger follows is a genuine one. There is a connection between the egeneto of v. 3 and that of v. 6. And if we were right to see a reference to Jesus in the houtos of v. 2 as well as in v. 15, we are not grossly mistaken to find in v. 3 a real reference to the Baptist and to the witnesses and preachers of the Word. Whoever belongs to the created world has no independent existence or function over against him who is called houtos in v. 2. All of them have their existence and function only di’ autou, or, as we might meaningfully continue with the parallel Col. 1:16, which speaks similarly of angelic powers, eis auton. The witness is not the Revealer, nor is he a witness to himself but to the Revealer. To be sure, this is not yet said in v. 3, but within the total context the way is undoubtedly prepared for it. And in this preparatory purpose I discern the special Johannine emphasis with which the contemporary idea of the mediating role of the Logos is adopted, the concern which causes the author to pause for a moment on this rung of the anticlimax.

4. En autō̧ zōē ēn kai hē zōē ēn to phōs tōn anthrōpōn. The first point to strike us grammatically is the shift from zōē to hē zōē. One is tempted to see a similar relation to that between theos and ho theos in v. 1, and thus to treat zōē as an impersonal quality that the Logos shares and hē zōē as the same quality personified. But this would not lead anywhere. For in this case the Gnostics would be right to find the aeon hē zōē taught here. When Jesus calls himself hē zōē in 11:25 and 14:6, this shows that hē zōē is no more itself a person than is zōē. It is a quality, a value, that finds personified manifestation in a real person, namely, in this person, and that can thus be ascribed to this person. This does not take place in the present verse. Like the personification “I am the light” (8:12; 9:5), it is known, confessed, and presupposed, but it is not yet made. We do not read here autos but en autō̧ zōē ēn; and of this life that is enclosed and contained by the Logos, and that thus characterizes the Logos, the second half of the statement speaks. The material point of the first half comes out in 5:26, which says that as the Father has life (zōē without the article) in himself, so he has given it to the Son to have life in himself. And now the second half says that this life was the light of men. Hence the relation between zōē and he zōē is not the same as that between theos and ho theos in v. 1, but the same as that between thronos and ton thronon in Rev. 4:2. The definite article has demonstrative significance. This life that dwells in the Logos, characterizes it, and is given to it, was as such, as hē en autō̧ zōē, the light of men.

Historically and genetically it may be noted that John’s vocabulary or conceptual material is in no way original. In the Hellenistic world phōs is often the proper name of Soter, the saving deity, or even of primal man (thought of as deliverer). The two words zōē and phōs are often combined in the same way. Thus Poimandres unites them as the two things that denote the origin of humanity and the goal that is to be reached by cleansing. In Mandean works we find the same dependence of light on life as here; we read of the light that rests on the mouth of the first life, or of the light that was from life, with reversals of the relationship as well. God as well as life, e.g., Serapis,32 is also called the “light of men” in the same phrase as that of the present verse. Undoubtedly, then, there are links with religious history, and I can appeal to the plain content of the verse itself, especially the second half, when I say that all this is correct. It seems to me to be hardly fair that the readers of such a wide-ranging commentary as that of Zahn hear nothing at all about such things. Yet these connections tell us nothing about the meaning that the terms zōē and phōs have here. We shall see later, however, that it is by no means a waste of time to take note of them.

Let us begin by considering that a new and third train of thought, which is concluded in v. 5, begins in v. 4. The life that was in the Logos is the light of man, and it shines in the darkness, but the darkness does not cease to be darkness. This is the point. By life, provisionally and very generally, redemption is meant, and by light revelation. But we shall have to prove the correctness of our interpretation against a whole flock of exegetes, many of whom have to be taken very seriously. According to H. J. Holtzmann (Hand-Commentar, pp. 34f.) v. 4 is the answer to a question supposedly implied in v. 3: How can all things have come into being from the Logos, how can there have been a principle of creation? The answer is: Because according to his depicted relation to God his content was life, a being that brings forth other being. Thus exposition of v. 4b has to run as follows: The power of life that streams forth from him proves especially to be a means of illumination vis-à-vis the human world. Many have previously followed this track, seeing in zōē the general life of creation (with a reference back to v. 3), and in he zōē the life that illumines humanity. “Le Logos était [comme dit Schaff] la vie de chaque vie.”33 Thus Augustine understands by “life” the existence of all things in the ideas, or in the idea, insofar as they have true existence in the idea. Apart from the idea they are bodies; in the idea, en autō̧, they are life. But human beings are rational souls as they perceive the idea, i.e., as they receive the Word, as they are illumined by this true life of things.34 “Augustinus more suo nimium platonicus ad ideas rapitur.” comments Calvin, and he finds the thought of the church father “a mente evangelistae longe remotum.” [See Eng. tr. p. 10: “Augustine, who is in his way an extreme Platonist, is addicted to the concept of the idea, … far … from the thought of the Evangelist.”] But Calvin’s own exposition, which does not platonize, or perhaps platonizes in its own way, moves remarkably along the very same lines. Calvin finds in zōē the continua inspiratio that takes place by the Word. By this means God, having made the world, constantly sustains it. In hē zōē, however, Calvin finds the life of the spirit which distinguishes humanity from the beasts. In this—undoubtedly a deeper and truer thought—the Word of God that is the basis of all things is reflected as in a mirror.35 Also along the same lines, but more crudely in the spirit of the nineteenth century, A. Tholuck explains that God as the self-revealing God is the source of natural life; in humanity this natural life appears at its highest potency as consciousness, as direct perception.36 Meyer, too, writes that the reference is to the general life source of the world that was made by the Logos, who as such could not be inactive, at least in relation to humanity, but who necessarily had to show himself to be at work in it according to its rational nature.37 In a sermon on this text Schleiermacher used the same thought to make the point that the individual human soul does not see only what is dead around it but also sees life, which leads it to a knowledge of God as the author of the world, so that earthly life, the life that encounters us in the world, is in fact the light of men.38 And finally, again in a sermon, and within the framework of this view coming closest to the truth, Luther distinctively claims that “natural life is a part of eternal life and only a beginning, but it comes to an end through death, because it does not recognize him from whom it comes; the same sin cuts it off, so that it has to die eternally. Again, those who believe and recognize him from whom they have life never die, but natural life is strengthened to eternal life, so that it never tastes of death.”39

I cannot deny that the presupposition underlying this whole understanding, namely, that v. 4a is looking back to v. 3, is not in itself improbable. At v. 3 we recalled the parallels in Col. 1:16 and Heb. 1:2, and it might well be pointed out that in those passages we go on to read: ta panta en autō̧ synestēken (Col. 1:17), and: pherōn te ta panta tō̧ rhēmati tēs dynameōs antou (Heb. 1:3), to which the en autō̧ zōē ēn of this verse aptly corresponds according to that understanding, especially in Calvin’s formula: “continua inspiratio mundum vegetans.” But we can obviously presuppose such a reference back to v. 3—and this is the second presupposition of that understanding—only if the decisive concept zōē permits and commands it. And this, it would seem to me, is not the case in that I know of no passage in the whole of John’s Gospel where it is possible to equate zōē with being that brings forth other being, with the life of all things in the idea, with continua inspiratio. with the source of life, etc. Always in this Gospel the term zōē (with or without the addition aiōnios) has soteriological-eschatological significance. It is the life which, as we have already affirmed in the light of 5:26, the Son has in himself (en heautō̧) as the Father has given him to do so. In contrast to apōleia and thanatos it is the imperishable being, not subject to corruption or destruction, which through the Revealer, as the decisive thing that he has to bring according to John, is offered to all people and imparted to those who believe in him, through him who at some climaxes is himself called hē zōē. This and not anything else is what zōē means in 6:33 and 6:51, where we read of zōē kosmon. In these passages the kosmos is unquestionably the human world and zōē is none other than the life that is imparted to this world by the Revealer. Zōē in John’s Gospel is not the life that is already in us or the world by creation; it is the new and supernatural life which comes in redemption and has first to be imparted to us in some way. Is it really permissible to assume that precisely here we have an exception and that what is meant is the natural life that is lent by God to all creatures as such? Is it not more likely that precisely at this point where it occurs for the first time it has to be used in the pregnant sense that it bears in the rest of the Gospel?

Coming now to the third presupposition of that understanding, we find that things are the same with the subordinate concept of phōs. I have still to find in John a passage in which light is the light which is present by creation, which is given in and with the life of creation, which is there as the uncreated light of the created world, which does not rather come only with the life of redemption, which is not the light of revelation, which perhaps comes from the very beginning but still comes. In relation to v. 3 we referred to the coincidence of revealed theology and natural theology both there and in the New Testament parallels. But it seems to me to be characteristic of New Testament thinking—I make the same point regarding the well-known verse Rom. 1:19—that with a strict reserve appropriate to the theme it does not use the insight that the Revealer is also the Creator in such a way that by a logical inversion (all things are possible in logic!) it is also said that the Creator is the Revealer. God’s self-revealing is a separate action that goes beyond creation. In relation to what was made, to its life and to the knowledge that may be gained from it, phōs is a new and different light which is only arising. It is the light of dawn, not the full light of eternity already present.40 Note that the apparently very tempting hē zōē ēn to phōs of this verse is given in v. 9 the interpretation: ēn to phōs erchomenon eis ton kosmon. This seems to me to oppose sharply that understanding, in spite of the venerable names associated with it, since it does not do justice to the strict character of revelation as phōs erchomenon. And finally, in view of our initial grammatical findings, we have to ask its champions what they make of the change from zōē to hē zōē, in which we can find the distinction between the life of creation and the life of the human spirit only by violent wresting. If this counterargument is cogent, as I believe, then in v. 4a we are not to look back. We have to consider a new thought—in brief the whole complex of reconciliation41 and revelation. The religious parallels mentioned also point us in this direction. After the author has said in v. 3 that without exception everything made is mediate to God because it is made by the Word, and that nothing is chōris autou, that nothing has its origin from God directly and apart from the Word, now, making a new beginning, he goes on to say that in him was life, namely, the life which is indispensable to men but which in a fearful way they do not have, the true, authentic, eternal life which is immune to corruption and death, life such as God has in himself. That we do not actually have this indispensable thing is stated indirectly in v. 5, but the reason why this is so is not yet given. We are undoubtedly right to assume that with the mere mention of the thoroughly soteriological term zōē, implicitly its negative presupposition too (indicated by the ou katelaben of v. 5) would be more than clearly stated for the author’s contemporaries. This life, i.e., the life that overcomes death, was in him.42 In view of the continuation in v. 4b, i.e., that it was the light of men, and in view of the ēn erchomenon with which the same thought is taken up in v. 9, one has to say that this ēn has a significance that goes beyond the eternal ēn of v. 1. We do not rule out that meaning, but here ēn also means that it was, not as one created thing is alongside others, nor in a permanent relation that is contained from the very first in the concept of God and the world, but in the unique way in which this life—in the Word which is spoken from eternity into time, and which may be heard in time with all the seriousness of eternity—is present as the life that is indispensable but is still missing, as the true life that overcomes death. Is, I say, although not excluding the was. The imperfect ēn includes a present here, as may be seen from the phainei that follows in the next verse. In translation we can quietly let the past tense stand, however, only so long as by the past we do not understand a specific time but all past history. Thus life was presented to the world. It was set before eyes and ears in such a way that they could not forget it, or overlook it, or suppress their unavoidable unrest and longing for it, or deny the appeal that it signified for them. This redemptive life, v. 4b explains, was (en autō̧, contained and offered in God’s Word) the “light of men,” the light of revelation which illumined them. Objectively and enduringly there stood before them the possibility or opportunity of knowing it, of knowing about it. Whatever the result might be (more of this in v. 5), light was nowhere and never absent. Nowhere and never was there lacking the chance, provided by the divine action, to think about life, about salvation, about the life that is lost and yet not lost inasmuch as it was enclosed and preserved and offered in the Word and shone as the light of revelation. By the Word, as Schlatter paraphrases it,43 God has worked the miracle that the life that derives from him appeared on earth and did not remain hidden.

If zōē is not the life which is from creation but the life which in reconciliation44 is in principle future, i.e., which comes to us, which in contrast to all our past breaks into our present, and if as the phōs ton anthrōpōn it is not the light of reason and the like but revelation, i.e., the redemption which visibly tears down the barriers of death, we have still to answer the question what specifically the Evangelist has in mind when he speaks these words. If in the exposition thus far I have mostly agreed with Zahn over against the other exegetes, in this question I have to part company with him. Far too one-sidedly and violently, as it seems to me, he rushes on to the interpretation that the reference here is to the “historical person of Jesus.” In him was life as distinct from all others, in whom it was not present. In his self-attestation by word and work the life shone for all. This is how he would interpret the verse. Similarly he relates the whole prologue directly and exclusively to the thirty years of the epiphany of the Logos in Jesus of Nazareth.45 I admit to the suspicion that the principle of orthodox Lutheran christology, ubicunque est logos, ibi etiam praesentissimam sibi habet carnum,46 might have had something to do with Zahn’s zeal in this regard. But be that as it may, his view of the matter is onesided and violent because even he, in vv. 1–3, cannot deny that we have to do with a reality and activity of the Logos that is only pointing ahead to the historical Jesus, and because it is hard to see why the statement which begins there, and which does not start at the Incarnation but simply hastens toward it, preparing the ground for a consideration of the incarnate Word, should suddenly break off here and become what in this case must be called a puzzlingly abstract reference to the significance of the life of Jesus. Certainly we have to say that in every word that John writes he has in view Jesus of Nazareth as the reality that fills out his depiction of the function of the Logos, as the goal toward which he is moving in this remarkable anticlimax. Certainly, if our interpretation of v. 2 is correct, John has been referring in a significant way to Jesus from the very first: He was in the beginning with God. Certainly vv. 4–5 are speaking of the same light as that whose epiphany or arising is depicted in vv. 14ff. and which then becomes the theme of the Gospel proper. Every word of the prologue can (and even must) be related to Jesus of Nazareth, for every word is thought out in relation to him, i.e., to the revelation that took place in him.47 Yet the word “light” includes not only the sunrise but also the dawn when the sun has not yet risen, and even the half-light of the night. It does not seem to me to be the presupposition of the prologue that the existence of light in the world, its coming into the world, to which v. 9 and then 3:19 and 12:46 refer, begins only with the ensarkōsis of v. 14. “Lux luxit etiam antequam in carne appareret.”48 Inasmuch as every word here relates to Jesus Christ, it also relates to the Logos as the Revealer of God who announces himself before and even apart from Jesus of Nazareth. To the conjectured dogmatic background of Zahn’s view we might reply with a principle of orthodox Reformed christology: “Sic logos naturam humanam sibi univit, ut totus earn inhabitet et tote quippus immensus et infinitus extra eam sit.”49 I shall be careful not to advance in relation to v. 4 the counterthesis that the reference here is simply to a pre-Christian stage of revelation, e.g., to Israel. The notes sounded by the terms “life” and “light” are too full to permit this. Obviously no one time is here marked off from another. Revelation as a whole, the light which comes and has already come, the light which is the light of men, is here contrasted with history as a whole. What the author wants to say is that whatever was revelation, the light of life, redemption for men, was so only in him—again not directly or immediately from God, from God indeed, but in him, in the same Word that took flesh in Jesus Christ, alongside which there never has been or can be any other Word. In him was life, and this life was the light of men. The emphasis of the verse—we must not let this be lost—is on the en autō̧. Wherever there was light, it was this light. Apart from him there is only witness to the light (v. 8), just as outside him nothing came into being that is. Augustine, even though in the main point he is wrong about this verse as “nimium platonicus.” is right, and grasps the thought of the Evangelist very well, when he comments on the phrase to phōs tōn anthrōpōn: “John the Baptist was illumined by this light, and so was John the Evangelist himself. He was full of this light who said: ‘I am not the Christ, but he who comes after me.’ … He was illumined by this light who said: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word.’ ”50 Here we take our red thread51 in our hands again. It is as well not to miss here, too, the accompanying note of this problem.

5. Kai to phōs en tȩ̄ skotia̧ phainei, kai hē skotia auto ou katelaben. The readoption of the term phōs from v. 4b (which gives significance to the first connecting kai), the fact that v. 5a is in some sense an explanation of v. 4b, since it was as the light shining in the darkness that the life was the light of men, these factors justify our assumption that v. 5 stands in a special relation to v. 4 in the same way as v. 2 does to v. 1. The change from ēn to phainei, which is surprising at first glance, is no argument against this. We have already seen from v. 3b how flexible the tenses are for the author. We shall find further examples in the prologue when we come to v. 9 and v. 15a. As the ēn of v. 4 has some present significance, so indubitably the phainei, as the contrasting aorist katelaben shows, embraces the past as well. In this regard one has to say, of course, that in John the present always has the ring of the special actuality of the event denoted by the verb in question. For the moment I will leave open the question of the special thing at issue and in a preliminary way simply point out that the historical part of the first chapter, the story of Lazarus in ch. 11, and finally the resurrection in chs. 20–21 are all marked by a strikingly fluid use of the present tense which, in places where readers would expect past tenses, necessarily confronts them with the events narrated and hauls them out of their seats to action on the stage. That the surprising martyrei of v. 15a of the prologue has this effect is beyond dispute. Is this the aim here too, and also with the phōtizei of v. 9? However that may be, the relation in v. 4, which in appearance at least is neutrally described (“The life was the light of men”), is now characterized. It takes on color and becomes dramatic. The presuppositions of the terms “life” and “light,” which v. 4 does not specify, now come to the fore. Light shines—this is an analytical statement—in the darkness. Revelation confronts nonrevelation,52 concealment, indeed, a power that acts inimically against revelation. This is skotia. That skotia is not identical with the hoi anthrōpoi of v. 4 we can see from 3:19, where the men who love the dark, to skotos, more than the light are obviously distinguished from darkness. According to the relatively few passages in which skotia occurs in John, darkness is the atmosphere which contends against light and redemption. Men, all men, walk in this atmosphere (8:12; 12:35; 1 John 2:11). But as disciples of Jesus they must no longer walk in it; as believers they must not abide in it (12:35, 46). But according to 12:35 darkness can still overtake (katalambanein, the same term as in v. 5b) once again those who walk in the light, like a mist that unexpectedly rises in the mountains.

It has often been noted, and quite correctly, that John does not explain why revelation is revelation in the darkness. He has given no origin for this opponent of revelation. He has set it in no relation to the panta di’ autou, either by explaining that it is an exception, that it has its own genesis, or by explaining that it is included, that evil falls within God’s plan for the world. The question of its origin is neither posed nor answered. “The Evangelist has not reflected on it,” is the comment of H. Holtzmann53 on this silence. We must add, however, that this is not because he unfortunately never thought about this profound question. It is because it was for him a meaningless question. Skotia is for him a reality which is found on the plane where one cannot put the question of origin, where there is no possibility of objective consideration, where our only option is to reckon with the realities that arise there and to deal with them either in war or in peace. On the same plane there stands on the other side the Word of God in which the self-revealing life is contained. In this case, too, there is no question of origin, of why or whence. In this case, too, there is only the question de fait, not de droit, for theos ēn ho logos (v. 1). Naturally darkness is not for John a second god as it is for Marcion. We are not in fact to restrict the panta di’ autou (v. 3). At the same time we are not to excuse or explain the fact of darkness with the help of the panta di’ autou. Incomprehensible in its origin, it confronts the light. It is not just an isolated phenomenon but the atmosphere, the characteristic constitution of humanity to which revelation turns. It is the dark riddle for the sake of which revelation is necessary and on account of which it can be understood only as a miracle. One might say that we confront the same incomprehensibility in face of darkness and in face of the light that streams from the life of the Word, positive on the one side, negative on the other. The revelation of v. 4 is a new thing compared to v. 3. It is unforeseen. It does not arise out of the plan or reality of creation. If in fact panta di’ autou, what need is there of the special life that comes, or of its revelation? Revelation has no basis or origin, or it is not revelation. Similarly, the darkness is simply there. It is an incident. It is not part of any program. Opposed to every program, it is simply an event. This incident on the one side and the Word of the revelation of life on the other are what the Evangelist finds to be the determinations of human existence, i.e., of his own existence. Hence he cannot “reflect” on them. Both of them, if in different ways, are incomprehensible. Hence in different ways he can only take up an attitude to both as to facts of an existence that is determined by both. He cannot possibly contemplate them or ask the reasons for them. He can only set them alongside himself. The ugly formula “dualism” does not fit the Johannine antithesis of light and darkness. As the silence shows, there can be no question here of any worldview, of any “ism,” of any system. We simply have a conflict in which the Evangelist finds himself engaged and in which—perhaps this explains the urgent phainei—he wants to engage his readers. Or rather, he wants to teach his readers that he is engaged in this conflict. He does not philosophize about two world principles. Like a watchman on a tower he signals the approach of armies from the east and from the west. He proclaims imminent decision.

But all this is only incidental and implicit in the verse. The true point of v. 5 is to make a further statement about the role and significance of the Logos. The light shines in the darkness. Its revelation means antithesis, conflict, strife. To be the light of men is to stand against a world of enemies. If we have interpreted v. 4 correctly, and if we are right about the special connection between v. 4 and v. 5, then the only point of v. 5 is to stress the isolation in which the light shines for men, in which the light concealed in the Word manifests itself. As life is in the Word alone, and the life concealed in the Word alone is light, so (v. 5) the light is alone among men, for men are in darkness. The world and history are hostile to the light as a whole. It is not at all true that in and from them there is goodwill, an ability and readiness to receive, that receptivity corresponds to the light and runs to meet it. Note already here what will be said later in vv. 12–13 about the possibility of such receptivity. Those who receive him are born of God. Apart from this possibility what meets the light in men is darkness. Men are trapped in darkness, in revolt and rejection. A No stubbornly confronts the Yes. This is the actual situation between the Word and those to whom it is directed. V. 5b confirms from the other side, from the human side, that the darkness has not comprehended the light. It had no power to appropriate it, to make it its own, to cease to be darkness and itself to become light. This is how we must translate and understand the statement. The meaning “to overtake,” which katalambanein perhaps has in 12:35, is not possible here. The meaning “to restrict,” “to overpower,” “to conquer,” which Zahn especially among more recent commentators espouses,54 seems to be too uncertain and yields a sense which, excellent though it is in itself—the darkness does not master the light—disrupts the context in most unheard-of fashion. We read in Rom. 9:30 of a katalambanein of righteousness and in 1 Cor. 9:24 and Phil. 3:12 of a katalambanein of the heavenly prize, and it is along these lines that we are to seek the meaning of the striking term. John is trying to say that the light stands in conflict with an opponent which by nature could not become its friend even if it wanted to do so. It is in a conflict that cannot end with a compromise. Darkness has never appropriated the light and never will. The light, when it shines, can expect nothing from the darkness except that it was and is and will be darkness. Its conflict can only be one of decision and destruction. H. Holtzmann and W. Bauer refer in this regard to a “tragic note,” to the “pessimism” of the passage.55 This is wrong. We shall see that such terms are out of place in vv. 10f. too. They certainly do not fit here. What is here said about the light is in keeping with what was said about it before (very objectively, without the evaluation or elucidation inherent in the terms): The Word was God by nature. All things have their origin in him. In him is redemption. This redemption is revelation. And now, filling out the last point, the statement is made that revelation takes place in the darkness, that it is isolated, that it involves a decisive conflict. This is not tragedy. If we are to use an aesthetic figure, it is an epic. It is a final hymn to the unique dignity and significance of the Word. This hymn is, of course, austere and exclusive. It humbles all flesh. Yet it is also bright and proud. It crowns all that has gone before. In no sense is it pessimistic. This, I think, is how we are to take the whole passage 1:1–5, which is now behind us. Perhaps, if we have spoken aright about the rhythm of the verse, this is also its best explanation from a literary standpoint. Materially I regard it as the only possible one.

6. Egeneto anthrōpos apestalmenos para theou, onoma autou lōannēs. This verse seems to transport us at a stroke into another world. Here is the break in the prologue of which we spoke in the Introduction. I shall not return to that. A literary question perhaps arises here. In this and the next verses the author has perhaps worked over a non-Christian original that may go back in some way to the Mandean world and corrected its statements about John the Baptist. However that may be, there can be no doubt that he is speaking about what is for him a pressing issue. We thus have the right and the duty, in respect of these verses, to relate our own concern to their form and place in John’s Gospel. If they disturb us—and in some way this reaction is certainly justified—then we have to ascertain the significance of the disruption which the author himself effects either with his own or with alien materials. Or rather, we have to ascertain the sense in which these statements are obviously intended to alert his readers and suddenly to steer their thoughts in a new direction.

Our thoughts do in fact have to make a leap from v. 5 to v. 6 after moving step by step, if very vigorously, from v. 1 to v. 5. The surprising element in v. 6 is that it plunges us into the inside of the history that has as it were been illumined from outside in vv. 4–5. All at once it leads us factually to a specific point in the history, and not, as the sharp contrast of v. 5 would lead us to expect, immediately to the epiphany of the Logos, but to one of the points in the history which according to v. 5 undoubtedly must lie in the sphere of skotia. What is the point? This is the question that v. 6 obviously poses for us in drastic fashion as we move on from v. 5. Egeneto means “there appeared,” “there came,” “there once was,” according to Zahn.56 In any case a historical appearance is at issue, a personal coming, a coming within the world, the appearance of one of those existent things, of one of those factors which according to v. 3 (the use of egeneto here and in v. 14 as well as in v. 3 is no accident!) comes under the common denominator of di’ autou, belonging to the plane of creatureliness or relativity in contrast to the Word. Certainly it is not the Word itself, nor anything equal to it, that appears at this point. The egeneto unquestionably declares this. That egeneto will also be used of the Word in v. 14 represents a further and steep step on the way which we must not presuppose as already apparent if we are to evaluate the text aright. What we see in v. 6, in the light of what precedes, is the contrast between the Logos and all that has come into being. He to whom v. 6 refers is to be seen on this side of the contrast. The anthrōpos confirms this. As distinct from egeneto, John never uses it for the Logos, or later in the Gospel for Jesus (or only incidentally in 8:40). As a man the one referred to here is one of those for whom the life contained in the Logos was and is light (v. 4), light that shines in the darkness (v. 5). If the egeneto and the anthrōpos definitely distinguish him from the Logos, the predicate apestalmenos para theou brings him close, and even in a sense puts him in the same sphere and gives him the same function. For the same verb (along with pempein elsewhere) describes Jesus also as “sent by God” in 5:36, 38; 7:29; 20:21. In the Mandean literature, too, the Revealer himself is “sent” by the higher deity. But it is more relevant here to think of the Old Testament concept of a “sending” of prophets, servants, and angels—the angel of God in Mal. 3:1, 23 [Eng. 4:5]. This last passage played a considerable role in the Christian assessment of John the Baptist. Within the world that has come into being, within the human world that has fallen under darkness, not as an exception to the determinations that are posed for all and every creature, there is among the determinations this qualification: sending by God, separation for a task or mission, and in this sense prophecy. “A man, i.e., one who was not previously anything but an ordinary man, was afterward sent by God,” is the correct paraphrase of Schleiermacher.57 And Calvin makes the essential distinction: “Angeli magis quam hominis personam sustinet. Non suarum virtutum elogiis ornatur, sed hoc uno, quod Dei legatus fuerit.”58

Already in the Introduction we have discussed the onoma antō̧ lōannēs (3:1 introduces Nicodemus in the same way), the semi-obscurity which in part surrounds this name, and the general nature of the problem that this ambivalence raises. If we take vv. 9ff. into account, if we are right to view vv. 6ff. not as an abruptly interposed fragment but as an introduction to vv. 9ff., then we cannot fail to see that in spite of the concretely historical character of vv. 6ff. the author is unwilling to go on directly to an account of the mission of the Baptist. Even in vv. 14ff., where the Baptist appears again in a new context, and even speaks, this will not happen. It does so only in vv. 19ff. with the true beginning of the Gospel. Are we wrong to think that with a view to vv. 9ff. the Baptist does not represent himself in vv. 6ff. but represents all that comes under the concept of phōs erchomenon eis ton kosmon, of light as dawn, advent, approaching Christmas, or, more concretely, of prophet, of anthrōpos apestalmenos para theou? As apestalmenos para theou the prophet, without being the Logos, assumes the function of the Revealer and to that extent shares his significance and worth. This is a servant’s share, a subordinate share—on this see v. 8!—but it is still a share. Inasmuch as he is apestalmenos para theou his gegonenai, his humanity, his belonging to the created world, and even to the dominion of skotia, does not in the slightest prevent him from being seen (as in vv. 9ff.) from the standpoint of the light of revelation that comes into the world from the very first. With reference to him it can be said of the light of redemption, of life, that it was in the world (v. 10) even apart from the epiphany of the Word itself. If it was the Evangelist’s concern, even before he began to speak as an Evangelist, to consider and state in principle what he and his fellows were doing in this function relative to its subject, he could hardly do it in a more appropriate way than by the presentation that he initiates in v. 6.

7. Houtos ēlthen eis martyrian, hina martyrēsȩ̄ peri tou phōtos, hina pantes pisteusōsin di’ autou. I have already said in the Introduction that this verse should prevent us from viewing the assessment of the Baptist in the prologue one-sidedly from the standpoint of its probable ecclesiastico-political significance and hence interpreting it in a one-sided negative way. In this verse, as H. Holtzmann59 better perceived than W. Bauer after him,60 every word but one is positive. And this verse is present and throws light on the whole statement, as v. 8 will in its own fashion later.

Ēlthen is here undoubtedly the same solemn erchesthai with which Elijah came according to the Synoptics, the same as that with which the kingdom of God has come near, the same as that with which the Son of Man will come at the end of the days, the same as that which serves both in the Synoptics and in this Gospel to denote the first epiphany of the Lord. “Coming” is also a technical term for the appearing of the Revealer in Mandean works. If the appearance of the Baptist as a total phenomenon (this is the point in v. 7 as distinct from vv. 19ff.) is described by this solemn erchesthai, this embraces its coordination with the office of the Revealer himself. The same is true of the terms martyria and martyrein, which, as we have said in the Introduction, denote also the work of the disciples of Jesus and at times that of Jesus himself. Finally, note how directly the aim of the mission of John is described by the point that all are to believe through him. The above-mentioned exception, the limitation of the positive character of the statement about John, lies in the self-evident pisteusōsin di’ autou. This at once sets the Baptist alongside the Samaritan woman, of whom it is said in 4:41f. that many come to believe through her word, whereas the Gospel never says that anyone believes “through” Jesus but always that people believe or do not believe eis auton or autō̧. Consider what this means. One may believe, i.e., come to faith, through John, but the Revealer himself is the object of faith. We have seen the solemn mediatorial significance of the expression di’ autou in v. 3. What breadth and depth it gives to John’s summons to repentance and baptism of repentance—his function according to the Synoptics. It rules out any limitation of his significance as purely Old Testament or perhaps legal (v. 17). The pantes shows that his work is both extensive and universal, as that of the Samaritan woman in ch. 4 could never be, and as only that of Christ, and on a lower level that of his disciples as his designated witnesses, can also be. All who come to faith are to do so through John. That is how we are to construe the pantes, and later the phōtizei panta anthrōpon of v. 9. All this is indeed positive enough.

Irrespective of the caveat in v. 8, it is important for the author to say that there is not only the absolute but also a qualified relative, not only revelation but also, deriving from it, relating to it, serving it, applying to all to whom revelation applies, the witness to it, the indication of it, the word from the lips of a man, but from a man who is “sent by God.” What martyria and martyrein are may best be seen if we take as literally as possible the peri and genitive with which John’s Gospel often denotes the object of witness. Witness is truly and in the best sense speaking about a subject, describing it exactly and fully, pointing to it, confirming and repeating it, and all in such a way that the subject remains itself and can speak for itself, that it is not in any way absorbed in human speech or shouted down and overpowered by it. Only where we have supreme concern both to be as close to the subject as possible, and yet to keep at a distance so that it may speak for itself, do we have martyria. And di’ autou, by a human mediator of the divine Mediator, by this human witness that is still qualified as a medium, di’ anthrōpou apestalmenou para theou, there comes about, not revelation, for this needs no witness in order to take place, but faith in it. “Testis hic nostra, non Christi causa est ordinatus.”61 But he is ordained for our sake. As we come to faith, we cannot bypass or leap over the witness, the prophet, the apostle. The figure of John is not there for nothing. It is not there for its own sake at the beginning of all the Gospels. In John’s Gospel especially the first disciples come to Jesus as they follow the pointing finger of John. “John” in the broadest sense, understood in such a way that the prophets before him and the apostles after him are also “John,” as he stands in highly significant ambivalence between them—this John, because he is a relative entity, is not on that account an indifferent or dispensable entity. “L’idée du témoignage […] est corrélative et inseparable de celle de la foi” (F. Godet).62 From the other side, we may also say with Schlatter: “He who is a witness has a right to be believed. He speaks as one who knows about something that others do not know and cannot know for themselves. He tells them so that they may achieve certainty through his knowledge. If in reply to the word of witness faith grasps it and accepts it, then the light shines into us. By whether we come to faith or not it may be seen whether the light wins the victory or shone in the darkness in vain, whether it remained or withdrew.”63 Thus far Schleiermacher rightly observed concerning this verse that “John the Baptist is close to the Redeemer as the instrument that God uses.”64

8. But now we come very definitely to the caveat with which alone all this can be said. Ouk ēn ekeinos to phōs, all’ hina martyrēsē peri tou phōtos. Only now, if very vigorously (for note the emphatic place of ouk ēn), do we find polemic, not against the Baptist, but against a false evaluation of the Baptist. The Baptist must not be confused with the Revealer; he must be respected in his position as a witness. The existence of a false evaluation of the Baptist is presupposed not only here but also in v. 15, in vv. 19ff., in ch. 3, and elsewhere in the New Testament. Luke 3:15 tells us that the people were musing in their hearts whether John was the Christ. In his address at Antioch Paul has John issue the disclaimer: “I am not the one you suppose me to be” (Acts 13:25). The statement of John that all the Synoptics record (Mark 1:7; Matt. 3:11; Luke 3:16): “A mightier than I comes after me,” and the related sayings about the shoelaces and the baptism that is more than water baptism, are also to be understood in connection with this presupposition. The same is true of the doubting question of the Baptist from prison as it is recorded in Matt. 11:3: “Are you he who is to come, or do we look for another?” We are also told in Acts 18:24f. that the Alexandrian Apollos, whom we also know from 1 Corinthians but who was then in Ephesus, was “an eloquent man, well versed in the scriptures, instructed in the way of the Lord, and fervent in spirit,” but also that although he edidasken akribōs ta peri tou Iēsou, he knew only the baptism of John. And we are then told in Acts 19:1ff. that there were “some disciples” in Ephesus who had never even heard of a Holy Spirit, and who explain this by the fact that they have been baptized only with John’s baptism. This deviation, which the author of Acts obviously judges very mildly and thinks is easily remediable, clearly presupposes both here and in the Synoptics and John an alleged superiority of the Baptist to Christ. This is obvious from what Paul says to these disciples in Acts 19:4: that John taught the people that they should believe in him who was to come after him, namely, in Jesus. Not, then, in John, who plainly stands in the background. Apart from the question in Luke 3:15, the thesis that Jesus is the Christ is presupposed in John 1:20 and 3:28. The New Testament itself never says expressly that such and such people presented and championed this thesis. But the Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions in 1.60 tell us: “Ecce unus ex discipulis Ioannis affirmabat Christum loannem fuisse et non lesum.” [“Behold, one of the disciples of John asserted that John was the Christ and not Jesus.”] And the fact that there was a messianic glorifying of the Baptist and hence a related polemic in his favor and against Jesus seems to be confirmed in an interesting way by recent Mandean research. I will quote a remarkable passage from these works as it is given by W. Bauer (op. cit., p. 15): “When John lives in that age of Jerusalem, goes to the Jordan, and baptizes, Jesus Christ comes, goes thither in humility, receives the baptism of John, and is taught by the wisdom of John. But then he twists the words of John, changes baptism in the Jordan, perverts the words of Kušta and preaches wickedness and deception in the world.” If it is a long way from the disciples of John in Acts, whose chief representative, Apollos, is so finely eulogized even prior to his Christian baptism, to those whose voice is heard here, there can be no mistaking the fact that the vigor and urgency with which John’s Gospel presents the counterthesis seems to point to a very much sharper mood than that presupposed in the disciples of John in Acts 18–19.

No matter how things might have been with the history and structure of this rival church, we obviously have to reckon with a religio-historical and ecclesiastico-political background to this verse. John’s Gospel belongs to a specific historical situation, although we can, of course, form only a partial and hypothetical picture of it with the help of occasional inferences. Clearly by no means the least important part of this situation was the need to say that John the Baptist was not the light, not the Christ (1:20; 3:28), not the returning Elijah, not the awaited prophet of later Jewish hopes (1:21), not the bridegroom (3:29), not the one who comes from above, from heaven (3:31). Vv. 1–5 prepare us for these negations as they cause us, at least with side-glances, to look around and consider where we stand. The full deity of the Word (v. 1), the reference to Jesus (he is the Word, v. 2), the subordination of everything that has come into being to the Word (v. 3), the restriction of the concept of light or revelation to the life that was in the Word (v. 4), and the opposing of revelation to the darkness as the sphere in which we human beings live (v. 5)—when we consider the place of the problem of the Baptist in the prologue, none of these things can be asserted without the Baptist also being in view. But as we were careful then not to allow the amply justified side-glance to lead us to neglect the far richer content of the presentation in which those references are embedded, so now, when the red thread is plain to see and takes a central place in the text itself, we must be careful not to see in the text only the practical historical background. In modern exposition that inclines in this direction the text takes on a remarkably petty and spiteful character that the author would not have tolerated. All honor to the Mandeans and all that is connected with them! But the possible correction of the squabblings of a Near Eastern sect is not the only thing or the final thing that we must see here.

We should certainly remember that any criticism there might be here either of the Baptist or of a sect of the Baptist has universal and typical significance for the author. In putting the witness in his place he surely recalls that he himself could have only the function of a witness, so that all that he wrote about the Baptist was automatically written about himself as well. In principle the same misunderstanding or confusion to which he sees the sect of the Baptist fall victim is the danger that besets every witness of the light. Luther was undoubtedly right when he said of this verse that the world suffers from the affliction of being full of masters and know-alls, of sages and lights, who seek their own way to heaven and want to be lights of the world and teach and lead us how to come to God; John is warning us against such.65 Wherever we have this confusion, the witness, instead of remaining a witness, begins to pose as the Revealer, points to himself instead of to Christ, and makes God’s cause his own. And wherever, as commonly happens, the disciples of the witness, out of pure gratitude and enthusiasm, do him the wrong of putting him in a place where he does not belong (although probably in a more refined way than in that Mandean text), there John 1:8 is apposite, for there we have a sect of the Baptist which cannot be too plainly or sharply refuted. The practical historical background of the text should not cause us to lose sight of the universal and typical nature of the problem that it raises.

A second point is even more definite and important. We have stressed from the very outset that the criticism of the Baptist is positive, i.e., that the No carries with it dialectically a Yes which is openly and non-dialectically expressed and which is thus to be heard no less attentively. We distort the meaning of the text if with W. Bauer66 we put an “only” in brackets before the eis martyrian (v. 7) and the hina martyrēsē (v. 8). A witness who is really a witness, from all that we have heard in vv. 6–7, is not “only” a witness. In doing justice to the polemical element in the verse we have to allow that the “only” has some validity, but in reading and interpreting v. 8 in context, with vv. 6–7 preceding it and vv. 9ff. following, we have no reason to view it merely as polemic, vigorous though the polemic may be. The second and positive part of the statement is certainly not just an amplification of the first and negative part, where Bauer’s “only” would be in place (although not in a translation). The second part is related in content to vv. 6–7, which are so positive that no one would think of limiting them by an “only” were it not for v. 8a. What they say is already limited and needs no further limitation. All that is said in vv. 6–7, within the limitation, applies also to what is said in v. 8a. Because the Baptist is not the light he is no less what he is and can be, a witness. What v. 8a affirms in definition of the term “witness” is the servant-relationship, the subordination, the dependence which applies to the one thus named over against revelation. But what vv. 6–7 affirm on behalf of v. 8b is that being a witness (even if only a witness) means a positive share [in revelation]67 even if this share be only indirect and on a lower level. John the Baptist is a mountain peak which is visible in the valley and which is lit up by the morning sun when the sun is not yet seen in the valley. The comparison is once again Augustine’s. Augustine tells us—strikingly with reference to v. 9—that John the Baptist came to weak spirits, to sick hearts, to the enfeebled eyes of the soul. This is why he came. And how could the soul see what is perfect? In the same way, as often happens, one can see the risen sun on an object on which it shines when one cannot see the sun with the eyes. For even those who have weak eyes can see a wall which is lit up and illumined by the sun, or they can see a mountain or a tree or some other object, and in another object the sun shows that it has risen even when they have no ability to see it for themselves. In the same way all those for whom Christ came were not completely unable to see him. He lit up John, and through him, who confessed that he was illumined and enlightened but did not himself illumine or enlighten, he was known who illumines, enlightens, and fills.68 Like Augustine, we are certainly not deviating from the Evangelist’s meaning if we say that John the Baptist represents a whole category here. What is true of him is true of all those who with him, classically represented by him, fall under the concept of “witness.” Hence in what follows in vv. 9ff. when we read of the phōs erchomenon eis ton kosmon, we are not to think only of the direct light of the incarnate Word which will be expressly mentioned only in v. 14. Implicitly, of course, there is reference to this too in vv. 9–13, as we had to assume that there was already in v. 5. But along with the direct light there is also for John an indirect light of revelation, which, as we noted already in v. 5, even now as dawn, or indeed as the half-light of midnight, is light from the same light even when its source, the sun, is not yet visible in the sky. This is what seems to be in view in vv. 9–13, which precede the saying about the Incarnation, if there is some significance in the fact that the saying about the Incarnation comes at the end and not at the beginning. And in vv. 9–13 John the Baptist undoubtedly is not the only one at issue. He represents all those who can and must be mentioned with reference to the phōs erchomenon eis ton kosmon in this derived and secondary sense. If this anticipated understanding of vv. 9ff. later proves to be correct, then v. 8 also has a forward reference. As the bearer of this indirect, broken, and muffled light, as the reflector of the light itself, as the representative of Advent who can be present only because Christmas comes, as the one who is reached already by the revelation of life in the midst of the field of force of darkness, as the one who gives information about this revelation, he is what he is, the witness, and over against the Revealer the first of those of whom there is to be said what vv. 12–13 will tell us about “those who received him,” the proclaimer of what he himself has known to those who have not yet known it, and for this reason also the one who has to draw back when he hears the voice of the bridegroom (3:29), the one who must decrease because the latter increases (3:30). In the same way, as the sun rises one no longer looks at the mountain peak which is lit up by it. The light of Christmas is the end of the lights of Advent. When the building is complete, the scaffolding can fall. When the subject itself speaks, there is no longer any need to speak about it, peri tou phōtos. This is the limit, the “only,” the restriction under which the witness stands as such. But within this limit he is what he is with authority and power.

We can meaningfully relate all this to the witnesses of revelation both before and after the epiphany. Before the epiphany John sees the Old Testament, concerning which he says in 8:56 the most unheard-of thing, which one has to read in connection with the New Testament. After the epiphany there is the church, within which he himself has a part. He finds light, the light that comes into the world, both before and after, both before the great skēnoun of the Logos among us (v. 14) and after his poreuein, his departure, among whose signs the later chapters of the Gospel are to be numbered. John the Baptist stands for him on the knife-edge border as the last to bear witness to him who is to come and the first to bear witness to him who has already come, already in some sense looking back to him when he calls him the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world [1:29]. Hence he and his position have both positively and negatively a universal69 significance that embraces the different times. In this regard note the ēn of v. 8a with a reference back to v. 4. In this light we take it that the pisteusōsin di’ autou of v. 7 means that all in some way must pass by him and his pointing finger if they are to come to faith. Hence the comparison of the epiphany to the rising sun has its limits. We are not to press it historically as though the position and character of the witness became different after the years 1 to 30 from what they were before. All witness to revelation is as such the Advent message, not phōs but martyria peri tou phōtos. At all times and in all circumstances the bearer of the Christmas message, having his own light, is the Word that is incarnate in the fulness of time. But the witnesses of the remotest past and the most distant future have in principle a similar share in revelation, or render a similar service to it. There applies to all of them the caveat that in themselves, if they do not misunderstand themselves, they are only witnesses, only friends of the bridegroom, destined to decrease, not worthy to untie his shoelaces. One may put more stress on either the positive or the negative side. At different times one or the other may be more necessary. That is not important. The important thing is that the office of the witness, the ministering function in relation to Christ, should be seen and understood as a function that there always has been and always again has to be, for our sake, not Christ’s,70 as a reflection of his own function.

9. Ēn to phōs to alēthinon, ho phōtizei panta anthrōpon, erchomenon eis ton kosmon. We have first to consider the understanding of older exegesis, and today not only of Schlatter71 but also of E. Schwartz,72 which also found expression in, e.g., Luther’s translation: “That was the true light that lights all men that come into this world.” On this view the subject lies outside the sentence and is best sought in the preceding phōs. Erchomenon eis ton kosmon then goes with anthrōpon, and the stress obviously falls on panta; everybody that comes into the world is illumined by the true light. Taken in connection with vv. 10–11 (according to H. J. Holtzmann’s formulation), what we have is thus a complaint “that men still need a witness to the same Logos when it has already been so close to every one of them.”73 Opinions differ as to whether the light that comes into the world is to be regarded as the grace that has always been offered to all (Augustine, Luther, Schlatter)74 or the communis lux naturae (Calvin), i.e., the sensus aeternae lucis which is given to each of us with reason and conscience, which is spoiled by the fall, but which still cannot be lost or destroyed in substance.75 Linguistically this view has in its favor the undeniable fact that it makes the order of the sentence easier to understand, but it has against it the lack of a subject in the sentence, the subject having to be supplied, not very convincingly, from what precedes: to phōs ēn to phōs to alēthinon, ho phōtize.… Materially it has in its favor the excellent forward connection, at least up to v. 11, but against it stands the arbitrariness of the link with vv. 6–8, as though there were some reason to bewail the need for a special witness to the light. With most modern exegetes I think the arguments against this reading carry the day. Favoring the reading: “The light was coming into the world,”76 which Cocceius, too, vigorously supported,77 is the linguistic point that the author likes to use what is called the periphrastic imperfect (cf. 1:28; 3:23; 10:40, ēn baptizōn; etc.; examples collected by W. Bauer).78 Again, “coming into the world” is constantly in this Gospel a function of the light or of Jesus (cf. 3:19; 12:46; etc.), in agreement with a Mandean formula and contrary to Philo, in whom God keeps the Logos with himself.79 Finally (a point made by H. J. Holtzmann),80 a fine contrast results between the surprisingly placed ēn, followed at once by the subject phōs, and the ouk ēn of v. 8. We thus translate: “The true light, which lights every man, was coming into the world.”

But what does this mean? First, what is to phōs to alēthinon? Four related meanings for alēthinos call for consideration: (1) “genuine” as distinct from false, imitative, or only apparently corresponding to the concept; (2) close to, or coincident with, alēhēs, i.e., “related to or filled with the truth,” “belonging to the realm of truth”;81 (3) “reliable,” “credible”; (4) “true” in the sense of the reality that has only an original and not a copy; cf. the true and heavenly tabernacle of Heb. 8:2 which God has set up and not man. If we look at other passages in the Gospel in which the term occurs, we have to say that according to the context pretty well all the meanings are more or less possible in their own place. As for this passage, in context I decide (with Calvin)82 for the fourth possibility. There can be no question here of opposition to a false or imitation light, for John the Baptist is not regarded as such. The meaning “related to the truth” is so general that its colorlessness and abstractness make a strange impression in this verse. The sense “reliable” or “trustworthy” fits well enough if the thought of the illumination of men by the light is the real point of the statement. But from what we have just said it is not. The paraphrase of Calvin makes good sense. Light in heaven and earth always receives its radiance from elsewhere. But Christ is the light which shines of itself and then fills the whole world with its radiance: “ut non alia sit usquam origo vel causa splendoris. Veram ergo lucem dixit, cui natura proprium est lucere.” [“There is no other source or cause of its brightness anywhere. And so he calls Him the true light whose own nature is to be light.”] Over against the witness peri tou phōtos there stood and stands the phōs alēthinon, the original, uncreated, primary light, the direct and immediate revelation of life that bears witness to itself. Of this true light a relative clause tells us: ho phōtizei panta anthrōpon. Phōtizein is more than phainein (v. 5), and the relative clause says more than v. 4b (that the light was the life of men). Not just an activity but an effect of light is meant here. It illumines men, it fills them with light, it sets them in the light. To the extent that they are set in the light at all! “Quisquis illuminatur, ab hac luce illuminatur.”83 It is in this restrictive sense that we are to take the panta, after the analogy of the pantes of v. 7. Everyone who receives light receives it from this source. Obviously also the man mentioned in v. 6! Only in this way and to this extent does he himself shed light so that others come to faith through him—only as he is illumined by this true and primary light. By this light which is first original and then alone at work, is what the author means to say. Of this light he says that it was erchomenon eis ton kosmon, i.e., coming into the world. What does this mean? According to Cocceius, H. Holtzmann, Heitmüller, and Zahn,84 we must quietly supply a tote before erchomenon. According to this view the Evangelist’s meaning is then that “when the Baptist witnessed to him, Jesus began to emerge from the concealment of his former life” (Zahn). Against this view it has been repeatedly pointed out that in spite of the “there was” with which they begin, vv. 6–8 (cf. v. 15, and in contrast v. 19) are not a historical account or record but the evaluation and characterization of a concrete historical entity to which it would be most inappropriate to attach the story of the coming of Jesus (which in this case would be just as oddly abstract as, one has to say, Zahn’s view of v. 4 is). No, the reference is not to the light which appeared in the humanity of Jesus, although not first or only in this humanity, but to the primary light of the revelation of life from which all other light derives (with the Baptist, and the category that he represents, in view). This light was (the same time-embracing ēn as in v. 4 and v. 8) coming into the world. Later in v. 10 we shall read that it was in the world. Here we have the explanation that we also found in v. 4. The being of this light in the world is its coming. But its coming in full reality! This coming establishes the truth of what is said about the Baptist in vv. 6–8. Because the primary light is coming into the world there is a Baptist, a martyria. Not in virtue of the erchesthai of such men (v. 7) but in virtue of the erchesthai, the dawn, of the light, of which their erchesthai on the lower level, in history, gives intimation—not out of the caprice of religious yearning but out of the necessity which is laid upon them by the inconceivable divine condescension which is enacted again and again in this coming.

10. En tō̧ kosmō̧ ēn—kai ho kosmos di’ autou egeneto—kai ho kosmos auton ouk egnō. The structure of this verse reminds us strikingly of v. 1: three short statements joined by kai and all three rotating around a single concept, in this case kosmos. If we note the masculine auton in the third statement, and if we assume, as is probable, that this same masculine is the subject in the first statement, and after the analogy of v. 3 is also meant in the di’ autou of the second, then we see that the masculine can refer only to the ho logos of vv. 1ff. and v. 14 (unless with Zahn85 we look ahead and seek to refer it at once to the historical Jesus). There thus arises unsought a material parallel as well to v. 1. Comparison shows that between them we have come a considerable way. With the same urgency with which v. 1 taught the deity86 of the Word, v. 10 now teaches its turning to the world. With the necessary caution one might say that the former refers to the transcendence of the Logos, the latter to its immanence in the world. It is important to note, however, that the en tō̧ kosmō̧ ēn of this verse understands the immanence as an event in contrast to permanent immanence. V. 9, and further back v. 5, and also v. 11 with its ēlthen, forbid us to construe this ēn as a continuous relation. It is act or action. “The Word gave itself to be received by the world,” we might paraphrase the first statement. How far the Word was engaged in this turning to the world vv. 4–5 and v. 9 have shown in a general way. Life or redemption was in the Word, and this life was light, it was manifest among men in the midst of the darkness in which they live; it came and comes into the world. How concretely? Vv. 6–8 have given the answer to this question. It came and comes in the form of the witness who is not himself the light of the world but who is its witness with full authority. The term light, having rendered this service, recedes into the background. In its place, preparing the ground for v. 14, the Word itself returns as whose life, or redeeming content, the light was introduced. Thus a line is drawn under what goes before. As the light shone (v. 5) and came into the world (v. 9) (the light that was simply the light of his life), the Word himself was in the world.

The term kosmos can have at least three meanings in John: (1) “The sum of all created things.” This meaning fits the second statement best (cf. v. 3). But in the third statement the kosmos is depicted as either knowing or not knowing. And all that precedes and follows points to a more specialized meaning for this central concept. (2) “The creature in its hardened turning from God and his revelation,” shut off from revelation because it shuts itself off; the world as per se the world that lies in the evil one [cf. 1 John 5:19b]. This pregnant meaning, which is common in John, fits the content of the third statement very well—but perhaps too well inasmuch as the statement then becomes analytic. And v. 11 shows that the author does not regard the world as from the very outset alien and hostile but wants to depict its turning from the Word as an unexpected and scandalous episode. (If we adopt these first two meanings, we have to assume that there is a shift of meaning in the middle of the verse. The world that came into being through the Word could not be the world that is hardened, and the world that does not know the Word could not be simply the sum of all that is created. Such a change of meaning is not impossible in John, but it is perhaps as well not to use the resultant exegetical possibility too hastily or too often.) (3) “The human world.” “homines in mundo.”87 “the earth and the people on it,”88 history as a world within the world. With this sense kosmos would be neutral in the first two statements, its sense being determined by its relation to the Word, this sense then being found in the third statement. I regard this third sense as the most probable in the context, especially in the light of the third statement and the related v. 11. If we want to assume a shift of meaning, then we have sense (1) in the first and second statements and sense (3) in the third. Our interpretation is thus as follows.

1. En tō̧ kosmō̧ ēn. The Word neither was nor is remote from humanity. His life, which is their redemption, became and is manifest. It could and can be received. Care is taken that no one has to feel left out. No one can complain of unfair treatment. The witness and testimony to him are there. “Their voice goes out through all the earth” [Ps. 19:4]. Calvin paraphrases: “Summa est, nunquam talem fuisse Christi absentiam a mundo, quin homines eius radiis expergefacti in ipsum attollere oculos debuerint.”89 Those who have ears to hear, let them hear!

2. Kai ho kosmos di’ autou egeneto. If we have correctly expounded the parallel in v. 3, here again the stress lies on the fact that over against the human world the Word has all the superiority of the Creator. It was not a part of the human world. It came into the world from above, from heaven, as will later be said of Christ [3:31], from that which is in principle above all that has come into being, yet not, of course, as a foreign body, but as the truth (v. 11 may be heard in advance in this second statement in v. 10) which the world really ought to know. If it came in the form of human witness to it, even in the reflection of this witness it was no less to phōs to alēthinon (v. 9), the primary light that no one may rightly evade.

3. Ho kosmos auton ouk egnō. In view of the continuation in v. 11 one can hardly miss the fact that the two preceding statements are written for the sake of this statement. Here again and in relation to v. 11 reference has been made90 to the “impression of tragedy in the life of Jesus” to which these statements allude. But if the concept of tragedy cannot be separated from the element of fateful guilt or guilty fate in the hero, then if there is tragedy here, in the mind of the Evangelist the cosmos rather than Jesus is the tragic hero who, the captive of fate and guilt, finally misses the supreme opportunity that is offered. V. 10c and v. 11 certainly raise such a complaint and accusation against the cosmos, although in the mind of the Evangelist the complaint and accusation hardly have a “tragic” ring in the pregnant sense of the term. Not unjustifiably, perhaps, we are reminded by the verse of the pessimistic judgment on the cosmos that we also find in Hermetic and Mandean writings. But we have to add at once that this judgment does not harden into a dualistic system in John. Note the significance of the fact that v. 10c is embedded between v. 10b and v. 11. We have here a momentary part of the situation of conflict similar to that found in v. 5. We do not have a metaphysical principle. One may thus ask whether the complaint and accusation can really be called the true purpose of the passage vv. 10c–11. Note the connection of the passage with vv. 12–13. Quite indisputably these verses depict a mighty deed of the Word. Among those who contest it, the Word itself gives a great number, the hosoi, the possibility or power for something unheard-of and humanly impossible, i.e., for being God’s children (really God’s children according to the strict interpretation of v. 13) in the midst of a crooked generation [Phil. 2:15]. One cannot deny that the paradox of v. 11 effectively prepares the way for the depiction of this mighty deed of the Word. This is how the Word worked and works by its own power. It is not heard by those by whom it ought to be heard and yet—wholly by itself—it has found receptivity and faith. On the other hand, one cannot deny that v. 11 is only the explication of v. 10c. Hence one cannot allow v. 10c, or v. 10 as a whole, or with it v. 11, to be regarded only as that complaint about the world or that accusation against it. Beyond this note, which is certainly present but only as a secondary note, there sounds as the meaning of the whole passage vv. 9–13 the melody of triumph as the Word, the true and only effective light (v. 9), comes into the world, inconceivably finds no echo in the world, and yet equally inconceivably—enigma again confronts enigma as in v. 5—completes its work in the world in spite of the world, reaches its goal, finds faith, and gives birth to children of God. Even though it is present to the world in the dignity of the Creator, it meets only with resistance in it. Like what is said in v. 5 (that it shines in isolation, in the darkness which does not comprehend it, but that it still finds its witness in the sphere of darkness, that by its power and deed it still finds open ears in the world that resists it), this truth shames the world and brings blame upon it and complaint against it. Yet again we must not make the Evangelist stop there. We must not find in him only an attitude of what might be called theological pettiness in face of the world. The church’s right to judge the world depends upon the judgment not being a last word but having only subordinate significance. And this is what it has in this passage. What the Evangelist says about the world is not said for its own sake but for the glorifying of the Word, which, although it is not received by men, sees to it that nevertheless it is received, because it has the power to give exousia where none exists. To this goal, which is intimated in v. 9, we have taken the first step in v. 10.