Witness to the Word. Karl Barth
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