Witness to the Word. Karl Barth
which itself needs witness and expects witness—the witness that its subject must give. This giving is an event, an action, the action of God in the strictest sense of the term. The point of our own action as hearers and expositors of the Gospel stands or falls with God’s action through the instrument with which we have to do.
3. Our situation as readers and expositors of the Gospel means finally that we are placed under a specific demand. This relates to our own concrete attitude to this task. I do not mean the demand for faith. Our starting point is that the Gospel at once addresses to us a demand for faith that we can neither miss nor avoid. I add that every point at which we are occupied with the Gospel carries this demand with it and necessarily has the significance of an act of obedience or disobedience to this demand. But what is faith if not the illumination without which we cannot perceive the light of scripture? And what is this illumination if not the inscrutable and uncontrollable work of God upon us for which we can only pray?22 What we have now to discuss, however, is the other demand that Augustine expresses in connection with the familiar cultic formula of the early church: “Lift up your hearts.”23 What does this mean? If we listen to Augustine, the mysticism of Neoplatonism and the asceticism of the Hellenistic mystery religions tell us what he meant. From the mountains that we see with our eyes we should mount up higher and higher to the invisible One who has made the visible mountains, just as John as a recipient of the divine gift was one of the highest mountains because he rose up above everything created, above all heavens and angels, to the uncreated Word that was in the beginning. And for our hearts to be able to do this, they need cleansing—for they are carnal—they need the catharsis, the purifying of continence. To us these are alien notes. But they cannot be totally or finally alien. Alongside or prior to the faith that is not put in our own hands, on the level of what we desire and can do, in a way that does not bind him from whom every good gift comes, but not on that account without significance, there is a readiness for faith or for understanding what faith and its object are all about. Concretely, there is a readiness to understand24 that only in the sphere denoted by the terms church, sacrament, and canon can John’s Gospel be read and understood as the word of an apostle, i.e., as the word of a witness not to himself, but to the revelation imparted and entrusted to him. There is a readiness to look in the direction indicated, even if only in the form of a hypothetical intention demanded by an understanding of the formal nature of the subject.25 There is an openness to the need to understand this matter within its own logic and ethic. There is a willingness to adapt to this need because one wants to understand. Instead of willingness, then, we might say objectivity. We are perhaps not guilty of too great misrepresentation if we go on to say that the continence that Augustine commends consists concretely of opposing to the subjective presuppositions with which, to the hurt of our understanding, we constantly approach scripture, the equally subjective but sincere and earnest desire to read and expound the Gospel, not as teachers but as students, not as those who know but as those who do not know, as those who let ourselves be told26 what the Gospel, and through it the divine wisdom, is seeking to tell us, holding ourselves free for it as for a message that we have never heard before. This readiness can be the subject of a demand. We can want it, seek it, and have it. It is not a final word. It is not identical with faith. But as a penultimate word the demand for this readiness has its place. In the situation in which we find ourselves, as an integral part of its reality, there sounds forth unmistakably for all who are in it the cry: Lift up your hearts.
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