The Gospel of St. John. Joseph MacRory
nothing definite; but it is generally held that it was akin to that of the Cerinthians and Ebionites.
Among the “other heretics” alluded to by St. Jerome in the passage cited above were, doubtless, the Simonians (followers of Simon Magus, Acts viii. 9, and foll.), and the Docetae.
The Simonians agreed with the Cerinthians in denying that the world was made by God, and that Jesus was God, and St. Irenæus speaks of them as the originators of the Gnostic heresy. “Simoniani a quibus falsi nominis scientia accepit initia.” (Adv. Haer., i. xxxiii. 4.)
The Docetae (δοκεῖν = to seem) held that Christ had only the appearance of a human body; and hence, that His sufferings and death were not real, but apparent.
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Chapter I.
1-18. The prologue16 declares the Word's eternity, distinct personality, and essential unity with God; His relations with creation generally, and with man in particular; His incarnation, and the fulness of grace, and perfection of revelation attained through Him.
19-34. Some of the Baptist's testimonies to Christ.
35-51. Circumstances in which Christ's first disciples were called.
| 1. In principio erat Verbum, et Verbum erat apud Deum, et Deus erat Verbum. | 1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. |
1. In the beginning. These words most probably mean here, as in Gen. i. 1, at the beginning of all created things; in other words, when time began. Their meaning must always be determined from the context. Thus we know from the context in Acts xi. 15, that St. Peter there uses them in reference to the beginning of the Gospel. Similarly, the context here determines the reference to be to the beginning of creation; for He who is here said to have been in the beginning, is declared in verse 3 to be the creator of all things, and must therefore have already been in existence at their beginning.
Others, however, have interpreted the words differently. Many of the fathers understood them to mean: in the Father, and took this first clause of [pg 014] v. 1, as a declaration that the Word was in the Father. But, though it is quite true to say that the Word was and is in the Father (x. 38), both being consubstantial, still such does not seem to be the sense of the phrase before us. Had St. John meant to state this, surely he would have written: In God, or, in the Father, was the Word. He names God in the next two clauses: And the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Why then should he at the risk of being misunderstood, refer to Him in this first clause under another name? Besides, if this first clause stated the Word's consubstantiality with the Father, the third clause: And the Word was God, would then be tautological.
Many of the commentators also urge against this view, that if the first clause meant, in God (or, in the Father) was the Word, the second clause would be merely a repetition. But we cannot assent to this, since, as we shall see, the second clause would add the important statement of the Word's distinct personality. However, the view seems to us improbable for the other reasons already stated.
Others take “beginning” here to mean eternity, so that we should have in this first clause a direct statement of the Word's eternity. But against this is the fact that ἀρχη (beginning) nowhere else bears this meaning, and can be satisfactorily explained in a different sense here. Hence, as already explained, “in the beginning” means: when time began.
Was (ἦν), i.e., was already in existence. Had St. John meant to declare that at the dawn of creation the Word began to exist, he would have used ἐγένετο as he does in verse 3 regarding the beginning of the world, and again in verse 6 regarding the coming of the Baptist. This cannot fail to be clear to anyone who contrasts verses 1, 2, 4, and 9 of this chapter with verses 3, 6, and 14. In the former ἦν is used throughout in reference to the eternal existence of the Word;17 in the latter ἐγένετο, when there is question of the beginning of created things (3), or of the coming of the Baptist (6), or of the assumption by the Word of human nature at the incarnation (14). At the beginning of creation, then, the Word was already in existence; and hence it follows that He must be uncreated, and therefore eternal. St. John's statement here that the Word was already in existence in the beginning, is, accordingly, equivalent to our Lord's claim [pg 015] to have existed before the world was (xvii. 5), and in both instances the Word's eternity, though not directly stated, follows immediately. Hence we find that the Council of Nice and the fathers generally inferred, against the Arians, the eternity of the Son of God from this first clause of verse 1. “If He was in the beginning,” says St. Basil (De Div., Hom. xvi. 82), “when was He not?”
The Word (ὁ λόγος). St. John here, as well as in his First Epistle (i. 1), and in the Apocalypse (xix. 13), designates by this term the Second Divine Person. That he speaks of no mere abstraction, or attribute of God, but of a Being who is a distinct Divine Person, is clear. For this “Word was with God, was God, was made flesh, and dwelt amongst us,” and in the person of Jesus Christ was witnessed to by the Baptist (i. 1, 14, 15, 29, 30). Outside the writings of St. John there is no clear18 instance in either Old or New Testament of this use of the term λόγος. Throughout the rest of the Scriptures its usual meaning is speech or word.
What, then, we may ask, led our Evangelist, in the beginning of his Gospel, to apply this term rather than Son, or Son of God, to the Second Divine Person? Why did he not say: In the beginning was the Son?
Apart from inspiration, which, of course, may have extended to the suggestion of an important word like the present, apart also from the appropriateness of the term, of which we shall speak in a moment, it seems very probable that St. John was impelled to use the term λόγος because it had been already used by the heretics of the time in the expression of their errors.19 Endowed, too, as St. John was, like the other Apostles, with a special power of understanding the Sacred Scriptures (Luke xxiv. 46), and privileged as he had been on many an occasion to listen to the commentaries of Christ Himself on the Old Testament, he may have been able, where we are not, to see clearly in the Old Testament instances in which λόγος refers to the Son of God; e.g., “Verbo (τῷ λόγῳ) Domini coeli firmati sunt” (Psalm xxxii. 6).
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One thing, at all events, is quite plain, that, whatever may be said regarding his reason for the application of this term to the Son of God, St. John did not borrow his doctrine regarding the λόγος from Plato or Philo or the Alexandrian School. For though the term (λόγος) is frequently met with in the writings of both Plato and Philo, yet Plato never speaks of it as a person, but only as an attribute of God; and Philo, though in our opinion, he held the distinct personality of the Word, yet denied that he was God, or the creator of matter, which latter Philo held to be eternal. As to the Alexandrian School, to which Philo belonged, and of whose doctrines he is the earliest witness, there is not a shadow of foundation for saying that any of its doctors held the same doctrine as St. John regarding the Divine Word.
From the teaching of Christ, then, or by inspiration, or in both ways, our Evangelist received the sublime doctrine regarding the λόγος with which his Gospel opens.
Having now inquired into the origin of the term λόγος as applied to the Son of God, and having learned the source whence St. John derived his doctrine regarding this Divine Word, let us try to understand how it is that the Son of God could be appropriately referred to as the Word (ὁ λόγος). Many answers have been given, but we will confine ourselves to the one that seems to us most satisfactory.
We believe, and profess in the Athanasian Creed (Filius a Patre solo est non factus, nec creatus, sed genitus), that the Son is begotten by the Father; and it is the common teaching that He is begotten through the Divine intellect. Now, this mysterious procession of the Son from the Father through the intellect, is implied here in His being called the Word. For, as our word follows, without passion or carnal feeling, from our thought, as it is the reflex of our thought, from which it detracts