In the Beginning Was the Word: Notes on the Prologue of the Gospel of John

Jesus as the LOGOS, the Incarnation of God’s Preexistent Word

Jesus as the LOGOS is only in John's Prologue (1:1-18). 

The Prologue is said to be an early Christian hymn that was incorporated at a later stage in the Gospel’s development—at Stage Three by a reactor.

However is the case, the Prologue is the ‘pearl of great price’ of the entire Gospel of John—it orients, sets, or dictates how the Gospel of John should be read. It encapsulates John’s view of Christ.

The Prologue has four parts (or strophes):

I. The Word with God (vv. 1-2)
II. The Word and Creation (vv. 3-5)
III. The Word in the World (vv. 10-12b)
IV. The Community’s Share in the Word (vv. 14, 15)

Strophe I or Part I – three elements of unique High Christology are immediately presented:

1) The Word as precreational preexistence. = “In the beginning was the Word”

The verse teaches a precreational christology: it means that the Word preexisted creation—it was already there before the “beginning” takes place. Creation as such will happens only in verse 3.

2) The Word in communion with the Father. 

This is the sense of the v. 1b: “And the Word was with God.” The Greek is difficult to translate: KAI HO LOGOS EN PROS TON THEON (literally, “And the Word was toward the God”). R. Brown explains the preposition (PROS) as one that implies communion or closeness with the Father so he translates the phrase: “And the Word was in God’s presence (pp. 4-5). It means “that the primordial, eternal being of the Logos (v. 1a) is an existence which proceeds from God and his love, is filled with the life of God (cf, 5:26) and shares in his glory” (Schnackenburg I: p. 234).

3) The Word WAS God. 

According to R. Brown, this is one of only three passages in the New Testament where Jesus is clearly called God.

The other two are Hebrew 1:8-9 and John 20:28 (Introduction to New Testament Christology, p. 185ff). The main problem of this passage is the lack of the definite article “the” (HO in Greek) before the name “God”: KAI THEOS EN HO LOGOS. The HO is missing before THEOS. Ordinarily, when it refers to God the Father, the article HO (the) is present as in verse 2 (the TON in EN PROS TON THEON is the accusative form of HO). Without the article HO, THEOS (God) can be only an adjective like “divine”—“And the Word was divine”—meaning the WORD is not of equal status with the Father or subordinate with the Father (cf. Iglesia Ni Cristo belief). According to R. Brown, such translation is weak and there is a word for “divine” in Greek (THEIOS). The passage, in fact, forms an inclusio with John 20:28 (Thomas’ cry: “My Lord and My God”). The sense of the passage then should be: “What God was, the Word was.”

The Word became flesh (in Strophe IV, v. 14).

This is John’s way of expressing the mystery of the incarnation. Incarnation means that at his human conception the Son of God did not come into existence; rather he was a previously existing agent in the divine sphere who took the flesh in the womb of Mary (Brown, Introduction, p. 134).

The Background of the Idea of a Precreationial preexistent Logos.

Through the years, scholars have suggested a number of thoughts as its background, the following two are prominent:

1) The LOGOS in Hellenistic Greek – the eternal principle of order in the universe.

A representative of this is Philo of Alexandria, a Jew but a Hellenistic philosopher who was born around 20 B.C. and died around 40 A.D. The LOGOS as a figurative expression of right reason is prominent in most of his works.

2) The Wisdom (HOKMAH in Heb. SOPHIA in LXX) in the Jewish Wisdom Literature (Proverbs, Sirach, and Wisdom of Solomon in particular). 

Wisdom came from the mouth of the Most High (Sir 24:3) and existed with God from the beginning even before there was earth (Prov 8 8:22-23; Sirach 24:9; Wisdom 6:22)—so also the Johannine Jesus is the Word who was in the beginning (1:1) and was with the Father before the world existed (17:5). Wisdom is said to be a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty (Wis 7:25), and those who hold her fast inherit glory (Sir 4:13)—so also Jesus had glory with the Father before the world was created and then manifests the Father’s glory to human beings (1:14; 8:50; 11:4; 17:5, 22, 24). Wisdom is said to be a reflection of the everlasting light of God (Wisdom 7:26); and in lighting up the path for people (Sir 1:29), she is to be preferred to any natural light (Wisdom 7:10, 29)—in John, Jesus who comes forth from God is the light of the world (1:4-5; 8:12; 9:5).

Furthermore, Wisdom is described as having descended from heaven to dwell with human beings (Prov 8:31; Sirach 24:8; Baruch 3:37; Wisdom 9:10)—so also Jesus is the Son of Man who has descended from heaven to earth (John 1:14; 3:31; 6:38; 16:28). The Katabasis-Anabasis in John 3:13 is very close to Baruch 3:29 and Wisdom 9:16-17. Wisdom worked signs to deliver holy people and guided them along a marvelous way (Wisdom 10:15-17), the whole of Jesus worked signs and constituted the way (John 14:6).

---Raymond Brown favors no. 2 above as the background of the Johannine Logos (see An Introduction to the Gospel of John, pp, 259-265 from which the paragraphs in no. 2 were taken).

Some attempts at a better translation of LOGOS

THOUGHT (Goethe) – hence DIWA in Tagalog; REASON; UTTERANCE; SPEECH; POWER; VERBUM – hence Verbo in some Filipino bibles.

WORD (SALITA), in the sense of communication, is still the best, esp. taking into account the creative Word of the LORD or prophetic Word (Heb. DABAR) in the Old Testament. Here it means, the REVELATORY WORD. Jesus is the revelation of God. To see and to hear him is to hear the Father, Jesus is the way in which those who believe in him know God. The WORD is the perfect concept for expressing the significance of Jesus. For, just as a word reveals the one who utters it, so Jesus reveals the Father who sent him. Jesus is the revelatory word of God so that whatever he says and does is the perfect expression of the one who sent him (Matera, New Testament Christology, p. 237).