The Gospel of John and the Religious Quest. Johannes Nissen
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means that the eternal foundation and basic principle of life is not impersonal, but is met in person in a human life.89
The Cosmic Christ—in the Midst of Human Beings
The importance of the Prologue is also underlined by Harry Månsus, the founder of the Bromma-dialogue, a Swedish movement which highlights the dialogue between Christian faith and new spirituality. According to Månsus many Christians see spiritual currents of our time as a threat or even a sign of our living at the end of time. This situation is not new, however. Early Christianity was itself an “alternative spiritual movement” to the established order. It was born in a world that is as religious complex as our own.90 In Hellenistic culture many people distanced themselves from the ancient gods and the public religion. The void after the traditional religions was filled with alternative spiritual movements—including mystery religions, astrology, various forms of healing, and Christianity. Stoic philosophy is of particular importance in this context. It is said that Logos as the “cosmic world reason” permeates everything. In this way it may be said that God was present in the cosmic cathedral.91
Månsus is convinced that God uses many different means in his attempt to reach man. If the church proves unsuitable he will employ other means. Today the new religiosity and the new spirituality may be seen as a quest for sincere spiritual experience and a wish for a personal encounter with the cosmic Christ. Hence, the church should not isolate itself inside the walls of churches and chapels, but follow the example of the first Christians and meet people in public places, following Paul’s dialogue with the Athenians at the Areopagus in Acts 17:17–34.
The Prologue in John’s Gospel is another example of this open, dialogical approach. The text has the form of a hymn which was probably written in a Hellenistic environment with gnostic tendencies. The similarity with the new spirituality is striking. After all, we might have expected the author of the hymn to take steps to avoid any alternative spirituality, but in fact, he does the opposite. According to Månsus, John takes over the winged words from the spiritual circles of his time, “baptizes” them, and uses them in his presentation of the cosmic Christ. In his hymn John appropriates the concept of Logos from Stoic popular philosophy and the gnostic “terminology of light,” as well as including cosmic perspectives from the Old Testament story of the creation, cf. John 1:1–5.92
John’s theological intention is obvious: The cosmic Christ should not be isolated in churches, in false piety, or in religious dogma. God is not withdrawing himself from the earth into a religious reservation. On the contrary, in the gospel we meet the Creator himself as the cosmic Christ who descended into the fallen creature in order to liberate and heal creation from below. The cosmic Christ—“the true light, which enlightens everyone”—has incarnated himself in the world (John 1:9).
In Månsus’s view, John’s message to the new spirituality of the first century is: If you are searching for the light, you will find it embodied in a dark world! His message to seekers with a popular philosophy is: Logos—the wisdom that permeates everything—has revealed its glory, and we ourselves have seen it! His message to Judaism is: The Wisdom that is referred to in the Old Testament, has become man and lives in our midst!93
The Role of Incarnation in the Encounter with Other Religions
All religions operate with a center where eternity and time, divine and human, sacred and profane meet. The center signifies the irruption of divine reality into human reality. Hence, centering is the bestowal of some meaning from which all other meaning derives. The old reality is replaced by a new reality. The Fourth Gospel describes the Logos as this center, the axis of life. Everything else in the Gospel emanates from the central affirmation made in verse 1 and verse 14. In v. 1 the reader is brought into a primal, archetypal time in which the Logos existed and was God. It is this Logos that v. 14 affirms to have become flesh.94 Through the structure of the Prologue John seeks to express the experience of Christ first in a language that echoes his non-Christian environment, and then in a Christian language.95 It is a double movement, from pre-existence to incarnation, from the impersonal to the personal.96 John insists that the Word that became flesh has become the new center, the new reality that irrupts into the old world and has replaced the old centers. Thus, the center of Judaism, the temple, is replaced by Jesus who is the “place” where God tabernacles among us (1:14).97
The preceding examples of modern interpretations of the Prologue raise the question of how far Christians should go in communicating with non-Christian religions. A similar question was addressed by John. The Fourth Gospel is the classic example of the challenges and risks that are posed by translating the Christian message into the languages and perceptions of other cultures. Some would say that in order to win over the Gnostics John almost became a Gnostic himself (cf. Part Two). Yet he differed from his audience on two decisive points: his insistence on the historicity of Jesus and on his human nature.
It is essential for any dialogue today that Christians take the same movement as the Prologue: from the impersonal to the personal and from pre-existence to incarnation. In other words, we must do the same as the Gospel of John did: identify the Logos, the principle of life, with the person Jesus Christ. He is not just the core of life, but also life in all its fullness (1:16), for he gives life in abundance (10:10).
49. Barrett, The Gospel According to John, 130, rightly comments on v. 1: “John intends that the whole of his gospel shall be read in the light of this verse.”
50. Cahill, “The Johannine Logos as Center,” 65; Senior and Stuhlmueller, The Biblical Foundations for Mission, 284.
51. Kieffer, Johannesevangeliet, 19.
52. Cf. Olsson, “Deus semper major?” This point is underlined by John’s mission theology. There are four types of sending in the Fourth Gospel (John the Baptist, Jesus himself, the Paraclete, and the disciples). All of them revolve around Jesus: John the Baptist announces his coming; the Paraclete confirms his presence; and the disciples proclaim his Word to the world. But the endpoint of John’s mission is not Jesus but the Father. The Father, alone is not sent. He is the origin and goal of all the testimony of the Gospel, cf. John 1:1–18 and 17:20–23 (Nissen, New Testament and Mission, 76).
53. The first half of the Prologue gives the divine-human encounter in general terms, the second half gives it in a specific Christian language (Vellanickal, “The Gospel of John in the Indian Context,” 150).
54. The New Revised Standard Version is an example of the first option, as is the New Danish authorized translation from 1992 (over against the Danish authorized translation from 1948).
55. Berger, Exegese des Neuen Testaments, 230–31.
56. Kysar, John the Maverick Gospel, 25.
57. Aagaard, “Findes der