The Gospel of John and the Religious Quest. Johannes Nissen
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practice of employing words which have a double—Jewish and Hellenist—background. John’s ideas and terminology may have developed within the Palestine heterodox Judaism under the influence of pressing Hellenism. But the very choice of such heterodox Judaistic language shows that John is deliberatively moving towards a wider world which seems approachable to him only through the kind of ‘open-ended’ language we find in John.”
42. Culpepper, Anatomy of the Fourth Gospel, 189.
43. Ibid., 190.
44. Ibid., 196.
45. Mogensen, “Symboler og symboldidaktik,” 247.*
46. To be noticed is the parallel of the Areopagus speech in Acts 17:17–34. The Athenians are described as being very religious people (17:22) and it is said that “they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him” (17:27); see also Nissen, New Testament and Mission, 61–65.
47. Mogensen, Således elskede Gud verden, 120.
48. Bjerg, Øjnenes faste, 124.
3
The Word
Historical Perspectives
The Structure of the Prologue
The Prologue sets the tone for the rest of the Gospel.49 It is the conceptual center from which all other dimensions radiate.50 From this center light is thrown on other parts of the book and on all its important issues. These include an understanding of both the human quest for the meaning of life and the relation between the universal and the particular elements in Christianity. The relation between the universal and the specific Christian elements is crucial to understanding the structure of the Prologue. This text has a twofold character: on the one hand its structure is concentric; on the other it reflects a progress from the universal to the specific Christian. Both these aspects have relevance for contemporary interpretations of the Gospel.
The first approach may be characterized as literary; it reflects a spacious understanding. The structure of the Prologue is concentric, as is seen from the following scheme:
A. The Word was with God (vv.1–2)
B. All things were made through the Word (v. 3)
C. The Word was life and light for human beings (vv. 4–5)
D. John witnessed to the light (vv. 6–8)
E. The true light came to the world (vv. 9–10)
F. He came to his own (people)—they received him not (v.11)
F. Whoever received him . . . he gave power to become children of God (vv.12–13)
E. The Word was made flesh (v. 14)
D. John witnessed to the Word, who was before him (v. 15)
C. From his fullness we have received grace (v.16)
B. Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ (v. 17)
A. The only Begotten Son—himself God—has interpreted God for us (v. 18).
In this structure a special emphasis is placed on the beginning (A) and the end (A), which correspond to each other, with the center at F-F, where it is underlined that those who have received Jesus have become God’s children (vv.12–13). The Prologue is about the Word, but in the last two verses it is clarified that Christ is the only Begotten Son, himself God. In this way the Prologue describes a movement from God to God with the incarnation of the Word as a turning-point. The aim is that all those who receive the Word become part of this divine movement.51 According to this understanding the main emphasis is on soteriology, the understanding of salvation.
The structure reflects John’s understanding of God. In a number of passages God is presented as the ground of all being and the source of all life (cf. the paragraph “Witness” in Part Two). In this sense God is greater than anything else.52 This observation is relevant to how we nowadays can be engaged in a dialogue of religions, since the transcendence of God is underlined by other religions than Christianity, e.g., Islam. But the Gospel of John does not stop there of course. The book not only says that the Son is subordinated to the Father, but it also insists on the unity between Father and Son. And the crucial point in the last verse of the Prologue is that the Father has revealed himself in the Son. This may be interpreted as a critical concern for other religions, including Islam.
The second approach is the traditional historical-critical analysis, which is based on a temporal conception: a chronological axis, where v. 1 and v. 18 constitute the frame, and the climax is v. 14. The emphasis here is on Christology:
v.1 v. 14 v.18
According to this understanding the Prologue reflects a course or a progress. It has two major parts and a transitional passage. In the first half of the Prologue John uses general terms like Logos, God, all things, life, light, darkness, world etc. In the second half he uses specific Christian terms such as the only begotten Son, Father, grace, truth, Jesus, Christ, glory etc. John’s attempt to express his experience of Christ in a language that would raise echoes in a non-Christian world around him should remain an inspiration and model for us to continue the same process in our own times.53 The transition between the two halves is fluid. In the Greek text it is not quite clear when the author passes from the impersonal “it” to the personal “he.” Some modern translations choose the personal pronoun already in verse 2 (“He was in the beginning with God”), while others have it later in the text, e.g., verse 10.54 The latter alternative is to be preferred, since this is in line with the context.
The Word in the World
It is beyond dispute that the Word (the Logos) has a unique position in John’s theology. Scholars have sought the origins of Logos in many different contexts. Some argue that the concept is rooted in the creative Word of the Old Testament and/or the Wisdom literature (e.g., Prov 8), while others point to the Hellenistic world, e.g., Hermetic and gnostic literature or Stoicism and Philo.
Again it is probably not an either-or question; Logos has to be seen in both contexts. It seems that the author deliberately uses a language that is “semantically” open.55 The value of modern research is that by way of comparison or contrast, it brings out the manifold aspects of John’s thought. Jesus is seen as the fulfillment of all this but in a specific way. As Kysar puts it: “Yes, Christ is all of this—Stoic Logos, Old Testament Word, and Jewish Wisdom—rolled into one person. And that is the thrust of the prologue, I believe. Logos for the Christians is a person. The Logos is not an abstract philosophical concept. It is not a category of religious experience. Nor is it speculative religious mythology. It is a person, infleshed, living, historical person.”56
From the beginning the Prologue points to a Christology that is inclusive and cosmic. The focus is on the universal Word that is active in all places. First comes a description of the divinity of the Word (vv.1–2); then