(avg. read time: 4–7 mins.)
In my entry on Wisdom Christology in John’s Prologue, I had mentioned an alternative reading for the Prologue, or at least certain parts of it, which took the relevant references as being not to the time of creation but to salvation history prior to the incarnation. I have never been so onboard with the reading that I thought it needed to replace reference to the Word’s/Jesus’s participation in creation, but I was once convinced that it should be a “both-and” reading of the text. Now, I do not know that even that much can be said for this view. Just as I offered an appraisal of the common reading of John’s Prologue in terms of seeing Christ presented as Wisdom Incarnate, here I will offer an assessment of the salvation-historical reading of John’s Prologue. A work that will be helpful in this regard is, as far as I have seen, the most detailed engagement with the reading in Wilson Paroschi’s dissertation “Incarnation and Covenant in the Prologue to the Fourth Gospel (John 1:1-18).”1
The minority salvation-historical reading of the Johannine Prologue rests on a few bases. One, the key word λόγος, as well as its Hebrew precedent דבר, has a broad semantic range, which includes the idea of “plan” (cf. Isa 40:8; 55:8–9). That is, the Word here refers to the Plan of God and its enactment across history leading to the climax of the very embodiment of the Plan in Jesus.2 Two, such a reading better explains the use of γίνομαι in 1:3 and 10 (rather than words seemingly more appropriate for a creation context like κτίζω or ποιέω).3 That is, the significance of this word is not taken as “come into existence,” but rather “become,” “come to pass,” or “happen,” whereas the other seemingly more appropriate words mean “create” or “make.” Three, though this is more disputed among advocates of the salvation-historical reading, the reference to πάντα (“all”) refers to events rather than to the created world as such (cf. the Hebrew of 1QS XI, 11, 17–19; 1QHa I, 6–24; X, 1, 9; XII, 10), for which πάν or τά πάντα would apparently be more appropriate.4 Four, the argument tends to rely on a certain notion of where the punctuation ought to be between vv. 3 and 4.5 That is, while the typical view is that the punctuation is, “All things came to be through him, and without him not one thing has come to be/was made that has come to be. In him was life, and the life was the light for humans,” this view claims the punctuation should be as follows: “All things came to pass through him, and without him not one thing came to pass. What came to pass in him was life, and the life was the light for humans.” Five, the prepositional change from “through him” to “in him” signals a change in ideas (compare John 5:26, 40; 8:12; 14:6; 1 John 5:11).6 Six, likewise, the references to “life” and “light for humans” signal the narrowing from the whole creation to the sphere of humans, and from creation to salvation, so that “what has come to pass” refers specifically to the incarnation and the results thereof (cf. the perfects in 2 Cor 5:17; Rev 21:6).7 There is, of course, variety among this group, but the basic issues that drive these considerations are questions of if Jesus’s work in creation is being referenced particularly in vv. 3–4 or if this text provides the first reference to the incarnation in the Prologue.
The first point does indeed point to a possible meaning of God’s “Word,” but it is neither here nor there for the purposes of assessing the salvation-historical view. In fact, one of the advantages of calling Jesus the λόγος is precisely because it has such broad significance and can convey so much in one word, including, in certain contexts, the idea of God’s plan or promise and its coming to fruition. But to have this kind of restrictive understanding simply is not justified since, in Paroschi’s words, “to claim that this whole passage, starting from vs. 1, refers essentially to God’s salvific plan which was conceived in the eternity past, is to leave the realm of exegesis and to derive from the text a theological conclusion that does not seem to be evident. On the contrary, a plain reading of vss. 1-3 immediately evokes the cosmological scenery of the creation story.”8 The second point is vastly overstated. This verb is used in the context of creation in the LXX of Gen 1:3, 6, 9, 11, 15, 20, 24, and 30 as a translation of היה. In John 1 itself, as Paroschi notes, the verb is used in reference to the world coming to be through him in 1:10b, which undermines the idea that it has to mean something else in the parallel statement of 1:3a.9 The attempt to attribute such significance to a particular form of “all” in the third point is utterly misguided, as one can see from elsewhere in John (4:29, 39, 45; 5:20; 10:4, 41; 13:3; 14:26; 15:15, 21; 16:30; 18:4; 19:28; 21:17). Likewise, again, the parallel of v. 10b to v. 3a indicates that “world” parallels “all things.”
The punctuation issue raised by the fourth point is more complicated, as is evident from the amount of space scholars devote to it.10 Even so, it remains the case that even with scholars who accept the punctuation so that “what has come to be” is the beginning of v. 4, they do not see the conclusion necessarily following that the text references the incarnation rather than creation. Their patristic forebears were no more inclined to such a conclusion either. But this punctuation seems to have been accepted as broadly as it was because of debate with gnostic interpreters who used it to make a particular point.11 As a matter of fact, though, it is difficult to take it as a proper punctuation in the context of this passage, as Paroschi summarizes:
If ὁ γέγονεν is placed at the beginning of vs. 4, as the subject of ἦν, the pattern in the Prologue of using ἦν only as a predicate of ὁ λόγος and its characteristics (cf. l:la-c, 2, 4b, 9, 10, 15b-c) is broken down. Further, ζωή without the article is a predicate noun, and inasmuch as it is a characteristic of the Logos, it cannot have ὁ γέγονεν as the subject. Another point is that, as the subject, the perfect ὁ γέγονεν would require the predicate to be in the present tense (ἐστίν) rather than in the imperfect (ἦν). As it is, despite Lamarche’s insistence that “this question is not really important,” ὁ γέγονεν ἐν αὐτῷ ζωή ἦν can hardly make any sense. If it were not so, ancient as well as modern writers would not try at all costs to establish ἐστίν as the original reading.12
The fifth point is accurate, but not for the reason Ed Miller thinks it is. There is indeed a switch in ideas being conveyed through the different prepositional phrases, but it is because the first conveys the Word’s participation in creation while the second conveys the reason why the Word could create: he has life in himself from which others derive life (whether mortal life or salvific, everlasting life that is sharing in God’s life). We see this same kind of logic at work in reference to what will be Jesus’s new creative action in raising the dead, where both God the Father and his Son Jesus are the subjects of the verb ζῳοποιέω, which is clearly related to the noun ζωή that we have in this text. This verb in John 5:21, which is connected with giving everlasting, divine life to the dead, is a result of the fact that the Son has life in himself, just as the Father does (5:22–29).
Finally, in light of the point just made, the apparent effectiveness of pointing to the salvific references of “life” and “light” elsewhere in John is vitiated. It is from the life that the Word has in himself that others can receive light. The life of others is only possible because of the light he provides, as in Gen 1 where the declaration “Let there be light” is a precondition for everything else that follows. At this point in the Prologue, John is providing more layers to the Genesis creation narrative that will be necessary for understanding that the Word through whom God created is the same one who has become incarnate to bring about his new creation work through the gospel narrative.
Wilson Paroschi, “Incarnation and Covenant in the Prologue to the Fourth Gospel (John 1:1-18)” (PhD diss., Andrews University, 2003), esp. 34–57.
John Ashton, Studying John: Approaches to the Fourth Gospel (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 22–23.
Ed L. Miller, Salvation-History in the Prologue of John: The Significance of John 1:3/4, NovTSup 60 (Leiden: Brill, 1989), 79–81; William C. Weinrich, John 1:1-7:1, ConcC (St. Louis: Concordia, 2015), 137–38.
Miller, Salvation-History, 72–76; Weinrich, John 1:1–7:1,136–37.
John F. McHugh, John 1–4, ICC (London: T&T Clark International, 2009), 15, 103–7; Miller, Salvation-History, 17–44.
Miller, Salvation-History, 82–83.
Miller, Salvation-History, 83–84; Weinrich, John 1:1–7:1, 140.
Paroschi, “Incarnation and Covenant,” 38.
Paroschi, “Incarnation and Covenant,” 37.
For Paroschi’s response as a whole, see “Incarnation and Covenant,” 42–57.
Paroschi, “Incarnation and Covenant,” 46.
Paroschi, “Incarnation and Covenant,” 45.