The first words of the gospel, n rc, immediately call to mind the beginning of the book of Genesis. Indeed, the first part of the prologue can be seen as a re-writing of the first moments of creation. Philo of Alexandria, the greatest Jewish philosopher of the early Christian era, believed Scripture revealed its deepest truth when it was interpreted allegorically (Pringle, p.4). It seems entirely reasonable to suppose that the author of John would have taken this approach. It is easy to see how the first verses of John can serve to interpret and amplify the creation story:
| n rc poijsen Qeov ton opanon kai tjn gjn. @j de gj n oratov kai kataskeuastov, kai skotov panw tjv bussou; kai pneuma Qeou pefereto panw tou datov. kai ipen Qeov, genjqjtw fwv; kai geneto fwv. kai eden Qeov to fwv, ti kalon; kai diecwrisen Qeov na meson tou fwtov, kai na meson tou skotov. (Genesis 1:1-5 LXX) | n rc n logov, kai logov n prov ton qeon, kai qeov n logov. otov n n rc prov ton qeon. panta di@atou geneto, kai cwriv atou geneto ode n. gegonen n at zwj n, kai zwj n to fwv twn anqrwpwn. kai to fwv n t skoti fainei, kai skotia ato o katelaben. (John 1:1-5) |
What did John (I will use the traditional name for simplicitys sake) mean by logov? The Torah is an obvious guess (Pringle, p. 21). But John 1:17 suggests that the logov is more than that:
The law was given, whereas the logov simply was. Furthermore, the logov has not been supplanted.
Some scholars believe that John is using logov in the Platonic sense of the rational principle behind the universe. Philo, seeking to explain the Scriptures in a Greek philosophers terms, defined the logov as an expression of the one true God (ibid, pp. 17-20). Johns use of the word is not inconsistent with this definition. But a side-by-side reading with the Septuagint suggests that there is more to it than that.
It is interesting to see what we can deduce about the logov if we view the beginnings of John as a step-by-step reinterpretation of the creation story. To which part of the story does the logov correspond?
Since we know that the logov existed from the beginning, we must ask what is pre-existing in the Genesis account.
Genesis 1:1 must be a summary of the entire process of creation, rather than its first step; verses 6-10, which are part of the same priestly creation story (The Jerusalem Bible, annotation of Genesis chapter 1), describe heaven and earth as being made later, and separately from one another. So who is on stage, so to speak, when the curtain rises?
God, of course, and John tells us that the logov is indeed God but it is not as straightforward an equation as it seems, for how can the logov simultaneously be God and be with God (prov ton qeon)? Even the grammar is ambiguous -- not logov n qeov, but qeov n logov, which could be taken to mean that the logov was a separate, small-g god (Pringle, p. 6).
The darkness and the abyss must be pre-existing, as there is no mention of their being created. However, the fact that the abyss is described solely in negative terms (oratov kai kataskeuastov) suggests that it is defined by the absence of Gods creative force. Likewise, since Gods first named creation is light, it would seem that darkness is primarily the absence of light. Furthermore, John identifies the logov with light (or rather, he identifies both with Jesus more on this shortly).
The apparent pre-existence of water is interesting, but the water plays no role in the creation, and thus does not fit in with what John tells us about the logov: panta di@atou geneto, kai cwriv atou geneto ode n. John could possibly have interpreted the water as referring to baptism, which gives new life to believers, but if he did, he did not make it explicit.
Thus we come to the first likely candidate in verse 2: kai pneuma Qeou pefereto panw tou datov.
The word pneuma (like the Hebrew original) is ambiguous. The Jerusalem Bible, used in the liturgy of the Catholic Church in Britain, translates it as spirit; the New American Bible, used by the Church in the United States, says wind. By way of compromise, we might say the word refers to the breath of God. The pneuma is the first entity mentioned, apart from God the father himself, that is capable of playing an active role in creation. The verb pefereto is in the imperfect, implying continuous motion. It is uncertain what this signifies, however, since according to Philos interpretation, time would not yet have existed:
To understand how Johns concept of the logov relates to this idea of the pneuma/Shekhinah, we must move on to verse 3 of Genesis. Here, at last, we have actual words the first word of God: kai epen Qeov, genjqjtw fwv; kai geneto fwv. But this cannot refer literally to a spoken remark; to whom would God have been speaking, and why would he have needed to? It must be a humanly understandable way of expressing Gods creative force. It may be that kai pneuma Qeou pefereto panw tou datov is an introductory phrase explaining how this force was expressed. I believe that the words genjqjtw fwv, or rather the force that they represent, are what John means by the logov; and that it is this same force John will later refer to as the Holy Spirit.
Even a casual reading of Johns gospel shows that the Spirit was of special importance to his community. This gospel, unlike the others, does not portray Jesus baptism; instead, his ministry begins when John the Baptist perceives the Holy Spirit in him (1:29-34). Rebirth in the Spirit is the key to becoming a follower of Christ (3:5). Jesus words to the Samaritan woman (4:21-24), while seeming to do away with divisions, create a new group of worshippers o ljqinoi proskunjtai -- that is exclusionary in its own way. The existence of true worshippers implies that there are false worshippers from whom they can be distinguished, and the criterion for these true worshippers is that they worship in Spirit. Finally, only in John do the apostles receive the Spirit while Jesus is on earth (20:22-23). (Raymond Brown [pp. 28-29] believes that Johns community emphasised their guidance by the Paraclete in order to explain the differences between their Christology and that of other Christian communities.)
If we accept that logov refers to the Holy Spirit, then it seems clear that the prologue is presenting a picture of the Trinity. However, Johns concept of the Trinity would probably not have been the one that most Western Christians have today. Indeed, the idea of the Trinity remained fluid until many centuries later, when the insertion of the filioque clause into the creed of the Western Church fixed the doctrine on the matter and permanently alienated East from West. (Most of the information below comes from Kelly, pp. 358-367.)
The first Trinitarian creeds merely stated a belief in the Holy Spirit, without further elaboration (ibid, p. 196). Tertullian, early in the third century, said that the Spirit proceeded from the Father through the Son, and some Eastern creeds expanded to say that the Spirit proceeded from the Father (kai ev n pneuma gion, to k tou patrov kporeumenon; ibid, p. 188). This idea was commonly accepted until the fourth century, when St Hilary and Marius Victorinus began to propose that the Spirit proceeded from both the Father and the Son. The double procession was proclaimed definitively by St Augustine of Hippo:
Although popes from Gregory the Great onward taught the procession of the Spirit from the Son, they resisted putting an explicit statement of this belief into the creed, so as to avoid alienating Eastern believers. However, by the eighth century, various local churches had inserted the clause and from the son (filioque in Latin) into the creed they recited at Mass. Charlemagne saw the clause as a political weapon to use against the Eastern Empire, and pressured Pope Leo III to adopt it for the entire Church. The Pope resisted; but when Henry II made the same demand about a century later (the exact date is disputed), Pope Benedict VII gave in.
(Although this marked an important breaking point between the Eastern and Western churches, it should be pointed out that the rift was not absolute or final. Today the Eastern Catholic churches omit the filioque from their creed, while remaining in full communion with Rome.)
But let us leave the politics of later eras aside and see how much we can determine about Johns own view of the Holy Spirit. Assuming that the prologue is a commentary on Genesis, we can learn something by looking back to the first logov: genjqjtw fwv. The simplicity of this phrase is highly significant. All Gods other creatures are made to specifications. In the act of creating them, he explains that they are made for a certain function, like the sun, moon and stars; or that they are made through separation from their opposite element, like the earth and the sea; or that they will be made in different varieties (plants and animals) or according to a particular design (man). But with the light, God simply says: genjqjtw fwv. And light comes into being. One could almost say, in the words of the creed, that the light is begotten, not made.
Suppose that in the prologue, logov and to fwv both refer to Jesus. That is certainly what the text implies. Does this mean that to fwv and logov are the same? But Genesis tells us that to fwv came into being (geneto); it did not exist from the beginning, as John tells us logov did. The same tension and ambiguity occur here as in verse 1, when the logov is identified with -- and yet distinguished from -- God.
And yet for John, logov and to fwv are so closely linked that they are essentially the same. The fwv obviously depends upon the logov for its existence yet without the fwv , the logov would have no reason for existing (just as an angel, or ggelov, cannot exist without a message). Furthermore, we must remember that a Jew of Philos time would hardly have seen a distinction between Gods command, Let there be light, and the lights coming into existence. Not only did time not yet exist at this stage in creation, but it is natural that God should do everything at once, not merely by uttering a command, but by even thinking of it (Philo, paragraph III).
However, recognising that the persons are interdependent is not the same as saying that one proceeds from the other. The prologue gives us reason to think that the Spirit proceeds from the Father, but not necessarily that he proceeds from the Son. Indeed, other passages in John in particular, 14:26: de parakljtov, to pneuma to gion, pemyei patjr n t nomati mou -- seem to support Tertullians idea that the Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son. This is reinforced by the fact that the Spirit comes to rest on Jesus from outside (1:32) and is then transmitted through his words and breath (6:63, 20:22). The passage in John that is most often cited to support the idea of procession from the Son is 16:13-14:
But perhaps to concentrate on this question is to miss the point of the prologue. After all, it is written not in the form of a theological treatise, but in the form of a hymn. Despite its lack of support for any particular hypothesis, the original Greek of the prologue, especially when laid alongside the Septuagint, can lead to much insight about the Spirit. The view of the Trinity expressed in the Prologue is not that of the theoretician, but of the poet and the mystic:
All Old Testament quotations are from The Septuagint with Apocrypha, 2001 Hendrickson Publishers.
ti nomov dia Mwsewv doqj,
cariv kai ljqeia dia @Ijsou Cristou geneto.
for since time is the interval of the motion of the heavens, there could not have been any such thing as motion before there was anything which could be moved; but it follows of necessity that it received existence subsequently or simultaneously. It therefore follows also, of necessity, that time was created either at the same moment with the world, or later than it -- and to venture to assert that it is older than the world is absolutely inconsistent with philosophy (The Creation of the World, paragraph VII).
Jewish scholars of the rabbinic period identified the pneuma in Genesis with the Shekhinah, a concept that developed as a way of expressing Gods active involvement in his creation. Like the logov, the Shekhinah is identified with God but is also somehow an entity on its own.
As the indwelling presence of God, the Shekhinah is compared to light. Thus the midrash paraphrases Numbers 6:25 (The Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you): May he give thee of the light of the Shekhinah (divine presence). In another midrash the shining of the Shekhinah in the Tent of Meeting is compared to a cave by the sea. When the sea rushes in to fill the cave, it suffers no diminution of its waters. Likewise the divine presence filled the Tent of Meeting, but simultaneously filled the world (Cohn-Sherbok, p. 36).
Although the idea of the Shekhinah was closely bound with light, it was not at this stage considered to be light; it was not a creature, but an aspect of Gods nature. (Later Jewish scholars did, in fact, identify the Shekhinah with to fwv in Genesis, defining it as a light specially created by God so that he could appear in a way perceptible by man; when the prophets saw God in human form, they were really seeing the Shekhinah. However, this was a medieval development and may have been a way of emphasising the unity of God in the face of Christian trinitarianism. See Cohn-Sherbok, p. 37. Likewise, the Cabalistic idea of the Shekhinah as the feminine aspect of God dates back only to the fifteenth century AD. See De Lange, pp. 169-172.)
St Augustine felt no need for reserve. His Trinitarianism did not start with the Father as the source of the other two persons, but with the idea of the one, simple Godhead Which in Its essence is Trinity. He admitted that, in a primordial sense (principaliter) the Spirit proceeded from the Father, because it was the Father Who endowed the Son with the capacity to produce the Holy Spirit. But it was a cardinal premiss of his theology that whatever could be predicated of one of the persons could be predicated of the others. So it was inevitable that he should regard the denial of the double procession as violating the unity and simplicity of the Godhead (ibid, p. 359).
The Greek theologians, however, strongly resisted this idea. Unlike their Latin counterparts, they had a strictly hierarchical view of the Trinity, with God the Father at the head. They feared that letting go of this idea would open the door to Sabellianism, a heresy which taught that the Son and the Spirit were merely parts of the Father and not persons in their own right.
tan de lq keinov, to pneuma tjv ljqeiav, djgjsei mav n t
ljqei pas; o gar laljsei f' autou, ll' sa kousei laljsei kai ta rcomena naggelei min. keinov me doxasei, ti k tou mou ljmyetai kai naggelei min.
But this argument is undermined by the very next verse:
panta sa cei patjr ma stin; dia touto epon ti k tou mou ljmyetai kai naggelei min.
It is clear that the filioque clause is the result of a later way of thinking, which would have been foreign to the evangelist and his community. Depending on ones point of view, the clause can be seen either as an unnecessary, divisive and politically inspired addition to the faith, or as the product of the further instruction of the Holy Spirit, on which Johns community relied so heavily.
This is the sense of Gods mystery: in order that we might clearly perceive and understand what his fullness is, the origin of which has never been seen and in which there is never any lack of the powerful strength that established all the streams of spiritual force. For if God were ever to be empty of his own greenness and power, what would become of his works? They would of course be in vain. Therefore he who is the maker is seen in the fullness of his works. (Hildegard of Bingen, The Trinity, from Scivias. Atherton, p. 23.)
The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears mans smudge and shares mans smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
(Gerard Manley Hopkins, Gods Grandeur)Works cited
All New Testament quotations are from Nestle-Aland, Novum Testamentum Graece 27th edition, 1993.
2003 by Laura Brown