The Last Gospel: An Exegesis of the Prologue of St. John's Gospel (2/3)

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Life: In him was life, and the life was the light of men. (John 1:4)

The life which is “in” the Word is the divine life derived from the Father who is the source of the Godhead, a procession in the Trinity which is eternal without beginning. (Jn 5:26) Additionally, the Word as the Wisdom of God is the blueprint for Creation:

A carpenter makes a box. First he has the box in design… Give heed, then, to the box as it is in design, and the box as it is in fact. The actual box is not life, the box in design is life; because the soul of the artificer, where all these things are before they are brought forth, is living. So, dearly beloved brethren, because the Wisdom of God, by which all things have been made, contains everything according to design before it is made, therefore those things which are made through this design itself are not immediately life, but whatever has been made is life in Him.[1] (St. Augustine)

The Word expresses and includes all that can be created and the Father creates what He sees and knows in the Word. Yet only humans, in the material cosmos, are made “to the image of God” (Gn 1:27) and thus capable of representing and participating in Christ's divine life: “Cattle are not illuminated, because cattle have not rational minds capable of seeing wisdom. But man was made in the image of God, and has a rational mind, by which he can perceive wisdom. That life, then, by which all things were made, is itself the light; yet not the light of every animal, but of men.”[2] (St. Augustine) As such, this life of the Word specifically refers to “the words of eternal life.” (Jn 6:69) Christ the Word and Son of God is thus the Lord of life, as He later makes clear when He calls Himself “the life” (Jn 14:6) and brings both Lazarus and Himself back to life. (Jn 11:43, 20:19)

Christ has the power, as the Lord of life, to raise anyone He wills to eternal life and accordingly calls Himself “the resurrection and the life.” (Jn 5:21, 11:25) This life comes by knowing the Word in faith from the Father's commandments which Christ preaches, (Jn 12:50) by knowing both the Father and the Son who reveals Him (Jn 17:3) and by His grace as a sharing in His divine life. This, as He says, is why He came, to give everyone “abundant” life. (Jn 10:10) “And this life comes to the Logos and is inseparable from Him, once it has come to Him. But the Logos, who cleanses the soul, must have been in the soul first; it is after Him and the cleansing that proceeds from Him, when all that is dead or weak in her has been taken away, that pure life comes to every one who has made himself a fit dwelling for the Logos, considered as God.”[3] (Origen) Later in this Gospel, Christ makes two further connections which help explain the nature of the Word as the source of life. He first identifies Himself as the divine Bread of Life whose flesh and blood give eternal life when consumed. (6:33, 55) He then calls Himself the Good Shepherd who lays down His life for His sheep and thereby gives them everlasting life. (Jn 10:11, 28)

Light and Darkness: …the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it… That was the true light, which enlighteneth every man that cometh into this world. (John 1:4-5, 9)

One of the many contrasts or dichotomies employed by St. John, both in his Gospel and other New Testament writings, is light and darkness.[4] (e.g. 1 Jn 2:8-11, 3:8) The light is pure being, wisdom, goodness, truth, glory, beauty; the darkness is non-being, negation, evil, ignorance, sin, falsehood, ugliness. The darkness can never “comprehend” or “overcome” (depending on the translation of verse five) the light. St. John later shows Christ declaring Himself to be “the light of the world” and “the light of life.” (Jn 8:12) The author of Hebrews calls Him “the brightness” of God's glory, (Heb 1:3) echoing the Old Testament which calls Him, as the Wisdom of God, “the brightness of eternal light.” (Wis 7:26) As such, the Word is “the way, and the truth, and the life”, (Jn 14:6) the lamp of intelligibility guiding those who walk in the light, whereas “he that walketh in darkness, knoweth not whither he goeth.” (Jn 12:35)

As the eternal Logos, Christ reveals the light of God's truth and glory in order to bring the world to Him. This is a further proof of the divinity of Christ, since elsewhere Scripture says God is “the Father of lights” (Jas 1:17) and “inhabiteth light inaccessible.” (1 Tim 6:16) As the light of the world, the Word is this divine light who proceeds from the Father and shines into the darkened hearts of men. In this way, the “true light” to whom St. John the Baptist testified brings authentic “enlightenment,” not in a New Age or secular sense but as a participation in the divine life and wisdom of God, who “shineth in darkness” and thus dispels all of its corruption.

St. John the Baptist: There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. This man came for a witness, to give testimony of the light, that all men might believe through him. He was not the light, but was to give testimony of the light… John beareth witness of him, and crieth out, saying: This was he of whom I spoke: He that shall come after me, is preferred before me: because he was before me. (John 1:6-8, 15)

St. John the Baptist is the last of the prophets of the Old Covenant, the culmination of the Hebrew prophetic tradition: “He deprives the Prophetical choir of immeasurable honour, whoever denies that it was their office to bear witness to Christ. John when he comes to bear witness to the light, follows in the train of those who went before him.”[5] (Origen) Nevertheless, as Scripture says, John, like the apostles after him, was blessed to see what the earlier prophets and patriarchs had longed for: the coming of the Messiah. (Mt 13:17; Jn 8:56) Even though St. John the Baptist is “sent from God,” he is not identified as God or as the Messiah but instead, as a true Christian, he points to Jesus; as such, he is the herald of the light, but not the light himself. (Jn 1:20)