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John 1:1

Christology, the study of who Jesus is, has to do with a reasoned statement about the rela-
tion of Jesus to the One God of Israel. There is no doubt that for the early Christians Jesus "had the
value and reality of God." This, however, does not mean that they thought Jesus "was God." It has
been held by some that John presents Jesus in metaphysical terms which would appeal to people in
the Greek world who thought in terms of abstract ideas familiar to Hellenistic thought. "Ortho-
doxy" claims John as its bridge to the world of Greek metaphysics -- the metaphysics which
helped to mold the Jesus of the Church Councils.

We suggest that we should first see if John can be readily understood in terms of his other-
wise very Jewish approach. Why should we attempt to read John as though he were a student of the
Jew Philo or of Gentile mystery religion? Why should John be claimed as a supporter of the dog-
matic conclusions of the much later Church Councils? Should we not make sense of him from the
Old Testament world of ideas? "What we do know," says a leading Bible scholar, "is that John
was steeped in the Old Testament Scriptures. If we wish to understand the historical ancestry of
John's Logos [word] concept as he himself understood it, we have to go back to those Scriptures"
(C.J. Wright, "Jesus the Revelation of God," in The Mission and Message of Jesus: An Exposi-
tion of the Gospels in the Light of Modern Research, 1953, p. 677).

It is a considerable mistake to read John 1:1 as though it means "In the beginning was the
Son of God and the Son was with the Father and the Son was God." A similar very misleading
paraphrase in the Living Bible reads: "Before anything else existed, there was Christ, with God.
He has always been alive and is Himself God. He created everything there is -- nothing exists that
He did not make" (John 1:1-2). THIS IS NOT WHAT JOHN WROTE! The German poet Goethe
wrestled with a correction in translation: "In the beginning was the Word, the Thought, the Power
or the Deed." He decided on "deed." He comes very close to John's intention. What the evangelist
wanted to say was: "The Creative Thought of God has been operating from all eternity."

As a leading British Bible scholar wrote, "When John presents the eternal Word he was
not thinking of a Being in any way separate from God, or some 'Hypostasis.' The later dogmatic
Trinitarian distinctions should not be read into John's mind....in the light of a philosophy which
was not his....We must not read John in the light of the dogmatic history of the three centuries sub-
sequent to the Evangelist's writing" (C.J. Wright, Jesus the Revelation of God, p. 707).

To understand John (and the rest of the New Testament) we must pay close attention to
John's cultural heritage which was not the world of Greek philosophy in which the dogmatic
creeds were formed some three hundred years later. When John is read in the light of his Hebrew
background he provides no support for the doctrine of a Jesus who is "God the Son," an eternal un-
created Person in a triune godhead:

"An author's language will confuse us, unless we have some rapport with his mind....The
evangelist John takes a well-known term logos, does not define it, but unfolds what he him-
self means by it....The idea belonged to the Old Testament, and is involved in the whole re-
ligious belief and experience of the Hebrew Scriptures. It is the most fitting term to express
his message. For a man's 'word' is the expression of his 'mind'; and his mind is his essential

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