The Christology of The Gospel of John

 

Jesus in the Gospel of John (we shall continue to call him John, though we do not know who wrote this book and this essay is not on the historicity of the Gospel) is traditionally presented as equal to God the Father in status before coming in the world as read in his famous prologue,

“In the beginning was the Word (Logos), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:1,14)

At the same time, he is not identical to the Father as when he talks to God he is clearly not talking to himself. Yet when he leaves the world after his resurrection at the end of the Gospel, his glory will be restored by God to be as it was before his incarnation as being God’s logos as a preexistent divine being. However, is the standard narrative true about the logos being equal to the Father?

         Logos can be understood as a divine hypostasis or an aspect or attribute of God or that became separate and distinct from him as an outward expression of God’s reason. The logos of John took flesh and became a human in Jesus Christ. Furthermore, in Neoplatonic thought, it was through the logos that God created the universe as God himself is completely distinct from creation. A common reading of Johannine Christology is that the logos is the first emanation of God the Father and through its incarnation through the virgin birth, acquires a dual nature and lives as a human until his death and resurrection back to heaven where he returns to his former glory, “And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.” (John 17:5). The causation of God speaking his logos into existence is an eternal act not temporal therefore the logos is equally eternal to God the Father under a trinitarian reading of the text. Meanwhile other interpretations, such as the one of the church writer Tertullian, believed there was a time where the logos did not exist nor possesses all of the divine attributes. A similar idea can be found in the works of the early church father, Justin Martyr. Both writers, including other church fathers such as Irenaeus discussed in a previous blog post, believed in a two-stage logos theology. This entails:

1. Only God the Father is fully divine (i.e., all-powerful, eternal, invisible, unbegotten).

2. The Son is divine and “god” but has a different level of divinity (he is visible, begotten, began to exist).

3. The Son has his own will that is aligned with the Father as it is subordinate to the will of the Father.

4. The Father has his own internal logos within his person eternally.

5. The Father (at the beginning of time) willfully begets the external logos but does not lose his internal logos.

6. The logos is now the Son and is a second and distinct God.

7. The Son is created by God but in a unique way apart from all other creation.

8. The Father creates the universe through the logos or Son.

9. The true God is the Father.

A perfect example of this can be found in Tertullian’s work Against Praxeas Chapter 5 and Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho Chapter 61 respectively,

“For before all things God was alone — being in Himself and for Himself universe, and space, and all things. Moreover, He was alone, because there was nothing external to Him but Himself. Yet even not then was He alone; for He had with Him that which He possessed in Himself, that is to say, His own Reason. For God is rational, and Reason was first in Him; and so all things were from Himself. This Reason is His own Thought (or Consciousness) which the Greeks call λόγος, by which term we also designate Word or Discourse and therefore it is now usual with our people, owing to the mere simple interpretation of the term, to say that the Word was in the beginning with God; although it would be more suitable to regard Reason as the more ancient; because God had not Word from the beginning, but He had Reason even before the beginning; because also Word itself consists of Reason, which it thus proves to have been the prior existence as being its own substance. Not that this distinction is of any practical moment. For although God had not yet sent out His Word, He still had Him within Himself, both in company with and included within His very Reason, as He silently planned and arranged within Himself everything which He was afterwards about to utter through His Word.”

Before anything else existed, God was alone. He existed in and for himself, without any external influences or entities. God was the universe, space, and everything that exists. This emphasizes God's self-sufficiency and completeness. God was not truly alone because he had his own Reason within himself. God's Word is the expression of his Reason and as soon as God speaks then his Word will become external from him.

“I shall give you another testimony, my friends, from the Scriptures, that God begot before all creatures a Beginning, [who was] a certain rational power [proceeding] from Himself, who is called by the Holy Spirit, now the Glory of the Lord, now the Son, again Wisdom, again an Angel, then God, and then Lord and Logos; and on another occasion He calls Himself Captain, when He appeared in human form to Joshua the son of Nave (Nun). For He can be called by all those names, since He ministers to the Father's will, and since He was begotten of the Father by an act of will; just as we see happening among ourselves: for when we give out some word, we beget the word; yet not by abscission, so as to lessen the word [which remains] in us, when we give it out: and just as we see also happening in the case of a fire, which is not lessened when it has kindled [another], but remains the same; and that which has been kindled by it likewise appears to exist by itself, not diminishing that from which it was kindled. The Word of Wisdom, who is Himself this God begotten of the Father of all things, and Word, and Wisdom, and Power, and the Glory of the Begetter, will bear evidence to me, when He speaks by Solomon the following: (Quotes Proverbs 8:22)”

The quote from Justin introduces the idea of the divine logos as a rational power proceeding from God. This logos is described as a Beginning, indicating a fundamental aspect of God's creative and expressive nature. The Logos is portrayed as having multiple roles and identities, such as the Glory of the Lord, the Son, Wisdom, and even an Angel as he is a pre-incarnate messenger to the figures in the Jewish Bible. Just as a fire can kindle another without being diminished, the divine logos proceeds from the Father without diminishing the Father's essence. Both quotes explore the concept of the divine Word or logos. The first quote from Tertullian discusses the primacy of Reason, identifying it as the fundamental aspect of God before the concept of logos came into existence. The second quote from Justin expands on the nature of the logos, describing it as a rational power proceeding from God, begotten before all creatures. Both quotes highlight the divine origin and significance of the logos, emphasizing its role as a distinct yet inseparable aspect of God the Father. The logos is created by God as a second subordinate god. In chapter 13 of his First Apology, Justin claims the Son is second place to the Father,

“Our teacher of these things is Jesus Christ, who also was born for this purpose, and was crucified under Pontus Pilate, procurator of Judaea, in the times of Tiberius Caesar; and that we reasonably worship Him, having learned that He is the Son of the true God Himself, and holding Him in the second place, and the prophetic Spirit in the third, we will prove.”

         Writing contemporaneously with John was the Jewish philosopher, Philo of Alexandria. Philo followed the Platonic distinction between imperfect matter and perfect Form, and therefore intermediary beings were necessary to bridge the enormous gap between God and the material world. The logos was the highest of these intermediary beings, and was called by Philo “the first-born of God”. Philo also wrote that the logos held all things together and binding all the parts and prevented them from being dissolved and separated. Eventually, the logos became God, unbegotten yet made and therefore distinguishable from the Father, but, being God, of the same substance which was decreed at the First Council of Constantinople in 381 A.D. but I would contend that this is not the original christology presented in the Gospel of John. Jesus is a creature yet distinct from other creatures as he is monogenés or the only begotten or one of a kind, “Jesus gave them this answer: ‘Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.’” (John 5:19). An obedient son is the agent par excellence of their father and if anyone was to speak for the father then who else but his son? This is why it seems that in John there is a functional equality while at the same time having clear subordination of the logos incarnate as Jesus represents an agent of God on earth while being ontologically distinct from him. Yet after his resurrection he is restored to his former glory which is still subordinate as he originates from the Father, ““You heard me say, ‘I am going away and I am coming back to you.’ If you loved me, you would be glad that I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I.” (John 14:28).

         There is also more unitarian ways of reading John. For example, in John 10:30-38,

“‘I and the Father are one.’ The Jews picked up stones again to stone him. Jesus answered them, ‘I have shown you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you going to stone me?’ The Jews answered him, ‘It is not for a good work that we are going to stone you but for blasphemy, because you, being a man, make yourself God.’ Jesus answered them, ‘Is it not written in your Law, ‘I said, you are gods’? If he called them gods to whom the word of God came—and Scripture cannot be broken—do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’? If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me; but if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.’”

While a trinitarian might read the first verse of the passage to mean that Jesus and the Father are ontologically one and consubstantial, a unitarian would read it more spiritually and metaphorically. There is a spiritual and cooperative unity between the two. The Jews he was in a dialectic with misunderstood Jesus to be claiming divinity so therefore Jesus rebuts by quoting their scriptures (Psalm 82:6) where it is made clear that human beings can be called ‘god’. He is empowered to do these things by the logos and therefore he has the title given in the prologue. Furthermore, when Jesus is called God in the prologue it should be read in the context with the rest of the Gospel such as John 10:30-38 mentioned earlier. There is a unity of action and cooperation between God and Jesus such that God is acting through Jesus as presented by his works and miracles which are sourced by the Father. One cannot see God directly but they can see him indirectly by seeing Jesus. “No one with even the slightest intelligence would dare to assert that the Creator and Father of all things left His super-celestial realms to make himself visible in a little spot on earth” (Justin Martyr, Dialogue 60). Lastly,

“‘My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.’” (John 17:20-23).

The unity of Jesus with the Father is what he wants from his disciples as well. The Father will be in the disciples through Jesus just as the Father is in Jesus.

         In conclusion, the exploration of the christology in the Gospel of John reveals a wide range of interpretations that reflect the richness and depth of religious thought within early Christianity. The concept of the logos, as presented in the prologue and interpreted by various scholars and theologians, demonstrates the intricate balance between the divinity and humanity of Jesus Christ from trinitarianism to subordinationism to Platonism. The differing perspectives, whether emphasizing functional equality, ontological distinction, or spiritual unity, provide a testament to the complexity of faith that allows for unitarians to interpret the text in light of their own theology. As readers continue to engage with the Gospel of John, they are invited to ponder the complexities of the Greek carefully chosen by the author of the Gospel which has provided a spiritual home for Christians for centuries. Ultimately, the christology of the Gospel of John serves as a testament to the enduring questions about the nature of God and Jesus.