Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of John 1:18
No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared [him.]
18. The Evangelist solemnly sums up the purpose of the Incarnation of the Logos to be a visible revelation of the invisible God. It was in this way that ‘the truth came through Jesus Christ,’ for the truth cannot be fully known, while God is not fully revealed.
No man ] Not even Moses. Until we see ‘face to face’ (1Co 13:12) our knowledge is only partial. Symbolical visions, such as Exo 24:10; Exo 33:23; 1Ki 19:13; Isa 6:1, do not transcend the limits of partial knowledge.
hath seen ] With his bodily eyes.
at any time ] Better, ever yet; ‘no one hath ever yet seen God;’ but some shall see Him hereafter.
the only begotten Son ] The question of reading here is very interesting. Most MSS. and versions have ‘the only-begotten Son’ or ‘only-begotten Son.’ But the three oldest and best MSS. and two others of great value have ‘only-begotten God.’ The test of the value of a MS., or group of MSS., on any disputed point, is the extent to which it admits false readings on other points not disputed. Judged by this test the group of MSS. which read ‘only-begotten God’ is very strong; while the far larger group of MSS. which have ‘Son’ for ‘God’ is comparatively weak, for the same group of MSS. might be quoted in defence of a multitude of readings which no one would think of adopting. Again, the revised Syriac, which is among the minority of versions that support ‘God,’ is here of special weight, because it agrees with MSS. from which it usually differs. We conclude, therefore, that the very unusual expression ‘only-begotten God’ is the true reading, which has been changed to the usual ‘only-begotten Son,’ a change which in an old Greek MS. would involve the alteration of only a single letter. Both readings can be traced up to the second century, which again is evidence that the Gospel was written in the first century. Such differences take time to spread themselves widely. See on Joh 1:13 and Joh 9:35.
in the bosom ] Literally, into the bosom, which may mean that the return to glory after the Ascension is meant. Comp. Mar 2:1; Mar 13:16; Luk 9:61. On the other hand the Greek for ‘which is’ points to a timeless relation.
hath declared ] Better, declared, acted as His interpreter. The Greek word is used both in the LXX. and in classical authors of interpreting the Divine Will. On the emphatic use of ‘He’ here comp. Joh 1:33 and see on Joh 10:1. In the First Epistle this pronoun ( ekeinos) is used specially for Christ; Joh 2:6, Joh 3:3; Joh 3:5; Joh 3:7; Joh 3:16, Joh 4:17.
In this prologue we notice what may be called a spiral movement. An idea comes to the front, like the strand of a rope, retires again, and reappears later on for development and further definition. Meanwhile another idea, like another strand, comes before us, and retires to reappear in like manner. Thus the Word is presented to us in Joh 1:1, is withdrawn, and again presented to us in Joh 1:14. The Creation comes next in Joh 1:3, disappears, and returns again in Joh 1:10. Then ‘the Light’ is introduced in Joh 1:5, withdrawn, and reproduced in Joh 1:10-11. Next the rejection of the Word is put before us in Joh 1:5, removed, and again put before us in Joh 1:10-11. Lastly, the testimony of John is mentioned in Joh 1:6-7, repeated in Joh 1:15, taken up again in Joh 1:19, and developed through the next two sections of the chapter.
We now enter upon the first main division of the Gospel, which extends to the end of chap. 12, the subject being Christ’s Ministry, or, His Revelation of Himself to the World, and that in three parts; the Testimony (Joh 1:19 to Joh 2:11), the Work (Joh 2:13 to Joh 11:57), and the Judgment (12). These parts will be subdivided as we reach them. 19 37 The Testimony of the Baptist (1) to the deputation from Jerusalem, (2) to the people, (3) to S. Andrew and S. John: 38 51 The Testimony of the Disciples: Joh 2:1-11 The Testimony of the First Sign.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
No man hath seen God at any time – This declaration is probably made to show the superiority of the revelation of Jesus above that of any previous dispensation. It is said, therefore, that Jesus had an intimate knowledge of God, which neither Moses nor any of the ancient prophets had possessed. God is invisible: no human eyes have seen him; but Christ had a knowledge of God which might be expressed to our apprehension by saying that he saw him. He knew him intimately and completely, and was therefore fitted to make a fuller manifestation of him. See Joh 5:37; Joh 6:46; 1Jo 4:12; Exo 33:20; Joh 14:9. This passage is not meant to deny that men had witnessed manifestations of God, as when he appeared to Moses and the prophets (compare Num 12:8; Isa 6:1-13); but it is meant that no one has seen the essence of God, or has fully known God. The prophets delivered what they heard God speak; Jesus what he knew of God as his equal, and as understanding fully nature.
The only-begotten Son – See the notes at Joh 1:14. This verse shows Johns sense of the meaning of that phrase, as denoting an intimate and full knowledge of God.
In the bosom of the Father – This expression is taken from the custom among the Orientals of reclining at their meals. See the notes at Mat 23:6. It denotes intimacy, friendship, affection. Here it means that Jesus had a knowledge of God such as one friend has of another – knowledge of his character, designs, and nature which no other one possesses, and which renders him, therefore, qualified above all others to make him known.
Hath declared him – Hath fully revealed him or made him known. Compare Heb 1:1, Heb 1:4. This verse proves that Jesus had a knowledge of God above that which any of the ancient prophets had, and that the fullest revelations of his character are to be expected in the gospel. By his Word and Spirit he can enlighten and guide us, and lead us to the true knowledge of God; and there is no true and full knowledge of God which is not obtained through his Son. Compare Joh 14:6; 1Jo 2:22-23.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Joh 1:18
No man hath seen God
The limitations of human vision
Some men have seen much, for all have not the same power of vision.
Some have seen much more than others with
I. THE NATURAL EYE. They have travelled far and near; seen wonders upon the deep and on the mountains, and the marvels of creation living and lifeless–but no man hath seen God.
II. THE INTELLECTUAL EYE.
1. The eye of science. They can invade worlds of truth which are veiled and shut to souls of lesser power; ascend into the heavens and see the harmony which rules all the movements of those gleaming worlds, descend into the deeps of the earth and of the ages which have measured out its history, and read the records which are there inscribed. They can see something of the unity which pervades the whole universe; that all sciences are but chapters in one great illuminated book, or are but notes in one sublime and never-ceasing song–but they have not seen God.
2. Some men have the poets eye which can glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven, and detect behind what is natural and changeful the truths which are typified, and which abide for ever–but even they have not seen God.
III. THE MORAL EYE. Patriarchs, prophets, apostles beheld wonderful visions. Some of them were favoured with glimpses and manifestations and tokens of His presence, and so impressive and overpowering were these that they felt as if they had seen God, but even they were no exception to the rule that no man hath seen God at any time. (E. Mellor, D. D.)
The invisible and revealed God
I. THE INVISIBLE GOD.
1. We are invisible to each another; nay, to ourselves. There is a veil between our spirit and another that, while our words and looks may serve to indicate what is passing within, they cannot unveil the indwelling soul. And so utterly can the soul tyrannize over the house in which it dwells, that it can compel it to illuminate its windows with festive joy when all is woe within, or compel it to darken them when all within is mirth and revelry. And if we cannot see man, much less can we see God.
2. There is no law that God has impressed on nature that we can see. Form and colour we can see, and that things move, but not the pervading life nor the gravitation which holds them together in their orbits.
3. The material universe is but a faint indication of Gods greatness, nor does it seem possible for even omnipotence to embody itself in matter. We might imagine the sun robbed of its beams, and heaven, earth, and sea combining to surrender whatever of beauty or grandeur they contain, still the result would be miserably insufficient to portray the glory of the invisible God.
4. The mind is baffled in its attempt to grasp the fundamental mystery. The loftiest conception we have is that of infinity. And yet this is a mere negation, and must be affirmed of each separate attribute as well as the totality of Gods being.
5. Without the guidance of revelation no one has ever reached any fair conception of the unity, spirituality, and moral character of God. Though day unto day has been uttering speech, and night unto night showing knowledge, the mass of the rude and unlearned have everywhere, divided the empire of the universe among gods many and lords many. And as to the philosophers, such of them as have been able to emancipate themselves from gross polytheism, have either guessed at the truth that there is one God, and have contented themselves with a cold deduction of reason, or they have merged God and nature in one, thus destroying His personality in Pantheism. The world never by wisdom knew God. And were we to close the Book of Revelation in a few generations we should relapse into a heathenism as absolute as that of Greece and Rome.
6. And as for the supposed teachings of natural religion, they are but flashes from the revealed Word. We are astonished that any eye can miss the Divine monogram written large in the heavens, small in the flower. But we do not search nature for the invisible, we take the idea with us.
II. THE DECLARED GOD. Christ has revealed the Father in three ways which meet and satisfy these corresponding necessities in man.
1. The incarnation, e.g., of the spiritual in the bodily meets that necessity which feels how impossible it is to grasp the purely spiritual. We do not feel happy at the thought of what is both infinite and invisible. Who has not felt at times the all but intolerable oppression that comes upon the spirit when one has stood in the shadow of Alpine mountains! We are bewildered by the unmanageable vastness of the conception of an all-prevailing God. We long for something that we can more effectually compass. We wish to pray; are heavy laden and sad; but infinitude is too grand for us in such hours, and we long for a friend who can take our hand and say, Fear not I am with thee. But God, the great and glorious mystery, has been manifest in the flesh. As He had to reveal Himself to man, He found no better medium than man, the form with which we were most familiar, and of which we should be least afraid.
2. By His character and life Christ declares to us the moral character of God. There is much in God which humanity, even in its highest and purest type, is inadequate to represent. The medium is tarnished and dimmed so that the heavenly light cannot shine through it, or only brokenly. Once only has humanity formed a medium through which, in its unmingled brightness and beauty, the moral character of God might pour its beams. To learn the mural character of God we must learn it in Christ; its holiness, its tenderness, its mercy for the sinful.
3. Christ has declared to us the Fatherly character of God. God we are told is love. This He is in Himself, and this He has been pre-eminently to us. We need more than words, and then, when we receive but words from those who might give us more real help, we learn bitterly that all friends are not true. Now there is no better test of love than the test of endurance and suffering, but Divine love has made for us the highest sacrifice, for God so loved the world, etc. (E. Mellor, D. D.)
Invisible things
There are even material agents in existence around us so subtle as to elude the cognisance of the senses. There are powers in nature whose ever-present influence we perceive, yet which themselves are never directly discerned. The varied forms and colours of material objects around us the eye can detect, but not the latent electricity that pervades them. The masses and motions of the planetary bodies are appreciable by the sight; but the keenest organs of sense cannot see gravitation, cannot detect that mysterious power, as it flies through space, binding orb to orb. And if thus on the confines, so to speak, of the material and spiritual worlds, there are agents impalpable to sense, much more, when we pass those limits, do we enter into a region where bodily organs fail us, and a vision and faculty far more divine is needed, Who has seen thought What eye has ever rested on that mysterious essence which we designate mind, soul, spirit? If it be that spiritual intelligences surround us, if millions of spiritual beings walk the earth both when we wake and sleep, yet, as they pass hither and thither on their heavenly ministries, does the faintest sign of the presence of these glorious beings ever flash on the dull sense of man? Nay, are we not dwellers in a world of embodied spirits, holding continual intercourse with them, witnessing constantly the proofs of their existence and the effects of their activity: yet has one human spirit ever become visible to another? No l it is but the forms of spirit that are visible to sense. We see in the busy world around us the mere houses of souls. In this sense, then, God is now and ever must be invisible. If even a finite spirit cannot be seen by the bodily eye, how much less the infinite spirit? (J. Caird, D. D.)
The invisibility of God
We are much in the condition of children for whom their father has built a magnificent house, and stored it with all needful provisions, and ornamented it with the most exquisite decorations, a house which the more it is examined the more it reveals forethought and arrangement, startling its inmates constantly with unexpected anticipation for their comfort and happiness. But their father, for some reason or other, is concealed from their view. Now every house is builded by some man, but He that built all things is God. We dwell in His house. Its roof declares His handiwork. Its chambers are garnished with a wondrous glory. Its table is supplied day by day with food convenient for us. The house is renewed year by year. But the Hand which accomplishes it all is unseen. We sometimes long to get behind the intercepting veil. We would fain see the Great Worker at His work, see the arm of power, gaze on the fountain of fight, rise above and through all phenomena, leave the fleeting behind us, and stand in the presence of the changeless. But no man hath seen God at any time, and what is more, no man can see God and five. (E. Mellor, D. D.)
God invisible to sense
Could we entertain for a moment the supposition of God condescending to contrive some resplendent form, some radiant shape of superhuman majesty and loveliness, by which to convey to man a conception of His spiritual glory, we might conceive the universe to be searched in vain for the materials of such a production. We might give the rein to fancy, and imagine the sun robbed of its glory and the stars of their splendours, and heaven, earth, sea, skies, all the myriad worlds in space, combining to surrender whatever of beauty or grandeur they contain; still would the result be miserably insufficient to portray the unapproachable glory of the invisible Being of God. These are but parts of His ways; how little a portion is heard of Him! but the thunder of His power who can understand? (J. Caird, D. D.)
The incomprehensibility of God
In the Greek legend she who desired to see the deity in his splendour is instantly reduced to ashes. In the Hindoo mythology when Brahma, the supreme, shoots down a pillar of light between the two contending deities, Siva and Vishnu, one deity wings his way upwards for a thousand years with the speed of lightning, but cannot reach its summit; the other wings his way downwards with the speed of lightning for a thousand years yet cannot find its base. Christian theology has felt this no less clearly that God in His own Being is incomprehensible. There is a picture of the vision of St. Augustine, who, when he was writing a treatise on the Trinity, saw a child trying to empty the ocean with a shell into a little hole in the sand. What art thou doing? asked the saint. I am trying to empty the sea with this shell into this hole, answered the child. But that is impossible, said Augustine. Not more impossible, O Augustine, than for thee in thy treatise to explain the mystery of the Trinity. (Archdeacon Farrar.)
As regards God, our soundest knowledge is to know that we know Him, and our safest eloquence concerning Him is silence, when we confess without confession that His glory is inexplicable, His greatness above our capacity or reach. (Hooker.)
The only-begotten Son
The only-begotten Son
This only-begotten Son is the same Person who, in the previous portion of the chapter, is designated the Word, and of whom it is said in language of which it is impossible for us to mistake the reference, He was made flesh and dwelt among us, and so dwelling among men there was beheld in Him the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. The Person, then, who is thus named is none other than He who was more familiarly known as the Lord Jesus Christ.
I. Briefly, then, let me try to unfold to you THE IMPORT OF THIS GREAT NAME–the Son, the only-begotten Son of God. There is a previous inquiry to which I may, in a very few words, refer. What is the reference of the text–it being ascertained that it refers to the Lord Jesus Christ? Does it refer to Him as Divine, or simply as Mediator between God and man? It is evident to my own mind that the Scriptures give the name Son to the second Person of the Godhead, as a Person of the Godhead, and that it belongs to Him as Divine, and that, apart altogether from His becoming incarnate and doing work for the salvation of sinners, He is the only-begotten Son in the bosom of the Father. Further, there is nothing in the name itself that makes it inapplicable to the Divine Person. It is quite true that, as applied to man, it does include those ideas of derivation of beings, which are totally inconsistent with the notion of eternal existence; but when we find figures of any sort applied to God, we must strain them no further than is consistent with a notion of His Divinity. Yet farther: if this name be not descriptive of a Divine relation, then the name Father also is not descriptive of a Divine relation. And if you take it away, then have we no manifestation of the first Person of the Godhead by any personally distinctive name whatever. As, therefore, you say the Father is a name belonging to the first Person of the Godhead as Divine, so is the Son. We must take notice, in an introductory way, of the expression only. This name, whatever be its import, belongs to Christ as it belongs to no one else. There is but one Son of God in the sense of my text. You do not need to go far back into the previous context to find that there are others who in a certain sense are the sons of God.
II. We now proceed to notice SOME OF THE THOUGHTS SUGGESTED BY THIS INCOMMUNICABLE TITLE.
1. I think that instead of suggesting to us, when wisely interpreted, something inconsistent with Divinity, this title in its sole and incommunicable preeminence suggests the very idea of Divinity. Indeed that is the very first thought I find in it–sameness of nature with the Father. The Son of man is not angelic; the Son of man is man. And so when you speak of Him in the full and true and proper sense, the Son of God is God. Nay, so far may you carry this principle that you cannot describe a creature as the son or child of God without his being, as far as a creature may be, partaker of the Divine nature. It was because there was something of it in him that Adam was called the son of God. But in the full sense, in which it belongs to no other, it is true only of Jesus Christ that He is God.
2. Then there is second thought. There is resemblance in character. The Son of God resembles the Father, and the resemblance in this Divine nature is so perfect as to come to identity. He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.
3. Then, thirdly, these words Father and Son suggest intimacy of fellowship. The Father showeth the Son all things that He Himself doeth!
4. But perhaps the most prominent of all ideas connected with the title is intensity of mutual Divine affection. The Father loveth the Son.
5. There is another idea which is brought out also in Scripture, namely, community of interests. All that belongs to the Father belongs to the Son.
6. But I should be omitting one thought of great importance if I did not say that the title Son, as applied to the second Person in the Trinity, does, after all, indicate a certain distinction. The Father is not personally the Son, nor the Son the Father. And now for one or two particular inferences from what I have been unfolding in this somewhat dry and formal manner. And first–if these things be so–oh, what love is that of the Father towards sinful men? The second inference is this–I wish I could bring it out as it presents itself, in its attractive phase, to my own mind. If the Saviour be Gods beloved Son–His only Son–the object of infinite, unfathomable, everlasting delight–what an argument the sinner has when he goes to God for pardon, love, and all spiritual blessings! What a plea does God put in the sinners mouth, when He says to the sinner, Ask of Me for My Sons sake. But there is another side to this argument. If the Saviour be
Gods only Son, what becomes of those that will not know Him–of those who dishonour and reject Him? (J. Edmund, D. D.)
He hath declared Him
Christ; the revelation of the invisible God
The obvious import of these words is, not that Jesus Christ has told or taught us verbally who and what God is, but that in His own person and life He is the silent inarticulate manifestation of God to the world. A child may declare or describe to you the appearance and character of his father; a pupil may tell you of his teacher; an author may give an account of himself in his book; but there may be in each of these cases an involuntary and indirect description, much more clear and emphatic than the direct one. For in his writings, the author, especially if he be an earnest writer, unconsciously portrays himself, so that we may know as much of the heart and soul of a favourite author by familiarity with his books as if we had lived for years in personal intercourse with him. So the pupil has caught the revered masters manner; or the child bears, not only in his person, but in his temper, habits, sentiments, prevailing tone of thought and feeling, a strong family-likeness to the parent; and though there may be much in the father which, from inferiority of talents or attainments, the character of the child may be inadequate to represent, yet, according to his measure, he may convey to us a better idea of what the father is than by any express and formal description of him we could attain. Now, so it is in the case before us. Jesus manifests the Father by His person, by His life and character, and especially by His sufferings and death. (J. Caird, D. D.)
The unseen God made visible in Christ
In looking at the sun through a telescope, if we use unstained glass the eye will be burned to the socket, and we shall see nothing; but if we employ a coloured medium, we can examine it with safety. So no man can see God and live. But if we contemplate Him through Christ, that is, if we come to Him through the medium of humanity, we behold Him without being destroyed, nay, the sight of Him thus imparts salvation to us; for we behold His glory as that of the only begotten, and lo! it is full of grace and truth. (W. M. Taylor, D. D.)
Christs relation to the Great Father
I. He is the NEAREST RELATION to the Great Father. The phrase onlybegotten which occurs only here and Joh_1:14; Joh_3:16; Joh_3:18; 1Jn 4:9, implies an essential relation perfectly unique as appears
1. From the interpretation which the Jews put upon it (chap. 5:18).
2. From the extraordinary manifestation of Divine love which the sacred writers saw in His mission.
3. From several events of His history
(1) His miraculous conception;
(2) His persistent self-assertion;
(3) His wondrous miracles;
(4) His atoning death;
(5) His resurrection and ascension.
II. He is TENDEREST IN AFFECTION to the Great Father.
1. In His preincarnate life (Pro 8:30).
2. In prophecy (Isa 42:1).
3. At His baptism.
4. At His transfiguration (2Pe 1:17-18).
5. In the Epistles (Col 1:13). From this we learn
(1) That God loves; He is not mere infinite Intellectuality; He is infinite Sensibility too;
(2) Christ is the highest object of His love. That love is not the love of pity, of gratitude, but of infinite complacency.
III. He is the MOST ACCURATE IN THE KNOWLEDGE of the Great Father.
1. He alone is intellectually qualified to know God. The highest created being only knows God in some of His aspects; Christ knows Him in all, in His being.
2. He alone is morally qualified to know God. He alone is
(1) Sufficiently pure: only the pure in heart can see God;
(2) Sufficiently powerful: Moses, Isaiah, John could not stand a slight manifestation.
IV. He is THE MOST COMPLETE REVELATION of the Great Father Mat 11:27). He is the Logos, the only word which can express the Divine heart. He has revealed
1. Gods Being: a Spirit, etc.
2. His relation: a Father. If Christ is the correct revelation of God
(1) All other revelations must be tested by His.
(2) Much that is prevalent in religious society must be repudiated as un-Christ-like.
(3) Christ alone must be held as the Master of seals. (D. Thomas, D. D.)
A Blessed Evangel
Concerning
I. THE CHARACTER OF GOD, Who is
1. Not an abstraction, but a Person.
2. Not a Supreme Intelligence merely, but an infinite Heart.
3. Not a Divinity enthroned in the serene altitudes of His measureless perfections, but a Father interested in the affairs and providing help for the necessities of His children, yea, coming near them in the person of His Son.
II. THE DESTINY OF MAN.
1. By establishing the inherent dignity of human nature, since it was capable of union with Divine.
2. By revealing its lofty possibilities when so allied.
3. And so discovering that man must have a future not bounded by time. The first prediction of this was mans creation (Lev 1:27), the second the Incarnator (Heb 2:14).
III. THE SUBSTANCE OF THE GOSPEL which is announced to be grace and truth, without which the nature of God could not be revealed nor the destiny of man attained. Lessons:
1. Do we believe in the Incarnation? Our answer discloses the inner quality of our souls (1Jn 4:2-3).
2. Have we accepted the gospel it brings? This also is heart searching, character revealing, destiny fixing inquiry (Joh 3:33; Joh 3:36; 1Jn 5:10).
3. Can we confirm from personal experience these truths? If so our faith will be invincible against modern doubt. (T. Whitelaw, D. D.)
The Revealer of God
Jesus Christ declared
I. THE UNITY OF GOD. By this we do not understand that this truth was absolutely unknown before His advent, but that it received new importance and fresh vitality in the religion He established.
1. There is but one God–a very vital truth. Whence came it? From nature? Let us ask the pupils of nature, the numerous nations of antiquity. How many gods are there? There are gods many, not that nature taught polytheism, but her pupils learnt it in her school. The mildest departure from the monotheistic faith was that of Persia and the adjoining countries. Their populations looked around, and beheld, as we behold, the presence of light and darkness, of good and evil. These two powers were in perpetual antagonism. How did they account for them? By the adoption of a creed in which there were two gods, Ormuzd and Ahriman, a god of good and a god of evil.
2. Turn from nature to philosophy. Philosophy and idolatry were attached twins. The capital of the one was the centre of the other (Act 17:16). There were a few there who dared to ridicule the graven images; but what had they to offer instead? Nothing. The alternative lay between polytheism and atheism. One here and there gave utterance to lofty truths about God. But to their thinking the existence of inferior deities was not inconsistent with that of the Lord of all. Socrates on his deathbed ordered a fowl to be sacrificed on his behalf to the god AEsculapius. Besides, the idea of one God, supreme among the many, was counteracted in its influence by the absurd notion that in proportion to His greatness was He removed from the ordinary affairs of mankind.
3. This truth, absent from every other, is prominent in the literature of the Hebrews. The Jewish creed teaches it, but its Author is God.
4. This Old Testament truth Christ appropriated, and made it the cardinal doctrine of the new religion. He amplified it and gave it a vitality it never had before. Its novelty on Christs lips consist in its representation that God is near man and interested in his concerns. Judaism showed men a great God, but he was distant. Paganism showed them a near god, but he was small. In Christianity, however, we see the great God of the Jews without being far, and the near god of the Greek without being small.
II. THE SPIRITUALITY OF GOD. Not that this was totally unknown to the ancient leaders of thought, but that it received from Christ a new impulse, power, and application.
1. That God is a Spirit is a thought than which there is none more familiar to the modern mind. Whence came it? From nature? Decidedly not. Matter does not give the idea of spirit; it cannot give an idea which is not in it.
2. Whence then came it? We are conscious of mind, a substance essentially different from matter; but the most influential modern school denies that mind is different from matter, being only the natural result of the happy organisation of matter. And this was practically the doctrine of ancient stoicism, whose God was refined matter.
3. Let us turn to the Hebrew Scriptures, where we find very Spiritual views of God; but the ideas in the Jewish mind were low and carnal. Hence the proneness of the nation to idolatry, which is materialism of the grossest kind.
4. At this crisis Jesus Christ makes His appearance on the arena of history, and proclaims, with an emphasis and a fulness of meaning before unknown, God is a Spirit, etc. This declaration overwhelms us with its simplicity, purity, and grandeur.
III. THE GOODNESS OF GOD.
1. The prominent idea of the god of nature is power. But the idea of bare power would create dismay rather than trust. God is mighty, but I have offended Him. Will He forgive? Nature cannot say?
2. The main excellence of the god of philosophy is wisdom; but such a god can make no appeal to the heart of humanity.
3. Christ declares that God is love: His love and His essence are so interwoven that the cessation of the one would be the destruction of the other. Being always in His bosom, the Lord Jesus knows perfectly the contents of Gods heart; and in His life, death, and ministry that heart is unfolded to the world. (J. Cynddylan Jones, D. D.)
God unfolding Himself to man
(Childrens Sermon):–The ancients tell a story of one who tried to storm the heavens, but was defeated, and had to bear the heavens as a punishment on his shoulders. He was called Atlas, from which we get the name for a collection of maps. Our religion rests upon the one great doctrine of God. How are we to know Him? We cant see Him. But seeing the Queen would not make her known to us; but
1. If the Queen were to send us a picture painted by herself we should know her knowledge, skill, and love of beauty.
2. If she were to send a kind letter we should know her better.
3. If she sent a daughter exactly like herself we should know her best. In these three ways God has revealed Himself to us.
1. The world is a great picture painted by God. Visit a factory and you see order everywhere, which shows that the man who built and arranged such a place had an orderly mind. So there is order; and wisdom, power, beauty and goodness as well, which tells us something of God.
2. The Bible is Gods letter which tells us of Gods heart, which nature does not; and what He thinks of us and would have us be and do.
3. Jesus Christ is Gods Son, and if we want to know exactly what God is like we must study Jesus. If we want to know how He treats sinners and little children, we must find out how Jesus treated them. (Joseph Dawson.)
Christ the declarer of the Father
I. CHRISTS PERSONAL MINISTRY.
1. Its contents
(1) Gods nature, perfections, authority, and government;
(2) The eternal councils of His will for the salvation of lost sinners;
(3) The wonders of His love in sending His only-begotten Son into the world.
2. Its manner
(1) Unique and authoritative;
(2) Gentle and tender;
(3) Complete;
(4) Zealous;
(5) Courageous;
(6) Unanswerable;
(7) Commanding.
3. Its credentials
(1) The fulfilment of types and prophecies;
(2) His life;
(3) The purity of His doctrine;
(4) His miracles.
II. His PROPHETIC OFFICE more extensively considered
1. Before the Incarnation.
2. During His earthly life.
3. After His ascension
(1) By the ministry of inspired man;
(2) By the ministry of uninspired men, pastors, teachers, officers of the Church; calling them, inclining their hearts to the work, giving them opportunities for engaging in it;
(3) By internal illumination, removing the veil from mens heart, and quickening their apprehensions by His Spirit.
III. THE USE.
1. To show the excellence and necessity of Christs teachings.
2. To warn against the danger of refusing to hear the Divine Teacher.
3. To encourage us to attend to His teachings. (Dr. Guyse.)
Christ the perfect revelation of God
Perfections that are set before us in mere epithets have no significance but that which we give them by thinking them out. But perfections lived, embodied physically, and acted before the senses, under social conditions, have quite another grade of meaning. How much, then, does it signify when God comes out from nature, out of all abstraction and abstractive epithets, to be acted personally in just those glorious and Divine passivities that we have least discerned in Him and scarcely dare impute to Him. By what other method can He meet us, then, so entirely new and superior to all past revelations, as to come into our world history in the human form; that organ most eloquent in its passivity, because it is at once most expressive and closest to our feeling? (H. Bushnell, D. D.)
God only to be seen in Christ Jesus
A man cannot behold the sun in the eclipse, it so dazzleth his eyes. What doth he then? He sets down a basin of water, and seeth the image of the sun shadowed in the water. So, seeing we cannot behold the infinite God, nor comprehend Him, we must, then, cast the eyes of our faith upon His image, Christ Jesus. When we look into a clear glass, it casteth no shadow to us; but put steel upon the back, then it casteth a reflex, and showeth the face in the glass. So, when we cannot see God Himself, we must put the manhood of our Lord Jesus Christ as it were a back to His Godhead, and then we shall have a comfortable reflex of His glory. (J. Spencer.)
God revealed in Christ
We use many words to declare our minds, thereby showing the incoherency of our thoughts and the faultiness of the vehicle in which we convey them. The more powerful the mind, the fewer and clearer the words it uses to disclose itself; and the higher and more inspirational the mood, the more condensed and significant the language. Every extraordinary genius reveals itself, not by the multiplicity of its sentences, but by one or two words struck off the anvil at the moment of white heat. Every illustrious man is characterised by one or two sentences. Know thyself! therein you see the whole mind and philosophy of Socrates. God revealed Himself once in Christ the Word. (J. Cynddylan Jones, D. D.)
Christianity says with simplicity, No man hath seen God, except God. That is a saying of profound meaning. (Napoleon Buonaparte.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 18. No man hath seen God at any time] Moses and others heard his voice, and saw the cloud and the fire, which were the symbols of his presence; but such a manifestation of God as had now taken place, in the person of Jesus Christ, had never before been exhibited to the world. It is likely that the word seen, here, is put for known, as in Joh 3:32; 1Jo 3:2, 1Jo 3:6, and 3Jo 1:11; and this sense the latter clause of the verse seems to require:- No man, how highly soever favoured, hath fully known God, at any time, in any nation or age; the only begotten Son, (See Clarke on Joh 1:14,) who is in the bosom of the Father, who was intimately acquainted with all the counsels of the Most High, he hath declared him, , hath announced the Divine oracles unto men; for in this sense the word is used by the best Greek writers. See Kypke in loco. 1095
Lying in the bosom, is spoken of in reference to the Asiatic custom of reclining while at meals; the person who was next the other was said to lie in his bosom; and he who had this place in reference to the master of the feast was supposed to share his peculiar regards, and so be in a state of the utmost favour and intimacy with him.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
No man has seen God at any time; no man hath at any time seen the essence of God with his eyes, Joh 4:24; nor with the eyes of his mind understood the whole counsel and will of God, Mat 11:27; Rom 11:34. Moses indeed saw the image and representation of God, and had a more familiar converse with God than others; upon which account he is said to have talked with God face to face; Num 12:7,8, God saith he would speak unto him mouth to mouth, even apparently; but he tells us how in the same verse, and the similitude of the Lord shall he behold; and God, who had spoken to the same sense, Exo 33:11, saith, Joh 1:20, Thou canst not see my face; for there shall no man see me, and live. Now to whom he did not discover his face, he certainly did not discover all his secret counsels.
The only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father; but he who is the only begotten and beloved Son, hath such an intimate communion with him in his nature, and such a free communication of all his counsels, as it may be said, he is continually in his bosom.
He hath declared him; hath declared him, not only as a prophet declareth the mind and will of God, but as the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth his handy work, Psa 19:1; being the brightness of his Fathers glory, and the express image of his person, Heb 1:3. So as the Father can only be seen in the Son; nor is so full a revelation of the Fathers will to be expected from any, as from the Son.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
18. No man“No one,”in the widest sense.
hath seen Godbyimmediate gaze, or direct intuition.
in the bosom of the FatherAremarkable expression, used only here, presupposing the Son’sconscious existence distinct from the Father, and expressing Hisimmediate and most endeared access to, and absoluteacquaintance with, Him.
heemphatic; As if heshould say, “He and He only hath declared Him,” because Heonly can.
Joh1:19-36. THE BAPTIST’STESTIMONY TO CHRIST.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
No man hath seen God at any time,…. That is, God the Father, whose voice was never heard, nor his shape seen by angels or men; for though Jacob, Moses, the elders of Israel, Manoah, and his wife, are said to see God, and Job expected to see him with his bodily eyes, and the saints will see him as he is, in which will lie their great happiness; yet all seems to be understood of the second person, who frequently appeared to the Old Testament saints, in an human form, and will be seen by the saints in heaven, in his real human nature; or of God in and by him: for the essence of God is invisible, and not to be seen with the eyes of the body; nor indeed with the eyes of the understanding, so as to comprehend it; nor immediately, but through, and by certain means: God is seen in the works of creation and providence, in the promises, and in his ordinances; but above all, in Christ the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person: this may chiefly intend here, man’s not knowing any thing of God in a spiritual and saving way, but in and by Christ; since it follows,
the only begotten Son; the word that was with God in the beginning. The Jerusalem Targum on Ge 3:22 says almost the same of the word of the Lord, as here, where it introduces him saying,
“the word of the Lord God said, lo, the man whom I created, the only one in my world, even as I am, , “the only one”, (or, as the word is sometimes rendered, “the only begotten”,) in the highest heavens.”
And to the same purpose the Targum of Jonathan, and also Jarchi, on the same place. The Syriac version here renders it, “the only begotten, God which is in the bosom of the Father”; clearly showing, that he is the only begotten, as he is God: the phrase,
which is in the bosom of the Father, denotes unity of nature, and essence, in the Father and Son; their distinct personality; strong love, and affection between them; the Son’s acquaintance with his Father’s secrets; his being at that time, as the Son of God, in the bosom of his Father, when here on earth, as the son of man; and which qualified him to make the declaration of him:
he hath declared him. The Persic and Ethiopic versions further add, “to us”; he has clearly and fully declared his nature, perfections, purposes, promises, counsels, covenant, word, and works; his thoughts and schemes of grace; his love and favour to the sons of men; his mind and will concerning the salvation of his people: he has made, and delivered a fuller revelation of these things, than ever was yet; and to which no other revelation in the present state of things will be added. Somewhat like this the Jews n say of the Messiah;
“there is none that can declare the name of his Father, and that knows him; but this is hid from the eyes of the multitude, until he comes, , “and he shall declare him”.”
He is come, and has declared him: so Philo speaks of the “Logos”, or word, as the interpreter of the mind of God, and a teacher of men o.
n R. Moses Haddarsan in Psal. 85. 11. apud Galatin. de Arcan, Cathol. ver. l. 8. c. 2. o De nominum mutat. p. 1047.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
No man hath seen God at any time ( ). “God no one has ever seen.” Perfect active indicative of . Seen with the human physical eye, John means. God is invisible (Exod 33:20; Deut 4:12). Paul calls God (Col 1:15; 1Tim 1:17). John repeats the idea in John 5:37; John 6:46. And yet in 14:7 Jesus claims that the one who sees him has seen the Father as here.
The only begotten Son ( ). This is the reading of the Textus Receptus and is intelligible after in verse 14. But the best old Greek manuscripts (Aleph B C L) read (God only begotten) which is undoubtedly the true text. Probably some scribe changed it to to obviate the blunt statement of the deity of Christ and to make it like 3:16. But there is an inner harmony in the reading of the old uncials. The Logos is plainly called in verse 1. The Incarnation is stated in verse 14, where he is also termed . He was that before the Incarnation. So he is “God only begotten,” “the Eternal Generation of the Son” of Origen’s phrase.
Which is in the bosom of the Father ( ). The eternal relation of the Son with the Father like in verse 1. In 3:13 there is some evidence for used by Christ of himself while still on earth. The mystic sense here is that the Son is qualified to reveal the Father as Logos (both the Father in Idea and Expression) by reason of the continual fellowship with the Father.
He (). Emphatic pronoun referring to the Son.
Hath declared him (). First aorist (effective) middle indicative of , old verb to lead out, to draw out in narrative, to recount. Here only in John, though once in Luke’s Gospel (24:35) and four times in John 10:8; John 15:12; John 15:14; John 21:19). This word fitly closes the Prologue in which the Logos is pictured in marvellous fashion as the Word of God in human flesh, the Son of God with the Glory of God in him, showing men who God is and what he is.
Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament
1 ) “No man hath seen God at anytime;- (theon oudeis heoraken popote) “No one has (ever) seen God at any time,” that is no one – ever rightly understood or apprehended God, 1Jn 4:12. The eye of mortal and carnal man could and cannot bear, the sight of God, as it is written, “There shall no man see me and live,” Exo 33:20. The Theophany manifestations of the Old Testament were of God’s Son, not the Father, whom Jesus came to reveal.
2) “The only begotten Son,” (monogenes) “The only begotten one, Jesus Christ, the virgin born Redeemer,” Joh 1:14; Joh 3:16; Joh 3:18; Gal 4:4.
3) “Which is in the bosom of the Father,” (theos ho on eis ton kolpon tou patros) “The one existing in the bosom of God, the Father,” a figure of speech signifying close personal relation between the Father and the Son in affection, in counsel, and in essence of nature and attributes.
4) “He hath declared him.” (ekeinos eksegesato) “That one declared him,” set Him forth expressed, or disclosed the Father’s express glory in His moral nature, Heb 1:3; Jesus thus said, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father,” for “God was manifest in the flesh,” Joh 14:9; 1Ti 3 16.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
18. No man hath ever seen God. Most appropriately is this added to confirm the preceding statement; for the knowledge of God is the door by which we enter into the enjoyment of all blessings; and as it is by Christ alone that God makes himself known to us, hence too it follows that we ought to seek all things from Christ. This order of doctrine ought to be carefully observed. No remark appears to be more common than this, that each of us receives, according to the measure of his faith, what God offers to us; but there are few who think that we must bring the vessel of faith and of the knowledge of God with which we draw.
When he says that no man hath seen God, we must not understand him to refer to the outward perception of the bodily eye; for he means generally, that as God dwells in inaccessible light, (1Ti 6:16,) he cannot be known but in Christ, who is his lively image. This passage is usually explained thus that as the naked majesty of God is concealed within himself, he never could be comprehended, except so far as he revealed himself in Christ; and therefore that it was only in Christ that God was formerly known to the fathers. But I rather think that the Evangelist here abides by the comparison already stated, namely, how much better our condition is than that of the fathers, because God, who was formerly concealed in his secret glory, may now be said to have rendered himself visible; for certainly when Christ is called the lively image of God, (Heb 1:3,) this refers to the peculiar privilege of the New Testament. In like manner, the Evangelist describes, in this passage, something new and uncommon, when he says that the only-begotten Son, who was in the bosom of the Father, hath made known to us what was formerly concealed. He therefore magnifies the manifestation of God, which has been brought to us by the gospel, in which he distinguishes us from the fathers, and shows that we are superior to them; as also Paul explains more fully in the Third and Fourth chapters of the Second Epistle to the Corinthians. For he maintains that there is now no longer any vail, such as existed under the Law, but that God is openly beheld in the face of Christ.
If it be thought unreasonable that the fathers are deprived of the knowledge of God, who have the prophets daily going before them and holding out the torch, I reply, that what is ascribed to us is not simply or absolutely denied to them, but that a comparison is made between the less and the greater, as we say; because they had nothing more than little sparks of the true light, the full brightness of which daily shines around us. If it be objected, that at that time also God was seen face to face, (Gen 32:30; Deu 34:10,) I maintain that that sight is not at all to be compared with ours; but as God was accustomed at that time to exhibit himself obscurely, and, as it were, from a distance, those to whom he was more clearly revealed say that they saw him face to face. They say so with reference to their own time; but they did not see God in any other way than wrapped up in many folds of figures and ceremonies. (31) That vision which Moses obtained on the mountain was remarkable and more excellent than almost all the rest; and yet God expressly declares,
thou shalt not be able to see my face, only thou shalt see my back, (Exo 33:23😉
by which metaphor he shows that the time for a full and clear revelation had not yet come. It must also be observed that, when the fathers wished to behold God, they always turned their eyes towards Christ. I do not only mean that they beheld God in his eternal Speech, but also that they attended, with their whole mind and with their whole heart, to the promised manifestation of Christ. For this reason we shall find that Christ afterwards said, Abraham saw my day, (Joh 8:56😉 and that which is subordinate is not contradictory. It is therefore a fixed principle, that God, who was formerly invisible, hath now made himself visible in Christ.
When he says that the Son was in the bosom of the Father, the metaphor is borrowed from men, who are said to receive into their bosom those to whom they communicate all their secrets. The breast is the seat of counsel. He therefore shows that the Son was acquainted with the most hidden secrets of his Father, in order to inform us that we have the breast of God, as it were, laid open to us in the Gospel.
(31) “ Enveloppemens de figures et ceremonies.”
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(18) No man hath seen God at any time.The full knowledge of truth is one with the revelation of God, but no man has ever had this full knowledge. The primary reference is still to Moses (comp. Exo. 33:20; Exo. 33:23), but the words hold good of every attempt to bridge from the human stand-point the gulf between man and God. The world by wisdom knew not God (1Co. 1:21), and systems which have resulted from attempts of the finite to grasp the Infinite are but as the vision of a dream or the wild fancy of a wandering mind.
The only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father.The oneness of essence and of existence is made prominent by a natural figure, as necessary in Him who is to reveal the nature of God. The is in is probably to be explained of the return to, and presence with the Father after the Ascension.
Some of the oldest MSS. and other authorities read here, Only begotten God, which is in the bosom of the Father. It will be convenient to group together the passages of this Gospel, where there are important various readings in one Note. See Excursus
B. Some Variations in the Text of St. Johns Gospel.
He hath declared him.He, emphatically as distinct from all others, this being the chief office of the Word; declared, rather than hath declared; Him is not found in the original text, which means He was interpreter, He was expositor. The word was used technically of the interpretation of sacred rites and laws handed down by tradition. Plato, e.g., uses it of the Delphian Apollo, who is the national expositor (Rep. iv. 427). The verse is connected, by a likeness of Greek words too striking to be accidental, with the question of Jesus the son of Sirach asked some three centuries before, Who hath seen Him that he might tell us? (Sir. 43:31). The answer to every such question, dimly thought or clearly asked, is that no man hath ever so known God as to be His interpreter; that the human conception of God as terrible and great and marvellous (Sir. 43:29) is not that of His essential character; that the true conception is that of the loving Father in whose bosom is the only Son, and that this Son is the only true Word uttering to man the will and character and being of God.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
18. No man hath seen God Son hath declared him The Evangelist winds up this exordium as he began it, with the declaration that the Son, like the Word, is the manifest God, revealing the God invisible and unknowable. In the 17th verse the Son gives, reveals, grace and truth; in the 18th he is the declarer or revealer of the infinite Unseen.
The only begotten This begetting is as truly figurative as the utterance of the Word is figurative. Derivation and infinite wisdom are expressed in the latter; derivation and infinite power are expressed in the former.
Only begotten Son Mr. Tregelles seems to have established the fact that the true reading is only begotten God. The passage thereby becomes a striking proof-text of the divinity of the Son.
In the bosom of the Father As the Word was in the divine intellect before its incarnation, so the Son was in the love, the bosom, the heart of God, before his earthly birth. The Wordship and the Sonship are equally divine, before the creation and the First Advent, and eternal.
The prologue of the Gospel has now terminated, and the narrative proper commences at this point; to which point the forty days’ Temptation in the Wilderness is the last preceding event. Nor is there, as sceptical critics have pretended, the slightest difficulty in finding ample place for the Temptation at this point.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
‘No man has seen God at any time. God only begotten, (or ‘the only begotten Son’) who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known.’
Indeed he sums up by declaring that Jesus is the final revelation of God, as the One Who alone partakes in His essence. He is ‘God only begotten’, alone enjoying the very nature and essence of God.
‘God only begotten.’ Many ancient authorities have here ‘God only begotten’ instead of ‘only begotten Son’, and the evidence for the former is very strong (‘monogenes theos’ instead of ‘ho monogenes ‘uios’). It is especially likely that it represents the original text because the idea of ‘only begotten Son’ (ton ‘uion ton monogene) is found in Joh 3:16. But either way the meaning is the same. Both mean ‘of the same nature and essence with the Father’. Here was one Who was of the very essence of the Godhead.
‘No one has seen God at any time.’ There were those who had awesome revelations of God, such as Abraham in Gen 15:12-17; Moses in Exo 3:2; Exo 33:21-23; Job in Job 42:5-6; Isaiah in Isa 6:1 and Ezekiel in Ezekiel 1, but these were but shadows of the great reality. Mainly He was revealed in fire. They had not seen God as He really is. For God is the One Who dwells in unapproachable light, Whom no man has see nor can see (1Ti 6:16; 1Jn 4:12).
As the hymn writer put it:
The spirits that surround the throne, may bear the burning bliss,
But that is surely theirs alone
For they have never, never known
A fallen world like this.
Yet here He now was revealed in human form. In Jesus the Father was being revealed (Joh 14:7-9).
‘Who is in the bosom of the Father.’ Compare ‘pros ton theon in Joh 1:1 – ‘in close relationship with God’. To be in someone’s bosom meant to be in favoured relationship, to enjoy the choicest position, and only one could be in a person’s bosom at a time. Thus Jesus is being portrayed as uniquely favoured by His Father.
‘He has made Him known, (or ‘declared Him’).’ The verb is exegeomai, ‘to explain, interpret, tell, report, describe, and thus make known’. It is used of gods making themselves known to men. In this context therefore it means ‘makes God fully known’. He has made God known as none else had or could do (compare Joh 14:7-9; Mat 11:25-27).
Through Jesus Christ, God’s final Word to man, God is revealed as never before, not in the sheer glory of a shining brightness (although a glimpse of that was given at the Transfiguration), but in the fullness of His personality, in His behaviour, in His thought and in His presence. Now we can know what God is really like, for He has sent us His likeness in human form, His final Word to man, and through that Word we can be saved.
We can sum up by considering that behind these last verses (14 onwards) there is a deliberate connection with the Exodus narrative, especially Exodus 33. There God came down to dwell among men in His glory within the tabernacle (Exo 33:9; Exo 40:34). Here God comes down, made flesh, to dwell in a humanity which is His tabernacle, and reveals His glory. There the Law was given (Exo 32:15; Exo 33:13; Exo 34:1), here grace and truth come. There God was seen in veiled form in a cloud (Exo 33:9), here He is more fully revealed, though veiled in flesh. There Moses spoke with God ‘face to face’ (Exo 33:11), yet in a cloud, for he could not see His glory (Exo 33:20; Exo 33:22), here we behold His glory, seeing Him face to face. The new covenant is more real and personal, more glorious, than the old. It is the beginning of a new deliverance.
NOTE. Extract from Plummer’s Commentary on John In The Cambridge Bible Series Re The Word.
Joh 1:1
(1) In the Old Testament we find the Word or Wisdom of God personified, generally as an instrument for executing the Divine Will. We have a faint trace of it in the ‘God said’ of Gen 1:3; Gen 1:6; Gen 1:9; Gen 1:11; Gen 1:14, etc.
The personification of the Word of God begins to appear in the Psalms, Psa 33:6; Psa 107:20; Psa 119:89; Psa 147:15. In Proverbs 8, 9 the Wisdom of God is personified in very striking terms. This Wisdom is manifested in the power and mighty works of God ; that God is love is a revelation yet to come.
(2) In the Apocrypha the personification is more complete than in O. T. In Ecclesiasticus (c. B.C. 150 100) Sir 1:1-20 ; Sir 24:1-22 , and in the Book of Wisdom (c. B.C. 100) Wis 6:22 to Wis 9:18 we have Wisdom strongly personified. In Wis 18:15 the ‘Almighty Word’ of God appears as an agent of vengeance.
(3) In the Targums, or Aramaic paraphrases of O.T., the development is carried still further. These, though not yet written down, were in common use among the Jews in our Lord’s time; and they were strongly influenced by the growing tendency to separate the Godhead from immediate contact with the material world. Where Scripture speaks of a direct communication from God to man, the Targums substituted the Memra, or ‘ Word of God.’ Thus in Gen 3:8-9, instead of ‘they heard the voice of the Lord God,’ the Targums have ‘they heard the voice of the Word of the Lord God ;’ and instead of ‘God called unto Adam,’ they put ‘the Word of the Lord called unto Adam,’ and so on. ‘ The Word of the Lord’ is said to occur 150 times in a single Targum of the Pentateuch.
In the Theosophy of the Alexandrine Jews, which was a compound of theology with philosophy and mysticism, we seem to come nearer to a strictly personal view of the Divine Word or Wisdom, but really move further away from it. Philo, the leading representative of this religious speculation (fl. A.D. 40 50), admitted into his philosophy very various, and not always harmonious elements. Consequently his conception of the Logos is not fixed or clear. On the whole his Logos means some intermediate agency, by means of which God created material things and communicated with them. But whether this Logos is one Being or more, whether it is personal or not, we cannot be sure; and perhaps Philo himself was undecided.
Certainly his Logos is very different from that of S. John; for it is scarcely a Person, and it is not the Messiah. And when we note that of the two meanings of Logos Philo dwells most on the side which is less prominent, while the Targums insist on that which is more prominent in the teaching of S. John, we cannot doubt the source of his language. The Logos of Philo is preeminently the Divine Reason. The Memra of the Targums is rather the Divine Word ; i.e. the Will of God manifested in personal action; and this rather than a philosophical abstraction of the Divine Intelligence is the starting point of S. John’s expression.
To sum up : the personification of the Divine Word in O. T. is poetical, in Philo metaphysical, in S. John historical. The Apocrypha and Targums help to fill the chasm between O.T. and Philo; history itself fills the far greater chasm which separates all from S. John. Between Jewish poetry and Alexandrine speculation on the one hand and the Fourth Gospel on the other, lies the historical fact of the Incarnation of the Logos, the life of Jesus Christ.
The Logos of S. John, therefore, is not a mere attribute of God, but the Son of God, existing from all eternity, and manifested in space and time in the Person of Jesus Christ. In the Logos had been hidden from eternity all that God had to say to man ; for the Logos was the living expression of the nature, purposes, and Will of God. (Comp. the impersonal designation of Christ in 1Jn 1:1.) Human thought had ‘ been searching in vain for some means of connecting the finite with the Infinite, of making God intelligible to man and leading man up to God. S. John knew that he possessed the key to this enigma. He therefore took the phrase which human reason had lighted on in its gropings, stripped it of its misleading associations, fixed it by identifying it with the Christ, and filled it with that fullness of meaning which he himself had derived from Christ’s own teaching.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Joh 1:18. No man hath seen God at any time; Neither Moses nor any of the prophets, who in former ages delivered the will of God to men, ever saw the divine Being in his essence, and therefore they could not make a full discovery of his perfections and counsels to men. The only Person who ever enjoyed this privilege was the Son of God, who is in the bosom of the Father: he always was and is the darling object of his tenderest affection, and the intimate partner of his counsels; and therefore he was able fully to declare the great purpose of God concerning the redemption of the world. To be in one’s bosom, denotes the greatest familiarity and intimacy, a communication of counsels and designs, and entire and tender affection.
Hence it is used, Deu 13:6; Deu 28:54 to signify a man’s best beloved wife. The word , rendered declared, signifies to explain, to interpret, to declare, and is particularly applied by the heathen writers to the explanation or declaration of things relating to religion.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Joh 1:18 furnishes an explanation of what had just been said, that . . ; [107] for that there was required direct knowledge of God, the result of experience, which His only-begotten Son alone possessed.
] no man, not even Moses. “Besides is no doctor, master, or preacher, than the only Teacher, Christ, who is in the Godhead inwardly,” Luther; comp. Mat 11:27 .
] has seen, beheld (comp. Joh 3:11 ), of the intuition of God’s essence (Exo 33:20 ), to the exclusion of visions, theophanies, and the like. Comp. 1Jn 4:12 ; also Rom 1:20 ; Col 1:15 ; 1Ti 1:17 . Agreeably to the context, the reference is to the direct vision of God’s essential glory, which no man could have (Ex. l.c .), but which Christ possessed in His pre-human condition as (comp. Joh 6:46 ), and possesses again ever since His exaltation.
. ] As . refers to the state on earth of the Only-begotten, consequently, taken as an imperfect, cannot refer to the pre-human state (against Luthardt, Gess, pp. 123, 236, and others); yet it cannot coincide with . in respect of time (Beyschlag), because the . . . was not true of Christ during His earthly life (comp. especially Joh 1:51 ). [108] The right explanation therefore is, that John, when he wrote . . ., expressed himself from his own present standing-point, and conceived of Christ as in His state of exaltation , as having returned to the bosom of the Father, and therefore into the state of the . So Hofmann, Schriftbew . I. 120, II. 23; Weiss, Lehrbegr . 239. Thus also must we explain the statement of direction towards, ., which would be otherwise without any explanation (Mar 2:1 ; Mar 13:16 ; Luk 11:7 ); so that we recognise in as the prominent element the idea of having arrived at (Ellendt, Lex. Soph . I. p. 537; Jacobs, ad Anthol . XIII. p. 71; Buttm. N. T. Gr . p. 286 [E. T. p. 333]), not the notion of leaning upon (Godet, after Winer, Lcke, Tholuck, Maier, Gess, and most others), nor of moving towards , which is warranted neither by the simple (in favour of which such analogies as in aurem dormire are inappropriate) nor by , instead of which (Hom. Il . vi. 467) or with the accusative ought rather to bo expected. [109] This forced interpretation of would never have been attempted, had not been construed as a timeless Present, expressing an inherent relation, and in this sense applied (Lcke, Tholuck, De Wette, Lange, Brckner, Hengstenberg, Philippi, and most expositors) also to the earthly condition of the Son; comp. Beyschlag, pp. 100, 150. So far as the thing itself is concerned, the . does not differ from the of Joh 1:1 ; only it expresses the fullest fellowship with God, not before the incarnation, but after the exaltation, and at the same time exhibits the relation of love under a sensuous form ( ); not derived, however, from the custom (Joh 13:23 ) of reclining at table (thus usually, but not appropriately in respect of fellowship with God ), but rather from the analogy of a father’s embrace (Luk 16:22 ). In its pragmatic bearing, is the historical seal of the ; but we must not explain it, with Hilgenfeld, from the Gnostic idea of the .
] strongly emphatic, and pointing heavenwards. [110]
] namely, the substance of His intuition of God; comp. Joh 8:38 . The word is the usual one for denoting the exposition , interpretation of divine things, and intuitions. Plato, Pol . iv. p. 427 C; Schneid. Theag . p. 131; Xen. Cyr . viii. 3. 11; Soph. El . 417; comp. the in Athens: Ruhnken, ad Tim . p. 109 ff.; Hermann, gottesd. Alterth . 1, 12. It does not occur elsewhere in John, and hence a special reference in its selection here is all the more to be presumed, the more strikingly appropriate it is to the context (against Lcke, Maier, Godet). Comp. LXX. Lev 14:57 .
[107] Not including any explanation of also (Luthardt), because and answer only to the conception of the truth in which the vision of God is interpreted.
[108] Hence we must not say, with Brckner, comp. Tholuck and Hengstenberg, that a relation of the is portrayed which was neither interrupted nor modified by the incarnation. The communion of the Incarnate One with God remained, He in God, and God in Him, but not in the same manner metaphysically as before His incarnation and after His exaltation. He while on earth was still in heaven (Joh 3:13 ), yet not de facto , but de jure , because heaven was His home, His ancestral seat.
[109] Philippi’s objections ( Glaubens . IV. 1, p. 409 f.) to my rendering are quite baseless. For an explanation of the . which occurs to every unprejudiced expositor as coming directly from the words themselves cannot be “arbitrary.” And it is not contrary to the connection , as both Godet and Beyschlag hold, because what the words, as usually interpreted, say, is already contained in the , whereupon , . . . sets forth the exaltation of the Only-begotten just as in were given the ground and source of the as the infallible confirmation hereof. This also against Gess, p. 124. My interpretation is quite as compatible with earnest dealing in regard to the deity of Christ (Hengstenberg) as the usual one, while both are open to abuse. Besides, we have nothing at all to do here with the earnestness referred to, but simply with the correctness or incorrectness of the interpretation. Further, I have not through fear of spiritualism (as Beyschlag imagines) deviated from the usual meaning, which would quite agree with Joh 3:13 .
[110] As with Homer (see Nitzsch, p. 37, note 1), so in the N. T. John pre-eminently requires not merely to be read , but to be spoken. His work is the epic among the Gospels.
Note .
The Prologue, which we must not with Reuss restrict to Joh 1:1-5 , is not “ A History of the Logos ,” describing Him down to Joh 1:13 as He was before His incarnation, and from Joh 1:14 ff. as incarnate (Olshausen). Against this it is decisive that Joh 1:6-13 already refer to the period of His human existence, and that, in particular, the sonship of believers, Joh 1:12-13 , cannot be understood in any other than a specifically Christian sense. For this reason, too, we must not adopt the division of Ewald: (1) The pre-mundane history of the Logos, Joh 1:1-3 ; (2) The history of His first purely spiritual working up to the time of His incarnation, Joh 1:4-13 ; (3) The history of His human manifestation and ministry, Joh 1:14-18 . John is intent rather on securing, in grand and condensed outline, a profound comprehensive view of the nature and work of the Logos; which latter, the work, was in respect of the world creative , in respect of mankind illuminative (the Light ). As this working of the Logos was historical, the description must necessarily also bear an historical character; not in such a way, however, that a formal history was to be given, first of the (which could not have been given), and then of the (which forms the substance of the Gospel itself ), but in such a way that the whole forms a historical picture , in which we see, in the world which came into existence by the creative power of the Logos, His light shining before, after, and by means of His incarnation. This at the same time tells against Hilgenfeld, p. 60 ff., according to whom, in the Prologue, “the Gnosis of the absolute religion, from its immediate foundation to its highest perfection, runs through the series of its historical interventions.” According to Kstlin, p. 102 ff., there is a brief triple description of all Christianity from the beginning onwards to the present; and this, too, (1) from the standing-point of God and His relation to the world, Joh 1:1-8 ; then (2) from the relations of the Logos to mankind; Joh 1:9-13 ; and lastly, (3) in the individual, Joh 1:14-18 , by which the end returns to the beginning, Joh 1:1 . But a triple beginning (which Kaeuffer too assumes in the Schs. Stud . 1844, p. 103 ff.) is neither formally hinted at nor really made: for, in Joh 1:9 , is not the subject , and this must, agreeably to the context, refer to the time of the Baptist, while Kstlin’s construction and explanation of
is quite untenable; and because in the last part, from Joh 1:14 onwards, the antithesis between receiving and not receiving, so essential in the first two parts, does not at all recur again. The simple explanation, in harmony with the text, is as follows: The Prologue consists of three parts, namely, (1) John gives a description ( a ) of the primeval existence of the Logos, Joh 1:1-2 , and ( b ) of His creative work, Joh 1:3 (with the addition of the first part of Joh 1:4 , which is the transition to what follows). Next, (2) he represents Him in whom was life as the Light of mankind , Joh 1:4 ff., and this indeed ( a ) as He once had been, when still without the antithesis of darkness, Joh 1:4 , and ( b ) as He was in this antithesis, Joh 1:5 . This shining in the darkness is continuous (hence , Joh 1:5 ), and the tragic opposition occasioned thereby now unfolds itself before our eyes onwards to Joh 1:13 , in the following manner: “Though John came forward and testified of the Light, not being himself the Light, but a witness of the Light (Joh 1:6-8 ), though He, the true Light, was already existing (Joh 1:9 ), though He was in the world , and the world was made by Him, still men acknowledged Him not; though He came to His own , His own received Him not (Joh 1:10-11 ); whereas those who did receive Him obtained from Him power to become the spiritual sons of God (Joh 1:12-13 ).” Lastly, (3) this blessedness of believers, due to the Logos who had historically come, now constrains the apostle to make still more prominent the mode and fashion in which He was manifested in history (His incarnation ), and had revealed His glory , Joh 1:14-18 . Thus the Prologue certainly does not (against Baur) lift the historical out of its own proper soil, and transfer it to the sphere of metaphysics, but rather unveils its metaphysical side, which was essentially contained in and connected with it, as existing prior to its manifestation, and in the light of this its metaphysical connection sums it up according to its essence and antithesis , its actual development and the proof of its historical truth being furnished by the subsequent detailed narrative in the Gospel. We may distinguish the three parts thus: (1) The premundane existence and creative work of the Logos , Joh 1:1-4 a ; (2) His work as the Light of men , and the opposition to this, Joh 1:4-13 ; (3) The revelation of His glory which took place through the incarnation , Joh 1:14-18 . Or, in the briefest way: the Logos (1) as the creator; (2) as the source of light; (3) as the manifestation of the God-man . This third part shows us the Incarnate One again, Joh 1:18 , where as He was in the beginning
. . ; and the cycle is complete.
Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary
DISCOURSE: 1600
THE MANIFESTATION WHICH CHRIST HAS GIVEN OF THE FATHER
Joh 1:18. No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.
THE knowledge of God is the great source of blessings to mankind, but the heathen world were altogether ignorant of him, nor were the Jews themselves fully instructed concerning him: to make a full revelation of him to the world was a part of that work which was reserved for Christ himself; and this office he performed, to the unspeakable comfort of his Church and people The Evangelist unites his testimony with that of John the Baptist in confirmation of this truth.
We shall inquire,
I.
What Christ has declared of the Father
God himself is invisible to the eye of sense [Note: 1Ti 6:16.]: even Moses was permitted to see only his back parts [Note: Exo 33:23.]. But Christ had a peculiar relation to the Father as his only-begotten Son; and a most intimate acquaintance with him, as being from all eternity, and at that very hour, in his bosom. He has made known the Father to us, and declared,
1.
His nature
[Mankind had gross conceptions of the Deity as a material Being: but Christ has assured us of his perfect Spirituality [Note: Joh 4:24.]. Nor was the Unity of God clearly ascertained among the Gentiles: but Christ has left no room for doubt upon this subject [Note: Mar 12:29.]. He has, moreover, revealed to us a Trinity of persons in the Godhead. He has affirmed in the plainest terms his own Oneness with the Father [Note: Joh 10:30.]. He has spoken of the Holy Ghost as co-existing with himself and with the Father [Note: Joh 15:26.], and has joined the Three together as equal in authority and honour [Note: Mat 28:19.]. Thus has he enabled us by faith to see him who is invisible.]
2.
His perfections
[God had long since proclaimed his own name to Moses [Note: Exo 34:6-7.]; but Christ has afforded us more abundant discoveries of all his attributes. He has clearly shewn us that his goodness is unbounded [Note: Mat 5:45.], his sovereignty uncontrolled [Note: Mat 11:25-26.], his power irresistible [Note: Mat 26:53.], his justice inflexible [Note: Mat 26:42.], his mercy infinite [Note: Joh 3:16-17.], and his truth inviolable [Note: Luk 16:17.]. There is not any thing relating to his Father, the knowledge of which could be at all serviceable to us, that he has not revealed [Note: Joh 15:15.].]
He did not however merely utter these things like the prophets of old:
II.
How he declared him
Christ had formerly spoken of God in and by the prophets [Note: 1Pe 1:11.]; but now he declared the Father in a different manner:
1.
By exhibiting a perfect pattern of him
[He was himself an exact resemblance of the Father [Note: Heb 1:3.], and in his conduct exhibited every perfection of the Deity [Note: Joh 8:29.]. Hence a sight of him was, in fact, a sight of the Father himself [Note: Joh 14:7-9.].]
2.
By making known his counsels
[Much of the Fathers counsels had lain hid from the foundation of the world, or had been very imperfectly revealed. Christ opened them to his hearers as they were able to bear them [Note: Joh 16:12.]. He made known Gods intention to admit the Gentiles into his Church [Note: Mat 8:11-12.], and assured us that the most abandoned of mankind should be cordially received the very instant he returned to God [Note: Luk 15:20.]; but that none of whatever character could be saved, unless they sought acceptance with God through his mediation [Note: Joh 14:6.]. Thus by these declarations he has enabled us to attain a more perfect knowledge of the Fathers mind and will.]
3.
By exerting a secret energy on the minds of men
[No man could know the Father unless Christ revealed him inwardly by his Spirit, as well as outwardly by the word [Note: Mat 11:27.]. His very Disciples understood not until he opened their eyes [Note: Luk 24:45.]: nor can we attain to a true knowledge of God in any other way. The word must come to us in power and in the Holy Ghost, or it will come in vain [Note: 1Th 1:5.]; but, when applied by his Spirit, it shall teach us plainly of the Father [Note: Joh 16:25.].]
Infer
1.
How glorious a person must Christ be!
[The description given of him shews his superiority above every created being: He is not the Son of God by creation, as the angels are, nor by regeneration and adoption, as men; but by an inexplicable generation, his Only-begotten; and, as well in his incarnate as in his pre-existent state, was continually in the bosom of the Father [Note: Joh 3:13.]. Nor was any other worthy to reveal the Father to us. Let us then entertain just conceptions of his worth and dignity, and manifest our delight in him as the saints in heaven do [Note: Rev 5:5-9.].]
2.
How precious ought the Scriptures to be to us!
[Job and David had but a small portion of the Scriptures in their hands: yet did they value them above every thing in the world [Note: Job 23:12, Psa 119:72.]. How much more should we, who possess the sacred oracles entire! In these is recorded every thing that Christ has declared; and by these we may be made wise unto salvation [Note: 2Ti 3:15.]. Let us then search them with diligence, and treasure them up in our hearts; nor let a day pass without our digging into those invaluable mines [Note: Pro 2:4.].]
3.
How inexcusable are they who are ignorant of God!
[It is to our shame that many of us are still ignorant of God [Note: 1Co 15:34.]: we have not that knowledge of him that produces correspondent affections towards him. But what excuse can we offer in extenuation of our guilt? Has not Christ declared the Father in order that we might know him? And is he not willing also to reveal him in us by his powerful energy on our souls? Some, doubtless, are more guilty than others in proportion as they have possessed means of instruction; but all will find the consequences of their ignorance most tremendous [Note: 2Th 1:8.]. Let all begin then to inquire after God with their whole hearts, nor rest till they have attained that knowledge of him which is life eternal [Note: Joh 17:3.].]
Fuente: Charles Simeon’s Horae Homileticae (Old and New Testaments)
18 No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him .
Ver. 18. The only begotten Son ] In the year of grace 1520, Michael Servetus, a Spaniard, taught that there is no real generation or distinction in God, and was therefore worthily burnt at Geneva, in the year 1555. He would not recant; and yet feeling the fire, could not with patience endure it, but kept a hideous roaring till his life was exhausted, crying out to the beholders to dispatch him with a sword. (Bellarm. i.; de Christo, i.; Calvin Opusc.)
He hath, declared him ] . In a divine and extraordinary manner, as the word here used imports.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
18. ] The connexion is: ‘Moses could not give out of the of grace and truth, for he had no immediate sight of God, and no man can have: there is but One who can , the , who is no mere man , but abides in the bosom of the Father.’
. . . ] The sight of God here meant, is not only bodily sight (though of that it is true, see Exo 33:20 ; 1Ti 6:16 ), but intuitive and infallible knowledge , which enables Him who has it to declare the nature and will of God: see ch. Joh 3:11 ; Joh 6:46 ; Joh 14:7 .
The Evangelist speaks in this verse in accordance with the sayings of the gnosis whose phraseology he has adopted: ; Sir 43:31 .
. ] As regards the reading , the authorities for and against it will be found in the digest. It seems to have arisen from a confusion of the contracted forms of writing, [22] and [23] . The question, which reading to adopt, is one which, in the balance of authorities, must be provisionally decided by the consideration that as far as we can see, we should be introducing great harshness into the sentence, and a new and strange term into Scripture, by adopting : a consequence which ought to have no weight whatever where authority is overpowering, but may fairly be weighed where this is not so. The “prstat procliviori ardua” finds in this case a legitimate limit.
[22] The CODEX EPHRAEMI, preserved in the Imperial Library at Paris, MS. Gr. No. 9. It is a Codex rescriptus or palimpsest, consisting of the works of Ephraem the Syrian written over the MS. of extensive fragments of the Old and New Testaments 2 . It seems to have come to France with Catherine de’ Medici, and to her from Cardinal Nicolas Ridolfi. Tischendorf thinks it probable that he got it from Andrew John Lascaris, who at the fall of the Eastern Empire was sent to the East by Lorenzo de’ Medici to preserve such MSS. as had escaped the ravages of the Turks. This is confirmed by the later corrections (C 3 ) in the MS., which were evidently made at Constantinople 3 . But from the form of the letters, and other peculiarities, it is believed to have been written at Alexandria, or at all events, where the Alexandrine dialect and method of writing prevailed. Its text is perhaps the purest example of the Alexandrine text, holding a place about midway between the Constantinopolitan MSS. and most of those of the Alexandrine recension. It was edited very handsomely in uncial type, with copious dissertations, &c., by Tischendorf, in 1843. He assigns to it an age at least equal to A, and places it also in the fifth century . Corrections were written in, apparently in the sixth and ninth centuries: these are respectively cited as C 2 , C 3 .
[23] The CODEX EPHRAEMI, preserved in the Imperial Library at Paris, MS. Gr. No. 9. It is a Codex rescriptus or palimpsest, consisting of the works of Ephraem the Syrian written over the MS. of extensive fragments of the Old and New Testaments 2 . It seems to have come to France with Catherine de’ Medici, and to her from Cardinal Nicolas Ridolfi. Tischendorf thinks it probable that he got it from Andrew John Lascaris, who at the fall of the Eastern Empire was sent to the East by Lorenzo de’ Medici to preserve such MSS. as had escaped the ravages of the Turks. This is confirmed by the later corrections (C 3 ) in the MS., which were evidently made at Constantinople 3 . But from the form of the letters, and other peculiarities, it is believed to have been written at Alexandria, or at all events, where the Alexandrine dialect and method of writing prevailed. Its text is perhaps the purest example of the Alexandrine text, holding a place about midway between the Constantinopolitan MSS. and most of those of the Alexandrine recension. It was edited very handsomely in uncial type, with copious dissertations, &c., by Tischendorf, in 1843. He assigns to it an age at least equal to A, and places it also in the fifth century . Corrections were written in, apparently in the sixth and ninth centuries: these are respectively cited as C 2 , C 3 .
. ] The expression must not be understood as referring to the custom of reclining , as in ch. Joh 13:23 : for by this explanation confusion is introduced into the imagery, and the real depth of the truth hidden. The expression signifies, as Chrysostom observes, : and is derived from the fond and intimate union of children and parents.
The present participle, as in ch. Joh 3:13 , is used to signify essential truth , without any particular regard to time.
On the use of , see reff. It is not ‘put for’ : indeed it would be well for the student to bear in mind as a general rule, that no word or expression is ever ‘put for’ another: words are the index of thoughts, and where an unusual construction is found, it points to some reason in the mind of the writer for using it, which reason is lost in the ordinary shallow method of accounting for it by saying that it is ‘put for’ some other word. So here, is not = , but is a carrying on of the thought expressed in Joh 1:1 , by : it is a pregnant construction, involving in it the begetting of the Son and His being the of the Father, His proceeding forth from God. It is a similar expression, on the side of His Unity with the Father, to , on the side of His manifestation to men. We have similar expressions, uniting the verb of rest with the preposition of motion, in , Od. . 51; , Eur. Iph. [24] . 624: see Khner, Gr. Gr. 622.
[24] CODEX BORGIANUS 1, in the Library of the Propaganda at Rome, of the fifth century (probably). Contains fragments of Luke and John with a Sahidic version. The portions Joh 6:28-67 ; Joh 7:6 to Joh 8:31 were published by A. A. Georgi, at Rome, in 1789: and examined by Tischendorf. This Grco-Egyptian MS. also contains a portion of St. Luke, Luk 22:20 to Luk 23:20 , which was first brought to my notice by Dr. Tregelles, as being mentioned by Zoega in his “Catalogus Codicum Copticorum MSS. qui in Museo Borgiano Velitris adservantur.” My brother, the Rev. Bradley H. Alford, happening to be at Rome, was fortunate enough to obtain permission to collate this ancient fragment, and sent me the collation, from which the readings were, in Edn. 4 of this Volume, first published. Two other portions of the same MS. were once in the possession of C. G. Woide and were published by Ford in the Appendix to the Codex Alexandrinus, Oxford, 1799. They comprise Luk 12:15 to Luk 13:32 ; Joh 8:33-42 .
] ‘ He, and none else:’ an emphatic exclusive expression.
] declared, better than ‘ hath declared ,’ as E. V. , , and (Gen 41:8 ; Gen 41:24 ), are technical terms used of the declaration of divine matters. Wetstein has collected abundance of passages in illustration of this usage. See also Mller’s Eumenides, Excursus D, on the . But Lcke (and I think rightly) believes it more in accordance with the simple style of John to take the word here in its ordinary, not its technical meaning.
The object to be supplied after the verb is most likely , i.e. . De Wette thinks this too definite, and supplies ‘that which He has seen,’ as in ch. Joh 3:11 . Lcke supplies . ., as being ‘that which He has seen;’ but De Wette well observes that is more matter of revelation by act , than of . Euthymius’s explanation, , is certainly wrong. See Mat 11:27 .
Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament
Joh 1:18 . . This statement, “God no one has ever seen,” is probably suggested by the words . The reality and the grace of God we have seen through Jesus Christ, but why not directly? Because God, the Divine essence, the Godhead, no one has ever seen. No man has had immediate knowledge of God: if we have knowledge of God it is through Christ.
A further description is given of the Only Begotten intended to disclose His qualification for revealing the Father in the words . Meyer supposes that John is now expressing himself from his own present standing point, and is conceiving of Christ as in His state of exaltation, as having returned to the bosom of the Father. But in this case the description would not be relevant. John adds this designation to ground the revealing work which Christ accomplished while on earth ( , aorist, referring to that work), to prove His qualification for it. It must therefore include His condition previous to incarnation. is therefore a timeless present and is used, as in Mar 13:16 , Act 8:40 , etc., for . , whether taken from friends reclining at a feast or from a father’s embrace, denotes perfect intimacy. Thus qualified, “He” emphatic, He thus equipped, “has interpreted” what? See Joh 8:32 ; or simply, as implied in the preceding negative clause, “God”. The Scholiast on Soph., Ajax , 320, says, , , Wetstein.
Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson
No man: i.e. no human eye. Greek. oudeis. Compound of ou. App-105.
hath seen. Greek horao. App-133.
the only begotten Son. Lm. Tr. WI. Rm., with the Syriac, read “God (i.e. Christ) only begotten”. The readings vary between YC and OC.
Which is = He Who is: like “was” in Joh 1:1.
in = into. Greek. eis. App-104. This expresses a continued relationship.
bosom. Figure of speech Anthropopatheia. App-6. Compare Joh 13:23; Joh 21:20.
he = That One.
hath declared = revealed. Greek exegeomai = to lead the way, make known by expounding. Hence Eng. “exegesis”. Only here, Luk 24:35. Act 10:8;.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
18.] The connexion is: Moses could not give out of the of grace and truth, for he had no immediate sight of God, and no man can have: there is but One who can , the , who is no mere man, but abides in the bosom of the Father.
. . .] The sight of God here meant, is not only bodily sight (though of that it is true, see Exo 33:20; 1Ti 6:16), but intuitive and infallible knowledge, which enables Him who has it to declare the nature and will of God: see ch. Joh 3:11; Joh 6:46; Joh 14:7.
The Evangelist speaks in this verse in accordance with the sayings of the gnosis whose phraseology he has adopted: ; Sir 43:31.
. ] As regards the reading , the authorities for and against it will be found in the digest. It seems to have arisen from a confusion of the contracted forms of writing, [22] and [23]. The question, which reading to adopt, is one which, in the balance of authorities, must be provisionally decided by the consideration that as far as we can see, we should be introducing great harshness into the sentence, and a new and strange term into Scripture, by adopting : a consequence which ought to have no weight whatever where authority is overpowering, but may fairly be weighed where this is not so. The prstat procliviori ardua finds in this case a legitimate limit.
[22] The CODEX EPHRAEMI, preserved in the Imperial Library at Paris, MS. Gr. No. 9. It is a Codex rescriptus or palimpsest, consisting of the works of Ephraem the Syrian written over the MS. of extensive fragments of the Old and New Testaments2. It seems to have come to France with Catherine de Medici, and to her from Cardinal Nicolas Ridolfi. Tischendorf thinks it probable that he got it from Andrew John Lascaris, who at the fall of the Eastern Empire was sent to the East by Lorenzo de Medici to preserve such MSS. as had escaped the ravages of the Turks. This is confirmed by the later corrections (C3) in the MS., which were evidently made at Constantinople3. But from the form of the letters, and other peculiarities, it is believed to have been written at Alexandria, or at all events, where the Alexandrine dialect and method of writing prevailed. Its text is perhaps the purest example of the Alexandrine text,-holding a place about midway between the Constantinopolitan MSS. and most of those of the Alexandrine recension. It was edited very handsomely in uncial type, with copious dissertations, &c., by Tischendorf, in 1843. He assigns to it an age at least equal to A, and places it also in the fifth century. Corrections were written in, apparently in the sixth and ninth centuries: these are respectively cited as C2, C3.
[23] The CODEX EPHRAEMI, preserved in the Imperial Library at Paris, MS. Gr. No. 9. It is a Codex rescriptus or palimpsest, consisting of the works of Ephraem the Syrian written over the MS. of extensive fragments of the Old and New Testaments2. It seems to have come to France with Catherine de Medici, and to her from Cardinal Nicolas Ridolfi. Tischendorf thinks it probable that he got it from Andrew John Lascaris, who at the fall of the Eastern Empire was sent to the East by Lorenzo de Medici to preserve such MSS. as had escaped the ravages of the Turks. This is confirmed by the later corrections (C3) in the MS., which were evidently made at Constantinople3. But from the form of the letters, and other peculiarities, it is believed to have been written at Alexandria, or at all events, where the Alexandrine dialect and method of writing prevailed. Its text is perhaps the purest example of the Alexandrine text,-holding a place about midway between the Constantinopolitan MSS. and most of those of the Alexandrine recension. It was edited very handsomely in uncial type, with copious dissertations, &c., by Tischendorf, in 1843. He assigns to it an age at least equal to A, and places it also in the fifth century. Corrections were written in, apparently in the sixth and ninth centuries: these are respectively cited as C2, C3.
. ] The expression must not be understood as referring to the custom of reclining , as in ch. Joh 13:23 : for by this explanation confusion is introduced into the imagery, and the real depth of the truth hidden. The expression signifies, as Chrysostom observes, :-and is derived from the fond and intimate union of children and parents.
The present participle, as in ch. Joh 3:13, is used to signify essential truth, without any particular regard to time.
On the use of , see reff. It is not put for : indeed it would be well for the student to bear in mind as a general rule, that no word or expression is ever put for another: words are the index of thoughts,-and where an unusual construction is found, it points to some reason in the mind of the writer for using it, which reason is lost in the ordinary shallow method of accounting for it by saying that it is put for some other word. So here, is not = , but is a carrying on of the thought expressed in Joh 1:1, by : it is a pregnant construction, involving in it the begetting of the Son and His being the of the Father,-His proceeding forth from God. It is a similar expression, on the side of His Unity with the Father, to , on the side of His manifestation to men. We have similar expressions, uniting the verb of rest with the preposition of motion, in , Od. . 51; , Eur. Iph. [24]. 624: see Khner, Gr. Gr. 622.
[24] CODEX BORGIANUS 1, in the Library of the Propaganda at Rome, of the fifth century (probably). Contains fragments of Luke and John with a Sahidic version. The portions Joh 6:28-67; Joh 7:6 to Joh 8:31 were published by A. A. Georgi, at Rome, in 1789: and examined by Tischendorf. This Grco-Egyptian MS. also contains a portion of St. Luke, Luk 22:20 to Luk 23:20, which was first brought to my notice by Dr. Tregelles, as being mentioned by Zoega in his Catalogus Codicum Copticorum MSS. qui in Museo Borgiano Velitris adservantur. My brother, the Rev. Bradley H. Alford, happening to be at Rome, was fortunate enough to obtain permission to collate this ancient fragment, and sent me the collation, from which the readings were, in Edn. 4 of this Volume, first published. Two other portions of the same MS. were once in the possession of C. G. Woide and were published by Ford in the Appendix to the Codex Alexandrinus, Oxford, 1799. They comprise Luk 12:15 to Luk 13:32; Joh 8:33-42.
] He, and none else: an emphatic exclusive expression.
] declared, better than hath declared, as E. V. , , and (Gen 41:8; Gen 41:24), are technical terms used of the declaration of divine matters. Wetstein has collected abundance of passages in illustration of this usage. See also Mllers Eumenides, Excursus D, on the . But Lcke (and I think rightly) believes it more in accordance with the simple style of John to take the word here in its ordinary, not its technical meaning.
The object to be supplied after the verb is most likely , i.e. . De Wette thinks this too definite, and supplies that which He has seen, as in ch. Joh 3:11. Lcke supplies . ., as being that which He has seen; but De Wette well observes that is more matter of revelation by act, than of . Euthymiuss explanation, , is certainly wrong. See Mat 11:27.
Fuente: The Greek Testament
Joh 1:18. , God) Whom grace and truth exhibit as love [in essence].-, no one) not even Moses, much less those earlier than the time of Moses, nor Jacob, nor Isaiah, nor Ezekiel: not even the angels saw Him in such manner as the Son. See the note on Rom 16:25, etc. [The revelation of the mystery, which was kept secret since the world began].-, hath seen) no one hath seen: no one hath declared [God]: The Son hath seen, the Son hath declared, [God] ch. Joh 3:32 [What He hath seen and heard, that He testifieth].- , who was) Comp. Joh 5:1, and still more, Joh 6:62 [What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up, where He was before?]; 1Jn 1:2 [That eternal life which was with the Father, and has been manifested unto us]. So for was, ch. Joh 9:25 [whereas I was blind, now I see; ]: So Heb. , who sucked, Song Son 8:1. , in the bosom) ch. Joh 6:46 [Not that any man hath seen the Father, save He which is of God, He hath seen the Father]. Pro 8:30 [Then I was by Him as one brought up with Him, I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him]. Zec 13:7 My shepherd, and the man that is my fellow, saith the Lord of Hosts. The bosom here is divine, paternal, fruitful, mild, secret, spiritual. Men are said to be in the loins, who are about to be born: they are in the bosom, who have been born. The Son was in the bosom of the Father; because He was never not-born. The highest degree of unity, and the most intimate knowledge are signified by immediate sight [the seeing God face to face].- [That Being] He) An epithet of excellency and distance [implying the vast interval that separates Him above all others].-, hath explained [declared God]) both by His words and by the sight of Himself [as God manifest in the flesh].
Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament
Joh 1:18
Joh 1:18
No man hath seen God at any time;-While no man hath seen God, Jesus is the only begotten Son of God and the express image of his person and the effulgence of his power and is presented to man as the best beloved of the Father and the perfect representative of God, declaring Gods own fullness and perfectness and the full representative of God to the world.
the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father,-[Most intimate with him-not living, like Moses, at an infinite distance from him. This intimacy gives him such thorough knowledge of all that pertains to him as to qualify him for the next clause.]
he hath declared him.-[Revealed or manifested him. There is more in this than the mere declaration of a messenger. Jesus Christ is the visible manifestation of God. He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.” God has now been seen in the person of his Son, who was the effulgence of his glory, and the very image of his substance.]
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
hath seen God
CF Gen 32:20; Exo 24:10; Exo 33:18; Jdg 6:22; Jdg 13:22; Rev 22:4. The divine essence, God, veiled in angelic form, and especially as incarnate in Jesus Christ, has been seen of men.; Gen 18:2; Gen 18:22; Joh 14:8; Joh 14:9.
declared Lit. led him forth, i.e. into full revelation. Joh 14:9.
Fuente: Scofield Reference Bible Notes
seen: Joh 6:46, Exo 33:20, Deu 4:12, Mat 11:27, Luk 10:22, Col 1:15, 1Ti 1:17, 1Ti 6:16, 1Jo 4:12, 1Jo 4:20
the only: Joh 1:14, Joh 3:16-18, 1Jo 4:9
in the: Joh 13:23, Pro 8:30, Isa 40:11, Lam 2:12, Luk 16:22, Luk 16:23
he hath: Joh 12:41, Joh 14:9, Joh 17:6, Joh 17:26, Gen 16:13, Gen 18:33, Gen 32:28-30, Gen 48:15, Gen 48:16, Exo 3:4-6, Exo 23:21, Exo 33:18-23, Exo 34:5-7, Num 12:8, Jos 5:13-15, Jos 6:1, Jos 6:2, Jdg 6:12-26, Jdg 13:20-23, Isa 6:1-3, Eze 1:26-28, Hos 12:3-5, Mat 11:27, Luk 10:22, 1Jo 5:20
Reciprocal: Gen 16:10 – the angel Gen 17:22 – General Gen 32:30 – I have Exo 24:10 – saw Exo 33:23 – thou shalt Num 14:14 – art seen Jdg 6:22 – because Jdg 13:22 – we have Job 42:5 – mine Psa 2:7 – this Isa 60:2 – the Lord Eze 10:1 – as the Dan 8:13 – that certain saint Dan 10:17 – talk Amo 9:1 – I saw Mat 12:42 – behold Mat 21:37 – last Mar 12:6 – one Joh 1:10 – was in Joh 1:34 – this Joh 1:49 – thou Joh 3:11 – We speak Joh 3:13 – no man Joh 5:20 – and showeth Joh 5:37 – Ye have Joh 7:29 – I Joh 8:19 – if Joh 8:55 – but Joh 9:35 – the Son Joh 10:15 – As Joh 13:3 – and that Joh 14:7 – ye Joh 17:5 – glorify Joh 17:25 – but Rom 1:20 – For the 1Co 1:30 – wisdom 2Co 4:4 – the image Phi 2:6 – in Heb 1:2 – spoken Heb 1:6 – And again 1Jo 1:2 – which was Rev 21:23 – the Lamb
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
THE ONLY-BEGOTTEN SON
The only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father.
Joh 1:18
So writes John, in this glorious introduction to his Gospel. He is about to tell, in the following chapters, of what the Man Christ Jesus did, and said, and suffered; how He called His disciples, how he sat wearied by the well, how He wept at the grave, how He died upon the Cross, and rose again. And here, then, first He tells us, plainly, solemnly, and sweetly, Who this Man was. He shows us His other nature, His Godhead, His eternity, His oneness with the Eternal Fatherso that we may believe, and adore, and rest in and enjoy, the preciousness and power of all which as Man He did and bore; the wonder of His being Man at all; the loveliness and peace of the thought that He was made Man and slain for sinners.
Now part of this description of the eternal Nature, the Godhead, of Jesus the beloved Saviour, is this simply worded yet mysterious truth: that He is one with the Father, and the Beloved of the Father. Could it be more graciously conveyed than it is here: The only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father? This is one part, then, of what we know of the Saviours glory. Let us look at it just as it is set before us.
I. All is mystery in such a truth; yet all, in one respect, is simplicity and joy. All is mystery. If we ask how these things can be, the answer must be, We absolutely cannot know. The being and Nature of God is in itself an unfathomable secret. He Who is from everlasting (think of it) and to everlasting; all knowing, Almighty; surely the how and the why of His Nature and His ways absolutely must be far above out of our sight? And so, when we read, on His own Word (and nothing less than His Word could be worth hearing about it) of this wonderful Fatherhead and Sonship which is in Himof God the Father, one Person; and God the Son, another Person; both Eternal, both Almighty, because both God in the Scripture sense of God: and yet One, one God, in a oneness most deep and blessedwhen we read of this, and try to think it out, in its how and why, by our knowledge of human fathers and human sonsthought fails; we feel we cannot tell; His ways are past finding out.
In this respect, all is mystery indeed. Clouds and darkness are round about that throne where from eternity to eternity the only begotten Son iseternally isin the bosom of the Father.
II. But then, on another side, how simple and how divinely comforting and gladdening is the revelation of this only begotten Son in the bosom of the Father.We lay aside the vain, weary question, how it can be. We look here and see on the page of Gods book that, however it is, it is. And now what light it gives! The Son, the only Son, the beloved Son, the Father, the infinitely loving Father; such is the truth about the God Who made us. How simple indeed are the holy words Father, Son, the bosom of the Father. Nothing is here but nearness, dearness, love. The golden words, God is love, shine even brighter than ever when we think how Scripture, how God tells us of this union and endearment on the Throne, the eternally loving Father, the eternally beloved Son. Look simply again, I entreat you, on this truth, this mighty truth, of the inner Divine love. Does it not somewhat move and stir your heart, even if that heart is as yet a stranger to the love of God? Does it not show you that at least, whether you love God or not, God is lovable? Can you not believe, whether you ever felt it or no, that there is in such a God a heart to love you, dearly to love you? Ah! believe that there is such a heart in Him.
The only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father.
Such is the simplicity of the truth, whatever be the mystery. Christ the Saviour of sinners, Christ the welcomer of the weary, Christ the meek and lowly, is nothing less than this, the only begotten Son who is eternally in the bosom of the Father.
III. Who shall explore, and weigh, and fathom that lovethe love of God the Father for God the Son?We shrink from the question; we know it must be a love immeasurable as it is eternal; the love of the All-blessed for the All-blessed; of the All-holy for the All-holy; of God for God. I ask, who can explore and estimate that loveonly that I may ask, in closing, one or two questions suggested by it.
(a) The Father loveth the Son, with a love infinitely above what any creature can have for Him. Well, what then was the Fathers compassionating love for the sinful world, that He so loved it, yes, so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should have eternal life?
(b) The Father loveth the Son; then what an object of love must that Son be to them that find Him, to them, to us, to whom His Gospel comes! And what is obedience to the Son, but a life lived in the path of His most blessed will, under the light of His most precious love?
(c) The Father loveth the Son, Who is in the bosom of the Father. Then what is the love of the Father by those who are led by the Holy Spirit to love the Son, to recognise and accept and love the Lord Christ Jesus as their pardon, their peace, their life, their hope, their righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption? Think of this, that it may attract you to your Lord.
Bishop H. C. G. Moule.
Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary
8
No man with fleshly eyes has ever seen God, for that would have caused his death (Exo 33:20). Yet God wished to give man some kind of glimpse at Him that he could endure, hence the Son of God came among man in the form of flesh, who then declared, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father” (Joh 14:9).
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
The Apologists Bible Commentary
John 1
18No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known (NIV).
C o m m e n t a r yJohn 1:18 presents some interesting challenges for the translator and exegete. The issues surround the phrase rendered in the NIV as “God the One and Only.” Other versions read as follows: NASB ESV KJ V ISV RSV NWT the only begotten God the Only God the only begotten Son the unique God the only Son the only-begotten god The theological stakes are high. Does this verse call Jesus the “only Son” or the “only God?” Is the Son an “only-begotten god” – a created secondary god alongside the “unbegotten” Father? Or is He the “only begotten Son” in a literal sense – begotten by a union of the Father and Mary? The exegetical issues may be categorized as those dealing with whether Jesus is called “Son or God” (a textual issue) and how this title is modified or amplified (an issue of translation). Only Son or Only God? The initial problem is a textual one. Of the thousands of early Greek New Testament manuscripts, there are four principal textual variants of this phrase. We first need to establish which variant we believe represents the original text, then move from there into possible translations of that text. The four variants (in transliterated Greek) are: 1. ho monogens (The Only One) 2. ho monogens huios (the only Son) 3. monogens theos (only God) 4. ho monogens theos (the only God) In the field of textual criticism, there are two fundamental criteria used to establish which text represents the original: External evidence and internal evidence. External evidence consists of examining the manuscripts containing the variants, collating them into “families” or so-called “text-types,” charting them to see which variant may be present in the earliest manuscripts, determining which variant has the greatest manuscript support in raw numbers, which is distributed across the largest number of text-types, etc. Next, the textual critic will see which variant best explains the others – that is, if we can demonstrate that an original monogens theos more easily was changed in the transmission process to ho monogens huios rather than the other way around, the former reading gains support as the possible original text. Only after the external evidence has been weighed – and only if it is found to not to be conclusive – will textual critics turn to internal evidence, such as immediate and larger context, authorial style and usage, etc. According to the majority of modern scholars (but by no means all), the external evidence favors monogens theos as the original text. However, it must be noted that this reading exists primarily in the Alexandrian text-types. Textus Receptus – the manuscript tradition behind the KJV and many other Bibles – reads ho monogens huios. This reading ranks second in terms of the number of manuscripts containing it, and has a wider distribution among text-types. Turning to internal evidence, ho monogens huios is consistent with John’s usage elsewhere and fits the immediate context (Son…Father) better than the other variants. Buchsel says monogens theos “can hardly be credited to J[oh]n, who is distinguished by monumental simplicity of expression” (TDNT, 4:740, note 14). Monogens theos is a so-called hapax legomenon – a rare one-time occurrence in the NT. Textual critics prefer readings that are not unique, unless compelled by external evidence otherwise. But, as Kurt Aland, has noted even strong internal evidence should never outweigh external evidence (Aland and Aland, The Text of the New Testament, p. 280). Such is the case with John 1:18. A final consideration, which many scholars consider decisive, is that it is easier to explain a scribe – either by design or mistake – changing theos to huios, rather than the other way around. The reading monogens theos is the more “difficult” reading, in that it does not occur elsewhere in the NT, and it directly attributes theos to Jesus. As William Barclay notes, “the more difficult reading is always the reading which is more likely to be the original” (Jesus As They Saw Him, p. 23). This is because a scribe would generally be inclined to “smooth out” difficult readings, rather than create them. Even if it were a simple scribal error, the sudden appearance of a “difficult reading” in the manuscript tradition would likely be corrected back to the normative text, whereas a sudden “smoothing” might remain in place and ultimately replace the original. On balance, monogens theos is represented in a great number of the earliest MSS, is prominent in the MSS that are considered to contain accurate texts, and is most probably what John actually wrote. Translating Monogens There are two significant difficulties the translator must resolve when rendering monogens in English: What does the word mean and does it function as an adjective or as a noun? The first difficulty is complicated by a long tradition of translating monogens as “only-begotten.” This is the rendering found in most English Bibles prior to the 20th Century, most notably the King James. The rendering “only-begotten,” however, actually predates the Bible in English, going back to Jerome’s Latin Vulgate. The Old Latin versions uniformly translated monogens as the Latin unicus (“only”). Jerome rendered monogens this way as well, when the word does not refer to Christ. However, in the six verses where it does, Jerome rendered it unigenitus (“only-begotten”). Jerome, probably following Gregory of Nazianzus (A.D. 329 – 390), sought to respond to the Arian claim that Christ was a created being by referring to the relationship of the Father to the Son as one of “generation” (the Father = gennetor [“begetter”]; the Son = gennema [“begotten”]). Following Origen, Gregory (and Jerome) understood the generation of the Son to be an eternal process, one which maintained the unity of the Son in Eternity with His Father, while preserving the Biblical distinction between the Two. This unfortunate (though perhaps well-intentioned) theological rendering of monogens influenced the King James translators, and they in turn, most English Bibles produced since then. In the last century, however, scholars and translators have recognized that monogens is not related to the verb gennao (“begotten”), but to ginomai (“to be”). Thus, the Old Latin and Jerome (in the verses not referring to Jesus Christ) are correct to render monogens as unicus (“only”) – literally, “one of a kind” (see Grammatical Analysis , below, for further details). And this practice has been followed by many modern versions, rendering it variously as “only,” “unique,” or “one and only.” Some scholars and translators, however, argue that monogens – when used of persons – carries the sense of an only offspring. Thus, translations such as the ESV, ISV and the RSV render monogens in John 1:14 and Hebrews 11:17 as “only Son,” even though it appears in these verses absolutely (that is, by itself, without an accompanying noun). The second difficulty is determining whether monogens functions as a noun or adjective in this verse. John uses monogens as a noun (or “substantive”) just four verses earlier. In John 1:14, monogens is a substantive, meaning: “only Son” or “only One.” But in three other verses (John 3:16, 18; 1 John 4:9), John uses monogens as an adjective modifying the noun “Son” (Greek: huios). It would seem, on the surface, that John 1:18 is most similar to the adjectival usage, with the word “God” taking the place of “Son” (Greek: monogens theos vs monogens huios). In this case, monogens would modify “God” in John 1:18 the same way it does “Son” in John 3:18: “The only God” or “Only Son God.” But surface appearances do not always reveal the entire picture. In his three clear adjectival uses of monogens, John uses the article. In the substantival use in John 1:14, he does not – nor does he does so in John 1:18. The lack of the article in John 1:18 suggests that monogens and theos may be understood as two substantives in apposition (“only Son, [who is] God”). As Fennema puts it:: “Reading the terms individually, rather than as a unit, is consistent with the lack of an article to bind them together.” McReynolds and Harris make the same point. Had John wished to use monogens unambiguously as an adjective, he could have written ho theos ho monogens. He could also have made the adjectival force far more likely by writing ho monogens theos. Instead, he wrote simply monogens theos, using monogens without the article as he does just four verses earlier, and with a writer of John’s evident skill, this certainly was intentional. Further, in John’s Gospel, there are 72 occurrences of nominative-masculine-singular adjectives (like monogens, in John 1:18), and only eight of them precede the noun. That’s an 8:1 ratio. Let’s consider the eight. Three are terms which, to my knowledge, never occur substantivally in any context (“every,” 2:10; “large,” 6:5; “my,” 7:8). That leaves five, one of which is monogens theos. The remaining four are all allos mathts (“[the /an]other disciple,” 18:15; 20:3; 20:4; 20:8). All but one are articular. Conversely, John uses allos five times substantivally (4:37; 5:7, 32, 43; 15:24; 21:18). In all cases, allos is anarthrous. Considering John’s usage of nominative-masculine-singular adjectives that can be substantivized preceding a nominative-masculine-singular noun, we find: 1. John only fronts a noun with monogens once when he intends it to be adjectival, and it is articular in that case. 2. Excluding John 1:18, he uses the article 75% of the time when intending the adjectival meaning. 3. Again, excluding John 1:18, in all cases when intending the substantival meaning, he uses the anarthrous construction. This is not to say that an attributive adjective must have the article. But these statistics suggests that John favors using the article with adjectives in the first attributive position, and therefore might intend a substantival meaning in the anarthrous monogens in John 1:18. When we look at John’s regular use of monogens elsewhere, and particularly in the immediate context (monogens is clearly used as a noun just four verses earlier), and consider the many clear examples of substantival use in Biblical and contemporary Greek texts, the evidence for a substantive reading is quite strong. Conclusion Monogens means “only” or “only child/son/offspring.” It can stand alone as it does in John 1:14 – “the only Son” – or it can be used adjectivally to modify a noun as it does in John 3:16 – “the only Son.” In John 1:18, it can be viewed as a substantive (“The only one, “the Unique One”), a substantive absolute containing the idea of an only offspring (“the Only Son”), or adjectivally modifying theos (“the only God,” “the unique God”). Theos can also be taken both substantivally (“God”) or adjectivally (“divine”). Thus, the translator has a number of “legitimate” choices he or she can make that are true to the grammar. How each ultimately chooses to render the passage depends an a host of factors. A number of prominent scholars prefer apposition to an adjectival rendering. Origen cites of John 1:18 in Contra Celsum 2.71: “kai monogens ge n theos …,” which I would translate “the one and only [Son], being God…” McReynolds cites this as “a clear early witness as to how one should understand the reading monogens theos.”10 On the whole, I find the evidence presented by these scholars convincing. I would render monogens theos as “the only Son, God.” However, an adjectival reading for monogens is also possible, yielding a translation similar to the ESV or ISV, “the one and only God.”
G r a m m i t i c a l A n a l y s i s monogenhV qeoV wn ton kolpon tou patroV ekeinoV exhghsato MONOGENS THEOS hO N TON KOLPON TOU PATROS EKEINOS EXGSATO [The} one and only God who is in the bosom of the father, [he] has explained [Him]. MONOGENS BAGD : “In the Johannine lit[erature] m[onogens] is used only of Jesus. The mngs. only, unique may be quite adequate for all its occurrences here…But some (e.g., WBauer, Hdb.) prefer to regard m[onogens] as somewhat heightened in mng. in J and 1J to only-begotten or begotten of the Only One.” (Bauer, it will be remembered, believed the Gospel of John was a gnostic text, and hence saw a theology behind John’s writing compatible with the creation of the Logos as a semi-divine intermediary between the Monas and the creation with which He could not directly interact). Louw & Nida : “Pertaining to what is unique in the sense of being the only one of the same kind or class – ‘unique, only.'” Moulton & Milligan : “Literally ‘one of a kind,’ ‘only,’ ‘unique’ (unicus), not ‘only-begotten….'” Grimm/Thayer : “Single of its kind, only, [A.V. only-begotten].” (Note that Thayer’s insertion merely cites the KJV translation, which owes considerable debt to the Vulgate of Jerome, who translated monogens “unigenitus”). NIDNTT : “The only begotten, or only….RSV and NEB render monogens as ‘only.’ This meaning is supported by R. E. Brown, The Gospel According to John, Anchor Bible, I, 1966, 13 f., and D. Moody, God’s Only Son: The Translation of John 3:16 in the Revised Standard Version, JBL 72, 1953, 213-19. Lit. it means of a single kind, and could even be used in this sense of the Phoenix (1 Clem. 25:2). It is only distantly related to gennao, beget. The idea of only begotten goes back to Jerome who used unigenitus in the Vulg. to counter the Arian claim that Jesus was not begotten but made.” Newman : “Unique, only.” LSJ : “Only, single” (references John 1:14, the only NT verse cited). TDNT defines monogens as “only begotten,” but distinguishes between nouns ending in -genes and adverbs ending in -gens. The former denote the source of the derivation, the latter the nature of the derivation. Thus, the author (Buchsel) concludes that monogens means “of sole descent.” But Pendrick argues strongly against this view: Buchsel’s claim that “in accordance with the strict meaning of genos, -gens always denotes derivation” is contradicted both by the evidence of the aforementioned adjectives as well as by the fact that even in the earliest Greek literature genos occurs without the denotation of derivation. On the other hand…monogens could be … interpreted rather as ‘only-born.’ (:Pendrick, “MONOGENHS,” NTS, 41, pp. 587-588). Buchsel also calls “an only-begotten, one who is God:” “an exegetical invention [which] can hardly be credited of [John], who is distinguished by monumental simplicity of expression.” (TDNT 4 p. 740). Buchsel makes this comment in a footnote, and doesn’t elaborate on his reasons for his conclusion. As far as I know, he has never in print provided a reason for this comment. Buchsel provides a list of his sources, but makes no reference to the Patristics. This is a rather striking omission, since the term is used over 100 times in Patristic writings. For Biblical and extra-Biblical uses of monogens as a substantive, see note , below. In any case, few modern scholars writing on monogens have agreed with Buchsel on this point.
O t h e r V i e w s C o n s i d e r e d Jehovah’s Witnesses objection: The New World Translation (NWT) of Jehovah’s Witnesses renders John 1:18 as follows: No man has seen God at any time; the only-begotten god who is in the bosom [position] with the Father is the one that has explained him. (Joh 1:18 NWT). In defense of this translation, Jehovah’s Witness apologist Greg Stafford, citing Dahms, argues that monogens – at least in John’s usage, always means “only-begotten” (Stafford , pp. 356-357): We have examined all of the evidence which has come to our attention concerning the meaning of monogens in the Johannine writings and have found that the majority view of modern scholarship has very little support….’Only-begotten’ is the most accurate translation after all (Dahms, “The Johannine Use of Monogenes Reconsidered,” NTS, 29, p. 231). Mr. Stafford acknowledges that Pendrick argues against Dahms on numerous points, and Mr. Stafford interacts with him and finds his counter-arguments unsatisfactory. I will address each of Mr. Stafford’s objections to Pendrick in my Response, below. Regarding the meaning of monogens, Mr. Stafford concludes: “In filial contexts where monogens is used of an offspring, the idea of generation seems always to be present, or at least implied, in the NT” (Stafford, pp. 357-358). Another Witness author, Rolf Furuli, is less dogmatic about the precise meaning of monogens, however he argues whether it means “unique,” “only-begotten,” or “uniquely derived,” It implies the generation/derivation of only one of its kind….the words of John 1:18, therefore, may imply that apart from the Father, others may be called “gods,” but of these only one is “the only-begotten/uniquely derived god.” (Furuli , p. 224). response: Mr. Stafford’s conclusion (that in the NT, when monogens is used of an offspring, “the idea of generation seems always to be present, or at least implied”) is overdrawn. Indeed, Mr. Stafford admits that in Luke, “either ‘only-begotten’ or ‘only’ is equally acceptable” (Stafford , p. 358, emphasis added). The implication Mr. Stafford and Mr. Furuli find of generation may be explained by “the obvious and natural connection between ‘child’ and the notion of birth or derivation.”11 On other occasions, Mr. Stafford argues that the meaning of a word in the NT should be informed by usage in the LXX.12 But in the case of monogens, Mr. Stafford does not consider the LXX at all, saying: “We are primarily concerned with usage…in the NT” (Stafford p. 358). Mr. Stafford’s reluctance may be due to the fact that, as Pendrick (citing Buchsel) notes: Monogens in the LXX means ‘only,’ ‘single’ … or ‘unique’ … or even ‘solitary’…reflecting the Hebrew yachid which it translates.”13 Pendrick argues that monogens in Hebrews 11:17 means “unique.” Mr. Stafford agrees that Pendrick’s argument is “possible,” but rejoins: “in human terms a child must have two parents, and Isaac was the only-begotten son of both Abraham and Sarah” (Stafford , p. 358). But, as Pendrick points out, “Isaac is there spoken of as Abraham’s son (the article ton has possessive force),”14 not Abraham and Sarah’s son. The Genesis account refers to Isaac as Abraham’s “only” son (Hebrew: yachid in Genesis 22:2, 12, 16). While the LXX renders yachid as “beloved” (Greek: agapos), Aquila renders it as monogens in Genesis 22:2, as does Symmachus in Genesis 22:12. As Richard Longenecker notes: “the fact that yachid can be translated by both monogen and agapos suggests something of the roughly synonymous notations associated with these two Greek words.”15 . Thus, there is really no basis for concluding that monogens in Hebrews means anything other than “only” or “only son.” Turning to John’s use of monogens, Pendrick argues that the adjective “emphasizes Jesus’ unique status as the only son of God.”16 Mr. Stafford responds: “But Jesus is not God’s only son! (Stafford , p. 359).” Stafford suggests that the translation “unique Son” calls into question how Jesus is unique, and concludes: “Only-begotten is the only [translation] that answers this question and at the same time remains true to the Biblical teaching that God does have other sons” (Ibid). Pendrick’s argument is substantially more nuanced than Mr. Stafford implies. Pendrick points to support for his view in the “leitmotif which runs through the whole of John’s Gospel,” namely: The uniqueness of Jesus – of his relation to the Father, of his mission and of the revelation which he offers….Monogens here emphasizes that as God’s only son, Jesus is the only source of revelation about the Father.17 While others may be called God’s sons in the Bible, there are many ways in which God’s Son is unique – and, as Pendrick correctly notes, one of the major themes in John’s Gospel is to explain the various ways in which Jesus is the Son of God (John 20:32). Further, Pendrick anticipates the argument raised by Mr. Stafford as follows: Parallel to the Johannine use of monogens to emphasize Jesus’ uniqueness is the careful terminological distinction maintained between Jesus as God’s ‘son’ (huios) and believers as God’s children (tekna).18 Thus Pendrick demonstrates how the translation “only” or “unique” fits perfectly with one of John’s main purposes in writing his Gospel, and Mr. Stafford’s response fails to provide a convincing reason to think otherwise. Pendrick also argues that there is no undisputed use of “begotten” (Greek: genna) for Jesus in John’s Gospel or letters.19 Mr. Stafford responds that 1 John 5:18 is a counter-example: 1 John 5:18b (NIV) the one who was born of God keeps him safe, and the evil one cannot harm him (the “one born of God” is Jesus Christ). Pendrick considers this example to be “uncertain.” In the first place, there is a major textual variant in this verse, reflected in translations based on Textus Receptus: 1 John 5:18b (ASV) but he that was begotten of God keepeth himself, and the evil one toucheth him not (the “one born of God” is the believer). The issue turns on who “the one born of God” is: Jesus or believers. If it is Jesus, argues Mr. Stafford, “1 John 5:18 is referring to Jesus Christ, and therefore shows that the idea of Jesus’ ‘birth’ from God was well known to John” (Stafford , p. 360). Pendrick refers his readers to commentator and author Raymond Brown for “evidence and arguments” regarding the various ways this verse has been understood by scholars, and therefore of the “uncertainty” of its referent. Mr. Stafford does not engage Brown’s arguments at all, instead apparently thinking that if he can demonstrate that the variant “him” (Greek: auton) is more likely than “himself” (Greek: heauton), he has successfully rebutted Pendrick. Let’s consider Mr. Stafford’s arguments in order, supplying counterpoints from Brown and others, as necessary. First, Mr. Stafford acknowledges that the variant “himself” occurs in a number of manuscripts, but “him” (Greek: auton) is the preferred reading, citing Metzger . Metzger and the UBS Translation Committee rated auton as a {B} variant (“almost certain”), but the reading “himself” is very widely exampled. It exists in: Codex Sinaiticus, the corrector of Alexandrinus, the Byzantine tradition, the Peshitta, Sahidic, Armenian, and by Origen, Epiphanius, Didymus, Theophylact and the critical version of Merk, Vogels, and von Soden.20 It appears the UBS Committee did not give “him” an {A} rating due to this wide range of witnesses reading “himself.” But the textual variant tells only part of the story. Even if one regards auton as the “almost certain” variant, this does not preclude the understanding that believers are the ones “born of God.” Indeed, auton may be used as a reflexive21 , and – as Brown notes – this was the interpretation of many Greek church fathers.22 Thus, we must turn to internal evidence to determine just how likely it is that John here uses “begotten” of Jesus. This brings us to Mr. Stafford’s second argument; namely that that if “himself” is the preferred reading, “we have a case where the believer who is spiritually ‘born’ from God ‘protects himself'” (Stafford , p. 360). Mr. Stafford apparently believes that because elsewhere, (John 17:15 and 2 Thessalonians 3:3) it is God that protects sinners, this meaning is unlikely. However, it should be noted that the all translations of the Bible based on Textus Receptus (including the KJV, ASV, and RSV) read “himself,” and yet no commentators using these versions found this reading to be theologically difficult. John Gill provides a typical example: keepeth himself; not that any man can keep himself by his own power and strength; otherwise what mean the petitions of the saints to God that he would keep them, and even of Christ himself to God for them on the same account? God only is the keeper of his people, and they are only kept in safety whom he keeps, and it is by his power they are kept; but the sense is, that a believer defends himself by taking to him the whole armour of God, and especially the shield of faith, against the corruptions of his own heart, the snares of the world, and particularly the temptations of Satan (Gill ). Further, modern scholars such as Raymond Brown who argue for “himself” as either the preferred textual variant or the preferred meaning have also had no trouble reconciling the sense of this verse with the Bible’s teaching. Indeed, Brown notes that John himself speaks of Christians as “overcoming” the Evil One in 1 John 2:13-14.23 It would seem, then, that Pendrick’s assertion that Jesus is never indisputably described by John as “begotten” is confirmed by the evidence. While it is possible that John uses “begotten” of Christ in this verse, it is not certain enough upon which to base a lexical decision. As Brown notes: I find it hard to believe that if the Johannine writers thought that Jesus had been begotten by God, they would never elsewhere have used that language in the many passages on the subject.24 In conclusion, Mr. Stafford’s objections to Pendrick have not proven at all convincing. On the whole, the meaning of monogens is very well established: It means “only” or “unique,” and may well carry the sense of an “only child” or “only offspring.” objection: Mr. Stafford considers the translation “only-begotten god” to be “lethal” to the Trinity: The reference to the Word as the “only-begotten god” shows that he is not the same God as the Father, nor His equal. Justin evidently understood this, for he argued: “There is, and there is said to be another God…and Lord subject to the Maker of all things.” (Stafford , p. 361). response: If this reading is so fatal to the Trinity, it is odd that John 1:18 was never a disputed text during the Arian controversy, being used equally by both sides. As Ezra Abbot explains: Though monogenhs qeos may sound strangely to us, it was not a strange or harsh expression to copyists of the third, fourth, and fifth centuries. On the contrary, it was, as we have seen, a favorite phrase with many writers of this period, being used with equal freedom by the Arians and their opponents.25 It will be noted that Dr. Abbot was a Unitarian scholar of considerable note. Indeed, Mr. Stafford refers favorably to Abbot’s work on several occasions (e.g., Romans 9:5 ). If anyone should have noticed the deadliness of this reading to the Trinity, it would be Dr. Abbot.26 As for Mr. Stafford’s reference to Justin Martyr, it would be a mistake to read later Arian thought back into Justin’s words. Justin’s term “second God” occurs in his dialog with Trypho, a Jew. Justin is trying to demonstrate to a devout monotheist that there is another Person in the Bible who is called the true “God.” He does so by citing various theophanies in the OT (Dialog with Trypho, 56), by citing passages in which two “Gods” appear in the OT (Ibid., 58, 60, 126), as well as evidence from the NT, such as Heb 1:8 in which the Father calls the Son “God” (Ibid., 56). It must be noted that in each of these references, the implicit meaning is that the Logos is truly God – distinct from the Father and subordinate to Him, yet essentially one with Him as well. This meaning becomes explicit when Justin discusses passages in which “Lord” (YHWH) is ascribed to “two Gods:” It must be admitted absolutely that some other one is called Lord by the Holy Spirit besides Him who is considered Maker of all things (Ibid., emphasis added).27 objection: Mr.Furuli argues against reading monogens theos as two substantives in apposition (e.g., “The only [child], who is God”): Any adjective can be sustantivized but there is no example of this in the NT when it immediately precedes a noun in the same gender, number, and case (Furuli , p. 223). In support of this argument, Mr. Furuli cites textual scholar Bart Ehrman.28 Dr. Ehrman concludes: “To the best of my knowledge, no one has cited anything analogous outside this passage.” response: It will first be noted that while adjectives normally agree in gender, number, and case with the nouns they modify, this is also true of two substantives in apposition. More importantly, there are a number of examples in the NT of substantivized adjectives preceding nouns of the same gender, number, and case. Here are just two examples: Mat. 13:28: Echthros Anthropos Echthros is tagged by Friberg as Adj-Nom-Masc-Sing; Anthropos is tagged Noun-Nom-Masc-Sing. These are exactly the same tags as monogenes theos in John 1:18. BAGD defines echthros as an adjective in this verse, but: “the position of e before a suggests that e is an adjective here, but a by itself could also serve to emphasize the uncertainly…then this example would belong to b” (b is the substantival definition). Vine defines echthros as an adjective but “used as a noun” in this verse. Thayer translates the phrase in this verse: “a man that is hostile, a certain enemy.” NWT: “an enemy, a man” Darby: “a man [that is] an enemy” YLT: “a man, an enemy.” Acts 2:5: Ioudaioi andpes (eulabeis) Ioudaioi is tagged by Friberg as Adj-Pronomial-Nom-Masc-Sing; andpes is tagged Noun-Nom-Masc-Sing NWT: “Jews, reverent men” Darby: “Jews, pious men” YLT: “Jews, devout men” If Ehrman were correct, Ioudaioi would have to modify andpes, hence “Jewish men.” While some translations render Ioudaioi as an adjective, the New World Translation, which Furuli is defending, takes it as a substantive in apposition to andpes. These examples can be multiplied. Greek scholar Daniel Wallace has written an article doing exactly that, which you can find here . To my knowledge, Dr. Ehrman has not responded. Thus, Dr. Ehrman’s assertion is not borne out by the evidence. There is no grammatical reason why monogens theos cannot be be understood as two substantives in apposition. As noted in the Commentary, above, Origen understood it this way, as have a number of modern Greek grammarians and commentators. Notes. 1. John 3:18 has the article and adjective in what Greek grammarians call the first attributive position (article+adjective+ noun): tou monogenous huiou in John 3:18 John 3:16 and 1 John 4:9 have the article and adjective in the second attributive position (article+noun+article+ adjective): John 3:16: ton huion ton monogen 1 John 4:9: ton huion autou ton monogen 2. An appositional substantive further defines the head-noun, as in: “This is my friend, Roger.” We may use the gloss “who is” to help identify appositional nouns (e.g., “This is my friend, who is Roger”). 3. D.A. Fennema, “John 1:18”, NTS 31, p. 128. 4. Paul R. McReynolds, “John 1:18 in Textual Variation and Translation,” in New Testament Textual Criticism: Its Significance for Exegesis: Essays in Honor of Bruce M. Metzger, Epp and Fee, eds, 1981, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981, p. 106; Harris , p. 91. 5. These statistics were derived from an analytical search of the Greek New Testament using Quickverse Greek Edition, which utilizes the Friberg morphological tagging system. 6. “Adjectives and particles may be attributive when no article is used” (Robertson , p. 656). Robertson cites John 1:18 as an example, but says just two sentences before: “The attribute may be substantive in apposition with another substantive.” 7. In Biblical usage, monogens appears as an absolute ten times (LXX: Judges 11:34, Psalm 21:20; 24:16; 34:17, Tobit 3:15; 6:14; Wisdom 7:22; NT [excluding John 1:18]: Luke 9:38, John 1:14, Hebrews 11:17. Lampe lists eleven examples of monogens used absolutely in his Patristic Greek Lexicon. In The Martyrdom of Polycarp, section 20:2, we find a substantival use (tou monogenous iesou christou) which the Lightfoot/Harmer/Holmes translation renders “the only begotten Son, Jesus Christ (Holmes, The Apostolic Fathers, p. 242-243). 8. It may be asked why, if monogens contains in itself the meaning “only child” or “only son,” it modifies huios in John 3:16, 18, and 1 John 4:9? The NT is replete with examples of ‘doubled’ word pairs. For example: Eiserchomai eis occurs over 80 times in the NT. Erchomai eis occurs 70 times. Both mean ‘come into,’ but eiserchomai also means “come into” when used absolutely (c.f., Mat 8:5). However, we do not translate eiserchomai eis as ‘come into-into.” The doubling may simply be to make the gender of the “only child” explicit, or to provide emphasis. 9. E.g., Burton, du Plessis, de Kruijf, Finegan, Theobald, Fennema, Beasley-Murray, Carson, McReynolds, BAGD, Westcott, R.E. Brown, William Loader, Feuillet, Lagrange, Cullmann, Lindars, E.A. Abbott, Barnard, Rahner, J.A.T. Robinson, W.F. Howard, and the translators of the NIV and ESV. 10. McReynolds, p. 108. 11. Gerard Pendrick, “MONOGENHS,” NTS, 41, p. 590. 12. E.g., Stafford proskyneo (pp. 206-207); prtotokos (p. 217-218); arch (p. 239 n 119). 13. Pendrick, p. 592. BDB defines yachid as: only, only one, solitary. The TWOT lists “only-begotten” as a possible gloss for yachid, not on the basis of any inherent meaning in the Hebrew, but because it is sometimes rendered in the LXX as monogens. But they add: “It must be pointed out, however, that even monogens may “be used more generally without reference to its etymological derivation in the sense of ‘unique’, ‘unparalleled,’ ‘incomparable,’ ” (They are here quoting the TDNT entry for monogens). 14. Pendrick, p. 593, emphasis in original. For the article used as a possessive pronoun, see Robertson , p. 684; Wallace , pp. 215-216. Pendrick here is responding to Dahms, who argues that monogen means “only-begotten” in Hebrews 11:17 on slightly different grounds than Mr. Stafford. Pendrick argues convincingly that Dahms’ appeals to Targum Pseudo-Jonathan and Philo do not support his position. Ellingworth, in his Commentary on the Greek text of Hebrews, notes that the chiastic structure of this verse concentrates “attention on Abraham, and thus prepare for the development in vv. 18-19” (Ellingworth , p. 600). 15. Richard Longenecker, “The One and Only Son “. Longenecker concludes his study: “in Johannine usage monogen is an adjective connoting quality, which should be translated in a manner signaling primarily uniqueness.” 16. Pendrick, p. 595. 17. Ibid. Pendrick cites Raymond Brown: “It is the unique relation of the Son to the Father, so unique that John can speak of ‘God the only Son,’ that makes his revelation the supreme revelation” (Brown, The Gospel of John, p. 36). He could, of course, have cited numerous other commentators who have drawn this same conclusion, e.g., Beasley-Murray, John, pp. 15-16; Westcott, The Gospel According to St. John, p. 15; Carson, The Gospel According to John, p. 135. 18. Pendrick, p. 595 note 43. 19. “There is no certain reference to Jesus as ‘begotten’ in Johannine texts; rather, it is Christians or believers who are repeatedly characterized as ‘begotten by God'” (Pendrick, p. 596). 20. Raymond Brown, The Epistles of John, p. 621. 21. BDF , 283. 22. Brown, p. 621. 23. Ibid. 24. Ibid, p. 622. 25. Ezra Abbot, “On the Reading ‘Only-Begotten God’ in John 1:18: With Particular Reference to the Statements of Dr. Tragelles,” in Thayer, JH, ed., Authorship of the Fourth Gospel and Other Critical Essays, George H. Ellis Publishers: 1888. 26. Mr. Stafford’s point also seems to have eluded commentators on John’s Gospel (e.g., Ridderbos, Carson, Beasely-Murray, Westcott, Robertson) and the NASB translators. 27. For more information on the Christology of Justin and other early Church Fathers often quoted by the Watchtower and its apologists, see Were Early Christians Trinitarians? 28. Bart D. Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, London: Oxford Press, 1996 p. 81 (Furuli cites page 80 of the 1993 edition). Greg Stafford makes the same argument (Stafford , p. 359) without citing Ehrman or Furuli.
F u r t h e r R e a d i n gArticles The Text and Grammar of John 1:18 Dan Wallace The One and Only Son Richard Longenecker
Fuente: The Apologists Bible Commentary
Joh 1:18. No one hath seen God at any time; One who is only begotten God, he that is in the bosom of the Father, he declared him. It is not possible in a commentary such as this to defend the reading which we here adopt, God instead of Son. But the passage is so extremely important that we may be permitted for once to depart from our usual practice of not referring to other writers, and to commend to our readers one of the finest critical Dissertations ever published in any language upon a reading of the New Testament. We refer to that by Dr. Hort of Cambridge upon this text (Macmillan, 1876). We add only that by thus reading we preserve an important characteristic of the structural principles of our Evangelist, that which leads him at the close of a section or a period to return to its beginning. The word God here corresponds to God in Joh 1:1.
No one hath seen God at any time. The contrast is to we beheld in Joh 1:14, and the words describe God in His nature as God; He dwelleth in light that is inaccessible. The soul longs to see Him, but this cannot be. Is then its longing vain, its cry unheard? The Evangelist answers, No. One has declared Him, has, as the Word, unfolded and explained Him. And the glorious fitness of the Word to do this is pointed out in three particulars, all showing how fitly He could do that which none other could do. (1) He is only begotten, Son among all other sons in His own peculiar sense, who is fully able to represent the Father, to whom all the perfections of the Father flow. (2) He is Godnot only Son, but, as Son, God,Himself divine, not in a metaphorical sense, but possessing all the attributes of true and real divinity. (3) It is He who is in the bosom of the Father. The climax of thought, and the consideration that here are mentioned the conditions which make it possible for Jesus to be the complete Interpreter of the Father, preclude our taking these words as referring to the state which succeeded the resurrection and ascension,in the sense, He that hath returned to the bosom of the Father. He of whom the Evangelist speaks is more than only begotten, more than God. He is in the bosom of the Father. In Him God is revealed as a Father; without Him He can be revealed only as God. The words thus include more than with God in Joh 1:1, more than the Divine self communion, the communion of God with God. The fatherly element, the element of love, is here. Out of that element of love, or of grace and truth, the Son comes; into it He returns. It is of the very essence of His being so to do. He did so from eternity. He did so in time. He shall do it in the eternity to come. Not less does it belong to the profoundest depths of His nature to do so, than to be only begotten, to be God. Therefore is He fully qualified to declare the Father, whom to know as thus made known in Jesus Christ (Joh 1:17) is that eternal life after which the heart of man feels, and in the possession of which alone is it completely blessed (comp. Joh 17:3, Joh 20:31).
One remark has still to be made upon a point which may seem at first sight to interfere with the correctness of that view of the structure of the Prologue which (as we have seen) is not only a matter of interest, but also a guide in the interpretation. There is no mention of the rejection of the Word in Joh 1:14-18. But this fact when rightly considered rather confirms what has been said. It illustrates that progress which in this Gospel always accompanies parallelism.
In Joh 1:1-5, the first section of the Prologue, we have seen that rejection is implied.
In Joh 1:6-13, the second section, it is fully brought out.
In Joh 1:14-18, the third section, it is overcome.
Thus also, taking the Gospel as a whole, it is implied in the section immediately preceding the Conflict (chaps, Joh 2:12 to Joh 4:54). It is fully brought out in the section of Conflict (chaps, Joh 5:1 to Joh 12:50). It is overcome in the section following (chaps, Joh 13:1 to Joh 17:26).
How unique, how wonderful is the plan of the Gospel! How much light does the whole cast upon each part, how much each part upon the whole!
Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament
Joh 1:18. No man hath seen God at any time Nor, indeed, can see him as he is, an incorporeal, and, therefore, an invisible Being: but the only- begotten Son, &c. John, having spoken of the incarnation, now calls Christ by this name, and no more terms him the Word, in all his book; who is in the bosom of the Father And ever favoured with the most endearing and intimate converse with him. The expression denotes the highest unity, and the most perfect knowledge. He hath declared him Hath revealed him in a much clearer and fuller manner than he was made known before, and that by such discoveries of his nature, attributes, and will, as have the most powerful tendency to render us holy and happy. The following particulars are evidently implied in this passage: 1st, That, as the nature of God is spiritual, he is invisible to our bodily eyes. He is a Being whose essence no man hath seen or can see, (1Ti 1:17; 1Ti 6:16,) though Moses and others frequently heard his voice, and saw the bright cloud and external glory, that was a symbol of his presence. 2d, That the revelation, which God made of himself under the Old Testament dispensation, was very inferior to that which he has made by Christ; and what was seen and known of him before Christs incarnation was little, in comparison with what may now be seen and known; life and immortality being now brought to light in a far higher degree than they were then. And, 3d, That neither Moses, nor any of the Old Testament prophets, were so well qualified to make God and his will known to mankind, as our Lord Jesus Christ was. They never saw, nor perfectly knew the Divine Being, and his eternal counsels, and therefore could not make a full discovery thereof to men. The only person who ever enjoyed this privilege was the only-begotten Son of God, the Word, which was in the beginning with him, or, as it is here expressed, was, and is, in the bosom of the Father: that is, always was, and is the object of his tenderest, yea, of his infinite affection, complacency, and delight, and the intimate partner of his counsels. And this circumstance recommends Christs holy religion to us unspeakably before any others; that it was founded by one that had seen God, or that had clear and perfect knowledge of him, and of his mind and will, which no other person ever had, or could have.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
Ver. 18. No one has ever seen God; the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has revealed him to us.
The absence of a particle between Joh 1:17-18 is the proof of a very intimate relation of thought or feeling between the two. The second becomes thus, as it were, an energetic reaffirmation of the preceding. And in fact, what is this truth born for the earth in the person of Jesus Christ, according to Joh 1:17, if it is not the perfect revelation of God described in Joh 1:18?
The true knowledge of God is not the result of philosophical investigation; our reason can seize only some isolated rays of the divine revelation shed abroad in nature and in conscience. It does not succeed in making of them a whole, because it cannot ascend to the living focus from which they emanate. The theocratic revelations themselves, which were granted to the saints of the Old Covenant, contained only an approximate manifestation of the divine being, as the Lord caused Moses to understand, at the very moment when He was about to make him behold something of His glory: Thou shalt see my back; but my face shall not be seen (Exo 33:23). This central and living knowledge of God which is the only true knowledge, and which has as its symbol sight, was not possessed by any man, either within or outside of the theocracy, not even by Moses.
The word God is placed at the beginning, although it is the object, because it is the principal idea. One can know everything else, not God! The perfect , has seen, denotes a result, rather than an act, which would be indicated by the aorist: No one is in possession of the sight of God, and consequently no one can speak of Him de visu. The full truth does not exist on earth before or outside of Jesus Christ; it truly came through Him. The Alexandrian reading God only-begotten, , or, according to , the () only-begotten God, long since abandoned, has found in Hort a learned and sagacious defender, who has gained the assent of two such scholars as Harnack and Weiss. The received reading has been defended, with at least equal erudition and skill, by the American eritic, Ezra Abbot, in an article in the Bibliotheca Sacra, Oct., 1861, and in a more recent essay in the Unitarian Review, 1875. The result of these studies with reference to the external testimonies, is:
1. That the two readings must have already co-existed in the second century. It is probable that both of the two are found already in Irenaeus. The received reading was read in the Itala and by Tertullian; the other, that of the Alexandrian authorities, by Clement of Alex.;
2. That the latter is found only in the Egyptian documents (Fathers, versions and manuscripts), and that the documents of all other countries present the received reading; thus for the West, the Itala, Tertullian and all the Latin Fathers without exception,the only exception which has been cited, that of Hilary, is only apparent, as Abbot proves:in Syria and Palestine, the ancient Syriac translation of Cureton, Eusebius, Chrysostom, Theodoret, etc.; and, what is more surprising, in Egypt Athanasius himself, the most inflexible defender of the divinity of Christ.
Does it not seem to follow from this, that the Alexandrian reading is due to a purely local influence, which goes back even to the second century? As to internal reasons, as favoring the Alexandrian reading, stress may be laid upon its unique and wholly strange character; for it is said to be more improbable that it should be replaced by the received reading, which has a more simple and common character, than that the contrary could have taken place. But it may also be asked whether a reading which does not find its counterpart in any writing of the New Testament, and in any passage of John himself, does not become by reason of this fact very suspicious. To account for its rejection it is enough that an explanation be given as to how it may have originated and been introduced, and Abbot does this by reminding us how early readings like the following were originated: the Logos-God, which is found in the second century in Melito and Clement of Alexandria, and the epithet , mother of God, given to Mary. Hence, readings like these: the body of God, instead of the body of Jesus, Joh 19:40, in A; or all were waiting for God, instead of all were waiting for Him (Jesus), Luk 8:40, in; or the Church of God which He purchased with His own blood, instead of the Church of the Lord, etc. (Act 20:28), in and B. It is curious that it is precisely these same two MSS., which especially support the reading God, instead of Son, in our passage. It would be difficult, on the other hand, to explain the dogmatic reason which could have substituted here the word Son forGod. The Arians themselves, as Abbot has well shown, had no interest in this change; for they were able to make use of the Alexandrian reading to prove that the word God could be taken in a weakened sense, and designate a divine being of second rank, inferior to the Father; it was for them the best means of getting rid of the word God applied to the Word in Joh 1:1.
So Athanasius himself does not hesitate to use the received reading; as for ourselves, we cannot hesitate. The absence of any parallel to the Alexandrian reading and its very pronounced doctrinal savor seem to us, independently of external criticism, sufficient reasons for rejecting it. It is true that Hort and Weiss urge against the received reading the article , the, before the title only-begotten Son, for the reason that Jesus, not having been yet called by this name in the Prologue, could not be thus designated with the definite article. This objection falls to the ground through the true explanation of Joh 1:14, where the words only-begotten Son cannot denote an only-begotten Son in general, as Weiss will have it, and can only be applied to the Word made flesh. Moreover, even without this preceding expression, no reader, when reading the words: The only-begotten Son has revealed him to us could for an instant doubt concerning whom John meant to speak.
The character of complete revelator ascribed here to Jesus is explained by His intimate and personal relation with God Himself, such as is described in the following words: who is in the bosom of the Father. The participle , who is, is connected in a very close logical relation with the following verb: He has revealed. As Baumlein says, it is equivalent to , inasmuch as He is; thereupon rests His competency to reveal.
The figure which John employs might be derived from the position of two nearest guests at a banquet (Joh 13:23); but it seems rather to be borrowed from the position of a son seated on his father’s knees and resting on his bosom. It is the emblem of a complete opening of the heart; he who occupies this place in relation to God must know the most secret thoughts of the Father and His inmost will. The word , bosom, would by itself prove that the mystery of the Son’s existence is a matter, not of metaphysics, but of love, comp. Joh 17:24 : Thou didst love me before the foundation of the world. The omission of the words in is a negligence condemned by all the other MSS. Must we, withHofmann, Luthardt and Weiss, refer the words: who is in the bosom of the Father to the present glorified condition of Jesus? But the heavenly state which Jesus now enjoys cannot explain how He was able to reveal the Father perfectly while He was on the earth. We must then, in that case, refer the revealing act of Jesus to the sending of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, which is implied by nothing in the text. Or is John thinking especially of the divine condition of the Logos before His coming to the earth? But that would be to say, that the knowledge of God which Jesus communicated to men was drawn from the recollections of His anterior existence. We cannot admit this. In fact, everything which Jesus revealed on earth concerning God passed through His human consciousness (see on Joh 3:13, Joh 6:46). I agree, therefore, in opinion rather with Lucke, that this present participle , who is, refers to the permanent relation of the Son to the Father through all the stages of His divine, human and divine-human existence. He ever presses anew with an equal intimacy into the bosom of the Father, who reveals Himself to Him in a manner suitable to His position and His work at every moment. The form , instead of (the prep. of motion, instead of that of rest), expresses precisely this active and living relation. The bosom of the Father is not a place, but a life; one is there only in virtue of a continual moral act.
If John substitutes here for of Joh 1:1, this arises simply from the difference between the object , the bosom, which denotes a thing, and the object , God, which designated a person. The word , of the Father, is not merely a paraphrase of the name of God; this term is chosen in order to make the essential contents of the revelation brought by the Son understood. He manifested God as Father, and for this He did not need to give speculative teaching; it was enough for Him to show Himself as Son. To show in Himself the Son, was the simplest means of showing in God the Father. Thus, by His filial relation with God, Jesus has initiated earth into the most profound secret of heaven, a secret which the angels themselves perchance did not yet sound completely. Outside of this revelation of the divine character, every idea which man forms of God is incomplete or imaginaryin a certain measure, an idol, as John says (1Jn 5:20).
The pronoun , he, has here, as ordinarily in John, a pregnant and even exclusive sense: he and he alone! It is impossible to explain the use of this pronoun, as Weiss would do, by the contrast with a nearer subject, which would be the Father Himself. The employment of the word to explain, to make known, is often explained by the technical use of it which was made by the Greeks, with whom it denoted the explanation of divine things by men charged with this office, the . The simplicity of John’s style hardly harmonizes with this comparison, which, besides, is not necessary in order to the explanation of the word. The apostle uses it absolutely, without giving it any complement. It is to the act, rather than its object, that he desires to draw attention, as in the first clause of Joh 1:16 (we have received): He has declared; really declared! Every one understands what is the object of this teaching: God first, then in Him all the rest. To reveal God, is to unveil everything.
With this 18th verse we evidently come back to the starting-point of the Prologue, to the idea of Joh 1:1. Through faith in Christ as only-begotten Son, the believer finds again access to that eternal Word from whom sin (the darkness, Joh 1:5) had held him apart. He obtains anew, in the form of grace and truth (Joh 1:16-18), those treasures of life and light, which the Word has spread abroad in the world (Joh 1:4). Sin’s work is vanquished; the communion with heaven is re-established. God is possessed, is known; the destiny of man begins again to be realized. The infinite dwells in the finite and acts through it; the abyss is filled up.
At the same time, these last words of the Prologue form, as Keil says, the transition to the narrative which is about to begin. How did Jesus Christ reveal the Father? This is what the story to which the apostle passes from Joh 1:19 onward is to relate.
General Considerations on the Prologue.
I. The Plan.
Three thoughts sum up this remarkable passage and determine its progress: The Logos (Joh 1:1-4); the Logosunrecognized (Joh 1:5-11); the Logos received (Joh 1:12-18). Between the first and second subjects Joh 1:5 forms the transition, in the same manner as Joh 1:12-13 form that between the second and third. Finally, the last verses of the Prologue bring back the mind of the reader to the first words of the passage.
This plan seems to us the only one which is harmony with the apostle’s thought. We shall convince ourselves of this by recognizing, in the sequel of this study, the fact that the entire narrative is founded upon the three factors which have been indicated and that its phases are determined by the appearance, and the successive preponderance of these three essential elements of the history.
II. The Intention of the Prologue.
There are three very different ways of viewing this subject.
I. The Tubingen School think that the author proposed to himself to acclimate in the Church the doctrine of the Logos. Finding that speculative idea in the systems of his time, he wished to build the bridge between the Church and the reigning philosophy. And as, in his whole narrative, he had no other aim except to realize this design by illustrating this dominant idea of the Logos, by means of certain acts and discourses more fictitious than real, he did not hesitate to inscribe at the beginning of his book the great thought which forms its synthesisnamely, that of an eternal being intermediate between the infinite God and the finite world.
If it is so, it must be acknowledged that the theorem of the Logos is the end of the work, and that the person of Jesus is nothing more than the means. Is this, indeed, the meaning of this Prologue? Who can think, in comparing Joh 1:1 and Joh 1:14, that the second of these verses is there for the sake of the first, and not the reverse? No; the author does not wish to take us on a metaphysical walk in the depths of Divinity, in order to discover there the being called Logos; he wishes to make us feel all the grandeur and all the value of the person and work of Jesus Christ, by showing us in this historical personage the manifestation of the divine Logos. It is not the fact of the incarnation (Joh 1:14) which is at the service of the thesis of the Logos (Joh 1:1); it is this thesis which prepares the way for the account of this capital fact of human history. By nothing is the opposition between the speculative intention which Baur ascribes to the Prologue (as to the whole Gospel) and the real aim of this passage, better indicated, than by the explanation which that scholar is obliged to give of Joh 1:14. To that verse, which is the centre of the whole passage, Baur gives an altogether subordinate place. John does not mean that the Logos becomes incarnate, but simply that He is made visible by a kind of theophany. This fact, according to Baur, has no value for the accomplishing of salvation; it serves only to make us perceive more clearly all its sweetness. This explanation is sufficient to show the contradiction between the thought of the Tubingen professor and that of the evangelist.
II. Reuss avoids such an exaggeration; he understands that the historical person of Jesus is the end and that the theory of the Logos can, in any case, be only a means. The author, in possession of the Gospel faith, seeks to give a rational account to himself of his new belief, and for this purpose he undertakes to draw, outside of the Gospel, from the contemporary philosophy an idea capable of becoming for him the key of Jesus’ history, and of raising his faith and that of his readers to the full height of religious speculation. Our Prologue is the initiation of the Church into the true Gnosis. This is also the result of Lucke’s study. To explain the Prologue thus, whether one wills it or not, is to give up the authenticity of the entire work. For it is impossible to ascribe to an apostle of Jesus such an amalgam of contemporary metaphysics with the conception of the person of his Master. So the author of this explanation has ended, after much hesitation, by placing himself in the number of the adversaries of the authenticity. By a fatality he was obliged to come to this point. There was, indeed, for the Apostle John, if he was really desirous to deposit in a written work the theory of the Logos, which had thrown a clear light for him upon his own faith, a simple means of establishing for the Church this new view. It was that of setting it before the Church in an epistle; there was no need of using for this purpose the means very equivocal in a moral point of viewof a Gospel narrative.
Reuss regards the procedure which he attributes to the author as unconscious on his part and, consequently, as innocent. But the fact that the author all along avoids putting the word Logos into the mouth of Jesus, clearly proves that he acted with reflection, and that he had the consciousness of not having this name from the lips of Him to whom he applied it. As to the innocence of this matter, history has passed judgment, and its judgment is severe. History says, indeed, that among all the writings of the New Testament, the Gospel of John and particularly the Prologue have especially contributed to establish in the Church Jesus-worship, that is to sayfrom the standpoint of those who think after this mannera remnant of paganism. Julian the Apostate could well say: This John who declared that the Word was made flesh must be regarded as the source of all the evil. This is the result of John’s speculative desires; he has thrown into the Gospel the leaven of idolatry, corrupted the worship in spirit and truth, and even troubled at its source the purity of the Christian life, for eighteen centuries. Only at the present day does the Church awake from this long infatuation of which he was the author, and return to a sound mind. Thus so far as he is concerned has the Master’s promise been verified: He who heareth you, heareth me!
When we penetrate the thought of the Prologue we see clearly that the doctrine of the Logos is not to the author’s mind superimposed upon his faith, but that it forms the foundation and essence of it. If Jewish unbelief with regard to Jesus was something so monstrous, it is because He was not only the Messiah, but the Word who had come into the midst of His own. If the faith of the Church is so great a privilege for itself, it is because, by uniting it with Jesus, it puts the Church again in communication with the divine source of life and light, with the Word Himself. This Logos-idea, then, belongs to the essence of John’s faith; it is no longer for him a means, as Reuss claims, but an end, as Baur would have it.
III. This idea was simply a result. It was evolved for John from the sum of his reflections on the person of Jesus. He himself describes to us in Joh 1:14 the way in which this work was accomplished in him. The Son of God was revealed to him in the person of Jesus through the glory full of grace and truth which distinguished this man from every other man; and he inscribed this discovery at the beginning of his narrative, in order that he might make the reader understand the decisive importance of the history, which was about to pass under his eyes; here is not one of those events which we leave after having read it, that we may pass on to another: These things have been written, that you may believe, and that believing you may have life (Joh 20:31). The question in this history is of eternal life and death; to accept, is to live; to reject, is to perish. This is the nota bene by which John opens his narrative and guides the reader.
But why employ so singular a term as Logos?
III. The Idea and Term Logos.
We have here to study three questions: 1. Whence did the evangelist derive the notion of the Logos? 2. What is the origin of this term? 3. What is the reason of its use? Having discussed these questions in the Introduction (pp. 173-181), we will notice here only that which has a special relation to the exegetical study which we are about to undertake.
1. First of all we establish a fact: namely, that the Prologue only sums up the thoughts contained in the testimony which Christ bears to Himself in the fourth Gospel. Weiss mentions two principal points in which the Prologue seems to him to go beyond the testimony of Christ: 1. The notion of the Word by which John expresses the pre-historic existence of Christ; 2. The function of creator which is ascribed to Him (Joh 1:3).
Let us for a moment lay aside the term Logos, to which we will return. The creative function is naturally connected with the fact of the eternal existence of the Logos in God. He who could say to God: Thou didst love me before the creation of the world, certainly did not remain a stranger to the act by which God brought the world out of nothing. How is it possible not to apply here the words of Joh 5:17 : As the Father…I also work, and Joh 5:19-20 : The Father showeth the Son all that he doeth…, and: Whatsoever things the Father doeth, these doeth the Son in like manner. Add the words of Gen 1:26 : Let us make man in our image, to which John certainly alludes in the second clause of Joh 1:1 of the Prologue. All the other affirmations of this passage rest equally on the discourses and facts related in the Gospel; comp. Joh 1:4 : In Him was life …, with Joh 5:26 : As the Father hath life in himself, so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself; Joh 1:9 : There was the true light, with Joh 8:12 and Joh 9:5 : I am the light of the world…He that followeth me shall have the light of life; Joh 1:7 : John came to bear witness, with Joh 1:34 :
And I have seen, and have borne witness that this is the Son of God, and Joh 1:33 : Ye have sent unto John, and he hath borne witness to the truth; what is said of the presence and activity of the Logos in the world in general (Joh 1:10), and in the theocracy in particular (to His home, His own, Joh 1:11), previous to His incarnation, with what Jesus declares in chap. 10 of the Shepherd’s voice which is immediately recognized by His sheep, and this not only by those who are already in the fold of the Old Covenant (Joh 1:3), but also by those who are not of that fold (Joh 1:16), or what is said of the children of God scattered throughout the whole world (Joh 11:52); the opposition made in the Prologue (Joh 1:13) between the fleshly birth and the divine begetting, with the word of Jesus to Nicodemus (Joh 3:6): That which is born of the flesh is flesh; that which is born of the Spirit is spirit; the notion of Christ’s real humanity, so earnestly affirmed in the Prologue (Joh 1:14), with the perfectly human character of the person and affections of the Saviour in the whole Johannean narrative; He is exhausted by fatigue (Joh 4:6); He thirsts (Joh 4:7); He weeps over a friend (Joh 11:35); He is moved, even troubled (Joh 11:33, Joh 12:27); on the other hand, His glory, full of grace and truth, His character as Son who has come from the Father (Joh 1:14-18), with His complete dependence (Joh 6:38 f.), His absolute docility (Joh 1:30, etc.), His perfect intimacy with the Father (Joh 1:20), the divinity of the works which it was given Him to accomplish, such as: to give life, to judge (Joh 1:21-22); the perfect assurance of being heard, whatsoever He might ask for (Joh 11:41-42); the adoration which He accepts (Joh 20:28); which He claims even as the equal of the Father (Joh 1:23); the testimony of John the Baptist quoted in Joh 1:15, with the subsequent narrative (Joh 1:27; Joh 1:30); the gift of the law, as a preparation for the Gospel (Joh 1:17), with what the Lord says of His relation to Moses and his writings (Joh 1:46-47); Joh 1:18, which closes the Prologue with the saying in Joh 6:46 : Not that any one hath seen the Father, except He that is from the Father, He hath seen the Father; the terms Son and only-begotten Son, finally, with the words of Jesus in Joh 6:40 : This is the Father’s will, that He who beholds the Son …; Joh 3:16 : God so loved the world, that He gave His only- begotten Son, and Joh 3:18 : Because he hath not believed on the name of the only-begotten Son of God. It is clear: the Prologue is an edifice which is constructed wholly out of materials furnished by the words and the facts of Jesus’ history. It contains of what is peculiar to John only the idea and term Logos applied to His pre-existent state. It is certainly this term, used in the philosophical language of the time, which has led so many interpreters to transform the author of the Prologue into a disciple of Philo. We shall limit ourselves here to the mentioning of the essential differences which distinguish the God of Philo from the God of John, the Logos of the one from the Logos of the other. And it shall be judged whether the second was truly at the school of the first.
1. The word , in John, signifies, as in the whole Biblical text, word. In Philo, it signifies, as in the philosophical language of the Greeks, reason. This simple fact reveals a wholly different starting-point in the use which they make of the term.
2. In Philo, the existence of the Logos is a metaphysical theorem. God being conceived of as the absolutely indeterminate and impersonal being, there is an impassable gulf between Him and the material, finite, varied world which we behold. To fill this gulf, Philo needed an intermediate agent, a second God, brought nearer to the finite; this is the Logos, the half-personified divine reason. The existence of the Logos in John is not the result of such a metaphysical necessity. God is in John, as in all the Scriptures, Creator, Master, Father. He acts Himself in the world, He loves it, He gives His Son to it; we shall even see that it is He who serves as intermediate agent between men and the Son (Joh 6:37; Joh 6:44), which is just the opposite of Philo’s theory. In a word, in John everything in the relation of the Logos to God is a matter of liberty and of love, while with Philo everything is the result of a logical necessity. The one is the disciple of the Old Testament interpreted by means of Plato and Zeno; the other, of the same Old Testament explained by Jesus Christ.
3. The office of the Logos in Philo does not go beyond the divine facts of the creation and preservation of the world. He does not place this being in any relation with the Messiah and the Messianic kingdom. In John, on the contrary, the creating Logos is mentioned only in view of the redemption of which He is to be the agent; everything in the idea of this being tends towards His Messianic appearance.
4. To the view of Philo, as to that of Plato, the principle of evil is matter; the Jewish philosopher nowhere dreams, therefore, of making the Logos descend to earth, and that in a bodily form. In John, on the contrary, the supreme fact of history is this: The Logos was made flesh, and this is also the central word of the Prologue.
The two points of view, therefore, are entirely different, and are even in many respects the antipodes of each other. Nevertheless, we notice in Philo certain ideas, certain terms, which establish a relation between him and John. How are we to explain this fact?
The solution is easy: it is not difficult to find a common source. John and Philo were both Jews; both of them had been nourished by the Old Testament. Now three lines in that sacred book converge towards the notion of an intermediate being between God and the world. 1. The appearances of the Angel of the Lord (Maleach Jehovah), of that messenger of God, who acts as His agent in the sensible world, and who sometimes is distinguished from Jehovah, sometimes is identified with Him; comp. e.g., Gen 16:7 with Joh 1:13; again, Gen 32:28 with Hos 12:4-5. God says of this mysterious being, Exo 23:21 : My name (my manifested essence) is in him. According to the Old Testament (comp. particularly Zec 12:10, and Mal 3:1), this divine personage, after having been the agent of all the theophanies, is to consummate His office of mediator by fulfilling here on earth the function of Messiah. 2. The description of Wisdom, Pro 8:22-31; undoubtedly this representation of Wisdom in Proverbs appears to be only a poetic personification, while the Angel of the Lord is presented as a real personality.
3. The active part ascribed to the Word of the Lord. This part begins with the creation and continues in the prophetic revelations comp. Psa 107:20; Psa 147:15, and Isa 55:11, where the works accomplished by this divine messenger are described.
From the time of the Babylonish captivity, the Jewish doctors united these three modes of divine manifestation and activity in a single conception, that of the permanent agent of Jehovah in the sensible world, whom they designated by the name of Memra (Word) of Jehovah ( ). It cannot be certainly determined whether these Jewish learned men established a relation between this Word of the Lord and the person of the Messiah.
This idea of a divine being, organ of the works and the revelations of Jehovah in the sensible world could not, therefore, fail to have been known both by John and by Philo. This is the basis common to the two authors. But from this starting-point their paths diverge. John passing into the school of Jesus, the idea of the Word takes for him a historical significance, a concrete application. Hearing Jesus affirm that He is before Abraham; that the Father loved Him before the creation of the world,…he applies to Him this idea of the Word which in so many different ways strikes its roots into the soil of the Old Testament, while Philo, living at Alexandria, becomes there the disciple of the Greek philosophers, and seeks to interpret by means of their speculations and their formulas the religious ideas of the Jewish religion. We thus easily understand both what these two authors have in common, and what distinguishes them and even puts them in opposition to each other.
II. With respect to the term Word, frequently used, as it already was, in the Old Testament, then employed in a more theological sense by the Jewish doctors, it must have presented itself to the mind of John as very appropriate to designate the divine being in the person of his Master. What confirms the Palestinian, and by no means Alexandrian, origin of this term, is that it is used in the same sense in the Apocalypse, which is certainly by no means a product of Alexandrian wisdom; comp. Act 19:13 : And his name was the Word of God. Philo, as he laid hold of this Jewish term Logos, in order to apply it to the metaphysical notion which he had borrowed from Greek philosophy, could not do so without also modifying its meaning and making it signify reason instead of word. This is what he did in general with regard to all the Biblical terms which his Jewish education had rendered familiar to him, such as archangel, son, high-priest, which he transferred to speculative notions according to the method by which he applied the word angels to the ideas of Plato.
We see, therefore: it is the same religion of the Old Testament, which, developed on one side in the direction of Christian realism, on the other in that of Platonic idealism, produced these two conceptions of John and of Philo, who differ even more in the central idea than they resemble each other in that which envelops it.
In applying to Jesus the name Word, John did not dream, therefore, of introducing into the Church the Alexandrian speculative theorem which had for him no importance. He wished to describe Jesus Christ as theabsolute revelation of God to the world, to bring back all divine revelations to Him as to their living centre, and to proclaim the matchless grandeur of His appearance in the midst of humanity.
III. But can the employment of this extraordinary term on his part have occurred without any allusion to the use which was made of it all about him in the regions where he composed his Gospel? It seems to me difficult to believe this. Asia Minor, particularly Ephesus, was then the centre of a syncretism in which all the religious and philosophical doctrines of Greece, Persia and Egypt met together. It has been proved that in all those systems the idea of an intermediate divine being between God and the world appears, the Oum of the Indians, the Hom of the Persians, the Logos of the Greeks, the Memar of the Jews. If such were the surroundings in the midst of which the fourth Gospel was composed, we easily understand what John wished to say to all those thinkers who were speculating on the relations between the infinite and the finite, namely: That connecting link between God and man, which you are seeking in the region of the idea, we Christians possess in that of reality, in that of history; we have seen, heard, touched this celestial mediator. Listen and believe! And by receiving Him, you will possess, with us,grace upon grace. In introducing this new term into the Christian language, therefore, John had the intention, asNeander thought, of opposing to the empty idealism on which the cultivated and unchristian persons around him were feeding, the life-giving realism of the Gospel history which he was proposing to set forth.
IV. The Truth and Importance of the Teaching of the Prologue Respecting the Person of Jesus Christ.
If the Prologue is the summary of the testimonies which Jesus bore to Himself in the course of His ministry, the teaching of John in this passage can no longer be regarded as the last term of a series of phases by means of which the Christological conception passed into the midst of the Church; it is at once the most normal and the richest expression of the consciousness which Jesus had of His own person. Renan is not indisposed to accept this result. Only in this estimation of Himself which Jesus allowed Himself to indulge, he sees the height of self-exaltation. But this explanation is incompatible with the moral character of Jesus. If He overrated Himself even to folly, how are we to understand that inward calm, that profound humility, that unalterably sound judgment, that so profoundly true appreciation of all the moral relations, whether between God and man, or between man and man, which Renan himself recognizes in Him? The kingdom of truth and holiness which has come from the appearance of Jesus is enough to set aside the suspicions of His modern biographer and to decide in the evangelist’s favor. The critic might limit himself to calling in question the historical accuracy of the discourses which John puts into the mouth of Jesus. But we think that we have demonstrated the full confidence which we are obliged to accord to them (Introd., pp. 93-134). They cannot be separated from the facts with which they are closely connected, and these facts are as well, not to say better, guaranteed than those of the Synoptics (Introd., pp. 68-93).
Reuss urges, as an objection, a contradiction between the Prologue, in which the perfect equality of the Father and Son (such as ecclesiastical orthodoxy professes) is taught, and the authentic words of Jesus in the Gospel, starting from the idea of the subordination of the Son. The exegesis of the Prologue has proved that this contradiction does not exist, since subordination is taught in the Prologue, as clearly as in the discourses. Let us recall the expressions: he was with God, Joh 1:1; the only-begotten Son, Joh 1:14; who is in the bosom of the Father, Joh 1:18; these expressions imply subordination as much as any saying related in the Gospel. Reuss’ mistake is that of wishing by all means to identify the conception of the Prologue with the Nicene formulas.
Baur does not believe in the possibility of reconciling the notion of the incarnation with that of the miraculous birth taught in the Synoptics. But if we take this expression, became flesh, seriously,as Baur does notthe alleged contradiction is solved of itself. As in this case the subject of the Gospel hisory is not longer, as Baur claims, the Logos continuing in His divine state, but a true man, the fact of a real birth of this man, whether miraculous or natural, becomes a necessary condition of his human existence.
The most serious objection is derived from the difficulty of reconciling the pre-existence of Christ with His real humanity. Thus Lucke, while fully recognizing that there is something dangerous in the rejection of the pre- existence, thinks, nevertheless, that this dogma implies a difference of essence between the Saviour and His brethren, which seriously compromises both His character as Son of man, and His redemptive function. Weizsacker takes his position at the same point of view. He acknowledges that the communion of the Son with the Father is not simply moral; that Jesus did not gain His dignity as Son by His fidelity; but that it is, much rather, the presupposition of all that He did and said; that His moral fidelity maintained this original relation, but did not produce it; that, it is the unacquired condition of the consciousness which He had of Himself. On the other hand, he maintains that the superior knowledge which Christ possessed, could not be the continuation of that which He brought from above; for that origin would take away from it the progressive character, limited to the task of each moment, which we recognize in it and which makes it a truly human knowledge. And, as for the moral task of Jesus, it would also lose its truly human character; for where would be the moral conflict in the Son, if He still possessed here below that complete knowledge of the divine plan which He had had eternally in the presence of the Father? There are, therefore, in the fourth Gospel according to this critic, two Christs placed in juxtaposition: the one, truly man, as Jesus Himself teaches in harmony with the Synoptics; the other, divine and pre-existentthe Christ of John. In attempting to resolve this difficulty, we do not conceal from ourselves that we are entering upon one of the most difficult problems of theology. What we shall seek after, in the lines which follow, is not the reconciliation of Scripture with any orthodoxy whatever, but the agreement of Scripture with itself.
The Scriptures, while teaching the eternal existence of the Word, do not, by any means, teach the presence of the divine state and attributes in Jesus during the course of His earthly life. They teach, on the contrary, the complete renouncing by Jesus of that state, with a view to His entrance into the human state. The expression: the Word was made flesh (Joh 1:14), speaks of the divine subject only as reduced to the human state; it does not at all, therefore, suppose the two states, divine and human, as co-existent in Him. The impoverishment of Christ of which Paul speaks 2Co 8:9, and His voluntary emptying of Himself described in Php 2:6-7, have no meaning except as we see in this renunciation of the divine state and the entrance into the human mode of existence two facts which were coincident. The Gospel history confirms these declarations. Jesus does not on earth any longer possess the attributes which constitute the divine state. Omniscience He does not have. He Himself declares His ignorance on a particular point (Mar 13:32). In our Gospel, also, the expression: When he heard that the Jews had cast him out… (Joh 9:35), proves the same thing. In general, every question put by Him would have been only a pretence, if He had still possessed omniscience. He possessed a superior prophetic vision, undoubtedly (Joh 4:17-18); but this vision was not omniscience. And I do not think that the facts by any means confirm the opinion of Weizsacker, that John’s narrative ascribes to Jesus a knowledge which was a reminiscence of His heavenly knowledge. The exegesis will show that Jesus never enunciated anything whatsoever which did not pass through His human consciousness. No more does He possess omnipotence. For He prays and is heard (Joh 11:42); as for His miracles, it is the Father who works them on His behalf (Joh 1:36). He is equally bereft of omnipresence. He rejoices in His absence at the time of the sickness of Lazarus (Joh 11:15). His love, perfect as it is, is nevertheless not divine love. This is immutable; but who will maintain that Jesus in His cradle loved as He did at the age of twelve, and at the age of twelve, as He did on the cross? Relatively perfect, at each given moment, His love increased from day to day, both in intensity and with reference to voluntary self-sacrifice, and in extent and with reference to the circle which it embraced, at first His family, then His people, then the whole of mankind. It was a truly human love. For this reason, St. Paul says: The grace of one man, Jesus Christ (Rom 5:15). His holiness was, also, a human holiness; for it was realized at every moment only at the cost of a struggle, through renouncing lawful enjoyment and the victory over the no less lawful dread of pain (Joh 12:25; Joh 12:27; Joh 17:19 a.). This holiness is so human that it is to pass into us and become ours (Joh 17:19 b.). All these texts clearly prove that Jesus did not possess, while on earth, the attributes which constitute the divine state. And, indeed, how could He otherwise terminate His earthly career by asking back again the glory which He had before His incarnation (Joh 17:5)?
Can we conceive of such an emptying of Himself on the part of a divine being? Keil, while acknowledging that there is here a problem which has not yet been solved, thinks that the emptying of the divine attributes took place through the very fact of the entrance of the subject who possessed them into a more limited nature.Steinmeyer, likewise says: The very fact of the entrance into a material body had the effect of reducing to the condition of latency the qualities which befit an absolute personality. We might carry back to this idea the saying of Paul (Php 2:7): He divested himself (emptied), having taken the form of a servant, by making the act expressed in the participle having taken the antecedent and condition of that which is expressed by the finite verb: he divested himself. But we may also conceive of the act of voluntary divesting as preceding the entrance into the human state, and as being the condition of it. And it is rather to this idea, as it seems to me, that the passage in Philippians leads us. However this may be, Scripture does not, by any means, teach that He came to earth with His divine attributesa fact which implies that He had renounced not only their use, but also their possession. Even the consciousness of His anterior existence as a divine subject would have been incompatible with the state of a true child and with a really human development. The word which He uttered at the age of twelve years (Luk 2:49) is alleged; but it simply expresses the feeling which Jesus had already at that age of being entirely devoted to the cause of God, as a well-disposed son is to the interests of his father. With a moral fidelity like His, and in the permanent enjoyment of a communion with God which sin did not impair, the child could call God His Father in a purely religious sense, and without resulting in a consciousness within Him of a divine pre-existence. Certainly the feeling of His redemptive mission must have developed itself from his early age, especially through the experience of the continual contrast between His moral purity and the sin by which He saw all those who surrounded Him affected, even the best of them such as Joseph and Mary. The only one in health in this caravan of sick persons with whom He made His journey, He must early have had a glimpse of His task as physician and have inwardly consecrated Himself wholly to it. But there is in the Gospel history not a word, not an act attributed to Jesus which leads us to suppose in the child or the youth the consciousness of His divine nature, and of His previous existence. It is to the apocryphal gospels that we must go to seek this contra- natural and antihuman Jesus. It was, if we mistake not, on the day of His baptism, when the moment arrived at which He was to begin to testify of Himself, of what He was for God and of what God was for Him and for the world, that God thought it fit to initiate Him into the mystery of His life as Son anterior to His earthly existence. This revelation was contained in the words: Thou art my Son, which could not refer only to His office as Messiah, since they were explained by the following words: In thee I am well-pleased. He recovered at that time that consciousness of Sonship which He had allowed to become extinguished in Him, as at night, as we surrender ourselves to sleep, we lose self-consciousness; and He was able from that moment to make the world understand the greatness of the gift which was made to it and of the love of which He was the object on God’s part.
The following, therefore, as it seems to me, are the constituent elements of this mysterious fact:
1. As man was created in the image of God and for the divine likeness, the Logos could, without derogation, descend even to the level of a human being and work out His development from that moment in truly human conditions.
2. Receptivity for the divine, aspiration towards the divine, being the distinctive feature of man among the other natural beings, the essential characteristic of the life of the Logos made man must be incessant and growing assimilation to the divine in all its forms.
3. This religious and moral capacity of the Logos having entered into human existence is not to be measured by that which each particular man possesses. Through the fact of His miraculous birth, He reproduces not the type of a determinate father, but that of the race itself which He represents a second time, as it had been represented the first time by the father of all mankind. In Him, therefore, is concentrated the aspiration of the whole race, the generic and absolute receptivity of humanity for the divine. Hence the incomparable character of this personality, to which all are forced to render homage.
4. Having arrived at the consciousness of His eternal relation to God, the Logos can only aspire to recover the divine state in harmony with the consciousness which He has of Himself; but, on the other hand, He is too closely connected with humanity to consent to break the bond which unites Him to it. There remains, therefore, only one thing: to raise humanity with Himself to His glory and thus to realize in it the highest thought of God, that which St. Paul calls the purpose of the wisdom of God for our glory (1Co 2:7), the elevation of man, first, to communion with Christ, and then, in Him, to the possession of the state of the Man-God. This is the accomplishment of the eternal destiny of believers, as St. Paul also states it in Rom 8:29-30.
The course of the development of the earthly life of Jesus is easily understood when we place ourselves at this point of view. By His birth as a member of the race, as Son of man, humanity finds itself replaced in Him at its normal starting-point; it is fitted to begin anew its development, which sin had perverted. Up to the age of thirty, Jesus accomplishes this task. He elevates humanity in His own person, by His perfect obedience and the constant sacrifice of Himself, from innocence to holiness. He is not yet conscious of Himself; perhaps, in the light of the Scriptures, He begins to have a presentiment of that which He is in relation to God. But the distinct consciousness of His dignity as Logos would not be compatible with the reality of His human development and with the accomplishment of the task assigned to this first period of His life. This task being once fulfilled, the conditions of His existence change. A new work opens for Him, and the consciousness of His dignity as well-beloved Son, far from being incompatible with the work which He has still to accomplish, becomes the indispensable foundation of it. Indeed, in order to bear witness of God as Father, He must necessarily know Himself as Son. The baptism is the decisive event which opens this new phase. Meeting the aspirations and presentiments of the heart of Jesus, the Father says to Him: Thou art my Son. Jesus knows Himself from this moment as the absolute object of the divine love. He can say now what He could not have said before: Before Abraham was, I am. This consciousness of His dignity as Son, the recompense for His previous fidelity accompanies Him everywhere from this hour. It forms the background of all His manifestations in acts and words (see Weizsacker’s fine passage, pp. 120, 121). Heaven is opened to Him and He testifies of what He sees there. The baptism, however, while giving to Jesus His consciousness of Sonship, did not give back to Him His state of Sonship, His form of God. There is still an immense disproportion between that which He knows Himself to be and that which He really is. Herein, especially, there is for Him the possibility of temptation: If thou art the Son of God … Master of all, He disposes of nothing, and must at every moment address Himself with a believing and filial heart to the paternal heart of God. It is only through the resurrection and the exaltation which follows it, that His position is placed on the level of the consciousness which He has of Himself, and that He recovers the divine state. Henceforth, all the fullness of the divinity dwells in Him, and that humanly, and even, as Paul says, bodily (Col 2:9). Finally, ten days after His personal assumption into the divine glory, He begins from the day of Pentecost to admit believers to a participation in His state of sonship. He thus prepares the day on which, by His Parousia, He will consummate outwardly their participation in His glory, after having re-established in them the perfect holiness which was the basis of His own exaltation. Living images of the Logos from our creation, we shall then realize that type of divine-human existence which we at present behold in Him. Such was the divine plan, such was the last wish of Jesus Himself (Joh 17:24): Father, I will that where I am, they also may be with me.
The true formula of the incarnation, according to our Gospel, would, therefore, be the following: That filial communion with God which the Logos realized before His incarnation in the glorious and permanent form of the divine life, He has realized in Jesus since His incarnation in the humble and progressive form of human existence.
The school of Baur think that they discover an essential difference between John’s conception and that of Paul respecting this point. The latter could have seen in the pre-existent Christ only the prototypic man, but not a divine being. This view is rested upon 1Co 15:47 : The first man, derived from the earth, is earthy; the secondman is from heaven. But this conclusion, which is founded upon no other passage, has really no support in this one. The whole fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians has an eschatological bearing, for it treats of the resurrection of the body. The words cited, therefore, apply to the now glorified Christ, and not to the pre-existent Christ; this is also proved by the words which immediately follow: As is the earthly (Adam), such are they also that are earthly (men in their present state): as is the heavenly (Christ), such are they also that are heavenly (the believers risen from the dead). For as we have borne the image of the earthly, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly. Certainly, Paul does not mean to say that we shall bear the image of the pre-existent Christ, but that of the Christ as man raised from the dead and glorified. Even the term second (man) would be sufficient to prove this; since the pre-existent Christ would be the first Adam, the Adam Kadmon of Jewish theology. The idea which Baur finds in this passage is, moreover, incompatible with two other expressions of the same epistle, in which two divine functions, the creation of the universe and the leading of Israel through the wilderness, are ascribed to the pre-existent Christ (Joh 8:6 and Joh 10:4). These functions surpass the idea of a mere heavenly man.
When Paul calls Christ the image of the invisible God, the first-born before every creature, the one in whom all things have been created and all things subsist (Col 1:15-16), he says exactly what John says, when he calls Him the Word (the image of the invisible thought), and when he adds: All things were made by Him, and nothing which has been made was made without Him. The two terms, image and Word, express, under two different figures, the same notion: God affirming with an affirmation which is not a simple verbum volens, but a living person, all that He thinks, all that He wills, all that He loves that is most perfect, giving thus in this being the word of His thought, the reflection of His being, the end of His love, almost His realized ideal. Let us picture to ourselves an artist capable of giving life to the master- piece of his genius, and entering into personal relation with this child of his thought; such is the earthly representation of the relation between God and the Word. This word isdivine; for the highest affirmation of God cannot be less than God Himself. It is eternal; for God cannot have begun at any time to affirm Himself. It is single; for it is His absolute saying, the perfect enunciation of His being, consequently His primordial sovereign utterance, in which are included, in advance, all His particular sovereign utterances which will re-echo successively in time. It is, accordingly, this Word who, in his turn, will call forth all beings. They will be His free affirmation, as He is Himself that of God. He will display in the universe, under the forms of space and time, all the riches of the divine contents which God has eternally included in Him. The creation will be the poem of the Son to the glory of the Father.
This notion of the Word, as a creative principle, has the greatest importance as related to the conception of the universe. The universe rests thereby on an absolutely luminous basis, which secures its final perfection. Blind and eternal matter, fatal necessity, are banished from a world which is the work of the Word. The ideal essence of all things is absolutely protected by this view.
The notion of the person of Christ which is contained in the Prologue is of decisive importance for the Church.
If the supreme dignity ascribed to Jesus is denied Him, however worthy of admiration this Christ may be, humanity may and should always look for another; for the path of progress is unlimited. The gate thus remains open for one who comes afterward: I am come in my Father’s name, and ye receive me not; another shall come in his own name, and him ye will receive (Joh 1:43).
But if in Jesus the Word was really made flesh, there is no higher one to be looked for. The perfect revelation and communication of God are accomplished; eternal life has been realized in time; there is nothing further for every man but to accept and live, or to reject and perish.
We understand, therefore, why John has placed this preamble at the head of his narrative. Faith is not faiththat is to say, absolute, without reserveexcept so far as it has for its object that beyond which it is impossible to go.
FIRST PART: FIRST MANIFESTATIONS OF THE WORD. BIRTH OF FAITH. FIRST SYMPTOMS OF UNBELIEF. 1:19-4:54
As compared with the two parts which are to follow, of which one specially traces out the development ofunbelief (v.-xii.), the other, that of faith (xiii.-xvii.), this First Part has a character which may be called neutral. It serves as the starting-point for the two others. It contains the first revelations of the object of faith and unbelief, of Jesus as Son of God. Jesus is declared to be the Messiah and Son of God by John the Baptist; a first group of disciples is formed about Him. His glory beams forth in some miraculous manifestations within the circle of His private life. Then He inaugurates His public ministry in the temple, at Jerusalem. But this attempt having failed, He limits Himself to teaching, while performing miracles and collecting about Himself adherents by means of baptism. Finally, observing that, even in this more modest form, His activity gives umbrage to the dominant party at Jerusalem, He withdraws into Galilee, after having sowed by the way the germs of faith in Samaria. This summary justifies the title which we give to this First Part, and the more general character which we ascribe to it as compared with those which follow.
The evangelist himself seems to have wished to divide it into two cycles by the distinctly marked correlation between the two remarks, Joh 2:11 and Joh 4:54, which are placed, one at the end of the story of the wedding at Cana:
This was the beginning of Jesus’ miracles which took place at Cana in Galilee; and He manifested His glory, and His disciples believed on Him; the other, which closes this whole Part, after the healing of the nobleman’s son, Again, Jesus did this second miracle when He came from Judea into Galilee. By the manifest correlation of these two sentences the evangelist calls attention to the fact that there were, in this first period of Jesus’ ministry, two sojournings in Judea, each of which terminated with a return to Galilee, and that both of these returns were alike marked by a miracle performed at Cana. This indication of the thought of the historian should be our guide. Accordingly, we divide this Part into two cyclesthe one comprising the facts related Joh 1:19 to Joh 2:11; the other, the narratives Joh 2:12 to Joh 4:54. In the first, Jesus, introduced into His ministry by John the Baptist, fulfills it without as yet going out of the inner circle of His first disciples and His family. The second relates His first steps in His public ministry.
Fuente: Godet Commentary (Luke, John, Romans and 1 Corinthians)
Verse 18
Hath seen God; known God.–In the bosom of the Father; closely conjoined with him.–Hath declared him; made him known; revealed him to mankind.
Fuente: Abbott’s Illustrated New Testament
1:18 {10} No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the {e} bosom of the Father, he hath {f} declared [him].
(10) The true knowledge of God proceeds only from Jesus Christ.
(e) Who is nearest to his Father, not only in respect of his love towards him, but by the bond of nature, and by means of that union or oneness that is between them, by which the Father and the Son are one.
(f) Revealed him and showed him unto us, whereas before he was hidden under the shadows of the law, so that our minds were not able to perceive him: for whoever sees him, sees the Father also.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
There are many passages of Scripture that record various individuals seeing God (e.g., Exo 33:21-23; Isa 6:1-5; Rev 1:10-18). Those instances involved visions, theophanies, or anthropomorphic representations of God rather than encounters with His unveiled spiritual essence (cf. Exo 33:20-23; Deu 4:12; Psa 97:2; 1Ti 1:17; 1Ti 6:16; 1Jn 4:12). The way we know what God is like is not by viewing His essence. No one can do that and live. God has sent His unique and only Son (monogenous, cf. Joh 1:14) from His own most intimate presence to reveal God to humankind.
"In the bosom of is a Hebrew idiom expressing the intimate relationship of child and parent, and of friend and friend (cf. xiii. 23)." [Note: Tasker, p. 49.]
In the system that Moses inaugurated, no one could "see" God, but Jesus has revealed Him now to everyone. Note also that John called Jesus God here again. Though some ancient manuscripts read "Son" instead of "God," the correct reading seems clearly to be "God."
Jesus "explained" (NASB) God in the sense of revealing Him. The Greek word is exegesato from which we get "exegete." The Son has exegeted (i.e., explained, interpreted, or narrated) the Father to humankind. The reference to Jesus being in the bosom of the Father softens and brings affection to the idea of Jesus exegeting the Father. The nature of God is in view here, not His external appearance.
"God is invisible, not because he is unreal, but because physical eyes are incapable of detecting him. The infrared and ultraviolet rays of the light spectrum are invisible because the human eye is not sensitive enough to register them. However, photographic plates or a spectroscope can make them visible to us. Deity as a being is consequently known only through spiritual means that are able to receive its (his) communications." [Note: Tenney, "John," p. 34.]
John ended his prologue as he began it, with a reference to Jesus’ deity. [Note: For an exposition of Joh 1:15-18, see David J. MacLeod, "The Benefits of the Incarnation of the Word," Bibliotheca Sacra 161:642 (April-June 2004):179-93.] He began by saying the Word was with God (Joh 1:1), and he concluded by saying that He was at the Father’s side. This indicates the intimate fellowship, love, and knowledge that the Father and the Son shared. It also gives us confidence that the revelation of the Father that Jesus revealed is accurate. John’s main point in this prologue was that Jesus is the ultimate revealer of God. [Note: See Stephen S. Kim, "The Literary and Theological Significance of the Johannine Prologue," Bibliotheca Sacra 166:644 (October-December 2009):421-35.]
". . . John in his use of Logos is cutting clean across one of the fundamental Greek ideas. The Greeks thought of the gods as detached from the world, as regarding its struggles and heartaches and joys and fears with serene divine lack of feeling. John’s idea of the Logos conveys exactly the opposite idea. John’s Logos does not show us a God who is serenely detached, but a God who is passionately involved." [Note: Morris, pp. 103-4.]
Later John described himself as reclining on Jesus’ bosom (cf. Joh 13:23). His Gospel is an accurate revelation of the Word because John enjoyed intimate fellowship with Him just as Jesus was an accurate revelation of God that came from intimate relationship with Him.