Lecture Notes: Commentary on the Gospel of John (Lecture 1-5)

The Theological Scope and Structure of the Gospel of John

  • The principal object of John the Evangelist is to demonstrate the divinity of the Incarnate Word.
  • The Gospel is divided into two major parts:
    • First Part (1:1−1:131:1 - 1:13): The Evangelist states and treats of the divinity of Christ.
    • Second Part (2:12:1 and following): The Evangelist demonstrates Christ's divinity through his actions performed in the flesh.
  • Within the first part (1:11:1), a distinction is made between:
    • The existence and nature of the Word as it pertains to the divine nature (1:1−1:1 -1:5).\n - The manner in which Christ's divinity is made known to us through the incarnation (1:6 - 1:14).\n- The treatment of the existence of the Word (1:1 - 1:2) follows a specific inquiry structure:\n - **When the Word was:** "In the beginning was the Word."\n - **Where he was:** "And the Word was with God."\n - **What he was:** "And the Word was God."\n - **In what way he was:** "He was in the beginning with God."\n- These clauses correspond to two philosophical inquiries: The first two pertain to the question of "whether something exists," and the latter two pertain to the question of "what something is."\n\n# The Nature and Definition of the Word (Verbum)\n\n- According to Aristotle (referred to as "the Philosopher") in *On Interpretation* (16a3), vocal sounds are signs of the affections existing in the soul.\n- It is a scriptural custom for things signified to be called by the names of their signs (e.g., "And the rock was Christ" in 1CorinthiansCorinthians10:4). Similarly, the internal conception of the soul, signified by the external vocal word, is properly called a "word."\n- The interior word is the cause of the exterior vocal expression and exists prior to it in time relative to the human subject.\n- In the human intellect, there are three distinct elements:\n - The intellectual power itself.\n - The species of the thing understood (the form/likeness by which the intellect understands).\n - The activity of understanding (the act).\n- None of these three items is the "word" itself. The word is the *product* of the act of understanding.\n- The intellect forms two types of entities based on its operations:\n - **Understanding of indivisibles:** Results in a definition (the notion or *ratio* signifies this).\n - **Uniting and separating:** Results in an enunciation or proposition.\n- Therefore, the interior word is that in which the intellect sees the nature of the thing understood. It is not the *means* (that by which) the intellect understands, but the *object* (that in) which it understands the thing.\n\n# Comparative Analysis of Human vs. Divine Word\n\n- **Formation vs. Actuality:** Human words are formable before they are formed. We reach a notion of a thing through "cogitation" (reasoning/discourse). Until reasoning is complete, the word is in potency. First principles are an exception as they are known at once. The Word of God, however, is always in act. There is no "cogitation" or change in God. Augustine (XV *On the Trinity*) states that God's Word is spoken without cogitation to avoid implying mutability.\n- **Perfection vs. Imperfection:** Human knowledge requires many imperfect words to express various concepts separately. God understands both Himself and all others through His essence in a single act. Therefore, there is only one Divine Word which is expressive of all things, including the Persons and creatures. "God speaks once" (Job 33:14).\n- **Nature and Substance:** A human word is an accident and not of the same nature as the soul because the soul's nature is not its operation. In God, to understand and to be are identical; therefore, the Word of God is not an accident but is subsistent and of the same nature (consubstantial) as the Father. Damascene calls God a "substantial Word" and a "hypostasis."\n\n# Questions & Discussion\n\n- **Q1: Why did John omit the Father and begin with the Son?**\n - There are two answers: First, the Father was known in the Old Testament (though as God, not specifically as Father), but the Son was unknown. Second, we are brought to the Father through the Son, as per John 17:6.\n- **Q2: Why use the term "Word" instead of "Son"?**\n - There are two answers: First, to avoid the misconception of material or changeable generation associated with human "sons." "Word" implies an intelligible, unchangeable proceeding. Second, "Word" better implies the function of manifesting the Father.\n- **Q3: Why did translators use "Verbum" (Word) instead of "Ratio" (Notion) for the Greek "Logos"?**\n - Augustine suggests that "Ratio" indicates the concept within the mind, whereas "Verbum" signifies a reference to something exterior. Because "Logos" refers to the Son's existence in the Father *and* His operative power by which all things were made, "Word" is a more complete translation.\n- **Q4: Why does John use the name "Word" absolutely without adding "of God"?**\n - There is one absolute Truth (the divine act of being) and one absolute Word by which all speakers participate. John uses the absolute name to signify the supereminence of this Word. In Greek, the use of the article ("the Logos") signifies a separate and elevated substance, akin to the Platonist concept of "Man per se."\n- **Q5: How can the Word be co-eternal if he is begotten?**\n - Originative principles precede outcomes in duration for three reasons (none of which apply to God):\n 1. If the principle precedes the action (but God generates naturally and instantly).\n 2. if the action is successive/long (but God's act is simple).\n 3. If the action depends on the will (but God the Father generates the Son as a natural requirement of His self-understanding).\n - An analogy is fire and its brightness; if fire were eternal, so would be its brightness.\n- **Q6: Why discuss "where" and "when" the Word was before "what" it was?**\n - Origen explains that the Word is with God by origin. It was necessary to show the Word was "with the Father" by receiving natural divinity before showing that he definitively *is* God.\n- **Q7: What is the meaning of "nothing" in "without him nothing was made"?**\n - Heretics like Valentine, Manichaeus, and others claimed "nothing" stood for eras, the devil, or corruptible matter. Augustine and Origen argue that either "nothing" is used purely negatively, or it refers to "sin." Sin is a defect of the will, not an act of art or causality from the Word; thus, it is a "nothing" participating in non-existence.\n- **Q8: Is everything that exists alive?**\n - Manichaeus claimed wood and stones are life because "what was made in him was life." This is false. A thing is only "life" as it exists in the Word's archetype or divine mind, where the creature is the creating essence. In themselves, things like metals lack life.\n\n# The Temporal and Eternal Significance of the "Beginning"\n\n- The term *principium* (beginning/principle) is analyzed according to Origen and Augustine through four contexts of order:\n - **Quantified things:** A point in a line or number.\n - **Time:** The start of duration.\n - **Learning:** Christ is the beginning of wisdom by nature (Divinity) and to us (Incarnation).\n - **Production:** Either the first part of a thing (foundation) or the cause (intention, reason, execution).\n- Three ways to interpret "In the beginning was the Word":\n - **The Son as Principle:** The Word was "in" the Son as the active power of creation (Origen's view).\n - **The Father as Principle:** The Word was "in" the Father as the source of every divine process (Augustine's and Origen's view).\n - **Beginning of Duration:** The Word existed before all temporal (time)oraeviternal() or aeviternal (aeon) things. Hilary states: "Go back season by season... set down whatever you want as the beginning... the Word already was."\n\n# The Distinction of Persons: "With God"\n\n- **God vs. Deity:** "Deity" is abstract and refers to the nature; "God" is concrete and can stand for a Person. In the phrase "with God," the word "God" stands for the Father because the preposition "with" implies distinction.\n- **Prepositions "In" vs. "With":**\n - **In:** Signifies intrinsic union and consubstantiality.\n - **With:** Signifies personal distinction and extrinsic union (used here to distinguish the Son from the Father by origin).\n- Four conditions implied by the preposition "with":\n - **Subsistence:** Things that do not subsist of themselves (like color in a body) are not properly said to be "with" another.\n - **Authority:** The object of the preposition usually has the authority (the soldier is "with" the king).\n - **Distinction:** One cannot be "with" oneself.\n - **Union/Fellowship:** Implies a social or essential bond.\n\n# Analysis of the Verb "Was" (Erat)\n\n- **Tense Selection:** John uses the past imperfect (*erat*) for eternal things and the past perfect (*fuit*) for temporal things.\n- **Past Imperfect (*erat*):** Indicates something that has been, has not ended, and still endures. It is used for the Word's existence because it transcends time.\n- **Substantive significance:** According to the Gloss, *erat* implies the existence of a thing (substantive verb) rather than temporal change.\n- Augustine notes that God's being does not know a past or future; the present tense ("I am") is also appropriate for eternity as it indicates perpetual act.\n\n# The Refutation of Heretical and Philosophical Errors\n\n- **Ebion & Cerinthus:** Claimed Christ began from the Virgin. Refuted by "In the beginning..."\n- **Sabellius:** Claimed no distinction between Father and Son. Refuted by "...with God."\n- **Eunomius:** Claimed the Son was unlike the Father. Refuted by "...Word was God."\n- **Arius:** Claimed the Son was a later creature or less than the Father. Refuted by "He was in the beginning with God" and his role in creation.\n- **Natural Philosophers (Democritus):** Claimed the world was created by chance or matter. Refuted by the Word as the intellectual beginning.\n- **Platonists:** Claimed separate Ideas for things. Refuted by the fact that these "Ideas" exist in/with God as the Word.\n- **Aristotle:** Claimed the world was co-eternal with God. Refuted by "He (the Word) alone was in the beginning."\n\n# The Operation and Power of the Word (John 1:3-4a)\n\n- **Universal Causality:** "All things were made through him." This demonstrates the Word's equality to the Father (omnipotence), co-eternity (creation of time), and consubstantiality (non-created status).\n- **Understanding "Through" (*Per*):**\n - Valentine's Error: The Word offered material to the Father (Word as cause of Father's making).\n - Origen's Error: Included the Holy Spirit as something "made"; the Word as a lesser instrument.\n- **The True Meaning:** If "through" denotes efficient cause, the Father works through Himself. If formal cause, the Father works through His Wisdom (the Word). Because the Son receives His power from the Father, the power is numerically one (1); hence the Word is not an inferior instrument but an equal.\n- God makes nothing except through the conception of His intellect (eternal wisdom/the Word). Augustine calls the Word "the art full of the living patterns of all things."\n\n# The Word as Life and Light\n\n- **Hierarchy of Creation:** Existence -> Life -> Understanding. The Evangelist follows this order: "was" (existence),"inhimwaslife"(), "in him was life" (life),"thelightofmen"(), "the light of men" (understanding).\n- **The Word as Life:**\n - In the Word, all things are life because they are identical to His essence. They are not merely "living" (like creatures in time) but are the very act of understanding which is God's essence.\n - Origen's interpretation: The Word was *made* life for us by restoring us (ref: 1CorCor15:22).\n- **The Word as Light:**\n - Light implies manifestation. The Word is the "light of men" specifically because men are rational creatures who can know the nature of truth itself.\n - This distinguishes human life from plant life (non-knowing) and brute life (sensitive knowing of material individuals).\n - The light is the object of human rational vision and the participant means (intellectual light) by which we see.\n\n# The Irradiation and Witness (John 1:5-8)\n\n- **Darkness Interpretations:**\n - **Natural Defect:** The created mind is darkness relative to the divine sun.\n - **Lack of Wisdom:** Foolishness as darkness.\n - **Punishment/Suffering:** Christ is joy in our sorrow.\n - **Devils:** The struggle vs. principalities of darkness.\n - **Sin/Error:** Ignorance before Christ.\n- **Incomprehensibility:** "The darkness did not overcome it." Whether darkness is sin or the finite mind, it cannot enclose, apprehend, or extinguish the divine light.\n- **The Precursor (John the Baptist):**\n - **Nature:** "There was a man" (fuithomo). Changes from *erat* to *fuit* to signal temporal existence. Refutes the idea that John was an angel in nature.\n - **Authority:** "Sent by God." John is an angel by office (messenger) via inward inspiration.\n - **Fitness:** "Whose name was John" (interpreted as "in whom is grace").\n - **Witness:** God uses intermediate human causes to ennoble them. John bears witness to the light so men might believe through him (faith)beforeseeingperfectlyinheaven() before seeing perfectly in heaven (vision$$).
  • Distinction: John was not the light by essence, but light by participation. Fire is better exhibited by something afire; thus, a holy man $(participating ext{ }light)$ is a witness to the True Light.