Criswell Theological Review 3.1 (1988) 31-48.
Copyright © 1988 by The
THE INCARNATIONAL
CHRISTOLOGY OF JOHN
JAMES PARKER
John
leaves no doubt as to the purpose of writing his Gospel. He
states it explicitly in John 20:31: " . . . these
have been written that you
may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of
God; and that believing
you may have life in His name" (NASB). John
seeks to support and
defend this purpose by the selections, (more material
was available
than John utilized, according to 20:30) arrangement,
and exposition of
the material in his Gospel, From the beginning of
the Prologue where
the Word is said to have become flesh in Jesus to
Thomas' majestic
conclusion "My Lord and my God" (20:28) ,
the reader is constantly
reminded that Jesus is much more than a mere man
representing a
deity, He is very God of very God come in the flesh.
Jesus' work of
salvation ("believing you may have life in
His name") is dependent
upon the nature of His person ("the Christ, the
Son of God").
I. The Prologue (John 1:1-18)
The clearest and most explicit
statement in the NT concerning
the Incarnation is in the Prologue of John. The
Prologue applies the
term Logos or Word to Christ in describing the
person of Christ and
particularly His relationship with God.l In using the term Logos, the
author is using a word which had currency and a range
of meanings in
both the Hellenistic and Hebrew world.
1 Scholars have debated
whether the Prologue was "elevated prose" (L. Morris,
The Gospel According to
John
[NICNT;
(C.
F. Burney, Aramaic Origin, 40-41; G.
R. Beasley-Murray, John, Word
Biblical
Commentary,'3). Beasley-Murray observes
(John, 4): "If indeed 14-18 are to be viewed
as elements of the Church's confession of faith,
like 3:16, this would underscore what in
32
CRISWELL THEOLOGICAL
REVIEW
Logos in the Hellenistic
World
In ca. 500 B.C. Heraclitus
first made use of the Logos concept. In a
world of constant flux Heraclitus
sought to find some abiding princi-
ple. He called this Logos.
J. Adams writes, "He seems to conceive it
as the rational principle, power, or being which
speaks to men both
from without and from within--the universal word
which for those
who have ears to hear is audible both in nature and
in their own
hearts, the voice, in short, of the divine."2
Furthermore, "In Heraclitus
the three conceptions, Logis,
Fire and God, are fundamentally the
same. Regarded as the Logos, God is the omnipresent
Wisdom by
which all things are steered."3 Since
this Logos permeated everything,
there was no transcendence.
Heraclitus'
successors--to the extent they understood fire as the
primordial source of all things--were the Stoics.
This creative fire was
called the logos spermatikos
(i.e., Seminal Reason). E. Bevan asserted
that "the orderly working of nature was its
operation: organic beings
grew according to regular types, because the Divine
Reason was in
them as a lo<goj spermatiko<j, a formula of life
developing from a
germ."4 This, in turn, led the
Stoics into a warm "theoretical panthe-
ism," as seen in the Hymn to Zeus of Cleanthes of Epictetus' Dis-
courses.5 The Stoic logos is not
parallel to the Logos of John, as Bevan
observes: "It is sometimes said that the
Stoic spermatiko>j
lo<goj; was
parallel to the cosmic Logos of Philo or the
Fourth Gospel, but in the
fragments of the old Stoic books the word is
habitually used in the
plural, spermatikoi>
lo<goi, for the multitude of specific types repro-
duced by propagation.
Stoicism knew of no cosmic Logos distinct
from God or the Divine fire: where they speak of the
lo<goj of the
world in the singular they generally mean the
'scheme' of the world."6
any case is implied in the postulate of a hymn at
the base of the prologue, that the
theology of the Logos incarnate was not the
product of a single theological genius, as
the Church has generally viewed the Evangelist, but
a fundamental tenet of a church
(or group of churches) of which the Evangelist was a
prominent leader, whose gospel is
its definitive exposition." Furthermore, the
commonly regarded Christological hymns
Phil
2:6-11 and Col. 1:15-20 are theologically very closely related to the Prologue.
The
literature on John is massive. The student is
referred to the extensive bibliographical
information in Beasley-Murray for further study; for
bibliography on the Prologue, see
Beasley-Murray,
John, 1.
2 The Religious Teachers of
According to
3 Ibid.
4 Stoics and Sceptics, 43, quoted in W. F.
Howard, Christianity, 35.
5 W. F. Howard, Christianity, 35.
6 Late Greek Religion, XV, quoted in W. F. Howard, Christianity, 36.
Parker:
THE INCARNATIONAL CHRISTOLOGY OF JOHN 33
The Hellenistic Jew Philo of
Alexandria also developed a lo-
gos doctrine.7
Through the hermeneutical method of allegory, Philo
attempted to trace Greek ideas to a Hebrew origin.
With Plato he
believed the logos to belong to the world of
ideas; however, he went
further than Plato and linked logos with the
expression of the idea as
well. D. Guthrie8 summarizes five points
distinctive of Philo's logos
doctrine:
(i) The logos has no distinct personality. It is described as 'the image
of
God. . . through
whom the whole universe was framed.'9 But since it is
also
described in terms of a rudder to guide all things in their course, or
as God's
instrument (organon)
for fashioning the world,10 it seems clear
that Philo
did not think of logos in personal terms.
(ii) Philo speaks of the logos as God's
first-born son (protogonos huios),"11
which
implies pre-existence. The logos is certainly regarded
as eternal.
Other descriptions of the logos as
God's ambassador (presbeutes),
as
man's
advocate (parakletos)
and as high priest (archiereus),
although
offering
interesting parallels with Jesus Christ, do not, however, require
pre-existence.
(iii) The logos is not linked with light
and life in Philo's doctrine as it is
John’s, and combination cannot have
been derived from him, although it
would have
been congenial to him.
(iv) There is no
suggestion that the logos could become incarnate. This
would have
been alien to Greek thought, because of the belief in the evil
of matter.
(v) The logos definitely had a mediatorial function to bridge the gap be-
tween the transcendent God and the world. It can be
regarded as a
personification
of an effective intermediary, although it was never per-
sonalized.12
Philo's logos has, therefore, both parallels and differences
from John’s
logos. . . “13
Appeals have been made to two other
sources as a background to
explain John's logos doctrine: the Hermetic
literature,14 speculative
7 For an extensive
discussion of Philo's logos doctrine, see W. F. Howard, 36ff.;
C.
H. Dodd, The Interpretation of the Fourth
Gospel, 66f.; 276ff..
8 New Testament Theology (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1981) 322-23.
9 Cf. Philo, De Somm.
11.45.
10 Cf.
Philo. De migr. Abr. 6.
11 Cf. PhIlo. De agr. 51.
12 Cf. Howard, Christianity, 38, who sums up Philo's
logos in the following way.
"Philo
uses the form Logos to express the conception of a mediator between the
transcendent God and the universe,
an immanent power active in creation and revela-
tion, but though the Logos
is often personified, it is never truly personalized."
13 For a useful survey of
views, Guthrie (New Testament Theology,
323) directs
the reader to E. M. Sidebottom's The Christ of the
Fourth Gospel (1961) 26ff.
14 On the Hermetic
literature, cf. C. H. Dodd The Interpretation of
the Fourth
Gospel (
34
CRISWELL THEOLOGICAL
REVIEW
philosophical writings of the second
and third centuries A.D. and the
Mandarean liturgies, dated even later,15 and for that reason held to be
insignificant as related to John.16
Even though the logos idea is used,
frequently in the tractate
Poimandres (a tract that
speculates on Genesis' cosmogony), there is
no evidence of literary dependency. C. H. Dodd
says that the parallels
seen can be attributed to "the result of minds
working under the same
general influences."17
Logos in the Hebraic World
In recent years the attention of
scholars has turned form Greek to
Jewish
sources as a background for John in general and the logos
concept in particular. Several major Jewish
sources have been sug-
gested:18 the OT, non-cannonical wisdom literature, rabbinic idea of
Torah, and
First, the divinely spoken
"word" (dabar)
of God in the OT
communicates the creative power of
God (cf. Gen 1:3ff.; Ps 33:6;
107:20).
Sometimes dabar
is translated as "deed,"19 thus indicating the
15 R. Bultmann
(The Gospel of John [Philadelphia:
Westminster, 1971] 8) claims
that John is dependent on the gnostic
Odes of Solomon. This thesis has been under-
mined by recent research on gnosticism.
It appears there is no evidence (or full-blown
pre-Christian gnosticism.
Cf. E. Yamauchi, Pre-Christian Gnosticism:
A Survey of the
Proposed Evidences (Grand Rapids: Baker,
1983).
16 Dodd thinks that,
"The Compilation of the Mandaean Canon. . . cannot be
dated much, if at all, before A.D. 700" (Interpretation, 115). Therefore if there
is any
literary conceptual dependence it is in the
direction from John to the Mandaeans. As
R.
M. Grant tersely observes: "The most obvious explanation of the origin of
the
Gnostic
redeemer is that he was modeled after the Christian conception of Jesus. It
seems significant that we know of no redeemer before
Jesus, while we encounter other
redeemers (Simon Magus, Menander)
immediately after his time" (Gnosticism,
17 C. H. Dodd, The Bible and the Greeks, 247.
18 Another source
suggested, memra
(the Aramaic term for "word") in the Tar-
gums has been called "a blind alley in the
study of biblical background of John's Logos
doctrine." Cf. C. K. Barrett, The Gospel According to
Memra Yahweh, according to the results of the
exhaustive studies of Strack-Billerbeck,
Kommentar zum Neuen
Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch,
II (C.
H. Beck, 1961),
302-33
and Vinzenz Hamp, Der Begriff 'Wort' in den aramaeischen Bibeluebersetzun-
gen (Neuer Fiber-Verlag, 1938), 193,
fails to account for the Johannine personalization.
The
targums never translate such phrases as "the
word of God" or "the word (dabar) of
the Lord." Cf. G. F. Moore, Judaism in the First Centuries of the
Christian Era: The
Age of the Tannaim, I (Harvard, 1962) 417. The Memra
Yahweh and Logos of John
have no relationship and no bearing upon one
another. Memra
refers neither to divine
revelation nor to a divine mediator of God.
19 Eero
Repo, Der Begriff 'Rhema' im Biblisch-Griechischen: I, 'Rhema' in der
Septuaginta (1951),
59-62.
Parker:
THE INCARNATIONAL CHRISTOLOGY OF JOHN 35
"dynamic" coloring of the word. God's word is His
creative act, His
powerful agent. God's dabar, in its creative faculty,
possesses the
power of self-realization (Isa
55:10, 11): it will accomplish what it
purposes.
Another group of dabar passages is used to
indicate divine revela-
tion through the prophets to
the people
1:4,
20:8; Ezek 33:7). To some degree the term is identified with the
Torah, and in Ps 119:9, 105, the whole message
of God to humanity.
Not
found in the OT is the idea of God's word as a distinctive "entity"
existing alongside God. While
Ps 33:6; 107:20; 147:15 and Isa 55:10f.
may approach a personification of the word, one
does not find a
hypostasis.
Wisdom is another OT concept that
has significance for the logos
idea.20 Wisdom is not the
product of creation21 but is initiated from
God;
it is a gift of God. In Proverbs 8, a personified wisdom is spoken
of as having been present at the world's creation
(8:27ff.). However,
the fact of it also speaking of its own creation in
8:22 must qualify the
understanding given to its
pre-existence.22
In other Judaistic
thought and the intertestamental literature which
preceded it one finds the concept of a mediating
divine hypostasis
more closely aligned to John, but even here it does
not parallel it in
equal force, originality or content. In the
apocryphal Wisdom of
Solomon
the Logos ("thine all powerful word")
"leaped from heaven
down from the royal throne, a stern warrior, into
the midst of the
doomed land" (
"semi-divine" figure whose source is the Deity and whose
works
include the following: the creation and preservation
of the world and
the purification and inspiration of men (7:22-8:3;
9:4, 9-11).23 In this
literature one finds that while wisdom is personified
it is not person-
alized (i.e., it is spoken of
in personal terms without being regarded as
a person).
A third Jewish source is the
rabbinic idea of Torah. The parallels
between this and John's Logos are as follows:24
"First, the Torah was
20 See.
A van Roon, "The Relation between Christ and the
Wisdom of God
according to Paul," NovT 16 (1974) 207-19 for the OT
and intertestamental evidence of
the wisdom concept.
21 Job 28:12-19.
22 F. M. Braun,
"Jean Ie Theologieu:
2. Les glandes traditions d'Israel,"
Etudes
bibliques (1964) 137-150 and R..
E. Brown John (Garden City: Doubleday
1966) 520ff.
23 By the time of the
Gospels, this later concept was widespread both in the OT
and apocryphal literature: Provs
8:1-9:18; Job 28:12-28; 4 Ezra 5:10; 1 Bar 3:9-4:4; Sir
1:1-10,14-20; 24:1-22; 51:13-30; 1 Enoch 42; 2 Enoch 30:8.
24 Guthrie, New Testament Theology, 325.
36
CRISWELL THEOLOGICAL
REVIEW
believed to have been created before the
foundation of the world; in
other words, its pre-existence is asserted. Secondly,
the Torah lay on
God's bosom. Thirdly, 'my daughter,
she is the Torah.' Fourthly,
through the first born, God created the heaven
and the earth, and the
first-born is no other than the Torah. Fifthly, the
words of the Torah
are life for the world." John, however,
asserts the superiority of Jesus
Christ
to Moses the Torah-giver (John 1:17). Moses gave the Law,
grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. John far
surpasses the
affirmation of the rabbis by offering and producing
much more than
the pre-existent Torah could.
The
at hand does lessen the significance of
Hellenistic claims by providing
a contemporary Jewish dualistic background that
"approximates more
closely. . . John's background in his Logos
doctrine than does the gnos-
tic dualism which Bultmann
stresses so strongly. Indeed, the
dualism, like John's, is monotheistic, ethical
and eschatological."25
The question still remains, in view
of the Hellenistic and Jewish
backgrounds, why John preferred to call Jesus the
Logos--and what
he meant by it. The answer lies close at hand.
Christ Himself is the
source for the content of the idea. The meaning of the
Logos comes
out clearly in an exegesis of the Prologue passage
itself. It will be seen
to include His pre-existence, His Deity, His
creative agency, His
incarnation, His person as the source of light and
life, and the revela-
tional and soteriological
aspects of His earthly ministry. To what
purpose and for what profit are we invited to
investigate Hellenists
and Hebraic understandings of logos, if not as
sources of John's
concept? We investigate these systems for the
overtones and implica-
tions they provide to the
Prologue and which John nuanced in employ-
ing this unique expression
of Jesus' person. V. Hamp says that "the
Johannine prologue with its Logos reveals something
new in terms of
content; by it a hellenistic
term is Christianized, and the Word of
creation is clearly made known. The doctrine of
truth of the OT is
worked into the speculation."26
Taken from this perspective,
according to J. Boice, the parallels
are striking.
To the Greeks especially, but also
to the Jews, the description of Christ
as Logos
points emphatically to His pre-existent state as Son of God and
mediator of
the creation. In John's thought, however, the conception
rises far
above that of a mere Son of God, a figure who partakes in some
25 Ibid.,
326.
26 V. Hamp,
Der Begriff, 193, quoted in
James M. Boice, Witness
and Revelation
in the Gospel of John (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1970) 163.
Parker:
THE INCARNATIONAL CHRISTOLOGY OF JOHN 37
measure of God's nature, to describe the Son par excellence--eternally
existing with God, partaking in its fullness of
the divine nature, and
acting with God in the creation (v. 3) and the
preservation of the world
(v. 4). To the Jew the 'word' recalls creative
action, action which is at
once a revelation of God's person and of His inscrutable
will. John adds,
however, that the revelation in Christ, God's perfect
Word, reveals as no
other the fullness of God's glory in its aspects of
grace and truth (v. 14)
and is that which above all else summons men to
repentance and to the
acceptance of light and life through Him.
The Logos terminology rises to new
heights in John in expressing a
two-fold significance of Jesus Christ--the
significance of His person in
its pre-existent and incarnate states and the
significance of His ministry
as an act of revelation and reconciliation. All this John does without in
the least distracting from the importance of the
historical Jesus as the
focal point of the divine disclosure. For whatever
may have been the
teachings about the Logos in the first Christian
century, it is John's first
and distinctive teaching that Jesus, not another, is the divine hypostasis
who had been with God from all eternity, who was
God, and who took
on human form by incarnation, appearing on earth
for the saving revela-
tion of the Father, and that
the Logos, in spite of contemporary teaching
and the philosophical speculations attaching to it,
is only to be found in
this historical personage and at this moment in
history in which He made
His
per.son known.27
We now turn to defend and
substantiate the conclusion just
described by a careful examination of the usage of
Logos in John.
Logos in John
The Logos idea in John's Prologue
makes certain affirmations
which simultaneously eliminate certain alternative
ways of interpreting
Jesus of
posed by the idea of creation. Vv 1-3 of John read
thusly: (NASB) "In
the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with
God, and the
Word
was God; He was in the beginning with God. All things come
into being by Him, and apart from Him nothing came
into being that
has come into being." The Word was with God (pros ton theon)
describes the pre-creation state, a formula
similar to Gen 1:1. The
deity of the Word is explicitly affirmed, without
obscuring distinction
between the Word and God. Some have erroneously
concluded that
the absence of an article before theos meant that
"the Word was a
God" (or divine). Theos is a predicate, so that
interpretation is with-
out defense.28 It is absolutely clear to
the reader of John that the
27 Boice, John, 163.
28 E.
C. Colwell, JBL 52 (1933) 20.
38
CRISWELL THEOLOGICAL
REVIEW
Word
shared in the nature of Deity. He did not mean, however, that
the Word and God were simply interchangeable words.
While the
Word
is fully Deity, the concept of God embraces more than the
Word. John does not explain it further.
The relationship between the Word
and the world is clearly
articulated: "all things were made through him,
and without him was
not anything made that was made." The Word is
God's agent in the
creation of the universe, a thought not
dissimilar from that of Paul in
merely in degree. Creation ex nihilo is both presupposed by and
demanded for the Incarnation. H. P. Owen
correctly observes: "Those
who do not base their Christology on the concept of
creation ex nihilo
inevitably exhibit Christ as one who differs in
degree, but not in kind,
from other men. Thus according to Hegelianism Christ
can be no
more than the supreme expression of God's universal
presence in
humanity. Again, for Whitehead Christ can be no
more than the
moment of greatest significance in the cosmic process
whereby God
and the world create each other. By contrast those
who follow the
teaching of the councils are obligated to hold
that although no man is
divine God in Christ totally transcended his normal
relation to creatures
by hypostatically uniting a human nature to his
own. It is only if we
place Christ in the context of the creator-creature
relationship that we
can regard him as being absolutely unique and
intrinsically unsurpass-
able."29 The Logos is distinct from
creation. A different verb is used
for the creation ("to become") and the
Logos ("to be").
V 14 asserts that this eternally pre-existent
Word became flesh in
Christ.
Flesh signifies in this context human nature, the full and real
manhood of the incarnate Logos. Thus certain
conclusions follow.
First,
adoptionism is ruled out. From the beginning of his
life Jesus
was God Incarnate. Second, Jesus was the
Incarnation of the eternal
pre-existent Word. His place is
firmly fixed in the divine Trinity. It
was the Son, not the Spirit or Father, that became
a man in Jesus of
Father
in His being and status (subordinationism) is ruled
out. John
did not say the Word was theios (divine) but rather theos (God).
Owen
explains the implications of this distinction. "To say that the
Word
was divine could leave room for subordinationism
which can
be excluded only by affirming an identity of being
between him and
God. Of course the Son is subordinate to the Father
in the sense that
he is derived from the Father, but if. . . he
receives the Father's
29 H.
P. Owen, Christian Theism (Edinburgh:
T & T Clark, 1984) 24.
Parker:
THE INCARNATINAL CHRISTOLOGY OF JOHN 39
whole nature, he and the Father are co-equal."30
This emphasis of the
full Deity and full humanity of Jesus Christ
simultaneously disavows
both docetism and (later) Arianism.
II.
Son of God
John states that his purpose (20:31)
is to convince his readers that
Jesus
is the Son of God. He accomplishes this purpose by the selection
and arrangement of his material. While the title
itself occurs several
times, the description of the unique absolute
qualitative Father-Son
relationship throughout the gospel
establishes the concept even more
firmly than the mere usage of the title. Jesus was
conscious of being
the unique Son of the Father and we find Jesus
referring to God as his
Father
more than a hundred times. On four occasions John describes
Jesus as the "only (monogenes) son" (John 1:14,
18; 3:16, 18).
While
exegetes differ as to its meaning, it appears
most likely that monogenes
means something like "alone of its kind"--the
only one of that genus.
It
would therefore be used to heighten Jesus' Unique "one of a kind"
qualitatively different sonship. Jesus' sonship differs
from ours in kind,
not in degree. Jesus makes this distinction in John
20:17 where he
refers to "my Father and your father" and
"my God and your God."
On several occasions in John, Jesus
was recognized as Son of
God:
John the Baptist (1:34), Nathanael (1:49), and Martha
(11:27). In
John
10:36 Jesus' critics charged Him with blasphemy. In this discus-
sion Jesus particularly
claimed to be the Son of God--thus emptying
charge of substance. His works were evidence that He
did the works
of His Father. The incident of the raising of
Lazarus was "so that the
Son
of God may be glorified by means of it." The charge was made
before Pilate that Jesus called himself the Son of God
(19:7).
Guthrie delineates eight special
characteristics of Jesus as the Son
of God in John.31 (1) "The Son is
sent by the Father" (3:34; 5:36, 38;
7:29; 11:42). The pre-existence of
Jesus is implied in these passages.
The
incarnation is a continuation of the relationship the Father and
Son
had in eternity, even as is demonstrated by the Logos doctrine.
(2)
"The love of the Father for the Son" (3:35, "all things given
into
the Son's hand"; 5:20, the Father "shows
the Son all that he is doing";
10:17,
"the Father's love is intensified by the Son's voluntary laying
30 Ibid.,
28. G. W. H. Lampe (Christ, Faith and
History [ed.S. W. Sykes and J. P.
Clayton:
Christology
rather than a Spirit-possession Christology in order to establish belief in
Jesus' absolute uniqueness as God incarnate.
31 Guthrie, New Testament Theology, 313-16.
40
CRISWELL THEOLOGICAL
REVIEW
down of His life"; 17:24, the Father's love for
the Son "existed before
the foundation of the world.") (3) "the
dependence of the Son on the
Father." John 5:19 says:
"The Son can do nothing of his own accord,
but only what he sees the Father doing." The
Son is perfectly obedient
to the will of the Father. "The dependence of
the Son on the will and
power of the Father demonstrates, not the inferiority
of the Son, but
the identify of purpose between the Father and the
Son (cf. 14:20).
The
absolute unity of Father and Son (10:30, 17:11; cf. 14:11, 20) is as
important as the dependence of the Son on the
Father. Those two
concepts are different facets of one truth and
neither can be separated
from the other. John, in recording them, evidently
saw no contradic-
tion between them."32
(4) "Son prays to the Father." Jesus prays at
Lazarus'
tomb (11:41): "Father, I thank thee that thou has heard me."
Jesus'
high priestly prayer in John 11 represents the height of intimacy
between Jesus and His Father (He refers to God
as His Father six
times: 11:1, 15, 11, 21, 24, 25). (5) "Jesus as
Son makes claim to be the
exclusive revelation of the Father." Jesus
alone has been in the pres-
ence of God the Father
(6:46). "As the Father knows me and I know
the Father" (10:15) shows the transparency
between Father and Son.
Jesus
reveals the nature of God (8:19; 14:8-9). (6) "The Son speaks the
words of the Father." Jesus said, " . . . for all that I have heard from
my Father I have made known to you" (15:15).
Jesus speaks on the
authority of God His Father who has "given me
commandment what
to say and what to speak" (12:49f). "The
word which you hear is not
mine but the Father's who sent me" (14:24). (7)
"The Father has given
all things into the Son's hand." (13:3ff).
Jesus said, "All that the Father
has is mine" (16:15). The Son also shares with
God the Father in
judgment (8:16). (8) "Jesus speaks of
returning to the Father, especially
in the farewell discourses. .." (14:12,
14:28; 16:10, 16:16ff.; 16:28;
20:11).
The triumphant ascension of Jesus demonstrates the consum-
mation of the work of the
exalted Son.
III.
Son of Man
The expression "Son of
Man" is used 13 times in John's Gospel.33
In
the usage of this expression one finds first of all fundamental
agreement with the understanding of "Son of
Man" as found in the
synoptics, and secondly further
explicit development of meaning.34
32 Ibid.,
314.
33 John 1:51, 3:13; 3:14;
5:27; 6:27; 6:53; 6:62; 8:28; 9:35; 12:23; 12:34; 13:31.
34 While the point of
this article is not to review or establish the source(s) of the
Son
of Man sayings, this author concurs with the conclusion of scholars that hold
that
Parker:
THE INCARNATIONAL CHRISTOLOGY OF JOHN 41
The
Son of man in John is similar to the Synoptics in
that this figure is
associated with the theme of vindication after
suffering.35 Most of the
Johannine Son of Man sayings combine
the two ideas of humiliation
and honor into one expression. An example of this
would be when
Jesus
speaks of being "glorified" (John 3:14; 8:28; 12:34; 12:23; 13:31).
A
difference in John is the lack of the Synoptic emphasis on the
vindication of the Son of Man in the eschaton.
From an examination of the Son of
Man passages certain character-
istics emerge of the meaning
and usage of Son of Man in John. First,
several statements assert the authority of the
Son of Man. For ex-
ample, in John 6:27 the activities of the Son of Man
are parallel to
those activities of God. The implication is clear:
There is no difference
between God's and the Son of Man's authority.
The Son of Man can
give eternal life (3:14, 15; 6:27) and has the
authority to execute
judgment (5:26f.). Not only does the Son of Man's
mission involve
salvation, but ultimately judgment and
condemnation in the future as
well. Second, the pre-existence and destiny of the
Son of Man is
identified. John 1:51 and 3:13 emphasize the
"descent and ascent" of
the Son of Man. "Descent" primarily reveals
Jesus' awareness of being
sent from God, while "ascent" indicates
the truth that the real home of
the Son of Man is heaven in the presence of the
Father, and thence He
shall return to God. The idea of pre-existence (John
6:62: "Then what
if you were to see the Son of Man ascending where
he was before?")
dove-tails with the Logos doctrine of the Prologue.
The historical
Jesus
of Nazareth is to be seen from the perspective of his eternal
pre-existence. The Son of Man is
glorified in 12:23 and 13:31.36
Thirdly,
some Son of Man sayings are in the context of being crucified-
"lifted up."37 Two implications are derived
from this usage: 1) the
heavenly Son of Man, as in the Synoptics, is related to the death,
humiliation and passion but nevertheless 2) continue
to embrace the
idea of the future exaltation after the death (which
ties in with the
previous discussion of the glorification
concept). In summation,
the Son of Man in John's Gospel is the pre-existent
Logos who enters
into the world incarnate in Jesus, suffers, dies, is
exalted and glorified
the Son of Man logia stems from authentic primitive
tradition about and from Jesus and
consequently belongs to the earliest
theological stratum of John's Gospel.
Marshall,
"The Synoptic Son of Man Sayings in Recent Discussion," NTS 12 (1965-66)
327-51
and also S. S. Smalley, "The Johannine Son of
Man Sayings," NTS 15 (1968-69)
278-301.
35 This theme appears in
Daniel, 1 Enoch and 2 Esdras.
36 See also 2:11; 5:41ff.; 7:18; 8:50f.; 11:4; 12:41; 17:1f.; 17:22,24.
37 The three passages are
3:14; 8:28; 12:32-34.
42
CRISWELL THEOLOGICAL
REVIEW
and is given God's authority to execute judgment on
the earth and in
eternity.
IV.
Signs
John speaks of Christ's miracles as
signs (semeia).
However,
semeia does not always refer
to a miracle; it can refer to Christ's non-
miraculous "works." A sign is a
"token" or "distinguishing mark" (like
circumcision is a token or sign of
the covenant in Gen 17:11). A sign is
a symbol which points to something beyond itself.
A miracle may be
a sign by pointing to the presence of a divine
person or authenticating
a prophet who has been authorized by God. John
makes clear the role
of signs in his volume: "Jesus did many other
signs in the presence of
the disciples, which are not written in this book;
but these are written
that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the
Son of God, and that
believing you may have life in his name"
(20:30, 31). The point of the
signs is to draw attention to Jesus and exemplify
some aspect of his
Person. Selected examples would be as follows:
(1) the miraculous
transformation of water into wine at
Can a (2:1-11) had a two-fold
result: it manifested Jesus Christ's glory immediately
which awakened
faith in His disciples, and it showed the unity between
Jesus the Son
and God the Father in creative power, (2) the
second sign, healing the
nobleman's son (4:46-54), demonstrated Jesus' power
over sickness,
(3)
the healing of the impotent man (5:1-18) demonstrates
Jesus'
power over sickness again and shows the life-saving
power of the
Incarnate
Word, (4) the multiplication of the loaves and fish (6:1-14)
shows both Christ's creative power over nature as
well as demon-
strates the point that Christ
Himself is the Bread of life, (5) Christ's
walking on the water (6:16-21) demonstrates His
power over nature,
(6)
the healing of the man blind from birth (9:1-41) shows
Christ's
power to heal both physically and spiritually, (7)
apart from His own
resurrection, the resuscitation of
Lazarus from the grave (11:1-46) is
the greatest demonstration of Christ's triumph over
nature, sin, sick-
ness and death itself. In the discourse material
connected with this
story Jesus makes the claim to be "the
resurrection and the life." The
meaning of this miracle is summarized succinctly
by Dodd: "first, that
eternal life may be enjoyed here and now by
those who respond to
the word of Christ, and secondly, that the same
power which assures
eternal life to believers during their earthly
existence will, after the
death of the body, raise the dead to renewed
existence in a world
beyond."38 The signs have as their
overriding motivation and object
38 C.
H. Dodd, Interpretation, 364.
Parker:
THE INCARNATIONAL CHRISTOLOGY OF JOHN 43
the revelation of Jesus' glory. Jesus demonstrates
signs to demonstrate
His
divine nature and miraculous power, with the consequence of
arousing faith in those who witness His
"signs and wonders." The
signs, particularly the latter ones, are often
accompanied by a propo-
sitional and authoritative discourse,
which itself becomes a part of the
divine revelation.
V.
The Discourses
The discourse of Jesus in John
3:1-21 with Nicodemus explains in
detail the nature of spiritual regeneration. The idea
of Jesus' inaugurat-
ing a new era had been
intimated in the two earlier signs: Jesus
turning the water into wine and the cleansing of
the temple (2:13-22).
In
John 4 Jesus is recorded as healing an official's son. A discourse of
Jesus
on the water of life (4:7-26) introduces the pericope;
in the
context it looks backward to new birth (3:5) and
forward to the
healing of the official's son.
Jesus heals the man at the
Jesus'
defense of His nature as Son of God and giver of life (5:26-29,
40).
The feeding of the five thousand in John 6 is
explicated by a
discussion on Jesus' being the bread of life
(6:25-65). The man's sight
restored in John 9 is preceded by a conflict
between the Jews and
Jesus
(8:12-59) which begins with Jesus assertion "I am the light of
the world" and concludes with the absolute use
of ego eimi ("before
Abraham
was I am"). The raising of Lazarus introduces the sixth
discourse (John 10:1-18) where Jesus identifies
Himself as
shepherd who gives His life for others (vv 11,
15, 17, f.). The last
discourse (chaps 14-16) is introduced by the catch
of fish (John 21).
Jesus
declares Himself to be "the way, the truth and the life" (14:6).
VI. The "I Am" Sayings
The "I Am" statements of
Jesus are significant in establishing the
Christology of John. One of the reasons for
this is that the sentence "I
Am"
is used in the OT as a self-designated name of God. God says "I
am that I am" in Exod
3:14. Upon examination one finds seven "I Am"
sayings of Jesus, each one demonstrating some
work of Jesus: bread--
sustenance (6:35); light--illumination (8:12); door--admission
(10:7);
shepherd--nuturing and
protection (10:11); resurrection and life--
quickening (11:25); way, truth, life--leading
(14:6); vine--making
fruitful (15:1). The unparalleled audacity of
such a statement as "I am
the light of the world becomes credible, rather
than demonstrating
insanity, only from the mouth of one who was
indeed and in fact
44
CRISWELL THEOLOGICAL
REVIEW
God's sole agent in the universe's creation. In the Prologue the
work
of the Logos is in the abstract; in the "I
Am" sayings it takes on flesh
and becomes personal.
While some may argue that the
"I Am" sayings really mean no
more than an emphatic first person
self-identification, the usage of "I
Am"
in John 8:58 demands more. Jesus answered in reply to
a question
from the Jews about whether he had seen Abraham,
"Before Abraham
was (en),
I am (ego eimi)."
This writer concurs with Guthrie's analysis
of this staggering passage:39
The force of the absolute use of 'I am'
here must be gauged against the
absolute
use of the phrase in John 8:24 and 13:19. This usage cannot be
explained
by parallels in the synoptic gospels (e.g., Mk. 6:50; Mt. 14:26)
where the
phrase represents a simple affirmative. John 6:20 seems to be a
parallel Johannine example of this. Another occurrence which is
probably
of the same
type is John 18:5, although some have seen it as evidence of
a divine
claim because of the dramatic action of those who had come to
arrest
Jesus. Yet the contrast between the en
(was) applied to Abraham
and the ego eimi here
must be seen as linked with the name for Yahweh
revealed in
Exodus 3 and with the absolute use of 'I am' (‘ani hu’) in
Isaiah 46:4. It must be noted that
when the form of words used in this
latter
passage occurs elsewhere in the OT (Dt. 32:39; Is.
43:10), it is
attributed
to God as speaker, followed by words which express his
uniqueness.
There seems little doubt, therefore, that the statement of
8:58 is intended to convey in an
extraordinary way such exclusively
divine
qualities as changelessness and pre-existence. The divine implica-
tion of the words would alone account for the
extraordinary anger and
opposition
which the claim immediately arouse.
The implications of such a statement
were not lost on G. K.
Chesterton:40
Right in the middle of all these
things stands up an enormous exception
. . . It is nothing less than the
loud assertion that this mysterious maker of
the world
has visited his world in person. It declares that really and even
recently,
or right in the middle of historic times, there did walk into the
world this
original invisible being; about whom the thinkers make theories
and the
mythologists hand down myths; the Man Who Made the World.
That such a higher personality
exists behind all things had indeed always
been
implied by the best thinkers, as well as by all the most beautiful
legends.
But nothing of this sort had ever been implied in any of them. It
is simply
false to say that the other sagas and heroes had claimed to be
the
mysterious master and maker, of whom the world had dreamed and
disputed.
Not one of them had ever claimed to be anything of the sort.
39 Guthrie, New Testament Theology, 332.
40 G.
K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (London:
Dodd, Mead & Co., 1908) 93.
Parker:
THE INCARNATIONAL CHRISTOLOGYOF JOHN 45
The
most that any religious prophet had said was that he was the true
servant of such a being. The most that any
primitive myth had ever
suggested was that the Creator was present at the
Creation. But that the
Creator
was present. . . in the daily life of the
something utterly unlike anything else in nature.
It is the one great
startling statement that man has made since he
spoke his first articulate
word, instead of barking like a dog. ..it make nothing but dust and
nonsense of comparative religion.
VII.
Miscellaneous
Humanity--Sinlessness
John makes it clear that the Logos
took on real flesh--true hu-
manity. He wearied physically
on trips (4:6), thirsted (4:7; 19:28),
wept (11:33-35), prepared fish (21:9) and died on
the cross. There is
no docetism in John's
gospel. He affirms that Jesus Christ was fully
God and fully man. While He was fully man
He was nevertheless
sinless. "Which of you convicts me of
sin?" Jesus remonstrated (8:44).
If
Jesus were not sinless, claims such as "I am the light of the world"
would not only provide evidence for His emotional
imbalance but
would betray a megalomanic
arrogance indescribable. Jesus said he
reflected the will of God in His person and work
(10:37f; 14:10-11;
14:31;
15:10; 17:4). If He was a sinner, how could He have truthfully
claimed to be one with the Father (10:30,
17:22)?
God
The title God is used of Jesus
Christ in two places: The Prologue
(John
1:1 and 1:18 which have already been discussed) and John 20:28
where Thomas exclaims: "My Lord and my
God!" The Gospel that
begins with the affirmation Jesus is God ends with the
same ringing
declaration.
Lord
An examination of the sparse usage
of Lord (Kyrios)
in John
reveals a non-theological usage before the
resurrection (4:1; 6:23; 11:2)
and a theological usage afterwards (chaps 20 and
21). In the latter
case, Thomas' confession, it is significantly linked
with God.
Messiah
The background for John's use of
Messiah is intensely Hebraic. In
John
1:41 and 4:25 both the original Aramaic form and the Greek
translation are given. Another occasion for its use
is Andrew's declara-
tion to Peter, "We have
found the Messiah" (1:41). Then Philip de-
clares to Nathanael,
"We have found him of whom Moses in the law
46
CRISWELL THEOLOGICAL
REVIEW
and also the prophets wrote." Here again Messiahship was understood
against an OT background. In the confession of
Martha in 11:27,
Messiah
is coupled with the formula "Son of God" (one finds it again
in 20:31). The Messiahship
John presents is qualified in such a way
that would exclude a political understanding. On
another occasion
Jesus
explicitly rejected such an understanding (6:15 when the people
wanted to make Jesus an earthly king). John corrected
some popular
views of Messiahship (7:27
that he had a secret origin and 7:34, that he
would continue forever without death at all), but
squarely asserted
that He was a kingly (but not political) Messiah.41
The basic teaching
of John's gospel is that Jesus is indeed the
Messiah. He corrected
current false understandings and interpretations
of messianic expecta-
tions and replaced them with
a new higher spiritual sense which is
understandable only in the context of
Incarnate Logos and Father/Son
filial relationship.
Conclusion
From the time of John to this
present hour the high doctrine of
the Incarnation has been under attack. The Ebionites and docetists
attempted to supplant it in the 2nd century. In
the 4th century Arius
argued that there was a time when the Logos was not,
that the Second
Person
of the Godhead was a created being. In the decision of the
Council
of Nicea, the church universal affirmed the
Incarnation. In
A.D.
318 in his brilliant, historic and still relevant treatise, De Incar-
natione Verbi Dei (On the Incarnation of
the Word of God),
the
nineteen year old Egyptian deacon Athanasius emphasized that the
love of God was manifested in the Incarnate Logos'
supreme sacrifice.
He
argued correctly that if the Son is a creature, he would need
redemption Himself. Only God could bring salvation.
At one time it
looked as if the doctrine of the Incarnation would be
jettisoned in the
interest of maintaining peace within Christendom.
"The world is
against you," they shouted at Athanasius. He retorted flashing his
black eyes, "If the world is against Athanasius, then Athanasius is
against the world." Five times he was
banished from the empire for
holding firm to this doctrine of the
Incarnation. His heritage to the
41 See Nathanael's confession of Jesus being "King of the
Jews" in 1:49; the
triumphal entry in 12:13 more than anything
emphasizes the kingly nature of Jesus'
messiahship. The onlookers hailed
Him as "king of
trial provides another clear opportunity to assert
the kingship theme in connection with
the concept of Messiah. For a good discussion on
why there appears to be no "Messianic
secret” in John, see S. Smalley, John: Evangelist & Interpreter (
1978)
217f.; and Guthrie, New Testament Theology, 243f.
Parker:
THE INCARNATIONAL CHRISTOLOGY OF JOHN 47
church universal was to pass on to subsequent
generations the doctrine
of the Incarnation intact. Chesterton captures the
high drama and
theological implications of this issue.42
There had arisen in that hour of
history, defiant above the democratic
tumult of
the Councils of the Church, Athanasius against the
world. We
may pause
upon the point at issue; because it is relevant to the whole of
this
religious history, and the modern world seems to miss the whole
point of
it. We might put it this way. If there is one question which the
enlightened
and liberal have the habit of deriding and holding up as a
dreadful
example of barren dogma and senseless sectarian strife, it is this
Athanasian question of the
Co-Eternity of the Divine Son. On the other
hand, if
there is one thing that the same liberals always offer us as a piece
of pure and
simple Christianity, untroubled by doctrinal disputes, it is
the single
sentence, "God is love."
Yet the two statements are almost identical; at least one is very
nearly
nonsense without the other. The barren dogma is the only logical
way of
stating the beautiful sentiment. For if there be a being without
beginning,
existing before all things, was He loving when there was
nothing to
be loved? H through the unthinkable eternity He is lonely,
what is the
meaning of saying He is love? The only justification of such a
mystery is
the mystical conception that in His own nature there was
something
analogous to self-expression; something of what begets and
beholds
what it has begotten. Without some such idea, it is really illogical
to
complicate the ultimate essence of deity with an idea like love. If the
moderns really
want a simple religion of love, they must look for it in the
Athanasian Creed. The truth
is that the trumpet of true Christianity, the
challenge
of the charities and simplicities of
day, never
rang out more arrestingly and unmistakably than in the
defiance of
Athanasius to the cold compromise of the Arians. It
was
emphatically
he who really was fighting for a God of love against a God
of colourless and remote cosmic control; the God of the stoics
and the
agnostics.
It was emphatically he who was fighting for the Holy Child
against the
grey deity of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. He was
fighting
for that very balance of beautiful interdependence and intimacy,
in the very
Trinity of the Divine Nature, that draws out hearts to the
Trinity of the Holy Family, His
dogma, if the phrase be not misunder-
stood,
turns even God into a Holy Family.
During the Reformation, Socianism attempted to repeat the old
christological heresies. In the
present day there are clear indications
that the christological
battle of the ancient church needs to be fought
all over again. Major theologians and
ecclesiastical leaders have made
a concerted drive to route the doctrine of the
Incarnation from Chris-
tendom. Klaas
Runia in his book The
Present-Day Christological
42 G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man, p. 232-33.
48
CRISWELL THEOLOGICAL
REVIEW
Debate chronicles this attack
on the Incarnation.43 A removal of the
doctrine of the Incarnation destroys the doctrine
of the Trinity and
ultimately affects all other major doctrines. J. Macquarrie in his review
of The Myth
of God Incarnate, the volume that began the most recent
vigorous attack on the Incarnation, said:
"Christian doctrines are so
closely interrelated that if you take away one,
several others tend to
collapse. After incarnation is thrown out, is the
doctrine of the Trinity
bound to go? What kind of doctrine of atonement
remains possible?"44
The absolute uniqueness of Jesus is
dependent upon His Incarna-
tion. H. P. Owen observes
that "if he (Jesus) was God incarnate and if
the Incarnation was unrepeatable he must have been
absolutely
unique. Similarly the only absolutely unique element
in Christianity--
the only thing that distinguishes it wholly from
all other religion--is
the belief that the Creator became man in one
figure of history. This
point has been well made thus by J. A. Baker:45
The one totally new thing which
Christianity brought into the world was
the belief,
hammered out over the first four-and-a-half centuries of its
existence,
that in Jesus of Nazareth God had been living a genuine
human life.
Other religions had gods walk the earth incognito, or had
proclaimed
the divinization of some hero or sage. Christianity alone took
a
historical person and said, "Here in this human personality, with all the
limitations
and suffering of our human condition, was the eternal God,
the Cause
and Origin of all that is". As defined in all its classical rigour
this is the
unique feature of the Christian religion, its only valid claim to
separate
existence. A God of goodness, a Creator who cares, it shares
with
Judaism, and philosophical theism. A man who truly reflects the
nature of
the divine is no new thing to the Hindu or the Baha'i.
A
divinely
inspired prophet, even one miraculously born, is acceptable to
Islam. The
Spirit of God indwelling man and guiding and strengthening
their lives
is a religious commonplace. Divine food received in a
sacra-
mental meal
is Zoroastrian; ritual washings and initiation rites are found
universally.
Islam holds fast to judgment, heaven and hell; Judaism to
repentance,
amendment, and God's merciful pardon. At every point
accommodation
is possible save at this one: this unique claim about Jesus,
with its undergirding in the doctrine of the Holy Blessed and
Undivided
Trinity. If
this goes then the end of Christianity as an independent entity
cannot be
indefinitely delayed. No Incarnation, no Christianity.
43 K. Runia,
The Present-Day Christological Debate (
sity, 1984).
44 Green, Michael, ed., The Truth of God Incarnate (Hodder, 1977), 144.
45 The quote from Bishop
John Baker is from a speech made at King's College,
This material is cited with gracious
permission from:
The
www.criswell.edu
Please report any errors to Ted
Hildebrandt at: