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,
:
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