Theology & Doctrine · FaithLogic

"The Word Became Flesh" — John's Prologue

John 1:1–18 is the New Testament's most compressed statement of who Jesus is: the eternal Word (Logos) who was with God and was God, through whom everything was made, who became flesh and lived among us. Every clause has been fought over — 'was God', 'the only God', 'became' — and every clause has held.

In brief

The text. '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 were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. … And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth' (John 1:1–3, 14).

The load-bearing clauses:

• 'In the beginning was' (ēn) — imperfect tense, continuous existence with no starting point; contrast 'became' (egeneto) used of created things and of the incarnation.
• 'with God' (pros ton theon) — face-to-face, a real distinction of persons.
• 'was God' (theos ēn ho logos) — 'God' is the predicate, fronted for emphasis, anarthrous (no article) because it is the predicate of a definite subject — 'the Word was God', not 'a god' (the Jehovah's Witness rendering) and not 'the Word was the Father' (modalism).
• 'All things were made through him' — the Word is on the Creator side of the Creator/creature line; he is not among 'all things'.
• 'became flesh' (sarx egeneto) — a real assumption of humanity, not an appearance (against Docetism).
• 'dwelt' (eskēnōsen, 'tabernacled') — the glory that filled the tent and temple now in a human life.
• 'the only Son / the only God' (monogenēs) — 'one of a kind', unique; v.18 in the best manuscripts reads 'the only God, who is at the Father's side'.

Background. Logos drew on both the Old Testament (God's creative and revelatory 'word' — Genesis 1; Psalm 33:6; Isaiah 55:11) and its Wisdom tradition (Proverbs 8; Wisdom 7), and it was intelligible to Greek readers for whom logos named the rational principle ordering the cosmos. John fills the term with a person.

Synthesis

FAITHLOGIC ANALYSIS. John 1:1 is famous because it says three things in one breath that any one of the heresies wants to drop. Drop 'the Word was with God' and you get modalism — the Son is just the Father wearing a different name. Drop 'the Word was God' and you get Arianism — the Son is a creature, 'a god'. Drop 'the Word became flesh' and you get Docetism — a phantom Christ. The church's whole Christological labour is the refusal to drop any of the three.

The grammar carries the weight and it holds: a fronted, article-less predicate ('God was the Word') is Greek for 'the Word was God by nature' — not 'a god', which John's own sentences a few verses later rule out, and not 'the Father', which 'with God' rules out. Then 1:3 draws the line the Arian cannot cross — 'without him was not any thing made that was made' — and 1:18, in the oldest manuscripts, closes the frame it opened: 'the only God, who is at the Father's side.' Augustine's summary has not been improved on: the philosophers could tell him 'in the beginning was the Word'; only the Gospel told him 'the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.'

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