he zōē the life that illumines humanity. “Le Logos était [comme dit Schaff] la vie de chaque vie.”33 Thus Augustine understands by “life” the existence of all things in the ideas, or in the idea, insofar as they have true existence in the idea. Apart from the idea they are bodies; in the idea, en autō̧, they are life. But human beings are rational souls as they perceive the idea, i.e., as they receive the Word, as they are illumined by this true life of things.34 “Augustinus more suo nimium platonicus ad ideas rapitur.” comments Calvin, and he finds the thought of the church father “a mente evangelistae longe remotum.” [See Eng. tr. p. 10: “Augustine, who is in his way an extreme Platonist, is addicted to the concept of the idea, … far … from the thought of the Evangelist.”] But Calvin’s own exposition, which does not platonize, or perhaps platonizes in its own way, moves remarkably along the very same lines. Calvin finds in zōē the continua inspiratio that takes place by the Word. By this means God, having made the world, constantly sustains it. In hē zōē, however, Calvin finds the life of the spirit which distinguishes humanity from the beasts. In this—undoubtedly a deeper and truer thought—the Word of God that is the basis of all things is reflected as in a mirror.35 Also along the same lines, but more crudely in the spirit of the nineteenth century, A. Tholuck explains that God as the self-revealing God is the source of natural life; in humanity this natural life appears at its highest potency as consciousness, as direct perception.36 Meyer, too, writes that the reference is to the general life source of the world that was made by the Logos, who as such could not be inactive, at least in relation to humanity, but who necessarily had to show himself to be at work in it according to its rational nature.37 In a sermon on this text Schleiermacher used the same thought to make the point that the individual human soul does not see only what is dead around it but also sees life, which leads it to a knowledge of God as the author of the world, so that earthly life, the life that encounters us in the world, is in fact the light of men.38 And finally, again in a sermon, and within the framework of this view coming closest to the truth, Luther distinctively claims that “natural life is a part of eternal life and only a beginning, but it comes to an end through death, because it does not recognize him from whom it comes; the same sin cuts it off, so that it has to die eternally. Again, those who believe and recognize him from whom they have life never die, but natural life is strengthened to eternal life, so that it never tastes of death.”39
I cannot deny that the presupposition underlying this whole understanding, namely, that v. 4a is looking back to v. 3, is not in itself improbable. At v. 3 we recalled the parallels in Col. 1:16 and Heb. 1:2, and it might well be pointed out that in those passages we go on to read: ta panta en autō̧ synestēken (Col. 1:17), and: pherōn te ta panta tō̧ rhēmati tēs dynameōs antou (Heb. 1:3), to which the en autō̧ zōē ēn of this verse aptly corresponds according to that understanding, especially in Calvin’s formula: “continua inspiratio mundum vegetans.” But we can obviously presuppose such a reference back to v. 3—and this is the second presupposition of that understanding—only if the decisive concept zōē permits and commands it. And this, it would seem to me, is not the case in that I know of no passage in the whole of John’s Gospel where it is possible to equate zōē with being that brings forth other being, with the life of all things in the idea, with continua inspiratio. with the source of life, etc. Always in this Gospel the term zōē (with or without the addition aiōnios) has soteriological-eschatological significance. It is the life which, as we have already affirmed in the light of 5:26, the Son has in himself (en heautō̧) as the Father has given him to do so. In contrast to apōleia and thanatos it is the imperishable being, not subject to corruption or destruction, which through the Revealer, as the decisive thing that he has to bring according to John, is offered to all people and imparted to those who believe in him, through him who at some climaxes is himself called hē zōē. This and not anything else is what zōē means in 6:33 and 6:51, where we read of zōē kosmon. In these passages the kosmos is unquestionably the human world and zōē is none other than the life that is imparted to this world by the Revealer. Zōē in John’s Gospel is not the life that is already in us or the world by creation; it is the new and supernatural life which comes in redemption and has first to be imparted to us in some way. Is it really permissible to assume that precisely here we have an exception and that what is meant is the natural life that is lent by God to all creatures as such? Is it not more likely that precisely at this point where it occurs for the first time it has to be used in the pregnant sense that it bears in the rest of the Gospel?
Coming now to the third presupposition of that understanding, we find that things are the same with the subordinate concept of phōs. I have still to find in John a passage in which light is the light which is present by creation, which is given in and with the life of creation, which is there as the uncreated light of the created world, which does not rather come only with the life of redemption, which is not the light of revelation, which perhaps comes from the very beginning but still comes. In relation to v. 3 we referred to the coincidence of revealed theology and natural theology both there and in the New Testament parallels. But it seems to me to be characteristic of New Testament thinking—I make the same point regarding the well-known verse Rom. 1:19—that with a strict reserve appropriate to the theme it does not use the insight that the Revealer is also the Creator in such a way that by a logical inversion (all things are possible in logic!) it is also said that the Creator is the Revealer. God’s self-revealing is a separate action that goes beyond creation. In relation to what was made, to its life and to the knowledge that may be gained from it, phōs is a new and different light which is only arising. It is the light of dawn, not the full light of eternity already present.40 Note that the apparently very tempting hē zōē ēn to phōs of this verse is given in v. 9 the interpretation: ēn to phōs erchomenon eis ton kosmon. This seems to me to oppose sharply that understanding, in spite of the venerable names associated with it, since it does not do justice to the strict character of revelation as phōs erchomenon. And finally, in view of our initial grammatical findings, we have to ask its champions what they make of the change from zōē to hē zōē, in which we can find the distinction between the life of creation and the life of the human spirit only by violent wresting. If this counterargument is cogent, as I believe, then in v. 4a we are not to look back. We have to consider a new thought—in brief the whole complex of reconciliation41 and revelation. The religious parallels mentioned also point us in this direction. After the author has said in v. 3 that without exception everything made is mediate to God because it is made by the Word, and that nothing is chōris autou, that nothing has its origin from God directly and apart from the Word, now, making a new beginning, he goes on to say that in him was life, namely, the life which is indispensable to men but which in a fearful way they do not have, the true, authentic, eternal life which is immune to corruption and death, life such as God has in himself. That we do not actually have this indispensable thing is stated indirectly in v. 5, but the reason why this is so is not yet given. We are undoubtedly right to assume that with the mere mention of the thoroughly soteriological term zōē, implicitly its negative presupposition too (indicated by the ou katelaben of v. 5) would be more than clearly stated for the author’s contemporaries. This life, i.e., the life that overcomes death, was in him.42 In view of the continuation in v. 4b, i.e., that it was the light of men, and in view of the ēn erchomenon with which the same thought is taken up in v. 9, one has to say that this ēn has a significance that goes beyond the eternal ēn of v. 1. We do not rule out that meaning, but here ēn also means that it was, not as one created thing is alongside others, nor in a permanent relation that is contained from the very first in the concept of God and the world, but in the unique way in which this life—in the Word which is spoken from eternity into time, and which may be heard in time with all the seriousness of eternity—is present as the life that is indispensable but is still missing, as the true life that overcomes death. Is, I say, although not excluding the was. The imperfect ēn includes a present here, as may be seen from the phainei that follows in the next verse. In translation we can quietly let the past tense stand, however, only so long as by the past we do not understand a specific time but all past history. Thus life was presented to the world. It was set before eyes and ears in such a
