such. The meaning “related to the truth” is so general that its colorlessness and abstractness make a strange impression in this verse. The sense “reliable” or “trustworthy” fits well enough if the thought of the illumination of men by the light is the real point of the statement. But from what we have just said it is not. The paraphrase of Calvin makes good sense. Light in heaven and earth always receives its radiance from elsewhere. But Christ is the light which shines of itself and then fills the whole world with its radiance: “ut non alia sit usquam origo vel causa splendoris. Veram ergo lucem dixit, cui natura proprium est lucere.” [“There is no other source or cause of its brightness anywhere. And so he calls Him the true light whose own nature is to be light.”] Over against the witness peri tou phōtos there stood and stands the phōs alēthinon, the original, uncreated, primary light, the direct and immediate revelation of life that bears witness to itself. Of this true light a relative clause tells us: ho phōtizei panta anthrōpon. Phōtizein is more than phainein (v. 5), and the relative clause says more than v. 4b (that the light was the life of men). Not just an activity but an effect of light is meant here. It illumines men, it fills them with light, it sets them in the light. To the extent that they are set in the light at all! “Quisquis illuminatur, ab hac luce illuminatur.”83 It is in this restrictive sense that we are to take the panta, after the analogy of the pantes of v. 7. Everyone who receives light receives it from this source. Obviously also the man mentioned in v. 6! Only in this way and to this extent does he himself shed light so that others come to faith through him—only as he is illumined by this true and primary light. By this light which is first original and then alone at work, is what the author means to say. Of this light he says that it was erchomenon eis ton kosmon, i.e., coming into the world. What does this mean? According to Cocceius, H. Holtzmann, Heitmüller, and Zahn,84 we must quietly supply a tote before erchomenon. According to this view the Evangelist’s meaning is then that “when the Baptist witnessed to him, Jesus began to emerge from the concealment of his former life” (Zahn). Against this view it has been repeatedly pointed out that in spite of the “there was” with which they begin, vv. 6–8 (cf. v. 15, and in contrast v. 19) are not a historical account or record but the evaluation and characterization of a concrete historical entity to which it would be most inappropriate to attach the story of the coming of Jesus (which in this case would be just as oddly abstract as, one has to say, Zahn’s view of v. 4 is). No, the reference is not to the light which appeared in the humanity of Jesus, although not first or only in this humanity, but to the primary light of the revelation of life from which all other light derives (with the Baptist, and the category that he represents, in view). This light was (the same time-embracing ēn as in v. 4 and v. 8) coming into the world. Later in v. 10 we shall read that it was in the world. Here we have the explanation that we also found in v. 4. The being of this light in the world is its coming. But its coming in full reality! This coming establishes the truth of what is said about the Baptist in vv. 6–8. Because the primary light is coming into the world there is a Baptist, a martyria. Not in virtue of the erchesthai of such men (v. 7) but in virtue of the erchesthai, the dawn, of the light, of which their erchesthai on the lower level, in history, gives intimation—not out of the caprice of religious yearning but out of the necessity which is laid upon them by the inconceivable divine condescension which is enacted again and again in this coming.
10. En tō̧ kosmō̧ ēn—kai ho kosmos di’ autou egeneto—kai ho kosmos auton ouk egnō. The structure of this verse reminds us strikingly of v. 1: three short statements joined by kai and all three rotating around a single concept, in this case kosmos. If we note the masculine auton in the third statement, and if we assume, as is probable, that this same masculine is the subject in the first statement, and after the analogy of v. 3 is also meant in the di’ autou of the second, then we see that the masculine can refer only to the ho logos of vv. 1ff. and v. 14 (unless with Zahn85 we look ahead and seek to refer it at once to the historical Jesus). There thus arises unsought a material parallel as well to v. 1. Comparison shows that between them we have come a considerable way. With the same urgency with which v. 1 taught the deity86 of the Word, v. 10 now teaches its turning to the world. With the necessary caution one might say that the former refers to the transcendence of the Logos, the latter to its immanence in the world. It is important to note, however, that the en tō̧ kosmō̧ ēn of this verse understands the immanence as an event in contrast to permanent immanence. V. 9, and further back v. 5, and also v. 11 with its ēlthen, forbid us to construe this ēn as a continuous relation. It is act or action. “The Word gave itself to be received by the world,” we might paraphrase the first statement. How far the Word was engaged in this turning to the world vv. 4–5 and v. 9 have shown in a general way. Life or redemption was in the Word, and this life was light, it was manifest among men in the midst of the darkness in which they live; it came and comes into the world. How concretely? Vv. 6–8 have given the answer to this question. It came and comes in the form of the witness who is not himself the light of the world but who is its witness with full authority. The term light, having rendered this service, recedes into the background. In its place, preparing the ground for v. 14, the Word itself returns as whose life, or redeeming content, the light was introduced. Thus a line is drawn under what goes before. As the light shone (v. 5) and came into the world (v. 9) (the light that was simply the light of his life), the Word himself was in the world.
The term kosmos can have at least three meanings in John: (1) “The sum of all created things.” This meaning fits the second statement best (cf. v. 3). But in the third statement the kosmos is depicted as either knowing or not knowing. And all that precedes and follows points to a more specialized meaning for this central concept. (2) “The creature in its hardened turning from God and his revelation,” shut off from revelation because it shuts itself off; the world as per se the world that lies in the evil one [cf. 1 John 5:19b]. This pregnant meaning, which is common in John, fits the content of the third statement very well—but perhaps too well inasmuch as the statement then becomes analytic. And v. 11 shows that the author does not regard the world as from the very outset alien and hostile but wants to depict its turning from the Word as an unexpected and scandalous episode. (If we adopt these first two meanings, we have to assume that there is a shift of meaning in the middle of the verse. The world that came into being through the Word could not be the world that is hardened, and the world that does not know the Word could not be simply the sum of all that is created. Such a change of meaning is not impossible in John, but it is perhaps as well not to use the resultant exegetical possibility too hastily or too often.) (3) “The human world.” “homines in mundo.”87 “the earth and the people on it,”88 history as a world within the world. With this sense kosmos would be neutral in the first two statements, its sense being determined by its relation to the Word, this sense then being found in the third statement. I regard this third sense as the most probable in the context, especially in the light of the third statement and the related v. 11. If we want to assume a shift of meaning, then we have sense (1) in the first and second statements and sense (3) in the third. Our interpretation is thus as follows.
1. En tō̧ kosmō̧ ēn. The Word neither was nor is remote from humanity. His life, which is their redemption, became and is manifest. It could and can be received. Care is taken that no one has to feel left out. No one can complain of unfair treatment. The witness and testimony to him are there. “Their voice goes out through all the earth” [Ps. 19:4]. Calvin paraphrases: “Summa est, nunquam talem fuisse Christi absentiam a mundo, quin homines eius radiis expergefacti in ipsum attollere oculos debuerint.”89 Those who have ears to hear, let them hear!
2. Kai ho kosmos di’ autou egeneto. If we have correctly expounded the parallel in v. 3, here again the stress lies on the fact that over against the human world the Word has all the superiority of the Creator. It was not a part of the human world. It came into the world from above, from heaven, as will later be said of Christ [3:31], from that which is in principle above all that has come into being, yet not, of course, as a foreign body, but as the truth (v. 11 may be heard in advance in this second statement in v. 10) which the world really ought to know. If it came in the form of human witness to it, even in the reflection of this
