the appeal that it signified for them. This redemptive life, v. 4b explains, was (en autō̧, contained and offered in God’s Word) the “light of men,” the light of revelation which illumined them. Objectively and enduringly there stood before them the possibility or opportunity of knowing it, of knowing about it. Whatever the result might be (more of this in v. 5), light was nowhere and never absent. Nowhere and never was there lacking the chance, provided by the divine action, to think about life, about salvation, about the life that is lost and yet not lost inasmuch as it was enclosed and preserved and offered in the Word and shone as the light of revelation. By the Word, as Schlatter paraphrases it,43 God has worked the miracle that the life that derives from him appeared on earth and did not remain hidden.
If zōē is not the life which is from creation but the life which in reconciliation44 is in principle future, i.e., which comes to us, which in contrast to all our past breaks into our present, and if as the phōs ton anthrōpōn it is not the light of reason and the like but revelation, i.e., the redemption which visibly tears down the barriers of death, we have still to answer the question what specifically the Evangelist has in mind when he speaks these words. If in the exposition thus far I have mostly agreed with Zahn over against the other exegetes, in this question I have to part company with him. Far too one-sidedly and violently, as it seems to me, he rushes on to the interpretation that the reference here is to the “historical person of Jesus.” In him was life as distinct from all others, in whom it was not present. In his self-attestation by word and work the life shone for all. This is how he would interpret the verse. Similarly he relates the whole prologue directly and exclusively to the thirty years of the epiphany of the Logos in Jesus of Nazareth.45 I admit to the suspicion that the principle of orthodox Lutheran christology, ubicunque est logos, ibi etiam praesentissimam sibi habet carnum,46 might have had something to do with Zahn’s zeal in this regard. But be that as it may, his view of the matter is onesided and violent because even he, in vv. 1–3, cannot deny that we have to do with a reality and activity of the Logos that is only pointing ahead to the historical Jesus, and because it is hard to see why the statement which begins there, and which does not start at the Incarnation but simply hastens toward it, preparing the ground for a consideration of the incarnate Word, should suddenly break off here and become what in this case must be called a puzzlingly abstract reference to the significance of the life of Jesus. Certainly we have to say that in every word that John writes he has in view Jesus of Nazareth as the reality that fills out his depiction of the function of the Logos, as the goal toward which he is moving in this remarkable anticlimax. Certainly, if our interpretation of v. 2 is correct, John has been referring in a significant way to Jesus from the very first: He was in the beginning with God. Certainly vv. 4–5 are speaking of the same light as that whose epiphany or arising is depicted in vv. 14ff. and which then becomes the theme of the Gospel proper. Every word of the prologue can (and even must) be related to Jesus of Nazareth, for every word is thought out in relation to him, i.e., to the revelation that took place in him.47 Yet the word “light” includes not only the sunrise but also the dawn when the sun has not yet risen, and even the half-light of the night. It does not seem to me to be the presupposition of the prologue that the existence of light in the world, its coming into the world, to which v. 9 and then 3:19 and 12:46 refer, begins only with the ensarkōsis of v. 14. “Lux luxit etiam antequam in carne appareret.”48 Inasmuch as every word here relates to Jesus Christ, it also relates to the Logos as the Revealer of God who announces himself before and even apart from Jesus of Nazareth. To the conjectured dogmatic background of Zahn’s view we might reply with a principle of orthodox Reformed christology: “Sic logos naturam humanam sibi univit, ut totus earn inhabitet et tote quippus immensus et infinitus extra eam sit.”49 I shall be careful not to advance in relation to v. 4 the counterthesis that the reference here is simply to a pre-Christian stage of revelation, e.g., to Israel. The notes sounded by the terms “life” and “light” are too full to permit this. Obviously no one time is here marked off from another. Revelation as a whole, the light which comes and has already come, the light which is the light of men, is here contrasted with history as a whole. What the author wants to say is that whatever was revelation, the light of life, redemption for men, was so only in him—again not directly or immediately from God, from God indeed, but in him, in the same Word that took flesh in Jesus Christ, alongside which there never has been or can be any other Word. In him was life, and this life was the light of men. The emphasis of the verse—we must not let this be lost—is on the en autō̧. Wherever there was light, it was this light. Apart from him there is only witness to the light (v. 8), just as outside him nothing came into being that is. Augustine, even though in the main point he is wrong about this verse as “nimium platonicus.” is right, and grasps the thought of the Evangelist very well, when he comments on the phrase to phōs tōn anthrōpōn: “John the Baptist was illumined by this light, and so was John the Evangelist himself. He was full of this light who said: ‘I am not the Christ, but he who comes after me.’ … He was illumined by this light who said: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word.’ ”50 Here we take our red thread51 in our hands again. It is as well not to miss here, too, the accompanying note of this problem.
5. Kai to phōs en tȩ̄ skotia̧ phainei, kai hē skotia auto ou katelaben. The readoption of the term phōs from v. 4b (which gives significance to the first connecting kai), the fact that v. 5a is in some sense an explanation of v. 4b, since it was as the light shining in the darkness that the life was the light of men, these factors justify our assumption that v. 5 stands in a special relation to v. 4 in the same way as v. 2 does to v. 1. The change from ēn to phainei, which is surprising at first glance, is no argument against this. We have already seen from v. 3b how flexible the tenses are for the author. We shall find further examples in the prologue when we come to v. 9 and v. 15a. As the ēn of v. 4 has some present significance, so indubitably the phainei, as the contrasting aorist katelaben shows, embraces the past as well. In this regard one has to say, of course, that in John the present always has the ring of the special actuality of the event denoted by the verb in question. For the moment I will leave open the question of the special thing at issue and in a preliminary way simply point out that the historical part of the first chapter, the story of Lazarus in ch. 11, and finally the resurrection in chs. 20–21 are all marked by a strikingly fluid use of the present tense which, in places where readers would expect past tenses, necessarily confronts them with the events narrated and hauls them out of their seats to action on the stage. That the surprising martyrei of v. 15a of the prologue has this effect is beyond dispute. Is this the aim here too, and also with the phōtizei of v. 9? However that may be, the relation in v. 4, which in appearance at least is neutrally described (“The life was the light of men”), is now characterized. It takes on color and becomes dramatic. The presuppositions of the terms “life” and “light,” which v. 4 does not specify, now come to the fore. Light shines—this is an analytical statement—in the darkness. Revelation confronts nonrevelation,52 concealment, indeed, a power that acts inimically against revelation. This is skotia. That skotia is not identical with the hoi anthrōpoi of v. 4 we can see from 3:19, where the men who love the dark, to skotos, more than the light are obviously distinguished from darkness. According to the relatively few passages in which skotia occurs in John, darkness is the atmosphere which contends against light and redemption. Men, all men, walk in this atmosphere (8:12; 12:35; 1 John 2:11). But as disciples of Jesus they must no longer walk in it; as believers they must not abide in it (12:35, 46). But according to 12:35 darkness can still overtake (katalambanein, the same term as in v. 5b) once again those who walk in the light, like a mist that unexpectedly rises in the mountains.
It has often been noted, and quite correctly, that John does not explain why revelation is revelation in the darkness. He has given no origin for this opponent of revelation. He has set it in no relation to the panta di’ autou, either by explaining that it is an exception, that it has its own genesis, or by explaining that it is included, that evil falls within God’s plan for the world. The question of its origin is neither posed nor answered. “The Evangelist has not reflected on it,” is the comment of H. Holtzmann53 on this silence. We must add, however, that this is not because he unfortunately never thought
