should happen. It is in the balances, no, it depends on God’s good pleasure whether it does so or not. If it does not, we shall hear the Evangelist and yet not hear him. Thus our relation to him has a twofold character. We are pleased to let ourselves be bound by his word even as and although we see that in the first instance we have to do with it alone, with this particular man and his particular words in their own place, within the limit of his time, in all the specificity with which he speaks as a man like any other. We face a historical problem. But we let ourselves be bound only in order that, thus bound, we may be freed by God himself to and for God himself. Without being bound we cannot be freed, for it is from the mountains that the light comes to us, the little hills, from the apostles that the Word of God comes to those that are in the church. This is why we hear them and lift up our eyes to the hills. But without the liberation we are not bound, for the mountains do not illumine unless they are illumined, the apostles do not speak to us as such unless it is ever and again given to them to do so by God. Thus our help comes from the Lord who has made heaven and earth [Ps. 121:2]. As a medium20 what is historical, the human word of the witness to revelation, demands our total, concentrated, and serious attention. But only as a medium,21 not for its own sake and not to be understood in terms of itself, but as witness which itself needs witness and expects witness—the witness that its subject must give. This giving is an event, an action, the action of God in the strictest sense of the term. The point of our own action as hearers and expositors of the Gospel stands or falls with God’s action through the instrument with which we have to do.
3. Our situation as readers and expositors of the Gospel means finally that we are placed under a specific demand. This relates to our own concrete attitude to this task. I do not mean the demand for faith. Our starting point is that the Gospel at once addresses to us a demand for faith that we can neither miss nor avoid. I add that every point at which we are occupied with the Gospel carries this demand with it and necessarily has the significance of an act of obedience or disobedience to this demand. But what is faith if not the illumination without which we cannot perceive the light of scripture? And what is this illumination if not the inscrutable and uncontrollable work of God upon us for which we can only pray?22 What we have now to discuss, however, is the other demand that Augustine expresses in connection with the familiar cultic formula of the early church: “Lift up your hearts.”23 What does this mean? If we listen to Augustine, the mysticism of Neoplatonism and the asceticism of the Hellenistic mystery religions tell us what he meant. From the mountains that we see with our eyes we should mount up higher and higher to the invisible One who has made the visible mountains, just as John as a recipient of the divine gift was one of the highest mountains because he rose up above everything created, above all heavens and angels, to the uncreated Word that was in the beginning. And for our hearts to be able to do this, they need cleansing—for they are carnal—they need the catharsis, the purifying of continence. To us these are alien notes. But they cannot be totally or finally alien. Alongside or prior to the faith that is not put in our own hands, on the level of what we desire and can do, in a way that does not bind him from whom every good gift comes, but not on that account without significance, there is a readiness for faith or for understanding what faith and its object are all about. Concretely, there is a readiness to understand24 that only in the sphere denoted by the terms church, sacrament, and canon can John’s Gospel be read and understood as the word of an apostle, i.e., as the word of a witness not to himself, but to the revelation imparted and entrusted to him. There is a readiness to look in the direction indicated, even if only in the form of a hypothetical intention demanded by an understanding of the formal nature of the subject.25 There is an openness to the need to understand this matter within its own logic and ethic. There is a willingness to adapt to this need because one wants to understand. Instead of willingness, then, we might say objectivity. We are perhaps not guilty of too great misrepresentation if we go on to say that the continence that Augustine commends consists concretely of opposing to the subjective presuppositions with which, to the hurt of our understanding, we constantly approach scripture, the equally subjective but sincere and earnest desire to read and expound the Gospel, not as teachers but as students, not as those who know but as those who do not know, as those who let ourselves be told26 what the Gospel, and through it the divine wisdom, is seeking to tell us, holding ourselves free for it as for a message that we have never heard before. This readiness can be the subject of a demand. We can want it, seek it, and have it. It is not a final word. It is not identical with faith. But as a penultimate word the demand for this readiness has its place. In the situation in which we find ourselves, as an integral part of its reality, there sounds forth unmistakably for all who are in it the cry: Lift up your hearts.
Augustine’s exordium and my commentary upon it might just as well introduce the exposition of any other book of the New Testament rather than John’s Gospel. That text reminds us of the basic elements in general biblical hermeneutics. Yet we have only to cast a glance at the first and clearly discernible section of the Gospel, its famous prologue in 1:1–18, to realize that it was neither by accident nor caprice that Augustine made his remarks in this context, and that with the apparently general considerations that we have appended to them we have in fact already approached our first, specific, and immediate exegetical task, namely, the exposition of the prologue.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word. He was in the beginning with God. Everything was made by him, and without him nothing that is was made. In him was life, and this life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not comprehended it.
There was a man sent from God who was called John. He came for witness, to bear witness to the light, that all might come to faith through him. He was not the light but bore witness to the light.
He was coming into the world as the true light that lightens everyone. He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came to his own home and his own people did not receive him. But those who did receive him, to them he gave the power1 to become the children of God, even to those who believed in his name. These were not born of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of a man, but of God.
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, a glory as2 of an only-begotten of his Father, of one who is full of grace and truth. John bears witness to him, and cries, and says: This was he of whom I said, he who comes after me surpasses me, for he was above me from the very first. Of his fulness we have all received grace for grace. The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth are through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, but the only-begotten, God, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has manifested him.
In support of the statement that our introductory discussion of Augustine has led us on to the right track for an understanding of the prologue, I might make the general observation that in the prologue, too, there is a concern to make it clear to readers of the Gospel that they are in a specific situation in relation to it, that they are in some sense from the very first its prisoners. A word, no, the Word has been spoken which in principle, as the Word of the Creator, precedes and is superior to all that is (vv. 1–3). A light shines, namely, the life that was originally in the Word. It shines in the darkness for all people. It has always shone. It was in the world (vv. 4–5, 9–10). All people are from the very first hoi idioi, his own people (v. 11). It may be that they are darkness that does not comprehend the light (v. 5), cosmos that does not know it (v. 10), people who do not receive their Lord (v. 11). But this does not alter the fact that the light shines in the darkness (v. 5), that the world was made by him who is the light (vv. 3, 10), that these are from the very first his own people (v. 11). The dice have been cast concerning humanity once the Evangelist, even though he, too, is only a man, introduces his theme. He omits the sursum corda, the express appeal to readers with which Augustine finally brings to light the significance of the situation. He was able to omit it. For who will not hear it at the end of the prologue, unspoken though it is?
Nevertheless,
