By Pastor Dave Farmer

The unspoken antecedent is given a name, "The Logos of Eternal Life."

The Prologue of 1 John - Part 3

THE FIRST CAUSE OF ALL THINGS

1 John 1:1f [This epistle is] about the Logos of [Eternal] Life [Expanded translation].¹

Introduction

This is the fifth and final clause of verse 1, and now the unspoken antecedent to the relative pronoun "what" is introduced: The Lord Jesus Christ is "the LOGOS OF [ETERNAL] LIFE." This is a title John gives to the Lord as he did in his gospel, John 1:1,14 and will again in Revelation 19:14. This Greek noun LOGOS, does mean "Word," but John is using this epithet as a technical description of the Lord Jesus Christ in these five verses.

A Brilliant Approach To Evangelize Greek Gnostics

John was not only interested in defending the truth; he wanted to lead to salvation those Gentiles in his new mission field. At Ephesus, he was presented with those who were heavily involved in the Hellenistic philosophies of the day. This was quite different from his ministry in Palestine, which was focused on the Jewish people. In fact, Ephesus was the hometown of the famous philosopher Heraclitus. What's more, it was this philosopher who was the first to used LOGOS in his speculations regarding the origin of the universe.

So by the time John arrived in Ephesus, many Hellenistic philosophies existed: the schools of Heraclitus, the rationalistic schools of Socrates and Plato, the empirical schools of Aristotle, and the stoic schools of Zeno and Philo. ² They each had two things in common. One, they all talked about the logos. Secondly, as brilliant as they were, their intellect kept crashing into the Great Wall Of Separation, which isolates us from eternity. Consequently, by our very own natures, we are without any tools to penetrate this wall, 1 Corinthians 2:9 - 16.

It is truly inspired by the great Apostle to take a word that would capture the attention of the Gnostics, a word right out of their philosophical playbook, a word at the very center of six hundred years of debate and to introduce them to the Lord Jesus Christ using their vocabulary. I am giving John credit, but of course, the Holy Spirit under divine revelation and inspiration reveals this to John. All praise be to Him!

The Great Wall Of Separation

For us to appreciate this, I want you to imagine your standing before a GREAT WALL. This wall is so immense that it cannot be ascended. It reaches into the clouds. You cannot go around it for East meets West without a break. You cannot go under it, for it is infinity deep. On one side of the wall is eternity, and all that is eternal. On your side of the wall is time. Since we are finite creatures, meaning we are governed by time, we are entirely shut off by our human natures, ill-equipped to see what is on the other side. Christians must understand this. So let me illustrate this:

One of the leading scientists of our day, Dr. Steven Hawking, was asked on Larry King Live, " Is there a God?" Here is a brilliant physicist who was asked to use his genius mind to answer this question. This was his reply, "I believe the simplest explanation is the correct one. No one created the universe, and no one directs our fate." Now, when a Christian hears this brilliant man make such an extraordinary pronouncement, that challenges the very foundation of our faith, it is distressing. We hold in great admiration scientists, like Dr. Hawking; nevertheless, they are flawed in their thinking.

Years ago, I read an illustration that Dr. Francis Schaeffer gave that has helped me immensely, especially when I am faced with the comments of the intellectual elite. Dr. Schaeffer writes:

Imagine the room where you are sitting with the curtains pulled and the doors locked. Let us suppose that room is the only universe that God has made. Now that would be possible. God could have made such a universe. So let us say that the only universe that exists is the room with the doors locked and the curtains pulled. There is nothing outside at all, absolutely nothing. We are in a universe that can be seen with one look around the room.

Now let us go further. Suppose we have two chairs in this room and that sitting on these two chairs are two men, the only two men in the universe. As we consider them, we find that they differ. One is a totally consistent materialist. As far as he is concerned, the universe is made up of nothing but mass, energy, and motion; that’s all there is to it. On the other chair sits a Christian who lives in the light of the teaching of the Bible as the propositional revelation of God. And these two sit facing each other in a universe in which they sit alone.

After they have looked at each other awhile, the materialist says, “Now I’m going to explore our universe.” And the Christian replies, “That’s fine.” So the materialist begins to analyze the universe, and it takes him a long time. He goes through all the scientific processes that we now use to examine our own universe. He uses the sciences of chemistry, biology, physics, etc. He goes back to the periodic table, and behind the periodic table into the atom and examines it. He examines everything from the paint on the Wall to the more basic particles. All this takes him a long time. Finally as an older man, he comes to the Bible-believing Christian and brings him a big set of books, and he says, “Now here’s a set of books, they’re nicely bound, and they give in great detail a description of our universe.” So the Christian takes a number of months, even years, to study these books with care.

Finally the Christian turns to the materialist and says, “Well, this is a tremendous work. You really told me a great deal about my universe that I wouldn’t otherwise have known. However, my friend, though this is all very instructive, it’s drastically incomplete.” And you can imagine this man, who has spent his lifetime pouring out his heart to do his measuring and his weighing, suddenly taken aback. He turns and says to the Christian, “Well, now, I’m shocked that you tell me it’s not all here. What have I missed?” And then the Christian responds something like this: “I have a book here, the Bible, and it tells me things that you do not know. It tells me the origin of the universe. Your scientific investigation by its very nature cannot do that. And your investigation also says nothing about where you and I as men came from. You have examined us because we, like the paint on the wall, are phenomena in the universe. You’ve studied something of our psychology and even given me several volumes on it, but you have not told me how we came to be here. In short, you don’t know the origin of either the universe or us.

“Furthermore,” the Christian continues, “I know from this book that there is more to the universe than you have described. There is an unseen portion as well as a seen portion. And there is a cause-and-effect relationship between them. They are not mutually exclusive, but are parts of one reality. It’s as if you had taken an orange, sliced it in half, and only concerned yourself with one of the halves. To really understand reality in our universe, you have to consider both halves—both the seen and the unseen.”

In this sense supernatural is not a good word to describe the unseen portion. We must understand that the unseen portion of the universe is just as natural and as real as is the seen portion. Furthermore, the seen and the unseen are not totally separated. When we do certain things, it makes a difference in the unseen world, and things in the unseen world make a difference in the seen world. The Christian would say to the materialist, “Your volume on the philosophy of history just does not hang together. The reason is that you are only looking at half of what’s there; you are only looking at half of history; you do not take into account the unseen portion. Consequently, your philosophy of history will never be sound.” He is right: nobody has ever produced a satisfactory philosophy of history beginning with the materialistic viewpoint. There is too much in the seen world that does not make sense when taken as if it were all there is. One cannot produce a philosophy of history based on only half of history.

Now what happens next? These two men look at each other rather askance because their two primary views of the universe are set one against the other. The materialist replies, “You’re crazy. You’re talking about things you can’t see.” And the consistent Christian responds, “Well, you may say I am crazy because I’m talking about things I cannot see, but you are completely unbalanced. You only know half of your own universe.”

Let us notice something extremely important: these two views can never be brought into synthesis. One man is not a little right and the other a little right and a synthesis better than both. These are two mutually exclusive views—one is right and one is wrong. If you say less than this, then you reduce Christianity to a psychological crutch, a glorified aspirin. That doesn’t mean that the Christian can’t glean much detail from the materialist’s observation. But as far as the comprehensive view of the universe is concerned, there can be no synthesis. Either this man is right and that man is Wrong, or that man is right and this man is wrong. It’s a total antithesis. ³

So when Dr. Hawking says, "There is no God or evidence of God remember:

1. His IQ is probably double yours.

2. As smart as he is, he only has half an orange.

3. Because you have the Bible, you know the whole truth.

4. Therefore, you, with your Bible, have a spiritual IQ, which makes you smarter than Hawking.

5. He will not admit it.

6. I don't care; it is true.

Heraclitus [ 535 - 475 B.C.] wanted to know what was on the other side of that great wall, for he believed the answers to his questions were there. For him, LOGOS was the principle that controls the Universe. I hope you can put yourself in Heraclitus' shoes for a moment. Heraclitus was a genius, but he is frustrated. He is known as the weeping philosopher, for his brilliant mind crashes into the Great Wall of Separation. He cannot see over it; it is too high. He cannot go around it; it is too wide. He cannot dig under it; it is too deep. What is true physically is true mentally. He thinks, he reasons, he deduces with brilliant logic, but in the end, all he can do is speculate. There are no real certainties in theories. He only has half an orange. What is on the other side of the wall? For him, it was the Logos!

Heraclitus' Speculations

He believed there had to be something beyond the barrier of time. There had to be something that created his brain and enables him to form words and thoughts. Heraclitus said that life consists of what you think. This is the same idea found in Proverbs, "For as he thinks within himself, so he is," Proverbs 23:7. He said a man is not like the animals. They act upon impulse and instinct. They cannot form words and think and write down their thoughts. He saw a difference.

He didn't call that THEOS, god. The Greeks had many gods, and Heraclitus didn't think highly of any of them. So, in his philosophical system, he calls the force that control's the universe LOGOS. LOGOS is the original thinker. LOGOS is the creator, the inventor of language. He was the first person to say, "I think," and therefore, if I think, there must be someone who always existed who thought, and he has given me the ability to think, the ability to reason. So out there is the original thinker, the LOGOS.

From this summary, you can see how powerful John's message is. Six hundred years of anthropocentric humanistic speculation and no one, not Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, have been able to penetrate the Great Wall of Separation between time and eternity. They can talk about what may be there, they can debate it, but they have no certainty for they know in the end that their theories are less than what exists. Jean-Paul Sartre, the French Existentialist philosopher, said, "The problem we face is that something exists." They have no answers, just questions. They knew of the existence of the Logos from their rational minds, but they did not know who the Logos was. John knows, and it is Jesus.

The Breakthrough- Jesus, the Eternal Logos, crosses over the Great Wall and enters our world.

Now, since man has been attempting to cross over to the other side, and has failed; what if someone from eternity came over the wall into our world. The Apostle John will say next that this Logos you have been talking about all these years, well He has come into our world of space and time and revealed Himself to us. He came from eternity to reveal to us the truth about the origin of the universe and the purpose of life. Therefore, we complete verse one introducing the Lord Jesus Christ as the Eternal Logos. In our next article, we will magnify Him for He is the Revelation of God.

ENDNOTES

¹ See exegesis of 1 John 1:1.

² Kittel, on the meaning of LOGOS, traces its use throughout the Hellenistic period. I have decided not to pursue the history of philosophical thought or attempt to explain their views in these articles.

³ The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer of Vol 4, book 4, chapter 9 entitled," The Universe and Two Chairs" pg 287, Good News Publishing, 1982, Wheaton, Illinois