Occam's Razor and John's Theology: An Exposition of John 1:1-18
PHILOSOPHERS LOVE TO DISAGREE. The history of philosophy attests to this fact, consisting essentially of a long series of conflicting opinions on what defines and constitutes reality. It should come as no surprise, then, that only the greatest and most compelling of ideas endure the test of time in philosophical circles. One of these ideas was presented by the nominalist Franciscan monk William of Ockham in the fourteenth century, and is known as Ockham's (or Occam's) Razor. As usually stated, Occam's Razor amounts to an assumption that among competing metaphysical claims, the simplest explanation is the best, or at least the most promising: "Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity." Secular philosophers, scientists and scholars frequently appeal to Occam's Razor to defend the likelihood of naturalistic hypotheses against religious claims. Most of them would be surprised, no doubt, to discover that Occam himself understood both the existence of God and the authority of Scripture to be self-evident. For Occam, Christian theism is the ultimate expression of Occam's Razor.
John's Gospel has endured the test of time for a number of reasons - most obviously and most importantly, because it is more than a mere sampling of literature, but is biblical literature, God's inspired message to man: It offers the truth of the gospel of Christ to sinful men in need of a savior. Apart from its practical, redemptive merits, however, the Fourth Gospel offers an elaborate statement of theological truth. John is a lasting, spiritually compelling work because it is both profound in its complexity and stark in its simplicity. In a sense, it is a shining example of Occam's Razor applied to Christian theology: The reality of God as creator of the heavens and the earth is necessarily complex, but his revelation to us concerning himself turns out to be relatively simple. One almost gets the impression from studying it that the principal author of the Fourth Gospel (the Apostle John, in my opinion) - like a research physicist writing a book for a lay audience - is deliberately condescending to a level at which everyone can understand. In other words he's translating a rich, divinely inspired revelation, the fruit of a lasting relationship with Jesus himself, into simplified, logically codified terms. (John 21:25 lends support to this view, as the author assures readers that there is much more to the revelation of Christ than could ever be recorded in the pages of a book.) Nowhere is this combination of simplicity and profundity in John's theology better demonstrated than in his prologue, or the first eighteen verses of the Gospel. In these few verses John masterfully distills the complexities of theological concepts (e.g., the deity of Christ) into an unadorned and coherent form.
Overall Structure, Themes, and Concepts
An examination of contexts reveals that John 1:1-18 is a well-defined pericope, written from a particularly detached perspective and consisting of neither a strictly historical record of events nor of theological commentary on those events. (Verse nineteen begins what may be termed more typical Gospel material, the story of Jesus' ministry on earth.) Thus, as the first of four major sections of the Gospel - a prologue, the signs, the passion, and an epilogue - the prologue is not so much a subsection of Gospel narrative; rather it serves as a grand cosmological-theological backdrop or introduction for the events that follow. It begins, logically enough, with the ultimate beginning of all things, and ends with the end of all things. Jesus Christ is the answer on both counts. He is the transcendent, eternally preexistent Word (v. 1-3) as well as the fulfillment of grace and truth in human flesh (v. 14-18). In between he is the Light of the world, the truth received by many and rejected by still more (v. 6-7). In characteristic straightforward manner, John uses the prologue to pronounce exactly what his Gospel is all about and where his own theological priorities lie. To expand it a little further structurally, the prologue may also be seen as a broad synopsis or summary of the entire Gospel itself. This is a diagnostic Johannine feature, as there is really nothing equivalent to it in the Synoptics. An implicit structure derived from the prologue-as-summary view consists of three basic categories, all centered on the person of Jesus Christ: (1) Verses 1-4 are the revelation of Christ, as creator and Light of the world, roughly corresponding to John 1:19-6:71; (2) Verses 5-11 describe the rejection of Christ as Messiah by the Jews, corresponding to John 7-12; (3) Verses 12-18 convey the reception of Christ by his disciples, those who received him and remained with him by faith, as described in John 13-21. In providing a carefully structured overview of events, the prologue provides further evidence of a deliberate, reflective process of redaction particular to John among the Gospels.
A number of recurring themes in John's Gospel as a whole also appear in the prologue. Foremost among these are certain cosmic dualistic concepts similar to those common among the Qumran community as recorded in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Light versus darkness is a theme that figures heavily into both the Gospel of John and 1 John, as a metaphor for truth versus deception, spiritual/moral understanding versus ignorance. The two are essentially incompatible: "and the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it" (John 1:5). It follows that there are only two kinds of people: those who receive Christ and those who reject him (v. 11-12). This too is an expression of cosmic dualism. John also writes from the standpoint of realized eschatology, i.e., the idea that much of what is generally regarded elsewhere (e.g., in the Synoptics) as reserved for the future is actually present reality. From John's perspective, judgment, salvation and eternal life, for instance, are not merely distant possibilities to be realized in the course of a prearranged eschatological schedule but are to a great degree realities accessible in the present: In the first chapter John describes Jesus as the "light of men," who "gives light to every man," who gives "the right to become children of God" to "everyone who believes." This is really absolutist terminology, offering little in the way of further eschatological contingencies in order for all men to be fully redeemed. Jesus is therefore the ultimate fulfillment of prophecies and principles of both testaments: "And of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace. For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ" (v. 16-17).
The centrality of Christ in John's thinking is unequivocal, and relates to another prominent theme of the prologue, the deity of Christ. John 1:1 is arguably the strongest affirmation of the divinity of Jesus in the entire NT - which may explain why this particular text is often interpreted and translated so badly (by Jehovah's Witnesses and others). In a radical departure from his relative contemporaries Philo, Josephus and the Greek philosophers, John carefully crafts his language to assert that in the beginning, at the point of creation itself, the Word (logos) already existed. "In the beginning was the Word." The use of the past imperfect in the original language is no accident, but implies a continual state of preexistence on the part of Christ, so that it would really make no sense in reference to any created being. The Word has always transcended the bounds of time and space, and moreover has been eternally "with God," or in the Greek "face-to-face with God" (pros ton theos). The Father and the Word have always been in a continual close relationship. The Trinitarian implications of this clause are unmistakable. But John continues in the same verse, as if to forestall any speculations of polytheism, "and the Word was God" (or as it was originally penned, "God was the Word"). Certain critics of Trintarianism argue that the absence of the definite article preceding theos, or God (which if included would read "the God") implies that the Word was "a god," perhaps one of many. That objection fails on two counts: (1) Absence of a definite article does not entail any meaning associated with the use of an indefinite article. In fact, there is no article preceding theos whatsoever in the clause in question. (2) If John were to assert that "God=the Word" and "the Word=God," and that is all there is to it, then he would not be an orthodox Trinitarian but a Sibellian, and further would directly contradict his previous statement that the Word was "with" God, i.e., ontologically distinct from the Father in some sense. John seems to have gone out of his way to declare the deity of Christ while at the same time steering clear of a reductionist "Jesus only" heresy. His is a three-pronged declaration of deity: Jesus has always existed; Jesus has always existed with or alongside the Father; and Jesus was (or is) God himself, equal to the Father in that respect. Such an interpretation of John 1:1 is further supported by the context of the prologue in verse eighteen, in which Jesus is the living revelation, literally the exegesis, of the Father: "No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son... He has made Him known." The whole of the Gospel likewise provides contextual support of John's affirmation of the deity of Christ (cf, John 6:20; 8:58; 14:9; 20:28).
Language, History and Literary Development
A number of key terms used throughout John's Gospel can almost all be found in the prologue, and thereby bolster the thesis that the prologue summarizes the whole. As we have seen, the "Word" or logos is the creative element and revelation of God himself incarnate in Christ. Logos is for the Greeks the rational principle of reality, for the Hebrews the principal agent of creation (as revealed in Genesis 1), and for the early church the message of salvation - meanings all encapsulated in verse 1 of John and paralleled in Hebrews 1:1-2. The term "know" (whether ginosko or oida in Greek) is used a total of 118 times in John, and can refer to both subjective and objective knowledge. John indicates in verse ten and eleven of chapter one, as throughout the Gospel, that real knowledge belongs to those who believe and receive Christ rather than to worldly philosophers or even the scribes. "Life" (zoe, or spiritual, eternal life) is another important term in John's theology, as it is taken most literally: Christ is life itself, so that those who don't believe in him are dead in a very real sense. "In Him was life, and the life was the light of men" (v. 4). Similarly, Jesus as logos is the "truth" incarnate (v. 14, cf John 14:6). On the heels of his post-resurrection accounts, John also indicates that "belief" is central to the purpose of the Gospel: "...but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name" (John 20:31). That same thought is expressed in verse twelve of the prologue: Jesus gave the right to become children of God "to those who believe in His name." Finally, there are frequent appeals in John to the "witness" of third parties to substantiate the claims of the Gospel, in compliance with the OT requirement: "By the mouth of two or three witnesses the matter shall be established" (Deut. 19:15). The OT Scripture itself (or "Moses"), the disciples, the multitude, the Spirit, and the Father all bear witness to the authority of Christ. In the prologue John invokes the witness of John the Baptist: "This man came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all through Him might believe" (v. 7).
One of the keys of interpretation has to do with ascertaining the particular circumstances in which the author wrote, or the historical-cultural context. Certain polemical elements in John's writings, along with much related historical evidence, indicate that his presentation of Christ has been inspired at least to an extent by conflict. Much of his Gospel, like the Synoptics in this regard, is taken up with polemics against the Jews, or more precisely the powerful leaders of the Jews: the Pharisees, the Sadducees and the Sanhedrin. In their general hostility to the message of Christ, the Jewish leaders represent the secular world as well. (Notice how careful John is to record the direct involvement of both Jews and Romans in the crucifixion of Christ, for instance.) Though the conflict develops more vividly in later chapters, John alludes to it in verse eleven of chapter one: "He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him" - and again in verse seventeen: "For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ." Among the Gentiles, Gnosticism was one of the earliest and most formidable heresies to face the early church, taking on two main forms: Docetism and Adoptionism. John goes to some lengths to repudiate both strains of Gnosticism in the Gospel and in his letters, especially 1 John. In the prologue of John, he describes in no uncertain terms the spiritual, eternal divinity of Christ (v. 1-3), as against the Adoptionists, and then proceeds to declare that the same divinity has been fully embodied in human flesh (v. 14), in repudiation of the Docetists. Textual and historical evidence also points to the existence in the apostle's day of a John the Baptist sect (John 1:21-23; 3:27-30), which maintained itself long after John the Baptist's ministry and death (Acts 19:1-3). Like certain Christians today who preach condemnation, these devout followers of John the Baptist seem to have either doubted or ignored the central message of their master. John the apostle subtly counters their influence by way of reminder: "There was a man sent by God, whose name was John. This man came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light.... He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light" (John 1:7-8).
Scholars are divided over the issue of authorship, but most generally agree that John's Gospel was written in stages: (1) The document was originally drafted in light of the testimony of an original apostolic witness - whether actually written by John the apostle himself or by another John, "the Elder" (as he designates himsef in 1 and 2 John). Textual evidence in light of Palestinian archaeology favors the "traditional" theory of Irenaeus, citing Polycarp, that the Fourth Gospel was written by John the apostle of Christ, the son of Zebedee, at Ephesus. (Or at least that theory seems to fit better with the facts than the alternative view attributed to Papias by Eusebius, that the anonymous "Elder" wrote from Asia Minor after the Apostle John was already dead.) (2) The core material of the Gospel was subjected to a process of theological development, or redaction, with clear polemical objectives in mind (John 20:31) - which indicates a retroactive or reflective viewpoint. (3) Some would also argue that John was further polished by an editorial group from Ephesus, as indicated by a reference to the first person plural in John 21:24: "and we know that his testimony is true." As a whole, the high theological development of the prologue itself is evidence at least of the Johannine feature of reflection. This would further lend support to the view that John underwent a number of developmental phases.
John's Gospel, the Letters of John, and the Synoptics
Related to the authorship issue are the striking similarities in John's Gospel to the letters, particularly 1 John. There seems to be no evidence that 1 and 2 John have been edited by an overseeing board of any sort, so that (in my opinion) the overall language, theology, and other similarities between John's Gospel and letters would appear on those grounds to support a theory of single authorship of both. Specific parallels between John's prologue and 1 John include, as mentioned, a strong anti-Gnostic element. Internal evidence from 1 John indicates an ongoing and even intensified effort on the part of the author to combat Gnosticism. Not one to beat around the bush, John translates his general assertion of the deity and humanity of Christ ("and the Word became flesh") from the Gospel into a litmus-test of the faith in 1 John: "...Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit that does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God" (4:2-3). Indeed, John's confessional statement - "In the beginning was the Word... and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory" (v. 1, 14) - has a direct parallel to the opening words of 1 John: "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life - the life was manifested..." (v. 1-2). In both texts the Word is divine ("from the beginning") and yet is fully human ("became flesh" or "was manifested"). Dualistic concepts in John surface as well in 1 John. While the incompatibility of light and darkness, for instance, is a major theme of John's entire Gospel, including the prologue, so it appears in 1 John (1:-6; 2:8-11).
Among the Gospels, John's is unique. That fact has long been recognized by Bible scholars and is really accentuated by the prologue to John. So how does this text in John relate to the Synoptics? To begin, the prologue itself has no real parallel in the Synoptics whatsoever. Matthew and Luke each preface their respective Gospels with an abbreviated genealogical record, while Mark basically jumps right into the story with the preaching of John the Baptist in fulfillment of OT prophecy. John, much to the contrary, leads into the story of John the Baptist with this profound theological commentary. John's prologue also introduces a number of terms and themes which contribute to an almost systematic theological treatment of the Gospel record. For John, history is incidental and theology (or Christology) is central - that is, history properly understood points us to the ultimate theological reality, Christ himself. Unlike the Synoptics, John seems to regard theological development as more important than the purely objective recording of historical events. (In fact, he might be inclined to argue that a purely objective record is impossible to obtain in the first place.) This is one reason Clement of Alexandria referred to John as a "spiritual gospel" (rather than an historical Gospel.)
Of course, John was in all likelihood aware of the Synoptic material already in existence, and arguably was under no compulsion to produce what would have become essentially a Fourth Synoptic Gospel. For failure to recognize his situation, John is too often misunderstood as a mystic, or even as a Gnostic. As we have seen, no one is more opposed to Gnosticism than John. So he's not one to be easily pigeonholed. On the other hand, John's theology is fully orthodox, and this is where his alliance with the Synoptics is indisputable (and his differences with them overstated). Where it counts the most, the Gospels are in complete agreement: Jesus is the center of attention: He is the Son of Man, preceded by John the Baptist, anointed by the Spirit, who teaches with authority and not as the scribes and Pharisees, who feeds the multitudes, who preaches the truth so as to open the eyes of the blind, who is delivered up by the Jews and crucified under the authority of Pontius Pilate, and who rises from the dead in victory. Indeed, John's prologue could be seen not only as a summary of his own Gospel, but as a basic statement of the gospel message of all four evangelists and attested by the entirety of Scripture: "For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ" (John 1:17).