Section II

the pre-historic glory of Jesus Christ

(Joh 1:1-18)

The contemplation of the absolute glory of Jesus Christ in His historical appearing and manifestation, became to the Evangelist John, as has been already hinted, a means of knowing Him in His eternal pre-historic glory before the world was, and in the relation which His eternal being bears to the world and to man. He found the bright form of the eternal glory of His Lord by penetrating always further and further into the divine depths of His present glory. In this perception of Christ’s eternal glory the spirit of revelation met with its highest explanation, which is, that its inmost life is an impulse towards the light.

But at the same time we may observe, that the Evangelist was guided by a great and irreversible law of life. This law may be expressed as follows: Every kind of life is specifically definite, a definite idea of God. Hence follows, that any definite kind of life, in all the changes and developments which it passes through, must nevertheless continue always like itself in its proper and essential capacity. Now, if we apply this law of life to the person of Christ, it amounts to something like this: since Christ in His historical manifestation has evinced Himself to be the powerful living principle of man and the world,—the ideality of the world, or the light in which all its essential relations disclose their ideality,¹—it must necessarily follow, that He was this principle before the foundation of the world, and that He, as its deepest ground, exclusively mediated this foundation; and hence it also follows, that at the end of the entire development of the world He shall appear as the glorious centre and Prince of life in all its forms, as the Head of the glorified Church. This law is vividly presented to our view when Christ is called, according to His divine nature, The first and the last (Rev 1:17).

With the Jewish idealists, the eternal Angel of God’s presence gradually faded away into the general idea of the mere spiritual Messiah (probably after their realists had gradually lost Him in the seven archangelic forms). The Socinians, on the other hand, thought that Christ was able by the way of merit to become gradually the Son of God, which He was not at first. Finally, our most recent spiritualists make Him suddenly become, in the middle point of time, the absolute mover of mankind, which He neither was before, nor is to be after; they make Him give the world an impulse quite foreign to His nature,² an impulse to which His nature has no corresponding depth and power, constantly pervading and ruling the world. And so they also think that the apostles could have been divided in their knowledge of Christ, or rather their mistakes regarding Him, by similar extraordinary limitations of spiritual view; so that the one had a perception of the post-historic glory of Christ, but not of His pre-historic majesty, and that the other again continued entangled in the directly opposite pure half or minus Christology.³

All these notions flow from the supposition, that the various stages in the development of life should be regarded as romantic metamorphoses, that is, that every development is purely and altogether fantastic transmutation, and can pass from any one form into any other—it can, while in progress, lessen, increase, and transpose their contents in every imaginable way; a supposition which has reached its full scientific development in the Hegelian philosophy. (See below, Note 1.) But the idea conveyed by the romantic metamorphosis must be removed by the knowledge of the classic metamorphosis, as it has been so significantly unveiled by Göthe in the realm of nature, that is, by the fundamental principle, that life, in its deepest ground, is definite, and that, therefore, every kind of life has its own specific definiteness, and unfolds itself in conformity with itself in a specifically definite manner. Although this canon suffers modification through the principle of freedom, yet that principle by no means abolishes it, but only gives it a more exact definition. Man can, by the misuse of his freedom, really frustrate his heavenly destination; frustrate it, we say, but not abolish it, for the measure of this frustration will always be represented by the measure of his hellish sufferings. Thus he can never erase from his nature anything belonging to his deeper capacity. In so far as his existence is not in God for delight, it is in vanity for pain. And just as little is the Christian, in the right use of his freedom, able or desirous to give himself a spiritual glory, that is, a fulness and fashion of spiritual life which transcends his original destination. But, on the other hand, whatever God has laid up before the foundation of the world for one of the elect in one way, and for another in another, must all be made manifest in its glorified form in the light of Christ.

Now Christ is the elect of God in the absolute sense. All things were created by Him, and through Him, and for Him (Col 1:16). Thus John has, while contemplating the divine eternal glory of Christ manifested in time, a distinct view of His eternal glory before time, and that as it proceeded from its eternal ground to the historical revelation by manifestation in time of the Only-begotten of the Father. In accordance with this view, he describes to us the Eternal Christ, first, in His relation to God (Joh 1:1), then in His relation to creation (Joh 1:2-3), and further, in His relation to mankind in their original and inalienable nature (Joh 1:4), and especially to historic, fallen man (Joh 1:5).

This relation to historic man is now unfolded. The eternal Logos reposing in God—supporting the world, and in His motion shining into mankind—is portrayed as gradually becoming incarnate. In the first place, prophecy is introduced as it announced the future manifestation of the Eternal Light. John the Baptist, its last and highest representative, is described (Joh 1:6-8). Then the gradual coming of the Eternal Light into the world is expressed (Joh 1:9). This advent is distinguished in the first place by its historical beginning from the eternal presence of the Logos in all the world, without reference to time. Its result is next exhibited to us; namely, that the Logos was at first received neither by the world in general, nor by His people in particular, but that He was afterwards received by a special election of His own people. In this we see, first, the contrast between Heathenism and Judaism; and next, that between unbelieving and believing Jews (Joh 1:11-12). These believers are now described as they become through the Logos children of God (by an incipient supernatural conception), and so mediate the advent of the Logos in the flesh (by a perfected supernatural conception), (Joh 1:13). The point proposed for consideration is now reached, namely, the historical revelation of the Logos in His incarnation, and the communication thereby of eternal life to mankind (Joh 1:14). The testimony of John the Baptist, and also of the apostles, to the eternal glory and the gradual historical incarnation of Christ is then given (Joh 1:15-16). Finally, when the Evangelist, in concluding, intimates the fulness and the full saving efficacy of the divine revelation in Him, he at the same time intimates His post-historic, continued, and eternal rule in mankind (Joh 1:17-18). We can give only a brief sketch of all these matters.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

This intimates the eternal divinity of Christ. For the affirmation here is regarding the beginning simply as the beginning, and the Word simply as the Word; and just as unconditional is the expression, It was, the Word, it was. In the beginning of all things, and so from all eternity, the Word already was. But if Word was before the world, it belonged to the very essence of God, and as Word was God’s Word. And if it was the one, the all-embracing concentrated Word of God, it was the eternal self-determination and determinateness of God, the eternal brightness and power of His being and will, all the fulness of God comprehended in one pure and perfect expression. Thus it was, on the one side, the pure expression of His essence; on the other, the full expression of His world-creating will: on the one side, entirely spirit, like reason in discourse; on the other, entirely life-producing power, like the breath, the sound, and the life-awakening effect of speech.

The mind of the heathen world says, In the beginning was Chaos; the contracted Christian mind says, In the beginning the Word came into being; cramped speculation says, At the end the Word arises; and Faust, under the influence of Mephistopheles, writes, In the beginning was the deed.⁴ The enlightened Christian mind says, with the Spirit of revelation, In the beginning was the Word. We may admit, without hazard, that the Evangelist was led to adopt the expression, The Word, from the secular speculation of the time in which he lived;⁵ and it makes his Christian peculiarities so much the more characteristic, that he has employed the idea of the Logos in a sense different from, and much deeper than, the speculation of a Philo when developed to its full, and even partly supported by Old Testament faith.

Philo’s Logos is not the full (ideal and concrete) expression of God’s essence, or His perfect self-revelation; not the alone and exclusive principle of the origin of the world, or the full power of pure creation; and, finally, not the kingly principle of life simply, which has power to become man in a form of life which is definite and individual; in short, not the Logos of the historical Christ. According to Philo’s view, He is weakened in the relation first mentioned by the indefiniteness of the divine nature, that is, by the obscuration of His eternal personality;⁶ in the second, by the opposition of an eternal matter which He, as the world-forming idea, must overcome;⁷ in the third, by the irreconcilable opposition between the ideal world and the real.⁸ In a word, this Logos is oppressed and obscured by heathen (although Platonic) views of the world, by which Philo intended to idealize the purely Old Testament view. Philo’s Logos does not possess absolute vital power; it is not the eternal personality of the Son, but only the ideal unity or universality of all ideas of the world.⁹

But, according to John, the Logos of the Gospel stands before God in this personal definiteness. He was with God not as regards locality or space, but stood before God in perfect contrast of definiteness of life; and that not first proceeding from Him in an unfinished and incipient state, but in a perfect form moving towards Him (πρὸς τὸν Θεόν). And so He Himself was God; He was of divine essence. For as yet the world was not, but He was; and He was complete in the presence of God, and bearing a relation to God. Thus He was perfectly distinct from God, and yet He was also perfectly one with God. In this perfect definiteness of His being, the Logos appears as the perfect self-revelation of the divine essence. God has determined Himself and views Himself in the Logos. If we perceive in its full significance the contrast in this relation, we discern the doctrine of the Father and the Son, and God appears to us as the highest life, that is, as love. If, on the other hand, we look at the unity in this contrast, we have revealed to us the being of the Divine Spirit, especially as the Holy Spirit. But when we consider God Himself in the unity of these three great and definite expressions of His consciousness, we recognize Him as the Spirit, as the Spirit of spirits, or as the Threefold. Threefoldness is an essential characteristic of all spirits. Even man is threefold in so far as he is spirit. Only blind force appears to be altogether simple, and yet it is not really so. Now since God is the Spirit of spirits, He is, as threefold, the most blessed Trinity. The three essential elements of all consciousness exist in His divine consciousness in infinitely definite essentiality and in infinitely essential definiteness.¹⁰ Thus the doctrine of the Logos is, in special, the doctrine of the eternal glory of the Son of God.

But at the same time the doctrine of His perfect elevation above the world is set forth, as the Evangelist expresses it, by summing up what he had already said in the expression:

The same (the Logos in the divine definiteness of His being already stated) was in the beginning with God.

But His presence in the world also, nay, even His eternal incarnation, has been indicated already; for it is not said that He was before the beginning, but in the beginning. As He was complete in the beginning, so the beginning was constituted by the completeness of His being. For in the beginning He was already the Word, and so the world-determining principle.¹¹ Christ’s being in the world rests upon the world’s being in Christ, and it is just this which decide His being in the world. If the world had not been first ideal in Christ, as Christ is in the world, He would, at His coming into the world, have been included in it, and not the world in Him. But because the world was, before its origin, predestined in Him, and proceeded from that predestination, Christ could enter into the world and appear in it as a denizen of it without losing His superterrestrial glory in itself.¹² As above the world and within the world, He is the principle of creation.

All things were made by Him (the Logos); and without Him was not anything made that was made.¹³

It indicates the absolute superiority of God and of Christ above the world, that the world was made by the Word, the Spirit of divine life complete in form and conscious of His action, and not by a blind force unconscious of its own existence, and unable to direct its own operations. This absolute superiority of Christ to the world forms the only proper ground for His absolute presence in the world, or the fact that the Logos is present in every forth-putting of the world’s life with His whole power and superiority to it. And this superiority of Christ to the world involves, at the same time, the full ideality of the world. Not anything that has been made, however small, not a single atom, has been made, except by the Word. So there is nothing originally blind, no eternal matter, no primeval obscure in the world; everything that consists must be traced to the dynamic operation and conscious reason of the Logos. John, without doubt, means just this when he writes, 1Jn 1:5, ‘God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all;’ or even when he says, Joh 1:7, ‘God is in the light.’ This is the strongest concrete-speculative expression of the eternal personality of God. But the strength of this expression shows how consciously he had in view the antagonistic principle which underlies the heathen view of the world as it presented itself in the rising Gnosticism of that age, placing itself in antichristian opposition to the fundamental principle of Christianity. At the same time, he has, by these words, decided the eternal triumph of Christian speculation over abstract human speculation, down even to its latest systems and their supporters.

Now, because the Logos is the principle of the world when coming into existence, He must also establish and conserve it when it has come into existence. And as He thus manifests Himself, the one Logos branches out into two forms. He is the very life of life. And so, in particular, He is the light of men. The world develops its life in a definite contrast, on the one side in the form of natural life, on the other in the form of spirit. Now the Logos is the power which upholds and preserves both regions of life. He is first of all the principle of life. In Him was life;¹⁴ that is, the individual, eternal, personal forms, the ends and aims, the shapes, metamorphoses, laws, and faculties of life, all proceed from Him. In appearance, the order is the reverse; but in reality, it is as we have described it.¹⁵ For in the Logos, or in the Eternal Christ, men and spirits generally are chosen and beloved: men imply the forms of the world, and from these the forms of life in the world proceed, and the powers which in the first place form the material basis of the world’s life and their last result. Thus creation is not upheld by atoms, nor by the law of gravity, nor, in general, by anything which appears. Its deepest ground is Christ, the Eternal Elect of God, in whom all God’s children are elect and beloved as His Church. The visible creation is, so to speak, only the bridal chariot which outwardly indeed precedes the Eternal Bridegroom and His Church, the eternally beloved bride, but in reality comes after them, for it presupposes the Bridegroom and bride. Thus the life of the Logos, the ideal mind, the breath of love, pervades the whole world. Nature is not the first, but the second,—not the ground of life, but the form in which the spirit appears.¹⁶ The Logos is its breath of life. But it is very significant that the Logos even as the life of the life is also the light of the lights, namely, of men. The truth, the moral and religious law of life, the living and spiritual power of man, does not consist in a world of abstract ideas and general conceptions regarding an absolute spirit overshadowing individuality. It is true that the light of the world forms a definite contrast to the life of the world, but this contrast is a pure harmony. There is no contradiction between life and light—no incongruity of any kind, as is supposed by the abstract thinking of the philosophy of the schools, which degrades life to a burnt-offering to light, and the world of the individual to the Golgotha of the Spirit. On the contrary, it is just life which forms the light of men. For as the life which appears has proceeded from the light of the Logos, it again becomes in man word and light. Truth, knowledge, law, the light of men, have proceeded from the eternal and essential forms and their relations, from love and its ruling power, from the real world and its norms. The life is the light!

This is the relation of the Eternal Christ to the world in its undisturbed, substantial relations. But now the Evangelist further describes His relation to the world in its historic agitation, that is, to fallen man:

The light shineth in darkness, and (yet) the darkness comprehended it not.

Darkness exists now. He does not say, whence. For darkness has no proper whence. Sin is unsubstantial.¹⁷ It is the direct opposite of light. Light is the principle of clearness, the element of the transformation of the world—of the revelation and restoration of its ideal configuration in the kingdom of love. Darkness again assails the light, and so it is the spirit or unspirit which darkens and devastates the world by hiding its personalities, by deranging its ideal relations, and dishonouring its spirits in the kingdom of hate. And as light proceeds from life, so does darkness from death. But as the life is from the Word, so death is from the false primeval cecity of sin in the life of conditioned spirits. And finally, as that Word is the revelation of love, so the unword, the self-obscuration of man, is from hate, from growing cold towards God, our neighbour, and the demands of our own inmost life.

Thus darkness exists. It is fact, and forms the ground-tone of the world’s history before Christ; so much so that the Evangelist can combine sin and men in one, and call this unity Darkness. But it does not form the only tone of the ancient world. The light stands opposed to this darkness, which has apparently become concrete. It shines on it, shines into it, or rather, according to the Evangelist’s deep expression, shines in it. It is infinitely near to the darkness; not in the sense of Pantheism, which attributes sin to necessity, and so makes it a kind of light, but in the sense of primordial and efficacious divine faith, which regards the ills which proceed from sin, and reveals sin in its substantial side, as God’s judgment on sin—as the first reaction of the injured life against the nullity of the morally evil, and thus as a shining of the light in the midst of the realm of darkness. Nay, it is just the darkness of sin which first makes the light to shine, properly speaking, makes it flash fitfully in many-hued coruscations, and reflects it in all the colours of the rainbow. What insight must the Evangelist who wrote this have acquired into the conflict of the light with the darkness in human life in the heathen world, and especially in the heathen mythologies! He knew, as no one else did, how this conflict of light with darkness forms lurid appearances of a thousand shapes and hues, christological reflections in heathen mythology. It was the triumph of the light¹⁸ that it could continue to shine in the midst of darkness. The light displayed its most glorious and sublime appearances or conformations in the realm of revelation, namely, in the forms of righteousness and mercy.¹⁹ But the greatness of the fall of the human race was shown in its not perceiving this general revelation of the Logos, and by its keeping itself so wrapt in its darkness, as to have not the slightest surmise of the shining of the light of the Logos, as if it had let its light be quenched in its darkness. Thus the darkness comprehended not the light. It rather seemed as if the light were swallowed up, or at least suppressed, for ever by the darkness. But it only seemed so. For although the darkened world of man could for its part do nothing right to appropriate the light,²⁰ the light rested not until it had victoriously forced its way through the darkness of men. This breaking through took place in the depths of human life, in the secret midst of popular life, by a gradual development lasting through several thousand years, without men having a distinct consciousness of it. The prophets alone gave testimony to it by announcing the coming of Christ. It is quite in accordance with the emphatic manner of the Evangelist, that he here sets forth John the Baptist as the proper representative of the whole succession of Old Testament prophets and the whole Old Testament prophecy regarding Christ, because he as the last and greatest prophet completed the testimony of prophecy to Christ.

There was a man sent from God whose name was John. The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe. He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light.

Thus the advent of Christ was announced by the word of the prophets. In this very word the nominal side of Christ’s advent was unfolded. But a real advent ran parallel with this open unfolding of His name. Nay, further, this real breaking through of the Logos in the hearts of the elect was the actual and living ground of those visions, in which His coming was revealed to the prophets. Their hearts were shaken, made to swell with blessed emotions, by the dawning rays of His incarnation. The Evangelist now describes to us this real advent of Christ.

The true Light (the positive primal Brightness, the Light of lights), which lighteth every man (shining in into him), was on His way to come into the world (was entering into the world).²¹ He was already in the world, and the world was made by Him, and yet the world knew Him not. He (the Logos) came unto His own peculiar possession, and His own people received Him not. But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name.

This is the dark enigma of sin and of Heathenism, that the Logos, who was in the world, the Creator and Upholder of the world, who announced His presence in it by every manner of appearance of which it was capable, was nevertheless, as to His eternal rule, not known by the world (heathen humanity), was not once observed in His great historic breaking through and coming into the world; nay, that He came by the way of revelation unto His own, unto the Jewish people, and that the men who were in a special sense His own received Him not.²² The Evangelist exhibits in all its enormity this misconduct of men, which sought to bar the way against Christ in His advent. For the number of those who finally received Him in reality, was infinitely small in comparison with the number of those who received Him not; and even in the case of the former He was received not without manifold resistance of the sinful nature, so that it long seemed as if the Logos would not be received at all by men. But this appearance passed away. In opposition to the passive religion of the heathen, the active religion of the patriarchs was formed, which was further developed and moulded into shape in all true, pious Israelites. They received Him, and by receiving Him increasingly gained distinct knowledge of His nature and advent, and faith in His name. With this faith He gave them the power (of the new life, of the new birth) to become the sons of God (in an incomplete and incipient form).²³ The incarnation of the Son of God was mediated through this higher birth, through the faith and life of these embryotic children of God.

Who were born not of blood,²⁴ nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

The Evangelist evidently regarded those Old Testament children of God as the living means of Christ’s miraculous birth of the Virgin. They were this, first, as they were the incipient children of God; secondly, as they were born to be such children of God; thirdly, in so far as they were born not of human generation; fourthly, because the birth of God was nevertheless mediated by the progressive consecrations of human generation; fifthly and lastly, because they exhibited in their history an endless mutual action and reaction, and progressive approximation of the natural birth and the new birth, which had to reach its goal in the birth of Christ—a birth absolutely new (on the one side entirely spiritual, on the other entirely natural).²⁵

These beginnings of real sonship to God in the many, formed an essential prediction of the complete Sonship to be manifested in the birth of Christ, His Only-begotten. But they were sons of God not merely in name, or simply consecrated for that intention; they experienced the commencement of a transformation of their inmost nature into the life of the Spirit—the commencement of a new birth; and this became a prophetic intimation, that hereafter the absolutely spiritual life could be born. And yet their regeneration did not proceed from human generation, but was an immediate operation of God from on high, and in this form it foretokened the perfect and miraculous birth. Their new birth transcended human generation, yet it was mediated or made way for by the ennobling of the theocratic generation. The Evangelist intimates this, by describing with discrimination three different forms of generation. The first is the common sensuous generation, proceeding from the intercourse of the sexes, ἐξ αἱμάτων. The second is that which is ennobled in some measure by the action of the will in the flesh—a generation in which the higher plastic or formative impulse of a nobler nature, unknown to the generator, operates in his flesh.²⁶ The third is the noblest theocratic generation; it is consecrated by the moral spirit of free love, of marriage, and of priestly spirituality, or, as John says, by the will of man. Isaac and John the Baptist, for example, were the offspring of such generation from the will of man.²⁷ As the incipient Old Testament new births were based upon this consecration of nature, but rose decidedly above it, the same is, in the highest degree, the case in the birth of Christ. He was not of human generation, even the most consecrated; but His birth was mediated by those consecrations of nature as well as by those spiritual new births. For that spiritual life became more and more nature and birth, and those births, on the other hand, became more and more spiritually consecrated; this reciprocal influence could reach its perfection only in the holy birth of the Messiah from the Virgin. This birth is spoken of in the following terms:—

And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the Only-begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth.

The Evangelist employs the strongest terms to express the incarnation of Christ. It was not as it were a particular word from the Eternal Word, a single or special energy of the Logos, but the Logos Himself that was made man.²⁸ And He was made man in the proper sense, not as if the case were that He merely revealed Himself through a man, that He put on humanity, or ‘clothed Himself in our flesh and blood;’ He was really and truly made man. ²⁹And with what fulness and power did He appear as man! He was made man in the form of being one man distinctively,³⁰ with a definite individuality; nay, He was made flesh.³¹ He assumed human nature in all its sensuousness and substantiality.³² When it is further said, ‘He dwelt among us’ that indicates that His incarnation proceeded so as to enter fully into historic relations with men. He gave actual proof of the truth of His being made man, by humbling Himself, taking on Himself the form of a servant, becoming a Jew, a poor pilgrim, and at last a curse of the world upon the cross. But when the Logos revealed Himself in the flesh, He revealed Himself as the fulness of grace and truth. Grace—the highest glory of the love of God, appeared in Him as it effaces and abolishes the guilt of sin, sin itself and death, and changes the curse into blessing; truth—the highest glory of the revelation of God in His essential light, appeared in Him, not only as it destroys every illusion of sin, but also brings the reality and certainty of the highest life, fulfilling all mere appearances, all shadows and symbols of life.

The Evangelist could not confine himself to a merely objective presentation of this truth; he had to interpose a parenthesis which attested the blessed experience of himself and his companions in the faith. ‘And we saw His glory.’ To see the glory of the Lord, which had only been granted to the prophet Isaiah in a state of ecstatic vision, had for years been the constant experience of their lives. With the eyes of their body spiritually enlightened, they saw the glory of the Lord, the effulgence of God (the Shechinah) as exhibited in its most distinct manifestation, in the bodily shape of Christ. A view more glorious than the highest Old Testament vision, was for them matter of daily experience. And under the influence of this divine brightness in human form, the eyes of their spirit were opened more and more, so that they perceived in Christ the glory of the Only-begotten of the Father (the Son of God embracing in His one and only birth, all the births and new births of all God’s children).

The expression, He dwelt among us, taken in connection with the special signification of what follows regarding the beholding of the glory of Christ, shows the contrast between the Old Testament and the New Testament view of the glory of Christ. There, the Lord dwelt in the Holy of Holies in the temple; here, in the midst of His people. There, He revealed Himself but seldom, and to chosen individuals; here, He lived together with His own. There, they saw only His brightness, and that while in an ecstatic state; here, believers had, with their bodily eyes, a full view of Him as He was manifested in the flesh. There, His appearing had resembled lightning in its sudden disappearance; here, He made, by historical intercourse with His disciples, His abode not merely among them, but also in them.

This incarnation of the Logos bore witness of itself, and just because it did so it was also attested by God’s witnesses; first by those of the Old Testament, represented by John the Baptist, and next by those of the New, in whose name John the Evangelist speaks.

John bare witness of Him, and cried, saying, This is He of whom I spake, He that cometh after me is preferred before me; for He was before me. And of His fulness have all we received, and grace for grace.

Thus the two Johns, of whom the one seals the Old Testament when it reached its climax, and the other unlocks the New in its depth, bear common testimony to the incarnation of the Son of God. The testimony of the Baptist, which he gave in his crying (κέκραγε), is still preserved in its spirituality (μαρτυρεῖ). And it is a definite testimony to the glory of Christ profoundly expressed. Christ comes after him as the prince comes after the herald; that is His historic glory;—and yet in reality He was before him in His continual ideal-substantial incarnation in the Old Testament; that is His theocratic glory. That He comes after and yet is preferred before him, rests on His being before him as the principle of his life in God; that is His divine glory. The younger John gives the New Testament testimony in the words, ‘And of His fulness have all we received, and grace for grace.’ One revelation after another of love in its highest majesty as it eradicates sin and makes the soul free and joyous in God, one solar operation after another, as it stirs, quickens, and renews life in all its depths, have all we experienced from Him, one in one manner, and another in another, and every one always more and more gloriously, so that it became evident that the divine life of Christ is an infinite fulness of God, which is displayed in endless manifestations of sin-uprooting grace. Thus the revelation of the Son of God has received the very highest attestation. And now the Evangelist, in his own manner, sums up the whole contents of the prologue in one retrospective, concluding sentence.

For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. No man hath seen God at any time; the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.

The Evangelist does not content himself with giving us once more, in this concluding sentence, a general description of the incarnation of the Son of God in all its significance, but also teaches us how to appreciate it with still more exactness, by exhibiting it in distinct contrast to the divine revelation of the Old Testament. He has already given us a glance into the real connection between the Old Covenant and the New. He now comes to speak of their distinction; and first of all, as a distinction between Christ and Moses. The law was given by Moses: the law, in contrast to the fulness of the grace of Christ, and consequently as an exact outline of that new life, without the power of imparting it, which can be done by grace alone; the law, as a strict demand of life under the threatening of the curse, and consequently as the mere symbol of life, but as the real power of death. But the new and absolute revelation in Christ now appears in contrast to the former revelation through Moses. The condemning power of the law, which kills the sinner and yet cannot kill sin, is abolished by the expiatory power of grace, which kills sin while it restores life to the sinner; and the symbolic signification of the law is abolished by Christ’s fulfilling all its types and shadows, by bringing in the reality of life. But this distinction between the Old Covenant and the New holds good as a distinction between Christ and the prophets. Taking the experience of them all, they had the most manifold visions of the glory of the Lord; but comparing their revelations with that of Christ as a prophet, we can use the strong expression, God (Himself) has been seen by no man; never by any. But He has been seen by the only-begotten Son. They only beheld while in a state of ecstasy the refulgence of the glory of God in the light of the Son, in His incipient incarnation; but Christ saw and always sees the Father in the spirit. He constantly reposes on the Father’s heart (as John leaned on Jesus’ bosom); and thus He beholds the Father’s face with all the intimacy of perfect love. And it is this Beloved of the Father who brings us the new revelation of God. He has, in the most unconditioned sense, declared Him (ἐξηγήσατο).

But when Christ gave His disciples a complete revelation of the great salvation, unfolded fully the nature of the Father, and wholly disclosed His own divine glory, He at the same time laid the foundation for revealing His eternal nature to all the world. Thus the Evangelist, whose starting-point was the consideration of the pre-historic glory of Christ, and who described His historic glory, points us in conclusion to His post-historic glory.

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Notes

1. The distinction between the idea of the classic metamorphosis and the romantic metamorphosis is of great importance for theology. For it is an unmistakable fact, that progressive life always develops itself in metamorphoses. It is very easy, therefore, to distinguish the idea of a lawless fanciful metamorphosis, which may be designated as the romantic, from that of the real metamorphosis guided by law, which may be called the classic. The choice of these designations results from the relation in which the predominating notion in the idea of the lawless metamorphosis stands in our days to the more recent Pantheism, and especially to the romantic poetry which runs parallel with it. But the distinction, of which a general outline has been given above, must be more closely defined: the classic metamorphosis is conditioned by the inviolable law of a definite principle of life. It starts from the centre of a definite principle of life, the unfolding of which it exhibits in its constant transformations, which take place successively according to the operation of an orderly law, that it may at last exhibit again the same principle of life in a fully developed and glorified form, and thereby attest that it has faithfully followed its course of development. Romantic metamorphosis, on the contrary, takes its origin from a quite indefinite plastic source of life, then assumes a seemingly specific definiteness, but only soon to exchange it again for a second and third; and if all the while it moves in an ascending line, yet at the end it loses, by the dissolution of its last apparently definite form in the bosom of the universal, from which it arose, the whole gain of the process. According to the law of the classic metamorphosis, the boy becomes a youth, the youth a man; according to the law (or unlaw) of the romantic metamorphosis, the beautiful princess is changed into a bear or a hateful monster, and vice versa. The more recent natural philosophy for some time entertained the idea of the romantic metamorphosis in the realm of physiology. According to the representatives of this theory, the individual life does not proceed from definite principles established by a conscious act of creation, but from the dark bosom of a generative source capable of producing an endless variety of forms, and disclosing itself in the shape of emanation. And while the doctrine of creation brings forth each individual life, after its own invariable kind, from the principles or creative thoughts veiled by the mother-bosom of universal nature, this emanation-theory constructs a fanciful process of nature, according to which the one kind of individual life always shifts round into the other, in which it sets out from the lowest forms of the vegetable kingdom, until at last, after having passed through the essential types of the vegetable and animal kingdoms, it reaches a definite and final goal in the likeness of man. This theory has been supported particularly by the doctrine of equivocal generation (generatio æquivoca), by which is understood a generation which is not brought about by sexual propagation from beings of the same kind, but effected by elements of different kinds (organic substance, water and air), through the generating power of a plastic primeval matter diffused through all nature. The basis of this doctrine, however, has been shaken by the recent investigations of Ehrenberg and others regarding the infusoria; and Sobernheim has lately, in his treatise Elemente der allgemeinen Physiologie (Berlin, 1844), attacked it theoretically also. (Compare on this subject the thoughtful essay of Pastor Johannes Hirzel, die Weltanschauung der Bibel und der Naturwissenschaft.) Sobernheim maintains, against the above-mentioned theory of nature, the proposition, that all beings are propagated only by their like (omne vivum ex ovo). This proposition may indeed be pushed too far, otherwise the doctrine of the creative energies of the universal substance could not have followed the doctrine of monads. It cannot be denied, that according to the genesis of life the egg must have proceeded from the universal life, just as much as the definite life from the egg. The first and fundamental forms of the visible creation were really not the definite seeds and species, but the more general elements of life-earth, water, air, light (see Gen 1:1-31) But the definite forms of life which proceeded from the bosom of the more general life cannot be traced back to an indefinite plastic vital power (this is to be considered as only their nourishing mother-bosom), but to quite similarly definite vital ideas, which must have been realized in the definite developed living being (e.g., Adam), before they were in the seed of the living being (e.g., human generation). But at the same time we must firmly hold, that the species are really species (omne ovum revera ovum), true and definite forms of creation. From all this it follows, in the first place, that there is a defining creative spirit, the clear divine thought, which establishes the definite principle of nature. The egg or the bird cannot, as a distinct and definite form of life, take its origin from the infinitely indefinite, and can have been called into existence only by the absolutely defining. It follows, secondly, that the species do not proceed the one from the other, and do not exist as an ascending chain of being produced by a general process of life, but that they are distinct types having a common consistency, although succeeding one another, and typifying, in the unity of a highly manifested life, the One and most specific life. Thirdly, and lastly, it follows, that the speciality of the life already indicated by the speciality of the egg, must manifest itself through the whole course of its development, or rather, that it must unfold itself always more and more decidedly. Agassiz, too, in his treatise, De la succession et du développement des êtres organisés à la surface du globe terrestre (p. 7), distinctly declares himself against the systems ‘which formerly delighted in representing the whole of these organized beings as forming a graduated series, rising without interruption from the most imperfect beings to man,’ although at the same time he rejects the frigid hypothesis, ‘which, denying all succession, will not see in all creation anything except a motley assemblage of diverse forms, reascending to one and the same epoch, and having no other bond of connection than that of a common existence.’

It is worthy of remark, that even in nosology the idea of the classic metamorphosis is beginning to react against that of the romantic metamorphosis, as is seen, e.g., in Mühry’s interesting tractate, ‘Ueber die historische Unwandelbarkeit der Natur und der Krankheiten’ (on the historical unchangeableness of nature and of diseases), Hanover, Hahn 1844.

The romantic metamorphosis appeared to best advantage in the more recent romantic poetry; and yet it could not but make a fatal impression when the moral characters were made to go through many fantastic changes from one form into another, as is sometimes the case in Tieck. But when even philosophy, in its more recent speculations, allowed itself to be misled into receiving the romantic metamorphosis into its theory of the world, thus recalling to life the East Indian goddess Maia, this can be attributed only to indistinctness in the thinking faculties themselves; and it is natural if that fantastic goddess appears more repulsive in Hegel’s phenomenology of the spirit than in Tieck’s poetic fancies, although both works, as highly interesting parallels, illustrate with equal and distinguished ability the idea of the romantic metamorphosis, the one in philosophy, and the other in poetry. But that fanciful theory is the most intolerable when it strays into the realm of theology, and pitches its tent in criticism, the strictest of all theological orders; and if the latest products of this kind remind us of F. T. W. Hoffman or Holderlin’s poetry of the penult stadium, we must perhaps beg pardon of the spirits of these romantic poets. Thus, for example, in a well-known school, the New Covenant is constructed from the basest sediments of the Old Covenant (Ebionitism) and of the old world (Gnosticism); that is to say, the new world of the new man is constructed from the sweepings of the old world and the passions and emotions of the old Adam. The religious-philosophical parallel to these romantic metamorphoses in criticism is to be found in the writings of Feuerbach.

2. The construction of the prologue proposed by Köstlin (as above, p. 102), according to which the prologue gives a threefold view of the Christian religion from its commencement up to the author’s time, is very properly rejected by V. Baur (22).

1) The opinion has been often expressed, that the Greeks had no conception of the holy; but the Greeks had certainly a presentiment of the holy in the recognition of the ideal. Ideality is the visible form of holiness. We use the term ideality here, because we are speaking of the scientific conception of the transformation of the world by Christ

2) Which would consequently have to be considered as pure, unmixed extravagance; so that Heine and Feuerbach, setting out from those premises, are quite consequent in representing Christianity as the peculiar extravagance of mankind.

3) See the already mentioned treatise by Von Baur (Theol. Jahrbücher von Zeller, iii. 4, 618).

4) This transposition has grown into great favour in the most recent philosophy.

5) On this question comp. Tholuck, Commentary on John, p. 58. It is certain that John neither had, nor could have, his idea of Christ from, the Alexandrian school. He had it, in the first instance, from beholding Christ Himself. In the next place, the Old Testament doctrine of the Wisdom of God (Job xxviii. 12; Prov. viii. 22, &c.; Sirach i. 1-10, xxiv. 10-14; Book of Wisdom vii.-xi.), and also the doctrine of the Angel of the Lord, might contribute essentially to unfold it. Moreover, in the choice of the expression, The Logos, the spirit of his evangelical intermediation between the Christian idea of Christ and the Alexandrian doctrine of the Logos is plainly discernible. It is not necessary to assume that he was acquainted with Philo's doctrine before leaving Palestine. But he certainly became acquainted in Ephesus with the Alexandrian Philonic doctrine of the Logos. And when he then appropriated the expression, it was not to enrich his own idea of Christ by that of Philo, but to reform Philo's by his. ['The inspired writers are to be regarded, not as borrowing and imitating, but as correcting the errors and supplying the deficiencies of their less favoured predecessors and contemporaries.' Conybeare's Hampton Lee., p. 66. The relation of John to Philo is fully discussed in (besides the Commentaries, especially Larnpe's) Treffry, On the Eternal Sonship. See also Burton's Bampton Lec., p. 223, and Hagenbach's History of Doctrines, i. 108.—ED.]

6) To this pertains what Philo teaches concerning the incommunicability, intangibility, and inaccessibility of God. Comp. Keferstein, Philo's Lehre von den göttlichen Mittelwesen, pp. 2 ff.

7) When Philo sometimes expresses himself as if the matter of the world was created by God (see the same, p. 5), that is to be explained from the reaction of hits Old Testament faith against the views which dominated over him.

8) Still less could Philo s Logos have become flesh, for Philo considered the body as the prison of the soul.

9) Although Philo often personifies the Logos. Comp. the above work, p. 88. [That Philo's expressions, which might at first sight seem to imply personality, are to be understood merely as personifications, has been put beyond all reasonable doubt by Dorner (On the Person of Christ, vol. i. pp. 19 ff.) Mosheim has very ably maintained the same opinion in his notes to Cudworth (Intell. System, ii. 323 ff.), in which he gives a very masterly sum of Philo's views. Conybeare (Bampton Lectures for 1824, p. 63) expresses himself of a different mind, but does not state his reasons.—ED.]

10) Comp. Nitzsch, On the Essential Trinity of God (Stud, und Krit. 1841, 2)

11) The doctrine of the eternal incarnation of Christ was no doubt alluded to in Mic. v. 2: 'His goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.' Comp. Schöberlein, On the Christian Doctrine of the Atonement (Stud, und Krit. 1845, 2, 297).

12) What has been said may be applied to the relation between God and the world. The fact of God as God being in the world establishes His superiority to it. Were
God only in the world, and not at the same time above it, He would not be in the world as God, but as a product of the world itself, and this immanence would be anything but the immanence of God.

13) The punctuation of the Alexandrians, οὐδὲ ἓν. ὃ γέγονεν, ἐν αύτῷ, harmonizes well with their view of the world. It obscures the connection. See Lücke, p. 304.

14) In other places Christ is styled simply The life; but here, The principle of life, doubtless to prevent His being identified with the natural life of the world.

15) It is characteristic that Philo, even in the creation of the rational world, makes the more abstract and general, e.g. , the idea of the sky and of empty space, precede the more concrete, e.g., light, and even the spiritual in itself precede the specific spiritual.

16) In appearance, everything springs at first from the undeveloped ; and many let themselves be misled by this appearance to assume that even the Spirit, God Him
self, proceeds from the undeveloped. They do not consider that even in the nature which appears, everything that can be called egg or seed has behind it a developed life of its own kind, and that so they are very sensuous in apprehending nature from the mere outside and first appearance which presents itself.

17) V. Baur writes (in the treatise referred to, p. 12), 'Only so far as the Logos, as the principle of life and of light, is the light of men, has He, as the light that shineth in darkness, the darkness for an opposite, and therefore darkness must be takenchiefly in an ethical sense. But since the whole matter under consideration proceeds from the absolute, and. mediated by the Logos as the principle of the divine self-revelation and world-creation, moves onward to the contrast between God and the world, light and darkness, we are, even in respect to the ethical, referred back to thegeneral cosmic connection of principles, in which ethical and physical, freedom and necessity, spirit and nature, are still comprehended in their unity, as the meta physical background, which is the essential supposition of everything whereby moral volition and action realize themselves in the realm of ethics.' And this is called interpreting John, who has written John i. 3, and 1 John ii. 5 and 7.

18) Of the λόγος. σπερματικός. See Justin Martyr, Apol. ii.

19) See Schöberlein's treatise referred to, p.

20) Characterizing passive religion.

21) On the expression ἡν ἐρχόμενον, comp. Lücke, p. 319. Lücke, after a learned and careful analysis, takes the expression as preterite, allowing himself to be guided by the supposition, that vers. 11-13 refer to New Testament matters. But this is a wrong supposition. The sense of the expression receives its explanation from the idea of the real substantial advent of Christ.

22) On the various expositions of the antithesis τὰ ἴδια and οἱ ἴδιοι, compare Lücke.

23) Lücke maintains, that the expressions, vers. 11, 12, 13, are to be understood as referring to New Testament times. This is, however, contrary to strict speculative sequence of the context. He observes : It could doubtless be said of the Old Testament revelations, οἱ ἴδιοι αὐτὸν οὐ παρέλαβον. Doubtless indeed, comp. John xii. 39, &c. Further, τὸ ὄνομα αὑτοῦ would never be used with respect to the Messianic name of the Logos in the Old Testament—the Christ of prophecy. Comp. against this view, John v. 46, viii. 56, xii. 41. Finally, the sonship of God effected by the Logos would never be attributed to the faith of the Old Testament, but of the New Testament life. Against this, comp. John viii. 39, x. 35.

24) Οὐκ ἐξ αἱμάτων.

25) On the current expositions of this passage, see Lücke, p. 331. The proper signification and reference of this passage to the miraculous birth of Christ would have been perceived earlier, had not the substantial advent of Christ been too much lost sight of.

26) As, for example, in the history of Judah, Gen. xxxviii., in which, however, the fanatical veneration of Tamar for the theocratic in the house of Judah (notwithstanding her error), is to be taken well into consideration. Judah sank here below his dignity; yet notwithstanding, the formative impulse (the will) of the theocratic nobility was ruling in his flesh.

27) From the reference of this passage to Christ's birth of the Virgin, it is clear that the Evangelist could not speak here of the will of the man or of the woman.

28) Köstlin indeed maintains (Lchrbeyriff des Evancjeliums und der Briefe Johannes, p. 159), His being made flesh has not yet advanced further in the way of development than to His being clothed with a human body, and to immediate active and passive participation in what happened to and around Him on earth. This overlooks the fact, that becoming flesh is, in its very nature, the last development in becoming man. Or would flesh, pure and simple, be human flesh? Yet Köstlin thinks that ἄνθρωπος would have done here equally well as σάρξ. But the Evangelist perhaps had grounds for not choosing the expression ἄνθρωπος, and for choosing the expression σάρξ, namely, not to approach too closely to the idea of the ideal eternity of the God-man.

29) See Fromman, der Johann. Lehrbegriff, ii. 351.

30) Distinctive oneness in the case of man involves uniqueness, that is, individuality; and if no special human personality is ascribed to Christ in contrast to the divine-human personality, yet He must not be thereby deprived of human individuality. His individuality consists in embracing as unity, all individuals of the human race. Are all individualities to find their unity in one who is not an individual?

31) The expression, the Logos was made flesh, is so pregnant, that no other could be substituted for it. The word Logos cuts away all Ebionite conceptions, and the word flesh all gnostic-docetic. The expression, He was made, can be used for refuting Nestorianism. It is much stronger than if it were said, He came in the flesh

32) V. Baur (as above, p. 20) disputes the supposition, that the prologue exhibits distinct marks of historical progress in the revelation of the Logos until His incarnation. 'The prologue has no knowledge of a historic Christ in this sense, but the Logos becomes historic through His entrance into the world and human history by His being the light shining in darkness. What is signified by the Logos being made flesh, can therefore, from the Evangelist s standpoint, be considered as only an adjunct, a mere accident of the substantial existence of the Logos.' The fundamental thought of Christianity only an adjunct! It was natural, moreover, for the author, when dealing with this decisive watchword, to characterize his position towards historic Christianity.