Written by Scott R. Swain |
Tuesday, September 12, 2023
In describing the true light’s reception by believers, the prologue picks up a theme already introduced in John 1:3 and elaborated more fully throughout the Gospel, namely, the indivisible operation of the persons of the Trinity. The believing reception of the Word, resulting in the reception from the Word of “the right to become children of God,” is a reception effected by God (through the Spirit: Jn 3:5-6, 8): “who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” (Jn 1:12-13). 

Brandon Smith’s most recent book, The Trinity in the Canon: A Biblical, Theological, and Practical Proposal (B&H Academic), offers fifteen chapters on a variety of topics related to the Trinity and the Bible written by a gifted group of biblical scholars and theologians. I was delighted to contribute the chapter on the Gospel of John. Below is an excerpt on John’s Prologue, which is posted with permission of the publisher.
The Being of the Word (Jn 1:1–2)

John’s prologue begins with “three short affirmations” regarding the central subject matter of the Gospel. These affirmations tell us who that central subject matter is, how he is, and what he is: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was toward God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1).[1] The threefold repetition of the verb “was” locates the Word on the divine side of the creator-creature distinction, on the side of God’s eternal and unchangeable being as opposed to the creature’s temporal and changeable becoming.[2]
In affirming the Word’s eternal existence (“In the beginning was the Word”), John’s prologue echoes Proverbs 8’s speech regarding divine Wisdom in at least one regard.[3] John identifies the Word not merely as a divine attribute, much less a literary personification. John identifies the Word as an eternally and unchangeably existing “someone,” a “who” and not merely a “what.”[4] “This one,” the prologue tells us, “was in the beginning with God” (Jn 1:2).
In describing the Word’s eternal relation to God (“the Word was toward God”), the prologue suggests why John has chosen the title “Word” instead of “Wisdom” to identify the second person of the Trinity.[5] The Word’s eternal, Godward repose is what qualifies him to perform the divine works of making, saving, and glorifying all things, especially human beings. According to certain ancient conceptions of human psychology, a word faces two directions and fulfills two functions.[6] As “inward logos,” the word remains within a person and grasps what a person knows. The inward word is the mind in the mode of being understood,[7] what Augustine calls “a word in your heart” (cf. Matt 12:35).[8] As “outward logos,” the word expresses and communicates to others what a person knows, making that knowledge common to, shared by others. The outward word is the mind in the mode of being uttered (cf. Matt 12:34).[9] John 1:1-2 identifies the Word as God’s “inward logos,” who eternally sees, hears, and contemplates God and God’s plan for creatures (Jn 3:11, 32; 6:46; 8:26, 38, 40; 15:15). This, in turn, qualifies the Word both to interpret and execute outwardly God’s plan for creatures (Jn 1:3-5, 14, 18; cf. Rev 5:4, 9), which, in the case of human beings chosen, redeemed, and sanctified by the Trinity, ultimately involves coming to share the Word’s own contemplative repose as friends and fellows of God (Jn 1:18; 13:23; 15:15; 17:3, 24; cf. 1 John 1:3). The Word’s eternal relation to God is what ultimately distinguishes him, not only from John the Baptist (Jn 1:5-9), but also from Moses (Jn 1:17), to whom God spoke “face to face” (Exod 33:11; Deut 34:10). “No one has ever seen God”—except the Word who faces God (Jn 1:1; 3:11, 32; 6:46; 8:38; cf. Exod 33:20). Therefore, the Word alone is fully qualified to make the Father known (Jn 1:18; cf. Heb 1:1-4).
John’s prologue not only describes the eternal relation of the Word to God (“the Word was toward God”). It also predicates deity of the Word (“the Word was God”). By itself, such a predication is not necessarily distinctive or unique. Philo of Alexandria calls the Word a “second god.”[10] What distinguishes John’s predication from many Greco-Roman and Jewish descriptions of the Word, is his claim that the Word is uncreated God, and thus divine in the full and supreme sense of the term.[11] Unlike Philo’s Logos or 1 Enoch’s Son of Man, the Johannine Word is not God’s first and supreme creature, through whom God relates to all other creatures.[12] The Johannine Word is one with the uncreated God, existing before and above all other so-called “gods” (Jn 1:15, 30; 3:31; 10:30, 34-36; cf. Pss 8:5; 95:3; 1 Cor 8:4-6). As we will see more fully below, John 1:1’s predication of deity, in the full and supreme sense, to the second person of the Trinity is both comprehensive and structurally significant (Jn 20:28).
One final observation regarding the eternal being of the Word is in order. Though John moves away from identifying the second person of the Trinity as the Word after the prologue, he does not move away from the conceptual framework the prologue has established. Throughout his Gospel, John offers a twofold description of the Son that mirrors the prologue’s twofold description of the Word. In conveying the distinctive nature of the Son’s person and work, John speaks in a variety of ways about the Son’s relation to God (that which distinguishes him from the Father, i.e., his mode of being God); and he speaks in a variety of ways about the Son’s oneness with God (that which he holds in common with the Father, i.e., his being God). In John’s testimony, both patterns of speech are essential to identifying who the Son is and how the Son operates. This twofold pattern of speech, in turn, becomes central to the conceptual framework of later trinitarian theology.[13]

The Agency of the Word (Jn 1:3–5)

The eternal being of the Word determines the nature of his activity in the production of creatures. As we observed above, John 1:1-2 locate the Word on the divine side of the creator-creature distinction, on the side of God’s eternal and unchangeable being, not on the side of the creature’s temporal and changeable becoming. John 1:3 underlines this point by identifying the eternal Word as the creator of all things, the producer of everything that has come to into being: “All things came into being through him, and without him nothing has come into being that has come into being” (Jn 1:3).
In stating that all things came into being “through” him, John identifies the Word who is internal to God’s being as an expression of God’s immediate agency, the divine Word whose utterance brings all things into existence (cf. Jn 5:25; 11:43-44; Rom 4:17; Heb 11:3).[14] To accomplish this identification, John employs the language of “prepositional metaphysics,” which in ancient philosophy was a means of identifying the various “causes” of all things (e.g., efficient, formal, material, final).[15] However, unlike Philo, who identifies the Logos as an “instrumental cause” through which God produces all things,[16] John identifies the Word as a personal mode of God’s immediate agency, in whom God’s own life-and-light-giving power resides (Jn 1:4; 5:26; 6:63).

Read More
Related Posts:

Talented songwriters can do better. It is not as if we don’t have an inspired songbook to show us how it’s done. Let’s mine the Word of God and the world of God for analogies that will fire and inspire the Christian imagination to rightly know and encounter our infinite God.

Don’t use adjectives which merely tell us how you want us to feel about the thing you are describing. I mean, instead of telling us a thing was “terrible,” describe it so that we’ll be terrified. Don’t say it was “delightful”: make us say “delightful” when we’ve read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers, “Please will you do my job for me.”C. S. Lewis
Lewis helps us to recognize a flaw in much modern Christian songwriting. No doubt, many contemporary songs are vast improvements on the gospel-song cliché-mill. The re-commitment to theological clarity and depth in many contemporary hymns is something to rejoice over, and any serious Christian will be thankful for an injection of sound theological ideas into the gelatinous world of modern evangelical conviction.
With all that said, I find Lewis’s sentiment played out before me in not a few modern songs. These songs seem to try to gather as many superlative adjectives as possible that will fit the meter of the song. These are then piled on top of one another, and the result is a rapid-fire of high-concentrate adjectives. The resulting lyrics are something like: “Indescribable majesty, incomparable glory, unbounded mercy, immeasurable beauty…”
Yet for all this verbal altitude, the effect is palpably flat. Instead of soaring into the heights of praising God as the ultimate Being, we sing these super-hero adjectives with a sense of incomplete affection. It is as if we are hoping that these superlative adjectives will kick-start our delight in God. Some worshippers succeed, others don’t. Likely, most content themselves with the thought that ascribing superlative adjectives to God is surely the right way to go, even if little moral excitement is raised in response to them.
Read More

Related Posts:

“Love seeks the highest welfare of the people we are called to serve. Love seeks that welfare, love serves that welfare, love sacrifices for that welfare. And that seeking, serving, and sacrificing are three essential foundations of love. It was of course, to this same Corinthian Church that Paul wrote his great hymn of love in chapter 13, If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love… I am nothing. I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. That is what you are Christian if you are without love. American or not – you are nothing without love.”I’ve been this week at the conference of the Anglican Diocese of the Living Word (ACNA), led by Bishop Julian Dobbs. The bishop gave his annual address on Friday morning, and … Lord have mercy, if only ten percent of bishops and pastors talked like this man, we would be living in a different country. I present to you here the entire text (absent a personal remembrance of three recently deceased members of the diocese). Imagine a bishop talking like this! Catholics and Orthodox can scarcely wrap our minds around it. I asked the diocesan communications director to send me the text, which was so extraordinary. Here it is:In the name of God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. Let all that you do be done in love.As a young lad, I was forded the great privilege of attending an Anglican boys boarding school from the age of 9. This was an expensive commitment for my parents who both sacrificed significantly for me to have this opportunity. My parents believed that education, respect, formation, opportunity and a valuing of order and tradition were values they wanted to gift and impart into their young son.
It was here, at King’s School and later at King’s College that my commitment to follow Christ began to focus and my formation as an Anglican converged, setting the course for the future determined for me by God. It was here at King’s, worshiping Christ often twice on a Sunday, using the daily office from the Book of Common Prayer 1662, that I began to wrestle at age eleven, with what I come to know as a vocation to serve God in Holy Orders.
Singing in the chapel choir, enamored by the hymns of Watts and Wesley, I would often be transfixed during worship on a verse of Scripture that was inscribed on the northwestern wall of the Chapel of the Holy Child.
Stand fast in the faith, be strong. (1 Corinthians 16, verse 13). What an outstanding choice of scripture to inspire young boys. Virtus pollet – the school motto, virtue prevails, become men, be servants, be leaders, Stand fast in the faith, be strong. This is part of the formation that has shaped some of the DNA of my own episcopacy. As a disciple of Christ in any form of leadership or ministry in the church of this generation, 1 Corinthians 16, verse 13 has a notable sense of urgency, Stand fast in the faith, be strong.
In this pastoral address today, I want us to consider from Scripture what are the foundational exhortations that will enable us to stand fast in the faith in our context across the Anglican Diocese of the Living Word, in our nation and beyond our borders. You ask me, why is this important? I would say to you, as we listen and talk about the issues confronting North America and the world, it appears that the Bible is no longer in vogue. So let us go to the Bible and find out what it says for us today, in our context.
In the final chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians, the Apostle Paul breaks into his final instructions and gives his final greetings with five short, staccato commands, or imperatives that would later be inscribed, in part, upon that northwestern wall of my school chapel.
Look at it again. It is a wonderful text. Be vigilant… Be watchful, that is, stand firm in your faith, be strong, be courageous. And let all that you do be done in love.
It is interesting that each of the five commands pre-supposes some problem, some difficulty, some responsibility, or temptation within the Corinthian Church which makes the commands necessary.
1. Be watchful
Keep awake is the exhortation from Paul. The implication here is that we have enemies ‘out there’ and we cannot afford to relax our vigilance. It seems today, that no believer can ever afford to disconnect, because frankly we do not know when the crisis is going to come and when we will find ourselves on the ropes. Things change, things change in states, in countries, things change in workplaces, things change in families frighteningly quickly and we can find our backs against the wall. Stand up at work for some inconvenient point about honesty or integrity and suddenly your boss says, you are not performing quite as well as you were and maybe the time has come to move on. Tell your parents you are having to make some changes as a result of a Christian commitment and suddenly there is an icy coolness that creeps into what you thought was a solid relationship.
Be watchful! There are real wars taking place today in the realm of ideas. Real wars attempting to control idea-shaping institutions, congregations, seminaries and denominations – and biblical truth—a prize far more precious than any army has ever contended for—is at stake.
At the center of this attack against Christ, his word and his faithful followers is a subtle, wicked, unscrupulous, very powerful archenemy called Satan. He is an adversary who prowls around seeking someone to devour.
He uses politicians, pastors, priests, prelates and anyone he can entice.
One politician recently said in a speech to our nation which advocated for and unreservedly supported and advanced transgenderism, that parents of transgender children should be encouraged to affirm their child’s identity as one of the most powerful things they can do to keep them safe and healthy. How could such advocacy be safe and healthy when 82% of transgender individuals have considered killing themselves and 40% have attempted suicide.
Transgender individuals are not the enemy. They are loved by Christ. But be watchful, for we are wrestling against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. People of God, there are real wars taking place today for the control of our minds and our bodies. And if politicians are vulnerable – Satan will attack there. If priests and bishops depart the faith once for all entrusted to the saints – Satan will attack there.
Jesus speaks of Satan as a wolf in the clothing or the disguise of a sheep. And he creeps up unnoticed when leaders are at their most vulnerable, when their guard is down.
Be watchful – be vigilant. That is the exhortation from Paul in these verses. For when we lose ground to Satan, it is a tough fight to reverse the trend and bring about the required course correction.
In their 2021 statement to the Church, the bishops of the Anglican Church in North America reminded the faithful that, ‘while questions pertaining to human identity are ancient, a certain vividness around personal identity has been introduced into our current cultural conversation.
Our society has collapsed into a sexual world view which attempts to redefine the image of God in humanity as predominantly one of sexual orientation and behavior.
In the liturgy of the Consecration of Bishops, a bishop commits himself, with all faithful diligence to banish and drive away from the Church all erroneous and strange doctrine contrary to God’s Word and both privately and publicly to call upon others and encourage them to do the same?
Therefore, I believe that it is my responsibility as your diocesan bishop to provide direction and speak clearly as the Church navigates these crucial and important matters.
The Bible is clear on matters of sexual identity. God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.10 Therefore, any confusion of the sexes is a distortion of God’s created order. Some Christians have great difficulty with these biblical foundations. They will often point you to the experience of a much loved family member and tell you how they have been significantly influenced by someone who identifies him or her self in a way that is inconsistent with their biological sex.
While all Christians should show compassion and empathy when possible to the personal experiences of others, the Anglican Diocese of the Living Word cannot and will not recognize personal experience as revelatory. We believe that our identity must be grounded in the truth about creation which is revealed in the Scriptures and in God’s Son, our Savior Jesus Christ.
This biblical truth is under attack today within our culture and from within the evangelical church. As a result, I have appointed a task force in the diocese, chaired by The Rev. Matthew Kennedy, to help us wrestle with what it means to be created male and female in the image of God. I have asked the task force to prepare guidelines to assist us in our ministry with individuals who are already in our congregations or come to the diocese in the future and are wrestling with sexual identity.
In their report, which the clergy will receive tomorrow, the task force says this, ‘God is the author of all good things. The world that He has made includes men and women and our Lord said that from the beginning God made human beings “male and female” (Matthew 19:4). Yet this is a cultural moment when there is increasing confusion about the significance of this order and about whether Christians should think about being male or female as something that is given and fixed, or as something that is to a substantial degree malleable and self-chosen.’
Thank you Matt and the members of your task force, for your focused work.
Let me tell you why this is so important. The Holy Scriptures have been given to us by God and as a result, the word of God written is extraordinarily precious. The bible tells the world what it does not wish to hear. We should not expect to be embraced by those whose thoughts and deeds contradict the truths of our faith. Nor should we seek to make our faith more palatable, lest the salt lose its savor. As Dr. Carl Trueman has written, ‘Accommodating the world’s demands is a fool’s errand.’
I urge you to establish a framework of discipline in your life that has regular and robust biblical study and reflection. We build our beliefs and ethics, not from the loudest or the most appealing voices in the public square, academia or the corridors of power; we build our beliefs and ethics from a robust engagement with Scripture.
This is why I urge you to participate in a weekly bible study group in your congregation to study the Bible and build accountable relationships with other Christians. We need faithful friends!
Friends who will love us. Friends who will encourage us. Friends who will pray regularly for us and friends who will bark loudly like watch dogs when they perceive in us the first glimmerings of compromise. People of God, be watchful!
2. Stand firm in the faith.
Staying awake, keeping our guard, maintaining our vigilance – yes, indeed! Paul adds (vs.13) Stand firm in the faith. Stand firmly planted against all the pressures to conform. Stability is a much desired quality in almost every sphere of our lives.
About 6 weeks ago, I was visiting Holy Cross Anglican Church in the Historic Third Ward in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. As I waited for the plane to depart on my return journey, the pilot informed the passengers that our flight was delayed in order to reconfigure and stabilize our aircraft. The plane I was on was a small aircraft and it required the crew to accurately compute the center of gravity so that the plane would appropriately level off in flight.
Some days later, I sought the wisdom and experience of U.S. Air Force pilot, Colonel Karen Love to explain the situation to me. Karen told me the center of gravity ensures the plane flies within its specified parameters. Without proper balance, the plane might be nose low or nose high upon leveling off at altitude. She said, the pilot must be cognizant of aerodynamic balance and stabilization to ensure maximum flight fuel and course efficiency.
It seemed to me that Karen was saying… the plane needs to be stable!
Paul exhorts us to be stable. Aerodynamic balance! Maximum flight fuel and course efficiency! Stand firm, stand fast in the faith. Do not deviate off course.
… Most of us admire people who have a stable character, a stable personality and stable convictions. I believe that ‘stability’ was one of the attributes that Jesus admired the most in John the Baptist. In Matthew chapter 11, Jesus speaks to the crowds concerning John: “What did you go out into the wilderness to see? And He gave three possibilities. A reed shaken by the wind? Did you go out to see a person who is swayed by public opinion and blown about in the wind? What then did you go out to see? A man dressed in soft clothing? Someone living in a king’s palace? What then did you go out to see? A prophet? Somebody who lives under the authority of the word of God. In those three options you have everybody in this room. Every one of us is one or other of those three descriptions. What is it that rules your life? Is it public opinion from the outside? Is it your own pleasures and passions on the inside? Or is it the word of God from above?
The two Books of Homilies [which are a gift to us all today and are beautifully being rediscovered in the Anglican Church] are valuable in a multiplicity of ways and show how Anglican doctrine shifted during the Reformation. These homilies were intended to raise the standards of preaching by offering model sermons covering particular doctrinal and pastoral themes. I strongly commend the Books of Homilies to you.
The “Homily on The Reading of Scripture” states that, ‘…as drink is pleasant to them that be dry, and meat to them that be hungry, so is the reading, hearing, searching, and studying of Holy Scripture to them that be desirous to know God or themselves, and to do his will.’
Stand firm, do not deviate. For when the Church deviates from the word of God the consequences are catastrophic!
On October 14, last year, I received a very early text message from our Director of Communications, the Rev. Marc Steele. The information Marc sent me was personally painful and the consequence for the church was, in that moment, unfathomable! My friend and confidant, bishop and former keynote speaker at this missions conference and synod had converted to the See of Peter, the Church of Rome.
After spending his entire adult life within the Anglican Communion—including thirty-seven years as an Anglican bishop, Michael Nazir-Ali was received into the Ordinariate of the Catholic Church at Our Lady of the Assumption and St. Gregory Church in London on October 31, last year.
In Michael’s own words, this was a ‘dramatic step’.
In a recent article, Michael wrote this, ‘One problem with the Anglican Communion was its lack of unity based in apostolic continuity. Each time an “agreement” was reached on important issues and accepted by the respective communions as consonant with what they believed, some part of the Anglican Communion would take unilateral action that cast doubt on the strength of the agreement.’
Michael wrote, I had often boasted that Anglicanism, although reformed, had by divine providence retained both the sacred deposit of faith and the sacred ministry.
He cites the apparent lack of authority, the ordination of women as priests and bishops, the ordination of individuals in active homosexual relationships, the breakdown of the discipline of marriage [especially amongst clergy and bishops] and a lack of clarity concerning personhood and the protections due to it at the earliest and latest stages of life as indicators which “epitomized a tendency within Anglicanism to capitulate to the culture rather than sound a prophetic voice within it.”
‘A tendency within Anglicanism to capitulate to the culture!’ That’s interesting!
One of the many reasons why I am so sensitive to wokeness and this pattern of capitulation within the Anglican Church is because I am, and many of you are, refugees from a church that lost her way when she began to succumb to appeals for compassion, tenderness and a capitulation to culture as the justification for dismantling the faith ‘once for all entrusted to the saints’.