CREATION
IN THE BEGINNING,
CREATIO
CONTINUA, RE-CREATION
We may now ask a more specific
question: According to John, what does Jesus create and when? The question
first arises in the translation of John 1:3. John Ashton wishes to render παντα δι’ αυτου εγενετο, ‘All things happened through
him’. The emphasis is on history, rather than creation per se. This is an
extreme solution. It is almost impossible to imagine that these words following
hard on the heels of ‘in the beginning’ would not refer to the original
creation. Furthermore, the parallel in 1:10, ο κοσμος δι’ αυτου εγενετο, makes vastly more sense as ‘the
world came into being through him’, rather than ‘the world happened through
him’. As in other key New Testament texts, Christ is there in the beginning
with God, creating everything else.
This does not mean, though, that
the phrase ‘all things came into being through him’ cannot open up to embrace
events beyond the first week of creation. If, for example, we accept the
punctuation of verses 3-4 that gives us ‘what came to being in him was life’,
we have (at best) an ambiguous reference to the creation week. Was everything
then made ‘alive’? This is possible, but it would make better sense as a reference
to Jesus’ life-giving ministry among human beings as narrated in the Gospels.
Such a seamless transition between the dynamics of creation and the dynamics of
Messiah’s service on earth would fit perfectly in the Prologue.
There is evidence elsewhere in the
Gospel that John sees Jesus as God’s agent in creatio continua. The
healing of the paralytic in chapter 5 is the most significant incident. When
Jesus’ opponents rebuke him for working on the Sabbath, he replies (5:17): ‘My
Father is working until now and I also am working’. Jewish thinkers had no
doubt long wrestled with the question of what God’s Sabbath rest in Genesis
implied for his ongoing maintenance of the creation. Thus the following quote
from Exodus Rabbah, while late, is likely indicative of the type of
reasoning employed in earlier times. A sectarian once taunted some rabbits that
God himself does not keep the Sabbath. The rabbis replied:
‘Wretch! Is not a man permitted to
carry on the Sabbath in his own courtyard?’ He replied, ‘Yes’. Whereupon they
said to him, ‘Both the higher and lower regions are the courtyard of God, as it
says, The whole earth is full of His glory (Isa. VI.3), and even if a
man carries a distance of his own height, does he transgress?’ The others
agreed. ‘Then,’ said they, ‘it is written, Do I not fill the heaven and
earth?’ (Exod. Rabb, 30.9)
While John no doubt disagrees with
Jesus’ opponents’ assessment that ‘he is making himself (εαυτον ποιων) equal to God’ (5:18), there is
no doubt that he affirms that Jesus as the beloved Son and Sent One is availing
himself of divine prerogatives by working on the Sabbath.
This one sentence, ‘My Father is working
until now and I also am working’, reveals added depths in all the signs in John’s
Gospel. We have taken them to this point as signs of the inbreaking of God’s
eschatological kingdom; and this is certainly the most sensible initial
interpretive move to make. The curse is being reversed; end-times blessings are
beginning to flow in the land. But 5:17 refutes the false destruction from this
that God has been idle from Day 6 until the arrival of Jesus. While it is just
possible that ‘My Father is working until now’ (εως αρτι)’ means only ‘My Father’s
recently inaugurated eschatological work of re-creation keeps going even on the
Sabbath’, it seems more natural to understand it as ‘My Father is always
working to maintain his creation, and so it is inevitable that I too participate
in that work’.
The signs, then, do not point to
the inbreaking of a completely foreign world, absolutely distinguished from the
world made in the beginning. Instead, they point to the realization of what God
always intended the created world to be. At one level, it is perfectly valid to
emphasize the novelty of God’s work through the Messiah. This is especially pertinent
for John, with his sharp distinctions between the Spirit and the flesh, light
and darkness, believers and unbelievers. But at another level there is an
unbroken stream from primal creation, through the ongoing maintenance of
creation, and on to eschatological re-creation.
This can be illustrated in a few
days. First, it is important that the paralytic is put back on the moral course
of everyday living; he is now able to function well within the borders of the
present creation. (He functions well physically, at least; his spiritual performance—is
another matter.) In the ensuing discussion with his opponents Jesus says that
he will do greater works than this: just as the Father raises the dead
and gives them life, so also Jesus will give life to those whom he chooses
(5:21). This is a patent allusion to the raising of Lazarus, which thus
represents a much more radical incursion into the world than even the healing
of the paralytic. While Lazarus’ resuscitation cannot yet be the absolute
inbreaking of resurrection life into the world, it is the definitive sign of God’s
intention to break the power of death in an unprecedented manner.
Jesus’ own resurrection that is
absolute inbreaking, and we may conclude this section by considering the Gospel’s
accounts of the risen Christ. One of the most remarkable things about these
Johannine texts (and those of Matthew and Luke as well) is how unremarkable the
resurrected Jesus is in certain respects. Although he is apparently able to walk
through walls, he can be mistaken for a gardener (20:15), or a stranger on the
shore (21:4). He still bears the scars of his humiliating earthly experience
(20:25-7), and he participates in the very ordinary activity of sharing a meal
with the disciples (21:12-15). There is more here, I think, than simply a few
more examples of the ‘Johannine (non-)recognition episode’. The risen Christ is
himself the bridge between the now world and the new world. The fact that he participates
in everyday activities and continues to exercise authority over the creation
(e.g. the miraculous catch of fish), speaks to a level of continuity between the
now and the new which is not always appreciated by the commentators on John.
Jesus does return to glory with the Father, but he does so in his resurrected
body. In keeping with 2:19, it is ‘this temple’, Jesus’ human body which has
been ‘raised up’. Believers likewise may anticipate having future fellowship
with Jesus not only in spirit, but in resurrected bodies (5:28-9).
While John’s Gospel does not lay
out its final eschatology in as much detail as other New Testament writings,
the unmistakable presence of bodily resurrection signals that the Gospel should
be read in the context of the general early Christian expectation of a renewed
creation, rather than as a purely spiritual experience. Since Jesus is the
agent of bodily resurrection (5:28-9), it stands to reason that John would see
him as the agent of the cosmic eschatological renewal as well. As God’s Word,
his Messiah inaugurates, sustains, and completes God’s creation project. (Sean
M. McDonough, Christ as Creator: Origins of a New Testament Doctrine [Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2009], 223-26)
