Friday, January 13, 2023

Sean M. McDonough on John 1:3

  

 

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 διαυτου 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 διαυτου 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)