and familiar words were turned to new uses and filled with new meaning and significance. The term λóyos, word, was seen by the author of the fourth gospel to be admirably fitted to express his lofty conception of the Christ of God. He appropriated it and filled it with a fullness of meaning it had never borne before. It is not a vague and indefinable concept like the λóyos of Philo; nor is it the archetypal idea (idéa and eidos) of Plato, nor the Memra of the Targums, nor the personified Wisdom (n) of the book of Proverbs. And yet all of these may have contributed somewhat to the doctrine of the Word as set forth in the prologue of John's gospel. The superiority of John's conception and the originality of his genius appear in the ease and simplicity which he evinces in all this realm of thought. His divine Logos is no mixture of dualistic and docetic fancies; no philosophic portrayal of powers and attributes, now in repose and now again in activity. There is in his language the calm expression of one who knows of what he speaks. The Word of God is to him a living reality. For he tells us at the beginning of his first epistle that he himself had heard, and seen with his own eyes, and even handled the Word of life, which was so manifested in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, that he could personally "bear witness and declare the eternal life, which was with the Father." This heavenly Logos is the "onlybegotten from the Father," the "only begotten Son (or God) who is in the bosom of the Father," and has revealed his nature and glory by a personal incarnation among men.

8. Necessity of Incarnation. According to John, all true knowledge of God must come to us through some manner of incarnation. The thoughts of God, the mind, will, wisdom, and feeling of the eternal Father cannot be expressed except by such a manifestation of himself as can be seen, heard, and touched by conscious contact. Hence the necessity of real personality in the divine Logos of revelation. The Hindu mystic has much to tell us about Avatara, incarnation, transmigration of souls, and ultimate repose in the bosom of Brahm, the divine Essence of the Universe. We may discern a profound concept of the truth in all this mystic dreaming, but it lacks the element of personal reality, which is the distinguishing feature of John's doctrine of the incarnation and

"The apostolic proclamation," says Delitzsch, "did not scorn the forms of ideas already coined by the Alexandrian philosophy, but it filled them with the contents presented by the history of their New Testament realization. As Christianity withdrew the limits from the spirit of the Old Testament revelation, and separated the imperishable gold of its substance from the dross of its cosmical elements so it became a refining fire for Hellenistic and Hellenic philosophy, the transfiguration and consecration of what was true, and of the forms in use for both in the presentation of the Truth."-System of Biblical Psychology, p. 211. Eng. trans., Edinburgh, 1869.

visible manifestation of the Word. The eternal God revealed himself in the Word which "became flesh and tabernacled among us . . . full of grace and truth." This manifestation is no other than that which is to be seen in the person of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who "is come in the flesh."

9. Suggestive Words and Phrases. A closer study of the prologue will discover a number of far-reaching suggestions. At the beginning of the creation the Word already was; did not begin to be. The statement implies that the Word was without beginning, and is himself no part of God's creation. Then it is added, “and the Word was with God" (pòs Tòv deóv), obviously indicating some manner of distinction between God and the Word; and then it is immediately added, as if to emphasize the unity and substantial identity of the Word with Deity, "and the Word was God." The word deós is here without the article and occupies the position of emphasis in the sentence, being thus made the emphatic predicate, and affirming the divine nature of the Logos. Thus it is shown that this Word is no "second God," like the λóyos of Philo, but of the essential nature of Deity.' The first three verses of the prologue point to the narrative of creation in Gen. i, where it is written over and over again, "God said," and it was done. The creative Fiat was a manifestation of God himself, and the personal Logos of John's gospel is God himself speaking, acting, and bringing all things into being.

10. The Word of Life. That all things were created through the Word or Son of God (ver. 3) is a doctrine we have already found in 1 Cor. viii, 6; Col. i, 16; and Heb. i, 2; xi, 3. He is before all things; without him nothing ever came into existence, and in him all things hold together. But when it is added in John's prologue, verse 4, "In him was life, and the life was the light of men," we advance to another lofty concept of the Logos. In v, 26, we read: "As the Father hath life in himself, even so gave he to the Son also to have life in himself." In xi, 25, and xiv, 6, he is called emphatically "the life." At the beginning of the first epistle of John he is called "the Word of life," and there it is declared that "the life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare unto you the life, the eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us." This manifestation of the life was, according to John, specifically and definitely in the historic fact that "Jesus Christ is come in the

1 Comp. Gloag, Introduction to the Johannine Writings, p. 171. London, 1891. 'We may, perhaps, best indicate the import of the anarthrous emphasis of ɛós in the sentence kai Deds hν ó λóyos by the translation, and Deity was the very nature of the Word.

flesh" (1 John iv, 2; 2 John 7), for it was such an unmistakable disclosure concerning the Word of life that it could be heard, seen, and handled (1 John i, 1). Paul taught that "the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Rom. vi, 23; comp. Col. iii, 3, 4; 2 Tim. i, 1), but according to John's gospel Jesus declares himself "the bread of life which cometh down out of heaven, and giveth life unto the world" (vi, 33, 35, 41, 48, 50); and according to the epistle (v, 11, 12), “God gave unto us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath the life; he that hath not the Son of God hath not the life."

11. The Word of Light. The Logos of John's gospel is also the light as well as the life of men. This light was no new thing, shining for the first time when the Word became flesh. It was coetaneous with the creation of the world, when God said, "Let there be light," for "God is light and in him is no darkness at all" (1 John i, 5). And this light did not go out when sin entered the world and filled the hearts of men with darkness. The light keeps right on shining in the darkness, whether men regard it or not, and it has been shining from the beginning until now. Here and there, during the long times of darkness, some pious souls have caught gleams of this heavenly light, and have given glory to God (Psa. xxvii, 1; xxxvi, 9; xliii, 3; xcvii, 11; cxii, 4; Prov. iv, 18; Mic. vii, 8), and prophets saw its future shining as a revelation of Jehovah's glory (Isa. lx, 1-3, 19, 20). But the sad, condemning fact remains that "the light is come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their works were evil” (iii, 19). Evil doers hate the light, which convicts them of sin and guilt (iii, 20). Hence it is that while the light is all the time shining in the darkness "the darkness apprehended it not." Even before the Word became flesh "there was coming into the world the light, the true light, which lighteth every man" (ver. 9), and this only genuine light was from the Logos, who was in the beginning with God, and was God. He accordingly declares: "I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in the darkness, but shall have the light of life" (viii, 12; comp. ix, 5; xii, 35, 36, 46; 1 John i, 5-7; ii, 8). Thus the Logos of John's gospel has life in himself and is at the same time the fountain of light to men. He is the creative Word and the Word of spiritual illumination. He was all this in the beginning; but, having come in the flesh, he has manifested the life and the light of God in a fullness never known before.

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1 Note the force of the present, paive, in verse 5.

'Ov karéλaßev; that is, did not seize hold upon it so as to make it a possession of its own.

12. Doctrine of Preexistence. The entire presentation of Christ in the fourth gospel is in strict harmony with this doctrine of the preëxistent Word of God who was manifested in the flesh. He himself says, in iii, 13, "No man hath ascended into heaven, but he that descended out of heaven, the Son of man, who is in heaven." In vi, 62, he speaks of "the Son of man ascending up where he was before." In viii, 58, he says: "Before Abraham was born, I am." In xvii, 5, he prays to the Father: "Now glorify thou me with thine own self, with the glory which I had with thee before the world was"; and in verse 24 he adds, "for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world." These passages all clearly involve the doctrine of personal preëxistence, and they accord with the statement in the prologue that the Word "was in the beginning with God"; and this has been the interpretation put upon them by the great majority of expositors during the Christian centuries. The profoundly realistic manner in which the doctrine of incarnation is thus conceived is most impressive.

13. The Idealistic Explanation. But there are those who explain all these utterances touching Christ's preëxistence in a purely mystic or ideal way. Appeal is made to the Platonic doctrine of archetypal ideas, to the use of the term Logos in Philo and in the apocryphal book of Wisdom; to the personification of Wisdom in Prov. viii; to the fact that, in Heb. viii, 5; ix, 23, the Mosaic tabernacle is conceived as a copy of heavenly things; and to the ideal of the New Jerusalem of John's Apocalypse, "coming down out of heaven from God" (Rev. xxi, 2). These references are cited to show that the heavenly original of all things which appear in time was, during the first century, an idea very common and current in the widely scattered communities of Greek-speaking Jews. These facts are indeed beyond successful contradiction, and the proofs have been sufficiently given in the foregoing pages. But it does not follow that John's doctrine of the Logos and of the heavenly preëxistence of Christ is identical in meaning with these Platonic and Jewish-Alexandrian conceptions, or was derived from them. On the contrary, it is maintained that the teaching of the fourth gospel, while appropriating current words and expressions

1 The genuineness of the words ó av kv rị oỷpavý, who is in heaven, is very doubtful. They are not found in the great manuscripts N, B, L, T, C, nor in a number of other ancient authorities, and they are omitted from the text of Westcott and Hort, who say in their Notes on Select Readings: "There are many quotations of verse 13 (in early Christian writers) which stop short at rоv avvрúrov; and it is morally certain that most of them would have included ỏ v év T oupave if it had stood in the texts used by the writers. The character of the attestation marks the addition as a Western gloss, suggested perhaps by i, 18; it may have been inserted to correct any misunderstanding arising out of the position of åvaßéßnкev, hath ascended, as coming before xaтaßás, descended." Notes on Select Readings, p. 75.

of this ideal cast, fills them with a significance they had not borne before. And the various assertions of a personal character, and the emphasis put upon them both in the gospel and in the first epistle of John, are not compatible with a mere ideal existence or preëxistence.'

(1) Does Not Accord with John's Explicit Language. The language employed in John's gospel is too explicit and personal to be satisfactorily explained after the manner of conceiving Plato's doctrine of archetypal ideas. For Plato's ideas were pure abstractions of thought, the perfect models or forms in which all things intelligible were conceived as eternally existing. He seems to have regarded them as something which human souls might have contemplated in a preëxistent state,' so that the process of learning things in this life is a recollection of preëxistent thoughts." So lacking in clearness and consistency are some of Plato's statements on this subject that one may well believe that his views underwent considerable change in the course of his own life and study. But no possible construction of his ideas (idéal) and forms (elôn) can be rationally adjusted to the words of John's gospel.

(2) Logos Not Synonymous with Abstract Terms. Equally futile is any attempt to expound the Johannine teaching by means of the various and often contradictory statements of Philo. Nor can the concepts of the Logos in the Wisdom of Solomon be made to fit the specific and sublime utterances of the fourth gospel. If the Logos be explained as Reason, Intelligence, Wisdom, Power, or some other like term, it should be said, by way of reply on the other hand, that we may readily perceive a certain simple and intelligible meaning in declaring that God created the world in the exercise of his perfect wisdom; but when one says, "This Power became flesh and dwelt among us," "This Reason shall ascend up where it was before," "Glorify this Wisdom with the glory it had before the world was," we cannot but feel that there is an element of unreality in the entire conception. John's Logos is not an abstract quality or idea hypostatized, but an eternal Person, inscrutably identified with Deity, and manifested in the flesh of Jesus.

1 It is almost amazing that in his special pleading for a purely ideal preexistence of Christ, Beyschlag should thus comment on John viii, 58: "He does not say, I was; his point is not his having been before, but his eternal being. Abraham is only a transient appearance he is the appearance of the Eternal in time. Before God thought of the birth of Abraham, he stood before him, through whom he would lead humanity to the goal of its destiny, the Alpha and Omega of his decree" (New Testament Theology, vol. i, p. 254). But if his "eternal being" and preexistence were real in no deeper sense than the ideas of Plato (comp. Beyschlag, p. 252), he was no more eternal or preexistent than Abraham. The archetypal Abraham must have been as real and as eternally preexistent as Jesus Christ. Omniscience would think of the birth of Abraham as occurring long before that of Jesus. * Phædo, 76.

'Phædrus, 249, 250.