Here is another theme which will repeat through the rest of John's story:
No one can know God. Jewish people had the words which God had given, and the written stories of what God had done. So they were in the enviable position of being able to know quite a lot about God, much more than other people. But here John tells us that this is not enough. No one has seen God; nobody is intimate enough with God to introduce him.
But this person, the one that is at the centre of this mysterious eulogy, and in fact is the essence of the entire narrative to follow, is intimate with God. Every paragraph, almost every sentence, so far has been telling us this in different ways. But the first sentence (the Word was with God, and the Word was God) is the clearest and most uncompromising until we get to this last sentence of the prologue.
This "One and Only", we have already been told (have a look at the first post "unique glory" for a discussion of this phrase), came from the Father. Now John goes further: this person 'is himself God'. This is a bit weird if one thinks about it. It is clear that in this whole section, John is trying to build a multifaceted picture which will somehow hook us up to a cosmic truth which is too big to fully express. I think that John hopes we'll connect with this at a super-cognitive level, and that this will pull us along through the narrative which follows, forcing us to consider Jesus in more dimensions than we would have otherwise.
In the same way that he struggled in our first paragraph, John wrestles here, within this different image, to help us not to get our ideas too narrow. This person is himself God, but from another perspective he is the only [Son] of the Father, and now he intensifies this: "is in closest relationship with the Father".
But this interprets what is really an image - the one who is in the chest (or bosom, or breast) of the Father. Other translations vary from the old in the bosom of the Father, through nearest the Father's heart, and at the Father's side. to in the intimate presence of the Father. One picture is of a person (most commonly it would be a child) who is snuggled into the upper part of a Father's garment, inside his jacket, very close both physically and emotionally. The other is of someone in the chest cavity of the Father, heart to heart in a sense, sharing everything. The meaning is clear: intimacy of the highest order, including commonality of personality and purpose.
This is the person John is going to tell us about, and we need to be ready, because the point is that he is so close to God that he is able to "make God known". There is someone here worth knowing about; this is a story worth our fullest attention. We are going to need the astonishment that this whole "prologue" has created in us if we are to read with enough dynamic insight to see what John is seeking to communicate with us.
Showing posts with label unique. Show all posts
Showing posts with label unique. Show all posts
Wednesday, 2 November 2011
Sunday, 23 October 2011
unique glory (two)
Apart from the (almost incidental) identification of the beings/persons who are the subject of his description, John uses this paragraph to move into another arena: A comparison with other spiritual options. In the second paragraph (life and light) he has already suggested 'the light' is opposed by the darkness (though not overcome by it). Now he takes us further.
We've seen already that this paragraph is about explaining the uniqueness of Jesus; "full of grace-and-truth" is a description of what this uniqueness means, and it must be one of the most evocative phrases there is. It is not in power (whether supernatural, or the ability to draw crowds, or the winning of debate) that John places Jesus' glory, his uniqueness. It is in this combination of grace and truth.
The key phrase in this paragraph (John1:14-17) is "grace and truth". It is rather fascinating that one of these two words, truth, is used repeatedly in the main text of John's story, while the other, grace, is never used again! Just to make up for this, John uses it extra in this bit!
John talks of Jesus as full of grace and truth, and it is out of this fullness that we receive. It is a if Jesus has so much that he overflows, and what overflows to us is grace. Grace is all about someone who gives to the undeserving, who is a companion to the unworthy, who is kind no matter what. John tells us that he and Jesus' other followers had experienced something extraordinary: Jewish people had already received from God and the Bible is clear that this was undeserved, what they already had as God's people was grace. But then Jesus came, and they found themselves receiving more grace, richer grace, more gracious grace, if such a thing is possible.
He explains. The law was given through Moses. The law was very precious; through it people could discover who God is and how he means them to live. This was wonderful. However, more was needed. We needed to see the truth, we needed to touch grace. Moses was involved in the giving of the law, but in Jesus truth and grace came. This is an intensely personal happening, Jesus brought something to us in himself. Jesus is different not only like light is different from darkness, but as the real thing (Jesus=grace&truth) is different from a description (the law). He is different from Moses in the same way as meeting a person is different from hearing about them.
We've seen already that this paragraph is about explaining the uniqueness of Jesus; "full of grace-and-truth" is a description of what this uniqueness means, and it must be one of the most evocative phrases there is. It is not in power (whether supernatural, or the ability to draw crowds, or the winning of debate) that John places Jesus' glory, his uniqueness. It is in this combination of grace and truth.
The key phrase in this paragraph (John1:14-17) is "grace and truth". It is rather fascinating that one of these two words, truth, is used repeatedly in the main text of John's story, while the other, grace, is never used again! Just to make up for this, John uses it extra in this bit!
John talks of Jesus as full of grace and truth, and it is out of this fullness that we receive. It is a if Jesus has so much that he overflows, and what overflows to us is grace. Grace is all about someone who gives to the undeserving, who is a companion to the unworthy, who is kind no matter what. John tells us that he and Jesus' other followers had experienced something extraordinary: Jewish people had already received from God and the Bible is clear that this was undeserved, what they already had as God's people was grace. But then Jesus came, and they found themselves receiving more grace, richer grace, more gracious grace, if such a thing is possible.
He explains. The law was given through Moses. The law was very precious; through it people could discover who God is and how he means them to live. This was wonderful. However, more was needed. We needed to see the truth, we needed to touch grace. Moses was involved in the giving of the law, but in Jesus truth and grace came. This is an intensely personal happening, Jesus brought something to us in himself. Jesus is different not only like light is different from darkness, but as the real thing (Jesus=grace&truth) is different from a description (the law). He is different from Moses in the same way as meeting a person is different from hearing about them.
Saturday, 10 September 2011
unique glory
John uses this paragraph to gives us more words, both images and concepts, which describe the person he is telling us about. Just like the previous ones, most of these words, and all of the ideas behind the words, will echo through the narrative to come.
The key words here are "full of grace and truth" - but before he comes to this phrase, John takes trouble to point out yet again that this person is unique; he is the one and only who came from the Father. This is an interesting phrase, and we struggle a bit in English because there is no way of translating it which is a elegant, as poetically pointed, as the Greek which is a single word!
I am generally dead against amateurs like you and me messing with translation because after all, if you get 70 of the world's most expert Greek, Hebrew and English specialists together (like they did to create the NIV) how am I likely to clarify things? However what I am doing here is IN NO WAY suggesting an alternative translation, but merely explaining for interested parties why it might sound less elegant than expected, and why some translations use that odd device of adding in the word [Son] - the square brackets mean that it is a word added for clarity, which the translators believe is 'understood' in the original. So, this is just my way of teasing out what John is telling me!
This word is a composite one: The first part is mono, which is totally familiar to us because we use it in much the same way in English, tells us this thing is the only one, or one-of-a-kind. It is fairly simply translated as "only" or "one and only". The second part is the tricky bit it is genos (or at least genous, which merely another part of speech for the same word, like the differerence between love and loved - same meaning but changed form to fit into a different part of a sentence) which has to do with someone being descended from another person, or perhaps a thing which is the same as another and emerges from it. So an old translation uses the word "begotten" of the Father, which we don't use any more. Our NIV 2011 says "Son who came" from the Father. But some people struggle with the idea of Jesus as God's Son because it sounds too biological, too earthy. Now later John will use the normal Greek word for 'son' when he will call Jesus the 'Son of God' and invte us to believe that, but he isn't actually doing that yet. Here he is being more subtle, more complex, more abstract.
I think here John is trying to portray that Jesus is someone whose relationship with God can't be described in the normal ways. We've already see this in the first paragraph with the multiple descriptions of the Word with respect to God. Now he is finding another way of saying that Jesus is 'the same as' God but 'distinct from' God also. For good measure, in case another is tempted to say, "Oh, well, of course we all come from God, after all he made us," or words to that effect, John puts in the prefix mono. The only one like this.
It is this glory that John and his companions saw as they lived with Jesus. This is the glory he is going to tell us more about. It is a glory which is inherent in the nature of this unique person. As we will see, this glory can be described by the phrase: full of grace and truth.
The key words here are "full of grace and truth" - but before he comes to this phrase, John takes trouble to point out yet again that this person is unique; he is the one and only who came from the Father. This is an interesting phrase, and we struggle a bit in English because there is no way of translating it which is a elegant, as poetically pointed, as the Greek which is a single word!
I am generally dead against amateurs like you and me messing with translation because after all, if you get 70 of the world's most expert Greek, Hebrew and English specialists together (like they did to create the NIV) how am I likely to clarify things? However what I am doing here is IN NO WAY suggesting an alternative translation, but merely explaining for interested parties why it might sound less elegant than expected, and why some translations use that odd device of adding in the word [Son] - the square brackets mean that it is a word added for clarity, which the translators believe is 'understood' in the original. So, this is just my way of teasing out what John is telling me!
This word is a composite one: The first part is mono, which is totally familiar to us because we use it in much the same way in English, tells us this thing is the only one, or one-of-a-kind. It is fairly simply translated as "only" or "one and only". The second part is the tricky bit it is genos (or at least genous, which merely another part of speech for the same word, like the differerence between love and loved - same meaning but changed form to fit into a different part of a sentence) which has to do with someone being descended from another person, or perhaps a thing which is the same as another and emerges from it. So an old translation uses the word "begotten" of the Father, which we don't use any more. Our NIV 2011 says "Son who came" from the Father. But some people struggle with the idea of Jesus as God's Son because it sounds too biological, too earthy. Now later John will use the normal Greek word for 'son' when he will call Jesus the 'Son of God' and invte us to believe that, but he isn't actually doing that yet. Here he is being more subtle, more complex, more abstract.
I think here John is trying to portray that Jesus is someone whose relationship with God can't be described in the normal ways. We've already see this in the first paragraph with the multiple descriptions of the Word with respect to God. Now he is finding another way of saying that Jesus is 'the same as' God but 'distinct from' God also. For good measure, in case another is tempted to say, "Oh, well, of course we all come from God, after all he made us," or words to that effect, John puts in the prefix mono. The only one like this.
It is this glory that John and his companions saw as they lived with Jesus. This is the glory he is going to tell us more about. It is a glory which is inherent in the nature of this unique person. As we will see, this glory can be described by the phrase: full of grace and truth.
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