01 - 1Jn 1:1
Ὃ ἦνἀπ’ἀρχῆς,ὃ ἀκηκόαμεν,ὃ ἑωράκαμεν τοῖςὀφθαλμοῖςἡμῶν,ὃ ἐθεασάμεθα καὶαἱχεῖρεςἡμῶνἐψηλάφησαν περὶτοῦλόγου τῆς ζωῆς. As to the construction of the first verses of this Epistle, modern exegesis has come to a pretty clear agreement. The period contains a double specification of the object; first, it is given in the relative clauses with ὃ [“which”]; and then, secondly, it is summed up in the words: περὶτοῦλόγουτῆςζωῆς [“concerning the word of life”]. The predicate to which all these definitions of the object belong is ἀπαγγέλλομεν [“we proclaim”] in 1Jn 1:3. But before this is announced the apostle inserts a parenthesis for the closer explanation of the περὶτοῦλόγουτῆςζωῆς [“concerning the word of life”] (1Jn 1:2); and then the broken thread is taken up again by a brief repetition of the object (ὃἑωράκαμενκαὶἀκηκόαμεν [“which we have seen and heard”]). But when the form is settled, the matter yet remains for interpretation. What is the substance of the announcement which St. John has to make? Is it a thing? In favour of this seems the neutral beginning, the fourfold ὃ [“which”]. Or is it a person? For this speaks the matter of these same neutral clauses: ἦνἀπ’ἀρχῆς, αἱχεῖρεςἡμῶνἐψηλάφησαν, κ.τ.λ. [“was from the beginning, which our hands have touched, etc.”]; for this also the allusion to the beginning of the Gospel, where in part the same is said concerning the Logos; for this, finally, the summarizing expression: λόγοςτῆςζωῆς [“word of life”]. It is certainly inadmissible to translate these words as meaning the annunciation or message concerning life; for St. John’s aim is not to speak about the preaching of the apostles, but to announce that preaching itself. We can understand περὶτῆςζωῆςἀπαγγέλλομεν [“concerning the life we proclaim”]; but περὶτοῦλόγουτῆςζωῆς [“concerning the word of life”] would be, on such a theory of interpretation, an embarrassing thought. The undeniable coincidence between the beginning of the Epistle and the prologue of the Gospel requires that we take the λόγος [“word”] here in the same sense as there,—that is, as the description of the Son of God, the eternal Revealer of the divinity.
All the expressions of the verse showing that it is a person who is in the apostle’s view, how comes it that he begins with the neuter? We shall find the right answer when we seek for the solution of another and easier question: why, that is, the apostle does not, in summing up the object of his annunciation, use the simple accusative, τὸνλόγοντῆςζωῆςἀπαγγέλλομεν [“we proclaim the word of life”], instead of saying, περὶτοῦλόγου [“concerning the word”]. These two are by no means equivalent. We might expect to find τὸνλόγονἀπαγγέλλομεν [“we proclaim the word”] in the beginning of the Gospel, or in the beginning of the Epistle to the Hebrews, or, in fact, of any document which might be occupied with the person of our Lord; but it is obvious to the most superficial consideration, that our Epistle neither gives nor professes to give a detailed disclosure of the characteristics of the person and nature of the Logos. It is true that the Logos is the fundamental matter and pith of the Epistle; not, however, His person in itself, but in its effects, in its glorious outbeamings, which only in an indirect way lead to any conclusions concerning His own nature as a person. Consequently the apostle announces assuredly περὶτοῦλόγου [“concerning the word”], merely things which stand connected with the Logos, but not directly τὸνλόγον [“the word”]. From this point of view we can explain primarily the clause: περὶτοῦλόγουτῆςζωῆς [“concerning the word of life”]. This phrase also carries us back to the prologue of the Gospel. We read, Joh 1:4, concerning the Logos, ἐναὐτῷζωὴἦν [“in him was life”]; in Joh 14:6 the Lord calls Himself absolutely the Life; and, according to Joh 5:26: ἔδωκενὁπατὴρτῷυἱῷζωὴνἔχεινἐνἑαυτῷ [“the Father has granted to the Son to have life in himself”]. It might appear, from this combination, as if the expression λόγοντῆςζωῆς [“the word of life”] signified only the Logos who hath life, the true life, in Himself. But a closer study of the passages quoted shows that in all of them life comes into consideration not as shut up in the Logos alone, but also as streaming forth from Him, so that His life is at the same time a power; penetrating and filling the world. So even in the Gospel of Joh 1:4, the words which immediately follow declare that ἡζωὴἦντὸφῶςτῶνἀνθρώπων [“the life was the light of men”]; and in Joh 5:26 the Lord makes it emphatic that He had life in Himself, only to demonstrate His authority as the Giver of life, as the ζωοποιῶν [“to make alive”]. And the same holds good of Joh 14:6 when we consider the clause added: οὐδεὶςἔρχεταιπρὸςτὸνπατέραεἰμὴδι’ἐμοῦ [“no one comes to the Father except through me”], which states the design of the definitions of Himself given by Christ in the former member of the sentence. But in order to arrive at a surer determination of the meaning of λόγοςτῆςζωῆς [“word of life”] in our passage, we must consider another series of Johannaean passages—those, namely, in which, as here, the life is the genitival definition of another name, such as ἄρτοςτῆςζωῆς [“bread of life”], Joh 6:35, and φῶςτῆςζωῆς [“light of life”], Joh 8:12. These passages also lay down not only that the bread and the light are themselves living, but that they are life-giving also. In the latter of them, the words ὁἀκολουθῶνἐμοιἕξειτὸφῶςτῆςζωῆς [“the one who follows me will have the light of life”] do not aim to show that where there is life merely Christ will become to that life light also, but that the light which He gives awakens life; and, that ἄρτοςτῆςζωῆς [“bread of life”] makes emphatic not the internal quality of the bread, but its effect as such, is proved, apart from other considerations, by Joh 6:33, where the words ἄρτοςζωὴνδιδοὺςτῷκόσμῳ [“bread of life given to the world”] prescribe the sense in which the ἄρτοςτῆςζωῆς [“bread of life”] ought in this connection to be understood.
Thus also in our passage we shall, guided by the analogy of these collective parallels, understand by the λόγοςτῆςζωῆς [“word of life”], not only the Logos so far as He has life, but so far also as He gives life. As it lies in the nature of light that it is not only luminous itself, but also makes other things luminous, so it lies in the idea of the Logos, as viewed by our apostle, that He communicates and diffuses whatever He is, and therefore His life. This latter aspect could here least of all be excluded; for the apostle’s design is not to impart any purely theoretical communications concerning that which is in Christ, but to set it forth as the possession of His people; and he sums up the scope of his Epistle, 1Jn 5:13, as consisting in this, that we by means of our faith should know ourselves in possession of life. That which, therefore, conclusively and distinctly, the writer would announce, is the life; as appears plainly from the circumstance that in the expression λόγοςτῆςζωῆς [“word of life”], in 1Jn 1:2, he selects and makes prominent that element which is the most important,—that is, the life. Thus, when the apostle says that he would make his record περὶτοῦλόγουτῆςζωῆς [“concerning the word of life”], he indicates, by means of the genitive, that element on account of which he speaks generally of the Logos,—that is, of the Logos in as far as He is life, and, according to what follows, life become manifest and communicable. Thus, while it is the Logos which certainly is present to his view, it is not the Person in Himself, and as such, that is the matter of his announcement: not His acts nor His process, but only that quality in Him which is life, life in His person and flowing from it. Fundamentally, therefore, it is quid and not a quis of which the apostle would speak; hence he is justified in saying that he declares not τὸνλόγον [“the word”], but more generally περὶτοῦλόγου [“concerning the word”]; and he is right in defining the object of his announcement not as masculine, but as neuter.
Since it is plain that the expression περὶτοῦλόγουτῆςζωῆς [“concerning the word of life”] can denote only the same object of announcement which the preceding relatival clauses indicate, the task lies before us to ascertain whether our definition of that object accords with all these. It is found that it does in the highest degree: the same interfusion of person and thing meets us as in the λόγοςτῆςζωῆς [“word of life”]. Of course it may be objected, that what the disciples heard, saw, and touched had not been the life which was hidden in Christ, but the Person, the Logos, Himself; and it might seem that this is fatal both to our explanation of the neutral pronouns and to our definition of the object generally. But let this be closely examined. By the ἀκούειν [“to hear”] certainly not the mere sound of Christ’s words is to be understood, but the substance of His discourse; what was that but the announcement of the life which was in Christ, and which was to flow into the apostles? Surely, too, by the ὁρᾶν [“to see”] and θεᾶσθαι [“look upon”] was not signified merely the beholding of the corporeal form of the Lord, so that a Caiaphas might have been included under the plural ἑωράκαμεν [“we have seen”]; but what they beheld was His works, not according to their outward occurrence, but according to their inward significance; and what did the disciples see, other than that the Lord both was the life and imparted it? Finally, it has probability in its favour preliminarily, and will hereafter be more fully shown, that the ψηλαφᾶν [“to touch”] refers directly to the narrative of Thomas after the resurrection. Moreover, it is demonstrable that even this last expression does not allude to the touching of the person of Christ as such, but to the knowledge of Him as the life which the touching was the medium of obtaining. We know it had been the opinion of the disciples that He who appeared was an apparition, an appearance which belonged essentially to the dead and had only the semblance of life. By means of the ψηλαφᾶν [“to touch”] Thomas discerned that the Saviour had in Himself true, perfect, and not merely seeming life,—in fact, that He was the Conqueror of death. The main thing, then, was not the handling of the Logos, but of the λόγοςτῆςζωῆς [“word of life”]. And when, in virtue of that touch, he broke out into the words “My Lord and my God!” the Lord approved Himself to him not merely as the Possessor of life, but as the Dispenser of it. For the rest, what we have now arrived at is as follows. As St. John says that what he had heard, had seen, had touched, was the matter of his annunciation, he cannot mean the annunciation of external occurrences, such as the words and acts of the Lord; for the Epistle contains directly no such matters. No more can he mean the seeing, hearing, touching of the person of the God-man in itself; for that would have required a masculine form at the outset. He means rather the seeing, hearing, and touching of the Lord as of the life. In fine, the apostle speaks of Christ, but not of Christ as a person,—not of the Son in Himself, but of the Son as He is the life. In this way every word of the clause finds its full and unrestricted meaning.
Let us now descend to details. The relative clauses which introduce the Epistle are grouped primarily in two parts: the first declares the objective existence of the λόγοςτῆςζωῆς [“word of life”] from the beginning, the others declare His manifestation as in the presence of the apostles. But these two divisions are, in the style adopted by the writer to arrange and connect the words, not to be viewed as antithetic, but as gradational. The contrast is not between the eternal existence and the temporal manifestation to certain persons, and at a specific season,—had it been so, we should have read ὃἀπ’ἀρχῆςἦν, νυνὶδὲἡμεῖςἀκηκόαμεν [“that which was from the beginning, but now we heard”], or ἡμεῖςδὲἀκηκόαμεν [“but we heard”]. But the ἀκούειν [“to hear”] is an advancement on the εἶναι [“to be”], as is plain from the precedence of the ἦν [“was”] in the former clause and the absence of the ἡμεῖς [“we”] in the latter. The meaning of the earlier words will be made more plain by a comparison with the Gospel. This begins with ἐνἀρχῇἦνὁλόγος [“in the beginning was the word”]; in antithesis to the ἐνἀρχῇἐποίησε [“in the beginning he created”] of Genesis [Gen 1:1], St. John writes ἐνἀρχῇἦν [“in the beginning was”Joh 1:1]: when God made all things, the Logos was already in existence. Here, on the other hand, the question is not of the priority of the Logos as opposed to the world, but of the priority of His being as opposed to His manifestation: the life that filled eternity had entered into the world of manifestation. Further, our ἀπ’ἀρχῆς [“from the beginning”] is to be noted in its relation to the ἐνἀρχῇ [“in the beginning”] of the Gospel, In the latter we must understand, following the pervasive parallel with the first words of Genesis, that ἐνἀρχῇ [“in the beginning”] is the same as the רֵאשִׁ֖ית|בְּ [“in the beginning”] of Gen 1:1,—that is, the element of the first creating, of the beginning of the creature, is contained in it. If we take the word in the same sense in our own passage, then the apostle affirms that ἀπ’ἀρχῆς [“from the beginning”], since the beginning of the creation, that of which he will speak, the true life, existed. Nothing would then be said in this passage of the pre-temporal, pre-creaturely existence of the true life, and the possessor of that life, the Word; nor, indeed, was anything necessary to be said. But ἀρχή [“beginning”] may be understood in another sense,—that is, not as the beginning of the world, and therefore of time, but as the starting-point of human thought in its way over the limits of the creaturely universe. As we can form no conception of timelessness, we are wont to define that which was before the creation by terms taken from time,—even this “before” introduces the temporal idea where it does not belong, for we cannot shake off the restraints of time and space. In this sense, as a help to express the notion of eternity, ἀρχή [“beginning”] is often employed in Scripture. The beginning of the world is not then denoted, as in Gen 1:1; but the absolute First, going before all things else. Thus, for example, in the passage of the Old Testament which lies at the basis of the Logos-doctrine, Pro 8:23: [Κύριος“The Lord”] ἐθεμελίωσέμεἐνἀρχῇπρὸτοῦἐνἀρχῇτὴνγῆνποιῆσαι [“established me in the beginning, from in the beginning when he made the earth”], where the last words show that the ἐνἀρχῇ [“in the beginning”] cannot be understood of the beginning of the world, but designates eternity. Furthermore, in 2Th 2:13, according to the right reading, εἵλατοὑμᾶςὁθεὸςἀπ’ἀρχῆςεἰς σωτηρίαν [“God chose you from the beginning for salvation”], where ἀπ’ἀρχῆς [“from the beginning”] may be supposed to express the same thought as elsewhere is expressed by πρὸκαταβολῆςκόσμου [“before the creation of the world”] (Joh 17:24; Eph 1:4; 1Pe 1:20). Similarly, the description of Christ as ἀρχὴκαὶτέλος, [“the beginning and the end”] Rev 21:6[n], is intended to teach the truth, not only that Christ lives through all time, but that He is above time: in fact, to declare His super-temporal nature. To accept in this way the ἀπ’ἀρχῆς [“from the beginning”] of our own passage is recommended to us by the thought which St. John aims to express: it cannot be his design to assert, that, since the world was, Christ, or the eternal life, has been; but he would describe the absolute primordial life of Christ Himself. When we clearly perceive that in the whole verse the notion of ζωή [“life”] is that which floats before the apostle’s vision, we shall be constrained to accept this idea as the substance also of the ὃἦνἀπ’ἀρχῆς [“which was from the beginning”]: the eternal life, which I would publish to you, was before all time, existing therefore before all manifestation of itself. As in Pro 8:22 it is said of Wisdom that she was the beginning of the ways of God, so here it is said of the life; for both had from eternity rested in the Logos, who Himself is or was the Wisdom and the Life. But that which thus has its essence in the eternities has become to the apostle and to his fellow-apostles—this is evidently the meaning of the plural form—the object of personal and most interior experience. As St. Paul, with all his independence, and notwithstanding his self-assured relation even to the other apostles, finds it a necessity, when he writes officially and of his office, to regard his own person as part only of a greater whole,—that is, of the apostolate ordained of Christ,—and therefore to use the plural, so also it is a necessity to St. John. “We note in the stream of his discourse, always strengthening in its volume and never doing itself full justice, how important it was to him to make emphatic the reality of the amazing revelations which had been made to him; and how, on the other hand, an overwhelming joy on their account pours out everywhere on his words its inspiring influence. Between the four predicates, which describe the manifestation of what was from the beginning, we find a twofold relation in the fact that the last two by a single ὃ [“which”] are linked closely together; these take the place of one whole, as over against the first two predicates; while, again, between the first and second, and further, between the third and fourth predicates, an advance is indicated through the instrumental definition which is connected with the second and fourth particularly. Thus we have two pairs of clauses; and there is, indeed, an elevation of meaning discernible first between each pair, and then also between the first and the second pair. First, by the ἀκηκόαμεν [“we have heard”] the altogether general thought is expressed of a knowledge touching the object; it is not yet said whether that was the result of direct hearing or indirectly through a third hand. The ὁρᾶν [“to see”] takes a step in advance, with its addition τοῖςὀφθαλμοῖςἡμῶν [“with our eyes”], an addition which affirms the extraordinary character belonging to this immediate contemplation: “it is scarcely credible, but I affirm it, with our own eyes we saw it.” The ὁρᾶν [“to see”] in holy writ always stands higher than ἀκούιεν [“to hear”]; it indicates the most assured and the most incontestable evidence. Again, we have the ἐθεασάμεθα [“we have looked upon”]. The word by its root (compare θάμβος [“amazement”], θαῦμα [“wonder”]) points to a seeing which, in regard to its object, is connected with astonishment and wonder; something was exhibited to the apostles which was most worthy to be beheld and contemplated. With regard to the seeing subject, it connects the perfect energy and intensity of the act; the word itself is stronger than ὁρᾶν [“to see”], and describes a purposed and most diligent beholding. The ψηλαφᾶν [“touch”] finally establishes, so to speak, the most material kind of knowledge, which excludes even the faintest doubt. Now, as we cannot, of course, think of an accidental or fortuitous touching of the Lord, while obviously the position at the close of the four predicates leads to the conclusion that, with ψηλαφᾶν [“to touch”], as with θεᾶσθαι [“to look upon”], the intention is to make prominent a deliberate and conscious and purposed attainment of knowledge, we arrive necessarily, in a new and striking way, at the relation between the first and second pair of predicates. Ὁρᾶν [“to see”] and ἀκούιεν [“to hear”] indicate immediate perceptions of sense; θεᾶσθαι [“to look upon”] and ψηλαφᾶν [“to touch”] indicate investigation pursued with full purpose and diligence, and therefore with all exactitude. Now, as St. John, and only he, in the Gospel records the transaction with Thomas, in which precisely this industrious θεᾶσθαι [“to look upon”] and ψηλαφᾶν [“to touch”] plays a part, it is almost evident that in these words he is thinking of that event, and generally of the time after the resurrection. If this is the right point of view to assume for the interpretation of the last pair of predicates, the change of tense is at once explained, namely, that the first two verbs are in the perfect, and the last two in the aorist; the former are to describe the evidences of the sense running through the whole of the life of Christ, and completed as one whole; the latter by the aorists point to definite historical individual occurrences, which are to be described as such.
Thus St. John has given a twofold utterance concerning the object of his publication: that He in His nature is eternal, and therefore divine; and also that He descended into the domain of human, yea, sensible experience, and thus became manifest, so that He became known in a perfectly assured manner. More distinctly is the object of the writing laid down in the words περὶτοῦλόγουτῆςζωῆς [“concerning the word of life”]; the subject is the λόγος [“word”], but, as we have seen, the Logos, not as in Himself, but as He is the λόγοςτῆςζωῆς [“word of life”]; and precisely this makes it clear why the apostle lays so much stress on the θεᾶσθαι [“to look upon”] and ψηλαφᾶν [“to touch”] of the risen Lord; why the Lord was so emphatically present to his eye as risen. For Christ had indeed from the beginning of His ministry manifested Himself as the life, and, like the χάριςκαὶἀληθεία [“grace and truth”], the ζωή [“life”] also had ever been reflected from His face; but beyond all comparison more abundantly did the characteristic of ζῶν [“to live”] and ζωοποιῶν [“to make alive”] declare itself in Him when the long-restrained source of life was fully unsealed in the resurrection: ἐὰνμὴὁκόκκοςτοῦσίτουἀποθάνῃ,αὐτὸςμόνοςμένει,ἐὰνδὲἀποθάνῃ,πολὺνκαρπὸνφέρει [“unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” cf. Joh 12:24].