02 - 1Jn 1:2
(Καὶ ἡ ζωὴ ἐφανερώθη, καὶ ἑωράκαμεν καὶ μαρτυροῦμεν καὶ ἀπαγγέλλομεν ὑμῖν τὴν ζωὴν τὴν αἰώνιον ἥτις ἦν πρὸς τὸν πατέρα καὶ ἐφανερώθη ἡμῖν.) But with all this, St. John has not laid down precisely enough the object of his Epistle. Of the two ideas contained in λόγος τῆς ζωῆς [“word of life”] he therefore singles out and makes prominent that one which concerns him particularly; not the person bearing and enfolding the life, but this life itself is the main idea. The Gospel begins with ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο [“the word became flesh” cf. Joh 1:14], for it treats of the person of Him through whose mediation the ζωή [“life”] came. The Epistle says ἡ ζωὴἐφανερώθη [“the life was made manifest”], for its object is not the person, but the influences flowing through the medium of the person. It is true that in the Gospel also the influences and energies of the Logos are depicted; but it is in such a manner as to exhibit His person in richer light, and define that person more precisely. It is true also that, conversely, the Epistle speaks of the person of the Logos; but it is in such a manner that thereby the influences of that person should be made more conspicuous. This life has entered into the world of manifestation, ἐφανερώθη [“to make manifest”]. It is obvious that it could not be said of the ζωή [“life”] that it σὰρξἐγένετο [“became flesh”]; for while the λόγος [“word”], the person, might indeed become man, no attribute or qualification of Him could be incarnate. The eternal life of the Logos with the Father, and the earthly life below, are diverse forms in which the ζωή [“life”] clothes itself; itself, however, becomes not σάρξ [“flesh”]; rather, as the result of the incarnation, it presents itself to us as manifested. But, apart from the logical impossibility in such a passage as ours of the σὰρξἐγένετο [“became flesh”], it is to be remarked that elsewhere the Epistle of St. John betrays a preference for the more general φανεροῦσθαι [“to make manifest”]. And naturally so. For the assumption of flesh was in fact only the means of the manifestation, and moreover, a medium which had not eternal continuance; for, when the Lord was glorified. He remained indeed man, but not σάρξ [“flesh”]. The flesh, whose note is weakness, was penetrated and swallowed up by the power of the Spirit that pervaded it. In our Epistle, where the subject is the life-giving energy of the Lord, and at this point, where the first verse has indicated that this was to be found specifically in the risen Saviour, who was no longer σάρξ [“flesh”], the more general φανεροῦσθαι [“to make manifest”] is on all accounts the most adequate and pertinent expression.
What has been said makes it clear that ζωή [“life”] cannot here be a personal name of the Logos; it is rather that quality or characteristic of the Logos which the writer would by means of his Epistle implant in us. The ζωή [“life”] is a potency constituting the personality, but not the person himself. What has led to the contrary opinion, namely, that ζωή [“life”] is a definition of the person of the Logos, is the second clause of our verse, where we read, ἡ ζωὴ ἥτις ἦν πρὸς τὸν πατέρα [“the life which was with the father”], that being declared concerning the life which in the Gospel is declared concerning the Logos, But the testimony of the Gospel may with equal propriety be turned against this view; for there it runs expressly, ζωὴ ἦν ἐν αὐτῷ [“life was in him”], and thus even in the Gospel the life is not used as a personal name, but as a characteristic inherent in the Logos. What there is of right in this opinion, which, however, we cannot accept, is that here, more than elsewhere, the eternal life is described as something enfolded in Christ and inseparable from His person. Only through the manifestation of the Son could the life become! manifest; but not on that account is the life an idea which may be used interchangeably with Christ or the Logos. This life, which has been manifested in the Logos, and which we have learned to recognise as the object of apostolical annunciation, is in the second half of the verse more precisely defined as ζωὴαἰώνιος [“eternal life”],—that is, looked at on the side most important for the aim of the writer. At the outset it must be noted that “eternal life” is not to St. John merely a term for un broken continuance in being, as if it were simply equivalent to the ζωὴἀκατάλυτος [“indestructible life”] of Heb 7:16[N]; that it does not define the form of this life so much as the nature and meaning of it: ζωὴαἰώνιος [“eternal life”] is, in other words, a description of divine life, of the life which is in God, and which by God is communicated. It is with this expression as it is with the βασιλείατῶνοὐρανῶν [“kingdom of heaven”]. To the οὐρανός [“heaven”] the New Testament does undoubtedly attach first of all a local meaning. When Christ teaches us to pray that the will of God may be done here as it is done in heaven, and when we read of a descending from and ascending to heaven, this meaning is sufficiently manifest. But then the word passes from the external and local into the internal and spiritual or ethical sense. The βασιλείατῶνοὐρανῶν [“kingdom of heaven”] is not only a kingdom whose seat is heaven in the ordinary sense, but, at the same time, a kingdom which has the same ethical quality that characterizes the super-terrestrial world, and hence this βασιλείατῶνοὐρανῶν [“kingdom of heaven”] may indeed be literally on earth. In other words, οὐρανός [“heaven”] is the antithesis not only of the physical, but also of the ethical idea of the κόσμος [“world”]. The same thing holds good of the ζωὴαἰώνιος [“eternal life”] primarily it denotes, of course, the antithesis of the external, temporal finiteness and restriction of the earthly life, as, for instance, when we read of a ζήσεσθαιεἰςτὸναἰῶνα. [“will be alive for eternity”]. But when Christ calls Himself ζωή [“life”], or is called ζωὴαἰώνιος [“eternal life”], Joh 17:3,[N]1Jn 5:20, this notion recedes before the internal quality of the life so defined; by ζωὴαἰώνιος [“eternal life”] a life is meant which really and truly is life, life in the fullest sense, life and nothing but life, in a word, divine life; while all earthly life is in some sense death. This last interpretation of the ζωὴαἰώνιος [“eternal life”] is an absolute necessity in our present passage. For only when it is thus interpreted does the added clause, ἥτις ἦν πρὸς τὸν πατέρα [“which was with the Father”], acquire a satisfactory meaning. At the outset, the fact that instead of the simple ἥ [“which”] the connection by ἥτις [“which”] is preferred, indicates that the interjected relative clause contains a reason for the preceding name, or an explanation of it. But, apart from that, only two ways of interpreting the relative clause are possible. The first would be to consider the apostle as resuming by means of it what he had said about the life: what he had said having been the εἶναιἀπ’ἀρχῆς [“being from the beginning”] the φανερωθῆναι [“manifested”]. But we must reject this explanation, because the εἶναι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆςεἶναιἀπ’ἀρχῆς [“being from the beginning”] is not really taken up again, but instead of it comes in the idea of εἶναιπρὸς τὸν πατέρα [“being with the Father”], which is, after all, another; here the counterparts are being in the Father and being in the world, while in 1Jn 1:1 they are being from the beginning and manifestation in time; and however nearly related these two pairs may be, they are not identical, and the one is not a resumption of the other. But, granted that the substance of what precedes was to be recapitulated by the relative clause, and thus εἶναιπρὸς τὸν πατέρα [“being with the Father”] was to be altogether equivalent to εἶναι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς [“being from the beginning”], yet even this does not give αἰώνιος [“eternal”] the idea of mere superiority to the limitations of time, for then the αἰώνιος [“eternal”] would itself be a recapitulation of the εἶναι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς [“being from the beginning”], and this latter would be twice resumed, once by the αἰώνιος [“eternal”], and a second time by ἥτις ἦν πρὸς τὸν πατέρα [“which was with the Father”]. But, as it has been made evident, this whole notion of an analepsis of what had preceded by means of the relative clause is not to be justified; there is, however, another analepsis which commends itself, namely, that the relative clause gives a reason for the declaration, ἀπαγγέλλομενὑμῖν τὴν ζωὴν τὴν αἰώνιον [“we proclaim to you the eternal life”]. That this ζωή [“life”] is an αἰώνιος [“eternal”];—that is, as seen above, a divine life, life in the true ethical sense—is established and proved by the fact that it springs from the Father; that St. John can and will announce it, is established and proved by the fact that it has passed into manifestation, that it has become knowable, and therefore communicable. It is not the life, as it is in God the Father, that the apostle can and will declare, but the life which is in the Son, who says of Himself, Joh 5:26, John 6:57: ἐγὼ ζῶ διὰ τὸν πατέρα [“I live because of the Father”]. The life of the Father is sealed and shut up in itself, and that which is said of the Father generally may be said of His life: Θεὸν οὐδεὶς πώποτε ἑώρακεν, ὁ μονογενὴς υἱὸς ἐξηγήσατο. [“No one has ever seen God,butthe only begotten Son has made him known.” cf. Joh 1:18]. It is the life of the Son of God, more particularly of the incarnate Son of God, that St. John beheld and would fain implant in the church. Hence it is not said, ἥτις ἦνἐντῷ θεῷ [“which was with God”], but πρὸς τὸν πατέρα [“with the Father”]. And here, as in the prologue of the Gospel, we must carefully mark that it is not παρά [“beside”], but πρός [“with”],—that is, it is thus to be asserted that the life existing in the Logos is not a life originating in Himself, but one that is His only in virtue of a permanent relation to the Father, through the eternal turning towards Him. And it is precisely this reference of itself to the Father that makes αἰώνιος ζωὴ [“eternal life”] the true and divine life.
Let us now retrace our steps and measure our progress to this point. In always more specific definitions and always narrowing circles, the apostle has laid down the object of his writing more and more precisely. It is something eternal, yet, at the same time, something to him made known in immediate and therefore most assured experience, that is the first point of his announcement. It is something, again, as he still more closely defines it, which concerns the λόγος τῆς ζωῆς [“the word of life”]. That is, in the third stage, it is precisely the life existing in the Son; and, finally, this as the only true life in the fullest sense, as ζωὴαἰώνιος [“eternal life”]. While he places this true life in inseparable conjunction with the Logos, and makes it matter of knowledge and announcement only through the manifestation of the Logos, he places it thus in antithesis to all that before was called or might be called life. All previous life, even that which most of all bore the stamp of divinity in itself, was nevertheless mingled with sin and death, and therefore no true life. Not till the manifestation of Jesus Christ did the ζωὴαἰώνιος [“eternal life”] in its deepest sense appear, but with its appearance all previous life was stamped with the character of darkness. As to the object of the apostolical announcement, we might now feel tolerably clear; but the manner in which it is and becomes known has yet to be considered. This is defined to us by the threefold predicative: ἑωράκαμεν [“we have looked upon”], μαρτυροῦμεν [“we bear witness”], ἀπαγγέλλομεν[“we proclaim”]. In these we have a climax; the predicate that precedes is always the basis for that which follows. Let us, in order to see this more clearly, observe the three predicates in their inverted order. The last, ἀπαγγέλλομεν [“we proclaim”], denotes a promulgation for the hearers’ sake, through such means to be edified; what the apostle himself knows and enjoys he would make over to the hearers of his message. But if the message lays claim to be accepted, it must itself be true, and this presupposition is guaranteed by the μαρτυρεῖν [“to bear witness”]. Μαρτυρία [“testimony”], to wit, is ever the declaration of something self-experienced and self-observed by the witness. A witness is not primarily appointed to be serviceable to others, but purely to serve the cause of truth. Whether it is profitable or not, received or rejected, is a matter of indifference to testimony as such: it is an actus forensis, though in this case the forum is a divine one only. In the ἀπαγγέλλεῖν [“to proclaim”] the emphasis lies on the communication of truth; in the μαρτυρεῖν [“to bear witness”] the emphasis lies on the communication of truth. As already noted, the μαρτυρία [“testimony”] rests always on personal experience, hence the word which Christ, Joh 3:11, spoke to Nicodemus, ὃ ἑωράκαμεν μαρτυροῦμεν [“what we have seen and testify to”]; hence the sedulousness with which the apostles in the Acts present themselves as witnesses of the resurrection; hence in our passage the ἑωράκαμεν [“we have looked upon”] placed before the μαρτυροῦμεν [“we bear witness”]. That this word and not ἀκηκόαμεν [“we have heard”] is chosen, has its reason in the fact that the former rather than the latter expresses the direct evidence of the senses, so that ὁρᾶν [“to see”] is alone selected of the four verbs of perception used in the first verse; as well as in the fact that in all languages the idea of seeing is used for sensible cognizance of every kind. In the previous verse it is easily intelligible why the apostle spoke in the plural, for the experiences recorded there had always been his in the fellowship of the other apostles; but for the same reason he here also writes ἀπαγγέλλομεν [“we proclaim”], since, though he alone writes the Epistle that follows, he recognises himself in the act as only the organ of the apostolical function as a whole.