In the Beginning Was the Word: The Uncreated and Eternal Divine Logos

John’s Gospel begins with the famous words “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). The phrase in the beginning in the first clause of John 1:1 is very significant. By starting off his gospel with this phrase, John is deliberately alluding to Gen 1:1, the very first verse of the Bible, which says: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

The significance of this allusion is profound. By saying that the Word was in the beginning, John implies that the Logos already existed before the beginning talked about in Gen 1:1, namely, the beginning of created reality. This means that the Logos must be uncreated and eternal. It is totally appropriate, therefore, for John to say in the third clause of John 1:1 that “the Word was God.” After all, John’s main argument in the prologue to his gospel in John 1:1–18 is that Jesus is the Logos incarnate, God’s revelation of himself in human form (see “The Divine Logos as Eschatological Torah in John 1:1”). Jesus himself could not be divine revelation if the Logos were not divine.

In the Beginning Was Language

Words! We are surrounded by words, and on average each of us speaks more than ten thousand words each day. But why do we have words, and from where did the ability of language arise?

Evolutionary biology is not unified on the question of the development of human speech, but the most common theory held today is that the human ability of speaking only emerged around 50,000 years ago. This means that anatomically modern humans (according to this theory) existed for 150,000 years on earth before developing the ability to speak.

I personally find such a theory very hard to believe. What were our ancestors doing for the first 150,000 years? Just grunting and groaning? Some scientists have even suggested that a single mutation in the brain of certain human individuals suddenly resulted in the ability to speak. But that kind of explanation is more likely to be speculation rather than anything more substantial. Generally the evolutionary biologists simply look at the complexity of art and artifacts at various prehistorical periods, and try to determine from this when the ability of speech developed.

All of this “informed speculation” is, however, far removed from the picture painted in the Bible. The Bible indicates that God created Adam with the ability of speech. In Gen 2 we see Adam naming the animals (Gen 2:19–20) and speaking poetry to his wife (Gen 2:23). In Gen 3 we see both Adam and Eve speaking (see Gen 3:10, 12, 20; and Gen 3:2–3, 13 respectively).

But why did God create human beings with the ability of speech? The flow of Gen 1–3 suggests that God created human beings with the ability of speech because God himself speaks! The tenfold and God said of Gen 1 highlights the fact that God speaks. Speech is an expression of thought; and because God thinks, he also speaks. Furthermore, God created human beings in his image with the ability to think and to produce and process language. God did this in large part because his plan of self-revelation (for which he created the world, and human beings in his image) necessarily means that he wants to communicate and share his thoughts with us.

At the beginning of the Gospel of John, reflecting upon the content of Gen 1, the Apostle John was moved to proclaim: “In the beginning was the Word” (John 1:1). This proposition not only asserts that the second person of the Trinity is eternal, but it also asserts that language is integral to the nature of God. As it is for God, so it is for humanity. Language and the ability of speech is integral to who we are as human beings. It is a divine gift that has been with us since the very beginning.

The Divine Logos as Eschatological Torah in John 1:1

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). This is a famous verse, but what does John mean by describing Jesus as the Word? Most commentators point out that the Greek word λόγος was used by some Greek philosophers to designate reason, which was thought of as being the law which structured the universe. While John’s use of λόγος here would be significant in a Greek context, the fact that the argument and concerns of John’s Gospel are fundamentally Jewish suggests that the significance of logos is best understood in Jewish terms.

What does the concept word convey in Jewish circles? The Old Testament is the most natural place to look for the answer. Indeed, the language of the prologue of John’s Gospel (i.e., John 1:1–18) points us in that direction. When the concept word is thought of in the context of concepts such as in the beginning (vv. 1–2), creation (v. 3, 10), life (v. 4), light (vv. 4–5, 7–9), and darkness (v. 5), what are we meant to think of? We are meant to think immediately of Gen 1. And the word that occurs in Gen 1 is the word of God.

When first-century orthodox Jews thought of word, they thought supremely of the word of God. But what is the function of the word of God in the Old Testament? The primary function is that of revelation. The most common way in which God revealed himself in the Old Testament was by way of his word spoken by the prophets on his behalf. God’s word reveals his character and will. It seems, therefore, that John has used the concept of the logos to assert that Jesus is the supreme revelation of God.

And this is confirmed by the way in which the prologue ends: “No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known” (v. 18). God the Father is unknowable unless he reveals himself. Just as a person’s words reveal the character of the person, the word of God reveals the character of God. Jesus is the supreme revelation of God. He makes God the Father known.

To say that Jesus is the Word is the same as saying that Jesus is the supreme expression of torah. In other words, Jesus is eschatological Torah! Being the supreme revelation of the God the Father, the Word is divine. The Son of God, in his capacity as the Word of God, is God as he has deigned to reveal himself. God as he reveals himself is none other than ... God! “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

The New World Translation of John 1:1 and Colwell's Rule

I have been asked to comment of the interpretation of the third clause of John 1:1 in the light of the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ New World Translation and the Word was a god. To insist that John 1:1c should be translated and the Word was a god on the basis of Greek grammar is incorrect. Likewise, some people, seeking to defend the orthodox Christian translation of the clause, have misguidedly appealed to a grammatical rule called Colwell’s Rule.

Colwell stated that “definite predicate nouns [i.e., definite noun complements] which precede the verb usually lack the article” (E. C. Colwell, “A Definite Rule for the Use of the Article in the Greek New Testament,” JBL 52 [1933]: 20), approximately 87% of the time (David Alan Black, It’s Still Greek to Me: An Easy-to-Understand Guide to Intermediate Greek [Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998], 79). That may be true for pre-verbal definite noun complements, but others have pointed out that anarthrous (i.e., non-articular) pre-verbal noun complements are usually qualitative.

In the end, the proper translation of such clauses is dependent on the context, but the balance of probability strongly favors the pre-verbal definite noun complement as being qualitative, hence the suggestion by some that John 1:1c is best translated as and the Word was divine. Given the broader context that Jesus and his disciples accepted the Jewish monotheistic idea that God is one, the New World Translation is clearly a case of eisegesis dictating translation. The idea of the Word being divine is that he shares in the divine nature of the one true God.