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Joh_1:4. An advance to the nature of the Logos[77] as life, and thereby as light.
ἐν αὐτῷ ζωὴ ἦν ] in Him, was life, He was πηγὴ ζωῆς (Philo). Life was that which existed in Him, of which He was full. This must be taken in the most comprehensive sense, nothing that is life being excluded, physical, moral, eternal life (so already Chrysostom),—all life was contained in the Logos, as in its principle and source. No limitation of the conception, especially as ζωή is without the article (comp. Joh_5:26), has any warrant from the context; hence it is not to be understood either merely of physical life, so far as it may be the sustaining power (B. Crusius, comp. Chrysostom, Euthymius Zigabenus, Calvin), or of spiritual and eternal life,—of the Johannean ζωὴ αἰώνιος (Origen, Maldonatus, Lampe, Kuinoel, Köstlin, Hengstenberg, Weiss), where Hengstenberg drags in the negative notion that the creature was excluded from life until Christ was manifested in the flesh, and that down to the time of His incarnation He had only been virtually life and light.
καὶ ἡ ζωὴ , κ . τ . λ .] and the life, of which the Logos was the possessor, was the light of men. The exposition then passes over from the universal to the relation of the Logos to mankind; for, being Himself the universal source of life to the world made by Him, He was as such unable to remain inactive, least of all with respect to men, but shows Himself as operating upon them conformably to their rational and moral nature, especially as the light, according to the necessary connection of life and light in opposition to death and darkness. (Comp. Joh_8:12; Psa_36:10; Eph_5:14; Luk_1:78-79.) The light is truth pure and divine, theoretical and moral (both combined by an inner necessity, and not simply the former, as Weiss maintains), the reception and appropriation of which enlightens the man ( υἱὸς φωτός , Joh_12:36), whose non-appropriation and non-acceptance into the consciousness determines the condition of darkness. The Life was the Light of men, because in its working upon them it was the necessary determining power of their illumination. Comp. such expressions as those in Joh_11:25, Joh_14:6, Joh_17:3. Nothing as yet is said of the working of the Logos after His incarnation (Joh_14:6), but (observe the ἦν ) that the divine truth in that primeval time came to man from the Logos as the source of life; life in Him was for mankind the actively communicating principle of the divine ἀλήθεια , in the possession of which they lived in that fair morning of creation, before through sin darkness had broken in upon them. This reference to the time when man, created after God’s image, remained in a state of innocency, is necessarily required by the ἦν , which, like the preceding ἦν , must refer to the creation-period indicated in Joh_1:3. But we are thus at the same time debarred from understanding, as here belonging to the enlightening action of the Logos, God’s revelations to the Hebrews and later Jews (comp. Isa_2:5), by the prophets, etc. (Ewald), or even from thinking of the elements of moral and religious truth to be found in heathendom ( λόγος σπερματικός ). In that fresh, untroubled primeval age, when the Logos as the source of life was the Light of men, the antithesis of light and darkness did not yet exist; this tragic antithesis, however, as John’s readers knew, originated with the fall, and had continued ever after. There follows, therefore, after a fond recalling of that fair bygone time (Joh_1:4), the painful and mournful declaration of the later and still enduring relation (Joh_1:5), where the light still shines indeed, but in darkness,—a darkness which had not received it. If that reference, however, which is to be kept closely in view, of ἦν to the time of the world’s creation, and also this representation of the onward movement of our narrative, be correct, it cannot also be explained of the continuous (Joh_1:17) creative activity of the Logos, through which a consciousness and recognition of the highest truth have been developed among men (De Wette); and just as little may we find in τὸ φῶς τ . ἀνθρ . what belongs to the Logos in His essence only, in which case the reading ἐστί would (against Brückner) be more appropriate; comp. φωτίζει , Joh_1:9. As in ἐν αὐτῷ ζωὴ ἦν , so also by ἦν τὸ φῶς τ . ἀνθρ . must be expressed what the Logos was in His historical activity, and not merely what He was virtually (Hengstenberg). Comp. Godet, who, however, without any hint from the text, or any historical appropriateness whatever, finds in “life and light” a reminiscence of the trees of life and of knowledge in Paradise.
[77] The Logos must necessarily be taken as in vv. 1–3, but not from ver. 4 onwards in Hofmann’s sense, as no longer a person but a thing, viz. the Gospel, as Röhricht (p. 315) maintains, as if the verbum vocale were now a designation of Christ, who is the bearer of it. No such change of meaning is indicated in the text, and it only brings confusion into the clear advance of the thought.