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Page 8- John 1:1- Caveat Lector (Reader Beware)
A most enlightening comment comes from Dr. Norman Kraus. Dr. Kraus commends the translation of J.B. Phillips in John 1:1 and deplores the rendering of the Living Bible which gives the impression that Jesus himself was alive before his birth.15 He says,
The Word expressed in Jesus is the self-expression of God. Thus John tells us that from the beginning God is a self-expressive God, not transcendent and aloof as in the Greek Neo-Platonic philosophical thought which greatly influenced the orthodoxy of the fourth and fifth centuries. God is not hidden, revealing His will only in written form as in Islam’s Koran. Neither is He the silent reality which can be discovered only in the discipline of meditation beyond all human rationality as in the practice of zazen [in Buddhism]. How different the whole meaning of John’s Gospel would be if the first verse read: In the beginning was satori (enlightenment).16
It is interesting that a translation was made as early as 1795, by Gilbert Wakefield, which rendered John 1:3, 4: “All things were made by it and without it was nothing made.” The same translation rendered the first verse of John 1: “In the beginning was Wisdom.” There is no doubt that from the point of view of Jewish background, Wisdom and Word carried similar meanings.
A distinguished member of the team of scholars who produced the Revised Version of the Bible (1881) noted that “word” means “Divine Thought manifested in a human form in Jesus Christ.” He rendered verse 3: “In it was the life and the light of men.”17
A leading British expert on the texts of the Bible, Dr. Hort, admitted that even in John’s Gospel there is no clear statement that the Son of God existed before his historical birth in Bethlehem: “An antecedent [i.e., preexistent] Fatherhood and Sonship within the Godhead, as distinguished from the manifested Sonship in the Incarnation is nowhere enunciated by John in express words.”18
These examples from the pens of leading Christian analysts of the Bible show that it is entirely legitimate to think of “word” as God’s utterance, not His Son at that stage of history. The Son is in fact what the word became. Thus the Son is the visible human expression of God’s pre-planned purpose. There was no Son of God until the Messiah was conceived in history. Before that God had His Design and Plan “with Him,” in His heart.
When Did the Son of God Begin to Exist?
Luke had no doubt about the reason and basis for Jesus being entitled to be called the “Son of God.” It was as a consequence of the supernatural miracle wrought in the womb of Mary that Jesus is truly “the Son of God.” “For that reason indeed [dio kai] he will be called the Son of God” (Luke 1:35). Luke/Gabriel did not believe in an eternal or preexisting Son. The Son was supernaturally conceived in history when Mary became pregnant. Matthew was careful to note that what occurred in the womb of Mary was the creation, the coming into existence, the begetting of the Son of God. He was not begotten before that miraculous moment. Matthew 1:20 states that “what is begotten [i.e., describing the Father's procreative act, wrongly rendered “conceived” in many versions] in her is from the holy spirit.” At that moment, and not before, God became the Father of the unique Son, Jesus.
Luke 1:35 informs us that this creative act of God brought into existence the Son of God. There was therefore no Son of God until the miracle which God performed in Mary. The Son of God was begotten by the Father when Elizabeth, Mary's cousin, was six months pregnant. Professor Caird comments correctly: “What Luke is here concerned to tell us is that Jesus entered upon the status of Sonship at his birth by a new creative act of that same Holy Spirit which at the beginning had brooded over the waters of chaos. It is this new creation which is the real miracle of Jesus' birth and the real theme of Gabriel's annunciation and Mary's wondering awe.”
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[15] “Before anything else existed, there was Christ with God. He has always been alive and is himself God. He created everything there is — nothing exists that he didn’t make.” This is an obvious contradiction of Isaiah 44:24 and fifty other texts ascribing creation to the Lord alone.
[16] Jesus Christ Our Lord, Herald Press, 1987, 105.
[17] Dr. G. Vance Smith, The Bible and Popular Theology, 159. Dr. Smith was a non-Trinitarian member of the RV translating committee.
[18] Dissertation, 1876, 16.
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