the following is taken from lenski's commentary on the gospel of john.
the line of though from v14 onward is quite straight;
the incarnate coming of the word who is the only begotten,
attested as preexistent by the baptist.
being full of grace and truth,
we received from Him grace for grace,
for, as compared with moses,
grace and truth actually came by Him,
in fact, could come by Him alone,
who being the only begotten in the bosom of His Father
alone could bring us the ultimate revelation.
in particular, v18 expounds the egeneto of v17
and helps to show how the Logos 'came'.
v14 shows how He arrived, he was born in bethlehem;
v18 shows whence He arrived and thus how He
could bring what He brought.
in form v18 is an advanced parallel to v17,
each with a negative and with a positive part.
the advance is from the gifts (law, grace and truth)
to the source of these gifts (the waw not
requiring the sight of God,
grace and truth requiring even more,
that the bringer be even in the bosom of the Father).
because v17 and 18 are such parallels,
therefore v18 is simply set beside v17
and has no connective word.
'no man hath seen God at any time;
God only begotten,
who is in the bosom of the Father,
he did declare Him.
the emphasis is on 'God',
'God no one hath seen at any time'
no matter whom or what else He may have seen.
the absence of the article with theon (God)
has no special significance,
the word itself means 'God' in His actual being
as distinguished from the theophanies
when God assumed certain mediums for appearing unto men.
the verb opaO means simply 'to see' with the eye
and thus denies even this much in regard to God:
no man ever even swa Him, to speak of nothing more.
this, of course, is in contrast with the Logos who not only saw God
but was in the bosom of His Father.
john uses many perfect tenses,
all of which are highly expressive.
here he has eorake, which with pOpote,
'hath seen at any time', is an extensive perfect...
but of broken continuity...
meaning that in all the extent of the past
no one ever at this or at that moment
had a glimpse of God.
the denial is general and absolute,
including moses as a matter of course:
but also all others whoever they may be.
in ex. 33.11 the Lord, indeed, spoke to moses
'face to face'.
" " " = 'mouth to mouth' num. 12.8,
and thus does not imply that moses saw the face of God.
God communicated with moses in the most direct way
and in the directness of this communication
moses excelled all others save Christ....
agains this strong background of negation is placed
the still stronger affirmation that the word
made flesh has more than seen God.
the question of the true reading is no longer in doubt.
it is monogenAs theos (only begotten God)
and not ho monogenAs hUios (the only begotten Son)
nor ho monogenAs (the only begotten) without a substantive
(used in a sentence like a noun)
the article
(any memer of a small class of words that are linked to nouns
and that typically have a grammatical function
identifying the noun as a noun
rather than describing it.)
in the variant ho monogenAs theos (the only begotten God)
would even be misleading as indicating that
there are several thoi (gods), one of whom is only begotten.
the absence of the article bids us stress the qualitative force
of the termss...
we have already rejected the interpretation that
'only begottren' refers to the human conception in the womb of the virgin
and that only in this human sense the Logos became the only begotten.
here the addition theos (God) makes this certain beyond question.
'God only begotten' cannot date from a point in the course of time,
for this would be a contradiction in the very terms.
the one term 'God' being timeless, eternal
the other term 'only begotten' being 1900 years old.
'God only begotten' is such fromall eternity,
and the adjective predicates the inner trinitarian mystery
of the generatio aeterna,
describing the eternal metaphysical relation of the Father and the Son.
the objections raised against this evident sense are futile.
..john..reveals this much,
though it exceeds our finite powers of comprehension,
because we must know at least this much,
ie. the fact thus stated, in order properly
to understand and value what the Logos has done.
the objection based on the glory v14 of the only begotten,
that this is only the glory of His personal revelation,
dating only from the incarnation
and embodied in the incarnation,
is answered by the simple fact that this was no human glory,
however great it may be made,
but the divine glory, the manifestation of the divine nature of the Logos...
at this point john goes beyond 'only begotten'
which he has here added to the Logos as being 'God'.
he pours out the fullest measure of revelation:
God only begotten 'who is in the bosom of the Father'.
the interpretation of this participial clause is misdirected
when 'only begotten' is made temporal instead of eternal.
the present participle On (which is) is timeless
as luther already perceived:
'is-ever and ever is'.
it is thus more than if john had written hos An (who was)
for this would only reach bacward;
also better than hos esti (which is)
which would sound like a statement about the present when john was writing.
the participle (On) expresses only durative being
and thus more easily becomes timeless.
the article ho On does only one thing:
it attaches the participle to 'God onlybegotten'
after the manner of a relative clause
and describes this wonderful person for us.
in no way does the article (ho) change or limit the timeless force of the participle.
this would, indeed, be greatly changed if 'God only begotten'
dates only from the virgin birth,
for then any further modifier would be equally limited.
without the article the paritciple,
though it is separated from the main verb by ekAnos,
would tend to become adverbial, either temporal,
'when He was in the bosom'
of causal,
'since He was in the bosom'
and thus instead of the timelessness we should have
the mere historical time indicated by the constative aorist
exAgAsato. (explained)
these are the assured grammatical facts regarding ho Wv,
which we should not yield when they are modified in the interset of
a wrong view of the person who is truly 'God only begotten.
the view of the ancient church was that ho On
extended back from time when Christ appeared on earth,
back to all eternity.
since the present participle may stand also for the imperfect tense,
this view has some justification grammatically.
so understood, this participle would resemble
the repeated An in v1,2.
while thus the participle would predicate nothing concerning Christ
since the time of His earthly appearance,
by an easy inference at least we should
be able to conclude that Christ as 'God only begotten'
is also now and, indeed, is forever in the Father's bosom...
it is surprising that in spite of all the information available through
the recently discovered mass of ostraca and papyri,
presented in all the newer grammars..
at some length,
any recent first class exegete and linguist
should still insist that with on we must regard As (into) as distinct from en (in),
as denoting a movement towd the Father's bosom
ending with rest in that bosom.
this is the old explanation of the use of As with static verbs and verbs of being
and was made when the koine (common greek used at the time of Jesus)
was not understood on this and on many other points.
let the student read the entire story of the rise of As after en had the field alone;
how As first divided the field with en by taking over all the verbs of motion;
how As then began its invasion of the territory of en,
namely by starting to be used with verbs of being and condition,
just as we see this in the new testament,
with a case right her in On As;
and how this use went on until in the modern greek vernacular en is dad and As rules.
we must translate, 'in the bosom just as if en were used and not As.
the preposition denotes place and since persons are referred to,
it denotes their union and communion,
whereas pros in v1 and 3 denotes reciprocity.
the term kolpos (womb) is figuative
and brings out the idea of greatest possible intimacy.
Sod only begotten and the Father could not be in closer union.
they do not only 'see' eacj ptjer.
'know' or 'speak with each other';
they are in each other's embrace.
this is only one step removed from the word of Jesus Himself
when he says that He and the Father are one.
hitherto john has written 'God' and 'the logos'
when distinguishing the two persons,
though at once he also called the latter 'god.'
here he writes 'the Father' and 'God only begotten',
by the former making fully clear in what sense 'only begotten; is to be understood.
this thus is the first instance in which the word 'Father' is used
distinctively with regard to 'the Son' to express
a relation that is far superior to
that which we have in mind when we speak of the Father and
regard ourselves as 'God's children', vqw
or as 'God's sons,' gal 3.26; 4.6,7
Jesus never unites Himself with us by saying 'our Father'.
when he says 'my Father' he distinguishes himself,
the essential Son,
from all others who are only adopted sons.
this is made evident with greatest clearness in 20.17,
'i ascend unto My Father and your Father,
and My God and your God'.
it will not do, then,
to see in this distinctive term 'Father' only the cahracter and the scope of
what Christ revealed to us,
that in a sense God is truly our
Father,
or that He is Christ's Father by virtue of the incarnation.
'God onlybegotten' and 'the Father' are the correlatives of the Son
by virtue of their eternal relation through the generatio aeterna.
and this relation is immutble grounded in the divine essence itslf,
unaffected by the incarnation,
though our human reason is able to fathom neither
the unincarnate nor the incarnate side of it.
the wonderful person thus described to us can,
indeed, and did, indeed, bring us the ultimate revelation,
'he ddi declare Him'.
the demonstrative ekAnos is resumptive and emphatic,
taking up 'God only begotten' togerher with the appended relative clause..
the verb exAgAsato (declare) is choice and impressive
and is not used otherwise by the evangelist.
it gose far beyond what any man could do,
assuming even that it were possible for him to see God
and then to tell us what he had seen.
the tense is the historical aorist,
summing up all that Jesus 'did declare' concerning God
not only by His words and His deeds
but also by his very coming and the presence of his person.
the Logos is the supreme exegete,
the absolute interpreter of God.
the
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment