Witness to the Word

A Commentary on John 1

Barth, Fuerst

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2003
• eBook ISBN: 9781498270847
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Karl Barth's lectures on the first chapter of the Gospel of John, delivered at Muenster in 1925-26 and at Bonn in 1933, came at an important time in his life, when he was turning his attention more fully to dogmatics. Theological interpretation was thus his primary concern, especially the relation between revelation and the witness to revelation, which helped to shape his formulation of the role of the written (and spoken) word vis-a-vis the incarnate Word.The text is divided into three sections - John 1:1-18, 19-34, 35-51, with the largest share of the book devoted to the first section. Each section begins with Barth's own translation, followed by verse-by -verse and phrase-by-phrase commentary on the Greek text. Although Barth's interpretation is decidedly theological, he does take up questions of philology and textual criticism more thoroughly than in his other works.Much has happened in Johannine scholarship since these lectures were first delivered, yet they remain valuable today - 100 years after Barth's birth - both for their insights into the gospel and into Karl Barth.

VERSES 1–18

Augustine’s exordium and my commentary upon it might just as well introduce the exposition of any other book of the New Testament rather than John’s Gospel. That text reminds us of the basic elements in general biblical hermeneutics. Yet we have only to cast a glance at the first and clearly discernible section of the Gospel, its famous prologue in 1:1–18, to realize that it was neither by accident nor caprice that Augustine made his remarks in this context, and that with the apparently general considerations that we have appended to them we have in fact already approached our first, specific, and immediate exegetical task, namely, the exposition of the prologue.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word. He was in the beginning with God. Everything was made by him, and without him nothing that is was made. In him was life, and this life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not comprehended it.

There was a man sent from God who was called John. He came for witness, to bear witness to the light, that all might come to faith through him. He was not the light but bore witness to the light.

He was coming into the world as the true light that lightens everyone. He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came to his own home and his own people did not receive him. But those who did receive him, to them he gave the power1 to become the children of God, even to those who believed in his name. These were not born of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of a man, but of God.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, a glory as2 of an only-begotten of his Father, of one who is full of grace and truth. John bears witness to him, and cries, and says: This was he of whom I said, he who comes after me surpasses me, for he was above me from the very first. Of his fulness we have all received grace for grace. The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth are through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, but the only-begotten, God, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has manifested him.

In support of the statement that our introductory discussion of Augustine has led us on to the right track for an understanding of the prologue, I might make the general observation that in the prologue, too, there is a concern to make it clear to readers of the Gospel that they are in a specific situation in relation to it, that they are in some sense from the very first its prisoners. A word, no, the Word has been spoken which in principle, as the Word of the Creator, precedes and is superior to all that is (vv. 1–3). A light shines, namely, the life that was originally in the Word. It shines in the darkness for all people. It has always shone. It was in the world (vv. 4–5, 9–10). All people are from the very first hoi idioi, his own people (v. 11). It may be that they are darkness that does not comprehend the light (v. 5), cosmos that does not know it (v. 10), people who do not receive their Lord (v. 11). But this does not alter the fact that the light shines in the darkness (v. 5), that the world was made by him who is the light (vv. 3, 10), that these are from the very first his own people (v. 11). The dice have been cast concerning humanity once the Evangelist, even though he, too, is only a man, introduces his theme. He omits the sursum corda, the express appeal to readers with which Augustine finally brings to light the significance of the situation. He was able to omit it. For who will not hear it at the end of the prologue, unspoken though it is?

Nevertheless, there is a more specific relation between the thoughts of Augustine and the Johannine prologue. Those who have studied John’s Gospel more closely know what is the exegetical crux of the prologue. It is concrete and palpable in vv. 6–8 and v. 15. These verses deal with a John, John the Baptist, as is plain in the rest of the chapter. They tell us that the author wants to show us at once what is the relation of this John to the Word, to the light about which vv. 1–5 and vv. 9–13 speak, to the incarnate Word that is seen by us (v. 14), to Jesus Christ, as will at last be openly stated in v. 17. He, this John, is not himself this Word; he is a man sent by God (v. 6). He is not himself the light; he is a witness to it (v. 8). He bears witness that the one who comes after him surpasses him, as he is before him in principle (v. 8). But v. 7 makes the same point in a positive way. He, this John, has come to bear witness to the light that all might come to faith through him.

There can be no question but that these four verses, above all, cause difficulty to readers and expositors. Vv. 6–8 and v. 15 constitute an interruption which we should like to expunge in the interests of a smoother reading. If they were not there, then for all the other obscurities and ambiguities, understanding the prologue would be a relatively simple task. But they are in fact there, and there can be no doubt but that it is they that give the prologue the concrete appearance with which we have to reckon. They are important. The author has an urgent concern to say what they say. This is true even if, as Bultmann has assumed,3 they are to be viewed as marginal corrections or strengthenings which the author added to an older work that he adopted and revised. He certainly did not want to see the prologue go out and be read without these verses. In their concreteness, and materially in their significant relation to the real beginning of the Gospel in v. 19, they stand out strangely from the verses around them, and precisely in so doing they bring to light the practical purpose of the introductory statement. Whatever we may think about this purpose, whatever view we may take of the literary relation of these verses to the verses around them, whatever may be our position vis-à-vis the textual and historical4 questions raised by these verses, one thing is certain, namely, that the problem of the relation between revelation and the witness to revelation, which is the issue in Augustine’s exordium, is precisely what the author undoubtedly wanted to pinpoint in these verses (and not, perhaps, in these verses alone), his aim being to make readers of the Gospel aware of their situation and to put them in the right place in this situation.

He is speaking about John the Baptist as a witness to revelation. But only later, after the prologue, does he make this express distinction even though he, the author, is also called John, or wants to be called John, or is supposed to be called John according to the tradition. As though it did not matter much if there is a temporary confusion between the two Johns in the minds of readers, as though such a confusion or conflation might even be welcome, he first leaves a certain haziness around the name John which he removes only later. We follow a clue first noted by Franz Overbeck5 when we stress the remarkable proximity of the two Johns in the mind of the author. According to Overbeck this answers the question why the author wanted to be called John or to rely on the authority of John. Overbeck believed that in relation to Jesus the apostle John serves6 as another witness alongside the Baptist John. “As the Baptist is the witness of the Logos, the mediator between him and the world prior to the completion of his epiphany in the world, before the Logos is at the point of perfectly showing the world [by]7 himself the glory of God on earth, so John the apostle is the mediator for the Logos after his departure from the world.” “He is called John on account of his calling in the Gospel and the inner relationship of this calling to that of the Baptist in the whole economy of the divine light in the world according to the basic conception of this economy on which the whole of the Fourth Gospel rests according to the prologue” (p. 417).

As for the narrower issue of the name in the Fourth Gospel, one might question this hypothesis and still not affect the excellence of the observation on which it rests. There is in fact an inner relationship of calling between the two Johns. There is also perhaps—I am less certain of this—a parallelism, as Overbeck suggests, between the witness before and the witness after. One certainly cannot say that the Fourth Evangelist has only a negative or polemical interest in the one who bears his name. Note that in contrast to the Synoptists he is not content to assign to the Baptist merely the position of a forerunner in the sense of a prophet who simply predicts the Messiah, of one who proclaims him that is to come. No, with houtos ēn he at once stresses the Baptist’s word of witness (v. 15). He has him bear express witness to the one who has already come (vv. 26, 29ff., and then again in 3:27ff.). He is the first to point to the one who was then living unrecognized in the midst of Israel before there was ever a disciple or an “apostle” insofar as this word is to be distinguished from the term prophet. Note also that as compared with the Synoptics the Fourth Gospel enhances, as it were, the position of the Baptist by understanding and interpreting his function of preaching repentance and remission in direct reference to Jesus and claiming his baptism directly as Christian baptism (Overbeck, p. 419). The statement of Walter Bauer8 that the attitude of the Evangelist to the Baptist and his followers is to be regarded as one of “intentional contradiction” can hardly be viewed as a happy one in the light of these theses. But there is more. The Baptist is the man who in v. 32 bears witness to the descent of the Spirit upon Jesus from heaven. If the Evangelist now bears witness also to Jesus and his mission, he is not therewith opening a new, let alone an opposing, series. He is placing himself in the series that opens already with John the Baptist. To be sure, he is critical in relation to the Baptist. He shows reserve. He makes distinction. He sets him in his place. Yet we do not find criticism alone. Or, one might say, the criticism is positive. It is also—inevitably—criticism of himself in...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Translator’s Preface
• Preface
• Introduction
• Verses 1–18
• Verses 19–34
• Verses 35–51
• Indexes