In the prologue to John's Gospel, the focal point of creation moves toward primordial time, not time as understood in Genesis which proceeds preexistent chaos and involves the ordering of things and sanctification of time, but time as before all forms exist.
Word, or "Logos," in the divine discourse that undergirds the universe, the rational principle of the cosmos. It finds functional equivalency with "Sophia," or wisdom, in Jewish commentaries which speak of wisdom personified as a woman who accompanies God in the beginning as a guide to bringing order into creation (in LXX, Sophia is the word used for wisdom). For the purpose of understanding "Logos" as symbolic personification here, Sophia will substitute:
In the beginning was Sophia, and Sophia was with God, and Sophia was God; she was in the beginning with God. All things were created through her; nothing was created which was not created through her.
Nothing is created apart from the divine wisdom which accompanies God and finds locality in God's essence. John 1 goes on to describe the life-giving qualities of Wisdom and the light which emanates from her to all who enter the world. It also describes how any who accept her receive a new birth not of blood. This beautiful creation poem then ends like this:
And she became flesh and pitched her tent among us . . . full of grace and truth.
Of course, the elipsis here leaves out the part about Sophia/Logos being the unique Son of God. We will get to that shortly.
Apart from the christological identification, John 1 deals with the impartation of divine wisdom to humanity in bodily form. This parallels the creation of humanity in Genesis 1 insofar that humans are created in the image of God. Thus the embodiment of divine wisdom in human beings in a unique sense in John 1 involves an untarnished new creation separate from the degraded icon of God present in humanity as a whole. John 1 basically recapitulates Genesis 1 as a new creation involving new birth and the re-embodiment of untarnished divine wisdom. For John this recapitulation finds its locus in the theophany of Christ.
This is where christology enters, and in particular Pauline christology. Paul describes Jesus as "wisdom (Gk. Sophia) from God" and the "image of God." The Colossian Hymn describes Jesus as "the image of the invisible God." In John, Jesus continually mediates wisdom to those around him and speaks constantly of it. For Paul, Jesus in the Second Adam, the recapitulation of primordial humans as the untarnished "eikon" of God. Thus, it can be said that the Johannine prologue describes the birth of the Second Adam and the reentrance of divine wisdom into the world through the embodiment of a sacred mystery "hidden from the foundations of the world."
From an evolutionary perspective, these things happen in reverse. Humanity does not fall from a pristine state but historically gravitates toward something higher. Within this framework the elements can still be re-appropriated without great loss of meaning. The Christ-event does not function as a mediating source of renewal between pristine Eden, inaugural present, and golden future; it functions as a North Star which recapitulates any lost potentialities in history and illuminates the event horizon toward which humanity is being moved by the same spirit of wisdom embodied in Christ. Thus, the new creation is beyond history and renewal and constitutes an event horizon beyond which a glory lies, the glory of the divine embodied in Christ which Paul says remains hidden until the resolution of this age.
Hence, the glory which exists as a pure potentiality in primordial time is that towards which time moves as an actualizing factor in the unfolding of divine perfection as manifest in the concealed revelation of wisdom and love.
Word, or "Logos," in the divine discourse that undergirds the universe, the rational principle of the cosmos. It finds functional equivalency with "Sophia," or wisdom, in Jewish commentaries which speak of wisdom personified as a woman who accompanies God in the beginning as a guide to bringing order into creation (in LXX, Sophia is the word used for wisdom). For the purpose of understanding "Logos" as symbolic personification here, Sophia will substitute:
In the beginning was Sophia, and Sophia was with God, and Sophia was God; she was in the beginning with God. All things were created through her; nothing was created which was not created through her.
Nothing is created apart from the divine wisdom which accompanies God and finds locality in God's essence. John 1 goes on to describe the life-giving qualities of Wisdom and the light which emanates from her to all who enter the world. It also describes how any who accept her receive a new birth not of blood. This beautiful creation poem then ends like this:
And she became flesh and pitched her tent among us . . . full of grace and truth.
Of course, the elipsis here leaves out the part about Sophia/Logos being the unique Son of God. We will get to that shortly.
Apart from the christological identification, John 1 deals with the impartation of divine wisdom to humanity in bodily form. This parallels the creation of humanity in Genesis 1 insofar that humans are created in the image of God. Thus the embodiment of divine wisdom in human beings in a unique sense in John 1 involves an untarnished new creation separate from the degraded icon of God present in humanity as a whole. John 1 basically recapitulates Genesis 1 as a new creation involving new birth and the re-embodiment of untarnished divine wisdom. For John this recapitulation finds its locus in the theophany of Christ.
This is where christology enters, and in particular Pauline christology. Paul describes Jesus as "wisdom (Gk. Sophia) from God" and the "image of God." The Colossian Hymn describes Jesus as "the image of the invisible God." In John, Jesus continually mediates wisdom to those around him and speaks constantly of it. For Paul, Jesus in the Second Adam, the recapitulation of primordial humans as the untarnished "eikon" of God. Thus, it can be said that the Johannine prologue describes the birth of the Second Adam and the reentrance of divine wisdom into the world through the embodiment of a sacred mystery "hidden from the foundations of the world."
From an evolutionary perspective, these things happen in reverse. Humanity does not fall from a pristine state but historically gravitates toward something higher. Within this framework the elements can still be re-appropriated without great loss of meaning. The Christ-event does not function as a mediating source of renewal between pristine Eden, inaugural present, and golden future; it functions as a North Star which recapitulates any lost potentialities in history and illuminates the event horizon toward which humanity is being moved by the same spirit of wisdom embodied in Christ. Thus, the new creation is beyond history and renewal and constitutes an event horizon beyond which a glory lies, the glory of the divine embodied in Christ which Paul says remains hidden until the resolution of this age.
Hence, the glory which exists as a pure potentiality in primordial time is that towards which time moves as an actualizing factor in the unfolding of divine perfection as manifest in the concealed revelation of wisdom and love.
Michael Dise, you are on a roll these days!! Also your theology is fascinating. It's like your #theopoetics
ReplyDeleteMy favorite part is when you talk about Sophia. I also like when you're thinking about evolution + Christology. And OMG I remember reading a great Genesis book before I lent it to a friend who never returned it, maybe you would enjoy it! It is called THE GENIUS OF GENESIS by Dennis Shulman.