We really should talk about Christ in creation a lot more. The Bible tells us that Christ was there from the very beginning and that all things came into being through him (John 1:1-3) and yet for many too much focus on creation is deemed pantheistic, new age or even pagan. Historically the Western church has viewed humanity’s role in creation as one of ‘dominion’- ruling rather than care-taking, and I think we can see the direct results of that view in climate change now. [1] In the 1960s Lynn White Jnr (an American historian & Professor) wrote, quite controversially for the time, that ‘Christianity bears a huge burden of guilt’ in relation to the state of the planet, with it being far too anthropocentric, leading to humanity exploiting nature. White’s paper drew much criticism as well as support but has been the basis for much discussion and debate in Christian eco thought since. [2] The evangelical wing of the church seems to have been particularly suspicious of any sort of eco theology, in part because there has been a sense of it pointing us away from the central teaching of Christ and salvation. With that in mind I’ve been on somewhat of a mission to point to where Jesus is in creation rather that is not, and to make a theological case for Christ’s role in creation being at the core of our faith, not as some kind of optional add on. During my MA I’ve focussed on various passages of scripture and I’ll be sharing some of that here, hopefully in a way that it isn’t so academic as to make it inaccessible.
I’m starting with John’s gospel and in particular the first few verses of the Prologue.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
John 1:1-5
The Prologue is the intro to John’s gospel laying out key themes that he is going to cover. The clearest aim of John’s gospel is undoubtedly to point the reader to Christ as the Son of God, a Jewish Messiah. Here in the Prologue he launches straight into it, positioning Christ as taking a role in creation. Some suggest this is simply as a result of cultural influences from the era [3] but I believe that John is deliberately pointing to Christ as a divine force in creation himself.[4] Let’s take a look at some of the key themes here…
Christ as the Son of God
Firstly, then, John’s focus seems to be to convince the reader of Christ’s person as the Son of God; with every aspect of Jesus’ life depicted pointing to that point. [5]
John himself notes in 20:31:
But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.
Michael Peppard’s in depth study of the term ‘Son of God’, suggests that John (and Paul also) used this term to draw a divine comparison with some emperors such as Julius Caesar and Octavian who used the term for themselves and is therefore trying to help readers understand the concept of the relationship between Jesus and God the Father in a way they would understand. [6]
Agents of Creation
So how does this link to creation? Well, the key question is how does Christ link to creation and what exactly was John saying about this? In the general thinking of the day (Second Temple Jewish thought) there were actually a variety of thoughts around ‘agents’ of creation which it is likely John knew about, for example: Wisdom (Sophia). Wisdom appears throughout the Old Testament, the Apocrypha and contemporary writings of the period such as those of Philo (1St C Jewish Philosopher). [7] While there is no real consensus on what or who Wisdom/Sophia is, in Jewish writing she is seen perhaps sat alongside Yahweh, expressing the presence of God in the world [8] or even as a revelation of God, or the voice of God. [9] However there is no suggestion that Wisdom is herself a god or indeed the one true God.
There are clear parallels in John’s writing with wisdom which have been well documented and researched so that I need not go into too much detail here. [10] However Raymond Brown is perhaps the most clear on this, who argues that John saw Jesus as the culmination of the wisdom tradition in the Old Testament.[11] He lays out numerous biblical and literary parallels between wisdom and Christ which are worth exploring for those with an interest in this area [12] but just to give a brief insight he highlights:
The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago. Ages ago I was set up at the first, before the beginning of the earth. (Proverbs 8:22-23)
Before the ages, in the beginning, he created me, and for all the ages I shall not cease to be. (Sirach 24:9)
and
I will tell you what wisdom is and how she came to be, and I will hide no secrets from you, but I will trace her course from the beginning of creation, and make knowledge of her clear, and I will not pass by the truth… (Wisdom 6:22)
All of which point to Wisdom in existence with God from before the creation of the world and they can be paralleled quite clearly with John’s Jesus of the Prologue, who existed in the beginning:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God’ and even before the creation of the earth (John 1:1).
It seems clear therefore that the wisdom tradition, and in particular the idea of wisdom being present from the beginning of creation, was indeed an influence on John. But is he going any further than suggesting that Jesus is simply, like wisdom, an agent of creation?
John of course does not actually use the word Sophia but uses Logos, originally a Greek word, philosophically used to signify word, not as a written word but as reason or a spoken expression of thought, and used by Greek philosophers and even by Heraclitus in relation to a cosmological order and process of creation and recreation.[13] There are well documented parallels here with the work of Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria [14] who in relation to creation refers to Logos in various ways: as ‘chief-messenger senior in rank’ [pointing us to logos as an archangel]; a continual suppliant to the immortal God; the archetypal idea; and ambassador of the ruler [like a High Priest]. So his take is that whilst the Logos does pre-exist creation, there at the beginning, as agent or instrument of creation, it is God who is creator. [15] There is debate about how much influence Philo had on John [16] but it seems likely he had at least some influence on him, although their ideas do not exactly match up. While Philo talks of the Logos, who is pre-existent and has a role in creation he makes a distinction between this and God, whereas John’s use of Logos in the prologue is certainly more ambiguous.
In the Beginning
Throughout John’s gospel he makes reference to Old Testament scripture and shows an obvious knowledge of Jewish interpretation and exegesis. [17] We see this very clearly in the echoes between his first few verses and Genesis 1:1.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. (John 1:1-3)
In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth. (Genesis 1:1)
In doing so John points to the Logos as ‘pre-existent’ (existed before creation), as we see in verse 1: ‘In the beginning…’ (John 1:1). David Ford in his work on Christian Wisdom states that in doing so John is ‘rewriting the opening of his Bible’. [18] John may be influenced by the work of Paul and Hebrews here, but by using Logos and therefore aforementioned links with Wisdom and creation of the world, the reader would naturally be pointed to Christ/Logos as existing before the earth, both as we read: ‘with God, and was God’, (John 1:1), so not simply God the Father but something other. [19] In paralleling Genesis in this way I think John actually seems to be equating Christ with the creator God, and all the power that God has. Several scholars have noted that this is impossible because Jewish belief is very clear on Monotheism – one God – so it would be difficult for John to seek to equate Jesus in this way.[20] NT Wright however, disputes this noting that:
in effect, the NT writers offer an incipient trinitarian theology without needing to use any of the technical terms that later centuries would adopt for the same purpose (1998).
Some scholars have argued that John’s ‘high Christology’ (ie: his framing of Jesus as the Son of God in such a prominent way) does point to Jesus being more than simply an agent of creation and goes beyond Philo’s Logos. [21] Ruben Bühner argues that John clearly refers to Christ in this way but that but to consider him asGod would be: ‘…unthinkable in the Jewish Hellenistic wisdom tradition’ .[22] Bühner does not go quite as far as to say Christ/ the Logos is God but notes:
…the Johannine Logos is the uncreated source of life; through him everything was created. He is a personified attribute of God, even explicitly called “God”, and belongs to the side of the one God of Israel.[23]
John’s writing in this way further links to Jewish scriptures and texts such as Wisdom 9:9 (wisdom present when the world was made); Proverbs 8 (wisdom as part of creation), Ecclesiastes 2:13 (light and dark), to further hammer home his point. [24]By linking the Jewish reader, or those familiar with Jewish texts, to these passages, he invites the reader to make an initial connection to Christ as the fulfilment of Jewish teaching, the Messiah and synonymous in some way with God as creator.
In Summary
There are therefore a range of diverse views relating to ‘The Prologue’ of John’s gospel but some level of agreement on John being immersed in Judaism, his writing being influenced as such and likely aimed at a Jewish audience; and of John’s purpose to claim Christ as the Son of God. But, as NT Wright asks: ‘is it conceivable that John might have thought of Jesus in any way as “god” ’ (1998) or was he simply pointing to him as an ‘agent’ of creation, as Philo notes in his Logos writing – an angel or ambassador? Or further, as a simple parallel to the Jewish Wisdom/Sophia? Philo is clear the Logos is not God and opinion is divided on his influence on. And yet, John appears to be going beyond both Philo’s Logos and Jewish wisdom, declaring: ‘the word was God’ (as well as with God) [emphasis mine] (John 1:1).
I believe John is seeking to point to Christ as God, perhaps as a pre-cursor to Trinitarian thinking as NT Wright suggests, and in the role of creator, even ‘rewriting the opening of his Bible’ as Ford claims. [25] John wants readers to see Christ alongside God from the very beginning, and his wording is abundantly clear in vs 2:
He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.
John may have been influenced by others and other texts but I believe he chose his words carefully and deliberately. Jesus was pre-existent, with God before the world began, Christ is not simply an agent of creation, it is only in him that it came into being.
Bibliography
Biblical quotations in English are from the NRSV unless otherwise stated
Brown, R.E. (1971) The Gospel according to John I-XII New York: Doubleday
Bühner, R. A. (2021) Messianic High Christology New Testament Variants of Second Temple Judaism, Waco: Baylor University Press.
Bultmann, R. (1971) The Gospel of John, A Commentary Oxford: Blackwell
Deane-Drummond, C. (1992) ‘A Critique of Jürgen Moltmann’s Green Theology’ New Blackfriars, November 1992, Vol. 73, No. 865, (554-565), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dodd, C.H. (1953) The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dunn, J.D. (1980) Christology in the Making London: SCM
Ford, D.F. (2007) Christian Wisdom Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Hillar, M. (2012) From Logos to Trinity: The Evolution of Religious Beliefs from Pythagoras to Tertullian Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hurtado, L.W. (1979) New Testament Christology: A Critique of Bousset’s Influence, Theological Studies, vol. 40, no. 2 Woodstock: USA.
Hurtado, L.W. (2005) Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans
Jenkins, W. (2009) ‘After Lynn White: Religious Ethics and Environmental Problems’ The Journal of Religious Ethics, Vol. 37, No. 2, Jun, 2009, (283-309).
Mealand, D. (1978) The Christology of The Fourth Gospel in Scottish Journal of Theology, Vol. 31, Issue 5, October 1978, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Moltmann, J. (1985) God in Creation London: SCM
Murphy, R.E. & Carm, O. (1985) Wisdom and Creation in Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol 104, No.1, March 1985, Atlanta: The Society of Biblical Literature.
Peppard, M. (2011) The Son of God in the Roman World Oxford: Oxford Academic.
Scott, M. (1992) Sophia and the Johanine Jesus in Journal for the Study of the New Testament Supplement Series 71, JSOT Press: Sheffield.
Smith, B. D. (2019) What Christ does, God Does: Surveying Recent Scholarship on Christological Monotheismin Currents in Biblical Research, 2019, Vol 17(20).
Thatcher, T. (2017) John and the Jews: Recent Research and Future Questions in Culpepper, R.A. & Anderson, P.N. John and Judaism: A Contested Relationship in Context Atlanta: SBL, pp.3-38.
Williams, C. H. (2017) John, Judaism and “Searching the Scriptures” in Culpepper, R.A. & Anderson, P.N. John and Judaism: A Contested Relationship in Context Atlanta: SBL, pp. 77-100.
Williamson, R. (1989) Jews in the Hellenistic World Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wright, N.T. (1998) Jesus and the Identity of God at: https://ntwrightpage.com/2016/07/12/jesus-and-the-identity-of-god/
References
[1] Moltmann, 1985, xi
[2] See for example: Jenkins, 2009, 283-286; Deane-Drummond, 2008, 82.
[3] Jewish-Hellenistic influences of the Second Temple period
[4] I should add a note here to say I won’t be addressing questions over authorship, dating or Gnosticism – but if you are interested in John’s gospel there is much written about these areas already. I don’t agree with those who argue John is influenced by Gnostic teaching, largely because it is clear that John’s focus is on Christ as the Son of God, something Gnostic followers would not accept.
[5] Bultmann, 1971, 5; & Williamson, 1989, 78
[6] Peppard, 2011, 16
[7] Job 28, Proverbs 8:22; the book of Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus
[8] Dunn, 1980, 176
[9] Murphy & Carm suggest Wisdom is even a revelation of God, her voice the voice of God (1985, 9)
[10] Eg: Scott, 1992, 88 & Brown, 1971, cxxii
[11] Brown, 1971, cxxii
[12] Brown,1971, cxxii-cxxv)
[13] Hillar, 2012, 10-11
[14] See Dodd, 1953. 54-56; Williams, 2017, 103
[15] Williams, 2017,125-136
[16] Dodd thinks his work is key, Scott does not, suggesting a contemporary trend for the interchangeable use of Logos /Sophia (Scott, 1992, 58 & 94) and Bühner suggests John used the term in order to reach a wider cultural audience (2021, 150) (See also Williams, 2017,136)
[17] Williams 2017, 77-8
[18] Ford 2007, 55
[19] See Mealand, 1978, 450; Hurtado, 2005, 364; Dunn, 1980, 163
[20] Bousset seemed to have sparked this, writing in his influential work: ‘Kyrios Christos’ that as Jews were monotheists, they could not therefore have thought of Christ as divine, arguing for a later Hellenstic influence on this (Smith, 2019,184). Despite many scholars agreeing with Bousset; Hengel, Hurtado and others have strong objections to this, with Hurtado citing Bousset’s ‘quaint, old liberal bent’! (Hurtado, 1979, 307). Smith outlines the position of Hurtado and Bauckham (amongst others). He notes that Hurtado argues for Jesus as an agent of God, given divine status, in a way that was unique for Second Temple period worship (Smith, 2019, 188) but that Bauckham argues Jesus was elevated above this, writing that: ‘…early Christians like John saw Jesus’ actions as congruent with the character and actions of God’ (Smith, 2019,188-189).
[21] These arguments sit within the subject of the Messiah in Second Temple Judaism. Bühner argues that NT texts with a ‘high Christology’ [such as we might say of John’s Gospel] are a key part of this theme. He highlights that: ‘the expectation of a heavenly pre-existent or in some other way superhuman messiah is part of the lively and diverse messianic discourse’ of this era, whether angel or Son of God or other (Bühner, 2021, 3-4). But he also suggests that John’s writing goes beyond these concepts, which for some points away from the Jewish Messiah (2021,143-144). He also argues that despite a ‘brazen divine Christology’ it can fit within Jewish Messianic thinking and suggests that the opening lines of John’s gospel are deliberately written in order to direct the reader’s understanding (Bühner, 2021,145).
[22] Bühner, 2021,153
[23] Bühner, 2021,157
[24] Thatcher, 2017, 7
[25] Ford, 2007, 55
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