I cannot deny that the presupposition underlying this whole understanding, namely, that v. 4a is looking back to v. 3, is not in itself improbable. At v. 3 we recalled the parallels in Col. 1:16 and Heb. 1:2, and it might well be pointed out that in those passages we go on to read: ta panta en autō̧ synestēken (Col. 1:17), and: pherōn te ta panta tō̧ rhēmati tēs dynameōs antou (Heb. 1:3), to which the en autō̧ zōē ēn of this verse aptly corresponds according to that understanding, especially in Calvin’s formula: “continua inspiratio mundum vegetans.” But we can obviously presuppose such a reference back to v. 3—and this is the second presupposition of that understanding—only if the decisive concept zōē permits and commands it. And this, it would seem to me, is not the case in that I know of no passage in the whole of John’s Gospel where it is possible to equate zōē with being that brings forth other being, with the life of all things in the idea, with continua inspiratio. with the source of life, etc. Always in this Gospel the term zōē (with or without the addition aiōnios) has soteriological-eschatological significance. It is the life which, as we have already affirmed in the light of 5:26, the Son has in himself (en heautō̧) as the Father has given him to do so. In contrast to apōleia and thanatos it is the imperishable being, not subject to corruption or destruction, which through the Revealer, as the decisive thing that he has to bring according to John, is offered to all people and imparted to those who believe in him, through him who at some climaxes is himself called hē zōē. This and not anything else is what zōē means in 6:33 and 6:51, where we read of zōē kosmon. In these passages the kosmos is unquestionably the human world and zōē is none other than the life that is imparted to this world by the Revealer. Zōē in John’s Gospel is not the life that is already in us or the world by creation; it is the new and supernatural life which comes in redemption and has first to be imparted to us in some way. Is it really permissible to assume that precisely here we have an exception and that what is meant is the natural life that is lent by God to all creatures as such? Is it not more likely that precisely at this point where it occurs for the first time it has to be used in the pregnant sense that it bears in the rest of the Gospel?
Coming now to the third presupposition of that understanding, we find that things are the same with the subordinate concept of phōs. I have still to find in John a passage in which light is the light which is present by creation, which is given in and with the life of creation, which is there as the uncreated light of the created world, which does not rather come only with the life of redemption, which is not the light of revelation, which perhaps comes from the very beginning but still comes. In relation to v. 3 we referred to the coincidence of revealed theology and natural theology both there and in the New Testament parallels. But it seems to me to be characteristic of New Testament thinking—I make the same point regarding the well-known verse Rom. 1:19—that with a strict reserve appropriate to the theme it does not use the insight that the Revealer is also the Creator in such a way that by a logical inversion (all things are possible in logic!) it is also said that the Creator is the Revealer. God’s self-revealing is a separate action that goes beyond creation. In relation to what was made, to its life and to the knowledge that may be gained from it, phōs is a new and different light which is only arising. It is the light of dawn, not the full light of eternity already present.40 Note that the apparently very tempting hē zōē ēn to phōs of this verse is given in v. 9 the interpretation: ēn to phōs erchomenon eis ton kosmon. This seems to me to oppose sharply that understanding, in spite of the venerable names associated with it, since it does not do justice to the strict character of revelation as phōs erchomenon. And finally, in view of our initial grammatical findings, we have to ask its champions what they make of the change from zōē to hē zōē, in which we can find the distinction between the life of creation and the life of the human spirit only by violent wresting. If this counterargument is cogent, as I believe, then in v. 4a we are not to look back. We have to consider a new thought—in brief the whole complex of reconciliation41 and revelation. The religious parallels mentioned also point us in this direction. After the author has said in v. 3 that without exception everything made is mediate to God because it is made by the Word, and that nothing is chōris autou, that nothing has its origin from God directly and apart from the Word, now, making a new beginning, he goes on to say that in him was life, namely, the life which is indispensable to men but which in a fearful way they do not have, the true, authentic, eternal life which is immune to corruption and death, life such as God has in himself. That we do not actually have this indispensable thing is stated indirectly in v. 5, but the reason why this is so is not yet given. We are undoubtedly right to assume that with the mere mention of the thoroughly soteriological term zōē, implicitly its negative presupposition too (indicated by the ou katelaben of v. 5) would be more than clearly stated for the author’s contemporaries. This life, i.e., the life that overcomes death, was in him.42 In view of the continuation in v. 4b, i.e., that it was the light of men, and in view of the ēn erchomenon with which the same thought is taken up in v. 9, one has to say that this ēn has a significance that goes beyond the eternal ēn of v. 1. We do not rule out that meaning, but here ēn also means that it was, not as one created thing is alongside others, nor in a permanent relation that is contained from the very first in the concept of God and the world, but in the unique way in which this life—in the Word which is spoken from eternity into time, and which may be heard in time with all the seriousness of eternity—is present as the life that is indispensable but is still missing, as the true life that overcomes death. Is, I say, although not excluding the was. The imperfect ēn includes a present here, as may be seen from the phainei that follows in the next verse. In translation we can quietly let the past tense stand, however, only so long as by the past we do not understand a specific time but all past history. Thus life was presented to the world. It was set before eyes and ears in such a way that they could not forget it, or overlook it, or suppress their unavoidable unrest and longing for it, or deny the appeal that it signified for them. This redemptive life, v. 4b explains, was (en autō̧, contained and offered in God’s Word) the “light of men,” the light of revelation which illumined them. Objectively and enduringly there stood before them the possibility or opportunity of knowing it, of knowing about it. Whatever the result might be (more of this in v. 5), light was nowhere and never absent. Nowhere and never was there lacking the chance, provided by the divine action, to think about life, about salvation, about the life that is lost and yet not lost inasmuch as it was enclosed and preserved and offered in the Word and shone as the light of revelation. By the Word, as Schlatter paraphrases it,43 God has worked the miracle that the life that derives from him appeared on earth and did not remain hidden.
If zōē is not the life which is from creation but the life which in reconciliation44 is in principle future, i.e., which comes to us, which in contrast to all our past breaks into our present, and if as the phōs ton anthrōpōn it is not the light of reason and the like but revelation, i.e., the redemption which visibly tears down the barriers of death, we have still to answer the question what specifically the Evangelist has in mind when he speaks these words. If in the exposition thus far I have mostly agreed with Zahn over against the other exegetes, in this question I have to part company with him. Far too one-sidedly and violently, as it seems to me, he rushes on to the interpretation that the reference here is to the “historical person of Jesus.” In him was life as distinct from all others, in whom it was not present. In his self-attestation by word and work the life shone for all. This is how he would interpret the verse. Similarly he relates the whole prologue directly and exclusively to the thirty years of the epiphany of the Logos in Jesus of Nazareth.45 I admit to the suspicion that the principle