If the above observations are all correct, then Augustine’s exordium is not so remote from the text as it might seem to be at first glance. The Johannine prologue is not dealing with the general situation of humanity vis-à-vis revelation. It is dealing concretely with the question of the situation that arises when we hear a witness to revelation, when we lift up our eyes to the hills from which our help comes, and yet when we can expect help only from the Lord who made heaven and earth. All this casts at once a brilliant light on the distinctively radical way in which the Evangelist approaches his task. He knows what he is doing when he sets about the work. He is concerned to express this, to see to it that the place from which he speaks, from which he confronts his readers, is depicted both positively and negatively. As he perhaps in fact brings to light the hopeless confusion of witness and revealer of which that competing religion might have been guilty, as he honors the witness and yet draws the line by calling him a witness, he sets himself in his own place and his readers in theirs. More plainly than anywhere else in the Bible except in the parallel 1 John 1–4, which is probably by the same author or from the same circle, we are told here what the Bible is, namely, witness to revelation both in relation to revelation and yet also in distinction from it. What might at first seem to be exegetically very remote in the passage from Augustine is in fact typically Johannine. There is said in it by way of introduction something which has to be said by way of introduction to the exposition of all biblical books as such: the great Yes and No with which these books call us to themselves only to point us to the Lord, as the Baptist pointed his disciples. This is the radical procedure of the Gospel, or at least a distinctive example of it. For we have the prologue only in the light of what I have called his practical intention. I have anticipated because, led on the one side by Augustine and on the other by the present state of the religio-historical and literary-critical debate, I incline to the opinion that if in the total web of the prologue we lay hold of this one thread, we shall in fact find the guiding thread to an understanding of its content as a whole. The radius of the circle that this section draws is naturally much larger than has been expressed in our deliberations thus far. The question, or rather the answer, the insight with which the Evangelist approaches his task, is obviously not exhausted by his formula for the relation between Christ and John, between revelation and its witness. Nevertheless, one might say, and only in this light does the exordium of Augustine commend itself, that in the framework of a much more comprehensive consideration the purpose of the prologue achieves in that formula its most concrete form.
We shall now turn to the detailed exegesis of what must be regarded as the much more comprehensive material.
1. En archȩ̄ ēn ho logos. The order of the sentence lays the stress on en archȩ̄. It is correct to translate: “In the beginning was the Word,” but the usual emphasis on “the Word,” though what it may seem to be saying sounds profound, is not in keeping with the meaning of the statement. What was in the beginning, namely, the Word and not something else, is not the point here. Instead, something is being said about the Word. It was already in the beginning. It did not come into being or arise subsequently.11 En archȩ̄, in principio (Vulgate), in unmistakable allusion to Gen. 1:1, denotes the beginning of all being as it is posited by divine creation. The world that is distinct from God enters into existence en archȩ̄. The Logos also was en archȩ̄. This does not mean that the Logos itself is this archē. As may be seen from what follows, it does not belong to the world that is distinct from God, not even as its beginning, not even as the first and oldest link in the chain of created things. This, of course, is how Philo understood it: presbytatos tōn genesin eilēphotōn (W. Bauer, op. cit., p. 9). And this was how Prov. 8:22 viewed divine wisdom: kyrios ektisen me archēn hodōn autou. When it is said here that the Logos was en archȩ. it is distinguished from the beginning of the created world and therefore from this world itself. The same is true of the ap’ archēs that is used in the parallel 1 John 1:1 and also of the remarkable prōtotokos pasēs ktiseōs of Col. 1:12. The Logos was in, with, before, and above the totality of the created world. There is no space in this world that is not limited by it. There is no possibility of evading or escaping it; no more than of evading or escaping God himself. That “the Logos was in the beginning” means that he is as God. Only God, the Creator himself, was “in the beginning.” That he “was” in the beginning means that he is beyond the coming into being of what arises with the beginning. By him, in virtue of his being, there is a coming into being (v. 3). His being as such is not one that comes into being. It is not temporal; it is the eternal being that in principle precedes and encloses and originates all time. The Athanasians of the fourth century were right when they based on this ēn their thesis that there was no time in which the Logos was not.12 The text means precisely that the Logos was before all time.13
But how can there be a being in the beginning apart from and alongside the being of God? The first statement suggests this question, and the second statement answers it: kai ho logos ēn pros ton theon. There is no need to switch subject and predicate in this case. The natural stress undoubtedly falls on the pros ton theon. The saying is a statement about the Word; it was with God. No one was in the beginning (v. 1) apart from or alongside God. But the Word was not apart from or alongside God. The Word was “with God.” It belonged to God. The translation of Heinrich Holtzmann: “It was toward God,”14 is right in suggesting relationship but it is still misleading. W. Bauer correctly abandoned this translation and explanation. Ad te nos creasti, as Augustine puts it in a famous passage,15 obviously fits the creature, especially the human creature, but not an entity that is to be sought beyond the archē. That the Word was ad Deum would not be an answer to the question how far it was what only God can be, namely, en archȩ̄. The idea of Theodor Zahn16 about the intercourse with God or movement toward God in which the Logos was involved also leads us astray. The reason is the same; a being that was not en archȩ̄ might also have dealings with God. Pros ton theon has to define a being that was en archȩ̄. It has to explain how it could be this. W. Bauer was right when he took pros to mean “with” with no nuances. The statement forms what is, of course, the paradoxical answer to the question who could be en archȩ̄ outside and alongside God. The answer is that he could be this who was with God, who, belonging to God, with God, being after the manner of God, stood and essentially stands beyond the line that is drawn by the beginning of all things. The Word was “with God”—therefore it was in the beginning.
But how could it be pros ton theon, or belong to God? The third statement gives the answer: kai theos ēn ho logos. If in the first two sentences we were right to put the stress on the statements made about the Logos, we may assume that the situation is the same in the third sentence, that we must once again reverse the statement, that we have to recognize in theos, even though it comes first, the predicate (cf. 4:24: pneuma ho theos), that this is where the emphasis lies, that the Logos was God, i.e., of divine nature or essence. It has rightly been pointed out that the predicate that is here ascribed to the Logos is theos, not ho theos. But it is doubtful whether one does well to follow W. Bauer (op cit., p. 10) in recalling the loose, improper use with which Philo calls the Logos theos, or to think with Theodor Zahn of the occasional way in which ha’ elohim in the OT is not a proper name but is used for a category, e.g., spirits, angels, or even men. At any rate, we are advised to treat with caution the usual inference that the Logos is not here identified with God. A distinction must be made. The nature of the Logos is here identified with the nature of the entity called ho theos. The theotēs of this entity is unreservedly ascribed to the Logos. Significantly, the He denoted by the definite article is not identical with the Logos. The Logos, who is three times in this verse described with the definite article, seems perhaps to stand over against this He as a second He