John 1 Proves That the Word Was Uncreated, Right?

The introduction to John 1 is often used by trinitarians as a prooftext that supports their view of the godhead, and that refutes the views of various cults. It’s true that the cults have difficulty with this passage, but it’s also true that trinitarians should consider it a problem passage for their view, rather than a support.

The full argument in this regard is discussed in the article, Jesus the Firstborn of Creation, so I won’t elaborate too much here. But the essential point is that trinitarians change the meaning of “God” (theos) from “God the Father” to “the divine essence shared by all the persons” in the span of a single sentence. They need “God” in John 1 to refer to God the Father, to distinguish his personhood from that of God the Word/Son. But applying that definition consistently to the whole verse forces it to break the trinitarian formulation of the Godhead, which claims that the Son is not the Father. Consider the following injection of their more preferred terminology of Father and Son:

In the beginning was the Son, and the Son was with the Father, and the Son was the Father. (Jhn 1:1)

Trinitarian theology uses this verse to show a difference between the Father and the Son in the first part, and they accomplish this by interpreting “God” as God the Father, who was with (and therefore distinct from) the Son. But the second half of the verse equates the two, forcing trinitarians to equivocate on the definition of “God” to now refer to the divine essence shared by all the persons of the Godhead, rather than the Father. The Word was with “the Father” (theos) and the Word was “divine” (theos).

Because the cults also suffer from John 1, they don’t generally force trinitarians to be consistent in their interpretation of this verse. But it truly should be seen as a problem passage for the trinity, rather than a support.

Because Patternists do believe in a plurality of persons in the godhead, we wouldn’t be challenged by John 1 even if the trinitarian rendering were accurate. But our recognition of a preincarnate hypostatic union allows John 1 to be interpreted according to the nature of Christ rather than the nature of God, since the hypostatic union fits the merging and separating of persons more naturally than plurality within the godhead. Consider the following rendering:

In the beginning was Christ, and Christ was with God, and Christ was God.

When we view the term “Christ” here to refer to a union of Jesus’ divine and human natures, it’s appropriate to speak of Jesus in the incarnation as being both distinct from God, and God himself. We see this in many places in the gospels, some of which I’ve listed in article linked above.

The problem of course is that God became man long after creation, only 2,000 years ago. But if we show that the union of God and creature can be pushed back to the point of creation, then John 1 can be speaking of a preincarnate hypostatic union, rather than plurality of persons within the Godhead. To accomplish this, patternists appeal to Jesus’ old testament appearances through the Angel of the LORD, who was both with Yahweh God, and who was Yahweh God.

As elegant as the Angel of the LORD is in explaining the Word of John 1, Trinitarians have a response to this kind of reasoning, taken from historic interactions with Arianism. Like Pattern Christology, Arius claimed that the Son is a created being, but he did this without appealing to a hypostatic union of divine and creaturely natures. Thus Arianism turned Jesus into a demigod, rather than a union of God and man, and is rightly refuted by trinitarians.

However, as part of this refutation, some trinitarians will argue that if the Word of John 1 created all things, then the Word himself cannot be a created being. So if patternists make the “Word” of this passage refer to Jesus’ preincarnate created nature, the Angel of the Lord, then along with Arianism this means that something created had to create “all things,” which would be a self-contradicting statement.

This of course is a very wooden use of the term “all” in scripture. All does not always mean all, in the sense that there are no exceptions to the general universality implied. We do this “all” the time in English, and New Testament Greek offers plenty of its own examples. Consider this sampling of non-universal uses of “all” from John’s gospel alone:

• “And they came to John and said to him, “Rabbi, he who was with you across the Jordan, to whom you bore witness–look, he is baptizing, and all are going to him.” (Jhn 3:26) Here the sense of “all” is clearly meant to refer to a general trend rather than a universal set of all people. John’s disciples who were speaking were clearly exceptions, and most likely there were other scatterings of people who did not go out to Jesus.
• “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” (Jhn 4:29) The conversation we have recorded between Jesus and the woman at the well does not contain every activity ever done by the woman, nor is it likely that the full conversation did either. The point of concern seems to be all of the men she had ever been with, or all of the significant points of shame in her life. In any case, the phrase “all I ever did” is limited in its meaning by the context of her words.
• “[Peter] said to him, ‘Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Feed my sheep.'” (Jhn 21:17) Here Peter acknowledges Jesus’ divine omniscience, but fails to acknowledge the limits and exceptions to this omniscience which came with his union to a human nature (e.g. Mar 13:32). Here we have a strong sense of the term “all,” but with known exceptions.
• “The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hand.” (Jhn 3:35) This too is a strong, highly universal use of the term “all.” Yet even Jesus’ authority has an exception, one that Paul calls out in his own explicit refutation of a wooden overapplication of “all.” We will look at this in detail in the next section.

In light of these examples, is it reasonable to infer from John 1 that Jesus’ creation of all things necessarily rules out his own prior creation? Or is it possible that there is an exception to this general statement, strong as it is?

Notably, patternists do not even need an exception for the alternative view of John 1 to work. Given Jesus’ divine nature, it is entirely appropriate to speak of Jesus creating himself as the firstborn of creation, in the same way that Jesus is credited as resurrecting himself (John 2:19). Because Jesus is truly God and truly a creature, the strong statement in John 1 can be taken without any exception by simply appealing to Jesus’ self-creation of his angelic nature.

Nevertheless, to push back against an excessively wooden use of language, let’s take a look at the appropriateness of refusing exceptions to a strong and universal use of the word “all.”

It’s amazing to realize that Paul actually, explicitly dealt with this very issue of misusing the word “all” in his first letter to the Corinthians. Usually we go to Paul for deep insights into theology and the Old Testament, but apparently the wooden use of biblical language was as much of an issue in his day as it is in our own, such that he had to address it in his writings. He argues,

For “God has put all things in subjection under his feet.” But when it says, “all things are put in subjection,” it is plain that he is excepted who put all things in subjection under him. When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all. (1Co 15:27-28)

In his argument for the supremacy of Christ over all creation, Paul initially uses an imprecise shorthand for the concept by simply stating that “all things” were placed under him. But recognizing that some people might include God in “all things,” he nuances his use of “all” to say that of course God is the exception. Jesus is the king who God appointed over all things to be his vice-regent (Psa 2). Therefore God retains the highest authority, and Jesus rules under him, from his throne in Heaven.

So is it fair to expect human language to always list out and defend exceptions like this, when they are not germane to the point being made by the author? No, of course not. The same nuanced statement of Paul is made in John without nuance or exception (Jhn 3:31, 35). As readers, we are expected to use our brains to apply a passage according to the evident purpose of the author, even when the language isn’t flawlessly precise. Simple computers often require such arcane precision, but humans are elegant, context-sensitive communicators who build our knowledge about a thing by synthesizing data from a number of sources, in this case various passages of scripture. We interpret scripture by taking the whole body of what God has communicated to us, and bringing it to bear on a particular passage.

So when John 1 says that all things were created through the Word, and nothing was created apart from him, are we required to say that he himself cannot be an exception to this statement? If we have other reasons from other scriptures to say that Jesus had a prior, created nature at the beginning of the world, then even a strong, universal statement like this can be implicitly nuanced in the same way that Paul explicitly nuanced his strong statement in 1 Corinthians.

As argued above, Pattern Christology is entirely unimpeded by a full-blown trinitarian rendering of John 1. We believe in a plurality of persons in the godhead (two rather than three), and that one of them is properly called the Word/Logos. So even if the trinitarian rendering could be correct, our view would stand regardless.

However, while John 1 is often used as a prooftext for the Trinity, upon close examination it requires trinitarians to change the meaning of “God” from one half of a verse to the other. Patternists observe that the passage would be better seen as referencing the incarnation of God in Christ, because a form of the incarnation may be evidently seen in the Old Testament through the Angel of the LORD, prior to his incarnation as a human. John 1 may be better interpreted as the Angel of the LORD being with Yahweh, and the Angel of the LORD being Yahweh himself, the firstborn of creation. It is entirely valid use of language to say that the incarnate Christ created all things, including his own created nature, so this should be seen as the preferred interpretation of John 1, instead of the trinitarian view that it describes plurality within the uncreated godhead.

In any case, Pattern Christology is entirely compatible with both views, so John 1 is no threat to the Pattern. Rather, it should be seen as either a problem passage for the Trinity, or a passage that is irrelevant to the nature of God discussion.