Give your divine wisdom to us as Jesus gave his mother to his disciple John from the cross that we may understand your word. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Okay, today I want to do the prologue and you can spend a whole year on the prologue so it's necessarily going to be sketchy. We'll probably go a little overtime too. Actually, I think it's worth learning Greek just to be able to read this one page of John's Gospel. It used to be the so-called last gospel of the mass and you read it every time. Was it only on Sunday or was it every day? It was every day. Every time he celebrated the mass that prologue of John was at the end. Curious that the prologue should be the epilogue, as it were, of the Eucharist. But so it was because it's got a resonance like nothing else in the Scripture, practically speaking. Somehow it contains all of the Scripture within itself, even from the first words. In the beginning was the word, the word. I watched it. Who read it? Just here at the

[01:20]

Hermitage? No, that was in the Roman liturgy before. The last gospel of the Roman liturgy. So you read a different gospel each day, you know. You had your regular lectionary, but that one was tacked on at the end. Yeah, it was part of the liturgy of the mass. Also, Brown points out that they used it for blessings, you know. They use it for blessings for children and so on, things like that, just as a kind of magical thing almost. And Luther, if you read that article, Luther was complaining about the magical use of the prologue. I remember that story. There's a story in the Hasidim of the rabbi, you know, who was so eager for the truth that they said he'd tear up the floorboards for one spark of the truth, for one lost bit of the Torah, of the truth. Well, the prologue somehow has got the whole mountain, the whole rock inside of it, and so it's really worth giving attention to. And as we read the gospel, we'll come back to the prologue again and again, because what it is, is a kind of

[02:21]

kernel or digest of the whole gospel. In fact, I think you can call it sort of the eye of the gospel. It's the lens, it's the window through which you want to read the whole gospel. And it gives you the key to what the gospel is about in a very condensed and kind of transparent fashion. And it's a different style from the gospel itself. It's not a narrative, basically. You've got these little bits of narrative about John the Baptist. I'll give you all that paper stuff in a few minutes, but it itself is not narrative. In fact, it's almost music. It's other prologues. For instance, remember that passage from Philippians 2 that we so often recite, that though he was equal to God, he did not consider that a thing to be held on to, but humbled himself and became obedient, even unto death as on a cross. That's another one of those hymns of the New Testament, which is said to pre-exist the context in which you find it in Paul.

[03:25]

There are other ones in Colossians and Ephesians and some of the other letters of Paul. So there's a musical quality about this. Here's something from Brown talking about the prologue. If John has been described as the pearl of great price among the New Testament writings, then one may say that the prologue is the pearl within this gospel. In her comparison of Augustine's and Chrysostom's exegesis of the prologue, a certain woman scholar points out that both held that it is beyond the power of man to speak as John does in the prologue. The choice of the eagle as the symbol of John the Evangelist was largely determined by the celestial flights of the opening lines of the gospel. The sacred character of the prologue has been reflected in the long-standing custom of the Western Church to read it as a benediction over the sick and over newly baptized children. Its former place as the final prayer of the Roman mass reflects its use as a blessing, even though it wasn't a prayer. Indeed, it took on a magical character when it was used in amulets worn around the neck to protect against sickness.

[04:26]

This is what he says about that hymn thing and about the pre-existence of the prologue before the gospel. He calls it an early Christian hymn, probably stemming from Johannine circles, which has been adapted to serve as an overture to the gospel narrative of the career of the Incarnate Word. Now, here's the difference between your historical critical scholar, like Brown, and Kermodey, as you'll see. As he opens these questions, which begin to reflect the existence and the integrity of the prologue in front of you, whereas Kermodey refuses to do that. He's going to take it as it stands. But Brown says, well, it pre-existed and it was adapted, therefore you start looking for different stages. And part of it then is genuine and goes way back, and then other parts were tacked on as you went along. So you lose the sense of it being one thing. Now, if we want to go the other way, we have to prove, we have to verify our approach by what we find. In other words, we have to prove that there's meaning, that there's value, that there's power in this other approach of considering it as a unit, as a literary unit. So let's see as we go on. When you say hymn, now hymn has got to mean

[05:37]

music, doesn't it? And this is music. It kind of orbits around a center of which it sings, it flies, it sort of dances, it weaves and it casts a spell. It's a circular motion, a kind of incantatory motion, like a chant or something. And it moves around the center, as we shall see. It's a kind of music of fullness. The music of fullness, there is such a thing, a movement which expresses plenitude and a kind of brimming over, a brimming over of this fullness, of this light that's in it. And yet it moves forward, too. The movement is a spiral, it's not only a circle. The progression is from a kind of fullness to fullness. Remember there's a Hindu phrase, is it from the Vedas or the Vedanta or somewhere about from fullness to fullness. The first fullness is the fullness of being. That is, the word is with God. The second fullness is the fullness of revelation. And we saw it as glory. Glory is the only begotten of God. From an invisible fullness of being, to a fullness which is

[06:40]

revealed to us, to a third fullness, which is a fullness inside of us. In other words, a fullness of unitive eminence. And eminence is going to be a big word as we go on with the prologue of John's Gospel. From a fullness which is invisible outside of us, through a fullness which is visible in front of us. Jesus with his glory somehow manifest, as at Cana the first time. To a third fullness, which is a fullness again invisible because it's inside of us. Because somehow it's one with us. And that's the real life that John is telling us about, and that's what John's Gospel is about. It moves from an invisible beginning to a visible presence to an invisible eminence dwelling within you. And then this movement is interrupted by these strange bits about John the Baptist. That is, this kind of dance. It's almost, you've got this character there in the goatskin who gets pulled into the dance and whirled around, sort of, for a couple of movements, a couple of beats, and then he's out of the circle again. And it

[07:43]

continues and then he gets pulled in again. And then you're left with him at the end. You're left with John the Baptist out in the desert. But John the Baptist out in the desert, in the wilderness, with his emptiness, is expressing the opposite of what the prologue is expressing. And it's really interesting, the language that John the Baptist uses as soon as they start asking him who he is. Three negatives. They say, are you the prophet? Are you the Messiah? And finally he says, I am not. He simply says, I am not, in contrast to this fullness of being that's in the prologue. And when we get to the being becoming thing, it's in clear contrast to this business of the being of God. And he was, he was, and he was, he means he is. And that is in direct union with those statements of Jesus throughout the Gospel, I am. The fundamental I am statement of Jesus, which is the fundamental self-identification of God in the Old Testament. The name Yahweh, and so on. So we'll come back to that. The strongest parallels in the New Testament

[08:45]

are these other prologues, especially the prologue to the first letter of John. I'd urge you to look at that and to compare it to this prologue. In fact, the whole first letter of John is a good way of, a good door to understanding the prologue of John's Gospel. The whole of the first letter, the whole of the first letter is almost like the language of the prologue of the Gospel. It's another condensed statement. In fact, you can almost consider that first letter to be a kind of epilogue to the Gospel, even though it's not tacked onto the Gospel, as is the prologue. It's almost an epilogue to John's Gospel that is coming from the experience that John's Gospel is pointing out, is opening to, initiating to, and which reflects the prologue of the Gospel itself. And then there's also the prologue to Hebrews, the letter to the Hebrews, the first few verses, in which the word is spoken of also. The word logos isn't used, I don't believe, there, but finally God has spoken to us through his Son, and so it's the

[09:48]

same notion. Obviously there's a kind of influence or a common tradition there between those. Okay, what I want to do is take a series of approaches here, and I know that we're going to run out of time before I get finished, but let's start on a name. The first approach I'd like to use is that of the notion of centering, which is very popular now because of centering prayer and a whole bunch of other things. What John does in his prologue is to establish a center which is going to endure for the whole of the Gospel. I'll read a little bit of this that I had written up for something else. And I refer you to an article by Cahill called Prologue as Centered. I'll have to make a copy or I'll put up the bottom of the Catholic Biblical Quarterly in which you'll find that article. It's a precious article, very unusual from a Biblical scholar, but most of these guys just don't see things in

[10:53]

that unit of prayer. This is J.P. Cahill, he's up in Canada, and the Johannine Logos as Centered from the Catholic Biblical Quarterly in 1976. Another approach to the peculiar depth of John's Gospel is through the symbol of center, which has recently re-emerged in our spirituality, and also that the book of E. Griffith's Return to the Center, as well as Panakar's book Blessed Simplicity, the cornerstone of which is the notion of center as defining the monastic life. So this thing connects directly with us. Although John's approach and John's wisdom is essential, right at the heart of the monastic life, because of this notion of interiority and of center, and something that will gradually explain itself to us as being unitive, that's what monasticism is about. The symbol of center which has re-emerged

[12:01]

recently, a gravitational dynamism of centering is established immediately in John in the first words of the prologue, in the beginning was the Word, and the remainder of the prologue draws out the center into a theological axis along which the deepest meaning of the Gospel will unfold. So John in the first words establishes a center, and then from that center he draws a line, and the center becomes an axis, and we'll see where that axis is going. That axis moves right into the Gospel, and especially into the interactions of Jesus with women. There's something very dramatic happening there, which hasn't really been opened up for us very much yet. But the relationship between the unitive, the divine unitive of the Logos, of this creative Word, and at the other end the human unitive, which actually is sexuality, and which is at the center of John's symbolism. So we're going to see an axis described between those two points, but we won't see that until we get well into the Gospel. And around that more human side, and at first you've got the Logos, and the Logos

[13:03]

become flesh. And around this reality of flesh, and even remember there shall be one flesh in Genesis, another pole, the whole world of symbolism opens up around that. And the most poignant and powerful parts of the narrative of John's Gospel, I believe, are those in which Jesus actually is relating to women, so that the relationship between Logos and Sophia, let us say, the feminine wisdom, is very subtly being exposed there. But we'll see that as we go along. In the beginning, we are led to imagine a source of all being, from which the creation continues to defend us from its ontological center. The source, the Word, is light and source of light at the center of the human person. Who is the rational creation, and therefore is able to perceive a light, which is not just visible, this light. This light shines in the darkness of incomprehension. The source itself comes into the world and becomes the center of the world. The source, which is the Word, which is the Logos, which is the light, comes into the world, and then the world somehow exists around that

[14:05]

center from which it exists, from which it depends. Comes into the world anew, and it was always in the world, but it comes into the world in a physical and visible form in Jesus. And though unrecognized by that world becomes anew, it's centered through this presence. The light shines in the midst of the darkness with a new dramatic intensity as he comes to his own people, who had been prepared as the center of the world, as the living temple of God in the midst of his creation. They, representing the world, perceive him not, that is as John puts it, the Jews, that's his language. The world centered in itself will not accept as its center this one who comes from the beginning. He became a human person, made his earthly dwelling in that being, who was created to be the temple of God, the center of the world, that is man, the human person. We have beheld his glory as the only one begotten of the source as the center. He has opened himself to us and poured out into us that which is within him, a fullness which manifests itself in grace and truth,

[15:07]

in the living fullness and in the inner self-validating light of our being. Now I'm paraphrasing the prologue. These are just echoes of the words of the prologue. I'm doing it too fast for you to keep it correlated with the prologue. Through Moses we have been given an external structure. Remember, the law was given through Moses, the prologue says, but grace and truth have come through Jesus Christ. Through Moses we have been given an external structure to contain and guide our life with God. Now the life itself of God has opened, unfolded within us through Jesus Christ. Another prologue says nobody's ever seen God. God cannot be seen externally with human eyes. The absolute center who is in God, he has opened the way into that place for us. That's what I think the prologue is saying. So the whole thing is a kind of drama of centers moving along this axis. And that remains throughout the Gospel, but the language changes. Let me read just a few words from this Cahill article just to

[16:15]

whet your appetite. What he does is to look at John's prologue and the logos, the word of John, in terms of comparative religion. So he reads people like Eliade and so on, and points out the importance of center in world religions. And then shows how what John is doing is exactly what is done in establishing a center, even like the center in a temple or something like that, or in other ritual ways in the other religions. However, the logos can be conceived as a center from which the world and the moral order to be articulated in the Gospel emanates. So a center which remains center for everything, not only morality, but also the creation itself, existence itself. At this point, when the logos, the word, becomes incarnate, when the center becomes an incarnate,

[17:19]

the concrete physical center in the world, at this point humanity becomes the symbol of the logos and introduces a type of presence commensurate with the full existence and reality of man. Thus the logos, who has been described as a cosmological center, that is the center of being of the world, a religious center, the center of worship, is now described as an anthropological center. The richness of the symbolism of centering is ultimately derived from the one ontological centering in which the human and divine, the profane and sacred, are joined into the logos incarnate, when the word becomes flesh, when God becomes one with his creation, center and source of unity for everything. The logos, now incarnate, is the center from which all else in the Gospel follows. I don't have time to read any more of this, but I'll make it available to you. So there's the center, and then the center identifies with the word or the logos of John,

[18:23]

as well as with a bunch of other things in the Gospel, as we'll see. Now what is this word, this logos? As I mentioned last time, there's a whole Greek philosophical background, an immense kind of watershed of philosophy and of thought and of wisdom behind this word logos, in the Platonic tradition and also in the Stoic tradition, and already in Heraclitus, one of the earliest, most profound of the Greek philosophers, the logos are spoken of. It was almost obsessive, I think, with the Greeks, because they were people who were centered in the intellect, and this was the principle of rationality and of meaning of the universe, conceived more or less profoundly, you know. But actually the way John uses it, it lies at the intersection of the Greek logos and the Hebrew, the Jewish, the biblical word of God. Now the Greek logos, or word, is a principle of understanding and of meaning and of sense and of continuity in the universe, but the Hebrew word of God

[19:28]

is a dynamic principle, it's an active force, it's a power, it's creative, and then after the creation it acts in the world. Remember that passage in Isaiah 55, where it says, as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, so my word will come and do what I send it for. It won't come back to me empty. The word is not idle, but the word works. The word not only makes the world, but it changes the world. It speaks to us, but when it speaks to us, as John the Cross says in some places, its actual speech is its action, its effect is already in the speech, already in the hearing. It does its work, so it's an active work, and tremendously. There's just been a recovery in the last 30 or 40 years of the enormity of the importance of this word in Christianity. I think Karl Barth was one of the leaders in this, he certainly was. He influenced our Father Benedetto quite a bit, and influenced the other Catholic biblical theologians too. The trouble with Barth is that God is too much divorced from the creation, so that the word

[20:32]

cannot be a sapiential word, it cannot somehow be the principle of unity of all things. It's still sort of opposed, or separate from, or speaking from outside to the creation, it's still dualistic. But if you find the word the way John talks about it, it becomes the center of absolutely everything, absolutely everything, and the creation itself springs from it, and it's still able to be in unity with it, and that's what John is talking about. John is talking about finding that root, and then getting back into it, getting back into that center, getting back into that source, and living from it, so that the light flows into you, so that the life flows into you. And that light and that life are the one central unifying, unitive reality, in which everything else is one. It's the center of the wheel, and there everything is one. References on that, we just don't have time to deal adequately with this notion of logos of word here, so I'll give you a few references. One very simple and accessible one is that

[21:33]

first note in the Bible of Jerusalem, at the beginning of the Gospel of John, the note on the word, and what they do there, in that note, is very quickly to summarize for you the different senses and dimensions of the word, and also the principal places in John where you find these dimensions represented and expressed. Another very useful reference on the word is in Brown, where he's got an appendix in his first biography, called Appendix 2, the word, from page 519 to 524. I'm going to read you just the summary at the end of that appendix of Brown. In sum, it seems that the prologue's description of the word is far closer to biblical and Jewish

[22:36]

strains of thought than it is to anything purely Hellenistic. Now, Hellenistic is that Greek culture, late Greek culture. Hellenic is really a classical Greek culture, but Hellenistic is that more, what would you call it, vulgarized and later Greek culture, which has spread all over the Middle East. In the mind of the theologian of the prologue, that's John, the creative word of God, the word of the Lord that came to the prophets has become personal in Jesus, who is the embodiment of divine revelation. Now, that's a lot to swallow. Those are the things that you really have to mull over before they become real for you. Jesus is divine wisdom, pre-existent, but now come among men to teach them and give them life. Not the Torah, the law, but Jesus Christ is the creator and source of light and life. He is the Memrak. That's another term for God's word in Hebrew, God's presence among men. And yet, even though all these strands are woven into the Johannine

[23:39]

concept of the word, this concept remains a unique contribution of Christianity. It is beyond all that has gone before, just as Jesus is beyond all who have gone before. And one of the ways in which it's beyond, of course, is that the word has become not only personal, but incarnate, become a human person. But secondly, that the word is unitive, is completely and unconditionally unitive. That is, that it contains absolutely everything. It is the meeting point, the meeting place and the source of absolutely everything. This word which is in the bosom of God, this word which is in God, and in which God dwells, and which is God, as John says. Okay, now, Brown just mentioned that Jesus is divine wisdom, and that would send us off on a whole other track. Divine wisdom, the Sophia of the Old Testament, which, by the way, is feminine,

[24:39]

by golly. And if you think about that sufficiently, it will enrich John's gospel a lot for you. Somewhere here among my papers, I've got a bunch of correlations between the prologue of John and the wisdom tradition. And in that book of Dodd, an interpretation of the of the fourth gospel period, Dodd does some of that, but he does it with the Greek, so it's not that helpful if you don't know the Greek. But on page 274, 275, he does some of this. But let me read you just a few expressions from the wisdom literature and see if they resonate for you with the gospel of John. I'll do it a little bit in order, that is, following the sequence of the prologue itself.

[25:41]

If you've got that sheet in front of you, or if you have the text of the prologue in front of you, it will make better sense. Remember, in the beginning was the Word. The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old. This is from Proverbs. Ages ago I was set up as the first before the beginning of the earth. From eternity in the beginning he created me, and for eternity I shall not cease to exist. This wisdom existed in the beginning just as the Word existed in the beginning with God, and wisdom was God somehow too. So these are one thing. But remember that this is feminine. This is Sophia. I will tell you what wisdom is and how she came to be. I will trace her course from the beginning of creation. Okay. And she comes from the mouth of God. She, that is, wisdom, is the book of the commandments of God and the law that endures forever. All who hold her fast will live, and those who forsake her will die.

[26:42]

Turn, O Jacob, and take her. Walk toward the shining of her light. Wisdom is the law. Wisdom is the Word, the Word of God, the Torah. O God of my fathers and Lord of mercy, who has made all things by your Word and by your wisdom has formed man. Almost synonymous. Give me the wisdom that sits by your throne. This wisdom which is in creation, out of which all things come, and then which becomes a friend, the companion of man. All wisdom comes from the Lord and is with him forever. For she, that is, wisdom, is a breath of the power of God and a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty. Therefore, nothing defiled enters into her. For she is a reflection of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God and an image of his goodness. You may remember that first chapter of the letter to the Colossians, which comes from here, but it also resonates in John, in John's prologue. Wisdom and glory, somehow, have something very much in common. And we'll find that the Word incarnate manifests its glory, and that glory is full of what?

[27:48]

Grace and truth. And the truth which has grace, the truth which has this aura of grace, the truth which bears with it grace, the truth which comes in the fullness and freedom of grace, is wisdom, is Sophia. The mysterious interplay, therefore, between Logos and Sophia, which will be commemorated appropriately with our two trailers. I saw that wisdom is more profitable than folly, even as light is more profitable than darkness. Wisdom is very frequently compared with light. The path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, which shines brighter and brighter until full day. The way of the wicked is like deep darkness. They do not know what they've stumbled. He who finds me finds life. For in him was the light, and the light was the life of men. All who hold her fast will live, and those who forsake her will die.

[28:53]

Turn, O Jacob, and take her. Walk toward the shining of her light. Send her forth from the holy heavens, and from the throne of your glory send her, that she may be with me in toil, and that I may learn what is pleasing to you. Wisdom came to make her dwelling place among the children of man, and found no dwelling place. That's from Enoch. Remember, and he, the word became flesh and made his dwelling place among us, pitched his tent among us, eskenoson, that Greek word, which means pitched his tent, pitched his tabernacle, made his dwelling among us, reflecting wisdom. And he said, make your dwelling in Jacob, and in Israel receive your inheritance. In the holy tabernacle I ministered before him, and so I was established in Zion, et cetera. A lot of those you'll recognize in the liturgy of Our Lady, in the liturgy of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who in some way has this kind of non-bounded relationship with wisdom too.

[29:56]

Okay, now we have to change our tune and talk about the structure of the prologue. Now you have, almost all of you have that thing from Culpeper, right? The chiastic structure of the prologue. And you also have a sheet on which you have the whole prologue strung out. That is one page in which the prologue has sort of been spread out. Now if you take those two together, let's see, because he's only got a few Greek words there for you, but let's see how that works out. And you may want to do some pencil work on your prologue sheet at this point. I've colored mine up like this, okay? So you've got that little, you don't have it, probably some, I'll have to make some more of those. That little half page which has got the chiastic structure on it, that kind of horseshoe view,

[31:00]

and then the page which has the prologue spread out. Now let's look at the two together and see what we get. I'd advise you to mark up the page with the prologue on it, because otherwise it's hard to keep it in front of you. Now the center of his chiasm there is verse 12b, all right? Now I haven't separated 12a, b, and c there. It goes like this, verse 12. But to all who received him, that's a. B is he gave power to become children of God. You see that? And c, it's in a different order actually in the Greek than it is on your page there in English. C is who believed in his name. We're in verse 12 of the prologue and separating it into a, b, and c.

[32:24]

So the center is b, he gave power to become children of God. A is but to all who received him, and c is who believed in his name, okay? So a and c are symmetrical around b, which is their center. Now b is not only the center of verse 12, it's the center of the whole prologue. According to the scheme. Then corresponding you have 11 and 13. 11 and 13 are f and f prime. Or f1 and f2, if you like. So those match. 11 and 13, he came to his own home and his own people received him not, and then who were born out of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man. There's a kind of a selection there. Those who did not receive him. And then e and e prime are 9 and 10. That's e.

[33:26]

E is 9 and 10. And e prime is 14. The true light that enlightens every man was coming into the world. He was in the world and the world was made through him, yet the world knew him not. That's e. And e prime. And the word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth. We have beheld his glory. Glory as of the only son from the father. Now in 9 and 10, in e you have the light, and in e prime you have the glory. The glory which emanates from the word incarnate. And those two correspond. And d and d prime. D is three verses, 6, 7 and 8. And d prime is 15. Now it's very easy to see the parallel between those, because those are the

[34:28]

sort of intrusions about John the Baptist, okay? They seem to interrupt the progress of the prologue itself. There was a man sent from God whose name was John, I'm sure. And in 15, John bore witness to him and cried. And then the prologue proceeds in each case. D and d prime. Let's see. That's what that is. C and c prime. C is 4 and 5, verses 4 and 5. In him was life and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. Let's see. And c prime is, and from his fullness we have all received grace upon grace. Now in that notion of life being in him, and in that notion of fullness in verse 16, you have a good parallel. Especially since we have received that fullness. This is something that can come into us, something that can dwell in us.

[35:28]

Therefore it's life, as well as light. Okay, b is verse 3. All things were made through him and without him was not made anything that was made. And b prime. For the law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. Now what you've got here is the first creation and the new creation. And in the middle is Moses. All things were made through him. That's the original creation. And in 17, there's this intermediate of the law through Moses, which is not a new creation. Which is not a new creation. It's only a temporary provisional kind of structure and expression of God in the world. And then comes Jesus with grace and truth, which constitutes somehow the new creation. And then we'll have to see what grace and truth mean. And finally, a is simply verses 1 and 2.

[36:31]

And a prime is verse 18. 1 and 2, in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. He was in the beginning with God and that's the beginning of the prologue. And 18, no one has ever seen God face to face. And that refers especially to Moses, who is supposed to have seen God. The only son who is in the bosom of the father, he has made him known. Now, we're going to fool with part of that, that he has made him known verse afterwards, because there's another translation of that. And the other translation is, he has opened the way. Which makes a lot of sense in pulling the thing together, pulling the prologue together. Because it refers back directly to that statement about the only son being in the bosom of the father. I think what's really happening there is that the word was with God in the beginning,

[37:33]

and who in his human terms at the end of the prologue is expressed as being in the bosom of the father, has opened the way to us into this dwelling in the bosom of the father. Now that has all kinds of resonances on symbolic levels. That's the opening of paradise. It's the reopening of the closed gate of Eden, before which the fiery sword had been put, and so on. It's the opening of the human heart. It's the piercing of the body of Jesus. It's Thomas in John 20 looking into the open side of Jesus and saying, my Lord and my God. And at the same time, it's the breathing of the spirit of God into man by Jesus in the same chapter, John 20. So what it is, is a mutual eminence, a mutual indwelling, an opening of the human person to a new reality, which is at the same time an opening of the whole of creation to a new reality, to a new indwelling of God. And as it were, the opening of God to penetration by the human person, so that the human person

[38:37]

can dwell in God. Remember where Jesus says, in my father's mansion there are many houses, there are many rooms in my father's place. Okay, so it's the opening of God and it's the opening of us to what constitutes really a new creation. In other words, the creation first is out there and then God talks to it, as it were. At least this is the way the story goes in the Bible. The creation is out there and God addresses his word to it through the prophets and so on. Some people hear, some people don't. The part of the creation that can hear, that can relate to God, is the human person. Okay, that's the temple of God. That's somehow got this capacity, but it's somehow still sealed. So you've got all this ritual mediation. And then what happens is that God manifests himself in this world and then brings together the two, so that one dwells within the other. And this is the new creation. The new creation is the imminent creation, the unitive creation, in which the creation is no longer out there, but is inside God. Now, we go to the center of the prologue, which is verse 12.

[39:39]

Now, is this really the center as far as meaning is concerned, or only as far as structure, as far as geometry is concerned? To all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God. Now, that's the key. From creation, you move to generation, okay? From the creation which is out there, which is outside God, and God is outside it, at least, you know, as the Bible has it. You move to a new creation, which is generation, which is generation. In other words, it's a creation, a personal creation by God in his one son, in his one child, in which you are actually generated with the being of God, a unitive creation. Unitive creation is generation of the son by the father. There's only one son who is in the bosom of the father, who dwells within the father, who is in God, who is God. There's only one son. And instead of being just created out there through faith, through this light that comes into the world, that comes into us, we are enabled to receive this, to accept it, and

[40:44]

to be generated by God. Now, hardly anybody talks about this but Eckhart, Meister Eckhart. He seems to be the one who's bored through to the center of this truth, and so it's for good reason that he's being brought back into light today. From creation to generation. So the two great marks of this new creation are, first of all, that it's imminent, that it's unitive, that in this word, which dwells in God and which is the son of God, all things are together. All things are together in God, in the one, in the union, in the unity, which is God. All things are together there. And the new creation is precisely that being opened up to us, within us, and within the creation itself, as the center of the creation, as the center of us. That being opened up so that we can be there, so that we can be in that. Now, symbolically, paradise, symbolically Eden, which we're going to find at the end of John's Gospel, represents precisely that. The gate which has been closed is the gate of the center, is the gate of the unitive place, where all things are one.

[41:46]

And the only place that that can be is in God. God is the communion in which all things are one. And here the first letter of John is very important, where immediately he talks about koinonia, that koinonia is this fact. So read the first bit of the first letter of John, and then if you have the Bible of Jerusalem, read the note on that, the note on that fellowship, which in the note it says this is the essential, the secret, the core of John's mysticism, this union with God, which is actually not just union with God, it's the union which is God, and in which everything is one. So the first mark is this unitive mark. We said that was going to be our key in reading John's Gospel. The second point about this new creation is that it is generative, that it's generation. In other words, something new is being somehow brought into existence, and this something new is coming out of God, dwelling in God, to this unitive reality, but coming out of God, emerging from God, like light out of darkness. But darkness now, which is not ignorance or evil, or simply the chaos, the cosmos, but

[42:48]

darkness which is the mystery of God. So it's generative, it's new being, something new coming into existence, and that something new coming into existence is, as it were, the Word which is being spoken, which is being generated at every point, the Son, the Child, and in the Child, in the Son, the children, and therefore it is us. So this idea, the freedom of being generated at every moment, that's what Jesus is talking about in that passage from Matthew, where he says, come to me all you who are heavy burdened, and take my yoke upon you, because it's right, my burden is right. Just before that he said, nobody knows the Father except the Son, and those who know the Son will choose to reveal it. So that light burden is to be in the Son, and to be generated afresh at every moment, coming into existence at every moment, and not just created out there, but created inside God, created with the life of God, born inside the life of God at every moment. That's the freedom which Jesus brings, but which isn't limited to us, which is also a new existence of the creation itself.

[43:50]

In other words, we are supposed to know this, and to be this, and to propagate this in the center of the creation. That's why we're supposed to be light in the world, but a light which doesn't just shine in the world, but which transforms, as our own being is being transformed. Transformation sounds a little laborious, but generation is something else. Generation is for children. Remember where Jesus says, well, I thank you, Father, because you didn't reveal this to the smart ones, to the wise ones, but you revealed it to little children. Little children are those who are simple enough to be generated at every moment, or poor enough, if you prefer that language, to be brought into existence at every moment in that freedom and that communion, which is the very being of God. And that's what I think John is writing about. But see, the prologue condenses it all here in phrases which at first are a little bit opaque, but which turn into pure light. Yes? How does this idea of the generation relate to the Eastern demonization? Okay, I think maybe it goes a little deeper than the Eastern idea of demonization, because

[44:58]

that comes from a kind of sophisticated philosophical adaptation of the Biblical reality. Now when I say East, what I mean, I mean something very jumbled and imprecise. Both the Christian East, to a certain extent, but even more so the non-Christian East, Hinduism and Buddhism. What they're after is that unity of experience, not in community, not collectively, not the koinonia, that secondary thing. They don't care about that. It's only a meme. But experience by the individual, that other realization. The history of the Eastern demonization, because it's over history, it's history itself. Yes? It's in the cosmos, it's in the cosmos, it's in the universe, it's in the cosmos. Maybe it's not so real, but experience, experience-wise, that's what we've lost. Okay, so that being and becoming, I won't say much more about it, but I want to mention something else here in the prologue before we end the prologue, and that is those two

[46:02]

terms grace and truth. This fellow Kilwin, the Steinerean that I mentioned to you last time, is extremely good on grace and truth. I think there's a lot more to that grace and truth than appears in the commentaries. You've got it twice in the prologue, so it's emphasized by John in the prologue. First, in verse 14, And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth. We have beheld his glory, glorious of the only Son from the Father. Now that, I mentioned that I guess yesterday, but the Word became flesh and grace and truth may be described, this is here for some paper's purpose, but I want to read this for you. I don't know if I've got this here. And then, the Word becomes flesh, the Word which is flesh becomes flesh which is world. And then, the Word becomes flesh, and we can consider this as the essential truth that

[47:06]

we encourage, so that it expands itself further and explodes as it is chronicled, which is expressed as glory, and that fullness is expressed in two other terms, one of which is truth, and the other of which is grace, grace and truth. Aletheia and charis, the two words of John in the prologue. Now, I think that here almost is the birth of the whole symbolic system of John at its core, and that the truth is that the revelation for John's truth, aletheia, or aletheia, I never know my aletheia, is the revelation, the unveiling of that which is. Okay, so it relates directly to what we've just been talking about, that being and becoming. Truth is the unveiling, the revelation, the discovery, and in Jesus primarily, centrally in Jesus, of that which is, simply of that which is.

[48:07]

Now, that which is is God, and everything else only is kind of, you know, fragile and sensitive, is really God, is the revelation of that which is. Now, what's this charis, this grace? Grace, and it's hard to get these two terms, to see the correlation between them, but I believe that grace is precisely not the revelation of that which is, but it's becoming into being. So, as truth relates to the being that we've just been talking about, so charis, grace, it relates to the becoming, but it's not just the becoming. Once again, we have to go back inside God as it were, where there is that which is, and there is that which emerges, that which is born, that which is becoming, because we believe that God is Trinity, and therefore, that there is generation in God, that there's something in the feeling of God, a birth that's always happening in God. And we get that correctly, that birth is the Word. There's one birth that's always happening, it's the one thing that's happening in the

[49:09]

world, there's one birth that's happening, and that's it, there's a coming into being, in spite of that being what is. Now, these are how things you can get across in the day when I think I'm going to reflect on them, I think. So, there's that which is, the fundamental element of the rock of being, and there's that which is, is not, and comes into being, and that's even in God. So, what these two terms are doing, once again, is taking us back inside God. Back inside God is when there is simply being, there is simply the absolute, the I am, which has no second, and we somehow believe in the being of everything that is. And then there is something that's out of that I am, out of, as it were, out of nothing, seemingly, out of darkness, the deep darkness is the mystery of death, comes into being. And these two realities somehow contain everything. You find them in the creation, but radically, in their roots, you find them in God. I would suggest that these somehow relate to, also to, masculine and feminine, and that if Jesus says to Pilate, yes, I am a king, it is for this that I have come into the world

[50:13]

to give witness to the truth, and all those who are of the truth hear my words, what he's expressing is not only his vocation, but he's expressing, in a sense, the vocation of man, insofar as man is a symbolic reality in the world, an origin to the Jenga problem, to what extent is everybody masculine and feminine at this point? Because everybody is, and what we're talking about here can be generalized to everybody. But on one side, you've got this revelation of truth, also in an alien, in a hostile world, the unitive truth, the truth which is God. On the other side, you've got this grace, which is the generation of something new, which is the pouring out of mercy, which is always going beyond bounds, which is the salvation of the sinner, which is bringing that which is not into being, as Paul talks about, which pours out, which is something, which is gratuitous, something coming out of nothing, which is love, which is the spring of love, or of joy, or of whatever at every moment, that's charis, grace. So these two things are somehow matching realities, and we're going to find them reflected later

[51:19]

on in the symbolism, the central symbolism of John's Gospel, especially where Jesus relates to women. Look at where he relates to the Samaritan woman, or look at the wedding feast of Cana, or look at the anointing of Jesus by Mary to Bethany, or look at Jesus encountering Mary Magdalene in the garden in John 20. And each time you're going to find that woman somehow represents that which is poured out, represents charis, represents grace, represents this kind of spontaneous issue, either in terms of wine, or in terms of the ointment, or in terms of the spring of the well of living water, or in terms of magnolent tears, or whatever. Whereas Jesus tends to represent the other dimension, the truth, the truth which is flowering into this fullness through its becoming also, manifesting also, releasing also, it seems even receiving also, this grace. And that's his glory, the fullness which is expressed in us too. Well, that's Fagina also. If you read some of this, we've got another copy of this over there, I'll put it on

[52:25]

the shelf so you can get an idea. It's his chapter 10 where he goes into those terms. Now I can't buy everything that he says, but he gives you some very deep indications as to what's to be found inside those notions of grace and truth. Is that why you say that wisdom is more feminine, because it's like closer to grace? Okay, let me try to make this contrast. That let us say that law, the law that comes through Moses, is truth without grace. Now that's an exaggeration, but remember how Paul contrasts law with grace? And you can't expect those terms to stay still and move from John to Paul. You can't expect the word grace to hold still. Not exactly, but it's a very close resemblance. So law, especially the law in the terms in which it's hardened, it's become parsaic law, it's become your legalistic, literalistic, rigid law, is truth without grace. Now Jesus comes into the situation of truth without grace. Now what he brings is truth with grace, truth which is grace, this incredible reality of

[53:31]

a truth which is grace, of a rock which is water. Okay, now he has to die in order to pour out this, in order to pour out this, as it were, liquid, okay, into the world. And that's wisdom. The wisdom is truth which is grace, which we tend to think of as a feminine reality, but I said that the feminine refers to this fact. What Jesus is, actually, is both of them together. The truth which is grace, and which can't be contained within any words, because words are truth. Words are on that level of logos, on that level of cognition, on that intellectual level. So you've got to get to the other level of pure gratuity, which is also experience, which is also union, which is also fullness in some way, in order to express this. That's why it's never quite in the words, because the words are always on this side. Grace is when the thing is real, it's not when it happens. It's the moment of existence, the moment of presence. So, wisdom is the synthesis, the integration of these two, and that's what Jesus is, and that's what finally he pours out, but he's got to die to do it, because this heart and

[54:34]

truth here, let us say, this heart and truth here, rejects and refuses the truth which is grace, because this tends to center itself in ego, and to close itself with the world, close itself as a world self-contained, self-centered in its God. But once you get this over, you can't do it anymore, because it's total freedom. When you're referring to wisdom in Sophia and all that stuff, it's on a Jewish tradition, and I think that might have been what confused him a little bit, too. He might not really understand that the Jewish concept of wisdom is found. That's right, yeah. Actually, the word Sophia is Greek, but it expresses a kakma in Hebrew, which is wisdom None of those passages I was reading a little while ago from the wisdom books, that's this woman who is wisdom, and who somehow is not separate from God. It's like God outside God, and nobody in the Old Testament understood how to express that,

[55:36]

how to express it precisely, but it's just there. Those are some of the later books of the Old Testament. Well, there's plenty of depth. I don't know if you could say philosophical depth. I think it did, really, but it was not philosophical language. See, the biblical language is not a philosophical language. It's got another kind of depth to it. I think it had a terrific, unitive depth to it, which was not conceptually defined. As soon as they started getting it into Greek, you'll find people trying to do that, like Philo, Philo the Jew, who wrote in Greek and tried to make a kind of Greek-nosis out of this biblical reality. So, the depth is another kind of depth in that wisdom literature. Not philosophical. It's got all kinds of philosophical ramifications, but they're not explored in the Bible itself.

[56:41]

Okay, thank you. That's probably enough for today.

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