A Diction of Matter
A Matter of Diction
A reading of John 1:1

"In the beginning was the Word." So begins the Gospel of John, already distinguishing its creation story as something different, centered not so much on the creator or the creation, but on the Word, whatever this word may be. This notion of The Word separates John's creation telling from other Judeo-Christian creation stories, such as those found in Genesis and in the later Zohar. At the same time, the creation story of John finds it very much bound to the earlier Genesis account and, to some extent, to the later Zohar text. All begin with the seeming same thing viewed from different angles -- Genesis with God invoking light with a simple subjunctive, Zohar with the King bringing forth the light, and John with the Word. If indeed the word brought about the light, was the invocation of light, or the light was the word, or all were god, depending on which text you read, the stories are very much the same viewed in very different lights. Therefore if the peculiarities of John's creation, the obsession with this Word among other things, mark it as different from other versions, it stands to reason that these differences stand at the essence of what the passage is about, for otherwise the text of Genesis could stand alone without need to tell the story again. Studying the creation story within John, we hope to see at least in some small way why it is as it is, what it means, and why it is phrased in such a peculiar manner.

And so we return to the Word. This is no simple mandate from God, for it is there, in the beginning, and in the beginning, it is "With God."(John 1:1). Thus it cannot be simply the Genesis God's command for light, for Genesis describes God in the world, sweeping over the face of the waters, all before he utters the command for light. For insight into what exactly this word is, if not a command, we must look at the completion of the first line: "the word was God." Seemingly this statement either contradicts the statement made just previous (the word was with god) or it is BLINDINGLY obvious -- after all, if the word was god himself it would be very difficult for the god to not be with god, much as it is extremely difficult to see a situation as if one were not observing it. Leaving aside these interpretations for a moment, however (rest assured we will return to them) consider another option which makes the statement somewhat less confusing. What if the phrase, "The word was god," is meant to say not that the Word as an entity was identical with God as an entity but rather that the Word as an entity was identical with God as a word, as a name. Thus, in the beginning was the name of god, and the name of god was with god, the third phrase becoming simply a definition of what this word was. All of the sudden, the statement appears nearly straightforward.

This reading of the phrase, "The word was God," is not without basis either. Consider Exodus 3:14, where God as the burning bush reveals his name to Moses, "I am who I am." It is here that God reveals his name -- or at least the aspect of his name that Moses is able to comprehend -- to be simply a statement of his own existence. If we are already considering the name of God to be the Word, consider reading it a step further, substituting God"s statement of his own existence for the word God after changing all of the Words to the word God. We are left with: "In the beginning God acknowledged himself. And God"s acknowledgement of self was with God, and God's acknowledgement of himself was God." So, we have an image of God calling himself into being at the beginning of things, and his calling himself into being no different from his self. Thus it collapses back to the original supposition and follows from it: If the name of god IS the creative act, and god is the creative act, and the name of god is the word, then the word IS god as well as being with him, and thus either reading of, "the word was God," now appears correct, the ambiguity only furthering the deep and inextricable link among God, his name, and creation.

But now, having found that our semantic argument, rather then letting us out of the problem of reconciling the Word being both with God and the same as God has thrust us back into it, we must deal with the repercussions of this. Having revealed that it is indeed possible for the Word to be God proper, we are lead to wonder how the Word can be with God as well. As stated above, this is a seemingly impossible task -- for God to be both himself and with himself implied a certain ability to abstract the self from the self. But how can self be abstracted from self and remain of a single essence, that is, remain a single thing that can be called God, and not a dyad of God and Word, separate. We have already seen part of the possibilities of why this is in our exploration of the above semantic question. The name of God is not simply a name, it is not simply a pointer to another thing that one can use to talk about that thing. The name of God, instead, acts. The name acts because it not only implies the existence of God but actually spells out God"s own invocation of self; each time the name of God is spoken, God brings himself, in some manner, into existence -- each utterance of the name of God is tied to creation -- depending on one"s reading, it is conceivable that the speaking of the name of God is enough to bring another universe into existence. The fundamental point is that the name of God in this scenario is recursive: the spoken name of God is enough to bring both god and a universe into existence, and that universe will contain the word that is the name of god which is enough to bring another universe into existence, and on ad infinitum. The existence of God himself along with the Word, the name of God, can in this manner imply a sort of duality that is not a duality. For, in this system of self referentiality, even if you were to abstract God from the Name of God, or vice versa, each would imply each other despite the separate naming -- in a sense the naming of God as being WITH this Word/Name of God to imply a single entity, coupled with the statement of the equality between the word and god (which may be read as a statement of DUAL equality, naming the Word as both God and the Name of God) which implies a duality is the best way to imply the nature of a self-referential God -- a God which creates a thing separate from him, and yet manages only to create in that separate thing himself.

It is only a short step from here to a Christology, for after all the Word in John is used as a metaphor for Christ, though I use the term metaphor loosely in this place where descriptions can be both metaphoric and literal. What sort of Christology would it be, however? We have Jesus Christ who is the Word, and thus was both in the beginning with God, and was God, and created, or perhaps creates, God. However, this system allows a dual system of God and Christ to exist and a single entity, God implying Christ and Christ implying God. Indeed, it seems to be a major step toward a Trinitarian philosophy and a very convincing way to give God and Christ the same essence while allowing them to remain distinct. Christ is, in this text, a Word to be sure -- the part of a concept that can be manipulated and felt and dealt with in the world -- but he is a special word that by its very nature is what it describes because it by its very existence CREATES what it describes just as what it describes implies it because it creates it. It is a system outside of time intersecting with time and causality, both dictating and dictated by the world that it creates.