"The light" in the prologue

[B Tucker]

Hi Booker,

Maybe a better example of how a true convertible proposition works would be the sentence:
The Son of God is the Savior of the world.
Both have the same referent. You can turn the sentence around, and it will still be true:
The Savior of the world is the Son of God.
But that doesn’t imply that Son and Savior are interchangeable:
The Savior of God is the Son of the world.

Determining whether “the life was the light of men” is a convertible proposition only involves two things. Do they have the same referent? Yes. Are they on equal footing (the alternative would be if one was merely a subset of the other)? Yes.

So A=B, therefore B=A. The only mistake was thinking that A=the life, and B=the light. Wrong. B= “the light of men.” With that understanding, they are a convertible proposition. The life was the light of men. The light of men was the life. Other than a very slight change in emphasis those two sentences are identical.



I’m not quite sure what you mean by “it leaves to phws in verse 9 without a referent. J.R. is not changing how you interpret verse 9 at all. He’s just saying that when you get to verse 10 and the masculine pronoun, we’ve come full circle and returned to a discussion of the Logos.
We started with the Logos, narrowed our vision to focus on two attributes of the Logos, life and light (or three, truth), now we’ve broadened the scope back out to the Logos. The referent has never changed, we’ve just been turning it over in our hands and looking at different aspects of it. I think I would agree with J.R., both because our eyes are drawn back to the Logos in the middle of 10 by the phrase, “the world was made through him,” and because we’re finished with the light aspect. There’s no more mention of light or allusion to light (other than “we have seen his glory” in verse 14). Now whether John chose auton, masculine, because it is the same gender as Logos, or because it is the same ad sensum gender as Christ, is something we would have to ask John.

But isn't J.R. saying that the antecedent of αὐτὸν in verse 10 is ὁ λόγος instead of το φως in verse 9 (see his post 11)? If I mis-read his post I apologize. That's what I disagree with J.R.. Certainly I would agree with all here that το φως of verse 9 is ὁ λόγος .We have established that the antecedent of αὐτὸν in verse 10 is το φως in verse 9 . I thuoght J.R. was going against this grain of thought.

In thr peace of Christ,

[BookerG]

Auton in verse 10 could have to phws as its antecedent, if it is constructio ad sensum. But I agree with J.R. that the antecedent is more likely the Logos, because of the previous pronoun. "The world was made through him." Was the world made through the light or through the Word? I know Christ is the referent of both, but it much more clearly fits the thought of the chapter that the world was made through the Logos. And if autw is the Logos, then the auton that follows is as well.

[B Tucker]

Auton in verse 10 could have to phws as its antecedent, if it is constructio ad sensum. But I agree with J.R. that the antecedent is more likely the Logos, because of the previous pronoun. "The world was made through him." Was the world made through the light or through the Word? I know Christ is the referent of both, but it much more clearly fits the thought of the chapter that the world was made through the Logos. And if autw is the Logos, then the auton that follows is as well.

O.K.

But that pronoun is just as applicable to το φως as it is to ὁ λόγος since το φως is λόγος . Would you say that the antecedent of auton is at verse 2 (ὁ λόγος ) ? That to me seems impossibly strained, miles away , since the immediate context of auton in verse 10 is το φως. I've checked Wallace on this issue and he seems to agree with me:

20tn Or “He was the true light, who gives light to everyone who comes into the world.” The participle ἐρχόμενον (ercomenon) may be either (1) neuter nominative, agreeing with τὸ φῶς (to fw"), or (2) masculine accusative, agreeing with ἄνθρωπον (anqrwpon). Option (1) results in a periphrastic imperfect with ἦν (hn), ἦν τὸ φῶς… ἐρχόμενον, referring to the incarnation. Option (2) would have the participle modifying ἄνθρωπον and referring to the true light as enlightening “every man who comes into the world.” Option (2) has some rabbinic parallels: The phrase “all who come into the world” is a fairly common expression for “every man” (cf. Leviticus Rabbah 31.6). But (1) must be preferred here, because: (a) In the next verse the light is in the world; it is logical for v. 9 to speak of its entering the world; (b) in other passages Jesus is described as “coming into the world” (6:14, 9:39, 11:27, 16:28) and in 12:46 Jesus says: ἐγὼ φῶς εἰς τὸν κόσμον ἐλήλυθα (egw fw" ei" ton kosmon elhluqa); (c) use of a periphrastic participle with the imperfect tense is typical Johannine style: 1:28, 2:6, 3:23, 10:40, 11:1, 13:23, 18:18 and 25. In every one of these except 13:23 the finite verb is first and separated by one or more intervening words from the participle.

I think το φως as antecedent of auton agrees with the natural flow and grammar of verses 9-10.

In peace,