Chiasmus in the Prologue of John's Gospel

The "Prologue" of the Gospel of John employs a chiastic structure. Indeed, biblical writers of the Old and New Testaments used this structure to help lead our attention to their main point. The only problem is that we moderns are almost completely unacquainted with "chiasmus".

"Chiasmus" is named for the Greek letter X (chi). To help explain, here is an example from 1John 4:7-8 (an example borrowed from the The Shape of Biblical Language by John Breck):

A: for love is of God,
   B: and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.
   B': The one who does not love does not know God,
A': for God is love.

A and A' relate to each other, and B and B' relate to each other. If there were more phrases, the order would be something like A, B, C, D, E, D', C', B', A', working toward the center and then working back out from it, with similarities in D and D', the C and C', and so on. Maybe you can see why the X is used to name this method: though rarely visual, the writers build a conceptual X made out of meaning, working toward the center and expanding back out.

An understanding of this type of structure will help lead us to the author's main point. In the the above-mentioned book, Father John Breck says this about the Prologue:

"If we read the Johannine prologue according to its inherent chiastic structure, however, the tension between vv. 9 and 14 is resolved, and we discover that the author's focus is not what it may at first have seemed. The chiastic center of John 1:1-18 is not v. 14, but vv. 12-13: "But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God..." The focus of the "literal sense" of this passage, then, is not incarnational but soteriological."

That is, the "literal sense" of this passage is focused not on God becoming flesh, but more on the salvation of man. But of course, verses 9 and 14, on each side of that central purpose, are affirmations that God's incarnation in the flesh is how this salvation is worked out.

Back out one step from those verses, verses 8 and 15, you will see references to John the Baptist. Keep backing out, and you will continue finding parallels till you hit

verse 1,
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

and verse 18,
No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.

And what beautiful bookends that makes. St. John, the Apostle and Theologian, one of the three closest disciples to Christ, is telling us that the same unity seen between the Word and God can be the reality between us and God, for though "no one has ever seen God", God himself has come to us, and made known to us the previously unknowable God, for he himself is God.

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