John 1:13

[See also the "General Considerations on the Prologue" in the comments of John 1:18.]

Ver. 13. “ Who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. ”

It seems, at the first glance because of the past verb: who were born that the apostle places regeneration before faith, which is, of course, impossible. But, as Meyer rightly observes, the relative οἵ (who), does not refer to the words τοῖς πιστεύουσιν (those who believe), but, by a constructio ad sensum, to the neuter substantive τέκνα θεοῦ (children of God). John 1:13 unfolds this term: children of God, first in a negative relation, by means of three cumulative phrases which have a somewhat disdainful and even contemptuous character. Does John mean thereby to stigmatize the false confidence of the Jews in their character as children of Abraham? This does not seem to me probable. Three expressions to set forth the idea of the theocratic birth would be useless. Besides, the Prologue has too lofty a flight, too universal a bearing, to admit of so paltry a polemic. John means rather to set forth with emphasis the superiority of the second creation which the Logos comes to accomplish on the foundation of the first. There are two humanities, one which propagates itself in the way of natural filiation; the other, in which the higher life is communicated immediately by God Himself to every believer. It is, therefore, ordinary birth, as the basis of natural humanity, which John characterizes in the first three expressions. The first phrase: not of blood, denotes procreation from the purely physical point of view; the blood is mentioned as the seat of natural life (Lev 17:1).

The plural αἱμάτων has been applied either to the duality of the sexes, or to the series of human generations. It should rather be interpreted as the plural γάλαξι, in the words of Plato (Legg. x., p. 887, D): ἔτι ἐν γάλαξι τρεφόμενοι the plural suggesting the multiplicity of the elements which form the blood (see Meyer). The two following phrases are not subordinate to the first, as St. Augustine thought, who, after having referred the latter to the two sexes, referred the two others, the one to the woman and the other to the man. The disjunctive negative, neither...nor (οὔτε... οὔτε), would be necessary in that case. The last two expressions designate, like the first, the natural birth; but this, while introducing, in the one phrase, the factor of the will governed by the sensual imagination (the will of the flesh), in the other, that of a will more independent of nature, more personal and more manlike, the will of man. There is a gradation in dignity from one of these terms to the other. But, to whatever height the transmission of natural life may rise, this communication of life- power cannot pass beyond the circle traced out at the first creation that of the physico-psychical life. That which is born of the flesh, even in the best conditions, is, and remains flesh. The higher, spiritual, eternal life is the immediate gift of God. To obtain it, that divine begetting is needed by which God communicates His own nature. The limiting phrase, ἐκ θεοῦ (of God), contains, in itself alone, the antithesis to the three preceding phrases. By its very conciseness it expresses the beauty of that spiritual birth which is altogether free from material elements, from natural attraction, from human will, and in which the only cooperating forces are God acting through His Spirit on the one side, and man's faith on the other.

But how are we to explain the virtue of this faith which fits the man to be begotten of God? Does it have in itself, in its own nature, the secret of its power? No, for it is only a simple receptivity, a λαμβάνειν, receive: its virtue comes from its object. The apostle had already intimated this by the words: “who believe on His name; ” and he now expressly declares it: