2.1 Pre-Johannine Understanding of the Concept of Logos

With a concise, but also definition-like formulation, Hans Urs von Balthasar writes the following: “Jesus Christ is the Word. The Word and the language par excellence. The word and language of God in the word and language of man. Mortal man as the language of the immortal God”.² The fact that Jesus Christ is to be identified with the “Word and language of God and man” however cannot be assumed without an account of the pre-Johannine use of the term lógos. Unlike the evangelists Matthew and especially Luke, who provide a comparative wealth of details about the conception and birth of Jesus, John restricts his account of the Incarnation, the becoming of Lógos, to eighteen verses in the Prologue of his Gospel, which can also be regarded as a table of contents of his entire work. To paraphrase Klinger: “The prologue contains the overall program of the Gospel: it has a wisdom character and is a hymn to that Word who was with God, who pitched his tent among men and connects earth with heaven. Jesus is the child of God’s wisdom. He reveals it to all”.³ Verse 14 is usually seen as the center of the prologue, the basic concept of which is the lógos: “Καὶ ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο – And the Word became flesh”. It remains the task of the following considerations to discuss in more detail whether the concept of lógos in v. 14 alone, or exclusively in connection with v. 18b, constitutes the core content of the prologue. A brief overview of the origin of this term and its reception in the Gospel of John proves necessary for this, without being able to go into detail here.

The Jewish-Hellenistic philosopher Philo of Alexandria († around 40 AD), who was influenced by middle Stoa and middle Platonism, is regarded as the direct mediator of the concept of lógos for Johannine use; however, Lógos has a much longer history of use in philosophy, as Dietzfelbinger notes:

This term [logos] has long been an important instrument of philosophical thought in Greece. Heraclitus of Ephesus (around 500 BC) was able to speak of the Logos that administers the universe, and Logos is understood less as a spoken word than as the epitome of the sensible and rational, and the Stoic school of philosophy understood Logos to be the world reason that constitutes and governs the world, which has also taken up residence in every human being.⁴

Philo of Alexandria interprets lógos with the Old Testament category of wisdom in such a way that he “often equates it with Old Testament wisdom (Prov. 8:22ff)”.⁵ Mack even goes one step further and says that Philo replaces Old Testament wisdom with lógos:

The understanding of wisdom as the lawfulness of the cosmos and its direct identification with the Torah as a cosmic principle can no longer be found in Philo. Instead, the Logos, again in his capacity as the Son of God, appears as desmos, orthós lógos and nomos. This also supports the assumption that wisdom has been replaced by the Logos.⁶

Between the two attributes of God, goodness and power, to which the terms God and Lord respectively correspond, Philo adds a third attribute that unites the two, which is wisdom, or lógos. Lógos has the mediating function in the creation of the world and is most like God, because he was conceived by God before creation, and in him, God placed all the ideas of the form and order of creation.⁷

In addition to Greek philosophy, the Jewish tradition on the one hand and Egyptian mythology on the other play a decisive role in Philo’s understanding of Lógos. For Philo, power as one of the Jewish categories for naming God is concentrated in Lógos. Rather, “the Logos is the totality of the God’s Powers,” and “in Philo, the Logos is always said to be ‘generated’ by God, never ‘made’”.⁸ It is an interpretative addition to the Old Testament categories that Philo undertakes. In this respect, he is also familiar with the concept of lógos from the Jewish tradition. However, what is innovative about Philo lies not only in his reinterpretation of these categories, but also in the fact that he ascribes personal traits to lógos that have no equivalent in the Old Testament, as Mack notes:

Since Deutero-Isaiah, Judaism has spoken of a word of power and command from God, which, not yet presented in a “hypostasized” way, emerges from God. The word plays an important role in relation to creation, but also appears in the context of the interpretation of the Exodus, which corresponds to the connection between the two ideas since Deutero-Isaiah.⁹

Like Greek philosophy and the Jewish tradition, the influence of Egyptian mythology on Philo’s understanding of Lógos must also be taken into consideration. Mack sees the influence of Egyptian mythology on Philo in his designation of Lógos as the son and eikòn of God, a clear reference to the Egyptian myth of Horus. Horus, the sun god in early Egyptian mythology, was symbolized as a falcon and had the sun and the moon as eyes. Therefore, Horus is regarded as the eikòn of his parents, namely Osiris, god of fertility, and his wife Isis, who was also his sister. Both originated from the earth (geb) and the sky (nut), which were born from the union of the twins (Shu and Tefnut / air and water) of the sun god Re. For Mack, the parallel drawn by Philo between Sophìa and Eikòn expresses this influence: “In Philo, the Logos as son of God is at the same time the Eikon of God”,¹⁰ and Mack goes on to add that “the designation of the Logos as son and Eikon of God is to be understood from the Horus mythology. Horus is the son and eikon of his father. Since he is also the sun god, this explains why the Logos is presented several times as a being of light”,¹¹ which indicates that Philo

[knows] the Plutarchian idea of the eikones as radiating parts of light. When it is said that the Logos as the archetype is “completely filled” with the light of God, it is obvious to think of Isis-Sophia-eikón, who is regarded as the reflection of the highest god of light on the one hand, but as the recipient of his parts of light on the other.¹²

In this philosophical-religious context, the prologue of John most likely emerged in the liturgical framework of early Christianity as a hymn or song to Christ, who is now identified with the lógos as his visible presence. As Ritt writes, “the rhythmically structured Johannine prologue (John 1:1–18) is an (early Christian) song that identifies Christ himself – in the absolute use of the word – with the personal logos”.¹³

2.2 The Birth of the Logos in John 1:14

Christianity’s expansion into the Hellenistic linguistic and cultural world, combined with the fact that the early Christian community incorporates the concept of lógos into its liturgical, aesthetic, and practice-oriented use of language, testifies to a double translation: On one hand, the good news is translated into the inner-worldly categories, and on the other, concrete language is also used as an expression of the human spirit and its history, thus translating it into the sphere of proclamation. What is at stake here is the moment of the inner-worldly generative between transcendence and immanence, between the historical and the meta-historical, that is, the eschatological. The application of the same term – Lógos – testifies that this is a generative event, which is not merely taken literally, but instead is given two radically new connotations that are unfamiliar to Greek philosophy in general and to Philo of Alexandria in particular. The first connotation, or the first designation of the Lógos relates to the transcendence of its Platonic or Middle Platonic intermediate sphere. The Lógos of early Christianity, that is, the Johannine prologue, is not simply an intermediate stage in the heaven-earth or God-human relationship but is called “God” right from the beginning of the prologue: “καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος – and the Word was God” (vs. 1b). The second designation relates to the concreteness of the flesh “καὶ ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγγένετο – And the Word became flesh” (v. 14). Although the sárx emphatically addresses the transience, the vulnerability, and the failure of history, it also expresses the moment of the absolutely new, that is, the generative: the self-translation of God into this transience, into this vulnerability, and into this failure of history. From here, an event is described that depicts something unprecedented, as indicated by the aorist medium ἐγένετο of γίνοµαι, where γίνοµαι means both becoming and happening as well as giving birth and begetting. This flesh-happening and flesh-being-born goes beyond the simple and definable designation of human. Flesh (sárx) represents a universally inclusive category that is, the lógos is born and this generative moment has an absolutely inclusive character, as Schnackenburg noted at the time:

The absolute σὰρξ is not simply a description for “man” […], but in Johannine thought, an expression for the earthly-bound (3:6), the transitory (6:63), the typical of a purely human way of being in contrast to everything heavenly-divine, divine-spiritual. For the evangelist, this is associated with the cosmic dualism of “below-above” (cf. 3:3; 8:23), “earth-heaven” (3:31); in the incarnate Logos, heaven descends to earth […]; for John, Christ in the flesh is not a representative of Adamic humanity as he is for Paul (cf. Rom 8:3), but he leads the earth-bound human beings home into the heavenly world of life and glory (cf. 6:62f; 14:6; 17:24) […]; the “flesh” assumed by the Logos in the incarnation is the prerequisite for the bloody death on the cross (cf. Jn 19:34; 1 Jn 5:6). Σὰρξ announces full humanity.¹⁴

In v. 14, it is the same lógos as in v. 1b, to which the conjunction καὶ (and) seems to point and does not have so much a linguistic, as a theological relevance and therefore an identificatory function between v. 1b and v. 14. In this respect, de Fraine also formulates both the identificatory and the corrective function of καὶ in relation to Philo: “If John was directly or indirectly aware of Philo’s teaching, he corrected it by emphasizing the essential equality of the Logos with the Father”.¹⁵ We must not overlook, however, that this “equality of essence” is a double equality: with the flesh and with the Father, a double-generative translation, already mentioned above. Moreover, Philo was the thinker – as indicated by Bos – who avoided the concept of “creating” in favor of the generative concept of “giving birth” in relation to the Lógos. Although for Philo, acknowledging that the Aristotelian concept of archê geneseôs can be attributed only to God, he interprets this Aristotelian idea through a Platonic lens, and emphasizes the being generated instead of being created of the Lógos.¹⁶

The theme of the generative in its various forms of expression of becoming, happening, giving birth – all concerning the new as discontinuity in relation to what has been and therefore concerning the absolute, which finds its most suitable and unifying formulation in the concept of the generative – permeates the entire Prologue of John. The verb γίνοµαι occurs ten times in the prologue. Up to v. 14, the generative mainly refers to the original character and thus to the generative action of the lógos: “Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος […] πάντα δι᾽ αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο, καὶ χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο οὐδὲ ἕν – In the beginning was the Word […] All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be” (1,1a. and 3a). The verses 11–13 also point in the same direction and with an explicitly generative meaning, thus transforming the generative from a merely gender-physical category into a cross-gender and universal theological category. In this respect, v. 14 represents both an interruption and a continuity of the previous descriptions of the lógos. The interruption consists in the fact that this verse reports on the event as the birth of the lógos itself. The archè, through which everything was (begotten), becomes flesh (sárx), and in this category of flesh (sárx) there is continuity with the universal meaning of the generative in the preceding verses. For, as has already been shown, flesh (sárx) forms the universally inclusive category in the prologue, whereby “universally inclusive” encompasses God as well as man and the world.

2.3 The Generative in John 1:18b

Against the background of what has been said thus far, the main topic of this article must now become our focus: the generative in John 1:18b, which reads: µονογενὴς θεὸς ὁ ὢν εἰς τὸν κόλπον τοῦ πατρὸς ἐκεῖνος ἐξηγήσατο, and in literal translation: The only-begotten God, the Being in the womb of the Father, this One has exposed him. First, we will examine whether and what connection exists between the words µονογενὴς (only-begotten), κόλπος (womb) and ἐξηγήσατο (has exposed). This requires a clarification of the word κόλπος, which is seen as a biblical-theological and meaning-explanatory link between the other two vocables for these considerations.

In contrast to γαστῆρ (γαστρì/Lk 1:31) and κοιλία (John 3:4; Matt 19:12; Luke 1:41, etc.), κόλπος not only has an anatomical meaning, but also a general physical, medical and affective meaning. In Homer’s Iliad, for example, Aphrodite responds to Hera’s request for love and desire by giving her “the colorful, shimmering girdle” and asking her: “There, hide in the womb (κόλπῳ) of the colorful, shimmering girdle”.¹⁷ Similarly, in Homer’s Iliad, κόλπος can be found in the meaning of “depth of the sea (θαλάσσης κόλπον)”.¹⁸ For Philo of Alexandria, the word κόλπος has both a medical and anthropological-generative meaning. In his work De specialibus legibus, Philo considers both organs – heart and sex organ – to be equally generative. The heart serves the generation of thoughts and the sex organ (κόλπος) generation of offspring.¹⁹ With an affective meaning²⁰ κόλπος is used in the Septuagint, namely “as an expression of marital union (Dt 13:7) […], of the woman’s belonging to the man (Sir 9:1), [and] of the man as belonging to the woman (Dt 28:56). – As an expression of loving care for a child (Nu 11:12)”.²¹ In the context of these considerations, the meaning of the tomb is also particularly relevant, which is described in various Greek epigraphs as “the κόλπος of mother earth”.²² All these meanings are based on three characteristics: fertility, femininity and affectivity, which can also just as easily be related to the masculine.

On this basis, the inclusion of these vocables from the Johannine prologue becomes all the more relevant. To be able to classify the following analysis accordingly, two exegetical positions will first be presented exemplarily. Schnackenburg sees in vs. 14–18 “a unified theological conception […] which evaluates the Exodus and Moses motifs typologically”.²³ When it comes to the expression “in the womb of the Father”, however, Schnackenburg is austere. For him, “in the womb of the Father” is merely “a figurative way of speaking by the evangelist […] which renders the ‘being with God’ of v. 1 in a different way”.²⁴ If this reading is advocated, then v. 18b would be nothing more than a synonymous repetition of v. 1 of the prologue, whose originality would consist in its imagery, and the entire real meaning of the sárx-centered prologue risks either being lost or being dismissed as irrelevant in its transformative radicality of the understanding of God and man.

The second is Dietzfelbinger’s position, which shows a theological interest in the connection between lógos and kólpos and is of particular importance for the perspective of this article. He suggests that lógos and kólpos are closely related, and therefore should be interpreted together, because the “Logos is the potency of God’s self-externalization”,²⁵ whereby “self-externalization” is used in connection with the term kólpos. From this second standpoint, one can conclude that the “only-begotten God (monogenès Theòs)” reveals, through his flesh, the profound essence of the Father to humanity and all of creation. This theme of generativity, introduced here, however, permeates the entire Gospel of John.

To understand the inner logic of the terms used by John, two fundamental facts must be emphasized. Firstly, reality manifests as historical concreteness. Secondly, universality encompasses the entirety of history and opens it toward the éschaton. This movement begins with the opening of the Father’s womb for the Incarnation, while simultaneously opening the flesh – interpreted in the previously elucidated sense of sárx – for the eternal. Universality, therefore, encompasses both temporality and eternity, as well as the categories of boundary, vulnerability and failure. It signifies not merely what can be grasped, but rather the mutual interpenetration of two or more realities. Throughout the Johannine prologue, especially in the terms sárx (flesh), kólpos (womb) and exegésato (has exposed), these two realities find expression. The Lógos as sárx of v. 14 reveals the generative and justifies the use of both kólpos and exegésato, which seems to be, from a linguistic perspective, without object. Notably, the subject of exegésato is not primarily the “only-begotten God (monogenès Theòs)”, but rather the Lógos as sárx and monogenès Theòs.

Building upon our discussion thus far leads us one step deeper into the topic of the generative. Specifically, the generative nature of the kólpos is even more pronounced through the concept of exegésato; however, the subject of exegésato also receives the same generative character for us precisely through the act of exposing it, that is, the Lógos sárx as the “only-begotten God” brings the Father to the side of the flesh for us, revealing him, leading his kólpos out (ex-egésato, Aor. Med. from ἡγέοµαι = to lead and ἐξ = out). This generativity of the lógos, therefore, consists in exegésato as a for-us of the economy of revelation and does not concern the primordial character of the Father in the dogmatic sense of “πηγαία θεότης (source of the Godhead)”,²⁶ which is of pseudo-Dionysian origin. This shows that the Johannine combination of kólpos and exegésato is not just a figurative synonymy of v. 1 of the prologue (Schnackenburg). Instead, it introduces a radically new understanding of God.

The Lógos serves as a mutual translator between us and the Father, to whom maternity and thus femininity are ascribed – apart from all the gender distinctions and male supremacy. For John, the God whom the lógos translates is both mother and father, in the real-universal (sárx) and not only in the comparative sense, as in Isa 49:15, in which a comparison is made between woman-mother and God in order to emphasize the supremacy of God.

The sárx as a real-universal category, which reveals the meaning of kólpos and exegésato, also indicates that John’s generative reference to the Father is not intended to deny the woman’s generative quality. Rather, he seeks to broaden his socio-cultural and religious perspective to encompass the universality of divine revelation in the sárx. The deliberate choice of kólpos over exclusively anatomical or birth-specific vocabulary such as γαστῆρ and κοιλία would be difficult to explain otherwise. From this, a direct connection between the “womb of the Father (eis tòn kólpon tou Patròs, John 1:18b)”, the “womb of Jesus (en tô kólpô tou Iesou, John 13:23)” and the womb of the earth (kólpos tes gés), that is, the open tomb (John 20:1b), is expressed through the dynamic of the “exit (apò Theoû exêlthen)” and the “return (pròs tòn Theòn hypágei, John 13:3)”, with which John introduces the Passion and Resurrection scene.

3.1 Theses on a New Inclusive Understanding of the Incarnation

The reflections in the first part have a clear intention. On the one hand, using a philosophical, linguistic and biblical-theological instrument, they attempt to trace the gospel back to its genuine and original, that is, its prophetic-symbolic (sacramental) meaning. In accordance with this meaning, on the other hand, the objective is to theologically emphasize the event of the Lógos in its inclusive universality. This universality is illustrated in two movements of the spirit: firstly, the leaving behind preconceived definitions of gender roles in the interpretation of Jesus’ message, due to the inadequacy of such rigid definitions; secondly, the tracing the understanding of the sacraments back to the Incarnation through a reinterpretation of the concept of tradition, which roots are not in the origin of the Church’s interpretation of Scripture. The Scripture itself means the transmission (tradere) of the message of salvation, of which the Gospel of John is an excellent example. Without this reciprocal translation of the Good News into the respective cultural spirit and vice versa – acknowledging the necessary historical and context-related differentiations that do not dismiss the prophetic or the eschatological-symbolic nature of the Gospel – the event of Lógos loses its actuality and therefore its vitality. It becomes nearly devoid of existential impact. Even the concept of incarnation, though extra-biblical in origin, belongs to hermeneutics and therefore to the aforementioned transmission of Scripture, although its formulation for the theological landscape probably originated with Irenaeus of Lyon in the 2nd century.²⁷ Nevertheless, its becoming-event in history is handed down and transmitted in the Bible.

Drawing on these insights and considering the theological and ecclesiastical context, some thought-provoking impulses can be formulated. These reflections aim to address the present and will be further developed with regard to their liturgical translation:

1. The Prologue of John, through its deliberate choice of words, directs our attention to the incarnation which possesses an inclusive-universal character and consists, above all, in generative reciprocity. With the generative, however, the horizon of understanding of God’s self-communication is also expanded, in that the divine feminine is added to the theological cognitive, or is recognized anew, not as a merely figurative way of speaking, but as an ontologically constitutive reality.

2. If the lógos becomes event as flesh in history, thus representing God’s generative for humanity, and if this event signifies the foundational moment of Christianity, then this sárx transcends all gender categorizations – transcending, not in the sense of undifferentiation, but in the sense of overcoming reductionism to individual biological aspects, therefore including the entirety of bodily humanity.

3. The incarnation, as the foundational event of Christianity, stands as an effective and working sign, or sacrament, of God’s presence among humanity (eskénosen en hemîn = [the Lógos sárx] pitched the tent among us, John 1:14b). It is the origin and foundation of all other effective signs or sacraments of God’s presence in human history and therefore reveals the inclusive character of the sacraments – a meaning that should also become clear in their act of execution, namely in the leiturgía as an open, public act of service by the community of people.

3.2 Cross-Gender and Inclusive Translation

If we consider the “Only-begotten” as the one who reveals God through the vulnerability and failure of the flesh by exposing him (exegésato) and bringing him to the other side (trans-latio/over-setting) of God, then the Only-begotten is the simultaneous phenomenon of both the divine and the human. The “Only-begotten” therefore shows to be the hermeneut and the trans-latio (over-setting) of God to the side of the human and the human to the side of God. It is crucial to emphasize, however, that as Lógos-sárx, he is the cross-gender and personified translation of the new and inclusive image of God. John’s portrayal of a cross-gender image of God has significantly influenced Christian practice and mysticism, repeatedly finding transformative and practical relevance within the Church and religion.

Francis of Assisi and, through him, Bonaventure’s entire affective theology, stands out in this context with his emphasis on maternity. Francis emphatically urges his brothers to “love and nourish each other as a mother loves and nourishes her son”.²⁸ The Rule for hermitages draws inspiration from the biblical story of Mary and Martha as its basic motif (Luke 10:38–42). The brother hermits are to alternate between Martha’s service and Mary’s contemplative listening on a daily basis. When in Martha’s role, the brothers embody the nurturing maternal spirit, while those in Mary’s role represent the receptive sons.²⁹ Interestingly, Francis explicitly refers to himself as a mother in the only historically verified letter he penned, advising Brother Leo: “So I say to you, my son, as a mother […]”.³⁰ This perspective aligns with the Gospel in which Jesus emphasizes the mutual relationships of all believers: “you are all brothers. Do not be called ‘father’ on earth”³¹ and “all should be called ‘minor brothers.’ And one ‘washes’ another’s ‘feet’”.³² This attitude of Francis of Assisi is one of the best-known testimonies of how the rigid and male-determining gender categorization is a historical construct, distinct from the essence of Jesus’ teachings.

The testimony of Francis of Assisi, which is both theologically and cognitively relevant, as well as liturgically significant, directly illuminates the connection between John 1:18b, the Last Supper scene in John 13:4–25 and the resurrection in John 20:1. In the Last Supper, the readers are confronted with two gestures which are known in the sociocultural context, but which also transcend the mere sociocultural norms. First and foremost is the washing of the feet, which is deeply rooted in the Middle Eastern world as a gesture of hospitality. Traditionally, the guest’s feet are washed by the slave or, if applicable, by the housewife. This is why foot washing was known in early Christianity, for which Paul, writes to Timothy, provides us a prominent witness: “A woman should only be included in the list of widows […] if it is known that she […] has been hospitable and has washed the feet of the saints” (1 Tim 5:9–10).³³ The pinnacle of this practice occurs during the Last Supper, where Jesus himself performed this female task and thereby identifies himself with both the host and the slave or (house)wife.

In this poignant moment, the titles Lord and Master are emphasized by their repeated use. Jesus underscores the exemplary nature of his action (John 13:15) and draws a comparison with a slave (John 13:16) – both aspects belong from then on to the essence of discipleship. No longer confined to the house, the act of foot washing extends to an open body, receptive to movement towards the other; it represents a service of the body to the body, and is no longer the categorization between male and female, but service. Thus, the freedom to serve represents the demonstration of “love unto perfection (eis télos)” (John 13:1b) as the ultimate goal (télos) of discipleship.

In the narrative of Jesus washing the disciples’ feet, a profound inclusivity emerges – one that transcends both the apostles’ expectations (as exemplified by Peter’s initial resistance) and the prevailing socio-cultural norms of that time, some of which persist even today. The result is a fresh perspective on relating to others, whereby the washing of the feet is akin to the generative significance as previously explored above with regard to the connection between kólpos and exegésato in the sárx. The entire act of foot washing, as described by the evangelist, takes on a ritual quality, therefore it becomes open for liturgical interpretation (John 13:4.12).

The second gesture is described in John 13:23: “One of his disciples, the one whom Jesus loved, was laying on Jesus’ womb – ên anakeímenos … en tô kólpô tou Iesou”. This posture of semi-recumbent dining was also nothing unusual in a (Middle) Eastern context. The surprising element, however, lies not in the physical position but in the identities involved: a man is lying on another man’s womb.³⁴ While the Greek word “kólpos” could be translated here as chest, it must be rendered as womb, otherwise the subsequent head movement against Jesus’ chest (epì tò stêthos tou Iesou) in v. 24 would lack coherence. In this context, Thyen’s explanation seems plausible, as he draws a parallel to John 1:18b, where the disciple whom Jesus loved occupies a position akin to Jesus’ position in relationship to the Father in John 1:18b.³⁵ The moment in which the Lógos sárx is about to be handed over and, consequently, his entire mission history is about to fail, is thus transformed into a moment of universal generativity.

This disciple whom Jesus loved and who lay on Jesus’ womb remains nameless, inviting each of us to give him one’s own name. Through this movement towards the womb and from the womb of Jesus, the disciples are now also enabled to give birth to him for the world, because they are born of him. At the same time, the universal generative is also regarded as the inclusive, and therefore, continuing translation of the lógos sárx into the body of history – of every time. Herein lies a potential solution to the Gospel’s silence regarding Mary’s role as the birther of the Lógos sárx. Nevertheless, she is obviously depicted as the eschatologically anticipatory bride. In the eschatological symbolism of the wedding at Cana (John 1:1–12), there is no mention of the bride – the very cause for joy. Instead, the evangelist draws attention to Mary, the mother of Jesus, who seems to anticipate the eschatological wedding as his bride already in the history.

From what has been said, there is a correspondence between the womb of the Father in John 1:18b and the womb of Jesus as a womb for us in John 13:23. This correspondence finds its completion in the third womb – the womb of the earth, which is represented by the open tomb. Heinrich Schlier’s insights illuminate this theological interplay:

The victory message […] is that in Jesus Christ the eschaton, the “utmost,” has taken place, that this “utmost,” the dying of love into life, has lifted and broken through the deadly doom of sin and that all the world and every human being now comes from this “utmost” and moves towards this “utmost.”³⁶

This “utmost,” however, is revealed in its finality through the fruitful, new-generating openness. This openness unseals the stone of the tomb as the womb of the earth, and is first to bear witness to the resurrection. The open tomb³⁷ seems to be a common thread of all the Gospels for the first witness to the resurrection. In this respect, Imperatori writes that “all the evangelists agree with the fact that on the first day after the Sabbath early in the morning – a Sabbath which in Johannine chronology corresponds to the Jewish celebration of Passover – at least Mary of Magdala comes to the tomb, and surprisingly finds it open”.³⁸ The paradox, which consists in John’s juxtaposition of “while it was still dark (skotías éti)” and the verb “saw”, focuses the attention on what Mary saw – namely that “the stone [was] removed from the tomb” (John 20:1). Although her first reaction is concern that someone had taken away the Lord (v. 2), this does not diminish the fact that it is a woman who notices the open womb of the earth – as was shown in the meaning of kólpos. Like the other witnesses she also does not see the resurrection as an act in itself. Rather, she is a witness to the completion of the womb correspondence: the open womb of the Father (John 1:18b), the open womb of Jesus (John 13:23) and the open womb of the earth (John 20:1).

3.3 Liturgical Translation

The peculiarity of the resurrection, as depicted in the Gospels, possesses a unique quality in that it cannot be seen directly, only witnessed. Even the Easter sequence, Victimae paschali laudes, which precedes the proclamation of the Gospel on Easter Sunday, sings of Christ’s victory over death and recognizes the open tomb as a sign of life through the testimony of Mary Magdalene:

The testimony is and simultaneously wants to generate an act of faith, a commitment to a particular perspective or interpretation of the Lógos. However, this structure of witnessing does not only concern the resurrection, but also the incarnation itself. In John’s prologue, the figure of the witness is centrally inscribed in the events of revelation and incarnation. Significantly, the prologue does not immediately introduce “Jesus.” Instead, the first name mentioned in the opening text of the Gospel of John is “John,” the Baptist: “A man named John was sent from God. He came for testimony, to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him.” (John 1:6–7) Only later, in verse 17, does the prologue explicitly mention Jesus.

From this it can be deduced that the figure of the witness – the personal- historical refraction and mediation of the exegesis of God through the Logos, and of the birth of the Father through the Son for us – belongs to the core of this revelatory and generational event itself. From a Christian perspective, the revelation of God represents a self-sublation (Selbst-Aufhebung) of the Absolute – an act that transcends kenosis/incarnation, and extends to the resurrection and ascension; however this act hinges upon the reception, testimony, faith and response of human beings. This is not to say that revelation is simply an arbitrary human decision, nor that the sacred can simply be controlled, but one hast to speak of a self-sublation of the absolute insofar as God binds himself to the history of his witnesses in his revelation and translation through the Lógos.

From a biblical perspective, the testimony of Jesus as the Son of God is once again an event accompanied by God himself. In John’s farewell discourses, Jesus speaks of the mission of the Paraclete (John 14:16.26), who will serve as a reminder to the disciples, guiding them to all truth. For this reason, the writings, which also convey the Logos (and thus reflect their own genesis), are regarded as works of the Spirit.

Additionally, the letters and gospels of the Second Testament originated in the bosom of the historical experience of witnesses and individual communities. Their genesis is inseparable from the concreteness and historical-cultural contingency. Consequently, the New Testament writings form a plurality of perspectives. In this sense, the ascension, or “Jesus’ walk to the Father,” in which the incarnation finds its completion,⁴⁰ represents an expansion and pluralization of the incarnation event. The incarnation of the Logos in the singular body of Jesus continues into a universal inclusion of the flesh in the cosmic Christ (cf. Eph 1:10).

The most striking symbol of this living cosmos in Christ is the sacrament of the Eucharist, which must not to be seen as an isolated act/object, but rather – in the context of the celebrating community, which Paul describes as the body of Christ (1 Cor 12:12–27) – as an action, e. g. the act of celebration. Recognizing the world in its spiritual generativity thus does not seem to be self-evident, but requires a believing gaze that is mediated in witness and translation – above all through Scripture and liturgical celebration, that is aesthetic-performative practice. In this sense, scripture, liturgy, and piety function as mystagogy, or as a school of the gaze that seeks to engage the reader and celebrant in a spiritual perception of the world as the body of Jesus.⁴¹

A complex initiation process was developed in the early Church for passing on the faith.⁴² During this period of testing and preparation, the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer were handed down (traditio) and reproduced (redditio) as the main Christian prayers.⁴³ The Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, formulated in the course of the first councils, reflects the belief in the begetting/generation of the Logos from the Father, inspired by the Prologue of John. Accordingly, it states: “in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Only-begotten, Begotten of the Father before all ages”.⁴⁴ The culmination of the initiation process was baptism, which in the Western Church in antiquity was still accompanied by the chrism anointing of the later sacrament of confirmation and the first reception of the Eucharist.

Two types of interpretation were available to the Christian communities for the understanding of baptism itself from the biblical testimony. According to Paul’s testimony, baptism was interpreted as dying and rising with Christ (Rom 6:1–11), yet, according to the Johannine tradition, it was primarily interpreted as a rebirth or new birth. In the conversation with Nicodemus (John 3:1–13), Jesus confirms to the Pharisee the need to be “born again”⁴⁵ (John 3:3), namely “of water and the Spirit”⁴⁶ (John 3:5), in order to be able to see or enter the kingdom of God. Both lines of interpretation, that is death and resurrection with Christ as well as birth and rebirth, found their way into the catechumenal and mystagogical preaching of the Western and Eastern Fathers.⁴⁷

All the gestures and signs accompanying baptism – the immersion in and emergence from the water, the complete nakedness of the candidate for baptism, as well as the architecture and musical motifs of the baptisteries of the early church, symbolized both the tomb and the maternal womb,⁴⁸ and bore witness to this understanding of baptism as the death and new birth of believers.⁴⁹ Essentially, it is a matter of being born into, or being taken into, the living body of Christ, and consequently, into the Father-Son relationship between God and the Logos himself.

In many liturgical texts relating to the baptismal event, it becomes clear how this sacrament was recognized as an event that creates a universal community able to overcome all natural boundaries, even those of death. Accordingly, Paul says to the Christians in Galatia: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is not male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal 3:28) Incorporation into the body of the Only-begotten thus suspends all natural identities – even gender identity, however, not in the sense that these no longer have any significance, but in that they no longer have any ultimate power of definition. Therefore, participation in the body of Christ and in the sacraments that symbolize it is to be understood as inclusive. Thus, based on this biblical testimony, gender-determined restrictions in the sacramental community seem to be out of place.

The Gospels and the liturgy introduce a mystagogical way of seeing that no longer has direct, physical access to the beloved object, the body of Jesus. The disciples must now seek him in a different, mediated way in the world. This perspective, considering the incarnation and ascension, that is God’s/Christ’s lasting identification with and presence in the world, entails not seeing him directly as an object, but learn to see the flesh of the world in a new way. This seems not least to be the decisive question towards the end of John’s Gospel, in which Thomas wants to see the body of the Risen One (John 20:19–30). The scene underscores how Thomas’ encounter with the open flesh of Jesus, with the wound of the Risen One and his hospitable invitation to approach him and touch the wounds, changes his view and causes his metanoia, that is a transformation of his thinking and seeing. It is not the object-like physical body that presents itself to his gaze, but the body in its depth and affective openness.

Theologically, one could point out that Jesus is precisely not an immediate pagan incarnation of the divine, but in the transparency and openness of the sentient body is a reference to God as the other of himself and only in this referential structure IS the dwelling place of the “Father.” […] It thus forms the point of contact and passage, that is the sensory space […] of two spheres, the communion […] of man and God. In this sense, God’s compassion is not an external-sentimental one, but the sensation of the human being opening up (and being touched) becomes the space of sensation of the body of God itself.⁵⁰

The motifs of turning, seeing and also hearing appear once again in abundance in the last book of the Christian canon, the Revelation of John. The scenery it presents unveils a liturgical character. Lying at the heart of it is a great heavenly liturgy at the center of which is the slain lamb, with a line running from the beginning of the Johannine writings, where Jesus is identified by John the Baptist as the Lamb of God (John 1:36). It then weaves through the crucifixion scene, which John shifts to the time of the slaughter of the Passover lambs,⁵¹ and ultimately to the apocalyptic lamb of Revelation (Rev 5:6–14).

This view of the body, simultaneously vulnerable and mortal, yet also open and fruitful, allowing others to live, resonates deeply within the central symbol or gesture of the liturgy: the breaking and sharing of the Eucharistic bread. During the liturgy, it is no longer the intact body that takes center stage. In the elevatio following the consecration, it is the broken and open body that is shared by the celebrating believers for communal internalization. The broken bread symbolizes the impossibility of a complete presentability of the body in its unique history. It signifies a body that is not characterized by a self-sufficient completeness, but finds its meaning in the openness and hospitable reception of others (genitivus subjectivus and objectivus). In the liturgy’s pinnacle moment, the consumption of the broken and shared bread solidifies this communal interconnected body. Thus, the Christian liturgy creates an open body that can no longer be demarcated as a discretely definable object, but manifests itself as an open interweaving of bodies, signs and gestures, as a community of the living and the dead.

The liturgy, with its transitional nature, vividly embodies an eschatological threshold. This liminal character of the Christian understanding of time and the body, and of the liturgy in particular, is symbolized not least in one of the great symbolic figures in the Revelation of John. For this last text of the canon also tells of an apocalyptic birth:

A great sign appeared in the sky, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was with child and wailed aloud in pain as she labored to give birth. (Rev 12:1 et seq.)

In theological tradition, the star-spangled woman has been identified with the Church, which gives birth to believers in the tribulation of the end times, and in the literature of the Fathers with Mary, the new Eve. In any case, the birth of the heavenly woman announces the birth of a human dominion in the face of the powers of violence and destruction, to which the beasts and the dragon that also appear in the Book of Revelation refer. It heralds the emergence of a priestly people, which is ultimately evoked in the image of the open heavenly Jerusalem (Rev 21:1–22:5). People from diverse cultures and all corners of the world flock to this heavenly city, where all abominable reigns will ultimately pass away. Even worship is no longer confined to a sacred area. In the heavenly city, there is no longer a separate temple that can be separated from the “profane,” but “its temple is the Lord God almighty and the Lamb” (Rev 21:22). Ethics and worship converge here in the openness of the flesh, which is symbolized by the lamb and in which the name of God dwells.⁵² If we read the letters of Paul and the Johannine writings together, this is likely the reign in whose expectation “all creation is groaning in labor pains even until now” (Rom 8:22).