John 1:3 — Community Reflections

JOHN 1:3 — KING JAMES VERSION 0

“All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.”

Through him all things have been made; without him nothing has been made that has been made — here John moves from the Logos' identity to cosmic function, attributing creation itself to Jesus. This directly challenges both pagan cosmologies and Gnostic emanations, affirming that the material world's creator is the same person who will become incarnate. The repetition of "nothing...nothing" forms an inclusio emphasizing totality; all being depends on the Word. The use of "made" (egeneto, "came to be") distinguishes created things from the eternal Word, maintaining both the Logos' divinity and the genuine createdness of all else.

Church Fathers on John 1:3

After speaking of the nature of the Son, he proceeds to His operations, saying, All things were made by him, i.e. every thing whether substance, or property.
Alcuin · 8th century

[It is said], the Word indeed was in the beginning, but it may be that He was not before the beginning. But what says he; All things were made by him. He is infinite by Whom every thing, which is, was made: and since all things were made by Him, time is likewise.
Hilary of Poitiers · 4th century · Or thus

Moses indeed, in the beginning of the Old Testament, speaks to us in much detail of the natural world, saying, In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth; and then relates how that the light, and the firmament, and the stars, and the various kinds of animals were created. But the Evangelist sums up the whole of this in a word, as familiar to his hearers; and hastens to loftier matter, making the whole of his book to bear not on the works, but on the Maker.
Chrysostom · 4th century

Read all 19 entries in the readerCatena Aurea · St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. J. H. Newman · public domain

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