Read It Again

For God so loved the world . . .   John 3:16 NASB

World – What a shame that we have strayed so far from the rich spectrum of meanings associated with the Greek word cosmos. Our English translation, “world,” limits our appreciation of John’s vocabulary by truncating nearly all of the nuances that would have been evident to the original audience. Perhaps we need to recapture those nuances and read this verse again.

We start with the verb, kosmeo (cosmeo):

“This verb was used in classical Greek from the time of Homer. Its meanings derive from the basic sense of κόσμος, i.e., order or adornment. In the sense “to order” κοσμέω is a technical military term for the placing of a host or the ordering of combatants,”^[1]

The noun, κόσμος (cosmos), covers a wide range:

1. “That which is well assembled or constructed from individual constituents.”
2. When the object of the building consists of individual men who are integrated into a whole, κόσμος is a term for the order between men.
3. κόσμος is very common in the general sense of “order.”
4. In so far as the concept of the beautiful is inseparable from that of the ordered, it is always implied in κόσμος and finds particular expression in the sense “adornment” (usually of women).
5. κόσμος . . . The senses previously mentioned merge in that of the world (the cosmic order or system, the universe, also heaven). Here κόσμος becomes one of the most important terms in Greek philosophy. It has significance not merely in intellectual history but also in the history of ancient religion.^[2]

If we read John’s comment as the original audience read it, we might hear something like this: “For God so loved the order of His creation, He was so enthralled with the adornment that the Creation provided Him, that He sent His son.” This helps us realize that John 3:16 is not just about us. It enlarges the role of the Messiah so that his task involves the entire creation. He is sent to reveal to us the full adornment of the Father in all of His handiwork. It means that the Messiah is the final statement of YHVH about our relationship with all YHVH has done. The original audience would have heard overtones of full integration into God’s purposes. They would have listened to the implied connection between beauty and purpose. And most importantly, they would recognize that God’s love extends to everything He made. In other words, the son did not come merely to “save” us, as popular billboards suggest. He came to re-order the entire creation. What God is after is recovery of the original in all of its aspects. Of course, that included men and women, but it doesn’t stop there. And neither should we. Saving souls is not the objective. Returning to the original order is.

My daughter, Rachel, remarked that “the least of these” must also include animals, oceans, streams, forests, beaches and everything else God made. She was quite disturbed to see people abusing stray dogs. “How can anyone say they love God and treat His creatures like that?” cosmos is a very big term. It requires a very big shift in our thinking and our behavior.  Perhaps Heschel points us in the right direction:

We do not confess our belief in God; we adore Him. We do not proclaim our belief in revelation; we utter our gratitude for it. We do not formulate the election of Israel; we sing it. Thus our liturgy is no mere memorial to the past; it is an act of participating in Israel’s bearing witness to the unity, uniqueness, love and judgment of God. It is an act of joy.[3]

Topical Index: cosmos, world, John 3:16

An additional note: Hebrew has no word for “universe.” Instead, it used the terms “heaven and earth.” But Jewish writers influenced by Hellenism used the word cosmos and imported it into rabbinic material. “Hence it is only in the final writings of the LXX, which are Greek in their very conception, that κόσμος is found in the sense of “world.”^[4]

This raises a question about Sasse’s statement, “In the NT κόσμος is never used in the sense ‘order,’ and it occurs for ‘adornment’ only once at 1 Pt. 3:3 of women.”^[5] Perhaps Sasse reads cosmos in the New Testament as a Christian concept rather than a Jewish Greek one. If Judaism used cosmos as a substitute for “heaven and earth,” then the idea of order is clearly embedded in cosmos and since the New Testament Greek is Jewish Greek, it seems unlikely that cosmos in the New Testament never means order. It is more likely, it seems to me, that Sasse interprets cosmos in opposition of Gnosticism in the first century rather than recognizing the rabbinic background.

^[1] Sasse, H. (1964–). κοσμέω, κόσμος, κόσμιος, κοσμικός. G. Kittel, G. W. Bromiley, & G. Friedrich (Eds.), Theological dictionary of the New Testament (electronic ed., Vol. 3, p. 867). Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.

^[2] Ibid.

[3] Abraham Heschel, Man’s Quest for God, pp. 82-83.

^[4] Sasse, H. op. cit.

^[5] Ibid.