NOTES for Joh 14:1-11

"I am the way and the truth and the life." That is how these words sound, in a way unfamiliar to our ear. We are more accustomed to "I am the way, the truth, and the life"; then it would be a list of coordinate terms, each of which could be moved into first place. See Fr. Georgy Chistyakov's book Light Shines in the Darkness, chapter 19. Yet such an approach substantially distorts the picture: the word "way" stands at the beginning for a reason, for Christ is the way, and "the expression 'and the truth and the life' has, to use the scholarly term, an explicative character, from the Latin explicatio, explanation" (ibid.).

But it is hard to come to such a conclusion by limiting oneself to an attentive reading of this one phrase alone; it is necessary to turn to the whole New Testament text as a whole. Let us recall the words where the way and life again appear together: "narrow is the gate and narrow the way that leads to life" (Matthew 7:14). The way that leads to life. What sort of way is this? Let us note that here it says "gate and way." But the Lord says, "I am the door; if anyone enters by Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture" (John 10:9).

A door, like a gate, is something one must pass through in order to go out onto a way. But when the way is finished, one must pass through the gate and the door again, for this is the beginning and the end of the way. The Lord is the beginning and the end, but also what lies between them: the way itself. Let us recall another saying: "I know your works. Behold, I have set before you an open door, which no one can shut; you have little strength, and have kept My word, and have not denied My name" (Revelation 3:8). The opened door becomes, as it were, an icon of the Lord, who sends us on the way and waits for our return.

So we have tried to understand the link between "way and life." Now let us turn to the expression "way and truth." The word "truth" (like the words "to do," "works of God," "light," "hour," and some others) is key for the Gospel of John and does not occur in the synoptic text. First of all we must recall a fragment of the prologue: "for the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ" (John 1:17). It is not He Himself who is truth, as one could think if the words in the phrase we are considering were separated by commas; rather, truth came through Him. And although neither the Greek nor the Latin originals contain this etymological connection, in Russian the word proiskhodit, "comes forth," has the same root as khodit, "to walk," and one can walk only by one way or another.