Before the Big Bang: Saint John’s Eyewitness Account of the Eternal Word Made Flesh

What existed before the Big Bang—and did Saint John touch it?

Beloved:
What was from the beginning,
what we have heard,
what we have seen with our eyes,
what we looked upon
and touched with our hands
concerns the Word of life —
for the life was made visible;
we have seen it and testify to it
and proclaim to you the eternal life
that was with the Father and was made visible to us—
what we have seen and heard
we proclaim now to you,
so that you too may have fellowship with us;
for our fellowship is with the Father
and with his Son, Jesus Christ.
We are writing this so that our joy may be complete.

1 John 1:1-4

Audible, Visible, Touchable: Saint John the Theologian Proclaims the Incarnate Word

Two days after Christmas, the Church celebrates the feast of Saint John the Apostle, whom the Eastern Church calls “The Theologian” because of his extraordinary penetration into the mysteries of faith. His awe-filled words in his first epistle begin at “the beginning,” before time began, with the Word and source of eternal life. This Word, he testifies, became audible, visible, and tangible—the very Son of God made flesh.

John’s strange and ethereal language may sound worlds away from our scientific lingo, but it is fully compatible with our mathematical calculations and observations. Contemplating in the spirit with a faculty transcending reason and logic, John soars into the divine mysteries connatural to the infinite thirst for wisdom lodged in every soul. 

While science traces spacetime, matter, and energy back to a dense singularity (the source of the “Big Bang”), playing in the realm of number and motion, theology addresses questions exceeding time and being itself. Wonderment in one field stimulates wonderment in the other, without contradiction, for the human person composed of spirit and matter searches into all things visible and invisible. Indeed, the Author of Life glories in our human quest for wisdom and truth.

Beyond the Cosmic Horizon: The Big Bang, the Tomb, and the Tiny Tot

The cosmos, from a dense point, 
Exploded and expanded,
Posit physicists in a 
Theory the facts demanded.

Spacetime, matter, and energy,
Stretched from a singular dot,
Formed number, measure, and weight—
Products of the Big Bang hot.

But what preceded the boom?
The question transcends the whole
Panorama of spacetime,
Yet gnaws at the wond’ring soul.

Saint John the Theologian,
Soaring above cognition,
Reason, logic, and science
To timeless contemplation,

Pithily proclaims the Word
He heard and saw with his eyes
And touched with his hands the flesh
Of the Lord in human size.

Descending to the Many,
The immeasurable One
Tabernacled among us—
God’s only-begotten Son.

Mythology or science?
John flies beyond the divide
With empirical knowledge
And spiritual insight.

The mystery of matter
Sparks questions beyond its scope,
Stirring the questioner’s mind
And heart to eternal hope.

John ran to the tomb and found
The shroud wherein Jesus lay,
But the risen One was crowned
In glory on the third day.

The Author of the Big Bang
Invites us beyond the dot
To the timeless realm of God,
Who became a tiny tot.