It is my contention that the foundation of Eastern Spirituality is truly the Gospel of John. His Gospel, perhaps more than the other three, leads us inside the true reality of Jesus – leads us in a real sense of God incarnate. His Gospel leads us to the belief that God is not only deeply in love with us, the portion of His creation that He made in His image and likeness, but that He constantly calls us to freely return His love. God bestowed on us free will so that we might freely return His love,

John begins his Gospel just as the Old Testament begins: In the beginning…. But the writer or writers of the Book of Genesis bring the reader to the first moment of creation. A spark exploded as it crackled and shot forth from the mighty heart of God. John, however, leads us beyond the first moment of material creation and places us, his readers, back into the very heart of God as a community.

God is othering Himself as He begets Himself and His Word from all eternity. The same presence of God as self-emptying love – depicted in Genesis as a Spirit that hovers like a mighty cosmic bird over the chaos and the void – is hiddenly present as the bonding love between the Divine Mind and the Divine Word. John would soon reveal His name as the Holy Spirit.

Thus John wishes us to be grounded, if we are to become the community of God’s love on this earth, in the very primal community of love: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Truly grounded in the Trinitarian community of love as the Source of all reality and life, John wishes to establish the Word’s role, not only in human salvation, but also in the entire cosmos. He first establishes the eternal pre-existence of the Logos (Word). At the beginning of time, when the material world first came into existence, this Word (Christ) was in full being.