In the 1500s Protestant Laelio Sozzini (or Socinus) set about to reinterpret John 1:1. He argued that since the Gospels sometimes use the word “beginning” to describe the beginning of the ministry of Jesus, [1] John 1:1 must mean the same thing.

This interpretation was not known before the 16th century and influenced Laelio’s nephew, Fausto Sozzini (Faustus Socinus), the founder of Socinianism, or the Polish Brethren.

These early non-Trinitarians were hoping to counter the millennia-old interpretation of John 1:1 about the “eternal God the Son,” i.e., the second Person of the Trinity. But the novel Socinian reading seems like a non-Trinitarian overreaction, predicated on the false notion that “the word of God” of John 1:1 is an individual separate and distinct from God.

For the Old Testament writers “the word of God” is the self-expression of God or a quality of God. So when John 1:1 says that “the word was with God” it doesn’t mean that a person was with God.

In the Old Testament qualities of God, things belonging to God are said to be “with Him” — His reward/salvation in Isaiah 40:10; 62:11; His purpose/plan in Job 10:13; 14:5; 23:14; 27:11; wisdom and strength in Job 12:13, 16; mercy in Psalm 130:7. (See also Gal. 2:5: “the truth of the Gospel would remain with you.”) And the famous passage in Proverbs 8-9 describes “wisdom” as a woman beside God, with her companion “prudence.”

We know from Psalm 33:6 that “by the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of His mouth all the starry hosts.” As you can see from the parallelism, “the word of the Lord” here is synonymous with “the breath of His mouth” (ruach, breath = spirit), which can be linked to “the spirit of God” in Genesis 1:2 (cp. “by faith we understand that the ages were set in order by the word of God,” Heb. 11:3).

The words and phrases used in John chapter 1 clearly echo Genesis chapter 1, for example, “In the beginning” (Gen 1:1 LXX, en arche as in John 1:1). This same phrase is also used for wisdom in Proverbs 8:22-23 (LXX).

John does sometimes use the word “beginning” for the start of the ministry of Jesus, but it is not the same phrase as in John 1:1: “in the beginning.” As a matter of fact the Greek phrase (en arche) is not used anywhere else by John.

In Genesis 1:3 the Greek word translated “Let there be” (egeneto) is the same Greek word translated as “came into being” (egeneto) in John 1:10 in connection with the creation of the “world” (kosmos). And the phrase “the light (phos) shines in the darkness” in John 1:5 echoes Genesis 1:4 where God separates “the light from the darkness” (Gen. 1:4, LXX).

The “all things” in John 1:3 is also a reference to the Genesis creation. This same phrase is used by other NT writers in connection with creation (cp. Eph. 3:9; Heb. 3:4; Rev. 4:11).

The Catholic scholar Raymond Brown summed it up well when he observed that if John 1:1 refers to the beginning of the ministry of Jesus, “then the clearer reference to his coming in John 1:9 and 10 seems tautological” (i.e., a needless repetition).

Dr. Brown says the writer of John “has inserted a reference to John the Baptist after vs. 5, and one can scarcely imagine that the [writer] would introduce John the Baptist after describing the ministry of Jesus and its effect. Clearly the [writer] thought that the references to the coming of Jesus began in vs. 10; he put the coming of John the Baptist in vss. 6-8 before the coming of Jesus, and used vs. 9 to connect John the Baptist to the moment of that coming.”[2]

In other words, John did not put the coming of Jesus before the coming of John the Baptist, which would be putting the proverbial “cart before the horse”!

[1] Mark 1:1; Luke 1:2; John 15:27.

[2] The Gospel According to John, Anchor Bible, p. 26.