we might call ‘sacramental’ thinking is absolutely central to John’s gospel. If the Word has become flesh (1.14), we shouldn’t be surprised if the same principle is designed by God to work its way through the whole creation. There is a very careful balance to be kept, as the next passage will make clear. We can’t imagine that the whole creation is now ‘sacramental’ in this sense, as though there were nothing now wrong with any of it, and as though any experience of the created order were somehow pregnant with the presence of Jesus. That way leads straight to pantheism, nature mysticism and
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