Cosmos (κόσμος) in the Gospel of John: Humanity and the Nonhuman Creation

There is a tendency in recent Johannine scholarship to understand κόσμος in the majority of instances in the Gospel of John as ‘humanity’. It is assumed that the meaning ‘creation’ is appropriate only in a few occurrences. In this article, I want to challenge this consensus in three steps. First, a survey of the scholarship on the Johannine use of κόσμος will focus on the question of whether there is an anthropocentric bias in the history of reception. Second, a semantic analysis will explore the possible passages in which the κόσμος cannot be reduced to humanity but also includes nonhuman creation. Third, an eco-hermeneutical outlook will set the debate in the context of the ecological crisis and focus on the interdependence between humanity and the rest of the cosmos. Is it time to rethink the meaning of κόσμος in light of the climate crises? Does God only love humanity or does he care about his whole creation (3.16)? Is Jesus, according to 4.42, only the savior of humans or also of the ‘more than human creation’? And if so, does doing the works of God (6.28) imply caring for the creation?