Chapter 1 of the Gospel of John begins in a way that echoes Genesis 1:
In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
He was in the beginning with God.
All things came to be through him,
and without him nothing came to be.
What came to be through him was life,
and this life was the light of the human race;
the light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness has not overcome it.
The first words of Genesis that correspond to the above are these
In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth,
the earth was a formless wasteland, and darkness covered the abyss, while a mighty wind swept over the waters.
Then God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.
God saw how good the light was. God then separated the light from the darkness.
God called the light "day," and the darkness he called "night." Thus evening came, and morning followed--the first day.
There are hints in both accounts of the permanence of this light, as well as its life-giving character. Thus, the light is seen as eternal and life-giving. The sun is a metaphor for this light, as is any star, but it is only a metaphor.
Let us now recall the following conversation between God and Moses,
"But," said Moses to God, "when I go to the Israelites and say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' if they ask me, 'What is his name?' what am I to tell them?" God replied, "I am who am." Then he added, "This is what you shall tell the Israelites: I AM sent me to you."
How do you explain being-in-itself to a bronze-age Israelite? The above is how God defined himself to Moses, but this definition serves us remarkably well, even today. From this name we get most of our philosophical understanding of who, and what, God is. God is necessary and sufficient being, from whom all other beings derive. All creation comes from God. In particular, the whole space-time continuum comes from God.
[Note: Time is a dimension of the space-time continuum (considered as an Einstein-Minkowski space, where time is a dimension in a local sense). The universe is known to have a finite beginning in time, but it is not known to have a finite end. It may have such an end if the universe is curved back upon itself and the amount of matter in the universe is sufficient to cause ultimate collapse into an essential singularity. If it is not curved back on itself, but continually expands forever, it will have a practical end in heat death, due to the second law of thermodynamics. There has been much speculation about a third possibility, that of an oscillating universe, where the net angular momentum is positive, and sufficient to keep the universe open enough for matter to fly out from a central meeting place. I don't know whether this is still considered to be a viable case. If it is, then entropy still applies, and heat death is inevitable. All of this points to unavoidable practical constraints on human existence. No such constraints apply to God, who keeps everything in being according to laws he established -- including the law of gravity and the law of entropy.]
What does time mean to God? All we can say is that it is his invention, his creation. God's existence does not depend in any way on time, nor is it limited in any way by time. To say that God is ever present means he is fully "in touch" with all creation for all time. It does not mean that God is "in" time. To put this in terms an engineer might understand, the universe (all of space-time) is universally observable (indeed, is being observed) and controllable (is being controlled) by God.
It's only in such a context that we can begin to understand the significance of John's Gospel introduction in modern terms. "Word" is our English translation of John's Greek, λογοσ (logos, transliterated into English). The following excerpt from the Columbia University Press encyclopedia (accessed through answers.com) may help us to understand John's meaning:
Logos (λογοσ) [Gr.,=word], in Greek and Hebrew metaphysics, the unifying principle of the world. The central idea of the Logos is that it links God and man, hence any system in which the Logos plays a part is monistic. The Greek Heraclitus held (c.500 B.C.) that the world is animated and kept in order by fire— this fire is the Logos; it is the power of order in the world and the order itself. It thus became the unifying feature of the Heracleitean system. The Stoics (see Stoicism) were influenced in part by Platonism and Aristotelianism in their conception of the Logos. To them God was immanent in the world, its vitalizing force, and God as the law guiding the universe they called Logos; with the additional idea that all things develop from this force, it is called the Spermaticos Logos. The Logos reappears in Greek philosophy in a much restricted form in the system of emanations of Neoplatonism [Cf. Wisdom 7:24-27]. Certain books of the Old Testament present a principle called the Wisdom of God active in the world. At the same time there was a very ancient Hebrew idea of the Word of God, also active in the world. Thus the Wisdom and the Word of God, sometimes quasi-distinct from Him, coalesced. Philo, in his synthesis of Judaism and Greek thought, naturally hit upon the Logos as a union between the systems; hence his Logos retains qualities both of the Stoic Logos and the Hebrew Word of God. Philo's God is remote, unaffected by the world, without attributes, unmoving; hence He must have mediation to connect Him with the world. At times Philo's Logos is independent of God (because of God's remoteness); at other times the Logos is simply the Reason of God (because Philo's monism obliges God to act in the world through His mediating forces). St. John in his Gospel adapted the term to his purpose. In the prologue of 14 verses the idea of the Gospel is stated clearly and simply. The Logos, which is the eternal God, took flesh and became man, in time. The Logos is Jesus. The impersonal, remote God of Philo is not there; the intermediate Logos, neither God nor man, has been replaced by a Logos that is both God and man. This explanation of the relation of God and man became an abiding feature of Christian thought.
It may be seen from the above that Philo's ideas about the Logos were not entirely consistent or coherent.
There is a very interesting historical treatment of this notion of the Word (or Logos) emanating from (or eternally begotten of) God, given by Emily Shonk, a junior biology major at Bridgewater college in Virginia. Entitled, "'Logos' through History," her essay traces the roots of the term Logos in the history of Greek philosophy, beginning with Heraclitus, proceeding through Plato, Aristotle, Philo (a contemporary of John who wrote before John did) and continuing with Augustine and Aquinas.
It would be most accurate, perhaps, to say that John's work was poetry, rather than philosophy or theology. It is dense with meaning and significance. There is much symbolism in it, including, particularly, the use of the term Logos, which literally means logic or word, but refers figuratively, we might say (by way of introducing a theology) to God's eternal expression of Himself or his total self-awareness. Clearly, John intended that the references to the Word of God in the Old Testament would take on personhood in the Logos, suggesting that this meaning was already implicit in the earlier Scriptures. Indeed, if we identify the Word with Wisdom in the book of Wisdom, then this personification appears to be quite apt. If we similarly personify the Ruah Yahweh (Breath of God), then we get the Spirit of God.
We find this theology achieving greater maturity in the works of Augustine and Aquinas. Considering, as Augustine does, the Logos as the eternally uttered Word of God (as God's total self-expression) the creation of the universe is a part of that eternal utterance. Thus we would say, in agreement with John, the universe comes from the Word. In the theology of Aquinas, the Holy Spirit is the love of the Son for the Father, and vice versa.
In the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, we find the terminology "eternally-begotten of the Father" to describe the Logos. This corresponds to the relationship between the Father and the Word which we find in the Old Testament and in John. The expression "proceeds from the Father (and the Son)" describes the fact that the Father and Son share the Holy Spirit, divine Love, with each other and with us. In receiving the Holy Spirit and allowing the Spirit to bind us to God in love, we also unite our will with God's will. As part of God's creation, we partake in his self-expression, and we are his children. A clearer meaning for communion with God could hardly be imagined. That communion, already perfect and total in the Trinity, is the reason we say God is one. Jesus reminded us of that kind of unity when he recalled Genesis 2:24, "For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh." [Matt 19:5] Marriage is, indeed, intended to be a sign of that unity within the Trinity.
What is our end? As we seek to abandon our lives more completely to God's will, we share more intimately in his Love and his Logos. In the process, we become more like God, and we share in God's being. We accomplish as much of this as we can with God's grace, subject to the limits of our cooperation.
When we die, there is typically some unfinished business. There remains in our souls some effect of unrestored justice due to our sin. We suffer punishment for our sins, but we do not fully grasp what that punishment entails. We may anticipate that this suffering is very intense, not because God is mean, but because we would deeply wish to get it over with. This stands in very sharp contrast with our instinct to avoid pain in this life, even the pain of repenting of our sinfulness. [Much of what we mean by "growing up" is increasing our tolerance for pain.] What is clear is that our purgatory is a transition between our life on earth and our entry into eternity. That transition is experienced, somehow, as limited, whereas eternity itself is unbounded.