The Gospel of John (4)

I don't suppose this is an original thought but thinking about John's Gospel, its author and the way in which it is sooo different to the Synoptic Gospels, I am taken by the relative parallel between John 1: 18 and John 13:23

'No one has ever seen God. The only begotten God, the one being in (or near) the breast (kolpon) of the Father, that one brought out the knowledge of him (exegesato).'

'One of his disciples, whom Jesus loved, was lying close to the breast (kolpo) of Jesus.'

How do we know who God is (according to the Gospel of John)? Through the knowledge shared with us by the one (the Son) being in or near the breast of the Father.

How do we know about the Son (and thus about what the Son knows about the Father)? Through knowledge shared with us by the one (the author, see John 21:24) being in or near the breast of Jesus.

In other words, despite the immense differences between the Synoptics and the Fourth Gospel, we cannot dismiss the Fourth Gospel as some kind of fictional creation because its claim is that it is written by one who was as intimate with Jesus the Son as the Son was intimate with the Father.

We may not know the name of the author, or, if the name is John, we may not know which John the name belongs to, but we know something very significant about the author: he was an intimate of Jesus. One question then is whether this intimacy was that of one of the Twelve or another disciple. Generally the signs in the Fourth Gospel point to 'another disciple'; and generally the Synoptics give signs that there were other disciples of Jesus than those named therein (e.g. the host of the last supper).

The Gospel of John (3)

A key book in my reading at this stage in preparation for teaching the Gospel of John is John Ashton's Understanding the Fourth Gospel (OUP, 1991). I think I need to get hold of the second edition.

For the record, and as a good summary of the understanding John Ashton has, I include here a blurb for his book (concerning the second edition, 2009):

"In this fully revised new edition of a pioneering study of John's gospel, John Ashton explores fresh topics and takes account of the latest scholarly debates. Ashton argues first that the thought-world of the gospel is Jewish, not Greek, and secondly that the text is many-layered, not simple, and composed over an extended period as the evangelist responded to the changing situation of the community he was addressing. Ashton seeks to provide new and coherent answers to what Rudolf Bultmann called the two great riddles of the gospel: its position in the development of Christian thought and its central or governing idea. In arguing that the first of these should be concerned rather with Jewish thought Ashton offers a partial answer to the most important and fascinating of all the questions confronted by New Testament scholarship: how did Christianity emerge from Judaism? Bultmann's second riddle is exegetical, and concerns the message of the book. Ashton's answer highlights a generally neglected feature of the gospel's concept of revelation: its debt to Jewish apocalyptic."

Further comment is here.

I am also wondering about the work of Thomas Brodie who has written on the sources of John's Gospel, a thesis which ties the gospel to the other gospels, but his overall theory of the composition of the New Testament (in summary, generated from the prototype of the Elijah-Elisha narratives) leaves me cold. Notice of his major commentary on the fourth gospel is here.

The Gospel of John (2)

Why should we read John's Gospel sociologically, that is, as a history of the Johannine community? Why not read it theologically, as an offering to the Christian communities of John's theological reflection, a reflection (no doubt) responding to various challenges (e.g. deteriorating relationships between synagogue and church), but one driven more by the essential question Jesus posed. Who is Jesus?

In this light, the prologue is very important. Whether or not it is adopted by John into his gospel (from another theological source, as a Christian hymn, even as an adapted statement from another religion), it sets out a theological focus in relation to the question, Who is Jesus?

Jesus is the Word made flesh, the only Son of the Father, the one who makes God known in the fullest way to the world.

" And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. (John testified to him and cried out, ‘This was he of whom I said, “He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.” ’) From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known. [NRSV]"

This christology is not disclosed (save implicitly) in the three Synoptic gospels, nor is it as explicit in the writings of Paul (though in various ways Colossians and Ephesians go very close). Need we pose any major cause for the writing of John's Gospel, any significant origin for his Gospel other than the reflection of an agile and questing theological mind as it posed then answered the question, Who is Jesus?

From the prologue, the ending of which is cited above, the Gospel of John flows readily as an account of who Jesus is: the Word become flesh (the Word which created the world now, in the flesh, transformed it through signs), with a glory seen by eye-witnesses, disclosing a message of God's love ('grace and truth') received by many (and rejected by some), in the course of which mission of transformation, God himself as Father identified with his Son, has been revealed in a manner not seen before.

The Gospel of John

I want to use some posts here to set out some thinking on John's Gospel as I am teaching it in Semester 1, 2013. Any thoughts you wish to make via comments will sharpen my thinking.

The first three gospels pose all sorts of interesting puzzles, not least their relationship to each other. But the puzzle is interesting because potentially it is solvable, since the three gospels tell pretty much the same story with common materials, so comparing the differences leads to some good proposals re solutions.

The fourth gospel, John's Gospel, poses a different kind of puzzle. It is so different to the first three gospels that we can scarcely use comparison between the first three and the fourth to solve the puzzle of the relationship between then. The vastness of the difference is the puzzle. "Where does John's Gospel come from?" is one way to pose the puzzle. It does not seem to come from any one, two or three of the Synoptic Gospels. If those gospels are any kind of guide to whom Jesus was and what he did, then we might also ask whether John's Gospel stems from Jesus. The Synoptics' Jesus is a parable-telling, demon-exorcising, prophetic figure in the mould of Moses, Elijah and Jeremiah who agonises through his last night before the cross. The Johannine Jesus shares none of these characteristics but does share with the Synoptics' Jesus continual clashing with Jewish authorities while healing and teaching his way through Judea and Galilee. At best we could say that if the Johannine Jesus is connected to the authentic, historical Jesus of Nazareth at least as strongly as the Synoptics' Jesus then "another side" to the historical Jesus is being disclosed to the reader.

This in fact is a line taken by Richard Bauckham as he argues that the author John of the gospel is not John the Son of Zebedee but another John, a Jerusalem-based disciple with an insider's view of Jesus' activities in Jerusalem. Perhaps it is the only line which can be taken in order to offer a plausible explanation of coherency between the Jesus presented in Synoptic perspective and the Jesus presented in Johannine perspective.

Bauckham consciously argues against the other plausible explanation (if I may describe as a single explanation a variety of proposals advanced on the basis of the great work on John by the giant Bultmann which are synthesised by John Ashton). In this explanation, John's Gospel is as much, if not more so, an account of the circumstances and trials of the Johannine community (the Christians gathered around the author or authors of the fourth gospel) as it is an account of the life and times of Jesus.

The great advantage of the second account is that it does not have to justify itself in the court of biography (creative fiction about Jesus doesn't matter because the gospel document serves to convey another history). The great challenge for the first account is that it does need to justify itself in the court of biography (which Bauckham, more than any other Johannine scholar I know, rises to): did Jesus speak and act thus and so, even in a seminal way? (For we might allow, on this first account, that the gospel writer so identifies with Jesus Christ that he - through the Spirit of Jesus - stretches the words Jesus spoke into a true interpretation which Jesus speaks through the author.)
(to be cont'd).

I am still here

Hermeneutics has not gone away from my interests. Indeed the fourth Hermeneutical Hui for our church is looming - early February 2013.

For the record

Glynn Cardy's speech at GS in Fiji recently is here.

I note, on a quick read, that Glynn steers clear of the key passage (in my view) re marriage and the Bible, Ephesians 5:25-33, with specific reference to Christ and the church.

Aetiology

I am moving a discussion about the causes of homosexuality from Anglican Down Under to here.