Sin, the Human Predicament, and Salvation in the Gospel of John

Mathew E. Sousa

• Publisher: T&T Clark
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780567699237
• eBook ISBN: 9780567699220
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

Mathew E. Sousa demonstrates that in certain respects, John's doctrine of salvation fails to align with its customary depiction in Johannine scholarship. Sousa suggests that, according to John, the human predicament is not merely "unbelief" or a lack of mental perception, and Jesus's mission consists not merely of "revelation" and/or a purely forensic atonement. Rather, Jesus is (for John) the one who makes true and everlasting life an accomplished fact for humanity, and in doing so Jesus reveals the true nature of the predicament from which he saves. Sousa argues that salvation in the Gospel of John concerns "ethics" and the quality or condition of human corporeality. The matters of sin and death in particular also make clear that, according to John, the human predicament is a reality that in various ways persists for believers as they both are and become children of God. Sousa thus concludes that salvation for John consists of far more than the emergence of belief in a moment of decision.

1 Introduction

The Human Predicament in John’s Gospel: Assessing the Claims of Scholarship

What may be termed the “plight” or “predicament” of human beings in the Gospel of John is an issue that is frequently acknowledged and broached in Johannine scholarship, especially in literature devoted to John’s soteriology, anthropology, and theology.¹ Perhaps as a consequence, there is some variation within scholarship in how this predicament is described. Rudolph Bultmann speaks of the human predicament in John’s Gospel as “existence in bondage” to the collective power of sin, the devil, and death, which holds sway over the kosmos as “the world of man.”² Bultmann frequently describes this existence in bondage as “blindness.”³ Cornelis Bennema speaks of the human predicament in John’s Gospel as a “spiritual oppression” that is caused by the devil, sin, and death, and that manifests itself in various physical, social, and religious ways.⁴ Craig Koester summarizes the plight in John’s Gospel as “separation from God” (which is caused by sin and death as well as by human limitations).⁵

Interestingly, in some studies that focus specifically on John’s soteriology it is difficult to determine how the human predicament should be understood, because here discussions devoted to the topic are lacking and descriptions are peripheral to other concerns.⁶ In certain treatments of John’s soteriology the nature of the plight receives no attention at all and, thus, seems to be assumed.⁷ It is the case more generally that John’s portrayal of the human predicament, or at least such aspects of it as “sin” and “death,” does garner some amount of attention from those variously interested in John’s soteriology, anthropology, and theology, although a full description of the plight and its various aspects is often lacking.⁸ For many interpreters, the paramount importance of “revelation” presumed for John’s soteriology seems to dictate the way in which John’s portrayal of the human predicament is conceived and explained.⁹ This observation will now be discussed more fully.

Notwithstanding the variation just noted in how scholarship describes the human predicament in John’s Gospel, there is consensus that, for John, “sin” and “death” largely define this predicament. Sin and death collectively represent the crux of the matter. A common assertion (or in some cases assumption) in scholarship, though, is that sin in the Fourth Gospel amounts to “unbelief.”¹⁰ This idea seems to take shape in one of two ways: (1) “sin” in John’s Gospel is deemed not to be a moral or ethical category; or (2) “sin” in John’s Gospel is deemed to be the source and cause of immoral behavior, and it is rectified when one “believes” in response to divine revelation. In each case, the interpretation of sin informs and is informed by the interpretation of such matters as “ignorance” and “knowledge” of God, “darkness” and “light,” as well as “death” and “life,” since such matters directly or indirectly relate to sin in John’s Gospel. Consequently, in each case the interpretation of sin and the human predicament more broadly shapes as well as reflects a certain reading of John’s soteriology and theology as a whole.

An example of the first line of interpretation, which finds “sin” to lack moral and ethical significance for John, is the study of Rainer Metzner: Das Verständnis der Sünde im Johannesevangelium. Metzner finds that “sin” is for John “neither a nomistic nor a moral category. It does not adequately allow itself to be comprehended as the violation of a generally accepted human value-system.”¹¹ For Metzner, the Christological determination of “sin” in John’s Gospel, in conjunction with the Johannine lawsuit motif, indicates that sin should be understood “trans-morally” and in accordance with John’s theology of revelation: sin is “an expression of a fundamental blindness and hostility of the world to the will of God coming to bear in the Revealer. … Sin is the one denial of the world to the messenger of God, manifested in its opposition to the revelation of God.”¹² In finding “sin” to lack moral or ethical significance for John, because it designates “unbelief,” Metzner follows interpreters such as E. F. Scott,¹³ Thomas Knöppler,¹⁴ and Alois Stimpfle.¹⁵ Christina Urban apparently agrees.¹⁶ So do Udo Schnelle¹⁷ and Michael Theobald.¹⁸ Michael Labahn considers how John’s respective delineations of “sin” and “law” may contribute to Johannine ethics and, on the basis of previous research, concludes the same: “aside from a few exceptions in 1 John, ‘law’ and ‘sin’ do not appear to function as moral categories in the Johannine writings.”¹⁹

This line of interpretation has major implications for John’s soteriology and theology. If sin is found not to be a moral or ethical category for John and, thereby, not to signify immoral actions and wayward behavior, then human behavior becomes irrelevant to the human predicament and, also, to its solution. What people do becomes insignificant in John’s view of things.²⁰ It would seem to follow that human corporeality or embodiment is of no consequence for John.²¹ Jesus, according to John, has come to save human beings from “sin,” but sin understood not as immoral actions and conduct but as a lack of mental perception, as “spiritual blindness.” Those who reject Jesus and his revelation continue in their faulty perception, which may now be described as “unbelief,” while those who believe in Jesus are liberated from their ignorance and, thus, saved. Salvation is essentially (or perhaps entirely) “realized” in the emergence of belief.²² The preponderance of this line of interpretation becomes all the more evident when one observes that, within scholarship, immoral behavior is seldom identified and emphasized as a key component of the human predicament in John’s Gospel.

Differing to varying degrees from this assessment, other interpreters likewise explain “sin” in the Fourth Gospel as “unbelief,” but explain sin as pertaining to morality and human behavior in the sense that “unbelief” is the source and cause of wayward conduct. Jan van der Watt, for example, finds that “sin” in John’s Gospel is in essence “not accepting (believing in) God as he is revealed in and through Jesus”; the human predicament is “a lack of spiritual knowledge and blindness.”²³ “This existential situation,” van der Watt continues, “results in hatred for and rejection of the Son and the Father by the opponents of Jesus, and consequently, in their evil behaviour.”²⁴ Sin, for John, is to be understood “as the negative position and attitude of a person. … This existential position forms grounds for doing wrong things.”²⁵ In describing “sin” or “unbelief” as the cause of immoral actions and behavior, van der Watt more or less follows interpreters such as Raymond Brown²⁶ and Craig Koester.²⁷ Dorothy Lee appears to agree: sin and evil are for John “bound up with a failure of recognition, an incomprehensible absence of knowledge”; “sin” may therefore be defined as “unbelief,” as “a fundamental disorientation in relationship to God underlying acts of wrongdoing, that can be removed only by the divine miracle of incarnate love.”²⁸

In certain cases both views (i.e., that “sin” for John does and does not pertain to immoral behavior) seem to be espoused simultaneously. Bultmann, for instance, describes “sin” as “unbelief” and as “blindness,” and he says that, for John, “one might almost say: the sin of ‘the Jews’ lies not in their ethics, as in Paul, but in their dogmatics.”²⁹ Bultmann indicates elsewhere, though, that sin is for John the source and cause of immoral behavior: “being in darkness, the world is simultaneously in falsehood. For it is this illusion about itself, not some immoral conduct, that is the lie—an illusion, however, which is no mere error in thought, but the illusion of a false self-understanding out of which any immoral conduct that may develop proceeds to grow.”³⁰

Regardless of whether one is deemed consistent in his or her analysis, though, an important result of finding “unbelief” in John’s Gospel to be the source and cause of immoral behavior is that human behavior becomes wholly consequent on and determined by a moment (and dualism) of decision.³¹ If “sin” is for John “unbelief,” then it follows that, when a person “believes,” the source and cause of wayward behavior is addressed and rectified.³² The problem of what human beings do, according to this line of interpretation, is resolved for John in the emergence of faith. This calls into question the extent to which John may be said to present salvation as a process of bodily transformation (if such a characterization is thought at all to be suitable), since the believer’s moral renewal or sanctification is “realized” in the moment she or he begins to believe in Jesus.³³ One could perhaps argue, on the basis of Christian experience, then, either that John offers a rather naïve portrait of the Christian life (i.e., one in which no immoral, devious, or self-serving conduct occurs in the lives of believers) or that, in light of John’s Gospel, something is terribly amiss in the life of the Christian community. How “sin,” following the emergence of belief, factors into salvation as an ongoing process and experience is here a question apparently not applicable to the Fourth Gospel.

Assessments of the human predicament in John’s Gospel have these same implications when sin is not characterized as “unbelief.” This is because scholars who find this characterization to be inapt still seem to maintain that, for John, salvation from sin is realized in the emergence of belief. J. Terence Forestell, for example, refines the common assessment of “sin” in John’s Gospel when he writes, “Although many commentators assert that unbelief is the only sin in John, it would be more accurate to say that unbelief manifests a state of sin in which man lives”; “evil actions simply manifest a deeper spiritual state which the fourth gospel calls sin.”³⁴ In the Fourth Gospel, “sin” should be viewed as “a way of existence characterized by murder, hatred, lying and self-exaltation. It is a state of alienation which results in division and hatred among men.”³⁵ For Forestell, though, because “sin” in John’s Gospel is a “spiritual state” from which evil actions arise, the result is that the problem of sin and evil behavior is resolved for John in the emergence of belief: “Sin is destroyed in John by the very gift of eternal life,” and, for John, “eternal life or salvation does not lie in the future. It is the present possession of all those who believe in Christ.”³⁶ According to Forestell, what remains to be realized for believers following their acceptance of Christ, in John’s view of things, is greater contemplation of Christ’s glory, not moral and physical transformation.³⁷

Martin Hasitschka also finds to be inadequate the characterization of sin in John’s Gospel as “unbelief”: “Sin is according to John … not to be understood so much in a moral/ethical sense and also is not simply to be equated with ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Life and Light, Darkness and Ignorance of God: The Prologue as Introduction to the Human Predicament and Its Solution
• 3 Illness, Disability, and Death: The Man with a Disabling Illness at Bethzatha and Jesus’s Consequent Monologue
• 4 Sin and Its Effects: The Case of “the Jews” Who Believe and Fall Away
• 5 Conclusions and Reflections
• Bibliography
• Index of Modern Authors
• Index of Ancient Sources
• Index of Subjects
• Copyright Page