"It is the Spirit that Gives Life"
A Stoic Understanding of Pneuma in John's Gospel
- 519 pages
- English
- PDF
- Available on iOS & Android
"It is the Spirit that Gives Life"
A Stoic Understanding of Pneuma in John's Gospel
About this book
Since Origen and Chrysostom, John's Gospel has been valued as the most spiritual among the New Testament writings. Although Origen recognizes the Stoic character of John's statement that "God is pneuma" (4:24), an examination of the gospel in light of Stoic physics has not yet been carried out. Combining her insight into Stoic physics and ancient physiology, the author situates her thesis in the major discussions of modern Johannine scholarship â e.g. the role of the Baptist and the function of the Johannine signs â and demonstrates new solutions to well-known problems.
The Stoic study of the Fourth Gospel reveals a coherent narrative tied together by the spirit. The problem with which John's Gospel wrestles is not the identity of Jesus, but the transition from the Son of God to the next generation of divinely begotten children: how did it come about? A reading carried out from a Stoic perspective points to the translation of the risen body of Jesus into spirit as the decisive event. The provision of the spirit is a precondition of the divine generation of believers. Both events are explained by Stoic theory which allows of a transformation of fleshly elements into pneuma and of multiple fatherhood. In fact, in his Commentary on John, Origen described Jesus' ascension as an event of anastoixeiĂ´sis, which is the Stoic term for the transformation of heavily elements into lighter and pneumatic ones.
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Table of contents
- Frontmatter
- Table of Contents
- Chapter 1. History of Research. Cosmos in the Fourth Gospel
- Chapter 2. Cosmology in Stoicism. The Discourse of Physics
- Chapter 3. Philoâs Divine Generation. The Safer Way to Truth
- Chapter 4. The First Pneumatic Event. The Descent of the Spirit as Jesusâ Divine Generation
- Chapter 5. Johnâs Call from the Wilderness for a Better Guidance of the Way to the Lord
- Chapter 6. Regeneration as Hermeneutical Competence. The Johannine Signs and the Meta-Story of Pneumatic Transformations
- Chapter 7. The Penultimate Pneumatic Event. âIt Is the Spirit That Gives Lifeâ (6:63). Jesusâ Ascent and Translation into the Father
- Chapter 8. The Ultimate Pneumatic event. Worshippers in Spirit and Truth. The Quest for the Father â The Quest of the Father
- Backmatter