The Gospel of John

A Thematic Approach

R. Jackson Painter

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN:
  9781608994847
  9781498256391
• eBook ISBN:
  9781498272520
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Critique et interprétation bibliques

Part of the genius of the Gospel of John comes from how the author infuses the gospel message into every part of the Gospel. In The Gospel of John: A Thematic Approach, Jackson Painter investigates John's literary-theological strategy by identifying seven key themes and showing the reader how to detect them in any portion of the Gospel as well as how to see the themes interacting with one another to create John's distinct theological message about Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The author gives numerous examples of the elements and motifs that comprise the themes and presents three studies that illustrate how the themes interact. Students of the Gospel of John will come away with a newfound ability to understand and interpret the Gospel of John.

Part One

Thematic Essays

1

Identity

“Who are you?” the Jewish leaders ask Jesus in John 8:25. Their question is the most basic question reflected on in the Gospel of John. John’s answer to the question is complex, but unified. Jesus is the very revelation of God: the divine Son, the Savior of the world, the hoped for Messiah of the Jews, the true Witness to God the Father. These fairly simple epithets are the essential elements of the first four themes: Identity, Life, Festival and Witness. Each theme embodies one complex of images related to the nature of Jesus as the revelation of God.

The Identity theme sets out the divine nature of Jesus Christ. From beginning to end this gospel is concerned to show where Jesus Christ comes from, whose authority he acts under, the scope of his nature and authority, and his destiny in returning to his place of origin. As such, the Identity theme infuses the gospel from start to finish.

Pilate asks Jesus a fundamental Identity question, “Where are you from?” (19:9). The readers of the gospel know the answer is “from heaven.” A number of scholars have illustrated the coming of Jesus in the Gospel of John with a “V“ indicating his coming from the Father (heaven) to earth and then his return. The gospel story takes place at the bottom point of the “V” at a moment in time, but the larger story is timeless with a “beginning” before creation and an “ending” in eternity forward. John seeks to show in the Identity theme that Jesus Christ on earth was the very picture of what he always was and always will be, God.

Identity encompasses a number of images and motifs which John may introduce only once, such as the Logos, or which he expands significantly, such as the Son motif. Identity motifs include preexistence, an extensive “Son” motif with various combinations, and the absolute “I am” sayings. As pointed out in the introduction, this theme and its associated motifs weave together with other themes and their associated motifs, creating an endless web of relationships and possibilities for meaningful observations. Of further note is the function of these Identity motifs in John’s plan. Each instance of the Identity theme serves as a riddle for the reader (or hearer) to reflect on regarding the divine nature of Jesus and come to a decision concerning its meaning and the claim that is made on one’s life. Every question in the text is also a question for the reader.

Because the Identity theme concerns Jesus’ divine identity, the theme as outlined here does not include elements related to Jesus as Savior or as the Jewish Messiah. The Life and Festival themes will cover these topics. As will be evident with every theme, Identity, while focusing primarily on Jesus and the meta-theme of Revelation, also includes an aspect that relates it to the meta-theme of Response. When people encounter Jesus and respond to him, their identity changes, and their true origin in God is revealed.

Logos

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” These opening phrases of the so-called “Prologue” of John (1:1–18) introduce the Identity theme. “The Word” (1:1) who became flesh (1:14) and reveals God (1:18) is the dominant idea of these eighteen verses. The “Word” (Gk. logos, henceforth Logos) is the subject of the opening three phrases in John 1:1. This emphatic three-fold repetition makes an imprint on the rest of the gospel. The gospel is concerned preeminently with the revealing of the Logos. Though only used as a title in the Prologue (1:1–18) the Logos is clearly linked in an intimate and discreet way with the person of Jesus Christ (1:17). The Prologue is John’s theological account of how this connection transpired, how the eternal Logos became the incarnate Logos.

John never defines the term Logos, but does associate Logos with God. The Logos existed with God in the beginning. For John, God and Logos always existed together. The relationship between the two is expressed as “the Logos was with God”. “With” (Gk. pros) is not a static concept, but expresses the idea of “motion toward.” Logos and God have a constant eternal movement toward each other. The third phrase in 1:1, “and the Logos was God,” expresses even more clearly the divine character of the Logos. The NEB attempts to get at the meaning of the phrase with the expression “and what God was the Word was.” The grammatical structure implies that the Logos is fully God, but not the totality of God. Neither was the Logos any less than God. In formulating the divine identity of the Logos this way, John lays the foundation for Trinitarian theology. This formulation also prevents modalistic thinking about God; in the Incarnation, God the Father and God the Son existed together, one did not become the other.

Why does John use the term logos? Likely because only this term allowed John to bring to expression his understanding of how God revealed himself in the Incarnation. The Greek term logos has an extremely wide range of meanings in ancient literature. The Liddell-Scott Lexicon lists nine major categories of meaning with numerous specific renderings including: account, saying, story, relation, ratio, explanation, reason(ing), a speech, and other types of verbal statements. In the Gospel of John the term logos often refers to a variety of statements or utterances, primarily those of Jesus. Only in the Prologue, however, does John use the term logos in a personal sense to refer to the manifestation of God, which is the active force in creation and ultimately the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ.

The use of this wide-ranging Greek term allows John to refer to both Hebrew and Greek conceptions. First, in using logos John draws from Genesis, where God speaks creation into existence, and the rest of the Hebrew scriptures, which refer to the word of the Lord (LXX, logos kyriou) to Abraham, Jacob, Moses or any of the prophets.

Besides drawing on the rich tradition of the speech of God in creation and to the prophets of Israel, John employs logos in an age where the Platonic, Stoic, and Hellenistic Jewish traditions have imbued the term with philosophical depth. It is impossible to know the extent to which John was aware of these traditions, but certainly the first generations of readers of the Gospel discerned these connections. The Stoics conceived of the Logos as the impersonal force of coherence that held the universe together. The Jewish philosopher Philo drew on Platonism and Jewish Wisdom traditions to conceive of the Logos as the active force of God in creation and humanity. Philo never conceived of the Logos as incarnated in a person, however. John makes this conception clear with the phrase, “and the Logos became flesh and dwelled among us” (1:14).

While John 1:1–2 sets out the relationship of the Logos to God, verse three introduces the scope of the divine authority of the Logos: “All things were made through him, and apart from him nothing was made which was made.” Not only is the Logos identified with God, but a specific function of the Logos is creation. The Logos is the agent of creation. John is specifically alluding to the active speech of God in Genesis 1 and maybe to the wisdom traditions in Proverbs.1 By the time John wrote the Prologue, several other Christian writers had formulated similar ideas about the role of Jesus Christ in creation (1 Cor 8:6; Col 1:16–17; Heb 1:2). John is the only one to use logos, though the author of Hebrews says it similarly: “in these last days, [God] has spoken to us in a Son” (Heb 1:2, italics mine). The Logos is the divine agency of the Godhead involved in creating all things and communicating to that very creation.

The succeeding verses of John’s Prologue develop several characteristics of the Logos, primarily the Logos as light and life. These important images are part of the separate though related theme of Life, which I will take up in the next chapter.

The important transition point in the Prologue with regard to Identity occurs in 1:14: “And the Word (Logos) became flesh and dwelled among us and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” We as readers do not yet know the full meaning of this verse. We do know that the Logos is now human like us. We also know the Logos is uniquely from the Father in the role of “only-begotten” (Gk. monogenēs).2

John goes on to specify who the Logos made flesh is as a particular human; in 1:17 he identifies the Logos with Jesus Christ. From this point on, the gospel writer intends that every word and act of the man Jesus are those of the divine Logos. This idea is confirmed in 1:18: “the only-begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, has made him known.”3 One irony of the gospel is that the actors in the gospel must discover this identity for themselves.

The revealing of the Logos in these eighteen verses only commences the Identity theme. The Logos as a title does not appear again in John; instead the motifs of “preexistence,” “the Son” and the phrase “I am,” take over to definitively connect the person of Jesus Christ with the Logos. These motifs are actually present in the Prologue and continue as John tells the gospel story.

Finally, while John focuses primarily on the identity of the Logos in the Prologue, there is another pertinent observation. In 1:12–13, John speaks of those who have received the Logos. This notice properly belongs to the Believing theme. However, in that those who receive the Logos become “children of God” and are “born from God,” we have an extension of the Identity theme. The identity of these people has changed from “born of the world” to “born of God.” Throughout the gospel we will observe this change of identity as people place their trust in the incarnate Logos, Jesus Christ.

Pre-existence

While is is fairly obvious from the Prologue that the Logos was preexistent as part of the Godhead, John goes on to connect this eternal state with the person of Jesus. The repetition of the concept makes pre-existence a sort of motif for the Identity theme.

John the Baptist is the character who introduces the concept with reference to Jesus. When “the Word became flesh,” the Baptist proclaims, “This was the man of whom I spoke, one is coming after me who is now ahead of me, because he existed before me” (1:15). John the Baptist’s statement indicates the pre-eminence of the incarnate Logos because of the pre-existence of that very Logos. The John the Baptist narrative o...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part One: Thematic Essays
• Chapter 1: Identity
• Chapter 2: Life
• Chapter 3: Festival
• Chapter 4: Witness
• Chapter 5: Believing
• Chapter 6: Signs
• Chapter 7: Destiny
• Part Two: Studies
• Chapter 8: A Thematic Analysis of John 3:1–21
• Chapter 9: A Thematic Analysis of John 6:26–58
• Chapter 10: A Thematic Analysis of John 17
• Epilogue
• Appendix
• Bibliography