The Death of Jesus and the Politics of Place in the Gospel of John

Peter Claver Ajer

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781498279628
  9781498279642
• eBook ISBN:
  9781498279635
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

This book's findings are rich and intriguing: In his death, Jesus--the chief architect in the production of space in the Christian realm--founds an alternative community that reorders space and creates a new reality for believers. This new community, which dwells in this radical new space, successfully resists the domination of oppressive regimes and mindsets, such as the Roman Empire. Suffering is transformed here. Many recent biblical studies have utilized various methodologies and historical-critical viewpoints, which have been helpful. However, drawing on theories of space and postcolonial approaches, Dr. Ajer breaks new ground in Johannine studies, a new terrain that will yield much fruit. The new understandings of "space" provide a key with which we may unlock more of the mysteries of the Fourth Gospel, as Ajer here demonstrates with powerful new discoveries and insights into John's Passion narrative.

Chapter 1

Previous Studies On The Death Of Jesus

Introduction

Many individuals were crucified under Roman rule in first century CE Palestine, but no single death has influenced the history of the world more than that of Jesus Christ. This influence stems from Christian interpretation of Jesus’ death on the cross, which made the horrible death acceptable. By interpreting it as an atoning sacrifice, the event took on salvific significance, and became the foundation of Christian faith.

An interweaving of John’s story with that of the synoptic Gospels formed the basis for this interpretation of the death of Jesus, but critical scholarship uncovered the difference between John’s narrative and that of the Synoptic Gospels. Craig Koester’s observation that the “Synoptics tell of Jesus’ suffering, John tells of Jesus’ triumph” demands investigation into what are the effects of John’s presentation of the story as a triumph, stripped of any suffering.4

Rudolf Bultmann ignited the probe into the significance of the death of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel with his provocative position that the Gospel of John is void of atonement terminology and therefore has neither atonement nor salvific significance.5 Ernst Käsemann staunchly followed Bultmann, differing from him on certain aspects but reaching the same conclusions. Subsequent studies reacted to both Bultmann and Käsemann. While Pro-Bultmann scholars made minor modifications to the arguments in favor of the non-atonement character of John, opponents resisted Bultmann’s conclusion and reclaimed the death of Jesus as atoning sacrifice. Later scholars focused on diverse motifs such as glorification and exaltation, sacrifices, ascent and lifting up, revelation, sign, cosmic war, and death of a “noble” shepherd.6

In the late twenty-first century, interpretations of the soteriological significance of the death of Jesus in John shifted to inquiry into the centrality of politics. Because no single explanation has been unilaterally accepted, this chapter will critically review scholarship that addresses the salvific significance of the death of Jesus in order to identify weaknesses in interpretation that are strengthened by interpretations focusing on politics.

Death of Jesus as Completion of Mission and Return to the Father

Rudolf Bultmann, along with Ernst Käsemann, pioneered interpretations of the death of Jesus as the completion of his mission and a return to his Father. Bultmann’s polemic affirmation that the Gospel of John is of no soteriological significance sprang from his conviction that the Fourth Gospel lacks atonement terminology and cannot be interpreted as an expiatory sacrifice for the sins of others.7 According to Bultmann, Jesus’ coming into the world is central to understanding the person and works of Jesus. Jesus’ arrival and departure “constitute a unity,” wherein “the center of gravity” is the incarnation. Bultmann argues that any attempt to make Jesus’ death central uses Paul’s theology to interpret John’s.8 Jesus’ death should be understood as part of his total revelatory work with no significance in and of itself because the release from sin is mediated not through Jesus’ sacrificial death but through his word (8:31–35; 15:13).9 Any allusions to atonement in the Fourth Gospel such as in 1:29, 35, are “later accretions or remnants of earlier traditions.”10 Bultmann thus boldly concludes that the understanding of the death of Jesus as an atoning sacrifice “has no place in John.”11 Jesus’ death is therefore “no offence, no scandal, and no catastrophe needing a resurrection to reverse or illuminate it.”12

Instead, Bultmann understands Jesus’ crucifixion—which John recounts under the force of tradition—as his “elevation” (ὑψωθῆναι) and “glorification” (δοξασθῆναι) whereby Jesus completes his mission of obedience to God and returns to the glory he had when pre-existent.13 For this reason, Jesus is never portrayed as a worldly phenomenon, someone to be captured and domesticated in worldly categories. He is not depicted as the “passive victim” but as the “active conqueror.”14

Like Bultmann, Käsemann argued that Jesus’ death must be understood in the context of his total mission of “coming and going,” as Jesus’ death as the completion of his heavenly mission and his “going away” back to his Father. This “going away” (ὑπάγειν: 7:33; 8:14, 21–22; 13:3, 33, 36; 14:4–5, 28; 16:5, 10, 17) represents the end of the earthly sojourn that Jesus’ incarnation began.15 The return represents no real change in the person of the revealer, anymore than his incarnation does. He may change his location, but he always and everywhere exhibits and possesses the divine glory.16 For this reason Jesus’ death discloses nothing of his person and work not already manifested in the incarnation itself. If his death is “the manifestation of divine self-giving love,” then so is his incarnation.17

Käsemann departs from Bultmann by arguing that the center of the Fourth Gospel is not the incarnation, but the “unity of the Father with the Son.”18 The key term for the articulation of this unity is the word “glory,” found in the Prologue of John’s Gospel (1:14) and at the beginning of chapter 17. Read with “glory” in mind, John’s Gospel does not proclaim the humanity of Jesus but his divinity, as the divine glory is exhibited in Jesus. The Gospel elicits faith through the unity of the Son with the Father. The sojourn of Jesus reveals the earthly manifestation of divine glory. The goal of the incarnation is the visible presence of God on earth, and is not proof of a “realistic incarnation.”19

Käsemann argues that the Johannine Jesus has few human features. The physical countenance is simply a deception. Jesus’ divine glory is not paradoxically hidden in his fleshly, earthly body as Bultmann claimed. Instead, Jesus is God striding across the earth. He is God’s envoy on earth and only in unity with God is his mission on earth accomplished. This means that Jesus is in complete unity with God even in his death.20 Because the theme of glory determines the entir...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Abbreviations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Previous Studies On The Death Of Jesus
• Chapter 2: Methodology
• Chapter 3: Spatializing the Decision to Kill Jesus
• Chapter 4: Locating the Place of Gathering
• Chapter 5: Spaces of Struggle and the New World Order
• General Conclusion
• Bibliography