John 12-21

An Exegetical and Theological Exposition of Holy Scripture

Gerald L. Borchert

• Editore: Holman Reference
• Anno: 2002
• ISBN:
  9781433672682
• Argomento: Teología y religión
• Categoria: Comentario bíblico

THE NEW AMERICAN COMMENTARY is for the minister or Bible student who wants to understand and expound the Scriptures. Notable features include: * commentary based on THE NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION;* the NIV text printed in the body of the commentary;* sound scholarly methodology that reflects capable research in the original languages;* interpretation that emphasizes the theological unity of each book and of Scripture as a whole;* readable and applicable exposition.

APPENDIX 1

A SUMMARY OF JOHANNINE THEOLOGY

1. Introduction

2. One Possible Approach: A Systematic Pattern

3. Another Option: Affirming the Story Nature of the Gospel in Theology

(1) About God in John

(2) About Human Weakness and Sin

(3) About Human Hostility

(4) About Satan, the Ultimate Enemy

(5) About Jesus

(6) About Believing and Life

(7) About Love

(8) About the Community

(9) About Prayer

(10) About the Holy Spirit and the Divine Presence

(11) About Destiny and the Ultimate Hope

Excursus 33: Questions of Eternity—Where Is the Place? What Is It Like? How Do We Get There?

A SUMMARY OF JOHANNINE THEOLOGY

1. Introduction

The Gospel of John is an amazing theological document. Its verses have been used repeatedly by the Church Fathers and successive Christian formulators of varying doctrinal views. Its texts have also been manipulated by a host of deviants who have departed from historic Christianity, such as the Gnostic mythologists¹ and outright opponents of Christianity such as the followers of Islam, who have employed the Paraclete passages to proclaim the foretelling of Mohammed.²

To supply a brief theological summary of Johannine thought, therefore, is no mean task. In this summary I will not attempt to re-present the detailed arguments in the commentary or repeat the footnotes included in the various sections. Rather, an effort will be made to provide an overview of some striking theological features in John's Gospel.

In this effort one is faced with a decision with the way one should design such a summary. In recent times a number of significant theological studies have appeared. After discussing the various settings in which the Gospel took shape, M. Smith concentrated on discussing the Johannine themes.³ In this process he was clearly aided by the earlier work of R. Brown, who detailed a number of the Johannine themes in appendices to his commentary.⁴ Earlier E. Lee and J. Crehan also followed a similar pattern to that of Smith and Brown.⁵ And prior to these writers A. Corell had focused on this style in terms of Johannine eschatology and ecclesiology.⁶

More recently Beasley-Murray sought to summarize Johannine theology in terms of the concept of life as it relates to the Son of God/Son of Man, the Holy Spirit, and the church and ministry, including what he refers to as the Sacraments in the Fourth Gospel.⁷ In the present study I will not attempt to replicate these earlier studies. Instead, I will attempt to provide a brief summary of some theological perspectives I find emerging from the Gospel.

2. One Possible Approach: A Systematic Pattern

In this effort of arriving at a reasonable summary, I have struggled with how to begin such a summary and maintain a sensitivity to the approach of John's Gospel presentation. Of course, one obvious option was to employ the categories of systematic or dogmatic theology. Such an option can be very appealing to readers who tend to think in deductive categories. The result of such an effort would be to supply readers with what might be a brief handbook of Johannine theology. This handbook could serve as a teaching aid by setting forth in a logical manner the Johannine perspectives on such matters as revelation, God (including the possible triune formulations), humanity, and the subsequent relationships between God and humanity in terms of creation, sin, salvation, and the processes of bringing about both judgment and blessing in the present world and in the hereafter,including, of course, the nature and role of the church in that process.

Such a pattern usually requires constructing a theological statement through the extraction of the Johannine ideas and theological themes from the stories and the dialogical pericopes in the Gospel. The resulting construct might be quite helpful if one would pursue it in something like the following manner.

Beginning with the concern for revelation, one could naturally detail the fact that God made known his divine purposes with humanity at a strategic point in history through the unique (monogenes) WORD (logos) that for a brief time became flesh and tented/dwelt among us (John 1:14).

In this section one would certainly want to include a discussion of the meaning of terms such as “knowing” (gin

skein) and “believing” (pisteuein), which are only used in their verb forms and never in their noun or substantive forms in this Gospel. Such a restriction to verbs is certainly of critical importance in understanding this Gospel. The reason, of course, is that the evangelist has purposely drawn attention to the fact that it is not “what” you know or believe that is the foundation of this revelation but “who” you know that is the focus of this Johannine message. The use of the verbs clearly emphasizes the dynamic nature of believing and knowing, and readers should pay particular attention to this fact. Thus, while doctrinal formulations were certainly important to the Johannine community, as is evidenced by the arguments in the first epistle (cf. 1 John 2:22; 4:2–3), nevertheless even in that epistle the dynamics of “living” and “loving” (2:24– 25; 4:7–23) are just as significant as the centrality of the new commandment is in the Gospel (cf. John 13:34–35).

As with Nicodemus, who thought he could categorize Jesus (3:2–4), and the woman of Samaria, who had neat little packaged ideas about the Messiah and worship (4:19–26), so the reader of John should soon realize that such ideas when presented primarily in terms of formulations can easily miss the living reality of the revealing Word who tented among humans like the tabernacle that moved around the wilderness with the people of Israel (cf. John 1:14).

Formulations and idea constructs can often fail to represent John adequately. Thus the Jews of Jesus' day had many ideas about God and the way God worked in the world. Like the Prodigal Son in Luke 15:18,21, the Jews avoided using the name of God and spoke of God in surrogate ways such as “heaven” because they feared taking the name of God in vain and in so doing violating God's holiness. Even more recently the followers of Islam set in single moveable script for print the entire name of Allah rather than in separate moveable type for fear that the letters of their God would be used elsewhere in unholy words and thus take the name of God in vain. But Jesus entered this world scene and fearlessly called God his “Father,” a fact thatclearly angered the theologically sensitive Jewish leaders of his day (cf. John 5:18). And what was even more startling is that he had the audacity to teach his disciples to call God their Father also (cf. Matt 6:9,14–15; John 16:23,27).⁸ Therefore what Jesus actually did was to upset the Jewish finely tuned theological base system. He summoned people to view their relationship to God in a very different manner from the harsh way the rabbis did.

Misguided views about the way the ancients thought God related to the world were common. Among those misguided humans the man who had been paralyzed for thirty-eight years is a prime example. In his wrongly conceived mythological mind-set he pictured God as dealing with humans on a “first come, first served” basis (John 5:7) so that he could not conceive of God acting in Jesus outside the boundaries of his set perception. Likewise, the Jews argued that Moses was the dispenser of manna or bread in the wilderness (6:30–31). They were also certain that “when Christ would appear” no one would know where he came from (7:27); and that since they were Abraham's descendants they had never been in bondage (8:33). Moreover, in their commitments to their doctrinal “correctness” they clearly instructed the healed blind man to give praise to God but also to admit that Jesus must be a sinner because he healed on the Sabbath (9:24). But their “ideas” about God and Jesus were patently incorrect according to John.

It should be apparent that the wonderful stories of the Johannine Gospel do not fit nicely into the specific divisions of systematic or dogmatic theology. Of course, one can extract verses from the stories to fit the categories, as was done most notably in past generations by renowned writers such as A. H. Strong and C. Hodge.⁹ But that method, helpful as it may be for some readers, really employs categories that are external to the Gospel stories and pericopes in a deductive manner as a means for organizing idea segments presented by the evangelist for the purpose of developing a holistic system or structure. In a sense we all import structure in the task of writing theologies. My goal, therefore, is not to condemn structure nor to provide this brief theological summary without a structure.

3. Another Option: Affirming the Story Nature of the Gospel in Theology

My purpose in this summary is to affirm the story nature of this Gospel and to focus on the primary aspects of theology that are related to the Gospel stories. Besides, anyone reading my commentary will sense immediately that I think the Gospel has a definite structure of its own, and I have sought to elucidate that structure in the commentary and the earlier “triptik,” or map, which I have provided in both volumes of this study. My goal at this point, however, is not to repeat that structure but to reaffirm the story nature of John's theology.

(1) About God in John

The stories in this Gospel do tell us some very important ideas about God: who was in the beginning (1:1; 17:5); whom no one has seen (1:18; 6:46); who loves the world (3:16); and more specifically loves the obedient followers of Jesus (14:21; 17:26); who sent the Son to save the world (3:17); who is Spirit (4:26); who raises the dead (5:21) and does not need to judge because he has committed that role to Jesus (5:22), who in turn uses the Scriptures and Moses to judge (5:45–46); who draws people to himself and is the source of authentic teaching (6:44–45; 7:16) who speaks and his people hear (8:47); whose “realm” is the consummate destiny of his people (14:1–3; 17:24); who with Jesus sends the Paraclete/the Spirit (14:26; 15:26); who is the ultimate protector of his people (17:11); and is the one to whom Jesus “delivered” his spirit when he died (19:30), an idea that is a deduction to avoid Jesus' delivering his spirit to the devil.

(2) About Human Weakness and Sin

These stories and pericopes also tell us about the other side of reality, namely human weakness, sin, hostility to God and the penchant for human misunderstanding. Even those who were supposed to be God's own people refused to receive God's sent Word (1:10). Since they had turned God's house into a place of business (2:16), they hardly were able to recognize his messenger, who embodied in himself the sanctuary of God (2:18–19). As a result Jesus was unwilling to accept the integrity of their believing because he knew the real nature of humanity (2:23–25) and understood the lack of commitment on the part of some of the leaders in their believing patterns (12:42–43).

The misunderstanding of the people who are out of harmony with God is a constant refrain in this Gospel: whether it is Nicodemus, who thinks he knows the nature of Jesus (3:2–4); the woman of Samaria, who represents the perspective of the rejected ones (4:15,19–22,25–26); the disciples themselves, who often seem to live in a fog (4:27,31–34; 11:8–14; 12:16; 16:29– 32); the well-intentioned Peter (13:36–38; 21:20–22); the realist Thomas, who made intriguing statements (11:16; 14:5–7; 20:25); the sidekick Philip (14:8–9); Martha, who could parrot typical Jewish theology (11:21–27,39– 40); the doubting brothers of Jesus (7:3–9); the Jews, who waited for the coming of the Messiah (7:25–28; 12:12–13); or the grieving Mary Magdalene (20:13–17). Confusion concerning Jesus and his work reigned supreme.

(3) About Human Hostility

But this Gospel also presents pictures of those whose misunderstanding merges into rejection of Jesus and outright hostility and enmity toward him. Among those who could be included in this negative group are those who refused to accept him (1:11); the paralytic, who blamed others for his situations in life and testified against Jesus to save his skin (5:6–7,10–15); the parents of the blind man, who did not want to become involved in a problem with their rejected son in order to maintain their status in the synagogue (9:20–23); the leaders, who believed but refused to acknowledge Jesus openly because of their desire for human praise and affirmation (12:42–43); the Pharisees and Jews who refused to accept Jesus and became part of the growing opposition to Jesus (2:18–20; 5:16; 6:41–42,52–59; 7:25,32,45–49; 8:13,39–44,48; 9:13–16,34,39–41; 10:31–33; 12:19); the scheming Caiaphas and Annas and their obedient council members and followers (11:47–53,57; 18:3,13,19–24,28; 19:6–7,15,21); and of course Judas, the betrayer, thief, son of doom, and devil man (6:70–71; 12:4–6; 13:2,26–30; 17:12; 18:3–6).

(4) About Satan, the Ultimate Enemy

To this negative category one must also add the ultimate enemy of God and Jesus, the one who is called the devil, Satan, and the prince of this world (12:31; 13:27 and perhaps 17:15). He is, in fact, the major force in the world behind the hostility against Jesus and his followers. He is portrayed as the one who instigates opposition directly or indirectly through knowing or unknowing devotees (8:44; 10:35–39; 12:31–35; 14:30; 15:18– 25; 16:2,11). The hostility against the followers of Jesus resulted in all forms of persecution epitomized in hatred (17:14), excommunication of Jesus' followers from Jewish synagogues (16:2; cf. 9:22,34), and the killing of Jesus' followers (16:2; 21:18–19).

(5) About Jesus

Having thus detailed several general theological issues in this Gospel, it is imperative at this point to recognize that the Gospel of John is focused primarily on the person and work of Jesus. Everything that is written by the evangelist is intended to provide the reader with an adequate theology concerning the significance of Jesus in order that the reader might believe that Jesus is indeed the expected Messiah/Christ, the Son of God, and through authe...