A scholarly evaluation of the fourth Gospel and Johannine community.

For contemporary Christians, Johns Gospel is a paradox. On the one hand, it stresses boundaries: “No one comes to the Father except through me.”

But on the other hand, it’s all about community: “I have no longer called you servant, but friends.”

Conversations with Scripture: The Gospel of John encourages readers to draw out the tensions between these two perspectives for an open, inclusive reading of this difficult Gospel—and to find in it reaching meaning for their lives. With a study guide that includes thoughtful, challenging questions for reflection and discussion, this is an ideal resource for individual and parish study.

CONVERSATIONS WITH SCRIPTURE: THE GOSPEL OF JOHN

By CYNTHIA BRIGGS KITTREDGE

Church Publishing Incorporated

Copyright © 2007 Cynthia Briggs Kittredge
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8192-2249-7

Contents

Chapter One

John Among the Gospels: Orienting John in History and Canon

The most important questions to explore at the outset of our conversation are how to conceive the relationship of John with the other gospels, how to understand the author of John, and how to imagine that the gospel tells the history of Jesus. These are immensely complex scholarly issues, but for the sake of this exploration I will try to simplify them and share how I have found it helpful to think about these questions. An expansive reading of John appreciates the distinctiveness of John's theological and artistic perspective, and views the difference from the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke as positive, creative tension. It understands the author of John, not as a named apostle, but as a leader or leaders of a community, drawing on the tradition of the disciple whom Jesus loved but does not name, who tell the story of Jesus and of themselves. Finally it conceives of the history reported by the gospel to be the story of Jesus told and retold by a community who elaborates upon that history as time passes and who rethink and retell Jesus' words and deeds in light of their sense of his ongoing presence with them.

Not the "Fifth Wheel" But the Fourth Gospel

    Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
    Bless the bed that I lie on.
    Four corners to my bed,
    Four angels round my head;
    One to watch, and one to pray,
    And two to bear my soul away.

Bible readers know John as one of four gospels in the New Testament. We begin with this fact because the existence of the other gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, affects how modern readers understand John. We know that there are several accounts of Jesus' life, of which John is one. This reality is summarized in the title for the Gospel of John, "The Fourth Gospel." To unpack this obvious fact, we need to review how the gospels came to be written, got their names, and became part of an authoritative collection of Scripture, or canon. This review will introduce how we will read John in relationship with the three other canonical gospels.

Canonization of the Four Gospels

The gospels that came to be known as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were composed by anonymous authors from traditions about Jesus in the decades following his death and resurrection. These gospels were among various kinds of writings, especially letters of Paul, which were acquiring authority for Christian communities gathered for Scripture study, prayer, and worship. When the gospels were first written, those who used them considered them sacred writings, but they were not "in a Bible" as we know it. The "Scripture" read by believers in Jesus was the Hebrew Bible in its Greek form, the Septuagint. That canon of Scripture was also not fixed, but became settled as rabbinic Judaism organized itself in the late first and second centuries of the common era. At the time they were written, the gospels did not name their authors, but in the second and third centuries the Christian writers known as the Church Fathers, or the patristic writers, discussed these books, attributed them to apostles in the time of Jesus, and explained traditions about their apostolic origins. At the same time they spoke about which books were considered to have authority and which books were questioned and why. Naming the authors of the gospels was part of the process we now call "canonization" which happened gradually between the second and fourth centuries. Canonization was a key part of the process of describing Christian orthodoxy which at this time was taking shape and becoming specifically defined.

In the first half of the second century (100–150 CE) from what we know, it appears that the Gospel of John was valued not so much among those writers who shaped orthodoxy, but by those Christians whom the orthodox writers later strongly opposed, the Valen-tinian Christians. The first commentary on John was written by Heracleon (160–180) and there is no other reference to the apostle John or to the gospel in the early first century. The popularity of John among these other Christian groups may have cast suspicion upon this gospel on the part of some writers. By the time of the formation of the canon, John was embraced and claimed by orthodox Christianity.

The changes in the ancient reputation of John gives rise to the question of John's relationship with what scholars used to call "Gnosticism," or to other gospels which did not become part of the canon, such as the Gospel of Thomas or the Gospel of Mary Magdalene. This question is important because of the extraordinary popular attention that these noncanonical gospels have received, especially since the book and the movie of The Da Vinci Code. Some scholars argue that John was written to oppose the approach to Christianity of the Gospel of Thomas. Others have claimed that John has characteristics typical of these heterodox groups. I have found that the strict opposition between "Gnosticism" and "orthodoxy" interferes with a sensitive and appreciative reading of John's gospel. The complex fabric of John resists simple categorization. I will point out where John's perspective is not in strict harmony with the perspective of developing orthodoxy, such as in its view of leadership in the community and the role of ongoing vision and prophecy An expansive reading attempts to move beyond the either-or question of "Gnostic or not?" in order to encourage both understanding and questioning of the vision of this gospel.

Patristic Interpretation of John within the Four Gospel Canon

As the four gospel canon came into being, the church fathers grappled with how the gospel fit or did not fit with the stories of Jesus told in the three gospels that had become important in the church. These leaders asked what seminarians and college students and parish readers continue to ask: "Is it OK that there is more than one version of the story of Jesus in the Bible? Does a variety of versions somehow undermine their claim to truth?" Marcion, a popular church leader, used one gospel, a version of Luke, and a number of letters of Paul. The second century ascetic Tatian and those who followed him used a harmony of the gospels called Diatesseron. Scholars know some facts about canonization from lists of canonical books and comments in the writings of the church fathers, but they are not able to reconstruct exactly how the canon came into being. History kept no schedule of meetings, recorded no minutes, nor spelled out the process in detail. In fact it is unlikely that these decisions were made in meetings; it is most likely that certain writings gained their authority by their circulation and use by Christian communities. But we do know that the answer on which orthodoxy came to agree was "Yes, it's OK. There must be more than one, and there cannot be more than four." The classic explanation of this fact of four gospels is made by Irenaeus in the second century:

The Gospels could not possibly be either more or less in number than they are. Since there are four zones of the world in which we live, and four principal winds, the church ... fittingly has four pillars, breathing out incorruption and revivifying men. From this it is clear that the Logos, the artificer of all things, he who sits upon the cherubim and sustains all things ... gave us the gospel in four-fold form, but held together by one spirit ... For the cherubim have four faces ... [and] the Gospels, in which Christ is enthroned, are like these. Adv. Haer. XI, 8.

Irenaeus knew that four gospels had achieved prominence in the church, and he makes their number a virtue rather than a liability. The confidence and solidity implied by Irenaeus is echoed in the children's nursery prayer. Just as there are four posts on a bed, there are four gospels, like angels surrounding a child's body, each with a particular job.

The four gospel canon came to be the solution to the problem of more than one gospel in the early church, but it raised particular questions about John. Of the four gospels, three, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, tell the story of Jesus in roughly similar order and resemble each other closely. Modern scholars use the term "synoptic" for Matthew, Mark, and Luke. John, however, uses a distinctive language, contains different stories and characters, and has some other important divergences. For example, John places Jesus' visit to the temple early in the gospel rather than before his entry into Jerusalem as in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. In the Fourth Gospel, during his final meal with the disciples, Jesus does not speak of the bread and wine as his body and blood, but washes the disciples' feet, teaches its meaning, and commands them to do the same. When they commented on the gospels, the church fathers noticed that John fit awkwardly with the others. On first glance, John was the "black sheep" of the gospels, and the church fathers had to explain how it properly belonged among the gospels. However, as the reputation of John grew and it became a valued source for doctrine in later church writings, the misfit gospel became the one which encompassed all. As a result the three synoptic gospels came to be read in light of doctrines based on language in John. For example, Irenaeus uses the title the Logos, a term from John, to describe the creator of the four-fold gospel canon. So, the gospel which could have been the hardest to assimilate with the others became the last, the Fourth, the one which completes Irenaeus' unity of four.

John in Its Own Words

In this conversation with John we will read it neither as the misfit gospel nor as the one which explains all the others. Rather, as much as possible, we will take our cues from the gospel's own understanding of itself, and try to figure out how it expresses the significance of Jesus and the story of his life and death. The writer or writers of John did not know it would be part of a four gospel canon, although they did know the existence of many traditions about Jesus' "signs" and even perhaps many books. To harmonize John with the others—to make it logically consistent—is to lose the distinctive insights that this gospel can teach. For example, the opening poem in John's prologue is not a Christmas story like the nativity narratives in Matthew and Luke. Likewise, to say that John assumes that Jesus instituted the Eucharist at the last supper is to miss the gravity of the foot-washing as the "sacramental" act of the dinner. As we get to know John's outlook and literary style well, we will learn to hear "in stereo" and at times make comparison with a version of the same incident in Matthew, Mark, or Luke. We will begin to see how John interprets Jesus' traditions and expresses them in a unique Johannine mode, as though using a different dialect or another key to explore the meaning of Jesus.

Although it is tempting to interpret John with the categories of the fully defined orthodoxy of the Nicene Creed, we will stay with the language of the gospel itself and seek to understand Jesus in the categories of the author or authors of John. For example, John's gospel was a prime source upon which the church fathers reflected when developing the doctrine of the Trinity, but we do not find the Trinity as a theological category in this gospel. Although orthodox Christology came to be articulated in the creeds, that Jesus was "fully God and fully human," what we find in John is the Logos poem that opens the gospel followed by stories of Jesus who speaks and acts in ways that cannot be easily categorized as "divine" or "human." The gospel cites and encompasses many titles for Jesus and includes statements about Jesus' equality with God juxtaposed with statements of his subordination to God. Getting to know this rich gospel in its particularity enables us to hear its theological voice and allows the gospel to work upon us.

John's own description of its purpose is critically important to interpreting this gospel. The writing of the signs is designed to evoke belief, conversion, and transformation of those who read. The Fourth Gospel states its purpose:

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe [continue to believe] that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name. (John 20:30–31)

These verses tell the reader explicitly why the gospel is being written. The narrator directly addresses the reader as "you" and states that these signs are written "so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God." This gospel expresses self-consciousness about its "writtenness." Some manuscripts have the present tense of "believe" and others have the aorist tense, a form of the past tense in Greek. If one takes the verb as aorist, the verse implies that the purpose of the gospel is to elicit belief that does not yet exist. If one chooses the present tense, the option that the NRSV includes in the textual notes (continue to believe), then the purpose of the gospel is to strengthen the faith of those who already believe. In John to believe is to embrace God's revelation in Christ. Believing is both relational and cognitive. The faith that the gospel intends to elicit or to strengthen also has a purpose, so that "you may have life in his name." This giving of "life" is the way this gospel speaks of salvation, the benefit of faith.

A second distinctive feature of this gospel is its ending. In teaching the gospels, I always ask students to look with extra care at the beginning and ending of each gospel, and sometimes I suggest beginning at the end. John is unusual in that it appears to have two endings. The summary of the purpose of the gospel looks to be a kind of conclusion, because it sounds like a very fitting ending. But immediately after this conclusion, the gospel resumes with another episode beginning with the unspecific phrase "after these things." This episode tells of another appearance of Jesus to his followers after his death. It is almost as though a writer took the first conclusion (20:30–31) seriously and included another story about a sign Jesus did in the presence of his disciples. The first "ending" appears to be ignored as an ending, but what it affirms is not eliminated.

The additional episode tells of a fishing trip with some disciples and a breakfast on the beach with Jesus. After this story, the gospel ends again with these words: "This is the disciple who is testifying to these things and has written them, and we know that his testimony is true. But there are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written" (John 21:24–25).

With the statement which begins, "this is the disciple," the narrator draws attention to the authoritative source for "these things." The disciple is the "disciple whom Jesus loved" who is mentioned in the previous verse. This character has been called attention to once before, in John 19:35, at the time when blood and water came from Jesus' side: "(He who saw this has testified so that you also may believe. His testimony is true, and he knows that he tells the truth.)" (John 19:35).

In the ending verses the author claims connection between the disciple whom Jesus loved and the testimony, writing, and truth of this book. The character does not name himself nor is the person named by the narrator. The verse does not say, "I, John, have written them" or, "the disciple, John, has written them."

This ending, like the first, acknowledges that there are many other things that Jesus did. It may be significant that unlike the first statement it does not call them signs or mention the presence of the disciples. The narrator speculates that the number of books filled with these signs could not be contained by the world—they are infinite. This ending admits that books cannot contain all the things that Jesus did, and by doing so ends, instead of with conclusiveness, on a surprising note of openness.

One can think of this unusual feature of the Gospel of John in a number of ways—the gospel has two endings, a double ending, an ending which isn't an ending, or no ending. And at the end the text refers enigmatically to the individual who testifies to the truth of the things written. These observations call for interpretation and lead to the questions of authorship and to historicity to which we now turn.

The Author of John

The ancient traditions about the author and date of the Gospel of John give information about the process of canonization and what the church fathers thought was important to explain about the origins of the gospel. For them it was necessary to assert that an apostle of Jesus wrote the gospel and to give an account of how it diverged from the other three gospels. Irenaeus writes: "Finally John, the disciple of the Lord, who had also lain on his breast, himself published the gospel, while he was residing at Ephesus in Asia." Tradition attributed this gospel to John, the son of Zebedee, the disciple described in the synoptic gospels as one called by Jesus with his brother from his nets. Gradually the name of the apostle John, John the son of Zebedee, and the beloved disciple came to be identified.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from CONVERSATIONS WITH SCRIPTURE: THE GOSPEL OF JOHNby CYNTHIA BRIGGS KITTREDGE Copyright © 2007 by Cynthia Briggs Kittredge. Excerpted by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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