Chapter Eleven

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Eleven

The Broad Dimensions

If the fourth Gospel begins with the logos, the Word, it begins equally with God. God was always with his self-expression (logos), and this self-expression was God. God was the creator of all things, even if the evangelist’s main point is that the act of creation was by means of the Word. The life which was the light of men (1:4) also finds its source in the logos, and thus in God. At this point (1:4) there is no question of the incarnation (which, in my view, finds its first definite mention in 1:9), but only of the source and mediation of all life. The life was also light, a light opposed, but not overcome, by darkness. Thus in a few terse sentences, God and his logos together stand above the universe as Creator/Sustainer, and yet opposed to all in it that is contrary to light. The origin of the darkness is not mentioned.

It is not surprising, therefore, to find in the fourth Gospel examples of God’s sovereign control over men and events, without the compromise of God’s character. It is worth studying a few choice examples before examining how the sovereignty-responsibility tension is related to some of the major johannine themes.

some specific examples

John 3:27

‘No one can receive anything except what is given him from heaven.’ Several attempts have been made to limit the force of this verse. Brown thinks that in its context it means either (1) if only a few come to John the Baptist, it is because that is all God has given him; or (2) if many come to Jesus, it is because God has ordained it thus. But the verse surely embraces both meanings. M.-E. Boismard offers an even narrower distinction: either (1) autō ((to) him) refers to the believer, and dedomenon (what is given) to the privilege of coming to Jesus (cf. 6:65), or (2) autō refers to Jesus, and dedomenon to the believer who is given to Jesus (cf. 6:37). Of the two, (2) is more likely; but it offers no reference to John the Baptist at all, fitting only Brown’s second alternative (supra), and is too narrow an interpretation of the text. Lindars compares 3:27 with 19:11, in which the neuter dedomenon refers not to exousia (power) but to the whole verbal idea, and suggests 3:27 means that no one can receive anything unless the capacity to receive it be given to him. But unlike 19:11, 3:27 has no conflict of gender (hen and dedomenon are both neuter, as indeed are the people whom God has given to the Son, when considered collectively: e.g. 6:37). Moreover, even the neuter dedomenon in 19:11 probably does not refer to the capacity to receive, but to the fact that the handing over of Jesus into Pilate’s hands was determined by God. Lagrange, following Augustine, insists that the Baptist cannot be advising his disciples ‘to recognise in success a gift from God’, which would be ‘a Gamaliel-style maxim (Acts 5:34ff.)’. Therefore he takes the verse to mean that John the Baptist will not presume to take what the Father has not given him. However, the context (3:26) suggests that John, far from restraining himself and cutting back in his ministry so as not to overstep prescribed bounds, is faced with the fact that Jesus’ popularity is soaring while his own is waning, and he must come to terms with what he cannot control.

The aphorism is very general: A man can receive only what is given him (i.e. granted him) from heaven. The wide range of meanings attributed to the verse by exegetes reflects the possible ways it might be understood in this context; but the essential meaning of the maxim, and thus the power it has within its context, is not restricted by contextual limitations. In a theistic universe the maxim must be true (cf. 1 Cor. 4:7); but the Baptist uses this universal principle to explain his own peculiar position, giving ultimate significance to the movement of people from himself to Jesus.

Bultmann rightly notes that this principle says nothing about the right or wrong of the situation, and that even a robber could not take his spoils unless God so disposed (cf. 19:11). He seeks to avoid the obvious difficulty by writing, ‘The statement points beyond the sphere of moral judgment—which has its justification elsewhere; it justifies events, not persons.’ But would John recognise so sharp a dichotomy between Person and Geschehen, especially when he is considering what a man can receive (cf. 3:30)? This does not mean the Baptist is reduced to puppet status, for there is indeed a moral question for him to face: it concerns his response to his disciples’ protests (3:26). The Baptist responds thoughtfully and humbly to the circumstances he cannot (and would not) change.

John’s maxim about divine sovereignty, broad as it is, thus has several functions. It grounds his own magnificent humility (3:28–30), provides encouragement for his disciples who face discouraging circumstances they cannot control, and within the context of the fourth Gospel as a whole provides the ultimate rationale for this development in salvation history.

John 5:14; 9:1–3; 11:4

More difficult is the relationship between sin and sickness. Some scholars hold that 9:1–3 is normative for the johannine viewpoint, and argue that 5:14 does not expressly condemn the cured man for past sins, but warns him about the danger of persisting in sin in the future. However, the natural implication of 5:14 with its present tense prohibition and comparative ‘nothing worse’, is that some explicit behaviour was the direct cause of the thirty-eight year paralysis. Indeed, although the New Testament as a whole dissociates disasters from particular sins, several passages forbid the conclusion that there is never a direct connection (e.g. Acts 5:1–11; 1 Cor. 11:30; Jas. 5:15?; 1 John 5:16).

In the case of the blind man, however, this is not the case (9:1ff.). The fact that the blindness was congenital provokes the question of 9:2. The disciples, far from being harsh, are most likely voicing opinions held by some of their contemporaries. But Jesus in this case rejects both alternatives offered him and says that this tragedy occurred ‘that (hina) the works of God might be made manifest in him’ (9:3). It is not clear whether hina introduces a purpose or a result. The latter view, held by few, suggests that God simply deflects the tragedy into something else; the former sees God’s sovereignty operative in the tragedy itself, which has its raison d’être in the fact that it is about to be relieved, so that God’s work might be displayed by this relief. Comparison with 11:4 renders unlikely any ecbatic view: Lazarus’ illness is ‘for the glory of God’. ‘In any case John could not suppose that the man’s birth and blindness were outside the control, and therefore the purpose, of God.’1  

Nevertheless, Brown is right when he remarks, ‘Jesus was asked about the cause of the man’s blindness, but he answers in terms of its purpose.’1 Jesus’ reply locates the tragedy within God’s control, but in terms not of mere cause-and-effect, but of purpose; and the purpose in view is the manifestation of God’s works, of his glory (11:4), as a witness to the light, before men. In this sense John 9 goes beyond Luke 13:1–5, which equally refuses to forge a rigid link between personal disaster and personal sin, but which then diverges in application: Luke 13:1–5 concludes that all men are guilty and all will perish unless they repent, while John 9 discusses what seems to be a personal disaster, in terms of God’s sovereignty being exercised for purposes of God’s self-manifestation.

John 11:49–52

The prophecy of Caiaphas raises the sovereignty-responsibility tension a notch higher. If John 3:27 speaks of God’s sovereignty in sweeping strokes but applies it in terms of salvation history, and if the sickness-and-sin passages (especially 9:1–3) connect divine sovereignty with personal disaster, now (11:49–52) God in some sense actually stands behind a sinful man and his sinful words.

Caiaphas was High Priest ‘that (fateful) year’: these words, far from betraying ignorance of the customs,1 help to account for the unconscious prophecy of 11:50f.1 Caiaphas did not utter these words ‘of his own accord’. This does not mean that God was using the High Priest like a puppet, or like Balaam’s ass. Caiaphas was giving his considered if callous opinion. The emphatic and contemptuous words, ‘You know nothing at all’, scarcely suggest good manners and noble reflection. His solution is repelling in its cynicism: he is interested neither in the moral issue, nor in the pragmatic best for the nation, but only in whatever is expedient to preserve the position of the aristocracy (11:48, 51).

Johannine irony reaches a peak here. Jesus was put to death, and politically the people perished anyway, and the leaders lost their place. Yet he died ‘for the people’, and those of the nation who believed in him did not perish but received eternal life (3:16). Caiaphas meant that Jesus should die instead of the people as a political scapegoat; in fact, God stood behind Caiaphas’ prophecy (quite unknown to him), ordaining that Jesus was to die instead of the people in a redemptive sense. Whereas Caiaphas is thinking in terms of expedience, God is thinking in terms of salvation. So crucial a saving event as the death/exaltation of Jesus Christ could not be thought to turn on the whim of a sinful man: God himself was behind it, the God who loved the world so much tht he gave his unique Son (3:16). When Caiaphas spoke, it was God who was speaking, even if Caiaphas and God were not saying the same things. John presupposes that God never relinquishes his absolute sovereignty, and, by exercising his mysterious control, brings his purposes to pass.

John 19:10f.

God’s sovereignty over Pilate (19:10f.) raises the tension again. There is a touch of incredulous arrogance in Pilate’s question: ‘You will not speak to me (‘me’ is emphatic in form and position)?’ Pilate’s own recognition of his authority ‘makes nonsense of all the shifts to which he resorted in the attempt to avoid making a decision.’1 Jesus’ reply does not deny Pilate’s authority, but insists that the Procurator would not have had1 any authority at all over him had not the entire handing over of Jesus1 been determined ‘from above’, i.e. by God. For this reason (dia touto) the one who handed Jesus over bears the greater guilt. This does not exonerate Pilate: if the sin of the one who hands Jesus over is greater, Pilate’s sin is only relatively less.

The thought sequence from 19:11a to 19:11b is not obvious, and the obscurity has led some commentators astray. Morris, for example, plausibly selects Caiaphas as the betrayer, but implausibly accounts for his choice: Caiaphas he deems to be ‘ultimately responsible’ since Judas was a ‘tool’.1 But Judas was a culpable tool—both of Satan and of God (although John avoids such deterministic terminology for both Satan and God); and in this Judas does not stand alone, for neither Caiaphas nor Pilate is exempt from God’s control (11:49–52; 19:11). We may compare Acts 4:27f. in which not only Pilate is regarded as a ‘tool’ of God, but so also is everyone else connected with the case.

So then, it is not God’s overruling which mitigates Pilate’s guilt, as if God did not overrule in the actions of the betrayer; rather, Jesus is saying that the handing over of himself, although determined by God, was the active plot of the betrayer, while Pilate’s lesser guilt developed because Jesus was delivered into his charge. Pilate remained responsible for his spineless, politically-motivated decision; but at least he had not engineered the whole ugly scene. Pilate would have had no authority over Jesus at all, unless in God’s purposes Jesus had been handed over to him. For this reason the one who actually handed Jesus over was more guilty than the Procurator.

Again, then, the saving event of the death/exaltation is specifically preserved within the sphere of God’s acts, confirming Jesus’ authority to lay down his own life as his Father commanded (10:18). Not less important, it is clear that divine sovereignty in no way mitigates human responsibility, while human guilt in no way contaminates divine holiness; yet the human moral choices are not fenced off from divine control.

Judas Iscariot

A final instance of note is the account of the fall of Judas Iscariot. As early as the closing verses of John 6, Judas’s role as betrayer is identified. Peter’s confession, tinged with overconfidence,1 is gently put down by Jesus. He claims, by a rhetorical question, that he, not they, did the choosing (cf. 13:18; 15:16), and suggests further that Peter should speak only for himself, because one of the ‘we’ (6:68), one of the Twelve, is a devil (6:70).

Thus far, it is simply a question of Jesus’ foreknowledge of Judas’s course. But in 13:2, 18, 27, the picture changes. The relationship among these verses, particularly between 13:2 and 27, is complicated by two textual problems which cannot be ignored but must be carefully weighed. (1) ginomenou is attested by א* BLWX Ψ al., and genomenou by (p66 genamenou) א‘ADgrK ΔΘΠ fl, f.13 al. The aorist tense is the lectio difficilior, because the supper was still in progress (13:4, 26); but even so it could be interpreted as ingressive, ‘supper having been served’. (2) There are several variations touching Ioudas Simōnos Iskariōtou, the crucial difference being between the genitive Iouda (AD Δ Θ fl al.) and the nominative Ioudas (p66 א BL WX al.). The latter entails translation to the effect that the devil had already put it into the heart that Judas should betray Jesus. The question is, Whose heart? Either the devil had put it into his own heart—i.e. he had decided; or he had put it into Judas’s heart—an awkward way of saying what the genitive reading means. There are examples of the idiom ‘putting into the heart of’.1 On this basis Barrett argues the text means that Satan had put (the idea) into his own heart;2 but as Lindars notes, ‘this makes nonsense of the word put.’2 Presumably beblēkotos would have to be beblēmenou. On every count, then, the lectio difficilior, which also has the superior external evidence, is best interpreted to mean that Satan had put into Judas’s heart the idea of betraying Jesus. The awkwardness of the expression accounts for the variants; and moreover, Bauer rightly points out that the sentence, composed this way with the name of the betrayer at the end, provides striking, dramatic impact.2  

Some see an irreconcilable contradiction between 13:2 and 27; but the contradiction is more in the eye of the beholder than in the text. If by 13:2 Satan has already put the evil suggestion into Judas’s mind, it is not until 13:27 that Satan himself enters Judas. This step is touched off by Judas’s personal acceptance of the ‘morsel’ (13:26f.): Judas has chosen for Satan.2 Yet even after Satan’s victory, Judas remains more than a robot, a puppet on a satanic string, for Jesus addresses Judas as the one who will act: ‘What you are going to do, do quickly.’

Jesus’ dismissal of Judas, however, suggests that it is he, not Judas, who determines the time of the passion. This observation recalls 13:18, where Judas’s action is in some sense a fulfilment of Scripture. Jesus testifies, ‘I know whom (tinas) I have chosen.’ The pronoun tinas may be interpreted to mean either: (1) the kind of men—i.e. Jesus chose Judas knowing full well the sort of fellow he was; or (2) ‘I know whom I have really chosen—and Judas is not among them.’ Against (2) is 6:70. This prompts Barrett to opt for (1), and supply a lengthy ellipse before all’ hina: ‘therefore I know that Judas is a traitor, but I have chosen him in order that …’2 Others argue for an imperatival hina: ‘But let Scripture be fulfilled …’2  

Purposive or imperatival, the clause insists on the sovereign control of Jesus, or of God (in fulfilling Scripture), respectively. In either case the necessity that Scripture be fulfilled is presupposed. The Scripture in question is Psalm 41:9, and it is cited in a form closer to the M than to the LX . The difficult expression ‘has lifted his heel against me’, however interpreted, casts Judas in the reprehensible role of being a close friend of and he is responsible; yet it comes about because God in his ultimate control has arranged things that way so Scripture may be fulfilled. Elsewhere we learn that Judas is ‘the son of perdition’ (17:12); and whether or not this expression itself implies that Judas was destined for perdition, its context requires that view. If he perished, it was not that Jesus’ keeping power was insufficient, but that Scripture might be fulfilled. Judas is responsible for his treason (cf. 12:4–6; 18:2f., 5), and in this sense ‘acted freely’; but it is contrary to the theology of the fourth Gospel to conclude from this that God ‘merely used his evil act to bring about His purpose.’2 Such a formulation makes God the one who a posteriori merely deflects Judas’s sin, or manipulates it, to achieve his own ends; but the teleological nature of the fulfilment-motif renders such a formulation too easy.

In the case of both Caiaphas and Judas, therefore, divine ultimacy even behind evil actions is presupposed. But divine ultimacy operates in some mysterious way so that human responsibility is in no way mitigated, while the divine being is in no way tarnished. In particular, Judas is responsible even when Satan is using him; but over both stands the sovereignty of God. The mysterious ultimacy in this divine sovereignty conclusively limits johannine dualism and makes John savour more of the Old Testament than of Gnosticism. Already it is clear that ‘the doctrine of predestination is apparent at every point in the Fourth Gospel, every incident being viewed sub specie aeternitatis as predestined in the mind of God.’2  

fulfilment motifs

The case of Judas has already underlined the importance of fulfilment motifs as an indication of God’s sovereignty. This one instance can easily be multiplied by sketching the way the fourth Gospel uses the Old Testament, both in general terms and in specific quotations.

The fourth Gospel is full of the Old Testament, which it treats, not primarily as a source for proof-texts, but as the foundation for all that takes place in the revelation of God in Jesus. This has been well-documented, and need not be reviewed here. But it is worth pointing out how, from the perspective of the fourth evangelist, the Old Testament must be interpreted in a christocentric way, if it is to be interpreted aright (5:39f., 46f.). Not only did Moses and the prophets write about Jesus (1:45; 5:46f.), but Abraham saw his day (8:56) and Isaiah his glory (12:38). Jesus is the logos, whose introduction in the Prologue evokes thoughts both of Wisdom and of Genesis 1. Even the replacement motifs—e.g. Jesus not only cleanses the Temple but replaces it (2:13–22; cf. 4:21ff.);2 replaces Moses, in part by surpassing him;2 displaces the Jewish feasts and appropriates their cardinal symbols (2:13, 23; 5:1; 6:4; 7:2, 37, etc., and contexts)3 —guarantee the christocentricity of this Gospel. These motifs are established by way of predominantly pesher exegesis which presupposes new revelation3 enabling the identification of Jesus with the roles alluded to from Old Testament pages.

John’s selection of the events he relates is not haphazard. Jesus came into the world to fulfil specific roles. Thus the disciples eventually understand from the Scriptures that Jesus had to rise from the dead (20:9). Specific references to Old Testament passages are most frequent in connection with Jesus’ passion; and it is just here that such references become more and more connected with hoti (12:39) and hina (12:38; 13:18; 15:25; 17:12; 19:24, 28, 36f.; instead of kathōs, 1:23; 6:31; 7:38; 12:14).3 What A. Richardson has said of the passion narrative in the Gospels in general holds for the fourth Gospel in particular:

The vivid details of the Passion narratives, such as the casting of lots by the soldiers or the vinegar on the sponge, are not recorded by the Evangelists because they were good story tellers with an eye for pictorial effect, but because these incidents demonstrated the principle, touto to gegrammenon dei telesthēnai (Luke 22:37). The scandal of the cross … was predetermined in all its details by the will of God.3  

Two or three specific examples will clarify this point. John 15:18–24 ascribes to the world hatred, culpable ignorance, wilful blindness, and removes all excuse for such sin; yet 15:25 insists nevertheless that all this took place to fulfil3 the Scripture which says, ‘They hated me without a cause.’ In context, Jesus is assuring his disciples that the sad state of affairs just described, far from indicating that plans have gone awry and circumstances are now out of control, is taking place precisely in accord with the very Scriptures of those who are hateful. As Lindars remarks, although the text is given to encourage the disciples, it ‘has the effect of making the words apply to the inevitability of our Lord’s sufferings, rather than just providing scriptural warrant for them.’3  

In 19:23f., a similar point is made. John is interested in the gambling of the soldiers for Jesus’ tunic, not because of alleged allegorical interest, nor because he wishes to depict the soldiers as greedy, insensitive men (although he probably takes that for granted), but because he wants to show that the Scriptures (Ps. 22:18) had to be fulfilled. So then (men oun occurs in John only here and at 20:30), the soldiers did these things. The same emphasis on the inevitability of the fulfilment of Scripture is found in 19:28.

For the first century believer, of course, where Scripture speaks, God speaks. Therefore it is the more remarkable that after this stress on the fulfilment of Scripture, John also emphasises the fulfilment of Jesus’ own words (18:9, 32). Jesus repeatedly predicts his death (8:28; 13:18f.; 15:18ff.), and, as G. Reim points out, this prediction is connected with Jesus’ identity as the ‘Ego Eimi’ of Isaiah.3  

The main point to be learned from this survey of johannine fulfilment motifs is that among the factors which have gone into John’s use of the Old Testament are ‘the Christian conviction of eschatological fulfilment and messianic presence.’3 These developments, far from being seen as fortuitous, are recognised as the necessary unfolding of Heilsgeschichte according to God’s plan. ‘Anything less like the heroic redemption of a bad situation by some desperate and improvised measure can hardly be imagined … What has happened is only the emergence into history of what was eternally laid up in the [d]etermination of God.’3  

johannine eschatology

The student who turns to this area of johannine studies is plunged into a vortex of questions. In this section I shall limit myself to discussion of the following points: (1) The hour. This is important for our study because it provides the evangelist with another way of picturing the fixedness of God’s purposes, and the unfolding of historical events according to divine timing to bring about divine ends. (2) Literary and historical reconstructions which deal with the tension between realised and future eschatology in the fourth Gospel. Eschatology is crucial to this discussion, because it deals with new developments in the reign (i.e., the exercise of the sovereignty) of God. If the conceptual structure of a book revolves around future eschatology, then that structure will approximate to the Jewish apocalyptic pattern; but where realised eschatology is on the ascendancy, new patterns of the tension between God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility necessarily emerge. (3) Theological constructions which deal with the tension between realised and future eschatology in the fourth Gospel. The most common approaches need to be surveyed rapidly to see what light they can shed on the sovereignty-responsibility tension. (4) The terminus a quo of the eschatological age, according to John. It is necessary to determine this, because it is from that point on that the tension takes on new forms. (5) Towards a new synthesis—one which treats johannine eschatology with sensitivity concerning the relationship between such eschatology and the sovereignty-responsibility tension.

1. The hour

The emphasis upon fulfilment in the passion narratives, as we have seen, stresses the inevitability of the death/exaltation event. This inevitability finds explicit confirmation in the ‘mustness’ (dei) both of Christ’s death (3:14; 12:34) and of his resurrection (20:9); and these things constitute the ‘hour’, toward which the fourth Gospel moves and with which it climaxes. At the beginning the hour has not yet come (2:4; 7:30; 8:20); by the end it has arrived (12:23; 13:30, 32; 17:1), the hour which embraces the purpose of Jesus’ coming (12:27). Until the arrival of that hour it is impossible for anyone to take Jesus’ life (7:30, 44; 8:20). Not just the passion, however, but all of Jesus’ life is governed by express submission to the father’s schedule (2:4; kairos, 7:6, 8). This view may even be supported by John’s specific time references (‘it was such-and-such an hour’).

That Jesus can speak, in 12:23, of the hour as having arrived, and then continue to do so all the way to 17:1, suggests a theological motif which climaxes at the cross but which is present incipiently throughout Jesus’ ministry. For this reason, Jesus can speak of the hour coming, but being present now (4:23; 5:25), i.e. in his ministry. Beyond each of the exchanges within that ministry lies the climactic ‘now’ (12:31; 13:31) of his death/exaltation.

The fixedness of Jesus’ ‘hour’ does not turn on impersonal fatalism, but on the will of the Father, to which Jesus submits—unlike other men (7:6, 8; 12:23, 27f.). God’s personal rule is thus related both to the arrival of the eschatological hour, and to the obedience of the Son. Johannine eschatology and christology must therefore be examined in connection with God’s sovereignty.

2. Literary and historical reconstructions which deal with the tension between realised and future eschatology in the fourth Gospel

Rudolph Bultmann excises apocalyptic elements from the fourth Gospel (in particular, all or parts of John 5:28–30; 6:39f., 44, 54; 11:24; 12:48; 21:22), attributing them to an ecclesiastical redactor; but in doing so he has been followed by few and opposed by many. Others have also tried to detect diverse communities or some other cause as the reason for what some take to be disparate literary strata. I have argued elsewhere, however, that although one may, a priori, suppose it likely that the fourth evangelist did indeed use literary sources, nevertheless current source-critical theories are methodologically deficient and therefore unconvincing.3 Therefore in this chapter and the next I choose to treat the fourth Gospel as it stands.

Nevertheless the crux of the problem raised by the source critics transcends the question of method: it concerns as well the Gospel’s place in the christian tradition, as indexed by its eschatology. Numerous views have been expounded. C. H. Dodd, for example, holds that John in this respect more accurately preserves the teaching of Jesus than do the Synoptics, which introduced apocalyptic motifs into the earliest kerygma, and that in John these lingering apocalyptic motifs are completely absorbed by realised eschatology.4 E. Stauffer agrees that the imminent expectation of the kingdom formed no part of Jesus’ teaching, and that the fourth Gospel is protesting against the persistently ascendant view of apocalyptic.4 The dominical view, according to J. A. T. Robinson, was that the kingdom came with Christ, and that the subsequently developed delayed-return doctrine eventually burned itself out in disappointment and then identified the bestowal of the Holy Spirit, without remainder, with the return of Christ.4  

These views seek to explain the eschatology of the fourth Gospel in terms of reconstructed primitive church history. What Bultmann excises, these reconstructions regard as residue. None of these reconstructions gives enough weight to the stubborn fact that John does include the basic elements of the two-age structure. It is more accurate to acknowledge that the Gospel of John takes its place along with other New Testament books in bearing witness to the tension between the ‘already’ and the ‘not yet’. Indeed, this feature has virtually become the Mitte of one of the most recent New Testament theologies.4 In this substantially accurate model, the age to come has already arrived in the person and work of Jesus, but awaits the consummation at his return. This interim invests christian apocalyptic with numerous elements not present in its Jewish forbear, not least the tension between the ‘already’ and the ‘not yet’.

But the observation that John preserves the tension, true though it is, does not explain why he reflects so high a degree of realised eschatology. The excisions and historical reconstructions not being convincing, numerous synthetic theological solutions have been proposed.

3. Theological constructions which deal with the tension between realised and future eschatology in the fourth Gospel

Opposed to those who see in the realised eschatology of the fourth Gospel a reaction against the apocalpytic enthusiasm of the early church is L. van Hartingsveld, who, himself overreacting, argues that futurist eschatology predominates in John.4 Van Hartingsveld goes so far as to insist that eternal life is an eschatological gift of salvation only promised, and appropriated in a preliminary way by faith.4 He thus solves the problem of the high degree of realised eschatology in John by denying it is there. Resurrection life and judgment experienced in the present he takes to be examples of language being used to divide the committed from the uncommitted.

O. Cullmann’s explanation for the fact that ‘the “already” stands in the foreground more dominantly’ is that ‘the whole perspective of the Gospel puts the historical life of Jesus in its place as the decisive mid-point of history more emphatically than any other Gospel does.’4 However, besides the fact that he has overstressed Heilsgeschichte in John, this still does not explain why Jesus should be more emphatically presented as ‘the decisive mid-point of history’ in this Gospel.

Cullmann’s student, P. Ricca, likewise stresses Heilsgeschichte with a real parousia to look forward to, even if the word isn’t used.4 But because no final conflict is mentioned, Ricca argues that the parousia has significance only for the church; and when it happens, for believers life will be crowned with resurrection. But at this point Ricca balks, for he cannot see how the new glory will differ from the old; and if it does not differ, the two are indistinguishable. Ricca is reduced to saying that the church is a continuum eschatologicum, a continuing parousia in which the Lord’s presence is as real as in the days of his flesh and as real as on the last day. For Ricca, this is the key to the problem: eschatology is christology. The End came, has come, will come; and all is dominated by Christ, who came, has come, and will come. There is but one eschatological event: Jesus himself. All that Ricca has granted with one hand he has taken away with the other. What begins as an excellent study degenerates when his key to the problem conflicts with his earlier exposition.

For J. Blank, too, eschatology is a function of christology.4 Christ confronts men and brings salvation; but strangely, Blank argues that judgment is not a function of Christ but of sinful men who reject Christ’s offer of salvation. He rightly maintains that realised eschatology predominates in the fourth Gospel, but comes closer than he thinks to Bultmann’s anthropological interpretation (infra).

A. Corell follows the lead given by Scandinavian scholars who see a connection between eschatology and the Church.4 He sees the Church as a projection of the earthly life of Jesus, yet also an anticipation of the final fulfilment. To make John thus sound like Paul, he rides some of John’s symbols very hard, and quite misses the accent on individualism in the fourth Gospel observed by C. F. D. Moule.5 But Moule’s explanation—that realised eschatology is the correlative of an accent on individualism (cf. especially 14:23) as futurist eschatology is of corporate thinking—although at first sight attractive, founders on several verses in the sixth chapter, viz. 6:39f., 44, 54. In 6:39, what Jesus will raise on the last day is auto—i.e. all (whom) the Father has given him; but in 6:40, 44, 54, the object of Jesus’ resurrection power is auton, the individual believer. In other words, there is evidence for the combination of futurist eschatology and individualism.5  

One of the most recent efforts to explain the high degree of realised eschatology in the fourth Gospel comes from D. E. Aune.5 He argues for a Sitz im Leben in which christian pneumatic prophets were giving words accepted as those of the Risen Christ (he could not have seen the most recent telling attacks against this common theory),5 and explains that the exalted Lord is both expected and experienced in the cultic worship of the johannine community. Aune regards 1:51 as the crux interpretum of his hypothesis that the visio Christi is the central point of the johannine cultus, and adduces parallels of angels involved in the corporate worship of God’s people. He argues that 1:51 reflects a stereotyped revelation-form common in late Judaism and early Christianity, and regards the cumulative force of these observations as a ‘decisive clue’ that the evangelist means by 1:51 ‘the kind of event which the Johannine community experienced pneumatically within the context of the community at worship.’5 It is always risky to build one’s case on a difficult and highly disputed passage; and the rest of Aune’s speculative exposition never succeeds in replacing the lost conviction. If the cultus is the explanation of the realised eschatology of the fourth Gospel, the evangelist has hidden the fact extraordinarily well.

The best known, yet most difficult to understand, theological reconstruction is Bultmann’s. Bultmann’s chief hermeneutical principle, reliance on Sachkritik, coupled with his philosophical lode-star, a form of Heideggerian existentialism, lead him to collapse Easter, Pentecost, and the parousia into the moment of proclamation.5 He does not argue that the eschaton is the present (in the sense that the age to come has in some sense overlapped the present age), but that the eschaton is present in the moment of the existential encounter. The eschatological, for Bultmann, is that which transcends world history—an abuse of language.

Bultmann emphasises the vertical dualism in John, at the expense of the eschatological (horizontal) dualism. The Son of man comes down from heaven (3:13): the Word has become flesh (1:14). The culmination of his life is in his death exaltation: he is ‘lifted up’ (12:32). The constant contrast between what is from above and what is from below (3:3, 31; 8:23), between the realm of spirit and the realm of flesh (3:6; 6:63), reflects the same stance. The world and its ruler (16:11) are in darkness whereas Jesus is the light (8:12). He enables men to become sons of light (12:36; cf. 9:5; 11:9; 12:35, 46). Jesus’ kingdom is not of this world (18:36), and so if anyone is to ‘see’ it or enter it he must be born from above (anōthen;5 3:3, 5). This vertical dualism is not absolute: the world was made by the Word (1:3) and is still loved by God (3:16), even if it is now characterised by wickedness (7:7). But the strength of the vertical dualism must not be minimised.

At the same time, John reflects a genuine eschatological dualism. Cullmann is right in so far as he shows that the world from above comes to us in the context of redemptive history. Hence, as Brown puts it, ‘Jewish history has been the preparation for this climactic era (4:21–23).’5 Moreover, although the new age has dawned, bringing both life and judgment in the present, the full gift of life does not come during Jesus’ ministry but only afterward through the resurrection of the last day. The transition from ‘life’ in the first sense to ‘life’ in the second sense is unmistakable in 5:21–30, and in the reverse order in 11:24–6. Not only is there a future element in christian life—even Bultmann admits that—but the basic structure of the two ages is also present (5:28f.; 6:39f., 44, 54; 12:48; possibly 14:2f.; and in the epilogue, 21:22f.).

Despite this criticism, Bultmann, Dodd, and Blank are correct in insisting that the main emphasis in the fourth Gospel is on realised eschatology, even if they do not accord the apocalyptic structure its rightful place.

4. The terminus a quo of the eschatological age

Granted a form of the two-age structure, it becomes imperative to discover just when the eschatological age first dawns. There are three inter-locking puzzles which contribute to this problem. These puzzles begin with the theological unity of the saving event—Jesus’ death/resurrection/exaltation/bestowal of the Spirit—and weigh this theological unity against: (1) the place of Heilsgeschichte in John; (2) the problem of the so-called ‘johannine Pentecost’ (20:22); (3) the status of the disciples before and after the saving event.

The unity of the saving event itself is underscored by John’s distinctive use of ‘to glorify’ and ‘to lift up’ (as commentators now recognise) taking place at the decisive hour (supra). Chronologically, Jesus’ death, resurrection, exaltation and bestowal of the spirit are separated; but theologically John sees them as one. If this perspective be pressed: (1) genuine Heilsgeschichte must be reduced to a minimum; (2) there is a strong case for viewing 20:22 as John’s version of Pentecost;5 (3) there are true believers only after the saving event. But in each case major qualification is necessary.

On (1), as I have pointed out already, O. Cullmann has made a strong plea for a good deal of Heilsgeschichte in John; and even if he has over-stated his case, he cannot be dismissed. But there is nothing that prevents John from making theological capital while preserving his historical framework. This point is best seen in John 20, where the time lapses in vv. 1, 19, 26 preclude a merely theological understanding of the chapter; yet at the same time there is the genuinely theological question of the relationship among 20:17, 22, 27.

This brings us to (2). Because John elsewhere argues that the Paraclete cannot come until Jesus is glorified (7:39; 16:7), it is frequently argued that 20:17 urges the unity of the resurrection and the ascension, which must therefore have taken place between 20:17 and 20:19, because the Spirit is given in 20:22. This argument, it is thought, is strengthened by the different approaches to touching the resurrected Jesus in 20:17 and 20:27.

Against this position the following points are worth considering: (a) C. F. D. Moule explains the differences between 20:17 and 20:27 in terms of the different needs of two disciples. (b) He has also pointed out that ‘I am ascending’ (20:17) is located in the message Mary is to convey, not given as the reason for her not to ‘touch’ him.5 The words ‘I have not yet ascended’ do not imply that Jesus was in the process of ascending, but only that Mary need not cling since Jesus has not ascended. (c) The very physical demonstration of 20:27 surely argues that Jesus has not yet ascended.6 The contrast between seeing-believing and not-seeing-believing (20:29) confirms this point by presupposing that Jesus ascended subsequent to 20:28. Attempts to avoid this point are unconvincing. (d) Those who stress the theological unity of the events must admit some time lapse (‘not yet’, 20:17) in any case. (e) Under their scheme, they must think it strange that Jesus’ dying word was ‘It is finished’ (19:30), instead of the more appropriate ‘I am ascending’. (f) J. D. G. Dunn points out that the different responses in 20:16 and 28 probably have no significance ‘in view of the identity of the responses in vv. 18 and 25.’6 (g) Moreover, those who see 20:22 as the johannine Pentecost, yet who do not think that Jesus has yet definitively ascended, have even less ground to stand upon, since the bestowal of the Spirit could not have taken place until this step in Jesus’ glorification (7:39; 16:7).

Common to these approaches is a misapprehension of the relationship between theology and history in the fourth Gospel. John is undoubtedly selecting and moulding and explaining the history he reports, but he is not trying to write a theological treatise which uses history in purely symbolic ways.6 On the other hand, although he acknowledges the temporally sequential nature of Jesus’ ministry/death/resurrection/bestowal-of-the-Spirit, he sees them as theologically unified. It is not so much that ‘for John the gift of the Spirit is a direct consequence of the death of Jesus, like the Ascension, not a separate event,’6 as that for John the gift of the Spirit is a direct consequence of Jesus’ glorification, even though a separate event.

Because the totality of the saving event emerges as a theological unity, Jesus greets the advent of the hour (12:23) before he has even eaten the last supper. This is the whole purpose of Jesus’ coming; and so as early as 10:18 he can say, ‘I lay [my life] down of my own accord’, just as he can say, equally in the present tense but with reference to the future, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father’ (20:17); and in both cases it rather misses the point to ask with a straight face, ‘Right away?’ The sequential arrangement and time lapses relate to history; the unity of the saving event relates to theology. True it is that ‘the theological motif can be adequately highlighted without obscuring the chronological outline.’6 Theologically, the constituent parts of this saving work of Jesus are not ‘chronologically disposed’,6 while historically they are.

To conclude that John 20:22 is not a ‘johannine Pentecost’, however, raises more acutely the question of what the verse does mean. Must we really conclude that John thought the gift of the Spirit was given by Jesus’ ‘insufflation’? Perhaps the word ‘insufflation’ is misleading: Schonfield’s ‘he expelled a deep breath’ is attractive. As far as I have been able to determine, the verb emphysaō, a New Testament hapax, occurs absolutely in the active voice only in John 20:22, never elsewhere in either classical or hellenistic Greek. The LX , for instance, offers many diverse constructions (e.g. Gen. 2:7; 3 Reigns 17:21; Tob. 6:8. (v. 1.); Ezek. 21:36; Ecclus. 43:4; Nah. 2:2); but no absolute usage. BA , p. 257, cites John 20:22 as an instance of absolute usage ‘for the purpose of transmitting the Spirit’; but of its alleged parallels none presents an absolute parallel. At very least John’s usage is strange, which accounts for the late addition of ‘on them’ (Tatian’s Diatessaron, D syrcur). If John purposely does not want to go so far as to say that Jesus was actually bestowing the Spirit at that time, he might well have avoided adding ‘the Spirit’ or ‘into them’.

Is it not possible to take this ‘exhalation’ as an acted parable picturing the gift of the Spirit within the theological unity of the total saving event, without insisting that John thinks the Spirit was acutally bestowed at that moment? Jesus’ action speaks of the gift of the Spirit to come, but within a context which relates it to the other elements of the ‘hour’. John 20:22 is the acted equivalent not of Acts 2:1ff. but of Luke 24:45–9. This ‘giving’ of the Spirit is not a gift different from the one in Acts, nor a sort of private proleptic downpayment, but an acted parable pointing ahead. A suitable johannine analogy is the washing of the disciples’ feet (John 13:1ff.). Even Jesus’ words ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’ do not conclusively demonstrate that 20:22 is meant to portray the bestowal of the actual gift. Elsewhere in the fourth Gospel Jesus gives commands which in the nature of the case cannot be obeyed at the time: cf. especially 7:37–9. Although this explanation of 20:22 seems incapable of final proof, it enjoys the advantage of avoiding the shortcomings of the other options (e.g., the stubborn fact that Thomas is not present), while according well with the interplay between history and theology in this Gospel.

Consideration of point (3) follows as a matter of course. To ask what is the terminus a quo of the eschatological age in John invites a double reply. Theologically, the eschatological age is introduced by the saving work of Christ from incarnation to bestowal of the Spirit, seen as one unified event, with perhaps special emphasis on his death/exaltation. Historically, however, the situation is more ambiguous, since on the chronological plane the believers are living through a unique and unrepeatable transition between the dispensations.

Now, if we understand the significant events of John in a chronological scheme which links up with Acts, we have to say that the transition period between the dispensations lasted from Jesus’ death to Pentecost, if not from the beginning of his ministry to Pentecost, if not from his birth to Pentecost. What we now call full Christian experience was possible only after the ascension and Pentecost, when the ‘advocate from heaven’ came to represent and act for the ‘advocate in heaven’. Likewise, the experience of the new birth and new creation was possible only after the sin-bearing death of the Lamb of God and his resurrection.6  

This suggests that there are true believers in a full christian sense only after Jesus Christ has performed all the steps in this climactic saving event. That means there are no full believers until after the setting pictured in the fourth Gospel, while those who read the Gospel are full believers or are invited to become such. The inherent ambiguity in this situation has contributed to the ambiguity surrounding just who is, and who is not, a believer among those with whom Jesus has to do. It is the tension between Sitz im Leben der Kirche and Sitz im Leben Jesu. Not only are the disciples, prior to the death/exaltation, seriously lacking in understanding (e.g. 2:22; 12:16; 20:9; cf. 14:26), but apparent belief in Jesus during his ministry is seen again and again to be quite unstable,6 a point to which I shall return in the next chapter. Thomas’s faith is thus a great leap forward; but even such faith cannot match the faith of later believers (20:28f.).

One might almost speak of a double terminus a quo: one that is theologically precise and another enmeshed in transitional history. What can be made of these disparate data?

5. Towards a new synthesis

A major part of the problem lies in its formulation. To begin with, vertical dualism and horizontal dualism are too often set over against each other. One recent writer wrongly argues that the dualism of Judaism runs along the horizontal line, and that since John embraces a good deal of vertical dualism, the horizontal perspective is ‘in process of dissolution’.6 H. Odeberg noted long ago that late Judaism makes place for both.6  

But there are more compelling reasons for synthesis. I have shown that in intertestamental apocalyptic the difference between God’s reigning activity in this age, as compared with the age to come, lies in the fact that only the age to come is the setting of God’s saving acts and open blessings toward his people, and, concomitantly, his judgment on his foes. The vertical dimension in apocalyptic tends to be restricted in this present age to the private experience of the seer. Therefore, the greater the degree of realised eschatology, the more likely are we to find in history the open reign and blessings of the transcendent God. If John betrays more realised eschatology than do the Synoptic Gospels, it is only to be expected that he will have more vertical dualism as well. Emphasis on the vertical dualism increases in proportion with the stress on realised eschatology, not in inverse proportion with the accent on horizontal dualism, from which it is quite independent.7  

We may go further. In simple apocalyptic, God introduces the age to come without so much as a ‘by your leave’. There is no question of man’s will co-operating with God at that point: God acts. The christian parallel is the parousia, the last day. But New Testament eschatology (including John) has appropriated the two-age structure in such a way that the age to come has already arrived in a preliminary way. Some of the features of the next age emerge now, and others, obviously, cannot. The ultimate finality of resurrection life and judgment await the ‘last day’; but men experience life and judgment now. The delay means there is still opportunity for men to respond to God; and yet, because the age has dawned, everything seems much more urgent than before. That it is God’s activity stands out the more sharply; and so a priori one would expect greater stress on God’s unconditioned sovereignty in saving men. The marked degree of realised eschatology entails the greater unveiling of God’s salvific activity, i.e. more vertical dualism. But the converse is also true. The greater the emphasis on vertical dualism operative now, the greater the degree of realised eschatology.

These conclusions can be tied together with remarks about the double terminus a quo of this new age, one that is theologically precise and the other enmeshed in transitional history. John’s readers are not to see themselves in the same position as those whose lives were touched by Jesus within the Gospel itself. They live after that transitional history, and after the unified saving event. But the emphasis on the theological unity and cruciality of this saving event has the effect of insisting that subsequent history be seen in its light. The saving event has taken place, and the new age has dawned. Realised eschatology is therefore stronger in the fourth Gospel than in the synoptics because of John’s more developed theology of Jesus’ death/exaltation, in which God has come down and acted decisively. Of course, if theology were to take over completely, it would be impossible to speak of a crucial ‘saving event’. One would be reduced to speaking about eternal truths. The event must be historical. But a merely historical description of the saving event, giving little more than the bare bones of what happened, would fail to present the uniqueness and significance of that event, and therefore its evangelistic implications, in the most forceful way. John’s readers must realise that God has already acted; Christ has descended, died and been exalted, and now they must approach the historical Jesus from the perspective of faith.

johannine christology

If Jesus is understood to be both God and man, then in him, if anywhere, the tension between God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility will come to its sharpest focus. This section, then, seeks to explore the relationship between the sovereignty-responsibility tension and the distinctive way in which the fourth Gospel presents Jesus. It does not attempt to survey the titles ascribed to him, and thus avoids, for example, the knotty problem of the Son of man sayings, except in so far as it impinges on the immediate topic.7  

1. A survey of the evidence

The fourth Gospel, perhaps more insistently than any other New Testament book, ascribes deity to Jesus. The Logos, identified with Jesus Christ (1:14, 17), was not only ‘with God’, but ‘was God’ (1:1). The Logos joined God in the work of creation (1:3). In the three most common critical editions of the Greek New Testament,7 Jesus himself is called monogenēs theos, ‘the unique God’, or the ‘unique One, God’ (1:18; the latter word is probably in apposition). The staggering element to do with Thomas’s confession (20:28) is Jesus’ reply (20:29); and this confirms Barrett’s observation on 1:1: ‘John intends that the whole of his gospel shall be read in the light of this verse. The deeds and words of Jesus are the deeds and words of God; if this be not true the book is blasphemous.’7 In short, John provides us with three references in which the title ‘God’ is explicitly given to Jesus (1:1, 18; 20:28); and, as has often been noted, John inserts them with considerable deliberation: the pre-existent Logos is God (1:1), the incarnate Logos is God (1:18), and the resurrected Christ is God (20:28).

Jesus’ deity, however, does not depend only on the direct ascription of theos to him. Jesus insists that to believe in him is to believe in the one who sent him (12:44), to look at him is to look at the one who sent him (12:45; 14:9), to hate him is to hate the Father (15:23). He says that all must honour the Son even as they honour the Father (5:23), that he and his Father are one (10:30). We not only learn that the Son cannot do anything except what the father shows him, but that the Son does whatever the Father does (5:19). At least one scholar thinks the word ‘work’, when applied to Jesus in the fourth Gospel, reflects the inner unity between the Father and the Son. The ‘I am’ statements, in particular the absolute ones (cf. especially 8:58), are claims not only for pre-existence but for deity.7 Pre-existence does not entail deity; but in the johannine view of things it certainly entails more than ordinary humanity. Pre-existence is repeatedly ascribed to Jesus (1:1, 15, 30; 8:58; 15:5, 24), and it is implied by the ideas of Jesus having come (5:43; 6:14; 7:28; 10:10; 11:27; 15:22; 18:37; etc.), being from God (6:46; 7:29; 9:33; 16:27f.; 17:8), and being sent by God (3:17, 34; 4:34; 5:23f.; 6:39f.; 7:16; 8:16, 18; 9:4; 10:36; 11:42; 12:44f.; 13:20; 14:24; 15:21; 17:3, 8, 18, 21, 23, 25; 20:21; etc.). Not one is before him. Certainly the Jews are represented as hating him precisely because he made himself equal with God (5:17f.; 10:33; 19:7).

At the same time, John refers to Jesus as a ‘man’ (1:30; 4:29; 8:40; 9:11f., 16; 10:33; 19:5)7 —even on the lips of Jesus himself (8:40). Admittedly, these references are incidental. However, whatever the attributes of the Word, ‘the Word became flesh’ (1:14); and despite the efforts of E. Käsemann (on which see infra) this clause is best understood within a pattern of humiliation from which the Son is glorified by exaltation to the position he once possessed (17:5), but temporarily relinquished. Although the Logos springs from God, ‘the Salvation’ (=hē sōtēria: a title?)7 is of the Jews (4:22). If this is a title, then the text can only mean that Jesus springs from the Jewish race—a decidedly human phenomenon. Pilate’s words ‘Here is the man!’ (19:5) may have been uttered in coarse jest, or to arouse feelings of contempt if not pity; but coupled with ‘Here is your king!’ (19:14), it is hard to resist the conclusion that the evangelist himself, a master at double meanings, saw Jesus as a man in the depths of humiliation and yet the king.7 Jesus grew tired and thirsty (4:6f.; 19:28), loved and wept (11:5, 35). He was tempted (6:15, 31; 7:3f.; although this is not stressed). Moreover, whereas he sometimes manifests supernatural knowledge (e.g. 1:48; 2:25; 5:42; 6:6; 6:15?; 6:64; 13:21; 14:29; 16:30; 18:4), there are occasions when he appears to learn things like other men (4:1; 5:6; 7:1; 11:3f.). When he dies, from his side flow blood and water (19:34).7  

But above all, John presents Jesus as completely and utterly dependent on the Father—for his power (5:19, 30; 8:28; 10:37; 14:10), knowledge (5:30; 8:16), his entire mission (4:34; 6:38; 17:4). These references could be multiplied, and have been well presented, if overstated, by J. E. Davey.7  

It is possible from such passages as 15:18; 17:16, 21 to conclude that there is no intrinsic difference between Jesus and other (christian) men: they are not of the world, just as he is not of the world, and his prayer for them is that they be one, just as he and his Father are one (although this last petition equally points to Jesus’ distinctive unity with the Father). Such an approach plays with the evidence selectively, for nothing is clearer in the fourth Gospel than Jesus’ uniqueness. Even in the passages cited, there are qualifying factors. In 15:18f. Jesus has chosen his disciples out of the world; in 17:24 they will be rewarded with seeing Jesus’ glory. The oneness which Jesus enjoys with his Father can pertain to moral and functional categories, and thus be shared by his disciples (as in 8:42; 17:21; cf. most commentaries on 8:38ff.—e.g. Barrett, Brown, Lindars, Morris), but it is not restricted to such spheres. In John, men may become ta tekna of God, but only Jesus is ho huios—indeed, ho monogenēs huios. Although a man, no man ever spoke as he (7:46), who surpasses John the Baptist (1:15, 27, 30; 3:27ff.) and even Moses (1:17). His relationship with the Father is special (2:16); he is ‘from above’ in a unique sense, and is therefore above all (3:31).8 He sets the pattern for humility (13:12ff.) but he stands alone in his claim for supremacy and honour (e.g. 5:23; 12:8). He is the Son of God (1:49); and whereas he chooses men, he is himself exclusively God’s Chosen One, God’s Elect (1:34).8  

By any reckoning, Jesus is in some sense God, in some sense man, and in some sense unique. How may these things be integrated with each other and with johannine theology? And what understanding of the sovereignty-responsibility tension is betrayed by these data?

2. A selection of proposed solutions

The following list is not meant to be exhaustive; but it does represent a fair selection of modern thought on the christology of the fourth Gospel. I should add that the various categories occasionally overlap somewhat.

(i) The most common modern approach to johannine christology is to fence the evangelist’s language off from ontological categories when in one way or the other he ascribes deity to Jesus. This method develops in different ways, but it is found in writers from Cullmann to Bultmann8 (and even in one as conservative as A. M. Hunter),8 and usually pictures Jesus’ deity as God-in-revelation. M. Appold8 insists that Jesus’ oneness with the Father is not to be explained in moral, metaphysical, or philosophical categories. Rather, it is a oneness of ‘equivalent relationality’ (sic), which, if I understand him aright, is a functional category. J. A. T. Robinson’s argument ‘places Jesus on exactly the same metaphysical level as every other son of God yet attests him functionally unique, because he alone “always does what is acceptable to God” ’.8 In discussing the matter, R. Kysar prefers to adopt the terminology ‘function’ and ‘person’, instead of ‘function’ and ‘ontology’;8 but I doubt if this refinement substantively changes very much. In any case, it is far from clear that absolute distinctions between what is ‘functional’ and what is ‘ontological’ can legitimately be made.8 ‘It is questionable whether St John gave any thought to the ontological nature of the sonship’, writes T. E. Pollard;8 to which the appropriate initial rejoinder is: ‘It is doubtful whether St John gave any thought to the functional nature of the sonship.’ Beyond that, it is of utmost importance to recognise that both ontological and functional categories can be found in John, a point inconsistently recognised by Pollard himself in the same paragraph, when he cites 7:19 and 14:9 and concludes, ‘Jesus claims to reproduce not only the Father’s thought and action, but also his very nature.’8  

(ii) Many of those who appeal to the functional elements in the deity of Christ in John’s Gospel also make recourse to hellenism. Fuller does this, and of course Bultmann. Lindars takes the same approach, arguing that the ascription of theos to Jesus shows that ‘the restraining influence of rigid Jewish monotheism is beginning to weaken’.9 The habit of calling Jesus kyrios, it is argued, led naturally to calling him theos, by analogy to ‘the Lord God’ in the LX . Referring to Jesus as God subsequently becomes very common in the epistles of Ignatius, a further step in the hellenising process.

Too many objections may be raised against this easy answer. First, as B. A. Mastin has shown,9 Ignatius’s ascription of theos to Jesus is quite in contrast to the careful reserve exhibited by John. Ignatius repeatedly speaks of Jesus as ‘our God’; he writes of ‘the passion of my God’, and ‘the blood of God’, and so forth. Second, I have already indicated how common it was in Jewish circles to speak of divine-like beings. In particular, R. N. Longenecker has pointed out that six of the New Testament passages which call Jesus God appear ‘in the writings representative of the Jewish cycle of witness’, whereas only two or three can be identified in the Paulines. Longnecker argues—and Mastin agrees—that ascribing deity to Jesus in a Gentile setting would suggest he was one god among many; whereas ascribing deity to Jesus in a Jewish setting would lead to ‘a rethinking of traditional monotheism in an attempt to include the idea of plurality within a basic unity’9 —unless it led to a charge of blasphemy.

(iii) In an earlier essay,9 Mastin suggested that ascription of deity to Jesus in John 20:28 was prompted by the imperial cult under Domitian. Suetonius tells us Domitian was addressed as dominus et deus noster, to which Christians might well reply that Jesus alone was Lord and God. However, it is by no means universally agreed that the fourth Gospel was written at so late a date. Moreover, it seems strange that the christian response (if such it be) is not framed as a plural confession to parallel the imperially prompted confession (the book of Revelation provides better parallels). Even if John 20:28 were in any way called forth as a response to the imperial cult, that cult can scarcely account for John 1:1, 18. Besides, this fourth Gospel, in contrast to the Apocalypse, does not smack of conflict between Christianity and the imperial cult.

(iv) A fourth explanation has been offered by R. E. Brown. Brown argues that the passages in the New Testament (including the fourth Gospel) which specifically give Jesus the title theos are either in hymns or doxologies, and he supposes that this is an indication that the title ‘God’ was applied to Jesus more quickly in liturgical formulae than in narrative or epistolary literature.9 Brown, in agreement with many others, regards the Prologue (which embraces the first two crucial references, 1:1, 18) as a hymn that was edited before insertion into the fourth Gospel. Moreover, he regards 20:28 as a response evocative of an early christian liturgy, Thomas speaking on behalf of the entire christian community. He thinks Revelation 4:11, ‘Worthy art thou, our Lord and God’, a confirmation of his interpretation.

There is some truth in what Brown is saying; but his general theory fits the fourth Gospel less convincingly than it fits other parts of the New Testament. J. T. Sanders is willing to concede that the johannine Prologue is ‘religious poetry’, but, on formal grounds he argues that it is not a hymn in the same sense that the other passages he studies are hymns.9 C. K. Barrett, in an important essay,9 insists that the Prologue is not verse, but rhythmical prose, written originally in Greek, and by the evangelist. Not all of Barrett’s arguments are convincing, but his main thesis is eminently defensible. Moreover, Mastin has pointed out that the definition of ‘doxology’ becomes a little vague if John 20:28 and Revelation 4:11 are both lumped together under this rubric. To serve as evidence that they both reflect the same liturgical/doxological response, they would have to be identical in form and they are not. On the face of it, John 20 is prose narrative; and in Revelation 4:11 the words ‘our Lord and our God’ simply identify who is worthy to be praised. In any case, our massive ignorance of first century christian liturgy makes theories which depend on early and well-developed liturgy more speculative than most others (and for the same reason, more difficult to disprove!).

(v) B. A. Mastin, in his recent article, already referred to,9 sides more or less with those who see Jewish background as the dominating influence on the fourth Gospel. However, he suggests that it is the church-synagogue clash which calls forth the ascription of deity to Jesus. As the synagogue minimises the significance of Jesus, so the church is helped to see his significance. In particular, he cites the johannine passages in which Jesus is in conflict with the Jews, in conflict which turns on Jesus’ identity (cf. especially 5:17f.; 8:58.; 10:30ff., and their contexts). By way of reply, however, certain things must be observed: (1) The three passages which unambiguously ascribe the title theos to Jesus are not in settings of Jewish/christian controversy. (2) Mastin’s theory approximates more closely than he thinks to the thesis that Jesus was deified in proportion as christianity drew away from Jewish monotheism and towards hellenistic polytheism, despite the strictures be imposes on the latter. Both see Christianity’s withdrawal from Jewish thought as in some sense the pre-condition for the ascription of deity to Jesus; and therefore both fall under the stubborn evidence adduced by Longenecker and others. (3) I am unhappy with the way church/synagogue disputes are getting blamed for everything in the fourth Gospel these days. The subject is so vast, I can here barely mention it. Nevertheless I must say that Leistner’s insistence9 that John is not as anti-Jewish as some suppose makes a great deal of sense to me; while the circular reasoning which crops up repeatedly in a work like J. Louis Martyn’s9 engenders suspicion that a clever theory is being foisted on the evidence.

(vi) C. K. Barrett frames the problem in terms of a dialectical christology.10 He rejects as anachronistic the efforts to detect ‘two natures’—e.g. to see the subordinationist passages (especially 14:28) as a reference to Jesus’ humanity—as he rejects majority patristic and some Reformed attempts to find distinctions between Father and Son independent of the incarnation. His own approach is to focus on one point at a time, and thus to discover the fourth Gospel is christocentric in confronting men, but that even the christocentricity is theocentric, the ultimate goal being to worship God in spirit and in truth. At the same time, although he admits that even those passages affirming Christ’s deity accommodate a distinction between Jesus and God (e.g. 1:1–18; 5:1–47; 10:22–39), he strenuously insists that this is accommodation, not obliteration. I think his analysis is essentially correct. My criticisms are threefold: (1) The word ‘dialectical’ is extremely slippery, being used by Barthians, Marxists, and Bultmannians in quite distinctive ways. It is better avoided. (2) Barrett puts too many johannine contrasts under this category in any case—a point to which I must return. (3) His analysis does not explain the genesis of this ‘dialectic’.

(vii) K. Haacker’s stimulating dissertation argues that the high point in the Prologue is not 1:14, but 1:17: Jesus is the ‘Stifter’ (founder) of a new religion, replacing Moses and his religion.10 In showing how Jesus outstrips Moses, the evangelist must show how Jesus’ revelation comes from God in an unprecedented fashion, a way that surpasses all that Moses or any other predecessor brought. Haacker argues that the motifs of the ‘sending’ and the ‘descent’ of Jesus are introduced to establish Jesus’ superiority;10 and that even

the presentation of his pre-existence is, like Christ’s descent, a derivative of the revelation motif. In any case, this is so whenever revelation takes on soteriological significance for the whole world. Pre-existence is the model (Umsetzung) of the divine origin in the time category, just as the descent motif is the model of the divine origin in the spatial category of primitive cosmology.10  

Moreover, in Jewish thought even pre-existent things like Torah, and in some cases Moses, were nevertheless created; but the fourth Gospel ascribes absolute pre-existence to Jesus Christ, again to establish his superiority.

Haacker’s analysis, though impressive, stumbles on his method. The superiority of Jesus and his revelation over all predecessors can indeed be plotted throughout the fourth Gospel; but it is not so all-embracing a motif as Haacker thinks. To make any one verse in the Prologue (1:14 or 1:17) so controlling a factor blinds the interpreter to other strands of thought. Most of the texts which Haacker cites concerning Jesus’ pre-existence, descent, and the like, are not obviously in contexts which relate to a contrast between Jesus and previous ‘founders’.

(viii) Of other proposed solutions to johannine christology, none has created as much stir in recent years as that of E. Käsemann.10 Although not the first in this generation to argue for a docetic christology in the fourth Gospel,10 Käsemann has put the case so forcefully that he has called forth a barrage of protest. Somewhat ironically, while for Bultmann and Cullmann Christ’s deity is nothing but God in revelation, for Käsemann christ’s humanity, his ‘flesh’ in 1:14, ‘is for the evangelist nothing other than the possibility for the Logos, as Creator and Revealer, to communicate with men.’10 He understands Jesus’ humanity, not his deity, functionally. As is well known, Käsemann views 1:14a as ‘the absolute minimum of the constume designed for the one who dwelt for a little while among men’,10 needed only to make 1:14b possible; while most of the subordinationist passages serve only to establish Jesus’ authority.

Most of Käsemann’s critics have focused on the fact that he has blown up one side of the evidence and seriously ignored the other.10 At least one has called his position ‘nothing more than absurd’.10 Another concedes Käsemann’s point for the body of the fourth Gospel, but thinks 1:14 is a late anti-docetic addition.11 K. Berger argues that the verb ginomai (‘to become’; 1:14) would have to be ‘erscheinen’ (‘to appear’) to suit Käsemann’s theory. Berger himself does not see in 1:14 an incarnation so much as a theophany.11  

3. Towards a better synthesis: the transcendent God personally expounded

Before the exile, the chief problem in Israel was her tendency to drift toward idolatry. After the exile, the problem shifted. We have observed in the intertestamental literature a tendency to stress divine transcendence at the expense of divine personality. Under this over-arching umbrella of sovereign transcendence, the people operated in increasing independence: divine ultimacy was squeezed out of the sphere of human moral decisions. Necessarily, God became, in some ways, a little removed from his people.11 Free will became formulated for the first time in Jewish writings.

Now if Longenecker and others have shown that the ascription of deity to Jesus was first made in Jewish Christian circles (supra), the evidence I have adduced from Jewish intertestamental literature reveals the beginning of a need for such a development in the same circles in spite of their simultaneous emphasis on the unity of God—indeed, almost because of it.

John presents this christology in such a way as to fill this need. Some scholars have recognised this. J. Jeremias, for example, says, that although God had in some ways revealed himself in the past, ‘he had remained full of mystery, incomprehensible, inscrutable, invisible’; but at one point ‘God took off the mask’ and spoke clearly and distinctly: and Jesus Christ is that Word.11 Another says:

… God has quite personally and eschatologically disclosed himself in the man Jesus and has spoken and acted through this man. Thus for John Jesus as ‘the Son’ is the full-fledged presence of God (italics his) … and God personally meets men exclusively through the man Jesus.11  

Being truly God and truly man, and being also the image of God and the archetype of humanity, (Jesus) is an ontological mediator between God and man; he is no less a mediator of true knowledge, and of salvation.11  

In short, ‘He is—as it is once expressed in Col. 1:15—the visible image of the invisible Father.’11  

Without, for the moment, further pursuing the question of ontology, I propose now to sketch in John’s picture of Jesus, focusing attention first on Jesus’ God-like functions, and then on his man-like functions.

The Prologue begins with the logos, who from the beginning not only was with God, but was God (1:1). The distinction between the logos and God (ho logos ēn pros ton theon) makes possible his becoming something other than just God (1:14); their identification (theos ēn ho logos) makes certain that the revelation is indeed God revealing himself (1:18). The Prologue concludes with the logos becoming flesh (1:14), being identified as Jesus Christ (1:15, 17). The invisible God has thus become visible (1:14f., 18). Between the opening and the close of the Prologue, otherwise transcendent features of God’s activity are by this means brought near: the same logos was involved in creation (1:3), and has come to what is his own (1:10f.). Even the possibility of salvation by becoming children of God is patterned on this bridging of the gulf between God and men (1:12f.): ‘In this way, the necessary and constantly reiterated scriptural affirmation of the infinite distance between God and man, and the affirmation of the coming of the Son of God who bridges this abyss in making believers participate in his divine sonship, are harmoniously related.’11  

Because Jesus thus bridges the gulf between the infinite God and finite man, the argument can leap with neither warning nor impropriety from Jesus and his words and work back to God and his words and work. Hence, for example, in 3:33ff., the person who receives the witness of Jesus ‘sets his seal to this, that God is true.’ Jesus’ words are God’s words (3:34); that is the reason why the one who receives Jesus’ witness confirms that God is true. Lest there be any suspicion that not all of Jesus’ words are God’s words, the evangelist hastens to add that God has given the Spirit without measure to Jesus (if we may take the clause that way), and so loved him as to give everything into his hand (3:34f.). This leap from Jesus to God is not exceptional. In precisely the same way, the faith that leads to life hears Jesus’ words and believes the one who sent him (5:24; 14:24). Only Jesus has seen the Father (6:46); but to know Jesus is to know the Father (8:19).

God, then, supremely at the ‘hour’, glorifies his Son and is thereby glorified in him (17:1; 13:31). By accomplishing the work the Father has given him to do, Jesus has glorified the Father, and will be returned to the glory he once shared with the Father (17:4f.). His work entails passing on God’s glory (17:22), the glory of the ‘one and only God’ (monogenēs theos), witnessed by his disciples (1:18). Even the descent/ascent theme presupposed by this perspective stresses the revelation of God to man.

The fourth Gospel thus admirably preserves the distance between God and men, while simultaneously bridging that distance by the incarnate logos, the Son of God. His coming corresponds to the vertical dimension in johannine eschatology. If contemporary Judaism was convinced that no one could see God until the age to come, John was announcing that the age to come had arrived even in this respect: the first disciples had seen Jesus. There was more glory still to be seen (17:24); but the divine presence had already been expounded to the believers (1:18; 17:26).

What about all the passages which underline the ‘sentness’ of Jesus and his dependence on his Father? On these points, Käsemann has come very near the truth, despite the objections of his critics. Most of the passages which mark Jesus’ dependence and ‘sentness’ function in their contexts as the ground of Jesus’ authority (5:17f., 19–30; 6:28, 32f.; 7:16, 18, 28f.; 8:16, 29, 42; 10:17f.; 11:41f.; 12:45, 48ff.; 14:23f., 28–31; 17:2, 7). In speaking God’s words (3:34; 7:16; 8:26, 38, 40; 14:10, 24; 17:8), performing only the Father’s works (4:34; 5:17, 19ff., 30, 36; 8:28; 14:10; 17:4, 14), and doing the Father’s will (4:34; 5:30; 6:38; 10:25, 37), Jesus is ‘the voice and hand of the Father’.11  

In connection with the ‘hour’ and the fulfilment of Scripture, we have already seen how Jesus is in no way dependent on the whims and decisions of men, but only on the will of the Father. Even the classic subordinationist passage, 14:28, calls for some such comment as that of Loisy: ‘It is understood that the Christ, because of his heavenly origin, is in essence divine, since he compares himself with the Father.’11 Perhaps the omission of some scenes from the synoptic tradition (e.g. the temptation, Gethsemane, the cry of dereliction) finds its reason in this, that to include them might hinder the presentation of the crossing of the barrier between transcendence and finitude.

Supremely, then, Jesus the Son of God is seen in the fourth Gospel as the mediator between the Father and men. The Father is therefore presented not so much in his relation to the world, as in his relation to the Son. Even in 3:16, the Father’s love for the world causes him to send his Son; while in 3:34f. and 5:19f. the Father’s love for the Son prompts him to show the Son all he does, and place everything in his hand. ‘To get to the bottom [of johannine thought], it must be recognised that the foundation of the church is the fact, not of a sort of divine philanthropy, but of the personal love of the Father for the Son.’12 The glory to which Jesus is moving, he already had with the Father before the world began (17:5); but it was given him because of the Father’s pre-cosmic love for the Son (17:24). Christians will be especially loved by the Father (14:21–3), but only in their relationship of obedience to the Son. And if the Father is asked to take over some of the functions of the Son (17:11ff.), it is because the Son’s work is coming to an end, and the time for the coming of the other Paraclete, for whom the Son himself has prayed (14:16ff.), is drawing on.

All of these features, however, gloss over the stubborn fact that Jesus is consistently presented in a position of subservience and, more specifically, unswerving obedience, to his Father. His food is to do the will of the one who sent him (4:34); and, despite the fact that Jesus’ dependence is frequently set in contexts which give him authority, it is real dependence nonetheless. The world must learn that Jesus does exactly what his Father has commanded him, despite the vigorous attack by the prince of the world (16:30f.). This is true not only of the father’s words and actions, which the Son takes over, but, as we have seen, of the entire passion: ‘the passion belongs to the commission the Father laid on the Son; and Jesus in loving obedience has discharged this commission, right to the last detail’12 (cf. 18:11, 37; 19:17?; 19:28–30). Thus, even though stress is laid on the fact that the entire ‘hour’ and its events are predestined by God and foretold by Scripture, equal stress is laid on Jesus’ willingness to drink the cup the Father has given him (18:11), to lay down his life of his own accord (10:18). This is the reason the Father loves the Son (10:17; cf. 8:29). The cured blind man was right when he noted that God listens to the godly man who performs his will (9:31). In Jesus, therefore, the certainty of divine predestination and the significant freedom of obedient response meet in a spectacular display.

It is in the life and death of Jesus Christ that the problem of free will and predestination finds its most poignant expression, and here, too, if anywhere, it must find its solution. The predetermined one freely chooses his appointed destiny: ‘not what I will, but what thou wilt’ (Mark 14:36). In Christ, the elect of God, perfect freedom and absolute determination intersect; human freedom and divine omnipotence meet and are one. The problem of free will and determination can be solved only in the new humanity of Jesus Christ.12  

Real freedom for a man is freedom from sin (8:34ff.), that is, a freedom which voluntarily performs God’s will, in the way Jesus kept his Father’s word (8:54). Or, as C. F. D. Moule has put it:

Jesus exhibits the nature and character of God in the only way in which they can be absolutely and perfectly exhibited in the context of human behaviour, namely in such a relationship as properly belongs to man over against God, the relationship of glad and willing filial obedience. To this extent the paradox of glory and humiliation, of equality and subordination, is resolved in that relationship of perfect intimacy and identity of purpose which expresses itself in perfect obedience. Oneness of will is expressed in subordination of will, freedom in constraint.12  

We have observed that when Caiaphas prophesied (11:49ff.), he did not speak aph’ heautou (‘of his own accord’; lit. ‘of himself’). But Jesus can say, similarly, ‘The words that I say to you I do not speak ap’ emautou, on my own authority’ (lit., ‘of myself’; 14:10). God’s sovereignty therefore remains intact whatever the response of men may be; but men are not thereby absolved of their responsibility to do his will. Caiaphas speaks out of arrogance; Jesus speaks out of conscious obedience to the Father.

Another corollary of the stress on Jesus’ obedience arises from the observation that responsibility is exercised first of all towards God. This does not mean that Jesus does not act graciously towards other men; it means rather that he acts graciously towards them because he acts responsibly towards his Father. He gives his life for the sheep; but this is a command received from his Father (John 10:15ff.). He preserves all the Father gives him and resurrects them on the last day, because this is the Father’s will (6:37–40). He washes his disciples’ feet in token of spiritual cleansing, for he knows the hour has come for the final act (13:1ff.).

At the same time, this last action becomes a paradigm of self-sacrificing service for the disciples (13:12ff.),12 constituting in fact the ‘new commandment’ (13:34), to love as Jesus has loved. The same pattern—Jesus’ special sacrifice, followed by its function as paradigm for others—is found also in 12:24f. In his sacrifice, Jesus was first of all pleasing his Father, thus standing with men in the necessity of obeying God. But although the sacrifice was unique, it was nevertheless so self-giving that it becomes a paradigm for others to follow; and in establishing the pattern in a new commandment Jesus stands with God in conscious authority. Thus, Jesus stands alternatively with men and with God. On the one hand, he has kept his Father’s word (4:34; 8:29, 55; 15:10), and men are exhorted to follow his example and keep Jesus’ word (5:24; 14:21; 15:10; cf. 8:37)—which, on the other hand, is his Father’s word (8:28, 38; 12:49f.; 14:24), and therefore binds men with all the authority of God. The position of Jesus Christ in all these patterns may be schematised like this:

Thus, the Son can do nothing by himself (5:19, 30), just as the disciples can do nothing without Jesus (15:4). But the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does (5:20), while the Son loves his disciples as the Father loves him (15:9), and has chosen them to go and bear fruit (15:16).

Jesus stands with God and expounds divine transcendence to finite men; he stands with men and demonstrates in his own life the proper relationship between men and God. This structure is called forth by the entire Christ-event, and the church’s Spirit-guided understanding of it as the ultimate revelation of the transcendent and holy God to finite and sinful men. Moreover, in the fourth Gospel the sovereignty-responsibility tension has merged with the tension in the divine-human christology, so that the two are virtually one.

theodicy

The insights gained from studying johannine eschatology and christology contribute to an understanding of John’s stance vis-à-vis ‘evil’. John deals with three aspects of evil: (1) moral wickedness; (2) the suffering of sickness; (3) the suffering that arises from persecution.

In the case of moral wickedness, John attempts no answer as to its origin. God in some way, as we have seen, stands behind it; but equally, he stands over against it, so much so that the logos becomes the lamb of God who takes away the world’s sin, and the wrath of God is manifest against it (1:29; 3:36). In the case of the suffering of sickness, answers vary: it may be caused by specific sin (5:14), or without reference to sin. When God stands more directly behind illness and death, the accent is on his purpose rather than his causation (9:3; 11:4). That purpose is the manifestation of God’s glory. In the case of suffering due to persecution—which receives predominant treatment—the answers come in terms of Christ’s example, the bestowal of the Spirit (which is related to realised eschatology), and futurist eschatology.

In the Old Testament, the unknownness of God’s ways, and the consequent need to trust him, constitute a major part of the theodicy. However, in John’s Gospel, there is a new revelatory stance: believers are ‘friends’ rather than ‘slaves’, precisely because they are told their master’s business (15:14f.; discussed infra). The new age has dawned; but because it dawns in two climactic stages, there is on the one hand a sense of arrival, of solution, of victory; and on the other, and to a lesser degree, a sense of release-still-to come, of long-range expectation.

The realised eschatology promises peace and joy despite trouble (14:27; 15:11; 16:33). This is connected with the promised Spirit/Paraclete (14:16–18, 25ff.; 15:26; 16:7ff.), whose roles include making present the presence of God (14:16f.; cf. 14:23), and teaching the disciples, making known to them what pertains to Jesus (14:25f.; 16:14). Therefore it is best for the believers that Jesus go away, so that the Paraclete may be given (16:7). Moreover, Jesus has chosen his followers out of the world, and therefore the world hates them; but they are to remember that the world hated Jesus first (16:18–20). This is why John’s christology is so crucial for this aspect of theodicy. With the coming of the ‘hour’ has come the most spectacular display of how God himself, in his Logos, reacts under fire. Suffering for righteousness’ sake as God’s will is for Jesus’ followers, if not more comprehensible, at least more bearable, precisely because Jesus the Son of God passed that way, and his servants are not above him. Therefore it is no accident that this thought (16:19–20) is expounded right after the declaration that the disciples’ status is changed by more revelation (16:14ff.): Jesus is that revelation. He has made known everything he learned from his Father (16:15), because he himself has expounded the Father (1:18; 17:6, 26). Theodicy as a personal dilemma (as opposed to a philosophical conundrum) is more bearable in proportion as God is understood to be for and with his people rather than against them or merely over them. From Jesus’ own example the disciples also learn that suffering according to God’s will glorifies God. To point out that the suffering of the disciples may have the same purpose is one of the functions of the epilogue (cf. especially 21:19). Of course, this realised eschatology is not the whole story: the ‘last day’ and the resurrection of the just and the unjust is still to come (5:28f.).

John is not primarily interested in the problem of theodicy, and it is useless to speculate what else he might have said. But his eschatological and christological emphases have contributed fundamentally to his understanding of the problem, however incidentally he displays such understanding. Certainly he never deploys a naive merit theology to promise an escape which could not materialise.

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