For the past 25 years I have had a deeper interest in the four gospels than in my preceding years of adult engagement with faith, theology and spiritual life in Christ.
Among questions significant for me to explore has been the question of the relationship with John's Gospel to the Synoptic Gospels. (That is, to Matthew, Mark, and Luke which have their own differences from each other, but have much common material, and essentially present Jesus in a similar manner, as a wandering Galilean rabbi who is only engaged with Jerusalem at the end of his life.)
There are many differences between John and the Synoptics - so many that many scholars think John's Gospel was composed without knowledge of the other three gospels. My own estimation is that, actually, John did know at least one of the other gospels well, and is precisely different because he chooses to be different - different through theological/christological/pneumatological development of ideas and themes in the Synoptic Gospels so that a deeper meaning or (taking up an ancient word used to describe John's Gospel in distinction from the other gospels) or a spiritual meaning is presented in John's narration of the story of Jesus' life and teaching.
Some of this development is pretty obvious as we read through John's Gospel. For instance, within John 3 we encounter the last times the phrase "the kingdom of God" is used, henceforth to be replaced by the phrase "eternal life." In John 6 there is teaching on the meaning of the bread and wine of communion to an extent and to a depth found nowhere in the Synoptics. Throughout the whole Gospel, the meaning of the relationship between Jesus the Son and God the Father is a recurring theme, presented in a variety of ways, well beyond any talk in the Synoptics of Jesus as "the Son of God", God as "Father" or "Our Father", and Son in relationship to Father and vice versa. The whole of the Gospel of John, from the perspective of Father/Son is a development of a verse common to Matthew and Luke (Matthew 11:27/Luke 10:22).
Recently I thought of another shift. (I am not claiming to be the first to have thought of this shift - only claiming it is the first time I have thought of this particular shift.)
That shift is from Jesus talking in ways which categorise his disciples as "servants" (we could think, for instance, of passages such as Mark 10:33-37 // Matthew 18:1-5 // Luke 9:46-49; Matthew 25:14-30 // Luke 19:11-27) to "friends" (John 15: 13-15). This shift is reinforced by Jesus having special friends: Lazarus (John 11:3, 11) and "The Beloved Disciple" (John 13:23 etc).
This shift to talk of the disciples in more intimate human relationship terms than "servant" is at one with the themes in John's Gospel of the intimacy between God and Jesus (Father/Son) and the role of the Spirit as indwelling the disciples.
And, for me personally, I have been gently challenged: do I think of myself as a "friend" of Jesus (and vice versa) rather than as a "servant"?
6 comments:
The use of *friend* is very interesting. I sometimes worship with Quakers who often refer to each other as "friends" ("the Religious Society of Friends"), bringing to mind Jesus' language - or the Johannine community's language - and inviting a more radically intimate, egalitarian ethos. I'm not sure how many modern liberal Quakers are aware of these Gospel roots, but they are revolutionary, I think. Thanks for drawing our attention here, Peter.
I love the Gospel of John. It is intimate and spiritual and dialogical - all these potent encounters....with Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman etc - in a way that the other Gospels aren't quite. But how to understand its differences from the Synoptics? I struggle with this. It is so much later, so different in many ways. Above all, it shows a Jesus who clearly and openly preaches his full unity with the Father (the famous I am statements). We don't get anything near that in the Synoptics, where Jesus, to my and many centrist scholars' best reading, never claims to be divine.
Most centrist NT scholars do not seem to believe that the Gospel of John was actually written by John the beloved disciple. That seems unlikely for many reasons. So it seems it is the evolving testimony of a community perhaps linked originally to the disciple John, developing somewhat independently from other Christian communities, and finally codifying its distinctive oral tradition ("gospel") sixty years after Jesus' death. I am open to this tradition bearing the unique sensibility and thumbprints of John the disciple, but all we know of oral tradition and transmission would suggest it is very hard to treat this gospel as "historically accurate".
I am very open to hearing what others think. How do you reconcile the Synoptics with John on these issues? If Jesus went around openly teaching his oneness with God, why do Mark, Matthew, and Luke never bother to mention this most startling fact?
In light of the above difficulties with treating John as historically reliable, and in light of its resolutely *spiritual* character, it seems likely to me that that is what the Gospel of John is: the mature reflections of an early Christian community inspired (by the Spirit, who will come and teach everything, as John says) by their experiences of the Christ, and remembering, interpreting, and re-narrating the life of Jesus from this perspective.
Guess I'm saying a more descriptive title for John might be:
The Gospel of the Spirit of Christ as experienced by the Johannine Community
Richard Bauckham in 'Gospel of Glory. Major Themes in Johannine Theology' (2015, pp 64-69) has a special discussion of love and friendship in John's Gospel, pointing out how Jesus' love for his friend Lazarus actually brings him into mortal danger, laying down his life for his friends: 'Jesus already knows that he will bring Lazarus back to life, but he also knows that this act of love for his friend will lead to his own death' (p 66). The whole book is a perceptive collection of exegetical essays on the gospel as well as a concluding chapter on 'The Johannine Jesus and the Synoptic Jesus' which reduces the gap a bit when we grasp the deliberate incompleteness and selectivity of John, as well as its highly schematic character e.g. the 'book'of seven 'signs', the seven 'I am' sayings and the intertextuality with the OT. It is not for nothing that in the Orthodox Church the evangelist is known as St John the Theologian, for no other gospel reveals the mind of Christ more explicitly.
On the historical reliability of John, Craig Blombberg wrote an affirmative monograph some years ago which marshalls the arguments. One question concerns the cleansing of the temple (ch 2): has John dischronologised the tradition or were there in fact *two such events in Jesus's ministry? It ay e a minority view but I opt for two for a range of exegetical reasons in which John actually casts light on the Synoptics.
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
It was common in the past generations to invoke anonymous "communities" as somehow being "behind" the Gospels, but Bauckham dismisses this idea as unfounded - and maybe a reflex of the old Formgeschichte which he believes he has overthrown (especially in his 'Jesus and the Eyewitnesses'). And this is fair because "communities" don't write books, individuals do.
Bauckham himself doesn't believe the apostle John wrote the Gospel but rather another dubbed 'the Beloved Disciple'. Others assert the traditional view that John is the Beloved Disciple. Who is the 'we' of ch 21?
Pax et bonum
William Greenhalgh
"...when we grasp the deliberate incompleteness and selectivity of John...."
But Bauckham seems to reading John alongside the synoptics as if "John" had knowledge of them. We do. But "John" didn't, right?
It is hard for me to regard Bauckham's views as authoritative after seeing his eyewitness theory so thoroughly refuted by Bart Ehrman
https://youtu.be/dw1T5AEhk9E?si=tMmzqjd2FIc0bfTi
My understanding is that most centrist NT scholars - e g. Raymond Brown - hold to the idea of a Johannine community.
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