If John draws directly on the Synoptics, what do we then draw from that?

My "best book I have read this summer" is Mark Goodacre's The Fourth Synoptic Gospel: John's Knowledge of Matthew, Mark, and Luke (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2025). It is not a long book but it packs a punch. Written by the New Testament world's leading proponent of the Farrer-Goulder Hypothesis (i.e. that non-Markan material common to Luke and Matthew is explained by Luke's knowledge of Matthew rather than by proposing use of a hypothetical document called Q), this book argues that 

"the author of John's Gospel knew, used, presupposed, and transformed the Synoptics" (p. ix). 

This is not a new position since for most of Christian history Christians have assumed John's Gospel had a relationship to the other three gospels, but it is a renewed position (with good arguments in the light of latest scholarship) since much of NT scholarship since the middle of the 20th century has either  argued or simply assumed that John is independent of the Synoptics. 

To be fair to the argument that John was composed independently of the Synoptics, there are multiple ways in which John's gospel is very different to the Synoptics. To take a few glaring differences, John reproduces none of the parables we know well from the Synoptics, he places the cleansing of the Temple at the beginning of Jesus' ministry and not at the end, and he narrates three Passover visits by Jesus to Jerusalem when the Synoptics know of only one. 

Nevertheless, Goodacre argues, with the aid of a number of clearly set out textual parallels (in Greek and in English), that 

"there are significant literary parallels between the Synoptic Gospels and John , and that these are sufficient to establish that John was familiar with Matthew, Mark, and Luke. The author of the Fourth Gospel did not use Synoptic-like traditions but the Synoptic Gospels themselves" (p. 17). 

I am persuaded that Goodacre is correct (and thus my personal position has shifted from "John seemed to know Mark's Gospel, possibly the other two" to "John definitely knew the Synoptic Gospels and drew on their wording in various parts of his gospel").

If Goodacre is correct, then what implications might that have for how we understand John's Gospel?

In no particular order of priority:

1. We must reckon with how John deals with the three Synoptic gospel accounts which he knows directly rather than allowing a form of wriggle room for John to have known "Synoptic-like" traditions so that where he differs from the Synoptics we can explain that in terms of his receiving variant traditions rather than the actual Synoptic material. 

If John knows the Synoptic material he absolutely changes a number of ways in which their collective narrative is conveyed to us.

In particular, note these examples from a larger set of possible examples of Johannine changes: 

- the revealing of various titles for Jesus is compressed into John 1 (along with some new John-sourced ones such as "Word" and "Lamb of God."); 

- the calling of the first disciples is (so to speak) fish-free in John 1 (though it is possible that there is an initial Johannine calling and a later Synoptic calling from their nets); 

- the cleansing of the temple by Jesus is brought forward chronologically (John 2); 

- the healing of an official's son (John 4:46-50) is strongly reminiscent of the healing of a centurion's servant (Matthew 8:5-13; Luke 7:1-20: were there multiple such miracles in Jesus' ministry or has John recast the Synoptic stories?); 

- then the healing of the man at the Bethsaida pool (John 5:1-18) recalls the healing and forgiveness of the paralyzed man (Mark 2:1-12 and parallels), with particularly strong verbal links concerning talk of taking up his mat and walking (John 5:8-9/Mark 2:9-12 - see further in Goodacre, p. 7) - again, there were multiple instances of dramatic healings across the gospel narratives, and so maybe John's language in influenced by Mark, rather than John has made a dramatic transformation of Mark's 2:1-12 story; 

- then, the biggest change John makes to the narratives at the end of Jesus' life, is to detail his death occurring on the day of preparation for the Passover (Jesus is crucified as the lambs for Passover meals are slain, John 19:31) rather than on the day of Passover itself (so, the Synoptics).

2. We should note the ancient assessment of John's Gospel in relation to the Synoptic Gospels: 

"Last of all, aware that the physical facts had been recorded in the gospels, encouraged by his pupils and irristibly moved by the Spirit, John wrote a spiritual gospel" (Eusebius, History, 6:14, citing Clement of Alexandria [c. 150AD to c 215AD].)

On the one hand, this is testimony to the view of Christian scholars through most of Christian history, that John knew the contents of the other gospels.

On the other hand, this is testimony to a reasonable way to understand the different character of John's Gospel in relation to the Synoptic gospels: it is a "spiritual gospel" in comparison to the Synoptics giving us "physical facts." Today we (if we might assume Clement's role for a moment or two) would likely say, 

"Last of all, aware that the historical facts had been recorded in the Synoptic gospels, encouraged by his disciples (those belonging to his school of theological teaching about Jesus) and irristibly moved by the Spirit (who, according to John 16:13 "will guide you into all the truth"), John wrote a theological gospel (where "theological" means that John told the history of Jesus in such a manner that he took his students then, and his readers now, deeper into the truth of Jesus Christ in relation to the God of Israel and of the universe, summed up in John's conveying the idea that God the Father and Jesus the Son were one)."

3. We should allow that John has other sources of information than he has read in the Synoptic gospels. Some of this additional information may be due to his strong links with Jerusalem and Jewish leaders based in that city. But John's greatest source may be Jesus himself, if he (the beloved disciple) had intimate conversations with Jesus (perhaps including Jesus reporting to him special conversations between Jesus and others such as Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman at Jacob's well). Nevertheless, it is far from explicable to suppose that every difference between John and the Synoptics is due to John's own sources.

4. We should allow that John may have changed what he read in the Synoptics because he lived in a different cultural context to our own and in that context saw no moral difficulty in writing what he wrote in comparison to the Synoptics. Today we would call such changes "spin doctoring" or "fictionalizing the facts." But our day is not John's day. In his day "biographies" and "histories" were different to our day. There is a wealth of scholarship devoted to those differences and I am not knowledgeable enough of that particular field of study to give a summary of findings. Suffice to say that we should not presume to conclude that John was doing anything other than writing the truth about Jesus Christ, with special reference to understanding the role of the Holy Spirit/Spirit of Jesus in guiding him to write what he wrote. The heart of that truth not being "historical facts" (if by that we mean "Jesus did this, then he did that, and afterwards he had a meal with these people, during which this particular dispute arose") but a profession of faith, that Jesus Christ was the Word of God become human flesh, that he was the ever existent Son of God in union with God the Father, and so forth. John writes not to recite for a fourth time (following Mark, Matthew and Luke) the historical facts of Jesus' life and times, but to lead us to belief in Jesus - the Jesus who is "the Messiah, the Son of God" so that through belief we might "have life in his name" (John 20:31).

5. We should allow that there are unexplainable (or yet to be explained) mysteries here. This is, I suggest, the critical question we do not have an answer to:

Why does John set out his understanding of Jesus Christ in relation to God and in relation to ourselves in the form of a gospel, structured similarly to the Synoptics (baptism, ministry, last supper, betrayal, arrest, trial, crucifixion, resurrection, ascension) rather than, say, in the form of an exposition such as Paul gives (e.g. Ephesians 1, Philippians 2-3 and Colossians 1) or as an extended sermon such as the writer of Hebrews gives?

There is much more to be said and perhaps I will come back to this topic later in 2026.

Anglicanism for today - the sharp edges of this "today"

I am just not going to get a post I am working on finished this week. So, why not point you in the direction of a finished post, a challenging post, an inspiring post, a very Anglican post?

Mark Clavier writes here on "Formed for Faithfulness: Recovering the Anglican Way of Life."

Out the window ... and (international) law is an ass

I naively harboured the hope that 2026 would be a better year than 2025 (in whatever way one might measure such things). And that harboured hope concerned the world as a global, political, conflictual entity, as well as the church at large, the church in our nation, ACANZP and life for me as bishop. We went into the new year with protests arising in Iran (potentially offering a better 2026 than 47 years previously for Iranians, but also full of dreadful possibility for a horrible crackdown on ordinary Iranians), and had scarcely gotten a couple of days into 2026 and ... 

Trump's troops invaded/policed Venezuela, and kidnapped/abducted/arrested-and-removed its legitimate/illegitimate President and his (collaborating) wife, for reason(s) such as oil-for-America/denuding a marco-terrorist state of its despicable trade in drugs and terrorism/fostering democracy in order to install its recently democratically elected leadership (as a long-term plan)/dismissing its recently democratically elected leadership as incapable of actually leading the country forward (in the short-term, what was actually said)/boosting someone's ego/pour encourager le autres (i.e. put the fear of the USA's power into other countries such as Cuba and Colombia so they pull up their dishevelled socks.

OK. Things can get better. Maybe the worst has happened and the year ahead will be glorious. But there are big concerns: Ukraine is no better; Syria now seems worse after a crackdown on the Kurds; Iran, should it survive the protests, is breathing fire against Israel and the USA; Sudan continues to be bad; rumbles in Somalia/Somaliland; Trump's Venezuela gambit may embolden China re Taiwan; the global economy stutters and stammers; and the planet continues to heat up. Woe is us!

So, some initial thoughts about early posts in 2026 have gone out the window (for now). Momentous moments of mondiality move minds to memos!

Of course many commentators are commenting and I feel no need to add to them with much. Two quick thoughts.

First, "international law" has taken a hammering with Trump's disregard for it. Suppose there was a gang of drug traffickers operating in NZ and when the police went to stop them, their lawyers advised that, actually, the gang had cunningly found a workaround the current laws about drug trafficking so that they couldn't be arrested. Cue an urgent sitting of parliament to change/update the laws so that police had the necessary powers to stop the trafficking, arrest the criminals etc. When we go international on a similar scenario, there is no world police, no world parliament and no ultimate regard for international law because it has consequences such as arrest, trial and imprisonment. (Yes, I know there is the ICC etc). Trump's action (irrespective of whether it is morally right or wrong, or internationally legal or illegal) highlights that "international law" works by consensus and is non-sensus when the consensus is broken. Of course, we didn't need to have Trump highlight the weakness of international law, we already had Putin/Ukraine, Hamas/7 October, Netanyahu/genocidal actions and other recent actions between nations, or involving non-nations crossing national borders. Further, of course, we seem to have had Venezuela itself supporting drug trafficking on a significant scale without fearing the consequences of that support ... until a couple of weeks ago.

Secondly, not for the first time, Trump has thrown some of the moral calculations of world punditry into chaos, with some great questions being generated about whether our moral calculations have been well made previously. In this case, we have moralized that a nation is sovereign, its rulers legitimate (to some degree or another, even when normal democratic results are overridden), and thus we can do nothing about whatever may concern us about those rulers actions, even when those actions may lead to drugs proliferating on our streets. (According to one article I read, such proliferation in Europe may even involve this "sequence of evil": Venezuela sends raw drugs to Lebanon, Hezbollah refines them, sells them, buys arms for fight against Israel, and for power struggles in Lebanon.) Trump sends in the troops to arrest and take Mr and Mrs Maduro away, and, suddenly, it seems like respect for national sovereignty, at least in some cases, is not so morally privileged after all, because few wish to defend national sovereignty protecting this particular "narco-terrorist".

Yes, many questions remain, including, and relevantly for NZ and the Pacific, what precedent has Trump created for nations who think other nations, or at least the rulers of other nations, are bad people presiding over bad decisions? After all, Trump's point about Maduro being a bad dude, is basically Putin's point about Zelensky (albeit not involving narco-terrorism in the latter case). Here Down Under, in the Pacific arena, it is mind-boggling to consider what China might think it worthwhile to do if it played "the great game" according to Trump's rules ... and I am not just thinking about Taiwan. Even now, NZ is considerably under the thumb of China and on various matters "dare not step out of line." And where we do dare step out of line (particularly in respect of support for Taiwan), we get our knuckles wrapped. The prospects for Christian churches under China's yoke are bleak: may that yoke not further fall on our necks.

It is not as though considerations of international law are now much of a check to the growth of hegemony on a global scale.

Some pundits are even predicting a world of three hegemonic spheres. And NZ wouldn't be falling into the US or Russian hegemony if this comes to pass.

Let the reader understand.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

It is that time of the year again ...

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all readers!

I will take a little blog holiday, per custom, and resume on Monday 12 January or Monday 19 January 2026.

Potentially at that point I will pick up on some discussions in recent weeks here ... and let's hope by then 2026 is off to a start which augurs well for a happier year than 2025 has turned out to be.

Till then.

Peter

Tuesday 16 December 1850-2025 - Canterbury Anniversary

Tomorrow, 16 December 2025, is the 175th anniversary of the arrival of the First Four Ships in Lyttelton Harbour on 16 December 1850 - the first ships carrying an intentional wave of new settlers to what would be the city of Christchurch and the province of Canterbury in the post Treaty of Waitangi (1840) emerging Aotearoa New Zealand, a land of Maori and Pakeha. Last night our Transitional Cathedral Evensong celebrated this anniversary. The following is the text of the sermon I preached.

175^th Anniversary Canterbury Settlement 1850-2025, 14 Dec 2025

Readings: Jeremiah 29:7, 11-14, Philippians 4:4-14

Introduction: On16 December 1850, four ships sailed into what today we call Lyttelton Harbour and thus became the First Four Ships carrying new settlers for a well planned Church of England settlement: a settlement to be established over the hill from Lyttelton, with the name Christchurch, after the Oxford college at which a number of the English planning committee had been students.

These ships were filled with members of the Church of England who settled into life in Christchurch or spread out across the Canterbury plains and into the foothills of the Alps, developing churches, schools, a university, businesses and farms, according to the plan.

And everything went well as a replication of the best life England and the Church of England could offer English people. What took place was a transplanting of English idealism into a place perfectly suited for establishing an Anglican utopia.

Except that wasn’t exactly what happened.

There was a need to limit French settlement to Akaroa and nearby bays.

We were eyed up by the Scottish Presbyterians. But for Lake Ellesmere being in flood when a surveyor sought to find an easy flat route from the sea to where our city now lies, we might have been Dunedin.

As it was, Scottish Presbyterians, including most famously the Deans’ families were critical to the development of Christchurch and Canterbury.

As were Australians who jumped the Ditch for a cooler climate, for work preparing Lyttelton and Christchurch for the new settlers, and, for some Australians, for securing better farming prospects than available in those days in New South Wales and Victoria.

The first four ships were not filled with Anglicans – a Europe in uproar in 1848 which might have pressed people to purchase their places on the ships and their acreage in the new province gave way to a more settled context in 1850.

So contented Anglicans remained in England and there were spare spaces for non-Anglicans to travel out here.

10 of the 20 clergy who arrived on 16 December 1850 found the going too tough or the prospects for a better life easier to secure elsewhere in the new world.

Bishop Selwyn was keener on a separate diocese in the first instance for the older settlement in Nelson. Jackson the first bishop designate for the not yet agreed to Diocese of Christchurch came and went.

Initial planning in smoke filled committee rooms in England made costs of going into sheep farming – farming for lucrative wool – prohibitive. That was a misstep by our administrative forbears.

Only when a change was made to the pricing of land suitable for sheep in the early 1850s (due to facts quickly learned, that other forms of farming could not earn a living), did the financial future for Canterbury brighten.

Many decades before we learned the word “globalization”, astute commercial leaders and farmers in Canterbury knew that global trading in wool counted ahead of local market sales of crops for local consumption.

Perhaps the best ever attempt at establishing an Anglican utopia by English people outside of England failed - failed to become what it was hoped and planned to be.

But what was established has been a success in this way: those who sought a better life in Christchurch in 1850, through dint of hard work and willingness to adjust plans to fit with reality, found that better life.

But 175 years later, we also look back on the role of Kemp, Wakefield and Godley, instrumental figures in the planned settlement becoming an actual settlement, and wonder regretfully how things might have been different for Ngai Tahu.

Has the English settlement here made life better for Ngai Tahu? That is a question we should continue to ask ourselves.

Let’s never forget that land was purchased from Ngai Tahu at such low prices that there is no case, from any perspective, that justice was done – justice such as the Christian faith requires of its adherents.

Nevertheless,175 years after the First Four Ships arrived, it remains the case that people move to Christchurch seeking a better life and for the most part, a better life is found here.

Providing you can stand the frosts, bear the hot nor’ westers,  wrap up against the easterlies and southerlies, and work your way round a very subtle class system with faint and not so faint reminiscences of England’s class system.

Exposition: Jeremiah the prophet speaks to us through our first reading this evening about finding a better life.

Israel is in exile in Babylon, in what today we call Iraq. It is not there because an Israelite Association for Settlement in Iraq was formed. It was there because Israel had been brutally conquered by Babylon and now many of its citizens were in forced exile.

Our reading hints that Israel was not only exiled because that is the way their history turned out but because that was God’s will – “I have sent you into exile.” In that difficult situation, God speaks to Israel through Jeremiah:

“But seek the welfare of the city, where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare” (29:7).

In more prosaic terms, God is asking Israel to make the most of its situation. To pray for all in the new city in which they now lived, because the well-being of the whole city will mean the welfare of the exiled Israelites domiciled there.

Jeremiah also offers God’s promise that:

“For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope” (29:11).

Tonight, we look back on what has been and acknowledge that what Christchurch and Canterbury is today, is what it is, because when the First Four Ships sailed into Lyttelton Harbour, there was a turning point, an historical moment, which changed Ngai Tahu and changed British settlers for ever, with benefits for all settlers since.

A new society has been forged – less than an Anglican utopia, less than any utopia, yet a society in which striving for the welfare of all continues and a society to which people are drawn.

New settlers come here from other parts of Aotearoa New Zealand and other parts of the world because belief is strong that here, welfare – a good life, well-being, a better life – is possible.

“A future with hope” is a plausible description of what Christchurch is becoming.

Paul, writes to a church at Philippi in Greece, which, incidentally, was a Roman colony – and he urges his readers to engage the life they lived with at least three attitudes: thankfulness, peace and contentment.

Tonight, in Christchurch, this reading invites us to look on our life here today in respect of these three themes.

Thankfulness: there is much to be thankful for here in this city and in this province. Three things stand out for me – you might share them as your thanksgiving standouts too.

1.      We have made important steps in righting wrongs of the past in respect of Pakeha and Ngai Tahu. Not all is yet sorted but we have begun to address that part of the past that we cannot be content with.

2.      We have made our way through the immense, intense challenges of earthquake damage. Where we are today was not conceivable in, say, March 2011, possibly not even on 22 February in, say, 2015. We have had to forge a new settlement and been pioneers again in doing so.

3.      We are becoming a city and a province welcoming new pilgrims to share our life in this place: welcoming people from many nations, not just the British Isles; from several faiths, not only the Church of England. We are forging a cosmopolitan settlement, inconceivable to the original Canterbury Association.

Peace: this city has largely lived a peaceful life, if we overlook the disturbing gusts of the strongest nor’ westers, and the brutal shakes of earthquakes past and recent.

But on 15 March 2019, our peace was shattered by the appalling mosques’ massacres. Any illusion that we might have had that a new cosmopolitan settlement of this region was emerging smoothly and seamlessly ended that day.

Peace cannot be taken for granted here. We must pray for peace, we must work for peace, and we must be vigilant about the “isms” that disrupt peace and harmony in our society: racism, fascism, misogynism and the like.

The first pilgrims from Britain, arriving here in 1850, found that the only way they could proximate to the vision of the Canterbury Association was through hard work.

As pilgrims on the journey through the 21^st century for Christchurch and Canterbury, we also must work hard: not only in building houses, roads, stadia, businesses and educational institutions, but also on relationships between people, on respect for human dignity and on a just society we are proud to belong to.

Thirdly, Contentment:  “I have learned to be content with whatever I have”, says the apostle Paul.

Christchurch is Christchurch (and not Auckland, Melbourne, New York, Shanghai, or Rio de Janiero) and Canterbury is Canterbury (and not Otago, California, Provence, the Gold Coast or Bali).

Other places have better beaches, finer fields for growing crops, quainter places for picture postcard perfect holidays, Disneylands and warmer nights for partying.

So what! We have much to be thankful for. Let us be content with this good and blessed land in which God has placed us.

Conclusion: In 1850 a distinctive path for a new settlement in this city and province began. At the end of it was presumed to be a utopia. Not long after we began walking the path we found the initial Anglican utopia vanished, and if we stop and pause, we can see the pain our ancestors’ settlement caused to those who had already settled here hundreds of years before 16 December 1950.

Our journey continues along the path. It has had severe recent disruptions. Yet we continue forward. May we seek the welfare of our city and province, making our requests known to God for our future flourishing, in prayers filled with thanksgiving for the blessings we have been privileged to enjoy these past 175 years.

Whither (Roman) women deacons?

In recent days the Vatican has published a report on the possibility/not of women being ordained deacons. Reuters has a report here. The gist is that women deacons are not possible *for reasons* but further study is encouraged. A bob each way, but not such that women and men aspiring for the Catholic church to permit women to be deacons can expect change anytime in the next decade or century or longer. At least one commentator is furious with the decision.

My interest in the decision is not about the reasons (I simply disagree with any reasons advanced againt the ordination of women. If imaging Christ is critical to sacramental ministry, then Christ is human before he is male; if history is critical, then while evidence is not overwhelming, it is possible to find precedence; if scripture is important, then *Phoebe*; if apostleship is male, then what about Junia, Mary Magdalene.) My interest is about the fact that the report leaves the door slightly ajar to the future, "further study" covering a multitude of possible/eventual reconsiderations. Newman was recently made a doctor of the church and he was keen on *development* of doctrine. I predict change will come but it could be centuries.

The Anglican point here is that if change comes, then the Anglican church (and other churches) have been both the pioneer of change and sometimes the brunt of Catholic critique for being that pioneer. Such critique, incidentally, not being abstract and confined to academic papers, but something an Anglican deacon recently noted as her lived experience: Catholic friends making critical comment about her being ordained. (I hasten to add that, for the most part, I find nearly all Catholic clerical colleagues very, very respectful and honouring of Anglican women clergy in our ecumenical interactions.)

The future is an unknown country. Its boundaries may be porous compared to existing barbed wire borders.

Surprise not surprise

There is an ongoing local church story which reappeared in The Press on Saturday - here - and tangentially refers to me, but the reference to me is not the point of this post.

What kind of Christ (or, should that be "Christ") is worshipped and, in the eucharist, received, who leads and nourishes a congregation in such a direction of doctrinal purity that it becomes at odds with its local and global leadership when those leaders are faithful and godly men?

(I am raising the question somewhat rhetorically - answers not expected in the comments.)

There is not one verse in Scripture which encourages us to think of eternal fellowship with the Trinity as reserved for the doctrinally pure. There are many verses in Scripture which highlight the extraordinary grace of God, the untraceable extent of God's love, and the inordinate variety of people who constitute the diverse church of God.

The Johannine Christians, the Petrine Christians, the Pauline Christians, the Jacobite [James] Christians, the Jewish Christians [think Matthew's Gospel] - all will be with God for eternity and if we believe we will be among them, we could reasonably, and helpfully, begin to prepare ourselves ecumenically for our extraordinary future as the heavenly saints constituted in one body.

Otherwise, heaven is going to be a shock.

There are not going to be separate enclosures for the purer than pure Catholics and for the purer than pure Protestants. Nor for each of the branches of Orthodoxy that have fallen out with each other!