Prof: We're going to
continue with the lecture on the Gospel of John that I talked
about last time. I want to finish up with some
of the material on John that I didn't get to as much as I'd
like to, and then we're going to switch
to the letters of John-- 1,2, and 3 John,
so we're going to do both of those things.
Now, remember,
the rubric under which today's lecture happens is not just the
Gospel of John and not just the letters of John.
As I've brought up several
times, the method that I'm teaching you right now in this
class is the historical critical method as it was developed in
the twentieth century in Europe and North America.
This means that we're not
reading these texts for just what the texts say about
theology or even the early church or doctrine,
or ethics or something like that.
We're trying to read the text
in a way against the very intention of the text.
We're taking the text as being
something like a window that we can look through to try to
construct, as best as we can guess at it,
what kind of social context, what kind of political context,
what kind of church, what kind of social groups
produced these texts and found them to be compelling,
found them to be believable. There are lots of other ways to
read this. Obviously the Gospel of John is
very important for Christian doctrine.
It's the most Christological of
the Gospels, it has the highest form of
Christology, that is the Christology--it's
the most divine rather than simply being human and so it's
very important for doctrine, and for theology, and for faith.
What I'm doing right now is
just one particular way of reading,
which is reading this text as a clue,
as a series of clues and traces that we might use to reconstruct
what we think was going on in the first century with the
growth of Christianity. I'm trying to show you by this
that there are different kinds of Christianity that grew up in
different places, different geographical
settings, and different times. So what we call Johannine
Christianity is what we're going to talk about today.
And we're also--one of the
wonderful things about the John literature is that by having the
Gospel, which is written at one time,
and then having 1 John which is the letter written after that
time we can tell, that shows us a development of
this form of Christianity and than by having 2 and 3 John,
which we believe were written still later than 1 John,
that gives us a third stage. In fact, what I'm going to be
talking about is three or four stages in the development of
Johannine Christianity as one branch of early Christian
literature. In order to do this--I talked
last time about how one of the things going on in the Gospel of
John is Jesus and the Gospel of John seems to start off lots of
conversations and they lead to division,
so the causation of division is one of the themes of the Gospel
of John and to show that we're going to walk through a couple
of chapters. First look at chapter 3,
this is the story of Nicodemus, so get your Bibles out and
follow along with me, because we're going to look at
this in depth and then we're going to look at chapter 8 a
bit, and then we're going to move
off. I said division is the issue,
so what we're going to talk about is what the division is.
One of the ways that this
author does this is he sets up Jesus in these dialogues that
don't actually work very well. Jesus is not good on
interpersonal communication in the Gospel of John.
I'm sorry to have to tell you
that. We'll talk about why that's the
case. Jesus talks in riddles,
so the question we're going to have is why does Jesus talk in
riddles in the Gospel of John? What do we get out of that?
Chapter 3, "There was a
Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews,
he came to Jesus by night and said to him"--
now by night, darkness is kind of a thematic
issue in the Gospel of John, right?
Notice I'm not going to bring
up all these themes this time, but keep noticing these themes
that I talked about last time as they occur even in this little
passage. "Rabbi,
we know that you are a teacher who has come from God,
and no one else can do these signs that you do apart from the
presence of God." Jesus answered him,
"Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of
God without being born from above."
How the hell does that follow
from what Nicodemus just said? He's gives Jesus a compliment,
"you're a teacher from God, no one else can do these
signs, ... apart from the presence of
God…," Jesus says,
"No one can see the kingdom of"--
what is there, is there a thank you?
Can Jesus say,
"You're smart"? "You just got something
there"? No, Jesus starts off changing
the subject. Jesus changes the subject in
the Gospel of John quite a lot. "No one can see the
Kingdom of God without being born from above."
Now you're reading it in
English translation. My text just said "from
above," does anybody's translation have something
different there besides "from above"?
Student:
> Prof: "Without
being born anew," "again."
The problem is the Greek
actually can be translated either "being born
again" or "being born all over again,"
or "being born from above."
The same Greek word means both
things. Now this is the one place,
basically, in the Bible which born-again
kind of language comes out, so it's kind of ironic that
there's whole branches of American Christianity which base
their entire theology and ideology on the idea,
have you been born again? Because really it's just from
this passage, the other Gospels don't talk
about being born again. It's a rather rare metaphor in
early Christianity. It comes from this chapter
right here, and it comes from a Greek word
that could be just as easily translated "be born from
above" as "be born again."
My English
translation--translators have decided to translated,
"from above," but notice it's confusing for
the hearer because Nicodemus then answers as if he heard it
to be, "being born again,"
so Nicodemus said to him, "How can anyone be born
after having grown old? Can one enter a second time
into the mother's womb and be born?"
Jesus said, "Nicodemus I'm
speaking metaphorically and spiritually here,
you need to understand that I don't mean particularly that
someone has to be actually born physically from their mother
again." No, Jesus doesn't say any of
that, right? That's what Jesus should have
said, probably, if Jesus really
wanted to communicate with Nicodemus,
but apparently, in John, Jesus is not that
interested in communicating very directly with Nicodemus because
Jesus says, "Truly I tell you,
no one can enter the Kingdom of God without being born of water
and spirit." What the hell does that mean?
"What is born of the flesh
is flesh, and what is born of the spirit is spirit.
Do not be astonished that I
said to you, 'You must be born from above.'
The wind blows where it
chooses, and you hear the sound of it but you do not know where
it comes from or where it goes."
What does that mean?
Does it help you to know the
Greek word translated here "spirit"
is also the Greek word which can be translated as
"wind." Notice that the Gospel of John
is playing with you with puns, there's already two puns in
this passage. One, does the Greek word--is
the Greek word "being born again" or is it "born
from above"? Well you're not told in the
text, in fact it sounds like it may mean a little bit of both.
Is this Greek word,
pneuma, is it supposed to represent the
spirit as a theological term or is it supposed to represent
breath or wind? It seems to be doing double
duty. Anyway, with all that stuff
about wind blowing where it will,
so it is with everyone who is born of the spirit Nicodemus
tries one more time said to him, "How can these things
be?" In other words,
Jesus can you give me an explanation of what you're
talking about? It's not an unreasonable
request. Jesus answered,
"Are you a teacher of Israel and you do not understand
these things? [Well that's helpful.]
Truly I tell you. we speak of what we know and
testify to what we've seen, yet you do not receive our
testimony. If I had told you about earthly
things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell
you about heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven
except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man.
And just as Moses lifted up the
servant in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be
lifted up, that whoever believes in him
may have eternal life." Well at this point Nicodemus
just gives up. We don't hear about Nicodemus
anymore in the story so apparently he's decided,
I can't get a straight answer out of this guy.
Notice also how Jesus starts
off in a dialogical stance with Nicodemus but never answers his
questions, and then Jesus almost gets kind
of, well nasty, toward the end.
He kind of just almost insults
Nicodemus rather than just explaining what he means.
This is kind of the way Jesus
sometimes talks in the Gospel of John, and my question is going
to be, why? Is Jesus just lacking in social
skills? Look in 8:31,
another little interesting dialogue.
Jesus has been teaching and now
"Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him."
Now notice the scene starts
out--often in the Gospel of John the Jews are talked about as if
they're something other than Jesus is.
Of course Jesus is a Jew,
his disciples are Jews, they're all Jews in this story
but the term "the Jews" gets packed in the
Gospel of John with this otherness and this is a
reflection of the sectarianism I talked about last time.
Now notice Jesus is now
starting to talk to the Jews who believe in him.
These are not the Jews who have
rejected him, that's very important to see at
this point in the chapter. These are the Jews who now
believe in him. "If you continue in my
word you are truly my disciples and you will know the truth and
the truth will make you free."
They answered him,
"We are the descendants of Abraham and have never been
slaves to anyone. What do you mean by saying you
will be made free?" Jesus answered them,
"Well I was speaking metaphorically.
I meant that,
let's say you're slaves to sin and, if you follow me,
then I will make you truly free in a spiritual sense,
I mean." That's not what Jesus does,
right? All right 34:
Jesus answered them, "Very truly I tell you,
everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin.
The slave does not have a
permanent place in the household.
The son has a place there
forever, so if the son makes you free, you will be free indeed.
I know that you are descendants
of Abraham, yet you look for an opportunity
to kill me [Wait a minute, Jesus, these are the people who
believe in you.] because there's no place in you
for my word. I declare what I have seen in
the Father's presence. As for you, you should do what
you have heard from the Father."
They answered him,
Well Abraham's our father, we're Jews.
Jesus said to them,
"If you are Abraham's children you would be doing what
Abraham did. But now you are trying to kill
me and a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God,
that's not what Abraham did. You are indeed doing what your
father said." They said to him,
"We are not bastards, we are not illegitimate
children, we have one father God Himself.
So they try another tactic,
well if he won't be satisfied with Abraham as being the
Father, okay, we'll have God as our Father.
Jesus said to them,
"If God were your Father you would love me,
for I came from God, and now I am here.
I did not come of my own,
but he sent me. Why do you not understand what
I say? Is it because you cannot accept
my word? You are from your father the
devil." The devil?
These are the people who
believe in him, and Jesus ends up the whole
thing as I told-- they finally end up saying,
yeah the Jews in verse 48 the Jews are saying,
"Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan
and have a demon?" Now they're both being
antagonistic, and finally the chapter ends
way down there as I talked about last time verse 56,
"Your ancestor Abraham rejoiced that he would see my
day, he saw it and was glad."
Then the Jews said to him,
"You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen
Abraham?" Jesus said to him,
"Very truly I tell you, before Abraham was,
I am." There's that strong
Christological claim of Jesus being God himself,
and of course they picked up stones to throw at him,
but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.
Notice there are these things
going on, Jesus speaks in riddles in the Gospel of John.
Jesus does not do what a good
Yale instructor is supposed to do, which is explain things to
you. Jesus talks in riddles.
When they ask questions he
responds in--with non-sequiturs. And then when they act like
they want to believe in him he pushes them and then starts
picking at them, and accusing them of stuff and
eventually the scene ends up with everybody is all
frustrated, Jesus is accusing them of
trying to kill him, and sure enough then they do
start to try to kill him. Notice how in the Gospel of
John repeatedly these issues come down to Christology.
Who is the person of Jesus?
The point at which they pick up
the stones to throw at him is when he makes this claim by
quoting Exodus, the very name of God,
that Jesus himself is God. Now with all that going on
let's look at how this then plays itself out in the first
letter of John. Just to back up,
remember how diverse we're finding Christianity,
and we're going to start seeing that diversity now representing
itself in Christology. We have seen it already in
geography, right? We've seen that,
and according to the Book of Acts,
the Gospel spread out in concentric circles from
Jerusalem to Judea, to Samaria to the ends of the
earth, but we also saw how in Acts if
you read it critically between the lines you can see it didn't
really spread that way. There were anonymous Christians
who went off out of Jerusalem after a certain period of
persecution and they took the message to Cyrene and to
different parts of the east of the Mediterranean and these were
anonymous people, we don't know them,
they weren't Peter. Then later Paul and Barnabas
take things around, and Phillip goes off to
Samaria, and maybe there's this Ethiopian eunuch in the Book of
Acts who's converted, and he may take the Gospel back
to Ethiopia. So the spread of Christianity
historically was much messier then it really is portrayed in
any straightforward way in the New Testament.
It seemed to have been spread
by just people going to their home villages and hometowns and
taking back this message that they heard in different places.
The way the Gospel spreads,
the way Christianity spreads is differently.
We saw, for example,
that in Thomasine Christianity, which seems to have been very
popular in Syria and then all the way into India,
that's a form of Christianity that's slightly different from
the form of Christianity that's rising up in Rome at the time.
Although church tradition says
that Peter was the one who took the Gospel to Rome and founded
the church there, well, we have good reasons as
you can tell why we historians tend to doubt that.
Why?
Because we attend--we believe
basically that again anonymous Christians who are lost to
history probably were the first ones who took the Gospel to
Rome, and then Peter became connected
--with that tradition. There's a certain kind of
Christianity that's growing up in Rome,
there's another kind of Christianity that's growing up
in Syria and India, there's another kind of
Christianity that's growing up in Antioch and in that part of
western Syria, and there's another kind of
Christianity we don't know anything about at this point
that's probably growing up in Egypt,
we just don't have enough sources to know what kind of
Christianity may have been growing up in Egypt.
There's different geographical
regions experiencing different kinds of Christianity,
and those different kinds of Christianity are diverse with
respect to the Torah, the Jewish law right?
If there's another--if there is
still a form of Christianity that's predominantly Jewish
that's located in Jerusalem and it's led by James the brother of
Jesus, who seems to have been famous
for advocating a certain kind of law observant Torah obedient
form of discipleship to Jesus, then you've got a form of
Jewish Christianity that still seems to be keeping the law,
and we've seen that reflected possibly in the Gospel of
Matthew, with its teaching that the law
is still something that people ought to obey.
We've seen though that the
Gospel of Mark teaches a Christianity that maybe it--
some people say Mark was written in Rome,
other people say maybe Mark was written in Syria or in Galilee,
but it's some kind of Christianity that's now
predominantly Gentile, although it still has Jewish
elements, but these are people who are
not keeping the law. They seem to believe that they
don't have to keep the Jewish law.
Then we've got the form of
Christianity in Luke that we saw where the Torah,
the law, represents a certain an ethnic tradition of the Jews,
so if you're Jewish you should keep the law but if you're a
Gentile you don't need to keep the law.
Then we saw from the Gospel of
Thomas and the Gospel of John where is the concern about the
law at all? It's not really there.
You can read all the way
through the Gospel of John, sure there are some
controversies about the Sabbath, about what you can do on the
Sabbath, but disputes about observation
of Jewish law are not really at issue in the Gospel of Thomas
and they're not really at issue in the Gospel of John.
What is at issue in the Gospel
of John is Christology. What do you believe about Jesus?
Let's look at the different
kinds of Christologies you get in early Christianity too before
we move onto the letters. First Mark, the Gospel of Mark,
what is Mark's Christology? What is his doctrine of Christ?
Well for one thing,
according to Mark, Jesus is the Son of God,
now that doesn't necessarily mean yet that Jesus is
completely divine or equal to God.
You can be called a Son of God
without necessarily being God himself in this period of
Christianity, but at least Mark certainly
considers Jesus the Son of God. He also, though,
considers Jesus to be the Messiah, the Christ,
who has to suffer and Jesus' suffering is for the purpose of
ransoming us sinners. Now the Christology that Mark's
working with is Jesus is the Messiah,
the Son of God, it's mandated that he suffers,
so it's God's will that the Messiah suffer.
And that's one of the reasons
he writes his Gospel is to convince his readers that Jesus'
suffering and execution wasn't an accident and it wasn't a
catastrophe, and it wasn't a calamity,
it was God's will, it needed to happen.
So the suffering Son of God is
part of Mark's Christology. If you get to Luke,
as I've said before, this whole idea that Jesus'
death was a ransom is not in Luke.
In fact, Luke excises that part
of Mark when he's copying that part of Mark,
and he leaves out that ransom passage from Mark because that
doesn't fit his Christology. For the Christology of Luke,
do you remember, Luke and Acts,
what is the Christology of Luke?
Anybody want to venture a
remembrance? The martyr prophet exactly.
Jesus is the martyr prophet
who's an example for Stephen, or Paul, or all of us who are
followers of Jesus, we're all martyr prophets,
we're called to be martyr prophets,
that's not a ransom for many. Luke doesn't have a doctrine of
the atonement, the Christian doctrine that
says, the death of Jesus was to pay for the sins of humanity or
to redeem human beings from the debts of sin,
so that's Luke's. The Gospel of Thomas,
there's no death at all in the Gospel of Thomas.
The Christology of the Gospel
of Thomas though is that Jesus comes across as practically an
already resurrected figure. He's a knower,
he's a figure of wisdom who's come from the Father,
who's come from above, and he comes to give his
disciples true knowledge. So Jesus as the revealer of
hidden knowledge is the main Christology of the Gospel of
Thomas. Now the Gospel of John,
this is when you get closest to what will be seen as orthodox
Christianity. A lot of orthodox Christology
was set at least, at one of the main periods,
at the Council of Nicaea. So we call this the Council of
Nicaea in 325 of our era CE, there was a council called
together by the Emperor Constantine who was tired of all
these Christians squabbling, especially about Christology,
and he got bishops and people from around the empire,
and he tried to get them to come to an agreement.
They wrote what has come down
to be called the Nicene Creed. And a lot of Christians,
Roman Catholics, Episcopalians,
Anglicans, some other churches, will actually say the Nicene
Creed in church as part of the literature.
Can anybody say it?
We believe in--some of you know
it, yes, you know the Nicene Creed,
so that Nicene Creed about Jesus being very God,
from very God, God from God,
light from light, begotten not made,
because that was one of the Christological--
so was Jesus Son of God because he was born from eternity as
divine or did God say at one point okay he's a really good
guy I'm going to graduate him to divinity status?
That was one Christology.
The Nicene Creed said,
no, Jesus did not become divine he always was divine.
The orthodox Christology was
set to a great extent by the Nicene Creed in 325,
but how do we get from the year 30 when Jesus is crucified,
the year 70 when the Jerusalem temple is destroyed and the
Gospel of Mark may have been published,
the 50s when Paul was writing his letters,
maybe a year in the 90s when the Gospel of John is writing,
from those times all the way to year 325 where there's a whole
lot of fighting going on between Christians trying to solidify
what the orthodox Christology should be?
Of these different sources
we've talked about, the one that comes the closest
to the Nicene Creed is this Christology of the Gospel of
John, because according to John,
Jesus is fully God, co-equal with the Father,
he's I am, that is identifying himself
with the figure who appeared to Moses in the burning bush,
he's the descending and ascending redeemer,
he's also the lamb of God sacrificed for the people,
and in his sacrifice he takes away the sins of the world.
All those elements that would
end up becoming orthodox Christianity,
orthodox Christology, those can be found in the
Gospel of John. Now how do we get from there to
1 John? Any questions about that?
What I want you to really see
is I want you to be able to anchor down,
not just take my word for it that well,
Professor Martin knows all things about all things,
and he tells me that there are these different Christology's
and these different early Christian documents and so
that's what I'm going to write back on a paper.
I don't want that.
What I want you to do is be
able to actually anchor down these ideas into these
particular texts that come from particular different places in
early Christianity, so any questions about that?
Yes sir?
Student:
> Prof: The Christology of
Matthew is quite a bit like Mark.
Matthew also believes that the
death of Jesus, for example,
was as a ransom for people and for sins.
Matthew also believes that
Jesus is the Son of God and that he is the Messiah.
Exactly how divine Jesus is in
the Gospel of Matthew is up for grabs,
it's not clear, but he still--he definitely
seems to believe that Jesus is divine in some sense.
Matthew's Christology is not
too much different from Mark's. The one thing that makes him a
bit different is that he seems to also take Jesus to be
something like a new Moses who either--
who not is giving a new law but is interpreting the Mosaic Law
in the proper way, so Jesus as a law giver and
Jesus as a teacher is also important for Matthew's
Christology. Any other questions?
Okay look at 1 John,
the first letter of John, right toward the end of the New
Testament. Now, first, there are several
different connections with 1 John to the Gospel that you can
see immediately. Let's hop through the Gospel
and see these. First look at the very
beginning, "We declare to you what
was from the beginning, what we have heard,
what we have seen with our eyes,
what we have looked at and touched with our hands
concerning the word of life."
That all should sound familiar,
there's the seeing motif, the hearing motif,
and even the touching thing because,
if you remember, it's in the Gospel of John that
you have that famous scene where doubting Thomas wants to touch
Jesus' body to make sure about-- that this is the real Jesus.
"This life was revealed,
and we have seen it and testified to it [testimony and
testifying and witnessing is part of the Gospel of John also]
and declare to you the eternal life [eternal life is one of the
themes from the Gospel of John] that was with the Father and
was revealed to us. [There's Jesus as the
revealer.] We declared to you what we have
seen and heard so that you may also have fellowship with us.
And truly our fellowship is
with the Father and his Son Jesus Christ.
We are writing these things so
that our joy may be complete. We're in the same world,
the same linguistic, the same discursive,
the same theological world as the Gospel of John.
Look at 1:5,
"This is the message we have heard from him and
proclaimed to you that God is light and in him there is no
darkness." That wonderful light/darkness
motif. Look at verse 7:
If we walk in the light, as he himself in the light,
we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus
his son cleanses us from all sin.
The blood of Jesus being
significant there too. 2:29: "If you know that he
is righteous you, may be sure that everyone who
does right has been born of him."
So born of him recalls this
birth stuff we've just seen in John 3.
And there are lots of others,
if you just read through the first letter of John and you
keep your ear attuned to those themes that you've already seen
in the Gospel of John, you can just underline them and
highlight them all the way through the letter of John,
so they're there. There are some interesting
problems with this letter also. Look at 1:8:
If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves and the truth
is not in us. If we confess our sins,
he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and
cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
If we say that we have not
sinned we make him a liar and his word is not in us.
All of us are sinners, yay!
You just have to confess your
sin and Jesus will cure you of sin.
We're all sinners.
Anybody who says they're not
sinners has a problem. Now look at 3:5,
"You know that he was revealed to take away sins and
in him there is no sin, no one who abides in him
sins." I thought we just said we are
sinners. "No one who sins has
either seen him or known him."
That sounds a little
problematic. Everyone who commits sin is a
child of the devil, for the devil has been sinning
from the beginning. The Son of God was revealed to
this person to destroy the works of the devil.
Those who have been born of God
do not sin because God's seed abides in them.
They cannot sin because they
have been born of God. The children of God and the
children of the devil are revealed in this way.
All who do not do what is right
are not from God, nor are those who do not love
their brothers and sisters. Now wait a minute,
the first part he says, we all sin and we have to
confess our sins. In this part it says,
if you're in him you don't sin, and if you do sin you're in the
devil. Look at 5:18,
"We know that those who are born of God do not sin,
but the one who is born of God protects them and the evil one
does not touch them." Well which is it?
Do Christians in John's church
sin or do they not sin? Is there a contradiction here
in the text? That's not the only weird place
in this letter, look at what he says about love
in 2:5: "Whoever obeys his word truly in this person the
love of God has reached perfection.
By this we may be sure that we
are in him." Love is supposed to be there,
2:10, "Whoever loves a
brother," now your English translation
may say "or sister," but the Greek just says
"brother" and maybe it's supposed to
include sisters also but the gender of the Greek word is just
"brother" at this point in the Greek.
"Whoever loves a brother
lives in the light and in such a person there is no cause for
stumbling." Okay so that talks about loving
one's brother, well who is the brother?
It seems like the brothers for
this writer are other members of the same community.
He's not necessarily talking
about your physical brother, your blood brother,
but he's also not talking about just any human being.
Notice how this works several
times, so look at 2:15,
so we're supposed to love and we're supposed to love our
brothers but 2:15, "Do not love the world or
the things in the world. The love of the Father is not
in those who love the world."
So we're not supposed to love
the world, "Love not the world, do not love the
world." Remember the word for world I
said last time was cosmos,
the entire universe. Does this sound a little odd if
you think back on what may be the most famous verse in the
entire New Testament? If you go to football games
anybody know what the most famous football verse is?
John 3:16, you see it on
posters--do they still--they did that years ago do--they don't
still do the posters I guess, right?
Just one guy does it all over
the whole NFL? John 3:16--yes sir?
Student: Well I was
going to say during the VCS National Championship game
before the quarterback wore a John 3:16 on his eye block.
Prof: Did they win?
Student: They did win
and he made it the number one Google search (inaudible).
Prof: Great!
The Florida quarterback wore
John 3:16 on his cheeks, these cheeks I suppose,
and that's why they won, okay, good.
What does John 3:16 say,
let's quote it, "For God so loved the
world-- Students:
"…that he gave his only begotten Son--"
Prof: You all are wimpy. "For God so loved the word
that he gave his only begotten Son--
," "--for God so loved the world."
1 John 2:15,
"Do not love the world."
Yes sir?
Student:
> Prof: I believe so,
I actually haven't checked, does anybody have a Greek New
Testament? Michael has a Greek,
Michael's going to look it up while I continue,
this is 2:15 and see if cosmos or some other word
is the word for world though. We'll get back to you on that
question. Look at 3:1:
See what love the Father has given us that we should be
called children of God, and that is what we are.
The reason the world does not
know us is that it did not know him.
Love is part of that,
look at 3:11: For this is the message you
have heard from the beginning, that we should love one
another. This is loving one another;
it's not talking here so much about loving the world.
Look at 3:14:
We know that we have passed from death to life because we
love one another. Whoever does not love abides in
death. Look at 3:23:
And this is his commandment, that we should believe in the
name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another,
just as he has commanded us. Look at 4:7:
Beloved let us love one another because love is from God,
and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.
Look at 4:11:
Beloved since God loved us so much we ought to love [not the
world but] one another.
Verse 12:
No one has ever seen God. If we love one another,
God loves is in us and his love is perfected in us.
What about the translation?
Student: Same verb,
same noun. Prof: Same verb,
same noun in John 3:16 and 1 John 2:15, so is there a
contradiction? That's just all I'm asking,
the Gospel of John talks about God loving the world,
the cosmos, and 1 John says Christians are not supposed to
love the cosmos. Contradiction,
we don't know, maybe not.
Look at 4:16:
So we have known and believe the love that God has for us.
God is love and those who abide
in love abide in God and God abides in them.
[Keep reading.]
Love has indeed been perfected among us in this that we may
have boldness in the Day of Judgment.
Because as he is so are we in
this world. There is no fear in love but
perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with
punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in
love. We love because he first loved
us. Those who say,
"I love God," and hate their brothers or
sisters are liars. And for those who do not love a
brother or sister whom they have seen cannot love God whom they
have not seen. The commandment we have from
his is this: those who love God must love all of humanity.
What?
No, I'm lying to you again;
follow along in your Bibles. See, some of you went to sleep.
Look at 21:
The commandment we have from him is this, those who love God
must love their brothers. There's nothing in 1 John about
loving the world, about loving humanity,
about loving all humankind, all mankind,
there's nothing like that in the first letter of John.
What you do have in the first
letter of John is that God is love, but that Christians,
the followers of John, must not love the world.
The world doesn't love them,
they don't love the world. This is again a radically
sectarian kind of stance, and in fact,
there's nothing here about loving outsiders.
According to the first letter
of John, all this love that's talked about is basically
centered only on the community of believers.
It's an internal love,
it's brotherly love but that means that the term
"brothers" is taken to mean members of
John's own community. There's nowhere that Christians
in 1 John are told to love people outside the community.
They're told repeatedly to love
people inside the community. Yes sir?
Student:
> Prof: Out of
brother--just to the community of believers?
Well you just have to analyze
the letter and see how does it occur here and just go through
it, it occurs all the way through.
For example,
I think you could definitely prove it with letters of Paul,
who specifically uses it for both Gentiles and Jews but only
within the body of Christ. Whether that's the case here,
you just have to read the letter.
I would argue that it is,
and it's precisely because I read the letter as setting up
this dichotomy between the outside cosmos and the inside
brotherhood, but it's just a matter of
reading the letter. The word in itself wouldn't
necessarily supply that. Any other questions?
Yes sir?
Student: Is that the
same as >?
Prof: Yes,
I believe--well sometimes it's philia and sometimes
agape. Student:
> Prof: Okay,
in the epistles it's almost always agape.
Any other questions?
In other words,
what I'm reading in 1 John is representing again a radical
sectarian group. These are people who see
themselves as a community set apart from the cosmos.
The cosmos is a place of
darkness and a place of the devil and that sort of thing.
In fact--so now what is the
cause of this radical sectarianism?
This is the most interesting
problem of the letter. Look at 2:18:
Children, it is the last hour. As you have heard that the
antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have
come. There are these antichrists,
and notice it says: They went out from among us but
they did not belong to us. For if they had belonged to us
they would have remained in us, but by going out they made it
plain that none of them belongs to us.
The people he's calling
antichrist are people that used to members of his own community
and they left the community for some reason.
Now look at 2:22,
"Who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the
Christ." He's saying you must believe
that Jesus is the Messiah, that's one thing,
is that the only thing? Not necessarily;
this is the antichrist, "The one who denies the
Father and the Son," so some people,
he's saying, have left the community because
their Christology is not high enough.
They're not allowing the true
sonship of Jesus, they're not allowing the
Messiahship of Jesus; maybe you're saying he's just a
prophet or he's just a human being, that's one of the things
that's going on. Look at 5:1:
Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been
born of God. Everyone who loves the parent
loves the child. That's the main part about
Jesus being the Christ, but now look at 4:2,
I'll start at the beginning of chapter 4:
Beloved, do not believe every spirit but test the spirits to
see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have
gone out into the world. By this you know the spirit of
God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in
the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not
confess Jesus is not from God, and this is the spirit of the
antichrist. One of the things that's going
on here--look at also 5:8, just briefly,
and we'll move on: These are three that testified:
the spirit and the water and the blood.
And these three agree.
In other words,
this author is objecting to some people who don't admit the
Messiahship of Jesus, and that may have been
reflected also in the Gospel. Remember some of the
reasons--some of the people there's a division is because
the writer of the Gospel of John believes that some people aren't
willing to confess that Jesus is divine,
that Jesus is the Messiah, that he's the Son of God.
Now we get to a different
situation, apparently there are other
people who have now come up in the community who may be
accepting that Jesus was the Christ but they're denying that
he was fully human, they're denying that he was
flesh and blood, and actually we do see
different beginnings of different Christologies.
The people--we have a term for
this, these early Christians who
said--they said that Jesus-- maybe there was a human Jesus
but that's not really the Christ,
the Christ was this spirit that maybe looked like he was human--
in fact some of them said, well if he walked along a wet
beach he wouldn't leave footprints because he didn't
have a physical body, he just was spirit.
He just seemed to be a body,
he seemed to be flesh and blood and that--
the Greek word for "seem"
he just looked like, we get this term we call
Docetics. Dokeo is the Greek word
for "to seem" or "to look like,"
so other Christians used this term as a label for those
Christians who said, Jesus wasn't truly flesh and
blood, because how can a divine being
be flesh and blood? That's a contradiction in terms.
You can't have a being that's
both God and flesh and blood because flesh and blood rots and
dies, and goes away. God is eternal,
so God by definition can't be flesh and blood,
and so they said, if Jesus is divine he must not
have been flesh and blood. He must have just seemed like
he was flesh and blood. Other Christians said,
that's wrong and they call these people the
"Seemsters," Docetics.
Docetism refers to a
Christology that says Jesus is spirit;
the Christ is spirit, but not really flesh and blood
human. Notice how this author is
arguing against different kinds of ideas and it shows a further
split in early Christianity. You have some people believing
that Jesus was human but not fully divine,
other people believing that he was so divine that he wasn't
even human, and this author is trying to
hold together these two things. Now how this happened--so
that's what's going on, the Gospel--the first letter of
John shows a community that's again divided but now it's
divided by some of the people within its midst going off
because they thought, you can't have a flesh and
blood God, and therefore,
if you're going to have Jesus as God he can't be flesh and
blood, so they've left the community.
Let's look at 2 John,
this is a little-- I'm going to read all the way
through this one because this is going--
we need to sort of figure out what's going on.
It's a very short letter.
"The elder,"
so he calls himself the elder, so he doesn't even give us his
name. The elder to the elect lady and
her children, whom I love in the truth,
and not only I but also all who know the truth,
because of the truth that abides in us and will be with us
forever ... I was overjoyed to find some of
your children walking in the truth just as we have been
commanded by the Father. He's talking to an elect lady
and her children, most of us think this is a
metaphor and he's actually addressing this to a church.
The elect lady probably means
the church itself, not a particular human person,
but that's just a judgment call.
But now, dear lady,
I ask you not as though I were writing to you a new commandment
but one we had from the beginning, let us love one
another. There's that love thing,
so we're know we're still in the same kind of Christianity
that we were with the others. This is love,
that we walk according to his commandments;
this is the commandment that you have heard from the
beginning ... Many deceivers have gone out
into the world, those who do not confess that
Jesus Christ has come in the flesh.
[There are those people again.]
Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist.
Be on your guard so that you do
not lose what we have worked for but may receive a full reward.
Everyone who does not abide in
the teaching of Christ but goes beyond it does not have God.
Whoever abides in the teaching
has both the Father and the Son. Do not receive into the house
or welcome anyone who comes to you and does not bring this
teaching, for to welcome is to
participate in the evil deeds of such a person.
The main purpose of this very
short letter is to say, to another church that's in the
same kind of community with this one,
there are people who have left our community and the reason is
they don't believe Jesus was fully flesh and blood.
Don't even let them come to
visit you, these are traveling preachers,
and he says, don't receive them,
don't give them money, don't give them food,
don't put them up in your guest room,
just completely shun them, so he's writing to another
church because of this. Now look at 3 John:
"The elder to the beloved Gaius," now it's the same
person writing, he says, but now it's to a man
named Gaius, not to the elect lady.
I pray that all may go with
you, in good health ... Beloved, you do faithfully
whatever you do for the friends, even though they are strangers
to you. They have testified to your
love before the church. You will do well to send them
on in a manner worthy of God, for they began their journey
for the sake of Christ accepting no support from non-believers.
This is a letter that has been
sent around, probably with other traveling
preachers, but these traveling preachers
seem to be representatives of the elder himself,
the author. He's writing to a man named
Gaius and says, you're a good guy,
you receive our messengers, you receive the people that
we're sending around to preach. "I have written something
to the church" --
oh he did write a letter to the church,
so now you see he wrote another letter to the church,
he's writing this letter to an individual.
"But Diotrephes,
who likes to put himself first, does not acknowledge our
authority. So if I come"--in other
words, Diotrephes seems to be the
leader of a church and has not allowed the elder to send his
letter to that church. He's intercepting letters and
not allowing these things to be read aloud in the church.
All these letters were supposed
to be read aloud in churches. If I come I will call attention
to what he is doing in spreading false charges against us.
And not content with these
charges, he refuses to welcome the friends and even prevents
those who want to do so and expels them from the church.
Diotrephes is refusing to
welcome the messengers from the elder that the elder sent ahead
of himself with the letter that makes up 2 John.
You see what's going on here?
There's a leader of this
Johannine church, probably after the writing of
the Gospel, probably after the writing of 1
John, and he writes 2 John as a sort
of introductory letter to a church,
and he says, I'm sending you some of my
messengers, receive them,
listen to the letter, give them what they need,
help them out financially, put them up in your guest room,
and then send them on their way so they can travel around to
other Christian churches. Something's gone wrong though,
maybe this is a different-- maybe 3 John--we don't know,
this is speculation, maybe 3 John is another letter
that he had to write to an individual in that town because
2 John didn't work. Why?
It may be that those people
disagreed with him about his Christology also,
so they may have received the very people that he thought they
shouldn't receive. And so he writes 3 John to an
individual saying, Diotrephes is causing a bunch
of problems not receiving my messengers and not allowing my
letters to be read in church. You see how this
represents--this is all guess work.
We don't know what's going on
but we see several things about the letter.
There's a greeting,
there are well wishes, there's praise of the
reputation and behavior of the recipients,
he attempts to establish a relationship,
he talks to this person--he's the father's son or a patron
client relationship and there's a letter of recommendation.
Send them on,
this is what you do in the ancient world,
you give a messenger--there's no post office you know.
You give a letter to someone
who's traveling and that person gets to a friend of yours to
where it says, and they show the letter,
that letter is read outside-- read aloud to the group,
and then you put that person up or those people up,
you host them for a while, they talk and you share your
messages, and then you send them on--you
give them a little bit of financial support to send them
on their way to the rest of the travel.
That's clearly what is going on
and both of these letters are letters of recommendation,
typical letters of recommendation.
What makes it interesting is
that 2 John seems to have been a letter of recommendation that
didn't work, maybe. And then 3 John had to be
written to an individual because his letter couldn't get through
to the whole church. What's the cause of this
division? Clearly the cause of division
in the Gospel of John is that some people are not accepting a
high enough Christology, they're not accepting that
Jesus is truly divine. They might be accepting that
Jesus is human but not that he is divine.
The situation has shifted
slightly by the time we get to the 1 John,
the letter, because there it seems like yes he's talked about
some people are antichrist because they've denied that
Jesus is the Messiah but other people are antichrist because
they've denied that Jesus is flesh.
He says they have gone out from
among us, so the church has been split
again on the issue of Christology but now the
Christology is do you accept the full fleshness of Jesus,
but then when you get to 2 John and 3 John,
the split--is the split now doctrinal?
Is it Christological?
Or is this just a split over
who gets to be the leader? Who gets to be the recognized
leader of these churches? Is it the elder?
Do his letters have to be
accepted and his emissaries get accepted in different churches?
Or is it this guy Diotrephes?
Is he sort of trying to buck
the elder for the leadership? Is there a dispute over
Christology? Do they disagree about
Christology or is it now a purely a personnel leadership
issue? It's very difficult to see but
you can very quickly see by looking at these four different
documents, the Gospel of John,
1 John, 2 John, 3 John, four different
documents which may have been written in the--
not by the same person, we don't think they're all
written by the same person, but they're clearly written by
the same school of early Christianity.
They share enough the
vocabulary and enough theology. You can almost see four
different stages of development and you see what we might
expect. Remember I said that in growing
up in Texas we always said "let's make like a Baptist
church and split." Early churches also seem to
split a lot, is that what we see here?
Four different stages of a
church with different kinds of divisions happening and,
therefore different, kinds of Christianity
developing due to these divisions;
very possible. Any questions about that?
Questions, comments, outbursts?
Now what I've just given you is
one reading of these texts, and I've done a lot of
speculating. For example,
you could just say, well 2 John may have been
written to one church and 3 John is written to a totally
different geographical region, that's entirely possible.
I think it's interesting to put
them in this way and read them this way,
but that's just one historical reconstruction because a lot of
what I'm teaching you is let's-- how do you imagine history
developing if all you have are these texts by which you
construct the history of the early church?
Next time we're going to shift
gears dramatically because now we're not going to be talking
about the historical situation of the text,
we're going to be talking about how do you get through all these
texts to try to figure out the historical Jesus himself?
Did Jesus of Nazareth really
exist? What did he do?
What did he say?
What did he think of himself?
That's what we'll talk about
next time.
