Studies in the Gospels (Part Eleven)
Jesus is directly called God twice in the gospel of John. First in the prologue, where we are told that the Logos (Word) is God, and that the Logos took flesh and lived among us as Jesus (1:14), and again in Thomas’ confession after the resurrection, where he proclaims that Jesus is “my Lord and my God!” (20:28). Jesus does not reject this worship, but simply replies to Thomas, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
In addition, there are several indirect references to Jesus’ divinity throughout the gospel. The first part of the gospel (following the prologue of chapter 1) can be called the “Book of Signs” because it is a collection of seven signs or miracles done by Jesus and the teachings that are related to them. The book of signs runs from chapters 2 through 11. In the discourses included in the book of signs Jesus identifies himself in six “I am” statements, with one remaining “I am” statement appearing in the long discourse of chapters 14-17. Each of these statements is an indirect statement of divinity. All first-century Jewish people knew that the personal name of God revealed to Moses in Mount Sinai was “I am that I am” (Exodus 3:14). Here are the seven “I am” statements from the Gospel of John:
I am the Bread of Life (6:35)
I am the Light of the World. (8:12)
I am the Door (10:7).
I am the Good Shepherd (10:11)
I am the Resurrection and the Life (11:25)
I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life (14:6)
I am the True Vine (15:1,5)
With its clear presentation of Jesus as the manifestation of God in human form, I wonder what kind of a reception this gospel received among first century monotheistic Jewish people, both believers and unbelievers in Jesus as their Messiah. We know that there were many different branches of Christianity even in the 1st century. Perhaps some were more accepting of the Johannine portrayal of Jesus than others.
James D.G. Dunn observes if the, “...striking ‘I am’ self-assertions of John had been remembered as spoken by Jesus, how could any Evangelist [gospel author] have ignored them so completely as the Synoptics do? (Dunn, Jesus Remembered, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2003). How can we explain that huge difference in the way Jesus speaks about himself in the Gospel of John and the way he speaks about himself in Matthew, Mark and Luke? Perhaps Jesus only claimed to be divine in private meetings spoken to his inner circle of disciples. It's possible that the people who transmitted the oral tradition that became the basis of the Synoptic Gospels were not aware of those private conversations.
One fact that weakens that theory is that in John's Gospel Jesus gives his “I am” statements in very public settings, and not just in private meetings with his
inner circle. In addition, there are no indications in the Gospel of John that Jesus wanted his identity as God to be hidden from the public. This is in contrast to a theme running through the Gospel of Mark called the "Messianic
Secret." In Mark, Jesus is often telling
those he has healed to keep things quiet and not to let other people know about the miracles. He seems to want to keep his identity as Messiah a secret. Ironically the demons portrayed in Mark's Gospel know he is
the son of God (human Messiah), but no one else appears to know that until
chapter eight, when Peter realizes and declares that Jesus is the Messiah (Mark 8:29). In regard to the issue of divinity then, the Jesus of John’s Gospel seems very
different than the Jesus of the Synoptic tradition. Most scholars believe that Mark was published
around 65 CE, Luke was published around 80, Matthew around 85 and John sometime
between 90 and 100 CE. Maybe what we are seeing as we move from the Synoptics to John is the development of early Christian thinking about who Jesus was.
James Dunn points out that the period from 70 CE to 132 CE was a time in Judaism of mystical speculation and interest in heavenly visions and angelic encounters. This was the time immediately following the destruction of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. Perhaps the Jewish people were trying to fill a spiritual void created by the loss of their Temple. This yearning for mystical encounter is reflected in the Jewish literature of the time, including the Gospel of John. Dunn writes,
“John’s objective [in writing his gospel] is to clearly focus such yearnings on Jesus: he alone has seen God and can thus make him known (1:18); the true Israelite will recognize that the Son of Man is the only link between heaven and earth (1:47-51) …What also becomes clear is that John is using this complex of motifs in order to present Jesus as the self-revelation of God. The exclusiveness of the claim made for Christ’s revelatory significance means that he also transcends such other claimants to heavenly knowledge and divine agency by the uniqueness of his relationship with the Father and by the closeness of continuity between the Father and the Son. He and the Father are one (10:30). To see him is to see the Father (12:45; 14:9).”
Dunn continues and he deals with the issue of Jewish monotheism:
“It also becomes clear from John’s Gospel…that the main issue at that period was monotheism. Was Christianity a monotheistic faith from the beginning? The question arises precisely because the development of Christology was part of broader movement of thought within the Judaism of the first century and early second century period. As we can now see, such reflection about translated patriarchs, glorious angels, and heavenly wisdom was bound, sooner or later to put severe strain on Jewish monotheism, on the fundamental Jewish belief in the oneness of God.
“…The first great Christological battle of the Christian period was not over docetism (Ignatius) or modalism (Tertullian); it was over monotheism. The issue was whether in applying such earlier speculation about divine revelation to Christ, and thus developing it further, Christianity had moved beyond the bounds of acceptable diversity within Jewish monotheism – whether, in a word, Christianity was still after all a monotheistic faith…The dominant Jewish view was that Christianity had lost this struggle; it had succumbed to an unacceptable view of God; it was no longer monotheistic; it believed that there were two divine powers in heaven; it was (together with other Jewish sub-groups) now a Jewish heresy. But in Christian eyes the battle which the Fourth Gospel represents was a victory for monotheism – for monotheism redefined, but monotheism nonetheless. Christ was the incarnate Logos, a self-manifestation of God, the one God insofar as he could make himself known in human flesh – not the incarnation of a divine power other than God” (Dunn, Christology in the Making, Second Edition, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1989, xxviii).
I think Dunn’s analysis is spot-on. Toward the end of the first century, the meaning of Jewish monotheism had been broadened and to someone like the author of the Fourth Gospel, it was not a violation of the Shema (“Hear O Israel, the Lord Our God, the Lord is One”), to say that Jesus was God come to the earth in human form. Later Jewish rabbinic tradition enforced a more narrow view of monotheism, and a result, looked at Christian claims about Jesus as heretical.
For me, questions remain about the divine claims of Jesus expressed in the Gospel of John. Could these claims be based on the actual words of Jesus? I find that unlikely given the complete absence of these divine claims in the Synoptic Gospels and in the writings of Paul (Paul's letters are our earliest Christian documents, having been written between 50 and 65 CE). My theory is that these divine claims were invented by the author of the Gospel of John after his own reflections on the life and ministry of Jesus.
In my next post I want to conclude my observations on John with a list of the elements in John that are now considered historical and with a final chart comparing all four gospels.
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