Notes on the Gospel of John II

[Thomas]

Through my long history of engagement with this forum, I have beat the drum for Tradition, declaring myself a Traditionalist both in the Catholic and in the Perennialist sense. Now, I find I have had a change of heart. Traditional no longer carries the weight it did with me – I try to be an apocalypticist – not in the common understanding of the term, someone who believes in the immanent end of the world, but someone who believes it has already happened.

+++

It's there, a kind of already-realised eschatology, in the pseudo-Pauline Ephesians 1:20-23; 2:6; Colossians 1:12-14; 2:12; 3:1-2; 4:1.
https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch...ab99-d5a2-4a1d-83a6-7ea6d71c39ba_640x619.jpeg
It is in the Gospel of John, however, that the horizontal, temporal axis of past to the future is shifted to the vertical, to the language of descent and ascent, to the language of now. Jesus is the one who comes from above to those below (8:23-24). The light of judgment has already now arrived and is in the world (3:19-21). Just as the Father raises the dead and makes them live (present tense), so has he given over judgment to the Son now, so that whoever hears the Son's word and has faith in the one who sent him already has "eternal life" or the "life of the Age" and does not come into judgment.

An hour is coming that in fact even now is when the dead will hear the voice of God’s Son and live (5:21-25). Not only will all who see the Son and have faith in him enjoy that 'aeonian' life and be raised by the Son on the last day (6:40); anyone who has faith already has that life (6:47), and will not see death "forever" or "unto the Age" (8:51); for to know the Father and him whom the Father has sent is already the life of the Age (17:3). And so Christ is himself even now the resurrection and the life (11:25).

"Now is the judgment on this cosmos; now shall the Archon of this cosmos be cast out; and I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will drag everyone to me" (12:31-32); for "I have conquered the cosmos" (16:33).

The risen Christ tells Mary Magdalene not to cling to him because he must yet ascend to the Father, but instead to go tell the disciples "I ascend to my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God" (20:17). For John, it is the risen and ascended Christ who appears to the disciples, who imparts the Spirit to them (20:19-22), who allows Thomas to touch him, and who then is revealed as Lord and God (20:24-28).

There is, in John, no final ascension. Rather, the already-ascended Jesus simply continues to appear to his disciples as he will. It's not even clear that the fourth Gospel foretells any "last judgment" in the sense of an additional judgment that accomplishes more than has already happened in Christ.

In John’s Gospel, all that was foretold has already come to pass. Jesus is the resurrection and the life (11:25). All heaven, earth and hell meet in those three days, so now, no matter how far any prodigal soul might venture from God, Christ is already further out into that "far country," has already borne all the consequence of an alienation from God and neighbour, and now can draw all persons to himself, as each requires to be drawn.

In Mark, Jesus cries out in (seeming) despair "Eloi, Eloi, lamma sabacthani? My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? (15:34) and then "gave up the ghost." (15:37). Same in Matthew (27:46, 50). In Luke, " 'Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.' And saying this, he gave up the ghost." (22:46).

In John, He says, quietly, "It is accomplished."

 

[Thomas]

In Mark, Matthew and Luke, Jesus suffers as a prophet in the tradition of Moses and Elijah, his suffering is, like theirs, human. In the early Synoptic narratives, Jesus does not seem aware that his ministry will culminate with personal suffering, but seems to expect future victory: "there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom" (Matthew 16:28). It is only at the mid-point in all three Gospels, the Petrine confession, that Jesus begins predicting his Passion.

Synoptic Jesus approaches suffering and death with anxiety and despair, bargaining and resignation, even a belief that God has abandoned him (Mark 14:32-42, Matthew 26:36-46, Luke 22:39-46).

The Evangelists had begun reading the knowledge of Jesus' Passion and Resurrection backwards into his own foreknowledge. There is no precedent in ancient Judaism for a suffering, dying, and rising messiah. The Synoptic Evangelists are inconsistent. They have to manage the question of how much Jesus knew about his future Passion, and how accepting he is of it, against various logia of Jesus predicting a future yet immanent victory.

The Synoptic Evangelists are engaged in a theological reflection on the life and death of Jesus, reading his Passion, Resurrection and Ascension through a typological reading of Jewish scripture and Jewish mystical speculation. The Synoptics do not give us a straightforwardly historical Jesus, rather we have stages of a theologised Jesus. A concern of the Synoptics is to manage the disappointment of a non-arriving parousia and assert that everything is going to plan, that hope is still valid, that Jesus’s suffering, resurrection and the delay of his return are all there in scripture, if one only knows how to look.

Luke, writing last, and authoring Acts, is the most developed iteration of this hermeneutic among the Synoptics, in the continuation of that original promise in the apostolic mission. In the late decades of the first century, as the Jesus followers fled Jerusalem to escape the coming war, that war and subsequent persecution were themselves markers of the Second Coming.

 

[Thomas]

John's Gospel declares Jesus' divine and messianic identity from the get-go, and only in John does Jesus go to the cross voluntarily and with full knowledge of his forthcoming passion. Indeed, when Jesus says he will go up to Jerusalem again, his disciples try and dissuade him, but Thomas declares "Let us also go, that we may die with him" (John 11:16)

In John, the crucifixion is the exaltation of the Son of Man on the throne of glory.

+++

In the Synoptics the disciples are not presented as understanding Christ until after the Passion (the road to Emmaus in Luke 24 being the classic text). In John, the narrative begins with that understanding: the Baptist identifies Jesus as "the Lamb of God” (John 1:29; cf Isaiah 53:7 and Jeremiah 11:19). Philip tells Nathanael: "We have found him of whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph" (John 1:45).

Philip identifying Jesus as "the son of Joseph" indicates that he has not yet fully grasped his true identity. After a brief conversation with Jesus, Nathanael then address him, alluding to title of the crucified one: "Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!" (1:49). Yet even this is not enough: "'You shall see greater things than these.' And he said to him, 'Truly, truly, I say to you, you will see the heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man'" (1:50–51).

John’s depiction of Christ thereafter is indeed very different than the earlier Gospels. There is no occasion of Transfiguration, no institution of the Eucharist. John, writing late, is not unaware of either (John 6 is regarded as the Gospel's Eucharist narrative), rather, throughout the Gospel we are in the presence of the transfigured Lord. He is the one "from above" (3:31; 8:23); the one who is not put to death but rather lays down his life, of his own accord (10:15–18), at the right time (2:4); the one who does not pray that the cup should pass yet reconciles himself the Father’s will, but rather asserts: "What shall I say, 'Father save me from this hour?' (cf Mark 14:46, Matthew 23:39, Luke 22:42) No, for this purpose I have come to this hour' "(12:27).

When Jesus says "It is finished" or rather, "it is completed" or "accomplished" or "perfected" (19:30), what is completed at this point are all apocalyptic themes, judgment: "now is the judgment of this world" (12:31) "now shall the archon of the cosmos be cast out." (12:31), "because the archon of the cosmos is already judged" (16:11), and the temple: "'Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up' ... But he spoke of the temple of his body." (2:19, 21).