MY QUESTIONS ABOUT JOHN'S GOSPEL OR ‘JOHN AS A THEOLOGICAL PROBLEM’

Robert Kysar in John, the Maverick Gospel concludes (p. 26) that “[w]e can be grateful to the early church for not excluding the Fourth Gospel from its canon. Had it done so, we would be far poorer.”

This is, I think, the conclusion of the majority of Johannine/biblical scholars regarding John. Now I think that there is a need to examine John, however, as a theological problem because there is a number of issues one can really consider major problems when dealing with the gospel not only in a literary way but more so in a theological way. Some of them can be expressed as: What problems resulted as a result of the tradition (in this context, ‘tradition’ means: the way of recounting Jesus’ life and person) that John began (or continued)? Did John’s focus on Jesus’ identity subvert the intentions of Jesus in his earthly career (Here I refer to the ‘real’ or even the ‘historical’ Jesus)?

Did the focus on Jesus’ identity and the high christology introduce a fundamental warp/distortion upon the “regnocentric” focus of the pre-Easter Jesus?

One specific area I wish to focus on is the following:

Itinerarium mentis (literally, ‘Itinerary of the Mind’ or Process of Development in the Faith)

Hypothesis: John disrupts the itinerarium mentis undergone by the first followers of Jesus

In his gospel, John immediately proclaims that Jesus is the logos, that Jesus is “one with the Father.” However, considering the matter historically, the early Christians reached those conclusions ONLY after a long process. Before they reached a high theology about Jesus, first, they had to encounter the figure of Jesus himself as a human. They had to be exposed to the words and deeds of this charismatic “rabbi” from Nazareth. They had to live with him, follow him, etc.

Now, if this was true of the first followers of Jesus, it cannot be said of communities and individuals who are introduced to Jesus predominantly by means of John’s gospel. John does not respect that long process but short-circuits it by proclaiming at once that Jesus is God “My Lord and my God!”  That’s the problem (for me)!

The Process of Faith

Before Christians everywhere could finally claim that Jesus was somehow divine, it took a long time and a long process of development in their corporate faith after long, arduous and even bloody struggles. When the gospels (especially John) came to be written down, that signaled the end process of a long developmental process.

However, in the case of John, the reader is invited to make a faith decision without respecting the fact that before such a faith decision could be done, one needs to go through a long process by which one encounters Jesus in his humanity, is attracted to this, then, after due discernment, considers Jesus a “prophet” or “rabbi”, then, from there, one makes the leap to consider Jesus as messiah of God and then as closely as possible to the being Israel called YHWH.

In light of all this, how are contemporary readers to make sense of this gospel, which, traditionally, has been the most popular gospel among Christians?