Category Archives: John

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Watering Down the Gospel?—John’s water motif

In Greek, John’s Gospel includes many plays on words, and John often likes to play on the image of water. Jewish people and Samaritans used water for various ritual purposes, but John emphasizes that it is God’s Spirit, not ritual when done without the Spirit, that transforms.

Six waterpots were set aside for the ceremony of purification. Bypassing their consecrated purpose, Jesus turned the water into wine (2:6, 9). Jewish people immersed Gentile converts in water, sometimes associating this conversion process with the convert becoming like a new person. Yet Jesus insists that Nicodemus, a teacher of Israel, be born “from water and the Spirit” (3:5); the Greek construction here could also be rendered, “the water of the Spirit” (i.e., with Calvin, as a hendiadys with an epexegetical kai, for those who are interested). When the Samaritan woman meets Jesus at a well sacred to her people, she learns of living water greater than the water of Jacob’s well. She leaves behind her waterpot and becomes the first mass evangelist as she brings her people to Jesus (ch. 4).

Unable to find healing at a special healing pool for thirty-eight years, a man unable to walk is healed at once when Jesus speaks to him (5:7-9). In another case, Jesus daubs mud on a blind man’s eyes, then sends him to wash in the Pool of Siloam to be healed (9:6-7). This case shows us that the problem is not with water per se; the water of the Pool of Siloam was used for the Festival of Tabernacles, and so was being used for ritual purposes at the very time that this healing probably took place (it was the last day of the festival in 7:37, and most scholars do not believe that the earliest manuscripts include the day change in 7:53—8:2). The problem is not with ritual, but with depending on ritual when we should be depending on God himself. Because Jesus sends the man, he is healed through water from the pool this time. But both in John 5 and in John 9, it is Jesus that makes the difference.

Likewise, John the Baptist earlier contrasted his own baptism involving mere water with Jesus’s greater baptism involving the Holy Spirit (1:31, 33). John’s baptism was not bad; Jesus’s baptism, however, was greater, and the ultimate purpose to which John’s baptism pointed.

On the last day of the Festival of Tabernacles, Jesus invites the spiritually thirsty to drink from him. He announces the fulfilment of the Scripture about rivers of living water going forth from the belly (7:37-39). What Scripture did Jesus have in mind? The Scripture readings for the last day of the festival included Ezekiel 47 and Zechariah 14, which described rivers of water flowing from the temple or Jerusalem. Many Jewish people considered Jerusalem the belly or navel of the earth. This Scripture was being fulfilled that day in Jesus because Jesus is the foundation stone of God’s new temple: from him flows the water of life for the thirsty. The water of which Jesus speaks here, John tells us plainly, is the Spirit (7:39).

It is no coincidence that John is the only Gospel to make a point of narrating something that the beloved disciple witnessed at the cross. When Jesus’s side was pierced for us, not only blood but water came out (19:34). Medically, the water-like fluid may come from a broken sac around the heart, but John probably records it because it climaxes Jesus’s point: now that Jesus has been lifted up, the Spirit becomes available (7:39). John, who likes plays on words, as we have noted, also points out that when Jesus died he gave up his spirit—in words that could also be translated, “he gave the Spirit” (19:30). Once Jesus came to the disciples after the resurrection, he breathed on them (as God once breathed into Adam the breath of life) and imparted the Spirit in person (20:22).

Have we been cleansed with the spiritual water of new life? Have we drunk freely of the water of his Spirit? It is freely available; “Let the one who wills come and drink freely from the water of life” (Rev 22:17).

Craig Keener is professor of New Testament at Asbury Theological Seminary and author of a two-volume commentary on John’s Gospel published by Baker Academic.

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Reliability of Gospels (plus harder questions about John and about Christmas)

George Wood interviews Craig regarding his book Christobiography and therefore on the reliability of the Gospels. At the end, he hits Craig with harder questions. Listen to Craig try to figure out what to say! 😮

https://influencemagazine.com/en/Practice/The-Gospels-as-Truthful-Biographies-of-Jesus

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How do we relate to members of the Trinity?

Since there are theologians who spend their entire careers studying the Trinity, I dare offer the following only as a thought experiment in Johannine theology. It is, however, one that helps me to relate to the One God in Three Persons.

Whoever has seen Jesus, has seen the Father (John 1:18; 14:7).

Whatever Jesus hears from the Father, he reveals to his own (John 15:15); whatever the Spirit hears, he reveals, revealing Jesus (16:13). One cannot have the Son without the Father or the Father without the Son (1 John 2:23). Through the Spirit, we experience the Father and the Son (John 14:23). Old Testament passages about YHWH (e.g., Isa 25:8; 49:10) are applied to both the Father and the lamb (e.g., Rev 7:16-17).

Rather than picturing this as three persons side by side, to whom we relate in succession, I picture this more like three figures, one in front of the other, but transparent so that seeing one reveals to us the other. Although they are distinct persons, in prayer we relate to them together. As we pray in Jesus’s name, we pray through him to the Father. But we cannot truly invoke any member of the Trinity without implicitly relating to them all.

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How can there be three persons in one Trinity?

How can we speak of more than one “person” within the Trinity? And what implications does this idea have for our lives?

Here I’m not summarizing biblical evidence for the Trinity; this is easily done but it is frequently provided elsewhere. Instead I’m trying to offer one window into what we may mean when we speak of more than one person in the Trinity.

Not always speaking precisely

Greek and Latin theologians developed precise terminology in their languages, but no language that I know of always communicates precisely without explanation. For this reason, it may be that many who do not use others’ precise language may mean something very much the same, whereas some others who do use the language do not understand what they are supposed to mean by it.

I was surprised, for example, to discover that even some who speak of “modes” (using technically Sabellian language) mean something similar to what most Trinitarians mean by “persons.” Neither term (whether in English or Greek) is precisely biblical, but certainly the New Testament regularly distinguishes the Son from the Father. Granted, Jesus and the Father are one (John 10:30), but Jesus also prays that believers may be one even as Jesus and the Father are one (17:22). Jesus is divine, yet he is “with” the Father, in intimate relationship with him (1:1-2, 18). Jesus models intimacy with God for us, doing only what he sees the Father do (5:19), reciprocally knowing (10:15; 15:15; 17:25) and loving (3:35; 5:20; 10:17; 14:31; 15:9; 17:24) the Father. Yet, distinctively, the Father sent the Son (5:23, 36-37; 6:44, 57; 8:16, 18, 42; 10:36; 12:49; 14:24; 17:21, 25; 20:21) and the Son expressed his perfect unity with the Father at least partly in perfect submission to him (10:18; 12:49-50; 14:28).

My agenda in this post is not to challenge Sabellian language, despite my disagreement with it; my point is simply to observe that not everyone uses their language precisely. In fact, most of us cannot match the precision of those theologians who, devoting their lives to the study of the Trinity, have developed very precise ways to articulate relations within the Trinity.

The supremely personal God

But coming back to the question: how can there be distinct persons, or distinguishable entities or actors, within one God? Although we as humanity are made in God’s image (Gen 1:26-27), analogies made from finite persons to an infinite Person, however valuable because of our desire to understand on some level, remain limited. Even the creation of male and female together as God’s image, which might be thought to reflect a sort of complementarity within unity and thus may provide an analogy, may not fully demonstrate or communicate the point. (If pressed far enough, the analogy of water, ice and steam that is sometimes used comes closer to illustrating modalism.)

The problem here, however, is more a problem of language and analogy than of God’s being. God’s personhood is on a higher dimension than ours; he is infinitely more personal than we are. Even with what we know from the world around us, we should be able to recognize that at higher levels of understanding apparent problems at lower levels can be resolved. This happens in theoretical mathematics, physics, and biochemistry. We perceive it ourselves when we distinguish different levels of causation (à la Aristotle): writing can be caused on one level by ink on paper, at another level by human muscles and nerves, on another by a human mind, and on yet another by the social and linguistic conventions that person uses to communicate, or by which that person is shaped. (Christian thinkers often apply this sort of analogy to levels of causation in creation.)

If God is infinite, God can be more personal than we are, and can be revealed in three persons, each of whom could also be no less personal than we are, while remaining one God. (As Richard Bauckham has argued, God’s oneness distinguishes him from all other reality, which is created. It does not prevent us from acknowledging distinctions within God where God has revealed those to us.)

{This one paragraph is a 2018 addition to the original Jan. 2015 post: One human analogy might be identical triplets, who share exactly the same DNA yet are distinct persons. This is a far better analogy than water, ice and steam! But ultimately the unity of the persons within the Trinity goes further than even this. To see the Son is to see the Father (John 14:7); he is the Father’s image (Col 1:15). By itself, “image” could be used even in Arian terms, but in Trinitarian terms it reinforces Jesus’s deity. If from our vantage point we see a line directly from the front, we see only a point. From a three-dimensional standpoint, however, we would see a line. If God is not limited to our dimensions, to see or experience any member of the Trinity is to see or experience God; our finite experience, however, does not limit God’s identity beyond our finite experience. We can trust God’s self-revelation that transcends our limited dimensions of experience.}

Some trinitarian theologians have emphasized other-centeredness as a necessary attribute of God as love. They have thus contended for the necessity of more than one person within God. I am not sure that we would have thought of that connection had we not already believed in the Trinity, but the point nevertheless is well-taken. The deep love shared between the Father and Son, so emphasized in John’s Gospel, seems inseparable from their divine unity.

Implications for us

Because the Son, eternal in being, is worth more than all the cosmos, the love that God demonstrated in sacrificing Him for our sins is more vast than the non-human universe. One time in prayer I felt that God was saying, “The sea is vast; but it is not vast enough to begin to contain my boundless love for my children, nor to contain all the wisdom of my purposes. My giving love to you is greater than all the sands of the seashore, more vast than the seas, higher than the mountains, more awesome than the skies.”

How can one be confident that God’s love is so deep? The Father surely loved the Son, who shared his glory before the world began, more deeply than all creation. If he gave Jesus’s blood to restore us to himself, then surely he loves humans more than the rest of the universe. (So far as we currently know, in terms of information content we are the pinnacle of complexity within God’s creation.)

God’s love for us in Christ is beyond measurement, other than the precious blood of Christ. To be loved by an infinitely personal God is an incomparable and unending blessing, merited not by us but by Jesus, and initiated in the heart of God’s love.

“… so the world may know that you sent me, and have loved them, in the same way that you have loved me”—John 17:23b

“For this is the way that God loved the world: he gave his only Son”—John 3:16a

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Can any good thing come from Nazareth?–John 1:46

Nathanael’s question about Nazareth performs a special function in its context in John’s Gospel. The reader of John’s prologue knows that Jesus is not primarily from Nazareth, but from God. This is something that Nathanael, however, is about to learn, and Jesus will explain it partly in terms of Jacob’s ladder, the connection between heaven and earth.
For details, please click the following link:
http://www.bibleodyssey.org/places/related-articles/can-anything-good-come-out-of-nazareth.aspx