Gospel of John, Part 1

We are reading the Gospel of John at the Catholic Thought Book Club at Goodreads and these are my posts and comments.

For me the Gospel of John is so magnificent I don’t know where to start with my comments. I could spend a week with every chapter, so I can’t imagine I will not get all my thoughts in.

A number of things can be pointed out up front. As everyone probably knows, John’s Gospel is different from the other three. The other three are called the Synoptic Gospels because of their similarity. In one way or another, either from deriving from each other or from shared material (I believe more from shared material than each other) the other three incorporate very similar material but more importantly have a very similar narrative structure. Their narrative structure is a slow unfolding of the nature of Christ as Christ and His disciples progress to the crucifixion. The synoptics, outside of the infancy narratives, have a one’s year time for the narrative to complete.

The Gospel of John, on the other hand, takes three years’ time from Jesus’ ministry to the crucifixion, and he goes back and forth from Jerusalem to the Galilee or the general north. And while in the synotptics there is a gradual unfolding of Christ as Son of God, in John it is told up front and repeated in different variations throughout. In the opening line we are told that Jesus is God and He was there from the beginning of time. I’ll get to that amazing prologue in a bit, but with John there is no initial ambiguity. It doesn’t climax to an awareness. If you consider narrative point of view, the synoptics look at Jesus from the apostles’ point of view, and their ignorance is illumined as time goes on. The point of view in John is from a narrator who is fully knowledgeable of Christ’s identity. It is still an apostle relating the story, but the story is filled in with revelation that came afterward. The story is told from a man who knew Jesus, may not have been fully aware of His nature at the time Jesus was with them bodily, but has had time to reflect and understand and indeed perhaps receive divine inspiration who Christ is.

And so John’s Gospel is not constructed so much a narrative but as a lyric poem. Each stanza is an enlightenment rather than a progression. Other than the climatic crucifixion, there is no reason why one incident comes before another. There is no reason why the Nicodemus exchange comes before the lady at the well exchange or either comes for the raising of Lazarus incident. Each chapter in John is a sort of stanza in a poem which can be reordered because it’s lyrical and not narrative, that is held together by sequence of time.

This raises an interesting question. Was John aware of the other Gospels before he wrote his? I can see an argument for either. We know indisputably John came after the other three. We know the other three relied on similar source material and perhaps each other, though we can argue as to who came first. But why wouldn’t John also have that same source material or even the other Gospels? Why are there no parables in John’s Gospel, especially since the parables seem to be Christ’s very teaching method? Why does John expand the ministry to three years—which seems so much more realistic to me—than consolidate into one year? Why does John skip the infancy narrative but locates Christ’s origin to God’s eternity? One could argue that all of these points lead one to John working independent of the synoptics, but one could also argue that because John is so different and that surely he would have known something of the synoptic material that he is consciously writing to be different than the synoptics. I could see John saying that the story in the synpotics has been done but I have something more to say. I think this is where I fall on this.

So if it’s not narrative that holds Johns’ Gospel to a form, then what holds it? The short answer is revelatory incidents, which culminate into the “signs” of Jesus’ divinity, discourse, which explains the theological point of the signs, and interweaving imagery that crystalizes Christ’s divine nature. There are rhetorical flourishes such as the “I am” statements which repeat to provide lyrical form. For me John’s Gospel is a masterpiece in writing. It’s my favorite of the Gospels.

Madeleine Commented:

I think, for me anyway, the major difference between John and the rest is John's special relationship with Jesus, a deep transcendent friendship that while Peter openly recognized Jesus' divinity in that passage we read on Matthew, John seems to have been in on it all along. I think John was the most mystically inclined, and the one who received the vision in Revelations. He refers to himself as "the one who Jesus loved"--a strange phrase because we know he loved them all, even Judas, And he was the only one of the twelve who follows the way of the cross all the way to the end, along with the two Marys and other women mentioned, the only one who was not martyred, perhaps for that reason.

My Reply:

There is a special relationship between John and Jesus. I'm going to try to focus and identify what the nature is of that relationship. You think John knows all along of Christ's divinity? I don't think we get a moment of epiphany, so there has to be a point where it dawns on John. My gut feel right now is that John realizes Christ's nature in retrospect. Certainly after the resurrection.

I should point out that John's Gospel was probably written some fifty or more years after the crucifixion. John has had a lot of time to think it through and perhaps even receive personal revelation.

Kerstin commented:

Manny wrote: "I could see John saying that the story in the synpotics has been done but I have something more to say. I think this is where I fall on this."

Me too. John probably understood Jesus on a more intuitive level than the other apostles we have writings of.

My Reply:

Also, I don't know if it's me, but I sense a certain rancor against the other apostles. Perhaps rancor is too strong a word. Maybe a slight grudge. John seems to be excluded by the Peter and Paul in the building of the Church. Except for a brief reference at the beginning of Acts of the Apostles he disappears. Did he go his own way? Or was he ignored? The other apostles also mostly disappear too but John was central in Jesus' ministry. He was the one who didn't abandon Christ. He was the one Christ handed His mother over to. He was the "beloved" disciple. And yet he fades away after Pentecost. While he gives Peter the privilege of primary, he does seem to poke at him in this Gospel. We'll see as Peter comes up.