James Dunn on John’s Logos Christology and Subordinationism

James Dunn on John’s Logos Christology and Subordinationism July 23, 2016

An interesting quote from the venerable James Dunn about how John’s Logos christology relates to his Son christology:

That is, various aspects of the Son Christology should not be read independently of the Logos Christology, but rather as intended to serve the Logos Christology. I am thinking not simply of the accusation that Jesus was making himself equal with God (5.18) and Jesus’ striking claim to be one with the Father (10.30); for such claims are an obvious expression of Logos/Wisdom Christology – Logos/Wisdom being the self-expression of the otherwise invisible God. Nor am I thinking only of the sending motif, where the Son sent is wholly representative of the Father who sent him (e.g. 10.36; 12.45). I am thinking more of the features of John’s Son Christology normally referred to as the Son’s ‘subordination’ to the Father – summed up by 14.28, ‘The Father is greater than I’.  In fact, however, the thought is not so much of subordination, as though that was already an issue. The issue is not the relation between the Father and the Son (as later), but the authority and validity of the Son’s revelation of the Father, the continuity between the Father and the Son, between the logos unuttered and the logos uttered. 
James Dunn, Neither Jew nor Greek, 353.


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