Firstly, this community defined eternal life or salvation as a special knowledge. Consider the following passages from this week’s reading:
Now this is eternal life: that they know you… (John 17:3)
Now they know that everything you have given me comes from you. (John 17:7)
They knew with certainty… (John 17:8)
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(Read this series from its beginning here.)
As an exercise, look up every time “knowing” is the important element emphasized in the book of John. When we acknowledge how central “knowing” was to the Johannine community’s version of the Jesus story, we discover the entire gospel is about gaining this knowing (gnosis) from Jesus. In fact, giving us this gnosis, the gospel of John tells us, is the entire reason Jesus came.
This is a very different emphasis from the one we read in Mark, Matthew and Luke.
Secondly, the early Johannine community didn’t treat a bodily resurrection as all that necessary for Jesus. In John 17, it is through the cross (death being the separating of the gnostic soul from the material body) that Jesus would be reunited with the Father. Looking to the cross and speaking to his Father, Jesus says, “I will remain in the world no longer . . . I am coming to you.”
This is one of the many reasons why a gnostic Jesus doesn’t quite fit the versions of Jesus we encounter in Mark, Matthew, and Luke. There would come to be deep divides and differences between later gnostic Christianity and what would become orthodox Christianity, and these divides were what led many Church Fathers to deem gnostic forms of Christianity as heretical.
The gospel of John later seeks to correct the implication of this prayer in Jesus’ statement to Mary at the tomb:
“Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father.” (John 20:17)
As I’ve shared as we’ve re-read the gospel of John, I prefer the more material Jesus we encounter Mark, Matthew, and Luke. There are still gems to mine from the gospel of John (the supremacy of Love is one), but I resonate much more with the synoptic Jesus, who is striving to make our concrete world, here and now, a safer, more compassionate, just home for everyone. I prefer that Jesus over the Johannine Jesus, who is primarily concerned with imparting a special knowledge that is the path or “way” and that ultimately liberates our spirits from our flesh.
I also find the synoptics speak more relevantly into our justice work today. If changing our present world is the goal, I’ll take Mark, Matthew and Luke. But if getting to heaven is the goal, then John’s gospel provides the most warm and fuzzy path to that end and it depends simply on knowing the Father the way Jesus came to reveal Him.
A third theme repeated in our reading this week is the theme of unity.
We’ll finish this week’s series by considering some implications of that theme.
(Read Part 3)
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