But first, from the early church fathers all the way down to more recent scholars, readers have associated John with first and second century gnosticism because of its elevated language about knowledge, light, and divine revelation and how it contrasts spirit and the flesh. John speaks of Jesus as the preexistent Logos (Word) who descends from above, revealing truth to a world trapped in misunderstandings. This emphasis on revelation and knowing God has led many scholars to suggest that John reflects gnostic thought. However, other scholars argue that while John uses similar vocabulary to the gnostic communities of that time, the gospel ultimately stands in dialogue and tension with Gnosticism and does not promotes it.
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This is Part 2 of the series New Beginnings and Our Justice Work Today
(Read this series from its beginning here.)
Classical gnostics viewed the material world as inherently evil and salvation as an escape from the physical realm through secret knowledge (gnosis). John’s gospel both confirms this view of the material world as negative (i.e. “ who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.”) and at other times seems to confront it (“the Word became flesh and dwelt among us”). Salvation in John, like salvation in gnosticism, is achieved through esoteric knowledge, yet for John that knowledge is only available through Jesus and revealed and embodied in Jesus’ life. Eternal life is both an escape from the world and “knowing” (gnosis) God’s glory. (John 17:3). On one side, John’s gospel emphasizes the incarnation and on another describes Jesus transforming death into a portal into the afterlife.
The gospel of John can be understood as engaging proto-gnostic ideas circulating in the 1st Century, sometimes by agreeing with them and sometimes by debating and providing theological tension with gnosticism. John adopts familiar gnostic language while presenting a theology that affirms the ethic of the love of God more than the synoptics’ focus on justice and love of neighbor. John’s Gospel thus proclaims a spirituality that insists that gnosticism’s knowledge is knowledge of the divine as known through Jesus and the real revelation is a disclosure of God loving the world. John’s gospels doesn’t define salvation as quite the same as do the synoptic gospels. Salvation in John is not as Jesus’ kingdom having arrived on earth or God’s will being done on earth as in heaven. In John salvation is through obtaining the knowledge of God in Jesus and entering fully into the divine life that transforms death into an escape from our material world into God who is spirit. All of this gives us much to ponder in tension with not only 1st Century gnosticism but also its relationship to the synoptic gospels.
Let’s get back to the contrast between Moses and Jesus. In John’s gospel, contrasting Moses with Jesus in ways that portray Moses or Judaism as inferior is a form of antisemitic interpretation. Not all of the New Testament requires that reading, but John does. These contrasts often frame Moses as representing legalism, wrath, or spiritual blindness, while depicting Jesus as embodying grace, truth, or love. But the opposition distorts both figures. Moses is central to Israel’s story of liberation, covenant, and justice, and Jewish tradition has long understood the Torah as a gift of grace, not a legalistic burden. When Christian readings suggest that Jesus replaces rather than building on and dialoguing with Moses, they implicitly delegitimize Judaism and sever Jesus from his own Jewish identity. The synoptic gospels, in contrast to John, present Jesus as standing firmly within Israel’s Hebrew prophetic justice tradition, drawing on the Torah and the prophets rather than rejecting them. Healthy interpretation emphasizes congruency: Jesus continues and intensifies Moses’ vision of covenant liberation, compassion, and justice. Reading Moses and Jesus in both continuity and at times in tension with with each other, correcting and even dissenting from each other, doesn’t mean they weren’t still part of the same Jewish family. Their has always existed vigorous incongruence even within Hebrew traditions themselves. Historically, dissonant voices have existed within Hebrew and Jewish culture, both then and even now. But however we interepret both Jesus and Moses, refraining from denigrating Moses in order to center attention on Jesus resists antisemitism and honors Jesus’ Jewish roots and the Jewish roots of the Christian faith itself.
However one reads the gospel of John, the Jesus of the synoptic gospel stories did not emerge in history as a quiet spiritual teacher detached from the realities of oppression and power. The Jesus of the gospels sought to reduce harm and call his listeners, like the Hebrew prophets of old, to a renewed commitment to justice and love toward one another. And this difference makes a significant difference in how we define what it means to follow Jesus, today. We’ll pick up with these differences in Part 3.
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