Essay for Christian Doctrines and Thought (III)

Prompt:

how might this passage have been understood as Christians of the first few centuries began to think carefully about Jesus’ relationship to God, and about the character of Jesus as a savior-figure? What does this passage seem most clearly to “put forth,” and what kinds of ideas and “pictures” of God or of Jesus might it combat or “rule out”?

I chose John 14:

John 14 begins with a quote where Jesus argues that if the Jews believed in God then they should also believe in him. This does not imply that Jesus was separate from God, but rather it seems that a new theology is being introduced. The Jewish creed of the Old Testament that God is one would cause most of the early readers of this passage to have difficulty in accepting that Jesus was truly divine as that would mean that there was more than simply one God. So the first argument of the passage is that belief in Jesus (consisting of a belief that Jesus was a savior and that he was divine – verse 6) should flow naturally from a belief in God Himself. This argument is then fleshed out through a series of statements in which Jesus emphasizes that he shares an intimate connection with God. For instance, verse 7 “If you had known me, you would have known my Father also.” In verses 21 and 23 Jesus states that loving him will necessarily imply a love of that person by God, which again indicates that there is a special relationship between Jesus and God.

The question for the early church at this point would be the cause of this special relationship. Is it caused simply because God chose to bless Jesus, who was just a man, and love him in a way that God had not loved any other man (John 17:23-24). Or is the relationship between God and Jesus due to the fact that Jesus himself is divine. This passage seems to imply the latter of those options, particularly in verses 8-11. In verses 10 and 11 Jesus says, “I am in the Father and the Father is in me.” The second part of the phrase implies that at the very least Jesus was indwelled, at least for a time, by the Spirit of God. However, the first part of the phrase is the decisive one. For God to dwell in a man did not require a man to be divine in the mythology of the ancient Greeks and Romans who often depicted their gods either taking on the appearance of humans or in Jewish beliefs where the Spirit of God was imparted to prophets for a time and gave them their prophecies. Yet, in order for a being to be in God necessitates that the being is itself divine; otherwise God is allowing an impure (due to the inherent sinfulness of man emphasized in Paul’s letters) and inferior being to dwell in Himself.* Further evidence that Christ must be divine is seen in verse nine, where Jesus implies that the very character of God is inherently evident when one looks at the character of Jesus (see also v7). This implies that Jesus himself possessed divine character, something that the Jews would never attribute to a man.

If an early Christian studying this passage were to then conclude that Jesus was divine and that Jesus was in a sense “equivalent” with God, as believing in one brought with it belief in the other (v1), how would they see the relationship between Jesus and the Father? At first glance verses 16, 28, and 31 seem to indicate that that there is a definite hierarchy in the relationship, with Jesus subservient to the Father (it seems also that the Holy Spirit likewise obeys the Father, who sends it, vs15 and 26, though the Spirit’s relation to Jesus is not directly addressed in this passage). While there is nothing in the passage that directly contradicts such an interpretation there are several things which seem to lessen its repercussions. First of all, in verse 16 although Jesus says that he will ask the Father, he already knows what the Father’s answer will be, and knows so in a definite sense, not merely one of hopeful anticipation (or else he could not make the promise of v18). This implies an intimate knowledge of the will and plan of God, also seen in verse 26. So while in one sense the Father “commands” the Son (v31) in another sense the two work in tandem.

Verse 28 is perhaps the most difficult of the passage, especially when taken on its own. However, it must be compared with the greater context of the book of John, as the early church would have been able to consider the letter as a whole. In 17:11, 21-23 there is distinct emphasis on the unity of Jesus and the Father, both in purpose and character, which could not be true if they were unequal deities. This leads to the conclusion that is implied in the very first verse of the passage, that the relationship between the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit is one that readers may not necessarily have picked up on from the Old Testament, but one that at the same time should not run contrary to their belief in God.

* One possible counter-argument to this reasoning could be verse 20 in which Jesus talks about “being in” the disciples, which according to this reasoning does not make sense if Jesus is divine and the disciples are not. However the difference between vs7-11 and v20 is the first part of v20 in which the future tense is used (also v18). When this is combined with the fact that Jesus was sent into the world, he did not originate there (John 17:14-16), and his prayer in chapter 17 it seems as if the state of his being in the disciples and they in him is something that came as a result of his coming into the world, and that did not exist naturally. On the other hand, this is not the case for the relationship between Jesus and the Father (particularly see John 17:24).