Trade Center, communications nexus for many may fall, but the communication of the gospel stands, the World Truth Center, Jesus Christ.
The World Trade Center, symbol of national pride may fall, but divine humility stands, through the World Truth Center, Jesus the Christ.
The World Trade Center, legal library for the country may fall, but grace and truth stand, through the World Truth Center, Jesus the Christ.
These things are spoken that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.
Faith is personal commitment to an unverifiable truth. It involves a leap.
Faith is an objective uncertainty, grasped with subjective certainty. It involves a leap.
Faith is the way to salvation, a real identity and a rich imagination. But it does involve a leap.
Tomorrow morning, which will it be? “In the beginning. . .” What? Creation or Grace? Covenant or Freedom? Law or Love? An eye for an eye or the second mile, the coat and cloak, the turned cheek? “In the beginning. . . was the Word.”
All of us are better when we are loved.
Now is the time to jump.
Notes from Raymond Brown’s Lectures on John
Union Theological Seminary
Spring 1978
April 27, 1978: John 1
The prologue was a hymn of the Johannine community. There are similar hymns to be found in Philippians, Colossians, and Ephesians. All of these hymns were highly Christological, and carried a high Christology. They typically begin with something prior to the material world, and they tend to move from creation to redemption. 1 Timothy 3:16 is one other example.
The prologue came from the life of the community. Perhaps it was written by the evangelist, and perhaps it was not. It certainly came from Johannine circles.
RB thinks that the gospel originally opened with John the Baptist, and with those materials. The term Word presents a realization of a problem. If one wants to present a pre-history of the earthly Jesus, one faces difficulties, trying to speak of the human Jesus before time. How do you do it? Christ Jesus is one way. Son of God is one way. Word is used in John. In the fourth century, the councils of the church decide that the Son existed from all eternity (but Jesus did not). Early on, as here, there was no such sophistication.
The Word is of course a direct connection to Genesis, though of course in a different sense. This beginning is an earlier beginning. The verb is “to be,” not “to become.” The reference is to the great IAM, which is translated “o ov”—“the existent.” The word Word has a two-fold directionality—to God, from God. The Word thus has community with both God and Man. There is a staircase parallelism here.
The last “God” in the opening has no article. Why? Because you still cannot say that the Word is the Father. This same struggle was to continue for centuries later. And there is even some struggle along the way here. This may also be simply a predicative use. (In the later New Testament books, God is predicated of Jesus Christ, but the usage is not common). There are growing Christological tendencies as the New Testament develops.
This Word must tell us about God. The Word that was God is spoken—to you. This reflection is not strange to Judaism. What is strange is the personification. Isaiah 55: God’s Word has its own reality. Both word and thing are expressed in dabar (Hebrew). The Word spoken is eternally existent. “My Word shall not return to me empty” (Habbakuk 3:5). Dabar can also be pestilence. Some read: before him went his word. This is tied into divine wisdom, a female figure. This figure is personified with God from the moment of creation. Both Proverbs and the Book of Wisdom give evidence of this. The Word is an emanation of God through which God creates. Wisdom creates things by God’s wisdom.
There is an increasing resistance to the use of the divine name. The Aramaic translation spoke of God’s “memra.” It became eventually a technical term (like Logos for us). To what degree did people sense this play on words?
Word is a term understood both in Greek and Judaic communities. The Word creates. The Word is the coming into being of life. Life here (verse 4) must be a reference to Genesis—God sharing his life with his creatures. And this life is the light of human beings. Verse 5 carries a question: Should it read “receive” or “overcome”? Or does the verse mean both?
Where does incarnation occur in this hymn? Not until after John the Baptist’s entrance. In verse 9 we hear of the coming of Jesus. With this comes a kind of pessimism of judgment. When John speaks of world, he speaks of those who do not receive Jesus. But those who accept him became God’s children. Light vs. Darkness. From then on he is speaking to his own.
Introductory Material: February 15, 1978
The author’s hope is to lead people to the light by bringing his own community to the truth. “And believing you may have life.” He has an almost unique purpose for writing: Is its thrust “come to faith” or “continue in faith”? It is probably the latter. John’s purpose is Christological. He is exploring the identity of Jesus Christ. This has come in part out of the community history. The real problem is the claim to divinity, which is rejected by the synagogue. John’s community is caused to suffer for its Christology.
Hence the Gospel becomes quite different. Jesus comes to tell of God and of God’s demands. There is no mention of the kingdom of God. In John, Jesus is the kingdom of God realized. Jesus is the mirror of God. So, we see the logic of the early church: Kingdom of God talk gives way quite early to Jesus talk. The act of faith centers on Jesus, not on the kingdom. This probably reflects outside interests, but also inner Christian questions as well. John is not satisfied to identify Jesus as the foundation of the community. Rather, Jesus is the vital principle of the community. Here the church is taking over the role of salvation. Jesus is the principle of life, the vine and the branches. If you are not a branch, you do not have life. Thus John has thrown out foundational language, in order to connect things to Jesus’ life rather than to his directives. John wants to mold, of words and deeds, the living truth for community life.
This must be a voice of warning, and complaint, as the institution grows. The Spirit is the presence of Jesus. Thus an abiding presence through spirit is affirmed, unperturbed by time and space. In his teaching, Jesus speaks of the most simple, temporal ideas for eternity.
Life is the term John gives to Jesus’ gift of God’s own life, and this life is the nature of the Christian message. For him, the natural life is not as real as the life Jesus gives. Real love is God’s, as with life. John talks quite realistically about eternal things. We receive God’s eternal life and nourish it with water and with food. This is not abstraction. It is concrete language about Jesus and as such it is a somewhat dangerous message.
John’s Christology brings him into conflict with other Christians. His pre-existent Logos is tough for people to swallow. Jesus’ followers never really understood Jesus fully. There is no mention of pre-existence in other books. Here there is a different sonship. Christology is not a matter of conception, but a matter of incarnation, based on the pre-existent principle.
5 / Two Brides
John 2:1–11
“These things are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:31).
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