this story describes,28 so this part of the gospel suggests instead the kind of interactions that the Johannine Christians were having with the Jewish authorities around 100 CE.
Finally, and most famously, the negative portrayal of the Jews appears in the Passion story. The Jewish leaders are painted as sinister and cowardly, wanting to kill Jesus, but conniving to get the Romans to do it for them; and the crowd chooses Barabbas to be saved rather than Jesus, shouting “Crucify him!” In this gospel, Pilate is portrayed as the one official who finds Jesus to be innocent, but who yields to pressure to crucify him nevertheless. It is impossible to know, two thousand years later, exactly what the role of the Jewish authorities or the Jewish populace was in the crucifixion of Jesus, but it is clear that this gospel writer portrays them in the worst possible light, because he wanted to use the gospel story to help his community make sense of their own lives, which were endangered and cut off from social support by the Jewish leaders.
This story was written to provide spiritual and emotional support for an early second century community that was under persecution. It is the responsibility of modern readers to keep those defensive messages from being turned in persecution against Jews today. This does not mean that one must reject the whole gospel, however. Having understood and rejected the text’s hateful messages about Jews, it is also the privilege of Christians today to glean from the rest of the gospel the beautiful and lofty affirmations that led to the persecution in the Johannine community in the first place—that Jesus was in the beginning, and all things were created through him; that he is the Light that has come into the world and the darkness did not overcome it; that Jesus and the Father are one. These remain the foundation of the Christian faith, and the Gospel of John contains the most beautiful statements of them that are found anywhere in Scripture.
The Paraclete
Clement of Alexandria famously called the Gospel of John the “spiritual gospel.”29 Indeed, spirit is a major theme throughout the Gospel, beginning in Chapter 1: “John testified, ‘I saw the spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him’” (1:32). The final appearance of the Spirit in the Fourth Gospel is in the insufflation—the scene in Chapter 20 in which the risen Christ breathes on the disciples and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”
Throughout the Gospel, Spirit is associated with images of breath and water. The linking of Spirit and breath is consistent with the Hebrew scripture’s use of ruah YHWH to indicate the powerful spirit (breath) of God that authorized and informed prophets. The linking of Spirit and water suggests baptism, and in fact the first chapter of the gospel contrasts John’s baptism with water to the baptism of the spirit that Christ will provide.
Unique to the Fourth Gospel is the description of Spirit as Paraclete in the Final Discourses. This appearance of the Paraclete in the second half of the Gospel of John, and nowhere else in the whole Bible, has raises interesting and important questions. For example, is this Paraclete the same as the Holy Spirit described elsewhere in the Fourth Gospel? Many scholars believe that the Paraclete references may be later additions that have no clear connection to the use of Spirit in the rest of the Gospel. They point out that the functions of the Paraclete appear to be more closely associated with Christ than with a separate Spirit figure. Tricia Gates Brown disagrees with this view, arguing that “the interrelationship of Jesus and the Paraclete . . . does not require pneumatology to become subsumed in Christology.”30
A second important question is the source of the Spirit. In chapter 14, Jesus says, “But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you” (14:26). But in chapter 20 Jesus breathes on the disciples himself and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” The first passage states that the Spirit is a gift of the Father, while the second demonstrates that it is a gift of the Son. This issue has occupied theologians for centuries, arising most famously in the question of the appropriateness of the filioque in the Nicene Creed. These differences are not irreconcilable, however. Bultmann is among those who argue that the insufflation in Chapter 20 is, in fact, the authoritative fulfillment of the promises throughout the Final Discourses of the gift of the Paraclete.31
However these and other pneumatological questions about the Paraclete are resolved, it is clear that the presentation of the Paraclete in the Fourth Gospel is a very particular view of the Spirit. The Final Discourses describe the Paraclete as Spirit of Truth, Advocate, Teacher, Comforter.
The Paraclete gave the Johannine Christians (and only them) personal and individual access to divine truth. In the context of the Fourth Gospel, Jesus’ promise of the Paraclete lent support to any theological claims that the Fourth Evangelist might make that went beyond the written and oral records of the original ministry of Jesus Christ himself, since the insight he recorded had come from Jesus via the Paraclete.32 The Paraclete is the irrefutable source of authority for this Gospel.
Organization of This Text
This is not a comprehensive commentary. Readers will see from a glance at the table of contents that this book does not address every chapter of the Fourth Gospel. Some readers may be surprised, for example, to notice that the passion story is not included here. Rather, the chapters 2–8 revolve around two major issues discussed above: the disappointment that the Johannine Christians faced in the delay of the second coming, and their dislocation after being expelled from the synagogue. Then chapters 9–12 examine the gifts of the Paraclete, Spirit of Truth.
Each of the following chapters selects a key passage from the Gospel and wrestles with it in different ways. Each begins with a sermon. Most also include some class notes from a course taught by Raymond Brown at Union Theological Seminary in 1978. The chapters close with other related materials.
Readers become lovers of this Gospel by wrestling with it. This book is intended to lead students into a just such a passionate interaction.
1. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 3.1.1; available from http://www.ccel.org/fathers2/ANF-01/anf01–60.htm#P7304_1933972.
2. So L. Michael White, From Jesus to Christianity (New York Harper, 2004) 306; contra Rudolf Bultmann, The Gospel of John: A Commentary, trans. G. R. Beasley-Murray, R. W. N. Hoate, and J. K. Riches (Philadelphia Westminster, 1971) 11; and Raymond E. Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament (New York: Doubleday, 1977) 369.
3. White, 307.
4. Francis J. Moloney, The Gospel of John: Text and Context (Boston: Brill, 2005) 117.
5. Bultmann, Gospel.
6. Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John, Anchor Bible 29–29A (New York: Doubleday, 1966–1970) xxxviii.
7. Brown, Gospel, 215.
8. Raymond E. Brown, The Community of the Beloved Disciple: The Life, Loves, and Hates of an Individual Church in New Testament Times (New York: Paulist, 1979) 23.
9.
