The Christology Of The Fourth Gospel

Christology is at the heart of the theology of the fourth gospel. Since Bultmann's impressive synthesis much has been written about its individual themes and motifs, its sources and history. The present study sets out to identify the basic structure of Johannine christology and to show how it underlies and integrates the various motifs and themes which surface in the transmitted text of the gospel. From the perspective gained through this analysis it re-examines the major issues of Johannine christology and their significance for understanding the gospel, both in its setting and in our own.

The Fourth Gospel is deeply shaped by its remarkably high Christology. It depicts the earthly Jesus, the incarnate one, as fully divine. This unrelenting Christology has led interpreters, both ancient and modern, to question the historical value of John's Gospel. For many, the Gospel is just theology. It is to the vexed relationship between history and theology that Jörg Frey turns in Theology and History in the Fourth Gospel. John's theological obsession with Christology might suggest that history counts for little in the Gospel. But, as Frey argues, the Gospel's clear and central claim is that John narrates the story of Jesus of Nazareth, his ministry, and his death, as "factual," and that this narrated "history" is foundational for the Christian message. Frey traces the Gospel's use of the available historical tradition by chiefly drawing from Mark and the Johannine community. Even if the Gospel of John used this received witness in a remarkably free manner, replotting and renarrating traditional episodes and even creatively staging new episodes, Frey contends that the historical life and person of Jesus remain central to John's enterprise. In the end, Frey warns that Johannine interpretation will miss the intention of the Gospel and the interpretive perspective of the evangelist if it remains preoccupied merely with questions of historical accuracy. The interpretive goal is to "let John be John," and, as Frey shows, readers will always yield to the priority of theology over history in the Fourth Gospel. In John's telling of the Christ story, the significance of history lies precisely in its disclosure of theological meaning, just as the significance of the historical Jesus is only understood in the theological language of Christology.

This important work not only contributes to understanding the origins and character of John's christological tensions, but it also outlines a new set of theories regarding several innovative dialogical approaches to the Johannine text. In his new introduction to this edition, Anderson engages constructively the responses of his reviewers and outlines his own theories regarding John's dialogical autonomy. Posing a comprehensive new synthesis regarding John's composition, situation history, relations to Synoptic traditions, agency Christology, historicity, and theological tensions, Anderson here summarizes his most significant theories published since it first appeared. In so doing, advances suggested by this pivotal text are laid out in a new set of paradigms addressing the Johannine riddles in fuller detail.

The culmination of a lifetime of work on the Gospel of John, William Loader's Jesus in John's Gospel explores the Fourth Gospel with a focus on ways in which attention to the structure of Christology in John allows for greater understanding of Johannine themes and helps resolve long-standing interpretive impasses. Following an introductory examination of Rudolf Bultmann's profound influence on Johannine studies, Loader turns to the central interpretive issues and debates surrounding Johannine Christology, probing particularly the death of Jesus in John, the salvation event in John, and the Fourth Gospel in light of its Christology. The exhaustive bibliography and careful, well-articulated conclusions take into account the latest research on John, ensuring that this volume will be useful to scholars and students alike.

About this Book: Gail R. O’Day’s Revelation in the Fourth Gospel set the stage for a new literary paradigm in Johannine studies, which has carried over into disciplinary advances in gospel criticism overall. With the addition of eight key Johannine essays and a state-of-the-art introduction by Alan Culpepper, this new publication as Volume 9 in the Johannine Monograph Series advances a fuller appreciation of her important work on John and new-literary biblical analyses overall. From the Preface: What becomes apparent in an overview of Gail O’Day’s work is her keen analysis of relations and functions of literary themes and features within the Gospel of John, as they further its rhetorical thrust, elucidating its meaning. Whereas diachronic approaches to John have tended to compartmentalize and divide sections and literary forms, O’Day shows time and again how things worked synchronically within John’s story of Jesus, challenging misinterpretations and opening doors to understanding more fully its message. The present collection highlights the dialectics between narrative and theology, time and space, and characters and plot in the Fourth Gospel, clarifying their tensive presentations within this classic narrative.

This is the groundbreaking sequel to Fortna's The Gospel of Signs which reconstructed a source underlying the Fourth Gospel narrative. Here he not only brings that reconstruction up to date but also provides commentary, section by section, on both the text of the reconstructed Johannine source and its redaction in canonical John (Part One).In Part Two, Fortna systematically draws together the theological movement from source to present Gospel covering such topics as Christology, the value of signs for faith, salvation, Jesus' death, eschatology and community, and "the Jews" in relation to geography in the Fourth Gospel. This work, then, provides a comprehensive and unique redaction-critical treatment of the whole Johannine narrative.