Gospel Notes by Michael Whelan SM
No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. (John 3:13-17 – NRSV)
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Introductory notes
General
Our text is taken from a conversation between Jesus and “one of the Pharisees, Nicodemus, a leading Jew.” “The Nicodemus scene is our first introduction to the Johannine discourse. It is the first oral exposition in John of the revelation brought by Jesus, and in capsule form it gives the principal themes of that revelation” (Raymond E Brown, The Gospel according to John (I–XII): Introduction, translation, and notes (Vol. 29), Yale University Press, 2008, 135).
Specific
The reference to “ascended” and “descended” is probably best seen in the context of “contemporary Jewish speculation concerning the ascent of Israel’s revealer-figures, Moses, Abraham, Isaiah, Enoch and other great saints”. (Francis J Moloney, SDB, The Gospel of John, Liturgical Press, 1998, 100.) John has Jesus declare that “no one has ascended into heaven”. This recalls a similar definitive statement in John 1:18: “No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.”
There is another element to this sentence that presents us with a particular challenge. It revolves around how we understand the Greek ei, me (εἰ, μή). Scholars are at variance on how this Greek expression is to be interpreted here.
The NRSV and NIV translate it as “except”, in which case Jesus seems to be saying that he has ascended to heaven and he hasdescended. The KJV and NKJV translate it as “but”, in which case Jesus could be understood as, firstly denying that any of those earlier chosen revealers of God’s ways have ascended to heaven and, secondly, Jesus has descended – sent by the Father – and therefore speaks with the Father’s authority.
If it is taken as the NRSV and NIV translate it, it could, for example, point the exegesis towards Gnosticism or an anachronism, reading back into the words of Jesus an event that happened after his death and resurrection.
If it is taken as the KJV and NKJV translate it, it could be seen to better preserve the originality of John’s Gospel.
A good body of scholars agree that the reference to – and denial of – ascending, refers to the other revealer-figures, and the reference to – and affirmation of – descending, refers exclusively to Jesus himself. One author writes: “This verse, connected to the preceding verse by kai (‘and’), provides the explanation for the fact that Jesus is able to speak authoritatively of ‘heavenly things’. It is often misunderstood, primarily because it can be translated more than one way. The NIV is misleading: ‘No-one has ever gone into heaven except (ei mē) the one who came from heaven—which sounds as if Jesus, the ‘one who came from heaven’, had previously ascended into heaven as an exception to the rule. This is then taken by many scholars to be a further indication that parts of this chapter are anachronistic. The Evangelist, it is claimed, is writing from the perspective of the church at the end of the first century, looking back on the ascension of Christ decades earlier (e.g. Bauer, p. 56; Brown, 1. 145; esp. Nicholson, pp. 91–98, and Borgen, Logos, pp. 133–148). But is it very likely that the Evangelist would create so clumsy an anachronism when he is frequently so careful to distinguish between events during Jesus’ ministry and understanding that took place only after the resurrection/exaltation? Even in the immediate context, he goes on to treat the resurrection of Jesus as future to the stance at which he has placed Jesus. Moreover this appeal to anachronism does not explain why the Evangelist has so tightly tied this verse to the preceding one.
“Resolution is found in the fact that ei mē, often translated ‘except’, can introduce an exception to the general idea that has been introduced, without providing an exception to what is explicitly stated in the immediately preceding clause. English usage in such cases often demands ‘but’, ‘but rather’ or ‘but only’ rather than ‘except’. Compare Revelation 21:27: ‘Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only (ei mē) those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.’ Clearly those written in the Lamb’s book of life are not thought to be impure, shameful or deceitful; the translation would be highly misleading in this context if ei mē were rendered by ‘except’ (cf. also Mt. 12:4; Lk. 4:27; Acts 27:22; probably Gal. 1:19). True, in all these instances the member in the ei mē clause proves to be the only one that does the action described in the first clause: in the example from Revelation 21:27, only those whose names are written in the book of life actually enter the holy city. Applied to John 3:13, that might be taken to mean that the only one who has ascended is the one who has descended. But the flow of the argument and the peculiar perfect anabebēken (‘has ascended’) conspire to focus the ‘exception’ rather differently. Jesus can speak of heavenly things (v. 12), and (kai) no-one [else] has ascended into heaven and remained there [so as to be able to speak authoritatively about heavenly things] but only the one who has come down from heaven [is equipped to do so] (cf. Lagrange, pp. 80–81; Westcott, 1. 53; Moloney, pp. 53–59).” (D A Carson, The Gospel according to John, W.B. Eerdmans, 1991, 199–200)
Spare a thought for the fundamentalists!
The title “Son of Man” seems to be one that Jesus used of himself. See Appendix 2.
Against the backdrop of the repeated use of this title in John’s Gospel, the words of Pilate to the people are ironic: “‘Here is the man!’” (19:5)
“The serpent in the wilderness” offers an intriguing symbol. Again, scholars are at variance as to the precise meaning both in the original usage – see Numbers 21:4-9 – and in John’s usage.
There are at least four possible themes at play here in the original usage:
- The wilderness, the place where the pilgrims are taken when freed from Egypt, is both a place of death and dying and a place of Covenant;
- The serpent in the tradition is a symbol of evil;
- The serpent’s bite becomes lethal in the context of sin, particularly the sin of complaint that the manna – which according to one tradition had any taste the eater desired – becomes boring and tasteless and this is more a statement about the loss of faith of the eaters than the reality of what is eaten;
- The sin of idolatry is the worst of sins; the people have stopped looking towards God and are caught up in their own earthbound self-regard; like the serpent they find God’s food – the manna – to be like the serpent’s food – dust (see Genesis 3:14); the people have committed the ultimate sin by aligning themselves with the serpent; they must therefore look at the image of the serpent, see it for what it is and through that experience recognize the Lord of the Covenant.
Ironically, the bronze serpent that was to be a healing symbol, a way of drawing the people back to YHWH, in time becomes a god in its own right: “Hezekiah removed the high places and broke the sacred pillars, cut down the wooden image and broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made; for until those days the children of Israel burned incense to it, and called it Nehushtan.” (2 Kings 18:4)
The major theme in John’s usage of the symbol is the parallel drawn by him between Moses and Jesus.
- John has thirteen explicit references in which he associates Jesus with Moses.
- In his Prologue he has announced: “The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” (John 1:17. See also 1:45; 3:14; 5:45 & 46; 6:32; 7:19, 22 (twice) & 23; 8:5; 9:28 & 29)
- Francis Moloney writes of the specific parallel between the symbol of the bronze serpent created by Moses and the death of Jesus: “What this association of ‘lifting up’ and ‘exaltation’ might mean is yet to be determined. After 1:5; 2:4, 18-22, and the Christian awareness that Jesus died on a cross the ‘lifting up’ is associated with the death of Jesus, but the link between death and glory will develop. As the narrative unfolds it will become the leitmotif of the passion narrative.” (Francis j Moloney, The Gospel of John, Liturgical Press, 1998 101)
- D A Carson writes: “Even Isaiah brings together the themes of being lifted up and being glorified, and this in the context of the suffering servant (Is. 52:13–53:12, esp. 52:13 LXX). If Jesus is the ‘one who came from heaven’ (v. 13), how shall he return? The Synoptists think of the crucifixion and the exaltation as temporally discrete steps; John makes it clear that Jesus’ return to the glory he had with the Father before the world began (17:5) is accomplished by being ‘lifted up’ on the cross. It is this exaltation that draws people to him (8:28; 12:32). If in v. 13 the Son of Man is the revealer, the one who came down from heaven, here he is the sufferer and the exalted one—but it transpires that it is precisely in the matrix of suffering and exaltation that God most clearly reveals himself in the person of his Son. The theological connection between resurrection and exaltation is not infrequent in the New Testament (e.g. Acts 2:32–33; Rom. 8:34; Eph. 1:20; 2:6; Col. 3:1; 1 Pet. 1:21). John goes farther, and theologically ties together the crucifixion, the resurrection and the exaltation.” (D A Carson, The Gospel according to John, W.B. Eerdmans, 1991, 201-202)
The statement – or better, proclamation – that “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes (pisteuo (πιστεύω)) in him may not perish but may have eternal life” could be taken as a summary of John’s Gospel. This is the Good News!
The focus is God’s love enfleshed in Jesus; that love becomes redemptive in and through the cross;
For our part, believing is the key; the Greek verb pisteuo is used more than fifty times in John’s Gospel; John never uses the noun, always the verb, to describe our faith-relationship with Jesus;
Our believing suggests a deep personal engagement with Jesus as God’s “Word”; we might say “to believe” is to enter an ongoing conversation, bearing in mind the etymological link between conversation and conversion.
APENDIX 1: A note on the origins of John’s Gospel (Francis J Moloney)
A fundamental question may be asked in conclusion. As in his 1966 edition, but with more detail, erudition, experience and lightness of touch, Brown insists that the Gospel of John is the product of “traditional Judaism” rejects any direct influence from Gnosticism, Mandean thought, the Hermetica,[1] or extrabiblical Hellenistic thought. Nevertheless, one traces here an important, however small, shift of position. I would like to force that issue further.
Brown’s carefully articulated argument reflects a middle-of-the-road position, taken by most scholars of his generation. Yet, as I indicated in my Introduction, and as Brown admits in the text, he has chosen to shift away from his original identification of “Palestinian Judaism” to the more broadly based “traditional Judaism” as his basic point of reference for the background to the Gospel of John. This not insignificant shift of position opens the door—ever so slightly—on another possibility that was not articulated in the text as we have it.
Let me explain further, and what follows is speculation on my part, perhaps the result of a vain hope that the distance between Brown’s understanding of the Gospel of John and my own is closer than might be first imagined. Brown’s work on the history of the Johannine community enabled him to develop the theory that the Gospel of John was not influenced by Gnostic thought, but that as the community fell into disunity, one direction some members of the Johannine community took was into Gnosticism. Thus, Gnosticism played no role in the formation of the Gospel, but was an important recipient of the Gospel.
In his analysis of the possible influence of Philonic-type Jewish-Hellenistic thinking, Brown concludes that Philo and the evangelist shared a common way of working out biblical motifs in a partially Jewish, partially Greek world where Hellenistic thought had taken root. This theme is developed further by means of Brown’s careful listing of the many parallels between the Wisdom tradition and the Johannine thought-world, imagery and terminology. The Wisdom tradition, as we have seen, reflects the presence of Jewish-Hellenistic thinking and writing in the pre-Christian era. But as he closes his reflections upon Wisdom, Brown returns to his earlier reflections on the various possible influences on the Gospel. He adds, in a note:
What John shows in common with these latter bodies of literature (Gnostic, Mandean or Hermetic) often represents a common but independently received heritage from the Jewish Wisdom Literature.
As with his earlier suggestions concerning the Gnostic reception of the Johannine tradition, the Gospel and the many other non-Jewish and non-biblical literatures and “cultures” contemporaneous with the emergence of the Gospel of John are regarded as recipients of common traditions.
Might I suggest that the person(s) responsible for the final form of the Gospel of John was well aware that this story of Jesus was very different from the Jewish traditions that formed it? The existence of a Philonic-like Jewish approach to the life and practices of Israel in the first Christian century is obvious, and Philo himself is evidence of it. But he would not have been alone. It happens that we have his written work, and we tend to think that he must have been something of a unique and lone voice. Such was surely not the case. Similarly, by Brown’s own admission (and it is commonplace among all scholars of early Christianity), a profound Hellenization of Judaism had been going on for some centuries before the Christian movement.
So much has been said and written about a pre-Christian Gnosticism. Did it, or did it not exist? This is to ask the wrong question in a discussion of the factors that may have influenced the formation of the Gospel of John as we now have it. Clearly the great Gnostic systems that we know from the second century owe a great deal to the Christian tradition, and especially to the Gospel of John. However, did these powerful intellectual movements, which almost took the young Christian church by storm, and aroused anger and voluminous writing from people like Irenaeus, Hippolytus and Epiphanius, come from nowhere? Did they suddenly appear on the scene in the second century as fully developed systems? As Giovanni Filoramo poses the question:
Related, if not prior to Christianity, it had arisen independently, based on oriental texts and ideas, a genuine religion in which the logos (word/reason) was the son of the mythos (myth) and Christianity one of several elements that came together to make a difficult puzzle.
It would be better, in the light of Filoramo’s comment and the evidence of the second century, to speak of a “pre-Gnostic Gnosticism.” If Brown is correct that the Gospel saw the light of day in its present form at Ephesus, the world into which the Gospel of John told its story of Jesus was marked by a maelstrom of religious thoughts and practices, however eclectic and primitive they may have been. It would have been impossible, to my mind, for the author(s) of the Gospel of John not to shape the Johannine story of Jesus so that it might address the confused and confusing religious world of one of the great cosmopolitan cities of Asia Minor.
The Gospel of John told the old story of Jesus in a radically different fashion, without betraying the roots of the original Christian tradition: the life, teaching, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. One of the reasons for these remarkable differences, might I suggest (and hope that Ray Brown is nodding approvingly), was an awareness of the new world into which Jesus’ story had to be announced.
Only of recent times have literary critics and people interested in the newer science of hermeneutics begun to speak about the worlds behind, within and in front of the text. However, in all ages, anyone who tells a story (the world in the text) is influenced by both the material he or she receives (the world behind the text) and the people for whom the story is being written (the world in front of the text).
Surely this was the case for the author(s) of the Gospel of John. If so, then the “pre-Gnostic Gnostic” and Hellenistic world of the first century (the world in front of the text), side by side with the formative elements from the story of Jesus and the traditional Judaism within which it was originally told (the world behind the text), also played a formative role in the development of the Gospel of John (the world in the text). This preparedness to shape a new story of Jesus to address a new world is one of the many reasons, in my opinion, for the perennial fascination of the Gospel of John. Into these worlds also steps the remarkable personae of Brown’s Beloved Disciple and evangelist if, indeed, they are to be separated. They have inscribed themselves into these inspired and inspiring pages. The Gospel of John builds bridges from one socio-cultural and religious world (traditional Judaism) into another (the Gnostic-Hellenistic world of Asia Minor), and in doing so serves as a paradigm for all who seek to tell and retell the story of Jesus. (Raymond E Brown, & Francis J Moloney, An Introduction to the Gospel of John, New York, NY: Doubleday, 2003, 322 – 325).
APPENDIX 2: “Son of Man” in John’s Gospel (Raymond E Brown)
Words and Motifs as Keys in the Gospel of John
Scholars have chosen various designations, portrayals, and titles as a key to Johannine Christology:
- Jesus as the divine Logos (Word) become flesh.
- The Father’s sending of Jesus into this world, especially with the mission of revealing the Father.
- Jesus as God’s only Son—a theme often combined with the preceding.
- Jesus as the descending/ascending Son of Man.
- The special use of “I am,” which may be the name that the Father has given to Jesus.
- A portrayal of Jesus heavily influenced by the OT picture of personified Wisdom, especially in the books written in the Hellenistic period (Sirach, Wisdom).
- Jesus as the prophet-like-Moses and/or the prophet of the end-time.
- Jesus and the Paraclete/Spirit functioning sequentially.
- A portrayal of Jesus influenced by Samaritan thought.
It is very difficult to rank these suggestions according to importance, especially if one is proposed as the key. Some may be more frequent than others; but they seem to be woven together by the evangelist into a larger picture. In a well-reasoned book, Loader describes a central structure of Johannine Christology that catches many of the motifs in a complementary manner:
The Father sends and authorises the Son, who knows the Father, comes from the Father, makes the Father known, brings light and life and truth, completes his Father’s work, returns to the Father, exalted, glorified, ascended, sends the disciples and sends the Spirit to enable greater understanding, to equip for mission, and to build up the community of faith.
A number of these motifs have been comprehensively covered in my earlier commentary. It may be useful to have special treatments of the Johannine use of Son of Man and Wisdom motifs, two issues that have been covered comprehensively since the publication of the Introduction to my 1966–70 Commentary.
Son of Man
This title of Jesus, although puzzling, is very important. O. Cullmann states, “It embraces the total work of Jesus as does almost no other idea.” By way of statistics, “[the] Son of Man” appears some eighty times in the Gospels, in all but two of which (Mark 2:10; John 12:34) as a self-designation by Jesus. Outside the Gospels the phrase occurs only four times. If the use of this title did not come from Jesus, why was it so massively retrojected, being placed on Jesus’ lips on a scale far outdistancing the retrojection of “the Messiah,” “the Son of God,” and “the Lord”? And if this title was first fashioned by the early church, why has it left almost no traces in non-Gospel NT literature, something not true of the other titles?
Yet there are curious features about the title: no person addresses Jesus by this title, and Jesus never explains its meaning. When the question comes up as to who Jesus is, “the Son of Man” is never suggested by others as an identification of him.
We do not know how it became a title. In the Synoptics there are three groups of Son of Man sayings: (1) those that refer to the earthly activity of the Son of Man (eating, dwelling, saving the lost); (2) those that refer to the suffering of the Son of Man; (3) those that refer to the future glory and parousia of the Son of Man in judgment. Some would attribute only the last to the historical Jesus.
The usual Gospel phrase ho huios tou anthrôpou (with two definite articles) is unknown in secular Greek and makes as little sense in Greek as “the son of the man” would make as a title in English conversation. As for its use in the Synoptic Gospels, most trace it terminologically to Semitic origins. The divine voice that speaks to Ezekiel addresses him over ninety times as “son of man” (= “O human being”), a term that highlights the contrast between the heavenly message and the mortal recipient. More pertinently, in the Aramaic of Dan 7:13 “one like a son of man” (contrasted to the beasts used as symbols of the pagan powers) enters the discussion—a human being who is a symbol of Israel and given dominion, glory, and kingdom (basileia). There is a long debate whether this passage may have prompted the development of a title, especially since it is one of the few sections of the OT that features the kingdom of God, another motif associated with Jesus.
Similarly debated is whether there could be influence from the Son of Man passages in the “Parables” (Similitudes) of I Enoch (37–71) where a preexistent figure who seems also to be called the Messiah is seated on a throne of glory. Although this section is missing from the copies of I Enoch found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, there is reason to think it was in existence in the early first century A.D.
Thus many think there was a Jewish concept of the Son of Man on which Jesus drew. Others deny that and appeal to a background in Gnosticism with its portrayal of a revealer who comes to enlighten the chosen ones or to what was purportedly a widespread notion in the ancient Near East of a preexistent primal man (sometimes royal) living in heaven who comes to earth at the end of time. This debate is interesting but inconclusive. Moreover, the answer does not necessarily cover John’s use of “the Son of Man.”
There are thirteen Son-of-Man passages in John, all but one in the Book of Signs.[2] There are parallels with the Synoptic usage, so that Higgins, Maddox, Schnackenburg, and Moloney, among others, posit that many of the Johannine and Synoptic sayings came from a similar type of tradition and developed in a similar manner. Yet there are different aspects that make John’s use of “the Son of Man” special. The Johannine sayings overlap the three Synoptic groups; they lack strong apocalyptic trappings, the element of realized eschatology dominates; and only in John does the Son of Man descend. That descent means that during his ministry he can offer life to those who believe in him (6:27, 53), a partial similarity to Synoptic group 1. Probably too 1:51, which has the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man, refers to the union of the Son of Man with heaven during his earthly existence.
Three of the Johannine Son-of-Man passages concern his being “lifted up” (3:14; 8:28; 12:34), an expression that refers both to the crucifixion and to the return to the Father’s presence in heaven—thus passages that touch on Synoptic groups 2 and 3. Similarly, John 3:13 states that no one has gone up into heaven except the one who came down from heaven, and 12:23; 13:31–32 speak of the glorification of the Son of Man in relation to his death and resurrection.
The power to pass judgment that has been given by God to Jesus “because he is Son of Man” (5:27; only time in the Gospels there is no definite article before either noun) is probably exercised both during Jesus’ life on earth and after his ascension at the end of time (see 5:28–29). Twice in John’s account (9:35–36; 12:34) people are not fazed by Jesus’ references to the Son of Man (as if they were familiar with the title) but want to know who he is. This would give the impression of an existing Jewish concept. Particularly important is John 9:35 where, in what may be an echo of the Johannine baptismal confession, the man born blind is asked, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”
That last passage raises the issue of the relation of the Son of Man designation to the frequently used “Son” (twenty times in John, eighteen of which are in the Book of Signs or first half of the Gospel) and “Son of God” (eight times, six of which are in the Book of Signs), for in other churches the latter functioned creedally (Rom 1:3–4). Moloney, Son of Man, would argue that “Son of God” is used by John to describe Jesus’ relationship with the Father before, during, and after his incarnation, while “Son of Man” is limited to the earthly career of Jesus (and perhaps, one might add, to his relation to human beings). Moloney would also contend that “Son of Man” corrected any attempt to picture Jesus, on the one hand, simply as a traditional Jewish Messiah, and, on the other hand, as a second God. Others do not see so sharp a distinction between Son of Man and Son of God in terms of divine origin. Significantly, in 1:51 Jesus uses “the Son of Man” as a deepening improvement of the titles given him by his disciples throughout the chapter (Messiah, the one described in the Mosaic Law and the prophets, Son of God, King of Israel), but none of those titles is repudiated.
A great deal of discussion has been centered on whether the preexistent and descending/ascending aspect of the Johannine Son of Man can be derived from the Jewish apocalyptic background—a question that needs to be answered even if one thinks (as I do) that John shares background with some of the Synoptic usage and that usage drew on Jewish apocalyptic. Higgins speaks of a Synoptic Son of Man overlapped by a non-Synoptic Son of Man. The appeal to an Oriental Gnostic myth reconstructed from later Mandaean and Manichaean texts (Bultmann), or to a primal Man prototype (Cullmann) or to a royal man myth (Borsch) has more following here than it has for the Synoptic imagery, but both the lateness of the sources and the difficulty of explaining how such diverse sources gave rise to a unified notion remain a formidable obstacle. Appeals to a Hellenistic heavenly man invoke Philo (commenting on Gen 1:26) and the Hermetic tract Poimandres. But the Philonic “man” is a Platonic ideal that does not really descend into this world, while Poimandres’ man does not antedate creation and is not a redeemer.
Those who opt for a biblical background for the Johannine descent motif frequently suggest two OT possibilities (either or both of which can be combined with a more general ambience for non-Johannine features of the Son of Man in Jewish apocalyptic). Borgen is a particularly strong proponent of a parallelism with the descent of Moses from the presence of God on Sinai with divine revelation embodied in the Law, and indeed from the very beginning John 1:17 tells us of the centrality of the Moses/Jesus comparison. That really does not cover the preexistence motif.
The other proposed OT background is the career of personified divine Wisdom. These points are shared by the Johannine Son of Man and Wisdom: preexistence with God, coming from heaven into this world, communication of revelation or divine knowledge, offer of spiritual food, producing division or self-judgment when some people accept and others refuse. Some think that the Son-of-Man and Wisdom motifs were joined in pre-Christian Judaism (F.-M. Braun, Moeller) or in Christian tradition prior to John (Schnackenburg, Maddox, Moloney); others think John made the union (Dion, Meeks), at times invoking an identification of the Word with Wisdom. As a caution, however, one should note with M. Scott that no Johannine writing mentions Wisdom (Sophia—perhaps because Jesus is male?) and that the exact vocabulary for descend/ascend is not applied in the OT to Wisdom (whence the complementary appeal to Moses and Sinai). Beyond its relationship to the Son-of-Man portrayal, however, Wisdom is so frequently invoked in discussions of Johannine theology that it deserves a special subsection. (Raymond E Brown, & Francis J Moloney, . An Introduction to the Gospel of John (pp. 251–259). New York: Doubleday, 2003, 251-259)
APPENDIX 3: The Cross reveals the nature of God and us (Rowan Williams)
“ ….. it is in the cross that we see the revelation of what it is that characterises God’s personal being, and so what is also possible for man: the cross reveals personality as ‘kenotic’. …. ‘Image and Likeness’ establishes personality in man (in the sense …. of free self-transcendence) as constituting the imago Dei: the renunciation of existing-for-oneself is man’s most authentically personal act and so also man’s most Godlike act. …. such an act can be recognised as ‘Godlike’, in the light of the Incarnation. Christ’s incarnate life is apprehended by the believer as the life of God in the flesh; but it is a life of rejection and agony, lived in the total self-renunciation of absolute obedience to the Father. This obedience leads us to see salvation as the common will and act of the whole Trinity; and the second person is perfectly manifested to us in a life utterly devoid of selfish, individual will: ‘This renunciation of his own will is not a choice, or an act, but is so to speak the very being of the persons of the Trinity who have only one will proper to their common nature’. This revelation of humility and self-renunciation in the heart of the Godhead is further confirmed by the ‘kenosis’ of the Spirit. His work is to witness to the Son while his own person remains hidden: he draws each unique human person in a unique and personal way to the contemplation of and participation in the Godhead imparted to humanity in the Incarnation, but conceals his own person in order to manifest and communicate only what is common to the whole Trinity. Thus the trinitarian dogma proposes a model of personal being which radically challenges the assumptions of the fallen human mind: thought itself must be turned upside down by grace if we are to grasp the mystery in any way. The dogma is a ‘cross for human ways of thought’ because it demands a belief that the abnegation of self and the absence of self-assertive, self-interested ‘individualism’ are the fundamental notes of personal existence at its source, in God. In its fallen and encapsulated condition, the individual human subject cannot accept this: only in the life of the Spirit, who transforms the whole of human being, is faith in the trinitarian dogma possible. This faith is not a matter of indifference, of taste or distaste, for the Christian: it is a mark of the transformation accomplished by the Spirit, it is inseparable from soteriology, indeed from anthropology as a whole. The ‘apophatc attitude’ is the primary expression of trinitarian faith, of the profound disturbance in thinking which is created by the manifestation of God as personally suffering death and the ‘abyss of hell’” (Rowan Williams, Wrestling with Angels: Conversations in Modern Theology, edited by Mike Higton, SCM Press, 2007, 14-15).
[1] The Hermetica are Egyptian-Greek wisdom texts from the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE, which are mostly presented as dialogues in which a teacher, generally identified as Hermes Trismegistus (“thrice-greatest Hermes”), enlightens a disciple. The texts form the basis of Hermeticism. They discuss the divine, the cosmos, mind, and nature. Some touch upon alchemy, astrology, and related concepts.
[2] Scholars sometimes divide John’s Gospel as follows: “Prologue” (1:1-18); “The Book of Signs” (1:19 – 12:50); “The Book of Glory” (13:1 – 20:31); “The Epilogue” (21:1-25) – note by Michael Whelan.
Paradox
In today’s Gospel – John 3:13-17 – we are reminded that life has many paradoxes. Some of them deeply troubling. They remind us that we are beggars before reality. Yes, over the centuries we have discovered a lot. No doubt we will continue to discover a lot in the coming centuries. Paradoxes will always be there to remind us that there is still more, infinitely more than we can imagine.
Paradoxes are statements of truth that appear to be self-contradictory. It is only on closer examination that we see the truth. Oscar Wilde was the master of paradox, saying things like, “There is only one thing worse than not having your expectations satisfied, that is having them satisfied.” Life comes to us in a series of paradoxes. For example, more of what is good is not necessarily good for you, the endless pursuit of pleasure will undermine your capacity for pleasure, taking drugs to produce wonderful feelings may produce terrible feelings. And in giving we receive, in embracing the constraints that life daily asks of us we become free, in dying to selfishness and hatred we live and love.
But the greatest paradox of all is found in the Cross of Jesus Christ. Calvary, the place of death becomes the place of life. The Cross, a symbol of death, becomes a symbol of life. The crucifixion, a terrible denigration, becomes exaltation. The dying is not an ending but a beginning.
Despite the prevalence of paradox in our days, it is probably fair to say that most of us are not very good at accepting paradox. Paradox mocks our expectation of predictability and therefore control. Paradox invites – even demands – surrender, acceptance, letting go. When we do surrender, accept, let go, we are surprised. We find that paradox is promise rather than threat. And so, St Paul writes to the Christians in Corinth: “For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart’” (1 Corinthians 1:18).
At baptism, we were anointed with the sign of the Cross. The celebrant called us by name and said: “the Christian community welcomes you with great joy. In its name I claim you for Christ our Saviour by the sign of the cross. I now trace the cross on your forehead and invite your parents and godparents to do the same.”
For the baptized, the Cross is power, strength and vision. The Cross is the triumph of love over hate, peace over violence, life over death. Baptism therefore is a profoundly moral event. It unites us with the Crucified One in his contest with evil. In choosing the Cross – and we must do that daily – we are choosing to stand against evil in any of its forms, gauche or sophisticated, approved or disapproved, popular or unpopular.