Read The Gospel of John and Christian Origins Online
Authors: John Ashton
Before turning to these, however, we may usefully consider three other passages that speak of the Spirit, the most remarkable of which (whose significance is generally lost in translation) comes in chapter 7, where the action takes place in the temple, on the feast of Tents or Tabernacles (a water feast):
On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and proclaimed, “If any one thirst, let him come to me, and let him who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, ‘Out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.’” Now he said this about the Spirit, which those who believed in him were to receive; for
as yet there was no Spirit
[οὔπω γὰρ ἦν πνεῦμα] because Jesus was not yet glorified (7:37-39).
Although we should retain the literal translation of the words οὔπω γὰρ ἦν πνεῦμα (“for as yet there was no Spirit”), they should be taken in conjunction with two later comments of the evangelist, the first concerning Jesus’ death, the second concerning one of the very last of his actions on earth, after his resurrection. John says first that in dying Jesus “gave up the ghost” (παρέδωκεν τὸ πνεῦμα; 19:30) and, second, that before taking his final leave of his disciples he breathed upon them (ἐνεφυσήσεν), and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit” (Λάβετε ἅγιον πνεῦμα; 20:22). In giving up the ghost he was at the same time
handing over
the Spirit (the literal meaning of the verb παραδιδόναι), and in breathing upon the disciples he was at the same time
infusing them
with the Spirit.
Taken together, these passages show that for this evangelist there was no role for the Spirit until after Jesus’ death and resurrection; and this conclusion is confirmed when we turn to the sayings concerning the Paraclete in the Farewell Discourse. There are five of these, two in chapter 14 (vv. 16-17, 26), one in chapter 15 (v. 26), and two in chapter 16 (vv. 7-11, 12-15). Four of these are relevant to our present purpose. (I omit 16:7-11 from consideration here.)
1. “And I will pray the Father, and he will give you another Paraclete, to be with you for ever—the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him; you know him, for he dwells with you, and will be in you [ἐν ὑμῖν ἔσται] (14:16-17). This other Paraclete (taking over from Jesus himself, who preceded him in his various functions)
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is thought of as the Spirit of
Truth
, with all that this implies; moreover, he will remain forever with the community, not just present
to
them but also, in some sense, present
in
them. Later on in the same chapter Jesus promises anyone who loves him and keeps his word that he and his Father “will come to him and make our home with him [καὶ μονὴν παρ’ αὐτῷ ποιησόμεθα]” (14:23). (The word μονή is the substantival equivalent of the verb μένειν, which in these passages we translate as “dwell” or “abide.”) The presence of Father and Son in the soul of the believer is made possible by, or rather is equivalent to, the presence of the Paraclete.
2. “But the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things [διδάξει πάντα], and bring to your remembrance [ὑπομνήσει] all that I have said to you” (14:26). Part of the Paraclete’s role will be to remind (ὑπομιμνήσκειν) the disciples of all that Jesus has told them up to this point. This is to be taken along with what is said concerning Jesus’ prophecy in the temple in chapter 2, that the disciples would remember it after he was raised from the dead. Only then, reminded by the Paraclete, would they fully understand; only then would they fully believe. Less clear is what is meant by saying that the Paraclete would teach them
everything
(πάντα). Not, surely, everything that there is to know, but rather everything that they needed to know in the one area that concerned them, summed up a little further on as “the truth.” And once again, not the truth about everything, but the truth about Jesus, who had just identified himself as
the
truth (14:6). Moreover, since the Paraclete would remain with them forever, this promise also holds good for those to whom the evangelist is addressing his Gospel, the Johannine community.
John 14 comes in the first edition of the Gospel. The fact that it contains such clear indications of the role of the Paraclete shows that by the time the evangelist had composed a first version of his work that could be regarded as complete he had a full grasp of the essential nature of the gospel form. And the fact that further reflections are found in the two subsequent chapters, which belong to the second edition, demonstrates the importance he attached to this aspect of his work.
3. “But when the Paraclete comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness concerning me [μαρτυρήσει περὶ ἐμοῦ]; and you also are witnesses [καὶ ὑμεῖς δὲ μαρτυρεῖτε], because you have been with me from the beginning” (15:26). Bultmann has an insightful comment on this passage:
The word μαρτυρήσει [
he will bear witness
] indicates that the Spirit is the power of proclamation in the community, and this is made fully clear by the juxtaposition of the disciples’ witness and that of the spirit; καὶ ὑμεῖς δὲ μαρτυρεῖτε [
and you also are witnesses
] (v. 27). For the witness of the disciples is not something secondary, running alongside the witness of the Spirit. . . . The community’s preaching is to be none other than witness to Jesus; for the word μαρτυρεῖτε is of course to be supplemented by the περὶ ἐμοῦ [
to me
] of the μαρτυρήσει. . . . Their witness is not a historical account of that which was, but—however much it is based on that which was—it is “repetition,” a “calling to mind” [14:26] in the light of their present relationship with him.
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At the end of chapter 21, rightly regarded by most scholars as an appendix to the Gospel, it is said of the evangelist that “he bears witness to these things,” and that “his testimony is true” (21:24). His Gospel contains nothing apart from his witness or testimony to Jesus (μαρτυρία) in the sense that this word has in the verse under discussion.
4. “I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit [πνεῦμα,
neuter
] of truth comes, he [ἐκεῖνος,
masculine
] will guide you into the whole truth [ἐν τῇ ἀληθείᾳ πάσῃ];
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for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will expound to you [ἀναγγελεῖ ὑμῖν] the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take from what is mine and expound it to you. All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and expound it to you” (16:12-15).
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Giving his last instructions to his disciples on the eve of his death, Jesus appears to be saying at this point that he has yet more to tell them. But how are we to understand this? There is now no time left for him to speak plainly in his own person of all that he has left to say. Even if he continued to speak, they could not take it in: so why continue? As the readers of the Gospel should know by now, the disciples
cannot
understand until Jesus had risen from the dead. He has already told them that it will be the work of the Paraclete to remind and instruct them. Now he puts it another way: he is to lead them into the truth.
Relevant here is the distinction made elsewhere between enigmatic and open discourse. In 7:26 “some of the people of Jerusalem” reflect admiringly that even though Jesus has been speaking quite openly (παρρησίᾳ), he has not been challenged; and asked later by the Jews to tell them plainly (παρρησίᾳ) if he is the Messiah, Jesus replies, “I
have
told you, and you do not believe” (10:24). Later still, in response to questions about his teaching addressed to him by the high priest at his trial, he declares, “I have spoken openly [παρρησίᾳ] to the world: I have always taught in the synagogues and in the temple, where all Jews come together; I have said nothing in secret [ἐν κρυπτῷ]” (18:20). Yet toward the end of the Farewell Discourse he admits to his disciples that up to that point he had been speaking to them enigmatically (ἐν παροιμίαις), and he continues: “the hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you enigmatically [ἐν παροιμίαις] but tell you plainly [παρρησίᾳ] of the Father” (16:25). Yet—to add to the reader’s confusion—when he has concluded this discourse, the disciples thank him for at last speaking plainly (παρρησίᾳ) and no longer enigmatically (παροιμίαν οὐδεμίαν λέγεις), adding, “now we know that you know all things and do not need to be asked” (16:29).
What are we to make of these apparent contradictions? The answer is that in spite of an occasional wobble the evangelist makes an absolute principle of his distinction between all that transpired in Jesus’ lifetime—both words and actions—and the quite different situation after his death and resurrection.
Before
the resurrection the disciples hear and see but cannot understand.
After
the resurrection they can no longer see and no longer hear (because Jesus is no longer with them), but with the assistance of the Paraclete, they can now (at last) understand. Wrede is quite right to say that “so far as the evangelist is concerned, Jesus would speak ἐν παροίμιαις even if nothing of the sort existed.”
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Wrede also saw very clearly that “the prophecy of teaching through the Spirit of Truth and all the related sayings refer to the teaching of the Gospel itself”;
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and he did not shrink from pointing out the implications:
I am thereby ascribing to the Gospel of John a manifest contradiction. Jesus refers to the future revelation and to the importing of information on a higher level than the disciples have meanwhile experienced, and yet during his life he said everything that was to be said. And this contradiction could not in any circumstances be evaded by the evangelist if he was going to postpone the unveiling of the truth to the disciples till the time of the glorification.
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Rudolf Bultmann comments approvingly on these remarks, agreeing that the contradiction is intentional on the part of the evangelist and underlining the point that the statements “Jesus has already said everything that he is still concealing” and “he has as yet said nothing in such a way that it could be understood” belong together.
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But in ascribing to the disciples a failure to understand Jesus’ words at the time they were uttered, the evangelist was not contradicting himself; rather, he was accepting that Jesus’ resurrection enabled and involved a new understanding. Also perhaps, as we shall see later, he was deliberately adopting the apocalyptic convention of two stages of revelation.
The idea of being guided or led into the truth, I suggest, is borrowed from the farewell discourse of Moses in the book of Deuteronomy. On the eve of his own death, Moses told the Israelites that his successor, Joshua, would lead them into the promised land, thus investing Joshua with his own authority. So too Jesus here tells his disciples that
his
successor, the Paraclete, the Spirit of Truth, will “lead them into all truth.” Moses, knowing that he is about to die, entrusts to Joshua the task of leading his people into the promised land; similarly Jesus promises to send the Paraclete to lead his disciples into the truth—the full revelation of all that he has told them. The Paraclete is the successor of Jesus as Joshua was the successor of Moses.
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I have been arguing in this chapter that John the evangelist, fully aware of the contradiction intrinsic to and inseparable from the gospel genre, has exploited it for his own purposes so as to underline the essential difference between the reception of Jesus’ words and actions during his lifetime and the enhanced understanding of these words and actions that was available to him and his community. Inherent in the full acceptance of all that the gospel genre implies is the awareness that all the works and words of Jesus are operative in the evangelist’s own present: he includes himself and his community as among the people Jesus was talking of when he uttered the words, “we must work the works of him who sent me, while it is still day” (9:4). He knows that the risen Jesus is an abiding presence and the source of life for himself and his community. He knows that the new understanding is a revelation from above, but that the
content
of this new revelation is nothing more (and nothing less) than the story he has just told. I reserve until the last chapter of this book any comment on the full significance of this perception. Meanwhile it is of some importance to recognize that John was not just “writing theology in a book that was to be a possession for ever,” as Barrett has maintained,
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but a book with immediate relevance to his own situation and that of his readers about an individual Jew called Jesus of Nazareth who had lived a half-century earlier.