In chapter i is related the calling of the prophet, in order to prove to his suspicious countrymen that he was the am- bassador of God. Not he himself had assumed the office of prophet, but Jahweh had conferred it upon him notwithstanding his reluctance. Chapters ii-vi contain rhetorical and weighty complaints and threats of judgment on account of the nation's idolatry and foreign policy.
The very first speech in ii-iii may be said to present the scheme of the Jeremianic discourse. Here also appears at once the conception of Osee which is typical as well of Jeremias: Israel, the bride of the Lord, has degraded herself into becoming the paramour of strange nations. The "words of the covenant" in the Thorah recently found under Josias contain threatenings of judgment; the enmity of the citizens of.
The same stern symbolism is exjiressod later by the earthen bottle which is broken on the rocks before the Earthen Gate xix, Prayers at the time of a VIII. The troubles of the times demand from the prophet an unmarried and joyless life xvi-xvii. The Creator can treat those he has created with the same supreme authority that the potter has over clay and earthen vessels.
Jeremias is ill-treated xviii-xx.
A con- demnation of the political and eccle. The vision of the two baskets of figs is narrated in chapter xxiv. John's account of the Baptist is different from that of the synoptic gospels. In this gospel, John is not called "the Baptist. In John's gospel, Jesus and his disciples go to Judea early in Jesus' ministry before John the Baptist was imprisoned and executed by Herod. He leads a ministry of baptism larger than John's own. The Jesus Seminar rated this account as black, containing no historically accurate information.
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Although not commonly understood as Gnostic , many scholars, including Bultmann, have forcefully argued that the Gospel of John has elements in common with Gnosticism. Brown have argued that the pre-existing Logos theme arises from the more ancient Jewish writings in the eighth chapter of the Book of Proverbs , and was fully developed as a theme in Hellenistic Judaism by Philo Judaeus. Comparisons to Gnosticism are based not in what the author says, but in the language he uses to say it, notably, use of the concepts of Logos and Light. Brown , have argued that the ancient Jewish Qumran community also used the concept of Light versus Darkness.
The arguments of Bultmann and his school were seriously compromised by the midth-century discoveries of the Nag Hammadi library of genuine Gnostic writings which are dissimilar to the Gospel of John as well as the Qumran library of Jewish writings which are often similar to the Gospel of John. Gnostics read John but interpreted it differently from the way non-Gnostics did.
Raymond Brown contends that "The Johannine picture of a savior who came from an alien world above, who said that neither he nor those who accepted him were of this world, [62] and who promised to return to take them to a heavenly dwelling [63] could be fitted into the gnostic world picture even if God's love for the world in 3: The Gospel of John is significantly different from the synoptic gospels , with major variations in material, theological emphasis, chronology, and literary style.
John lacks scenes from the Synoptics such as Jesus' baptism, [67] the calling of the Twelve, exorcisms, parables, the Transfiguration, and the Last Supper. Conversely, it includes scenes not found in the Synoptics, including Jesus turning water into wine at the wedding at Cana, the resurrection of Lazarus, Jesus washing the feet of his disciples, and multiple visits to Jerusalem. In the fourth gospel, Jesus' mother Mary , while frequently mentioned, is never identified by name. For John, Jesus' town of origin is irrelevant, for he comes from beyond this world, from God the Father.
While John makes no direct mention of Jesus' baptism, [67] [66] he does quote John the Baptist 's description of the descent of the Holy Spirit as a dove , as happens at Jesus' baptism in the Synoptics. Major synoptic speeches of Jesus are absent, including the Sermon on the Mount and the Olivet Discourse , [71] and the exorcisms of demons are never mentioned as in the Synoptics. Thomas is given a personality beyond a mere name, described as " Doubting Thomas ".
Jesus is identified with the Word " Logos " , and the Word is identified with theos "god" in Greek ; [74] no such identification is made in the Synoptics. In the Synoptics, the chief theme is the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Heaven the latter specifically in Matthew , while John's theme is Jesus as the source of eternal life and the Kingdom is only mentioned twice. In the Synoptics, the ministry of Jesus takes a single year, but in John it takes three, as evidenced by references to three Passovers.
Events are not all in the same order: In the Synoptics, quotations from Jesus are usually in the form of short, pithy sayings; in John, longer quotations are often given. The vocabulary is also different, and filled with theological import: Other scholars consider stories like the childbearing woman According to the Synoptics, the arrest of Jesus was a reaction to the cleansing of the temple, while according to John it was triggered by the raising of Lazarus.
Some, such as Nicodemus , even go so far as to be at least partially sympathetic to Jesus.
This is believed to be a more accurate historical depiction of the Pharisees, who made debate one of the tenets of their system of belief. The teachings of Jesus found in the synoptic gospels are very different from those recorded in John, and since the 19th century scholars have almost unanimously accepted that these Johannine discourses are less likely than the synoptic parables to be historical, and were likely written for theological purposes. The gospel has been depicted in live narrations and dramatized in productions, skits , plays , and Passion Plays , as well as in film.
Parts of the gospel have been set to music. One such setting is Steve Warner 's power anthem "Come and See", written for the 20th anniversary of the Alliance for Catholic Education and including lyrical fragments taken from the Book of Signs. Additionally, some composers have made settings of the Passion as portrayed in the gospel, most notably the one composed by Johann Sebastian Bach , although some verses are borrowed from Matthew.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This article is about the book in the New Testament.
Saint Augustine
For the film, see The Gospel of John film. Not to be confused with First Epistle of John. Apostle Beloved disciple Evangelist Patmos Presbyter. Apocryphon Acts Signs Gospel. Authorship of the Johannine works. Prologue to John , Book of Signs , and John Historicity of the Bible. Barrett quotes on that sense Robinson, who in asserted "the gospel is composed in Judea and under the pressure of controversy with "the jews" [ sic ] of that area.
But in its present form it is an appeal to those outside the Church, to win to the faith that Greek speaking Diaspora Judaism to which the author now finds himself belonging". He also notes that the sole exception occurs in the prologue, serving a narrative purpose, whereas the later aphorisms serve a "paraenetic function". It holds that the eschatological passages in the New Testament do not refer to future events, but instead to the ministry of Jesus and his lasting legacy. The Gospel and Epistles of John: The Epistles of John. Introduction to the New Testament.
Howard Marshall and J. Robinson in seeing the evidence as pointing to John the son of Zebedee as the author of this Gospel. Many recent writers have shown that there is good reason for regarding this or that story in John as authentic. It is difficult to The fact is John is concerned with historical information. John apparently records this kind of information because he believes it to be accurate.
He has some reliable information and has recorded it carefully. The evidence is that where he can be tested John proves to be remarkably accurate. John knew the other gospels and The synoptic narrative becomes more intelligible if we follow John.
He does not yield to any temptation to restate Christianity. It is the story of events that happened in history. John does not divorce the story from its Palestinian context. It follows that it is important for the evangelist that what he narrates happened. MacMillan and Co, John gives us the more perfect portrait". John" , p 9. One reason he accepts John's authorship is because "the alternative solutions seem far too complicated to be possible in a world where living men met and talked". But how is it that God moves the will? In other words, what does God do to the will that makes the assent of faith possible?
None of the proposed answers to this question are uncontroversial, but what follows appears to be faithful to the view Aquinas favored for some competing interpretations of Aquinas' account, see Jenkins, ; Ross, ; Penelhum, ; and Stump, and Thus we might think of the inward cause of faith to be a kind of infused affection or, better yet, moral inclination whereby the will is directed to God Ibid.
As a result of this moral posturing, a person will be able to view Christian teaching more favorably than she would were it not for the infusion of charity. John Jenkins endorses a similar account. He suggests that pride, excessive passion, and other vicious habits generate within us certain prejudices that prevent us from responding positively to sacred teaching Jenkins, In other words, faith formed by charity transforms the will by allaying the strength of those appetitive obstacles that forestall love of God.
On this view of faith, the person who subordinates herself to God does so not as a result of divine coercion but by virtue of an infused disposition whereby she loves God. For grace curtails pride and enables us to grasp and fairly assess what the Christian faith proposes for belief Jenkins, In doing so, it permits us to freely endorse those things that we in our sinful state would never be able—or want —to understand and embrace. Indeed, the arguments offered in support of Christian claims often provide us with the motivation we sometimes need in order to embrace them. But does the use of reasons or argument compromise the merit of faith?
Aquinas expresses the objection this way: He also quotes St. In short, human investigation into sacred doctrine threatens to render faith superfluous. For if one were to offer a good argument for the truth of what God reveals, then there would be no need for us to exercise faith in regard to that truth. What sort of reasoning or argumentation does Aquinas have in mind? He makes a distinction between demonstrative reasoning and persuasive reasoning. Were a person to grasp the truth of sacred doctrine by means of this sort of reasoning, belief would be necessitated and the merit of faith destroyed Ibid.
Persuasive reasoning, on the other hand, does no such thing. In other words, the arguments in which persuasive reasoning consists may provide reasons for accepting certain doctrines, but they cannot compel acceptance of those doctrines. One still needs the grace of faith in order to embrace them. A closer look at some central Christian doctrines is now in order. And although there are many doctrines that constitute sacred teaching, at least two are foundational to Christianity and subject to thorough analysis by Aquinas.
These include the Incarnation and the Trinity. Aquinas takes both of these doctrines to be essential to Christian teaching and necessary to believe in order to receive salvation see ST IIaIIae 2. For this reason it will be beneficial to explore what these doctrines assert. The doctrine of the Incarnation teaches that God literally and in history became human in the person of Jesus Christ. The doctrine of the Incarnation further teaches that Christ is the complete and perfect union of two natures, human and divine.
The idea here is not that Jesus is some strange hybrid, a chimera of human and divine parts. The idea rather is that in Christ there is a merger of two natures into one hypostasis —a subsisting individual composed of two discrete but complete essences ST III 2. Aquinas' efforts to explicate and defend this doctrine are ingenious but may prove frustrating without a more advanced understanding of the metaphysical framework he employs see Stump for a treatment of this subject. Rather than pursue the complexities of that framework, we will instead address a different matter to which the Incarnation is intricately connected.
According to Christian teaching, human beings are estranged from God. So understood, sin refers not to a specific immoral act but a spiritual wounding that diminishes the good of human nature ST IaIIae Further, Christian doctrine states that we become progressively more corrupt as we yield to sinful tendencies over time. Sinful choices produce corresponding habits, or vices, that reinforce hostility towards God and put beatitude further beyond our reach.
No amount of human effort can remedy this problem. The damage wrought by sin prevents us from meriting divine favor or even wanting the sort of goods that which makes union with God possible. The Incarnation makes reconciliation with God possible. To understand this claim, we must consider another doctrine to which the Incarnation is inextricably tied, namely, the doctrine of the Atonement. According to the doctrine of Atonement, God reconciles himself to human beings through Christ, whose suffering and death compensates for our transgressions ST III Yet this satisfaction does not consist in making reparations for past transgressions.
Rather it consists in God healing our wounded natures and making union with him possible. From this perspective, satisfaction is more restorative than retributive. As Eleonore Stump notes: A partial list is as follows: This last benefit requires explanation. Only a supernatural transformation of our recalcitrant wills can heal our corrupt nature and make us people who steadily trust, hope in, and love God as the source of our beatitude.
This brief description of grace might suggest that it is an infused virtue much like faith, hope, and charity. According to Aquinas, however, grace is not a virtue. This account helps explain why grace is said to justify sinners. Justification consists not only in the remittance of sins, but in a transmutation whereby our wills are supernaturally directed away from morally deficient ends and towards God. In this way God, by means of his grace, heals our fallen nature, pardons sin, and makes us worthy of eternal life. Now, remission of sin and moral renovation cannot occur apart from the work God himself accomplishes through Christ.
Yet such favor was not limited to Christ. But again, the aim of satisfaction is not to appease God through acts of restitution but to renovate our wills and make possible a right relationship with him Stump, Thus we ought not to look at Christ simply as an instrument by which our sins are wiped clean, but as one whose sacrificial efforts produce in us a genuine love for God and make possible the very union we desire ST III The preceding survey of the Incarnation and the Atonement will undoubtedly raise further questions that we cannot possibly address here.
For a careful treatment of this issue, see Stump: Instead, this brief survey attempts only a provisional account of how the Incarnation makes atonement for sin and reconciliation with God possible. This section will focus on the doctrine of the Trinity with all the typical caveats implied, of course. Aquinas' definition of the Trinity is in full accord with the orthodox account of what Christians traditionally believe about God.
According to that account, God is one. That is, his essence is one of supreme unity and simplicity. Yet the doctrine also states that there are three distinct persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. By distinct, Aquinas means that the persons of the Trinity are real individuals and not, say, the same individual understood under different descriptions. Moreover, each of the three persons is identical to the divine essence.
That is, each person of the Trinity is equally to God. The doctrine is admittedly confounding. But if it is true , then it should be internally coherent. In fact, Aquinas insists that, although we cannot prove the doctrine through our own demonstrative efforts, we can nevertheless show that this and other doctrines known through the light of faith are not contradictory de Trinitate , 1.
Aquinas' exposition of the Trinity endeavors to avoid two notable heresies: It teaches that Christ was created by God at a point in time and therefore not co-eternal with him. In short, God and Christ are distinct substances. The other heresy, Sabellianism, attempts to preserve divine unity by denying any real distinction in God.
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Aquinas' account attempts to avoid these heresies by affirming that the persons of the Trinity are distinct without denying the complete unity of the divine essence. How does Aquinas go about defending the traditional doctrine? The challenge, of course, is to show that the claim. In an effort to reconcile 1 and 2 , Aquinas argues that there are relations in God. For example, we find in God the relational notion of paternity which implies fatherhood and filiation which implies sonship ST Ia Paternity and filiation imply different things.
Thus if there is paternity and filiation in God, then there must be a real distinction of persons that the divine essence comprises ST Ia The notion of distinction , however, does not contravene the doctrine of simplicity because according to Aquinas we can have a distinction of persons while maintaining divine unity. This last claim is obviously the troubling one. How can we have real distinction within a being that is perfectly one? The answer to this question requires we look a bit more closely at what Aquinas means by relation. The idea of relation goes back at least as far as Aristotle for a good survey of medieval analyses of relations, see Brower, For Aristotle and his commentators, the term relation refers to a property that allies the thing that has it with something else.
Thus he speaks of a relation as that which makes something of , than , or to some other thing Aristotle, Categories , Book 7, 6b1. On the other hand, the notion of relation need not denote a property that allies different substances. It can also refer to distinctions that are internal to a substance. This second construal is the way Aquinas understands the notion of relation as it applies to God.
For there is within God a relation of persons, each of which enjoys a characteristic the others do not have. As we noted before, God the Father has the characteristic of paternity, God the Son has the characteristic of filiation, and so on. These characteristics are unique to each person, thus creating a kind of opposition that connotes real distinction ST Ia Care is required before proceeding here. Each of the aforementioned relations not only inhere in the divine essence, they are identical to it in the sense that each member of the Trinity is identical to God ST Ia From this abbreviated account we see that relation as it exists in God is not, as it is for creatures, an accidental property.
For the relation, being identical to God, does not add to or modify the divine substance in any way. This woefully truncated account of Aquinas' position presents a more detailed articulation of the very claim he needs to explain. One can still ask: Aquinas is aware of the worry.
Pentateuch
Aquinas recognizes that most people will find it difficult to imagine how something can have within itself multiple relations and at the same time be an unqualified unity. In order to show how one might have a plurality while preserving unity, consider the following analogy. Although the authors do not have Aquinas' account of divine relations in mind when using this analogy, we may cautiously avail ourselves of their insights.
If we can think of the lump of bronze and the configuration by which the bronze is a statue as a relation of two things, then we can see that relation does not concern anything that is not identical to the object the bronze statue. Such an account is similar to the one Aquinas has in mind when attempting reconcile 1 and 2. For although each person of the Trinity is distinct from each other, each person is not distinct from God ST Ia Some readers might object to the use of such analogies.
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In the present case, the relations that inhere in God are persons , not formally discrete features of an artifact. Moreover, the analogy does not adequately capture the precise nature of the relations as they exist in God. For Aquinas, the divine relations are relations of procession. Aquinas is careful not to suggest that the form of procession mentioned here does not consist in the production of separate beings. Jesus does not, as Arius taught, proceed from God as a created being. Nor does the Holy Spirit proceed from Father and Son as a creature of both.
In order to make sense of this idea, Aquinas employs the analogy of understanding, which consists in an interior process, namely, the conceptualization of an object understood and signified by speech Ibid.