The Beloved Discipe IIIA

The Vernard Eller Collection
STUDY ONE: The Beloved Disciple’s Name and Story

Our detailed analysis of the four Gospels has rather clearly exposed a difference–a tension if not an actual “conflict”–between the Markan-based tradition of a Peter-centered Galilean Twelve on the one hand, and the Fourth Gospel tradition of a Jerusalem–based Beloved Disciple on the other.

It must be said that the tension is all one-sided in that the Synoptics don’t even recognize the existence of the other tradition. And that would seem to be the very heart of the problem for the Fourth Gospel. It gives no evidence of wanting to refute or deny the historical actuality of the Galilean Twelve but simply shows a desire to win recognition for its own tradition alongside that one. The basic argument seems to be that its tradition, compared with that of the Synoptics, has credentials that are equally as good, just as strong a connection to the historical Jesus, and just as much right to be considered dominical. There does not have to be any fight for superiority but simply a recognition of equality–which, finally, seems to be granted by the acceptance of both the Synoptics and the Fourth Gospel as part of the canon.

The preceding chart shows that there are radical differences of form and character between the Synoptics and the Fourth Gospel that raise knotty problems concerning the history of the man Jesus. Yet, at the time the Fourth Gospel was written, the central issue probably was not the historical one but the theological one of how Jesus was to be described, his person and work explained. And here the Synoptics and the Fourth Gospel betray very different theological worldviews.

A. The Historical Eschatology of the Synoptics

The frame of reference consistently assumed by the Synoptics is what we shall call historical eschatology. With that term we have in mind the assumption that “salvation,” “the purpose of God,” “the work of Christ,” “the meaning of life”–all aspects of the faith–are meant to be understood in terms of God’s directing human history toward the outcome he has in mind for it (call it “the new creation,” “the kingdom of God,” “the messianic age,” “the day of the Lord,” or what you will).

Consider, then, that this eschatological orientation inevitably makes theology not a matter of intellectual concept and abstract thought but a matter of historical narrative–dealing, thus, with the concrete particulars of social, public history. The goal of such theology is not developing systematic, rational theory but rather getting the story rightly told and interpreted. Accordingly, this tradition is best served not so much by profound “thinkers” as by reliable “witnesses.”

In background, the historical eschatology of the Synoptics undoubtedly took its rise from the mainline Old Testament development–notably, the histories (beginning perhaps with the promise to Abraham that “By you all the families of the shall [finally] bless themselves”), the greater number of Psalms, and the whole of the prophetic tradition. It would seem that modern scholarship has demonstrated conclusively that Jesus of Nazareth understood himself and his career primarily in terms of historical eschatology. The apostolic church then carried the idea forward directly from Jesus–to where Paul picked it up and developed it. The Gospel of Mark in particular, but the other Synoptic traditions as well, proceeded make it the Gospel thematic. The Fourth Gospel and the three Epistles of John constitute perhaps the only New Testament literature betraying any different frame of reference. Historical eschatology safely can be called “the mainline tradition of Scripture.”

And not only is it the case that the earliest Christian understanding was eschatological, but contemporary scholarship is now in almost full agreement as to what specific events (with what interpretations) made up the eschatological sequence of that earliest understanding. The chart represents my own version of what scholars now find the New Testament to be saying. (Of course, many of the components of this series do appear in the Fourth Gospel. Yet the point is here that here the interpretations are different. In the Fourth Gospel, no individual component is itself “forward looking,” is seen as part of an ongoing historical sequence, or, above all, is seen to be explicitly pointed toward the final outcome described in part six of the chart.)

B. The Divine Communication of the Fourth Gospel

communicate his divine beatitude (the Beloved Disciple regularly calls it ‘eternal life’) to individuals in the sphere of the earthly, finite, and sinful?” Out of all the contrasts that could be developed between these worldviews, we will look at just two.

1. Because it is world-historical in orientation, the eschatological tradition must also understand salvation in terms of social community. Of course, the individual does find personal salvation–but finds it precisely through becoming enlisted in the larger process of God’s saving his creation. On the other hand, because divine communication is oriented primarily toward a believer’s finding “eternal life,” it inevitably sees salvation in the more individualistic terms of a person’s coming to faith in Jesus.
2. Because it wants and needs only witnesses who can get the narrative of God’s story rightly told and interpreted, the theology of historical eschatology is essentially simple and available to anyone without particular intellectual qualification. A fisherman like Peter will make just as good an apostle as a rabbinical egghead like Paul. Quite different is the language of divine communication in the Fourth Gospel, which speaks much more to readers who can handle matters of intellectual comprehension, creative insight, abstract conceptualizing, and philosophic theory-building. It may well be true that the Fourth Gospel is written in the plainest and simplest Greek of them all–and that (on one level) it has a message available to the most common of readers. Yet it is also true that this Gospel has other levels of meaning much more subtle and sophisticated than anything found in the Synoptics. Throughout Christian history there has been a notable tendency for intellectuals to gravitate toward the Fourth Gospel as their favorite.

I have no interest in pitting these two modes of apprehension against each other, puffing one up and putting the other down. My only concern here is to show that these two New Testament traditions appeal to two different sets of mind. Yet what this suggests is that the Fourth Gospel comes out of a ground different from that of biblical eschatology. Its predecessors seem rather to have been the Old Testament “wisdom tradition,” the more speculative and theorizing wing of rabbinical Judaism, and apparently even influences from Hellenistic philosophy. Of course, this tradition does stand as reputable and well-grounded–yet it also has to be counted as minor and heterodox in comparison with the dominance of biblical eschatology.

Now if the Fourth Gospel was written out of a sense that it was wrong for the church to ignore and dismiss that intellectualist tradition by giving attention solely to the eschatological Synoptic one, then it has been just as wrong for the later church to reverse that evaluation. Up until quite recent times, biblical scholarship has shown its own strongly intellectualistic bias by favoring the Fourth Gospel. One way it has done so is by arguing that the two Gospel types are to be read in sequence, marking a progress in Christian thought. The intellectuality of the Fourth Gospel marks a theological sophistication that overcomes and supersedes the primitivism of historical eschatology; the Beloved Disciple’s theology of religious experience (if that is what it is) gives us a way of escaping the unscientific crudity of supernaturalism and public miracle.

To my mind, one of the most damaging tendencies of Christian theology has been the inclination to assume that the more subtle, sophisticated, and intellectualized an explanation is, the truer it is. But of course, this doesn’t begin to follow–particularly regarding God’s truth, which we must assume he has revealed for the benefit of all. Yet I would guess the same bias is at work when we explain that the Fourth Gospel is the spiritual one–without even pausing to say what we mean by “spiritual.” What can we mean except “having less to do with actual historical reality and more to do with ideas, abstractions, and generalizations”? And these we automatically take as being superior to nuts-and-bolts historical actuality.

Another way in which this intellectualist bias shows up is in an idea that dates at least as far back as John Calvin–namely, that the Fourth Gospel is our key to understanding the Synoptics. On the contrary, it strikes me that if one thing is clear it is this: using the Fourth Gospel as the key will guarantee a misunderstanding of the Synoptics. These two kinds of Gospel represent differerent mind-sets and independent voices. Each has to be understood on its own terms. Any attempt to merge them, try to make them speak with a common voice, or to use one unlock the other cannot work except to the detriment of both. So I’m with the Beloved Disciple himself in not claiming that his tradition stands superior to that of the Galilean Twelve or that his word should displace theirs; I, like him, am just complaining that theirs should not be taken as God’s only word. Even though the Fourth Gospel is a minor voice, it deserves a hearing, too.

C. The Story of Jesus,

Covenant Lord of the Coming Kingdom

1.	Earthly Ministry. Jesus’ ministry has four principal components:
	a.	proclamation of the kingdom’s coming,
	b.	demonstration of its powers
	c.	anticipation of its future reality, and
	d.	exhortation to kingdom living.
2.	Passion & Death. In Jesus’ passion and death are effected.
	a.	the cutting (initializing) of the New Covenant in Jesus’ blood,
	b.	the atonement accomplishing eschatological forgiveness of sin,
	c.	God’s final victory over the power
3.	Resurrection. Jesus’ resurrection into the new life of the kingdom brings in its train both:
	a.	the baptismal resurrection of believers and
	b.	the general resurrection at the end of the age.
4.	the general resurrection at the end of the age. Exaltation. Jesus is enthroned as living Lord-the one made responsible for the remainder of the sequence-established at the right hand of power (graphically represented in his ascension).
5.	The Living Lord in His Body (as Holy Spirit). Jesus’ followers receive Pentecostal empowerment for
	a.	the evangelistic mission of eschatological “harvest” and for
	b.	newness of life-as individuals, but especially as communities of the end time.
6.	The Coming of Jesus and/or the Kingdom. Then comes “the end, when he [Jesus] hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed every rule and every authority and power … so that God may be all in all” (1 Cor. 15:20-28).