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55 4 Monotheism and the Gospel of John Many readers familiar with recent debates about the development of Christology may find no particular difficulty in accepting the arguments presented in the previous chapter regarding Paul’s Christology . Paul, writing in the earliest decades after Easter, was part of the generation that made the first steps in the direction of later Christian thought about Jesus and God, and it is to be expected that his views will not fully express the later Christian understanding of Jesus. In the case of the Gospel of John, however, most readers will assume, or perhaps even be firmly convinced by various pieces of evidence, that we are dealing with a portrait of Jesus that goes beyond the bounds of Jewish monotheism. The Johannine Jesus is accused of blasphemy for “making himself God” even though he is “a mere human being” (John 10:33). Not surprisingly, many scholars take this to be evidence of Christianity ’s departure from one of the most cherished beliefs of Judaism. Since I have addressed several aspects of this topic elsewhere, I will avoid going over the same ground again.1 In this chapter, I shall focus on studying John’s Gospel in comparison with the writings of some of his Jewish contemporaries to evaluate to what extent John’s view of Jesus would have been acceptable within the context of first-century Jewish monotheism .2 We will find that the evidence points toward a conclusion that may surprise some readers. In terms of Jewish monotheism as it existed in the first century, the evidence suggests that John was completely, undeniably , and without reservations a monotheist.3 McGrath_FINAL.indb 55 McGrath_FINAL.indb 55 11/14/2008 12:08:28 PM 11/14/2008 12:08:28 PM 56 chapter four The Prologue (1:1–18) The best place to begin is usually at the beginning, and so we may look first of all at the prologue, the hymnlike section found in John 1:1–18. The opening line, “In the beginning was the Word (Logos), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” is obviously of crucial importance for determining the extent to which this Gospel’s portrayal of Jesus may rightly be said to be monotheistic. How do such assertions as those made in the prologue compare to what we find in other Jewish sources? In this case, the relevant material is likely to be much more familiar to many readers than some of the other examples mentioned in this book, since there is scarcely any treatment of the Gospel of John that fails to include some mention, if not indeed a full-length treatment , of Philo of Alexandria and his views on the Logos. In first-century Judaism, many were seeking ways to reconcile the Greek view of God as transcendent, one who would never come into contact with this inferior material world, with the traditions of Israel which maintained that God had not only created the world but acted in human history. For Philo, as for many philosophically minded Jews of the time, God’s Word or Logos bridged the gap between God and creation , between the transcendent One and the material realm. In emphasizing this characteristic, Philo describes the Word as “neither uncreated . . . nor created” (Quis Rerum Divinarum Heres Sit 206). This may sound like gibberish today, but for Philo, and probably for many others in his time, it made sense in terms of their world view. The Word was “part” of or an “aspect” of God, since it existed within him before coming forth, and yet it could also be spoken of as distinct from God and therefore come into contact with the material world in a way that was felt to be inappropriate for the supreme God.4 The Word bridged the gap between the transcendent God and the creation. The existence of this “bridge” between God and creation means that although certain religious practices, such as cultic worship, distinguished Israel’s one God from all other beings, no absolute ontological separation was made, no hard and fast dividing line was drawn, between God and creation. This was certainly true of those who, like Philo, were engaging the teachings of Greek philosophy. It appears, however, to have been more universally true of the Judaism in this period. Recent studies suggest that the doctrine of “creation out of nothing” (in Latin creatio ex nihilo) had not yet been formulated in the first century...

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