The Gospel of John and the Religious Quest. Johannes Nissen

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СКАЧАТЬ the same movement as the Prologue: from the impersonal to the personal and from pre-existence to incarnation. In other words, we must do the same as the Gospel of John did: identify the Logos, the principle of life, with the person Jesus Christ. He is not just the core of life, but also life in all its fullness (1:16), for he gives life in abundance (10:10).

49. Barrett, The Gospel According to John, 130, rightly comments on v. 1: “John intends that the whole of his gospel shall be read in the light of this verse.”

50. Cahill, “The Johannine Logos as Center,” 65; Senior and Stuhlmueller, The Biblical Foundations for Mission, 284.

51. Kieffer, Johannesevangeliet, 19.

52. Cf. Olsson, “Deus semper major?” This point is underlined by John’s mission theology. There are four types of sending in the Fourth Gospel (John the Baptist, Jesus himself, the Paraclete, and the disciples). All of them revolve around Jesus: John the Baptist announces his coming; the Paraclete confirms his presence; and the disciples proclaim his Word to the world. But the endpoint of John’s mission is not Jesus but the Father. The Father, alone is not sent. He is the origin and goal of all the testimony of the Gospel, cf. John 1:1–18 and 17:20–23 (Nissen, New Testament and Mission, 76).

53. The first half of the Prologue gives the divine-human encounter in general terms, the second half gives it in a specific Christian language (Vellanickal, “The Gospel of John in the Indian Context,” 150).

54. The New Revised Standard Version is an example of the first option, as is the New Danish authorized translation from 1992 (over against the Danish authorized translation from 1948).

55. Berger, Exegese des Neuen Testaments, 230–31.

56. Kysar, John the Maverick Gospel, 25.

57. Aagaard, “Findes der en elementær kosmologi?,” 179; Aagaard, ”Tao,” 3.

58. Cracknell, Towards a New Relationship, 99.

59. Cf. Reichelt, “The Johannine Approach,” 94; Nørgaard-Højen, “Kristendommens absoluthedskrav,” 234. Various nuances differentiate the thought of these three church fathers. Yet, in the main lines their Logos-Theology shows a remarkable consistency, see Dupuis, Toward a Christian Theology, 70.

60. Several scholars argue that the Johannine community has undergone a development before it reached its present Christology and its special ecclesiological form. Brown (The Community of the Beloved Disciple) points out that the Johannine community originated among Jews who believed that Jesus had fulfilled well-known Jewish expectations, e.g., of a messiah or of a prophet-like-Moses. At a later stage there developed within the Johannine community a higher Christology that went beyond Jewish expectations by describing Jesus as a pre-existent divine savior who had lived with God in heaven before he became man.

61. Senior and Stuhlmueller, The Biblical Foundations for Mission, 280.

62. Vellanickal, “The Gospel of John in the Indian Context,” 150–51.

63. Reference is made to searchers for the truth among Buddhists, Taoists, Confucianists and others. “They style themselves spontaneously ‘Tao-Yu’, i.e., ‘Friends of Tao’ (Logos). Christ is for them the full realization and incarnation of the wonderfully rich Tao-idea which holds the supreme sway in all three religions in China (Buddhism included).” (Reichelt, “The Johannine Approach,” 99).

64. Reichelt, Fra Kristuslivets helligdom, 53.*

65. Riisager, Lotusblomsten og korset, 163–64.

66. Reichelt, “The Johannine Approach,” 95.

67. Ibid., 95. The terms tathata or bhutataka mean the Absolute, conditioned by nothing, which is in itself that which is; cf. Raguin, The Depth of God, 111–12.

68. Vellanickal, “The Gospel of John in the Indian Context,” 151.

69. Koyama, Theology in Contact, 60.

70. Ibid., 61.

71. Ibid., 62–63.

72. On the problem in general see also the paragraph “Transcending Categories—Toward a ‘More Than’ Christology” in Part Two below.

73. Indigenization “is not the transplantation of a grown tree, say from Amsterdam to Djakarta. Actually, indigenization is a critical antithesis to this whole process of big-tree-transplantation. The shift from transplantation to rooting is a difficult and painstaking process” (Koyama Theology in Contact, 67–68).

74. Ibid., 67.

75. Steiner, The Gospel of St. John, 19.

76. Ibid., 118.

77. Steiner’s own translation of John 8:58: “Before Father Abraham was, was the I AM.”

78. Steiner, The Gospel of St. John, 57.

79. Steiner, The Gospel of St. John and Its Relation to the Other Gospels, 33–34.

80. Romarheim, “Various views of Jesus Christ,” 95.

81. Damm, Kristendommen i antroposofiens lys, 16–20.

82. Steiner, The Gospel of St. John and Its Relation to the Other Gospels, 38. Steiner argues that the writer of John’s Gospel strongly СКАЧАТЬ