What I’m Reading: Jesus the Word According to John the Sectarian

It’s a short book with a long title and an even longer subtitle – Jesus the Word According to John the Sectarian: A Paleofundamentalist Manifesto for Contemporary Evangelicalism, especially its Elites, in North America – by Robert H. Gundry[i] I don’t remember where I picked up this book.  It’s been on my shelves for a couple of years, but I’ve only just now gotten around to reading it.

It’s not a long book at all (the title is almost longer than the book itself)  but it’s written in dull academic prose that is, at times, more complicated than necessary and makes the book feel longer than it really is. The book is less than 200 pages long – and has only three chapters[ii]  I’ll share my thoughts on those three chapters.

1 – Jesus the Word according to John

It has sometimes been argued by those who have studied the gospel of John that the prologue (1:1 – 1:18) was a separate writing that was tacked on to the rest of the gospel sometime later by an unknown editor. Those who subscribe to this idea point out the fact that the emphasis on the logos of God in the prologue disappears completely from the rest of the gospel.  Gundry demonstrates at some length that while the prologue may have indeed been added to the gospel later, it would be untrue to say that the themes of the prologue disappear from the gospel proper. 

In this first chapter Gundry walks the reader through the 4^th gospel showing how at every turn the (few) stories and the (many) words of Jesus return again and again to the themes established in the prologue – and how the emphasis on the gospel as a whole is on the Word – that is Jesus – who speaks the words of life, the words of God to the world.

I am looking forward to returning to some of this material again in the near future as I hope to develop a preaching calendar for next year focusing on John’s gospel[iii]

2 – The Sectarian

This is where things get a little tricky.  Gundry interprets John’s Jesus (and thus John – the author- by extension) to be “sectarian.”  To be “sectarian,” for Gundry, is to be a member of a “religious group that rejects the social environment in which it exists.”[iv]  

He points out the sharp division in John’s gospel between believers and unbelievers, those who are children of God and those who are children of Satan, between light and dark, He interprets Jesus’ command to “love one another[v]” as a command that the disciples should love those in the Christian community.

In John’s gospel we never see Jesus eating with sinners and tax collectors and Pharisees – like we do in the synoptic gospels.  In John, Jesus only eats with his friends – those he loves. [vi]

He acknowledges that Jesus’ followers are not instructed to hate outsiders – as the members of the Essene community at Qumran were[vii]  but shows how Jesus wouldn’t even pray for “the world,” only for those that he loved! [viii] In John’s gospel “the world” is dark, and unenlightened; it refused to recognize Jesus and was full of sin.

Whether we like it or not, an honest reading of John’s gospel will reveal some rather sectarian themes. But this would make sense if it is true (as many scholars of John believe) that John’s gospel was written as a defense of Christian beliefs by Jewish Christians who had been expelled from their synagogues and banished from Jewish communities by those who refused to accept Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ.  It’s easy to understand the “us –versus - them” attitude that can be found in John’s gospel.

3 - A Paleofundamentalist Manifesto for Contemporary Evangelicalism, Especially Its Elites, in North America

And this is where it gets a little repugnant (at least to me.) 

Gundry laments what he believes to be a decline in evangelical fervor and missionary zeal.  He decries an evangelical church that seems to be becoming too much like the rest of the world in its pursuit of pleasure and comfort.  And he longs for a return to fire and brimstone styled preaching with emphasis on strong doctrinal preaching and an emphasis on the afterlife- heaven and hell, eternal life and everlasting damnation[ix]

He would be quite pleased for evangelicals to return to their roots in Fundamentalism – defending the inerrancy of the Bible and a literal interpretation of the scriptures. 

I am not opposed to strong doctrinal preaching.  I’m not opposed to calling the Church away from a pursuit of power and luxury and comfort.  But I’m not at all comfortable with Gundry’s desire for a return to the Fundamentalism of the 1920’s or with his adoption of John’s sectarian mindset.

To have been a sectarian in John’s community was to have been in a position of powerlessness and persecution.  The Christian community that received John’s gospel had been cut off from the larger community and had been excommunicated from their place of worship.  They were in the minority and they were harassed.  In that situation it was natural for the Christian community to circle inward for protection.  They loved one another, but didn’t pray for the outsiders.

But to call for John’s type of sectarianism in our contemporary pluralist culture is wrong.  Evangelical Christians in America today are not (no matter how much they might whine that they are) under attack.  They are not persecuted.  They are not being expelled from their places of worship. They are not being cut off from their communities.

It struck me as interesting that Gundy quotes from the sociological research of Christian Smith on this point:

American evangelicalism… is strong not because it is shielded against, but because it is –or at least perceives itself to be – embattled with forces that seem to oppose or threaten it.  Indeed, evangelicalism…thrives on distinction, engagement, tension, conflict and threat.  Without these, evangelicalism would loose its identity and purpose and grow languid and aimless.[x]

It’s as if Evangelical Christians have to manufacture enemies in order to feel like they’re accomplishing something.  Perhaps this is why so many of them continue to believe that President Barak Obama is a Muslim who’s intent on turning America into an Islamo-Fascist state.

We can (and should) read John’s gospel for what it reveals to us – but it would be completely inappropriate for us to read it in the same way that the embattled Christian community who first received it. We do not face the same threats that they did.  We are not persecuted as they were.

 

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[i] William B Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, MI / Cambridge, U.K. 2002.

[ii] Three chapters plus a few “extended footnotes” and “some theological desiderata.”

[iii] I will also be returning to some of the things I learned from James McGrath’s books - The Only True God and John’s Apologetic Christology: Legitmation and Development in Johannine Christology.

[iv]  Page 64 – quoting Benton Johnson, “On Church and Sect”  American Sociological Review 28 (1963)

[v] John 13: 34 - 35

[vi] The wedding at Canaan might have been exception to this – except we don’t read of Jesus eating or drinking.  He’s just there.

[vii] 1QS 1: 9 -10 "...he is to teach them both to love all the Children of Light...and to hate all the Children of Darkness..."

[viii] John 17:9.  You might also compare that with 1 John 5:16 – 17.

[ix] Especially an emphasis on hell and eternal damnation.

[x] Christian Smith, American Evangelicalism, 89.Universtity of Chicago Press, 1998.