Book of John

The opening of the Book of John is a statement on Plato’s Timaeus, Aristotle’s Metaphysics, and Genesis at once. 

It inserts itself into the philosophy of first things in the first line. 

It places the beginning of the history of Jesus at the beginning of history. 

It inspired Philo’s attempt to unify Greek and the Hebrew Bible. 

It is also the line that most resists a simplistic division between reason and faith. 

In Aristotle, Logos is a philosophical activity, to give an account. The word is associated with reasoning. 

The highest activity of the mind is contemplation. And later becomes contemplatio dei. 

Its a little oddly Aristotle over Plato if the highest activity for Aristotle was logos, if it were a Platonic reference it would use the term nomoi instead. 

Greek philosophy at the beginning of Christianity, which also continuously refers to its relation to the Hebrew Bible.

The Western Tradition has to do with the citations to, the references between texts that belong to different “peoples”. 

John is citing the heaviest Greek and Hebrew works in the first line of the gospel.

Articles that 

Engberg-Pedersen, Troels. John and Philosophy: A New Reading of the Fourth Gospel. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. 

Gospel of Glory

Stoicism and the Gospel of John

What does the book of John have to do with the history of political thought? 

Well the Leviathan of Thomas Hobbes gives the first account of the coming to be of the modern sovereign state. Out of the 30 Years War but also on the shadow line of divine right, he had to explain the confession of the state.  

He says it is not more or less than Jesus is the Christ, which is a reference to the book of John 20:30-31. 

It seems like a typical rhetorical technique of reminding the reader of the purpose of the text. A statement that sums up the why. 

“In his disciples presence Jesus performed many other miracles which are not written down in this book. But these have been written in order that you may believe, that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through your faith in him you may have life.” 

Far from a door shutting conclusion, this verse is a threshold to what would later become known as a high Christology.

What is high Christology and why does it matter? 

Well, it comes from the Book of John and how it answers the question to what extent was Jesus, God? And the answer in the Book of John is, fully. 

In Hobbes’s materialist universe, he argues that the is no kingdom of God currently on earth because Jesus is not here in body. This leads into a tirade against the Papal power. 

The tirade against the Papal authority was of course motivated by the way it competes with the throne of England. 

But in saying that this phrase, directly from the Book of John, he says the most empowering, mystical note in the whole song, is the only one that would be required to be sung out loud. 

Verses that lay out the case for the high Christology are

The Logos Prologue: Eternal Pre-Existence and Incarnation

• John 1:1–3: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.”

   

• John 1:14: “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.”

   

• John 1:18: “No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son [or the only begotten God], who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.”

2. Equality and Oneness with the Father

• John 5:17–18: “But Jesus answered them, ‘My Father is still working, and I also am working.’ For this reason the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because he was not only breaking the sabbath, but was also calling God his own Father, thereby making himself equal to God.”

• John 10:30: “The Father and I are one.”

• John 10:37–38: “If I am not doing the works of my Father, then do not believe me. But if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, so that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father.”

• John 14:9: “Jesus said to him, ‘Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.'”

3. Absolute “I Am” (Ego Eimi) Statements

In the Greek text, Jesus uses the absolute phrase Ego Eimi (“I am”), echoing the divine name revealed in Exodus 3:14 and the Isaiah traditions (LXX).

• John 8:24: “I told you that you would die in your sins, for you will die in your sins unless you believe that I am he (ego eimi).”

• John 8:58: “Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, before Abraham was, I am (ego eimi).'”

• John 13:19: “I tell you this now, before it occurs, so that when it does occur, you may believe that I am he (ego eimi).”

• John 18:5–6: “Jesus answered, ‘I am he’ (ego eimi)… When Jesus said to them, ‘I am he,’ they stepped back and fell to the ground.”

4. Pre-Existent Glory

• John 17:5: “So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed.”

• John 17:24: “Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.”

5. Climax of Confession

• John 20:28: “Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!’ (Ho kyrios mou kai ho theos mou).”

Another way to put it, is that the high Christology is the path from Bethlehem back to Rome. 

And that, will change how you read the Leviathan.  In terms of the conditions under which the need for the sovereign state dissolves.  

At the end of the story, there is a feast. Before you can eat something with scales, the scales have to come off. 

Wearing the right clothes at the unexpected wedding feast. You don’t see the end coming, (like the character who is unexpectedly invited to the wedding)
its a revelation, so the most you can do is get ready.

But when it happens, that is the end of the sovereign state. It is eaten by the righteous.