The Human and Divine Jesus in the Gospel of John

This course will be a close reading of the Gospel of John, which will serve as the primary text. The seminar’s proposal is that John’s Gospel answers one question: ‘Who is Jesus?’ and answers it so thoroughly that all Christologies are, in essence, commentaries on his work. The Gospel’s Prologue begins with the revelation that the Word was at the beginning, and then ends with Thomas’s high Christological declaration to Jesus: “My Lord, and my God.”  In the pericopes that fill the rest of the Gospel, John reveals gradually and with theological precision, the meaning of the humanity and divinity of Jesus. We will study John’s use of a number of literary devices which provide clues to the nature of Christ. For example, the whole of his text is based on a complex and thorough use of chiasmic structuring which links and illuminates various texts as they refer to each other. John uses names (e.g., “the Woman”) in a somewhat mysterious and hidden manner, which forces the reader to explore salvation history more fully to understand his meaning. John also refers to various events that appear in the Synoptics, but offer no deeper explanation on their own terms. By teasing out the parallels between the Synoptic references and those John portrays, we are able to discover the theological depth of those Synoptic events. As well, John draws out the Christological meaning found in certain Old Testament texts to deepen our understanding of the “pierced one”.