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The author of John’s Gospel had a problem with first-century charismatics. John’s Gospel was largely addressed to Greek-speaking Jews—people of Jewish faith who had opened their minds and lives to the culture and thought of Hellenism. Part of this wider cultural background included ideas of divine inspiration, secret knowledge, and mediated wisdom.
The first-century charismatics were Greek-speaking, Greek-thinking Christians. Jesus of Nazareth had been dead for nearly 70 years. The stories about his words and deeds were losing impact, and clearly came from a different cultural context—the context of Aramaic-speaking, Palestinian Judaism. So the Hellenists beefed up the idea of the Spirit, of direct inspiration, of mystical insight, and new revelation.
That in turn raised another question: Will the future supersede the past, or bring it to fulfillment? Is there any place for novelty, or at least for progressive revelation? Do we know more than those who went before us? Is there new truth for us, or only the re-statement of old truths?
John is trying to manage a balancing act. If he goes with the charismatics, the church’s witness to Jesus of Nazareth as the Logos of God will be compromised. But he’s also writing his gospel as a protest against what church historians call "early catholicism," which tended to be backwards-looking, doctrinally prescriptive, and institutional in its focus. John doesn’t want to be a charismatic or an early catholic, so he puts it this way.
First, he’s adamant that the teaching of Jesus was more than the reflection of a wise and good man. In the words and deeds of Jesus we encounter, according to John, a word spoken into the world from the beyond, from God in Godself. So the last verse of the prologue (which is really a summary of the entire gospel) says, "No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known" [1:18]. For people who have chosen to focus their faith in God in the Christian Way, Jesus of Nazareth decisively represents the nature and purposes of God.
Secondly, John says both that there were things Jesus never got to say, truths he never told, and yet that in another sense, Jesus had said everything that needed to be said—everything that makes the person of faith free and ready to embrace God’s future. So, for example, in our reading from chapter 16, John has Jesus saying,
"I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now" [16:12].
Yet elsewhere, he says the task of the Paraclete, the Comforting Spirit, is simply to remind us of all that Jesus has spoken [14:26]; and in our reading from chapter 16, we’re expressly told that the Spirit will not speak on its own authority, and will not displace or surpass the teaching of Jesus, as if the Spirit had anything new to offer. Rather, the Spirit will speak only as the Spirit itself hears [16:13].
Theologian Rudolf Bultmann comments on this passage:
Now I haven’t got a lot of time for the contemporary charismatic movement. I think it’s a heresy. It elevates the Spirit and subjective experience into novelty and new knowledge which pretends to its own authority. It credits all sorts of new ideas to the inspiration of the Spirit. Some of it is crazy stuff — magical, superstitious thinking. And it’s often allied to a highly selective biblical literalism that buys unthinkingly into patriarchy, sexism and homophobia.
And yet neither could I be regarded by any stretch of the imagination as a conservative traditionalist! So I’m very interested in how John in his gospel locates himself between the charismatics and the early catholics.
I’m also interested in truths the church cannot yet bear to hear. Because I don’t think the first followers of Jesus were on their own in having a limited capacity to cope with truth-telling.
I think, for example, of the long history of secrets and lies in the Christian churches about the abuse of women and children, and particularly incest. We’re starting to tell the truth about this, truth we previously could not bear to hear.
A man in New Zealand by the name of Anthony McCabe has recently published an account of his own abuse, suffered from the age of four at the hands of both his step-father and his mother. He called his book, Let me tell you, from a poem he wrote:
Anthony McCabe is now 71 years old. It’s taken him a lifetime to tell the truths he himself could not bear to hear for so much of his adult life.
I also hear some churches beginning to tell the truth about their history of oppressing people who are homosexual. I hear people of faith, who are gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered telling their truth, truths many in the Christian churches still can’t bear to hear. Some of this truth-telling is taking place this very weekend, in the "Re-imagining love" conference being held in Newtown. This parish dramatically participated in telling new truths for the church earlier this year, with your float in the Mardi Gras Parade, and the banners which declared Eastside a "safe place".
And I hear truth-telling in some sections of the church about ecological responsibility and the sustainability of life on our planet—truth-telling that challenges the traditional doctrine of providence at a profound level. New truths that are having to be integrated into social and economic policy, and an ethics of human reproduction.
And I’m glad to hear these, and many other truths, being told in the church in a new way, or at least more forthrightly than previously. But I wonder, Can we do this? Can we tell new truths in the church without falling into the heresy of the charismatic movement, substituting novelty for authentic witness to Jesus as the decisive representation of God’s liberating presence in the world?
How can the church discern what is the Spirit bringing to us anew God’s word spoken to the world in Jesus, and what is novelty generated by the world speaking its own word, and seeking to sanctify it by claiming the Spirit’s inspiration for a passion and a conviction that may be utterly misguided, however politically correct at the present moment?
Today is Trinity Sunday, and despite my unitarian inclinations, I offer three sets of questions to help us discern what is of God in the new truths offered to the church in our day.
First, Jesus himself is of significance for faith, only because he is the one through whom, above all else, we encounter God, as God is and acts in the world. Jesus is the word spoken into the world from the beyond, inviting us to step fearlessly into the future which is God’s future. So first we might ask, Does this new truth liberate people to step out into the darkness beyond every present horizon, trusting that the future is and shall be God’s future? Does this new truth confront us squarely with the reality of God? And is it life-giving and affirming of the human person? Is this the word of God who calls us into the beyond, into life in its all fullness, and into community that is just, participatory and sustainable?
Secondly, is this new truth which the church now dares to tell in substantial continuity with what we know historically about the words and deeds of Jesus of Nazareth? Is the God encountered in this new truth-telling indeed the God of Jesus:
And thirdly, does this new truth resonate with our common wisdom in the community of faith? Does the Spirit bear witness with our spirits?—not my individual insight alone, or your individual insight alone, but the common mind of the community. When the church is at worship, in communion with one another and with the God of Jesus Christ, what then is the deepest insight of the community?
In other words, the way to safeguard the church against dangerous novelty, or the enthusiasms of powerful personalities, is the nurturing of a theologically informed, biblically literate, spiritually wise, and ethically sophisticated community. It’s about balancing action with reflection. It’s about relating contemporary stories from our own lived experience, in our present context, with stories and wisdom drawn from the entire history of our faith tradition. In Wesleyan terms, it’s about referencing our new truths to scripture, tradition, reason and experience.
The author of John’s Gospel probably wasn’t the same person who wrote the first letter of John, but they shared the same concern:
In the name of God, who ever creates, redeems and liberates us.