An Heretical View of the Gospel of John

There is no doubt that the Gospel of John, composed in its final form some seventy years after Jesus' death, is one of the most powerfully written of the Four Canonical Gospels. Here we see the deification of Jesus completed, he is no longer even merely a human messiah, nor merely the Son of God, but One and the Same as God. The author of this gospel has also married Greek Platonism with the Christian beliefs that had evolved at the time it was written, and uses this philosophical structure to spell out how he believes Christians should conceive of God, worship God, be saved spiritually by God, and just what angers and pleases God. Jesus' vulnerable humanity, his self-doubt, the sense of being in equal dialog with humanity are nearly gone. Admittedly, the Gospel of John has its own unique moments that connect it with the humane figure of Jesus found in the earlier Synoptic Gospels. For instance, in this gospel we have Jesus' humble and spiritually poignant act of farewell embodied in his exercise of a traditional custom of Middle Eastern hospitality, wherein the host washes the feet of his guests, in this case with Jesus so honoring his disciples at the Passover Seder. And then this gospel also has the precious anecdote of Jesus' psychologically subtle but morally profound defense of a suspected adulteress from summary execution by stoning at the hands of a fanatical mob. But beyond these specific points, for many Christians, the general poetic beauty, philosophical integrity and doctrinal clarity of the Gospel of John come together to make this the most reassuring and oft cited of the gospels in terms of justifying various essential beliefs and religious tenets, that get concisely expressed in Church-approved creeds. What is problematic for heterodox Christians is that it demands abasement and abject penance for one's inevitably sinful nature, emphasizing not our natural kinship with God but the rectification of what is perceived to be our fundamental estrangement from God. Many of us today seeking spiritual strength want to discover within ourselves a note of liberation and capability offered in the path of salvation, to form a partnership with God rather than a servile relationship, in which our own divine spark is seen in microcosmic relationship with God, the Spiritual Macrocosm. Another problem that both progressive and heterodox Christians find with the Gospel of John is its unreserved castigation and condemnation of the Jewish people. Progressive Christians take these passages and remind their congregations that what John means by "Jews" are the conservative authorities, members and agents of the Sanhedrin who opposed Jesus' teachings. Unfortunately, the gospel's author does not actually so clarify what he means by "Jews". We can read the Gospel of John back into the historical period in which Jesus lived, and say that if the real Jesus spoke criticism, he would have had to have meant only those members of his culture who opposed his reformist ideas, but whoever composed the Gospel of John was living generations later, and did not qualify his condemnation of Jews. He let it stand baldly and damned them all as a faith and as a people. That Jesus was antisemitic is an absurd assumption, for Jesus was not a preacher of hate and intolerance (just the opposite), and would never have damned his own people. It would be tantamount to a man cursing his own brothers and sisters for choosing not to worship him as a god! We must face the fact that this author (or authors), who pretentiously took the name of the Apostle John, must have put this in Jesus' mouth to suit his/their own mortal and ungodly purposes. It is most troubling that such anti-Semitic passages from John are still assigned and read for religious services in the lectionary cycle of the liturgical year as laid out by various ecumenical councils of allied Christian denominations. It seems quite certain that there are more constructive passages to read aloud to the congregation in this age of continued intolerance and misunderstanding. Progressive churches need to step up to the plate and shrug off the fear-inspired policy to "retain strength in unity" with fundamentalist denominations which insist that such profane intrusions corrupting the divine inspiration of holy scripture be continued to be read across denominational lines at Sunday services.