Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Jesus as Messiah in the Fourth Gospel

According to Tom Thatcher:

"John's Christology, his image of Jesus, emerges at the intersection of three currents: the recall of things that the historical Jesus presumably did and said; a post-resurrection understanding of Jesus' ultimate destiny; and a messianic interpretation of the Hebrew Bible, not only specific passages but the entire text taken as a whole. The interplay of memory, faith, and Scripture may therefore be viewed as John's christological formulae, the generative matrix through which he developed statements about Jesus' messianic identity"

Tom Thatcher, "Remembering Jesus: John's Negative Christology," in The Messiah in the Old and New Testaments, ed. S.E. Porter (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007), pp. 173-74.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Absolutely! It couldn't be said more concisely.

geoffhudson.blogspot.com said...

Before it got to the highbrow stage of 'John's Christology at the intersection of three currents', it could be seen as originally being a much simpler document that was the autobiography of the prophet, partially explaining its early date and its intrisic difference from the synoptics.