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The Spirituality of the Gospel of John: Part 1

John 1:1, 14–18; Exodus 32–34

Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of The Spirituality of the Gospel of John.


Doubtless you will recall that when the apostle Paul begins his so-called Athenian address, reported in Acts 17, he says, “Men of Athens, I see that you are very religious.” I suspect that if the apostle were speaking to a Western crowd today he wouldn’t begin that way. He might, however, begin, “I see that you are very spiritual.” Today, spirituality is in and religion is out, and the apostle Paul was at this point trying to make connections.

When he says, “I see that you are very religious,” he doesn’t mean, “I like all of your religions.” He certainly doesn’t mean, “I think they are, in every respect, correct and admirable.” But at least they’re not flat-out materialists, like Lucretius in the ancient world, so he had some basis for proceeding, although it’s not too long before he says, “Nevertheless, what you ignorantly worship, I am now going to tell you about.”

So there is a sense in which the apostle today would likewise be happy to meet people who are interested in spirituality. The difficulty is that spirituality today has approximately the same range of positive overtones as religion in the ancient world and is approximately as accurate, as precise. As a result, it has become really difficult to talk about the spirituality of anything without introducing some fairly long-winded explanations.

Before I plunge into my topic, The Spirituality of John’s Gospel, I want to devote a few minutes to talking about the history of the notion of spirituality. Where does this term come from? Despite the fact that some recent commentators in this area have said that the term derives from Paul, of course it doesn’t. He does speak of being spiritual, but the noun spirituality is not found, or anything even like it.

Thus, in some sense, spirituality is a construct, and it is a construct that has meant different things at different eras of the church, and it’s worth tracking at least a few of those out. In the history of the church until the Reformation, there were many different elements connected with spiritual life in discussion: sacraments, community, prayer, asceticism, martyrdom, vows of poverty, vows of celibacy, icons, monasticism, and much, much, much more. Increasingly, however, spiritual life came to be associated with the pursuit of perfection and, thus, not for all Christians.

Those who wanted really to pursue spirituality were, as it were, the elite. Thus, although spirituality, to use the term anachronistically, embraced all of life, it embraced all of life only for some believers. By the beginning of the eighteenth century, Giovanni Scaramelli of the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits, building on long-established traditions, sharply distinguished between ascetic theology and mystical theology as the two primary components of spirituality, of the spiritual life.

The former (that is, ascetic theology) has to do with the exercises to which all Christians who aspire to perfection will devote themselves. Mystical theology deals with the extraordinary states of consciousness and of secondary manifestations that come into a person’s life when they enjoy some kind of mystical connection with God: trance-like notions or a sense of oneness and absorption with God or a sense of a heartfelt devotion and overpowering love, and so forth.

Thus, spirituality gradually became a discipline, spiritual theology, to be distinguished from dogmatic theology, which tells us what must be believed, and from moral theology, which tells us how to conduct ourselves. These are the essential distinctions that govern the classic treatment on the history of spirituality, for example, by Pierre Pourrat. Then in his three-volume work, Bouyer sought a more precise definition. Let me read this paragraph to you. It’s very important.

“Christian spirituality (or any other spirituality) …” Notice that expression. We’ll come back to it. “… is distinguished from dogma by the fact that, instead of studying or describing the objects of belief as it were in the abstract, it studies the reactions which these objects arouse in the religious consciousness. But, rightly, it does not entertain the pseudoscientific and, in fact, wholly extravagant prejudice that the understanding of the objects polarizing the religious consciousness is essentially foreign to an understanding of this consciousness itself.

On the contrary, spirituality studies this consciousness only in its living relationship with those objects in its real apprehension of what it believes. Dogmatic theology, therefore, must always be presupposed as the basis of spiritual theology, even though the latter concerns itself with the data of the former only under the relationship that they entertain with the religious consciousness.” In other words, what he’s really saying is you have to have dogmatic theology first, and then spiritual theology is the study of how this dogmatic theology affects the religious consciousness. So he argues.

However, this last point, that spiritual theology presupposes dogmatic theology, a point much emphasized 50 to 100 years ago by people like Pourrat and Bouyer, is denied today by the majority of contemporary authors. Today we say spiritual theology comes first. That is, what you experience shapes what you believe. So it’s not that dogmatic theology constrains your definition of spiritual theology; it’s rather you experience certain kinds of things, and your experience then helps you to formulate your dogmatics.

Now it is worth pausing to draw attention to several features that have already come to light. Roman Catholicism (and Eastern Orthodoxy, for that matter) has invested far more heavily in spirituality studies, so-called, than has Protestantism until very, very recent times. The term spirituality was simply not used in most Protestant studies until about 30 or 40 years ago. Oh, it showed up once in a while, but not very commonly.

In part, this was because for the previous 1,400 years or so, spirituality studies tended to be focused on the elite, on the monastics, on those who were trying to be on the inside track, the more intimate ones. As a result, because Protestantism has constantly insisted on things like the universality of the priesthood of believers, that we all have equal access to God through the merits of Christ, and so on, to talk of spirituality seemed faintly alien.

Moreover, because so much of the ascetic side of spirituality in the Catholic and monastic tradition sounded an awful lot to Protestant ears like works (the way you get to a more intimate walk with God is by following ascetic practices), obviously this was not in very good report among an awful lot of evangelicals as well.

But at least since the eighteenth century, spirituality could refer either to certain approaches to the knowledge of God, still being defined, or to the study of such approaches. That is, spirituality sometimes was used as a term to talk about the discipline and sometimes about the experiences behind the discipline.

In the third place, the parenthetical remark “or any other spirituality” from this long quote I read from Louis Bouyer just a few minutes ago.… “Christian spirituality (or any other spirituality) …” This now reflects another development that is much harder to handle. Nowadays, people talk freely about Hindu spirituality, Islamic spirituality, Buddhist spirituality, animist spirituality, and so forth. In other words, spirituality is good.

In the taxonomy of good and evil, spirituality today functions approximately as motherhood and apple pie did during the Eisenhower years. In other words, you really can’t say anything bad about it. Thus you find many, many Christian writers saying, “Well, Protestantism has been very good in the area of dogmatics, but, on the other hand, if you want to grow in your knowledge of spirituality, you have to read the Catholic writers.”

Or increasingly, “The gifts of common grace have extended all around the world, so if you really want to learn something about spirituality, then, of course, you must go to the Eastern mystics. Now we’re not saying we should buy into their literature or into their theology, but there are many, many elements of their spirituality we can adopt.”

Suddenly you realize spirituality, as a term, is being used in astonishingly diverse ways. Can one become more spiritual by adopting certain ascetic practices? Yes or no? Or does it depend on other factors that are not well defined? Are the practices themselves intrinsically good, and is this definition of spirituality right in the first instance?

This side of Vatican II, Catholic emphases on spirituality have been less associated with the pursuit of perfection, which was the entire Catholic tradition up until Vatican II, although they’re still used in some respects. The dogmatic constitution on the church issued a universal call to holiness. “All the faithful of whatever rank are called to the fullness of the Christian life and to the perfection of charity.” You didn’t find much of that sort of emphasis in pre-Vatican II Catholicism.

As a result, in a lot of Catholic writings today, spiritual means something like what Protestants mean by devotional. Sometimes, for example, we write devotional commentaries. “The Letter to the Romans: A Devotional Commentary.” In Catholic literature it’s, “The Letter to the Romans: A Spiritual Commentary.” That’s the difference in terminology today, and it is absolutely everywhere for those who are pursuing this sort of literature.

Of course, they don’t mean to say that theirs are not devotional, and we don’t mean to say that ours aren’t spiritual, but the terms devotional and spiritual in certain contexts mean roughly the same sort of thing. That is, not self-distancing and not critical and not dogmatic, not technical, but sort of warm and encouraging and edifying and maybe a bit fuzzy. Then it’s spiritual and devotional. Thus, the category is becoming very difficult indeed.

In the last few decades, however, spirituality has become part of the regular vocabulary of Protestants. Let me give you a number of titles to give you some idea. Richard J. Foster, Celebration of Discipline; Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life; Orthodox Spirituality: An Outline of the Orthodox Ascetical and Mystical Tradition; Perfect Fools: Folly for Christ’s Sake in Catholic and Orthodox Spirituality.

Gospel Poverty: Witness to the Risen Christ, A Study in Biblical Spirituality; New Adam: The Future of Male Spirituality; Jewish Spirituality: From the Bible to the Middle Ages; Jewish Spirituality: From the 16th Century Revival to the Present; Spirituality and Human Nature; A Generation of Seekers: The Spiritual Journeys of the Baby Boom Generation; Computer Applications for Spirituality: The Transformation of Religious Experience.

Do you want me to go on? It really is becoming a very broad term. You folks invite me very kindly and ask me to talk on the spirituality of John’s gospel, and my first problem is I don’t know what you want me to talk about. There’s a sense in which I could say almost anything on the gospel of John, and it would fit under one of these labels here somewhere. At least you can’t criticize, because, after all, spirituality is good. If I’m saying something spiritual, it has to be good. Don’t you dare criticize me.

The discipline of the historical study of spirituality continues apace from various points of strong advocacy, but I spare you all of this. Nowadays, there are more and more geographical connections, global connections. Here are more books. Asian Christian Spirituality: Reclaiming Traditions; Spirituality and History: Questions of Interpretation and Method; Reformed Spirituality: An Introduction for Believers; The Spirit of Life: A Universal Affirmation; Luke: The Perennial Spirituality; The Spirituality of the Gospels.

These are all books that have come out in the last 10 years. So one way or the other, it’s pretty hard to escape this sort of thing. Therefore, we need to try to think about it as accurately as we can. Let me suggest one or two things that might help orient us to our discussion. First, spirituality is a theological construct. In other words, we can’t begin from a term. It’s a theological construct, and it is such a sloppy theological construct it means different things to different people in different contexts. That’s the reality.

So we have to decide what we mean by it and how we’ll use this term. I will use the term spirituality to talk about human connection (I use the term as vaguely as possible) with the divine. That is to say, I am not primarily talking about a dogmatic system, but I am talking about a dogmatic system insofar as that system might shape your understanding of the human connection with the divine.

When you’re talking about the human connection with the divine, there is some sense in which you may talk about Hindu spirituality in the sense that you’re talking about how they understand the human connection with the divine. Whether you think this divine is genuinely divine and whether the connection is valid and should be preached on is quite another issue. But in that sense, as a general term, you may speak of Hindu spirituality.

If that is the way you use the term spirituality (that is, human connection with the divine), then from a biblical point of view, you cannot possibly say that all spiritualities are good. You cannot do it, because there are many connections with the divine in biblical terms that are labeled rank idolatry. Thus, there is a sense in which what we are really studying is how human beings connect with God and experience him. That’s what we’re talking about. So we must examine the biblical text with that kind of perspective in view.

In other words, because mutually contradictory theologies may undergird these person-variable definitions of spirituality, the degree of real commonality from discussion to discussion of spirituality may be minimal. We’re all talking about spirituality, but when you probe beneath the surface, you may discover that, in fact, people are not agreeing nearly as much as they may seem initially to be doing. Moreover, it has to be said that even after you start talking about human connectedness with the divine, with God, spirituality in the hands of many authors, Protestant and others, often devolves into a matter of mere technique.

There are many evangelical authors, for example, today who talk about improving our spirituality (that is, our connections with God, our links with God, our awareness of God, our consciousness of God) by prayer, journaling, fasting, corporate worship, or sometimes things more esoteric, some kind of period of monastic silence, or sometimes nowadays, even in Protestant circles, iconography, taking over elements of the Orthodox tradition, and meditation. I will be saying a little bit more about some of those things later.

Christians now find themselves suddenly in two awkward positions. First, we don’t want to be caught dead saying nasty things about such matters as prayer, fasting, and meditation, because all of those things are found in Scripture. At the same time, we’re a wee bit worried about projecting the image that if you just get those things right, you will be spiritual, because since the discussion now has devolved upon technique, they are sometimes abstracted from the undergirding theological understanding on which they are being built.

So it doesn’t really matter whether you have a traditional medieval Catholic view of transubstantiation or a reformed Edwards view of the cross. Provided you do your meditation and journaling right, you will be a spiritual person. Suddenly meditation itself, as a technique, is being elevated to the level of independence from the undergirding theology. That, it seems to me, is foundationally dangerous.

Yet you don’t want to be caught saying that matters such as discipline and fasting and prayer are of no importance, do you? Yet surely, in the wrong sorts of hands or in the wrong sorts of constructs they become another form of works theology, don’t they? That’s part of the problem in this discussion.

It gets worse. The second point of embarrassment is that whereas we don’t want to be caught dead talking negatively about spirituality when everybody thinks it’s wonderful, yet in all fairness, some of the disciplines that are being advocated do not find any biblical support whatsoever. Now I have no objection if people want to journal, yet it’s hard to think of a Pauline passage that advocates it.

If journaling is part of a larger question of self-examination and recording one’s experiences before God and meditation on his Word and confession of sin, obviously, then, it’s beginning to fit into the categories of biblical theological terminology. On the other hand, if you simply take journaling as a kind of discipline and push it strongly, then one of the entailments is that any semiliterate or illiterate person can’t be spiritual, which is a rather nasty condescension to begin with.

The return of iconography and that sort of thing in the emergent churches and elsewhere is, in my judgment, deeply troubling, and this at the heart of evangelicalism. What do we do with something like yoga? Believe it or not, there are Christian yoga exercises today. How well can such matters be transported to Christianity? Are they value-neutral?

Well, at one level, the breathing exercises are, I suppose, intrinsically value-neutral. One learns a slightly different set in preparation for natural childbirth. Those of us who are dads and lived in a certain era went through the “hee-hees” and the “haw-haws” as our babies came forth. Been there, done that, bought the tee shirt.

So I’m sure that, in some ways, the breathings are value-neutral, but the association of certain breathing exercises with concentration on a black dot in an expanse of white, coupled with the chanting of mantras, in order to achieve a state of dissociation associated with the achieving of a higher state of spirituality …

Suddenly you realize these breathing exercises are not entirely that value-neutral because of their corresponding associations. How much of that is transportable to Christianity? I would say not very much, certainly not the chanting of mantras, still less the kind of meditation that is characterized by concentration on a spot on a blank expanse. And so on. Much more could be said about this sort of thing.

One or two more final observations. Because today people are worried about a kind of spirituality that is divorced from physical reality (it’s part of concerns about greenness; it’s part of concerns about an abstraction from the real world), today there is an increasing emphasis (it’s still not the majority emphasis, but it’s there) on spirituality that takes into account the body.


I came across this ad. The book is written by Rodney Clapp, and the title is Tortured Wonders: Christian Spirituality for People, Not Angels. “In Tortured Wonders, Rodney Clapp takes up the topic of embodied Christian spirituality with poetic intelligence and flare. With wisdom and flashes of humor …” This is a blurb. You have to understand you don’t take blurbs too seriously. “… he reminds us that we are in-between creatures, neither entirely body nor entirely spirit, neither apes nor angels.

He begins by showing how orthodox Christian spirituality never gives up on the body. Later, Clapp conjures pop-culture figures and narratives, namely Elvis and Bambi, to explore the spiritual consequences of our contemporary phobia about death and obsession with spectacle and celebrity. He calls us to embrace our creatureliness through a string of irresistible topics: Is there sex in heaven?” Well, there’s an irresistible topic. “What is the most biblical posture for prayer? What can we learn from non-Christian spiritual traditions?” This is exciting.

The titles of the chapters are “Introduction: Spirituality for Tortured Wonders; Affirming the Flesh: Christian Spirituality and the Necessity of the Body; Against Imitating the Angels: Christian Spirituality and Sex; Putting Adam Back Together Again: Christian Spirituality and the Social Body; Learning How to Be Spiritual with Your Body: Christian Spirituality and the Sacraments; How to See and Lay Hold of Christ: Christian Spirituality and the Eucharist; The Sacrifice of Compassion: Christian Spirituality and the Benefits of the Eucharist …

Sin and Salvation at Graceland: the Difficulties of Christian Spirituality in Elvis World; The Problem with Bambi: Death and the Beginning of Christian Spirituality; Jesus and the Grotesque: The Earthiness of Christian Spirituality; You Wonder Why We’re All Crazy: Making a Place for Sex in Christian Spirituality; Educating the Flesh: Bodily Exercise and Christian Spirituality; Saved from Drowning: The Generosity of Christian Spirituality.” I can hardly wait to read it.

My point is that this comes from an evangelical publisher, from somebody on the left end of evangelicalism. This is what is selling today, whether we like it or not. It at least keeps the spirit light. After all, a little mirth is a good thing, Proverbs reminds us. On the other hand, I’m not sure you can get through a serious book on spirituality and say absolutely nothing about the cross, which lies at the heart of human connection with God, and still dare to call it Christian spirituality. That is the problem.

It’s not that there won’t be some genuine insights in the book. It’s not that there are not some Christians who have an ethereal kind of spirituality that is divorced from the body. We sometimes need to be reminded of this. The question is.… What is at the center of our discussion about the connection between human beings and God?

Now, at last, let me turn to the gospel of John. The reason the gospel of John is important in this respect is because it has often been the basis for certain kinds of spirituality appeals. Let me mention three. John 6, with its long discussion of the Eucharist, has often been the basis of a eucharistic or sacramental spirituality. “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood,” and so forth. Very, very strong language. How are we to understand John 6?

It has also been the basis of what might be called a kind of mystical Christian theology, a kind of connection with God that focuses less on matters of legal transfer of guilt or legal reconciliation or matters of wrath and the like, and more on a kind of notion of oneness, a kind of mystical connectedness. Very frequently, the Farewell Discourse, in particular, has been understood along such lines. We are connected to God as the branch is connected to the vine. His life is pulsating in us.

It’s sometimes connected in Eastern Orthodox thought with the notion of theosis. After all, does not 2 Peter speak of being partakers in the divine nature? Isn’t that some of what the Farewell Discourse is about? “Without me you can do nothing. Now I in you and you in me.” Is that not talking about some kind of mystical communion? Then perhaps one more. John 17 is often appealed to in terms of the sacrament of unity, of an embodied Christianity that transcends debates on doctrine.

It used to be, as I said, that dogmatic theology was understood to be the precursor to spiritual theology, but that is increasingly changing today, partly under the impact of postmodern epistemology. You begin with experience and then work out your dogmatics from there. So you work at Christian unity and then see what can follow out of it. Thus, there is a kind of sacramental unity that becomes the basis for spirituality. John is often appealed to in this regard today in the contemporary literature.

So both to understand John better and to understand a genuinely biblical spirituality better, it might be worth our while to spend a bit of time in John’s gospel thinking through some of these things. By and large, I will use Johannine categories in Johannine ways and then try to make extensions at the end of each talk into our present vocabulary.

So let me plunge in after that rather extended introduction. I begin first with some observations on John’s prologue, John 1:1–18. Anyone with even the most elementary grasp of John’s gospel knows that at the heart of the connection between God and human beings lies revelation. That is, the Word becomes flesh and lives for a while among us, and we have seen his glory. One cannot escape the incarnation and then all that flows from it.

So it is worth reflecting, I think, on some of the expressions in the prologue itself. Let us begin with the very category, word. Why does John introduce Jesus as the Word? The more so, one might ask, because he then does not use, outside the prologue, this category for Jesus anywhere else in the book. He uses the word word, but elsewhere in the book, after the prologue, it means Jesus’ message. “Unless you obey my word,” Jesus says, where “the word” refers to his message.

Only in the prologue is Jesus himself called the Word. Why, then, does he choose this term? Why does he not say, “In the beginning was the Son of God, and the Son of God was with God, and the Son of God was God”? Wouldn’t that be what later became more traditional Trinitarian terminology? Why Word?

Of course, if John had used the term Son of God instead of Word, it would have been a kind of flag that “Son of God” was the controlling christological category as you read the entire gospel, because it would have been the first christological term, the dominate christological term, and it would have shaped all of our reading of John’s gospel.

One would have said, “This is the gospel of the Son of God. This is the gospel whose Christology is categorized in that domain.” Whereas, in fact, from 1:19 to 1:51, Jesus is introduced as Son of Man, Son of God, Rabbi, King of Israel, and two or three other christological categories, which are successively unpacked in the course of the book.

One cannot be sure, but I suspect that John is looking, as he writes his prologue, for a term that embraces all of the christological categories but can’t be reduced to any of them. As he reflects on this, he recalls that in the Old Testament the Word of God is associated with creation, with revelation, and with salvation.

“By the word of the Lord the heavens were formed,” we are told repeatedly. That particular expression, of course, from Psalm 33:6. “The word of the Lord came to Jeremiah the prophet [or to someone else] saying …” Revelation. Salvation, deliverance: “God sent forth his word and healed them. My word will not return to me empty but will accomplish what I desire.”

Thus, the Word of God, God’s self-disclosure … in his creative power, in revelation, and in salvation itself, in deliverance … becomes for John such a perfect way of thinking about Christ himself: one with God in creation, one with God in deliverance, and one with God in revelation. Someone has paraphrased this verse, “In the beginning God expressed himself, and his self-expression was with God, and his self-expression was God.” Close.

There is a long poem by Goethe, who tries to wrestle with how this word logos should be rendered. Should it be rendered word, which in English has a kind of static notion, or should it be rendered more dynamically? Some French versions have, “Dans le commencement Ètait le verbe,” or “In the beginning was the verb.” It’s trying to get away from the “staticness” of word. Of course, that’s not quite right either, but what are you trying to do with this word logos?

In the ancient world, logos tended to run in one of two directions. It could refer to the inner logic of something, and it shows up, in this usage, in our English words ending with -logy. So psychology is the logic, the science, of the psuke; and geology is the logic, the inner coherence, the science, of ge, of land; and theology is the science, if you like, of theos. It’s the knowledge, the internal logic, of theos.

It could also refer to the outward manifestation of something. Then it is often best rendered message. Thus we read, “The word of the cross is foolishness to those who believe.” Some of our versions rightly render it, “The message of the cross.” It doesn’t mean the word cross is foolishness or stauros in Greek is foolishness. It means the message of the cross, the manifestation in the cross, is foolishness to those who believe.

That is close, I think, to what is being said here. Hence, some translations render this, “In the beginning was the message, and the message was with God, and the message was God.” It’s a hard word, but nevertheless, there is some notion here of revelation that is undeniable. Moreover, this is not the only place in the New Testament where this notion surfaces. Remember how Hebrews begins.

“In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son,” en huios in Greek. It’s not that “by his Son” is entirely parallel to “by the prophets.” God spoke by the prophets. Those were the agents. Now God speaks by his Son, and now he’s the agent. All we’ve done is switched agents.

It’s more than that. “He has spoken to us en huios.” It’s hard to render. In Son. “In the Son revelation,” is the idea. That is, “He has spoken to us in the past by prophets and by signs and by miracles in many ways at different times by the hand of the prophets, but in these last days he has given to us the Son revelation.”

The climax of the Old Testament is not the New Testament. The climax of the Old Testament is Jesus, to whom the New Testament bears witness. Something of the same notion is found here. “In the beginning God expressed himself, and that self-expression was with God, and that self-expression was God.” He was with God, God’s own fellow, in eternity past, and he was God, nothing less than God.

I wish I could spend more time in tracking out the background of this in the Old Testament. I’ll let it pass and remind you simply of the words of Barrett. “John intends that the whole of his gospel shall be read in the light of this verse. The deeds and words of Jesus are the deeds and words of God. If this be not true, the book is blasphemous.” In other words, right at the beginning of this book, the way we are to be connected with this God is, first and foremost, in the context of revelation. This God takes initiative to disclose himself in the Word, who, we are told a few verses later, became flesh and lived for a while among us.

Now I wish I could take more time talking about his role in creation (verses 2–3), and then his role not only in creation but in revelation, disclosing not only the light of creation itself (“The light shines in the darkness”), but the light also in the revelation of good versus evil. Light begins to change its emphasis in John’s gospel. Thus we read in chapter 3, verse 19, “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.” How much was not understood (in verse 5)? I will pass by all of these things.

I will pass by, likewise, verses 12–13. After the world so widely and largely rejected him, even though the world was made by him, who is God’s own agent in creation (verses 10–11), yet some did receive him, and to these he gave the authority to become children of God, children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.

Many things in John’s gospel anticipate longer discussions in the rest of the book. That is, it is a prologue that introduces the themes that are unpacked in the book. Here, of course, this theme is unpacked in John 3, which we’ll look at a little later today. So I will skip it here and note how new birth comes into play in our understanding of what spirituality is in due course. We come, instead, to verse 14. Let me read verses 14–18.

“The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. John testifies concerning him. He cries out, saying, ‘This was he of whom I said, “He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.” ’ From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known.”


Now I want to argue that for biblically-literate people in the first century, it would be virtually impossible to read these words without harking back to a certain Old Testament passage, just as today, if I were to say in most of our congregations, “He was wounded for our transgressions” or the like, immediately most people in our church who have been Christians for any period of time at all would conjure up Isaiah 53 in their minds. You wouldn’t have to say more than that, and the whole chapter would spread out before them.

Or if I said, “You must be born again,” immediately the entire interplay between Jesus and Nicodemus springs to mind for most of us who are at all biblically literate. Likewise, these five verses, John 1:14–18, conjure up one Old Testament passage. Some of the allusions would not be determinative by themselves, but taken together, it seems to me, they are entirely determinate.

The passage, of course, is Exodus 32–34. Let me remind you of what that passage is about. You will see its bearing on this theme in a moment. In chapter 32, Moses goes up on the mountain to receive from God the Decalogue, but when he comes down, he discovers that Aaron and the people are involved in an orgy of idolatry. This golden calf has been cast, and they’re worshiping it. “These are the gods that brought you out of Egypt, O Israel.”

He comes down and is devastated by the infidelity and betrayal after a mere month. He smashes the Decalogue tablets. In due course, there is terrible judgment, and God is threatening to wipe out all of the nation and make of Moses a new nation. Terrible judgment and disappointment. In all of this, Moses himself feels abandoned, because, after all, it is his own brother who has been one of the ringleaders in all of this. Up until now, it has been Aaron who has been Moses’ spokesperson, but now he’s gone too, and Moses is alone.

Then in chapter 33, verse 7, we read, “Moses used to take a tent and pitch it outside the camp some distance away, calling it the ‘tent of meeting.’ ” There he seeks God’s face, and there’s glory on Moses’ face. Now you must understand this was before the tabernacle was built. After all, the instructions for the tabernacle were just given to Moses on the mountain. So this tent shrine, if we may call it that, was there before the tabernacle was built. Now we are introduced to Moses’ prayer at one of these meetings in the tent shrine.

Exodus 33:12: “Moses said to the Lord, ‘You have been telling me, “Lead these people,” but you have not let me know whom you will send with me.’ ” That is, whom you will send with me now that Aaron is compromised. After all, Moses’ agreement to go, however unwilling, was predicated on the assumption that God would give him a spokesperson. “I am halting in speech. I can’t do this.” “All right, all right. I’ll send Aaron.” Now Aaron is compromised. Where do we go from here?

“You have not told me whom you will send with me. You have said, ‘I know you by name and you have found favor with me.’ If you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so that I may know you and continue to find favor with you. Remember that this nation is your people. They’re not mine. I didn’t sign up for this job. It’s not as if I’m the redeemer here. They’re your people. You redeemed them. What am I supposed to do with them?” The Lord replied, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.”

Now at this point, Moses may be thinking of something else too. The plan was that when the tabernacle was built, it should be built in the center with the tribes around it: three in the north, three in the south, three in the east, and three in the west. But God has now said there’s no way he can go up in the midst of these people lest his wrath break out amongst them. If they act so idolatrously again, and the shrine, the place of the demonstration of the shekinah glory, is right in the midst of the people, it could break out and destroy all the people.

Now God says, “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” Moses picks up on this. “If your presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people …” Moses associating himself with the people. “… unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?”

This is now in the domain of spirituality. What is the connection between the people and God? Unless there is some demonstrable connection of some sort between the people and God, how will anyone know that we’re different from anybody else? From this point on, of course, there is no further talk of God putting the shrine somewhere else. God graciously replies, “I will do the very thing you have asked, because I am pleased with you and I know you by name.”

So at very least, there is a kind of personal knowledge of God that Moses has, an intimate, personal, verbal knowledge of God, and the demonstration of God’s presence in the tabernacle right at the heart of the covenant community. Thus, Old Testament spirituality is very largely constrained by tabernacle, and then later temple, manifestations.

It was to the tabernacle, then the temple, that the people of God were to gather in the old covenant. It constrains the nature of old covenant public worship. It constrains the nature of the relationship. This was the place where the high priest went in on Yom Kippur and offered the blood of bull and goat, both for his own sins and for the sins of the people.

Oh yes, there is a kind of individual spirituality in the Old Testament that is found, for example, in the Psalms, with wonderful intimacy of various kinds, yet nevertheless, in terms of corporate understanding of meeting of human beings with God, it is very heavily constrained by the centrality of what God has provided in the tabernacle and then later the temple.

Moses then said, “Now show me your glory.” It’s as if in the midst of the loneliest and hardest of circumstances, the only thing that will sustain us is a bigger, deeper vision of who God is. That too, broadly understood, falls in the domain of what is meant today by spirituality: a deeper knowledge of God, a deeper experience of God.

How can we put up with all of the vagaries and the hostilities and the ambiguities and the challenges that come in, even in the course of ordinary ministry, unless our knowledge of God is so deeply anchoring that it serves as a kind of bulwark? Moses means this quite literally. “I want to see something of your glory.”

“And the Lord said, ‘I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you.’ ” “Show me your glory.” “I will cause my goodness to pass in front of you.” Bear these terms in mind. We’re going to see them in John in a moment. “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.” God does not relinquish his sovereignty for one second.

“But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live,” which is, of course, explicitly referred to in John 1:18: “No one has seen God at any time.” That’s exactly what is being alluded to there. Then the Lord says, “There is a place near me where you may stand on a rock. When my glory passes by, hide yourself in the cleft of the rock.”

That’s the way it unfolds in chapter 34. He goes by, and God covers him over, and he intones certain words, and after God has gone by, then Moses is permitted to peek out and see something of the trailing edge of the afterglow of the glory of the Almighty. What are the words God intones? Chapter 34, verse 6:

“ ‘The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation.’ Moses bowed to the ground at once and worshiped. ‘O Lord, if I have found favor in your eyes,’ he said, ‘then let the Lord go with us. Although this is a stiff-necked people, forgive our wickedness and our sin, and take us as your inheritance.’ ”

This passage is of matchless importance. It defines the heart of the relationship between God and his people in terms of dealing with sin. That’s not a Buddhist spirituality. It’s not a Hindu spirituality, nor is it any warrant for thinking of increased intimacy with God merely at the level of technique. It is bound up with knowing God better because of forgiveness and despite our sin.

In other words, it fits into the broad-scale Bible storyline. It presupposes Genesis 1–3. Human beings, originally made in the image of God, who did have (what shall we call it … spirituality?) an intimate knowledge of God, an intimate relationship with God, an intimate awareness of God, pictured as walking in the garden in the cool of the day; a deep knowledge of him without inhibition, naked and unashamed.

Then with the “de-Godding” of God of Genesis 3, with the introduction of idolatry, with the dethroning of God, comes all of the entailments of the curse, and thus what must take place in biblical spirituality must be the overthrow of sin. It must be bound up with forgiveness. It must be bound up with reconciliation.

In the midst of these intoning words, one of the things God then says is, “The Lord, the Lord, abounding in …” Our translations fumble all over the place. Checed ‘emeth in Hebrew. “Love and faithfulness,” some versions have. Checed is covenantal love. It’s really not easily distinguishable from what we mean by grace. ‘Emeth is a broad category. It has to do with God’s faithfulness, but God’s faithfulness in word is what we mean by truth.

Thus, for example, when the queen of Sheba comes to Solomon and says, “Everything that was told me was ‘emeth,” what does she mean by that? “Everything told me was a faithful report.” That is, it was the truth. Thus, very frequently, this expression, checed ‘emeth, is rendered “grace and truth.”

Now go back to John’s gospel. “The Word became flesh and ‘tabernacled’ amongst us.” This is not some normal verb for “made his dwelling among us” or “lived among us.” It’s literally “tabernacled among us,” which means anybody who is biblically literate goes back to think about the onset of the first tabernacle. It is impossible to avoid thinking about it once this verb has been used.

“We have seen his glory.” Well, glory is a common enough expression in the Old Testament, of course, but if you’re thinking about glory at the time of the onset of the tabernacle, it’s very difficult to avoid thinking about this passage in Exodus 32–34. “Show me your glory,” Moses cries. Now John writes, “We have seen his glory,” and you start to think, “How does the glory theme work out in John’s gospel?”

In John’s gospel, the glory of Christ is manifest in event after event. For example, the first miracle in Cana of Galilee. It ends (verse 11), “Thus the disciples saw Jesus’ glory.” The crowd saw the miracle. The disciples saw the glory. So at various miracles, again we’re told Jesus manifested his glory, but by the time you get to chapter 12, glory takes on another connotation. The glory is manifest in the shame of the cross.

Jesus is lifted up and is about to return to the glory that he had with the Father before the world began, but this glory is manifested precisely in the ignominious shame and odium of the cross. “I will cause all my goodness to pass before you.” The glory and the sheer goodness and odium of a bloody cross. What starts off as spectacular wonder, as unabashed miracle, becomes the sheer goodness of God in the bloody cross.

“The glory of the One and Only, the unique one, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” This wonderful pair from the Old Testament that recurs again and again and again in Old Testament vocabulary, but not least in the context of Exodus 24–32. “The Lord, the Lord, abounding in checed ‘emeth.”

Well, it only shows up once, so it’s not too much. Except that, as we’ll see in a moment, it shows up in the following verses. “John testifies concerning him.” John the Baptist is reintroduced at this point, because John the Evangelist wants to make sure we understand this is not some sort of ahistorical, mystical seeing; this is precisely the manifestation of the Word made flesh in genuine history. In fact, it’s worth pausing at this point and thinking about this.

History lies at the very heart of Christian claims. Supposing you talk to a Buddhist, and supposing (I don’t know how) you could prove somehow that Gautama the Buddha never lived. Would Buddhism be destroyed? No, of course not, because there is nothing intrinsic to Buddhism that depends on the historicity of Gautama. The credibility of Buddhism depends on the coherence and attractiveness and philosophical richness and evocativeness of what is essentially a philosophical system.

Go to Hinduism. Supposing you could prove (I have no idea how) that Krishna never lived, never existed, was not a god. Would this destroy Hinduism? No, of course not, because in Hinduism, truth underlies everything and then manifests itself in literally millions of gods. So if you lose a god here or there, there are a lot of others. If Krishna disappears from the pantheon, well, go to a Shiva temple down the street. You’re not lost in Hinduism if you lose Krishna.

Go to Islam. Supposing you say to your friendly neighborhood mullah, “Do you think God could have given his revelation to somebody other than Muhammad?” He might misunderstand your question initially and say, “We Muslims believe that Muhammad brought the last revelation. Abraham was a great prophet. Moses was a great prophet. Jesus was a great prophet, but Muhammad brought the last and final revelation.”

You reply, “I’m not disputing that. You know I’m a Christian. I don’t believe that, but that’s not my question. My question is different. Could Allah, in all of his sovereignty, had he wanted to do so, give his final revelation to somebody other than Muhammad?” The mullah will reply, “Of course.” I mean, Muhammad is not the revelation; he merely carries it. Thus, there is very little that is intrinsic to history to make Islam coherent.

But you cannot even ask the same question of Jesus and make sense. Could God have given his revelation to somebody other than Jesus? Jesus is the revelation. The Word became flesh. It’s not even coherent. If you could prove Jesus never lived, Christianity is destroyed, because Christianity is not, first and foremost, an abstract philosophical system, though it does embrace worldviews. It depends on certain historical claims, claims that are authenticated by John. He saw him. He touched him. He announced him.

Now John the Evangelist contributes his bit. “We have seen his glory,” or as he writes also in his first epistle, “We’ve touched him; we’ve heard him, the Word of Life.” In fact, if you could prove Jesus never rose from the dead, you have destroyed Christianity. That’s what Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15. Suppose, he says, that the resurrection of Jesus never took place. What are the entailments?

First, the apostles are all a bunch of liars. Our access to history is through the first witnesses. Thus, if it turns out that the first witnesses are all wrong, then, in fact, they’re deceived or they’re liars. There’s no other alternative. Secondly, you’re still lost in your trespasses and sins. In other words, granted the larger biblical frame of reference in which we’re lost before God unless God himself pays off our sin, then if there’s no resurrection, there’s no clarity at all that the cross was something acceptable before God. Christ is not vindicated. We’re still damned.

Not only so, he says, but we’re, of all people, most to be pitied, because we’re believing something that isn’t true. In other words, here there is no vision of faith that is beneficial regardless of whether it’s true or not. “So long as you believe, it’s spiritually beneficial and it’s part of this spiritual existence we crave.” No, we’re of all people to be pitied, because we’re believing something that isn’t true.

For in the biblical frame of reference, belief, for its validity, depends on the truthfulness of its object, and that is ahistorical truth: incarnation, death, resurrection. It is in this context that God displays his checed ‘emeth. “From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another.” If you find 15 translations, they all translate it differently. It’s a very difficult passage to render.

It is literally, “From his fullness we have all received grace instead of grace.” It is a substitutionary term: anti. Charin anti charitos. “From his fullness we have all received a grace …” I’ll put it slightly paraphrastically. “… replacing a grace.” “A grace instead of a grace.” Verse 17: “For …” For gives us the explanation. “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth [checed ‘emeth] came through Jesus Christ.”

So we have received a grace now instead of a grace. Moses was given the law. Now grace and truth par excellence have come to us, and this is the still greater grace. We are no longer under the law covenant. We are under this new covenant. Although John never uses the term covenant, there are covenantal categories right through his book, as we shall see.

In other words, alluding still to this old passage when Moses was the one who mediated the giving of the law. That’s Exodus 32–34. The allusion is back there, and it’s unmistakable. Yes, the law was given through Moses, but checed ‘emeth, where in fact God promised checed ‘emeth to Moses, this came to us superlatively in Jesus Christ.

The law, after all, was a great grace. It was a gracious gift. It was something granted by God. It was a wonderful thing, but checed ‘emeth par excellence. This grace has come to us and has succeeded the law. We are not under the law covenant anymore. This book announces a new covenant in Jesus’ blood. In fact, we are not to think for a moment that our knowledge of God is based on a personal vision. “No one has ever seen God.”

This is picking up words exactly from Exodus 33. “No one has ever seen God, but God, the unique one (that is, the Son), who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.” In other words, all of our deep knowledge of God turns on this God who makes himself known as a human being, flesh and blood, who was touched and handled and seen and who dies on the cross, the epitome of glory in the goodness of the cross. “And he has made him known.”

I’ve told this story in other places. Forgive me if you’ve heard it, but I will end here. When I was an undergraduate at McGill University a long time ago (this was still in the mid-60s), there was a chap on the wing of the dorm where I lived, a Pakistani called Mohammed Yusuf Guraya. He was twice my age. He had left his wife and two children behind in Pakistan while he came to McGill to do a PhD in Islamic studies. McGill even then had a very fine Islamic institute, one of the best in the Western world.

He was trying to convert me to Islam, and I was trying to bear witness to him, but he was old enough to be my father. He was a lovely man, and a bit lonely. He had left his wife and children behind, and it was his first time in the West. It was a bit of a strange circumstance. I brought him to church with me once or twice. He had never been inside a Christian church. We walked down University Avenue to Pine Avenue and got on the bus to go around to Snowdon Baptist Church.

On the way, he said in his sparkling humor.… His eyes twinkled. He had these wonderful white teeth and a spectacular smile. “Don,” he said, “you study mathematics, do you not?” I said, “I do.” “If you have one cup and you add another cup, how many cups do you have?” Well, I was studying mathematics, so I said, “Two.” “If you have two cups and you add a third cup, how many cups do you have?” I said, “Three.” “If you have three cups and you take away one cup, how many cups do you have?” Boy, could I see where this was going. He said, “You believe that the Father is God?”

“Yes.”

“You believe that Jesus is God?”

“Yes.”

“You believe that the Spirit is God?”

“Yes.”

“So if you have one God plus one God plus one God, how many Gods do you have?” I was studying chemistry and mathematics, for goodness’ sake. How am I supposed to answer a PhD in Islam? I did the best I could. It wasn’t very smart in retrospect, but it was the best I could. I said, “If you’re going to give me mathematical arguments, let me at least choose the branch. Let’s talk about infinities. Infinity plus infinity plus infinity equals how much?” For the mathematically challenged amongst us, the answer is “Infinity.”

“Three infinities minus one infinity equals what?” He laughed. I mean, this was the level of our theological discussion. It was not very profound. It was the best I could do. That November, I gave him a Bible. He had never had one. It suddenly dawned on me the guy probably doesn’t even have one, so I gave him one. He said, “Where do I start reading it?” I didn’t know much about that either. I said, “Well, you start at the beginning, I suppose. How about John’s gospel?” So he started reading John’s gospel.

You must understand that in the typical Eastern way of reading you don’t start reading with the aim of covering as many passages as possible, understanding as little as possible so you can say you’ve read it. You tend instead to read and think about it and ponder it and stare off into middle infinity, and then read another few verses and go back and reread it. You think about it. So he’s beginning to think about it.

That Christmas he didn’t have anywhere to go, so I brought him home. By this time, my parents had moved up to Hull, Quebec. In the mysteries of God’s providence, that year my father spent most of the season in the hospital. So poor old Guraya was largely left on his own while we were trotting back and forth to the hospital.

At the end of the Christmas break, I said to my mother.… You know, we only have the one car. “Leave Dad alone in the hospital today. He’s all right. He’s getting better. I need to show Guraya something about Ottawa now he’s here.” So I took Guraya, and we went to this place and that place, did the various tourist things, and then ended up at the Houses of Parliament.

In those days, of course, there was much less security than there is today, so we got into one of these groups. There were about 30 of us led with a tour guide. We went to the Senate chambers and the House of Commons and the rogues’ gallery of prime ministers, John A. Macdonald all the way down, and the rotunda at the back with the library, and all this interesting history.

We got back to the central foyer, and there are these eight pillars with little fluted arches in the top of each one with a figure in each arch. “This is Aristotle, for government must be based on knowledge. This is Socrates, for government must be based on wisdom. This is Moses, for government must be based on law.” All the way around, all very deep. “Any questions?” It’s the end of the tour. Guraya pipes up, “Where is Jesus Christ?”

I didn’t know where this was coming from. I was looking for a crack in the ground to fall into. The guide certainly didn’t know where this was coming from either, so he did what guides do under those circumstances. He said, “I beg your pardon?” So Guraya did what foreigners do under those circumstances: assume that you haven’t been understood because of your thick accent, so you now say it more loudly and more slowly. “Where is Jesus Christ?”

So now we have three groups in the foyer of the Canadian Parliament hearing a Pakistani Muslim ask where Jesus is. I was watching this with amazement. Where are we going to go from here? Finally the guide said, “I don’t know. Why should he be here?” Mohammed looked shocked. “I read in the Christian Bible that the law was given through Moses but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. Where is Jesus Christ?” I thought, “Preach it, brother.”

You see, the man had been thinking. He had been thinking about what the gospel of John said, and already the figure of Jesus had captured him. He knew about law. He knew about sovereignty. He knew about God’s greatness. He knew about God’s glory, but God’s goodness manifested in the cross? Grace and truth manifested not simply in a tabernacle but in the one who ultimately replaces the tabernacle? This too, you see, is anticipating John 2.

Where do we meet God? How do we know God? It is under the terms of the new covenant, with a new sacrifice, with a new temple, in the glory of the Word made flesh and the one who goes to the cross on our behalf.

 

Is there enough evidence for us to believe the Gospels?

In an age of faith deconstruction and skepticism about the Bible’s authority, it’s common to hear claims that the Gospels are unreliable propaganda. And if the Gospels are shown to be historically unreliable, the whole foundation of Christianity begins to crumble.
But the Gospels are historically reliable. And the evidence for this is vast.
To learn about the evidence for the historical reliability of the four Gospels, click below to access a FREE eBook of Can We Trust the Gospels? written by New Testament scholar Peter J. Williams.