Kindle Notes & Highlights
“We do not see things as they are. We see things as we are.”
I have a set of lenses that you can’t see but without which I can’t see. These are the lenses of my background and my experiences, my gender and my upbringing, my ethnicity and my education. These lenses shape, color, inform, and even taint my view of the world and my very best attempts at objectivity. This is also true for each of you.
strive for objectivity while also realizing that they will never fully achieve it.
modern readers are not the originally intended audience.
Translators inevitably make interpretive decisions that influence how a given text is read and understood.
The Gospel of John is a story of Jesus than can stand on its own without the assistance of other gospels
There is no such thing as a “plain reading” of the Gospel of John.
We cannot assume that a widely held, contemporary theological view is found in its fully developed form in the pages of the New Testament.
Jesus as a fulfilment of or replacement for the outward trappings of Jewish religious life.
Jesus is the one who reveals the Father to humanity (v. 18c); this is his most important role in the world.
The stated purpose of the gospel is to engender belief in those who hear the story: “These things have been written in order that you might believe . . . and that believing, you might have life in his name”
it is fallacious to assume that a document written for a specific community cannot also speak to other, broader contexts.
requires an abandonment of the quest for certainty.
how religious writings functioned in the ancient world.
If we impose our modern sensibilities on the text we are making an illegitimate move, and if we insist that the text must conform to our modern theological constructs, we are making an equally illegitimate move. The Gospel of John is a theologically stylized narrative with his...
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Second, in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus is called Messiah, Son of Man, and Son of God, but at no point is he explicitly identified as divine.
they speak directly to Jesus’ relationship with his followers; they “emphasize the relationship between Jesus and believers . . . and also suggest that John connected Christology closely with early Christian experience.”
almost every character exists to serve the narrator’s agenda,
By replying, “I am not” (Greek: ouk eimi; v. 17b), Peter not only denies Jesus but also utters words that stand out against the threefold appearance of “I am” (Greek: egō eimi) in vv. 5–8.
his understanding of this truth is rooted in a signs-faith, which throughout the Gospel proves to be an inadequate basis for authentic belief.
The irony here is rich: the ordinary reader understands religious truths that the leading religious authority cannot.
God loves the world and has provided for its salvation. This expression of the universal saving will of God recalls the words of 1:10–11, in which Jesus comes to his own place and his own people reject him.
Jesus came not to condemn the world but to save it. Condemnation
One can access the salvation God offers through belief in God’s Son; otherwise, one is condemned by default.
the imperatives of love and belief.
