John the Theologian and his Paschal Gospel Quotes

“The whole economy of God is thus structured in such a way that we might learn the truth about God and the human being, and, in the end, become a living human being, the glory of God.”
― John Behr, John the Theologian and his Paschal Gospel: A Prologue to Theology

“in and through the Passion, the one Lord Jesus Christ becomes, as human, that which he, as God, always is.”
― John Behr, John the Theologian and his Paschal Gospel: A Prologue to Theology

“Seeing’ Christ, for John, does not mean to ‘see’ him as the world looked upon Jesus before his Passion, but rather to live as Christ lives, to share in the pathos of his life, the pathos of Life that he is.”
― John Behr, John the Theologian and his Paschal Gospel: A Prologue to Theology

“God reveals himself’.19 The Truth of Christianity thus ‘concerns not what shows itself, but the fact of self-showing, not what appears but the way of its appearing, not what is manifest, but the pure manifestation, in itself and as such…not the phenomenon but phenomenality’.”
― John Behr, John the Theologian and his Paschal Gospel: A Prologue to Theology

“what the Father does, and the Son seeing this does likewise, is to ‘raise [ἐγείρει] the dead and give them life’ (5:21),”
― John Behr, John the Theologian and his Paschal Gospel: A Prologue to Theology

“in the Gospel of John: τέτελεσται, it is finished, completed, perfected (19:30), confirmed, moreover, though unwittingly, by Pilate: ‘Behold, the human being’ (19:5, ἰδου ὁ ἄνθρωπος).”
― John Behr, John the Theologian and his Paschal Gospel: A Prologue to Theology

“the school of John’ were, as we saw in Chapter 2, the first to have an annual celebration of Pascha, and most likely the only ones to do so until the middle to the end of the second century.”
― John Behr, John the Theologian and his Paschal Gospel: A Prologue to Theology

“Christ’s life-giving death on the cross, although understood by others as an atoning death for sin (cf. Rom. 4:25), is not understood by John as a response to sin but rather as principally deriving from the love that God himself is (cf. 1 John 4:8) and has for the world (3:14–16). It is precisely this love, shown in this way, that has liberated human beings from the condition of being slaves to that of being friends (15:15), members of the household of God, enthroned in the Temple as sons alongside the Son,”
― John Behr, John the Theologian and his Paschal Gospel: A Prologue to Theology

“Irenaeus can conclude ‘the work of God is fashioning the human being’.”
― John Behr, John the Theologian and his Paschal Gospel: A Prologue to Theology

“Ignatius is at pains to uphold ‘the unity of the flesh and spirit of Jesus Christ’ (Magn. 1, 13; Smyrn. 3),”
― John Behr, John the Theologian and his Paschal Gospel: A Prologue to Theology

“It is written in the prophets, “and they shall all be taught by God”.’36 This is the teaching that Jesus is now giving, for ‘every one who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me’ (6:45).”
― John Behr, John the Theologian and his Paschal Gospel: A Prologue to Theology

“For every prophecy, before its fulfilment, is nothing but an enigma and ambiguity to human beings; but when the time has arrived, and the prediction has come to pass, then it has an exact exposition [ἐξήγησις].”
― John Behr, John the Theologian and his Paschal Gospel: A Prologue to Theology

“Cyril of Alexandria says, as we saw earlier, ‘One is the Son, one Lord, Jesus Christ, both before the incarnation and after the incarnation’,”
― John Behr, John the Theologian and his Paschal Gospel: A Prologue to Theology

“the work demonstrates how the one on the cross is in fact the Word of God, who through the Passion demonstrates his resurrection in those who follow him, as his body, in taking up the cross.”
― John Behr, John the Theologian and his Paschal Gospel: A Prologue to Theology

“What are we to make of his ‘incarnational’ theology? What is meant by ‘Incarnation’ anyway, despite it being such a beguilingly easy concept to use? Who is this Word and what is the ‘flesh’ that the Word becomes?”
― John Behr, John the Theologian and his Paschal Gospel: A Prologue to Theology

“The second principle is that in and through the Passion, the one Lord Jesus Christ becomes, as human, that which he, as God, always is.”
― John Behr, John the Theologian and his Paschal Gospel: A Prologue to Theology

“the Gospels are, rather, scripturally mediated memories in the light of the Passion, which to be read, or rather heard, as gospel must be ‘translated’, as Origen put it, from the form of a biographical narrative to become a proclamation, ‘the eternal gospel’, or, as Henry would insist, the Word of God addressing us through these texts, not by projecting a past history, but by shattering the world of appearances to recall us back to life.”
― John Behr, John the Theologian and his Paschal Gospel: A Prologue to Theology

“Only with Diodore of Tarsus and Theodore of Mopsuestia are the Scriptures (now decisively the ‘Old Testament’) no longer read in the previously ubiquitous manner, as unveiled by the cross to speak of Christ and his Passion, but as its own narrative or historia distinct to and other than that of the New Testament, which in turn is no longer read as a recapitulation or epitome of the Scriptures. The starting point for understanding Christ is no longer the types revealed in the unveiling of Scripture (the ‘Old Testament’), but the narratives of the New Testament themselves,”
― John Behr, John the Theologian and his Paschal Gospel: A Prologue to Theology

“once again, is a call to take up the same cross: ‘Be my witnesses [μάρτυρες]; I too am a witness, says the Lord God, and the servant whom I have chosen, so that you may know and believe that I AM’ (Isa. 43:10).”
― John Behr, John the Theologian and his Paschal Gospel: A Prologue to Theology

“John was regarded, by those who in the following two generations traced their lineage back to him, as being the high priest of the paschal mystery,”
― John Behr, John the Theologian and his Paschal Gospel: A Prologue to Theology

“it is precisely God’s divinity which, rightly understood, includes his humanity’.”
― John Behr, John the Theologian and his Paschal Gospel: A Prologue to Theology

“The mystery of God and the mystery of the human being, though as distinct as fire and iron, are only known together, as one and the same, the theanthropos, the God-man.”
― John Behr, John the Theologian and his Paschal Gospel: A Prologue to Theology

“Our God, Scripture tells us, is a ‘consuming fire’ (Deut. 9:3; Heb. 12:29), one not measured by space and time, for these are the dimensions of that which he has created. And so, ascending into heaven and to God through the Passion, while remaining that which he is, he nevertheless, as human, becomes that which he (the same one), as God, always is, the eternal Word of God: he, while remaining all that he is as human, is only known, as the iron in the fire is, by the properties of God, and God, in turn, while remaining unchanged, as does the fire when it receives the iron, is now, nevertheless, embodied, though the body is no longer measured by the space and time of our world to be seen in the world.”
― John Behr, John the Theologian and his Paschal Gospel: A Prologue to Theology

“In the unity of the paschal event as understood by John, as we have explored it in various ways throughout this work—whose Gospel does not narrate how Christ was put to death, nor present his Passion in terms of an atonement for sin, but rather affirms that he offers himself for the life of the world, a self-offering which is the paradigmatic expression of love—there is not simply a correspondence between heaven and earth, but a coincidence or identity:”
― John Behr, John the Theologian and his Paschal Gospel: A Prologue to Theology

“But’, Irenaeus continues, ‘when the Word of God became flesh, he confirmed both of these, showing forth the image truly, since he became himself what was his image, and he re-established the likeness in a sure manner, by assimilating the human being to the invisible Father through means of the visible Word’.”
― John Behr, John the Theologian and his Paschal Gospel: A Prologue to Theology

“Scripture, as the Word of God addressed to us, in human words, breaks through our forgetfulness of our originary condition; it calls us back, as prodigals, to our primal condition as sons of the Father.”
― John Behr, John the Theologian and his Paschal Gospel: A Prologue to Theology

“The apostasy of sin of course has meant that, in Irenaeus’ words, we who ‘are of God by nature’ have become alienated from God, ‘alienated contrary to nature’, resulting in our forgetting of our original condition.”
― John Behr, John the Theologian and his Paschal Gospel: A Prologue to Theology

“For John, then, as Henry reads him, flesh is not the means of a revelation understood as appearance in the world, but flesh is itself the revelation.”
― John Behr, John the Theologian and his Paschal Gospel: A Prologue to Theology

“the new life to be reached, the second life, is just the first one, the oldest Life, the one that lived at the Beginning and that was given in its transcendental birth to all living ones: because, outside it and without it, no living one nor any life would be possible’.”
― John Behr, John the Theologian and his Paschal Gospel: A Prologue to Theology

“This phenomenality is not that which operates in the light of the world, but instead in life, revealing itself to, and in, living ones, yet never itself seen in the world. Life is not seen, as an object in the world, but is that in which and by which those who live see.”
― John Behr, John the Theologian and his Paschal Gospel: A Prologue to Theology