O Almighty God, whom truly to know is everlasting life: Grant us so perfectly to know thy Son Jesus Christ to be the way, the truth, and the life, that we may steadfastly follow his steps in the way that leadeth to eternal life; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Amen.
~ Collect for the Fifth Sunday of Easter (
BCP pg. 173)
William Temple’s Readings
in St. John’s Gospel is a wonderful commentary on the Fourth Gospel. The short introduction is itself
worthwhile. I freely admit that I have a
great love for this gospel. It is a
preference I share with Temple: “Let the Synoptists repeat for us as closely as
they can the very words He spoke; but let St. John tune our ears to hear
them.” However, for all its beautiful
imagery, spiritual comfort, and theological profundity, St. John’s Gospel has
in the modern era been a book that has caused no small amount of squirming
discomfort and even antipathy for some.
There are various “problems”: the long stretches of dialogue can be
repetitive, Jesus often seems cryptic, the unflattering language about “the
Jews” has been used as justification for anti-Semitism, etc. Perhaps most problematic are the exclusive
claims of Jesus as recorded in this gospel.
There are numerous examples, but probably the most significant is John 14:6:
I am the way, the truth, and the life: no
man comes unto the Father, but by me. It’s
not hard to see why such an exclusive claim would make us modern Christians uncomfortable. The last thing we want is
to be seen as narrow-minded and intolerant.
Intolerance is, of course, the one thing modern, secular society will
not tolerate. I remember several years
ago seeing a priest on television say that she believed Jesus was the way, the
truth, and the life for her personally, “but that doesn’t mean he is for
everybody.” More recently, none other
than the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church has been criticized for
hedging on the question of whether Jesus is really the only way to God. It just doesn’t sound nice!
Be that as it may, from the perspective of Christian
doctrine, these exclusive claims are undeniable. It is not just St. John’s Gospel, but the
whole of the New Testament that asserts the utter uniqueness of Jesus Christ,
the God-Man. The Incarnation, the birth, life, death, and
resurrection of Jesus, is the central event in the story of humanity, the hinge
of history, “the culmination of the ages”
and “the fullness of time”, to borrow
St. Paul’s language. Accordingly, as St.
Peter preached at Pentecost, “there is no
other name under heaven whereby men can be saved.” This does not mean, however, that Christians
should be narrow-minded or arrogant; quite the contrary. Neither should we feel obligated to dismiss
all other claims to wisdom and truth, for all truth is God’s truth. Concerning John 1:9, There was the light, the true light, which enlighteneth every man – coming
into the world, Temple comments:
“From the beginning the divine light has shone. Always it was coming into the world; always
it enlightened every man alive in his reason and conscience … and this is what
is fully and perfectly expressed in Christ.
So it may be truly said that the conscience of the heathen man is the
voice of Christ within him – though muffled by his ignorance. All that is noble in the non-Christian
systems of thought, or conduct, or worship is the work of Christ upon them and
within them. By the Word of God – that
is to say, by Jesus Christ – Isaiah, and Plato, and Zoroaster, and Buddha, and
Confucius conceived and uttered such truths as they declared. There is only one divine light; and every man
in his measure is enlightened by it.”
And so we may believe that others may come to God in ways we
would not immediately recognize or acknowledge as “Christian”, and yet to the
extent that anyone comes to God, it is by and through Christ, the Word of God,
the “one divine light.” To claim
otherwise, that Christ is just one option among many paths to God, is a clear
rejection of the gospel as presented in the New Testament and the whole of the
Christian tradition.
In summary, as Temple ably states in the introduction:
“We may meet the complaint that in this Gospel the Lord is
presented as self-assertive. Certainly
we must admit that if the claims which He here makes are not true they are intolerably
arrogant. If He is a very good man
completely surrendered to the Spirit of God, He cannot, without offence, speak
as the Johannine Christ speaks. But if
He is God come in the flesh He not only may, He must proclaim Himself as the
fount of salvation. Love, not self-concern,
demands that He should call men to Himself as alone the revelation of the
Father. At the same time, it is
appropriate that He should do this either when He is expressly challenged, as
the religious leaders at Jerusalem challenged Him, or in conversation with His
intimate disciples; and it is precisely in these circumstances that the Fourth
Gospel presents Him as making these claims … If, when all is said, any still
feel a trace of self-assertion in the sense which involves moral defect, it may
be held that the Evangelist has imported into his record of what the Lord said
some of his own devoted eagerness. But I
find no reason for recourse to such a plea.
Those who admit, and wish to proclaim, all that the Lord is here
represented as saying about Himself, will feel gratitude, not resentment, that
the words are recorded; those who do not admit their truth are bound to resent,
or at least to regret, their presence in this profoundly sympathetic presentation
of the Lord.”
Peace of Christ.
