Over the past two weeks, we have been examining the different schools of Christian thought that developed after Jesus’s death. First, we looked at those followers of Jesus who kept their Jewish identity: those who followed Jewish laws and worshiped at the Temple. Last week, we studied the Gospel of Thomas and the very different theology promoted by the Thomasine school. Today, we focus on the Johannine school – a school of thought that developed in the late first century, between 80 and 100 A.D., and seemed to revolve around the city of Ephesus.

Johannine theology was much more successful than the theology of Thomas.  For one, this school of theology left behind four texts: the Gospel of John and the three letters of John, all found in the New Testament canon.  This strand of Christ-centered teaching appears to have centered in Asia Minor and remained as a separate and identifiable theological strand until the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. 

Johannine theology served as the bridge between Jewish monotheism and the Nicene Trinitarianism.  It has a very high concept of the nature of Christ, and in this way, it is very different from the other theological schools that emerged after Jesus’s death.  For John, Jesus stands outside the created order and existed prior to it.  This pre-existing Logos then incarnates, as stated in the Gospel of John: “The Word became flesh.”  This Word maintains a constant unity with the Father: “The Father and I are one.”

As a result, Jesus is clearly seen as the Son of God.  Jesus's role, then, is to reveal the Father to humanity.  In addition, Jesus is understood as the Son of Man, but in this role, he functions more as a cosmic apocalyptic figure rather than just a human being.

Like the Gospel of Thomas, John emphasizes that eternal life is available now, and the resurrected life is already present.  In essence, he internalizes the apocalypse.  Eternal life is available right now, and judgment is occurring in the present moment.  Resurrected life is already present and available.  

In contrast with Thomas, though, John has an explicitly dualistic theology.  He sharply contrasts between light and darkness, between above and below, between truth and falsehood, and between the children of God and the children of the devil.

For John, Jesus is not simply the Messiah.  He is the self-revelation of God.

The God of John is radically transcendent, for no one has seen God – he is above and beyond all human knowledge. At the same time, God is fundamentally imminent— an inward Presence that manifests through the power of the Spirit. Here, we see that John’s concept of the Holy Spirit is central to his teachings.  For John, the Spirit provides the believer with ongoing revelation and serves as both an internal teacher and a continual source of authority.

Of note, John’s understanding of the Holy Spirit differs significantly from that held by fundamentalist groups today.  While the Holy Spirit is both teacher and a source of authority, there is no speaking in tongues, prophecy, healing, or the other manifestations attributed to the Holy Spirit today.  Charismatic phenomena were not central to Johannine self-understanding.  For this school, the Spirit’s primary function was revelatory and ontological, not performative.  Authority rested in truth and relational participation, not spectacle.

Johannine theology differed in other respects as well.  For example, there are several key female figures in John, including the Samaritan woman, who is the first to question Jesus about theological matters; Mary of Bethany, who is cast as the model disciple; and Mary Magdalene, the first witness of the resurrection.  All of this suggests, in contrast to the widespread patriarchal frame of that time, that women were seen by this group as having theological agency.  This further suggests a less rigid ecclesiastical hierarchy.  The epistles of John, however, reflect a tightening of these boundaries over time.

The Johannine school derives its authority from three sources.  The first is from eyewitness testimony.  John frequently uses the phrase, “we have seen,” and this grounding in the visible and in personal experience of Jesus constitutes the initial basis for authority.  In addition, John refers to the ongoing teaching of the Holy Spirit as a further basis for authority.  Finally, John roots his authority in what he believes to be the correct cosmic Christology.

Over time, authority increasingly shifted towards episcopal structures.  As Ignatius of Antioch and other bishops of the era asserted their primacy and authority, the Johannine communities appear to have gradually adopted this view.

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There were several serious conflicts, both within the Johannine community and with other communities that existed at the time.  John’s letters clearly reflect a split within his community.  They describe a group that has “gone out from us” (1 John 2.19).  This group appears to have held the belief that Jesus only appeared to be human; that he did not truly possess a physical body, and thus, he did not actually suffer.  This view was competing with John’s understanding of Jesus’s Incarnation, and it created in a significant disruption of communal authority as a result.

There were also major conflicts with the broader Jewish community. The Johannine school seems to have originated within the community of Jewish Christians, led by James the Just. As Johannine theology developed, both the Jewish Christians and the larger Jewish community came to regard these followers of Jesus as heretics. Consequently, they were expelled from the synagogue.  In effect, they were pushed out of their own religious environment.

This conflict produced a theological radicalization within the Johannine community.  Their sense of Jesus as the Messiah escalates to Jesus as the pre-existent Logos, who is eternally one with the Father.  The more Jesus is rejected by the Jews, the more cosmic he becomes for this Christian community.  One of the consequences of this was an increasingly sharp dualism, with binaries such as light versus darkness, truth versus falsehood, and tellingly, the children of God versus the children of the devil.  These binaries are conflict language, and they function to preserve group identity after expulsion.

This conflict reshapes the Johannine understanding of Jesus.  Since they can no longer worship in the Temple, the Temple is vilified, described as a “marketplace,” and becomes the abode of the moneychangers.  Jesus then speaks of himself as the new temple, which God will raise up in three days.  In effect, the Johannine school, being expelled from the synagogue, relocates sacred space into Christ.

You can see the traumatic effects of this expulsion here.  Jesus, the disciples, and the Johannine community were all Jews.  This means that the Gospel of John is rightly understood as describing a family feud.  The vilification of the Jews in John’s Gospel has nothing to do with the anti-Semitism of later Christians.

It is important to understand that the harsh language (“children of the devil”) found in John is trauma language.  John is writing from a sense of profound loss.  For John’s community, it must’ve felt as if they were pushed out of their spiritual home by the people they were regarded as brothers and sisters.

The third and final conflict experienced by the Johannine community occurred in the second century.  During this century, spiritual authority began to coalesce around the person of the bishop of the in these early Christian communities scattered around the Mediterranean.  You can see how this conflict might arise.  The followers of John believed that the Holy Spirit is present in the hearts of the followers of Jesus, and this Spirit, coming from the Father and Jesus, is the ultimate authority.  The bishops of the various churches, especially Clement of Rome and Ireneus, vigorously contested this.

This development did not just come out of nowhere.  It was the bishops’ response to the plethora of competing ideas about Jesus that arose during this time.  Remember, this development takes place before there was any recognizable authority.  There was no list of authoritative scriptures to rely on.  There was no set of Christian beliefs by which you could judge a theology.  There was no central Christian leader who would determine whether a theological statement was true or false.

As you might suspect, this chaotic matrix gave rise to all kinds of wild speculations about the nature of Jesus, the nature of God, and the nature of humanity.  The bishops were faced with the problem of sorting through this unholy mess.  As a result, the bishops of Rome, Antioch, and Alexandria began asserting their primacy and their authority.

They were guided by several principles.  First, they asked if the doctrine was rooted in the apostles of Jesus.  Given that these men (and women) had actual direct experience with Jesus, their doctrines were likely to be closer to the truth than those who had no such direct experience.  Second, an orthodoxy, based on writings attributed to the apostles, was beginning to emerge in Christian thinking.  Did the doctrine conform with this emerging orthodoxy or was it in opposition?  These criteria, promulgated by the bishops, came to define early Christian thinking and doctrine.

Of note, Johannine theology was flexible enough to be claimed by multiple factions in these early years.  It’s theology was absorbed into the emerging catholic (here meaning “universal”) orthodoxy.  Thus, the Gospel of John is fully canonical and Johannine theology has become mainstream.  The independent school, however, did not survive.

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The outcome was this.  The cosmic Christology of John becomes the foundation of Nicene theology.  Spiritual authority, on the other hand, is subordinated to the episcopal structure.  Female agency is reduced in this later catholic consolidation.  The pronounced dualism of John is moderated, and the independent Johannine communities are absorbed into the catholic institutional church.

Here is the strange conclusion.  The Johannine school was theologically radical, mystically inclined, and centered around a cosmic Christ and an indwelling Holy Spirit.  In effect, it’s theology triumphed over him most of the competing theologies of the time.  That said, by 300 A.D. the school as a movement had vanished.  What a paradoxical outcome!

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Well, that’s enough for today.  Next week I will try to close this series by looking at the grand winner in the “Christian Doctrinal Sweepstakes,” the strange theology of St. Paul.  I hope you are finding these essays interesting, and they are helping you to understand how our apparently monolithic faith came to be.  When you start to take it apart and examine the pieces, you begin to see why the Christian faith has so many conflicting and contradictory elements.  The difficulty, in my view, is that spiritual truth is often forsaken in the process.

As a result, many have been (and are currently being) misled.  As a result, instead of the spiritual freedom promised by Jesus and all of the great avatars, sincere seekers are misdirected away from the Truth.  They find themselves locked in belief structures that loop upon themselves, creating a kind of mental jail.  From long observation, I have concluded that mental jails are much more difficult to escape from than the ones built from concrete and steel.

Please remember to take time every day to go within yourself.  Your freedom lies there, and is waiting for you to come and take the key and step into the fullness that God has created for you.

God bless you!

P.S.  These newsletters were written in a particular order, but due to the limitations of our email delivery system, we cannot send them in the order in which they were written.  We can send out the first five in order, but then the system sends out the next one, whatever that happens to be.

So, if you are suddenly moving from issue #5 to issue #whatever, it might be a little jarring.  If this sounds like you, I would encourage you to go back into our archives and do your best to read them in order. 

Humility as a Tool  → Letting go → Fear → Openness →  Acceptance & Growth

If you are finding this newsletter series helpful, you may want to consider Dr. Kaisch's latest book, Inside the Invisible:  The Universal Path to Spiritual Transcendence.👇

To access the other newsletter editions of the “Inside The Invisible Newsletter,” or if you’d like to read ahead or go back.

Please Note: These newsletters are meant to be read in order.