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Christology and Community: a Study of the Social Matrix of the Fourth Gospel Bill Domeris

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Christology and Community: a Study of the Social Matrix of the Fourth Gospel Bill Domeris JOURNAL OF THEOLOGY FOR SOUTHERN AFRICA 49 Christology and Community: A Study of the Social Matrix of the Fourth Gospel Bill Domeris INTRODUCTION I owe a profound debt to Albert Geyser, for he served for many years as my academic guide and mentor. Both during my time at Wits and later when he visited me in Durham he was a source of inspiration and encouragement. He was instrumental in making possible my participation in the City of David excavations in Jerusalem, and like him I learnt to love that land. But it was his love for the Fourth Gospel in particular which has left its mark upon me. So to his memory and his name (yud vashem) I dedicate this study of John. The application of Social Scientific methodologies and models to the study of the New Testament has added significantly to our understanding of the Biblical text. In particular, the work of social scientists like Poter Berger and Thomas Luckmann1 has opened the way for the sociology of knowk dge to be applied to the New Testament. Leon Festinger* has received new recogr <tion for the light his work casts upon the early Christian communities as millenarian movements. Kenelm Burridge3 is impor­ tant for his work in the same area, and in particular his focus upon cognitive disso­ nance. Edgar Mills4 has drawn our attention to the aspect of normative dissonance, and opened the way for Bruce Malina5 to apply this to the Gospels. The application of social scientific methods has been catalogued by Robin Scroggs,6 Philip Richter7 and John Elliott.8 In this article I shall attempt to apply some of the findings of these social scientists to the Gospel of John. The Gospel of John, with its distinctive picture of Jesus, presents a continuing chal­ lenge to contemporary scholarship. In recent years it has become evident that in order to understand the Gospel we need to find out as much as we can about the community 1. P Berger and Τ Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge, (Garden City Doubleday, 1967) 2. L Festinger, Η W RieckenandS Schachter, When Prophecy Fails A Social and PsychologicalJ Study of a Modern Group that Predicted the Destruction of the World, (New York Harper and Row, 1956) 3. Κ Burridge, New Heaven, New Earth A Study of Millenarian Activities (New York Schocken Books, 1969) 4. E W MILLS, "Sociological Ambivalence and Social Order The Constructive Use of Normative Dissonance" in Sociology and Social Research 67,1983, pp 279-287 5. Β J Malina, "Normative Dissonance and Christian Origins" in Semeia 35,1986, pp 35-59 6. R Scroggs, "The Sociological Interpretation of the New Testament" in NTS 26,1980, pp 164-79 7. Ρ J Richter, 'Recent Sociological Approaches to the Study of the New Testament" Religion 14,1984, pp 77-90 8. J Elliott, "Social-Scientific Criticism of the New Testament More on Method and Models" in Semeia 35,1986, pp 1 -33 Dr. W.R. Domeris is Associate Head of the Department of Biblical Studies, Johannesburg Col­ lege of Education. 50 CHRISTOLOGY AND COMMUNITY in which it arose. Social histories, like those of Louis Martyn9 and Raymond Brown10 have begun the process of drawing back the curtains, but many questions have yet to be answered. In particular the social, economic and geographical setting of the Gos­ pel remains a mystery. Perhaps, in this article, we will go a little way towards dispelling some aspects of the enigma. The starting point for our search, is the belief that there is a connection between the Christology for the Gospel and the Johannine community. This is not a new idea. In 1926 Rudolph Bultmann suggested that the Gospels are primarily sources for the situ­ ations from which they arose and only secondarily sources for the historical situations they describe.11 Several decades later Rudolph Schnackenburg argued that the driv­ ing motive for the composition of the Fourth Gospel may be discovered within "the author's intention to provide the Church of his time with a picture of Christ correspond­ ing to the Church 's spiritual condition... ".12 And so the belief took shape that the teach­ ing of the Fourth Gospel in some way mirrored the writer's own Church situation. David Aune has provided us with one of the most important studies in the relation­ ship between the Fourth Gospel and its founding community. Presupposing that re­ ligion is a projection of the consciousness of a community, he writes: The Chnstology of the Fourth Gospel is the primary means of expressing the religious needs, values and ide­ als of the Johannine community. That is to say that the Chnstology of the Johannine community is pnmanly determined by the sotenological interests of the ecclesiology of that community13 Aune argues that it was within the pneumatic worship of the Johannine community that the "present experience of the exalted and living Jesus" came to be understood as "the recurring actualisation of his future Parousia".14 What the people experienced in their regular worship, namely the spiritual presence of Jesus, became the basis for a realised form of eschatology. This doctrine was then read back into the teaching of the historical Jesus by the Evangelist.15 Thus the worship of the community lead to a radical re-assessment of their Christology.16 Aune's understanding of the flow from the social experience of the community to their Christology, has been criticised by Louis Martyn. Martyn agrees that the history of the Gospel intrudes upon the Gospel's presentation of Jesus,17 but prefers to follow Wayne Meeks and to speak of "a harmonic reinforcement between social experience and christology".18 Aune moved from the theological (charismatic) experience of the Johannine com­ munity to their Christology. Meeks chose to start with the history of the community and to understand their theology in the light of this history. He suggested a connection be­ tween the community's experience (expulsion from the synagogue), and the Evangelist's use of the ascent/descent motif as in John 3:13.19 Following Peter Berger 9. L Martyn, The Gospel of John in Christian History, (New York Paulist, 1978) and History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel (Nashville Abingdon, 1979) 10. R Brown, The Community ofthe Beloved Disciple (New York Paulist 1979) and "Johannine Ecclesiology-The Commun­ ity s Origins" in Interpretation 31,1977, pp 379-393 11. R Bultmann, "The New Approach to the Synoptic Problem" reprinted and translated from the original 1926 article in Exis­ tence and Faith Shorter Writings of Rudolph Bultmann edited by S M Ogden, (New York Living Age Books, 1960) pp 35-54 esp ρ 38 12. R Schnackenburg, The Church in the New Testament, (Ε Τ New York Herder and Herder, 1965) ρ 104 13. D Aune The Cultic Setting of Realized Eschatology m Early Christianity, (Leiden E J Brill 1972) ρ 76 14. Ibid ρ 101 15. Ibid ρ 99 16. Ibid ρ 101 17. Martyn, History and Theology, ρ 18 18. Martyn, The Gospel of John, ρ 105 19. W Meeks, "The Man from Heaven in Johannine Sectarianism ' in JBL 91,1972, pp 44-72 see esp pp 70-72 JOURNAL OF THEOLOGY FOR SOUTHERN AFRICA 51 and Thomas Luckmann's theory of the sociology of knowledge,^Meeks refined the projection model by arguing that the relationship between the Christology of the Gos­ pel and its social milieu was a dialectical one. He described the process as follows: the Christological claims of the Johannine Christians led to the exclusion of the commun­ ity from the synagogue, which led in turn to the development of the ascent/descent motif, and this in turn drove the community into further isolation.21 The advantages of such a dialectical model are obvious. Therefore, for this study I have chosen the model employed by Norman Gottwald in his classic work, Tribes of Yahweh. Utilising the theoretical frameworks of Emile Durkheim and Karl Marx, Gottwald describes the religion of pre-monarchic Israel as the product of the social- egalitarian relations experienced by the early Israelites.22 Pressing beyond Marx's belief that consciousness determines one's life,23 Gottwald opts for a dialectical model in which life and consciousness interact. He introduces the idea of a servomechanism or feed-back loop.24 In a convincing manner Gottwald argues that instead of a static model in which ideology is determined by the relations of production, we are to under­ stand a dynamic model. Yahwism is not simply a product of the social-egalitarian relations among the Israel­ ites, it also serves as "a feedback loop" by influencing in turn the very societal rela­ tions which brought it into being.25 Thus Yahwism legitimates and empowers a move­ ment for social equality.26 In fact Gottwald believes that it is the single most significant servo-mechanism for the society,27 able to feed information back into the social rela­ tions and so enable the system constantly to correct itself. In applying this model to the Fourth Gospel, I will focus on three areas: 1. The social structure of the community. 2. The leadership operative within the community. 3. The audience envisaged by the Evangelist. My thesis is that the Christology of the Fourth Gospel reflects the culmination of an historical process in which that Christology was developed in a dialectical relationship with its social praxis. THE JOHANNINE COMMUNITY A Unique Community "Israel thought they were different, because they were different" writes Gottwald.28 The same may be said of the Johannine community.
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