Raymond E. Brown, The Community of the Beloved Disciple.
Summary Charts, p. 165-169
Chart 1
The History of the Johannine Community
| PHASE ONE: ORIGINS (mid-50s to late 80s) |
ORIGINATING GROUP: In or near Palestine, Jews of relatively standard expectations, including followers of JBap, accepted Jesus without difficulty as the Davidic Messiah, the fulfiller of the prophecies, and one confirmed by miracles. Among this group was a man who had known Jesus during the ministry and who would become the Beloved Disciple. | ||||||
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SECOND GROUP: Jews of an anti-Temple bias who believed in Jesus and made converts in Samaria. They understood Jesus against a Mosaic rather than a Davidic background. He had been with God, seen Him, and brought down His words to people. | ||||||
| The acceptance of the Second group catalyzed the development of a high, pre-existence christology, which led to debates with Jews who thought the Johannine community was abandoning Jewish monotheism by making a second God out of Jesus. Ultimately the leaders of these Jews had the Johannine Christians expelled from the synagogues. The latter, alienated from their own, saw "the Jews" as children of the devil. They stressed a realization of the eschatological promises in Jesus to compensate for what they had lost in Judaism. The Disciple made this transition and helped others to make it, thus becoming the Beloved Disciple. | |||||||
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GENTILE CONVERTS | ||||||
| PHASE TWO: GOSPEL (ca. 90) |
Since "the Jews" were blinded, the coming of the Greeks was God's plan of fulfillment. The community may have moved from Palestine to the Diaspora to teach the Greeks. This contact brought out the universalistic possibilities in Johannine thought. However, rejection by others and persecution by "the Jews" convinced Johannine Christians that the world was opposed to Jesus, and that they should not belong to this world which was under the power of Satan. Rejection of the high Johannine christology by Jewish Christians was seen as unbelief and led to a breaking of communion (koinonia). Communications were kept open to the Apostolic Christians (see Chart Two) with hopes for unity, despite differences of christology and church structure. | ||||||
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| The defensive concentration on christology against "the Jews" and the Jewish Christians led to a split within the Johannine community. | |||||||
| PHASE THREE : EPISTLES (ca. 100) |
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| THE ADHERENTS OF THE AUTHOR OF THE EPISTLES: To be a child of God one must confess Jesus come in the flesh and must keep the commandments. The secessionists are the children of the devil and the antichrists. The anointing with the Spirit obviates the need for human teachers; test all who claim to have the Spirit. | THE SECESSIONISTS: The One who has come down from above is so divine he is not fully human; he does not belong to the world. Neither his life on earth nor that of the believer have salvific import. Knowledge that God's Son came into the world is all important, and those who believe in this are already saved. |
| PHASE FOUR: AFTER THE EPISTLES (2nd century) |
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| UNION WITH THE GREAT CHURCH: Unable to combat the secessionists simply by appealing to tradition, and losing out to their opponents, some of the author's adherents accepted the need for authoritative official teachers (presbyter-bishops). At the same time "the church catholic" showed itself open to the high Johannine christology. There was a gradual assimilation into the Great Church, which was slow, however, to accept the Fourth Gospel since it was being misused by gnostics. | ROAD TO GNOSTICISM: The larger part of the Johannine community seems to have accepted secessionist theology which, having been cut off from the moderates through schism, moved toward true docetism (from a not fully human Jesus to a mere appearance of humanity), toward gnosticism (from a preexistent Jesus to pre-existent believers who also came down from the heavenly regions), and toward Montanism (from possessing the Paraclete to the embodiment of the Paraclete). They took the Fourth Gospel with them; it was accepted early by gnostics who commented on it. |
Chart 2
Different Religious Groupings Outside the Johannine Community As Seen Through the Pages the Fourth Gospel
Those Who Do Not Believe in Jesus
| I. The World | II. "The Jews" | III. The Adherents of John the Baptist |
|---|---|---|
| Those who prefer darkness to the light of Jesus because their deeds are evil. By this choice they are already condemned; they are under the power of the Satanic "Prince of this world" and hate Jesus and his disciples who are not of this world. Jesus refuses to pray for the world; rather he has overcome the world. "The world" is a wider conception than "the Jews" (II) but includes them. This opposition gave the Johannine community an alienated sense of being strangers in the world. | Those within the synagogues who did not believe in Jesus and had decided that anybody who acknowledged Jesus as Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. The main points in their dispute with the Johannine Christians involved: (a) Claims about the oneness of Jesus with the Father—the Johannine Jesus "was speaking of God as his own Father, thus making himself God's equal"; (b) Claims that understanding Jesus as God's presence on earth deprived the Temple and the Jewish feasts of their significance. They exposed the Johannine Christians to death by persecution and thought that thus they were serving God. In John's view they were children of the devil. | Although some of JBap's followers joined Jesus or became Christians (including Johannine Christians), others refused, claiming that JBap and not Jesus was God's prime emissary. The Fourth Gospel carefully denies that JBap is the Messiah, Elijah, the Prophet, the light, or the bridegroom. It insists that JBap must decrease while Jesus must increase. Yet the adherents of JBap are pictured as misunderstanding Jesus, not hating him. There seems to remain hope for their conversion. |
Those Who (Claim to) Believe in Jesus
| IV. The Crypto-Christians | V. The Jewish Christians | VI. Christians of Apostolic Churches |
|---|---|---|
| Christian Jews who had remained within the synagogues by refusing to admit publicly that they believed in Jesus. "They preferred by far the praise of men to the glory of God." Presumably they thought they could retain their private faith in Jesus without breaking from their Jewish heritage. But in the eyes of the Johannine Christians, they thus preferred to be known as disciples of Moses rather than disciples of Jesus. For practical purposes they could be thought of along with "the Jews" (II), although John was implicitly still trying to persuade them to confess their faith publicly. | Christians who had left the synagogues but whose faith in Jesus was inadequate by Johannine standards. They may have regarded themselves as heirs to a Christianity which had existed at Jerusalem under James the brother of the Lord. Presumably their low christology based on miraculous signs was partway between that of Groups IV and VI. They did not accept Jesus' divinity. They did not understand the eucharist as the true flesh and blood of Jesus. In John's view they had ceased to be true believers. | Quite separate from the synagogues, mixed communities of Jews and Gentiles regarded themselves as heirs of the Christianity of Peter and the Twelve. Theirs was a moderately high christology, confessing Jesus as the Messiah born at Bethlehem of Davidic descent and thus Son of God from conception, but without a clear insight into his coming from above in terms of pre-existence before creation. In their ecclesiology Jesus may have been seen as the founding father and institutor of the sacraments; but the church now had a life of its own with pastors who carried on apostolic teaching and care. In John's view they did not fully understand Jesus or the teaching function of the Paraclete, but the Johannine Christians prayed for unity with them. |