May 25, 2014
ANo one comes to the Father except through me."
Many Christians in today=s world have turned these words into a weapon with which to
bludgeon one=s opponents into theological submission.
They use these words as a litmus test for Christian faith
in myriad conversations and debates within the contemporary church.
They have become the rallying cry of Christian
triumphalism, proof positive that Christians have the corner on God and that
people of any and all other faiths are condemned.
They are seen by others as embarrassingly exclusionary and
narrow‑minded, and they are pointed to as evidence of the problems inherent in
asserting Christian faith claims in a pluralistic world
How are we contemporary Christian supposed to interpret
this central claim of the Fourth Gospel?
It is important that before we accept or reject the John=s affirmation, embrace or distance oneself from its
theological view, that we allow him to have his say.
In other words, we have to engage ourselves in an act of
theological imagination when interpreting this passage,
we need to try to envision what he was trying to say to his
contemporaries, and not interpret his words through our own times.
Jesus= claim that Ano one comes to the Father except through me@ is the joyous affirmation of a religious community that
does, indeed, believe that God is available to them decisively in the
incarnation.
That his Spirit is living in them, alive and well.
This claim has been announced from the opening lines of the
Gospel, ANo one has ever seen God.
It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father=s heart, who has made him known@
It is only through the incarnation that the identity of God
as Father is revealed.
When Jesus says: AI am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to
the Father except through me,@ John is not making
a statement about AGod@.
Jesus does not say ANo one comes to God except through me,@ but ANo one comes to the Father except through me,@ and the specificity of that theological use of words needs
to be taken seriously.
John 14:6 is the very concrete and specific affirmation of
a faith community about the God who is known to them only through the
incarnation.
the incarnation changes everything for the Fourth
Evangelist, because through it humanity=s relationship to God and God=s relationship to humanity are decisively altered.
The incarnation has redefined God for the Fourth Evangelist
and those for whom he writes, because the incarnation brings the tangible
presence of God=s love to the world.
AGod@ is not a generic deity here;
God is the One whom the disciples come to recognize in the
life and death of Jesus.
When Jesus says Ano one,@ he means Anone of you.@
In John 14:6, then,
Jesus defines God for his disciples; the Fourth Evangelist defines God for the
members of his faith community.
It is important to try to hear this joyous, world‑changing
theological affirmation in the first‑century context of the Fourth Gospel.
This is not, as is the case in the twentieth century, the
sweeping claim of a major world religion, but it is the conviction of a
religious minority in the ancient Mediterranean world.
It is the conviction
of a religious group who had discovered that its understanding of the truth of
God carries with it a great price.
This conviction has led them into conflict with the Judaism
that previously had been their sole religious home, and so they have had to
carve out a new religious home for themselves, a home grounded in the
incarnation.
It is possible to hear an element of defiance in the
proclamation of 14:1‑11, a determination to hold to this experience and
knowledge of God against all opposition and all pressure to believe otherwise.
In the unambiguous words of John 14:6‑7, the Fourth Gospel
declares where it stands in the first‑century intra‑Jewish debate about the
character of God and the identity of God=s people.
It=s a call for us twentieth-century Catholic Christians to
re-assess our own faith.
Are we first of all Catholic?
Or are we first of all Christian
In other words, are we more
grounded in our religion or in our faith in the Spirit of
our incarnate Savior?
This is something important for us to ponder, for it has far-reaching
implications for our faith decisions.
Getting back to the today=s scripture, The Fourth Gospel is not concerned with the
fate, for example, of Muslims, Hindus, or Buddhists, nor with the superiority
or inferiority of Judaism and Christianity as they are configured in the modern
world.
It=s not even concerned, definitely not concerned, with even
whether or not we are Catholic.
These verses are merely the confessional celebration of a
particular faith community, convinced of the truth and life it has received in
the incarnation.
The Fourth Evangelist=s primary concern was the clarification and celebration of what
it means to believe in Jesus.
The theological vision articulated here expresses the distinctiveness
of Christian identity,
and it is as people shaped by this distinctiveness that
Christians can take their place in conversations about world religion.
Indeed, the Prologue=s claims about the Logos, the Word of God provide an opening
for conversations about how one encounters the divine,
not the closing of
discussion.
John 14:6 can thus be read as the core claim of Christian
identity; what distinguishes Christians from peoples of other faiths is the
conviction given expression in John 14:6.
It is, indeed, through Jesus, and only through
Jesus, that Christians have access to
their God.
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