St. Cyril on Who – not What – God is

Reading Cyril of Alexandria’s (5th century church father) commentary on John’s gospel is a treat.  Here is a portion of Cyril commenting on the latter part of John 8, where Jesus says “Before Abraham was, I AM.”  Notice how Cyril directs us not to what God is (his being), but who he is (his attributes as Scripture defines them).  

Cyril wrote that it is good and proper for us to have “fit and due thoughts” of God.  He goes on to say that “no sober minded person would enquire what God really is by nature” because it is “impossible to find out.”  The way we have fit and due thoughts of God is by determining what things “are his attributes and what things are not his attributes.”  These attributes a person may “with ease” recognize “if one is conversant with the sacred Scriptures.”

“For we know and have believed that he is mighty, we know that he is not infirm, we know that he is good, we know that he is not bad, we know that he is righteous, and again that he is not unjust.  We know that he is eternal, we are agreed and believe that he is not bounded by time, nor yet transitory, as we are.”

Beautifully, after these words, Cyril applies them to Christ as well: “He who is of God by nature is true God and he that is begotten of an eternal Father is eternal as he who begat him.”

Quotes can be found on page 675 of Cyril’s Commentary on the Gospel According to St. John (London: James Parker & Co., 1874).

Additional note: this entire commentary (along with scores of others) can be found on www.books.google.com (use the advanced search to save time).

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Water from Jesus’ “belly/womb?” – John 7.38

John 7.38 is one of those passages in Scripture over which scholars go back and forth; for example both Craig Keener and D.A. Carson write that it is “difficult” and end up coming down on different “sides.”  Do the waters of life flow from the believer’s “belly” (“heart” in NIV, ESV, etc) or Jesus’ “belly?”  Where does the period belong, after “the one who believes in me” or before it?  Which OT text(s) is Jesus referring to in verse 38?

I think Keener, A.T. Lincoln, and Joel Marcus are right here (even though Carson in his commentary and Fee in a journal article give some very helpful remarks while disagreeing with Keener, Lincoln, and Marcus).  The water of life flows from Jesus’ “belly.”  Here are the discussions that convinced me.

Lincoln brings us back to Ezek. 47.1-12, where eschatological rivers of life flow from the new temple.  Furthermore, writes Lincoln, Zech. 14 has to do with the Feast of Tabernacles/Sukkoth (which is happening during John 7-8) and the water and light of life symbols.  Still further back, Lincoln reminds us of Ex. 17 and Ps. 78, the OT recollections of water flowing from the rock during Israel’s wilderness years.  Finally, as extra-biblilcal (yet extremely helpful) proof, Lincoln notes that the Rabbinic descriptions of the Feast of Tabernacles associate the water from the rock in the wilderness to the water in the temple — water “rituals” that took place during the Feast of Tabernacles.  In summary and in Lincoln’s own words, “Jesus is now the rock, from whose womb come the waters of new life, the waters of the Spirit, the agent of new birth” (A.T. Lincoln, The Gospel of Saint John, [Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 2005], 256-7).

Joel Marcus links John 7.38 to Is. 12.3, discusses the Hebrew, LXX, and Greek text a bit, as well as Rabbinic “midrash,” then concludes, “Do not read, ‘from the wells of salvation,’ but ‘from the belly of Jesus,’ for rivers of living water shall flow from his belly” (see Joel Marcus, “Rivers of Living Water from Jesus’ Belly” Journal of Biblical Literature, 117 [1998]: 330).

Finally, Craig Keener: “From this center [Jerusalem/temple] would flow the rivers of life to water the whole world; and in John, where Jesus’ body becomes the new temple (2.19-21), he becomes the shattered cornerstone from which flows the water of the river of life” (Craig Keener, The Gospel of John: A Commentary [Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 2002], 730).

See also G.K. Beale, The Temple and the Church’s Mission (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2004), who agrees that “the ‘innermost being’ from which ‘flow rivers of living water’ is Jesus himself as the new ‘holy of holies’ and not the one who believes in Jesus” (p. 197).

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Lincoln on the Heart of John’s Gospel

Some critics say that the story of Jesus walking on the water in John 6.16-21 is out of place or the work of a later redactor.  Lincoln thinks not:

“What has already been said about  the distinctives of John’s account makes plain the force of this epiphany miracle for his narrative.  The unlimited power of God as Creator and Savior in the Jewish Scriptures is now attributed to Jesus, who also walks on the sea as on dry land, demonstrating his control over the forces of nature, thereby reuniting himself with his followers, reassuring them and bringing them across the waters to their destination.”

“In the process Jesus is also presented as taking on his own lips the self-identification of this God in the formula ‘I am: do not be afraid.’  As in 2.1-11, where the impact of the sign on the disciples was primary, so here: Jesus’ task in this narrative is to make God known (cf. 1.18) and in traversing the sea he displays dramatically to his disciples that he is one with God in word and deed (cf. also 10.31).”

Now to the main point: is this miracle “out of place” in the Gospel of John?  “In this way this tautly recounted episode can be seen not as a distraction from the rest of the chapter but as encapsulating in narrative form what is at the heart of the Fourth Gospel’s Christology” (emphasis mine).

See Andrew T. Lincoln, The Gospel According to Saint John (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2005), 220-1.  (This commentary is part of Black’s New Testament Commentary series.)

shane

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