In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Heavenly Father, we ask for your Spirit, we ask for the fire and the light of your word that we may understand what John is telling us, that we may experience your word within us. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. It's always exciting to start, at least for me, to start with John's Gospel again because it opens up to all kinds of things. First a few preliminary remarks and then gradually we'll move into reading the Gospel itself. I'd like to do something with the prologue this morning, but I'm not sure that we'll get to it. We won't even get to the prologue, will we? First of all, the class itself will have to have three phases, it looks like, because I'm going to be away from October 16th to November 20th at Montreal. We'll have to cut it just before then. We only have time for five classes now.

[01:01]

So my idea will be to try to give you the tools for reading John in a kind of unified way in these first five sessions. Then you'll have a break and hopefully want to do something on your own. And then we'll come back together and go through the Gospel. So this will largely be tooling up, but at the same time we'll be commenting on episodes of John's Gospel from the prologue up through John 6 up to what may be the center of the Gospel, even though not as far as the quantity of the text is concerned. And then we'll resume again on about November 24th and continue probably into January. Maybe about seven to ten further sessions. Now, for the references, we've got a lot of stuff on John. We've got shelves and shelves of books in the library on John. You can get lost easily. You can get drowned in the mass of material. So I'll put some selected ones out on the class shelf in the library.

[02:04]

Try to get to that today. And then I'll recommend them from time to time. The standard commentary now, of course, is Raymond Brown, The Fourth Gospel, two big volumes. And it's a very good basic work for us, pretty up to date, with some useful supplementary chapters, which I'll point to from time to time. But we'll be using another commentary too, at least in passing, and that is Ellis's The Genius of John for the structure of John. That opens something up which we'll continue. And you'll find other commentaries there that may be just as useful as Brown for you. The one by Barrett, C.K. Barrett, and also a very useful book by Dodd entitled The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel. Also, I've Xeroxed a bunch of articles for more or less interest, a lot of them up at the GTU library. And so I'll make them available when they seem to be relevant.

[03:06]

Now, it would be well if everyone, I urge very strongly that everybody take up some kind of a personal project to do with John during this course. And I'll issue a list of suggested subjects, but then it's up to you to choose what you want to do. Something hopefully which leads you deeper into the text. The reason for the tape recording is because we've always got somebody absent, and also because this class has a limited attendance. You know, basically it's for the formation group. I might have another one if there are enough other people interested. The reason for the Saturday morning time, of course, is because our cook is free today. I forgot about the guest house person. And also because there's no Saturday chapter now, so it opens up. When Fr. Robert comes back, we'll decide what to do about that. We might have to push him out of the way. Okay, something about just the vision of the study of John.

[04:11]

It's much more than an academic exercise. This is true whenever you're studying the scripture, whenever you're studying the Word of God, but particularly with John, as we'll find out, John has a real centrality. There are at least two dimensions, further dimensions, which emerge when you're studying John, and one is this individual assimilation to the Word. Because I'd like to propose that John is really not just a story, but an attempt to initiate the reader or the listener actually into the experience of that Word. Now this is probably true to some extent of every one of the Gospels, but with John it takes on a much more personal, interior, and mystical dimension, as we'll see. So there's really, beyond study, there's really a kind of contemplative depth in this whole matter, which should not be ignored, and which will govern a lot the way that you approach it, the way that you read John. Secondly, there's this matter of community, because I think actually that studying the

[05:12]

scripture together, when it becomes exciting, when it turns on, becomes a kind of generation of community. It becomes a kind of forming of, because it's about communion. Just as the contemplative experience, or that experience of the center, of the heart, on the individual level, is what really should kind of fructify, should grow, should sprout out of your reading of the scripture, when you do it together, there's another experience which is almost the other side of that, which is the experience of communion, the common delight in the Word, the common understanding of the Word, the sharing, the mutual illumination, mutual stimulation, that whole thing. There's really something there to be discovered. We have a problem, lots of problems, but one of them is we have limited time and unlimited possibilities, unlimited desires, in a sense. What opens up in John goes far beyond John. Especially at this particular juncture of history that we're at, the meeting of East and West, for instance, in our time, because I believe that John really is the biblical interface between East and West.

[06:12]

John is where you can really communicate with the Asian spiritual traditions, from that point of view. If you find out what John means by the logos, and what John is talking about when he's talking about the indwelling of the Father and the Son in you, and if you find out what Jesus means when he says, I am, you've got really a place from which to stand, from which to speak and listen to the East. Also, because there's a conflict between presentation and response. You know, I don't like to do a lecture delivery, and yet there's a certain amount of content, a certain amount of information, as it were, or proposals that has to be gotten across. But the best thing would be if a lot of the class would consist of your responses, of your reactions, of whatever comes out of the word for you. That may have to predominate later in the class. In the beginning I've got to be more lecture-like about it. For those who desire, sometime we could have another session just for discussion.

[07:14]

Another thing is the conflict between one vision, one approach, and all the other approaches, because I'm going to adopt basically one approach, which for me has pulled together the Gospel of John. And once you go with that far enough, you can't turn back and treat other approaches as if they have the same value. You're committed to one approach, you're committed to one reading, and the vision begins to build for you. So you can't really see the other ones objectively after that. So you have to be kind of patient with that. Now, what I say to you has to be therefore taken, you know, ultimately, critically, and adopt in the end what makes sense for you, what works for you. So what I say to you will be more of a personal development than a distillation of the best of John. I've tried that sometimes, you know, I've tried reading various papers on John, and shaking them down and summarizing them, and I just go crazy trying to do it. Especially because of the divergence of methods today, and because of the, what would you call it, the kind of disintegrative tendency of much recent scholarship.

[08:16]

So you end up with buts and ifs and whethers. So either you have to take an approach which pulls it together for you, makes one thing out of it, gives you one vision, and kindles one light, and looks at everything in terms of that light, or you end up with this mass of shifting atoms, this mass of shifting buts and ifs and whethers. All those questions are whether, did Jesus really say it? Did he mean it? Did the community put it in there? And what happened to that verse? Where did that come from? And is this where it started? And all those questions, you know. Well, those few pages of Frank Kermodey there, which I gave you, Xeroxed, are from a book called The Literary Guide to the Bible. It's a new book, it's just out. And what it is largely is literary critics approaching the Bible. So instead of the guys who take it apart, these people are largely interested in putting it together. In other words, in finding one sense and finding one meaning. And at least that's true of Kermodey's approach to John, which I find admirable.

[09:19]

If I had to recommend one short thing for you to read, probably, on John's Gospel, it would be the whole of that chapter of Kermodey. So I'll put that book on the class shelf so you can... I only copied the first part of the article because I was in a hurry, and also because that's all that relates to us today. But you'll see that in the beginning, he talks about the approach to John. And basically he gives you these two possibilities. One is the historical critical approach, with which you may not yet be familiar, which is enormously valuable and at the same time enormously destructive. Because you're always looking for where did it come from? And is it really there? And why is it there? And what are the phases of composition? And who is John anyway? And did he exist? And how many Johns were there? How many authors were there? And in the end, you can have in your hands very little with which to go in, let us say, a theological or contemplative way. The alternative is to take on the text as a whole, as it stands, with whatever adjustments you have to make.

[10:20]

For instance, if there's a chapter that obviously comes from somewhere else, we'll take it out. But if you take on the text as it is, and try to understand it as it stands, and give it every possible chance, just as if you were dealing with a painting in an art gallery, or just as if you were listening to a piece of music, you let it speak to you, and you listen to the whole thing. And you let one part interact with another, and you don't take it apart. You take apart a piece of music and you're in trouble. Take apart a painting and you're in trouble, I think. Either it works as a whole or it doesn't work at all. And if it works as a whole, then what's it saying? What does it have to communicate? And that's the delight. That's the great excitement of dealing with John, because he falls together, he comes together like nothing else in scripture, I think. With a depth and with a unity that you just don't find elsewhere. Okay, to kind of enlarge on this approach which I'm suggesting. Remember the Fathers like to look at scripture and its understanding in terms of three or

[11:20]

four different senses of scripture. Remember, Enoch Enzo was talking about that, and you've run into it. Did we hear that Conference 14 of Cassian? Was that read in the Refectory? Number 14 is the one on the understanding of scripture. And that's where Cassian elaborates on those four senses. The literal sense, and what they want to call the Christological sense, or the typological sense. And then the moral sense, and the eschatological, or mystical, or anagogical sense. They have all different synonyms for these. And it all sounds very technical and very dry. But really, it's quite exciting. Because what it does is to open up the scripture so that it moves into every level and every area of experience. In other words, it's a way of opening up the word so that it comes out and flows into your life, flows into the future, flows into the past, flows everywhere. Flows into cosmology, flows everywhere. And that's what we want to do. But I don't want to adopt that kind of fourfold scheme, which I don't think works that well anyway for the New Testament.

[12:20]

For John, basically, it's applied to the Old Testament. And then you find the New Testament within the Old Testament. That's the first development, you see. The first penetration is to discover the New Testament, discover Christ within the Old Testament. And then from that, these other dimensions kind of explode out, opening up the riches. St. Paul says the plenitude is in Christ. But in John, of course, we've got that plenitude already put right there before you. So we have to adopt a different method. This vision, by the way, has almost disappeared entirely among the professional biblical scholars. They just don't do that anymore. In fact, a lot of them are stuck on the historical sense, the literal sense. They just don't go beyond it. And largely the reason is, I think, the professional training that they get, you know. That is, the schools of biblical criticism, now of biblical scholarship, are scientific schools. It's as if you went to engineering school. You're all RPI or MIT, you know. So you come out with a kit full of wrenches and you know how to take everything apart. But darn if you can get it back together again. And you're not interested basically in any sense besides the literal sense that you can

[13:26]

prove. Because if you say anything you can't prove, your professor is going to wipe you out, you know. Your thesis is going to have red ink all over it. So you've got to be able to prove it. Well, the only thing anybody can ever prove is the literal sense. Okay. So the other sense just gets excluded. It's a little like our medical profession, I suppose. So the monastic tradition actually has to rediscover that with a good deal of courage because it's got to defend itself against all of this literalism. And by this, once again, I don't intend to wipe out the value of biblical scholarship. It's only that, as Kermody will say there, that its value is largely destructive in a sense, or degenerative. It's a critical exercise, a critical method, which eliminates the error, eliminates the confusion, which insists that you talk straight, insists that you correct your thinking and your language. That's as far as it goes. It's a criticism. Establishes the right text by excluding all the illegitimate texts.

[14:28]

Establishes the truth by elimination. But after it finds the truth, it doesn't know what to do with it. At that point, you've got to go to another level. And that's what we're talking about. So, I don't intend a four-level reading, but rather a reading on two levels. And I'll come back to this again and again and again and again. What I mean is this. First of all, call it a linear or horizontal level of study, which is rational, factual, historical, sensible, cumulative, too, because you learn something, then you use it the next time, you build on that, and you go on. And you're moving in a straight line, basically. We're all familiar with this, because this is how we ordinarily study. Working from data to conclusions. It's an inductive method. And you follow the narrative right through its dramatic logic to the conclusion. In other words, you stick to the narrative, you don't go off and play games and so on, but you stay with it, and you follow the story faithfully, like a true believer, right through to the end, chapter after chapter. The other way, the second level of reading, which I want to propose, I call a centric or vertical reading. Now, monastic lexio does this anywhere in the Bible.

[15:31]

You go straight from the word to the word, with a capital W. You go straight from the text that you're reading to the logos. You go straight from the outside to the inside, from the periphery to the center, from the surface to the heart. This is the vertical reading. This is the second level. And in John, you've got to do it all the time, because that's the way John wrote it. This is what John is about. From the first words of the prologue right to the end. John's gospel is an initiation into the experience and living of the logos, the word, at the center of your own being. Not just at the center of the text, but at the center of yourself. So, all the time that you're doing this, this faithful kind of pedagogy, you know, of following the narrative and sticking to the facts, you know, and what did he really say? Remember the first step of Innocenza? All the time that you're doing that, you've got these sirens that are singing to you, trying to persuade you to go right to the center. And that's what John is about. You're supposed to be caught in that tension as if we're following the narrative, and at every point he's taking you right to the center.

[16:32]

At every point there's some word that just starts to glow, and from the center, from the logos, from the Christ that's holding this whole thing together, that light is flashing out. So you're walking in a straight line and you're walking in a circle at the same time. You're going in a straight line like on pilgrimage, and at the same time, you're beginning to orbit around this center. So if it all seems confusing, well, it's a happy confusion. At least that part of it is. Because you're continually being tugged by this center, which is beneath the surface of the word, as you follow the path along the surface of the word. There's a man who wrote a book called Becoming Aware of the Logos. It's a very good book. It's got kind of a bent to it, kind of a philosophy behind it, which is the spiritual science of Steiner, Rudolf Steiner. Have you heard of him? But it's a brilliant exposition, really, of what John is about. And this is how he starts his first chapter, by quoting Rilke. So there's a comment on Steiner?

[17:33]

No, it derives from the theory, the vision of Steiner, but it's about John. And particularly, it's all about the prologue of John, really. It's all about the logos, about the word, the prologue of John. Steiner himself is really brilliant. He's weirdly brilliant at the same time. And he's had some wonderful disciples, really. Owen Barfield is a disciple of Steiner. He's begotten these marvelous children. Even though, when I read Steiner himself, I just can't follow it, because I can't keep believing it as he goes on, because there's a whole gnosis there. But he's got some wonderful disciples. He's had a marvelous influence. Also on education. He starts by quoting Rilke, at the head of his first chapter. We are only mouth. Who sings the distant heart that dwells entire within all things? Its great pulse lives in us, divided into lesser beats. And its great pain, like its great joy, is too great for us. So we always tear ourselves away again, and are only mouth. But suddenly the great heartbeat enters into us invisibly, and we cry out.

[18:36]

And then our being change and countenance. And then this writer Kilwin begins, To become aware of the Logos is to become aware of the Logos in oneself. This sentence must be understood in all its meanings. That communication is possible and happens, that something is communicated, is the active being of the Logos among human beings. The Logos the word, or Logos the Greek for word. And it has an enormous Greek philosophical background and baggage behind it. An enormous connotation of metaphysics and philosophy, both from the Stoics and from the Platonic tradition. That something is communicated is the active being of the Logos among human beings. The content of the communication matters little at first. The fact that it happens at all is the presence of the Logos. The fact that we can speak to one another and hear one another is already the presence of the Logos. Which means that all communication in some way is sacred. That all words, and in fact all thought even, has some kind of participation in the Logos. That's what he's saying.

[19:37]

Now this is only one angle. This is only one way in which this notion of John, of the word of the Logos, opens up. So from the beginning of the Gospel, John is opening this whole thing up. So the prologue is extremely important to the Gospel. It gives the key, precisely gives the key for the understanding of the whole Gospel. Which goes off as a narrative afterwards. But first he gives you the center, and then he goes off on the periphery, as it were. Leaving you, at every point along the periphery, along the road, to bore through to the center once again. To discover that light of the Logos shining out from within. And literally he says, the Logos, the word is the light that enlightens every man. The light that's within everything. So, in another place this author Kilwin says that the teaching is more important than what is taught. Isn't that marvelous? The idea of a guru, you know, the idea of, in the East and in the ancient monastic tradition, the idea of the rapport in which there is speech and in which there is hearing, is more important than what is taught.

[20:39]

The spell, the magic is there somehow, in the communication itself. And of course what's important, what's taught is mighty important. But it's almost like what is taught is a commentary on the teaching itself. And the teaching, you see this in Jesus, okay? When he's talking to people. Is it important what he says? Of course it's important what he says. What's really important? It's him that's important, right? And he is the communication in some way. He is the word, the fullness of which somehow is there as presence and within which things are said. Within which things are said, you know. Within which he says, well, blessed are the poor of spirit and so on. But meanwhile, he's there, he's there. And he is the very world of the word, the very world of communication, even of thought, in which everything is said. In which those little words are said. And meanwhile, this whole thing is burning there. This whole great universe of the word, of the Logos. This living Logos which contains everything. And which he is. So the teaching, the communication, the word, the saying, the hearing, the listening, the being together, the presence,

[21:41]

are more important than what is said. And in John, we're continually having this thing sort of beating on the wall, you know, pounding through, just separated from us but trying to speak itself. That's what John is about. So I think that the symbolism and the structure of John converge upon a center, which is gradually discovered to be within you, inside of you. And which is talking to you all the time. And which is the Christ Logos in his fullness. But it has some surprising characteristics which we'll discover as we move along. It's not just a kind of static philosophical thing, but there's a movement in John too, there's a dynamism, something is happening. For the class method, this means it will continually be walking in a straight line through the Gospel and at the same time continually becoming aware of a center, turning towards the center. Some people will speak of a spiral movement, Sister Donald Corcoran likes that expression, where you're going in a circle, but at the same time you're going somewhere. You're moving forward, but at the same time you're orbiting. You're orbiting around a center, it's a centric movement and a progression at the same time.

[22:42]

So we have to combine both the reading of concrete episodes with these theoretical views, these longer range insights and generalizations. We have to combine a logical sequence with digressions. We have to combine prose with poetry in a sense. And we have to combine our program with interruptions because often the Spirit really speaks in the interruptions. It's what happens at the moment often that's important, rather than what was pre-programmed. So the class is going to seem rather untidy as we go along. I had some kind of analogies that occurred of this way. Did you ever try to paint with a brush, or write with a brush the way the Chinese do, to make characters? They've got this, what is it, rice paper. And you've got a brush loaded with black ink. And as soon as you try to make a line, as soon as you touch that paper, the first drop of ink that hits the paper spreads on you like this. It spreads out in a circle. It sort of blossoms on you. So you're trying to draw a line, and meanwhile the thing is circling like that. The thing is spreading out. So it's a combination of linear progress and the spreading. So that what actually happens in the end

[23:45]

has to be the exact convergence at that moment of your act almost, of your almost predetermined act which is yet spontaneous, with that movement, with that figure. The line and the center and the circle are all happening at once. So it forces you to be completely there when you do it. I hardly got started. Another example is a pilgrimage where people start unpacking their lunch along the way. In other words, you're going somewhere to have a party, and then people start opening their lunch box along the way, and the party starts right there. They pour out the wine and everything. So you're going somewhere, but you're always getting... Another example is Nicodemus in John 3. Remember where he comes to Jesus at night and says, well, we know you're a teacher from God because nobody could do these things, say these things, unless you were. And he says, well, you know, unless you're born again, you can't see the kingdom of God. So it's as if you're a teacher in Israel and you don't know these things.

[24:45]

It's as if the teacher in Israel has got his program, he's got his scroll, he's going to read the Torah and so on, he's got his lesson plan and so on. He says, you've got to be born again. In other words, he takes the linear thing, he takes, as it were, the whole history, the whole progression, the whole Karigachi, and explodes it at every moment with this birth that has to happen from the Holy Spirit. And it's a birth which happens once, it's a birth which happens all the time. In a sense, it's the one thing that's happening at all. But at every moment, you can have an intuition of it. Every moment, you can experience it. Every moment, it can intrude itself into your life, and it's the one thing that's important. So, we're continually kind of between Nicodemus and Jesus in that sense. Eckhart would say that Jesus is that birth. He is that one birth that's happening all the time. Okay. Here are some keys, I would say, to John. I'm going to throw them out now, and we'll keep enlarging on these things. What they are really is elements

[25:46]

of this approach that I'm suggesting. First of all, a literary interpretation rather than the historical critical interpretation. In other words, a maximizing interpretation that gives the text credit, that gives John credit for having made something that is one, something that has an excess of being, something that has fullness to it. So, it gives the text respect for being that, and then approaches it as it is, and tries to find what it's saying by understanding, in a sense, how it's made. In some sense, we need to reproduce the painter's intuitions, his perception. We have to reproduce the way he saw that scene in some way, don't we, to understand what he's done. In order to understand what he has put down, what he's saying, in a sense, we have to participate in his experience. We have to repeat his experience. And so, in some way, we have to follow his architecture, follow his structural intuition. Somehow, that's how we see it. Not absolutely, but that's one approach.

[26:48]

And if we say a poetic interpretation, and this means with all the fullness, the ambiguity, the illusion, the resonances that are in poetry, that are in a poetic work, because John will say something and he means three different things with it at the same time. It's not scientific language. He'll say, he says to Nicodemus, you've got to be born anothen. Anothen both means again and it means from above. And he means both of them at the same time. And everything in John resonates with everything else. It's like a big mobile. You touch one bit and the whole thing starts vibrating. Secondly, John's gospel is a deliberate composition. In other words, he's not just following the order in which things happen, but he's putting it together with a theological point which is expressed in an artistic way. So what he's really doing is writing a poem in a certain sense. Not that it doesn't have historical truth to it, but the principle that dominates, actually, is the principle of the meaning in it. So the whole thing is centered in some kind of meaning.

[27:50]

This is quite different from the other gospels, which are more faithful to the history. And then the meaning starts getting in more and more forcefully. Like in the Gospel of Luke, there's enough theology which has gotten in there and altered the historical reality so that the meaning is beginning to predominate. But in John, it predominates entirely. And the whole thing is like a sphere. It's like a perfect form which has been created to express this one meaning which John divines. Because above all, he is the writer of unity. He's the poet of unity. Because for him, Christ is the unity of all things. Jesus, the Logos, the Word, is the unity of everything that there is. Divine and human. And the poem that he creates, the gospel that he creates, is formed accordingly. So he moves things around. You don't have to expect that. And its principal structure is more like a theology of symmetry. He works by symmetry. He works by doubles.

[28:50]

He works both by contrast and by similarity, by reflection. The historical critical questions, if we adopt this poetic or literary interpretation, and here I refer you to Fermati once again who justifies his choices there in those few pages I gave you, means the historical critical questions, the ifs and the whethers, will be given little attention. The question of how many phases were there in the writing of John's gospel, the question of where it was written, the question of the influence of the Johannine community after the time of Jesus on the writing of the gospel, the question of how many authors were there, was it written by John the evangelist, was it written by the beloved disciple, was it written by a later disciple, is the author the same as those other two? We're not going to try to solve that question. It gets you into the ifs and the whethers and distracts you from basically the meaning of the text. What we're after is the meaning. What is this intended to mean? So a quest for meaning rather than for causes and influences and so on.

[29:52]

The quest is intrinsic, it's centric, it's focused upon what we presuppose and credit the gospel with having in essence. And therefore unity, supremacy of being rather than being extrinsic and peripheral and therefore disintegrating as much of the historical criticism as necessary as it is. And finally, poetry understood as being more than ornament or fancy. I think poetry has a bad name ever since the Romantic age, I suppose. It's sort of the frosting on the cake that the cake is what counts. The cake is fact and the frosting is poetry. Which isn't good for you, it lowers your blood sugar in the long run or something. It's more than ornament or fancy or fancy language or style. A poetry of essence. Because remember this is the gospel of the word, the gospel of the logos. Now poetry is the word, the word is poetry. The word is not just fact, the word is not just a kind of dogmatic assertion. The word is nearly music. The word is poetry. A poetry which springs alongside creation

[30:54]

from the creative word itself. Which is sister to creation and illuminates creation from within. It's as if John is writing this word inside the world which illuminates the world. Just like Jesus is the word inside the world which illuminates the world. So John is writing this word inside the world which illuminates the world. Remember he says that crazy thing at the end of the gospel, if all of the things that Jesus said and did were to be written down, I suppose the world itself wouldn't contain the books that would have to be written. It's like he's talking about the fantastic kind of range of that word, which he expresses to his best in the poetry which is his gospel. Okay, second, that was a long-winded rendition of this first key. The second key is a symbolic system in John. John is loaded with symbolism. If we talk about poetry then we're talking about symbolism and John's symbolism is very carefully put together. He selected things, as it were, from the life of Jesus, from his own experience of Jesus,

[31:54]

things like water and wine, things like light and darkness, things like bread, expressions that Jesus uses. And then he's looked at them until he finds their real depth and then he's tied them together. He's tied them together into a kind of network of symbolism which we'll try to trace. A network of illusion, allusion, not illusion but allusion, a network of reference and resonance and metaphor and similarity. So the water and the wine and so the lamb of God and the sheep and the shepherd and the unfaithful shepherds and the paschal lamb, all of these things are tied together. Everything in John is knotted together in that way, symbolically. It's intensely woven. Thirdly, this is kind of a mysterious point, this key with the unitive, with a capital U. Now what I mean is that you've got to read John in that way because no other approach to John ultimately satisfies you as being on the level on which John is talking to you

[32:55]

except a unitive approach, a unitive interpretation, which means what John is talking about is the unity of everything that is and that that unity is in Jesus and that unity is expressed first of all in the prologue by the Logos, by the Word. And continually, this is what John is saying is that the unity of all things has come and is here and is walking around here and wherever he walks he is the center. Wherever he walks everything else walks with him, everything else moves with him because he's the unitive and the center, he contains it all. That's what he's saying about Jesus. Jesus is the one in which a shattered universe is brought back together again and he actually writes the gospel in that way. But that will only become clear as we go on. Fourth key is what I call doubling. That is, John is always working in pairs and this is difficult of writers of art. How else can you bring something out except against a background except in this world of division, of dualism? How else can you bring something out except against its contrary or by associating it with others

[33:58]

and so on? So he's got pairs of characters. He's got John the Baptist and John the Evangelist. John the Baptist and a beloved disciple. He's got John the Baptist and Jesus. He's got Peter and John. Notice how often John figures in these pairs. He's got Judea and Galilee. He's got light and darkness. And in the prologue we'll see right away Kermody is marvelous on this. He's got being and becoming. He's got water and wine. He's got the level of the flesh and the level of the spirit. All of these contrasts which are really attempting to bring out one contrast in the end. And I'll talk a lot about Exodus and Genesis, about Exodus and creation because I think those perhaps biblically speaking express well or to the best the two phases and the two levels that John is conveying. There are two continual levels of meaning. The narrative level. I talk about a double meaning. The narrative level and the unitive level or the linear and the centric level

[34:59]

as we're going to see. Sixth key is the dynamism or the process of the gospel from phase one to phase two. And then we've got to identify those two phases. Even in the prologue you find this. You find the first phase given a kind of intermediate thing in the second phase. It's the transformation of the first creation into the new creation or the movement from let us say Exodus from going out from the Old Testament to the New Testament. Remember that hinge between the Old Testament and the New Testament is the fundamental structural principle of Christianity in a sense of the New Testament itself. Of the picture of Revelation, the history of Revelation. That joint point of junction of the old and the new. Now that's what you'll find John's prologue is about and that's what his gospel is about. But what it's really about for John is expressed in a very subtle way. A very marvelously resonant poetic way as you go through the gospel. Because it's about imminence. It's about something which you can't see. It's about something which can only be expressed

[35:59]

through symbols and yet is inside of you. And John says that like nobody else. Seventh, we talked about the unitive. There's a unitive structure in John which I can express in three phases. The first phase is that there's a center there and you see it from the outset. As soon as John begins talking about the word in the prologue about the logos that forms the center for everything else. There's also the center of the gospel. It's the center of all that is. Remember, he comes into the world and the world doesn't recognize him. The light's in the world. The light's in the middle of the darkness. It's always in the center because wherever it is wherever it goes it's the center. Okay? Now this is going to be true structurally too. We're going to discover that there's a center to the prologue. There's a center to the gospel. So John structurally reproduces as well as symbolically what he wants to say that there's a center. So the first level is the idea of a center. The second level is what we're going to call chiasm. And we'll talk about that next time. C-H-I-A-S-M

[37:03]

Chiasm. And what that basically means is a symmetrical structure which is you can diagnose this. The simplest thing would be A, B, and here's C. And C is the center, okay? That joins these two these two sides. And then over here you've got something else which matches with A. Matches with A. And something else that matches with B. So this is the direction that we're going. You start here. One, two, three, four, five. You've got five parts. The first part is matched by the last part. The second part is matched by the next to the last part. And then you've got a center here which doesn't match with anything else. So that's a centric form, isn't it? Because this is the center and then these things are arranged around it. Now that's your second step is the key element. And it comes from the Greek letter P which is a crossing. And that's a form

[38:04]

that was used quite a lot. We'll talk more about it later. Now the third level of what I'm talking about here, this unitive structure is the mondo. If you've got a center here and you've got these four points, you can do this another way, can't you? You can put your center in the center and then do this. And this is what I believe John does in the structure of his gospel. Now that cross form you'll find a lot in the New Testament. In some of the Pauline epistles it's extremely strong. Ephesians, Colossians, elsewhere. For him, I think they had a vision. That is in the apostolic times there was a vision of Christ as on the cross and as the cross reconciling everything. The Fathers write about this. Irenaeus writes about this. He's the center. But the center expresses itself in four dimensions

[39:04]

somehow. And those four dimensions are symbolized by the arms of the cross. And things are pulled together there at the center. And the fullness of everything that's brought together there and everything that emanates from the center, the first things are brought together at the center. And then a new fullness emanates from the center and the fullness is expressed by the circle. The natural expression for fullness. And therefore we have a mandala. I'll talk more about mandalas later on. It has a kind of exotic ring to it. But it's something also that's in our own tradition. Now, Father, on the center, how do you know when you find the center? Is it like the real key of the whole? Yeah, it's got to be the... Then what's before and after explains it the best. Yeah, the first way you find it is simply by finding things that match up. Suppose, when we see that book by Ellis, The Genius of John, what he does is to look for words, for instance. And we'll see it already in the prologue. You look for a word here reflected by a word here. You find at the beginning of the prologue

[40:04]

the word is with God. At the end of the prologue, He who is in the bosom of the Father. It's nearly the same thing, isn't it? So there's a real mirror reflection there which makes you suspect that these two pieces match. And you keep doing that. So you find a track on both sides which reflects the track on the other side. A series of elements here which reflect a series of elements here. And they lead you down here. And here you don't find anything to match this. Now, that's the first step. But the second step is you begin to discover a deep significance here in this point. You begin to discover that this center has been chosen for some reason and it begins to shed light on everything else. Okay? Now, we're going to find in Ellis that the center of John's Gospel for him and this I'll tell you now and then we'll come back to it again and again. The center of John's Gospel for him is chapter 6, 16-21. Now, what that is is the point at which Jesus has multiplied the bread, remember,

[41:05]

and the people come and they want to make him king and he runs away and he runs up into the mountains and then the disciples take off and they're going across the lake in a boat. They're going across the lake of Genezareth in a boat to make a sea of Galilee. And they're rowing against the wind in a storm and Jesus, they don't know where he is, and suddenly they see this figure walking across the water towards them and they're afraid. And then Jesus says, do not be afraid, it is I. But what he really says in the Greek is, do not be afraid, I am. Do not be afraid, I am. And then they take him into the boat and immediately they're at the shore. This weird thing happens and as soon as, evidently, he gets into the boat, they're at the shore, they've arrived where they're going. Now, that always seemed to me to be a kind of a, excuse me, a useless thing in the Gospel of John. It doesn't connect with anything else, or can't. It's not like the sign in which Jesus heals somebody or where he multiplies the bread

[42:06]

or does something useful. This is totally useless, it's just time. And then, you begin to discover that the whole Gospel is centered around that point in some way. Well, we spend a lot of time talking about that. And this, by the way, is an optional approach, you don't have to buy this. But I've bought it completely, so I'm so far into it I can't get out. The interesting thing, I think, with what you're saying is, on one hand, I immediately think, well, what we do is we come up with our conclusion and then we look to the Gospel and we find, to see how the Gospel will fit into our conclusion. And so we have the Word here, we have the Word here, and we stretch everything in order to fit our particular thesis. That's the trouble. It's the French way to do it. And it's true, that's the way the French do theology. And so, but it's also the, it's a poetic way of doing it as well, because poetry allows us to do that. Poetry doesn't restrict us. It opens up everything. And poetry, I think,

[43:06]

has also been written in that form, in a symmetrical form. You can't interpret a poem wrongly. If it means something for you this way, then it's valid. Well, I always kind of dispute that. I've heard people interpret poetry very badly. Well, I mean, but on a certain level, this is what the person sees in it. You know, well. No, it's okay for him. You can't put him in jail for it. I mean, you're just pressurizing him a certain amount. Now, this thing can be much too rigid. Okay, this chiastic thing can be done in such a rigid way that it almost destroys the Gospel. In fact, Ellis seems to go too far with it, because the reflections that he finds are often too minor, so they're not significant enough. The basic trouble with his book, which is brilliant in its sense, is that it's too rigorous in its application of this chiastic thing. It's not poetic enough. So he doesn't go to the basic, looking for reflection between the basic symbols, but he sticks to the literal surface, that is, words and expressions. And often,

[44:07]

often they seem like minor things in the episode. And so, what difference does it make that they reflect one another? It seems just like a formalism that John has imposed on the narrative, and therefore doesn't take any further. So what we want to do is get to a point where what we're finding reflecting one another are the major symbolic elements in John's Gospel. For instance, if John the Baptist, in the beginning of the Gospel, is reflected by the beloved disciple by the other John at the end of the Gospel, that's really something. That opens up all kinds of meaning. There you've got the water and the wine of Canaan. There you've got the two phases. You've got Exodus and you've got Creation. All kinds of things develop out of that. But see, Ellis doesn't do enough of that. So we want to get beyond that. It's true that this thing can be applied in a kind of pedantic way, a rigorous way, which deadens the Gospel. But if you do it sensitively, I think it really brings it alive, because I think it's really there. You can see it pretty well in the prologue. It encourages you to find the chiasm in the prologue, which, by the way, is on one of those sheets that I gave to you. Unfortunately, that's got the Greek

[45:10]

words in there, but it gives you the verse numbers. Notice, he's got verse... That's from Culpeper, a paper called The Pivot of John's Gospel. But this has been done by about twelve different people, this chiastic thing in the prologue. So it's got a pretty good background to it by now. Another reference on it, by the way, is that little book by Bois Mard, B-O-I-S-M-A-R-D, called The Prologue of John, which is pretty old, but it's an exciting book. And he finds chiasm in the prologue, too. About the riches of the theology of the prologue. Do you have a bibliography? Well, at this point, if I'm trying to make a bibliography, at this point, I'd just write a, you know, just a heap of stuff which would be maybe a limited one, one page, maybe I could do. I don't want to make a big one, because... Before we quit today,

[46:12]

let me just read you something. About this whole thing of this kind of being a rabbi, being devoted to the word. A couple of texts that have come across this. This is from a Jewish prayer book published in Great Britain. He who feels after many trials that the soul within him can find repose only when it is occupied with the mysteries of the Torah, that is the word, that's the scripture, that's the Bible, should know that for this he has been destined. May no obstacle in the world, fleshly or even spiritually, confuse or turn him from the pursuit of the fountain of life, his true fulfillment, that is the word. And it is well for him to know that not only his own self-fulfillment and salvation wait upon the satisfaction of this tendency within him.

[47:13]

The saving of society and the perfecting of the world also depend upon it. For a soul fulfilled helps to fulfill the world. Wander about seeking water from wells which are not really his, then though he draw water as much as the ocean and take from streams in every part of the earth, yet will he not find peace. For like a bird who has wandered from his nest, so is the man who wanders from his place, and his place is the word. That's the Jewish tradition. The Christian tradition has just gone in the same line. Remember also that text that Innocenzo read to you from the Zohar? Was that a part of it? No, that was when he was talking to the formation group, remember? Verily the Torah lets out a word and emerges a little from her sheath. Here the Torah is a beautiful woman and then hides herself again. Notice, it's very interesting that the feminine characterization

[48:15]

of God's wisdom and of God's word in the Jewish tradition, which the Christian tradition has never taken up. The word is bridegroom in the Christian tradition. And there's something that we've lost here. There's something that, I think it's up to monasticism to find it again, paradoxically. The Torah lets out a word and emerges a little from her sheath and then hides herself again. But she does this only for those who know and obey her. For the Torah remembers a beautiful and stately damsel who is hidden in a secluded chamber of her palace and who has a secret lover unknown to all others. And so on. For love of her, he keeps passing the gate of her house, looking this way and that in search of her. And so she gradually reveals herself to him, but only if he's faithful, only if he's persistent. Such a man, finally towards the end. Only then, when he has become familiar with her, does she reveal herself to him face to face

[49:15]

and speak to him of all her hidden secrets and all her hidden ways, which have been in her heart from the beginning. Such a man is then termed perfect, a master, that is to say, a bridegroom of the Torah. Now, of course, what we have in our tradition is the bride of the Word. That's the classic, even in the male monastic tradition. Your soul is the bride of the Logos, the bride of the Word. St. Bernard, John of the Cross, Gregory of Nyssa, Origen, the whole tradition. So there's something still to be discovered here, I think. A bridegroom of the Torah, in the strictest sense, the master of the house to whom she discloses all her secrets, concealing nothing. Now, obviously, this is Sophia, this is wisdom. The wisdom of God, which is God. Concealing nothing, she says to him, Do you see now how many mysteries were contained in that sign I gave you on the first day, and what its true meaning is? Then he understands that to those words, indeed, nothing may be added and nothing taken away. We have a sense,

[50:19]

I think, much more easily of the Word as being a living thing. And if we do, that's because of John. That's because John tells us that the Word is Christ. OK, let's quit there and we'll pick it up from there next time. I'd encourage you to read the prologue over, OK? And you can fiddle a little bit with that that chiastic structure of the prologue if you can make it out. And also to read those pages by Carmody. And then, I guess we'd better spend some more time on the prologue next time because we didn't even get to it. OK. [...]

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