what we see
Some writing of William Barclay: Long ago, Paul said that the visible things of the world were so designed by God as to lead human thoughts to the invisible things, and that if people had looked with open eyes and an understading heart at the world, their thoughts would have been inevitably lead to the creator of the world (Rom 1:19-20). And this connects with something else that he wrote re the Greeks and John's gospel > 
"the fourth gospel was written in Ephesus around AD 100. By that time, two special features had emerged in the situation of the Christian Church. First, Christianity had gone out into the Gentile world. By that time, the Chrsitian Church was no longer predominantly Jewish; it was in fact overwhelmingly Gentile. The vast majority of its members now came not from a Jewish but a Greek background. That being so, Christianity had to be restated. It was not that the truth of Christianity had changed; but the terms and the categories in which it found expression had to be changed...
...the Greeks had two great conceptions:
(a) They had the conception of the Logos. In Greek, Logos means two things - it means word and it means reason. Jews were entirely familiar with the all-powerful word of God. "God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light" (Gen1:3). Greeks were entirely familiar with the thought of reason. They looked at this world; they saw a magnificent and dependable order. Night and day came with unfailing regularity; the year kept its seasons in unvarying course; the stars and the planets moved in their unaltering path; nature had her unvarying laws. What produced this order? Greeks answered unhesitatingly: the Logos, the mind of God, is repsonsible for the majestic order of the world. They went on: what is it that gives human beings power to think, to reason and to know? Again they answered unhesitatingly: the Logos, the mind of God, dwelling within an individual makes that person a thinking rational being.
John seized on this. It was in this way that he thought of Jesus. He said to the Greeks: "All your lives you have been fascinated by this great, guiding, controlling mind of God. The mind of God has come to earth in the man Jesus. Look at him and you see what the mind and thought of God are like." John had discovered a new category in which Greeks might think of Jesus, a category in which Jesus was presented as nothing less than God acting in human form.
(b) They had the conception of two worlds. The Greeks always conceived of two worlds. The one was the world in which we live. It was a wonderful world in its way but a world of shadows and copies and unrealities. The other was the real world, in which the great realities, of which our earthly things are only poor, pale copies, stand for ever. To the Greeks, the unseen world was the real one; the seen world was only shadowy unreality.
Plato systematized this way of thinking in his doctrine of forms or ideas. He held that in the unseen world there was the perfect pattern of everything, and the things of this world were shadowy copies of these eternal patterns. To put it simply, Plato held that somewhere there was a perfect pattern of a table of which all earthly tables are inadequate copies; somewhere there was the perfect pattern of the good and the beautiful of which all earthly goodness and earthly beauty are imperfect copies. And the great reality, the supreme idea, the pattern of all patterns and the form of all forms was God. The great problem was how to get into this world of reality, how to get out of our shadows into the eternal truths. John declares that that is what Jesus enables us to do. He is reality come to earth. The Greek word for real in this ssense is alethinos; it is very closely connected with the word alethes, which means true, and aletheia, which means the truth. The Authorized and Revised Standard Versions translate alethinos as true; they would be far better to translate it as real. Jesus is the real light (1:9); Jesus is the real bread, ...real vine, ...belongs to the real judgment. Jesus alone has the reality in our world of shadows and imperfections.
Something follows from that. Every action that Jesus did was, therefore, not only an act in time but a window which allows us to see into reality. That is what John means when he talks of Jesus' miracles as signs (semeia). The wonderful works of Jeus were not simply wonderful; they were windows opening on to the reality which is God. This explains why John tells the miracle stories in a quite different way from the other three gospel writers...
(foto's van karna CT trip)
"the fourth gospel was written in Ephesus around AD 100. By that time, two special features had emerged in the situation of the Christian Church. First, Christianity had gone out into the Gentile world. By that time, the Chrsitian Church was no longer predominantly Jewish; it was in fact overwhelmingly Gentile. The vast majority of its members now came not from a Jewish but a Greek background. That being so, Christianity had to be restated. It was not that the truth of Christianity had changed; but the terms and the categories in which it found expression had to be changed......the Greeks had two great conceptions:
(a) They had the conception of the Logos. In Greek, Logos means two things - it means word and it means reason. Jews were entirely familiar with the all-powerful word of God. "God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light" (Gen1:3). Greeks were entirely familiar with the thought of reason. They looked at this world; they saw a magnificent and dependable order. Night and day came with unfailing regularity; the year kept its seasons in unvarying course; the stars and the planets moved in their unaltering path; nature had her unvarying laws. What produced this order? Greeks answered unhesitatingly: the Logos, the mind of God, is repsonsible for the majestic order of the world. They went on: what is it that gives human beings power to think, to reason and to know? Again they answered unhesitatingly: the Logos, the mind of God, dwelling within an individual makes that person a thinking rational being.
John seized on this. It was in this way that he thought of Jesus. He said to the Greeks: "All your lives you have been fascinated by this great, guiding, controlling mind of God. The mind of God has come to earth in the man Jesus. Look at him and you see what the mind and thought of God are like." John had discovered a new category in which Greeks might think of Jesus, a category in which Jesus was presented as nothing less than God acting in human form.
(b) They had the conception of two worlds. The Greeks always conceived of two worlds. The one was the world in which we live. It was a wonderful world in its way but a world of shadows and copies and unrealities. The other was the real world, in which the great realities, of which our earthly things are only poor, pale copies, stand for ever. To the Greeks, the unseen world was the real one; the seen world was only shadowy unreality.
Plato systematized this way of thinking in his doctrine of forms or ideas. He held that in the unseen world there was the perfect pattern of everything, and the things of this world were shadowy copies of these eternal patterns. To put it simply, Plato held that somewhere there was a perfect pattern of a table of which all earthly tables are inadequate copies; somewhere there was the perfect pattern of the good and the beautiful of which all earthly goodness and earthly beauty are imperfect copies. And the great reality, the supreme idea, the pattern of all patterns and the form of all forms was God. The great problem was how to get into this world of reality, how to get out of our shadows into the eternal truths. John declares that that is what Jesus enables us to do. He is reality come to earth. The Greek word for real in this ssense is alethinos; it is very closely connected with the word alethes, which means true, and aletheia, which means the truth. The Authorized and Revised Standard Versions translate alethinos as true; they would be far better to translate it as real. Jesus is the real light (1:9); Jesus is the real bread, ...real vine, ...belongs to the real judgment. Jesus alone has the reality in our world of shadows and imperfections.
Something follows from that. Every action that Jesus did was, therefore, not only an act in time but a window which allows us to see into reality. That is what John means when he talks of Jesus' miracles as signs (semeia). The wonderful works of Jeus were not simply wonderful; they were windows opening on to the reality which is God. This explains why John tells the miracle stories in a quite different way from the other three gospel writers...
(foto's van karna CT trip)
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