Tried With Fire

We were blessed to hear Dr. Andreas Kostenberger speak on the Gospel of John this past week-end. As I'm pressed for time, I'm jotting down a few snippets rather than typing out my notes. - Dr. Kostenberger opened his 1st session on Saturday AM with a quote from Augustine: "The Gospel of John is shallow enough for a child not to drown but deep enough for an elephant to swim." Isn't this true? John's Gospel is usually the first book a new believer is encouraged to read yet there are depths that we will never reach. -  We need to look at John's Gospel (and really the whole Bible) from 3 perspectives: History, Literature, and Theology. Understanding the historical context, post destruction of the temple, gives insight as to why John was writing. The center of their religion was destroyed. What were they to do? John then points them to Jesus as the 2nd temple, e.g. not in this mountain or that mountain but we worship God in spirit and in truth. It was also ...

Speaker: Dr. Andreas Kostenberger Topic: Approaching John's Gospel - History, Literature and Theology Session 1 Dr. Kostenberger charted out the course we will be following this week-end. My notes are mainly derived from his slides. (Where there are ? is where I can't read my writing.) Tomorrow, he will walk us through the 2 main sections of the book, chapters 1-12 and 13-21. I. Who wrote John's Gospel? A. Formally anonymous. Unlike Paul's epistles and others where the author states his name. Perhaps because the gospel itself and the hero, Jesus, are more important than the author of the book. In the early church, the gospels were called the fourfold gospel - one gospel, 4 witnesses. B. The disciple whom Jesus loved. John used name identifiers so people with the same name would not be confused. In his gospel. John is John the baptist. C. Looking at events and timing eliminates that the other 11 could have been the author.  Farfetched theories of authorship incl...