Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Gospel of John
    The Gospel of John
    The Gospel of John
    Ebook238 pages4 hours

    The Gospel of John

    By Scott Hahn

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Based on the Revised Standard Version - Catholic Edition, this fifth volume in this Bible study series leads readers through a penetrating study of the Gospel of John, using the biblical text itself and the Church's own guidelines for understanding the Bible. Ample notes accompany each page, providing fresh insights by renowned Bible teachers Scott Hahn and Curtis Mitch, as well as time-tested interpretations from the Fathers of the Church. These helpful study notes make explicit what John often assumes. They provide rich historical, cultural, or theological information pertinent to the Gospel.

    The Ignatius Study Bible also includes Topical Essays, Word Studies and Charts. Each page also includes an easy-to-use Cross-Reference Section. Study Questions are provided for each chapter of the Gospel that can deepen your personal study of God's Holy Word. There is also an introductory essay covering questions of authorship, date, destination, structure and themes and an outline of the Gospel of John and several maps.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherIgnatius Press
    Release dateMay 29, 2012
    ISBN9781681491233
    The Gospel of John
    Author

    Scott Hahn

    Scott Hahn is Professor of Theology and Scripture at the Franciscan University of Steubenville, in Steubenville, Ohio. He also holds the Chair of Biblical Theology and Liturgical Proclamation at St. Vincent Seminary in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. He is author of The Lamb's Supper, Lord Have Mercy; Swear to God: The Promise and Power of Sacraments; and Letter and Spirit: From Written Text of Living Word in the Liturgy.

    Read more from Scott Hahn

    Related to The Gospel of John

    Related ebooks

    Christianity For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • UNLIMITED

      Why Theology Matters

      Nov 22, 2024

      Why Theology Matters
      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      ‘Curveball’: When Spiritual Skepticism Leads To Sturdier Faith

      May 2, 2023

      In his probing spiritual memoir, “Curveball: When Your Faith Takes Turns You Never Saw Coming,” Peter Enns describes a dark period. He realized his religious assumptions since his teenage years – that every word of the Bible was fact – needed a secon

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      What The New Testament Doesn’t Say

      May 20, 2019

      When professing Christians deny Biblical creation, we often point them to the Words of Jesus and the New Testament authors, which clearly affirm their own belief in Biblical creation. Because Christians are, by definition, people who believe what Jes

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Ask Val

      Jun 16, 2023

      Ask Val
      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Why Do Many People STRUGGLE With A LACK OF FAITH?

      Feb 11, 2022

      The apostle Paul exhorts Christians to “walk by faith and not by sight” – 2 Corinthians 5:7. What we see here is a contrast between truth and perception—what we know and believe to be true and what we perceive to be true. This is where the Christian

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      7 Quirky ‘Doctrines’ DEBUNKED

      Oct 28, 2022

      Jesus said that the truth sets us free. But the opposite is also true: Lies put us in bondage—even if the lies are spoken from a pulpit by a sincere minister or a Christian celebrity. In my international travels, I’ve sat in countless meetings and he

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Theology: Why Do We Need It?

      Nov 27, 2020

      Theology: Why Do We Need It?
      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Living With Purpose

      Sep 7, 2021

      Living With Purpose
      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Building A Biblical Worldview

      Nov 22, 2024

      Building A Biblical Worldview
      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Paradigm Shift

      May 10, 2024

      Paradigm Shift
      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Great Shaking

      Nov 27, 2020

      Way back in the last millennium when I was still a teenager there was a popular song made famous by Jerry Lee Lewis, “There’s been a whole lotta shakin goin’ on.”This is certainly true of today’s world. One major difference between the current global

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A New Day Of Pentecost Part Lll

      Feb 10, 2023

      Over the last few issues of JOY, I have been sharing insights about the day of Pentecost in the Bible (Acts 2). To fully appreciate the context of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on this day, we must first look at the events that took place before

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A New Day Of Pentecost Part VI

      May 19, 2023

      The scripture above records the final words of Jesus Christ to His disciples before He was taken up into a cloud. One of His last promises was that the Father would send the Holy Spirit, and the baptism of the Spirit would enable the disciples to acc

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Why Study Church History?

      Jun 15, 2020

      Why Study Church History?
      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Letters To The Editor

      Sep 24, 2021

      Dear readers, we love to hear your thoughts on the stories that we publish, what is going on around the world, and what the Lord has placed on your heart! Email your letter through to [email protected] for a chance to be featured – please try to ke

      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Getting to Know God The Personhood & Deity of the Holy Spirit

      Jan 1, 2021

      In examining the biblical revelation concerning God, we come upon an apparent contradiction. The Bible teaches that there is only one God, but it also teaches that Jesus is God. And what do we make of situations where God the Son is speaking to God t

      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Gospel of John

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      The Gospel of John - Scott Hahn

      INTRODUCTION TO THE IGNATIUS STUDY BIBLE

      You are approaching the word of God. This is the title Christians most commonly give to the Bible, and the expression is rich in meaning. It is also the title given to the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, God the Son. For Jesus Christ became flesh for our salvation, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God (Rev 19:13; cf. Jn 1:14).

      The word of God is Scripture. The Word of God is Jesus. This close association between God's written word and his eternal Word is intentional and has been the custom of the Church since the first generation. "All Sacred Scripture is but one book, and this one book is Christ, because all divine Scripture speaks of Christ, and all divine Scripture is fulfilled in Christ¹" (CCC 134). This does not mean that the Scriptures are divine in the same way that Jesus is divine. They are, rather, divinely inspired and, as such, are unique in world literature, just as the Incarnation of the eternal Word is unique in human history.

      Yet we can say that the inspired word resembles the incarnate Word in several important ways. Jesus Christ is the Word of God incarnate. In his humanity, he is like us in all things, except for sin. As a work of man, the Bible is like any other book, except without error. Both Christ and Scripture, says the Second Vatican Council, are given for the sake of our salvation (Dei Verbum 11), and both give us God's definitive revelation of himself. We cannot, therefore, conceive of one without the other: the Bible without Jesus, or Jesus without the Bible. Each is the interpretive key to the other. And because Christ is the subject of all the Scriptures, St. Jerome insists, Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ² (CCC 133).

      When we approach the Bible, then, we approach Jesus, the Word of God; and in order to encounter Jesus, we must approach him in a prayerful study of the inspired word of God, the Sacred Scriptures.

      Inspiration and Inerrancy  The Catholic Church makes mighty claims for the Bible, and our acceptance of those claims is essential if we are to read the Scriptures and apply them to our lives as the Church intends. So it is not enough merely to nod at words like inspired, unique, or inerrant. We have to understand what the Church means by these terms, and we have to make that understanding our own. After all, what we believe about the Bible will inevitably influence the way we read the Bible. The way we read the Bible, in turn, will determine what we get out of its sacred pages.

      These principles hold true no matter what we read: a news report, a search warrant, an advertisement, a paycheck, a doctor's prescription, an eviction notice. How (or whether) we read these things depends largely upon our preconceived notions about the reliability and authority of their sources—and the potential they have for affecting our lives. In some cases, to misunderstand a document's authority can lead to dire consequences. In others, it can keep us from enjoying rewards that are rightfully ours. In the case of the Bible, both the rewards and the consequences involved take on an ultimate value.

      What does the Church mean, then, when she affirms the words of St. Paul: All Scripture is inspired by God (2 Tim 3:16)? Since the term inspired in this passage could be translated God-breathed, it follows that God breathed forth his word in the Scriptures as you and I breathe forth air when we speak. This means that God is the primary author of the Bible. He certainly employed human authors in this task as well, but he did not merely assist them while they wrote or subsequently approve what they had written. God the Holy Spirit is the principal author of Scripture, while the human writers are instrumental authors. These human authors freely wrote everything, and only those things, that God wanted: the word of God in the very words of God. This miracle of dual authorship extends to the whole of Scripture, and to every one of its parts, so that whatever the human authors affirm, God likewise affirms through their words.

      The principle of biblical inerrancy follows logically from this principle of divine authorship. After all, God cannot lie, and he cannot make mistakes. Since the Bible is divinely inspired, it must be without error in everything that its divine and human authors affirm to be true. This means that biblical inerrancy is a mystery even broader in scope than infallibility, which guarantees for us that the Church will always teach the truth concerning faith and morals. Of course the mantle of inerrancy likewise covers faith and morals, but it extends even farther to ensure that all the facts and events of salvation history are accurately presented for us in the Scriptures. Inerrancy is our guarantee that the words and deeds of God found in the Bible are unified and true, declaring with one voice the wonders of his saving love.

      The guarantee of inerrancy does not mean, however, that the Bible is an all-purpose encyclopedia of information covering every field of study. The Bible is not, for example, a textbook in the empirical sciences, and it should not be treated as one. When biblical authors relate facts of the natural order, we can be sure they are speaking in a purely descriptive and phenomenological way, according to the way things appeared to their senses.

      Biblical Authority  Implicit in these doctrines is God's desire to make himself known to the world and to enter a loving relationship with every man, woman, and child he has created. God gave us the Scriptures not just to inform or motivate us; more than anything he wants to save us. This higher purpose underlies every page of the Bible, indeed every word of it.

      In order to reveal himself, God used what theologians call accommodation. Sometimes the Lord stoops down to communicate by condescension— that is, he speaks as humans speak, as if he had the same passions and weakness that we do (for example, God says he was sorry that he made man in Genesis 6:6). Other times he communicates by elevation—that is, by endowing human words with divine power (for example, through the prophets). The numerous examples of divine accommodation in the Bible are an expression of God's wise and fatherly ways. For a sensitive father can speak with his children either by condescension, as in baby talk, or by elevation, by bringing a child's understanding up to a more mature level.

      God's word is thus saving, fatherly, and personal. Because it speaks directly to us, we must never be indifferent to its content; after all, the word of God is at once the object, cause, and support of our faith. It is, in fact, a test of our faith, since we see in the Scriptures only what faith disposes us to see. If we believe what the Church believes, we will see in Scripture the saving, inerrant, and divinely authored revelation of the Father. If we believe otherwise, we see another book altogether.

      This test applies not only to rank-and-file believers but also to the Church's theologians and hierarchy, and even the Magisterium. Vatican II has stressed in recent times that Scripture must be the very soul of sacred theology (Dei Verbum 24). As Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI echoed this powerful teaching with his own, insisting that, "The normative theologians are the authors of Holy Scripture (emphasis added). He reminded us that Scripture and the Church's dogmatic teaching are tied tightly together, to the point of being inseparable: Dogma is by definition nothing other than an interpretation of Scripture." The defined dogmas of our faith, then, encapsulate the Church's infallible interpretation of Scripture, and theology is a further reflection upon that work.

      The Senses of Scripture  Because the Bible has both divine and human authors, we are required to master a different sort of reading than we are used to. First, we must read Scripture according to its literal sense, as we read any other human literature. At this initial stage, we strive to discover the meaning of the words and expressions used by the biblical writers as they were understood in their original setting and by their original recipients. This means, among other things, that we do not interpret everything we read literalistically, as though Scripture never speaks in a figurative or symbolic way (it often does!). Rather, we read it according to the rules that govern its different literary forms of writing, depending on whether we are reading a narrative, a poem, a letter, a parable, or an apocalyptic vision. The Church calls us to read the divine books in this way to ensure that we understand what the human authors were laboring to explain to God's people.

      The literal sense, however, is not the only sense of Scripture, since we interpret its sacred pages according to the spiritual senses as well. In this way, we search out what the Holy Spirit is trying to tell us, beyond even what the human authors have consciously asserted. Whereas the literal sense of Scripture describes a historical reality—a fact, precept, or event—the spiritual senses disclose deeper mysteries revealed through the historical realities. What the soul is to the body, the spiritual senses are to the literal. You can distinguish them; but if you try to separate them, death immediately follows. St. Paul was the first to insist upon this and warn of its consequences: God . . . has qualified us to be ministers of a new covenant, not in a written code but in the Spirit; for the written code kills, but the Spirit gives life (2 Cor 3:5-6).

      Catholic tradition recognizes three spiritual senses that stand upon the foundation of the literal sense of Scripture (see CCC 115). (1) The first is the allegorical sense, which unveils the spiritual and prophetic meaning of biblical history. Allegorical interpretations thus reveal how persons, events, and institutions of Scripture can point beyond themselves toward greater mysteries yet to come (OT), or display the fruits of mysteries already revealed (NT). Christians have often read the Old Testament in this way to discover how the mystery of Christ in the New Covenant was once hidden in the Old, and how the full significance of the Old Covenant was finally made manifest in the New. Allegorical significance is likewise latent in the New Testament, especially in the life and deeds of Jesus recorded in the Gospels. Because Christ is the Head of the Church and the source of her spiritual life, what was accomplished in Christ the Head during his earthly life prefigures what he continually produces in his members through grace. The allegorical sense builds up the virtue of faith. (2) The second is the tropological or moral sense, which reveals how the actions of God's people in the Old Testament and the life of Jesus in the New Testament prompt us to form virtuous habits in our own lives. It therefore draws from Scripture warnings against sin and vice, as well as inspirations to pursue holiness and purity. The moral sense is intended to build up the virtue of charity. (3) The third is the anagogical sense, which points upward to heavenly glory. It shows us how countless events in the Bible prefigure our final union with God in eternity, and how things that are seen on earth are figures of things unseen in heaven. Because the anagogical sense leads us to contemplate our destiny, it is meant to build up the virtue of hope. Together with the literal sense, then, these spiritual senses draw out the fullness of what God wants to give us through his Word and as such comprise what ancient tradition has called the full sense of Sacred Scripture.

      All of this means that the deeds and events of the Bible are charged with meaning beyond what is immediately apparent to the reader. In essence, that meaning is Jesus Christ and the salvation he died to give us. This is especially true of the books of the New Testament, which proclaim Jesus explicitly; but it is also true of the Old Testament, which speaks of Jesus in more hidden and symbolic ways. The human authors of the Old Testament told us as much as they were able, but they could not clearly discern the shape of all future events standing at such a distance. It is the Bible's divine Author, the Holy Spirit, who could and did foretell the saving work of Christ, from the first page of the Book of Genesis onward.

      The New Testament did not, therefore, abolish the Old. Rather, the New fulfilled the Old, and in doing so, it lifted the veil that kept hidden the face of the Lord's bride. Once the veil is removed, we suddenly see the world of the Old Covenant charged with grandeur. Water, fire, clouds, gardens, trees, hills, doves, lambs—all of these things are memorable details in the history and poetry of Israel. But now, seen in the light of Jesus Christ, they are much more. For the Christian with eyes to see, water symbolizes the saving power of Baptism; fire, the Holy Spirit; the spotless lamb, Christ crucified; Jerusalem, the city of heavenly glory.

      The spiritual reading of Scripture is nothing new. Indeed the very first Christians read the Bible this way. St. Paul describes Adam as a type that prefigured Jesus Christ (Rom 5:14). A type is a real person, place, thing, or event in the Old Testament that foreshadows something greater in the New. From this term we get the word typology, referring to the study of how the Old Testament prefigures Christ (CCC 128-30). Elsewhere St. Paul draws deeper meanings out of the story of Abraham's sons, declaring, This is an allegory (Gal 4:24). He is not suggesting that these events of the distant past never really happened; he is saying that the events both happened and signified something more glorious yet to come.

      The New Testament later describes the Tabernacle of ancient Israel as a copy and shadow of the heavenly sanctuary (Heb 8:5) and the Mosaic Law as a shadow of the good things to come (Heb 10:1). St. Peter, in turn, notes that Noah and his family were saved through water in a way that corresponds to sacramental Baptism, which now saves you (1 Pet 3:20-21). Interestingly, the expression that is translated corresponds in this verse is a Greek term that denotes the fulfillment or counterpart of an ancient type.

      We need not look to the apostles, however, to justify a spiritual reading of the Bible. After all, Jesus himself read the Old Testament this way. He referred to Jonah (Mt 12:39), Solomon (Mt 12:42), the Temple (Jn 2:19), and the brazen serpent (Jn 3:14) as signs that pointed forward to him. We see in Luke's Gospel, as Christ comforted the disciples on the road to Emmaus, that beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself (Lk 24:27). It was precisely this extensive spiritual interpretation of the Old Testament that made such an impact on these once-discouraged travelers, causing their hearts to burn within them (Lk 24:32).

      Criteria for Biblical Interpretation  We too must learn to discern the full sense of Scripture as it includes both the literal and spiritual senses together. Still, this does not mean we should read into the Bible meanings that are not really there. Spiritual exegesis is not an unrestrained flight of the imagination. Rather, it is a sacred science that proceeds according to certain principles and stands accountable to sacred tradition, the Magisterium, and the wider community of biblical interpreters (both living and deceased).

      In searching out the full sense of a text, we should always avoid the extreme tendency to over-spiritualize in a way that minimizes or denies the Bible's literal truth. St. Thomas Aquinas was well aware of this danger and asserted that all other senses of Sacred Scripture are based on the literal (STh I, 1, 10, ad 1, quoted in CCC 116). On the other hand, we should never confine the meaning of a text to the literal, intended sense of its human author, as if the divine Author did not intend the passage to be read in the light of Christ's coming.

      Fortunately the Church has given us guidelines in our study of Scripture. The unique character and divine authorship of the Bible calls us to read it in the Spirit (Dei Verbum 12). Vatican II outlines this teaching in a practical way by directing us to read the Scriptures according to three specific criteria:

      1. We must [b]e especially attentive 'to the content and unity of the whole Scripture' (CCC 112).

      2. We must [r]ead the Scripture within 'the living Tradition of the whole Church' (CCC 113).

      3. We must [b]e attentive to the analogy of faith (CCC 114; cf. Rom 12:6).

      These criteria protect us from many of the dangers that ensnare readers of the Bible, from the newest inquirer to the most prestigious scholar. Reading Scripture out of context is one such pitfall, and probably the one most difficult to avoid. A memorable cartoon from the 1950s shows a young man poring over the pages of the Bible. He says to his sister: Don't bother me now; I'm trying to find a Scripture verse to back up one of my preconceived notions. No doubt a biblical text pried from its context can be twisted to say something very different from what its author actually intended.

      The Church's criteria guide us here by defining what constitutes the authentic context of a given biblical passage. The first criterion directs us to the literary context of every verse, including not only the words and paragraphs that surround it, but also the entire corpus of the biblical author's writings and, indeed, the span of the entire Bible. The complete literary context of any Scripture verse includes every text from Genesis to Revelation— because the Bible is a unified book, not just a library of different books. When the Church canonized the Book of Revelation, for example, she recognized it to be incomprehensible apart from the wider context of the entire Bible.

      The second criterion places the Bible firmly within the context of a community that treasures a living tradition. That community is the People of God down through the ages. Christians lived out their faith for well over a millennium before the printing press was invented. For centuries, few believers

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1