The Eccentric, Inflated, Dangerous Theology of John’s Gospel

Read it and weep—and get over it

Here’s a book title that would dumbfound many devout churchgoers: This Tragic Gospel: How John Corrupted the Heart of Christianity. The author, Dr. Louis A. Ruprecht, Jr., states that the author of John intended his gospel to replace the earlier gospels (p. 180), and he refers to the “howling conflict between Mark and John…” (p. 13) Burton Mack wrote: “What a somersault, turning the page between Luke’s life of Jesus and the Gospel of John” (p. 175, Who Wrote the New Testament? The Making of the Christian Myth). Peter Brancazio notes that John’s gospel “will come as an astonishing surprise. Here the reader will encounter a radically different portrait of Jesus, both in terms of his message and his person” (p. 373, The Bible from Cover to Cover: How Modern-Day Scholars Read the Bible).

 

Surveys have shown that church folks don’t make a habit of reading the gospels—and certainly not studying the gospels, analyzing them critically. There are so many other options for entertainment. It’s common for the devout to accept the idealized version of Jesus promoted by the church, and there is special fondness for the gospel of John, e.g., 3:16, “God so loved the world…”  and 14:2: “In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.” Yes, heaven awaits, as this quaint King James Version rendering assures the faithful. I have often challenged believers to read all of Mark’s gospel in one sitting, take a break, then do the same with John’s gospel. Gee, that would mean two or three hours of Bible reading! But the most exhausting part of this exercise would be the discovery of how differently Jesus is depicted in these two gospels. What’s going on? 

 

The author of John’s gospel apparently felt that the earlier writers got the story wrong—and he wanted to set the record straight. But, alas, this author was not a historian. He was a theologian who created his version of the Jesus story late in the first century or early in the second, many decades after the death of Jesus. He got carried away, hence my title for this article, suggesting that his theology was eccentric, inflated, and dangerous.  

 

Eccentric

 

No Baptism of Jesus

 

In John’s gospel, Jesus is not baptized. Since his divine Jesus had been present at creation (more about this later), there was no need for him to be baptized for the remission of sins. Matthew was also bothered by this, so when he copied Mark’s text, he said that John the Baptist himself didn’t like the idea of baptizing Jesus. Matthew added Jesus-script: “Let it be so now, for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness” (Matthew 3:15). In other words, let’s do it for show. In John’s gospel, Jesus doesn’t set foot in the water. The Baptist is there to proclaim that Jesus in the “lamb of God who takes way the sins of the world” (John 1:29).

 

No Parables in the Teachings of Jesus

 

In Mark 4:10-12 we find the bizarre Jesus-script in which he claims that he taught in parables to prevent people from repenting and being forgiven. In Mark 4:34, we read that he taught only in parables. It seems that the author of John’s gospel was determined to show this was wrong. Instead of teaching in parables, we find long Jesus monologues found in none of the other gospels. 

 

There is no Eucharist at the Last Supper

 

In John’s presentation of this episode, Jesus washes the feet of the disciples—that’s the primary event (chapter 13). There is no mention of eating the bread as a symbol of Jesus’ body, and nothing about wine being his blood of the new covenant. However, late in chapter 6, which begins with the feeding of the Five Thousand, we find the especially ghoulish text about the importance of eating Jesus’ flesh and drinking his blood. More about this later too. 

 

There is little ethical teaching in John

 

This theologian-author was mainly concerned to present Jesus as the key to gaining eternal life. While Matthew added the Sermon on the Mount when he copied Mark’s text—and Luke modified the Sermon—John left it out altogether. And there’s a touch of irony here. In John 8 we find the famous story of the woman “taken in adultery,” whom the religious leaders are so eager to have stoned to death. They bring her to Jesus for his opinion on what to do. “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her” (John 8:7). But this story, which is commonly taken as an illustration of Jesus’ compassion, was not in the original text of John’s gospel. In some manuscripts, it turns up in Luke 21. There is nothing whatever by which to verify that it is an authentic story about Jesus.

 

John changed the day of the crucifixion—and Jesus’ attitude 

 

One of John’s theological themes is that Jesus was “the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” Thus it was crucial for him that Jesus die at the same time that lambs were killed for the Passover meal. The other gospels present Jesus having the Passover meal with his disciples that evening. And it was unthinkable for John that Jesus wasn’t the perfect divine being throughout the ordeal of the crucifixion. The other three gospels indicate that a man was picked out of the crowd, Simon of Cyrene, to carry the cross. In John 19:17 we read that Jesus carried the cross himself. In Mark’s gospel, the last words of Jesus were, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” John would have none of that; when Jesus breathed his last, he simply said, “It is finished” — “then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit” (John 19:30).  

 

Inflated Theology

 

John chapter one sets the tone

 

Please read and ponder carefully John 1:1-18. Verse 14 is perhaps most famous: “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.” We find this remarkable claim at the opening, vv. 1-3: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.” The other gospel writers positioned Jesus as the son of god. In Mark’s gospel this was announced by a voice from the sky when Jesus was baptized. Matthew and Luke grafted onto their Jesus story an idea borrowed from other religions, that Jesus had been conceived by a god. 

 

John had succumbed big time to cult fanaticism. He claims that Jesus had been present at creation, indeed nothing “came into being” without the participation of Jesus. The Galilean peasant preacher has disappeared under layers of theology. Any reader today must ask—curiosity must kick in: how did he know this? Why should anyone trust the ideas that were bouncing around inside his head? So many theologians of very different faiths have made exaggerated claims about their gods, confident, of course, that their followers will be convinced, i.e., be fooled. 

 

The contrived Lazarus story

 

This spectacular episode is found only in John’s gospel. How did the other gospel writers miss it? Please read and ponder John 11:1-44. The most famous text in the story is vv. 25-26: “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” There can be little doubt that this is the purpose of the story—to stress again that Jesus is the key to living forever. Nor can there be any doubt that the story is contrived, given vv. 14-15: “Then Jesus told them plainly, ‘Lazarus is dead. For your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.’” Jesus was glad he wasn’t there? Are churchgoers really okay with this? Would Lazarus himself have said, “Sure, let’s do this so you can score points”? 

 

Don’t miss the magic spell that Jesus uses here, v. 43: it’s a voice activated resurrection: “…he cried with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’” How in the world is eternal life proved by such an event? We are told nothing else about Lazarus, namely that he died again at some point. And so did all those dead people who—so we’re told in Matthew 27:52-53 — came back to life and walked around Jerusalem on the first Easter morning. Clearly Luke knew this problem had to be avoided with Jesus, so in Acts 1 he says that Jesus disappeared above the clouds to join god in the sky. That never happened…so newly alive Jesus remained on earth, and died again as well. 

 

John 6: 53-57, theology reaches a low point

 

This chapter opens with Jesus feeding a crowd of 5,000 people. One of the disciples noticed a boy who had five barley loaves and two fish—from which Jesus, again working his magic—produced enough food for everyone. The next day he advised those whom he’d fed: “Do not work for the food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you” (v. 27). We’re getting closer to perhaps the worst text in the New Testament, vv. 53-57: 

  

“So Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day, for my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me.’” 

 

If Christians heard these words shouted by a deranged street preacher, they’d cross the street, run in the other direction. The author of John’s gospel was so absorbed in his version of the Jesus cult that he was okay advocating this grotesque idea. His religion embraced magic potions, i.e., eating flesh, drinking blood that belongs to a god. But when you’re deep into the cult, this no longer causes offense. Over the centuries, the ecclesiastical bureaucracy promoted this ancient superstition relentlessly. It became part of ritual—to the ridiculous extent of making a big deal of First Communion, i.e., kids are allowed to eat Jesus for the first time. I often wonder: when are Christians going to snap out of it?    

 

John 14-17

 

Anyone who decides to read this gospel nonstop will find these chapters especially tedious—a great stretch of cult theobabble: Jesus and god are one. You’d better sign on, or else, e.g. 15:6: “Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.” Any curious reader will want to know: why are these chapters missing from the other gospels? Devout scholars, who argue—without evidence— that the gospels derive from eyewitness accounts, have to be stumped that all these words of Jesus said to the disciples are missing from the earlier gospels. John seems to have followed the ancient practice of making up speeches for holy heroes. Richard Carrier, after reviewing so many of the fabrications found in this gospel, concluded: “John has thus run wild with authorial gluttony, freely changing everything and inventing whatever he wants. By modern standards, John is lying” (On the Historicity of Jesus: Why We Might Have Reason for Doubt, p. 491).   

 

Dangerous Theology

 

Religious fanaticism has been fueled by scripture. Promising that people who don’t believe will be “thrown into the fire and burned” encourages violence. Two verses after the beloved John 3:16, we find this warning: “…those who do not believe are condemned already because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.” And at the end of the chapter: “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever disobeys the Son will not see life but must endure God’s wrath.” Through the centuries, Christian zealots have gone to war and burned people at the stake; these hateful verses in John’s gospel provide the justification. 

 

There has been a lot of commentary as well on the role this gospel has played in fueling antisemitism. The Wikipedia article on this include a section on the fourth gospel: “The Gospel of John is the primary source of the image of ‘the Jews’ acting collectively as the enemy of Jesus, which later became fixed in Christian minds.” Perhaps the worst
text is John 8:44, Jesus in conversation with the Jews: “You are from your father the devil, and you choose to do your father’s desires.” Hector Avalos has pointed out that this verse ended up on Nazi road signs (in his essay, “Atheism Was Not the Cause of the Holocaust,” in John Loftus’ anthology, The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails, p. 378).

 

Devout believers who are so sure that the Bible is the Good Book have a lot of explaining to do when the discussion turns to John’s gospel. This author—as Carrier notes—by modern standards, did a lot of lying, and in the process, as Louis Ruprecht maintains, “corrupted the heart of Christianity.”

 

 

 

David Madison was a pastor in the Methodist Church for nine years, and has a PhD in Biblical Studies from Boston University. He is the author of two books, Ten Tough Problems in Christian Thought and Belief: a Minister-Turned-Atheist Shows Why You Should Ditch the Faith, now being reissued in several volumes, the first of which is Guessing About God (2023) and Ten Things Christians Wish Jesus Hadn’t Taught: And Other Reasons to Question His Words (2021). The Spanish translation of this book is also now available. 

 

His YouTube channel is here. He has written for the Debunking Christianity Blog since 2016.

 

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