Friday, February 18, 2022

Robert Gundry vs. the Common Eisegesis of John 6:63 among many (often non-sacramental) Protestants

  

John 6:56 says it is the person that eats Jesus’ flesh and drinks his blood who abides in him and he in that person. But drinking Jesus’ blood drops out in the immediately following vv. 57-59, so that Jesus’ flesh captures the spotlight; for flesh is what the Word became (1:14). The reaction of many disciples follows naturally: “This word (λογος) is hard. Who can hear it?” (6:60). As a saying of Jesus this word is hard to hear, so that “his disciples grumble about it” (6:61). As Jesus himself this Word is hard to hear, so that “many of his disciples backslid and were no longer walking around with him” (6:66). So hard this word/Word, in fact, that whether it is Jesus’ saying or Jesus himself, no one can come to him unless it be given that person to do so (6:65; see also 6:44).

 

But according to 6:63 “the flesh is profitable in no way.” Why not, if the bread that Jesus gives for the life of the world is his flesh (6:51)? If being profitable in no way contrasts with making alive, as it does in 6:63, surely Jesus’ flesh is profitable. He does not say” My flesh is profitable in no way,” however, rather, “The flesh is profitable in no way” just as in 3:6 “that which is born of the flesh” contrasts with “that which is born of the Spirit” and just as in 8:15 Jesus says that the Pharisees judge “according to the flesh.” By contrast his flesh is profitable, makes alive, because it is not ordinary flesh. It is the Word-made-flesh on whom the Spirit descended and abode (1:32). So he says, “The words (τα ρηματα, synonymous with ο λογος ουτος in 6:60) that I have spoken (λαληχα) to you are Spirit and are life,” for “the Spirit is what makes alive” (6:63). The life-giving words that Jesus speaks are the Word-made-flesh that he is; for he not only has life in himself (1:4), he is the life (11:25; 14:6; cf. 1 John 1:1-2, where “the word [λογου] of life,” “the life” that “was manifested,” and “the eternal life that was with the father and was manifested to us” function virtually as christological titles).

 

Flesh as such profits in no way, then, so that apart from the Spirit the flesh of the Word would have done no good but imbued with the Spirit did immense good. For at the cross water as well as blood flowed out of Jesus’ riven flesh. Water represents the Spirit as the agent of rebirth from above and the source of life (3:5; 7:37-39). Put the equation of Jesus’ words with Spirit and life (6:63) together with the statement that Jesus has the words of eternal life (6:68) and you get Jesus’ identification with the Spirit alongside a distinction from the Spirit similar to the Word’s identification with God alongside a distinction from God in the Prologue. (Robert Gundry, “How the Word in John’s Prologue Pervades the Rest of the Fourth Gospel,” in The Old Is Better: New Testament Essays in Support of Traditional Interpretations [Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen Zum Neuen Testament 178; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005; repr., Eugene, Oreg.: Wipf and Stock, 2010], 340-41)