This book on the Fourth Gospel appears in Cambridge University Press’ New New Testament Theology series. The goal of this series is to ‘provide an up-to-date analysis of the theology in each book in the New Testament’ (from the front matter). This volume, therefore, is the successor the 1995 volume by D. Moody Smith in the first iteration of this series.
The book is divided into nine chapters, grouped into three major parts. In Part One, Myers articulates her understanding of John as a case of ‘narrative theology’: that is, ‘through its narrative, the Gospel conveys convictions about who God is and how God works through its story’ (p. 21). In chapter 1, Myers situates her own contribution within the broad arc of Johannine scholarship from Bultmann to the present. She narrates a number of major shifts that have occurred in scholarship during this time and the critical issues that attend these shifts. Her approach to John as narrative theology fits within the synchronic turn in Johannine studies.
Chapter 2 continues this literary-historical examination by explicating ways in which John blends different ancient literary genres and rhetorical strategies into its antique biography of Jesus. Myers also provides an overview of the Gospel’s narrative, whose plot is driven by God’s love for the world. Chapter 3 examines important literary and theological features of John’s Gospel as a case of narrative theology (e.g., narrator’s perspective and time, characterisation, symbolism, etc.). Myers also sketches the major theological elements which provide the substance of Part Two of the book.
The chapters in Part Two thus explicate John’s major theological themes in relation to four major theological elements. Chapter 4 centres on the will of God (the Father) to give life. This is the setting for John’s locating Jesus within the larger story of God’s dealings with the world generally and Israel specifically. Accordingly, Myers here treats John’s interpretation of scripture, his appeal to Jewish holy days and festivals and his presentation of ‘the Jews’.
Chapter 5 focuses on the Gospel’s Christology and the specific issues of the incarnation, Jesus’ revelation in word and deed, and his return to the Father with whom he is one. Myers includes here a very helpful discussion of John’s appropriation of topoi of characterisation, given in progymnastic rhetoric, in his presentation of Jesus.
Chapter 6 is a treatment of soteriology in John. Thematising the exorcistic effects of Jesus’ death (cf. John 12:31) and the Gospel’s apocalyptic aspects, Myers succinctly articulates her understanding of this topic: ‘In John, an apocalyptic worldview merges with purification to present God’s work through Jesus as a divine rescue and a climactic second exodus for those who will follow his theophanic presence out of slavery to sin’ (p. 115).
Chapter 7 takes up the community and life of disciples in the Gospel. Under this heading, Myers deftly integrates discussions of the Gospel’s dualism and pneumatology, its ethical and missional directives and the ways in which the Gospel integrates temporal perspectives to include believers from different times. For Myers, ‘While the Gospel retells the story of Jesus from the past, its rhetoric seeks to shape its audience in whatever present moment they find themselves, granting them access to God’s glory and encouraging them to imitate Jesus’s model life’ (p. 154).
Part Three contains two chapters, which treat the Gospel in relation to other literary corpora and theological discussions. Chapter 8 considers the place of John in relation to other writings of the New Testament canon. After a summary statement of John’s theological vision, Myers speaks to the relation of John’s Gospel to the other writings of the Johannine corpus, the Synoptic Gospels and traditions and other epistolary writings in the New Testament. She concludes, ‘John’s voice should be heard alongside these others to provide a fuller portrait of developing Christian theologies as believers sought to apply their understandings of God, Jesus, and the Spirit in an ever-changing world’ (p. 177).
This latter point shapes Myers’ excursion into moments in John’s reception history in Chapter 9. She first considers the early reception of John among Gnostic and orthodox writers in the second and third centuries and then speaks to the role of John in the trinitarian and christological debates of the fourth and fifth centuries. She concludes with reflections on ways in which readers can continue these interpretive impulses in the contemporary moment.
Myers’ book provides a helpful account of the contemporary state of the question as regards the theology of John’s Gospel, and thus it achieves the aforementioned goal of the series in which it appears. The author’s prose is learned and very readable, making the book accessible to a variety of audiences. Especially admirable are Myers’ discussions of John’s place within the context of Greco-Roman literary composition and rhetoric and also her attention to the Gospel’s apocalyptic subtext and the ‘exorcism and apotropaism’ (p. 124) worked by Jesus’ death. Myers’ reading of John is largely non-sacramental, and the book does not take up the issue of sacraments in John aside from two sentences and a footnote (see p. 145). While a non-sacramental reading of John is an established interpretive possibility, some discussion of the other interpretive possibilities on this long-standing question would have been a welcome addition.
