Is subordination within the Trinity really heresy? A study of John 5:18 in context

Trinity Journal, Spring 1999 by Keener, Craig S

Commentators cite Philo Allegorical Interpretation 1.5, 18; Cherubim 87. 12In Greek thought, see P. Borgen, "The Gospel of John and Hellenism: Some Observations," in Exploring the Gospel of John: In Honor of D. Moody Smith (ed. R. A. Culpepper and C. C. Black; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1996) 107; for Jewish thought see E. Stauffer, Jesus and His Story (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1960) 206. Blasphemy in the narrowest extant sense of the term required uttering God's name (m. Sanh. 7:5), but it is unclear how widespread this view was in the first century, and the Greek term includes "reviling" (Craig S. Keener, Matthew [Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1997] 377).

13Odeberg, Gospel, 203. Cf. the LXX of Deut 13:6 (13:7 LXX), where one must love God more than a friend "equal to oneself" (in typical Greek language of friendship). 14E.g., Sifre Deut. 329.1.1; b. Sanh. 38a, bar., reading with the earlier manuscripts; Pes. Rab. 21:6.

15R. Kysar, John, The Maverick Gospel (Atlanta: John Knox, 1976) 46.

16E.g., SB 3924 (where Germanicus deflects others' claims of his divinity); in Judaism, 1 Macc 2:24-27,50; 2 Macc 4:2; Jos. Ant. 12.2; lQS 9.23; Gal 1:14; Acts 22:3.

17Also others, e.g., J. C. Fenton, The Gospel According to John in the Revised Standard Version (London: Oxford University Press, 1970) 71; R. P. Martin, Carmen Christi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967) 148-9; cf. C. K. Barrett, The Gospel According to St. John (2d ed.; Philadelphia: Westminster, 1978) 257 (equality but not indenendence).

lsW. A. Meeks, "The Divine Agent and His Counterfeit in Philo and the Fourth Gospel," in Aspects of Religious Propaganda in Judaism and Early Christianity (ed. E. Schussler Fiorenza; University of Notre Dame Center for the Study of Judaism and Christianity in Antiquity 2; Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1976) 43; cf. Philo's complaint about Gaius in Meeks, "Agent," 55.

19J J. Pilch, "'Beat His Ribs While He is Young' (Sir 30:12): A Window on the Mediterranean World," BTB 23 (1993) 101-13; contrast the gluttonous son charge in Matt 11:19/Luke 7:34, based on Deut 21:20-21.

20 R. H. Lightfoot, St. John's Gospel: A Commentary (ed. C. F. Evans; London: Oxford University Press, 1960) 149; especially C. H. Dodd, More New Testament Studies (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1968) 31. It is, however, doubtful that Jesus intends his sonship here generically (pace Dodd, More Studies, 31; J. Jeremias, New Testament Theology [New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1971] 60).

2lDodd, More Studies, 33, 36-8 (also contending that apprenticeship functioned as a sort of adoption). The form of Jesus' claim, a negation followed by an affirmation, appears elsewhere in the Jesus tradition (cf. Dodd, More Studies, 39; Luke 6:40; 8:16; 11:21-22; 12:47-48).

22See Odeberg, Gospel, 204-5, though the parallels in the third-century work 3 Enoch (10:4-5;11:1-3; chap. 16; 48:10, 20 C) are so close that one suspects dependence on Johannine tradition.

236:10 does not count because "make" is properly attached to "sit down." 24Elsewhere God "made" the human mouth, a synecdoche for God making people in various physical conditions (Exod 4:11). 25Possibly Ign. Ep. Magn. 7.1 alludes to John here (even in the shorter recension). 26Meeks, "Agent," 55.