Beheading Hodges' Hydra - Part 2 of 3

In Part 1 of my review of the latest article by Hodges, I discussed the errors Hodges makes regarding his critics. Here in Part 2, I will discuss the errors he makes regarding the apostle John and the Gospel he wrote, and related matters. The reader should be aware that Hodges makes several assumptions in this area, and to address those assumptions takes quite a bit more space than it takes to simply make the assumption. As a result, this article is somewhat lengthy, however, I felt it appropriate in order to adequately address the significant errors I see in Hodges' unique theology. Part 3 of this series will be entirely devoted to explaining the errors Hodges makes in his article regarding the apostle Paul and "the gospel".

First, Hodges says that those of us who oppose him are "at war" with John's Gospel, that John's Gospel "stands in obvious contradictions" to our view, and that we are "uncomfortable" with the Gospel of John. This is ludicrous and complete well-poisoning. He never substantiates these assertions. There is no way any of us are "at war" with any part of the Bible. We are certainly not "uncomfortable" with John. We love John. That is ridiculous. I have in fact discussed the Gospel of John extensively in various places, and have actually argued that chapter 3 of that book supports the historic Free Grace position, rather than Hodges' new view. Certainly, none of us have any problem with any book of the Bible. For Hodges to make these outrageous claims, and then not even back them up, is itself outrageous.

Second, Hodges says that John never "preach[es] the conditions required for eternal life" by traditionalists. As I've stated many times in the past, John never preaches the conditions that Hodges requires either! Even Tim Nichols has acknowledged that Scripture simply does not give us a specific list of what must be believed for salvation. Indeed, we would not expect it to. John was part of what anthropologists call a "high-context" society. I have discussed this principle on this blog in the past, and it is vital to understand, especially in this debate where Hodges, et al. keep insisting that we find a neatly enumerated list of what God requires for salvation. As I indicated, Hodges has the exact same problem for his view. I have challenged several CG folks to show me even one verse or passage that specifically says what exactly a person needs to believe to be born again, and they have yet to do so. The reason they cannot and never will is because the NT is written in and to the high-context society of the Ancient Near East. The following is from a comment I made here:



Anthropologist Edward Hall popularized the terms "high context" and "low context" cultures/societies. Wikipedia isn't exactly the most scholarly/authoritative source, but their definition of "high-context" is borne out by others and is decent:

"High context culture (and the contrasting ‘low context culture’) are terms presented by the anthropologist Edward T. Hall in his book Beyond Culture. It refers to a culture’s tendency to cater towards in-groups, an in-group being a group that has similar experiences and expectations, from which inferences are drawn. In a high context culture, many things are left unsaid, letting the culture explain.

High context cultures are more common in the eastern cultures than in western, and in countries with low racial diversity. Cultures where the group is valued over the individual promote the in-groups and group reliance that favor high context cultures. Co-cultures are also conducive to high context situations, where the small group relies on their common background to explain the situation, rather than words. A low context culture explains things further, because those in a low context culture have a wide variety of background.

High context cultures have a strong sense of tradition and history, and change little over time. Many native societies (such as the Māori of New Zealand and the Native Americans.) are high context cultures. The static culture keeps the high context throughout different generations. Low context cultures change drastically from one generation to the next, like the United States."

It is certainly true, of course, that certain small groups within low-context cultures can and do have higher-context "subcultures" within the greater culture. Examples could include your family, a church/religious group, a work group, etc. But such subcultures are merely highER context than the overall culture, and do not negate the fact that the overall culture is indeed "low context".

A couple more helpful quotes...

From here, quoting a book by Malina and Rohrbaugh entitled Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels:

"The New Testament was written in what anthropologists call a 'high-context' society. People who communicate with each other in high-context societies presume a broadly shared, well-understood knowledge of the context of anything referred to in conversation or in writing. For example, everyone in ancient Mediterranean villages would have had a clear and concrete knowledge of what sowing entailed,largely because the skills involved were shared by most (male) members of that society. no writer would need to explain. Thus writers in such societies usually produce sketchy and impressionistic writings, leaving much to the reader's or hearer's imagination. They also encode much information in widely known symbolic or stereotypical statements. In this way, they require the reader to fill in large gaps in the unwritten portion of the writing. All readers are expected to know the context and therefore to understand the references in question."

And from here, this is Jonathan Sarfati (popular creationist), from his book Refuting Compromise, in which he utilized Malina and Rohrbaugh's Social-Science on the Gospel of John:

"That is, its members ‘presume a broadly shared, well-understood, or “high” knowledge of the context of anything referred to in conversation or in writing’. The authors wrote to intended readers with a certain background and expected them to be able to ‘fill in the gap’. There was no need to explain things in depth if they all had a shared, background knowledge. Conversely, we in the modern West are a ‘low-context’ society, and expect the context to be spelt out to us: ‘The obvious problem this creates for reading the biblical writings today is that low-context readers in the United States frequently mistake the biblical writings for low-context documents. They erroneously assume that the author has provided all of the contextual information needed to understand it."



So Hodges' complaint in his article that John never gave us the conditions that the historic FG position holds as necessary, is nullified, as a proper understanding of the culture of John shows that we would never expect such a thing.

Third, and closely related to the second error above, Hodges holds that John's Gospel was intended as a stand-alone message to bring unbelievers to salvation. He doesn't say that explicitly in this article, but he does imply it, and he has certainly stated so elsewhere, as have all other CG people I have read. Hodges does say that "John's Gospel was written long after [the requirements of the historic FG position] should have been standard fare", and that since such requirements are not listed out specifically in John's Gospel, then "[t]he conclusion is irresistible that such 'provisos' never existed. John the apostle obviously believed that the message Jesus gave to the lost was sufficient for the present age in which we live." The problems with this are at least three-fold. First, the point above regarding the "high-context society" in which John lived and wrote mitigates against such a list of requirements. Second, it is almost universally recognized that John's Gospel is the last of the 4 canonical Gospels, indeed it was one of the last books to be written in the entire Bible. It was most definitely written after Paul's letters. CG people like to try to use this fact in their favor, as Hodges did in the article, by claiming that if John didn't say it explicitly, then it must not be necessary. However, given the high-context John wrote in, if we recognize that Paul's letters, as well as the other 3 canonical Gospels, had been circulating for several years prior to John writing his Gospel, then we come to the obvious understanding that John did not NEED to spell out the details - they were already there and known by his readers. So when John quotes Jesus as saying, "Believe in me", he doesn't NEED to explain every last detail because that had already been done by Paul and others, and he would have assumed (correctly) that his readers already knew that. John could write something like "believe in [Jesus]" that seems vague to us, but was pregnant with meaning to his readers, and they all knew exactly what he meant. However, we are 20 centuries and a lot of culture removed from John's writings, so we have to do more study than his readers would have done to know what he meant.

So, rather than supporting the CG view, the fact that John's Gospel was written late actually refutes their view. Again, since John never actually tells us what he means specifically when he says "believe in" Jesus, the fact that his Gospel was written AFTER most of the NT indicates that he would have expected his audience to already know what that meant - which would have included Paul's constant refrain of Jesus' death and rez. And if Paul had already made the content of the gospel so abundantly clear, why would John spend any time reiterating the same points again? In addition, John was clearly trying to present unique points about Jesus' life and teaching (more on that below), and didn't have time or space (paper wasn't abundant like today) to just write about everything someone somewhere might consider important. Especially, again, if it had already been made clear by Paul and the other Gospels. Seeing this from the perspective of a high-context society that was already familiar with what John was talking about, we simply wouldn't expect John to enumerate neatly for us the exact requirements for salvation.

The third problem we see with Hodges' view that John's Gospel was intended as a stand-alone message to the lost is that I believe that John's primary purpose was NOT as a stand-alone evangelistic tool, but rather to present Jesus to second-generation, non-eye-witness believers, in order to encourage them in their faith. Naturally such a presentation would also be useful for evangelizing the lost, so that is a secondary purpose.

One way we can see this primary purpose is from the fact that John's gospel is so different from the synoptics. This article states, "The Gospel of John differs significantly from the synoptics in content. It is so different that one may justifiably suspect that John wrote to supplement the synoptic portrayal of Jesus, including material omitted by them, in order to round out the picture of Jesus presented." The point is that John is writing to readers who are already familiar with the story of Jesus from the synoptic Gospels. Thus we cannot make any kind of "argument from silence" from John's gospel because he would have been assuming his readers to know certain main points very well.

We can see this from other aspects as well, such as in John 11 when John relates the story of Lazarus being raised from the dead. John tells us that Lazarus was the brother of Mary, and in 11:2 John identifies which Mary by saying, "It was the Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment, and wiped His feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick." However, John does not tell us the story of Mary wiping Jesus' feet with her hair until AFTER this comment, in John 12. Thus it is clear that John assumed his readers to be familiar with at least this story, most likely from the synoptics, and thus very likely they would have been familiar with other main aspects of the life and story of Jesus.

W. Hall Harris said, "It is a bit surprising that John here identifies Mary as 'the one who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair,' since this event is not mentioned until later in 12:3. Many see this 'proleptic' reference as indication that John expected his readers to be familiar with the story already, and go on to assume that in general the Evangelist in writing the Fourth Gospel assumed his readers were familiar with the other three. Whether the Evangelist assumed actual familiarity with the synoptic gospels or not, it is probable that he did assume some familiarity with Mary’s anointing activity."

There are other reasons to think that John assumed that his readers were familiar with the general story of Jesus in the synoptics - the later date of John compared to the synoptics, as well as the view (held by many early church fathers as well as modern scholars) that John wrote his gospel to supplement the synoptics, possibly even at the urging of his own followers.

Additionally, the word translated "believe" in John's purpose statement in John 20 can either mean to come to believe OR to continue believing. Daniel B. Wallace says, "The twofold i{na-clause neatly delineates the purpose: that the audience embrace Christ and that they receive life because of this. One question remains, however: the main verb, “believe” has a textual glitch. It is either pisteuvshte (aorist) or pisteuvhte (present). If the former, it might be construed (though by no means necessarily) to mean “come to saving faith.” If present, the idea probably would be “continue to believe.” At issue is whether the audience is principally believers or non-believers, whether this gospel is principally evangelistic or confirmatory. ... [My own view is that] the purpose of the book is to confirm or strengthen Gentile believers in their faith."

So Hodges is shown to be in error when he claims that John's Gospel was written primarily to tell everyone today how exactly it is that the lost can be saved. His attempt to use the timing of the writing of John's Gospel has been turned on its head and actually stands in opposition to Hodges' view.

Finally, Hodges makes a peculiar claim about the "changes" in what the lost must believe to be saved. He apparently thinks that the saving message has NOT changed since the cross. This causes one to wonder what exactly Hodges believes about changes and the saving message then. He currently thinks that people must believe that a person named Jesus can give them eternal life. But what about OT saints then? When exactly does he think the apostles were saved? Most of the apostles were good Jews - were they on their way to hell until they believed Jesus could give them eternal life? Hodges either believes that even OT saints believed "in Jesus" specifically (contrary to dispensational theology, and I would say contrary to Scripture), or he believes that the saving message HAS changed at some point, specifically when Jesus arrived on the scene. If the latter, then his attempt to use "changes" to the saving message for shock value is hypocritical. But even so, these "changes" that Hodges sounds the alarm about are simply not as radical as he presents them to be. OT saints were not required to believe in the actual events of the death and resurrection because they were not yet actual events. Once those events were actualized, they naturally became part of the gospel, just as Jesus being the one sent from God naturally became part of the gospel once he was actually sent. This is not some sort of radical change invented after the cross. It's simply a normal development in the progression of revelation.

In summary, Hodges errs regarding John's Gospel in that he plays up the supposed tension between the Gospel of John and the historic FG position, yet he provides no basis whatsoever for such claims. He also fails to recognize the high-context society in which John lived and wrote, and how that affects the specifics that John wrote as part of his Gospel. Additionally, Hodges' claim that whatever we needed to know about salvation was included explicitly in John is shown to be completely unfounded. The kinds of things we find in the Gospel of John, as well as the fact that John was written AFTER all of Paul's letters as well as the other 3 canonical Gospels, indicate that John was not intended as a stand-alone evangelistic tool to be ripped out of its context, but rather it was written to people who were already familiar with the basics of Jesus' story as well as the "fleshed-out" theology of Paul's letters. His attempt to create some sort of problem with the idea that there have been changes to the content of the gospel is clearly not any kind of problem whatsoever. Hodges' misuse of the Gospel of John, combined with his misuse of the apostle Paul (which I will discuss in Part 3 of this series, coming on Monday), continues to have grave ramifications.