Authorship: Don Love is Associate Professor of Biblical Studies at Liberty University & Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary. He studied The Gospel of John and Biblical Theology under Andreas Köstenberger and continues to publish and teach within these interest areas. Thesis Statement: Internal and external evidence demonstrates that John was written to mitigate the growing Roman … Read more
A division of the Fourth Gospel into a Book of Signs and a Book of Glory or Passion represents a relatively uncontended consensus in observations of its arrangement. Nearly as broadly conventional would be a summary like that of D.A. Carson and D. Moo in their Introduction to the NT that the book’s division falls … Read more
The gospel of John’s ‘Book of Signs’ features several characters with varying levels of belief in Jesus’ messianic identity. Two of those characters interact with Jesus in healing type scenes that share many similarities: the lame man of John 5 and the blind man of John 9. There have been several studies on these characters, … Read more
The precise meaning of ἁμαρτία πρὸς θάνατον (sin leading to death) in 1 John 5:16 has continued to evade scholars. The difficulties are myriad. Understanding what John is saying requires ascertaining 1) whether the one sinning is a believer or and unbeliever, 2) the nature of life and death in this context, and 3) the … Read more
Jay Lemke contends that the meaning of the text can be better understood by analyzing its relationship with the intertextual discourses of its time. In what thematic discourses is the Gospel of John situated? The approach that portrays the Gospel of John as opposing Judaism, as proposed by Louis Martyn and Raymond Brown, has been … Read more
In the history of interpreting John, scholars like Bultmann and Kyser, among others, have rejected the notion that John was concerned with the ordinance or sacrament of baptism, especially in Jesus’ instruction to Nicodemus to be “born of water and the Spirit” in John 3:3-5. However, in addition to considering the context of John’s audience, … Read more
Recent discourse on the beatific vision has centered around the specific object of the blessed hope. Is it a vision of God’s essence? Or is it a vision of Christ’s glory? The text of 1 John 3:2 is widely discussed in support of the overall doctrine, but salient features of the text’s grammar warrant further … Read more
The relationship between John’s theology and his presentation of history has posed a hermeneutical conundrum for readers of the fourth Gospel. Recent contributions have helpfully worked to alleviate this hermeneutical challenge by highlighting John’s historiographic and eye-witness character (Bauckham, 2007, 2017), apocalyptic structure (Behr 2019), and expression of Christology as theology (Frey, 2019). However, these … Read more
The book of Revelation has traditionally been interpreted as a theological critique of Roman imperial cult, particularly through its symbolic opposition to emperor worship. Many theological readings tend to portray the imperial cult as a centralized, top-down ideology imposed by the central government of the Roman Empire, often overlooking its complex historical origins and localized … Read more
John presentes a complex and multi-faceted pneumatology in which God’s Spirit is understood through two primary lenses: living water and Paraclete. Accordingly, this paper will analyze such language and themes through a literary-historical lens. Jewish tradition and theology, especially the OT prophets, provide the historical and theological backdrop for John’s pneumatology and eschatology. Further, the … Read more