Thread by @GDemacopoulos

The following is a summary of @FrJohnBehr's excellent keynote address at #OxPats19, entitled "The Gospel of John in the Second Century".

@FrJohnBehr 1. He began by identifying a series of key historical notes about the development of Christianity, especially with respect to annual commemoration of Pascha vs. the Sunday commemoration of the Eucharist via John's Gospel.

@FrJohnBehr 1a. For example, it is only from the "school" of the Johanine Gospel that we have evidence for the annual commemoration of Pascha, a commemoration that treats, crucifixion, death, resurrection (and even Pentacost) as a single event.

@FrJohnBehr 1b. By contrast, the earliest evidence we have the weekly commemoration of the Eucharist (even that on a Sunday), does not connect that ritual act to a commemoration of the Resurrection.

@FrJohnBehr 1c. It is Ireneaus, who first locates the annual commemoration of Pascha on a Sunday.

@FrJohnBehr 2. The second major theme of the talk focused on the presentation of John himself in the Gospel and subsequent writings within its school, especially the suggestion that he was a "priest."

@FrJohnBehr 2a. Fr. Behr thinks the connection likely stems from the way that the Gospel presents the restoration of the Temple of Jerusalem with the body of Christ. Thus, for the school of John, John is the high priest of the new temple of God in Christ.

@FrJohnBehr 3. The third major theme (which I have heard him discuss before) lies in the Gospel's presentation of what it mean to be (or more accurately become) human.

@FrJohnBehr 3a. To be human, he argues, "begins" with following alongside the passion of Christ, to be an imitator of it. The beginning of [true] life, lies in martyria.

@FrJohnBehr 3b. For Fr. Behr, we know this because of the centrality of the claim from the Cross in John's Gospel "it is finished." This is the completion/fulfillment of the work of the creation of humanity in Genesis.

@FrJohnBehr 3c. To understand this (and Fr. Behr's work more generally), you have to follow his hermeneutical approach that reads the whole of scripture through passion/death/resurrction, rather than diachronically from Genesis through Acts.