Journal: Journal of the Grace Evangelical Society
Volume: JOTGES 22:43 (Autumn 2009)
Article: A Review Of Peter M. Phillips’s The Prologue Of The Fourth Gospel
Author: Bob Swift

JOTGES 22:43 (Autumn 2009) p. 45

A Review Of Peter M. Phillips’s
The Prologue Of The Fourth Gospel1

Bob Swift2

Flower Mound, TX

This is a book that Free Grace readers should take a look at for more than one reason. First, and just as the title states, it contains an interpretation of crucial subject matter – the first eighteen verses of John’s Gospel known as the Prologue. If truly a “threshold” through which Phillips draws readers from divergent backgrounds into the world of the “Johannine community” (p. 2), it will orient his readership to the point of view he wishes them to come to and to remain with. It provides interpretive direction for the narratives and the discourses which speak of eternal life more frequently and clearly than any other book in the Bible. Second, Phillips employs a reading strategy which he terms “sequential disclosure” (p. xi). Rarely does there come a “reading strategy” out of academia that is equally useful to both pastors and scholars. “Sequential disclosure” could be such a methodology. But more on this below.

The book is essentially Phillips’ doctoral thesis from Sheffield. It is well organized in seven chapters, clearly written, and interacts with what seems to be the whole spectrum of relevant literature, be it ancient or modern. Bibliography is extensive, footnotes numerous and appropriate to the subjects under discussion. The preface, introduction (chapter one), and chapter two define the methodology and interact with the literary theorists (Wolfgang Iser, Catherine Emmot, Umberto Eco) upon whose ideas the methodology draws most heavily.

JOTGES 22:43 (Autumn 2009) p. 46

Chapter three elucidates the role of “rhetoric” (i.e., the artful use of persuasion) in the Prologue of John’s Gospel with special attention given to repetition and irony. Phillips views these as the two key rhetorical devices employed by John to engage and then educate the reader into acceptance of his presentation of the person of Jesus Christ. Thus, John’s purpose in writing is evangelistic above all else (preface, p.xii, p.156, et al.). “Mission is an integral focus of this Gospel.” (p. 226, with references on this same page to the different communities associated with this Mission). Repetition serves to give the Prologue its movement of thought structured in a “spiral” or “concentric” pattern (pp 47-51). Irony serves as the technique through which the author initiates the reader into his perspectival realm. When irony has completed its work, the reader will share the “lofty perch” of the author. That is, the proper viewpoint from which to understand the development of...