Journal: Tyndale Bulletin
Volume: TYNBUL 63:1 (NA 2012)
Article: Affirming The Resurrection Of The Incarnate Christ: A Reading Of 1 John
Author: Matthew D. Jensen

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TynBull 63:1 (2012) p. 145

Affirming The Resurrection Of The Incarnate Christ:
A Reading Of 1 John1

Matthew D. Jensen

It is often claimed that 1 John contains no references to Jesus’ resurrection. However, for this claim to hold, a possible allusion to the resurrection in the opening verse of 1 John needs to be denied. There are three reasons given to discard this allusion. First, under the influence of the historical reconstructions that dominate the interpretation of 1 John, the opening verses of 1 John are often understood to affirm the incarnation and not the resurrection. Second, the allusion to the resurrection is rejected because of the similarity between the prologues of the Gospel of John and 1 John. Since John 1:1-18 affirms the incarnation, so too must 1 John 1:1-4. Third, the allusion to the resurrection is dismissed due to the apparent lack of other references to the resurrection in 1 John.

The thesis proposes that 1 John affirms the resurrection of the incarnate Christ in the context of an intra-Jewish disagreement over Jesus’ identity. The thesis presents a reading of 1 John that flows from understanding the opening verses of the book to be affirming the resurrection of the incarnate Christ. It argues that the resurrection is explicitly mentioned on three other occasions (4:2; 5:6-7, 20). Further, it also suggests that these resurrection affirmations are made in the historical context of an intra-Jewish disagreement over the identity of Jesus as the Christ, a disagreement in which the vital proof is Jesus’ resurrection.

The first part of the thesis outlines and reviews the reading methods used in previous research on 1 John before sketching out its adopted reading method.

TynBull 63:1 (2012) p. 146

The first chapter reviews previous methods for reading 1 John. The Historical Critical method and its resultant identifications are critically surveyed in order to evaluate the viability of rejecting the possible allusion to the resurrection under the influence of any of the historical reconstructions. The section concludes that none of the proposed situations behind the text of 1 John are viable and so should not be a basis for ruling out the possible resurrection allusion in 1:1. A discussion of the more recent literary approaches (Lieu, Neufeld, Griffith, Schmid) is presented in order to inform the methodology of the thesis.

The second chapter outlines the method a...

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