The Gospel of John is a gospel of superabundance. The cosmic Christ made incarnate would of course yield an absolute superabundance of grace, love, and unity. What makes John’s Gospel so distinct from the Synoptics? Why does it continue to draw readers into inexhaustible depths of meaning? In this conversation, theologian David Ford reflects on his two-decade journey writing a commentary on John. Together with Drew Collins, he explores John’s unique blend of theology, history, and literary artistry, describing it as a “gospel of superabundance” that continually invites readers to trust, to reread, and to enter into deeper life with Christ. Together they explore themes of individuality and community; friendship and love; truth, reconciliation, and unity; the tandem vision of Jesus as both cosmic and intimate; Jesus’s climactic prayer for unity in chapter 17. And ultimately the astonishing superabundance available in the person of Christ. Along the way, Ford reflects on his interfaith reading practices, his theological friendships, and the vital role of truth and love for Christian witness today. “There’s always more in John’s gospel … these big images of light and life in all its abundance.” Episode Highlights “It is a gospel for beginners. But also it’s endlessly rich, endlessly deep.” “There’s always more in John’s gospel and he has these big images of light and, life in all its abundance.” “It all culminates in love. Father, I desire that those also you, whom you have given me, may be with me.” “On the cross, evil, suffering, sin, death happened to Jesus. But Jesus happens to evil, suffering, sin, death.” “We have to go deeper into God and Jesus, deeper into community, and deeper into the world.” Show Notes David Ford on writing a commentary on John over two decades John’s Gospel compared to the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke) John as theological history writing (Rudolf Schnackenburg) John’s purpose statement in chapter 20: written so that you may trust “A gospel for beginners” with simple language and cosmic depth John as a gospel of superabundance: light, life, Spirit without measure John’s focus on individuals: Nicodemus, Samaritan woman, man born blind, Martha, Mary, Lazarus The Beloved Disciple and John’s communal authorship Friendship, love, and unity in the Farewell Discourses (John 13–17) John 17 as the most profound chapter in Scripture The crisis of rewriting: scrapping 15 years of writing to begin anew Scriptural reasoning with Jews, Muslims, and Christians on John’s Gospel Wrestling with John 8 and the polemics against “the Jews” Reconciliation across divisions John’s vision of discipleship: learning, loving, praying, and living truth Helpful Links and Resources David Ford, The Gospel of John: A Theological Commentary Rudolf Schnackenburg, The Gospel According to St. John About David Ford David F. Ford is Regius Professor of Divinity Emeritus at the University of Cambridge. He has written extensively on Christian theology, interfaith engagement, and scriptural reasoning. His most recent work is The Gospel of John: A Theological Commentary (Baker Academic, 2021). Ford is co-founder of the Cambridge Interfaith Programme and the Rose Castle Foundation. Production Notes This podcast featured David Ford Interview by Drew Collins Edited and Produced by Evan Rosa Hosted by Evan Rosa Production Assistance by Macie Bridge, Alexa Rollow, and Emily Brookfield A Production of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale Divinity School [https://faith.yale.edu/about](https://faith.yale.edu/about) Support For the Life of the World podcast by giving to the Yale Center for Faith & Culture: [https://faith.yale.edu/give](https://faith.yale.edu/give) This episode was made possible in part by the generous support of the Tyndale House Foundation. For more information visit Tyndale.foundation.
The Gospel of John is a gospel of superabundance. The cosmic Christ made incarnate would of course yield an absolute superabundance of grace, love, and unity.
What makes John’s Gospel so distinct from the Synoptics? Why does it continue to draw readers into inexhaustible depths of meaning? In this conversation, theologian David Ford reflects on his two-decade journey writing a commentary on John. Together with Drew Collins, he explores John’s unique blend of theology, history, and literary artistry, describing it as a “gospel of superabundance” that continually invites readers to trust, to reread, and to enter into deeper life with Christ. Together they explore themes of individuality and community; friendship and love; truth, reconciliation, and unity; the tandem vision of Jesus as both cosmic and intimate; Jesus’s climactic prayer for unity in chapter 17. And ultimately the astonishing superabundance available in the person of Christ. Along the way, Ford reflects on his interfaith reading practices, his theological friendships, and the vital role of truth and love for Christian witness today.
“There’s always more in John’s gospel … these big images of light and life in all its abundance.”
Episode Highlights
Show Notes
Helpful Links and Resources
About David Ford
David F. Ford is Regius Professor of Divinity Emeritus at the University of Cambridge. He has written extensively on Christian theology, interfaith engagement, and scriptural reasoning. His most recent work is The Gospel of John: A Theological Commentary (Baker Academic, 2021). Ford is co-founder of the Cambridge Interfaith Programme and the Rose Castle Foundation.
Production Notes
This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors.
Evan Rosa: This episode was made possible by the generous support of the Tyndale House Foundation. For more information, visit Tyndale Foundation from the Yale Center For Faith and Culture. This is for the life of the world, a podcast about seeking and living a life worthy of our humanity.
David Ford: Practically everything in John's Gospel it. Has both an immediate meaning but also endless depth. You know, you just never come to the end. It's the super abundance. He gives it in the headline of the prologues from his fullness. We've all received grace upon grace, upon grace, upon grace, upon grace. You know, there's always more in John's Gospel and he has these big images of light and life in order to abundance and.
Spirit given without measure and so forth, and the abundance of the symbolic things in the signs that he does all that bread with the leftover baskets and all the water, all the wind, all the light and so forth, you know that it is a gospel of super abundance. But what this conclusion and the purpose says is that John is choosing what he sees as the absolute essentials.
So therefore, there's far less incidents in John's gospel compared to the synoptics. Far less conversations he just chooses. Is a few and goes as deep as possible into them. Uh, and he's choosing those essentials that introduce you to Jesus and then get you deeper and deeper and deeper into who Jesus is.
The culmination of it is in that extraordinary chapter 17, where Jesus prays, you know, this is his last. Prayer before going off to be arrested and executed. And that is where the deepest secret of the individual and the community comes because he prays that they be united with him and his father in love in mutual indwelling.
The glory that you have given me, I have. Given them so that they may be one as we are, one I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. So it all culminates in love. Father, I desire that those also whom you have.
Given me may be with me where I am to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. In other words, this is rooted in the deepest secret of the universe, the love before the foundation of the world, which led to the creation. That's where we're asked to live, and of course it.
Utterly a affirming of each person and utterly affirming of their relationship with God and with each other. And then the final phrase, of course, is so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them and I in them. I mean, you can't get a more extraordinary understanding of human and divine identity in utter relationship with each other.
And I mean, for me, that has. Become, you know, my core vision of what one's deepest desire should be in order to be utterly at one in love with Jesus and his Father in the spirit and with each other in community for the sake of the whole world that God loves.
Evan Rosa: In the beginning was the Word, and the word was with God. And the word was God, the word, the logos. This organizing principle simultaneous at the deepest center of the universe and transcending and encompassing it entirely, that word became flush, taking on a human nature. And then in the words of Jesus in John 10 10, he does so in order to offer abundant life.
So yes, the cosmic Christ made incarnate would of course yield an absolute super abundance of grace, love, and. Unity, but how are we to understand the gospel of John? What are the theological and spiritual principles driving its author? What does it tell us about Jesus? What does it tell us about ourselves and about others?
And what role does this gospel play in a flourishing, super abundant life today? Drew Collins welcomes his dear friend and teacher theologian David Ford for a discussion of how to read the Gospel of John David Ford is Regis professor at Divinity Emeritus at the University of Cambridge. He has written extensively on Christian theology and your faith, engagement, reconciliation, and scriptural reasoning.
He's the author of many books, his most recent work being The Gospel of John, A Theological Commentary.
In this episode, drew and David. Explore the religious context of the gospel, the meaning of friendship, community, and love Found within it, the relation between truth and unity, the tandem vision of Jesus as both cosmic and intimate, and ultimately the astonishing super abundance available to the world through the person of Christ.
They started their conversation exploring the relationship between John and the other synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
Drew Collins: David, it is so good to see you and to be with you. Thank you so much for joining us. Well, it's great to be with YouTu. How do you understand the difference between John and the Synoptics?
David Ford: My goodness. That's a huge thing. I suppose one, one thing depends on whether you think he knew the synoptics. I am with that, those scholars, and I think it's an increasing group of scholars. There's made a wonderful book recently, for example, on John's transformation of Mark, which was an edited book with a lot of different scholars, you know, agreeing.
John did know Mark and was transforming him in various ways. I think also I'm with those scholars who think that he knew Luke and Matthew as well. That's much less common among scholars, but I think that is the case. In which case he was rereading those and was trying to do something obviously different, and I think the most.
Obvious thing that he was doing differently was his way of focusing on Jesus Christ. Who Jesus Christ was and is. And I think also he was trying to write about Jesus with a sort of bifocal uh, approach. Both pre resurrection and post-resurrection, much more of a post-resurrection perspective than the synoptics tend to have and, and I think it's a masterly way in which he tries to combine those and the scholarship that.
I've been most deeply impressed by, I think over the last 30 of the scholarship of the last 30 years or so, is the literary scholarship, the ones that show how wonderfully John is crafted in literary terms and, and I love the description by Rudolph Schnuck Inberg, that great Catholic German commentator.
He wrote a three volume commentary on John when he called it a theological. History writing and each of those are really important that the theology, the history that John is obviously intending to give eyewitness at something that has the ring of an eyewitness testimony and also. Literary, the writing, the literary crafts that goes into it.
And I'm just endlessly fascinated by the way in which he brings those three together. And he does it in a different way from the synoptics, and I think with a viewpoint a bit later in the story as well, and with a much fuller concern for what I call the ongoing drama of discipleship, the ongoing, you know, you just look at the Farewell Discourses in chapter 13 to 17, for example, and you see, mm.
Deep concern about how this whole story relates to our
Drew Collins: ongoing story. Yes. That's really, oh, that's really helpful. That's, it's really interesting too, 'cause you, I mean, the synoptics. Yeah. I suppose one way of thinking about focusing on the synoptics is there's a sort of linearity to the way the narrative unfolds there.
Yes. You sort of, you, the passion, the passion is really a culmination of something and surprising in some respects. We find out who Jesus is as we read the Synoptics. When you read John right there in the prologue. Like we are told, we are given not just a clue, but a sort of cosmic account of who Jesus is.
David Ford: Yes. You know, the, the culmination is actually John's gospel, the theological consummation is in John's gospel. I mean, John manages. To combine a certain amount of realistic narrative that he does though in a rather different style to the synoptics, but with, as you say, that framing in terms of the prologue and say something like John 17, which for me is the most profound chapter of the Bible.
Drew Collins: Well, let's get, let's make sure we get back to John 17 then. I wonder if we could just actually take a step back quickly and you could share with our listeners a little bit, your sense of. Who is the author of John where, what is the context in which this gospel emerges? What are the sort of, why do you think John might have felt the need to write another gospel if, as you say, he had access to at least some of the other Synoptics?
David Ford: Well, I mean, he gives his own purpose in writing it, and I think it's, it's worth a really close reading of what he says at the end of his first conclusion. There's two conclusions in John, one at the end of the epilogue, chapter 21, but one at the end of chapter 20 and what he says here, and it's. A lot can be deduced from this.
And scholars have done this. So they often differ, of course, on how they interpret it. I mean, he says, now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples. In other words, they, which are not written in this book. In other words, there were loads of other accounts that he knew I presumes written and oral and, but he said the, and what he's doing therefore is selecting the essentials.
That are relevant to the purpose that he's just about to talk about, but these are written so that you may come to believe. Well, the Greek word pissin, uh, is also means to trust or to have faith in and in our culture, I think the best translation is usually to trust. I remember a great New Testament scholar in, in Emory University.
She's saying to me, over lunch, once you know. I always tell my students, translate PI wine by trust in the first instance. You know, of course it means believe and have faith in as well, but these are written so that you may come to trust that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and so therefore come to believe in other words that.
Uh, it's for beginners. This is a gospel for beginners. That's his pur, but one of his purposes. And it is, it's in very simple language. It's got big imagery that everyone can understand what light is or bread is or whatever, and, but also it's endlessly rich, endlessly deep, and that's because of the second purpose.
And that through believing, trusting, having faith, you may have life in his name, in other words. Ongoing life. You are permanently involved in this and therefore you reread and reread and reread. When I spent, you know, those 20 years writing a commentary on John, one of my aims that I came to, that I was trying to do was to encourage people to become habitual rereads of John.
And I think that's what John meant as well. That's why you know that practically everything in John's gospel, it has both an immediate. Meaning, but also endless depth, so you just never come to the end. It's the super abundance. He gives it in the headline of the prologue from his fullness. We've all received grace upon grace, upon grace, upon grace, upon grace.
You know, there's always more in John's Gospel and he has these big images of light and life in all its abundance and the spirit's given without measure and so forth, and the abundance of the symbolic things in the signs that he does. All that bread with the leftover baskets and all the water, all the wind, all the light, and so forth.
You know, it is a gospel of super abundance. But what this conclusion and the purpose says is that John is choosing what he sees as the absolute essentials. So therefore, there's far less incidents in John's gospel compared to the synoptics, far less conversations. He just chooses a few and goes as deep as possible into them.
Uh, and he's choosing those essentials that introduce you to Jesus and then get you deeper and deeper and deeper into who Jesus is and what the
Drew Collins: meaning of his mission and so forth. Yeah. And that, that brings up this emphasis that you see in John on the individual, but on the one hand, as you say, the individual of Jesus.
I mean, if I understand you correctly, John is in some ways the most full threaded identity account. Of who Jesus is. That is the question that John is answering across the gospel. But it also, I think you, you see John ad addressing individuals. Yes.
David Ford: And many of his statements, whoever you know are, is often a, an individual.
It's singular. And Richard Baum, of course, has written very well on the individual in John's gospel. And of course, it's clear in the stories that he choose. He has long, deep conversations with Nicodemus, with the Samaritan woman at the well, with the man born blind with Martha and Mary, that we see Jesus also as a friend to Martha and Mary and Lazarus.
And of course there's also the beloved disciple who is anonymous in John's gospel. And of course you asked about who wrote the gospel. Well, according to the gospel, it is the beloved disciple we, we owe it to. But I think you always have to take into account as scholars do. Of course, that final, those final verses, you know, where the beloved disciple is identified as the disciple who is testifying to these things and has written them.
This is 21, 24, and 25. And we know that his testimony is true, but there are also many other things that Jesus did. If every one of them were written down, I suppose the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. Now, you'll notice in that. We know that his testimony is who are the we?
This is the community. This is a community book, and I think it's highly likely that John, that the basic testimony is due to whoever the beloved disciple was. John was a very common name at that time. It wasn't necessarily John the disciple. Richard thinks it was John the elder, who, I won't go into the details of that.
There. There's this, who is this? We who know that? Mm-hmm. In other words, somebody else is writing it in the community, the comm. This is a community book, but also I suppose that the world that's said, who is the I. So, in other words, we have a sense of a book that's due to testimony from a significant disciple of Jesus, but which has gone into the community and has been reflected upon, edited probably and so forth, and scholars endlessly speculate about all those processes that,
Drew Collins: that the book went through.
Sure. That actually you just pointed to, I think what I was gonna, what I'd like, what I was hoping to talk to you about next, which is the way that the sort of individual focus, this emphasis on. The individuality of Jesus, the individuals who He encounters us, the readers as individuals, and that individual relationship to Jesus.
The way in which that is not balanced, but points to the importance of the equal importance of community and the emphasis on community. And you mentioned friendship earlier this like it's a deeply relational gospel as well. And so I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about how that. How those two sit together.
On the one hand, this emphasis on individuality and alongside or in the context of a relationship both to Jesus and to one another?
David Ford: Well, yes, it's, I mean, it's relationship in love, isn't it? That's absolutely at the heart of it. And as you say, friendship and uh, I think it's really interesting the way in which the.
Deepest teaching in the gospel, in the, the Farewell Discourses from chapters 13 to 17, that there's waves of love in that. I mean, the very opening verse is about Jesus having loved his own. He loved them to the end, and then he washes their feet. In other words, loving service is the first fundamental thing about loving.
Then, uh, in chapter 15, there's another wave of loving where this is about friendship that Jesus says, you are my friends. And I think daring friendship is one of the things that Jesus himself shows in John Gospel with the Samaritan woman at the well and so forth. And, and I mean that's there of course in the synoptics too, the friend of text gatherers and sinners.
But, but the culmination of it. Is in that extraordinary chapter 17 where Jesus prays, this is his last prayer before going off to be arrested and, and executed. And, and that is where that. The deepest secret of the individual and the community comes because he prays that they be united with him and his father in love in mutual indwelling.
That, I mean, it's astonishing that chapter, you know, especially chapter verses 20 and following. You know, I asked not only on behalf of those who will believe. Trust in me through their word, but tho not only on behalf of these, that's the disciples he is with, but also on behalf of those who will trust, believe in me through their word.
And that shows how important the word is too. And of course, he's talking about his own gospel there, that they may all be what? As you father are in me, as is one of the great theological words of John's gospel because what does it mean? I mean, as how is the father, as you are in me and I am in you? How is the father in me?
I mean, you can endlessly that's, you know, the whole theological life, trying to probe that one. May they also be in us, and this is mutual indwelling. Utterly involved in love with and trust with God and with each other. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me, the world occurs 16 times.
Cosmos in, in this chapter, the glory that you have given me, I have given them so that they may be one. As we are, one I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. So it all culminates in love.
Father, I desire that those also whom you have given me may be with me where I am to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. In other words, this is rooted in the deepest secret of the universe, the love before the foundation of the world, which led to the creation.
That's where we're asked to live, and of course, it's. Utterly a affirming of each person and utterly affirming of their relationship with God and with each other. And then the final phrase, of course, is so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them and I in them. I mean, you can't get a more extraordinary understanding of.
Human and divine identity in utter relationship with each other. And I mean, for me, that has become my core vision of what one's deepest desire should be in order to be utterly at one in love with Jesus and his father in the spirit and with each other in community for the sake of the whole world that God loves.
Yeah,
Drew Collins: as unique individuals.
David Ford: Exactly. Yes. Yes. We're utterly ourselves and utterly coherent with others. And that it's a, it's like the best friendships or the best marriages, or the best relationships in all sorts of ways.
Drew Collins: That, uh, that brings me to something that I wanted to ask you about, which is a little bit about the process of writing this commentary.
You alluded earlier to, to the fact that this was a slow burn. There is, this is not the work of one, one, or two, or even three years, but the work of two decades. I just wonder if you could talk a little bit about. To what extent this sort of vision of community that you see in John is reflected in the process of writing the commentary itself?
David Ford: Well, gosh, you're so right Drew, that, that the process of reading with others, talking with others, and so forth, right the way through. One of the most difficult parts to write, I remember, and it took me ages, was the acknowledgements at the beginning of the commentary because I tried to remember all the significant communities and I list them there.
I mean, there's a long list. And an even longer list of course, of individuals and people to whom it was important. I mean, I mean, and it wasn't just of course with fellow Christians, it was also with Jews and Muslims and also when scriptural re, I mean that practice of scriptural reasoning as I know you're involved with too.
So I was reading John and other. Christian texts alongside together with Jews in reading the ACH and Muslims and reading the Koran. Uh, and of course that really does give different perspectives on things.
Drew Collins: Yeah. And so that, that brings me to a question that, you know, as you know, my, I, my mother is Jewish, and that was in part what led me to Cambridge to, to, with a question, um, that you helped me learn how to answer.
It's one that I'm still answering to some extent. But one of the things that stands out to a lot of folks who read John and myself included. The way he speaks about the Jews and the role of the Jews in his gospel. And you mentioned earlier, not only are you a founder of scriptural reasoning, um, this movement invites Christians, Muslims, and Jews, other people, different faiths, and then to come and read their scriptures together.
But you are reading John with Jewish interlocutors among others. And so I wonder if you could share a little bit about what that was like and what insights. You, you arrived on, on the way and how we should understand the way John writes about and views what the, in his terms, the Jews.
David Ford: Oh my goodness.
What a big question. And that issue gave rise to a very different way of doing the commentary on John chapter eight, where, you know, among other things Jews are called Children of the Devil and so forth. And you know that there's this bitter polemic, the heart of, uh, of chapter eight. I mean, I should say, first of all, I suppose that a, as so often I, I read what for me, has been the best book on this after I wrote the commentary that it's by Andrew Byers on John and the others, which basically comes to conclusions that I think are very sensible and he does it through detailed engagement with the whole world of New Testament scholarship in a way.
That I don't go into in my commentary though, though, the person I quote the Jewish scholar, Adele Reinhardt's, uh, I quote from her excellent piece in the, the Oxford Companion to the Johanne literature. I quote that in the commentary, her as a Jewish scholar on, on all these things, which I think is a very sensible one.
Uh, I also just give at the very beginning a a list of terms that. You know, extraordinary discomfort, messiness, darkness, death, hiddenness, blindness and self deception, immense obstinacy, destructive arguments, pessimism about humanity, the grimness of the world, et cetera, et cetera. A whole series of things that came up in a very important gathering that I was able to gather.
I was given some funding by the McDonald Aga Bay Foundation to have a, a symposium on anything I wanted to have. And I gathered people including Peter Oaks, the Jewish Scholar and Maria De Cake, one of my favorite Muslim interpreters, but also Francis Young, Richard Balcom, Richard Hayes and me actually, and other people I in Cambridge, to study John's Gospel together.
And it, it was actually Justin Welby who resigned not long ago as Arch Canterbury. He came while. Being Archbishop Canterbury and gave the paper on John eight Interesting. And a very, very good one. It was. But how do you come to terms with John eight? I mean, it's a matter of trying to face up to the terrible use that has been made of these.
Whenever I gave students to texts on John by. Luther by Augustine and other Christian commentators, they were often really appalled by the rhetoric against the Jews, so forth. And you know, it is a terrible history of Christians with Jews, and we have to absolutely face up to this. But on the other hand, there is an extraordinary journey in John Gospel.
Well, I take two journeys through John's in John's Gospel in chapter eight, and what that arose from was when. Peter Oaks was invited to give the Halian lectures. They're a big series of university lectures in Cambridge, and he stayed with me for three weeks here in Cambridge. And what we spent a lot of our three weeks doing in our spare time was reading John eight together.
And that was one of the most formative things to read it with a really wise and well informed Jewish scholar and philosopher and theologian. And so we wrestled
Drew Collins: with this text together. It's very powerful to me to hear that you is sort of critical juncture in trying to understand John's perspective on the Jews and one that is deeply challenging.
For us today, a lot of people would want to do nothing less than to read that with their Jewish friends. It takes a lot of courage and trust in your friendship. And I think, John, that you were able to do that. You brought that chapter to Peter and worked it through with him.
David Ford: Well, the practice of scripture reasoning, there's such sensitive areas and there's no easy word, but what I would say to Christians about this issue and other issues actually, uh, is that.
It's no use just working out your Christian position, apart from dialogue with real live Jews, real live Muslims, that you really do need to get involved in that dialogue and, and I have just learned so much and actually it is interestingly deepened. I feel my, my Christian faith. To do this. I mean, that's the thing that we always say in scriptural reasoning, that, uh, you can go deeper into your own texts because of the other and deeper into their texts, uh, and also deeper into the world you share.
You know, that scriptural reasoning has been remarkable in inspiring so many collaborations and long term. Engagements in situations and reconciliation. And I just add a further thing that's come outta that, and this is the biggest thing I'm involved in at the moment really, is that to John 17, Jesus prays for that radical concept of unity in love for Christians and.
I emerged from the Gospel of John with a renewed passion for Christian unity. That really, if that is the deepest climactic desire of Jesus, then it should be our climactic desire too, for the sake of the whole world, for for the sake that you know, because nothing damages Christian witness in the world and Christian involvement with things that than the terrible way we often treat each other to the point of bloodletting.
And you know, I really owe that too. John's Gospel and John 17. Mm-hmm. You know, the, the, the sense of how absolutely central it is to go for that sort of unity in love Yeah. For
Drew Collins: the sake of the world. Yeah. And actually I noticed something in your, even in your commentary on chapter eight, you described that sort of polemic or the as language of a family qua.
You know, you write, it's the language of family quarreling between Jews and later between Jews and Jewish Christians, even not just towards unity. In order to get to unity to establish there's going to be disagreement and quarrels along the way and keep maintaining the sort of communal context for the reading of scripture is something that I, that's
David Ford: exactly right.
That, that you have to stay in engagement and the sort of. Rule the guidelines for scriptural reasoning, how to do it or the, the sort of wisdom we've learned to keep people who have deep differences yet engage with each other and trying to, as Ben quash, one of the leading scriptural reasoners, I said, improve the quality of our disagreements.
Because, I mean, my vision always is of a world in which we try to be more healthily, plural. You know, we're plural whether we like it or not. Uh, in our world, that's sheer diversity in all sorts of ways. But how can we be more healthily, plural? And I think one of the. Fundamental ways is to take the deep sources of meaning in each other's traditions very seriously and try to enter into them and invite them into you.
It's mutual hospitality in depth really. Yeah. Is what it's about. And I think our world desperately needs that and desperately needs practices that that help that to happen more frequently. And of course, ideally those intensive. Deep to deep conversations lead into collaborations and even lead into long-term relationships in institutions and also in friendships.
So, I mean, I just owe so many friendships to these practices. Yeah, it is, I
Drew Collins: it the power of gathering around a text. But these texts. Is you just have to experience it to understand what it's like. Yes, exactly. As a practice, it's
David Ford: very hard to express it before you do it. And we, what we always say in, in s scripting, you can have all sorts of conceptions about other people in advance, but you do it and you find that you're involved with the these people and their texts in a way that.
Always spring surprises. And that for me has continued to be the experience of John's gospel. You know, I read it every day. Just continual surprises happen. Yeah. It's always more, and it's the most amazing text I've ever read.
Drew Collins: Could I, before we end, I wanted it to ask you, you talked a little bit about, I think, John eight being a chapter where your commentary, your, the process of writing this commentary tra changed your understanding of John eight.
I wonder if there are maybe a mo, maybe even out outside of the commentary, as you say, as you just described, your practice of reading, John, your most recent surprise as you were reading John or another example that stands out to you of a passage or a chapter that you see very differently now.
David Ford: I'll say two things that that have been absolutely fundamental.
And of course they're about the fundamental events. John, in John's gospel, everything leads up to the hour, you know, the final weekend, and what happens in the hour? Well, I mean, there's the farewell discourse. I would love to go into the. Foot washing and that extraordinary drama of chapter 13. But you know that Chapter 13 seems to me an extraordinary example.
It's where the beloved disciple comes in. It's where Judas betrays Jesus. It's where Peter's denial of Jesus predicted. In other words, it's a drama of love and the denial of love and the betrayal of love. And it's got the most extraordinary implications in it. And uh, I remember wrestling, it was one of the most valuable chapters to wrestle and wrestle with.
And of course, the foot washing is one of the things in John's gospel that is supported by the most insistent imperatives that we have to endlessly improvise on that. This is an example do as I have done. That's how we've to improvise endlessly in the spirit. But what I wanted to come to was the, the crucifixion.
I mean, the death of Jesus John's account in chapters 18 and 19 is very interesting of the trial. Jesus is always central. There's no doubt who Jesus is central In every chapter of John's gospel, that is the headline right from the start, the word made flesh and so forth. And a lot of the controversy is about who Jesus is in the.
Chapter 18 and 19 where Jesus is on trial before Pilate. I think it's very important in his farewell discourses in private with his disciples beforehand. The main emphasis has been on love, of course on truth as well. And you, well, it's. The three essentials for John's gospel, wave after wave of learning, loving and praying tho.
Those are the three essentials of discipleship for John, and he's had his farewell discourses where each of them is there wave after wave of each of them. The whole thing is teaching, of course, for learning, but. And everything culminates. Of course, the learning, loving and praying culminate in chapter 17.
As I say, that is the deepest chapter in the Bible for me. But then of course it has to be, prayer is one thing, but you have to live it. And Jesus goes into his arrest and his trial. And in the trial the emphasis of Jesus is not. He doesn't talk about love in his trial. Interestingly, what does he talk about?
And I think it's particularly important at this time in our public life. Here he is up against the major empire of his day, the empire where might. Is right. There's no doubt at all. The Roman Empire and the Roman, the Romans, when John wrote his gospel, the Romans had slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Jews in the destruction of the temple and of Jerusalem, just not long beforehand.
I think John was probably written in the eighties or nineties, and that has happened in the seventies. So this was a brutal empire. And here is the representative of a Pontius Pilate, who is a no, no doubt at all. He is saying to Jesus, I have the power to crucify you or to let you go. He says that, what does Jesus say to him?
He says, for this, I was born, and for this, I came into the world to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice. Pilate asked him, what is truth now? In other words. What is being said is that in the public sphere, we need to have an absolutely radical commitment to the truth.
And of course Pilate asks the wrong question. It's not just what is the truth, but who is the truth? Uh, according to the Farewell discourses, I am the truth, the way, the truth, and, and the life. But it seems to me that for us Christians in public life at the moment and in all areas of life, that the lesson that Jesus says that he came into the world to testify to the truth, and everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.
And then of course the other thing, what he does, of course from the cross is that extraordinary passage when he saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved and says, woman, here is your son. Here is your mother. This brings together. The two people he's closest to in a sense, or could be said to be closest to his mother and his beloved disciple and forms a community centered on the cross.
Of course, on him, him on the cross in humiliation. He's being humiliated. Yeah. And there he, what he does from that position of humiliation is forms a new community and the disciple took her. Her into his own home now, but what happens on the cross now? I think that the great insight that I've had, which has increased and gone on and on since is that's the wrong question.
The right question is who happens on the cross that John, all through the gospel? I am. I am. I am both. You know, before Abraham was, I am and I am the bread of life. I am the good shepherd I am. And often the I am are linked as in the good shepherd with laying down his life as well. In other words, what John is saying very clearly is when you look at the cross.
The crucial thing is who is on the cross and who is he? He is utterly at one with God. He said that utterly at one with us. No, he is word made flesh. He and in other words, this unique event of the one who is utterly united with God, utterly united with us in love. That that is love because he says, of course, I've laying down my life for my friends.
No one has greater love than this. So it's to be interpreted through love and through who he is. I think the analogy, it's always distant, any of these analogies, but the analogy that is Rung Truist to me about that is Nelson Mandela. You know, I remember reading to my son when he was 12, the Long Walk to Freedom, I think it's called Nelson Mandela's autobiography, and my son was.
Deeply affected by it still is I think, the extraordinary story of Mandela in his 28 years in prison. And it really, you know, apartheid. Could have ended with a bloodbath, but of course it's because of who Mandela was and who he became during those 28 years that he had the moral stature to actually do something.
In other words, apartheid happened to Nelson Mandela, but Nelson Mandela happened to apartheid and I think on the cross evil suffering sin death. Happen to Jesus. But Jesus happens to evil, suffering, sin, death, and the result of it is who He is. Jesus Christ risen, resurrected, and alive in a new way. In other words, the salvation on the cross is utterly centered on who he is.
And, and I think that this is the wisdom, I think it's the wisdom of the Patristic period as well. Why they were so concerned all through the Patristic period to battle for what culminated in Nyia. That God, that Jesus utterly at one with the Father. And of course he's at one with us as well. So, so, so it's who happened and then.
We go into the resurrection. So my first thing was just that. Mm-hmm. The biggest insight, I think, and that's, I've gone on thinking about that in all sorts of directions. The biggest thing is that, is that happening? And he's going on happening. That's the point. Yeah. That the, when God. When the one one with God and with us, it, it dies on the cross, then the result is resurrection.
Yes. And it's a mystery. Of course, we, and, but Hans Fry gets it, uh, in, in his book, the Identity of Jesus Christ. But then in the resurrection, I think the other big insight into the resurrection is, well, the, there's two of them really, you'll notice the first. Classic meeting. I mean, one of my favorite commentaries on John is by Margaret Daley Denton, which has the best title, supposing him to be the gardener and she's got the Earth Bible Commentary and it's a wonderful commentary.
I know her, she's lives in Dublin and the but, but Mary. Is told, do not touch me because I am ascending to my father and your father. My God and your God. And it seems to me that what that is saying is it sums up beautifully, the new form of presence of Jesus, the resurrected Jesus. It's no longer like the earthly presence when you could see him one day and not.
The next, but Mary's being told, look, of course you could hold onto me now, but then you know that other people won't be able to hold onto me in the same way and so forth. So when ascending to the father means that there is that form of mutual indwelling, she's being offered a much richer. Deeper form of presence that we're all being offered.
And of course that, that's exactly the point, uh, of with Thomas, when Thomas is, he confesses after his doubt, he confesses my Lord and my God. And what does that mean? It means that. He is present to all of us readers. He says then blessed are those who have not seen. We are those who have not seen. And Jesus, he goes on to talk about reader, us being the readers.
He address the readers. And so if we are those who have not seen and who read, then he is present to us. We read our way into his presence daily. Mm-hmm. And that's why rereading and rereading is so crucial and Mary is being offered that form of mutual indwelling presence. The climactic thing in that is in verses 19 to 23, where, where Jesus appears to the disciples, and this is an extraordinary thing.
All through John's gospel, we've been told to anticipate the cross right from the lamb of God, who takes a lot away the sin of the world. In chapter one, we've also been told to anticipate the resurrection, right from chapter one, where the, where his body is, the temple and so forth and, and also we've been told to anticipate the Holy Spirit.
You know that he'll be the one in chapter one, John says, who baptizes in the Holy Spirit. So all of those, John is wonderful at preparing our imaginations and our minds for what comes next and this and all of these. And here we have the crucified and resurrected Jesus breathing the spirit. So this is the climactic event of the gospel.
And then he gives the, and the so much else in it too, like peace and joy. Uh, but then. What does he do? He gives this vocation to all of his followers, it seems to me, as the father has sent me. So I send you now that it seems to me sums up the triple thrust of Christian spirituality that the, as the father has sent me, so I, we, we used to go deeper and deeper.
We have to understand how the father sent him, who, his relationship with the father, who he is, who the father is for. Yeah. That, that as means that we go deeper into who Jesus is and, uh, in not least as in relation with his father. Uh, and of course, uh, he was sent into the world, so we have to go deeper into the world, but it's all plural as the father sent me.
So I send you plural, we are sent as community. So the summary of Christian spirituality I often think is we have to go deeper into God. Jesus deeper into community and deeper into the world. And that, that, that's how John sends us in the spirit, that those three things have to happen simultaneously. And I think one of the be best lessons I've learned from John's gospel is how that.
It leads you in all different directions that you need in your spirituality, and it leads you into the whole rest of the Bible and the whole rest of reality because this is the one through whom all things were made. That's the horizon for us
Drew Collins: today. You've, you've referred to John 17 several times. Not only is your favorite chapter in John, but you, I think if I heard you correctly, the most important chapter in the whole of Christian scripture.
So I was wondering if you could just walk us through that chapter a little bit and talk us through what comes out to you there and why you think it is so, so important.
David Ford: Well, first of all, I'll say that when I was reading with Richard Balcom and Richard Hayes and we came to chapter 17, this was one of the chapters where they united in their verdict and said, of course, this is a midrash on the Lord's Prayer.
In other words, that it's a, an improvisation on the Lord's prayer, and that actually has changed my way of praying the Lord's Prayer. I now pray the Lord's Prayer in the light of John 17, and it's absolutely true that you get deeper and deeper into it. That in, in a sense, if you, I mean, it's obviously begins with father and Father, what in heaven?
He's looking up to heaven and so forth. Your name be hallowed, and that it opens with this extraordinary. Intensity of the mutual glorification between the father and the son. In other words, the divine intensity of glory, of love, of truth and so forth are, are where it starts. And of course, the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed.
In other words, this goes right. As deep as you can into the nature of reality, transcending creation itself. And then the extraordinary thing is that's the glory that's there. But then of course, later on in the prayer, he says, the glory that you have given me, I have given them. In other words, we are being invited into this glory.
And this love and this relationship, and it's quite clear in the part I quoted earlier, from 20 to 26, it is absolutely mind blowing. You know, what is being opened up here and what we're being invited into. And I think there are so many ways into. Is seeing this as the culminating chapter. It's the culmination on truth.
I mean, it says sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth, as you have sent me into the world. So I have sent them into the world. That, of course, anticipates the vocation later, you know, as the father has sent me. So I send you, and for their sakes, I sanctify myself so that they also may be sanctified.
In truth. Truth, I mean, and as I said earlier about the crucifixion, the trial and crucifixion truth. I think has never been more important in the public sphere. You know those people who stand up and it's not just religious truth, it's all truth. You know that this is the truth by the one through whom all things were made.
And so truth culminates here. Love culminates here. And of course, also prayer culminates here and we are invited into this relationship of mutual glorification and the relationship. That Jesus has with his father. It's absolutely unqualified and astonishing and can we ever take it in? Can we ever live there?
Live a whole day? You know, realizing that's what we're part of. But absolutely at the heart of it, of course, is where he ends up so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them and I in them, and there's much, much
Drew Collins: more as well. That is great. Gosh. Thank you. I'm gonna read that chapter differently now after just that very brief explanation.
David, I can't think of a better way of closing this conversation than that wonderful expectation. Thank you so much again for coming on to talk with us. It's been such a delight to get to, to talk about this lovely commentary.
David Ford: Thank you very much indeed. You've been a wonderful, empathetic, and perceptive reader of it, drew, and, uh, I greatly appreciate such readers.
It's been really good to talk to you. Such a joy
Evan Rosa: For the life of the World is a production of the Yale Center For Faith and Culture at Yale Divinity School.
This episode featured theologian David Ford, interviewed by Drew Collins, production assistance by Macie Bridge, Alexa Rollow, and Emily Brookfield. I'm Evan Rosa and I edit and produce the show. For more information, visit us online at faith.yale.edu, where you can find past episodes, articles, books, and other educational resources that help people envision and pursue lives worthy of our humanity.
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