Tag: 3 John

Diotrephes

What can we learn from this unknown man in the Bible? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

In my nightly Bible reading, I have been reading 3 John. This is a really short book so I read one verse a night and just think about it. The book opens with a greeting to the recipient, Gaius, who the author, who we will refer to as John be it the elder or apostle, prays that Gaius may be as well in body as he is in soul. This man must have a very good soul.

In the middle of the letter, we read about a man named Diotrephes. John writes that Diotrephes does not welcome him and those with him and spreads malicious nonsense anyway. When John comes, he will call attention to what is being done. After that, he tells Gaius to not imitate what is evil because those who do what is evil have not seen God. This I take to certainly be pointing back to Diotrephes.

Yet something else is said about Diotrephes.

He likes to be first.

So let’s consider the irony here. Gaius is as far as we know a quite humble individual. John speaks glowingly of him. Diotrephes is apparently a leader of the church since he has authority and his goal has been to be first. He wants to be the big man.

In his time, he could have been that. Yet here is the problem. His pride was keeping the good teaching out of the church because he wanted to be the one in power. He wanted to get the attention that would hold him up in honor.

What makes this even more ironic is that Diotrephes because of his pride wanted this number one position. He wanted to be known as the leader and no doubt, to be remembered as the leader. He took all these steps to insure that he was number one.

Yet today, we see Gaius being the recipient of this letter and him being the one spoken of in glowing terms. Meanwhile, everyone who has ever read this letter knows that Diotrephes is the bad guy. He wanted to be number one, but now he’s being seen as the villain that he is.

Because of his pride, Diotrephes did not become the first. In his eager dash for honor, he is now a person of shame. Not only that, he is that for all time. Anyone who reads the Bible will want to be more like Gaius than they will Diotrephes.

C.S. Lewis said that pride was the greatest of the sins, and indeed it is. It is because of the pride of Diotrephes that he is not remembered well in church history. Diotrephes had his own small community that he wanted to be number one at. Instead, not only did John publicly call him out, but all churches everywhere know that Diotrephes is someone you should not be like. Diotrephes’s pride led to a greater fall so that here, nearly 2,000 years later, he is still remembered as the villain of the letter.

Pride has no place in the church today at all still. When we are tempted, let’s remember Diotrephes and the impact he had on the church. We won’t appear in the Scriptures, to be sure, but eternity will remember what we do and the effects of our actions will carry over there. Make sure it’s something good for you. If you are a church leader definitely, do all you can to avoid pride.

In Christ,
Nick Peters

Deeper Waters Podcast 12/20/2014: Paul Rainbow

What’s coming up this Saturday on the Deeper Waters Podcast? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

The writings of John in the New Testament are noted for being difficult to understand. His Gospel is markedly different from the other Gospels. Let’s not forget about the book of Revelation either! Chesterton in his book Orthodoxy said “Though St. John the Evangelist saw many strange monsters in his vision, he saw no creature so wild as one of his own commentators.”

A book I went through not too long ago on this topic is Johannine Theology by Dr. Paul Rainbow. After reading it, I was convinced that this was an important topic that needed some more discussion and so I asked Dr. Rainbow to come on the show. So who is he?

Dr. Rainbow was born in Minneapolis in 1955 and studied at Born 1955, Minneapolis.
Studied at U. Minnesota, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Harvard Divinity School, and U. Oxford (England). He taught briefly at Canadian Bible College when it was in Regina SK (1980–82) before undertaking advanced studies. He served on staff as a Lay Assistant at St Ebbe’s Church, Oxford (Church of England = Anglican), 1987–88. He has been at Sioux Falls Seminary (German Baptist) for the last 26 years teaching New Testament. He is married to Alison and they have two grown children. For a hobby, he is also a classical pianist.
PaulRainbow
As you can imagine, Johannine theology is about the doctrine of God that is found in the Gospel, the epistles of John, and the Apocalypse. For the sake of argument, we will be assuming that these are all Johannine writings. It is worth noting that Rainbow does give a defense of authorship, but it will be more important in the interview for us to focus on the main subject matter.
Many of us read the Gospel of John and think that it’s meant to reveal the nature of Jesus. Of course, to a degree, it is, but it goes beyond that. It’s mainly to show us the nature of God. The way that we know who God is is by looking at Jesus. Is Jesus the full and best revelation? Yes, but He is the full and best revelation of the Father and if we are to know the Father, then we will have to know the Son as well.
This is definitely a complex topic, but if you’re a follower of the Deeper Waters Podcast, you should be used to complex topics. Still, we will try to keep it as simple as we can so that the average listener can get the most out of it.
I hope that you’ll be watching your podcast feed soon in order to catch this episode and I encourage you to go to Amazon as well and pick up a copy of Rainbow’s book if you’re interested in studying the doctrine of God in the writings of John. John’s writings are difficult so we will be working to take full advantage of having a scholar in the field help us sort through the difficult issues.
In Christ,
Nick Peters

Book Plunge: Johannine Theology

What do I think of Paul Rainbow’s book on the theology of John? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

JohannineTheology

Johannine Theology is over 400 pages of looking at a highly complex topic. John is the Gospel that is often the most problematic for people due to its being so different from the others. Even N.T. Wright has said it is like his wife Maggie. In speaking of her he says “I love her, but I do not claim to understand her.”

Rainbow begins with a brief history on Johannine studies and with a defense of authorship and the date of the writing and such and from there, it’s off to see what the book has to say. The opening should be sufficient for those who are interested in the basic apologetic aspect to understand the usage of John in studies of the historical Jesus.

Rainbow argues that while John’s Gospel certainly tells us about the life of Jesus, the main character being it all is really God. The Gospel should be read not just as a Christological statement but as a Theological one. This is fitting since we are told that it is the Son who is explaining the Father. We know God by knowing the Son. He who has seen the Son has seen the Father. We cannot know God as He truly is apart from knowing the Son and the Son came to reveal the Father.

I found this to be a highly important insight. Rainbow is not at all downplaying the importance of Christology. He has plenty to say about that in a later chapter and of course, he comes down on the side of orthodox theology, but he does want to stress that we cannot leave God the Father out of the equation in John.

I will say when he got to Christology, I was disappointed on one aspect. Much of the Christology came from the Gospel. I find an excellent place to go to really to get Christology in the Johannine corpus is to go to the book of Revelation. I did not see this interacted with in the work. Revelation begins after all describing itself as the Revelation of Jesus Christ and it does say that the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.

Rainbow also covers other themes related to theology. He covers the question of salvation and that of apostasy. He covers issues related to free will and predestination and points out that John has no desire to really address our questions there. It could be argued that John in fact argues for both sides of the equation. He also argues for how John says the church is to be to the world.

Surprisingly, there is little on eschatology and this was one area I did have a difficult time with as I happen to highly enjoy discussions of eschatology. Rainbow does take a futurist stance in his writings and that is not something that is argued for. I find it interesting for instance that Revelation is said to tell us about the antichrist and yet Revelation never once uses the term.

Still, Johannine Theology is a difficult topic to handle and I think Rainbow for the most part does an excellent job. I would have liked to have seen more on eschatology, but then that could be its own book entirely. Still, if you want to understand the writings of John in relation to theology, then you should get yourself a copy of this volume.

In Christ,

Nick Peters

Deeper Waters Podcast 5/24/2014: Peter Davids

What’s coming up this Saturday on the Deeper Waters Podcast? Let’s talk about it on Deeper Waters.

For many of us, the meat of the NT is usually thought to be found in Paul, which is a shame since we usually avoid the Gospels in that way. We will then when we want our dose of information about the end times turn to the book of Revelation. In between are these epistles not nearly discussed so much called the Catholic Epistles.

Fortunately, that group doesn’t include the Deeper Waters Podcast.

That’s why I’m proud to bring on another person from Houston Baptist University. Davids serves there as the visiting professor of Theology.

PeterDavids

In his own words….

“Born in 1947 in Syracuse, New York, of English extraction Peter Davids later moved with his family to Lynchburg, Virginia, where he graduated from E. C. Glass High School. He later went on the study at Wheaton College (BA in Psychology), Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (M.Div.), and the University of Manchester (Ph.D., 1974). His first teaching position was in Germany. After being confirmed in the Anglican communion in 1976, he was founding faculty of Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry near Pittsburgh, PA, where he was ordained in the Episcopal Church in 1979. It was while teaching there that his first book (James in the NIGTC) was published. He subsequently taught and ministered in Canada (1983 – 1996), Austria (1996 – 2002), Houston, Texas (2002 – 2006, 2011 – present) and again in Canada (2006 – 2010). He is currently Visiting Professor of Theology at Houston Baptist University. He is the author or editor of more than 10 books, most of them covering the Catholic Epistles. He is also committed to church ministry, having been preaching since he was 15. While at Wheaton College, he married the former Judith Lee Bouchillon of Houston Texas, who is a pastoral counselor and spiritual director. Together they have had 4 children, three of them living, and now have 8, almost 9 grandchildren, all of whom live in Canada.”

And yes, almost 9 grandchildren because the latest one is due to come on May 30th? Will he cooperate and be born then? We don’t know, but congrats to the mother and father and to Davids as a proud grandparent.

Naturally, with eight epistles, we’ll only be scratching the surface, but I hope that we will say enough that it will inspire you to read the epistles yourself a bit more closely and come to realize that these parts of the Bible are just as much Scripture as the rest and be thankful that God put them in there for us to benefit from.

Now I’d like to be able to tell you that there’s a link you can go to directly to listen to the show and I’d like to tell you what the call-in number is, but this time, I do not know how. Somehow I am going to have to record this using a Skype recorder and then leave it to that to get up on ITunes or a place like that.

This has to be done because sadly, we do not have the donations coming in to do this. If anyone was interested, we can get a position on blogtalkradio for $40 a month or $400 a year. This is definitely what I would prefer as it is much easier and efficient, particularly for someone not technologically skilled like myself. If anyone wants to make that possible, please hit the donate button and let me know or go to RisenJesus.com, the ministry of Mike Licona and say you want to keep the Deeper Waters Podcast going as is. (Note that all donations to Risen Jesus have the benefit that we get every penny.)

Until that happens or I find the funding on my own to get the show up, that’s the way it’s going to have to be.

But I will be recording the show at the same time as always and let’s hope that I do it right! I hope that whenever it does go up, you’ll be listening as well!

In Christ,
Nick Peters