7.
In light of this understanding of salvation, how might we Christians understand
John
14:5 - 6?
(Thomas said to him, "Lord, we do not know where you are going; how can
we know the
way?" Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no
one comes to the Father,
but by me.")
For us who are Christians, Jesus is the only way into covenant with God
the Father. In
him, we have found the saving knowledge--the Truth--that brings us Life.
He is our Way, and
our only Way. Without Jesus as our Way into covenant with the Father, we
would not know
the true God, and our life would be vulnerable to the service and worship
of false gods.
The Jewish people believe, as Franz Rosenzweig, one of their great
philosopher-theologians has said, that they are already with the Father.
They have come into
relationship with the Father by the gracious promises God offered to Israel
in the covenants
made with Abraham and Moses. Jews believe that these covenants are still
being honored by
God, and that through them God has provided Jews with a sure way into Truth
and Life.
For Christians who wonder why verse 6 of John 14 is so exclusive, it is
good to remember
that during the time when John's Gospel was reaching its present, final
form, both the church
and the synagogue were young and vulnerable institutions. Each was seeking
to clarify its own
identity and its special way of relating to God; and each, in this formative
period, was
increasingly at odds with the other. Verse 6 of John 14 shows John's community
claiming its
understanding of the distinctive way--through Jesus Christ--that had been
provided for it to be
in covenant with God.
In this same period, the Temple had been destroyed by the Roman army. The
Jewish
people, therefore, could no longer express their covenant loyalty to God
through Temple
sacrifices. Instead, like the nascent church, Judaism underwent a radical
development of its
special way of relating to God. The ethical reflections of the rabbis on
Hebrew Scripture began
to be recorded (see section 3 above), leading eventually to the formation
of the Talmud and to
the transformed way of being Jewish which today is called rabbinic Judaism
Finally, the fledgling church and nascent rabbinic Judaism found themselves
competing with
one another for converts from Greco-Roman pagan religions. Whenever such
competition
occurs between young, rival groups, exclusive claims that denigrate the
value, and even the
validity of the rival are likely to slip into argumentation. For John's
community to have
denigrated the emerging rabbinic way of being Jewish is hardly surprising,
then, when one
considers the context of identity-crisis, dispute, and rivalry within which
John's Gospel was
written.