Böcker av Royce G Gruenler

No book in the Bible says more about the Trinity than the Gospel of John. Of the innumerable commentaries published on this much loved Gospel, few have focused on this central theme.I have tried, writes the author, to listen to the discourses of Jesus in John and draw forth the disclosures of God''s social nature in the activity of the incarnate Son. He discovers something quite remarkable about the attitude of the persons of the Triune Community, something he calls disposability. Father, Son, and Spirit are there for the other, ...servants who place themselves at the other person''s disposal in an act of total generosity. They serve not only each other but also the fallen human race, and the creatures they redeem are invited to wash one another''s feet as servants to the world.Devoted Bible students will find in this thematic commentary a dimension to the Gospel of John they may have noticed only vaguely. As they follow the author through this Gospel chapter by chapter, they will acquire a far deeper understanding of the Triune God, whom they serve because he has served them.

The approaches of contemporary New Testament scholarship to Jesus and the Gospels have been, in Royce Gordon Gruenler's view, inadequate. Instead, he offers some imaginative and well-articulated reflections on several new and promising approaches. These ""have meant a great deal to me over the past few years,"" he writes, ""since in fact I had a change of personal commitment from a former liberalism which had run dry, to the rediscovery of the vitality of my earlier evangelical heritage."" This change was precipitated by ""the investigation of the data"" that this provocative volume details.Gruenler employs a phenomenology of persons, borrowed from Wittgenstein, to highlight the fundamental claims of Jesus. Though limiting himself to the core of sayings accepted by radical critics as authentic, the author concludes that Jesus' concept of himself is so incredible on any human level that it becomes academic to insist on separating his implicit from his explicit christological claims. The use of redaction criticism to distinguish the two, therefore, is misguided.Marshaled in support are Lewis, who urges attentiveness and obedience to the story; Ramsey, who points to the ""logically odd"" supernaturalism of the Gospels; Polanyi, the tacit dimension of trust; Marcel, Jesus' creative fidelity; Tolkien, the spell of the story; and Van Til, the importance of presuppositions in Gospel research.