Abstract
Holy Week, 2022
Greetings colleagues and friends!
I am very pleased to present this spring issue of the Christian Education Journal, now in its forty-second year of publication. Commendations to all of our contributing authors! Thank you to every member of our editorial team who makes this work possible!
One of the greatest responsibilities and privileges of being a teacher is the vocational ethic of continually learning. In my experience, one of the sublime means of leaning into this ethic is by actively receiving the wisdom of the students with whom God has gathered me. They certainly have plenty to share and much with which to shape and sharpen me.
I’d like to share with you a case in point. Early in my course, “Theological Anthropology for Christian Ministry,” I guide students to discover the connections between the basic anthropological questions of identity (“Who am I?”) and personhood (“What is man?”), and the Church's most historic ministerial framework for educational ministry, catechesis. But before we unpack Augustine's Enchiridion (1961) or read Packer and Parrett's Grounded in the Gospel (2010), I have students compose a response to a given life scenario: Pretend that you receive this question from a friend or acquaintance in your church (who is either a non-believer or a new Christian): “What does Jesus mean when he says he is ‘the way, the truth, and the life’ (John 14:6)? I understand the gospel—John 3:16, ‘whoever believes in him’—but I'm trying to understand what each of those three things (way/truth/life) mean, and why it's important.” In your written response, find an opportunity to use this quotation from the C.S. Lewis's The Great Divorce (1946, 2001): “If we insist on keeping Hell (or even Earth) we shall not see Heaven: if we accept Heaven we shall not be able to retain even the smallest and most intimate souvenirs of Hell.”
Below are three of the responses we shared and exchanged in my class this term, from Antonea Bastain (student), Jay Williams (TA), and myself. One marvelous thing to highlight here, pedagogically, is that three discrete-but-coordinating perspectives are put forth (with reference to Frame, 1987): normative (Jay), situational (John David), and existential (Antonea). In addition, these coordinating perspectives are presented and experienced in community as an practical exercise in doctrine— “the answer to the question, ‘Who is Jesus Christ for us today?’” (Vanhoozer, 2019, xxiii). In a phrase, the whole is so much greater than the sum of the parts—and exponentially richer than the sum of the professor's isolated offering.
Another thing I should mention is that both Jay and I read Antonea's response before we wrote our own. I can say especially for my part, that what I wrote would not have been the same had it not been influenced by my sister Antonea. I find her response to be an absolute treasure, dripping with unassuming profundity. Thank you, Antonea and Jay, for allowing me to share your contributions here!
I hope these collected reflections will serve as an encouragement to you in this season of new life. I also hope they will remind us all of the blessed richness of the learning communities we inhabit in our churches and institutions.
Antonea
That's a great question and I am honored you would bring that up so we can talk about it! If you think about it, we all have a way that we think is best. We all have truth that guides how we live our lives. We also have things, people, or ideas that we think bring an ideal life. When John 14:6 says that Jesus is “the way, the truth, and the life,” John, the writer of this passage and one of Jesus’ students, is telling us that Jesus has not only saved us but He becomes the one who determines how we ought to live our lives. He is the standard of what is true, and His life—the very way that He loved and obeyed His Father—is how we ought to live as well. The Bible presents two ways of life, following Jesus or following the world… "If we insist on keeping Hell (or even Earth) we shall not see Heaven: if we accept Heaven we shall not be able to retain even the smallest and most intimate souvenirs of Hell,” C.S. Lewis says. For Jesus to be “the way, the truth, and the life” means that we see how all of our hopes point to Him who can actually satisfy those hopes. We choose one way to live, one truth to measure every other truth by, and one life to live into. John 14:6 means Jesus doesn’t just point to the answers, he is the answer.
Jay
The context of what Jesus is saying here is rooted in the Last Supper discourse. Our Lord is soon to leave the disciples. The betrayer has left the table; Peter, the leader, has now been rebuked and told of his impending denial; and everyone is out of sorts. Their earthly kingdom is crumbling—all their dreams of earthly glory—the glory that they had witnessed and tasted was about to die. Little do they know, the “great rescue mission” is drawing near to fruition and moving according to plan. Jesus tells them “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God. Believe also in Me.” I.e., whereas much as Christ is the clear evidence of God the Father's eternal reality, so also is Jesus's knowledge of what he is about to do: “In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?” Heaven. Jesus then comforts the disciples with the logic that if he goes to prepare a place for them, he will not abandon them, but indeed that He will bring them to their new home—a home to which they already know the way-the information had already been smuggled in—but not yet understood. To which Thomas responds how can we know the way?
When Jesus says, “I AM the way, the truth, and the life,” He is summing up all of the great “I AM” statements throughout the gospels… He is the water of life… He is the bread of life… He is the light of the world… He is the great Shepherd… What are these statements but statements of the Master Shepherd who guides the way of the sheep to safety… the greater light beyond the sun-the eternal Logos-that quickens and fills the unnumerable halls of the mind with light… and the source of all life, the true Vine, that nourishes and heals the tired and weary soul from within, and that prunes and dresses it from without? What are Jesus's words here but the penultimate and very earthly echo of those immortal words “I AM WHO I AM” (Ex 3:14). In as much, the Son of God did not descend so far to fulfill so impossible a task, only to give the glory of His work to another-He is the only way. The eternal Logos who fashioned worlds in eternal wisdom, and man-a vessel infused with divine reason-cannot find illumination in any truth that does not ultimately flow from the archetypal Source of all intelligence-He is the truth. Finally, Jesus is the Life-creator of all and source of every good, indeed goodness itself, in all that nourishes the body and soul. In all that He has done, He prepares the disciples for His death and tells them that His next task is to go and carry on the next phase of Genesis chapter One. He will break the creation Sabbath and start construction for their future lodgings in the Happy Land of the Trinity when the ultimate “Great Divorce” takes place, evil must ultimately and truly end, so that the ultimate “Wedding party” in all its unadulterated goodness can begin. I believe that the more we understand Jesus's words here, the easier it becomes to recognize the madness of dusting our little souvenir collection as noted in Lewis's words: “If we insist on keeping Hell (or even Earth) we shall not see Heaven: if we accept Heaven we shall not be able to retain even the smallest and most intimate souvenirs of Hell.”
John David
In John 14:6, Jesus says to his disciple, Thomas, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
When I consider this passage, I think of C.S. Lewis's statement in his “imaginative supposal, ”The Great Divorce: “If we insist on keeping Hell (or even Earth) we shall not see Heaven: if we accept Heaven we shall not be able to retain even the smallest and most intimate souvenirs of Hell.”
John 14:6 is an invitation to embrace what is good, beautiful, and true. It is also a psychological truism (I.e., an undeniable reality pertaining to your soul): you are made to long-for and grasp-for what is good, beautiful, and true.
Every time you’ve ever experienced longing, you’ve been experiencing something divine.
John 14:6 is most often characterized as an exclusivistic axiom, à la Acts 4:12 [“And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”] And it is.
Like one of the most prolific pieces of Christian devotional literature says, “Without the way, there is no going; without the truth, there's no knowing; without the life, there is no living” (Kempis). The definite articles are definitely definite. But they’re as definitively healing as they are definitively damning. Jesus characterized himself as the the physician for those who are sick (Mark 5:17). Jesus's joy, the joy for which he endured the shame of the cross (Heb. 12:2), was in providing the rich and full life to those who would otherwise be les misérables (John 10:10).
So, to the extent that John 14:6 is an axiom of exclusion, it is every bit as much an axiom of embrace, à la Matthew 11:28. [“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”]
The message is not: you’re not good enough (for Jesus)—until you love him. The message is: Jesus has been good enough (for you)—because he loves you.
Jesus is the exemplar of everything that is ultimately good. He is the attraction behind all that is ultimately beautiful. He is the embodiment of everything that is really true and truthful—namely loving God and loving the world (John 3:16).
Jesus is what your heart desires! Every time you’ve ever tasted a longing or desire that hasn’t fulfilled you, you’ve heard God beckoning you to real life in him. Every time you’ve ever tasted or experienced a longing or desire that has profoundly fulfilled you, you’ve had some infinitesimally small experience of God's goodness.
But maybe you haven’t heard him clearly yet. Maybe for you, the way, truth, and life is “...like a song I can hear playing right in my ear that I can’t sing. I can’t help listening.” (Browne, 1974)
Brother/sister, “Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good!” (Psa. 34.8)
Look at Jesus! Embrace him! Once you do, you’ll let go of everything else. And you’ll leap in the air like a calf finally set loose from its stall (Mal. 4.2).
He will be the truth that your heart loves. He will be the life that your soul delights in and longs for, the spark of imagination that overwhelms you with the anticipation of a euphoric, coming redemption (“new life”). He will be the way that you go, the shepherd you stay close to, and the one who will rescue you when you wander away.
Embrace him!
What is keeping you from him? (This is the haunting message of The Great Divorce.) What are the souvenirs of Earth that you would have trouble releasing in order to gain Heaven?
Remember Gollum, from The Lord of the Rings? (Tolkien, 1954, 1955) Gollum's problem wasn’t that he desired something precious, nor that he doggedly clung to a precious thing. It was that he got fixated on an earthly precious thing that he mistook and substituted for an eternally precious thing. And eventually, it blinded him to what was real. First, his attention got distracted. Then, his appetite got changed. Then, his habits got nurtured. Then, his soul got trained. Then, his very life got devoured.
What is *gollumizing you? Or (Christian…) what has the potential to gollumize part of you? I can tell you that for me, it is the particular vanities of being in control, being an achiever, and pleasing the people around me.
Whatever it is for you, it isn’t worth it.
Your desire for obtaining and clinging to what is precious is good. But Jesus is the precious thing—the pearl of greatest price (Matt. 13:45–46). And any other thing, however legitimately valuable, honorable, or worthy of praise it is in its own right—if you must keep it at the expense of Jesus, you’ll trade a world of diamonds for a wheelbarrow of gravel.
“Turn your eyes upon Jesus! Look full in his wonderful face! And (then, only then …) the things of earth will grow strangely dim. In the light of his glory and grace.” (Lemmel, 1922)
And if you do turn your eyes on him, one Day what the eyes of your heart see now in faith (Eph 1.18), your whole body and soul will dive into and swim in.
Like Lewis's Unicorn in The Last Battle (1956), you’ll exclaim: “I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why I loved the (old earth) is that it sometimes looked a little like this (new earth). … Come further up, come further in!”
This is the message of John 14:6.
As we teach and lead in all the places we are flung, may we do so rejoicing in our resurrected Lord: the Truth who is our faith;
the Life who is our hope;
the Way who is our love.
Hosanna,
John David
Footnotes
Note
*I first became familiar with the term “gollumizing” in Naugle (2008).