Book Review
Jesus’ Emotions in the Fourth Gospel: Human or Divine?
Stephen Voorwinde, Library of New Testament Studies 284, London: T & T Clark, 2005, pp xiii + 344, $140.
Para leer esta reseña en español clic aquí.
This book analyses the references to the emotions of Jesus in the Greek text of John’s gospel and relates them to the humanity and/or divinity of Jesus. It is not a study on the psychological life of Jesus nor one which tackles the issue of divine impassibility. The author assumes that the 21 chapters of the book form a literary unit. His approach is one which is in sympathy with those of a conservative evangelical view of Scripture.
By the emotions of Jesus are meant his love in terms of agape (Jn. 11:5; 13:1, 23, 34; 14:21, 31; 15:9, 10, 12, 13; 19:26; 21:7, 20) and as philos (Jn. 11:3, 36; 20:2), his zeal (Jn. 2:17), his being moved (Jn. 11:33, 38) and disturbed (Jn. 11:38), his tears (Jn. 11:35), his rejoicing (Jn. 11:15) and joy (Jn. 15:11, 17:13). In the gospels the Johannine Jesus is particularly one who shows emotions, with John’s gospel containing 28 such references compared with 31 in the three synoptic gospels.
Whether these are simply human ones, as in the case of weeping, or both divine and human ones, as in the case of love, is discussed on by the author. The human emotions are understood to be motivated by divine insight, particularly that of the knowledge of his coming crucifixion. So such feelings cannot be connected straightforwardly to Jesus’ humanity.
The emotions are also related with the covenant theology evident in the gospel. Jesus is both the Lord of the Covenant, the “I am”, as well as the covenant sacrifice, the Lamb of God. To sustain this Voorwinde demonstrates the parallel themes between the gospel and the different books of the Pentateuch. For example, the gospel starting with the idea of the beginning and creation by the Logos is comparable with the God who creates by his word in Genesis 1; in Exodus there is the Passover theme which is also clearly present in the last supper in the gospel; and in Deuteronomy, Moses’ farewell discourses are comparable to Jesus’ farewell discourses in John 13-17 .
Another interesting fact indicated by the writer is that Jesus’ emotions are principally found in the Book of Signs (Jn. 2-11) and are seen in preparation for the passion of Jesus in the Book of Glory (Jn. 13-21). The main section of emotions is in the last and greatest sign, the raising of Lazarus in John 11 . John 12 is analysed as a bridging chapter between the emotions Jesus felt and their background reason, the coming passion.
The author sets his study in the context of the Bultmann–Kasëmann debate over the divinity of the Johannine Jesus. Is he “nothing but a man” (Bultmann) or is he “God walking on the face of the earth” (Kasëmann)? Voorwinde’s conclusion, in a similar vein to Schnackenburg, is that neither position is valid but that the Johannine Jesus is both God and man.
This indication of the book’s content indicates that it is more than an extension of B.B. Warfield’s thought provoking article, The Emotional Life of Our Lord [1]. Voorwinde interacts with contemporary Johannine theology, narrative criticism and Christological debates.
Pastors and seminary students will be interested in this publication for not only is there an analysis of Jesus' emotions in his earthly experiences, but there is an insight into the nature of God and of covenant theology, and an introduction to contemporary issues in the Fourth Gospel. At a practical level a study into the emotions of Jesus has pastoral implications in how the risen and interceding Christ can empathize with the human emotions of his people today.
The publication is a revised edition of the writer’s doctoral thesis from the Australian College of Theology. There are 10 appendices with lexicographical information on the words for different emotions in the Old Testament, the Dead Sea scrolls, the Apocrypha, each of the four gospels, and then the remainder of the New Testament books.
This is such a useful and thought provoking publication that it would be good if it could be made more accessible by producing it in a paperback edition, and of course, in Spanish.
David E. C. Ford
Profesor del Nuevo Testamento, Fundación Universitaria Seminario Bíblico de Colombia, Medellín, Colombia
[1] B.B. Warfield, The Person and Work of Christ, Samuel G Craig (ed.), Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1950, pp. 93-145.