This Gospel has wonderful poetic and "picturess" language about Jesus. It is written by an unknown person who was an inspired evangelist about 95 AD, some 60 years after the death of Jesus, and yet became a mainstay of traditional christian theology. Would Jesus have approved of the sayings attributed to him and of the theology written about him? It is suggested that the christian church now has a real problem with this theology such that evangelism has become impossible in 21st century Britain for the mainstream churches.

1. Housegroup Study, October 2018
Bible study of John’s Gospel (for verses in which Jesus is given voice)
Barry Jones My background comments on John’s Gospel
As with the rest of John’s Gospel, these verses are considered not to be the direct words of
Jesus but the reflection and inspiration of John (an unknown person) and his community in
Asyria about 95-100 CE, some 60 years after the death of Jesus who he clearly could not have
met. John is an independent evangelist and reflects the language of his own christian
community. This is by the use of long involved discourses totally unlike the short “bullet points”
of Jesus and his stories and parables, all of which could be and were transmitted orally. John’s
gospel couldnot have been transmitted orally—simply too complicated!
Therefore there is a clear difference in character between the Gospel of John and the three
much earlier-in-time Synoptic Gospels—Mark followed in time by Luke and Matthew. Links
between the former and the latter three seem tenuous.
From the Synoptic Gospels Jesus is clear about forgiveness and and salvation—it comes in this
world through repentance and reparation, and not through the giving of sacrifices. So it seems
that Jesus would have rejected all christian atonement theories, concern for the afterlife and his
deification developed by Saint Paul for the Gentiles and promoted through creeds for about
1600 years by the traditional christian church and in large measure by theological colleges and
ordained clergy with stipends/salary.
Jesus was a Jew and therefore believed in one God, not a christian Gentile who came to believe
in three Gods and then had to resolve to use a single Trinity explanation. Jesus was primarily
interested in the sovereignty of a personal God coming “here and now”, and not in the afterlife.
John’s gospel seems to promote an “other worldly” philosophy about Jesus (“ The Word” from
the beginning of time/space), perhaps because the promised sovereignty of God seemed to his
community so delayed in this life. Certainly the prose is wonderful “poetry and pictures” and
the gospel is a spiritual treasure.
There remains today therefore “big theological gaps” between the Godly ideas of Jesus (and his
forerunner John the Baptist) and those of the traditional christian church. John’s gospel and the
letters of St Paul are the bedrocks of the latter.
This is a very big problem (or should be) for christian theological colleges , christian preachers,
the ordained clergy and “the pew” in the 21st
century! Instead of following the message of Jesus
the early church leaders “ side-stepped” to try and keep out of political trouble. These
theological problems make it very difficult and in my view near impossible as things stand for the
mainline traditional christian churches to evangelise successfully in today’s post-Enlightenment
welfare British society which looks for outcomes, including political outcomes. Islam doesnot
suffer in the same way but it has not yet really faced an Enlightenment as has Western society.