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[JP Holy]

This morning, as I was reading John 5:17-30, I wondered, based on the Jewish understanding of a monolithic Godhead, as they understand Deut. 6:4, would have the religious leaders even understood what Jesus was talking about? In verse 18 John adds some commentary that Jesus was equating himself to God. I completely agree with John of course. However, wouldn’t have John had the same understanding of the Godhead that the religious leaders would have? Perhaps he’s speaking in retrospect here. That aside, would not the religious leaders be relatively flummoxed with this Father/Son craziness that Jesus was talking about?

[jimwalton]

Great question. They would at least have had a proximate understanding, especially living in a Greco-Roman culture where deities had human characteristics and humans took on divine status (the Emperor cult). They have had examples of humans claiming divinity, and they rejected all of it as both nauseating and blasphemous. Yes, v. 18 is John’s commentary, but it’s his perception of what the religious leaders were thinking, which was presumably being mumbled or muttered as Jesus spoke.

I’ll grant they could not have grasped the full import of what He was claiming because to date—in no religion and in no culture—there had been no such claim approximating what we today call Trinitarian theology. The real import of Jesus’s claims are only worked out by Christian theologians over the next several centuries.

It’s also true that at the time the disciples would not have had a refined trinitarian theology, but we can see clearly in their writings that they believe Jesus and the Father are one, even if they have not fully worked out how that works and how to understand it. I think it’s fair to say that the disciples would have had a better understanding of Jesus’s deity than the religious leaders. At least they had spent time with Jesus, heard everything he said (in contrast to snippets), and were open to considering His claims, whereas the religious leaders, by and large, had none of those advantages.

We know that the religious leaders were flummoxed by the things Jesus was saying. It brought up too much disequilibrium for everything they had even been taught or thought. We see this clearly in John 3 with Nicodemus. He doesn’t know how to think in the categories Jesus is raising. Though they haven’t had time to process it, they can at least tell He is making Himself equal to God, and thus conclude it’s blasphemy, even if they are not grasping the full impact of what He is claiming. If they had, their reaction would. I believe, have been more violent and sooner.