John: delving into the heart of patient and healer

A little thought about John’s and Paul’s writings.  This morning I am likening John’s writings to Mrs. Eddy’s Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (S&H), and Paul’s writings to Eddy’s Prose Works.  This thought came from reading Dummelow’s One Volume Bible Commentary: “[John’s] ideas are far deeper than St. Paul’s, but are much more simply expressed.”  

Dummelow quotes many of John’s sublime passages, and then states: “In these and many other passages, the peculiar union of simplicity and profundity produces the effect of sublimity, a characteristic often noted by the ancients, who expressed it by the figure of a soaring eagle, which became the accepted symbol, even as early as the second century, of the Fourth Gospel.”

My thought is that we could say that S&H is the absolute truth, and Prose Works the working out in human experience of the truths affirmed and set forth in S&H.  Thus, John’s account of Jesus’ life and works could be, at least in part, the basis of Paul’s working out “the problem of being” (as Eddy expresses it, e.g. S&H p. 271: 21).

I found this interesting note pencilled in at the beginning of the Gospel of John in my very old Bible: “John lifts law into demonstration, prophecy into ultimate spiritual fulfilment. He delves into the heart of patient and healer as he establishes resurrection to eternal life for all.”  Sorry I have no record of where I found it.  Another note says: “The Word: divine revelation.”

Now about the “Word” – just as Christ is God’s Word, even so is Christian Science God’s Word.  The Bible is also the Word, and so is Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. This brings to mind the lovely hymn, O Word of God, most Holy (hymns 251, 252), the last two lines of which are worth quoting: “It is the heaven-drawn picture/Of Christ, the living Word.”

What a record we have in the first chapter of John!  It feels to me like an overview – a sort of “helicopter” view.

Joyce Voysey