Creation and Participation in John’s Gospel

The Johannine notion of creation from nothing issues a non-contrastive distinction between God's transcendence and immanence. This serves as the key to relating creation and participation. Creation sets a limit to how far participation may go, in that the creator and creation forever remain distinct from one another, but it can, even within this limit, go quite far—certainly farther than the sort of intimacy two human beings can have, for God is always the condition for the existence of human creatures. John's Farewell Discourse points toward this by incorporating the thrust of the prologue, not by leaving it behind. When the Farewell Discourse speaks of believers indwelling Jesus, this is not a violation of the prologue's distinction, but the intense form of closeness that is possible for the transcendent God to have with those who depend on God, as this chapter seeks to explain through expounding John's narrative via philosophical and theological concepts.

© 2024 selection and editorial matter, Eleonore Stump and Judith Wolfe; individual chapters, the contributors

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