Confronting John’s Shadows while Basking in Its Lights: A Theological Attempt to Deal with the Fourth Gospel’s Ambivalence

Julius-Kei Kato

Confronting John’s Shadows while Basking in Its Lights

A Theological Attempt to Deal with the Fourth Gospel’s Ambivalence

Authors

Julius-Kei Kato King's University College-Western University, London, Ontario, Canada

Keywords:

Gospel of John, Problematic Aspects of John, Intuition and Inference, John and History, John and Anti-Jewish Attitudes, John and Conversion

Abstract

The Gospel according to John has quite a lofty place not only within the Christian scriptures but in the whole of Christian tradition and history. It is difficult, therefore, to confront the fact that, if scrutinized at the historical, theological, and even spiritual levels, one cannot help but take notice of a number of problematic aspects within it. This paper will be an effort to deal with these shadow aspects of John in a constructive way but also point out how the Fourth Gospel is an indispensable and insightful work to understand the Christian tradition.

Keywords: • • • • •

Author Biography

Julius-Kei Kato, King's University College-Western University, London, Ontario, Canada

A proud Filipino-Japanese-Canadian, Julius-Kei Kato is associate professor of Biblical & Religious Studies at King's University College–Western University, London, Ontario, Canada. He holds an SSL (Licentiate in Sacred Scriptures) from the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome, Italy and a PhD in Systematic and Philosophical Theology (with a focus in Hermeneutics) from the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, California, USA. He has taught as a visiting professor at the Sophia University and Kwansei Gakuin University in Japan and at the Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines. He is the author of How Immigrant Christians Living in Mixed Cultures Interpret Their Religion (2012), Religious Language and Asian [North] American Hybridity (2016), and Reading the Bible in a Secular Age: The New Testament as Spiritual Ancestry (2023).

Confronting John’s Shadows while Basking in Its Lights: A Theological Attempt to Deal with the Fourth Gospel’s Ambivalence