Early Christian spirituality of 'seeing the divine' in 1 John
Apophatic theology and cataphatic theology both occur in the corpus Johanneum to describe the character of God. Apophatically the Gospel of John and the first epistle of John state that 'nobody has ever seen God'. Cataphatically, Jesus teaches in the Gospel that, 'Whoever has seen me has seen the Father', and in 1 John we read that after the Parousia has taken place 'we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is'. This article focuses on the cataphatic phrase 'we shall see him as he is' (1 Jn 3:2). This investigation responds to the variety of interpretations of this particular phrase, as well as to the interest in the spirituality that it could have evoked amongst the readers of this epistle. In order to gain clarity on the 'spirituality of "seeing him" in the first epistle of John', this research focuses on the mechanisms used by the elder in the text to create spiritualities in the readers, such as the composition of images in the imagination of these early Christians, the dynamic interactions between the reader and the text, as well as the dialectic of pretension and retention in the reading of a text.
Main Author: | |
---|---|
Format: | Digital revista |
Language: | English |
Published: |
University of Pretoria
2015
|
Online Access: | http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0259-94222015000200043 |
Tags: |
Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
id |
oai:scielo:S0259-94222015000200043 |
---|---|
record_format |
ojs |
spelling |
oai:scielo:S0259-942220150002000432016-01-29Early Christian spirituality of 'seeing the divine' in 1 Johnvan der Merwe,DirkApophatic theology and cataphatic theology both occur in the corpus Johanneum to describe the character of God. Apophatically the Gospel of John and the first epistle of John state that 'nobody has ever seen God'. Cataphatically, Jesus teaches in the Gospel that, 'Whoever has seen me has seen the Father', and in 1 John we read that after the Parousia has taken place 'we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is'. This article focuses on the cataphatic phrase 'we shall see him as he is' (1 Jn 3:2). This investigation responds to the variety of interpretations of this particular phrase, as well as to the interest in the spirituality that it could have evoked amongst the readers of this epistle. In order to gain clarity on the 'spirituality of "seeing him" in the first epistle of John', this research focuses on the mechanisms used by the elder in the text to create spiritualities in the readers, such as the composition of images in the imagination of these early Christians, the dynamic interactions between the reader and the text, as well as the dialectic of pretension and retention in the reading of a text. University of Pretoria HTS Theological Studies v.71 n.1 20152015-01-01journal articletext/htmlhttp://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0259-94222015000200043en |
institution |
SCIELO |
collection |
OJS |
country |
Sudáfrica |
countrycode |
ZA |
component |
Revista |
access |
En linea |
databasecode |
rev-scielo-za |
tag |
revista |
region |
África del Sur |
libraryname |
SciELO |
language |
English |
format |
Digital |
author |
van der Merwe,Dirk |
spellingShingle |
van der Merwe,Dirk Early Christian spirituality of 'seeing the divine' in 1 John |
author_facet |
van der Merwe,Dirk |
author_sort |
van der Merwe,Dirk |
title |
Early Christian spirituality of 'seeing the divine' in 1 John |
title_short |
Early Christian spirituality of 'seeing the divine' in 1 John |
title_full |
Early Christian spirituality of 'seeing the divine' in 1 John |
title_fullStr |
Early Christian spirituality of 'seeing the divine' in 1 John |
title_full_unstemmed |
Early Christian spirituality of 'seeing the divine' in 1 John |
title_sort |
early christian spirituality of 'seeing the divine' in 1 john |
description |
Apophatic theology and cataphatic theology both occur in the corpus Johanneum to describe the character of God. Apophatically the Gospel of John and the first epistle of John state that 'nobody has ever seen God'. Cataphatically, Jesus teaches in the Gospel that, 'Whoever has seen me has seen the Father', and in 1 John we read that after the Parousia has taken place 'we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is'. This article focuses on the cataphatic phrase 'we shall see him as he is' (1 Jn 3:2). This investigation responds to the variety of interpretations of this particular phrase, as well as to the interest in the spirituality that it could have evoked amongst the readers of this epistle. In order to gain clarity on the 'spirituality of "seeing him" in the first epistle of John', this research focuses on the mechanisms used by the elder in the text to create spiritualities in the readers, such as the composition of images in the imagination of these early Christians, the dynamic interactions between the reader and the text, as well as the dialectic of pretension and retention in the reading of a text. |
publisher |
University of Pretoria |
publishDate |
2015 |
url |
http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0259-94222015000200043 |
work_keys_str_mv |
AT vandermerwedirk earlychristianspiritualityofseeingthedivinein1john |
_version_ |
1756006185068134400 |