Matthew E. Sousa. Sin, the Human Predicament, and Salvation in the Gospel of John

In this monograph, Matthew Sousa offers a coherent account of the human predicament in the Gospel of John and considers the implications for Johannine soteriology. For Sousa, “the human predicament in the Gospel of John is a way or manner of life” and the Johannine concept of salvation is “a process that involves the transformation of what believers do and how they live in relationship with God and others” (p. 16, emphasis original).The introductory chapter challenges interpretations of the Gospel that equate unbelief with sin. For Sousa, this results in two equally implausible results: either sin is “deemed not to be a moral or ethical category” (but is rather epistemic-existential) or sin is “deemed to be the source and cause of immoral behavior” (p. 2). First, such views fail to account for the problem of sin prior to the advent of Jesus. Second, since any construal of the human predicament has concomitant implications for the understanding of salvation, both views effectively view the emergence of belief as the resolution to the human predicament. Sousa argues that such conceptions of sin and salvation miss the mark. Instead, Sousa sets out to demonstrate that the human predicament is a wayward way of life that precedes the incarnation and continues to influence humans even after the emergence of belief.Chapter 2 offers an exegesis of John’s prologue in close concert with the body of the Gospel. Sousa develops the central claim that “the human predicament is ultimately discerned and defined in the Gospel of John . . . in the light of Jesus, who is the ‘solution’” (p. 21). On Sousa’s reading, Christology clarifies anthropology, even as soteriology elucidates hamartiology. Describing light and darkness as two contrasting ways of life, Sousa introduces his soteriological dictum that Jesus-as-light “realizes in himself the way of life that leads to and is eternal life” (p. 48, cf. pp. 21, 35, 96). In contrast, the darkness of the cosmos and the ignorance of those who inhabit it are ethical categories that describe an evil and disobedient way of life. On these terms, sin and salvation, the human predicament and its solution, are eminently related to what humans do—how they live in relation to God and others—not merely what they (dis)believe.Through an exegesis of John 5, chapter 3 examines illness, disability, and death as aspects of the human predicament. In line with his overall thesis, Sousa argues here that the human predicament lies in “the way human beings live corporeally” and is “not wholly rectified or resolved in the emergence of belief” (p. 49). By defining disability as the “social experience of impairment” (p. 51), Sousa emphasizes the location of illness as part of a sinful ecosystem, the way of the cosmos perpetuated by humans. The lame man at the pool of Bethesda is “physically debilitated” and, importantly, “socially dissociated” due to his exclusion from the temple (p. 57). Thus, while salvation for the man involves physical healing, Sousa emphasizes the fullness of life that comes from his reintegration into communal and religious life. The chapter ends with a definition of death not as a physical reality but as a way of life, the “direction and orientation” of a person’s life (p. 68).Chapter 4 sets out to understand the problem of sin vis-à-vis the concept of belief. On Sousa’s reading, the term “sin” is “polysemous,” understood as both wrongdoing (i.e., a wrong way of life) and the guilt thereby incurred (p. 72). Although guilt is resolved in the emergence of belief, liberation from the sinful way of life is still to come. Thus, belief is not punctiliar but a process—a process that some will abandon. Salvation is “a liberation from sin . . . that comes to fruition through remaining in and keeping [Jesus’s] word” (p. 84). Believers must therefore continually resist the way of life to which they were previously enslaved and await future liberation.Only 100 pages, Sousa’s book lends itself to two different types of reading. If one disregards the footnotes, the book is theologically constructive and monologic in approach, offering a cohesive account of John’s understanding of sin and salvation. If one considers the footnotes, Sousa’s argument is dialogic, engaging closely with both patristic and modern interpretation of the Gospel. Only on this level, for instance, can one gain a real sense of Sousa’s careful and serious engagement with the influence of Bultmann in the interpretation of the Gospel. Both readings are instructive and enjoyable. Through the former, Sousa shows readers the forest of John’s theology; through the latter, he proves that he also loves the trees of its interpretation.Although I appreciate the ethical emphases inherent to Sousa’s description of sin and salvation as ways of life, it is surprising that a work on salvation in the Gospel of John makes such infrequent reference to the crucifixion. In this regard, perhaps Sousa could have given more attention to the soteriological function of the Johannine signs, an element missing from his exegesis of John 5. If the Johannine signs are signs of life—the life that only God has in himself, made available to the world in Jesus’s glorification—then it is just a relation to the divine life that gives rise to the way of life that can properly be called eternal life. Sousa notes well that the lame man at the pool of Bethesda is excluded from the temple, but in the symbolic world of Israel, exclusion from the temple represents separation from the life of God. Just as Israel’s way of life in covenantal relation to the life of God was enabled by purification and atonement, so too is the salvific way of life described by Sousa enabled by the glorification of Jesus. Only through the crucifixion is the human predicament—separation from the life of God—resolved by living the right way of life in relation to the God who has life in himself and who has made that life available by sending his Son.