Reading John’s Gospel From a Glocal-Mission Perspective

Abstract

With a sense of postmodern understanding of the rejection of absolute truth and the embrace of relativism, the Fourth Gospel has to be treated with a balanced understanding of it. The present essay attempts to answer the following questions: Does John’s Gospel bridge the gap between the ‘local’ and the ‘global’? How does John attempt to present his theology with a gnomic intent? Does John contribute something significant to the contextual realities of the postmodern world? And how does John’s theology function at the micro-, meso-, and macro-levels of his narrative framework? Analyzing the entire gospel verse-by-verse is not the concern of this essay. Rather we will consider three important aspects seriously: first, the ‘global’ aspects of the Gospel in relation to the ‘local’ concerns; second, the Trinitarian nature of John’s theology and its significance in a glocalized and at the same time postmodern cultural context; and third, the mission theology of John in relation to a globalized cosmic order. The task of the essay is not analyzing the Gospel as a whole. It is rather to develop an interpretative frame for the Gospel in a globalized and postmodern social context.