Divine Healing for Toxic Religion

John’s Gospel and Tainted Legacies

Karen Guth is one of few scholars today who has wrestled deeply and at length with the problem of what she calls “tainted legacies.” It might be an unfamiliar phrase, but the nouns it applies to are widely known: Steve Lawson; Ravi Zacharias; Bill Hybels; John Howard Yoder; Jean Vanier; Southern US Christianity; Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa; Crusades; Constantine; and the list goes on.

I have come to realize that the Gospel of John, my most beloved book of the Bible, is itself a tainted legacy. As Chris Blumhofer notes, “John is the absolute nadir of the New Testament treatment of Judaism.”¹ In a previous post I briefly noted a few horrendous historical examples of how Christians (at least by profession) throughout history have weaponized John against the Jewish people.

While studying Guth’s work, it occurred to me that John’s Gospel might also fit her framework for a reforming response to a tainted legacy. For, while the Fourth Gospel has been misused to justify oppression and evil, the Gospel itself portrays Judaism as a tainted legacy that misused religion to justify oppression. I am not claiming this paradigm explains or exhausts the original intent of John. However, if and to the degree that this reading fits with the grain of this Gospel, it might offer additional hope for this season of the church wrestling with tainted legacies, toxic religion, deconstruction, etc. In case any readers might be tired of me constantly writing about John (no judgment, btw), you might consider this a brief overview of Guth’s work, which will be of interest to most Once a Week readers. See footnote² for the back-cover summary of her book The Ethics of Tainted Legacies: Human Flourishing after Traumatic Pasts.

What is a tainted legacy?

According to Guth, tainted legacies have four features³:

It is “some kind of indispensable good or contribution or influence”;
That indispensable good or contribution or influence “has been tainted in a serious way by trauma of some kind”;
Because it has been tainted by serious trauma, the legacy inflicts moral injury or institutional betrayal; and
Tainted legacies have “remainders,” that is, things, whether material (like texts and objects) or immaterial (practices), that “serve as reminders of the original trauma, and they also represent deeper structural injustices that gave rise to the problem in the first place.”

How might we discern the presence of tainted legacies in the Gospel of John? My suggestion here is that 1st century Judaism, as portrayed by John, can be accurately described as a tainted legacy.⁴ Here are some preliminary observations about Judaism as a tainted legacy in John:

Indispensable good: The faith of Israel as represented by both Scripture and practice provides the deep structure of John. From beginning to end, John is constantly alluding to Israel’s Scriptures. Within the Johannine narrative, the religious leaders of Jerusalem—most often referred to as Ioudaioi as well as Pharisees and chief priests—claim reliance upon Scripture. John is also structured around the religious practices and symbols that ground Israel’s faith: synagogue and sabbath; Passover; the festivals of booths, lights, and dedication. These are indisputably good things, given by God to the people of God unto blessing for the nations.
Tainted by trauma: However good, what stands out when looking at all the instances where the Ioudaioi reference Scripture is that they only do so with the express aim of maintaining control and causing harm. Additionally, references to Jewish festivals and Sabbath practices provide narrative context for threats and acts of religious abuse. John has portrayed for his readers how trauma tainted the legacy of Israel’s faith.
Moral injury: Tainted legacies inflict moral injury or institutional betrayal. Guth uses Shay’s definition of moral injury as that which results from “a betrayal of what’s right. . . by someone who holds legitimate authority. . . in a high‐stakes situation.”⁵ This fits the narrative of John and his emphasis on the betrayal of Israel’s faith by the religious authorities. For example, when the Ioudaioi cast out the healed blind man, many scholars believe this was an act of excommunication that excluded the man not just from the synagogue but from the faith community at large and the Jerusalem temple institution. In this way, we can also describe this as institutional betrayal.
Remainders: As to remainders, consider how a Jewish Christian who had been subject to synagogue expulsion (aposynagōgos) might react to Jesus’ prediction that his followers would be banned from the synagogues (aposynagōgos, 16:2). The text of John testifies to these tainted remainders—material items (Scripture, synagogue) and immaterial practices (Sabbath, Passover)—that “serve as reminders of the original trauma, and they also represent deeper structural injustices that gave rise to the problem in the first place.”

Reforming Tainted Legacies

By focusing on legacies, Guth seeks to address issues that run deeper and extend wider than either individual figures or specific institutions.

“We have to think in terms of legacy if we are to fully acknowledge how these legacies have already formed us and if we are to pass something better on to future generations. In short, legacies highlight the need for both a retrospective approach that redresses evils of the past and a future-oriented approach that creates the structures and conditions necessary for future generations to flourish.”⁶

John’s Gospel addresses both of these needs: 1) comfort and repair to survivors of religious trauma; and 2) the need to reform figures (pastors, shepherds) and institutions (the church, or household of God) so that God’s people can flourish and live free from religious oppression. We can see this through Guth’s fourfold reforming approach to tainted legacies: “truth-telling, honoring victims’ agency, the possibility of learning, and reparations.”⁷

Truth-telling: “Being honest and transparent about past suffering—and therefore the importance of memory—is non-negotiable if suffering is to have any kind of meaning-making potential.” One example of this is the “countermemory” concept of Emilie Townes which “contests harmful narratives and stereotypes; it provides microhistories that challenge the dominant history.”⁸
Possibility of learning: Guth describes this as redemptive learning, “learning from injustices and sufferings of the past that seeks to make change for the future—a future that does not reproduce past evils.”⁹
Honoring victims’ agency: Following womanist accounts of redemptive suffering, Guth points to the need to “prioritize the dignity and ability to make meaningful moral choices in death-dealing conditions of those often reduced to mere victims.” She applies this to the Journal for Religious Ethics, which promoted the work of serial sexual abuser John Howard Yoder: “this should lead us to consider those wronged through structural forms of violence, including systemic exclusion. Whose intellectual inheritance is worthy of study and continuance but is not acknowledged or included in the pages of the JRE?”¹⁰
Reparations: For Guth, “Repair of tainted legacies requires us to address structural injustices that facilitate these legacies rather than allowing debates on symbolic repair to distract us from pursuing justice.”¹¹ Symbolic repair isn’t limited to “remainders,” such as the texts of a scholar later known to be evil and a source of trauma, like John Howard Yoder. Guth believes dealing with remainders is important, but “institutions must also make meaningful material repair.”¹² Such repair can involve material reparations to survivors, but it also about “creating a more just society” and “ways of living in the world that resist and reform systemic injustices.”¹³

Reading the Gospel of John through the lens of Guth’s reformer response might look something like the following. Many more examples could be given with additional time and space.

Truth-telling: The high point of John’s truth-telling of tainted legacies is Jesus’ glorification on the cross. The narrative of the blind man in ch. 9—who according to Colleen Conway is the figure most like Jesus in the Fourth Gospel—also tells a story that emphasizes the traumatization caused by false religion. We can see truth-telling in the plot characterizations of both Judas and Peter who, in different but similar ways, represent the wolf and the hired hand of 10:12-13. The Fourth Gospel shows a clear concern for the safety of God’s people and their need for safe shepherds. Judas presents the memory of a shepherd who, though he claimed to follow Jesus, ended up looking just like the toxic Ioudaioi. The memory of Peter also fits with #2 below.
Possibility of learning: The story of Peter portrays the dangerous possibility of a shepherd turning into a wolf who, like the Ioudaioi, resorts to the tools and methods of empire (18:10, 36). John shows how Peter learned from his imperial error, was cleansed through repentance (21:7), and became a shepherd who could be trusted to feed and lay down his life for the flock like the Good Shepherd (21:15-17; 18-19). The possibility of learning is also about meaning, finding redemptive significance from the trauma caused by a tainted legacy. This possibility is, of course, most powerfully portrayed and created by the cross and resurrection. Richard Hays describes this well in his account of the resurrection hermeneutic that allowed the disciples to re-read the temple cleansing and find new and deeper meaning to that event. Edward Wong has also presented a helpful analysis of the Thomas episode of ch. 20 in which “the scars give the wounded past of Jesus a different future, a future that is not marked by the torturers nor their inflicted wounds but by the scars of divine healing that prevail over pain and suffering.”¹⁴
Honoring victims’ agency: One of the oft noted differences between John and the synoptics is the prominence given to women and the anonymous healed blind man. These are people who experienced exclusion, not only on account of their social status, but also explicitly because of tainted religious power. One example of the first reason, social status, is shown in the seemingly unnecessary narrative comment in 4:27 that the disciples “were amazed that [Jesus] was talking with a woman.” Not only did the disciples not ask Jesus what he wanted from her, John allows the woman to speak more words (161) in this one narrative than Peter speaks (116) in the entire Gospel. The second reason or form of exclusion comes through in the stories of the woman caught in adultery (John 7.53-8.11) and the healed blind man (John 9). Both of these anonymous individuals are manipulated by the Ioudaioi for political ends through their abuse of religious goods. And both are honored by Jesus. Jesus honors the woman by speaking with her, respecting her agency to speak for her self, and bestowing agency in the command to “go and sin no more” (8:10-11). The healed blind man is honored by Jesus in participating in his own healing, washing the mud from his eyes in the pool of Siloam (9:7). The honoring and restoring of agency is further emphasized by John the narrator, granting this victim of religious oppression a central role in the Gospel. After Jesus, the character that speaks the most words is John the Baptist. The next most prominent speaker in John is the healed blind man, who speaks 185 words (in the ESV); that’s more than Peter (116), more than the Samaritan woman (161), and more than Pilate (166).
Learning and repair: These are related but distinct in that learning is more about meaning, and repair has to do with living, especially at the level of the social system (or in John’s language, the house/household of God). John systematically and comprehensively takes the indispensable religious goods that had been tainted by Judaism, and re-connects them to their true source and goal: Jesus, the theanthropic Son of the Father. The Scriptures, the feasts, and all of the religious symbols cohere in Jesus and mediate his presence to the temple-household of God. This is powerfully portrayed in the tainted temple of ch. 2, which becomes the Spirit indwelt people of God in ch. 13-21.¹⁵ The new meaning for trauma afforded by the healed scars of Jesus comes to Thomas and the other disciples in their place of fear. Fear can cause disciples to use sympathetic flight, hiding and locking doors (20:19, 26); and fear can also cause disciples to use sympathetic fight, justifying violence and attacking with swords (18:10). By helping his readers work through their fear of tainted religion, John helps his readers become “a more just society,” one where the hands of shepherds, as well as all of Jesus’ followers, hold towels instead of swords (13:14-15; 21:18-19).

Might this paradigm help with problems like the tainted legacy of the text of John which has caused unimaginable horror to Jewish people? Might this paradigm also help those wrestling with various forms of religious trauma, how they heal, and how they repair their faith? This paradigm also might guide the church in serving sufferers by A) learning from the characteristic ways in which religion turns toxic and B) becoming more and more like the Good Shepherd in fulfillment of Jeremiah 23:4, “I will raise up shepherds over them who will tend them. They will no longer be afraid or discouraged, nor will any be missing. This is the LORD’s declaration.”

Quote from Peter Ochs

“When I bring my suffering to the text of scripture, I notice its wounds, first; I am drawn to tend them; and only after being engaged in the work of ‘mending’ them do I realize that my own wounds correspond to the text’s and that the more deeply I care for the text’s wounds, the more deeply my own wounds are healed.”¹⁶

Question

What do you think of Guth’s paradigm? Does it illuminate anything for you, whether personally or with respect to contemporary issues?

1 Christopher Blumhofer, “The Gospel of John and the Future of Israel,” PhD Dissertation (Durham, NC: Duke University, 2017), 382.

2 “What do we do when a beloved comedian known as 'America's Dad' is convicted of sexual assault? Or when we discover that the man who wrote 'all men are created equal' also enslaved hundreds of people? Or when priests are exposed as pedophiles? From the popular to the political to the profound, each day brings new revelations that respected people, traditions, and institutions are not what we thought they were. Despite the shock that these disclosures produce, this state of affairs is anything but new. Facing the concrete task of living well when our best moral resources are not only contaminated but also potentially corrupting is an enduring feature of human experience. In this book, Karen V. Guth identifies 'tainted legacies' as a pressing contemporary moral problem and ethical challenge. Constructing a typology of responses to compromised thinkers, traditions, and institutions, she demonstrates the relevance of age-old debates in Christian theology for those who confront legacies tarnished by the traumas of slavery, racism, and sexual violence.”

3 Quotes from interview by Matthew Shaddle, https://windowlight.substack.com/p/interview-karen-guth.

4 The “as portrayed by John” must be emphasized. John makes extensive use of the literary technique of characterization, in which individuals and groups are portrayed through highlighted traits. The characterization of “the Jews” (I prefer transliterating Ioudaioi) is not a historical description of Jewish people. This does not mean John’s characterizations are inaccurate. However, the characterization functions within the narrative to develop John’s plot and literary aims, and readers err when they divorce characterization from that plot. Eg, John 8:44 is not a timeless truth about Jewish people, nor is it even a description of Jewish people in the text or in 1st century Jerusalem.

5 Karen Guth (2018), “Moral injury and the ethics of teaching tainted legacies,” Teaching Theology & Religion Volume 21 (3), 198.

6 Karen Guth (2023), “Tainted Legacies and the Journal of Religious Ethics.” Journal of Religious Ethics 51, 678.

7 Ibid., 683.

8 Ibid., 685.

9 Ibid., 686.

10 Ibid.

11 Ibid.

12 Ibid., 686-687.

13 Ibid., 687.

14 Edward Wong (2023), “From Wounds to Scars: The Embodiment of a Forwarded Past through the Body Marks of Jesus in John 20,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament, 46(2), 212.

15 See Mary Coloe, Dwelling in the Household of God.

16 Peter Ochs, “The Bible’s Wounded Authority,” in ed. William Brown, Engaging Biblical Authority (Westminster John Knox Press, 2007), 117; quoted in Nathan Hershberger, “Tending Scripture’s Wounds: Suffering, Moral Formation, and the Bible,” PhD Dissertation (Durham, NC: Duke University, 2022), 72.