The Developing Tension Between Divine Presence and Absence

Continuing to follow the threads established by the previous chapter, this chapter highlights four passages (6:22–71; 7:11–8:30; 12:20–36; and 13:31–38) typically excluded from studies on John’s temple motif to demonstrate that John’s Gospel evinces a pervasive concern for divine presence and absence. I propose that John describes two objections to the Gospel’s claim that Jesus is the enfleshed divine presence, which dominate the narrative’s major conflicts: (1) Jesus’s humanity and (2) Jesus’s impending absence. Scholars rarely focus on the second of these objections, which I argue features prominently in the narrative. I contend that John depicts Jesus’s absence as a problem both for those still considering the Gospel’s claims as well as those struggling with faithfulness amid Jesus’s absence. Consequently, the authorial audience could perceive a developing tension between the Gospel’s emphasis on the significance of Jesus’s presence and their own lived reality amid Jesus’s physical absence, a tension which John amplifies by stressing that Jesus’s absence was an obstacle to belief even for the narrative’s characters.