DeConick A.D

154
JOHN AND THE DARK COSMOS
God of the Jews who gave the laws to his people. They thought that the
God of the Jews gave “miserable” laws to be obeyed because he himself
was wicked, associated with darkness and the world (1 John 1:5–6, 2:15–17).
Those who withdrew from the congregation believed that the God
Jesus preached is to be contrasted with the lawgiver God. Jesus’ Father
is a God of love who gave a new commandment, to love one another.
The God of the Jews is a malicious God who gave the old Mosaic laws
to burden people. Jesus’ Father is the true God, whom they claimed to
“know” (2:3–6).
The people who had left the congregation believed that they were part
of a sinless generation that was genetically connected to the true Father.
All who were members of the church were part of a pure and perfected
sinless generation born of God, seeded with his spirit. Opposing this generation
were the children of the devil, because they were similar to the
devil in nature. Based on their interpretation of John 8:44, they assumed
that this wicked generation comprised unbelievers fathered by the God of
the Jews (1 John 3:4–10).
Jesus, according to this side of the debate, was not a sacrificial victim.
Rather, he was a great power, the Logos, who descended from on high
and became flesh at the moment of Jesus’ baptism, by water only (5:8).
The spirit of God descended at Jesus’ baptism and was released at his
crucifixion (John 1:32–33, 19:30; compare with Matthew 3:16, 27:50; Luke
3:22, 23:46).
This characterization of Jesus is one of the oldest views of Jesus, created
by Christians out of the old Jewish tradition that God’s spirit anointed
righteous men such as prophets and had in fact rested on a prophet in
each generation (Wisdom of Solomon 7:27). The author of the Gospel of
Mark knows this old teaching and applies it to Jesus, insisting that it was
at Jesus’ baptism that God’s spirit resided in him (Mark 1:10). Matthew
and Luke likewise know this old tradition, but they attempt to supplant it
with secondary stories of a virgin birth.
Clearly, the teachings of those people who left the elder’s church are in
line with the Gnostic predisposition of the fourth Gospel outlined earlier
in this chapter. The view of the elder actually represents the newer of the
two positions.
So where did the more recent view of the elder and his supporters
come from, and how did it gain enough popularity to challenge and usurp