Dear Catholic Exchange:
Hello! A priest says he reads Raymond Brown faithfully and agrees with him. In his homily, Father said that the Gospel of John, the three letters of St. John and the book of Revelation were not written by St. John the Apostle whose day we were celebrating. All of these writings were probably written by a group of men, the Johnites (I am not sure if this is the correct spelling). On the EWTN mass that same day, the homily gave all the credit to St. John the Apostle. When I asked Father. — why the discrepancy? He laughed and said the priests on EWTN were not theologians. What? Father said his homily statements came from Raymond Brown's book. So who is telling the full truth? Please help me.
Pax Christi,
Susanna Matrisciano
Dear Mrs. Matrisciano,
Peace in Christ!
The Church has no official position on the authorship of any particular book of the Bible. Indeed Dei Verbum no. 7 (the Vatican II Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation) in discussing the authorship of the New Testament writings said that “it was done by those apostles and other men associated with the apostles who, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, committed the message of salvation to writing” (cf DV no. 18). This idea of “apostolic men” as opposed to apostles properly so-called was put forth to leave open the possibility of revision of traditional theories of authorship. It is important to remember the inspired nature of all the Biblical text which is a dogma of the Catholic faith and that the inspired character remains regardless of who the human authors were. It is also worth remembering that questions of Biblical authorship are basically historical questions which do not directly concern doctrines of faith or morals.
Concerning the priests on EWTN, it is difficult to know what they were getting at (not having seen the broadcast). They may have been just attributing authorship to John as a manner of speaking since if John did not write these books whom else would we attribute them to? On the other hand, they may believe in the traditional view of Johannine authorship which is of course quite possible to hold and defend.
For one thing the style and the vocabulary of the Johannine epistles is quite similar to that of the fourth Gospel. These features in 1 John (such as the great contrast between light and darkness, the extensive prologue, the stress on love, the treatment of water and blood) are features found elsewhere only in John's Gospel. These suggest a similar authorship. Indeed even scholars who deny Johannine authorship based on assumptions about the book's theology, acknowledge that the author of 1 John was someone very close to the author of the fourth Gospel.
Johannine authorship for the Book of Revelation is a tougher sell but there are reasons to suggest at least a very close relationship between this book and the Gospel of John. The Lamb of God theme and the extensive use of Ezekiel allusions are two features that are unique to these works. Further John's Gospel has no “mini apocalypse” such as we find in the Mt. Olivet discourse recorded in the other three Gospels (Mt 24, Mk 13, Lk. 21.) This suggests that John had perhaps intended a full-scale apocalypse that we see in the Book of Revelation. The problem however with attributing John's authorship to Revelation is the vastly different literary style — the author of Revelation writes in a very semitic Greek which differs considerably in syntax from the rest of the Johannine books. Further, the ancient authority Irenaeus seems to suggest that John in fact died before Revelation was written. Thus belief in Johannine authorship of Revelation was not universal even in the early Church. A few other Church fathers denied it as well such as Gregory of Nanzianus, Cyril of Jersualem and John Chrysostom.
As Catholics, perhaps we should make our own decision on these sorts of questions based on the evidence. We should not simply defend John's authorship because it is the pious thing to do nor should we immediately reject it because to do so is now trendy in certain circles. We should consider the facts perhaps giving some benefit of the doubt to the weight of the tradition and make up our minds accordingly.
United in the Faith,
Pete Brown
Information Specialist
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