It remains only for us to summarize our findings and to attempt to reflect on what implications this study may have for future Johannine scholarship and for the use of John in contemporary theology.

Summary

In our first chapter, we saw that there are a number of possible solutions to the problem of why Johannine Christology developed along the distinctive lines that it did. We found it necessary to reject the approaches which we categorized under the rubric of ‘History of Religions’, since these did insufficient justice to the Jewishness of Johannine thought and its close continuity with earlier Christian ideas and motifs. The suggestion that John's Christology developed organically out of earlier traditions was given a more positive evaluation, but was nonetheless felt to do insufficient justice to the extent of the developments, and the need for some sort of catalyst or explanatory factor in order to understand the development. The suggestion that a particular individual's insight shaped the Johan-nine portrait of Christ was not denied, but we nonetheless felt it necessary to look for a different level of explanation, one which gave greater attention to the setting in which the author wrote and the factors which inspired or stimulated him to write as he did. We thus adopted a sociological approach, suggesting, in line with Berger and Luckmann's model of legitimation, that the Fourth Evangelist adapted and developed the traditions which he inherited as part of a defence of his (and his community's) beliefs against objections raised by Jewish opponents.