Reconstruction from Weakness

Part 1: Razing the Household of God

Everyone is talking and writing about deconstruction. What about reconstruction? In case you missed it, last week

Daniel L. Bacon

started off a series of joint open letters we are writing about reconstructing after deconstruction. Our basic question is, what visions does Scripture offer us for reconstructing faith? I hope you’ll not only follow along but also join in through comments and discussion!

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Dear Daniel,

Thank you for your first letter on Paul and the foundations of reconstruction. As we agreed, our letters will be waiting for more direct replies until our respective Pauline and Johannine visions are filled out. For now, this is more like ships passing in the night carrying letters meant for the captains of those ships. I would love to dive right into the resonances I find in your first letter. The echoes are loud and glorious, and it will take some restraint to focus on my material in the writings of John. To help me with that focus, I want to start on a very personal note.

I survived spiritual abuse three years ago because Jesus met me through the Spirit-taught words of the Gospel of John. It all started with one simple verse: “When Jesus heard that they had thrown the man out, he went and found him” (9:35, my paraphrase). Gleaning the healing grain of the Fourth Gospel started near the center in ch. 9 and the story of the blind man’s experience of spiritual abuse. That gleaning expanded in concentric circles, first in ch. 10 in Jesus’ words about good and false shepherds, and then outward into the rest of the Gospel. I had no idea at first that the entire Gospel could be read from the perspective of religious trauma. But the more I found narratives and teachings that spoke to my own story, the more I tested trauma as an interpretive lens, and the more I tested, the more confirming results I received back.¹

As I had no idea John is all about trauma, and specifically religious trauma, I also had no idea that John is all about deconstruction. But it is. And I want to share with you personally about how John’s Gospel—and the Son who speaks in this Gospel through the Spirit—has facilitated my deconstruction and reconstruction.

To make sense of my story, we need some scaffolding—a framework that will allow us to climb down into the excavated ground within John from which Jesus is building me back up. The scaffolding will take up my first letter; my second will get more specific with John’s excavating and rebuilding tools; and my third will relate some specific personal examples from my journey.

Woodcut from Southern Germany, 1460/70, anonymous. As I’ll explain in future letters, it won’t do to use art depictions of the apostle John (traditionally associated with the Gospel of John) like your image of Paul. The Fourth Gospel was written by a community, not a single apostle. This scene from John 19:26-27 is the climax of the communal Gospel, where Jesus rebuilds/recreates the temple-household of God, and it’s highly significant that both man and woman are represented.

What do we even mean by deconstruction?

Ian Harber

, in his recent book Walking through Deconstruction, offers this definition:

“Deconstruction is a crisis of faith that leads to the questioning of core doctrines and untangling of cultural ideologies that settles in a faith that is different from before.”²

If deconstruction is fundamentally a “crisis of faith,” then we would expect John’s Gospel to address that. Although scholars endlessly debate the nature of the crisis, most agree that John was written for a community in crisis, whether that be competing faith ideologies after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, expulsion from the Jewish synagogue, relocation to Ephesus in the wake of that persecution, or some combination of those. Some go so far as saying John was actually written to cause a crisis.³

Crisis is a great lens for understanding the power of the Fourth Gospel to bring about deconstruction and reconstruction. That crisis can be told with reference to those in power, like Nicodemus and “the Jews” (and even Peter). And it can also be told from the perspective of weakness and those who come to see in the very same crisis that blinds those who claim to see (9:35-41). For the man born blind of John 9, it wasn’t so much a crisis of faith as it was a crisis that created faith (more on that in my next letter).

Deconstruction Ground Zero

Harber describes 1 Corinthians 3:11-15 as “ground zero” in his understanding of deconstruction. He even says that in this passage “Paul gives us the clearest description of deconstruction in the Bible.”⁴ While it’s not a competition, I believe John beats Paul for “the clearest description of deconstruction in the Bible” because the entire Gospel, not just five verses, is all about tearing down the trappings of death that cling to the faith and household of God.⁵ To see this, we start with John 2:19, where Jesus said to the Jerusalem authorities,

“Destroy this temple, and I will raise it up in three days.”

John clearly explains that Jesus “was speaking about the temple of his body” (2:21), so I understand if you’re initially skeptical. What does that have to do with deconstruction?

John has placed the temple cleansing narrative at the beginning of his gospel, unlike the Synoptics where it immediately precedes Jesus’ arrest and crucifixion. This serves to frame Jesus’ ministry from beginning to end as one of purging the corrupted religion of his Jewish people. Later narratives will continue this theme and imagery.

“In John, [the temple cleansing] is transformed into a paradigmatic episode with strong symbolic overtones which are closely linked with the whole of the Johannine presentation of Jesus’ identity and ministry.”⁶

This is the foundation of our scaffolding: the temple episode of 2:13-25 is a paradigm for all of John. Hold on to that word “paradigm,” which will show up again when I walk through key temple imagery and look at the related word hypodeigma in John 13.

Jesus’ statement about destroying and rebuilding the temple is made right after he cleansed the temple (2:13-18).

“John is the only canonical Gospel to identify Jesus explicitly as a temple...John is also the only Gospel to juxtapose the cleansing of the temple with a word about destruction. Jesus’ action in the temple has as its goal the purification of his Father’s house, but the saying about the destruction of the temple applies to Jesus himself. That is to say, there is one temple that must be purged of the trappings of buying and selling so that it can indeed be the temple, the house of God; there is another temple that will be destroyed and raised up again. This other temple is Jesus himself.”⁷

A corollary from Marianne Meye Thompson’s observation is that the purging of the temple is theologically related to the destruction of Jesus. They are symbolically similar, even though they are different images. Thus, cleansing is a form of destruction/deconstruction.

The topic of Jesus’ death is plotted throughout the entire Gospel. Implied by the connection between temple cleansing and Jesus’ death in ch. 2, we can see how the juxtaposed topic of the cleansing of the temple is also a continuing theme, running alongside the ever-impending “hour” of the cross. The continuation of the cleansing theme isn’t overt, though, and non-Jewish readers will easily miss this (especially readers who fail to become re-readers, which I’ll explain in another letter).

Deconstructing the Temple

John tells us that Jesus “drove everyone out of the temple with their sheep and oxen” (2:15). Matching deed with word, Jesus explains why: “Stop turning my Father’s house into a marketplace!” (2:16). A simple but important follow-up question is, did they stop turning the Father’s house into a marketplace? And the simple answer is, No. The work of driving worldliness out of the temple was no more completed that day than was the still-awaited destruction of the Temple Son. The remainder of John, especially chs. 5-10, is written to identify and remove what is false from God’s temple household. Ie, deconstruction. Or, if I may use some more literal translations of Jesus’ word for “destroy” (lyō), Jesus loosens, unties, and undoes whatever is false and decayed in God’s house. Lyō takes on the meaning of “destroy” when the object being untied is something like a wall that is unusable after being “loosened” and hence destroyed.⁸ But obviously lyō has a symbolic sense in John 2:19. The correlation between the temple cleansing and Jesus’ statement “lyō this temple” implies, in addition to the death of Jesus, a loosening and unbinding of the walls that hold up the Jerusalem temple system. Not literally, of course, but figuratively, and this figure aligns perfectly with the contemporary metaphor of deconstruction/reconstruction. Perhaps we can even combine those into one word, using John’s love of double meaning: Jesus razes the household of God. That is, raze to the ground (deconstruct), but also raise it up again (reconstruct).⁹

As we are focusing on reconstruction (raising), I won’t get into detail on the deconstruction (razing) motif here. For a detailed study of how John’s presentation deconstructs Judaism in the four Jewish celebrations of Sabbath, Passover, Tabernacles, and Dedication, see my series on liturgy and religious trauma.

Reconstructing the Temple

Jesus’ statement “Destroy this temple” sets of the theme of deconstruction throughout John. The second half of that statement, “and I will raise it up in three days,” is the fountain of the reconstruction theme. In what follows, we will see that this reconstruction applies not just to Jesus, who is the fulfillment of the Jewish temple/liturgical system, but also to the community of Jesus’ followers. It might take a few re-readings, but the careful re-reader of John will be able to trace the developing idea of Jesus reconstructing not just the temple of his physical body, but the temple household of the children of God.

For the sake of space, I am going to take just a few passages which develop this temple/body/house reconstruction/raising imagery in John. I hope you will see what I have come to see: just as John unbinds and rebuilds the Jewish faith tradition as embodied in Jesus, so too John razes and rebuilds the very essence of the church and those who belong to the household of God.

John 1:45, 46, 51 Philip found Nathanael and told him, “We have found the one Moses wrote about in the law (and so did the prophets): Jesus the son of Joseph, from Nazareth.” “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Nathanael asked him...[51] Then he said, "Truly I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”

What I’m about to show you here is one of those details that requires re-reading. Initially, Nathanael’s reference to Nazareth is snide and pejorative. But the twofold reference to Nazareth has an echo in the arrest and crucifixion where Jesus is called “the Nazarene” three times. This is a unique Johannine emphasis, including the unique Johannine addition to the sign put up by the cross.¹⁰

18:4-5, 7 “Who is it that you’re seeking? ” 5 “Jesus the Nazarene,” they answered. 7 Then he asked them again, “Who is it that you’re seeking? ” “Jesus the Nazarene,” they said.

19:19 Pilate also had a sign made and put on the cross. It said: JESUS THE NAZARENE, THE KING OF THE JEWS.

Mary Coloe shows that the thrice repeated name for Jesus “the Nazarene” alludes to the Branch of Zechariah 6.¹¹ It is foretold that this figure “will branch out in his place and build the LORD’s temple. Yes, he will build the LORD’s temple; he will bear royal splendor and will sit on his throne and rule” (Zech 6:12-13).

“Evidence from the Targums and Qumran scrolls support the hypothesis that by the fist century C.E. the term ‘Nazarene’ had developed associations with a Davidic Messiah who would build the eschatological temple.”¹²

John uses this tradition to emphasize Jesus fulfilling Zechariah’s prophecy of the Branch temple builder at the precise time when the temple body of Jesus was being destroyed.

“Jesus is condemned and dies as the Nazarene temple-builder. As his body is lifted up on the cross, his prophetic words from chapter 2 are fulfilled. The temple of his body is destroyed, but as ‘the Nazarene’ he is also raising up a new temple.”¹³

So when a re-reader comes back to 1:46 and Nathanael’s question, “Can anything good come from Nazareth,” Jesus’ answer takes on new significance: Then he said, “Truly I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man” (1:51). This echoes Genesis 28 where God gives Jacob a vision of angels ascending and descending a ladder between heaven and earth, and Jacob names the place Bethel, “house of God” (Genesis 28:12, 17, 19). An attentive Jewish reader would easily hear the temple/tabernacle imagery in that allusion, and then be able to link the Nazarene temple builder connection in 19:19 to Nathanael’s question about Nazareth. Indeed something good can come from Nazareth: the One who will build a new and better temple-bridge between heaven and earth, first through his own body, and then through the bodies of the reborn children of God.

I start with this example of John’s temple building typology because it provides an inclusio, showing the centrality of this motif from the beginning to the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry. The next two examples come from the farewell discourse of John 13-17 (and oh how I wish we could slowly walk through so many more of these examples! It’s stunning how central this theme is to John, once we know to look for it).

13:14-15 So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. [15] For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done for you.

John’s word for “example,” hypodeigma, only occurs one time in the Greek OT in Ezekiel 42:15. A similar word, paradiegma [ie paradigm], occurs more often, and according to Mary Coloe is synonymous.¹⁴ Ezekiel 42 is in the middle of a detailed vision of the heavenly Jerusalem and temple starting in ch. 40. In 42:15 the vision of the inside of the house (temple) was completed, and the angel measures “the plan [ie model, hypodeigma] of the house all around in its arrangement.”

So Coloe writes, “Ezekiel is shown a vision of the temple as the model [hypodeigma] of the new house of God (42:15). It is this meaning of hypodeigma as a prototype of the physical model of the tabernacle and the Father’s House that I believe lies behind the Johannine use.”¹⁵

This metaphor of temple building plans applies not just to Jesus’ act of footwashing, but to all of the farewell discourse of John 13-17. As we see in the repeated emphasis of love throughout those chapters, love is the blueprint for God’s temple people.¹⁶

14:2-3 “In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? If I go away and prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to myself, so that where I am you may be also.”

We need a new (that is, reconstructed) way of understanding Jesus’ familiar words here. He isn’t talking about rooms in heaven. This isn’t a funeral sermon text. Jesus is talking about rooms in the new temple which the Father sent the Son to create in and among their Spirit-indwelt family. “Preparing a place” fits perfectly within a reconstructing framework. However, the imagery has become highly relational rather than physical/spacial.¹⁷

“[T]he phrase ‘in my father’s household there are many dwellings’ is best understood to mean a series of interpersonal relationships made possible because of the indwellings of the Father, Jesus, and the Paraclete with the believer. The divine indwelling in the midst of a believing community makes it appropriate to speak of the community as a living temple.”¹⁸

Conclusion: The Johannine Hypodigm

Words are funny. Paradigm is a common English word, pulled straight from the Greek word paradeigma. The prefix para and the noun deigma literally mean “shown alongside.” But even though hypodeigma is used synonymously in the Bible, we have no corresponding word “hypodigm.”¹⁹ Perhaps we can use hypodigm to mean “shown underneath.” John 2:19 is the Johannine hypodigm: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” This statement shows that underneath the good news of Jesus, according to the Fourth Gospel, is a hypodigmatic framework of razing and rebuilding the temple people of God. If that hypodigm was just as relevant for Jesus’ original disciples as it was for the Johannine community around 90 AD, then it is just as relevant for us today. The work of razing the household of God is not a “once for all” reality like the cross. Protestants confess that because the church has been reformed, the church must always be reforming.²⁰ So too the church as being rebuilt must always be rebuilding. I look forward to sharing more in my next letter about the Spirit-inspired strategies John uses for that reconstructing work.

Yours sincerely,

Aaron

Quotes from Thomas Aquinas, Mary Coloe, and C.H. Dodd

“The end of this Gospel is also clear, and it is that the faithful become the temple of God, and become filled with the majesty of God.”²¹

“As one Temple is raised up on the cross, a new Temple is being raised up at the foot of the cross.”²²

“The Fourth Gospel may well prove to be the keystone of an arch which at present fails to hold together.”²³

1. Over a year into this study I learned about a new PhD dissertation on this very approach to John by Hong Konger theologian Edward Wong. Titled “Representations of Trauma in the Fourth Gospel” (University of Edinburgh, 2023), Wong persuasively demonstrates the ways in which trauma is pervasively embedded in John.

2. Ian Harber, Walking through Deconstruction: How to Be a Companion in a Crisis of Faith (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2025). See excerpt from IVP.

3. See Francis Moloney, The Living Voice of the Gospels, 238; Christopher Blumhofer, “The Gospel of John and the Future of Israel,” PhD Dissertation (Durham, NC: Duke University, 2017), 19. For the second part of the phrase “crisis of faith,” we must note that in John, similar to the rest of the NT but especially in John, faith is relational. It’s not a matter of believing in Jesus, but believing into Jesus (see consistent use of the preposition eis (“into”) rather than en (“in”); John 1:12; 2:11; 2:23, etc.). Obviously, that relational belief into Jesus also includes right theological belief about Jesus as God the Son, the Messiah sent from the Father into the world (John 1:1, 18; 11:27; 20:28).

4. Harber, Walking through Deconstruction, Audible audiobook, 00:43:41-00:44:26.

5. Of course, with your focus on Paul, feel free to be competitive on this point!

6. Jörg Frey, Theology and History in the Fourth Gospel, 132. See Mary Coloe, God Dwells with Us: Temple Imagery in the Fourth Gospel, 180.

7. Marianne Meye Thompson, “Jesus and the Victory of God Meets the Gospel of John,” in Jesus, Paul and the People of God: A Theological Dialogue with N.T. Wright, ed. Nicholas Perrin and Richard Hays (Downers Grove, IVP Academic: 2011), 33.

8. Cf Ephesians 2:14; Josephus, The Jewish War, 6.1.4; 1 Esdras 1:52; Sibylline Oracles 3:509. In parallel statements, though in false testimony and derision against Jesus, the Synoptics use a stronger form, katalyō, that more clearly and more often means destruction (Mark 14:57-58; Matt 26:60-61; Luke 21:6).

9. Of course, we could just use the more traditional word “reformation,” which incorporates both aspects of tearing down and rebuilding, but that concept must itself be de/reconstructed.

10. See Matthew 27:37, Mark 15:26, and Luke 23:38, where the title is simply “The King of the Jews.”

11. Following Coloe, I modified the CSB translation from “Jesus of Nazareth” to “Jesus the Nazarene,” which is simply a literal translation of the Greek: Ἰησοῦν τὸν Ναζωραῖον (18:5, 7); Ἰησοῦς ὁ Ναζωραῖος (19:19).

12. Coloe, “Raising the Johannine Temple,” ABR 48 (2000), 53.

13. Coloe, “Raising the Johannine Temple,” 54.

14. Mary Coloe, John 11-21, 369; see Coloe, God Dwells with Us, 137.

15. Coloe, John 11-21, 369.

16. Coloe, John 11-21, 371.

17. Coloe, God Dwells with Us, 164-165.

18. Coloe, John 11-21, 388.

19. At least not in every day usage. Apparently a paleontologist coined the word in 1940: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hypodigm.

20. Ecclesia reformanda, quia reformata, or the more commonly known shorthand, semper reformanda.

21. Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Gospel of John, Chapters 1–5, trans. Fabian Larcher and James A. Weisheipl (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2010), 5.

22. Coloe, God Dwells with Us, 219.

23. C.H. Dodd, Quoted by John Painter, “ The Fourth Gospel and the founder of Christianity,” in Engaging with C. H. Dodd on the Gospel of John : Sixty Years of Tradition and Interpretation, 264.