Peter Costello
Divine Diamond: Facets of the Fourth Gospel
by Kevin O’Gorman SMA (Messenger Publications, €14.95/£12.95)
The writings attributed to St John the Apostle have long stood out in contrast to the synoptic gospels. Indeed there were those who thought that the apocalypse of St John of Patmos attributed to the same author should not be added to list of canonical writings when it was established in 382AD. But today, the authorship is denied to John the Apostle by most scholars.
Even so the Gospel according to John presents its own complication. Fr Kevin O’Gorman in introducing his book remarks that since the 3rd Century it has been known as the ‘spiritual Gospel’, and admits that it can often seem intimidating. Certainly it abandons the narrative lines of the other gospels for a more mystical exploration.
By his title Fr O’Gorman wishes to suggest to his readers that it is a multifaceted text, not easy to quickly understand, but in which many themes are being explored. He believes that the themes opened up by the author of the Gospel “are inexhaustibly fresh and challenging”.
He approaches these through a series of ten chapters on the controlling ideas of light, life, truth, home, joy and so on down to the theme of love. Every reader will be able to recognise the immediate relevance of these, and still admit their complexity. Light for instance can be broken up by the prism of experience into the many hues of life.
Fr O’Gorman’s experience of the Gospel has been enlarged by his wide reading in the modern scholarship on the text. He shares the insights he has gained with his readers. But with the understanding that what is written here is very far from the last word. The readers will have to test what he writes and what the Gospel seems to say in the light of their own experience. This book, which runs to some 85 pages, is a short one, but it is opening up ways of thinking and understanding (or attempting to understand) that may prove to be endless, but also endlessly enriching.
The author is a lecturer in moral theology at the Pontifical University at St Patrick’s College Maynooth, and his experience as a teacher helps make this a very approachable book despite its complex material.