Indicators of the church in John’s metaphor of the vine
Abstract
This article aims to answer the question of what belongs to the essence of the church, as God
intended it to be, by identifying certain indicators of the essence of the church through a study
of one of the central metaphors of the New Testament: the vine in the Gospel of John. Through
structural analyses, commentary and metaphorical analyses, several indicators of unity as
part of the essence of the church emerge in this metaphor. These indicators are the primacy
(or authority) of Christ, trinitarian balance, equality, interdependence, inclusivity, growth and
unity (in diversity).
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- Faculty of Theology [977]