The Divine Name in the Gospel of John: Significance and Impetus

One of the distinctive features of the Fourth Gospel is the emphasis it places on the name (

) of God. As the earliest Christian texts already exhibit a shift toward Jesus’s name as the cultic or divine name, what might have motivated the Evangelist to this recovery of the divine name category? Joshua J. F. Coutts argues that the divine name acquired particular significance through the Evangelist’s reading of Isaiah, which, in combination with the polemical experience and pastoral needs of early Christians, formed the impetus for his interest in and emphasis on the divine name.