Monday, March 13, 2017

What is faith in the Gospel of John?

If we understand that signs manifest the character of God and show God's gracious activity at work in the world through Jesus, faith can be defined as faithfulness in trusting the God who is made known in Jesus God's anointed one.

We can examine the components of this definition:

First, faith is faithfulness. There is in the Fourth Gospel an emphasis on the importance of persevering, continuing, being steadfast in faith. That is the burden of John's use of the word menein, for example. It is those disciples who "continue" in Jesus' word who will know the truth and be set free (8:31); those who "abide" in the vine who will bear fruit (15:4-7). Jesus' farewell discourses are intended to keep the disciples from falling away (16:1), from becoming like the disciples of chapter 6 who "withdrew and no longer went about with him" (6:66).

Second, faith is faith in the God who is made known in Jesus God's anointed one. Even where the person of Jesus seems to be the explicit object of faith (e.g., 8:25, 28, 58; 17:3; 20:30-31), that faith is directed through Jesus to God. Jesus alone speaks the words of life (6:68), but those words communicate life because the living God has given life to the son who in turn confers it on believers (5:21-26; 6:32-33, 57). Ultimately life comes from God, but through Jesus; and faith which leads to life is faith through Jesus, but in God.

Third, faith is steadfastness in trusting the God who is made known in Jesus God's anointed one. John's language for faith is language of personal relationship and experience: one loves (13:34; 14:15, 21, 23-24; 15:12), knows (14:7; 17:30), obeys (14:21-24; 15:12-14; 17:6), lives in vital fellowship (14:23, 15:1-7) or in personal communion (17:21, 23), is taught (6:45; 14:25; 16:13), has peace (14:1, 27-28) and joy (14:28; 15:11; 16:20-21; 17:13). John's language borrows from the world of human experience and life: from childbirth (1:12-13; 3:1-6; 16:21), family (1:12-13; 8:34-58; 14:18), friendship (15:15), eating and drinking (6:31-58). The language of faith is the language of life (3:15-16, 6:40, 47-51, passim). John insists on the vital and robust character of faith as entrusting oneself to God.

Faith is steadfast trust because it is committed to the God made known through Jesus, and to no other God. For there is no other source of life (3:15-19), no other revelation of God (1:18: 14:9-11), no other avenue to God (10:8-10; 14:6-7), no other source of knowledge of God (1:18; 3:32). The finality of the revelation of God through His anointed one Jesus also serves to define faith in the Fourth Gospel, for it shows both to whom and through whom faith is to be directed, as well as to emphasize the character of faith as steadfastness. For the implication of the finality of revelation is the steadfastness required of faith: one may turn nowhere else for life.

Such a definition of faith does not entirely agree with the twofold insistence found often in Johannine studies today that faith in John is dogmatic and christocentric in character, that faith is primarily believing certain dogmatic propositions about Jesus. This definition of faith misses the heart of what faith is in John. Statements which are, on the surface, most radically christocentric are seen, on closer examination, not to call for faith in Jesus, but for faith in God mediated through Jesus. Thus Jesus is the bread of life given by God (6:32); Jesus is the way to the Father (14:7); Jesus has been granted authority by God to raise the dead and give life (5:21, 24-29; 11:25-26); and Jesus is the only Son who makes the Father known (1:18). In the end, sayings which point to Jesus' unique role and function are first and foremost statements about knowing God and receiving life and salvation from God, and not "dogmatic" assertions about Jesus. The Gospel's christology really stands in the service of its soteriology and not in the service of formulating doctrine about the person of Jesus. If the Jesus God's anointed one makes available the status of "children of God" (1:12-13), one gains this status not by believing that certain things are true about Jesus, but by being reborn by the power of the Spirit of God (1:13; 3:5– 8 ), the Spirit which Jesus bears and brings (3:34).

This understanding of faith is simply a corollary of the previous definition of signs. If Jesus' signs are manifestations of God's work through him, then it follows that if they are to lead to faith at all, they are to lead to faith in the God whose work they are. This does not imply that the agent through whom they are done is simply dispensable. The signs are also truly the signs of Jesus. But here we are already anticipating the third question; How do signs lead to faith in John? and it is to this question that we now turn.

How do signs lead to faith in John?

Jesus' signs lead to faith when one discerns in them the manifestation of the character of God as life-giving and responds to Jesus as mediating that life. So we may assert that true understanding of Jesus' works as the works of God includes the recognition that they are carried out with God's authority and power. But that recognition is in turn based on understanding the character of God's work as work which heals, restores, grants wholeness, gives life. God grants life through these works, and it is the character and work of God; and of God alone to give life. This is the key. God alone gives and restores life, and if the signs confer life, then Jesus' works are the works of God. Because Jesus' signs impart life and manifest God's life-giving character, one should "believe the works" (10:38; 14:11), that is, believe that they are God's own works of healing and restoration.

The words "impart" and "manifest" are deliberately chosen, rather than the words "symbolize" and "reveal." Jesus' signs do more than symbolize the gift available through him, as though the sign in itself were irrelevant to understanding him or that it were not part of the gift of life itself. Jesus' works do indeed point to the fact that he himself is life, but they do so because they themselves are also gifts of life. What the signs manifest and bring to men and women is, in Johannine terminology, life. Signs do not merely symbolize or point to the availability of eternal life through Jesus; they themselves offer life in the present. They effect what they promise. They are part and parcel of the substance of the gift of life. A helpful analogy is that of the signs which accompanied the Exodus. The plagues and wonders wrought by God through Moses foretold and promised the coming deliverance from Egypt; yet they were also part of God's acts on behalf of the people of Israel. God's signs through Moses both promise and are part of the liberation of the people from captivity.

Too often Jesus' deeds are regarded merely as pictures or illustrations of spiritual realities. On this view the real significance of the Johannine miracles lies not in the deed which was actually done, but in the spiritual or mystical reality which Jesus is also able to impart. The "bread of life" which Jesus promises is actually spiritual food, eternal life. A blind man is healed, but it is infinitely more important that he receives spiritual sight. Likewise, Lazarus symbolizes the raising of the spiritually dead. But we may justifiably ask, how is it that feeding 5000 guarantees or even suggests that Jesus can give that kind of food which will ease the pangs of spiritual hunger? And what is the connection between raising a man from the grave and the grand promise that those who believe in Jesus will "never die"? Certainly bringing the dead back to life is extraordinary; but is even such a marvelous act a sufficient basis for believing the promise that Jesus can also bestow eternal life? One may grant that these acts are symbols; but are they adequate for their purpose? They are if they are understood, like the Mosaic wonders and the prophetic signs, to effect what they promise.

Second, just as the word "symbolize" can mislead when applied to the Johannine signs, so can the word "reveal," since it is sometimes taken as implying the communication of new information or something previously hidden or unknown. That God is gracious and works to bring health, freedom, and life to Israel was not new to Israel. It was the substance of their confession and understanding of God, the common ground between John and his partners in debate, the datum against which Jesus' works could be tested and understood, and on which John's appeal was based. In fact, the continuity of Jesus' work with that of the God of Israel is one of the assumptions upon which John's argument is based. Jesus' critics did not deny that he worked signs; but they denied that his works were in keeping with, and could only be, the work of God.

But wherein lay the continuity between the work of God as made known to Israel in the past and the work of Jesus? On what basis was this claim to be believed? It was not to be believed solely on the basis of Jesus' own claims, nor to be known only in believing, in the leap of faith itself, nor by virtue of his working of miracles as tokens of divine power. Jesus was to be known by the kind of work he did. Jesus was to be known by the way in which he brought the mercy of God into the world. He was to be recognized because his signs manifested the character of God as the creator and sustainer of life. The response which is called for, then, is faith in this God who creates and sustains life, a faith which is construed as worship, trust, and obedience, and which is mediated through the person of Jesus.

What Is Faith?

(1) Faith entails discernment, both about the nature of Jesus' work and about the kind of God to whom faith is directed. The decision to follow Jesus, to entrust oneself to him, is based on the understanding that he does the life-giving work of God. Faith further discerns that the God whom it trusts is the God who creates and sustains life, who heals, who restores and raises to life. Faith is not directed to a void, but to the living God, the God of life.

(2) Faith has a corporate or communal dimension. One shares in believing with all those who have also received life from God through Jesus. John does not envision the gift of life as granted to scattered individuals. Those who have received life are also gathered into one fold, one people, knowing one God and Creator. Thus faith and love are closely linked in Johannine theology. If faith denotes the response of the people to God, love denotes their response to each other.38 Just as in faith one passes from death to life, so in love one overcomes the hate and death-dealing power of the world.

(3) Faith entails a commitment to life in the midst of death, to love in the midst of hate, to truth in the midst of error, to God in the midst of the world. Thus faith can never will suffering or evil for others; it seeks to bring them to life. The promise of salvation in John 3:16 is paralleled in the Johannine community by the call to love of one's fellow believer in
1 John 3:16-18. For faith which is directed to the God of life cannot abandon others to the realm of death.

(4) Faith stands before the Creator and Sustainer of life with the recognition of human frailty and utter dependence upon God. The faith which Jesus seeks, to which the signs call people, is the recognition that all that they are and have comes from God. Because of the lord Jesus God's anointed one was foreknown in the mind of God from before the foundation of the ages, the world was created, is healed and sustained, and will be raised to life. Thus faith is essentially gratitude, gratitude to God for grace, mercy, healing, wholeness; gratitude for life itself. Faith knows peace, for it trusts that all things are in God's hands.

(5) Because God is the source and destiny of life, faith is faithfulness in trusting God, for God was before all human life and always lives. God is the living God. The life which believers receive endures even beyond the grave, for it comes to believers because of the lord Jesus who was in the mind of God from before the foundation of the ages, and now have life from the Father himself. To such a God corresponds a faith which perseveres, for to whom can it turn but the God who speaks words of life?

(6) Finally, in the Fourth Gospel faith is faith in God, mediated through the person of Jesus God's anointed one. The question to John's readers is whether Jesus continues, manifests, and carries out a work which brings healing and liberation, whether he brings life. In recounting the signs as the life-giving work of God in Jesus, the Gospel reminds its readers that there is no other bread of life, no other shepherd, no other way or truth. Indeed, this is already said in the simple words of the prologue, "In him was life."

No comments:

Post a Comment