The Epistemological Basis for Belief according to John's Gospel

Miracles and Message in Their Essentials As Non-Fictional Grounds for Knowledge of God

Redelings

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2011
• eBook ISBN: 9781630879648
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

This book, a revision of the author's dissertation, describes the grounds on which knowledge about God is possible according to the Gospel of John. In response to modern questions and doubts about the possibility of religious knowledge, John's answers are identified and illuminated using standard historical method. A major part of this investigation is spent showing that, for readers of all persuasions, it is clear that certain parts of John's Gospel were never intended as either fiction or metaphor. From these parts, the basis on which John thinks that people can have religious knowledge is inferred and described.

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Introduction

This book describes the grounds on which beliefs about God are warranted, according to John’s Gospel. In the modern age, both nonreligious and religious people often consider knowledge of God to be impossible to attain. If the historic influence of John’s Gospel is any evidence of the depth of its insights, we may wonder how the early Christian author would respond to these modern doubts and questions.

While John’s Gospel is of special interest to Christians, John’s ideas address more universal concerns. As we will see, John has been largely influenced by earlier Jewish thought, to the extent that many scholars believe John was Jewish. Beyond this, John is interested in how all people can know about the one God, and on what basis they may believe. Consequently, it is congenial to pose modern questions about the knowledge of God, and describe the answers that John’s Gospel gives. Members of all religious traditions, as well as religious agnostics, will find that many of the philosophical questions posed in this investigation, and some of John’s answers, are congenial with their own perspectives. Standard historical method and argument are used in this investigation to describe and elucidate John’s ideas about the grounds for knowledge, which we will refer to as John’s epistemology. John’s handling of this topic holds particular interest for the Christian community, since the member of any faith must at times decide what is worthy of belief and practice within his or her own tradition.

This investigation considers questions about the sources of religious knowledge, the possibility and means of attaining such knowledge directly, the dependence of religious knowledge upon reasoning, the dependence of religious knowledge upon the reports of others who claim such knowledge, and the dependence of religious knowledge on historical knowledge of such reports. In each case, questions about the nature and extent of religious certainty are involved. This investigation does not try to answer these questions using primarily philosophical approaches. Instead, we attempt to describe and understand the way that John thought about these questions in his own (often Jewish) categories of thought, and to explain his rationale in terms that a modern audience could comprehend. John’s Gospel is perhaps the most important for understanding early Christian thought, and his reflections on the grounds for belief are the most developed of the four Gospels.

This investigation argues that the Gospel of John respects the prior need for evidence as a foundation for belief. Such respect is apparent already in the words that John attributes to Jesus, “If I do not do the works of my Father, do not believe me, but if I do them, though you do not believe me, believe the works . . .” (John 10:37–38). Here Jesus does not simply demand that he be believed because he makes claims, or because he is telling the truth, or even because he speaks God’s words. Jesus does not assume that people have the innate ability to perceive directly the truth or divine origin of someone else’s words. Instead, Jesus recognizes the reasonable need of his audience to base their assessment of his claims upon grounds that they are able to know and regard as sure. As we will try to show, John’s epistemological methodology proves to derive largely from the Books of Moses, particularly Genesis, Exodus, and Deuteronomy.

Scholars have proposed a number of theories for the history of editing and the underlying sources of this Gospel, however this investigation treats the book as a literary unit. Readers who approach with a different understanding can generally read references to John the Evangelist as references to the implied author of the Gospel (in its final form). References to John the Evangelist in the specific sense of the historical or real author can be understood as references to the real author who was the primary creator of the work. The identity and name of the author are not an assumption of the argument. One advantage of treating the work as a literary unit is that such treatment does not ignore apparently meaningful thematic and conceptual relationships between various parts of the work. These relationships, in turn, must be considered prior to final decisions about the sources and editing of the Gospel, especially where those decisions imply that the apparent meaning is only a literary accident.

What is the place for this book among others on the same subject? Edward Malatesta’s (1966) and Gilbert van Belle’s (1985) cumulative bibliographies on John’s Gospel list no entries of substance under “epistemology,” and list few relevant entries under related topics (e.g., revelation, knowledge). The situation apparently has not changed much, so there is much room for further study. Two recent works are worth noting. Cornelis Bennema has written a chapter on John’s epistemology in The Bible and Epistemology, edited by Mary Healy and Robin Parry (2007). Whereas Bennema focuses on internal illumination of believers, this investigation focuses on John’s direct claim that signs and testimony are grounds for an objective and public basis for knowing, and grounds the argument in John’s own vocabulary and conceptual world. (This focus on signs and testimony somewhat neglects other means of knowing, as my student David Hodges has noted, but the investigation may serve as an entry point to wider investigations of John’s epistemology in the future.) Also of note is philosopher C. Stephen Evans’ chapter, “The Historical Reliability of John’s Gospel,” in The Gospel of John and Christian Theology (2008), edited by Richard Bauckham and Carl Mosser. Evans’s chapter addresses epistemological questions about John’s historical claims, rather than focusing directly on John’s own epistemology. The conversation partners in this investigation have been selected for their relevance to the topic of John’s direct claims about his epistemology.

Unfortunately, establishing John’s own epistemology proves to be difficult, for there is currently a pervasive doubt among many scholars that any single part of John’s Gospel was clearly intended as historical nonfiction. As will be explained below, an author’s epistemology cannot be determined with high confidence on the basis of fictionally intended or metaphorical narrative. Establishing portions of John’s Gospel that scholars of all persuasion may accept as nonfictional and not metaphorical requires lengthy argument. That argument encompasses the majority of the chapters in this book. The need for this argument, and a more detailed description of the topics covered by this book, are given under the two headings below.

The Need to Identify the Limits of Fiction

In order to identify John’s epistemology, the investigation begins by identifying a part of this Gospel that nearly all can agree is nonfictional. Why is this necessary? Since before the composition of the canonical Gospels during the first century, those outside the Christian community have questioned the historical reliability of the Christian tradition that the Gospels embody. In particular, the New Testament itself tells of many who questioned the reports of Jesus’ resurrection. However, an investigation of John’s epistemology does not rest on such controversial reports. Instead of deciding whether an element in John’s Gospel is actually historical, we need only decide what John regarded as historical. Similarly, instead of deciding what metaphysical statements are actually true, we need only decide what John regarded as true. Furthermore, we need only decide this to the extent needed to describe John’s epistemology.

Since a large number of John’s statements are controversial if taken as historical claims, many people have interpreted them as nonhistorical claims. Such nonhistorical interpretations include: symbolic statements to express metaphysical or spiritual realities, legend that is not central to the message, dramatic embellishment, story as a medium for artistic expression, or something like a historical novel.

Since it is John’s understanding of history, rather than history itself, that is central to this investigation, the terms fiction and nonfiction typically do not refer in this investigation to whether John had his facts right. If we ask, for example, whether the resurrection of Jesus was a fiction, we will not usually be asking whether it was a historic fact, but whether John intended his readers to regard the resurrection as historic fact. Consequently, the terms fiction and nonfiction will typically refer to two alternate ways that John’s readers might be expected to understand his historical narratives.

Historical and metaphysical knowledge are important parts of epistemology, and John’s epistemological practice cannot practically be determined until one knows what kinds of things he regards as historical or real. In the current proliferation of doubt about John’s historical intent, it is likely that some would consequently question any reconstruction of the author’s actual system of epistemology as reconstructed from this Gospel. Such questioning could argue that fictional narratives need not fully and accurately represent the author’s own real view of the epistemological world, but might rather express his fictional viewpoint or the viewpoint of a fictional narrator. For this reason we begin by identifying material that the author intended as nonfiction.

To address the concerns of those who doubt John’s historical intention, this reconstruction of John’s epistemology rests only on an identified core of themes that the author most obviously intended to be understood as nonfiction. These themes are identified in the following way. We first show that the entire composition of the Gospel is driven by the author’s central purpose: to persuade his readers to believe, or continue believing, in Jesus. Where the author offers particular grounds as a persuasive argument for such belief, we argue that in some cases such grounds must be intended as nonfiction. Nobody will be persuaded by an argument when its grounds are plausibly understood as mere fictions.

The Main Argument

There are two main lines of argument that rest on this recognition of the Evangelistic purpose of the author. First, when the historical aspect of the ground of an argument is essential to the persuasive force of the argument, that historical aspect is clearly intended as nonfiction. As will be shown, John uses miracles as a ground supporting one argument for belief, and that argument depends on Jesus’ miracles being regarded as nonfictional historical events. The persuasive force of such an argument does not depend on John’s miracle accounts being free of all historical error, but it does require that the miracle itself is not regarded as a historical error. Again, the argument is not that the miracles were historical events, but rather that John regarded them as essentially historical events.

The second line of argument is different. When John portrays characters in his Gospel as turning away from Jesus because of Jesus’ claims, John cannot intend such offense as arising from a simple misunderstanding of fiction or metaphor. If that were the case, John’s concern to promote belief in Jesus would then require him to clarify his true meaning to the reader, in order that the reader not be unnecessarily offended and turn from belief in Jesus. Otherwise, John would not fulfill his purpose in writing the Gospel, which is to promote belief in Jesus. Consequently, this controversial aspect of Jesus’ claims cannot be metaphorical or fictional.

The effect of reconstructing John’s epistemology only from his central persuasive purpose is to narrow this investigation primarily to the Evangelist’s claim that belief in Jesus is warranted (along with any knowledge and beliefs that belief in Jesus presupposes). This has disadvantages. Focus on such a primary theological claim does not allow the same appearance of neutral and fair handling that analysis of less theological claims might give. Furthermore, such a limited case study does not allow a full survey of John’s system of epistemology and belief. Nevertheless, this focus actually provides a more secure basis for conclusions, due to its reliance only on clearly nonfictional elements of the author’s message. Furthermore, the grounds warranting such religious belief reveal the main structure of John’s entire epistemology. The results are at least indicative of, and sometimes directly show, the grounds that John would recognize as warranting any belief. Lastly, the results of this narrow investigation show that the extent of intended nonfiction in John’s Gospel is much wider than those passages and themes upon which the investigation was based. This provides a much larger basis on which expanded studies of John’s epistemology could be carried out in the future.

We will next argue that John’s appeal to nonfictional miracles as evidence warranting belief reveals the place of historical events and testimony in John’s epistemology. The rationale for an epistemology appealing to historical events and testimony as a basis for knowledge, in opposition to modern doubts about the reliability of any historical claims, will be discussed. John’s particular claims to religious knowledge will also be identified, and the rationale for these claims will be discussed.

In this investigation, the foundations of John’s ideas are not discovered or discussed until the final chapters. The argument begins with the evidence for John’s own epistemological beliefs and investigates the basis for those beliefs down to their foundations. A simple summary of John’s essential epistemological system might naturally present his thought in the reverse order, working up from foundational ideas. However this would not show so clearly that John’s own perspective was guiding the analysis. The order of this investigation is therefore the former order, the order of discovery.

For this reason it will be helpful to offer here, without supporting argument, a brief explanation of the perspective of the Evangelist. The Evangelist adopts implicitly the Jewish view that the structure and qualities of the one universe give evidence of One Creator. Rather than beginning his Gospel with any extensive arguments for the Creator’s existence, John simply refers to the word or plan (Greek logos) which established this particular order of the universe, alluding, as we shall see, to the opening words of Genesis. The Evangelist also adopts implicitly the Jewish view that this Creator has the ability to communicate just as do the people he created with that same ability, and has at times revealed himself by speaking in human language to chosen individuals, identifying himself by miracles and other phenomena that are otherwise inexplicable. In particular, John accepts the prophetic claims of Moses (and so, for all practical purposes, the covenant and teachings of Moses as preserved in the books of the Torah that were traditionally ascribed to him). Moses, as the prophet who announced God’s covenant and Law to the nation of Israel, was the prophet by whom the reports of all other prophets had to be judged. Moses told...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: Varieties of Belief in John’s Gospel, and the Need for Belief
• Chapter 3: The Character of Knowledge: General Considerations and Johannine Perspective
• Chapter 4: The Evangelist’s Concept of Knowledge: History, Fiction, and the A Priori Exclusion of the Possibility of Historical Miracles
• Chapter 5: The Evangelist’s Concept of : Intended Fiction in the Case of Miracles
• Chapter 6: The Evangelist’s Concept of Knowledge: Miracles as Historical Grounds for Belief
• Chapter 7: The Evangelist’s Concept of Historical Knowledge: A Comparison with Modern Historiography
• Chapter 8: The Extent of Nonfictional Intention in John’s Miracle Accounts
• Chapter 9: John’s Use of Miracles as Grounds for Belief in Jesus
• Chapster 10: The Essential Words of Jesus as Nonfiction in the Gospel of John
• Chapter 11: John’s Essential Message as Grounds for Belief in Jesus
• Chapter 12: Conclusions
• Bibliography