Let me begin by apologizing for the distasteful spam that got onto this site for a few days about a week ago. We have software that protects the site normally, but somehow missed this even though it affected every thread of this blog. I trust it is now fully removed. Let me now conclude my series on the book The Word of Life.
    In my opinion, the very best part of Craig Koester’s book (The Word of Life: A Theology of John’s Gospel [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008]) is the first half of the chapter on faith (163-174). While firmly grounded in the text and setting of the entire Gospel, Koester offers the clearest explanation of how faith works and the practical struggle for faith in today’s world that I have ever read. This part of the book brilliantly blurs the line between scholarship and devotional writing, along the lines of Richard Hays or Tom Wright. I will attempt to summarize the key points of the chapter here. If you are interested in a summary of the book’s chapters, see the full review on the Armageddon web site (www.thebattleofarmageddon.com).
    Koester begins by pointing out that the author of the Gospel deliberately addresses the faith issues of future generations (20:30-31). A continuing issue throughout the Gospel is how believing is related to hearing and seeing. For John, a “sign” is a miraculous act that demonstrates the power of God in a way that is accessible to the five senses. But the miraculous “signs” in the Gospel (water to wine, feeding 5000, raising Lazarus) do not, in themselves, bring about faith in Jesus. In fact, they can even create pseudo-faith (2:23-25) or opposition (5:16; 9:16). This is because everyone sees the signs from a different point of view.
    Why then do the signs cause some to believe and others to doubt? People do not merely see signs, they interpret them. The key is what the observer thinks the signs mean. Characters in the Gospel respond positively to Jesus’ signs if they have already been brought to faith through the words from or about Jesus. It is the words that bring faith, not the “signs.” The signs can only confirm faith, they do not create it. If a person was skeptical before seeing the sign, they tend to harden in their skepticism when the sign occurs.
    For example, some characters’ point of view was shaped by a certain approach to the Torah. If Jesus heals on the Sabbath day, this is not to them a sign of His divinity, but a sign that He is a law-breaker, a sinner (5:16; 9:16). If a character has a political point of view, they will interpret the sign as indicating Jesus is aspiring to a political office (6:14-15), or attempting to raise up a revolt against Rome (11:47). But if a character comes to believe the words of Jesus before seeing the sign, he or she will interpret the sign in a more positive way (4:46-54).
    This insight is extremely important for us today. Readers who live after the resurrection of Jesus cannot see the actions of the earthly Jesus. Yet they have what is essential. They have received the words from and about Jesus through the Gospel. If Jesus were present among us and doing the miracles He did before, it would not in itself bring an increase in faith. Characters in the Gospel responded to signs with faith if they had already been brought to faith by words from or about Jesus. The words people heard from Jesus enabled them to interpret the signs which they saw. We today do not need miracles in order to believe, we need the words from or about Jesus. These are available in the Gospel of John.
    Readers of the Gospel today are like the royal official of John 4:46-54. They have received the promise of life from Jesus, but they will not know whether that promise is true before believing in it. The only way to find out is to trust in the promise and move forward. That is what the official did. The question of the Gospel is whether the readers will do the same.
    For the man born blind in chapter nine, the birth of faith brings only conflict and dislocation. For him, as well as for readers of the Gospel, faith means believing in a Jesus they cannot see in the face of conflicts that they can see. Through the Gospel the signs of Jesus come to the reader in verbal form. They need not look elsewhere for wonders to believe in. John’s text has all the works and words that they need to come to faith.
    The sisters of Lazarus send requests that are only met by silence from Jesus. But faith is kindled in Martha in the visible presence of death (11:27, see 20:30-31) in response to Jesus’ words about being the resurrection and the life (11:25-26). Martha expresses faith in spite of Jesus’ absence, delay and her brother’s death. Jesus’ assures her that her faith will enable her to “see the glory of God” (11:40). Faith creates the point of view from which she can rightly interpret the Lazarus miracle. Like Martha, we today must come to believe in the face of God’s silence and in the face of death.
    For John, faith is the context in which genuine understanding develops. Those who show an initial trust in Jesus do not have all their questions answered at the outset. They come to understand Jesus as they follow him. So if faith is the context in which understanding develops, relationship with a Jesus we cannot see can begin in the absence of sight and even of understanding. It is triggered by the words and works of Jesus and acted upon by his surrogate, the Holy Spirit. To those of a modernistic world-view, Koester’s outline of faith in John’s Gospel may seem naive in a scientific world. But a younger, post-modern generation will find the stories of the Gospel fertile ground for faith.