Jesus and the Creeds

by Tim Geddert

This well-known text defines John's purpose in writing his Gospel. The signs which Jesus did led His disciples to believe, and John records many of these so that future generations also will believe.

But what precisely are the "signs" and the "written record" designed to convince people to believe? Most of us assume that John's purpose must be to establish a "high Christology". While everyone knows that Jesus was a special person, not everyone believes that Jesus was God's very own Son. Therefore, we assume that John's Gospel is designed to lead people from a low Christology (Jesus was a unique man) to a high Christology (Jesus was God). That, at least, is what I always assumed John's Gospel aimed to do.

If it were so, what a great text this would be for systematic theologians! All they would need to do is include a few verses from the context (the story of "Doubting Thomas" precedes these verses), and they would have a text that affirms the death and resurrection of Jesus, as well as a high Christology. In this text, Jesus is described as "Lord" and "God" by Thomas, and as "Christ" and "Son of God" by John the writer. These things are all central elements in the orthodox "creeds", the early confessions of faith of the Christian church which have been accepted by orthodox Christians ever since.

Moreover, in this way of looking at it, the text points the reader away from personal experience as a basis for believing (after all, Thomas was expected to believe without having seen the resurrected Jesus). "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed" challenged Thomas to believe on the basis of the other apostles' testimony, and continues to challenge John's readers to believe on the basis of the written record: "These things are written that you might believe." The Scriptures provide the data. Faith is the appropriate response.

This way of viewing the text (which I shall challenge in a minute!) seems to suit the preoccupations of many systematic theologians. For them, the great enemy is theological liberalism, the great weapon is God's Word, and the firm foundation for faith is the Christology of the early Christian creeds like those agreed to at Nicea and Chalcedon. This text and many others define the orthodox faith of the church. Nothing about the historical context of the writer, the literary context of the text, and especially the context of the modern reader are really relevant to a correct understanding of Scripture.

That is one way of viewing things. It is not really my way.

There is another way of thinking about theology and another way of interpreting John 20:30,31. Biblical theology (as opposed to systematic theology) is less concerned with creeds. It is more concerned with particulars. It seeks the unique witness to truth expressed in any given text. It asks about the author's intentions, the historical circumstances of a book and the literary context of any particular text. Even more significantly, it asks each generation to read the text anew, seeking the particular application for their time. We are to take our situation with us to the text and have our situation challenged by it. The present value of a given text is not determined by which part of the creeds it supports, but by how it relates to issues that need to be addressed today.

How would a biblical theologian look at this text? I will speak only for myself. First, I would not read it with one eye focused on the creeds of Nicea and Chalcedon. These did not exist when John wrote. John's direct aim was not to defend the creeds. While it is obvious that John's Gospel stresses the divinity of Jesus and the authority of the written Word, it even more focuses on Jesus of Nazareth, who calls, heals, redeems and changes lives.

Second, literary considerations would lead me to question whether this text is about believing without experiential evidence. The basis for Thomas's eventual belief was an experience, just as it had been for the other 10. If Thomas was not able to believe without experiencing all over again what the others had already experienced, whose fault was that? (For a fuller development of this interpretation, see "Rehabilitating Thomas", MBH, March 24, 1995.)

Think about it! The others claimed that Jesus had walked in on them through locked doors, encouraged them with the words, "Peace be with you!" and showed them His hands with the nail scars. "It had to be the Lord," they insisted. If you had been Thomas, what would you have asked? I'd have asked, "Then why are you still here hiding behind closed doors for fear of the Jews? Why aren't you out there proclaiming the good news?" I don't think that Thomas's ability to believe is being critiqued here as much as the others' believability. Would you have believed an announcement that was supposed to be life-changing, when the lives of those announcing it didn't seem to have changed a bit?

"Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe" does not mean "Believe just because the apostles and the written Word instruct you to." It means: "How blessed are those who live among people whose lives have been changed by meeting the resurrected Jesus. How blessed are those who live among people with a contagious faith and who have the marks of a true Christian (unity, obedience, love and faithfulness). How blessed are those who live among people who provide them with reasons to believe, even if they haven't personally experienced everything the first people have."

This is not about believing creeds, but about being a believable Christian community of disciples whose lives have been changed.

John tells us Jesus did many signs to lead the original disciples to faith. And he records many of them so that readers will come to faith. But they will not believe because some text or creed instructs them to. They will believe when they see that Jesus is still at work changing lives as He did then!

But what are we to believe? The systematic theologian answers: "John's high Christology! If only the liberals and the Jesus Seminar people would believe this, we could forget all this nonsense about Jesus being just a great human who somehow revealed God!"

No wonder we usually think this text is about defining a high Christology. We have one eye on the dangers of liberalism and the other on the creeds of the church. We find in this text what we want to find.

Every modern version of John 20:31 reads, "These are written that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God." We assume that this means that Jesus' identity is being defined not only as Jesus, but as God's very own Son. That's exactly what systematic theologians want it to say. No wonder they read it like that.

But there is a more likely alternative. Greek sentences containing two nouns (both a "subject" and a "complement" joined by the verb "to be" or "is") are often hard to interpret. This is because Greek word order does not tell us which is the subject. So authors used subtle signals, like dropping articles and locating complements immediately before the "to be" verb, in order that readers could determine which noun is the subject and which is the complement.

When we debate with Jehovah's Witnesses about the correct translation of John 1:1, we argue tooth and nail that the Greek complement rule justifies our translation "The Word was God" rather than "God was the Word" or "The Word was a god" (and the rules of Greek grammar support our claim). However, the same rule, when applied to John 20:31, suggests that John did not want to say, "These are written that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God." Rather, he wanted to say, "These are written that you might believe that the Christ, the Son of God, is Jesus."

Not a great difference, you say? Ah, but there is a very great difference. Translated the normal way, John claims his book was written to defend a high Christology. Jesus was not merely a human. He was more. He was Messiah. Indeed, He was the Son of God. He was very God of very God. The creeds are true. The Jesus Seminar is wrong.

Turning the sentence around (as I believe John intended), John's Gospel has a very different goal. John's theological opponents were not the liberals of the Jesus Seminar. His theological opponents believed in many christs and many divine sons and daughters. In John's day, there were many religious leaders promising liberation from sin, guilt, meaninglessness and fear of death. There were many would-be messiahs.

John's Gospel says: No! The Messiah (the only one who can deliver), the Son of God (the only one who truly reveals God) is Jesus of Nazareth, a concrete person. Jesus, living on the earth as a human being, did the works of God, spoke the words of God and showed by His faithful life what pleases God. Jesus died and rose again to redeem us back to God. The deliverer is no semi-divine being who made a guest appearance on earth. He was truly human, a particular human, Jesus. John writes his Gospel in order that, by believing, we might have life in His name -- not in anyone else's name, but in His name!

If John had this agenda in mind, no wonder he insisted at the beginning of his Gospel that "the Word became flesh" (John 1:14). His opponents needed to be persuaded that the Son of God did indeed become a human being.

Thus, this text does not critique the theology of the liberals as much as it critiques the theology of many conservatives. Too often conservative Christians affirm a high Christology, but do not really believe in the true humanity of Jesus, nor understand the significance of His human life. It confronts the heresy of those who affirm the historical creeds, but do not recognize the significance of Jesus of Nazareth who lived and served among us to reveal the Father, and who died and rose to reconcile us to Him.

In John's letters, John argues that anyone denying that Jesus Christ is come "in the flesh" is not of God (I John 4:1-3). Many theologians fight to defend a high Christology, and have virtually no room in their theology for the human Jesus, whom John describes as the one "we have looked upon, and our hands have handled" (I John 1:1).

When John wrote, it was the real humanity of Jesus that was in danger of being forgotten. This text was written to challenge people who needed to be convinced that the Saviour of the world was one into whose side a hand could be thrust, one in whose hands nail holes could be seen and felt, one who could eat, one who could change scared followers into a community of courageous disciples and missionaries.

When we take this original context seriously, this text turns out to be very relevant to our age (more relevant, I suggest than if it functions only to defend the traditional creeds).

We are moving into a very spiritual age, where spirit guides and even angels play all sorts of roles, including those of mediator and saviour. At the same time, we live in a very secular age where the "messiahs" that promise to deliver us from evil are sometimes political, sometimes economic, sometimes military, sometimes academic.

The witness of John is that only one can deliver, only one can bridge the chasm between God and humanity and that is Jesus, the true flesh and blood Jesus who lived and died and rose again.

Some people's Christology is too low. As conservatives and evangelicals, ours is often not nearly enough grounded in Jesus of Nazareth. This text calls us to re-think that.

The major contribution of this particular text is not to help define the high Christology of the creeds. Instead, it speaks a powerful word to those who come to it with modern and post-modern questions. If we stop filtering texts through the creeds, we find in them all sorts of themes which address our needs.

Tim Geddert is associate professor of New Testament at MB Biblical Seminary in Fresno, Calif.

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