Original Research

Belief in the Fourth Gospel: A Swinburnian Approach to John 2

Cristiano Meregaglia

Received: 24 June 2025; Accepted: 17 Sept. 2025; Published: 31 Oct. 2025

Copyright: © 2025. The Author(s). Licensee: AOSIS.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Abstract

This article proposes a philosophical approach to address the hermeneutical problem of the polysemy of the verb ‘to believe’ in the Gospel of John. After outlining the centrality of belief within the Johannine text, Chapter 2 of this Gospel is contextualised and examined, demonstrating its paradigmatic nature due to the occurrence of a threefold attestation of the verb ‘to believe’, each understood in distinctly different senses. Having analysed its problematic aspects, the article then proposes to investigate the issue using tools borrowed from analytic philosophy. To this end, it considers the work of Richard Swinburne, a prominent analytic philosopher of religion, and his contribution to the epistemic analysis of rational belief.

Contribution: Subsequently, Swinburne’s scale of rational justification for belief is applied to the three episodes described in the chapter under examination, aiming to provide a coherent interpretation.

Keywords: belief; Gospel of John; Fourth Gospel; John 2; Richard Swinburne; rational belief; faith and reason; sign.

The centrality of belief in the Fourth Gospel

It is unequivocally clear that the theme of belief is central to the Gospel of John, if anything because the term πıστϵυˊω, in its various forms, appears approximately 100 times within it. This constitutes about 40% of all its occurrences in the whole New Testament, not including numerous direct and indirect allusions to the theme (Du Toit 1991:327–330).

Furthermore, despite some scholars in recent decades attempting to divert attention to other aspects (e.g., Brown 1979), it is evident, even from a cursory reading of the text, that the evangelist’s explicit objective, as stated in John 20:31, is to cultivate and foster belief in the reader (likely intended as a non-Christian Jew who has encountered Christian testimony). This belief is specifically that Jesus is the Christ, so that through believing in him, life might be obtained in his name (Carson 1987:644–651). That this is indeed the purpose, and thus a pivotal theme of the Gospel, is not merely inferred from the evangelist’s explicit declaration but also from the context in which this assertion is made. The latter appears at the conclusion of Chapter 20, the chapter detailing the appearances of the risen Christ, following a series of episodes in which three characters, seemingly assuming a paradigmatic role, come to believe that Jesus has indeed risen.

At the beginning of the chapter, for instance, the beloved disciple, upon arriving at Jesus’ tomb, ‘saw and believed’ (Jn 20:8, ESV). Neither what he saw nor what he believed is specified, almost suggesting his readiness to believe even in the absence of extensive demonstrations. Subsequently, Mary Magdalene appears. Remaining at the tomb amid her sorrow over the loss of ‘[her] Lord’ (20:13), she is ultimately capable of announcing to the disciples that she has seen the Lord, thereby serving as a model for those who believe in Christ, even without fully understanding him. Finally, Thomas comes on the scene. Arriving after the other disciples, he is called to believe in the resurrection based on the testimony of others and understandably raises legitimate doubts until those same doubts are addressed, allowing him to confess Jesus as ‘My Lord and my God’ (20:28, ESV). In this way, he can represent those who are invited to believe based on the testimony of others and who, therefore, struggle with various forms of doubt. At the conclusion of the episodes featuring these three characters, having illustrated how anyone can identify with the described individuals, the evangelist directly addresses the reader in John 20:31, inviting him to believe that Jesus is the Christ, thereby highlighting what is his priority among the Gospel’s different themes (O’Brien 2005:292–302).

The centrality of belief in the Fourth Gospel is not only discernible from an analysis of its final chapters but is truly evident in almost every aspect of the Gospel, to the extent that the entire text is influenced by it. It is, therefore, not coincidental that references to all five senses are employed throughout the Gospel as imagery to exemplify what it truly means to believe in Jesus (Lee 2010). Nor is it accidental that rhetorical devices such as misunderstanding are found throughout the text, through which characters interacting with Jesus, confronted with a lack of comprehension of his words, are prompted to a deeper inquiry into the person of Jesus, enabling them to arrive at genuine faith. This misunderstanding, to be precise, is present at both textual and metatextual levels, as, for example, when the reader experiences the same bewilderment as the characters in the text when reading seemingly contradictory passages, thus feeling compelled to delve deeper into the truth concerning the figure of Jesus (O’Brien 2005:28–290; see also Meeks 1972:44–72).

Beyond this, it has been highlighted that, in the Gospel of John, the figures encountered from time to time follow a logic of juxtaposition, irrespective of the chronological progression of events. Indeed, characters are encountered who, despite sharing common characteristics, respond in contrasting ways to Jesus’ words and the signs he demonstrates, some manifesting adequate faith, others an inability to believe. For instance, in Chapter 1, both the Judeans and the first disciples receive John the Baptist’s testimony concerning Jesus, yet only the latter become his followers. Similarly, in Chapters 3 and 4, we first read of a meeting and then of an extended dialogue, respectively between Jesus and Nicodemus, a respected Jewish man who visits him at night, and between Jesus and the Samaritan woman, a foreign woman of questionable morality who comes to him in broad daylight. The characters with whom Jesus speaks appear to be diametrically juxtaposed, even though the two events proceed in a parallel manner, with his words being taken literally despite referring to spiritual realities, and concluding divergently: in the first case with the inability of an Israelite teacher to comprehend the things Jesus speaks of, and with the Samaritan woman’s testimony to others regarding Jesus’ messiahship in the other. Several such examples can be found, at least in the first half of the Gospel – the so-called ‘Book of Signs’ (Koester 1989).

John 2: A paradigmatic chapter

All of this demonstrates that the theme of belief is not only central to the structure of the Johannine Gospel but also serves as the matrix according to which its pages are woven. It is, therefore, unsurprising to find its appearance within the literary units that comprise the text. Among these, particular significance is assumed by the first major literary unit of the Gospel, covering Chapters 2:1–4:54, in a movement ‘from Cana to Cana’, which describes the events occurring between the first and second sign recorded by the evangelist. Here, after presenting Jesus and situating him within the context of Jewish Messianic expectations, the text emphasises his promise to Nathanael of seeing ‘greater things than these’ (1:50, ESV), before proceeding to describe the first of those σημεῖα that will fulfil the aforementioned promise and demonstrate Jesus’ true identity.

The miracle at the wedding in Cana, in fact, serves as the beginning of a literary inclusio that concludes with the healing of an official’s son, also in Cana of Galilee, and likewise described as a σημείων (4:54) (Kierspel 2008:537–538). While the decisive criterion behind the organisation of this section, and consequently its boundaries, has been understood in multiple ways (see, e.g. Beasley-Murray 1999:xci; Keener 2003:636; Köstenberger 1995:87–103), a careful analysis of this literary unit reveals that the evangelist skilfully organised his material to present what genuine faith in Jesus means and implies (Moloney 1978:820–821).

The first chapter of this section, which marks the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry in the Johannine Gospel, particularly seems to immediately highlight the significance of the response Jesus expects from his interlocutors. Indeed, Chapter 2 of the Fourth Gospel, by three times mentioning that certain individuals believed in Jesus, or in his words, or in his name (2:11, 22, 23), while also indicating that these ‘beliefs’ were not all of the same nature or intensity, appears to underscore that there can be various modes of response to Jesus’ actions and words which, although unified by the same verb, lie on a spectrum ranging from inadequate belief to firm and genuine faith.

It is observed, for instance, that Jesus, invited along with his disciples to a wedding feast in Cana of Galilee, and urged to intervene to prevent the embarrassment of the wine running out during the celebration, miraculously transforms water into wine. This is described in the text as a ‘sign’, thus emphasising that the extraordinary act performed by Jesus was not merely a demonstration of power but rather an indication of a deeper reality concerning Jesus that remained to be grasped (Carson 1991:175): the manifestation, in fact, of his glory (2:11a–b). In response to this first miraculous sign, the evangelist briefly comments, ‘his disciples believed in him’ (2:11c, ESV).

Subsequently, it is noted that the disciples, recalling the dialogue that Jesus had with the Jews in the temple concerning its destruction and reconstruction, and understanding how his discourse indicated a unique relationship with the Father (Moloney 1990:439–449), ‘believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken’ (2:22, ESV).

In the following verse, John highlights how, during the Passover feast, because of the miraculous signs performed by Jesus, ‘many believed in his name’ (2:23, ESV) – although he then quickly indicates, with a wordplay, that Jesus, knowing them, literally ‘did not believed in them’ (2:24).

Now, it is evident from these three episodes that belief is, on the one hand, a fundamental aspect of the Gospel of John, and, on the other hand, a concept that is far from being univocal. It is undeniable that the verb refers not only to varying degrees of intellectual assent and personal commitment but also to effectively opposite dispositions towards Jesus. From the comparison between the first and second occurrences of the verb we have discussed, a difference in the degree of belief is discernible: if this were not the case, further belief after the resurrection would not have been necessary. Conversely, an analysis of the third occurrence readily reveals that such belief, when thoroughly examined, constitutes an utterly insufficient form of belief from Jesus’ viewpoint, aligning more closely with the absence of faith than its presence.

It is therefore crucial to comprehend what belief truly means and implies, in order to account for the multiplicity of meanings attributed to it. To do so, considering that the question concerning the content and meaning of belief is a philosophical one before it is a theological one (Engberg-Pedersen 2017:28–30), it seems useful to turn to the philosophical investigation of belief, which, in recent times, has produced intensive research into the epistemological analysis of faith understood as founded on rational belief, thereby providing tools to disambiguate the polysemy of the verb ‘to believe’ as it appears in the Gospel of John.

Analysis of the concept of rational belief in Richard Swinburne

Richard Swinburne stands out among the thinkers who have dedicated considerable efforts and written extensively on faith from a philosophical point of view. In this respect, the Oxford scholar has diligently investigated and examined the rationality of theistic faith, inevitably confronting the question of the relationship between faith and reason. In doing so, particularly in the third volume of his trilogy on the rationality of theism, Faith and Reason (Swinburne 2005), Swinburne offers exceptionally keen insights into what it means to believe, an indispensable aspect of having faith, despite recent critiques suggesting the possibility of faith not based on belief (Schellenberg 2016). Therefore, it will be useful to explore his conclusions to gain hermeneutical tools that will allow for a more insightful return to the text of John 2.

Generally speaking, Swinburne emphasises that an individual’s beliefs constitute their worldview, what they hold and accept as true about the world (Swinburne 2001:32). Swinburne further characterises belief as a mental state to which the subject has privileged and infallible access. This means that when a subject holding a certain belief reflects on a specific matter that needs the articulation of that same belief, the subject cannot fail to know that they hold that very belief. This belief is known directly and immediately by those who hold it. Finally, Swinburne argues that ‘belief’ is a contrastive concept: this means that whatever its content is, it is necessarily concerned with alternatives (Swinburne 2001:35–39).

The latter claim may also be articulated as follows: to believe something (understood as a proposition p) means, in fact, to believe that this proposition is more probable than its alternatives, considering that the primary alternative consists in the negation of that proposition itself. A person who believes a certain proposition p, then, will think that the sum of the available evidence makes that proposition more probable than any alternative (although not necessarily more probable than the disjunction of all alternatives). Therefore, no one can believe a certain proposition and simultaneously believe that the public and private evidence they possess indicates it as improbable. All this leads Swinburne to conclude, despite the difficulties that may arise from such a notion (Hartman 2011), that belief is involuntary: it is something that happens to a person, not something that person does. In essence, it is impossible to choose what to believe at any given moment.

If beliefs are then determined by a subject’s evaluation of the weight of available evidence concerning a certain issue, an evaluation not dependent on the subject’s will, several important implications can be drawn. Firstly, we can deduce that beliefs are functions of a person’s basic propositions and their inductive criteria. What a subject believes is simply the result of a series of propositions they assume as true, that is, those that are self-evident, arise from direct experience, or are regarded as established truths, combined with the application of inductive criteria that, starting from these foundational propositions, allow for other, more general propositions to be considered probable. Secondly, another implication of this understanding of ‘belief’ is that, while it is impossible to instantly change one’s beliefs based on one’s will, it is nevertheless possible to come to believe different propositions over a relatively long period if one commits to seeking new evidence related to the issue at hand or verifying the correctness of one’s inductive tools (Swinburne 2005:15–26). Thirdly, it becomes evident that to achieve one’s goals, it is fundamental to hold true beliefs. Without them, a subject might never achieve their aims because of a worldview that does not align with reality.

With respect to this last point, we can add that, according to Swinburne, to strive for beliefs that are as true as possible demands aiming for beliefs that are as rationally justified as possible, meaning beliefs based on a set of evidence that makes them more probable than their alternatives (Swinburne 2005:39–44). The epistemic justification of a belief, moreover, can be considered from a synchronic or a diachronic perspective. In the first case, it refers to the justification being based on the set of evidence and inductive criteria a subject possesses at a given moment. In the second case, it refers to justification based on an adequate investigation of evidence and inductive criteria. Essentially, what a person can do to adequately investigate their own belief, thereby making it more rationally justified, is, on the one hand, to seek a greater amount of evidence, and on the other, to verify the strength of the evidence already in their possession, by both double-checking evaluations and calculations made from existing data and investigating the correctness of the inductive criteria adopted (Swinburne 2001:166–182).

In the light of these considerations, Swinburne develops a five-level scale of rational justification for belief.

To start with, Swinburne considers synchronically subjectively justified belief (rational belief 1), which consists of believing a certain proposition p based on the totality of evidence possessed by a subject and rendered probable by that total evidence, given their inductive criteria. A subject with a rational belief 1 is justified in believing what they believe because, within the body of evidence at their disposal, there are no internal contradictions.

Next, synchronically objectively justified belief (rational belief 2) is considered. This is a kind of belief that is logically probable because of its evidence, and its evidence consists of basic propositions that the subject is objectively justified in holding with the degree of confidence they have in them, meaning that the basic propositions they hold are, in fact, as probable as the subject believes them to be.

Moving on to examine diachronically justified beliefs, generally referred to as rational belief 3, Swinburne distinguishes those that are subjectively justified from those that are objectively so.

Diachronically subjectively justified belief (rational belief 4) is one that, based on the subject’s evidence and inductive criteria, is considered probable and, according to what the subject believes to be the correct criteria of adequacy, is based on an adequate investigation. In essence, it is configured as a rational belief 1 for which the subject has dedicated an amount of time, money, and energy that they believe to be appropriate to investigate it.

Finally, diachronically objectively justified belief (rational belief 5) is a belief that has been adequately investigated according to correct criteria of adequacy, meaning it is a rational belief 2 that has been investigated until the subject is virtually certain that any further investigation will not lead to any new evidence (Swinburne 2005:52–54, 70–71).

Swinburne’s approach applied

Given this framework for the epistemic investigation of belief, it becomes evident that the mention of the verb ‘to believe’ encompasses a rather broad horizon of dispositions and actions, capable of accounting for a complex phenomenology of attitudes among those to whom the predicate of believer is attributed. It is based on these conclusions by Swinburne, therefore, that we intend to return to the text of John 2 to analyse the threefold occurrence of the verb ‘to believe’ and attempt to give them a coherent interpretation within an encompassing hermeneutical framework.

Regarding the episode of the wedding at Cana, to investigate and subsequently indicate the type of belief attributed to the disciples, it is primarily useful to note certain aspects that the text seems to consider relevant.

Firstly, it is impossible to overlook the fact that the event occurs on the third day (2:1). This seems relevant not so much as a direct reference to the day of resurrection, given that the Fourth Gospel does not stress the third day in its resurrection narrative, but rather because no other sequence of days is explicitly highlighted by the author elsewhere in this Gospel. The third day, in the narrative of the early chapters, culminates a 7-day sequence. Beginning with the day a delegation is sent to question the Baptist (1:19–28), the second day sees the Baptist announce Jesus as the Lamb of God (1:29), the third is when two of the Baptist’s disciples follow Jesus and stay with him from the afternoon (the tenth hour) throughout that day (1:35–39), the fourth is when Andrew introduces Jesus to his brother (1:40–42), and the fifth is the day of the exchange between Jesus and Nathanael. ‘The third day’ mentioned at the beginning of Chapter 2, understood as inclusive of the part of the day of this last described exchange, indicates therefore that the miracle at Cana, where Jesus reveals his glory, occurs on the seventh day, concluding an entire week in which the evangelist intended to present Jesus (Carson 1991:167–168). All of this, by making the connection to Creation week evident, thus seems to suggest to the reader what the disciples, present at the wedding feast, would have grasped precisely from the miraculous sign observed: Jesus is the one who brings the wine of the new creation (Kierspel 2008:533–535).

Secondly, it seems relevant to note that the text mentions only the disciples as subjects of belief, and not, for example, the servants who, having drawn the water, were also witnesses to the miracle performed by Jesus (2:9). This seems to indicate that the type of response offered by the disciples was caused not only by seeing what Jesus had done, but by having seen it after having heard what Jesus had said (and what had been said about him) in the preceding days (1:29–51) (Koester 1989:329–332).

Keeping these aspects in mind, it is possible to assert that the disciples’ belief at Cana can be categorised as Swinburne’s rational belief 2. The disciples, based on the basic propositions and evidence regarding the person of Jesus they had acquired, directly or indirectly, during the events narrated in Chapter 1 of the Gospel, in the presence of the miracle they had witnessed, were synchronically objectively justified in believing in Jesus: what they believed about the person of Jesus was, for all intents and purposes, made indeed probable by the evidence they possessed.

Moving on to consider the second occurrence, it is evident that, although it is connected to the narrative of the temple’s purification and Jesus’ subsequent confrontation with the Jews, the time at which the disciples’ belief ‘[in] the Scripture and [in] the word that Jesus had spoken’ (2:22, ESV) is referred is some years later, after the resurrection. Now, this timing is significant because through it, the evangelist seems to indicate a kind of commitment on the part of the disciples to piece together the evidence gathered throughout Jesus’ years of ministry, to the point that subsequent events, such as the resurrection, shed light on phrases spoken by Jesus much earlier and retained in memory as open questions yet to be resolved. The disciples, of course, had seen Jesus’ glory and had believed in him, but they did not stop there. They had remained by Jesus’ side for the following years, listening to his discourses, witnessing his miracles and resurrection. All of this, ultimately, constituted a continuous investigation in the sense indicated by Swinburne.

Indeed, in listening to Jesus’ discourses, whether to them or to others, the disciples had the opportunity to evaluate what Jesus said about himself, his relationship with the Father, and the reason for his presence among them. In observing his miracles, they had the opportunity to test Jesus’ very credentials (Von Wahlde 1981:395–398). In being present at the Last Supper, they were able to test Jesus’ feelings, objectives, and determination to complete what he claimed was his mission (Du Toit 1991:334–336). In witnessing his arrest, they had the opportunity to examine their Teacher’s character even in the most critical of situations.

The years spent with Jesus during his ministry, therefore, can be configured as a thorough investigation into his person, an investigation with an outcome far from guaranteed, given the various occasions where the evangelist mentions Jesus’ followers who, confronted with the demands associated with Christian life, either withdraw or refuse to live them fully (see Jn 6:60–66; 8:30–59; 12:42–43; 13:26–30; 18:15–27). When, finally, the disciples become witnesses to the resurrection, all the pieces fall into place, and the investigation can come to its end, because the accumulation of so much evidence regarding the figure of Jesus, collected over a relatively extended period, makes Jesus’ identity manifest and renders further investigation virtually useless, in the sense that it would lead to no modification in judgement. If, therefore, such a description is accurate, it is evident that the disciples’ belief, mentioned in John 2:22, is nothing other than a rational belief 5.

Finally, examining the belief of the multitude at the Passover feast, what is immediately noticeable is that, as noted above, although belief is mentioned, the text implies, through a wordplay, that the evaluation of such belief did not result in a positive outcome.

Now, before being able to express an appraisal about the belief of these individuals, it is useful to observe, firstly, that in the Gospel of John the miraculous signs, mentioned in connection with Jesus’ work, are consistently and positively described as instruments through which Jesus’ identity is revealed (Johns & Miller 1994). This is a crucial element given the substantial difference between Jesus, who ‘needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man’ (Jn 2:25, ESV), and other people who, possessing direct and immediate knowledge only of their own being, find themselves in need of testimonies to discover the reality concerning someone other than them. Given this, it seems natural that ‘many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he was doing’ (2:23, ESV), meaning that, based on the experience gained in observing the signs performed by Jesus, they formed opinions, or beliefs. However, when compared to what was said about the disciples’ belief at Cana, the difference is evident: here, the signs are not preceded by any discourse or verbal testimony about Jesus; the only clue about who he truly is resides in his ability to perform wonders.

Secondly, it is important to highlight the fact that John 2:23–25 is introductory to the dialogue between Jesus and Nicodemus, a man who exhibits characteristics similar to those of the people present at the Passover feast: he too approaches Jesus and forms an opinion of him by seeing the miraculous signs he performed (Jn 3:2). In general he is characterised as a man who, although favourably disposed towards Jesus, does not appear inclined to follow him openly (Cf. Jn 3:1–2; 7:50–52; 19:38–39). If then he is representative of the group constituted by the multitude present at the Passover feast, the reason why Jesus did not believe in them, did not consider their faith adequate, is understandable: it was too little rooted in the reality of who he was.

Considering all this, it becomes easy to assert that this third occurrence of belief in the chapter presents itself as a belief that is only subjectively justified, lacking elements to assert that the conclusions reached are those that should actually be reached, and only synchronically justified, being devoid of a temporal investigation, that is, what Swinburne would define as a rational belief 1.

Conclusion

When confronting the richness and complexity of the Fourth Gospel and investigating the breadth of its themes, it becomes evident that belief assumes a central and weighty role within the text, starting from its very first literary units. What, however, also proves to be indubitable is the multiplicity of attitudes and positions exhibited towards Jesus by the characters to whom belief is attributed. This gives rise to the need, on the part of the reader, on the one hand, to keep in mind the polysemy connected to the verb ‘to believe’ in the Johannine Gospel, and, on the other, to find hermeneutical tools that allow its occurrences to be disambiguated, so as to make coherent use of its contents.

Considering, therefore, that the question of what belief truly means and implies consists in investigating an issue pertaining to analytical philosophy as much as to theology, the use of tools recently made available by philosophical research does not seem inappropriate. Among these, Swinburne’s work concerning the epistemic analysis of faith assumes particular relevance precisely because of the fact that it has produced a model which, by attributing different and well-defined levels of rationality to belief, is capable of giving an account of a multiplicity of meanings enclosed within the same term.

Consequently, the application of the schema proposed by Swinburne to John 2, despite the risk associated with the interdisciplinary approach (Jesse 2011:62) of imposing categories alien to Johannine thought, has at least three merits. Firstly, it plausibly resolves the ambiguity dictated by the threefold occurrence of the verb ‘to believe’; secondly, it provides a clear and readily usable framework, inasmuch as it is based on a numerical scale, and thus has the potential for wide applicability; thirdly, it offers the reader, on the basis of the previous two results, the chance to evaluate their own faith in accordance with the standard of the text itself.

If, therefore, the present work succeeds in yielding actual hermeneutical benefits, it then reveals itself as a viable path for aligning more closely with what is the explicit purpose of the Fourth Gospel.

Acknowledgements

The author declares that he has no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced him in writing this article.

C.M. is the sole author of this article.

This article followed all ethical standards for research without direct contact with human or animal subjects.

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analysed in this study.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and are the product of professional research. The article does not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated institution, funder, agency or the publisher. The author is responsible for this article’s results, findings and content.

References