John: Practice Versus Belief

Pierre Hadot reminded us that Christianity, in the early years of its growth, had strong ties to philosophy. It thought of itself often as the fulfillment of the philosophical life. But what is the quality of this fulfillment? What form does it take? We are mistaken if we see the philosophy of the time as primarily systems of belief — as fully articulated and systematic views of epistemology, ethics, metaphysics, et cetera. Philosophy was a “way of life” to quote Hadot again. As such, philosophy placed more emphasis on “practice” than on “belief.” Yes, beliefs are important, but it is one thing to study a philosopher to understand what he/she believed and quite another to study them for how they might help you live your life better. In other words, to reduce philosophy to systems of belief, especially during the Hellenistic era through the second and third centuries CE, is to impose a modern lens that distorts the practical aspects of philosophy at the time.

If we are looking for systems of belief, we can read Seneca and find in his notion of a providential universe (which is canonical Stoicism) a precursor of the Christian God. Yes, Seneca believed in a providential universe and that “god” is responsible for that providence, but his point is not to make a truth claim. His point is to help his readers come to terms with the ups and downs of fortuna. He rarely, if ever, discusses providentia outside of an ethical context. One needs to believe this in order to change one’s disposition to events and cut off anger. Providentia and fortuna are primarily concepts within a practice of the self that is about defusing anger and frustration and developing a form of attention to oneself that controls one’s responses to the events of fortune. It is fundamentally and essentially aligned with the Stoic ethical precept that you are only responsible for what you can control, and all that you can control is how you respond to fortuna. Seeing fortuna as providentia is helpful in enacting this precept because it changes your perspective on events and therefore changes your perspective on how you respond to them.

Something similar has happened to Christianity and its early alliance with philosophy as ethical practice. We’ve turned it into a system of beliefs about the nature of God, his Son, and the message that they delivered to humankind 200o years ago. What if we take seriously Hadot’s assertion that there was a strong practical connection between Christianity and philosophy? What if that connection is a practical one that focuses on “a way life” rather than the revelation of a doctrinal truth that we should believe as a condition of our salvation? What if we elevate Christianity as a set of philosophical practices to the forefront of our thinking? What if Christianity is treated more as ascesis (the training and practices of self-transformation) than as belief system? What would happen to the belief system that has usurped the primary position? What would become of “faith”? What would become of the commandment “Love each other as I have loved you?” (John 15:12)

There is no definitive answer to these questions. They must be taken up, if they are taken up at all, in the context of what one is dealing with at the time. This is philosophy as a way of life, but it is also “religious experience” as William James imagined it: what is your relationship to eternity and how does that help you with the specific issues you are dealing with here and now in this life, in this world? At this moment, I’m continuing to grapple with the question, “Am I a Christian?” I get closer to yes as I think about the practical aspects of Christianity as opposed to the doctrinal aspects: Christianity is a collection of philosophical and spiritual practices rather than a system of beliefs. For me, this yes is never likely to be total. I’m never likely to accept the doctrinal definitions of Christian belief as the sole source of truth. I’m never likely to accept that Jesus revealed a Truth that is incompatible with others who have brought us similar truths about how to live in harmony with other people. If we think that Jesus revealed this truth and we think that our salvation is external to this world and that this salvation is a matter of simply believing this truth, then this way madness lies. This way leads to competition among all religions that are organized around their particular brand of revealed Truth that must be accepted for salvation to occur — whether that salvation comes in the form of an individualized eternal afterlife or it comes in the form of a vengeful God who implements his Kingdom on this earth.

For right here, right now, I find value in spiritual practices that help me think through the verticalization of Christian belief that I grew up with. This is the belief that Jesus revealed a truth about the nature of God and that one’s salvation is based upon the profession of a belief in this Truth that is utterly incompatible with other Truths. “Faith” in this model becomes a belief that professing this truth leads to eternal life in a heaven where we will be reunited with our loved ones. This is a particularly proud form of Christianity. It requires a distinction between those who are saved and those who aren’t — those who will be granted admission to heaven and those consigned to hell — based solely on whether or not one believes in this doctrine. If I believe, then I am saved, even if I ignore the practices and go about my life in a manner unrecognizable to the life Jesus lived.

This is a proud form of Christianity because it makes accidents of birth and upbringing into a status of being among the chosen. It was easy for me to believe in the Catholic Christian God when I was young because that was expected of me. The fish doesn’t see the water it swims in. But what if I had been born at a different place and time? Would I be consigned to the fires of hell because this system of beliefs was not available to me? When Christianity — or any religion — presents itself as a system of beliefs as the basis for salvation, we are in dangerous territory. Condescension toward others (if not outright hatred) is relatively close at hand. We are never very far away from making hard distinctions between those who are on the inside with us and those who are not.

There is another problem for Christianity as belief in a doctrine. It makes Christianity into something you “join,” and the price of entry is way too easy to pay. The example represented by Jesus, no matter which Gospel you read, is difficult to emulate and achieve. I’m not talking about raising people from the dead or healing them with a touch. Modern Christianity has drained itself of the spiritual effort Jesus demonstrated in the life he lived. To “love each other as I have loved you” is very difficult. It is much more difficult than condescension, anger and hatred — all of which are wrapped up in Nietzsche’s notion of ressentiment. Living a Christian life is supposed to be hard, not because people will persecute you. That pretty much doesn’t happen any longer in the US despite Fox News’ belief that there is a “War on Christianity.” (If there is a war, it is Nietzsche’s war seeking a return to Jesus as exemplar of a way of living and away from the ressentiment-fueled Pauline Church. This may very well be a war worth fighting.) Rather, the spiritual practices demonstrated by Jesus demand a lot of us as we go about living in the world. To “turn the other cheek” and to greet hostility with kindness is hard work. Reducing salvation to a set of beliefs makes salvation easy. The only hard part is saying “Yes” to a set of doctrines that don’t make any logical sense. If there are challenges, they revolve around the willingness to hold onto this illogical set of beliefs in the face of challenges that would make one question them.

In this meditation, I want to dwell on this issue of Christianity as belief versus spiritual practice by looking at some key passages in the gospel of John. This gospel is critically interested in the problem of belief in the way that I have been thinking about it — belief in a doctrine versus belief in the effectivity of certain practices. To be specific: the author of John reworked what it meant to believe in the Jewish Messiah and the relation of that figure to the traditions and laws of the people. This is not a controversial point. He writes it explicitly at 20:30-31:

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

The last part of this passage is most interesting for my purposes here — “and that through believing you may have life in his name.” John makes clear that he believes Jesus is the Messiah, but the mission of the Messiah is very different than what was expected. If Jesus easily fit the mold of the Messiah, why does John feel the need to convince his readers of this fact? John seems to be responding to some group of people or way of thinking about Jesus that needs to be corrected. His statement belies the fact that there is a wider belief that Jesus didn’t fit that mold, yet John wants to convince his readers that Jesus was the one who was promised as Messiah.

At the heart of John’s gospel is what it means to believe and therefore what it means to know God and to “have life in his name.” These are the operative terms — at least in most English translations — belief in the Messiah, knowledge of God, and living a life in and through that knowledge and belief. We do ourselves a disservice if we use these terms in their conventional English meanings: to believe something is to know something definitively (or to think you know) and to speak that belief — to put a name to it. This is not what is going on in this gospel.

Reworking this expectation drives the narrative as a concern for what it means to believe in the mission of the Messiah. It is clear that John’s version of the Messiah is delivering a broader message of how to live with others “in this world” (a phrase often repeated in the RSV translation). As such, the message seeks to reform Judaism from within, but it is much more than that. The first suggestion we get of this is early in the gospel:

He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own [home], and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become the children of God…(1:10-12; emphasis added)

This passage contains the set of problems that John is dealing with. Jesus was not recognized as the Messiah by “his own people.” He didn’t fit the mold. Yet, his message was recognizable to some who came to believe that he was the Messiah, but in a very different model than what was expected.

In the opening chapters, there are two different reactions to Jesus as Messiah. The first reaction is to accept that he is the Messiah because of the miracles he works — changing water into wine, feeding the 5000, and healing the blind man. Because of these signs, those who witness them (or hear of them) believe that he is the Messiah as prophesied. John clearly wants his reader to adopt this belief. The episodes are presented with some detail about each miracle and they end with a statement of belief on the part of the witnesses. This is clearly not the end of the story for John. His overriding concern is to show that Judaic expectations about what the Messiah will accomplish are wrong and need to be revised. Let’s take the example of feeding the 5000.

When the people saw the sign he had done, they began to say, “This is indeed the prophet who has come into the world.”

When Jesus realized they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountains by himself. (6:14-15)

The expectation is that the Messiah will be a king to rule over the people. This is the expectation that John thinks is wrong. The Messiah’s mission is not monarchical. So in this first reaction, we have a double move. First, John works hard to establish that Jesus is the Messiah as promised by Judaic tradition. Second, he wants the reader to begin to question the Messianic mission. The problem is belief and what it means to believe in the Messiah. This is John’s crucial move. Jesus is the Messiah, that much is clear to John. He spends significant time in the opening chapters establishing this fact.

The second reaction in the narrative is the Judaic denial that he is the Messiah, which leads to the desire of the priets to put him to death. This is well understood in Biblical scholarship. Treated as a progression, John is the most adamant of the canonical gospels about the guilt of the Judaic priests in the death of Jesus. Pilate is completely innocent.

As the text progresses, the nature of that belief becomes the crux of the matter. The disciples continue to ask for further signs and demonstrations of what Jesus has come to reveal. It seems that they are asking for a new law. John’s Jesus knew that it was going to be hard going for his disciples. He was leaving them with a paradox. He was going to be killed to demonstrate that the world in which he and his disciples live is full of intolerant hate. His death, however, would be a demonstration of love for the world that hated him. This “going away” will also be a “coming again” (John 14:25-30). The Catholic Christianity that I grew up with saw that “coming again” as literal and physical. Jesus actually did rise from the dead, and he did speak to Mary Magdalene as she visited the empty tomb. This interpretation is possible if you don’t actually read the text, which of course was not a requirement. I didn’t actually read John until I took a course as an undergraduate.

The “coming again” is better understood as memory. At the end of the gospel of John, Jesus is laying out a future for the disciples that will be a difficult one as they try to maintain their memory of his example. The “Advocate” (i.e., Holy Spirit, Helper) is the mnemonic device that will come after him. The function of the Advocate is to remind and remember the life as lived: “love each other as I have loved you.” This is Jesus’ only “commandment” in John. It is a commandment of practice, not a commandment to believe in a doctrine or a new set of laws.

I struggle to find doctrinal commitments in John. All you can find is Jesus presenting himself as an example of how to live peacefully within a world full of anger and hatred. This life provokes the hatred of the world in such a violent fashion that it must kill him. His crucifixion will be the ultimate demonstration of how to deal with an angry world. It will remain just that — a demonstration that is to be remembered. This memory acknowledges that this practice of maintaining a disposition of love in a world of anger is very, very hard. Anyone who tries to live this value will be tested. Memory and recall of Jesus’ demeanor and disposition in the face of this cruelty will be a spiritual practice aided by the Holy Spirit (Advocate, Helper) that is being sent after he goes:

“When the Advocate [Helper] comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf. You also are to testify because you have been with me from the beginning.

I have said these things to you to keep you from stumbling. They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, an hour is coming when those who kill you will think that by doing so they are offering worship to God. And they will do this because they have not known the Father or me. But I have said these things to you so that when their hour comes you may remember that I told you about them.” (John 15:26-16:4; emphasis added)

To testify is to remember. Crucially, it is to remember Jesus’ example when one is in the midst of stumbling. The world is designed to draw us into its ressentiment. I must be specific here about “the world.” It is a repeated phrase in John. The world that John is railing against is not a generalized violent human nature. It is not a Hobbesian state of nature. This is a world that kills in the name of God as Truth. It is a world where you are either with us or against us. You are either on the side of Truth or you aren’t. It is a world that kills to protect itself and its God. It is not the Judaic world, but the world of its leaders — the Pharisees regularly come in for some rough treatment in John. Pilate repeatedly goes to the Pharisees and says that there is no case against Jesus. Pilate sees the “truth,” but the Pharisees are having none of it. If the world is all bad, we certainly don’t get that from the example of Pilate.

To return to the passage just cited: we mistake the point if we read this passage (and so many others in John) as Jesus having some sort of supernatural power to foretell the future. He clearly knows what is going to happen, but this is more of a literary device to make the ethical point: you are going to be tested just as I am about to be tested. Your job is to maintain a disposition of love through all of it just as I am about to demonstrate. This is the memory that must be kept alive eternally as a function of practice, not a function of doctrinal belief. In John, Jesus is adamant that this love is the truth of God and that it must be activated in the world: “And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one” (John 17:11).

At the end of this prayer, we find a very clear statement about what this protection is and what the “name” is that has been given:

Righteous Father, the world does not know you; and these know you who have sent me. I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them. (John 17:25-26)

Truth, the name of the Father, and knowledge all amount to the commandment to “love each other as I have loved you.” There is no Truth other that this. The only way to know it is through understanding the demonstration. The only way to know how to “love each other” is through the example and demonstration: “as I have loved you.” There is no knowledge of God other than the willingness to accept this example as a better way to live. That is all that there is when it comes to the revealed Truth. It is the revelation of a very difficult-to-maintain disposition to a world that will want you to conform to its version of God/Truth.

The “stumbling” that is at stake is reabsorption into a version of God/Truth that reinvigorates hatred and anger toward anyone who doesn’t conform. So, while “the world” repeated in these passages is specifically the world of synagogues, it can apply to any way of living that demands doctrinal conformity to a God/Truth. We are not very attentive readers if we think that John is telling us to replace the Jewish God with the Christian God as a one-for-one swap. This would be to replace one form of vertical orientation of the soul with another. This would merely play out the same dynamic of condescension and hatred for those who either don’t conform or make it difficult for us to conform. Ressentiment will Eternally Recur.

John’s message is not a vertical message. It is relentlessly and emphatically horizontal. It is about the relationship we have with other people and our ability to demonstrate and enact that relationship: “love each other as I have loved you.” I’ve emphasized “as” because in the English translation this article does so much of the work. There is no Platonic answer to “what is love?” The answer can only be found by referring back to the demonstration: “as I have loved you.” This demonstration must be remembered to remain alive in the world, especially when Jesus is gone. Thus there is no doctrine here, there is only a commandment that is not a commandment to follow a new set of laws. It is a commandment to a disposition, which will require a great deal of effort in the face of a hostile world that wants and needs its own God/Truth as a principle of conformity. Those who believe in this commandment — those who accept it — will be tested. Peter will deny Jesus three times. Judas will give him up to the authorities to make a buck. Both of these examples are not designed to make Peter and Judas into evildoers. These examples serve to show how hard this is going to be and how quickly their practices will be set aside to protect and enhance themselves and their stature. There must be something that comes after Jesus to keep alive his memory in these moments of doubt and struggle. This is the Holy Spirit, which is nothing other than the commitment to recall this spiritual practice when the going gets tough.

This is the redefinition of faith that occurs when one sees Christianity as a spiritual practice of love as a counter example to ressentiment. It is a faith that is very different than what I grew up with. It is a faith that believes that the practices can work, not that a doctrine is true and that I will (hopefully) be saved as a result of my nominal belief in the doctrine. To “love each other as I have loved you” is hard work, and it takes faith that the effort will not be in vain.

To put a point on this, I want to look at John’s chapter where Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth and the light. No one comes to the Father but through me.” I’m going to present the passage at some length here because a more full context helps make some crucial points clear:

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go and prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way to the place I am going.” Thomas said to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.” (John 14:1-7)

I will pause here to take stock of what has just been narrated. Just before this passage, Jesus has told Simon Peter that he will deny him three times even though Peter has just professed undying loyalty to Jesus. This is going to be hard not only because love in the face of hatred is hard, but because the disciples come from a culture that is deeply ingrained in them. This culture is the source of their misunderstanding of the example and demonstration of Jesus. Let’s be clear on this. When Jesus asks them to “Believe in God, believe also in me,” the disciples respond by asking to be shown something definitive, like a codified set of new laws or a doctrine of some sort. This is what they think “belief” means — a definitive demonstration of something True that they can conform to. They want Jesus to replace one doctrine with another and to show them what it is.

When Jesus says that he goes to “prepare a place,” a consistent reading of John could only interpret this “place” as “in this world.” He is going so that the disciples can take over the work that Jesus has shown them how to do. No further demonstration should be necessary: “From now on you do know him and have seen him.” To think that this place is a literal place (either our conventional “heaven” or some other physical place where he will forge his Kingdom) is to suddenly interject something that hasn’t been in the narrative and is not going to be in the narrative. This is Thomas’ confusion, and it parallels Simon Peter’s confusion in the previous section: “We do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” When Jesus responds that you already know it because I’ve shown it to you already, he is saying that no new codified laws are coming. All that you need is this demonstration and the belief that you can carry forward his example of love when he is gone. The place that is being prepared can only be consistently interpreted as their memories and remembrances of him that must be reactivated when “stumbling” is immanent. This is the “coming again” referred to in 14:3.

To continue, Philip clearly doesn’t get it. He still wants a concrete showing of a doctrinal Truth:

Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves. Very truly I tell you, the one who believes in me will do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.” (John 14:8-12)

This is a complete and total overhauling of what it means to “believe.” It is explicitly to believe in the example of Jesus as an exemplar (or sage) as the Stoics used it: he serves as an example of how to behave in a loving and kind way no matter what is thrown at him by the world. As such, he must become a memory that is passed on from the Father to the Son to the disciples and to others. The place that is prepared is thus a place in the soul to continue this spiritual practice ad infinitum. This place is prepared by memory of an exemplar, and it is the same place that Jesus refers to when he says “I am in the Father and the Father is in me” and when he claims that “the Father who dwells in me does his works.” The place is the soul, not a purported Heaven above and outside this world.

Thomas and Philip don’t get it because they want a different kind of Truth. They want a Truth that can be written down and conformed to. They want a new Law that they can obey. They want a kind of belief that is aligned with propositional statements about what is True. They want him to be a new Moses. Their desire for this kind of Truth and knowledge is very neo-Platonic. John is cutting off this desire. The author is saying all you need to know is what was demonstrated: “if you do not [believe me], then believe me because of the works themselves.” Do not look outside of what Jesus has demonstrated for a Truth beyond the works. The efficacy of the works stand on their own. Christianity is a practice, not a doctrine. There is no man behind the curtain.

Thus we can now understand what John means when Jesus says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me.” This is not an escape from the world. This is not eternal life outside of a hostile world as recompense for enduring it. This is accepting the example of Jesus as a way of living that is true because of the works he did — because of the practice that he demonstrated. All you need to believe in is the practice itself and “prepare a place” for it within yourself so that it can be passed on: “And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3). Eternal life is more like Nietzsche’s Eternal Recurrence — it is passed on, and it is passed on in this world by living the values and demonstrating them in how one lives.

With this reading, I am under no obligation to read “no one comes to the Father but through me” as a claim that transcends the specific historical community John is addressing. I am under no obligation to read this as an exclusive claim to a revealed Truth. We can more plausibly read this as a claim about the world in which John was written. There are no other examples as good as Jesus for what he is trying to communicate. But the world is full of these examples before and after Jesus.

……….

End Note: Much is made in Christianity about John’s use of “eternal life.” Always in this gospel eternal life is presented as something that someone “has” or “knows” as a result of believing in Jesus as Messiah (3:16, 3:36, 5:24, 6:47). This is a tricky translation. Let’s first take the notion that one “has eternal life.” In English, “has” means something that one possesses. The emphasis is on the subject who possesses the object, often through some act of earning it. I own this thing that I have; it is mine; I have earned it. But in Greek, this can mean “to partake in” or “participate in.” If we switch out “has” for “partake in,” then eternal life means something quite different. My contention is that reading these phrases as “participating in eternal life” versus “has earned eternal life as a possession” is much more consistent with what John is teaching us.

The tense of the verb is also important. The Greek uses the present tense, not the future tense. For John, to have eternal life is not something that happens in the future after you die. Rather, to participate in eternal life is to draw on the power of God to live a life of love and peacefulness in the face of anger and hatred. Eternal life is something one participates in now by the way you draw on and channel the power. Eternal life is not something you posses like an object earned. Thus to participate in eternal life would mean something like “tapping into” a power rather than possessing an object.

Looking at this now from the perspective of eternal life as a kind of knowledge, this tapping into a kind of spiritual experience of knowledge (ginóskó) rather than a techne as “knowing how to do something” like practice medicine, build a ship, play a lyre. Ginóskó is more experiential than doctrinal. Let’s take John 17:3: “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” Here “eternal life” is something that one knows experientially (ginóskó) not doctrinally. Eternal life is experienced here and now as a kind of spiritual knowledge that can only be reduced to a single commandment: “love each other as I have loved you.”

Finally, let’s’ take the word “eternal,” translates the Greek term aiónios. This is also very tricky. “Eternal” in English tends to mean having no end. Thus “eternal life” tends to mean that one will live on and have some level of experience after death. But the Greek term aiónios can mean outside of time or not of this particular era. The emphasis is on something that lasts for a long time in contrast to things that are temporary or fleeting. When we combine this meaning of aiónios with ginóskó, we have something closer to a force that one taps into by following the example of Jesus. When further combined with the commandment “love each other as I have loved you,” this force is love.

Thus the gospel (good news) that John delivers is not of the verticalized soul that seeks eternal life as a reward for believing in a doctrine. The soul in John moves first on both the horizontal dimension. “Love each other, as I have loved you.” The new commandment, the only one the Jesus of John leaves for his disciples, is horizontal — from each to each other. This horizontal starting point is a tapping into of an eternal force that is less about a conventional notion of eternity and more about abstracting oneself from the ressentiment-fueled culture in which his disciples lived. This abstraction starts, it should be clear by now, horizontally and thus as an engagement with the world rather than a wholesale anachoresis as physical and spiritual act of withdrawal to take care of your self.