ii. The Use of the Word ‘Believe.’
I have long suspected that one of the reasons for the apparent want of progressive development in the Fourth Gospel has been the ambiguity of its use of the word ‘believe.’ We are told from the first that disciples and others ‘believed,’ and it is natural enough that we should take the word in the full sense of complete conversion and acceptance of Jesus as the Messiah. But there can be little doubt that to do so is to read into the word a great deal more than the writer intended. We do not make sufficient allowance for the extreme simplicity of his vocabulary. He has but one word to denote all the different stages of belief. We must attend closely to the context if we would see when he means the first dawning of belief and when he means full conviction. Many times over he uses the word of what must have been a quite transient impression. The impression might be confirmed and become rooted, or it might pass rapidly away. As applied to members of the Twelve the word denotes successive stages of acceptance, culminating—but even then only provisionally—in St. Peter’s confession. As applied to the Samaritans and to the mixed crowds in Galilee and Jerusalem, the word probably does not cover more than faint stirrings of curiosity and emotion which lightly came and lightly passed away. One example of the use of the word is especially interesting. The writer is speaking of the visit of Peter and the unnamed disciple to the tomb, and he tells how, after Peter had entered, the other disciple also entered, ‘and he saw, and believed’ (xx. 8); but he immediately adds: ‘For as yet they knew not the scripture, that he must rise again from the dead.’ We might perhaps paraphrase: ‘The wonder of the resurrection began to dawn upon them, though they were not prepared for it. At a later date they came to understand that prophecy had distinctly pointed to it, and that the whole mission of the Messiah would have been incomplete without it: but as yet this was hidden from them. They saw that something mysterious had happened, and they felt that what had happened was profoundly important; as yet they could not say more. The first step towards a full belief had been taken, though the full belief itself was still in the future.’