The Mosaic of Belief in the Fourth Gospel

The Fourth Evangelist communicates the aim of the Fourth Gospel as belief and life among its audience (John 20:30–31). Moreover, what has become one of the most quoted verses in the Bible, John 3:16, identifies the one who believes as the one having eternal life. Understanding the action of believing is thus no marginal concern for the Johannine audience. This article surveys the evangelist's use of this concept and demonstrates that the Fourth Gospel provides no summative definition of belief, but rather illustrates fragments of contextually- and situationally-defined ethoi which form part of a participatory and performative immersion into belief and life, only translatable into the contemporary context if considered as parts of a whole: the mosaic of belief.