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257 It is a high privilege to be invited to respond to John Painter’s essay. Among his many contributions to New Testament studies, Professor Painter has alerted us to the ways in which the quest narratives function in John, both traditionally and rhetorically. His article in this volume not only explores the origin and development of key Johannine passages, but it also engages meaningfully their theological and experiential implications . In highlighting the relevance of Painter’s earlier work, this essay too is sure to make a difference. The subject in his paper I would like to focus on and take a bit further involves the divine quest for humanity, a theme that runs alongside the human quests for the divine in the Fourth Gospel. Put another way, if one were to ask why the quest narratives in John employ ironic presentations of dead–end aspirations and wrong–headed ventures that are challenged and corrected by Jesus, the answer would lie in the evangelist’s conviction that “the One Quest beyond the Many” stands above all human quests. The restlessness of the human heart points us to a more transcendent quest, conveyed—nay, embodied—by the Revealer. This divine quest for humanity, challenging all that is of creaturely origin, calls for authentic faith as a transformative response to the Divine Initiative. This theme is set out in the Fourth Gospel’s prologue (John 1:1–18) and climactically 13: Response THE JOHANNINE CONCEPTION OF AUTHENTIC FAITH AS A RESPONSE TO THE DIVINE INITIATIVE Paul N. Anderson 258 PAUL N. ANDERSON calls the reader to encounter at John 20:31. The latter verse stresses that, although other stories attributed to Jesus lie beyond the Johannine witness , these are written so that the hearer/reader might believe. I appreciate the fact that Painter opens his essay with the story of his own quest: his search for the truth about matters Johannine. John Painter has long been a hero for me, as well as a friend, and his quest and findings also intersect with my own. In addition to reading everything I could find by Professor Painter as I conducted my inquiry into the character and development of Johannine Christology while a student at the University of Glasgow, I too cut my interpretive teeth on Barrett and Bultmann, among others. Their theological interpretations remain solid, but my own testing of the literary evidence for their composition theories yielded critically inadequate results. The Fourth Gospel is not, in my view, an amalgam of unknown sources, nor is it dependent on Mark or another of the Synoptics (P. Anderson 1997a, 48–169). The Fourth Gospel’s autonomy is compelling, although its tradition did not develop in isolation; I prefer to think in terms of a “dialogical autonomy” in explaining the relationship between the Fourth Gospel and other Jesus traditions (P. Anderson 2006, 37–41, 101–26). I was privileged to present a paper, at Professor Painter’s invitation, in the Johannine Literature Seminar at the 1993 SNTS meeting in Chicago . Raymond Brown had been scheduled to do a paper on John 6 but had to cancel, and this opened a place for one last paper on the subject before the group moved on. There, I argued that at least four groups were targeted in the evolving Johannine context of John 6, in contrast to Martyn’s theory of a single community crisis in the context of John 9 (see P. Anderson 1997b, 24–57). The quests for another feeding (the crowd), religious certainty (the Jewish leaders), easy discipleship (the disciples), and apostolic primacy (Peter) are brought to bear on the life–producing food that Jesus gives and is, in contrast to death–producing alternatives (v. 27). As the Master from Marburg puts it, “The whole paradox of the revelation is contained in this [Jesus’] reply [6:35]. Whoever wants something from him must know that he has to receive Jesus himself. Whoever approaches him with the desire for the gift of life must learn that Jesus is himself the gift he really wants. Jesus gives the bread of life in that he is the bread of life. . . . Whoever wishes to receive life from him must therefore believe in him—or, as it is figuratively expressed must ‘come to him’” (Bultmann 1971, 227). The scandalizing impact of the Divine Initiative upon the world’s quests for miraculous signs, religious certainty, costless discipleship, and political power deserves further comment. Indeed, Jesus’ challenge to the miraculous evaluation of...

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