Jesus announced that his disciples were to be living fountains of the
spirit.
“If anyone thirsts,
let that person come to me and drink.
As Scripture has said: Rivers of living water shall flow from
the heart of everyone who believes in me” (7:37-38).
This promise of the spirit (see 7:39) clearly indicates a new, overwhelming experience. ln the light of what we saw in the previous chapter, we know it means some kind of inner transformation, an awareness of God being at work in us. What are the implications of its being an experience?
Before scrutinizing the gospel text again, let us reflect on what is involved in a religious experience. Usually, we can distinguish four elements. An event (a) affects someone in such a way as to cause lasting feelings (b). The person makes sense of the event by working out a satisfactory interpretation (c). Events, feelings and interpretation are sometimes recorded in a story (d). For instance, a flooding of the Euphrates and Tigris in Mesopotamia during the second millennium BC caused huge losses of life. Those who survived, remembering their fear, panic and sense of guilt, interpreted the disaster as a punishment by the gods. The experience has come down to us in religious epics: the Akkadian Gilgamesh epic, the Sumerian account of Ziusudra, the Greek Deucalion myth and the OT Deluge story.
The key element in a religious experience is obviously the interpretation. People saw only torrential downpours and rising water; no one actually saw God opening the sluices of the reservoirs of rain in the skies. Similarly, the Israelites saw the waves of the Red Sea covering the Egyptian chariots that galloped after them in hot pursuit; they did not see God holding the water back for a time, then releasing it on the Egyptians. The belief that it was God, punishing in one instance and saving in another, arose from the interpretation attached to either event. The interpretation may not always be obvious. John’s gospel gives an interesting example of this. The blind man who was healed by Jesus recognized God’s hand in his cure; the scribes and pharisees did not (9:24-34).
To be a truly religious experience in the strict sense of the word, the interpretation should be grasped at the same time as the event itself. A striking sunset may be the occasion of making us reflect on creation; our reflections may take us through argument and counter-argument to the conclusion that there must be a Creator. The sunset functions as a premise; no more. But if the sunset transports us in a sudden new feeling of wonder; if we grasp that in it we face existential questions; if our eyes look, as it were, beyond the display of colour and light at the infinite mystery behind it all; then we are having a religious experience the interpretation being part of the event. Ian Ramsey has called it the experience of a disclosure; Romano Guardini, a borderline, experience.(1)
It would take us too far afield to discuss here the complicated question of how we can know that our interpretation of a religious experience is correct or not. The validity of the perception can only be judged by a self-critical evaluation of the perception itself.(2) A critical attitude is, indeed, necessary. People can delude themselves. It is easy to ascribe to God what is no more than a natural happening or a hallucination.
The early Christians were aware of this possibility. The author of 1 John warns us not to trust every spirit, but to test the spirits to see whether they come from God. He proposes doctrinal norms to discern right from wrong. Whoever professes the true incarnation of Jesus comes from God; who does not, belongs to the antichrist (1 Jn 4:1-3). Paul, too, offers orthodoxy as a norm: “No one who speaks in God’s spirit can say: ‘Jesus is cursed’; no one can say ‘Jesus is the Lord,’ except through the spirit ”(1 Cor 12:3). The spirit can be recognised by the fruits it produces (Gal 5:22-23), which are opposed to the effects brought about by giving in to human weakness (Gal 5:19-21). But such external norms, however useful, do not tell us anything about the experience itself.
In John’s gospel the presence of the spirit is not judged by other norms. The spirit itself is the norm. In the Paraclete passages which we will discuss later, the spirit of truth is personified. He is like a companion at our side. “Ordinary people do not see him or know him, but you will; because he remains in you and~stays in you” (14: 17). ln the earlier strand of tradition, the spirit texts, the knowability is also expressed, though through different images. The spirit is like the wind whose sound one hears (3:8). It is like a fountain producing fresh water that stills our thirst. This reflects, no doubt, the original Christian experience of inner transformation by which they knew God was at work in them.
Paul calls on this experience when he asks the Galatians: “Did you receive the spirit by fulfilling the law or by being obedient to faith?” (Gal 3:2). The Early Christians knew that God dwelt in their hearts because of the spirit of which they were conscious (1 Jn 3:24; 4:13). The experience of the spirit, revealed through a new way of praying, was so manifest in Cornelius’ family that Peter exclaimed: “How could anyone refuse baptism to these people who received the holy spirit as we have?!” (Acts 10:44-47). It is obvious that John refers to the same original Christian experience an experience through which Christians were convinced the spirit had come upon them.
For John the presence of the spirit is typically a Christian experience. It is given to Jesus’ disciples. It is linked to the resurrection. “The spirit was not yet there because Jesus had not been glorified” (7:36). John is so consistent in maintaining the post-resurrectional appearance of the spirit that he even minimizes it in the life of Jesus. This was unusual, for tradition extolled the way in which Jesus had been overwhelmed by the spirit. Luke, for instance, stresses this point in his gospel. Jesus was conceived by an overshadowing of the holy spirit (Lk 1:35). The spirit drove Simeon to the Temple to bless Jesus as a child (Lk 2:27). The spirit descended on Jesus in the Jordan (Lk 3:22), drove him to fast in the desert (Lk 4:1) and to start his preaching in Galilee (Lk 4:14). ln Nazareth Jesus proclaimed that the spirit had come on him (Lk 4:18). Jesus praised his Father in a trance of joy, ‘filled with the holy spirit’(Lk 10:21). Jesus was the messiah because he was anointed with the spirit. (3)
Against this background it is interesting to observe that John does nowhere elaborate on Jesus’ own experience of the spirit. In harmony with ancient tradition he recounts that John the Baptist saw the spirit descend upon Jesus (1:32). In two instances he mentions Jesus’ spirit in a passing reference: Jesus was moved in the spirit ( 1 1:33), was troubled in the spirit ( 13:21); in both cases the reference could be merely psychological. Nowhere, however, does he make Jesus talk about his own relationship to the spirit. Jesus speaks more than fifty times of what his Father has done for him; never of similar favours by the spirit. The spirit does not occur in the high priestly prayer (17:1-26), nor in the prologue (1:1-18), the two summaries of Jesus’ mission. When Jesus defends himself against accusations by the scribes and pharisees, he appeals to the powers the Father gave him (5:19-27), to the miracles he performed in his Father’s name (5:36; 10:25), to the words of his Father he spoke (8:46-47), to John the Baptist’s witness (5:33), and to the Scriptures (5:39); not once does he appeal to the spirit he possesses. We can only conclude from this that John wanted to present the spirit rather as a gift from Jesus than as a gift we share with him.
The Early Church preserved the memory of a collective outpouring of the holy spirit on Pentecost day in Jerusalem (Acts 2:1-21). Also in Acts, Luke recounts similar experiences by the whole community on other occasions (4:31; 10:44). Paul presupposes common charismatic experiences in Corinth (1 Cor 14:1-40). John’s equivalent of the Pentecost happening— Jesus breathing on the assembled apostles and saying, “Receive holy spirit” (20:22) may imply such a communal aspect. Most spirit texts in John though would seem to indicate that receiving the spirit is a personal gift, experienced by the individual rather than the community.
The spirit comes to us in baptism (1-33). The spirit makes streams of living water well up in our heart (7:38-39). The spirit makes us to be born from above (3:5-8) to be born of God (1-13). Though an individual believer will, no doubt, receive support from the common experience of the spirit in the community, for John the basic experience of the spirit is a gift to each Christian.
1. Ramsey, Religious Language, SCM, London 1957; Christian Discourse, Oxford University Press, London 1965. R. Guardini, Spiegel und Gleichniss, Grunewald, Mainz 1932.
2. see ]. Wijngaards, “Assessing Spiritual Experiences,” Clergy Review 67 (1982) 253-260
3. See J. D.G. Dunn, Jesus and the Spirit. A Study of the Religious and Charismatic E.xperience of Jesus and the First Christians as Reflected in the New Testament, Westminster Press, Philadelphia 1980.