Note 165 — Chapter IX · MIRACLES OF JESUS.

In relation to the next question, the possibility and the actual course of the incident before us, the natural interpretation seems to find the most pliant material in the narrative of John. Here, it is remarked, Jesus nowhere says that he will effect the patient’s cure, he merely assures the father that his son is out of danger (ὁ υἱός σου ζῇ), and the father, when he finds that the favourable turn of his son’s malady coincides with the time at which he was conversing with Jesus, in no way draws the inference that Jesus had wrought the cure at a distance. Hence, this history is only a proof that Jesus by means of his profound acquaintance with semeiology, was able, on receiving a description of the patient’s state, correctly to predict the course of his disease; that such a description is not here given is no proof that Jesus had not obtained it; while further this proof of knowledge is called a σημεῖον (v. 54) because it was a sign of a kind of skill in Jesus which John had not before intimated, namely, the ability to predict the cure of one dangerously ill.165 But, apart from the misinterpretation of the word σημεῖον, and the interpolation of a conversation not intimated in the text; this view of the matter would place the character and even the understanding of Jesus in the most equivocal light. For if we should pronounce a physician imprudent, who in the case of a patient believed to be dying of fever, should even from his own observation of the symptoms, guarantee a cure, and thus risk his reputation: how much more rashly would Jesus have acted, had he, on the mere description of a man who was not a physician, given assurance that a disease was attended with no danger? We cannot ascribe such conduct to him, because it would be in direct contradiction with his general conduct, and the impression which he left on his cotemporaries. If then Jesus merely predicted the cure without effecting it, he must have been assured of it in a more certain manner than by natural reasoning,—he must have known it in a supernatural manner. This is the turn given to the narrative by one of the most recent commentators on the gospel of John. He puts the question, whether we have here a miracle of knowledge or of power; and as there is no mention of an immediate effect from the words of Jesus, while elsewhere in the fourth gospel the superior knowledge of Jesus is especially held up to our view, he is of opinion that Jesus, by means of his higher nature, merely knew that at that moment the dangerous crisis of the disease was past.166 But if our gospel frequently exhibits the superior knowledge of Jesus, this proves nothing to the purpose, for it just as frequently directs our attention to his superior power. Further, where the supernatural knowledge of Jesus is concerned, this is plainly stated (as i. 49, ii. 25, vi. 64), and hence if a supernatural cognizance of the already effected cure of the boy had been intended, John would have made Jesus speak on this occasion as he did before to Nathanael, and tell the father that he already saw his son on his bed in an ameliorated state. On the contrary, not only is there no intimation of the exercise of superior knowledge, but we are plainly enough given to understand that there was an exercise of miraculous power. When the sudden cure of one at the point of death is spoken of, the immediate question is, What brought about this unexpected change? and when a narrative which elsewhere makes miracles follow on the word of its hero, puts into his mouth an assurance that the patient lives, it is only the mistaken effort to diminish the marvellous, which can prevent the admission, that in this assurance the author means to give the cause of the cure.