Note 321 — Chapter IX · MIRACLES OF JESUS.

The supranaturalist was therefore driven to maintain that it was not faith in general which Jesus here intended to produce, but a conviction entirely special, and only to be wrought by this particular miracle. Proceeding on this supposition, nothing was more natural than to be reminded by the opposition of water and wine on which the miracle turns, of the opposition between him who baptized with water (Matt. iii. 11), who at the same time came neither eating nor drinking (Luke i. 15; Matt. xi. 18), and him who, as he baptized with the Holy Ghost and with fire, so he did not deny himself the ardent, animating fruit of the vine, and was hence reproached with being a wine-bibber οἰνοπότης (Matt. xi. 19); especially as the fourth gospel, in which the narrative of the wedding at Cana is contained, manifests in a peculiar degree the tendency to lead over the contemplation from the Baptist to Jesus. On these grounds Herder,321 and after him some others,322 have held the opinion, that Jesus by the above miraculous act intended to symbolize to his disciples, several of whom had been disciples of the Baptist, the relation of his spirit and office to those of John, and by this proof of his superior power, to put an end to the offence which they might take at his more liberal mode of life. But here the reflection obtrudes itself, that Jesus does not avail himself of this symbolical miracle, to enlighten his disciples by explanatory discourses concerning his relation to the Baptist; an omission which even the friends of this interpretation pronounce to be surprising.323 How needful such an exposition was, if the miracle were not to fail of its special object, is evident from the fact, that the narrator himself, according to v. 11, understood it not at all in this light, as a symbolization of a particular maxim of Jesus, but quite generally, as a manifestation φανέρωσις of his glory.324 Thus if that special lesson were the object of Jesus in performing the miracle before us, then the author of the fourth gospel, that is, according to the supposition of the above theologians, his most apprehensive pupil, misunderstood him, and Jesus delayed in an injudicious manner to prevent this misunderstanding; or if both these conclusions are rejected, there still subsists the difficulty, that Jesus, contrary to the prevailing tendency of his conduct, sought to attain the general object of proving his miraculous power, by an act for which apparently he might have substituted a more useful one.