John 2:11

Ver. 11. “ This first of his miracles Jesus did in Cana of Galilee, and he manifested his glory, and his disciples believed on him. ”

John characterizes under four important relations the miracle which he has just related. 1. This was the first, not only of the miracles performed at Cana, but of all the miracles of Jesus. As here was a decisive moment in the revelation of the Lord and in the faith of the disciples, John brings out this fact with emphasis. The Alexandrian authorities have rejected the article τήν before ἀρχήν, without doubt as being superfluous on account of ταύτην.

But, as is frequently the case with them, when desiring to correct, they spoil. Without the article, the attention is rather drawn to the nature of the miracle: “It was by this prodigy that Jesus began to work miracles.” By the article the notion itself of a beginning is more strongly emphasized: “ That fact...was the true beginning...” The second of these ideas is as thoroughly an essential element in the context, as we shall see, as the first is foreign to it. 2. John recalls a second time, in closing, the place where the event occurred. The design of this repetition cannot be purely geographical. We shall see, in John 3:24 and John 4:54, how anxious John was to distinguish between the two returns of Jesus to Galilee (John 1:44 and John 4:1-3), which had been united in one by tradition, and this is the reason why he expressly points out how the one and the other of these two returns was signalized by a miracle accomplished at Cana. According to Hengstenberg, the defining words of Galilee recall the prophecy of Isaiah 8:22 to Isaiah 9:1, according to which the glory of the Messiah was to be manifested in Galilee. This aim would be admissible in Matthew; it seems foreign to the narrative of John 3. John indicates the purpose of the miracle. He uses here, for the first time, the term sign (σημεῖον) which is in harmony with the following expression: “ He manifested His glory. ” The miracles of Jesus are not mere wonders (τέρατα), designed to strike the imagination.

A close relation exists between these marvelous acts and the person of Him who performs them. They are visible emblems of what He is and of what He comes to do, and, as Reuss says, “radiant images of the permanent miracle of the manifestation of Christ.” The glory of Christ is, above all, His dignity as Son and the eternal love which His Father has for Him. Now this glory is, in its very nature, concealed from the eyes of the inhabitants of the earth; but the miracles are the brilliant signs of it. They manifest the unlimited freedom with which the Son disposes of all things, and thus demonstrate the perfect love of the Father towards Him: “ The Father loveth the Son and hath given all things into His hands ” (John 3:35). The expression “ His glory” makes a profound distinction between Jesus and all the divine messengers who had accomplished like wonders before Him. In the miracles of the other divine messengers the glory of Jehovah is seen (Exo 16:7); those of Jesus reveal His own, by bearing witness in concert with His words, to His filial position. The expression His glory contains, moreover, all of His own that Jesus puts into the act which He has just performed, the love full of tenderness with which He makes use of divine omnipotence in the service of His own. 4. John, finally, sets forth the result of this miracle. Evoked at first by testimony, faith was strengthened by personal contact with Jesus, its object. Now in the course of this personal relation, it makes such experience of the power and goodness of Him to whom it is attached, that it finds itself thereby immovably confirmed. Doubtless it will grow every day in proportion as such experiences shall multiply; but from this moment it has passed through the three essential phases of its formation: testimony, personal contact and experience. This is what John expresses by the words: “ And his disciples believed on him. ” These glorious irradiations from the person of Jesus, which are called miracles, are, therefore, designed not only, as apologetics often assume, to strike the eyes of the still unbelieving multitude and to stimulate the delaying, but, especially, to illuminate the hearts of believers, by revealing to them, in this world of suffering, all the riches of the living object of their faith.

What took place in the minds of the other witnesses of this scene? John's silence leads us to suppose that the impression produced was neither profound nor enduring. This is because the miracle, in order to act efficaciously, must be understood as a sign (John 6:26), and because to this end certain moral predispositions are necessary. The impression of astonishment which the guests experienced, not connecting itself with any spiritual need, with any struggle of conscience, was soon effaced by the distractions of life.

On the Miracle of Cana.

Objections of two sorts are raised against the reality of this event: the one class bear on miracles in general; the other, on this one in particular. We do not concern ourselves with the first. We think there is nothing more opposed to the sound method the method called experimental than to begin by declaring, as a principle, the impossibility of a miracle. To say that there has never been a miracle until now, be it so. This is a point for examination. But to say that there cannot be one, is to make metaphysics, not history; it is to throw oneself into the a: priori, which is repudiated.

The objections which relate especially to the miracle of Cana are:

1. Its magical character (Schweizer). The difference between the magical and the miraculous is, that, in the former, the supernatural power works in vacuo, dispensing with already existing nature, while in the second, the divine force respects the first creation and always connects its working with material furnished by it. Now, in this case, Jesus does not use His power to create, as Mary undoubtedly was expecting; He contents Himself with transforming that which is. He remains, thus, within the limits of the Biblical supernatural.

2. The uselessness of the miracle is made an objection. It is “a miracle of luxury,” according to Strauss. Let us rather say with Tholuck, “a miracle of love.” We think we have shown this. It might even be regarded as the payment of a double debt: to the bridegroom, for whom the Lord's arrival had caused this embarrassment, and to Mary, to whom Jesus, before leaving her, was paying His debt of gratitude. The miracle of Cana is the miracle of filial piety, as the resurrection of Lazarus is that of fraternal affection. The symbolic interpretations, by means of which it has been desired to explain the purpose of this miracle, seem to us artificial: to set the Gospel joy in opposition to the ascetic rigor of John the Baptist (Olshausen); to represent the miraculous transformation of the legal into spiritual life (Luthardt). Would not such intentions betray themselves in some word of the text?

3. This miracle is even charged with immorality. Jesus, it is said, countenanced the intemperance of the guests. “With the same right one might demand,” answers Hengstenberg, “that God should not grant good vintages because of drunkards.” The presence of Jesus and, afterwards, the thankful remembrance of his hosts would guarantee the holy use of this gift.

4. The omission of this story in the Synoptics seems to the adversaries the strongest argument against the reality of the event. But this miracle belongs still to the family life of Jesus; it does not form a part of the acts of His public ministry. Moreover, as we have seen, it has its place in an epoch of the ministry of Jesus, which, by reason of the confusion of the first two returns to Galilee, had disappeared from the tradition. The aim of John in restoring this event to light was precisely to re-establish the distinction between these two returns and, at the same time, to recall one of the first and principal landmaks of the development of the apostolic faith (comp. John 2:11).

Do not a multitude of proofs demonstrate the fragmentary character of the oral tradition which is recorded in the Synoptics? How can we explain the omission in our four Gospels of the appearance of the risen Jesus to the five hundred? And yet this fact is one of the most solidly attested (1 Corinthians 15:6).

If we reject the reality of the miracle as it is so simply related by the evangelist, what remains for us? Three suppositions:

1. The natural explanation of Paulus or of Gfrorer : Jesus had agreed with a tradesman to have wine brought secretly, during the feast, which He caused to be served to the guests mixed with water. By His reply to Mary, John 2:4, He wishes to induce her simply not to injure the success of the entertainment which He has prepared, and the hour for which has not yet come, through an indiscretion. “The glory of Jesus (John 2:11), is the exquisite humanity which characterizes His amiable proceeding (Paulus). Or it is to Mary herself that the honor of this attention is ascribed. She has had the wine prepared, in order to offer it as a wedding present; and at the propitious moment she makes a sign to Jesus to cause it to be served (Gfrorer). Renan seems not far from adopting the one or the other of these explanations. He says in vague terms: “Jesus went willingly to marriage entertainments. One of His miracles was performed, it is said, to enliven a village wedding” (p. 195). Weiss adopts a form of the natural explanation which is less incompatible with the seriousness of Jesus' character (see above on John 2:3): nevertheless, he acknowledges that John believed that he was relating a miracle and meant to do so. But could this apostle, then, be so completely deceived respecting the nature of a fact which he himself related as an eye-witness? Jesus must, in that case, have intentionally allowed an obscurity to hover over the event, which was fitted to deceive His nearest friends. The seriousness of the Gospel history protests against these parodies which end in making Jesus a village charlatan.

2. The mythical explanation of Strauss: Legend invented this miracle after the analogy of certain facts related in the Old Testament, e.g., Exodus 15:23 ff., where Moses purifies bitter waters by means of a certain sort of wood; 2 Kings 2:19, where Elisha does something similar. But there is not the least real analogy between these facts and those before us here. Moreover, the perfect simplicity of the narrative, and even its obscurities, are incompatible with such an origin. “The whole tenor of the narrative,” says Baur himself (recalling the judgment of de Wette), “by no means authorizes us to assume the mythical character of the account.”

3. The ideal explanation of Baur, Keim, etc. According to the first, the pseudo-John made up this narrative as a pure invention, to represent the relation between the two baptisms, that of John (the water) and that of Jesus (the wine). According to the second, the evangelist invented this miracle on the basis of that saying of Jesus: “Can the friends of the bridegroom fast while the bridegroom is with them....They put new wine into new bottles” (Matthew 9:15; Matthew 9:17). The water in the vessels represents, thus, the insufficient purifications offered by Judaism and the baptism of John. The worse wine, with which ordinarily the beginning is made, is also Judaism, which was destined to give place to the better wine of the Gospel. The delay of Jesus represents the fact that His coming followed that of John the Baptist. His hour is that of His death, which substitutes for the previous imperfect purifications the true purification through the blood of Christ, in consequence of which is given the joyous wine of the Holy Spirit, etc....In truth, if our desire were to demonstrate the reality of the event as it is simply related by John, we could not do it in a more convincing way than by explanations like these, which seem to be the parody of criticism. What! shall this refined idealism, which was the foundation and source even of the narrative, betray itself nowhere in the smallest word of the story! Shall it envelop itself in the most simple, prosaic, sober narrative which carries conciseness even to obscurity! To our view, the apostolic narrative, by its character of simplicity and truth, will always be the most eloquent defender of the reality of the fact.

Before leaving this first cycle of narratives, we must further take notice of a judgment of Renan respecting this beginning of our Gospel (p. 109): “The first pages of the fourth Gospel are incongruous notes carelessly put together. The strict chronological order which they exhibit arises from the author's taste for apparent precision.” But exegesis has shown, on the contrary, that if there is a passage in our Gospels where all things are linked together and are strictly consecutive, not only as to time, but also as to substance and idea, it is this one. The days are enumerated, the hours even mentioned: it is the description of a continuous week, answering to that of the final week. More than this: the intrinsic connection of the facts is so close that Baur could persuade himself that he had to deal with an ideal and systematic conception, presented under an historic form. The farther the Gospel narrative advances, the more does Renan himself render homage to its chronological exactness. He ends by taking it almost exclusively as a guide for his narration. And the beginning of such a story, whose homogeneity is evident, is nothing but an accidental collection of “notes carelessly put together!” This, at all events, has little probability.