In short, the important point is that the Johannine metaphorical system is not only for the closed Johannine community72 (the Gospel as a closed sectarian document), but for the Johannine community which opened toward the world (the Gospel as an open document).73 Although it has a symbolic language of resistance against the center, the Gospel would be mainly given to the margins in the first century CE who longed for liberty from oppression.74 Lincoln comments exactly on this:
To all those who found their confession about the identity of Jesus in dispute and who suffered the consequences, this Gospel’s interpretation of his mission was meant to provide reassurance about the confession and about its being the means of experiencing the life and well-being of the age to come in the midst of present conflict and trials.75
Seeing the Johannine community in the larger environment, therefore, namely the Johannine community in the Roman world, opens a possibility of re-reading the Fourth Gospel with multiple purposes.
Purposes of the Gospel of John: A Synthetic Approach
Until now, we have discussed the possible purposes of the Gospel of John, missionary, polemic/apologetic, and parenetic. These three major possibilities must have their claim based upon proper grounds. In this sub-section, it is necessary to remark that the purpose of the Gospel is not categorized in an exclusive way. It is fairly acceptable that the Gospel “was intended to serve the needs of the community.”76 In terms of the needs of the community, it is quite probable that the Gospel was destined to meet a variety of apologetic, polemic, and parenetic needs in a multicultural and colonial society.77 I contend, therefore, that as a postcolonial text, the Johannine Gospel includes all these possible purposes in it, because it was written for first century readers who were in the colonial era in the process of the hybridization of culture. For that reason, it is appropriate to discuss a synthetic approach to the purpose of the composition of the Fourth Gospel.
As a synthetic approach, some scholars argue, “the purpose of the Gospel of John is to evangelize Jews, to evangelize Hellenists, to strengthen the church, to catechize new converts, to provide materials for the evangelization of Jesus and so forth.”78 On this matter, Okure’s question about the possibility of the interrelationship of the motives of the purpose(s) of the Gospel of John is appropriate.
The question raised, then, is whether these efforts to meet the various needs of the community can be considered as missionary work. In other words, do the apologetic, polemic and parenetic motifs serve a missionary purpose? Or does outreach to pagans constitute the exclusive meaning of missionary work?79
Fiorenza gives a sharp answer to the question: “apologetics and missionary propaganda functioned like two sides of the same coin.”80 While saying that “in whole or in part the Gospel was written with an apologetic, polemic, or missionary motif in regard to one or all of those groups,”81 Brown also argues that these goals are not mutually exclusive.82 Although Brown’s view on the purpose of the Gospel (that it was written to intensify people’s faith and make it more profound) is different from Okure’s (the Gospel was written for mission), their views on the interrelation of these motives for the writing of the Gospel meet in a common place. Furthermore, Segovia sees the Johannine community as the ideal/implied readers of the Gospel of John, which
is initiated, confirmed, or reinforced as children of God . . . who believe in Jesus and carry out his commands . . . should see itself as deeply estranged from and at odds with the world . . . are specifically warned thereby that an acceptance of the ways and values of God in the world implies and entails severe opposition from the world [as well as] a very privileged position indeed while in the world, ultimate victory over the world, and an abiding union with God in the world above . . . should expect nothing but hatred and oppression in and from the world [as well as] shall receive glory not only in the world of human beings but also in the world of God . . . are also urged thereby to carry on with their own mission in the world, regardless of dangers or consequences, in obedience to the plan of God and following the example of Jesus.83
Segovia’s view clearly shows that the Gospel of John is coincident with the multiple needs of the community.
In addition, these possible purposes have their own basis on a textual variant of John 20:31. At the textual level, this synthetic approach is closely related to a textual variant of John 20:31. Two possible translations of this verse from the Greek text could be proposed in relation to the tense of the main verb “you may believe” (πιστεύ[σ]ητε) because of different manuscript readings.84
Firstly, this verb can be parsed as the aorist tense85 of the subjunctive mood. In this case, the subject of the verb (second person plural) “you,” as the recipients of the Gospel stands for non-believers whether or not they were real historical figures. That is, the author of the Gospel wrote it for non-believers in order to make them believe in Jesus as the Christ and the Son of God through their reading of this Gospel; as a result of their belief in Jesus, they might have life in his name which they did not have before believing. In this case, the purpose of the composition of the Gospel might be missionary.
Secondly, the verb can be parsed as the present tense86 of the subjunctive mood. In this case, the subject could be interpreted as the believers who have not seen Jesus in the flesh. In this case, the purpose of the composition of the Gospel was to be for subsequent generations of believers who have not actually seen Jesus (you may continue to believe).87 In other words, John wrote it for believers in order to strengthen their faith that Jesus is the Christ and the Son of God; in order to emphasize the fact that they already have life in his name, because they had already believed in Jesus so that they need to have no doubt of the facts of their faith in any circumstances. In this case, the purpose of the composition of the Gospel might be closely linked to the consolidation of the Johannine community in Christ.
According to Metzger,88 both readings have the support of early witnesses. The problem cannot be resolved on the basis of textual evidences alone but on the general suggestion of the Gospel.89 Because of the possibility of the motives (missionary, polemic/apologetic, parenetic) for the writing of the Gospel, these two possible variant readings of John 20:31 could give the possibility of the multifaceted purpose of the composition of the Gospel: the purpose of mission (missionary propaganda/apologetic), and the purpose of strengthening the faith of the Johannine Christians. On this, Carson says,