St. Athanasius
The crowd demands that Jesus speak plainly. They want a plainly spoken answer to the question: are you the Christ? Jesus replies, “I told you and you do not believe. The works I do in my Father’s name testify to me. . .The Father and I are one.” The Father and I are one. How much more plain can you get? If he's shown them who he is by doing his Father's works and said to them plainly that he and the Father one, then what's the problem? Why are they still yammering for him to identify himself? Jesus knows why: “I told you [who I am] and you do not believe.” They know who he is, but they do not believe. They know, but they do not trust. When it comes to the faith, knowledge without belief is no better than rank ignorance. So, the ignorant continue to demand more evidence as if more evidence will move them to the saving truth. William Blake, the great British Romantic poet, wrote: “Rational truth is not the truth of Christ, but the truth of Pilate.” Rational truth is indeed true, but it's a truth constituted by the human mind. It's not a truth revealed in divine love. We call that a mystery.
Here's the thing we need to remember about mystery: mystery is not about not knowing; it's not about being ignorant of the relevant facts. You can have all the facts, the critical skills to interpret these facts, and the will to put them all together to form a reasonable conclusion. But even with a reasonable conclusion in mind, with all the facts neatly lined up to support you, you can still have a mystery to contemplate. So, if mystery is not about being ignorant of the facts, then what is it about? Note again what Jesus says to the crowd, “I told you [who I am] and you do not believe.” Knowledge is not enough, knowing is not sufficient to relieve the tension we experience when confronted by the unknown. To understand the mystery of who Christ really is, we must first believe; we must transcend facts, logic, experiment, and evidence, and submit ourselves to the dangerous adventures of trusting Jesus at his word, trusting his work among us: “The works I do in my Father’s name testify to me. . .The Father and I are one.”
It would be too easy to dismiss the art of believing without evidence as a fool's game, a trick to trick the gullible. But dismissing belief as irrational misses the point of what it means to experience mystery. For those who know the facts about who Christ is and put their trust in the revelation of his words and deeds, the mystery he presents produces joy rather than suspense, hope rather than anxiety. There is no temptation to remain in ignorance, demanding irrelevant evidence, “I told you [who I am]. . .The Father and I are one.” We don't resolve this mystery, we live it.
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