Spear Wounds and Sleigh Bells: Believing and Seeing in the Gospel of John and the Polar Express ...

• Main Author: Vanden Eykel, Eric
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: English
• Published: Humanities Commons 2017
• Subjects: Church history > Primitive and early church; North Pole
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.17613/m6g375; https://hcommons.org/deposits/item/hc:12887/

In his children’s book The Polar Express (1985), Chris Van Allsburg tells the story of a boy who travels to the North Pole and receives a bell from Santa’s sleigh. The sound of the bell nourishes the boy’s belief in Santa into adulthood. Van Allsburg’s narrative plays off a theme central to the Gospel of John: the relationship between hearing and believing. But while the author of the Gospel emphasizes the role of hearing in engendering faith, Van Allsburg’s narrative is one in which the ability to hear is a sign that faith is already present. In this paper I explore the tensions between these works in order to bring to light some of the more subtle points of the Johannine vision of belief. In John 20, for example, Thomas refuses to believe that his executed teacher is alive. He responds to the other disciples’ enthusiastic proclamation with a skeptical request for tangible proof. The episode highlights what until this point in the Gospel has been only latent: that the most significant faith comes not ...