part i. p. 206.

* «The later prophets of the Old Testament enlarge upon and complete the prophecies of the earlier. But they do not mention their names, or
declare their own purpose tc do what they do,’ Townson, pp. 134-147; quoted by Bp. Wordsworth, ubi supr, ἘΝ
$22 τς (2) Saint Fohn’s Gospel ts
predecessors. He is the organ of a Higher Intelligence; he owes both what he borrows and what he is believed to originate to the Mind Which inspires him to originate, or Which guides him to select. While the stream of sacred truth is flowing forth from his entranced and burning soul, and is being forthwith crystallized in the moulds of an imperishable language, the eagle-eyed Evangelist does not stoop from heaven to earth for the purpose of guarding or reserving the rights of authorship, by displaying his care to acknowledge its obligations. Certainly St. John does repeat in part the narratives of his predecessors &. But this repetition does not interfere with the supplementary character of his work as a wholeh, And yet his Gospel is not only or mainly to be regarded as an historical supplement. It exhibits the precision of method and the orderly development of ideas which are proper to a complete doctrinal essay or treatise. It is indeed rather a treatise illustrated by history, than a history written with a theological purpose. Viewed in its historical relation to the first three Gospels, it is supplemental to them ; but this relative character is not by any means an adequate explanation of its motive and function. It might easily have been written if no other Evangelist had written at all; it has a character and purpose which are strictly its own; it is part of a great whole, yet it is also, in itself, organically perfect.
2. St. John’s Gospel is a polemical treatise. It is addressed fo an intellectual world widely different from that which had been before the minds of the earlier Evangelists. The earliest forms of Gnostic thought are recognisable in the Judaizing theosophists whom St. Paul has in view in his Epistles to the Ephesians and the Colossians. These Epistles were written at the least some thirty years before the fourth Gospel. The fourth Gospel confronts or anticipates a more developed Gno- sticism; although we may observe in passing that it certainly
& As in chaps. vi. and xii.
h M. Renan admits the supplementary character of St. John’s Gospel, but attributes to the Evangelist a motive of personal pique in writing it. He was annvyed at the place assigned to himself in earlier narratives! ‘On est tenté de croire, que Jean, dans sa vieillesse, ayant lu les récits évangéliques qui circulaient, d’une part, y remarqua diverses inexactitudes, de l’autre, fut froissé de voir qu’on ne lui accordait pas dans l’histoire du Christ une assez grande place; qu’alors il commenga ἢ dicter une foule de choses qu’il savait mieux que les autres, avec l’intention de montrer que, dans beaucoup de cas ou on ne parlait que de Pierre, il avait fiquré avee et avant lui? Vie de Jésus, pp. xxvii, xxviii,
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a polemical treatzse. 223
does not contain references to any of the full-grown Gnostic systems which belong to the middle of the second century. The fourth Gospel is in marked opposition to the distinctive posi- tions of Ebionites, of Docete, of Cerinthians. But among these the Cerinthian gnosis appears to be more particularly contemplated. In its earlier forms especially, Gnosticism was as much a mischievous intellectual method as a formal heresy. The Gnostic looked upon each revealed truth merely in the
- light of an addition to the existing stock of materials ready to
his hand for speculative discussion. He handled it accordingly with the freedom which was natural to a belief that it was in no sense beyond the range of his intellectual grasp. He com- mingled it with his cosmical or his psychological theories; he remodelled it; he submitted it to new divisions, to new com- binations. Thus his attitude toward Christianity was friendly and yet supercilious. But he threatened the faith with utter destruction, to be achieved by a process of eclectic interpretation. Cerinthus was an early master of this art. Cerinthus as a Chiliastic Judaizer was naturally disposed to Humanitarianism. As an eclectic theorist, who had been trained in the ‘ teaching of the Egyptiansi, he maiitained that the world had been created by ‘some power separate and distinct from Him Who is above all” Jesus was not born of a virgin; He was the son of Joseph and Mary; He was born naturally like other men. But the fon Christ had descended upon Jesus after His baptism, in the form of a dove, and had proclaimed the unknown Father, and had perfected the virtues of Jesus. The spiritual impassible Christ had flown back to heaven on the eve of the Passion of Jesus; the altogether human Jesus of Cerinthus had suffered and had risen alone, To this fantastic Christ of the Cerinthian
1 St. Hippolytus, Refut. Her. vii. 33.
® St. Ireneus, i. 26: ‘Et Cerinthus autem quidam in Asié non a primo Deo factum esse mundum docuit, sed a virtute quiédam valde separata et distante ab ea principalitate, que est super universa, et ignorante eum qui est super omnia, Deum. Jesum autem subjecit, non ex virgine natum (impossibile enim hoc ei visum est); fuisse autem Eum Joseph et Mariz filium similiter ut reliqui omnes homines, et plus potuisse justitia et pru- dentia et sapientia ab hominibus, Et post baptismum descendisse in eum ab ea principalitate que est super omnia, Christum figura columbe; et tunc annuntiasse incognitum Patrem et virtutes perfecisse; in fine autem revolasse iterum Christum de Jesu, et Jesum passum esse et resurrexisse ; Christum autem impassibilem perseverdsse, existentem spiritalem.’ When St. Epiphanius represents Cerinthus as affirming that Jesus would only rise at the general resurrection, he seems to be describing the logical results of oy heresy, not the actual doctrine which it embraced, (Hee. xxviii, 6.) v
224 (3) δαήη Fohn’s Gospel teaches positive dogma.
gnosis St. John opposes the counteracting truth of our Lord’s Divine and Eternal Nature, as manifested in and through His human life. This Nature was united to the Manhood of Jesus from the moment of the Incarnation. It was not a transient endowment of the Person of Jesus; since it was Itself the seat of His Personality, although clothed with a human form. This Divine Nature was ‘glorified’ in Christ’s Passion, as also in His miracles and His Resurrection. St. John disentangles the Catholic doctrine from the negations and the speculations of Cerinthus; he proclaims the Presence among men of the Divine Word, Himself the Creator of all things, incarnate in Jesus Christ.
3. Thus St. John’s Gospel has also a direct, positive, dogmatic purpose. It is not merely a controversial treatise, as it is not merely an historical appendix. Its teaching is far deeper and wider than would have been necessary, in order to refute the errors of Cerinthus. It teaches the highest revealed truth con- cerning the Person of our Lord. Its substantive and enduring value consists in its displaying the Everlasting Word or Son of God as historically incarnate, and as uniting Himself to His Church.
The peculiarities of St. John’s Gospel are explained, when this threefold aspect of it is kept in view. As a supplementary narrative it presents us, for the most part, with particulars concerning our Blessed Lord which are unrecorded elsewhere. It meets the doubts which might naturally have arisen in the later Apostolical age, when the narratives of the earlier Evan- gelists had been for some time before the Church. If the question was raised, why, if Jesus was so holy and so super- natural a Person, His countrymen and contemporaries did not believe in Him, St. John shews the moral causes which account for their incredulity. He pourtrays the fierce hatred of the Jews against the moral truth which they had rejected; he exhibits this hatred as ever increasing in its intensity as the sanctity of Jesus shines out more and more brightly. If men asked anxiously for more proof that the Death and Resurrection of Jesus were real events, St. John meets that demand by recording his own experience as an eye-witness, and by carefully accumulating the witness of others. If it was objected that Christ’s violent Death was inconsistent with His Divine claims, St. John points out that it was strictly voluntary, and even that by it Christ’s true glorification was achieved. If the authority of the Apostles and of those who were ba pe
LECT,
Pecularities in Saint Fohn explained. 225
them was popularly depreciated on the score of their being rude and illiterate men, St. John shews from the discourse in the supper-room that the claims of Apostles upon the dutiful submission of the Church did not depend upon any natural advantages which they possessed. Jesus had promised a Divine Comforter, Who was to guide them into the whole truth, and to bring to their minds whatever He had said to them],
As a polemical writer, St. John selects and marshals his materials with a view to confuting, from historical data, the Humanitarian or Docetic errors of the time. St. John is anxious to bring a particular section of the Life of Jesus to bear upon the intellectual world of Ephesus™. He puts for- ward an aspect of the original truth which was certain to command present and local attention; he is sufficiently in correspondence with the age to which he ministers, and with the speculative temper of the men around him. He had been led to note and to treasure up in his thought certain phases of the teaching and character of Jesus with especial care. He had remembered more accurately those particular discourses, in which Jesus speaks of His eternal relation to the Father, and of the profound mystic communion of life into which He would enter with His followers through the Holy Spirit and the Sacraments. These cherished memories of St. John’s earlier years, unshared in their completeness by less privileged Apo- stles, were well fitted to meet the hard necessities of the Church during the closing years of the beloved disciple. To St. John the gnosis of Cerinthus must have appeared to’ be in direct contradiction to the sacred certainties which he had heard from the lips of Jesus, and which he treasured in his heart and memory. In order to confute the heresy which separated the man Jesus from the ‘4Zon’ Christ, he had merely to publish what he remembered of the actual words and works of Jesus". His translation of those divine words may be coloured by a phrase- ology current in the school which he is addressing, sufficiently to make them popularly intelligible. But the peculiarities of his language have been greatly exaggerated by criticism, while they are naturally explained by the polemical and positively doctrinal objects which he had in view. To these objects, the
1 Cf. Alford, Greek Test. vol. i. Prolegom. p. 60.
m St. Ireneus adv. Her. iii. 1. See Ebrard’s discussion of the objections which have been urged against this statement. Gospel History, pt. 2, div. 2, § 127. » Cf. Pressensé, J ésus-Christ, p. 240. Vv Q-
226 6Peculiarities in Saint F ohn explained.
language, the historical arrangement, the selection from con- versations and discourses before unpublished, the few deeply significant miracles, the description of opponents by a generic name—the ‘Jews’—which ignores the differences of character, class, and sect among them, and notices them only so far as they are in conflict with the central truth manifested in Jesus, —all contribute. But these very peculiarities of the fourth Gospel subserve its positive devotional and didactic aim even more directly than its controversial one®. The false gnosis
° The internal difficulties urged against St. John’s Gospel appear to be overborne by the weight of the external testimony, taken in conjunction with the characteristics and necessities of the later Apostolical age. These difficulties may however be very briefly summarized as follows :—
1. As to time:
(a) ‘The fourth Gospel implies a long Ministry, with festivals for its landmarks.’ But the three (Westcott, Study of Gospels, 267) at least allow of a ministry as long as the fourth can require; while reference to the festivals was natural in a narrative, the main scene of which is laid at Jerusalem.
(8) ‘The fourth Gospel appears to place the crucifixion on Nisan 14, the three on Nisan 15.’ This real difficulty has been explained by various hypotheses, as
e.g. (1) Of an anticipated passover, kept by our Lord, on Nisan 13.
Westcott, Int. p. 319; Ellicott, Huls. Lect. p. 322, and others. This is perhaps the most satisfactory, The objection drawn from the observance of Nisan 14, by those churches in the second century which inherited St. John’s traditions, assumes that such observ- ance was commemorative of the Last Supper, and not, as is prob- able, of our Lord’s Death. Cf. Meyer, Ev. Joh. ἘΠῚ]. p.18; Mansel, note on St. Matt. xxvi. in Speaker’s Commentary.
(2) Of a-passover postponed by the chief priests. St. Chrys. ; Estius; Wordsworth,
(3) Of a difference of computation, as to the true day of the Pass- over, owing to the variation between the Solar and Lunar reckonings. Petavius, qu. by Neale, Int. East. Ch. ii. 1054.
(4) Of a possible explanation of St. John’s language (xviii. 28, &c.), which would make it consistent with the date of Nisan 15, as that of the crucifixion. Dict. of Bible, vol. ii. 720; Edersheim, Life and Times of Jesus, ii. 481, 507; St. Tho. Sum. p. iii. q. 46. a. 9.
If none of these explanations be yuite unobjectionable, they may fairly warn us against concluding with our present knowledge that the difficulty is by any means insuperable.
2. As to the scene of Christ’s teaching :—‘ St. John places it chiefly in Judea; the three in Galilee.” But no Gospel professes to be a complete history of our Lord’s actions, and records of a Galilean and of a Judean cero respectively leave room for each other. Westcott on the Gospels, p. 265.
3. As to the style of Christ’s teaching :—‘Si Jésus parlait comme le veut Matthieu, i] n’a pu parler comme le veut Jean,’ But, the difference of subjects, hearers, and circumstances in the two cases, taken in conjunction
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Saint Fohn’s depth and simplicity. 227
is refuted by an exhibition of the true. The true is set forth for the sake of Christian souls. These things ‘are written that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through His Name P,’
We may perhaps have wondered how a Galilean fisherman could have been the author of a subtle and sublime theosophy, how the son of Zebedee could have appropiated the language of Athens and of Alexandria to the service of the Crucified. The answer is that St. John knew from experience the blessed and tremendous truth that his Lord and Friend was a Divine Person. Apart from the guidance of the Blessed Spirit, St. John’s mental strength and refinement may be traced to the force of his keen interest in this single fact. Just as a desperate moral or material struggle brings to light forces and resources unused before, so an intense religious conviction fer- tilizes intellect, and developes speculative talent, not unfrequently in the most unlearned. Every form of thought which comes even into indirect contact with the truth to which the soul clings adoringly, is scanned by it with deep and anxious interest, whether it be the interest of hope or the interest of apprehen- sion. St. John certainly is a theosophic philosopher, but he is only a philosopher because he is a theologian; he is such a master of abstract thought because he is so devoted to the Incarnate God. The fisherman of Galilee could never have written the prologue of the fourth Gospel, or have guided the religious thought of Ephesus, unless he had clung to this sustaining Truth, which makes him at once so popular and so
with the differing mental peculiarities of the Apostles who report our Lord’s words, will account for the difference of style. The phrases assumed to be peculiar to, and really of frequent occurrence in St. John are by no means unknown to the Synoptists. E.g. The antithesis between Light and darkness.
4. As to the matter of Christ’s teaching :— Baur begs the whole question by saying that ‘the discourses in St. John could not be historical, since they are essentially nothing more than an explanation of the Logos-idea put forth by that writer.’ This might be true if the doctrine of the Logos had been the product of Gnostic speculations. But if Jesus was really the Divine Son, manifesting Himself as such to men, such language as that reported by St. John is no more than we should expect Him to use at certain times. St.John never represents our Lord as announcing His Divinity in the terms in which it is announced in the Prologue to the Gospel; he would have done so, had he really been creating a fic- titious Jesus designed to illustrate a particular theosophic speculation. This is discussed hereafter, p. 272. See Pressensé, Jésus-Christ, p. 244; Luthardt, das Johanneische Evangelium, pp. 26-35.
P St. John xx. 31.
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228 Doctrine of the Eternal Word
profound. For St. John is spiritually as simple, as he is intellectually majestic. In this our day he is understood by the religious insight of the unlettered aud the poor, while the learned can sometimes see in him only the weary repetition of metaphysical abstractions. The poor understand this sublime revelation of God, the Creator of the world, as pure Light and Truth. They understand the picture of a moral darkness which commits and excuses sin, and which hates the light. They receive gratefully and believingly the Son of God, made Man, and conquering evil by the laying down His Life. They follow, with the experience of their own temptations, or sins, or hopes, or fears, those heart-searching conversations with Nicodemus, with the Samaritan woman, with the Jews. In truth, St. John’s language and, above all, the words of Christ in St. John, are as simple as they are profound. They still speak peace and joy to little children ; they are still a stumbling-block to, and a condemnation of, the virtual successors of Cerinthus.