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ITS PURPOSE AND THEOLOGY CHAPTER I

CHARACTER AND INTENTION

ANY other signs did Jesus in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book; but these 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." In these words, which form the close of the original Gospel, the Fourth Evangelist has himself indicated the general scope and character of his work. He declares, in the first place, that he has not aimed at presenting a complete and consecutive account of the life of Jesus. He has made a selection from the material before him, and deliberately omitted a large number of facts. Again, he acknowledges that his main purpose in making this selection has been to impress a certain belief on the minds of his readers. The narrative is composed with the set

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intention of proving that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.

The fundamental difference between the Fourth Gospel and the Synoptic is thus marked out explicitly by John himself. His statement may be contrasted with that of Luke in the address to Theophilus with which he prefaces his Gospel. The writer's design, as there indicated, is simply to record the facts, in a narrative more exact and orderly, more complete in detail, than those which were already in circulation. This fidelity to the historical tradition was undoubtedly the chief aim of the Synoptic writers. Their work may here and there bear traces of theological coloring, but their first interest was in the facts. Their part was not to interpret, but simply to record, as clearly and faithfully as they might, the actual events on which the new religion based itself. John, on the other hand, starts with a certain conception of the Person and life of Christ, and reads the facts in the light of it. They are valuable to him only as they afford evidence and illustration of a given belief. For this reason he dispenses with the fuller historical detail and contents himself with a few outstanding episodes, which witness in a signal manner to the divine worth of Jesus Christ.

Writing as he does with an express theological intention, John not only selects his material but adapts and modifies it. This result followed necessarily from his method. The historian who approaches his subject with a strong pre-posses-sion sees all the events from one particular point of

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view; unconsciously to himself he alters the perspective, and reads his own meaning into words and incidents, and disregards circumstances which seem to him immaterial. This, as becomes apparent from the most superficial comparison with the Synoptic, has been the procedure of the Fourth Evangelist. The import of the fact is always more valuable to him than the fact itself. Incidents are transposed in order to fit in more effectively with the general plan, and are so described as to bring out their hidden purport. In his Endeavour to accentuate the meaning of his story the writer is led naturally to introduce a large element of spoken discourse. Each incident is followed by a speech or a dialogue in which its inward significance is unfolded, and these discourses appear to be composed freely, according to the method employed in the narrative proper. Words actually uttered by Jesus are expanded and interpreted. Sayings are ascribed to Him which He may not literally have spoken, but which express His essential thought, as the evangelist conceived it.

John tells us, then, that he wrote with a definite purpose, which guided him in the treatment of his material. He proceeds to describe that purpose as a twofold one, " that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing ye may have life through His name." His interest on the one hand is in the historical Person of Jesus, in whom he recognizes the Son of God revealed in the flesh. But he desires at the same time to emphasize the abiding value and purpose of the historical life.

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Jesus Christ was more than a wonderful figure in the past. His appearance on earth had been only the beginning of a larger, enduring life, and it was still possible for His people to maintain fellowship with Him and to receive His quickening. The central purpose of the gospel is defined in these words, "that ye may have life through His name." In the Jesus who passes before us as a Person in history we are meant also to recognize the eternal Christ, who is still revealed, as an inward, life-giving presence, to those that believe in Him.

One significant phase in this passage, which forms John's own account of the aim and character of his work, may be taken as the point of departure for a larger survey. " That Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God" The Messianic title of Jesus is here co-ordinated with a higher title, or rather is superseded by it; and this use of the double title may be regarded as an index to the nature of the Gospel as a whole. It is a work of transition, in which primitive Christianity is carried over into a different world of thought.

i. The transition, in the first place, is from one age to another. The date which may be assigned to the Gospel with a fair degree of certainty (the first or second decade of the second century) coincides with the most critical period in the history of the Church. In that third generation after Christ the new religion had became finally separated from its historical origins. The last representatives of the Apostolic age had passed away. The primitive hopes and impulses had spent themselves. The

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bonds with the mother religion of Judaism, which Paul had loosened, had been definitely broken. If Christianity was to endure as a living faith, it had to embody itself in new forms and come to an understanding with the ideas and interests of the modern time. It was the work of the Fourth Evangelist to transplant the religion of Christ into the new soil before its roots had had time to wither. From the age immediately behind him, in which the primitive tradition was still a living force, he carried the gospel over into his own generation. To perform this task, it was not enough simply to transmit the facts. Jesus had appeared at a given time in history, and His teaching had been influenced and in some respects limited by the conditions of that time, which had now fallen into the past. If the message was to continue as a life-giving power, it must be re-interpreted in terms of the new modes of thinking. The story of Christ's coming must be told in fresh language, with a different emphasis, so that it might appeal to the second century as it had done to the first.

Moreover, in the course of its hundred years of development the original Christian message had unfolded itself into a far larger significance. The great mind of Paul had worked on it. The experience of a growing church, gathered out of many different races and classes, had thrown new lights on its meaning. Even the heresies which had sprung up from time to time had served to suggest the wider bearings of genuine Christian truths. These later developments seemed, at first

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sight, alien to the primitive gospel, but they had grown out of it, and belonged to its real import. To understand the work of Christ it was necessary not only to consider His actual life and teaching, but to take into account this great movement to which He had given the impulse. The Evangelist in his picture of Jesus invests Him with the grandeur which in His lifetime had not been fully apparent. He reads into His recorded words the deeper meanings which they had disclosed to later thinkers. He presents the facts of the divine life, not as men saw them at the time, but as they appeared long afterwards in the retrospect of an enlightened faith.

2. Again, there is a transition not only to a new age, but to a different culture. In order that the religion might naturalize itself in the larger Gentile world to which, since the days of Paul, it had chiefly appealed, it required to find expression in the Hellenic modes of thought. Paul himself had adopted Greek categories into his thinking, but his system as a whole was Jewish in character, imperfectly intelligible to the Hellenic mind. The writer of the Fourth Gospel, not content with employing a Greek idea here and there, attempts an entire re-statement of the Christian message in terms of the current philosophy. Jesus, according to the primitive tradition, was the Messiah, who had come to inaugurate the promised kingdom of God. In the Fourth Gospel the Messianic idea is replaced by that of the Logos. The proclamation of the kingdom becomes the message of "eternal

CHARACTER AND INTENTION

Life." Jewish conceptions are translated in almost every instance into the language of Greek speculation. It was impossible thus to transpose the Christian doctrine without modifying, often to a serious extent, its original character. The Greek ideas which John employs never correspond more than partially with the ideas of Jesus, and are sometimes alien to the whole spirit of His teaching. Yet it may fairly be argued that the Hellenic form is in some respects more adequate than the Jewish. There was a breadth and idealism in the thought of Jesus which transcended the limits imposed on Him by the Jewish modes of utterance. We cannot but feel in reading the Synoptic Gospels that He has sometimes to pour new wine into old bottles, to overstrain the language and imagery of traditional Hebrew thought in order to find expression for His message. The ideas of the Messiah and the kingdom of God, to take the most signal instances, meant infinitely more to the mind of Jesus than the names themselves could be made to signify. He was continually hampered by the inadequacy of the names, which as a Jewish teacher He was nevertheless constrained to use. The Fourth Evangelist, when he breaks with the literal tradition, and substitutes the language of Greek reflection for the actual words employed by Jesus, is not necessarily unfaithful to the Master's teaching. On the contrary, he gives truer expression in many cases to the intrinsic thought. There were elements in the gospel message, and these among the most valuable, which could not come to their own until

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they had received a new embodiment in Hellenic forms.

3. In yet a third way, as has been already indicated, the work of John effects a transition. It carries over the revelation of Christ from the world of outward fact to that of inward religious experience. At the time when the Gospel was written, that critical time which followed the close of the Apostolic age, Christianity was threatened with two great dangers, either of which would have destroyed its power as a living religion. There was a tendency on the one hand to dissolve the historical fact of the life of Jesus into a vague speculation. His life had now receded into the past; and the second generation, to which His personal influence had been mediated by His own disciples, had likewise disappeared. It seemed as if nothing remained but to sublimate the actual history into a philosophical allegory and so make it yield a certain permanent value. The other tendency, opposite to this, was equally destructive of vital faith. There were those who clung to the mere reminiscence, which was fading more and more into the distance. Their religion was wholly a matter of tradition, and was destitute of inward impulse and spiritual reality. Christianity, once separated from its historical beginnings, seemed to have no choice but to proceed in one or other of these two directions,—either to evaporate as a philosophy or to petrify as a mechanical tradition. That it was able to continue as a living faith was due mainly to the work of John. He presented

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the life of Jesus in its eternal meaning, and showed how true discipleship was still possible to those who had not seen and yet had believed. He claimed that this inward fellowship was even closer and more real than the outward one. And at the same time he assigned to the historical fact of Christ's appearance its necessary value. From the empty speculations of his time he went back to the actual record, and insisted that the Christ who manifests Himself to faith is one with Him who lived among us. His larger work, His eternal presence, cannot be understood apart from that historical revelation. It is the supreme service of the Fourth Evangelist that he interpreted the vision of faith by the light of the Gospel story. He ensured for all time that the Christ of inward experience should be no ideal abstraction, but the living Master who had once been manifest in the flesh.

In these three well-marked directions the Gospel is a work of transition, and this fact explains not a few of its main difficulties. The writer had to deal with diverse elements, and has not wholly succeeded in fusing them. His general purpose was to re-mould the original tradition according to his new conception of its meaning, but there was much in it that could neither be discarded nor yet find a natural place in the altered plan. Again and again we meet with isolated ideas which cannot be reconciled with the characteristic Johannine thought. They can only be regarded as fragments of the earlier doctrine that have simply

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been taken over without any, or with a very imperfect, attempt at assimilation. It is customary to speak of these alien fragments (the more important of which will be considered in due place) as " concessions" made by the evangelist to current modes of belief. This account of them, however, is scarcely just. A thinker who is reaching forward to a larger conception of truth does not break entirely with the common beliefs of his age. Even when they clash with his own belief he is not himself fully conscious of the opposition, and still allows room for them in his scheme of thought, although in spirit he has transcended them. John "concedes" no doctrine which he does not himself share with the primitive Church, but many of the doctrines thus taken over from the earlier time have ceased to be vital to him. They are incorporated in his work without in any way modifying its inward character.

Apart, however, from these alien fragments which do not enter into its substance, the Gospel is by no means uniform in its presentation of doctrine. The author, writing in a period of transition, is continually striving to find place within the same system for opposite types of thought and belief. He recognises the elements of truth in widely different conceptions, and seeks to preserve them all and to make them supplement and illuminate each other. This union of opposites which meets us constantly in the Gospel has led to the most diverse views as to its ultimate character and intention. It has been represented as a

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Gnostic manifesto, and as an orthodox reply to Gnosticism ; as a vindication of the historical facts, and as a bold attempt to explain them away; as a thoroughgoing exposition of the Logos idea, and as a simple narrative in which the Logos idea disappears after the prologue. Some critics find it dominated by a polemical interest, but differ as to the object of the polemic ; others interpret it as an ecclesiastical document, or as a work of speculation, or as a manual of practical religion. The Gospel offers itself to this wide variety of explanations, all of which can be supported more or less convincingly. It stands, as a matter of fact, at the conflux of many different currents in the life and thought of the Christian Church, and cannot be explained by any one hypothesis. We have rather to acknowledge the diversity of its teaching, and to see in this one chief element in its permanent value. More than any other book in the New Testament it has witnessed to the comprehensiveness of Christianity, and has afforded a meeting-ground for all the different types of religious temperament and thought.

The blending of various tendencies which marks the Gospel as a whole is no less visible when we examine its teaching in detail. Only a few examples, which will be considered more fully at a later stage, need be offered in illustration. The "world" is regarded sometimes as wholly evil,— the realm of darkness over against the light; and elsewhere as the object of the love of God. Man, according to one order of passages, decides for

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himself whether he will respond to Christ; according to another, he is determined by a power outside of him. The miracles of Jesus are alternately put forward as the main proof of His divine claims, and disparaged as a quite secondary evidence. An intellectual view of religion is combined with a strongly ethical view. The idea of an eternal life in the future stands side by side with that of a life realised here and now. The sacraments are regarded as mystically efficacious in themselves, and again set aside as mere symbols of the true spiritual influences. The Church as an outward institution is put in the forefront, and on the other hand religion is identified with an inward, personal fellowship with Christ. The Spirit is another name for the exalted Christ, and almost in the same verse a separate power. " Belief," which is sometimes hardly to be distinguished from the Pauline " faith," is elsewhere little more than an intellectual assent. The number of examples might be multiplied almost indefinitely if we took into account the minor discrepancies in John's thought. Nearly every sentence in the Gospel might be paralleled with another which appears to indicate a view of different tenor.

These inconsistencies, whether real or apparent, can be partly accounted for by the peculiar position of the writer, who stands between two epochs, two worlds of culture. But we shall find that to a large extent they have their roots in one grand antinomy which pervades the Gospel from end to end, and creates an actual cleavage in its religious teaching.

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The revelation through Christ is explained in the prologue as a temporary appearance in the flesh of the eternal Logos. This doctrine of the Logos, borrowed through Philo from the Greek philosophical thinkers, had nothing to do with the original Christian message. For the ethical view of the Person and life of Jesus it substituted a view which can only be described as metaphysical. Christ as Logos was a heavenly being, different in nature from man ; and nothing could be predicated of Him except that He was eternal, self-existent, one from the beginning with God. The evangelist sets out with this conception, and there can be little doubt that it pervades his whole narrative, although he does not revert after the prologue to the express Philonic term. But no one can read the Gospel in any spirit of sympathy without feeling that the theological view is combined with another of altogether different character. To John, as to the Synoptic writers, the revelation has come through the actual life of Jesus, and he seeks to explain by his theory of the incarnate Logos the impression which that life has made on him. He has recourse to the highest of philosophical categories in order to justify his faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God and the Life-giver. The doctrine of the Logos was, however, by its very nature inadequate to his purpose. It belonged to a world of abstract speculation, and Jesus had revealed the Father by His love and goodness, by the moral glory and divineness of His life. In the Fourth Gospel we have really two distinct conceptions, which are con-

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stantly interchanging but can never be reconciled. Jesus is, on the one hand, the Logos, a supernatural being who makes God manifest because He partakes Himself of the divine essence. On the other hand, He is the Saviour whom we know, who dwelt among us, full of grace and truth. The Gospel moves throughout on these two conceptions of the Christian revelation, and they are never brought into real harmony. Instead of vainly striving to harmonise them, we have to acknowledge an inner contradiction which affects the Johannine teaching at its very centre.

The frequent oppositions of thought that meet us in the Gospel are traceable, therefore, to two main causes. An earlier type of Christian belief is combined with another which had arisen at a later time in a different environment; and a revelation given through a historical life is interpreted by means of a philosophical doctrine, with which it cannot, in any true sense, be reconciled. But we must further allow due weight to the temperament of the writer himself, who with all his speculative genius is not primarily a theologian, but a man of profound religious feeling. Ideas flow in upon him from various sources—from primitive Christian tradition, Paulinism, Alexandrian speculation; and he does not attempt to reason them out, or to coordinate them into a system. They may stand in mutual contradiction, but as long as he responds to them with some side of his religious nature he is willing to accept them. He tests them, not by any

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logical criterion, but by an inward tact and sympathy. Hence the widely different elements that find a place side by side within his Gospel; and hence also the indefinable unity in which these conflicting elements are held together. They have all formed part of a living experience, and have a spiritual affinity to each other even when they appear most diverse. It is here, perhaps, that we come upon the crucial difficulty in the interpretation of this writing of John. We have to deal not so much with a thinker whose system may be examined by the ordinary logical rules, as with a unique religious temperament. Ignorant as we are of the personality of the writer, we are for ever deprived of the ultimate key to his Gospel.

It is necessary to bear in mind that the Johannine thought, even more than the Pauline, is bound up with a personal temperament and experience. The theology of Paul would in great measure be a riddle to us if we knew nothing of the individual life out of which it had shaped itself. Our knowledge of the man himself, of his early training, his conversion and the circumstances that led up to it, his activities as an Apostle, his personal sympathies and characteristics,—supplies the light in which his whole thought becomes intelligible. In the case of John we have no such light, and have to feel our way dimly, with the help of some vague acquaintance with the times and conditions in which he worked and the sources from which he drew. The result has been that criticism has too often attempted to construe his

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Gospel externally. It has been treated as little more than a compilation in which various fragments of earlier systems are pieced together, while the personal factor has been left entirely out of sight. Now it cannot be too strongly emphasised that this factor, which is outside our range of knowledge, is yet the ultimate and all-important one. Whatever is borrowed from previous thinkers is not simply taken over, but is penetrated with new meanings ; and much as we are assisted in the right understanding of the Gospel by various collateral lines of research, we have to deal in the last resort with the writer himself, and his own individual conception of the message of Christ.

The individual character of the work is strikingly marked in the very method of its composition. It has been noted already that John did not set himself to write a complete history, but only to enforce a given view of the Christian revelation in the light of selected facts. He is thus left free to shape his narrative on a deliberate artistic plan, and it unfolds itself with something of the ordered majesty and simplicity of a Greek tragedy. First, in a solemn prologue, our minds are prepared for the action which is to follow ; and then the divine life passes before us in its few cardinal episodes. In the first four chapters the Light is seen rising on the world, and all men appear to welcome it and respond to it. Then follows a period of uncertainty, when friends and enemies begin to take their sides (v. and vi.). In

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the next section (vii.-xii.) the world settles down into definite antagonism, while the few whom Jesus has chosen are drawn to Him ever more closely. At last He is left alone with this small company of His true disciples, and reveals His inmost heart to them in the quiet of the supper-room (xiii.-xvii.). Meanwhile the hatred of His enemies, like the love of His chosen friends, has reached its height, and in the remaining chapters we see Him overwhelmed by the powers of darkness, yet in the end rising victorious.

The story thus groups itself around one central motive, that of the judgment, the sifting out of men, effected by the coming of Christ. After the first wonder has spent itself, the two classes of children of light and children of darkness begin to emerge definitely. Those who are repelled from Jesus become more intensely hostile, while those who accept Him are won to an always deeper and more intimate faith. This separation of men by their attitude to the Light is the governing motive of the book, and as such it serves an artistic as well as a theological purpose. By his conception of Jesus as the Logos, the writer was compelled to regard Him as a stationary figure. There could be no inward development of His character or consciousness, no reaction of circumstances upon His life. As the story of the Incarnate Logos the Gospel could be nothing more than a series of repetitions, without any real sequence or unifying interest. The difficulty is overcome by the aid of that other motive, which enables the narrative to

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march forward with a natural dramatic progress. Jesus Himself remains sovereign and impassive, awaiting His "hour"; but the effect of His presence on the world becomes more and more decisive. A judgment is in process, and we follow it stage by stage to the great climax.

The deliberate artistic purpose which governs the main structure of the Gospel is apparent also in matters of detail. Every reader has been struck with the contrast between the prevailing tone of mystical thought and the vivid realism of many of the separate pictures. The book abounds in clearly drawn portraits of character. Disciples who in the Synoptics are little more than names stand out in John with definitely marked features. The more prominent actors in the history (e.g. Peter, Judas, Pilate) are carefully individualised. Even those persons who have no real part in the action, and are only introduced for the purposes of doctrinal discussion (Nicodemus, the woman of Samaria, the blind man), are endowed with some distinctness of character. In like manner the writer delights in little pictorial touches which serve to give a concrete reality to his narrative. He records dates, hours, names of places. He works out special episodes with a wealth of lively detail. He adds an individual reference to vague statements in the Synoptics. (Peter was the man who struck, and Malchus the man wounded; Judas objected to the waste of ointment; Thomas is the representative of the " some who doubted.") He introduces, often with wonderful effect, dramatic

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contrasts and circumstances. (" And it was night." "Jesus wept." "Behold the man!" "What is truth ?") These are but a few examples of that study of the vivid and concrete which forms one of the best marked characteristics of the Fourth Gospel, abstract and theological as it is in its main teaching. The favorite argument for the general authenticity of the narrative is based on this feature in its composition, but the force of the argument disappears on closer analysis. It can be shown that many of the apparently lifelike details have a symbolic value, and are in reality nothing but veiled allegorical allusions. Possibly, if we had an adequate clue to the evangelist's aims and methods, a side-reference of this kind could be discovered in almost every instance. Apart, however, from its allegorical value, the picturesque detail in John's narrative can be set down, not to the accurate memory of the eye-witness, but to the fine instinct of the literary artist. All the more that the prevailing tenor of his work was abstract and meditative, he felt the need of relieving it with touches of livelier color.

The elaborate character of the work becomes still more apparent when we look with closer attention at its inner structure. A manner of writing is adopted which admits of singularly little variation, so that it is difficult at times to distinguish between the words of Jesus Himself and the commentary which follows them. This monotony of the ^Johannine style, due to a certain uniform, semi-rhythmical construction of sentence, has often

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been remarked. It is evidently intentional, and imparts to the whole book an air of majesty and religious awe, in keeping with its high argument. A similar uniformity is traceable in the conduct of almost all the dialogue in which Jesus takes part. The method invariably adopted is this;—a dark saying is thrown out by Jesus which is misapprehended by His hearers, and He then repeats the original saying, and proceeds to amplify and explain it. Whole chapters (e.g. v. vi. viii.) consist of a series of such dark utterances, misunderstood and then interpreted. A regular method is likewise followed in regard to the miracles. They are performed by Jesus on His own initiative, and embody great spiritual truths which are not apparent to the onlookers. Thus they serve as introductions to the several discourses, in which they are expounded in their inward significance.

The allegorical nature of many of the incidents and allusions contained in the Gospel has already been indicated. In the case of the miracles, John himself invites us to consider the outward event as the vehicle of a hidden meaning ; and his narrative, down to its minutest details, appears to be saturated with symbolism. Even where his chief interest is to record facts as they actually happened, he is careful to place them in such a light as to bring out a deeper spiritual import which was concealed in them. A conspicuous example is the incident of the spear-thrust, vouched for in the most emphatic manner as strictly historical. It was the unanswerable proof that Jesus really died upon the Cross, and

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the evangelist is solicitous, above all, to establish the fact. Yet even here the outward event merges in the symbol. The water and blood that issued from the side of Christ typify the double work effected by Him, and the two sacraments in which it is appropriated by the believer. In like manner throughout the Gospel we have to reckon with a strain of allegorical intention woven in at every point with the narrative proper. " Earthly things " are to this writer the shadow of " heavenly things," and they are chiefly valuable to him for the sake of those higher truths dimly reflected in them.

A particular interest attaches itself in this connection to John's use of numbers. In view of his relation to the allegorical school of Philo, we are prepared to find the mystical value of numbers playing a part in his work, and this expectation is borne out to a greater extent than is at first evident. Definite allusions are indeed comparatively few, but it has often been noted that a numerical scheme appears to be constantly before his mind. Jesus makes His journey thrice to Galilee and thrice to Jerusalem; there are three Passovers and three other feasts ; the Baptist makes three appearances as witness; Jesus is thrice condemned, speaks thrice from the Cross, appears three times after His Resurrection. Seven, the other sacred number, is likewise prominent. There are seven miracles, seven references to the " hour " ; the formula " I am," introducing some type under which Jesus describes Himself, occurs seven times, as also the solemn

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asseveration, " These things I have spoken to you," in the final discourse. It even seems probable that the structure of the Gospel as a whole is determined by these two numbers, three and seven. The book can be articulated into seven main sections, each of which falls naturally into three main parts; and a still further subdivision on the basis of the sacred numbers can be carried out with sufficient plausibility. This method of analysis is at best conjectural and may easily be overstrained, but it is distinctly possible that John worked consciously on a scheme of numbers in the composition of his work. Such a plan might seem at first sight to place a fatal restraint on the free activity of genius, but we have instances of great creative work—for example, the poem of Dante—produced under still stricter limitations. To minds of a certain type the observance of a rigid system is no burden, but rather a necessary condition to elevated and harmonious thought.

Enough has been said to prove that the Fourth Gospel, in outward appearance so unstudied and spontaneous, is in reality a work of complex art. It bears traces of elaborate design, alike in its plan as a whole and in all its separate details. We are prepared, therefore, to discover a similar complexity in the content of the Gospel. We can assume that in its thought as in its composition it is not simple, but is full of hidden intention, and meaning involved in meaning. This will become increasingly evident as we' examine more closely into its religious and theological teaching.

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Meanwhile a new light is thrown on the broad question which meets us at the outset,—What is the aim with which this Fourth Gospel was written ? In view of the evangelist's express statement, the answer to this question might seem to present little difficulty. He wrote in a purely religious interest, " that, believing in Jesus Christ as the Son of God, ye might have life through His name." This statement does not, however, cover the whole purpose of the Gospel. It arose, like the other New Testament writings, out of the immediate life and needs of the early Church ; and we cannot but feel, when we study it with some attention, that the religious aim is combined with a more practical one. Again and again we come on passages that seem capable of a double interpretation. They can be explained, quite naturally, in the light of that larger purpose which the writer professes to have kept before him; but they have a bearing, still more direct and evident, on certain definite questions that agitated the Church at a given time.

What, then, was the real aim of our evangelist ? Areweto regardhim as a purely religious teacher, concerned only with the timeless element in Christianity? Or was he rather a man of his age, whose thought was chiefly determined by the immediate conditions under which he lived? Much of the discussion which in recent times has gathered around these questions becomes irrelevant when allowance is made for the element of complexity that belongs to the very essence of the Fourth Gospel. It is fair to assume that in such a work a number of

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intentions may be equally present, and so involved with one another that they cannot easily be separated. There is no reason to set aside John's own statement when he declares that his aim was in the first instance religious ; but this paramount aim was complicated in his mind with others, imposed on him by the particular circumstances of his time. They can be traced with more or less distinctness in every chapter of the work, and continually influence its main teaching.

These subordinate aims may be grouped, for the sake of convenience, under two divisions. In the first place, the evangelist seeks to repel the attacks to which Christianity was subject, from several different sides, in the early years of the second century. His narrative is so presented as to serve an urgent polemical interest. He writes, in the second place, as a representative of the Church, with the object of building up the Church idea. It might seem, indeed, that nothing could be further removed from the field of ecclesiastical debate than this "spiritual Gospel" of John. The Church is not once alluded to by name; the mind of the writer dwells among eternal truths which appear to have little to do with Church politics and controversies. None the less we shall find reason to believe that the thought of the Church is constantly present to him. The story of the beginnings of Christianity is described in such a manner as to adumbrate the later development, in which an ordered community, with its set laws and sacraments, continued the work of Christ. A

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whole region of John's thinking becomes intelligible only when we take account of this ecclesiastical interest which underlies his Gospel.

It need hardly be said that this division is not to be regarded as a strict one. The polemical purpose intersects at every turn with that which we have defined as the ecclesiastical ; and in like manner both of the subordinate aims fall into harmony with the supreme religious aim. Written as it is with a threefold strain of intention, the Gospel impresses us throughout with a sense of magnificent unity. The complex elements of which it is composed are all fused and vitalised by the prevailing motive,—"that ye may believe in the Son of God, and have life through His name."

Here, again, the method of the Fourth Evangelist may in some measure be illustrated from that of Dante. The poem, like the Gospel, is governed by a spiritual purpose, and depends on this for its whole power and meaning. Blended, however, with the central purpose, there are various subordinate aims which may often seem to have little relation to it. The poet concerns himself with the politics of his time, with the theological controversies, with the many-sided intellectual movement, so that the higher intention is sometimes half buried. It cannot be maintained on that account that the quarrel of Guelph and Ghibelline is the whole key to the Divine Comedy; and just as little can we interpret the Fourth Gospel by dwelling exclusively on its minor issues. These have their place and cannot be overlooked, but the religioi

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26 THE FOURTH GOSPEL

aim is paramount, and everything else must be explained in the light of it.

A few of the more striking characteristics of the Gospel have thus been indicated, and require to be borne in mind as we proceed to the more detailed criticism. It has been seen, in the first place, that John, by his own testimony, is not so much the reporter of historical facts, as a religious teacher who seeks to get behind the facts to their essential import. To his mind the idea was everything, and the outward event a mere shell and symbol. He considers it not only permissible but necessary to re-shape the tradition in order to render it transparent, more clearly significant of the spiritual truth conveyed in it. Again, his work was in more ways than one the product of an age of transition. It presented the Christian message to a new time, under the forms of a different culture. It sought to unite in one picture the two revelations of Christ,— that which He had given through His earthly life, and that which He still gives through His inward, eternal presence. Johannine theology thus represents the mingling of several currents of thought which do not altogether lose the traces of their original diversity. We meet constantly with types of doctrine which are not entirely harmonized, which even stand in mutual contradiction. The actual reminiscence of Jesus is combined throughout with a metaphysical theory derived from Greek speculation. Once more, the Gospel is no simple, spontaneous utterance, as it might appear to be, but a

CHARACTER AND INTENTION 27

work of elaborate art. In its most casual allusions we need to be prepared for some deeper allegorical meaning concealed beneath the immediate one. Its main religious intention is interwoven continually with various subordinate aims, polemical and ecclesiastical. The evangelist, so far as we know him from his work, was no secluded thinker, but an active leader of the Church in a difficult time. His Gospel is the purest exposition of the absolute religious spirit; but we have also to regard it as a contemporary document, written in the full whirl of the passions and controversies of the second century.

This writing of John is therefore a book of contrasts, of seeming contradictions. It combines a narrative, at times intensely real and human, with a profound metaphysic. It is concerned at once with the eternal verities of religion and with the practical issues of a given age. It finds room within itself for the most diverse types of thought, Greek, Pauline, early Christian. It defends the orthodox faith of the Church, and at the same time borrows from Gnosticism. With its matchless simplicity of literary form, it is a complex work of art. With its dependence on previous thinkers, alike in its main ideas and in detail, it impresses us more than any other book by its absolute originality. These are only a few of the contrasts in this wonderful Gospel, which makes a different appeal to every variety of Christian temperament and experience. The mystic, the churchman, the philosopher, the man of simple thought and feeling, have

28

THE FOURTH GOSPEL

all responded alike to the teaching of John. He gave the chief impulse to the development of dogma; he has also acted, in every age of the Church, as the great liberalising influence in Christian thought. Finality is impossible in the interpretation of such a book. Each new attempt to explain it is fragmentary at the best, and sends us back to the Gospel itself with a deeper sense of its ultimate mystery.

CHAPTER II

SOURCES AND INFLUENCES

Gospel of John is the most individual of the New Testament writings. All the diverse elements of which it is composed have been fused together in the mind of an original thinker, and bear his unmistakable impress. At the same time, the Fourth Evangelist was not, like Paul, a creator and discoverer. He works with only a few ideas, which he is content to reiterate almost in the same words. These ideas have all been given to him, and it would be possible to go over his Gospel in detail and trace its dependence, almost in every verse, on the work of previous thinkers. His originality is one of attitude, of temperament. Through his own inward experience he has arrived at a new conception of the meaning of Christianity, and he assimilates the results of earlier thought to this conception. They enter into new combinations and assume new values; in every case they have something added to them which changes their whole character.

Our knowledge of the sources from which John drew affords us, therefore, only a partial clue to his thought, and is sometimes positively misleading.

30

THE FOURTH GOSPEL

The fact that some term employed by him bears a certain meaning in Paul or in Philo, may signify very little. By reading the original idea into the borrowed term, we often miss the shade of difference which now belongs to its essential import. It may fairly be argued that much of the modern research into the possible influences that have gone to the making of John's Gospel has served to obscure its real purpose and character. In face of the vast array of analogies and parallel passages, it becomes increasingly difficult to take the book by itself and allow it to create its own impression. This, when all is said, is the only true method of approaching a work of genius; and, while examining the debt owed by our evangelist to writers before him, we must always remember that our chief concern is with himself. What he borrowed was for the most part rude material; what he gave was spirit and life.

Three main influences are everywhere traceable in the Gospel,—the Synoptic tradition, the writings of Paul, the Alexandrian philosophy. To these may be added two contemporary influences,—those of the orthodox Church doctrine and of Gnostic speculation. One important question, however, falls to be considered at the outset. May we assume that, besides these known sources, the author drew from some other source now lost to us, in his representation of the life and words of Christ? By the nature of the case no certain answer can be given to this question. Granted that the Gospel was written in the first decade of

SOURCES AND INFLUENCES 31

the second century, we can easily conceive that many authentic traditions of the life of Jesus were still extant. Men were living who had conversed with the Apostles, and we can hardly doubt that the Fourth Evangelist availed himself of their testimony. He would be at least as anxious as Papias " to inquire into the discourses of the elders, what Andrew or Peter said, or what Philip or what Thomas or James, or what John or Matthew or any other of the disciples of the Lord." In one memorable passage (xix. 35) he appears to make emphatic allusion to evidence received directly from an eye-witness; and in other cases not so carefully specified we may believe that he drew from authentic records, written or unwritten, which find no place in the Synoptics. At the same time, there is no ground for assuming that these other records were more than fragmentary. They may have supplied him with isolated sayings or incidents, but cannot be proved to have constituted a positive independent source. The theory of an original document underlying our present Gospel has recently been defended with vast learning and ingenuity by Wendt. This critic maintains that the discourses of Jesus, practically in the form in which we have them, were contained in an early Apostolic work, which was redacted by the later evangelist and thrown into an ordered narrative. The argument, however, makes shipwreck on two insuperable difficulties. In the first place, the Gospel as it stands is an organic unity and cannot be broken up into discourses and narrative, sub-

THE FOURTH GOSPEL

32

stance and framework; the impression of a single mind and a single hand rests upon every line of it, and a twofold authorship is simply inconceivable. Again, the portions assigned by Wendt to the original document are pervaded, like the rest of the book, with Pauline and Alexandrian influences. The source would thus offer exactly the same problems as the Gospel does, and would compel us to the same conclusions in regard to its date and authorship and intention. On these two grounds alone it seems impossible to accept any such theory as that which has been elaborated by Wendt. It may be freely admitted that John had access to many genuine fragments of Apostolic tradition, and embodied them in his work. Facts and incidents, touches of local colour, here and there a saying that bears the true accent of Jesus, may thus have been given him; but the large features of his picture, the general conception of the Lord's life and message, cannot with any probability be assigned to a primitive record now lost. We are thrown back on the assumption that the sources still accessible to us are the chief, and practically the only, sources from which the Gospel is derived.

Among these the first place must undoubtedly be given to the Synoptics. John would appear to have possessed these Gospels in much the same form as we have them now, and draws freely upon them all. There is little trace of critical discrimination in his use of them. It may be said generally

SOURCES AND INFLUENCES 33

that for the sequence of events he gives the preference to Mark, for separate details to Matthew, while in his larger view of the significance of Christ's life and work he is most in sympathy with Luke. In the main, however, he uses the three Gospels as a single authoritative source.

The dependence on the Synoptics is naturally most apparent in the narrative portion of John's work. He sets before us the same general picture of Jesus as a teacher, a worker of miracles, a Master surrounded by disciples who only half understood Him. The conception of the character of Jesus, heightened though it is by the dominant idea of the Logos, is yet essentially the same as in the earlier evangelists. These large features of resemblance do not necessarily imply a direct borrowing, but there are further similarities which cannot otherwise be explained.

In the first place, the main divisions under which the Synoptic narrative unfolds itself are carefully imitated by John. The ministry of Jesus is preceded by that of the Baptist. The beginning of miracles takes place in Galilee, under conditions of gladness and bright promise; then follows a period of debate, ever more embittered as time goes on, corresponding to the strife with scribes and Pharisees in the Synoptics. The confession of Peter (vi. 69) answers to the scene at Csesarea Philippi, and, like it, marks the turning-point in the story. In the closing sections of the book the Synoptic order is closely followed, although at 3

THE FOURTH GOSPEL

34

every step its details are skilfully adapted to the

Johannine scheme.

The evangelist thus keeps himself in line with a sequence of events which in his own reading of the history had lost all its real significance. Jesus, as he conceived Him, came forth at once as the declared Messiah; His course was not shaped for Him by outward circumstances; He knew the end from the beginning, and ordered it according to His own will. But in this new reading of the divine life John had to reckon with the tradition already fixed by the written documents. He accepts the fundamental frame-work which they afforded him, and fills it in after his own manner, so that the original lines of the history are largely obliterated. The Galilsean ministry, with its brightness and hopefulness, is summed up in the opening miracle at the wedding-feast, and then gives place to the more conspicuous work at Jerusalem. The controversy with scribes and Pharisees on definite matters of the moral and religious life becomes a theological polemic against "the Jews." Peter's confession loses its true significance as the first acknowledgment of Jesus as the Messiah. This, in John's view, had never been open to doubt, and the confession only marks the growing faith of the disciples in contrast to the growing unbelief of the world. So in each case the broad Synoptic divisions are adapted to new purposes, though at the same time they are recognised. The evangelist seeks to base himself as far as possible on the foundations already laid

SOURCES AND INFLUENCES 35

down. He reproduces, feature by feature, the history which was familiar to all Christian readers, while he presents it under a different light, so as to bring out more clearly its inward meaning.

In the details of the narrative, no less than in its general sequence, we can distinctly trace the Synoptic ground-work. The incidents are, with a few exceptions, taken over from the earlier evangelists with characteristic Johannine differences. We can easily identify the original sources of the story of John the Baptist, the cleansing of the Temple, the healing of the nobleman's son, the feeding of the five thousand, the walking on the sea, the anointing at Bethany, the entry into Jerusalem, the main episodes of the Passion and Resurrection. In all these parallels we have traces of a literary dependence which make it certain that the writer was borrowing from our present Synoptic Gospels. It is noticeable, however, that he never fails to modify in some fashion the material given him, sometimes changing its whole character. Compare, for instance, the account of the believing centurion with that of the nobleman whose son was healed. Apart from minor changes, —all of them introduced with evident intention— the purpose of the incident is altered. In the Synoptics the one prominent feature is the faith of the centurion, which secures an immediate answer to his prayer. In John the emphasis is all laid on the greatness of the miracle. Jesus performs it, not at the call of faith, but in order to evoke faith, complaining at the same time that men

36 THE FOURTH GOSPEL

cannot be persuaded except by signs and wonders. Thus, while he borrows the Synoptic story, John completely changes its meaning; and in the other instances he follows a similar method. Setting out from his own conception of the life of Christ, he adapts and modifies his originals, while still, in the main, adhering to them.

A more complicated question presents itself when we pass from these direct borrowings to certain other episodes in the Gospel which cannot be traced so. immediately to Synoptic sources. How did John obtain his knowledge of the marriage at Cana, the second testimony of the Baptist, the meeting with Nicodemus and with the Samaritan woman, the healing of the paralytic at Bethesda and of the man born blind, the raising of Lazarus ? The presence of these episodes might seem to prove conclusively that the Fourth Gospel embodies an independent tradition. Certainly it is possible, as has been indicated above, that John had sources of information, oral or written, apart from our present Synoptics. Such an incident as the meeting with the Samaritan woman may easily be supposed to rest on some actual fact which the evangelist took over from tradition and elaborated in his own characteristic manner. So, in regard to all the instances given, we are free to assume that he worked on lingering reminiscences that had come down from the Apostolic times. But, in view of his close dependence elsewhere on the Synoptic records, we have to admit the probability that here also he is drawing upon them, though not so directly

I

SOURCES AND INFLUENCES 37

and apparently. As a matter of fact, when we examine these peculiarly Johannine incidents with some attention, we arc rarely at a loss to connect them with parallel incidents in the earlier Gospels. Nicodemus has his counterpart in the rich young ruler who inquired of Jesus concerning eternal life. The miracle at Cana, obviously symbolic in its character, may well have been suggested by the two sayings of Jesus (Mark ii. 19, 22) about the children of the bride-chamber and the new wine. The second testimony of John seems to correspond with his sending of the embassy from prison ; only the witness, instead of wavering, reiterates his faith. The paralytic of Bethesda reminds us of the man who " took up his bed and walked " at Capernaum, and the man born blind of the blind Bartimseus. Possibly the story of Lazarus is likewise to be explained by the working up of different Synoptic suggestions into a single narrative. As it stands, we cannot, with any show of probability, find room for it in an intelligible scheme of the life of Christ. It is inconceivable that a miracle of such magnitude, performed on the very eve of the last momentous week of our Lord's life, and in presence of crowds of people in a suburb of Jerusalem,—a miracle, moreover, which was the immediate cause, according to John, of the Crucifixion,—should have been simply passed over by the other evangelists We are almost compelled to the conclusion that the narrative is in the main symbolical, gathering up under the form of "earthly things" the supreme doctrine of Christ the Life-giver. At the same

38 THE FOURTH GOSPEL

time it is woven together out of scattered hints supplied by the Synoptics,—the raising of J aims' daughter and the youth of Nain, the Lucan account of the two sisters Martha and Mary, the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, with its significant closing words, " Neither will they believe though one be raised from the dead." In no other instance does the evangelist depart so daringly from the historical tradition, yet he bases throughout on Synoptic reminiscences. He deals with them freely, and so combines and rearranges them as to form an entirely new narrative, but all the while he is careful to build with material given him. This is in accordance with his whole method and intention. He does not aim at writing a new life of Christ, but at re-stating the traditional facts in the light of what he regards as their inward meaning. The material is all borrowed from sources already familiar, and only the " truth," the higher spiritual

interpretation, is new.

When we pass from the narrative to the discourses, which form the larger and more important section of the Gospel, we can still trace a continual dependence on the Synoptic records. Here, however, it is almost wholly a question of indirect influence. Two or three isolated sayings are taken literally from the Synoptics, but for the most part Jesus speaks in a language that seems entirely different. He no longer uses parables, or studies to express Himself in the simplest, directest words. His favourite mode of utterance is in dark sentences, which are often capable of several mean-

SOURCES AND INFLUENCES 39

ings and are not intended to be fully understood.

In substance even more than in form the Johannine

discourses appear to stand in complete contrast to

the Synoptic teaching. The message of the

kingdom of God is barely alluded to, and in place

of it Jesus is occupied almost exclusively with the

doctrine of His own Person. In view of the

marked differences, it seems hard to establish any

connection between John's account of our Lord's

teaching and that of the other evangelists; the

discourses are either the product of free invention,

or they are based on an independent tradition now

lost to us. But there is a third alternative which

commends itself on closer examination as the

most probable. In the discourses, as in the narrative,

John draws from the Synoptics; but he uses his

sources freely, expanding, compressing, changing

the emphasis, re-stating the actual words to bring

out more fully the inward idea. There are few

Johannine utterances to which we cannot find some

parallel in the other Gospels. The resemblance

may not be immediately apparent, and is often

little more than a vague echo, but in almost every

case the thought is derivable from some authentic

saying of Christ preserved .in our Synoptics.

Examples might easily be multiplied, but we need

only refer to one, which illustrates in a very striking

manner the evangelist's method. The doctrine of

the New Birth as set forth in the dialogue with

Nicodemus is peculiar to the Fourth Gospel, and

can be traced back to a variety of sources. Ideas

that had grown up around the Mysteries are blended

40 THE FOURTH GOSPEL

in the mind of John with Pauline reminiscences, with theological reflections on the meaning of the Church rite of Baptism. Thus far the whole passage may be explained as a later addition, which has little to do with the recorded teaching of Jesus. Nevertheless the ultimate suggestion of the doctrine may be discovered in the earlier Gospels. The answer to Nicodemus : " Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God," takes us back to the familiar verse, " Except ye turn and become as little children, ye shall not enter the kingdom of heaven." In both sayings we have the same essential thought of a new life taking its departure from an entire break with the past. In both, likewise, the image is primarily the same. John has merely developed in its full implication the idea of " becoming like a little child," and sought to interpret it in line with his own conception. Most of the passages in which he appears at first sight to vary most widely from the other evangelists, might be analysed in similar fashion with a like result. Working as he does in a spirit of freedom, he yet draws throughout from the Synoptic sources. To him, as to us, those earliest records of the words of Christ were authoritative, and he is careful to use them as his ground-work, while at the same time he modifies and interprets them.

It may be granted that in the separate discourses John avails himself thus of suggestions given him by the Synoptic records ; but how are we to explain his new presentation of the whole tenor and context of our Lord's teaching ? In the Sermon

SOURCES AND INFLUENCES 41

on the Mount and the Parables the Speaker says little about His own Person. All the stress is laid on the moral truths to which He bore witness, and on God's kingdom and Fatherhood. In the Fourth Gospel the revelation of Jesus centres wholly upon Himself. His actions and words alike have no other purpose than to assert the worth of His Person, and to compel belief in Him as the Son of God. This change in the whole subject of the Gospel message marks the most serious difference between John and the Synoptics ; but here also he is simply interpreting his sources, with a true insight into their real import. Jesus, indeed, says little in the earlier Gospels about Himself. None the less we are made to feel in every sentence that the authority of the Person is behind the teaching. His "Verily I say" is the ultimate sanction of each new commandment; His own life and character give meaning to His revelation of God. His words are recorded, not so much for their own sake as for the knowledge they afford us of His mind and spirit. He Himself in His living Person was infinitely more than His message, and it was a message of truth and power because He spoke it. Thus the chief purpose of the Synoptic writers is to reproduce in some faint measure the impression which Christ Himself made on men; and in the Fourth Gospel this underlying purpose becomes explicit. Jesus is not only the messenger, but is Himself the subject of the message. Instead of proclaiming the kingdom and witnessing to God's love and providence, He dwells on the significance

42 THE FOURTH GOSPEL

of His own Person. " I am the Light of the world." " I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life." " He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father." These sayings, and a hundred others like them, have no direct parallels in the Synoptic Gospels, but they express the latent intention of those Gospels. Jesus revealed the Father, and opened up the way to eternal life, by the manifestation of Himself.

Thus far we have sought to prove that John works on the material given him by the earlier evangelists. His dependence on their record is so marked and constant, that we are the more struck by his omission of certain elements in it which are evidently of the first importance. He tells us, indeed, that he does not propose to write a complete life of Christ, but only to select the incidents that fit in with his practical religious aim. This accounts for the omission of many minor incidents; but it does not explain why a whole series of episodes, cardinal to the Synoptic story, is simply passed over. Nothing is said, for instance, about the genealogy and the Virgin Birth, the Baptism, the Temptation, the Transfiguration, the institution of the Supper, the agony in Geth-semane, the Ascension. Although the discourses of Jesus occupy the larger part of the Gospel, it contains not a single parable (the so-called parables of the Good Shepherd and the True Vine being pure allegories, which have nothing in common with the Synoptic parables). These remarkable omissions, which alter the whole character of the history, cannot be due to oversight or to the leav-

SOURCES AND INFLUENCES 43

ing out of what was non-essential. Without doubt they have been made deliberately, in view of certain theories and pre-suppositions with which the writer approached his subject. Indeed, in most of the instances it is not difficult to read the intention that was in his mind. His conception of Jesus as the Son of God did not admit of the apparent humbling of Him to human level, implied in the Baptism or the Temptation or the Agony. The scene of the Transfiguration became unnecessary, since Jesus was invested always with a divine glory, which shone out, not once by a special miracle, but in all His words and actions. The Virgin Birth was replaced by the doctrine of the incarnation of the Word ; before His birth in time Christ was the eternal Son of God, and came into the world as man by His own voluntary act. The Ascension disappears from the narrative for a similar reason. Jesus had never ceased to be the eternal Son, and required no special act of exaltation to restore Him to His place with the Father. In all these instances the divergence from the Synoptics is immediately due to the influence of the Logos idea; the discarded elements either conflicted with that idea, or seemed to fall beneath it, or served a theological interest which it already supplied. The omission of the parables and of the institution of the Supper must be accounted for on other grounds. The question of the Supper, which is peculiarly difficult and complicated, will be examined later. With regard to the parables, the evangelist himself indicates the reason why he passed them over.

44 THE FOURTH GOSPEL

He apparently shared the view, of which we have traces in the Synoptic writers themselves, that they were intended by Jesus to veil His true teaching. They were addressed to the unthinking multitude, " that seeing they might not perceive, and hearing they might not understand;" and John wrote his Gospel in order to disclose the "truth" which Jesus Himself had half indicated and half concealed. " These things have I spoken unto you in parables, but the time cometh when I shall no more speak unto you in parables, but I shall show you plainly of the Father" (xvi. 25).

In its omissions, then, as much as in its correspondences, the Fourth Gospel can be understood only by the light of the Synoptics. What John contributes is his new conception of the inward meaning of Christ's message. So long as the material given him can be harmonised with this conception, he accepts it, while at the same time re-moulding it freely. When he discards any important element in the Synoptic record, his reason invariably is that it will not blend with his own theological view. It is noticeable, also, that even when he omits, he shows a desire to conserve at least some vestige of the original tradition. The scene of Gethsemane could not be related without doing violence to the Logos hypothesis, yet there is a faint reminiscence of it (xii. 27-29) when Jesus trembles for a moment on the verge of His week of Passion. Here we can trace, however dimly, the several details of the Agony, in the trouble of Jesus under the shadow of death, His prayer, His

SOURCES AND INFLUENCES 45

submission to God's will, the divine help that strengthens Him. So the Ascension, although not recorded, is darkly alluded to in the words of the risen Christ to Mary (xx. 17). It would be possible to illustrate in like manner how the missing elements in the story are all replaced by something equivalent,—as when the prologue is substituted for the account of the miraculous birth, or the frequent allusions to Christ's manifest "glory" for the single scene of the Transfiguration. Throughout his Gospel the evangelist bases himself, consciously and deliberately, on the Synoptic writers. He accepts their narrative as the authentic record of the life of Jesus, and endeavours to keep in line with it even when it cannot be wholly reconciled with his own conception. At the same time he is more concerned with the "truth" of the original narrative, with its inward drift and significance, than with its literal content. " Having observed," says Clement of Alexandria, " that the bodily things had been exhibited in the other Gospels, John, inspired by the Spirit, produced a spiritual Gospel." This earliest criticism reveals a true insight into the purpose and method of John. He takes over from the Synoptic record the "bodily things," the actual facts of the Christian history, and makes it his special task to supply the interpretation. The Spirit guided him into all truth, yet the Spirit did not speak of Himself, but took of the things of Christ, as they were treasured in the familiar story, and unfolded them in their deeper meaning.

46 , THE FOURTH GOSPEL

II. A second influence, only less powerful than that of the Synoptic tradition has left its impress on the Gospel. Nearly half a century had passed since the death of Paul, and the mind of the Church had become impregnated with Pauline ideas. More especially in Ephesus, which had been one of the chief centres of the Apostle's activity, the theological development had followed the lines marked out by him. Much, indeed, that was primary in the Pauline system had now fallen into the background. The Church had long since broken with Judaism, and the controversy concerning the relations of Law and Gospel possessed a merely historical interest. With this change in the outward situation the key to Paul's theology had been in great measure lost. Moreover, the Christianity of Paul was so much the product of his individual mind and experience, that it could not pass in its entirety into the common life of the Church. It was gradually broken up into its various component elements, which were thrown into new combinations and invested with new values. All this must be borne in mind as we approach the question of the Pauline influence on the Fourth Gospel. The evangelist is everywhere indebted to Paul, yet we are not to look for any literal reproduction of the Pauline theology. Some of the Apostle's main conceptions are passed over or barely recognised; others are so blended with foreign ideas as to lose their original meaning; in all cases there is something added or discarded.

According to an ingenious conjecture, which

SOURCES AND INFLUENCES 47

has found acceptance with several recent critics, Paul is actually introduced into the Gospel under the figure of Nathanael. This mysterious disciple, who is nowhere mentioned in the Synoptic narratives, and whose call is yet described with peculiar fulness and solemnity, has always been one of the riddles of the book. It is impossible to identify him with any of the familiar Twelve, and we must regard him either as a purely ideal figure or as the symbolical counterpart of a real personage. If the latter alternative is adopted, there seems to be no other than Paul, who fulfils all the conditions. He was not of the Twelve, and yet ranked with them in the Apostleship, and received his call from Christ Himself. Like Nathanael, he was the last to enter the Apostolic band,—"as one born out of due time." He was at first adverse and contemptuous in his attitude, and was won over, not by the persuasion of the disciples, but by the immediate voice of Christ. "When thou wast under the fig-tree I saw thee," describes in a graphic image his predestination to Christian service while still under the shadow of the Law. " Behold an Israelite indeed " suggests more than one passage of Paul's own writings, in which he speaks of the "true Israel," the "Jew who is one inwardly," the spiritual seed of Abraham. The great promise to Nathanael (" Thou shalt see heaven opened," etc.) finds its truest fulfilment in the career of Paul, who had moments of ecstatic vision when he was rapt up to the third heaven, while in his ever-deepening faith and spiritual insight he beheld the Son of

THE FOURTH GOSPEL

48

man, more and more clearly revealed to him. On all these grounds it may be considered at least possible that in the story of Nathanael the evangelist alludes symbolically to Paul, and claims for him his rightful place among the very chiefest

of the Apostles.

Whatever be the worth of this conjecture, it is certain that John owes an incalculable debt to his great predecessor. In the course of the following chapters we shall have constant occasion to recognise his dependence on Pauline thought, and here it will be enough to touch more generally on the main points of contact. Reference may be made, in the first place, to particular verses and passages which appear to have been suggested by parallel sayings in the epistles. These reminiscences are for the most part vague and inconclusive, but here and there the Pauline original is unmistakeable. For example, the answer of Jesus (vi. 29): " This is the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom He hath sent," reminds us at once of Paul's teaching on faith and works ; it may be said, indeed, to sum up the Pauline position in a sort of epigram. In another controversial passage (viii. 33-39) we meet with a whole series of ideas obviously derived from Paul. " Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin ; " " The servant abideth not in the house for ever, but the Son abideth for ever ;" " If the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed ;"—each of these sayings has its almost verbal parallel in the epistles (cf. Rom. vi. 16-23 '> Gal. iv. 30, v. i). The claim of the Jews to special privilege in virtue of

SOURCES AND INFLUENCES 49

their descent from Abraham is answered on the familiar lines of Pauline polemic. So the later verse (viii. 56), "Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day," repeats, with an added touch of Johan-nine mysticism, the idea of Paul that the new dispensation of faith was implicit in the promise made to Abraham.

Such instances of separate Pauline thoughts reappearing in the Gospel might easily be multiplied; but we pass to a much more important manifestation of the influence. For almost all his larger doctrines the evangelist is indebted, more or less immediately, to Paul. The nature and extent of the borrowing will concern us more particularly, when we come to examine his teaching on the several aspects of the Saviour's work, and on Life, the Holy Spirit, union with Christ, the Lord's Return to His people. The doctrines that fall to be included under these heads are cardinal to the Gospel, and in each case the main conception is either derived from Paul or is combined with distinctively Pauline ideas. In some respects the Johannine theology may be considered as little more than the natural development, along one particular line, of Paulinism ; although here again we must keep in view the essential originality of the later thinker. He deals with Paul as we have already found him dealing with the Synoptics. He seeks to penetrate through the outward form of the Apostle's teaching to what appeals to him as its real and abiding import, and in so doing he profoundly modifies the Pauline ideas. Even when he seems to borrow most directly, his thought is 4

50 THE FOURTH GOSPEL

never that of Paul, but something individual and

new.

But apart from special doctrines, John is influenced by Paul in his whole attitude to the Christian revelation. It was Paul who first conceived of the glorified Christ as the real object of faith. The Lord whom he knew was the ascended Lord, who had been revealed to him, not in the intercourse of friend with friend, but in an inward spiritual experience. He claimed that this knowledge was as valid as that of the actual disciples, and even more real and intimate. John accepts this Pauline view with all its implications. To him also Jesus has become a heavenly being, whose life on earth had been only the beginning of an endless life, in which He is still present to those who believe in Him and love Him. In two directions, however, the Fourth Gospel advances on the

thought of Paul.

In the first place, the divine glory of Jesus is expressed under a yet higher category. Paul speaks of Jesus constantly as the Son of God, but the name as he uses it does not possess a definite theological value. It is partly associated with apocalyptic ideas of the Messiah, and partly runs back to a purely religious judgment on the relation of Christ to God. Paul nowhere attempts to define that relation. He is content to think of Christ vaguely as a higher being, " the Man from Heaven," who had taken on Himself the form of a servant, and was now declared to be the^Son of God with power. In the Fourth Gospel Jesus is the Son of God in a

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strict and literal sense. He is identified with the Logos who was with God from the beginning, and partakes of the attributes and the essential nature of God.

Again, the glory which Paul ascribes to the exalted Christ is thrown back by John on the actual life on earth. When the Apostle wrote, the historical figure of Jesus was still too near, too much entangled with petty realities, to disclose itself in its full majesty. It was difficult for those who had known Christ after the flesh to think of Him as a divine being, and Paul turned his eyes from the earthly appearance to the ascended Lord, whose glory had now become manifest. In the second century, however, the life of Jesus had receded into the past. The veil of trivial circumstance had fallen away, and the life could stand out in its true proportions, as an authentic revelation of God. It was now possible to reflect the ideal conception of Jesus on the facts of His earthly history. The Lord who revealed Himself to Paul in the experience of faith is to the evangelist one with Jesus Christ, who had lived and taught and suffered. Even then, while He still dwelt among us, " we beheld His glory as of the only-begotten of the Father."

The Fourth Gospel is thus built on foundations which had already been laid by Paul; but there are certain all-important differences between the two types of teaching. Three of the most significant may here be briefly indicated, although they will demand a closer attention in subsequent chapters, (i) The idea of Sin, which lies at the centre of all

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Paul's thinking, is reduced to a subordinate place. Salvation is regarded in its positive aspect as the entrance into a higher life, and the need of a deliverance from sin hardly appears to be realised. (2) The death of Christ no longer occupies the position which is assigned to it by Paul. Apart from one or two allusions of quite secondary importance, the Pauline doctrine of an Atonement has disappeared. The emphasis is removed from the death of Christ to His coming in the flesh ; and so far as the death is theologically interpreted the theory of Paul gives place to another and wholly different one. (3) The word "faith"—the keyword of Paul's theology—is absent from the Gospel. Instead of it we have a continual repetition of the verb "believe" in all its various forms; but this believing has little in common with the Pauline "faith." In itself it only signifies an intellectual assent, and has to be filled out and supplemented before it can be made to connote the

larger meaning.

These are the salient differences between the theology of Paul and that of John, and to some extent, doubtless, they are capable of reconciliation. The evangelist does not insist on the explicit Pauline doctrines, because he presents them, in what he considers their essential purport, under other forms. The death of Christ, to take no other exaBsfele, sums up for Paul the whole result and character of the Saviour's life. He isolates the one crowning act as the revelation of the divine love ; while John takes account of the whole life and dis-

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covers in it the same significance as Paul had ascribed to the Cross. But the difference can only be reconciled in part. We have to admit that John's development of Paulinism resulted in a new type of doctrine, new in substance as well as in outward form. The divergence was due in great measure to the changed conditions under which the Gospel was written. Paulinism could not be set free from what appeared its temporary and accidental elements without a loss of many things that belonged to its very essence. Much more, the difference between the two thinkers arose from a personal difference, in temperament and in religious experience. In his relation to his great predecessor we have perhaps the most striking evidence of the originality of John in his interpretation of the Christian message. Working throughout under the Pauline influence, he never allows himself to be mastered by it, but subordinates whatever is given him to his own conception of the truth.

III. We have now to consider a third influence which is all-pervasive in the Fourth Gospel. From an early time the Pauline tradition, more especially in the region of Ephesus, was crossed with the Alexandrian philosophy. The book of Acts (xviii. 24) tells of Apollos, "a Jew born at Alexandria,' who came to Ephesus and spoke and taught the things of the Lord. All the allusions to him appear to mark him out as an adept in the allegorical method of Philo, which he pressed into the service of the Christian mission. The fact, however, of an

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early intersection of Paulinism and Alexandrianism is placed beyond doubt by the presence of certain books in the New Testament, most notably the Epistle to the Hebrews, and, to a less degree, the Epistles to Ephesians and Colossians. In the first of these writings we find a thorough-going application of the method of Philo, together with some of his most characteristic phrases and ideas. In the two others his grand conception of the Logos, though not expressly mentioned, is clearly indicated and transferred to the Person of Christ. The main theology of these two epistles is strongly Pauline, and is not modified in any vital respect by the new conception; but none the less it is apparent that Paulinism has definitely allied itself with the philosophy of Alexandria.

The development which had thus begun in Paul's lifetime, or in any case shortly after his death, comes to its full maturity in the Fourth Gospel. The prologue consists of a succinct statement of the Philonic doctrine of the Logos, which is forthwith identified with Jesus Christ. And although the term "Logos" as applied to Christ does not occur again, the idea is everywhere present, as the inseparable co-efficient to every portion of the history. The evangelist has set himself consciously to re-write the life of Christ from the point of view afforded him by Philo's doctrine. He seeks to apply in its whole extent, and tcr^ork out into all its bearings and issues, the idea which previous Christian thinkers had only adopted partially.

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At the same time it is easy to exaggerate the influence of Alexandria on Johannine thought. The attempt has been made by more than one recent writer to explain the Gospel wholly as an Alexandrian work, and the influence of Philo has been discovered, not only in the central conception, but in almost every idea and sentence. To such a view it may be objected that there are at least two other influences, quite distinct from the Alexandrian, which contribute, as we have seen, to the making of the Gospel. Its dependence on the Synoptics and Paul is everywhere apparent, and when the largest allowance is made for all other influences, these two must still be regarded as primary. Again, we have found that in his employment of New Testament sources John works in a spirit of freedom. He borrows continually, but adapts whatever he borrows to his own purposes. We naturally expect that his attitude to the Alexandrian sources will be of similar character. He will not simply reproduce, but will select and modify and interpret, assigning a new value to each idea that he seems to borrow. There can be little doubt that this has indeed been his method. It may be granted (for this appears to be more than probable) that he had some direct acquaintance with the works of Philo, and frequently draws from them, but it does not follow that his thought is dependent, in more than a very partial sense, on that of Philo. The borrowed ideas have all become different, and sometimes essentially so, in the process of transference. Once more, the attempt to resolve the Gospel into a mere echo or

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adaptation of Philonism, breaks down when we compare the two theologies in their wider context and purpose. It is easy to single out a number of detached passages from Philo and set them side by side with passages in John to which they bear a strong resemblance. Turn, however, to Philo as a. whole. His work is a dreary chaos, in which science, metaphysic, history, philology, moral reflection are all heaped together without plan or motive. The underlying ideas of his system have to be disengaged from a huge bulk of heterogeneous material, and are still obscure in spite of the labours of many able expositors. The contrast between Philo's rambling allegory and the Fourth Gospel is infinitely more striking than the occasional likeness. Something, no doubt, is borrowed, as certain parts of the Sermon on the Mount are borrowed from the Rabbinical teaching. But in the one case as in the other, we have always to lay the chief emphasis on what has been omitted.

The dependence of John on Philo appears mainly in three directions : (i) I n the use of the allegorical method; (2) In special passages, scattered up and down the Gospel, which can be paralleled from the writings of Philo; (3) In the dominant conception of the Logos.

(i) It can hardly be questioned that the allegorical character of the Gospel is due to Alexandrian influence. In their effort to discover Greek philosophy in the Old Testament, the Alexandrian thinkers were driven to adopt a new system of exposition, whereby the letter of Scripture became

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indicative of a deeper sense. Allegory had indeed long been employed in the Rabbinical schools for the explanation of certain difficult texts, but in Alexandria it was accepted as the sole method of interpretation. The Bible history was nothing but a series of symbolical images, in which, to the enlightened mind, a higher esoteric teaching was shadowed forth. Persons became the types of spiritual qualities, incidents were figurative of the various phases in the life of the soul; places, names, numbers had all a mystical import. By the help of this method, applied in a perfectly arbitrary manner, Philo transforms the book of Genesis into an elaborate statement of his Hellenised theology. In the Fourth Gospel, likewise, outward facts are symbolical of an inward spiritual meaning. The events of the history have all a deeper reference. The persons described (Nicodemus, Thomas, Philip, the Beloved Disciple) are not so much individuals as religious types. Places (e.g. Bethesda, Siloam), numbers, dates have all their secret significance. In view of this pervading use of the allegorical method, it has been maintained by some critics that John simply deals with the Synoptic narrative as Philo dealt with the Old Testament. The historical record dissolves under his touch into a pure allegory, in which the apparent fact is nothing but a symbol or parable. This, however, is to overlook the obvious differences between the evangelist's method and that of Philo. It is noticeable, in the first place, that John's use of allegory is never merely arbitrary ; the higher meaning is not forced into the symbol,

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but grows out of it naturally and inevitably. The feeding of the five thousand leads of its own accord to the great discourse in which Jesus declares Himself the bread of life. The miracle at Cana reveals its symbolic meaning with perfect transparency. So in every part of the history the spiritual significance, as John seeks to unfold it, is the real interpretation of the facts. Again (and this is the crucial difference), the material fact has no value to Philo except as a dim suggestion of some abstract idea. The history is allegorical to him in the strict sense,—an adumbration under sensible forms of higher realities. John, on the other hand, attaches a supreme importance to the fact. The Gospel rests on the grand assumption that the Word has become flesh, the higher truth has embodied itself in the actual life of humanity; and this assumption involves at every point a profound departure from Alexandrian modes of thought. The whole interest of Philo is to break away from the material symbol and resolve it entirely into its ideal meaning, while John is concerned for the fact as much as for the idea. He seeks to show how the spiritual things have become concrete realities in the historical appearance and work of Jesus Christ.

(2) The Gospel contains a number of passages in which we can trace coincidences, more or less close, with passages in the Philonic writings. It is possible, by a little ingenuity, to multiply these parallels almost indefinitely. In the vast extent of Philo's work there are necessarily many scattered sentences which offer a certain resemblance to

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Johannine sayings; and this is the more unavoidable, as the Logos conception is the same, generally speaking, in both writers, and cannot be set forth without many analogies in thought and language. For example, when Philo describes the Logos as "eternal,"1 "uniting all things,"2 "incapable of evil,"3 "imparting joy and peace,"4 we need not infer that the corresponding Johannine ideas are immediately derived from him. Even when he speaks of the Logos under definite images as " leader on the way,"6 " shepherd,"8 "sustenance of the soul,"7 " well of fair deeds,"8 " healer,"9 " high-priest,"10 we are still within the region of natural coincidence. These images may well have offered themselves independently to both writers as the simplest and most expressive. They are part of the common religious language of all times. By far the greater number of the parallels to John which may be collected out of the Alexandrian writings may be set aside, in like manner, as at least inconclusive. There are passages in the Gospel, however, which seem to point to a definite reminiscence. One striking instance is the defence of Jesus for His breaking of the Sabbath—" My Father worketh hitherto, and I work" (v. 17). Here we have a thought which is several times insisted on by Philo,11 that God never ceases the work of creation which He accomplishes through the agency of the

1 Conf. lingu. n. * Somn. ii. 37.

T Leg. alleg. iii. 59. 8 Poster. Caini, 37. 10 Somn. i. 37. u Leg. alleg. i. 7 ; i. 3.

3 Qu. rer. dii>. 38. * Migr. Abr.y..

8 Prof. 21.

6 Agric. 12.

9 Leg. alleg. iii,

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Logos. This Philonic idea takes the place of the simple Synoptic argument that "itjs lawful to do good on the Sabbath day." Again, the saying (v. 19), " The Son can do nothing of Himself, but only what He sees the Father do," has an almost literal equivalent in Philo : " The Father of the universe has brought Him [the Logos] into being as His eldest Son, whom elsewhere He calls His first-born ; and He who was begotten, imitating the ways of His Father, and looking to His archetypal patterns, kept forming the separate species."1 A resemblance like this, in which the thought and the image are both so peculiar, can hardly be explained on any theory of chance. A third parallel, in some respects the most notable of all, is found in the great discourse on the bread of life in the sixth chapter. Philo in several places dwells on the significance ot the manna, and in each instance his thought anticipates that of John. "The Logos distributes to all the heavenly food of the soul, which is called manna."2 "You see, then, what the food of the soul consists in,—in the Word of God, given continually like the dew."s " They who have inquired what it is that nourishes the soul, have found it to be the Word of God and divine wisdom, from which all kinds of instruction and wisdom for ever flow. This is the heavenly food, and it is indicated in the sacred Scriptures, where the cause of all things says, Behold, I rain on you bread from heaven."4 The Johannine discourse appears to bear distinct traces

1 Conf. lingu. 14. 3 Leg. alleg. iii. 59.

2 Qu. rer. div. 39. 4 Profug. 2$.

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of the idea expressed in these and similar passages, that the Logos is the true manna, the bread from heaven, the food of the soul. At the same time we can observe in this typical instance how the Philonic thought changes its character. In the first place it is brought into relation with a peculiar order of ideas suggested by the Lord's Supper. Then the " nourishment of the soul " is understood mystically and religiously;—it does not consist merely in "all kinds of wisdom and instruction," but in a real communication of the divine life. Lastly, the whole force of the Johannine argument depends on the identification of the Logos with Jesus Christ. He, as He reveals Himself in the gospel history and in the inward Christian experience, is " the bread of life." The one condition of true life is to enter into personal union with Him, to incorporate, as it were, His spirit and nature into our own. It might be demonstrated in the same manner, that there is always an essential difference between John's thought and that of Philo, even when the apparent resemblance is closest.

(3) The Alexandrian influence is most evident in the Logos doctrine, which is expressly formulated in the prologue, and everywhere pre-supposed in the body of the Gospel. John does not, however, adopt the Philonic doctrine without subjecting it to certain profound modifications, which will be discussed in their due place in a later chapter. For the present it need only be indicated that the purely philosophical conception of Philo assumes an entirely new value when it is brought into relation

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with the historical Person of Christ. It has indeed been argued that Philo also conceived of his Logos as a personal being, and his language in many places might seem to bear out this contention. Admitting, however, that he ascribes a real, and not merely a figurative, personality to the Logos, it still remains certain that he keeps within the limits of abstract speculation. He is thinking all the while of the divine reason and activity, which he personifies as the intermediate agent between God and the world. John, on the other hand, starts from an actual knowledge of the earthly life of Jesus, and the conception of the Logos is always blended in his mind with the impression left on him by the Person. Even in the prologue, when he speaks of the pre-existent Word in language purely Alexandrian, he looks forward to the subsequent revelation, when this Word became flesh. For this reason alone it is impossible to regard the Logos of the Fourth Gospel as merely equivalent to that of Philo. John accepts the Alexandrian idea, and is largely determined by it in his treatment of the history, but the history likewise re-acts on the idea. The speculative view of Christ's Person merges itself at every point in the simple religious view.

To sum up, the influence of Alexandrianism in the Gospel is a real influence which must constantly be borne in mind. The evangelist had passed through the discipline of the Alexandrian school, had learned its methods and assimilated many of its ideas,—above all its central idea of the Logos. Nevertheless the Alexandrian influence is not to be

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recognised as primary, like that of the Synoptics or Paul. It does not affect the substance of the Johannine thought so much as the forms under which it is presented. The task of the Fourth Evangelist, it must be remembered, was somewhat similar to that attempted by Philo. Like the Alexandrian thinker, he sought to transplant into the world of Hellenic culture a revelation originally given through Judaism. By this similarity of aim he was constrained to follow, up to a certain point, the path marked out by Philo. He availed himself of the method of allegory as a means of penetrating through the facts to their deeper import. He expressed the Christian message in terms of the metaphysical conception of the Logos. The form in which his thought is embodied has thus been given him by Philo, and the thought itself is necessarily moulded, in some measure, by the form. But the vital and permanent elements in the Gospel are quite apart from the Alexandrian influence. They are derived immediately from the Christian tradition, as interpreted by the writer's inward and personal experience of the truth of Christ.

Thus far we have sought to determine the relation of the Fourth Evangelist to his three main sources—the Synoptic narratives, Paulinism, Alexandrian philosophy. The problem is a comparatively simple one, since in each case he availed himself of certain written documents which are still preserved to us. With regard to the two remaining influences, —the orthodox Church doctrine and Gnostic specu-

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lation,—which have left their impress on the thought of the Gospel, the question is much more complicated. In order to arrive at some approximate conclusion, it will be necessary, in the two following chapters, to examine the book more closely in its bearing on the particular religious interests of its age.

CHAPTER III

POLEMICAL AIMS

r I "'HE writings which compose the New Testa-_L ment had their origin in the immediate practical needs of the early Church. They were called forth by the exigencies of the mission, by the attacks of adversaries, by the conflict with different forms of false teaching. The Epistles of Paul are typical in this respect of all the New Testament books. Paul's object in the first instance was not to shape out a Christian theology for all time, but to defend his claims to Apostleship and the authenticity of his message, when these had been called in question. His permanent contribution to religious thought was thrown out almost incidentally in the course of a controversy which in itself had little more than a temporary interest. The other books arose in a similar manner out of some given historical situation. They were not the work of professed theologians, but of active leaders and missionaries, whose first concern was with the difficulties and the practical requirements of their own age.

It might seem at first sight as if the contemporary element which thus bulks so largely in 5

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the writings would lessen their enduring value. Addressed as they were to a particular time in view of its social interests, how can they possess the absolute significance which we commonly ascribe to them? Especially in the case of the Fourth Gospel we are apt to shrink from the suggestion of mere controversial aim. This writing, above all others, seems to breathe the timeless spirit —to detach itself completely from the petty antagonisms of its own day, and to set forth the Christian message in its eternal aspects. Nothing, however, is gained by thus isolating the Gospel from the age in which it was written. The power of the New Testament writings is due in large measure to the very fact that they grew directly out of the life of the Church in a given time and in given circumstances. They show us Christianity in movement; responding to present needs, adapting itself to real conditions, re-acting on definite forms of opposition. The message they convey is pressed home to the life of the age, and is therefore invested with a new reality and with a fuller meaning and power. The Fourth Gospel loses nothing of its abiding value when we cease to regard it as an abstract meditation and endeavour to relate it to its own particular time. It becomes, on the contrary, a living book, and makes a closer and more intelligible appeal

to us.

From the analogy, then, of the other New Testament writings we are prepared to discover a controversial interest present in the Gospel. The first age of the Church was necessarily one of

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conflict. There were enemies without and alien forces working from within, and the Church could not establish its positive teaching without at the same time replying to the different forms of error. In the Epistles of Paul the polemical issue is clear and simple. The great struggle was in progress between Christianity, as something new and independent, and the old religion of the Law; and the whole thought of Paul is connected, more or less directly, with this struggle. The controversial issue in the Fourth Gospel is much more difficult to determine. In the first place, the evangelist writes under severe restrictions, imposed on him by the narrative form in which his work is cast. He is recording the life of Jesus, which had been lived a century before, under conditions entirely different from those of his own time, and if he deals with contemporary debates it can only be indirectly, by way of implication and covert allusion. Again, our information regarding the Johannine age is obscure and fragmentary. Except for a few scanty historical notices, we have to feel our way to a knowledge of the time and of the questions that agitated it by the help of the Gospel itself. The key to John's polemic is thus to a great extent lost. Its general direction can be inferred with some degree of certainty, but the precise bearing of much of the argument must always remain doubtful. Once more, the controversy is no longer limited to a single issue, as in the case of Paul's Epistles. A generation had passed, during which the Church had widened its boundaries and come face to face

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with many new problems. Where Paul had to deal with owu-sharply denned form of opposition, the evangelist was called on to confront attacks at different points over an extended line. There appear to be several polemical intentions in his work, and they cannot easily be brought into relation with one another. It is hard to determine which of them is central, or whether they are all intended to rank equally in importance.

In regard to the main question, there can be little doubt that the Gospel is largely controversial in its character. Whole chapters consist of elaborate dialectic, in which the objections and misunderstandings of various opponents are carefully answered. Comparison with the Synoptics at once makes it evident that the criticism thus dealt with is different in kind from that which Jesus encountered in His lifetime. The writer is carrying back into the Gospel period the discussions of his own age. He is thinking not of the actual opposition which scribes and Pharisees offered to Jesus, but of the attacks directed in the present against the Christian Church. It was only natural in any case that the evangelist should adapt the history, as far as might be, to the conditions of a later time. Even if he had intended to write a literal record of the words and actions of Jesus, he would be led to lay a special emphasis on those which seemed to bear on present difficulties, and would unconsciously modify his account of them. The Synoptic writers themselves, faithful as they are to the essential facts, have composed their narratives

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with a well-marked contemporary bias; and this was the more unavoidable in a work written many years later, for a circle of readers to whom the circumstances of the Gospel history were entirely foreign.

The evangelist, however, has not merely coloured the past events by the unconscious reflection of the present. He has deliberately taken the changed conditions into account, so that his work throughout has a double bearing on the actual life of Jesus and on the life of the Church in the second century. This, indeed, is part of the general intention with which his book is written. In the historical figure of Jesus he seeks to adumbrate the eternal Christ, who is still present with His people, sharing their warfare, revealing Himself under ever-changing aspects. The Gospel is so composed that the earlier time and the later are always merging in one another. Jesus speaks in His earthly life as He is speaking now in the consciousness of the Christian Church.

In one significant passage the double intention is expressly indicated: "Verily I say unto thee, We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen; and ye receive not our witness" (Hi. n.). Here the words of Jesus pass insensibly into a declaration by the Christian community. Unless the change of person is due to forgetfulness (which is hardly possible in a work so elaborately finished), the writer desires to suggest that the Jesus of the past is still speaking through the voice of His Church. This inference is more than borne out by

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a detailed study of the Gospel. In several distinct directions it is a work of second-century controversy, and can be explained only on this hypothesis. The Church in the name of Jesus, and under the guidance of His Spirit, formulates its answer to certain groups of opponents who can still, at least in a general way, be identified.

I. There is one controversial purpose which is written large in almost every chapter of the Gospel. "The Jews" come forward constantly as the chief adversaries of Jesus,—not any sect or party of them, but simply "the Jews." This vagueness in the description might be partly explained by the fading of the historical perspective. After the lapse of a hundred years, the particular assailants of Jesus might well have been forgotten, and only the large fact have stood out clear that His own countrymen had opposed Him and compassed His death. Not only, however, are the different sects confounded in the one hostile party of " the Jews," but the opposition to Jesus assumes quite another character from that which is pourtrayed, in self-authenticating colours, by the Synoptics. The controversy no longer turns on our Lord's attitude to the Law or the theocratic hopes. His denunciations of pride, hypocrisy, self-righteousness, worldliness, are never mentioned. Even the question of His Messiahship falls into the background, lost sight of in His claim to a yet higher dignity. The objections urged against Him by the Jews are all of a kind

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which suggests a later age, when the broad lines of Christian theology had been definitely laid down. " He makes Himself equal with God." "Can this Man give us His flesh to eat ?" " Art Thou greater than our father Abraham ?" " We were never in bondage to any man, and how sayest thou, Ye shall be made free?" These sayings, and many others like them, take us into the thick of the conflict which arose afterwards when Judaism and Christianity confronted each other as powerful rivals. They echo the objections that were continually urged in the course of that struggle. Christianity seemed to impugn the monotheistic idea by raising Jesus to an equality with God. It assailed the racial privileges of the Jews by its insistence on faith in Christ as the one condition of salvation. Above all, it came into collision with Judaism through its sacrament of the Lord's Supper. The conflict between Jesus and the Jews in the Fourth Gospel comes to a head in the great Eucharistic discussion (vi. 32-59), a discussion which was plainly impossible in our Lord's lifetime, before the sacrament was yet instituted. It belongs to a later age, when the Supper had become the central object of the Jewish attack on Christianity.

The real nature of the controversy is still more apparent when we take account of certain details which are made prominent in it. For example, we are struck repeatedly with the author's evident intention to defend the work of Jesus from possible misrepresentations. He is aware of various

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objections which might be made, or have actually been made, to the facts of the Gospel history, and goes out of his way again and again in order to answer them. Thus he is careful to assert the publicity of our Lord's mission (vii. 4, xviii. 20), and subordinates the Galilsean teaching to the more conspicuous work in the capital. He shows that the rejection of a Messiah from Nazareth has its ground in an empty prejudice (i. 46, vii. 52). He lays emphasis on Pilate's declaration that he cannot condemn Jesus as a malefactor (xix. 4). He is manifestly perplexed by the episode of Judas Iscariot. Why did one of the Lord's own followers betray Him, and how could the All-Knowing One admit the traitor into His company of disciples? The twofold difficulty is met, on the one hand, by assigning the action of Judas to a direct impulse from Satan (xiii. 27), and, on the other hand, by the bold theory that Jesus foreknew and permitted the betrayal (vi. 64, xiii. 11). A like solution is given to the problem of the comparative failure of the Lord's appeal during His lifetime; this result also was foreseen and even designed. The evangelist notices in passing even the more trivial criticisms to which the Person and work of Christ seem liable. "How knoweth this man letters, having never learned?" (vii. 15). "Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed on Him?" (vii. 48). " Hath not the scripture said that Christ cometh of the seed of David, and out of the town of Bethlehem ? " (vii. 42). The supreme difficulty of the Cross is fully recognised, and the effort to

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overcome it leads to the peculiar Johannine view of the death of Christ as a self-determined act, necessary to His entrance into glory.