experience. On this account, one side of a thing, by which his attention was arrested, is brought by him prominently forward with an exclusiveness, so that the accidental setting forth of the other side is made thereby to appear as the sharpest self-contradiction. On that account, he finally takes no apparent notice of the different stages of developinent, because in each case he looks on the essence of the thing which is realized in it in certain mass and degree. Truth is truth, whether it be the imperfect Old Testament truth or the eternal perfect New Testament truth. Faith is faith; knowledge is knowledge, from its germinal beginnings to its fullest completeness. Life is eternal life even in this world. This may be called the idealism of John's view of doctrine, because in the concrete reality he sees, in general, only the idea which is realized therein, and which struggles thereby after the comprehension of the highest. This idealism is the glorified form of the fiery spirit, which Jesus characterized in the sons of Zebedee by the name Sons of Thunder (Mark iii. 17), of the impatience which would not acknowledge any other fellowship with Jesus, than the complete self-surrender of the disciples (ix. 38), of that high striving ambition by which the highest was purchased not too dearly by what is most difficult (x. 37-39). It is at this point shown that the beloved disciple of the Gospel is at last but the more completely developed form of the author of the Apocalypse, who had described the world-historical victory of Christianity as the great drama of the last struggle of God with Satan (§ 133, d).

(d) The perception of intuition and contemplation, as we have described them note b, is very suggestive; it comprehends and determines the whole man, because the object thereby is not in general apprehended in the divided territory of intellectual life, but in the centre of the spiritual life. On this standpoint there can be no contrast between the theoretical and the practical, between knowing and doing, between faith and life. John does not know of this contrast, and he will not acknowledge it; to him, even the revelation of the law has never stirred any discord between knowing and willing; for him there is but a knowledge of the full revelation of God in Christ, which brings about as its result the doing of what

is good. What the spiritual life has not comprehended in its simple central-point, it has not known; intuitive knowledge is such a laying hold of the object, as includes a being laid hold by it in the innermost being. The knowledge of God and Christ is a being in God and Christ, and a being of God. and Christ in us. That is the Johannean mysticism, which does not consist in a soaring in indefinite and confused views and feelings, but in an effort to get at the one central-point of the spiritual life, in which everything which is to have real value is traced back to the deepest foundation of the being to the personal life itself, which, moreover, finds as the religious element its deepest satisfaction in the direct relation of person to person. This mysticism is begotten of the innermost need of the emotional life, is comprehended in feeling and self-surrender, in finding in love the foundation and the object and the goal of all living and life-giving knowledge. Thus John, with all in whom love to God has been quickened, has found in Christ the full revelation of the love of God. In this sense he may be called the apostle of love. Only by that, on the other hand, there must not be understood a weak feeling, a sentimental impulse, but the energy of such a surrender of the whole person as knows of no third thing between love and hate, and which on that account is but the glorified form of a fiery spirit from another side, who once wished to have fire rained from heaven on one who refused his love to the Lord (Luke ix. 54), and who solemnizes the righteous judgment of God over the antichristian world.

§ 142. Previous Works on John.

The representations of the Johannean doctrinal system in the earlier works of Biblical theology, partly in consequence of false presuppositions as to the sources of that system, have turned out mostly to be somewhat poor (a). The independent representations of Frommann, Köstlin, and Hilgenfeld have dealt with it too much in the sense of a dogmatic or philosophical system (b). Hitherto Reuss, Baur, and Scholten have justified its peculiarity, although they have in principle mistaken essential sides of it (c). Only on the ground of a

thoroughgoing analysis of the Johannean fundamental ideas, and a juster appreciation of the Old Testament elements of its theology, as also along with a consideration of its relation to the living doctrines of his Master in the memory of the apostle, can it be set forth on all sides (d).

(a) Even for the representation of the Johannean doctrinal system, the discussion by Neander in particular (comp. ii. pp. 874-914 [E. T. ii. 1-58]) is to be put below the older works (comp. Bauer in his biblischen Theologie, Bd. ii.; E. Schmid, Diss. II. de theologia Joannis Ap., Jena 1801). Neander has many deep glimpses into the peculiarity of the Johannean theology, but these are set forth neither fully nor with complete proof. His main effort is directed towards a harmonizing comparison of the Johannean with the Pauline doctrinal system, as also towards a clear exhibition of his relation to some dogmatic fundamental doctrines, by which the representation of the Johannean theology in its special connections is prejudiced. Schmid has made the attempt, quite unjustifiable, according to § 140, c, to set forth John's doctrines, excluding Christ's speeches in the Gospel, and therefore to keep only quite a poor imitation (ii. pp. 359–396); van Oosterzee has also lately followed him (§ 45). The representation of Messner has turned out to be (pp. 323-360) much richer, because he does not altogether at least exclude these speeches (comp. p. 320). Without doubt Lechler has made use of them as sources for the doctrinal system of John (comp. p. 206), which, after a discussion on the doctrine of God, of the world, and of the prince of the world, he has comprehended in the sentence, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, in whom is life (p. 207 f.). But the peculiar Johannean fundamental ideas are disproportionably less thorough in their discussion than by Messner. Finally, Lutterbeck, who has excellently established the use to be made of the speeches (ii. p. 254 f.), has dealt with the Johannean doctrine altogether according to the scheme of the dogmatic system (ii. pp. 252299), by which its special type must necessarily be rubbed out.

(6) Frommann gave the first comprehensive representation of the Johannean theology in his johanneischen Lehrbegriff (Leipsic 1839). Although he excluded Christ's speeches in the Gospel from being special sources, he yet found himself

VOL. II.

compelled even to draw them in again for explanation and filling up. From his thoroughly misleading presupposition of the Johannean Gnosis (comp. § 141, b), that the apostle had risen to a freer speculation as to the grounds and nature of Christianity (p. 84), there is spun out of it a finely articulated system of speculative dogmatics, which seeks in him the solution of the deepest problems (e.g. as to the relation of God and the world, of freedom and necessity, pp. 137, 242), and attributes to him the sharpest distinctions (comp. e.g. pp. 210, 259, 266), and the most abstract definitions (comp. e.g. p. 165). Naturally the Johannean type of doctrine is thereby separated entirely from its historical foundations; it is torn away from its connection with the Old Testament and the Jewish consciousness (comp. e.g. pp. 288, 308, 329), and it comes necessarily to be but a spiritualistic shadow of the apostle's doctrine. In the comparisons of the Johannean with the other doctrinal systems much is sought for and sharply conceived, while the kernel of the Johannean peculiarity is not touched. The representation runs away on the lines of a tendency, which, with its abstract reasons for its sections, draws the apostle's doctrinal system à priori into a false light. The representation of K. R. Köstlin (der Lehrbegriff des Evangeliums u. der Briefe Johannis, Berlin 1843) is from the standpoint of the Tübingen school, which puts in the forefront as its central idea, that Christianity is the absolute religion, and that in contrast to Judaism and heathenism, and asserts that the apostle's dogmatics is at the same time throughout both apologetical and polemical (p. 40 f.). But the absolute religion is Christianity as a religion of the Gnosis, which to the evangelist is one with faith (p. 66 f.). Köstlin admits, to be sure, that the author does not philosophize; but all his conclusions in the form of direct knowledge, contemplation, he draws from his experience (p. 82), but only because systematic reflection on the dogma, and therewith intelligent activity, are thereby completed and brought to a firm result (p. 160). There is thus, then, here a doctrine of God imposed on His nature and His trinity in unity, which draws into the Johannean theology philosophical results altogether foreign to it. From similar presuppositions Schwegler in his nachapostolischen Zeitalter has characterized

the religious philosophical standpoint of the Gospel (ii. pp. 358-371). Hilgenfeld has also tried to class the Johannean system of doctrine in the development of the Gnosis, and he has therefore drawn from the Gospel a complete gnostic system occupying a middle place between Valentin and Marcion-a system with a fully pronounced dualism and anti-Judaism (comp. das Evangelium u. die Briefe Johannis, nach ihrem Lehrbegriff dargestellt, Halle 1849; Zeitschrift f. Wiss. Theol. 1863, 1, 2).1

(c) The general characterization of the Johannean theology by Reuss (ii. pp. 369-600 [E. T. ii. 331–543]) contains excellent suggestions as to its specific peculiarity. The arrangement of the representation of it, according to the leading ideas of a union of John iii. 16 and 1 John iv. 9, is a suggestive fancy, which cannot be carried through at least on his understanding of the Johannean doctrine. But the fundamental error of it consists, on the one hand, in this, that Reuss along with the historical assumes some speculative premises, which are to form the basis of the mystical contemplation of John; and, on the other hand, in this, that he understands the special Johannean doctrinal elements as much too modern and spiritualistic, and thereby puts it in sharp opposition to everything that is of the Old Testament or of Judaism. In consequence of this, he has at one time to assume that the author becomes entangled in contradictions to his speculative premises, and at another, that for practical use he appropriates popular ideas beyond which he has strictly gone. In this way, naturally, it is not possible to come to any uniform conception of the Johannean doctrinal peculiarities. Baur, in his Biblical Theology (pp. 351-407), represents the Johannean doctrinal system drawn from the Fourth Gospel simply as the highest stage and the most perfect form of the New Testament doctrinal type, a stage which presupposes all the others, includes them all in itself, and concludes them, which in like manner rises above Judaism and Paulinism (p. 401). Starting with the Logos-idea in the Prologue, taking

1 Of the smaller representations, comp. Holm, Versuch einer kurtzen Darstellung der Lehre des Apostels Johannes, Lüneburg 1832; Simson, summa theologiae Johanneae, Königsberg 1839; Niese, die Grundgedanken des johanneischen Evangeliums, Naumburg 1850.