true nature (I. iii. 8, 5), and thus was He glorified among the believers who acknowledged His glory (xi. 4, xvii. 10; comp. also note a).10 Those who recognised His revelation confess now that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh (I. iv. 2; II. 7).11 For the apostle everything depends on this coming of the Son of God in the flesh; for only thereby is the fact on which salvation is grounded, the fact, namely, that the Father hath sent the Son, become a matter of objective perception (I. iv. 14: Tε0εáμε0α). But it is not thereby said that the divine Logos has clothed Himself only with an earthly material, mortal body (Köstlin, p. 139; Scholten, p. 94), far less than with an apparent body, which Baur, p. 364, finds in vi. 19, vii. 10, 15, viii. 59 (comp. on the other hand, my joh. Lehrb. p. 253 f.). To be sure, the body of Jesus is regarded as the temple (ii. 21) in which the divine Logos has made His dwelling, as Jehovah once found in the tabernacle a place

10 As God, because He is a spirit, and therefore bound to no locality (iv. 24, 21), therefore cannot be seen with the bodily eye (i. 4, 12, 20), so naturally the Son of God also, because He is the divine Logos, and the nature of the Logos is self-evidently spiritual (comp. vi. 63), is not in Himself visible. Yet the eye-witnesses of the earthly life of Jesus testify that (in consequence of His manifestation of Himself and His miraculous works) His eternal Logos nature became (I. i. 1) capable of being heard and seen by them (notice the perfects: ἀκηκόαμεν ἱωράκαμεν) when in the closest intercourse with Him (αἱ χεῖρες ἡμῶν ἐψηλάφησαν), being an object of their attentive contemplation βιᾶσθαι, as throughout in contradistinction from pay, from perception by the senses (comp. i. 32, 38, iv. 35, vi. 5, xi. 45, i. 4, 14).

...

11 These expressions will not set forth the body of Jesus as a real body in contradistinction to a docetic one (comp. Lutterbeck, p. 277); they will rather prove that in the human person of Jesus, who was on that account called Jesus Christ (comp. footnote 1), the Christ or the eternal Son of God is come in the flesh, without our being capable on that account, with Gess, p. 509, to put Xporó into the predicate (that He is the Christ come in the flesh), which is very doubtful on account of the want of the article. It opposes in that way the false teachers, who distinguished between the higher aeon Christ and the human Jesus, and would concede only a temporary union between them (as Hilgenfeld, p. 244, imputes even to our author), and makes prominent as against them that He is come (by baptism) in water and (by His death) in blood (I. v. 6), and therefore even before baptism and even in death was He the Son of God manifested in the flesh. The oux ir dar μóvov is simply explained in this way, that the false teachers could yet ascribe this in a certain sense, and i, rộ aiμar, was specially decisive. Therewith falls the only reason which Gess, p. 518, can adduce against this the only interpretation conformable to the word and the fact; and that the reference to the baptism which Jesus introduced presupposes the most arbitrary assumptions, Gess, p. 519 f., shows clearly enough.

for His manifestation on the earth (i 14: èokývwoev èv iv). But the flesh, which forms the material substance of this body, is with John, as everywhere in the early apostolic system of doctrine, animated flesh, and the life of this flesh is not the bearer only of the physical, but also of the spiritual life in man (§ 27, b, c).12 The Logos come in the flesh is therefore become man in the fullest sense (comp. also Biedermann, p. 255). It is not said that the Logos took flesh' (which might, perhaps, be docetically misunderstood), but that the Logos became flesh (i. 14); 13 that He therefore became something else than He was before, as also the subject of the historical life of Jesus is never designated as the Logos, and a Logos extra carnem is never assumed alongside the Logos in carne (as Beyschlag, p. 173, would have it). As Logos the Son of God was a purely spiritual Being, and He became a Being in flesh, i.e. a Being who had the earthly material nature in His body, and can be on that account the object of bodily perception. The evangelist throughout speaks without reserve of His earthly home (i. 46, 47, vii. 41, 52; comp. iv. 44), of His mother and His brethren (ii. 1, 12, vii. 3, 10, xix. 25, 26; comp. i. 46, vi. 42). Then cáp is only that which is born of the flesh (iii. 6), and the

12 To be sure, vi. 63, cap forms only the earthly material body in opposition to the spiritual, and, viii. 15, xarà rèv cúpna, like xar' öý, (vii. 24), designates judging according to the outward, external appearance. But, i. 13, a bíλnua is ascribed to the cáp, which can only be the fleshly impulse by means of the soul (comp. I. ii. 16). Thus, too, a real human shuddering is ascribed to the soul of Christ; and if the same is elsewhere said of His spirit (xiii. 21, xi. 33), then this cannot be the spa of the Logos (Köstlin, p. 141; Scholten, p. 113), but only the μ constituting the human soul (§ 27, c). On the other hand, as little of the specifically Pauline ráp (§ 68) is found in John as anywhere in the early apostolic system of doctrine, as it has often yet without more ado been drawn in to iii. 6, where but the bodily birth, which conditions the earthly sensuous life, is contrasted with the spiritual second birth. The iría s capós (I. ii. 16) is not the sinful lust as such, but the lust of the flesh in the narrower sense, as even its conjunction with the lust of the eye shows.

13 The incarnation is not here to be described, which indeed (i. 9-12) is presupposed, since only He who has become flesh can come historically, be in the world, can be known and accepted. Rather from the context only those sides of it are to be made prominent by which a concrete beholding of the invisible Logos can come about (comp. Gess, p. 553). But if xãoa cáp designates every man, in so far as he is a fleshly nature (xvii. 2; comp. § 27, a), then ap iyivro can but designate that He became a being whose characteristic peculiarity it is to have in Himself σάρξ.

Logos has become σáp. But the identical subject of the original Logos-nature (Xplorós) and of the historical fleshnature ('Inooûs) is the only-begotten Son of God.

(d) In John, too, the Baptist testifies that he saw the Spirit descend on Jesus (i. 32, 33; comp. § 18, a); and Jesus seems Himself to refer to this consecration of the Spirit at His baptism (x. 36: nyíaσev).15 Yet it is not to be overlooked, that the evangelist explains, iii. 34, even the communication of the Spirit narrated by the Baptist, according to his conception of i. 32, 33, in this way, that the Spirit comes down on Jesus not to unite Himself with Him, but to abide upon Him (μévov èπ' avτóv), i.e. in order to give Him steadily the miraculous help, and the knowledge of what He has to speak and to do according to the will of God (§ 144, c, d). In this sense the saying of Jesus, i. 52, is but another form of the idea of that constant equipment and strengthening for the exercise of the activity of His Messianic calling, of which the incarnate Logos stood in need just as did the Son of man of Christ's words who came down from heaven. To be sure,

14 Since John knew and presupposed the Synoptic Gospels, it would be strange enough to ascribe to him, that he had to enter a protest if Jesus is spoken of in the mouths of the people as the son of Joseph of Nazareth, if he was not to be a witness against the miraculous birth at Bethlehem. For His incarnation the question whether He was naturally or supernaturally begotten makes no difference, as the incarnation depends on a fleshly birth as such.

15 Neither is the Spirit the Logos, who in baptism is united with the man Jesus (comp. Hilgenfeld, p. 254 f.), nor is that descent of the Spirit set forth as a mere vision of the Baptist (comp. Baur, p. 366 f.), to indicate to him that Jesus from the first dwelt in the Spirit (Neander, p. 887; Messner, p. 366), or that it is He who is to communicate the Spirit (Köstlin, p. 144). For, apart from the fact that a token cannot designate anything strange or opposed to the thing designated, the Baptist designates Jesus as One who had actually received the Spirit only without measure (iii. 34). If, then, it is here referred to this communication of the Spirit, that He whom God sent speaks the words of God, then that seems, at any rate, to involve a contradiction to Jesus' testimony regarding Himself, according to which His higher knowledge comes from His prehistorical existence with the Father (§ 144, a), and to the doctrine built thereupon of the Logos, who appeared in the man Jesus, having become flesh, inasmuch as Jesus' activity in the execution of His calling is never traced back to His higher nature, but to the preparation of the Spirit, which is different from the prophetic only in degree. But, closely connected with this, the idea is put into the mouth of the Baptist, by which He, who came from above, has seen and heard what He has testified (vv. 31, 32), so in the consciousness of the evangelist the two ideas at least cannot have been felt to be contradictory.

it corresponds neither with the immediate unity of the Son with the Father (§ 143, c, d), which comes out so strongly in the self-testimony of Jesus, to think of the relation of both being mediated by the Spirit; nor could the apostle, with his tendency to point out the marks of His original glory as Logos given in the historical life of the Son of God (note a), have any interest in this to follow further the traces of His truly human life in the incarnate One, which made Him require such constant activity of the Spirit. Hence these doctrinal elements, that rest on a true remembrance of the words of the Baptist, or that have come to him by tradition, continue with him in a sort of isolation,—an isolation which almost makes them appear as a contradiction to the ideas current with Him, while they yet, although not expressly brought about by them, involve to his consciousness no such. contradiction.

CHAPTER II.

THE SALVATION IN CHRIST.

§ 146. Christ the Life of the World.

As the Messiah, Jesus brings the highest saving blessing, which John designates as eternal life, and likes best to think of as now present (a). But eternal life consists in the living contemplative knowledge of God, as Christ has had it from eternity (b). To bring life to the world by means of this knowledge has He been sent, and He therefore calls Himself the bread of life (c). But He also imparts this life by His quickening word, whose contents form the powerfully energetic revelation of God (d).

(a) Even with John, Jesus begins with the proclamation that the kingdom of God is at hand, and it is now therefore important to fulfil the conditions under which only can one have a share in it (iii. 3, 5; comp. § 13). If the idea of the kingdom of God, as the saving blessing brought by Christ, falls latterly entirely in abeyance, and instead of it the idea of

life, or of eternal life, comes uniformly in its place,1 then this latter, even in the oldest tradition of Jesus' words, designates the salvation prepared for the individual in the kingdom of God (§ 34, b); and it corresponds simply to the tendency of John's writings, directed as these are to the subjective Christian life (xx. 31; I. i. 3, 4), if, in the words of Christ, as in the Epistles, the highest blessing is brought forward exclusively from the side on which it is realized in the individual. But as in the synoptical preaching of Jesus the kingdom of God is not only future, but even already present (§ 15, c), so with John also is the eternal life, which the Messiah came to bring, not only a blessing of the other and future life, but also of this and the present life. The believer has eternal life (iii. 36, v. 24, vi. 47, 54, xx. 31; I. v. 12, 13), He has already passed from death to life (v. 24; I. iii. 14). Bodily death cannot stop the continuance of this life (xi. 25), for that life death is as though it did not exist (vi. 50, 51, 58, viii. 51, 52, xi. 26); the resurrection is no more the condition, but the result of that life (vi. 40, 54). What has till now been the highest promise of God has now been fulfilled (I. ii. 25). This idealism, which beholds the ideal already realized in the present, we have learned to know in manifold forms as the characteristic aspect of the method of apostolic teaching (§ 51, c; 96, b; 104, d; 117, d), but it is implied in the speciality of the Johannean theology (§ 141, c), that it here comes into stronger prominence than anywhere else.2

(b) If John had found in the contemplative knowledge of Christ, and of the revelation of God given in Him, the highest

1 Only in xviii. 36 does Jesus speak of His kingdom, which is not of a worldly kind; but here there is no thought of the Messianic kingdom, but He has only in view thereby an explanation for the Gentile, in which sense Jesus might call Himself a king in a spiritual kingdom, which comprehends all friends of the truth. By John, wń in the absolute sense, and (an alávios, are constantly used promiscuously (iii. 36, v. 39, 40, vi. 53, 54; I. i. 2, iii. 14, 15, v. 11–13), as § 34, b (comp. in Paul, § 65, d).

2 Since Col. iii. 3 is quite different (comp. § 104, d), so only in John is eternal life, according to its true nature, thought of as beginning here, and it forms thereby the specific saving blessing. What Peter proclaimed as the second birth to hope (§ 50, b), what James as the engrafting of the perfect law (§ 52, b), what Paul as justification and new creation by the grace of God (§ 82, 84), what the Epistle to the Hebrews as the riλsiwas in the New Covenant (§ 123), in order to characterize the salvation come with Christ for the individual, that appears in John as the bestowal of the highest blessing by Him, eternal life.