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true knowledge must necessarily determine the whole life (§ 146, c), the fact of a man's being enlightened (ev Tậ pwTì είναι οι περιπατεῖν; comp. I. i. 7) must be known in his moral walk (I. ii. 9-11).

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(b) All true knowledge is but a knowledge of the truth, as such knowledge is the characteristic quality of Christians (I. ii. 21; II. 1; comp. § 107, a). If Christ, therefore, is to be the communicator of the life which consists in true knowledge, then must He be the communicator of the truth (xiv. 6: ἐγώ εἰμι ἡ ἀλήθεια καὶ ἡ ζωή). For this end indeed has He come, that He may witness to the world of the truth (xviii. 37; comp. viii. 40). But by the truth John by no means understands the sum of all that which is true, but the actual reality of what we know of God from revelation (comp. § 65, b, footnote 3), therefore the revelation of the ảλn@wós (I. v. 20). If the Logos incarnate in Jesus was Himself full of truth (i. 14), and could therefore communicate the truth to the world (ver. 17), then is this expressly declared, ver. 18, in this way, that He, who as the only-begotten Son stands in the highest fellowship of love with the Father, alone could show to the world His nature, which had been seen by none up till then. Just because the divine nature, which (when really known) of itself exercises a determining power over the and it makes the parallel clause say nothing at all; nay, in so far as it would deny the existence of any unholiness in God, it is almost a blasphemous tautology. On the other hand, we have here a natural turn of the symbolism already current in the Old Testament (comp. Isa. xlix. 6, and therewith Acts xiii. 47; Luke ii. 32) and in Paul (§ 102, a, footnote 1, d), on which the figurative expression explained above rests. Light is the means of enlightenment (in the physical world), and therefore the image of the organ of revelation (in the spiritual world); but it is also, according to its nature, that which makes itself evident, and therefore the image of God perfectly revealing Himself in Christ. When Huther asserts that by this interpretation of the passage in Xpor is naturally supplied, then even the evangelical proclamation, according to vv. 1–3, treats only of Christ, and it can be intended only to tell of what is given in and with Him.

3'Aλneue is by no means knowledge, but the object of knowledge, and it is not therefore identical with Zwń (rightly understood), but the revelation of the truth is the presupposition of it. 'Aanu also frequently stands for that which perfectly corresponds to the nature of the thing designated (ñyızoμśvo iv ἀληθείᾳ : xvii. 9 ; ἀγαπᾶν ἐν ἀληθείᾳ : I. iii. 18; II. 1 ; ΙΙΙ. 1; προσκυνεῖν ἐν ἀληθείᾳ : iv. 23, 24; comp. II. 4; III. 3), and which is elsewhere designated by the adjective ¿andirós (i. 9, iv. 23, 37, vi. 32, vii. 28, xv. 1, xvii. 3, xix. 35; I. ii. 8; comp. Rev. iii. 7, 14, vi. 10). Comp. vi. 55: antès fapãoss.

life (§ 146, c), is itself the contents of the truth, the truth has the power to deliver from the bondage of sin (viii. 32; comp. vv. 34, 36), and to work a life consecrated to God (xvii. 17). That is to say, God is here also, in conformity with His nature, as well Sixatos, inasmuch as He does right at all times (I. ii. 29), and gives to each what is due to him; therefore, e.g., true to His promise, He forgives sin to the penitent sinner (I. i. 9), as He is the simply holy (I. ii. 20), as in the Apocalypse (§ 133, a). It is true that His righteousness and holiness have been already revealed in the Old Testament; but in Christ the righteous One (I. ii. 1; comp. xvi. 10), who was pure from all sin (I. iii. 5, 3: ȧyvós; comp. viii. 46), is that revelation come to full, living view. As in the synoptical speeches of Jesus His self-manifestation in His walk appears to be for our example (§ 21, d), so is it here too (I. ii. 6, iii. 3). The knowledge of Christ as the sinless One is of itself normative for our walk, which in that

Hence that state of being inwardly determined by the truth (appropriated in knowledge), the ix rns áλndsias sivas, is known not only in all denial of the false (I. ii. 21; comp. i. 8), but also in the moral conduct of the individual (I. iii. 19; comp. ii. 4). Hence a walk in the truth (III. 4), or a doing of the truth (iii. 21; I. i. 6), can be spoken of. The truth is therefore here, too, a moral principle, as with Paul (§ 65, b, footnote 3); but not inasmuch as its contents are the revealed will of God as there, but inasmuch as the true knowledge of God is necessarily determinative of the (moral) life. Closely allied to this, ¿ańdua stands for subjective truthfulness (viii. 44; I. i. 8; comp. ¿antńs: viii. 26, iii. 33-v. 31, 32, vii. 18, viii. 13-17, xix. 35, xxi. 24; III. 12).

5 The current reference of rou ȧyíou to Christ (yet comp. Gess, p. 525), which, however, is not to be proved by the equally doubtful avro in ver. 27, is contradicted by the fact that Christ, while we have John vi. 69: ò åyios Toû esoũ, is never called the Holy One simply. There is no need of the artificial explanation by rò ayo (Ritschl, ii. p. 101, footnote), since the reason why God is here designated as the Holy One is clearly this, that He only as such can consecrate Christians with the unction to be His own holy possession. Just so is He, John xvii. 11, addressed as rárip äys, when what is dealt with is that He, who has separated Himself from all creaturely uncleanness (comp. § 45, d, footnote 6), should preserve the disciples, that they may not be misled and polluted by the world. But if He is addressed, ver. 25, as rársp díxas, the reference then is not simply to the perfecting of the salvation of the disciples (Ritschl, p. 117), but expressly to this, that He, in virtue of His judicial righteousness, awards to believers a different destiny than to the world which has not known Him (comp. v. 30, vii. 24, viii. 50); I. i. 9, too, does not speak of retribution, but of this, that He deals with penitent sinners as such (comp. Immer, p. 542). On the other hand, there is nothing in the passage to refer to any struggle after complete justification, a struggle in which the righteous Judge gives help (Gess, p. 523 f.).

way must be a sinless walk (I. iii. 5, 6) as soon as Christ is known as what He is, the sent of God (xvii. 3, 23), who is everlasting like God Himself (I. ii. 13, 14), who, having come out from the Father (xvii. 8), in His abiding unity with Him (x. 38) reveals the Father (xiv. 9), so that one has the Father in Him (comp. I. ii. 23; II. 9). Because this knowledge of the mission of Christ is the condition of that knowledge of the truth which delivers and transforms, it there forms the direct contrast to the not knowing of God (xvii. 25); for he only who has known God has known Him (viii. 19).

(c) But Christ also brings a new revelation of God. What is revealed in the sending of the only-begotten Son, in whom God has given up the highest object of His love for the salvation of men, is expressly designated, I. iv. 9, 10, as the love of God (comp. John iii. 16, 17), the love which on that account is named, I. iv. 16, as the object of Christian knowledge (xvii. 23). The apostle comprehends the whole contents of this new revelation of God in the sentence, God is love (I. iv. 8, 16); and the knowledge of this Being, who reveals Himself in love, shows itself to be livingly effective, inasmuch as it necessarily begets love in us (vv. 11, 19). That the sending of the Son, who introduces the Messianic

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• This, to be sure, does not consist in new disclosures about God's transcendent being (Scholten, p. 77). It does not therefore teach us to know that He is to be thought of as a spiritual and invisible Being, yet as absolute activity (Baur, pp. 354-356, 403, after v. 17), or that He is life, as Frommann, p. 91; Köstlin, p. 75; Reuss, ii. p. 434 [E. T. ii. 388], conclude from I. v. 20, although these passages, according to § 145, b, footnote 5; 146, c, footnote 5, do not apply to God that He is light, as they assume, following the misunderstood passage, I. i. 5 (comp. footnote 2), or that He is a spirit, which Frommann, p. 101; Köstlin, p. 77, find in iv. 24. In the latter passage Jesus appeals to a knowledge of God which was common to Jews and Samaritans, as even Reuss, ii. p. 433 [E. T. ii. 387], acknowledges, but which ought, like all true knowledge, to prove itself effectual in this way, that we recognise Him as a spiritual Being, and worship Him in a spiritual way (iv. 23, 24); comp. also Biedermann, p. 172. 7 The knowledge of this new revelation of God, after it has once come, is so much the measure for all knowledge of God, that Jesus directly denies that those have any knowledge of God who will not know Him as the only-begotten Son sent of the Father (vii. 28, viii. 19, 55, xv. 21, xvi. 3). All the great miraculous works which God did in Him are, indeed, if they are looked on, according to § 143, b, as pictures of the highest spiritual blessings, nothing but revelations of the divine love, which shows itself in the Messianic times by the fulness of its distributions of grace (comp. § 20, d).

time, implies the perfect revelation of the love of God, is not alien even to the oldest tradition of Jesus' speeches, only it is rather implicitly involved there in the proclamation of God as the Father of the members of the kingdom (§ 20); as He who is here also manifested (I. ii. 15, 16; comp. iv. 21, 23, xx. 17), inasmuch as His giving (I. iii. 1) and forgiving love (I. ii. 1, 13) is sure to them. But there, too, it is the revelation of the Father's love which moves His children to be like Him in love (§ 25, a). And not merely by the fact of the sending of the Son, and all its blessed results for us, by which it is perfected according to I. iv. 17, is the love of God revealed to us; but since here, too, the Father is seen in the Son, the highest divine love is known directly in the love of Christ Himself (I. iii. 16; comp. xv. 9, 13); and as Christ does in the synoptical tradition (§ 25, d), so here, too, He presents His own humbly ministering love (xiii. 14, 15), His self-sacrificing love (xiii. 34, xv. 12; comp. I. iii. 16), to be a pattern to us. Here also, as note b, the revelation of God given in the exhibition of Himself is determinative for our moral life.

§ 148. Christ the Saviour of the World.

The other side of the Messianic work is salvation from the destruction into which the world, on account of sin, falls at

Just so is the beginning of the fulfilment of the Messianic promise regarded by Peter as a gift of the divine favour (§ 45, b), and in the Epistle to the Hebrews the favour and the grace of God are again turned towards His people by the setting up of the New Covenant (§ 124, a). With Paul also the love of God is the ground and result of the new institution of grace (§ 75, c; 83, a), and it is a mistake when Baur, p. 400, says that the Johannean doctrinal idea is distinguished from the Pauline; that in the former the love of God is the highest idea, while in the latter righteousness stands over against it. For even in John the Old Testament revelation of righteousness not only abides, but it is perfected in Christ (note b), as Christianity to him forms no antithesis to Old Testament Judaism (§ 141, a). Undoubtedly the apostle of love has seen (§ 141, d) most clearly and deeply the perfect revelation of God in Christ in His revelation of love. And if from here we look back to the statement that no one has seen the Father except through Christ, it is clearly evident from these contents of the perfect revelation of God, that it results from no metaphysical speculation about the unknowableness of God (comp. Reuss, ii. p. 430 f. [E. T. ii. 384]), but that it is the necessary result of this, that the highest blessing is given only in the Messianic times, and through the Messiah-the highest good which the apostle has regarded as that beholding of the love of God.

death (a). This comes about in this way, that Jesus, atoning for the world's sin, purifies men from the stains of guilt by His blood (b). Only when the world has been delivered from death by His giving up His life, can it receive eternal life in the other world (c). But even in the specifically Johannean sense does the death of Jesus, as the highest manifestation of love, bring eternal life (d).

(a) The Johannean speeches of Jesus, like those of the Synoptists (§ 22, a), start from this idea, that the Messiah had to bring not only the consummation of salvation, but also deliverance (iii. 17, xii. 47; comp. v. 34, x. 9), and they presuppose the idea of owτnpia as one well known (iv. 22), so that in the deliverance expected in Messianic times, only a deliverance from destruction or from death can be thought of. Whoever dies in his sins (viii. 21, 24) is lost; unforgiven sin leads to death (I. v. 16).' Doubtless it corresponds to his idea of an eternal life already present (§ 146, a), that John, on the other hand, designates the destruction which sin brings with it directly as death (comp. moreover, even § 28, c), from which believers even now pass to life (v. 24), while sinners abide in it (I. iii. 14). But the definite distinction begins only after bodily death, since we are delivered from it only by the resurrection (vi. 39), while those who do not attain to salvation pass away without hope in Him (I. ii. 17). To be sure, the positive idea comes now with John into the forefront, by which, to those who have already received the highest good, eternal life, bodily death has ipso facto lost all significance (comp. § 146, a); but it lies in the nature of the fact, that the man, who by the divine judgment has fallen under death,

Our apostle has then kept fast hold of the idea of the earnpia rooted in the Old Testament, and recurring in all the New Testament types of doctrine, and for him the Son sent by the Father, or the Messiah, is the Saviour of the world (iv. 42; I. iv. 14). To him, too, this deliverance is a deliverance from destruction (áλua: xvii. 12), since μù áxodíolas and owénvas (iii. 16, 17) are convertible terms, or a saving the soul from destruction (xii. 25; comp. 34, c). He also shares, with the whole New Testament teaching (§ 50, d; 57, d; 66, d; 122, d), the Old Testament view, according to which death, and that even bodily death, is the punishment of sin, which Frommann, p. 308, in vain denies. As little, moreover, does he deny the idea that bodily diseases are the results of sin (§ 32, d, footnote 4). This idea is combated, ix. 3, only in a particular instance; but v. 14, on the other hand, presupposes it in the clearest way.

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