(1) It is supplementary to the first three. 221 Certainly Ewald here expresses himself with vehemence. Some among yourselves may possibly be disposed to complain of him as being too dogmatic. For it may be that you have made impatience of certainty a part of your creed; and you may hold that a certain measure of cautious doubt on all subjects is inseparable from true intellectual culture. You may urge in particular that the weight of external testimony in favour of St. John's Gospel does not silence the difficulties which arise upon an examination of its contents. You point to the use of a mystical and metaphysical terminology, to the repetition of abstract expressions, such as Word, Life, Light, Truth, Paraclete. You remark that St. John's Gospel exhibits the Life of our Lord under an entirely new aspect. Not to dwell immoderately upon points of detail, you insist that the plan of our Lord's life, the main scenes of His ministry, all His exhibitions of miraculous power save two, the form and matter of His discourses, nay, the very attitude and moral physiognomy of His opponents, are so represented in this Gospel as to interfere with your belief in its Apostolical origin. But are not these peculiarities of the Gospel explained when we consider the purpose with which it was written? 1. St. John's Gospel is in the first place an historical supplement. It was designed to chronicle discourses and events which had been omitted in the narratives of the three preceding Evangelists. Christian antiquity attests this design with remarkable unanimity d. It is altogether arbitrary to assert that if St. John had seen the works of earlier Evangelists he would have alluded to them; and that if he had intended to supply the omissions of their narratives he would have formally announced his intention of doing soe. It is sufficient to observe that the literary conventionalities of modern Europe were not those of the sacred writers, whether of the Synagogue f or of the Church. An inspired writer does his work without the selfconsciousness of a modern composer; he is not necessarily careful to define his exact place in literature, his precise obligations to, or his presumed improvements upon, the labours of his a See especially the remarkable passage in Eus. Hist. Eccl. iii. 24, St. Epiph. Hær. ii. 51. • These arguments of Lücke are noticed by Bp. Wordsworth, New Test. part i. p. 206. The later prophets of the Old Testament enlarge upon and complete the prophecies of the earlier. But they do not mention their names, or declare their own purpose to do what they do.' Townson, pp. 134-147; quoted by Bp. Wordsworth, ubi supr. 222 (2) Saint John's Gospel is predecessors. He is the organ of a Higher Intelligence; he owes both what he borrows and what he is believed to originate to the Mind Which inspires him to originate, or Which guides him to select. While the stream of sacred truth is flowing forth from his entranced and burning soul, and is being forthwith crystallized in the moulds of an imperishable language, the eagle-eyed Evangelist does not stoop from heaven to earth for the purpose of guarding or reserving the rights of authorship, by displaying his care to acknowledge its obligations. Certainly St. John does repeat in part the narratives of his predecessors 5. But this repetition does not interfere with the supplementary character of his work as a whole h. And yet his Gospel is not only or mainly to be regarded as an historical supplement. It exhibits the precision of method and the orderly development of ideas which are proper to a complete doctrinal essay or treatise. It is indeed rather a treatise illustrated by history, than a history written with a theological purpose. Viewed in its historical relation to the first three Gospels, it is supplemental to them; but this relative character is not by any means an adequate explanation of its motive and function. It might easily have been written if no other Evangelist had written at all; it has a character and purpose which are strictly its own; it is part of a great whole, yet it is also, in itself, organically perfect. 2. St. John's Gospel is a polemical treatise. It is addressed to an intellectual world widely different from that which had been before the minds of the earlier Evangelists. The earliest forms of Gnostic thought are recognisable in the Judaizing theosophists whom St. Paul has in view in his Epistles to the Ephesians and the Colossians. These Epistles were written at the least some thirty years before the fourth Gospel. The fourth Gospel confronts or anticipates a more developed Gnosticism; although we may observe in passing that it certainly As in chaps. vi. and xii. h M. Renan admits the supplementary character of St. John's Gospel, but attributes to the Evangelist a motive of personal pique in writing it. He was annoyed at the place assigned to himself in earlier narratives! On est tenté de croire, que Jean, dans sa vieillesse, ayant lu les récits évangéliques qui circulaient, d'une part, y remarqua diverses inexactitudes, de l'autre, fut froissé de voir qu'on ne lui accordait pas dans l'histoire du Christ une assez grande place; qu'alors il commença à dicter une foule de choses qu'il savait mieux que les autres, avec l'intention de montrer que, dans beaucoup de cas où on ne parlait que de Pierre, il avait figuré avec et avant lui.' Vie de Jésus, pp. xxvii. xxviii. does not contain references to any of the full-grown Gnostic systems which belong to the middle of the second century. The fourth Gospel is in marked opposition to the distinctive positions of Ebionites, of Docetæ, of Cerinthians. But among these the Cerinthian gnosis appears to be more particularly contemplated. In its earlier forms especially, Gnosticism was as much a mischievous intellectual method as a formal heresy. The Gnostic looked upon each revealed truth merely in the light of an addition to the existing stock of materials ready to his hand for speculative discussion. He handled it accordingly with the freedom which was natural to a belief that it was in no sense beyond the range of his intellectual grasp. He commingled it with his cosmical or his psychological theories; he remodelled it; he submitted it to new divisions, to new combinations. Thus his attitude toward Christianity was friendly and yet supercilious. But he threatened the faith with utter destruction, to be achieved by a process of eclectic interpretation. Cerinthus was an early master of this art. Cerinthus as a Chiliastic Judaizer was naturally disposed to Humanitarianism. As an eclectic theorist, who had been trained in the 'teaching of the Egyptians i,' he maintained that the world had been created by some power separate and distinct from Him Who is above all.' Jesus was not born of a virgin; He was the son of Joseph and Mary; He was born naturally like other men. But the Eon Christ had descended upon Jesus after His baptism, in the form of a dove, and had proclaimed the unknown Father, and had perfected the virtues of Jesus. The spiritual impassible Christ had flown back to heaven on the eve of the Passion of Jesus; the altogether human Jesus of Cerinthus had suffered and had risen alone k. To this fantastic Christ of the Cerinthian 1 St. Hippolytus, Refut. Hær. vii. 33. * St. Irenæus, i. 26: 'Et Cerinthus autem quidam in Asiâ non a primo Deo factum esse mundum docuit, sed a virtute quâdam valde separatâ et distante ab eâ principalitate, quæ est super universa, et ignorante eum qui est super omnia, Deum. Jesum autem subjecit, non ex virgine natum (impossibile enim hoc ei visum est); fuisse autem Eum Joseph et Mariæ filium similiter ut reliqui omnes homines, et plus potuisse justitiâ et prudentiâ et sapientiâ ab hominibus. Et post baptismum descendisse in eum ab ea principalitate quæ est super omnia, Christum figurâ columbæ; et tunc annuntiasse incognitum Patrem et virtutes perfecisse; in fine autem revolâsse iterum Christum de Jesu, et Jesum passum esse et resurrexisse; Christum autem impassibilem perseverâsse, existentem spiritalem.' When St. Epiphanius represents Cerinthus as affirming that Jesus would only rise at the general resurrection, he seems to be describing the logical results of the heresy, not the actual doctrine which it embraced. (Hær. xxviii. 6.) 224 (3) Saint John's Gospel teaches positive dogma. gnosis St. John opposes the counteracting truth of our Lord's Divine and Eternal Nature, as manifested in and through His human life. This Nature was united to the Manhood of Jesus from the moment of the Incarnation. It was not a transient endowment of the Person of Jesus; since it was Itself the seat of His Personality, although clothed with a human form. This Divine Nature was 'glorified' in Christ's Passion, as also in His miracles and His Resurrection. St. John disentangles the Catholic doctrine from the negations and the speculations of Cerinthus; he proclaims the Presence among men of the Divine Word, Himself the Creator of all things, incarnate in Jesus Christ. 3. Thus St. John's Gospel has also a direct, positive, dogmatic purpose. It is not merely a controversial treatise, as it is not merely an historical appendix. Its teaching is far deeper and wider than would have been necessary, in order to refute the errors of Cerinthus. It teaches the highest revealed truth concerning the Person of our Lord. Its substantive and enduring value consists in its displaying the Everlasting Word or Son of God as historically incarnate, and as uniting Himself to His Church. The peculiarities of St. John's Gospel are explained, when this threefold aspect of it is kept in view. As a supplementary narrative it presents us, for the most part, with particulars concerning our Blessed Lord which are unrecorded elsewhere. It meets the doubts which might naturally have arisen in the later Apostolical age, when the narratives of the earlier Evangelists had been for some time before the Church. If the question was raised, why, if Jesus was so holy and so supernatural a Person, His countrymen and contemporaries did not believe in Him, St. John shews the moral causes which account for their incredulity. He pourtrays the fierce hatred of the Jews against the moral truth which they had rejected; he exhibits this hatred as ever increasing in its intensity as the sanctity of Jesus shines out more and more brightly. If men asked anxiously for more proof that the Death and Resurrection of Jesus were real events, St. John meets that demand by recording his own experience as an eye-witness, and by carefully accumulating the witness of others. If it was objected that Christ's violent Death was inconsistent with His Divine claims, St. John points out that it was strictly voluntary, and even that by it Christ's true glorification was achieved. If the authority of the Apostles and of those who were succeeding Peculiarities in Saint John explained. 225 them was popularly depreciated on the score of their being rude and illiterate men, St. John shews from the discourse in the supper-room that the claims of Apostles upon the dutiful submission of the Church did not depend upon any natural advantages which they possessed. Jesus had promised a Divine Comforter, Who was to guide them into the whole truth, and to bring to their minds whatever He had said to them 1. As a polemical writer, St. John selects and marshals his materials with a view to confuting, from historical data, the Humanitarian or Docetic errors of the time. St. John is anxious to bring a particular section of the Life of Jesus to bear upon the intellectual world of Ephesus m He puts forward an aspect of the original truth which was certain to command present and local attention; he is sufficiently in correspondence with the age to which he ministers, and with the speculative temper of the men around him. He had been led to note and to treasure up in his thought certain phases of the teaching and character of Jesus with especial care. He had remembered more accurately those particular discourses, in which Jesus speaks of His eternal relation to the Father, and of the profound mystic communion of life into which He would enter with His followers through the Holy Spirit and the Sacraments. These cherished memories of St. John's earlier years, unshared in their completeness by less privileged Apostles, were well fitted to meet the hard necessities of the Church during the closing years of the beloved disciple. To St. John the gnosis of Cerinthus must have appeared to be in direct contradiction to the sacred certainties which he had heard from the lips of Jesus, and which he treasured in his heart and memory. In order to confute the heresy which separated the man Jesus from the 'Eon' Christ, he had merely to publish what he remembered of the actual words and works of Jesus n. His translation of those divine words may be coloured by a phraseology current in the school which he is addressing, sufficiently to make them popularly intelligible. But the peculiarities of his language have been greatly exaggerated by criticism, while they are naturally explained by the polemical and positively doctrinal objects which he had in view. To these objects, the See Ebrard's discussion of the objections this statement. Gospel History, pt. 2, n Cf. Pressensé, Jésus-Christ, p. 246. 1 Cf. Alford, Greek Test. vol. i. Prolegom. p. 60. m St. Irenæus adv. Hær. iii. 1. which have been urged against div. 2, § 127. |