positive preparation and transition to Christianity; nay, that the pre-Christian revelation of God in its method and working is often quite strikingly paralleled by the perfect revelation of God in Christ. Hence Old Testament ideas, and early apostolic ideas grounded thereupon, emerge in almost all the doctrinal parts, and often cross the independentlyformed new circle of ideas. No doubt, nothing ought to be said of any atoning element in John's view of doctrine, as Neander, p. 913, and Messner, p. 322, do. The author is not conscious of any antagonism between this circle of Old Testament ideas, and that specially formed by himself. In the naïvest way he unites them, perhaps, without requiring any means of openly proclaimed reconciliation. Just because Old Testament Judaism and Christianity are not contrasts to him, but the former is but the divinely-appointed preparatory step to the latter, the ideas springing from the latter never appear to him to be in contradiction to its peculiar circle of ideas.

(b) As one of the disciples, who had been constantly in Jesus' fellowship from His very first appearance, as one of the three confidential disciples (Mark v. 37, ix. 2, xiii. 3, xiv. 33), as he whom Jesus had counted worthy of a special love (John xiii. 23, xx. 2; comp. xxi. 20), John must have felt himself arrested by the person of Jesus, even more directly and more powerfully than the other disciples, and must have been determined by it in his entire spiritual life. How this came about, depended on his spiritual individuality. As we come to know this individuality from the Acts of the Apostles, John, who throughout yielded to Peter, although evidently bound to him by the closest ties (Acts iii. 1, 3, 11, viii. 14), was no energetically pushing nature, laying itself out for practical action. As he appears in his Epistles, he was intuitional, contemplative. Neither is the aid of reflective thinking any necessity to him, not even where various lines of thought cross before him (note a), by which the means are so easily offered him; nor does he show any inclination for speculation. proper, though that has often been sought in him. His whole spiritual work is a contemplative sinking of himself in a small circle of great truths, which unveil ever new sides to him, disclose ever new depths in them, present the same object in ever new lights. If we think of this contemplative nature

brought face to face with Jesus, then it could not be any one thing Jesus taught or brought or promised, but only His person itself, which seized his spiritual life, and concentrated on itself his undivided regard. To sink himself ever deeper into its whole height and significance; to seek and find in it on all sides the highest salvation; to become ever more sure and more joyful in the ever more complete surrender to this possession, must have been the goal of all his spiritual struggles and life. Thus the whole view of Jesus' person, so full of life, and the saving significance of it, grew on him, which, as it had been found not in the way of reflective thought or à priori speculation, but only by living intuition and contemplation, became the animating and blissful centre of his whole spiritual life. This complete view of the person of Christ and of its saving significance forms, therefore, the starting-point of his whole doctrinal views. Therein rests what may be called the Gnostic character of John's theology. This Gnosis has nothing in common with the speculative impulse, or with the dialectic skill of Paul (§ 58, a). It is a knowing immediately, a living looking on the highest revelation of God, given in and with the person of Christ, an ever new sinking of himself in fathomless depths of that revelation which had been manifested in Christ.

(c) A fruit of this contemplation, as it corresponded to the spiritual individuality of the apostle, we find in the great comprehensive first principles which are peculiar to the Johannean theology. They are not abstract ideas got from reflection, but forms of intuitive perception, in which the highest things, about which his spiritual life was occupied, ever afresh presented themselves to his regard. In these, the simple innermost being of things was presented to him; the external appearances, on the other hand, with their changeful manifoldness, as the accidental and the unessential, lost their significance. And therefore he sees throughout the comprehensive contrasts of God and the devil, light and darkness, truth and falsehood, love and hatred, which trace all phenomena back to their deepest reason, their ultimate principle. And therefore he announces so generally, what is the norm in the deepest nature of things, untroubled by the thought how many exceptions and deviations may occur in empirical

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. 252– 299), by which its special type must necessarily be rubbed out.

(b) 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

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