Thus is the

throughout the pre-Christian times there goes on a struggle between God and the devil. Christ is come to lead this conflict to victory, in that He destroys the works of the devil (I. iii. 8). The world's ruler finds in Jesus, who at all times did His Father's will from love (xiv. 31), no room for his lordship (v. 30); Jesus does not in the least belong to the world ruled by him (viii. 23, xvii. 14, 16). curse of his rule thereby broken (comp. § 23, c), and from this one point may the region ruled by him be reconquered step by step. Jesus has conquered the world that was hostile to Him (xvi. 33), in that He, in spite of all its opposition, has organized a fellowship of disciples, who no more belong to the world, as the territory ruled by the devil (xv. 19, xvii. 14), and has preserved them from the devil and the destruction which he brings (xvii. 12). One only surrenders himself to the devil (vi. 70), and while the devil inspires him with the thought of treachery (xiii. 2), and gives him opportunity to carry it out (ver. 27), he comes to destroy Jesus in death (xiv. 30). But while Jesus in the free obedience of love goes to face death (ver. 31), and now through death returns to the Father, He is proved to be the righteous One (xvi. 10), and the devil is judged because he has slain the righteous One (v. 11), not as though the devil had even now ceased to rule the world. The world in its antagonism to the community of the disciples (xiv. 17, 19, 22, xv. 18,

men (Frommann, p. 660; Köstlin, p. 185 f.; Reuss, ii. p. 499 [E. T. ii. 446]). Such a separation doubtless comes, in that the children of God accept the salvation He brings, while the children of the devil are hardened, and are deprived of salvation. Thus their contrasted positions are made clear, in that they, in the decisive crisis which Christ's appearance introduces, deal with it in opposite ways, and therefore experience opposite results from it. But xpios, in John, does not on that account designate this separation, but always the judicial decision brought with it, as to the fate of men, as even Scholten, p. 126, footnote, acknowledges.

Otherwise expressed, Jesus brings the light, and although the darkness, produced by the ruler of darkness, sets itself in hostile opposition, to destroy His work (xii. 35), yet it cannot overcome the light (i. 5), rather it is bit by bit conquered by it (I. ii. 8), inasmuch as a condition of light has been established on the earth in the community of believers. The world, on the other hand, has in whole and in part not known Him (i. 10, xvii. 25; comp. oi äveρwros: iii. 19, and therewith even § 33, c, footnote 5), inasmuch as it has surrendered itself to the dominion of the devil, and hates Jesus, who brings its sin to its consciousness (vii. 7).

19, xvi. 8, xvii. 9, 14–16; I. ii. 15–17, iii. 1, 13, iv. 5), i.e. so far as it is and continues to be the world, remains his kingdom, he is and works in it (I. iv. 4), as God and Christ do in believers; they are quite in his power, without wills of their own (I. v. 19). But there is and continues also in the world a holy place, where he can no more disturb the fellowship of those who are born of God, who are inaccessible to his influence (ver. 18), but not by any essential determination of nature, but because they always keep themselves, having been born of God. It is true he ever seeks even yet to destroy them, but God keeps them at Christ's intercession (xvii. 15), and they themselves, being made strong by Jesus' word, overcome the devil (I. ii. 13, 14) and the world united with him (I. iv. 4, v. 4, 5: vikav, quite as in Rev., § 135, b), the world which is judged with him by Christ's death (xii. 31). But in the proportion in which the exalted One extends His activity to all (ver. 32), there opens up the prospect of a final conversion of the world (xvii. 21, 23), which, at least so far as the divine destination is concerned (note a), is unlimited, and in that way the complete subjugation of the devil is presented to view.9

§ 154. The Church of the Disciples.

Those, who by means of the preparatory revelation of God had been made receptive, were given to Christ by God, while God leads them to Him, and teaches them to know Him (a). Thus the circle of the first disciples is formed, those disciples

9 Quite as in Revelation, the history of the Messiah and of His Church is a history of the conflict between God and the devil, who in the end is driven entirely out of his kingdom (xii. 31), only that here he rather looks back to the beginning of that conflict, while in the other the final decision of that conflict is especially kept in view (§ 133, d). This point of view is not awanting even in the speeches of Jesus as in the oldest tradition. But if there the contest with daemons as the organs of Satan is rather kept in view (§ 33, c), here, where everything is traced back to its deepest principle (§ 141, c), this rather external side of that conflict is repeated, only that one has no right on that account, with Frommann, p. 329, to deny that the apostle believes in daemons. Here, too, Jesus denies that He is possessed by a devil (viii. 49; comp. Mark iii. 22, 30), as He had been charged (vii. 20, viii. 48, 52, x. 20; comp. ver. 21). The general Old Testament belief in angels likewise is as little awanting in the Gospel (xx. 12, i. 52; comp. xii. 29), even though v. 4 is undoubtedly a false addition.

whom He had chosen, and appointed to be His messengers, that they may carry forward the work begun by Him to wider issues (b). He promises to see them again after His resurrection, to make them sure of their indissoluble union with Him, the Living One, and of His abiding gracious presence (c). But that they may be able to perform their work, they receive the promise that their prayers will be heard for everything they ask in His name, and they get also the power to forgive sins (d).

(a) Those in whom the preparatory revelation of God has achieved its object, and who on that account really belong to God (§ 152, d), God gives to Christ (xvii. 6, 9), that He may give them eternal life, and keep them from destruction (xvii. 2, x. 28, 29; comp. vi. 39). The evangelist describes in the apparently accidental finding of the first disciples, how God leads receptive souls to Christ (i. 42, 44, 46); for what God gives Him, comes to Him (vi. 37), sees the Son and believes on Him (ver. 40; comp. with ver. 39). But this is not so to be regarded as though God begot faith in them by an irresistible inner impulse, since, ver. 40, their faith is regarded as expressly brought about psychologically by their seeing. No one, it is true, can come to Him, if the Father does not draw him (ver. 44); but this drawing, according to § 149, b, takes place by the effectual testimony necessary for the production of faith, which the Father gives to the Son in the Scriptures and in the works, and by the fact that He teaches men to know Christ as what He is.1 In this divine giving there is therefore no divine predestination meant, in virtue of which God leads individuals irresistibly and irrevocably to salvation,

1 Such a teaching is expressively characterized as the drawing of the Father (vi. 45). But whether in conformity with the prophecy (Isa. liv. 13) He equally teaches all, and so those only who on the ground of the receptivity (xvii. 6, 9, x. 27) wrought in them, according to § 152, c, hear such teaching and learn, are really drawn to Christ and come to Him (vi. 45). But as God leads souls to Christ, so He unloosens the bonds of their outward fellowship with Him, when the evident want of an effective result from the revelation of God given in Him shows that they inwardly do not really belong to Him, or that they do not abide in Him (xv. 2; comp. vv. 5, 6). There comes a time when those even outwardly depart from Him (vi. 66), of whom Jesus had from the beginning known that they did not belong to Him in truth, although they seemed alike to believe on Him (vi. 64), and even this separation is traced back to a divine destination (I. ii. 19: iva avspwtãσiv).

when He works in them receptivity to believe (comp. Köstlin, p. 156), for the whole world is indeed appointed to salvation. It refers only to this, that every result is given to Jesus by God (iii. 27; comp. xix. 11), because He depends on the working of God, a working, however, which does not exclude human receptivity, but presupposes it (comp. § 29, d).2 Jesus therefore comforts Himself in the absence of any result by this, that it is not given to every one to come to Him (vi. 65); but not with a view to deliver from guilt those that fall away, but, according to the context, to establish the fact, that it does not depend on Him and His words, if they believe that they are made to stumble by that word (ver. 60).

(b) Those whom the Father has given to the Son are His own true possession (xiii. 1: oi idio), as Israel was originally the peculiar people of the Logos (i. 11). As was the latter, so are they chosen (vi. 70, xiii. 18, xv. 16), and thereby taken out of the whole world of men, to which they too had once belonged (xvii. 6), so that they no longer now belong to it (xv. 19; comp. xvii. 14, 16). No doubt all believers are given by God to Christ, and that also is true specially of all paonraí in the wider sense (§ 149, b, footnote 6). But in our Gospel the Twelve are at the same time the representatives of believers generally (comp. vi. 67); what is special to them consists only in this, that they are the first circle of the disciples; that by them the salvation brought by Christ is to be historically realized more widely in the world. They are to carry forward His work on the earth; Jesus therefore

2 To be sure, we are not to say, with Frommann, p. 242, that John has satisfactorily solved the problem of the apparent contradiction between man's freedom and his dependence on God. It is rather that, as Reuss, ii. p. 507 [E. T. ii. 453], has properly remarked, that question has not in any way been presented to his consciousness. His conception of salvation as the perfect revelation of God involves even in all its stages of development an act of God, as it likewise demands a reception on the side of the individual.

3 That this choosing, too, like that divine giving (note a), is not irrevocable, vi. 70, xiii. 18 show, according to which even Judas was a chosen one, one given to Jesus by God (xvii. 12; comp. § 135, c), which Schenkel, p. 390, denies without reason. This giving by God seems in itself to exclude any free selection on the part of Jesus. But, by the unity of the Son with the Father in the sense of § 143, c, the former will choose none other than him, whom the Father brings to Him, as He casts none away whom the Father brings to Him (vi. 37).

Jesus has therefore led them on by degrees from servants with no will of their own, who have to follow their Lord without knowing why He commands

sends them out into the world as the Father has sent Him (xvii. 18, xx. 21). By their word the world is to be brought to believe (xvii. 20), while their testimony comes in the place of His testimony, since they have been with Him from the beginning (xv. 27; comp. § 149, b, footnote 5).5 But their activity will be much more comprehensive than was His own during His earthly life. They will reap what He has sown (iv. 37, 38), they will do greater works than He has done (xiv. 12). His earthly activity was confined to Israel. Only when death had loosed these restraints, will He, like the seedcorn which perishes, bear much fruit (xii. 24), and extend His activity to all (ver. 32); only after His death can the gathering together of the scattered children of God begin (xi. 52). Both can naturally after His death take place only by His disciples, but the speeches of Christ in our Gospel as little contain a direct commission for missionary work among the heathen as does the oldest tradition (§ 31, a, footnote 2).

(c) To enable the disciples to fulfil the task appointed for them, Jesus promises them that, after the short painful separation by death, they would see Him alive again, and He them (xvi. 16, xxii. 14, xviii. 19). This second appearance

them, to be His friends, to whom He has entrusted the whole purpose of the Father, that had been made known to Him (xv. 15), that they may not cease to be doua, but that they may begin to be His ¿zócroλa (xiii. 16). For this end Jesus, by the word of God, which He has declared to them, has made known to them God's name, i.e. His whole nature (xvii. 6, 14); and as He has kept them during His earthly life in this name, i.e. in the full knowledge of His nature (ver. 12), so will God do Himself henceforth (ver. 11). He will thereby keep them not only from the devil (xvii. 15), but will also consecrate them to their calling, as He has consecrated the Son (x. 36), in the power of His word, the contents of which is indeed the full revelation of God, antua (xvii. 17), since Jesus by His sacrifice has taken care that they, because cleansed from sin, may be put into the position of real consecration to God (ver. 19, and therewith § 148, b).

5 That they may be able to certify this testimony of theirs (comp. § 40, a), Jesus has given (xvii. 22) them the glory of miracle-working, which was given to Him, in order to make Him known to the world (§ 145, a); and as He has glorified the Father by His work on earth, which was nothing else than giving the perfect knowledge of God (xii. 28, xiii. 31, xvii. 4), so will He do the same also by the advancement of His work by means of the disciples (xv. 8; comp. xiv. 13, xvii. 1).

6 The current perversion of these passages to a coming of Christ in the Spirit has as a consequence Baur's idea, according to which the Gospel of John generally knows of no appearances of the Risen One, but only of a return of Christ in the VOL. II. 2 c