CHAPTER IV
FUNDAMENTAL IDEAS OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL AND THEIR ORIGINS.
FROM all that we have said so far, it may have become more and more
obvious, that what is decisive, in the thought and in the presentation
of the Fourth Evangelist, is the conception of Jesus which exists in
his own mind. This idea we must now follow up more closely if we are to
advance from a mere comparison of Jn.'s picture of Jesus' life with
that of the Synoptics, and from the conclusion that it deserves less
belief, to the most underlying reasons why he has left us so incorrect
a description of Jesus' life.
For this purpose, in the first place we shall deal with a section of
his book about which we have not yet spoken because the Synoptics do
not contain one like it, we mean the prologue, i. 1-18. Something to
which hitherto our attention has only been directed occasionally--the
fact that Jesus before his earthly life lived a life with God in
heaven--is here, at the very outset and with the greatest emphasis,
placed at the head of everything, and is even surpassed by the
explanation, "he was the word" (in Greek "the logos").
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1. REVELATION THROUGH "THE WORD" (THE LOGOS).
This remarkable expression has had a history of its own, and would in
itself have quite justified the publishers of the
Religionsgeschichtliche Volksbuecher in allowing the Fourth Gospel a
separate treatment. In all religions, it has been found again and again
that the deity, if men are to learn to know its will and to aim at
following it, must reveal itself. This it does, according to the belief
of different peoples, in very different ways. But when it does so, for
example, by natural events, by serious misfortunes, men do not know at
first what they on their part ought to do in order to remove its anger.
Special means are needed to find this out. Wise men must explain the
will of God, whether they read it in the stars or in the flight of
birds or in the entrails of sacrificial animals, or in whatever it may
be. The prospect of doing this is far more auspicious, if there are
prophets with whom God--as they themselves are convinced--really speaks
in their inner man, in such a way that they can directly reproduce
God's very words. It is not without reason, for example, that Muhammed
in the Koran again and again emphasises the fact that he has proclaimed
to his people "in clear Arabic" the will of God. But in the Old
Testament, in which we have such abundant information about the
prophets, there are "false" prophets besides the "true"; yet these
quite certainly considered themselves to be the true, and the
distinction between the two classes was of such real difficulty, that
rules are given about it in the Bible itself which are quite
impracticable and even contradictory (Deut. xviii. 20-22; xiii. 2-6).
Clearly then the most helpful thing that could happen would be for a
divine being, who could not make mistakes, to appear himself upon earth
in order to speak immediately with men. Such a being would really
deserve to be called the incarnate "word of God."
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2. THE LOGOS AS REASON.
The Greek expression for "word" (logos), however, means at the same
time "reason." This brings us to a second origin of this name for
Jesus, and one which lies not so much in religion as in the
contemplation of the Greek philosophers about the world as a whole. If
we recognise in this world one order, it is natural to say that this
world, as well as each individual man, possesses a "reason." The logos
is then the reasonable order which rules in the world, and so we are
able to express ourselves, even if we cannot believe that the world is
ruled by a deity who possesses a consciousness of himself.
In this sense Heraclitus (about 500-450 B.C.) introduced the term
"logos" into Greek philosophy. Plato (427-347), without using this
term, assumed a world of ideas in which the highest, the idea of the
Good, represents the deity. These ideas he regards as the original
patterns of which all particular things in the material world are only
copies. The Stoics (from 300 B.C.) adopted the word logos and the idea
of Heraclitus, that the logos is the reasonable order that rules in the
world. On this view, therefore, particular things are adapted to the
logos, just as, on Plato's view, they are to the ideas. In
correspondence with the plurality of ideas in Plato, the Stoics divided
the one logos into a plurality, which is called in Greek logoi. To the
statement that these logoi are the originals or patterns of the things
in the world, they added a second statement, that they are the powers
by which the things of the world are established. So they compare the
logoi with seeds of corn which have been scattered everywhere in the
world and which have produced out of themselves the particular things.
Thus it happens, on their view, that the deity which they see in the
one logos, the world-reason, through its particular logoi creates all
that is, in conformity with that original which it actually represents
itself.
We find the doctrine of the logos fully developed in the Jewish thinker
Philo, who was twenty to thirty years older than Jesus. In his native
city, Alexandria, in Egypt, he had the best opportunity of imbibing
Greek philosophy, and of combining it with the ideas which he himself
cherished as a Jew. Consequently, the logos is the pattern and producer
of things, as we found it on Greek soil; but it cannot be the deity
himself (that would conflict with Philo's Jewish faith); it is simply a
second divine being, who is subordinate to the God of the Old
Testament.
In the Old Testament itself we also find the beginnings of a
disposition to distinguish between God himself and a second divine
being of this kind. In particular, the Wisdom of God is often
represented as assisting God at the creation of the world; it then
works in his sight for his delight (Job xxviii. 12-28; Proverbs viii.
22-31; Ecclus. i. 1-10; xxiv. 1-12; Wisdom of Solomon vii. 22-30). This
is, of course, only a figurative way of saying that God at the creation
of the world made use of his wisdom; but the form of the world, which
he conceived in this wisdom of his, before he made the real to arise in
conformity with the ideal, may, with a little imagination, be regarded
as the original of the world as it existed in the abstract, or as a
kind of model of it. And we get some thing very like the expression
"logos," when it is said that God created the world by his word (Psalm
xxxiii. 6), because in Gen. i. 3 it is said, "God spake . . . and it
was so." In the Hebrew Old Testament as translated into the Aramaic
language current at the time of the Fourth Evangelist, and as recited
in the Synagogue every Sabbath, in place of the name God, which the
people had to avoid pronouncing, the expression "the word of God" was
often put, even where, strictly speaking, it was not suitable.
All this, and presumably in addition, legends about the gods, who,
according to the religions of Egypt, Babylonia, or Greece, as the
agents of a still higher Deity shaped the world and filled it with
divine effects, Philo sums up, by representing that the Logos in itself
was, on the one hand, only a faculty of God, by which he conceived the
organisation of the world, and, on the other hand, a being who has come
forth from God and brought God's influence into the world. In the
second sense, we can call it a person, but in the former not; and the
important point is that in Philo the Logos must always be a person and
at the same time not a person. Were it only the one or only the other,
some necessary aspect which it has would be neglected. Philo gives the
Logos designations which only seem applicable to a person; for example,
the first-born son of God, the high-priest, the mediator, the sinless
one. We must not lose sight of the fact, however, that it always
remains the power of mind in God.
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3. JESUS AS LOGOS IN THE NEW TESTAMENT EPISTLES.
The idea has played a further part in the history of religion in the
New Testament itself. The Fourth Evangelist, that is to say, is by no
means the first New Testament writer to represent Jesus as the Logos;
others did the same before him. Even Paul presupposes that, before
Jesus appeared on earth, he lived a life with God in heaven (Gal iv. 4;
Rom. x. 6). In doing so, he thinks of him, in spite of all his heavenly
perfection, as a man in whose image earthly beings, especially men,
were first created (1 Cor. xv. 45-49; xi. 8). In fact, according to one
passage (1 Cor. viii. 6), he himself helped to carry out the creation
of the world. In any case, he arose in quite a different way from human
beings, and for this reason he is called God's own son (Rom. viii. 32).
We can see how much there is here in agreement with Philo, whose
writings or ideas Paul may have known very well. However, it is
noteworthy that Paul was not so much concerned, as Philo was, to
explain the origin of the whole world; had he been, he would have
described Jesus as the prototype of the whole world and not merely of
human beings.
The Epistle to the Hebrews, whose author unquestionably knew Philo's
writings, takes us a step further. To him Christ, before he descended
upon earth, is no longer a man in heaven, but is a reflexion of the
majesty and imprint of the nature of God, just as in a seal the imprint
entirely resembles the stamp; he has not only created the world, but he
also continually sustains it; that is to say, keeps it in existence (i.
2 f. 10). The manner in which he proceeded from God is expressly
described as a "being begotten" (i. 5), and he is accordingly called
simply "Son of God," without further addition, and so with the
implication that there is only one such (i. 1 f. 5; not so, however, in
i. 6 "the first-born"). It is all the more note worthy that Jesus "in
the days of his flesh offered up prayers and supplications with strong
crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and
. . . though he was a Son, yet learned obedience by the things which he
suffered" (v. 7 f.), and that he "in all points like as we," men, "was
tempted, yet without sin" (iv. 15), This true recollection of real
events in the life of Jesus can only be reconciled with the description
of his God-like elevation before his earthly existence by supposing, as
Paul does in 2 Cor. viii. 9 and Phil. ii. 6 f., that when he descended
upon earth he emptied himself of his heavenly powers, and assumed the
form of a man, even of a servant.
The Epistle to the Colossians (the most important sections of which
cannot have been written by Paul himself) adds to the two statements,
that through Christ the world was made and is maintained in existence,
a third to the effect that it was created for him, so that he is thus
its goal (i. 15-17). Moreover, it calls him the image of the invisible
God, and in doing so, explains even more clearly than the Epistle to
the Hebrews why God needed such an image. But, above all, in the
Epistle to the Colossians we find the idea of the humiliation of Jesus
on earth inter changed with its opposite. It is said in ii. 9, "in him
dwells the fulness of the Godhead bodily"; and this is true, not merely
from the time of Jesus resurrection, but even during his heavenly life
before his earthly existence, and then even during his earthly life
itself. We read for instance in i. 19 f., God "was pleased that in him
should all the fulness dwell, and wished" (afterwards) "through him to
reconcile all things unto himself, having made peace through the blood
of his cross, &c." If the author had thought as Paul did, he would not,
directly before the mention of Jesus' sacrificial death, have
emphasised the fact that God endowed Jesus with all the fulness of the
God head. The whole of the Gospel of Jn. is an amplification of this
briefly suggested thought, that in Jesus all the fulness of the Godhead
dwelt on earth, as in heaven.
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4. MINGLING OF RELIGIONS AT THE TIME OF JN.
Before, however, we can show this, it remains necessary to review
another part of the history of religion; that is to say, the mingling
of the religions of the Babylonians, Persians, Egyptians, Syrians,
people of Asia Minor and Greeks, in the last centuries before Christ.
Amongst nearly all these peoples there were legends of gods, goddesses
or sons of gods, who came down from heaven to earth to contend with
hostile beings. One such foe is the great serpent of the Babylonian
religion. It represents darkness, and the floods which in that country
made the winter such a joyless season. It is conquered by the sun of
spring, which is of course thought of as a god. In other religions the
struggle associated with the change in the year's seasons was
differently represented, but in such a way that the identity of the
thing could not be mistaken.
Another purpose for which the gods had to descend from heaven is found
in the belief that the soul of man is from heaven and yearns after its
home, but cannot find the way, unless a being descends from above and
releases it from the prison in which it is held captive. This idea also
had received, in different religions, different, but not altogether
dissimilar, expression.
But even that the world might be created or organised, subordinate
divine beings had to help as soon as a religion was dominated by the
belief that the highest God, if He was to continue to be perfectly pure
and divine, could have nothing to do with the world.
But, further, it must be possible to say, as regards these divine
beings, how they arose; and their origin, as can be easily understood,
was represented in such a way that one always proceeded from the other
or was born from two others, thought of as male and female. Here we
have reason enough for the existence of a number of divine figures in
every religion, whose derivation from one another, whose rank,
friendship and enmity amongst one another, whose activity in favour or
to the detriment of men, it was a somewhat intricate problem to solve.
When, especially from the end of the fourth century, Alexander the
Great's expeditions brought all the well-known peoples, and many more
which were less important, into frequent contact, there was an
interchange of ideas, even as regards their gods. The agreement between
so many divine forms in the different religions was recognised, and the
manner in which such and such a god was worshipped in one country was
transferred to the related god in another, so long as people believed
that, by doing so, they could better assure themselves of his help. In
brief, a complete mingling started, which made this whole world of
deities not only an intricate, but even a confused, puzzle.
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5. GNOSTICISM.
Gnosticism drew upon this mingling of religions. This was a very
important movement, but is so difficult to present in detail that we
must be content to give only the most noteworthy outlines. Gnosis means
"knowledge"; and this is in fact the first and most important point,
that one must have a great fund of knowledge to be able to know all
these doctrines about the different divine beings, and at the same time
a great deal of penetration rightly to apprehend the deep thoughts
which were hidden under such wonderful clothing. These Gnostics, or
Knowers, were at the same time men who thought deeply about the origin
of the world; and their ideas were again taken up by several of the
most prominent philosophers of the nineteenth century.
One idea which continually recurs in their systems is that a deep
division runs through the world. God is by nature good, pure,
unspotted; the matter of which the world consists is also by nature
evil, impure, tainted. God cannot therefore come into contact with this
matter; and it would have remained for ever unorganised and devoid of
any divine influence, if subordinate divine beings had not imparted
this to it and converted it into an organised world. They do it,
however, in a very imperfect way; for their own knowledge is quite
limited. This is why the world is so faulty.
The soul and the body of men are by nature just as much strangers to
one another as are God and the world. The soul comes from heaven,
whether it be supposed that the creator of the world, that is to say,
one of those divine, but subordinate, beings, created it, or that it
represents a spark which emanated from the highest God Himself and
descended into the gloomy kingdom of the world. The body, however, is a
part of that matter of which the world consists, and therefore shares
all its evil characteristics. Through the senses, and the spell which
they exercise, it drags down the soul into the domain of the vile and
common, and estranges it from its divine destiny. It is its prison, and
the soul cannot escape from it, partly for the very good reason that it
is no longer conscious of its divine origin. If, therefore, it is to be
redeemed, some one must come who will first make it realise that it has
come from God. But this can only be a being who has himself come from
God, and possesses the knowledge of the divine in full measure--in
other words, a god.
All Gnostics who confessed themselves Christians have found this being
in Christ as he appeared upon earth. But the division which exists
between the soul and the body of every man, of course affects him also,
and even in a much stronger degree. A being so high and divine cannot
really have a body which consists of earthly matter. Consequently, the
Gnostics could only explain in one of two ways. Either the Christ who
came down from heaven was only in an external way united to an ordinary
man Jesus, who was born of Joseph and Mary, but was righteous in a
peculiar degree: that is to say, he came down upon him at the baptism
in the Jordan, but left him again before he suffered death, so that the
person who underwent suffering was only the man Jesus. Or the heavenly
Christ, during the whole of his sojourn upon earth, possessed himself
of a phantom body, so that all his human acts, such as eating,
sleeping, suffering, &c., were nothing more than appearance.
From what we have said, it will be clear that the chief task of this
redeemer was to make the soul of man realise that it is of divine
origin. But many souls are not able to apprehend this truth; and so the
same disastrous division again makes itself felt, and separates men
into two classes. In the nature of the case, it is very conceivable
that the great sum of knowledge and the great depth of thought
appertaining to Gnosis, could not be within the reach of many simple
people. But the Gnostics assumed that the question who can attain to it
has been decided long before one comes to know it; from eternity there
are some, namely the Gnostics themselves, endowed with the capacity to
appropriate it as soon as it is imparted to them, whereas to others
this faculty is denied from eternity, and therefore they could never be
happy.
From the time when the soul of the Gnostic comes to know its divine
origin it is, strictly speaking, released from its fetters. A new life
begins for it, and from this point it is already sure of returning to
heaven as soon as death emancipates it from the body. For this reason,
in 2 Tim. ii. 18, and of course in a tone of reproach, the doc trine of
the Gnostics is represented thus: "the resurrection is come already."
And it is a resurrection only of the soul. The body can in no way share
in the eternal happiness; it abides for ever in death. The Gnostics are
equally firm in rejecting the idea that the Christ, who has risen and
been exalted to heaven, will return to earth again, when the dead will
be awakened and their works judged. Every soul at the moment of death
of itself reaches its final state of happiness.
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6. THE PROLOGUE OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
We may now turn to the opening words of the Gospel of Jn. They read:
"In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the
Logos was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were
made by him; and without him was not anything made that hath been
made." None of these statements is now new to us. Only, we must guard
against misunderstanding the third, as if it meant: God himself was the
same being as the Logos--which in fact would not agree with what has
already been mentioned. It would be equally wrong to make the statement
mean the contrary: the Logos was a god. The sense is rather: the Logos
was of divine nature (just as in iv. 24 the words "God is spirit" mean:
God is of a spiritual nature, has a spiritual nature). This is really
what we should expect: the Logos is not God Himself, but of like
nature. Similarly, we may expect that he was from the beginning, and so
existed before the creation of the world, and with God, and that by him
the whole world was made. What Paul, the Epistle to the Hebrews, and
the Epistle to the Colossians have said with increasing precision, only
without using the word Logos, is here expressed by the Fourth
Evangelist quite in the language of Philo.
It should therefore never have been doubted that Jn. borrowed the word
Logos and the ideas associated with it from Philo. And if we were
inclined to take offence that such an important idea should have come
to the Biblical author from an extra-Biblical writer--though in truth
there is nothing objectionable in it--yet we can console ourselves with
the thought that Jn. has shown great independence. He continues in
verse 14, "and the Logos became flesh, and dwelt among us." The idea
that the Logos could become flesh would have been to Philo something
impossible. We see then that Jn. gives the idea an entirely new turn.
Only, it would be a misunderstanding to interpret it: the Logos was
transformed into flesh. The sentence is certainly opposed to the idea
of the Gnostics, according to which the Christ who had come down from
heaven was not a real man. But Jn., nevertheless, agrees with them
inasmuch as he thinks the transformation of a divine being into a
fleshly being cannot be imagined. A more guarded statement therefore
would be: he became man, or as we read in 1 Jn. iv. 2 and 2 Jn. 7, he
came in the flesh that is to say, not "he came into flesh," but "he
came, clothed with flesh; he came forward with a body consisting of
flesh." It is possible that, as against the Gnostics, the expression
"he became flesh" was a more sharp than useful definition from the
point of view of clearness.
In other places also it is clear that Jn. does not on all points reject
the ideas of the Gnostics. Certainly he will not hear of their many
divine beings, but knows of the one true God and of Jesus Christ whom
he has sent (xvii. 3). But this Christ is to him, as to the Gnostics, a
necessary mediator between God and the world, and in his view, exactly
as in theirs, he must for a definite time appear upon earth. These last
ideas are, it is true, shared also by Paul, the Epistle to the Hebrews,
and the Epistle to the Colossians; the first especially by the Epistle
to the Colossians, in which God, just as in Jn. i. 18, vi. 46, is an
invisible God and Christ his image (Col. i. 15). But what Jn. has in
common with the Gnostics alone is the idea that it was Christ's most
important work to communicate a certain kind of knowledge to men.
At the end of i. 14: "and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only
begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth," we have, further,
the most peculiar term which Jn. applies to Jesus to describe precisely
the sense in which he is the Son of God. The Greek word monogenes means
the only son w r ho was begotten by his father, and that, in ordinary
human relations, means of course the single son produced by a father.
This being so, a satisfactory translation would be: "the only son."
Since, however, in Jn.'s Gospel, by the side of Jesus as the Son of
God, there appear very many children of God among men, the second part
of the expression also acquires a special sense: Jesus is the only son
of God who was begotten by Him; all others have been produced by Him in
another way.
Thus we must understand the idea of the author--even though just before
he has spoken of men who are able to be come children of God, and has
used a related Greek expression to the effect that they were begotten
from God. Those are meant of whom the Gnostics say they are able to
apprehend the idea of their heavenly origin because they come from God.
But that Jn. thought of Christ as having arisen in another way, having
been begotten in a more peculiar sense, is seen already in the
persistence with which he applies the name "son" solely to him, and
always calls all others the children of God (see p. 64).
But at the same time he has perhaps chosen the name monogenes, because
several Gnostics, in their long list of divine beings, used it of a
being different from the Logos, that is to say, of an older being and
one standing in a closer relationship to God. Of him Jn. will not hear.
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7. JESUS AS LOGOS THROUGHOUT THE FOURTH GOSPEL.
But the most important feature in this expression, "we saw his
majesty," &c. (i. 14) is this, that the whole Gospel is nothing but an
amplification of it, This explains the continual insistence on the
omnipotence and omniscience of Jesus, the omission of the baptism, the
temptation, the anguish in Gethsemane; it explains the prayer at the
grave of Lazarus, which was only for the sake of the people, the saying
on the cross "I thirst," which was only in fulfilment of a passage in
the Bible, Jesus inviolability when attempts were made to capture or to
stone him, the falling down of the Roman battalion when he said "I am
he" whom ye seek, his continual reference to his own person and to his
life with God before his descent upon earth, his ambiguous style of
speaking without considering whether his hearers could follow him, his
continual demand that they must believe in him, his continual assurance
that only faith in him could give eternal life; his unvarying
uniformity from beginning to end, his opposition to "the Jews" without
distinction, his superiority to "the law of the Jews" and "the feasts
of the Jews," and the colourlessness of the figure of the Baptist, who
is only permitted to point to Jesus. This explains, in particular,
certain utterances of Jesus which we have not yet mentioned: "And now
(that is to say, now that I am taking farewell of the earth), Father,
glorify thou me with thine own self, with the glory which I had with
thee before the world was" (xvii. 5), "before Abraham was, I am" (viii.
58). The "I am" seems really to be senseless. But, as a matter of fact,
there is a purpose in it, and it alone gives the sentence its real
force. Strictly speaking, two sentences have been compressed into one:
"before Abraham was, I was" and "I am eternal and, being such, have no
change." Next and last, iii. 13, "No man hath ascended into heaven" in
order to bring information, "but he only" can bring it "who descended
out of heaven, the Son of man, which is in heaven," that is to say "who
is simultaneously in heaven continually," not "who was in heaven." The
four last words are omitted in important manuscripts, but only, we may
be sure, because the copyists thought they went too far. They very
appropriately reflect Jn.'s idea about Jesus, and were therefore
certainly written by him. Finally, the positive summing-up of Jn.'s
view is expressed by Thomas in the last words addressed to Jesus in the
Fourth Gospel (xx. 28), "My Lord and my God." In the rest of the New
Testament Jesus is called "God" only in Heb. i. 8 f. (Tit. ii. 13?); in
1 Tim. iii. 16; Rom. ix. 5, he is only so called through a wrong
reading or faulty punctuation.
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8. SUPPRESSION OF HUMAN TRAITS IN JESUS.
From tins can now be gathered how greatly Jn.'s style of thinking is
misunderstood when an attempt is made to find traits of a real humanity
in the Jesus of the Fourth Gospel. Those who do this, for instance, in
the case of the raising of Lazarus, or those even who are only
disturbed by the thought that no such traits can really be found, have
quite misunderstood the peculiar character of this book. Humanly
speaking, Jesus must have been so cruel as to keep away from Bethany
for two more days, because otherwise the miracle which he proposed to
do would not have been so great as if it did not happen until the
fourth day after Lazarus' death. We ought not. however, to apply this
human point of view; if we are to do the Evangelist justice, we ought,
just as he does, to identify our selves to such an extent with this Son
of God who has come from heaven, as to approve entirely of his
demonstrating his exaltation, his dignity, and his omnipotence in the
strongest possible way. So long as it is what is truly human in Jesus
that attracts us, we are totally unfit to enter into the ideas of the
Evangelist, for he is attracted only by what is divine.
This is, in fact, so much the case that the human in Jesus is more
sternly set aside than the Evangelist himself desires. He would like
certainly to oppose the Gnostics, amongst whom the heavenly Christ was
united with the man Jesus only superficially and for a limited period,
or only had a phantom body to deceive the eyes of men. To meet this
latter idea, he insists that there flowed from the wound, which was
made by the spear-thrust in the crucified Lord, blood and water (xix.
34); and perhaps he has the same thing in mind when he says that Jesus
sat down tired by Jacob's well (iv. 6), and so forth. In this Gospel
again Jesus speaks of having always observed the commands of God (xv.
10) and of being studious to do not his own will, but the will of God
(v. 30). But how does all this help us? This kind of obedience can
hardly be said to have the same value as the obedience of a man to God,
for Jesus simply could not act otherwise; he himself speaks of doing
the will of God as being his food (iv. 34). He can even say "I and the
Father are one" (x. 30); and the reason for this is not that he
entirely subordinates his own will to the will of his heavenly Father
(he does indeed do this, but only because it was natural for him to do
so), but that he, and he alone, was begotten of God, that he, and he
alone, was of like nature with God.
This is as clear as daylight, when he walks over the sea, or when, on
an attempt being made to stone him, he makes himself invisible in a
miraculous way; when his soul is affected by no feelings of passion;
when he keeps away for two days from the place where his friend has
died, in order to set his miraculous power in a brighter light; when
Philip is made to see in his person, as he stands before him, God the
Father. Here he is actually, in hardly a different way than he is
amongst the Gnostics, a God walking upon the earth, whom one can only
worship in astonishment. A man whose possibilities are exposed to
limitations, as those of others are, who thinks and feels like others,
to whom one can cling, because he has first trodden the same path and
experienced the same difficulties, whom one can gladly follow--no, he
is nothing of this. The Fourth Gospel knows nothing and can know
nothing of the great consolation which the Epistle to the Hebrews (ii.
18) gives to all such earthly pilgrims: "because that he himself hath
suffered, being tempted, he is able to succour them that are tempted."
Nevertheless, we shall refuse to reproach its author for this, in
proportion as it becomes clear to us that the task which he set before
himself was from the first impossible of achievement. Nor has any later
teacher in the Church been able so to reconcile the divine and human
nature in Jesus, that a real and consistent personality has been
produced. The important point, therefore, is simply to recognise on
which of the two sides in Jn. the scale turns. Those who persist in
attempting to reconcile the two natures, are not agreed, even down to
the present day, as to whether they ought to say, as Paul says (see
above, p. 146), that Jesus, when he came down from heaven to earth,
laid aside his divine characteristics, or that he kept them, hiding
them during his earthly life. As regards the Fourth Gospel, we must say
that it quite certainly does not take the first of these positions. And
even as regards the second view, it only presents the thought that on
earth Jesus was endowed with all his divine characteristics; their
concealment is very slight and transparent, and does not really accord
with the purpose of Jesus' public ministry, which in Jn. consists
simply in revealing himself in all his greatness.
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9. KINGDOM OF GOD AND KINGDOM OF THE DEVIL ACCORDING TO JN.
Although the figure of Jesus claims almost the whole attention of the
Fourth Gospel, we must, in order to realise its fundamental ideas and
discover their origin, look into Jn.'s answer to the question, What is
God's relation to the world, and the world's relation to God? We have
been obliged to touch upon this already; for the whole descent of
Christ from heaven to earth would not have been necessary, if God by
His own work had made the world according to His will. There is,
therefore, in Jn., strictly speaking, exactly the same deep division
between God and the world as exists in the system of the Gnostics. And
to this he gives expression often enough.
Two kingdoms, we should almost say two worlds, are contrasted, the one
which is above, and the one which is below; from the one is Jesus, from
the other are the Jews (viii. 23). This lower kingdom is also called
the earth; it is, therefore, quite literally supposed that Jesus came
down from that heaven which forms an arch over the earth (iii. 31).
Elsewhere, the lower kingdom is called also "this world," or simply
"the world"; heaven is consequently never included in it. The upper
kingdom is that of light, truth, life; to the lower belong darkness,
deception, and death (i. 5; iii. 19-21; viii. 44; vi. 47-54). The ruler
of the upper kingdom is, of course, God; the ruler of the lower is the
devil (viii. 44). Paul also has already called the devil the god of
this world (2 Cor. iv. 4), but he has not set up any thing like so
harsh an opposition between it and the kingdom of heaven. In Jn. this
opposition is based on the thought that God cannot come into contact
with the world, because the matter of which it consists is evil by
nature and God would be denied by any contact with it. This idea is not
only represented in the Gnostic system, but is found even in Plato, and
has thence become the common property of many Greek philosophers, and,
in particular, of the Jews also who, like Philo, made the philosophic
thinking of the Greeks their own.
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10. CHILDREN OF GOD AND OF THE DEVIL.
The consequence, strictly speaking, was that all men were incapable of
receiving any divine gift. But the other idea also, which we have found
among the Gnostics, that the souls of men come from the upper kingdom,
was very widespread. But not all souls. And so the Gospel of Jn.
reveals that deep division, which separates God and the world, even
between those men who are begotten from God (i. 13), and those who are
the children of the devil (viii. 44). It is only another mode of
expressing this, when it is said in iii. 6, "that which is born of the
flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit." And
this sentence would lose all force, if we were to continue: but that
also which is born of the flesh can become spirit and vice versa. If it
is to have any value, we must complete it thus: that which is born of
the flesh is and remains flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is
and remains spirit. Further it accords entirely with this when in viii.
47 it is said: "ye hear not" the words of God, "because ye are not of
God," or in viii. 43, "ye cannot hear my word?" or in vi. 65, "No man
can come unto me, except it be given unto him of the Father." And when
he is leaving the earth, Jesus utters those words in xvii. 9 which may
well startle us: "I pray not for the world, but for those whom thou
hast given me." In fact, if this were the Evangelist's last word, he
could not be distinguished from a Gnostic; only destined men could come
to know the truth, and redemption would consist merely in enabling
these alone to recognise their heavenly origin and so to achieve their
emancipation from the prison formed by their body.
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11. SOFTENING OF THE OPPOSITION,.
The Evangelist, however, does not actually go so far. He already
declares against the Gnostics when in i. 3 he says that by the Logos
the world was made, and so not, as they taught, by subordinate divine
beings, who had no correct understanding of the way to do it, but by
the highest and only representative of God. True, if we were inclined
to conclude from this, that this Being must have made it quite
according to God's will, it would certainly be hard to under stand why,
notwithstanding, it is a kingdom of darkness, deception, and death. The
division between God and the world, which the author has accepted from
the philosophical thinkers of his time, is therefore not really set
aside; but the author has made a move in this direction.
In the next place, we are told in v. 22, in the spirit of the same
harsh division between God and the world, that God judges no one, but
has committed the whole work of judging to the Son. As regards other
works, however, he does not deny that God exercises them in the world;
for example, God attracts to Jesus the men who from the beginning were
destined to come to him (vi. 44). But we have, in quite a special way,
the expression "world," in which the change of Jn.'s mode of thought is
revealed. When Jesus declines to pray for the world (xvii. 9), the
world includes only those men who are children of the devil. Similarly,
in xv. 19, "be cause ye are not of the world, . . . therefore the world
hates you." Between these two parts of the sentence, however, we have
the clause, "because I have chosen you from the world," and here the
word "world "has a wider sense; it includes all men, even those who,
since they could be chosen, were from the first children of God, and
therefore, according to the more limited use of the word, are not "of
the world." Similarly in xvii. 6, "I manifested thy name unto the men
whom thou gavest me out of the world." But expressions like that in
iii. 16 f. go even beyond these: "For God so loved the world that he
gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth on him should not
perish, but have eternal life. For God sent not the Son into the world
to judge the world; but that the world should be saved through him":
that is to say the whole world, and not merely individuals singled out
of the world (similarly xii. 47; i. 29; vi. 33).
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12. DIFFERENCE BETWEEN JN. AND THE GNOSTICS.
The importance of these differences between Jn. and the Gnostics cannot
be overstated. By its very nature, Gnosticism was unable to make itself
master of the world, because it was, and aimed at being, a religion
restricted to a limited number of privileged persons. The simple man,
the simple woman, could never hope to be numbered amongst these. All
the valuable and exalted elements contained in the Gospel of Jn. could
only be saved for the Church, and so for all future times, by the
author's declaring them to be destined for all men. "God willeth that
all men should be saved, and come to the knowledge of the truth": this
saying (1 Tim. ii. 4) possesses telling force; and the author of the
Fourth Gospel has not failed to notice it.
It was not less important, however, that he should have differed from
the Gnostics in his teaching about the creation of the world. The
belief in one God could not be held to consistently if one of the most
important kinds of work which the pious gladly ascribe to Him, the
creation of the world, was carried out in a very faulty way by
subordinate and unintelligent beings. Many Gnostics went so far as to
see in this unintelligent creator of the world the God of the Old
Testament of whom it is said, that he produced the world. He was then
regarded by them as a being quite different from the real God.
In consequence, however, the Old Testament, which was likewise regarded
as his work, seemed at the same time to be a useless and abortive book,
though at that time it was the only holy book which Christians who
adhered to the Church .had (the New Testament writings were not
regarded as holy until towards the end of the second century, and in
large part had not yet been written at the time when Gnosticism made
its way into the Christian communities, that is to say, about the year
100). By such ideas, simple Christians, who on all questions thought
they might rely on the Old Testament, were thoroughly confused. It is
perhaps for this reason that the author of the Gospel of Jn. emphasises
the statement that Holy Scripture could not be annulled (see p. 129).
The Gnostics supposed that it was quite a new revelation which Christ
brought from heaven; if, however, as Jn. represents, this Christ was
the same being who had made the world, simple believers might rest
assured that everything which they received as a revelation through the
Old Testament and the teaching of Christianity was in agreement.
As regards this Christ, however, if one followed the Gnostics, one
could not take seriously what Christian tradition had to communicate
concerning his life upon earth. Take, for example, the death on the
cross. It was this, according to the common belief of the Church, that
brought salvation to mankind; but according to the Gnostics another
person, an ordinary man, must be supposed to have suffered, or the body
of Christ was merely a phantom figure. In this way, the whole
foundation of the faith of the Church crumbled to pieces. It was of the
highest importance to receive the assurance that it really was the
redeemer himself who was concerned in all the records of the Gospel
story.
And this was all the more important, because the existence of the
Church at that time was very seriously endangered. On the one side, the
Gnostics attracted a large following. On the other, the old habit of
worshipping the pagan deities and a continued intercourse with
relatives and friends who had remained pagan, enticed people back to
the old beliefs. Above all, however, the persecutions of Christians,
which from the beginning of the second century followed upon one
another all too quickly, made it really difficult for the young
community to persist in its faith. And though we, at the present time,
reject so much that was at that time accounted a necessary part of
Christianity, and has perhaps been clung to with a tenacity which may
be vexatious to us, yet, in judging past periods, we ought never to
forget one thing, that something which we can dispense with to-day may
at an earlier date have been in dispensable because people had not
anything better to cling to, and that perhaps we might not have had
Christianity as a whole to-day if in time of danger it had not been
kept intact by means which we should no longer think of using. Had the
martyrs, for example those at Lyons in the year 177, not cherished so
firmly the conviction that God would bring together from the ocean
every particle of the ashes of their burnt bodies, which the Romans
scattered in the Rhone in mockery of their faith, and so at the
resurrection would completely reunite their bodies with the old shapes,
who can say whether they would have endured their terrible tortures
with that firmness which made their persecutors on the very next day
adopt the same faith and themselves go to death on its behalf?
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13. JN.'S LEANING TO THE TEACHING OF THE CHURCH.
When the author of the Fourth Gospel takes up another position,
different from that of the Gnostics and more akin to the faith of the
Church, arid yet in many points agrees with them we would like much to
know whether this mingling is due entirely to a want of clearness or
whether it admits of a more satisfactory explanation. At that time,
when so many competing ideas were brought to the notice of the
individual, it is not inconceivable that many persons might appropriate
something of one and some thing of another, without being able really
to blend the two. Many other persons, however, will have attached
themselves entirely to the one at first, and afterwards have had a
leaning to the other, without having given up everything that at an
earlier time they had accepted as true. We may suppose the author of
our Gospel to have been in this position. Not that he was in process of
passing from the teaching of the Church to Gnosticism, but, on the
contrary, of passing from Gnosticism to the teaching of the Church.
This, of course, is merely a conjecture. It, however, strikes us as
probable, because we may presume that the Gnostic ideas would be more
prominent and not so strongly combated if the author had been by way of
attaching himself to them. Instead of this, they appear, in the main,
sporadically; and are withdrawn or made harmless by other utterances.
If this consideration be correct, the easiest explanation would be that
the author was attached to the Gnostic ideas at an earlier date, and at
the time he wrote had not succeeded in banishing them entirely from his
mind, but to all intents and purposes had now passed beyond them to
where he now stands.
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CONCLUSION.
There still remain many important ideas in the Fourth Gospel that would
repay discussion. But we cannot take them up here. In Part II. of this
book we shall discuss them from a new point of view.
We trust that readers who have followed us so far will also give their
attention to the briefer investigations to be undertaken there. Not
only have we still to deal with the whole question, when and by whom
the Fourth Gospel was really composed--which we shall deal with in
connection with the same question as regards the three Epistles and the
"Revelation" of Jn.--but we propose to add a few words as to the value
of these remarkable writings for the time of their authors and for all
times.
Whoever desires to know no more than this, whether the Fourth Gospel
gives us correct knowledge of the Life of Jesus, might stop at this
point. He would then throw the Gospel on one side like an instrument
which for any definite purpose is useless. But a book is not a mere
instrument. It is the work of some man who, if he does not dryly add
one note to another without being really interested in his work,
introduces into it, perhaps unconsciously, but to a more delicate mind
unmistakably, a part of his own soul. And from what we have already
said it should be clear that, in the case of the Fourth Evangelist,
this was so to a quite specially high degree. The more we have so far
found him to be wrong, when he differs from the Synoptics, the more
anxious we become to read his soul, by finding out the ideas and needs
by which he was actuated, and to search lovingly for what it is that
exercises such undeniable power of attraction over even the strictest
of his critics.
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