CHAPTER V.
SPIRIT AND VALUE OF THE GOSPEL AND EPISTLES OF JOHN.
THE task that remains is the most attractive of all. We have to enter
wholeheartedly into the spirit of the other four Johannine writings,
and to try to realise their importance, on the one hand for their own
time, and on the other for all times. When we did this in the case of
the Apocalypse, we could only speak with a good deal of reserve; as
regards these other writings, however, we are in a much more favourable
position, especially as regards the Gospel and the First Epistle. At
this point we assume, of course, that the reader is acquainted with all
that we have said at the close of the first part of this book (pp.
151-165) about the intellectual currents observable in the Fourth
Gospel.
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1. ADMISSION OF THE GENTILES INTO THE CHRISTIAN BODY.
A consideration of the question whether the Gentiles also ought to be
encouraged to become Christians will perhaps be the clearest way of
showing that, of all the writings of the New Testament, the Fourth
Gospel marks the greatest step forward.
At first Jesus did not think of extending to the Gentiles the benefits
of his work (p. 34 f.), and he forbade his disciples to undertake
mission work amongst them, or even among the Samaritans; though perhaps
the reason was simply that he wished the preaching of salvation to
reach, at any rate, all the members of his own race before the end of
the world, which he imagined to be quite near (Mt. x. 5 f. 23). For a
Gentile was no less capable than a Jew of meeting the requirements for
entrance into the kingdom of God, a longing for God, humility,
compassion, purity of heart (Mt. v. 3-9); and in this matter Paul has
grasped the inmost thought of Jesus more correctly than the original
apostles. These leave Paul and his associates to go on a mission to the
Gentiles, while they address themselves solely to the Jews (p. 187);
and Paul has to fight hard for the principle that the Gentiles do not
need first to become Jews and to accept circumcision and the whole of
the Jewish Law before they can become Christians (Gal. ii. 1-10; Acts
xv. 1, 5). In the Apocalypse only Jews (12,000 from each of the twelve
tribes) receive the seal on the fore head which protects them against
the great tribulations of the last days before the end of the world
(vii. 1-8); and it is only in a section added later (vii. 9-17) that
the seer sees before the throne of God a numberless crowd of all
peoples who have come there, because they have steadfastly endured the
great persecution of the Christians.
In the Fourth Gospel, however, the admission of Gentiles to
Christianity is quite a matter of course. When Greeks come near to
Jesus and wish to meet him, he sees in their coming the beginning of
the hour in which he will be glorified, that is to say, exalted to
heaven (xii. 20-23). This story, which at an earlier point in our
discussion (p. 78) seemed very curious, is now intelligible. The last
and greatest goal of Jesus earthly message was the admission of the
Gentiles to Christianity. And in x. 16 he says: "And other sheep I
have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring . . . and they
shall become one flock, one shepherd." Only such views as these could
make Christianity a world-religion.
For the same purpose again it was important that it should not seem to
be dangerous to the State. In the case of Paul, the Acts of the
Apostles always represents the Roman officials as recognising that it
did not really threaten the State (xviii. 14 f.; xxiii. 29; xxv. 18 f.;
cp. xix. 37; xxvi. 31 f.). In the Third Gospel, the same author, going
beyond Mk. and Mt., tells us that Pilate declared three times that he
found no fault in Jesus (xxiii. 4, 14 f., 22). Jn. emphasises this
still more (xviii. 28-xix. 16) and adds, moreover, that in the course
of his trial Jesus expressly said that his kingdom was not of this
world (xviii. 36).
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2. STRUGGLE WITH THE JEWS.
If Christianity was to become a world-religion, it had to break away
more and more from Judaism; and this cer tainly could not be done
without a struggle. The great majority of the Jews from the time of the
Apostle Paul had already adopted a hostile attitude towards
Christianity: this would make the Christians despise them all the more.
The way in which Jesus is represented as speaking of the Jews, the Law,
the feasts of the Jews, as matters of utter indifference to him, and
which to us seems inconceivable (p. 15 f.), entirely harmonises with
the ideas of Christians in the second century, who were for the most
part Gentiles by birth, and is most appropriate if the Evangelist was
alive at the time of the rising of Bar Cochba (p. 200 f.). When he
represents Jesus as being continually engaged in controversies with the
Jews, all those points are touched upon which were in question between
Christians and Jews in the second century: Jesus is really the Son of
God; the Jews refusal to believe this is simply due to obstinacy, &c.
In this way, the author answers all the needs of his time. We must
leave the question whether there were also followers of John the
Baptist to be refuted, and whether it is against these that proof is
offered of the great superiority of Jesus (p. 80).
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3. APPRECIATION OF MONTANISM AND GNOSTICISM.
We see more clearly how the author appreciates those intellectual
movements of his age with which he feels that he him self has something
in common. He prepared the way even for Montanus of Phrygia and his
followers, who after the year 156 came forward with new prophecies and
declared that this age of theirs, the age of the Holy Spirit which
filled them, represented a higher level compared with the time in which
Jesus lived, by making Jesus himself say in Jn. xvi. 12 f., that the
disciples could not at the time understand many other things which he
had to say to them, but that after his death the Holy Spirit would come
and lead them into all truth.
But it was, in particular, the captivating ideas of Gnosticism that the
Fourth Evangelist appropriated (pp. 152 f. 158-160). He did a great
service to his age by showing that one could be a thinker, appreciate
knowledge, stand in the midst of a stream of thoroughly intellectual
movements, and yet remain a faithful son of the Church. In this way, we
may presume, he contributed not a little to keep Christians from
splitting into two classes having hardly any connecting link, the
intellectual aristocracy of the Gnostics and simple believers. In face
of mutual feuds and of persecution from without, such cleavage might
have endangered the continued existence of Christianity altogether. The
Second and Third Epistles of John, which aimed at keeping the
communities closely knit together by means of the authority of the
Church, also deserve part of the credit for having warded off this
danger. To us the effort may not seem, very exalted or even very
beautiful: but, nevertheless, it was productive of good.
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4. IDEAS ABOUT THE STATE AFTER DEATH.
The Fourth Evangelist, by adopting the view that the visible world is
only a perishable copy of the invisible, at the same time introduced a
revolution in the ideas about the state after death, the results of
which have been felt even down to the present time. The Old Testament,
and with it Jesus and the whole of primitive Christendom, imagined a
future state of happiness upon earth. Even in the Apocalypse (xxi. 1
f.), we read of the New Jerusalem descending from heaven upon a
renovated earth.
Only in a few passages does Paul express the idea (2 Cor. v. 1-8; Phil.
i. 23) that the faithful immediately after their death will come to
Christ in heaven. It is not until we turn to the Epistle to the Hebrews
(xii. 27 f.) that we find the teaching that at the end of things the
earth will pass away entirely and only the heavens remain; there, in
the heavenly Jerusalem, which will not descend upon earth, is also the
place where Christians will enjoy eternal happiness (xii. 22 f.). But
whereas this truth is not easily to be discovered in the Epistle to the
Hebrews, in Jn. it is expressed with absolute clearness (xiv. 2): "in
my Father's house are many mansions. . . I go," by being exalted to
heaven, "to prepare a place for you."
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5. JESUS THE SON OF GOD AND LOGOS IN HEAVEN.
But the Fourth Evangelist exercised the greatest influence by adopting
to some extent the view of the world held by the great thinkers of his
age and applying it to the Person of Jesus. Paul and those who followed
him (pp. 144-146) had already ascribed to Jesus a life with God in
heaven before his descent upon earth, and even a share in the creation
of the world; but Jn. is the first to start clearly with the idea that
Jesus was the Logos and that without him God could have produced no
effect upon the world, because He, being perfectly good, was obliged
without question to keep at a distance from the world which was
thoroughly evil. The idea that Jesus was begotten of God as a human son
is begotten by his human father, an idea which Paul and those who
followed him had given expression to before Jn., must of itself have
helped very much to make Gentiles familiar with Jesus from the start
and favourably disposed towards his worship, for they knew of and
worshipped so many deities who were begotten by a god. But the
statement was truly a greater one when it could be said that the Logos,
whose work the deepest thinkers had found to be necessary if the divine
influence was to come into the world, was no other than Jesus. While
the conception of Jesus as a Son of God might make an impression on the
lower classes among the Gentiles, that of Jesus as the Logos would
attract the people of culture. And, as a matter of fact, it was very
important that Christianity should not always remain a religion merely
for uncultured and uninfluential people. In the form in which the
Fourth Gospel presented it, it was capable of satisfying the highest
demands of the age. Here attention was no longer paid to the fact that
this Jesus in whom people were to believe was a Jew--a fact which might
have greatly repelled many Gentiles--for he is described in such a way
as to make him quite superior to everything Jewish. And so Jn., even
more than Paul, has brought it about that Jesus should be recognised as
being what he was--without Jesus himself thinking the idea out--the
Saviour of the world.
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6. EMPHASIS ON THE CHURCH.
True, there is another side to this picture. There was now no longer
any other way of attaining to blessedness than by believing in Jesus.
He himself must now be represented as continually requiring people to
believe in him--a request which the Jesus of the Synoptics made so
seldom. The branches must abide in the vine (by which Jesus means
himself), otherwise they will wither. "Apart from me ye can do nothing"
(xv. 4 f.). But this means at the same time that one must be a member
of the Church and submit to the ordinances of the Church; for example,
to those of the Second Epistle of John (verse 10 f.), which forbids one
to receive Christian brethren who hold different doctrines, or even to
greet them. People are now divided into those who are in communion with
the Church and are blessed, and those who are outside and are not; and
the fact that one belongs to the Church is apt, moreover, to depend
more on faith than on that doing of the will of God which Jesus
required so continually in the Synoptics. On the other hand, the
feeling that one is one of the elect leads only too readily to
presumption; the power which is associated with ecclesiastical
officialism leads to domination, and even, in certain circumstances, to
mercenariness (1 Pet. v. 2; 1 Tim. iii. 8).
Nevertheless, it was necessary to establish a Church communion. The
desire to enjoy a common religious possession with people of a like
mind cannot be repressed. Moreover, such communion is a powerful
support to the individual, whether he comes to be distressed by doubts,
is in trouble, or is in danger of falling into sin. Institutions which
serve this purpose, whatever dangers may lurk in them, must be
considered instruments of progress.
To all intents and purposes, the Fourth Evangelist never speaks of such
institutions (xxi. 15-17 is by a later writer; see p. 186 f.). He has
no interest whatever in episcopal authority and such like things. Had
he had, it would have been a simple matter to make Jesus say something
more than he does in xx. 21-23 about the privileges of the Apostles.
His idea of the Church is still thoroughly ideal a community with
Christ alone as its head. Nevertheless, we should make a great mistake
if we were to think that he is indifferent to the Church. Every one who
wishes to be blessed must share the Church's belief in Jesus; he who
does not share it is already judged (iii. 18). He who wishes to be a
shepherd of the Church must come in to the sheep through the door,
which is Jesus himself, that is to say, through faith in him (x. 7-9;
see p. 135). Indeed, according to the one point of view, with which, it
is true, we shall soon have to contrast another, no man can have life
in him unless he partakes of the Supper (vi. 51b-56).
But beyond question the author, while emphasising these thoughts, does
so in moderation. In the First Epistle of John, the believer's
consciousness that he comes from God, possesses full knowledge, and is
free from sin (iv. 4, 6; ii. 20 f., 27; iii. 9; v. 18 by the side of i.
8-ii. 2: "if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus),
certainly goes very far; but it is due to a connection with Gnosticism,
more than to the idea that one belongs to the Church. Both authors
never forget that it is the individual who must have the faith and keep
the commandments of God; they do not say that, because he is a member
of the Church, any demand which should really be required of him will
be lessened. If, on the one hand, the Church is a blessing, and so far
as it is an evil, on the other hand, is a necessary evil, we shall have
to admit that only the Second and Third Epistles of Jn. transgress the
limits of what has to be recognised as an appropriate move forward.
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7. JESUS AS A DIVINE BEING UPON EARTH.
The really dangerous aspect of the matter when, by describing Jesus as
the Son of God and the Logos, people easily induced the Gentiles to
believe in him, is seen in another direction. They had to carry this
description through. It had to be shown in detail how be walked on
earth as a divine being, simply proclaiming his high rank, doing the
greatest miracles for his own glorification, and for that reason
keeping away from the grave of Lazarus for two days, while at the same
time an effort had to be made to maintain that he was really a man. We
need not stop again to explain how difficult it is for the mind to
imagine this figure, or how hard it is for the religious sentiment to
accept it. Even if it were applied to the Jesus of the Synoptics, that
would be a hard saying: "I am the way and the truth and the life; no
man cometh unto the Father but by me" (xiv. 6). People without number
have either never had an opportunity of hearing about him, or in spite
of knowing of him, hold to another religion or to a way of thinking
which cannot ascribe any merits to some mediator who has appeared at
some previous date; and yet, as a matter of fact, they display as much
humility, love, and fidelity to God as the many Christians who have
devoted themselves to the faith of the Church. But how much harder is
the saying, when it is the Jesus of the Fourth Gospel in whom one must
believe unconditionally if one wishes to enter into communion with God!
For centuries this demand has been made and complied with; and the
books of history suggest rarely to some extent how many have been the
doubts, and how great has been the torture of souls. To-day, in ever
widening circles, people resolutely refuse to comply with it. And since
this has happened, it may be considered fortunate that Jn. has made the
demand so emphatically. For as a result of it we have been made to
decide that no further move can be made in his direction, and that we
must go back to the Synoptics and try to find in their account
and--with their own guidance--in the background of their account, the
figure of Jesus as he really existed.
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8. WHY DID JN. WRITE A GOSPEL?
But why did this person write a Gospel? We are sure that the question
has long ago occurred to many of our readers. But what other kind of
book should he have written? A treatise, or a letter like the First
Epistle of Jn. as found in our Bible? What does this contain? Hardly
anything but general maxims: we must love God, we must shun false
teachers. Now the Gospel also contains such maxims: God is Spirit; a
man must be born from above (iv. 24, iii. 3), and so forth. But
Christianity does not purpose to be a system of Wisdom, based upon
theory; it is a religion which appeals to Jesus. Therefore in a book
which is to make an impression he must be represented as coming forward
and saying: "a new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one
another;" "I am the Light of the world;" "I am the Bread of Life;" "I
am the Resurrection and the Life" (xiii. 34; viii. 12; vi. 35; xi. 25).
At Jesus hand the Christians, and with them the Fourth Evangelist,
wished to receive no less than all that they thought themselves
entitled to hope for. And, similarly, if all the blessings which still
make Christianity precious to us at the present day were to be brought
into the world of the Gentiles, it was of all things necessary that
Jesus should be recognised by them; it was necessary therefore to
record his acts, especially if the Gnostics introduced the danger of
resolving his earthly life into a mere phantom existence (p. 150).
And it was necessary to be able to describe everything as being as
sublime as possible. It would not do to stop short at the teaching of
Paul, that Jesus laid aside his divine attributes before he came down
from heaven. If he ever possessed them, he must actually reveal them,
and reveal them just where they could be seen by human eyes--upon
earth. This idea must necessarily have arisen sooner or later. The
higher the god, the more powerful his help; and Gentiles, who hitherto
had always turned from a god who was not sufficiently powerful to one
who was supposed to be more so, would only address themselves to a
powerful god. In fact, even if Jn. had refrained from writing a Gospel,
another person would have written one in the same sense, and we should
simply have to make our complaint elsewhere.
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9. SOME SPECIAL IDEAS OF ABIDING VALUE.
What we have said may have suggested that the Fourth Gospel with the
Epistles of Jn. met the needs of its age in a very successful way, but
hardly gives us anything that is of value for all times. Certainly, the
abiding worth of the Gospel is not to be found where people seek it,
and where the claim of the book itself, that it is a history of the
life and work of Jesus, implies that they must seek it. Nevertheless,
it is seen to be all the greater in other respects.
If the authors of the Gospel and the First Epistle were not thinkers in
the strict sense of the term, but have taken up philosophical ideas
simply in order to defend their own religion, yet by their
declarations, "God is Spirit" (Jn. iv. 24: that is to say, God is of
spiritual nature; not, God is a spirit) and "God is Love" (1 Jn. iv. 8,
16), they have expressed the nature of God with a precision which
cannot be surpassed. Their leaning towards Gnosticism has given them
other ideas of abiding value: a deep-rooted feeling of dependence upon
God (Jn. iii. 27; pp. 149 f., 159 f.), and that interest in knowledge
and truth which no religion can ever dispense with. And yet, at the
same time, the onesidedness to which this might lead is obviated by the
fact that what is made the test of knowing God is the keeping of his
commandments (1 Jn. ii. 3).
Equally deep is the truth hidden in the saying of Jesus (Jn. vii. 17):
"If any man willeth to do his will, he shall know of the teaching,
whether it be of God, or whether I speak from myself." The context
shows that by the will of God, which is to be kept, is meant, not the
command to live a moral life, but nothing else than that teaching of
Jesus which consists in declaring that people must believe in his
divine origin. They will find this to be true as soon as they humbly
accept it. Whether this statement is correct is another question. But
it carries us farther than its application in this passage. It contains
a criterion which is true in all cases and will show how man, to whom
the knowledge whether a thing is of God has been made so difficult, can
learn in another way, by trial, by a provisional submission of his
will, whether it will satisfy him to such an extent that he can rest
assured that it is divine.
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10. COMMUNION WITH GOD.
The First Epistle of John speaks in most beautiful language of what is
at the heart of religion, communion with God. In the Gospel, since it
is assumed that God is separated from the world, this communion is
always effected through Jesus, who says, for example, in xvii. 23, "I
in them, and thou in me"; according to the Epistle, man himself,
without a mediator, feels that God is in him and that he is in God (p.
209 f.). This mysticism, the intenseness of which remains, whether it
consist in a feeling of union with God, or with Christ, is something
peculiar to the Johannine Writings. Nowhere else in the New Testament
has it so profound a meaning; in most cases, indeed, the gap between
man and God, and man and Christ, is represented as being so great that
the writers cannot imagine any such union. In the Johannine Writings
the idea at the same time serves in a valuable way to counter balance
the emphasis laid on knowledge, and thus assigns the feelings the place
that rightfully belongs to them in religion.
The actualisation of this close communion with God, however, is found
in love of God to man and of man to God, and from these in turn flows
the love of the brethren for one another. Not even Paul in the
thirteenth chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians has written
anything more profound about love than that found in the First Epistle
of John (iii. 13-18; iv. 7-21). The original source of love, it tells
us, is God. Our love for Him and for the brethren only flow from His
love; but it should do so for the very reason that God first loved us.
It is of the very essence of love for God that we should keep those
commandments of His which are not hard when they are obeyed from love,
and that all fear of Him should vanish. In fact, though God is
originally unknown, through our love to the brethren, he becomes
perceptible as one who is present in our souls. And the Fourth
Evangelist could not have summarised the life-work of Jesus more
appropriately than he does when he makes him say (xiii. 34 f .): "A new
commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another. . . . By this
shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to
another." In this way, as a matter of fact, he turns from his great
doctrines about Jesus dignity and his derivation from God, to the
simplest fact which the Synoptics tell us about him.
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11. REDEMPTION THROUGH JESUS.
He does this again, though with a different result, in what he says
about the redemption brought by Jesus. According to the Synoptics,
Jesus emancipated (redeemed) those who attached themselves to him from
two kinds of illusion and from two kinds of sin: from the illusions of
a religion of fear, and of a religion of pretences, as it is
represented in the parable in Lk. (xviii. 9-14) by the Pharisee as
distinguished from the publican, and from the sins of selfishness and
worldliness (Mt. xvi. 25 f.). He does so by proclaiming his teaching,
by illustrating it by his own example, and by his death, which proves
that he is ready not merely to come forward and champion his cause, but
even to die for it. Remission of guilt, forgiveness of sins, was
included in this emancipation from the religion of fear. He is not in
the least aware that his death is required in order that God may be
merciful out of consideration for the sacrifice. When he promises the
spiritually poor, the meek, the merciful, those who do God's will, and
those who become like children, that they shall enjoy the Kingdom of
Heaven, no previous conditions are laid down (Mt. v. 3-9; vii. 21;
xviii. 3); when in the parable in Lk. (xv. 11-32) the lost son returns
home penitent, his father goes to meet him, falls on his neck and
kisses him without asking whether any one has offered a sacrifice for
him; while Jesus is still present amongst his followers, he teaches
them to pray "Forgive us our sins," and comforts them with the words,
"Come unto me, all ye that are weary and heavy-laden, and I will
refresh you" (Mt. vi. 12; xi. 28). Picture to yourself a scene in which
some poor child of man, burdened with guilt, casts himself at Jesus'
feet and asks that he may realise this promise. Had Jesus thought his
own death necessary before forgiveness of sin could be realised, he
would have been obliged to say to him: "No, no, I did not mean that;
you must wait until I have died for you on the cross." And yet before
the declaration in Mt. xi. 28 he was silent about it!
On the last evening of his life, Jesus said: "this is my body;" "this
is my blood of the covenant, which is shed for many" (Mk. xiv. 22-24).
But only Mt. tells us that he added "for forgiveness of sins;" and in
the words, which have been thought so sacred, and moreover from the
first have been repeated at every celebration of the Supper, we may be
certain, nothing was omitted. On the other hand, additions might
certainly be made; the person who officiated at the celebration would
first express something as his own idea, and then at a later date this
would be wrongly regarded as a saying of Jesus (we have a very clear
example in the introductory words, "take," "eat," in Mt., of which Mk.
has only one, and Paul, in 1 Cor. xi. 24, and Lk. neither).
In what sense Jesus thought of shedding his blood for many, we can
easily realise when we remember that he was reclining at the paschal
meal (pp. 117-130). God had promised to pass by those houses, the doors
of which were smeared with the blood of the Paschal lamb, when on the
night before the Exodus of the Israelites with Moses from Egypt, he
would kill all the first-born (Exod. xii. 7, 12 f.; 21-27). The lamb,
therefore, had to die that others might be spared from death. In like
manner, Jesus will give his life to the fury of the enemy, that his
followers, whose lives would otherwise have been equally threatened,
might escape, since after their Master's death people would think them
harmless. We see then that he certainly wished to make his death a
sacrifice, not, however, in order that they might have forgiveness of
sins, but that they might be preserved from misfortune, and from a
misfortune which they did not deserve. [8] And if he added further,
that his blood was the blood of a covenant, his idea was that he was
again knitting them closely to God by a covenant, and that in the Old
Testament whenever such a covenant was made a sacrificial victim was
slain (Jer. xxxiv. 18; Gen. xv. 10, 17 f.; Exod. xxiv. 3-8). Here again
there is no idea of a sacrifice for sin.
And the only other passage in the Synoptics in which Jesus attaches
importance to his death for the salvation of men, can be understood in
the same way as the paschal sacrifice: "for verily the Son of Man came
not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a
ransom for many" (Mk. x. 45 = Mt. xx. 28), that is to say, that they
might be spared from the danger of themselves falling victims to
persecution. Instead of the Greek word "ransom," Jesus, who spoke
Aramaic, may very well have used a word which simply meant "an
instrument of escape." If, however, a sacrifice for the forgiveness of
sins were really intended, we should be compelled to suspect that the
concluding words ("and to give his life" . . .) are a later addition
based upon an idea of the Apostle Paul, since they would be in
contradiction with all that we have just found in the Synoptics. As far
as the context is concerned, they can be dispensed with at once, and
are not found in Lk. (xxii. 27) where the introductory words (in a
somewhat different version) occur.
Paul or some of his predecessors (1 Cor. xv. 3), with their strictly
Jewish way of thinking, introduced into Christianity the idea that God
was so angry with men for their sins that he had decreed the eternal
destruction of all of them, and could only have mercy upon them if his
own son died on the cross as a sacrifice on their behalf. In doing so,
according to the opinion of Paul, Jesus took upon him the punishment of
death which originally men themselves deserved; but he took it upon him
as one who was guilt less, and therefore his offering became a
sin-offering to God. This view has been held fast to in Church doctrine
down to the present day, regardless of the fact that it is not found at
all in the Synoptics, and only sporadically in the Fourth Gospel (p.
209), and that in the New Testament the purpose of Jesus' death is
described in more than twenty different ways, [9] which would not
certainly have been the case if people had known of one generally satis
factory explanation.
If, as the Fourth Gospel represents, Jesus is the Logos, it cannot have
been through his death that he first brought redemption. He is supposed
to bring the world into conformity with God's will, since God himself
was obliged to avoid contact with it. This he could only do by his own
activity, and so, when upon earth, by his works and preaching.
According to Jn., he may be compared especially with the light which
shines upon the world; and so the only important question is whether
people turn to him or away from him (iii. 19-21; i. 4-13). If they do
the former (that is to say, as Jn. puts it, believe in him), they are
quit of sin from that hour. But this brings us at once face to face
with a character which is familiar to us from the Synoptics. In the
Synoptics also Jesus brings salvation by his words and works, not by
his death; and declares that people's sins are forgiven at once,
wherever he finds the right frame of mind (Mk. ii. 5, 9; Lk. vii. 47
f.).
May we suppose then that Jn. here preserves a correct recollection of
the Life of Jesus? Certainly not. He only arrives at this agreement
with the Synoptics after making an extraordinarily roundabout journey.
Paul, influenced by a kind of piety which was very conscientious, and
for that reason very punctilious, in his teaching about the sacrificial
death of Jesus introduced foreign matter into the Gospel. Jn., though
in a tacit and quiet way, removes it again. Had he remembered that it
was not originally part of the Gospel, he would have omitted it
altogether, whereas, as a matter of fact, he uses it several times (i.
29, 36; on xi. 50-52; xvii. 19b, see pp. 271, 272 f.). It is not used
by him in other places, simply because it could not easily be adapted
to the other new matter which he felt obliged of his own accord to
introduce into the Gospel of Jesus, we mean to the doctrine that Jesus
was the Logos. To this doctrine itself he had only been led by that
other mistake made by Paul when he supposed that Jesus was begotten as
the Son of God before the creation of the world, and had existed in
heaven down to the time of his descent upon earth. The idea that he was
the Logos only carries us one step beyond this teaching. And yet it is
this alone that gives rise to the doctrine that Jesus brought
redemption, not by his death, but by his appearance upon earth. Thus we
have here an exemplification of the great law of intellectual progress,
that very often one truth proceeds from another only by the pathway of
error. Jn. only succeeded in arriving at the truth which already
existed in the Life of Jesus, by adopting the second of Paul's mistakes
and carrying it farther.
We ourselves, nevertheless, have reason to rejoice at the result. We no
longer find in Jn. any of Paul's laborious arguments to prove that the
Jewish Law has ceased to be binding upon Christians, and that the
sinner is justified, that is to say, is declared righteous by God,
through faith. If God is to declare any one righteous, he must be
represented as a judge, and must as such examine one's works; and the
faith which the sinner has merely to exhibit will not be a work, but
the opposite of any kind of service: it must be simply trust, purely
the opening of the hand to receive a gift from God--and this, moreover,
is what it really is. Paul himself in truth found it very difficult to
preserve intact the most deeply-rooted feature of this kind of faith,
for with him faith always involved the acceptance as unimpeachably true
of two facts of the past which criticism might only too easily shatter,
and as a matter of fact has shattered altogether. The first is that
Jesus suffered death for the purpose of blotting out the sins of
mankind; the second that he rose from the dead after three days.
Now, the latter Jn. also requires us to believe, that is to say, to
accept as true; but the faith in Jesus person which Jn. asks
for--although it also includes acceptance of the truth of his heavenly
origin--consists again, exactly as it does in the Synoptics, simply in
feeling oneself drawn to him, in confiding in him, in recognising him
as one's redeemer. Similarly--in place of the above-noted difficulties
in Paul's teaching about justification by faith--in the Johannine
writings everything has once more become so simple that the important
matter is again, just as in the Synoptics, to do the will of God or
Jesus, concerning which especially the First Epistle of John speaks in
such beautiful language (ii. 3 f., iii. 22, 24, v. 3 f.; Jn. viii. 51,
xiv. 21, xv. 10, 14). In fact, when Jesus washes his disciples' feet he
speaks of it simply as an example which he is giving them (xiii. 14
f.), an idea, for a parallel to which we shall search in vain in many
writings of the New Testament. If the roundabout way by which the
author arrives at the teaching that Jesus was the Logos, and in the
later course of which this beautiful language has all taken shape,
represents doctrines which are as unacceptable to us now as they were
before; if Jesus' washing of the disciples' feet on the last evening of
his life, about which the Synoptics know nothing, remains now, as much
as before, something which did not happen; yet the result has been that
the working-out of those ideas current amongst Christians of the time
which so often took people farther and farther away from the original
form of Christianity, leads us back in several main points to its
primitive simplicity, and so to what at the present time is the only
form that can satisfy us.
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[8] On this see a note by the editor of the present series, and my
reply to it, Appendix, pp. 261-269.
[9] For further explanation, see Appendix, pp. 270-277.
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12. SPIRITUALISING OF MATERIALISTIC IDEAS.
But the Fourth Gospel is most distinctly modern when it substitutes for
the materialistic and literally understood ideas of the earliest
Christians, the spiritual interpretations which were already implied in
them without people being conscious of the fact. Usually people have no
idea how many of the liberal ideas of the present may be found in this
Gospel. As regards miracles, we have already decided, that they are
only emphatically declared to be real events from one point of view,
but that from another standpoint they are regarded purely as symbolical
descriptions of profound truths (pp. 95-100, 105 f., 109); and those
who are no longer disposed to use them as buttresses of the Christian
faith need only appeal to the words which Jesus addressed to Thomas
(xx. 29): "blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed."
The doctrine of the Trinity, which represents that from eternity
Father, Son, and Spirit have existed as three divine Persons, and yet
only as one divine substance, cannot by any means be maintained in face
of Jn.'s statement (vii. 39): "the Spirit did not yet exist, because
Jesus was not yet (by his exaltation to heaven) glorified." The belief
that prevailed throughout the whole of the first century, that Jesus
would come back from heaven to establish the blessed kingdom of the
last days, has, in the mind of Jn., resolved itself into the idea that
the Holy Spirit, though of course at a quite different time, will come
into the hearts of believers. It is all the same to Jn. whether he says
that Jesus will come again (xiv. 3, 18, 28; xvi. 22), or that the Holy
Spirit will come because God or Jesus will send it (xiv. 16 f., 26; xv.
26; xvi. 7). The Jesus who has been exalted to heaven is for Jn., that
is to say, as he was already for Paul (2 Cor. iii. 17), this Spirit;
and this again is the reason why the Holy Spirit does not exist before
Jesus ascension.
It was generally expected by the early Christians that Jesus second
coming from heaven would be the signal for a bodily resurrection and
for the judgment to be held before the throne of God upon all mankind;
and that eternal life would then begin. In Jn., on the other hand, the
judgment takes place during life, when a distinction is drawn between
men, and the one section turns towards Jesus, the light which streams
upon the world, while the other turns away from him (iii. 19-21). This
very moment marks the be ginning of eternal life for such as believe in
him or acknowledge God and Jesus; and it is a life which can never be
interrupted by the death of the body, and so does not need to be
introduced by a resurrection of the body. Compare xi. 25 f.; xvii. 3,
and particularly v. 24: "He that heareth my word, and believeth him
that sent me, hath eternal life, and cometh not into judgment, but hath
passed (already) out of death into life." In fact, participation in the
Supper, which according to vi. 51b-56 seems so essential, is made a
matter which at bottom is of no importance by the concluding words in
vi. 63: "It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing;
the words that I have spoken unto you are spirit, and are life." In
fact, we can hardly conceive of the matter in a more modern way. And
obviously it is not merely the Supper that is stripped of its
importance by these words.
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13. FINAL APPRECIATION.
We have thus produced ample evidence to show that, although we cannot
admit the claim of the Fourth Gospel to be regarded as a record of the
life of Jesus, it deserves the highest consideration at the present
time when it is viewed as a book dealing with the essence of
Christianity. So long as it is read with the idea of finding each
particular statement about Jesus' works and discourses to be correct,
it cannot be enjoyed. But when this idea is abandoned, and when, in
addition, Jesus continual claim upon people to believe in his heavenly
origin is set aside, when therefore attention is given only to the
thoughts which he is made to express, or when one reads attentively the
First Epistle of John, one is impressed by a profundity of thought and
feeling, the equal of which cannot easily be found anywhere else in the
New Testament.
We may be sure that from the experience of his own soul he knew the
value of the benefits offered by religion. He is aware that the
religious man has light to illuminate his path (xii. 35), and that he
possesses truth--truth which does not merely preserve him from error,
but, more than that, delivers him from sin and leads him to holiness
(viii. 32-35; xvii. 17-19). He knows of that faith which means
resigning one's ego entirely to a higher personality; he knows of that
depth of meaning imparted to life which implies that this truly begins
at the moment of faith's awakening and cannot be interrupted by the
death of the body; he knows of a spring of living water in his soul
(iv. 14) and of the true bread from heaven which lasts for the life
eternal (vi. 27, 32); he knows of a peace which the world cannot give
(xiv. 27; xvi. 33), and of perfect joy (xv. 11; xvii. 13). In a word,
he knows what it is to feel oneself a child of God and a friend of
one's Master, instead of a slave who does not know what his Master is
doing (xv. 14 f.); he knows what it is for a man to feel at one with
God and with his Saviour.
For all that constituted his religious aspirations he now found
satisfaction in Christianity. But to him this means that he found it in
the person of Jesus. For, in addition to all that we have mentioned, he
knew something else: that no man has ever seen God, that none can
receive any thing unless it be given from heaven, and that one must be
chosen and cannot be the chooser of his own Saviour (i. 18; iii. 27;
xv. 16). Consequently he needed revelation, and, sharing as he did the
ideas of the age in which he lived, he could only conceive of this
being imparted by a divine being who came down from heaven, proclaimed
all truth, and brought every kind of salvation. The result is he has
sketched the Jesus of his own mind in such a way that we men of to-day
are often no longer able to find in him the true revelation. And yet in
spite of this we can understand the way in which this deeply religious
man came to build up this faith of his, In his Gospel we can still
discover some very homely statements about Jesus, which show how at
first a person's attention might have been attracted to him simply as a
remarkable phenomenon: "never man so spake" (vii. 46); "he that
speaketh from himself seeketh his own glory, but he that seeketh the
glory of him that sent him, the same is true, and no unrighteousness is
in him" (vii. 18); "I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd layeth
down his life for the sheep" (x. 11). But the author having by such
observations as these, which are really appropriate to the historical
Jesus, gained confidence in Jesus, his longing for revelation would of
itself carry him farther so that he could accept everything else that
was recorded of this same Jesus and all those ideas that necessarily
seemed to him to be presupposed if in his own person he represented a
perfect revelation of God. [10]
This again leads us to the thought that the author of the Fourth Gospel
deserves credit for wishing to ascribe to Jesus all the sublime
thoughts that he had made his own, especially when we remember that
people of other ages, the present not excepted, have in the same way
been only too ready to find in Jesus all that at any time has seemed to
them truest and best in religion, We can understand now how it is that
the author sees in this Jesus, and in him alone, the way to God, the
truth and the life (xiv. 6); we can understand the confidence with
which he can make him say, "whosoever drinketh of the water that I
shall give him shall never thirst" (iv. 14), or "if a man keep my word,
he shall never see death" (viii. 51). And one will be glad to be able
to say after him, though the words were addressed to another kind of
Jesus, "Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life"
(vi. 68).
At the same time he has not shut his eyes to the truth that Christian
knowledge needed to make progress. After the death of Jesus, the Holy
Spirit is to guide the disciples into all truth (xvi. 13). We may
certainly suppose that the Evangelist himself felt that he was
receiving some of this guidance when he advanced so far beyond his
predecessors in his effort to spiritualise Christianity. In fact, he
has contributed very greatly towards establishing the truth of those
words which in his Gospel (iv. 23 f.) Jesus addresses to the woman of
Samaria: "the hour cometh and now is (already) when the true
worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth . . . God is
Spirit, and they that worship him must worship in spirit and truth."
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[10] In the suggestion here offered, which of course is not meant to be
anything more than a suggestion, we have deliberately assumed that when
the Fourth Evangelist devoted himself to Christianity he was of mature
age. The growth of his ideas could be explained with very much greater
simplicity if we might suppose that he had been educated in
Christianity from the days of his youth.
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