Page:EB1911 - Volume 15.djvu/481

Rh appeal to, and answer of, the Father occurs only for His followers’ sakes. In the garden Jesus here Himself goes forth to meet His captors, and these fall back upon the ground, on His revealing Himself as Jesus of Nazareth. The long scenes with Pilate culminate in the great sayings concerning His kingdom not being of this world and the object of this His coming being to bear witness to the truth, thus explaining how, though affirming kingship (Mark xv. 2) He could be innocent. In John He does not declare Himself Messiah before the Jewish Sanhedrin (Mark xiv. 61) but declares Himself supermundane regal witness to the truth before the Roman governor. The scene on Calvary differs as follows: In the Synoptists the soldiers divide His garments among them, casting lots (Mark xv. 24); in John they make four parts of them and cast lots concerning His seamless tunic, thus fulfilling the text, “They divided My garments among them and upon My vesture they cast lots”: the parallelism of Hebrew poetry, which twice describes one fact, being taken as witnessing to two, and the tunic doubtless symbolizing the unity of the Church, as in Philo the high priest’s seamless robe symbolizes the indivisible unity of the universe, expressive of the Logos (De ebrietate, xxi.). In the Synoptists, of His followers only women—the careful, seemingly exhaustive lists do not include His mother—remain, looking on “from afar” (Mark xv. 40); in John, His mother stands with the two other Marys and the beloved disciple beneath the cross, and “from that hour the disciple took her unto his own (house),” while in the older literature His mother does not appear in Jerusalem till just before Pentecost, and with “His brethren” (Acts i. 14). And John alone tells how the bones of the dead body remained unbroken, fulfilling the ordinance as to the paschal lamb (Exod. xii. 46) and how blood and water flow from His spear-pierced side: thus the Lamb “taketh away the sins of the world” by shedding His blood which “cleanseth us from every sin”; and “He cometh by water and blood,” historically at His baptism and crucifixion, and mystically to each faithful soul in baptism and the eucharist. The story of the risen Christ (xx.) shows dependence on and contrast to the Synoptic accounts. Its two halves have each a negative and a positive scene. The empty grave (1–10) and the apparition to the Magdalen (11–18) together correspond to the message brought by the women (Matt. xxviii. 1–10); and the apparition to the ten joyously believing apostles (19–23) and then to the sadly doubting Thomas (24–29) together correspond to Luke xxiv. 36–43, where the eleven apostles jointly receive one visit from the risen One, and both doubt and believe, mourn and rejoice.

The Johannine discourses reveal differences from the Synoptists so profound as to be admitted by all. Here Jesus, the Baptist and the writer speak so much alike that it is sometimes impossible to say where each speaker begins and ends: e.g. in iii. 27–30, 31–36. The speeches dwell upon Jesus’ person and work, as we shall find, with a didactic directness, philosophical terminology and denunciatory exclusiveness unmatched in the Synoptist sayings. “This is eternal life, that they may know Thee the only true God and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent” (xvii. 3), is part of the high-priestly prayer; yet Père Calmes, with the papal censor’s approbation, says, “It seems to us impossible not to admit that we have here dogmatic developments explicable rather by the evangelist’s habits of mind than by the actual words of Jesus.” “I have told you of earthly things and you believe not; how shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things?” (iii. 12), and “Ye are from beneath, I am from above” (viii. 23), give us a Plato-(Philo-) like upper, “true” world, and a lower, delusive world. “Ye shall die in your sins” (viii. 21); “ye are from your father the devil” (viii. 44); “I am the door of the sheep, all they that came before Me are thieves and robbers,” (x. 7, 8); “they have no excuse for their sin” (xv. 22)—contrast strongly with the yearning over Jerusalem: “The blood of Abel the just” and “the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias” (Matt. xxiii. 35–37; and “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” Luke xxiii. 34). And whilst the Synoptist speeches and actions stand in loose and natural relation to each other, the Johannine deeds so closely illustrate the sayings that each set everywhere supplements the other: the history itself here tends to become one long allegory. So with the woman at the well and “the living water”; the multiplication of the loaves and “the living Bread”; “I am the Light of the world” and the blind man’s cure; “I am the Resurrection and the Life” and the raising of Lazarus; indeed even with the Temple-cleansing and the prophecy as to His resurrection, Nicodemus’s night visit and “men loved the darkness rather than the light,” the cure of the inoperative paralytic and “My Father and I work hitherto,” the walking phantom-like upon the waters (John vi. 15–21; Mark vi. 49), and the declaration concerning the eucharist, “the spirit it is that quickeneth” (John vi. 63). Only some sixteen Synoptic sayings reappear here; but we are given some great new sayings full of the Synoptic spirit.

Characteristics and Object.—The book’s character results from the continuous operation of four great tendencies. There is everywhere a readiness to handle traditional, largely historical, materials with a sovereign freedom, controlled and limited by doctrinal convictions and devotional experiences alone. There is everywhere the mystic’s deep love for double, even treble meanings: e.g. the “again” in iii. 2, means, literally, “from the beginning,” to be physically born again; morally, to become as a little child; mystically, “from heaven, God,” to be spiritually renewed. “Judgment” ( ), in the popular sense, condemnation, a future act; in the mystical sense, discrimination, a present fact. There is everywhere the influence of certain central ideas, partly identical with, but largely developments of, those less reflectively operative in the Synoptists. Thus six great terms are characteristic of, or even special to, this Gospel. “The Only-Begotten” is most nearly reached by St Paul’s term “His own Son.” The “Word,” or “Logos,” is a term derived from Heracleitus of Ephesus and the Stoics, through the Alexandrian Jew Philo, but conceived here throughout as definitely personal. “The Light of the World” the Jesus-Logos here proclaims Himself to be; in the Synoptists He only declares His disciples to be such. “The Paraclete,” as in Philo, is a “helper,” “intercessor”; but in Philo he is the intelligible universe, whilst here He is a self-conscious Spirit. “Truth,” “the truth,” “to know,” have here a prominence and significance far beyond their Synoptic or even their Pauline use. And above all stand the uses of “Life,” “Eternal Life.” The living ever-working Father (vi. 57; v. 17) has a Logos in whom is Life (i. 4), an ever-working Son (v. 17), who declares Himself “the living Bread,” “the Resurrection and the Life,” “the Way, the Truth and the Life” (vi. 51; xi. 25; xiv. 16): so that Father and Son quicken whom they will (v. 21); the Father’s commandment is life everlasting, and Jesus’ words are spirit and life (xii. 50; vi. 63, 68). The term, already Synoptic, takes over here most of the connotations of the “Kingdom of God,” the standing Synoptic expression, which appears here only in iii. 3–5; xviii. 36. Note that the term “the Logos” is peculiar to the Apocalypse (xix. 13), and the prologue here; but that, as Light and Life, the Logos-conception is present throughout the book. And thus there is everywhere a striving to contemplate history sub specie aeternitatis and to englobe the successiveness of man in the simultaneity of God.

Narratives Peculiar to John.—Of his seven great symbolical, doctrinally interpreted “signs,” John shares three, the cure of the ruler’s son, the multiplication of the loaves, the walking on the waters, with the Synoptists: yet here the first is transformed almost beyond recognition; and the two others only typify and prepare the eucharistic discourse. Of the four purely Johannine signs, two—the cures of the paralytic (v. 1–16), and of the man born blind (ix. 1–34)—are, admittedly, profoundly symbolical. In the first case, the man’s physical and spiritual lethargy are closely interconnected and strongly contrasted with the ever-active God and His Logos. In the second case there is also the closest parallel between physical blindness cured, and spiritual darkness dispelled, by the Logos-Light as described in the accompanying discourse. Both narratives are doubtless based upon actual occurrences—the cures narrated in Mark ii., iii., viii., x. and scenes witnessed by the writer in later times; yet here they do but picture our Lord’s spiritual work in the human soul achieved throughout Christian history. We cannot well claim more than these three kinds of reality for the first and the last signs, the miracle at Cana and the resurrection of Lazarus.

For the marriage-feast sign yields throughout an allegorical meaning. Water stands in this Gospel for what is still but symbol; thus the water-pots serve here the external Jewish ablutions—old bottles which the “new wine” of the Gospel is to burst (Mark ii. 22). Wine is the blood of the new covenant, and He will drink the fruit of the vine new in the Kingdom of God (Mark xiv. 23–25); the vineyard where He Himself is the true Vine (Mark xii. 1; John xv. 1). And “the kingdom of heaven is like to a marriage-feast” (Matt. xxii. 2); Jesus is the Bridegroom (Mark ii. 19); “the marriage of the Lamb has come” (Rev. xix. 7). “They have no wine”: the hopelessness of the old conditions is announced here by the true Israel, the Messiah’s spiritual mother, the same “woman” who in Rev. xii. 2, 5 “brought forth a man-child who was to rule all nations.” Cardinal Newman admits that the latter woman “represents the church, this is the real or direct sense”; yet as her man-child