The Johannine Writings/Part II, Chapter V

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. __________________________________________________________________

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). __________________________________________________________________

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). __________________________________________________________________

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. __________________________________________________________________

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." __________________________________________________________________

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. __________________________________________________________________

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. __________________________________________________________________

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. __________________________________________________________________

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. __________________________________________________________________

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. __________________________________________________________________

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. __________________________________________________________________

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. __________________________________________________________________

[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. __________________________________________________________________

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. __________________________________________________________________

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." __________________________________________________________________

[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. __________________________________________________________________