(6) The relation of Lot/os to T/icvs, as conceived by the evangelist, is sustained bj' the successive words and deeds of >Iesus which had slowly broken on the mind of the writer. The majestic words of the Prologue which are repeated in the opening sentences of the Eji. are the necessary antecedents of the events, the twofold meaning and ambigu- ity of the term Lngis, connoting the .ir/f-ronscious- ness and the necessarily connected utterance of the Eternal Theos. This Logos so interpreted is both 'God 'and 'with God' at once. He is the or^an of divine activity and the great image of His glory. Heyschlng, in his attempt to reduce all the eubsequeiit narrative to the ordinarj' human con- sciousness of .lesus, appears to ignore or minimize the supra-historic basis which precedes the historic narrative. Heforo the manifestation in the flesh of Christ, the Logos was the divine agent of crea- tion. No element of matter, no thrill of force, no harmony or beauty of the cosmos was excluded. The life and light of t!<Ml Htreanied forth from Him The divine immanence in nature and man
was His function. The darkness was not in har- mony with the Light, and did not apprehend it. He came age after age to His own, to those w ho were prepared by conscience, providence, and pro- phecy, and His own received Iliiu not. The Lugo.s, even to the present hour, is working in events, lavs, and forces, designing and forecasting and evolvinjj the eternal jjurpo.se ; j-et the world and even His own know it not, nay. He is rejected and despised. An element of deep tragedy has entered into human nature which has ever resisted Omni]iotence, but never exhausted the resources of divine love. Conscience, even the 'light which lighteth every man,' was reinforced by prophetic voices, of which the Baptist was the highest type, and the conflict between the Spirit and the fle.-li, the light and the darkness, the Logos and human- ity, is always in progress. The victory over the world and the flesh has made still greater demand upon an infinite compassion, and so we are led on to believe in a higher and more convincing contact of the Logos with human nature. The indwelling of the Lotos with the cosmos falls immeasurably short of the Incarnation, i.e. of an event which is described in the assurance (v.") that the Word became flesli. The Logos did not become ' all things,' but became adpk, to heal the source of human corruption, and consummate the plan of God.
(7) The entire Johannine conception turns on what is meant by these words. Is the .synthesis of the divine and human such as obliterates either of the two elements in the Christ : or is it one which, while pre.sen-ing both in their coiii])lete- ness, stretches the vinculum between them, so that it snaps, and there is left no other than a human Saviour, after all? Beyschlag objects to the ecclesiastical orthodoxy, and wisely dl.seounts the Kenotic theories of Gess, Thomasius, Godet, Pressensd, and others, on the ground that if our Lord never adopted phraseologj' intompatibie with ' mere humanitj',' the idea of a divine conscious- ness and the hypothesis of a true incarnation could never have arisen. Putting aside the two extremes of Ncstorian and Monoiihysite interpretation, and shrinking from the Catholic acceptance of what is true in both, Beyschlag falls bac-k upon the hare human consciousness and historical surroundings of .lesus. He reviews the great sayings of our Lord which atlinn a remembrance of ' the glory which he had with the Father before the world was' (17°"), or which assert a conscious existence before Abraham (8°*), or which indicate a realiza- tion of beinic; ' in heaven' while yet on earth (3'"), or which refer to His descent from heaven and return thither (C**"-"), and alBrm conscious unity with the Father. In doing this the critic is content with a purel}' Ebionitic interpretation which leaves the mystery of the greatest fact in the history of the moral world entirely unsolved. He falls back upon a method of interpreting Christ's own pre-existence, corresjionding with the Rabbin, method of regarding things of high value, such as the ark of the covenant, as 'eternally pre- existent in God.' By the use of metaphor, or feriid imagination, or intense prophetic or mystic realization of the divine indwelling, ond full re- conciliation with God, even absorption into the divine fulness, the expressions arose from which he supposes the Christian faitli to have li.id its origin. A similar interjiretation of the words anil the consciousness of^ .lesus is advocated in Drummond's Uibbert Lecture, Via Veritas Vita, where we seem called upon to forgive our Lord the use of phrases which, after all, are only tlic commonplaces of the religious life.
The statement, A \iyoi oa^ lyirrro, does not. in John's nsage, mean a transubstantiation uf X^oi
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JOHX, GOSPEL OF
into fipi, 80 that henceforth there U no longer ^47o^ but only ffipi, Beeing that the evangelist (2*) UBes a precisely similar phrase to denote ' the water wliicu hatl oocome wine.' As the water took up inco itself elements not previously in it, BO the eternal Logos took up human nature into Himself, and this is enough for humiliation of the Infinite Love. The metliod of the consciousness can only occasionally (if ever) be given its fulness, but the three axes of rovohition in succession suggest the entire mysterj-. These are ' the Son of God,' ' the Son of Man, and the 'Christ' ; and these remarkable terms are found in the Synoptic Gospels in much the same sense as in the Fourth.