(3) St. John’s teachings take their perspective (a) from his doctrine of the Adyos, which he sees pre- figured in the OT. This is central in his Gospel, as it is in the doctrine of the Trinity. The Divine Néyos became incarnate in Jesus. This may be why Christ’s conception of the Holy Ghost is not referred to, and why the Spirit is spoken of as a gift, and not made so clearly personal as in the words of Jesus Himself (1 Jn 3% 4). The Fourth Gospel presents Christianity as a double revelation of God through the Spirit and through the Son ; the Evangelist bears witness chiefly to the Son, and lets the Son testify to the Spirit. Because St. John beholds the eternal Son prominent in the OT (Gn 11, Ps 33+ 6, Is 408 55", Jn 11-14), he does not describe the Incarnation as a humiliation, as St. Paul does (Ph 2°), or rise to it through the thought of His ascension to glory involving pre-existent glory, as in He 1° 2° 10% He sees the Divine Son, the Creator of the universe (1), carry the glory of God veiled with Him into the world (11°), and, when His work of redemption was complete, move calmly again into the glory which He had with the Father before the world was. His emphatic statements that the \dyos was in the beginning with God, and that the beginning of the being of all things was through Him, set forth the eternal Being of the Son. And because of His Divine Son- ship He was a Divine revelation: ‘No man hath seen God at any time, God only-begotten (movoryevs eds, a8 in & BCL), who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.’ What can tran- scend ‘God only- begotten’? St. John exhausts all Jewish descriptions of Divine manifestations to set forth the glory of the Son. He embodied them all. He was one with the 7p’, the evident ‘ glory’ of God (1}4 24 12", Targ. to Is 6 ; ef. Schlottmann, 130, Mt 16”, Mk 88). His coming is the coming of the Divine glory, which Ezekiel said (431-7 in Targ.) should dwell for ever with God’s people. Jesus had identified Himself with the Shekinah (Mt 18” ; cf. Pirke Aboth, iii. 3): He even said that His presence was greater than the Shekinah in the temple (Mt 128) : St. John proceeds to identify the Son with the Memraor ‘ Word’ (14). In one statement he com- bines the Memra (Aéyos), the Yekar (d6éa), and the Shekinah (in cxjvow), and applies all to the incarna- tion of the Son of God (11438). Jesus Christ reveals the personal glory of God, not temporarily, but incarnate, tabernacling among His people as Je- hovah tented among: Israel (Ex 258 29”, He 1°). Philo called the \éyos figuratively dedrepos Beds ; St. John calls Him simply éeés ; for He is on one side the Adyos of God, and, on the other, God. Philo’s Adyos iS mpwréyovos vids, OF, AS an angel, apydyyeos (cf. Riehm, Hed. 146 f.): but St. John puts the
Son-Logos far above all angels; He is one with God, truly personal and incarnate as the Messiah, all of which is foreign to Philo’s allegorical exe- gesis. St. John’s theology shows no connexion with that of Philo. Like St. Paul, he comes to Jesus from the OT, and finds that it is the revealed God, the Jehovah, the Lord of David, the ‘ Memra’ that took flesh in Jesus (12 14"). The relation of the Son to the Father is expressed by St. John as in He 1’, by the terms ‘light,’ as ‘God is light’ (1 Jn 1”), ‘life,’ as ‘God is life’ (12)—only the Son is called ‘the life’ or ‘eternal life’ (1 Jn 52°), because the Son is the manifestation of Divine life and its source for man—and especially by the word povoyevys (111 316.18] Jn 4°; cf. 11). Christ was the only-begotten Son of God, as the widow’s son was her only child (Lk 72), as the ruler’s daughter was his only daughter (Lk 8%), and as the possessed boy was his father’s only son (Lk 9°8). He was the ‘only- begotten’ in such a sense that He might be called the only-begotten Son or the only-begotten God. He was the Son absolutely, and in a sense shared by no other being. He was so one with God that St. John says He was God (17-4) ; or, as put elsewhere (1 Jn 5°), He was the ‘true God’ revealing the true God. He was also ‘ with God’ (1'?), 7.¢. not God without a property peculiar to Him as Son of God. From this Divine Sonship flows St. John’s Gospel. In it he finds the source of all blessing and eternal life (2081, 1 Jn 5! 1%), From it come (1) the power to become sons of God (17), (2) sonship through faith in the Son (9*), (3) sonship through the will of the Father (1°), (4) participation in the truth, grace, glory, and indwelling of the Father (14, 1 Jn 4") ; (5) an experience of the fulness of the Godhead in the Son (1&2), through union with whom (6) believers share the victory of the Son of God over the devil (1 Jn 38), and (7) have the wit- ness of sonship in themselves (1 Jn 5!). No Divine Son of God, no other sons of God. If God be not the Divine Father of the Divine Son, He is the re- ligious Father of no man: that is the theology of St. John’s Gospel.