The Gospel of John opens at once into a circle of new and profounder conceptions of Jesus. He is the Eternal Logos who was in the beginning (1'). He is the eternal and immanent Reason manifest- ing creative activities. He mediates the creation of the universe (v.^). The Prologue sets forth Jesus Christ in His fourfold mediation, (a) As the Eternal Logos, who wa.s 'in the beginning with God, and was God' (1'), He mediates the creation of all things (v.^). The whole process and product of creation lie inwrapped in the Logo.s. Neither angels nor other beings assisted. 'And without him was not anything made that hath been made ' (v.=, cf. 1 Co 8«). (b) As the Creative Logos, He mediates life for men. He is immanent in the Creation. 'In him was life' (v.''), and ' He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not' (v."). He was the ground and source of life. St. Paul's saying, 'The world through its wisdom knew not God' (1 Co 1-'), shows the amazing inability of the world to recognize its Creator who was the ground of its own life. Sin hatl indeed become darkness which was incapable of apprehending the light (Jn P). ((•) As the Logos matte flesh or incarnate, He medi- ates a revelation of God to man (vv. ""'*). The wliole measure of revelation lies in the incarnate Logos. ' God manifested ' to men was manifested wholly in Jesus Clirist. [d) As ' the only-begotten from the Father' (v."). He mediates an atonement or reconciliation, through His death, between a holy God and alicnutiil sinners. This is the climax of His wondnuis iiicdiatdiship, and makes Him the perfected Mediator. The historic Christ is brought forward in this Gospel only enough to explicate or illustrate the eternal Christ, but it was in the historic Christ that the eternal and cosmic Christ was first recognized. The transactional phases of the historic incarnation lead, in St. John's view, straight to the eternal Logos who mediated the whole creation. Christ, as Creator, is so wrought into the Cosmos which He made and sustains, that upon the entrance of sin into the world He be- comes of necessity the mediator of new relations between the sinner and God. His mediatorship of redemjjtion rests on the fact that He was ' in the beginning ' the Logos who mediated the creation of all things. Christ, as Creator, is tlie fundamental idea of this Gospel. It is the starting-point of the whole history of the earth and the heavens, of man, his fall and his doom, of the redemption and the final glory. It is the interpretive key to the whole framework of the Fourth Gospel, whose author sees the designed correspondence between the Creator and the created, and that creation was primarily intended to be responsive to Him. ' He came unto his own, and they . . . received him not' (1"), expresses the failure of creation to fulfil the Divine purpose. St. John gathers up all that the Synop- tists have taught, but adds new conceptions of .lesus in a profounder interpretation of Him. He ti.M Ills (ci) the pre-existence of Christ (P" 3"- " 6"= s ' ' 14" 17°) more plainly and fully than the Svii..i,ti>is; (6) His authority (17=) : (<) His in- h.iiiit power to work miracles (2* 6" 11") ; (rf) His ownership of all tilings (V^). But new conceptions are added, (a) He is the source of an abiding or eternal life. He has power to give this life to whom He will (336 410. u 521-24. 40 e^J. m 10=8 nss u"
CEITICISM
CRITICISM
17-). (/3) His life is the light of men. But the fact that as Creator He is tlie source of both life and light to men does not prevent their rejectit)n of Him (l-" 8'= 9^^ 1235. 36. 46) (^j He shows His identity with the Father : ' I and tlie Fatlier are one' (10™) ; ' He that hath seen me hath seen the Father' (14' 12«). (5) He shows familiarity -with the life and conditions of Heaven (14- 17-'').
But these conceptions of Christ, as well as those which St. John and the Synoptists have in common, rest on the fact of His having mediated the creation of all things. His rights in the whole creation, as well as the obligations which He has toward it, grow out of the fact of His Creatorship. Tlie eternal and universal characteristics of botli in- carnation and reconciliation are grounded in the creational character of Jesus Christ.
LiTERATCRE.— B. Weiss, ReUqiou 0/ the NT, 190-191, and Bibl. Theol. of NT, ii. on ; G. B. .Stevens, The Chriatian Doctriiui 0/ Salmtion, 438 ; fi. A. (iorrlon. riu- Chrht of To-Dai/. sl-;i:i ; A. M. Fairbairn, 3'/i.' /'''r^' .-/'/:.- • '.. !/-/■ , .; /';,'./■/./. :;4I ; D. F. Estes, Oi((«H.' ■■/ \ / ■ ■ /■■ ■ \ 1: i-.i-ir,
St. PatU's Concept: I HI' ■'''-.
'SLSohn' {Pulpit V:„i ;„,„„-;.; '■ 'i- hi > ;..i .i- .",
the subject is very scant) . M A 1 11 A.N L. \\ uuD.
CRITICISM. — 1. A little more than seventy years ago (1835-1905), a turning-point was reached in NT criticism, the importance of which is gener- ally admitted.* In tlie year 1835 David Strauss published his Lchen Jesii (to be followed exactly ten years later by F. C. Baur's Paulus)._ The mythical theory was remorselessly applied by Strauss to the whole of the Gospel history.