One of the most difficult problems in connexion with the classes of readers for whom the Gospel was intended is presented by certain explanations introduced by the Evangelist. The chief of these are 2-' 6"- ^ 1^ 8" 12** 18^ These explanations seem to us at times superficial and unworthy of tlipir cniitext. We cannot be surprised that they
JOHN, GOSPEL OF
JOHN, GOSPEL OF
have given force to partition-theories like that of A\'endt, who maintains that the discourses are on a higlier intellectual and spiritual level than could be within the compass of the author of parts of the narrative. The difficulties in the way of partition- theories seem to be insuperable. A more plausible hypothesis is that the Evangelist deliberately introduced tlieae childlike observations for the benefit of the simpliciures, trusting to the educated reader being able to divine his purpose. But this theory is not very satisfactory. We have seen that St. John is able to see as many as three mean- ings in a simple occurrence. And so he may have felt that ' the Temple ' might mean Christ's natural body as well as the stone building and the Church of Christ, which last must have been mainly in his mind wlien lie foresaw the downfall of the Jewish sanctuary and all which it represented.
The stijlc of the Fourth Gospel is as different from that of tlie Synoptics as the matter. Instead of the variety \\lilili \\e find in them, we have a small nuiiilier of essi'ntial thoughts repeated again and again under a small number of images. From this results a strange impressiveness, common in mystical writings, which often share this peculi- arity, though to some readers the monotony appears tedious and inartistic. The discourses of Christ have a sweet and melancholy charm, with an in- describable dignity and grandeur ; over them all hangs the luminous haze of mysticism, in which mystery seems clear, and clearness itself is mys- terious. The pliraseology is Hebraic, not Greek ; in the Prologue we have a species of rhythm which recalls the old prophets, and in many places we find the parallelism of Hebrew poetry. The arrangement is that of the writer's own thought, not chronological. The appearance of detailed accuracy is not, as has often been seriously argued, a proof of first-hand knowledge, but is due to the vividness of the Evangelist's mental images. The numbers, as has been said, seem often to have a symbolic meaning ; the figures, such as Nicodemus and the Greeks who asked for an introduction to Jesus, disappear from the writer's mind as soon as the point is made. No difference can be detected between the style of the various speakers, or between the discourses of Christ and the Evan- gelist's own comments.
2. Theology of the Gospel.— The first question which meets us is the relation of the Prologue to the rest of the Gospel. Harnack, whose antipathy to the Logos theology apparently influences his judgment, suggests that the Prologue was merely prefaxed to the narrative in order to predispose the Greeks in favour of the views which the author was about to propound, views which do not really at all correspond with the Logos philosophy as they understood it.
'The Prolofjne brings in conceptions which were familiar to the Greeks, and enters into these more deeply than is justified by the presentation wliicli follows ; for the notion of the incarnate Logos is by no means the dominant one in the Gospel. Though faint echoes of this idea ma.\' possibly be met with here and there in the Gospel,— I confess I do not notice them,— the pre- dominating thought is essentially that of Christ as the Son of God, who obediently executes what the Father has shown and appointed Urn' {XThK \\. 18911.).
This strangely perverse judgment has evoked pro- tests from several critics who understand the Gospel better than Harnack, among others from R6ville, who has certainly no bias in favour of traditional views. It would be easy to show that every one of the dogmatic statements in the Pro- logue is reasserted in the body of the Gospel. For the pre-existence of the Logos, beyond time, in personal relation to, and in essential union with, God, cf. 6«2 8=8 14'» 17'- ■*. For the Logos as the Agent in creation, and its life-giving and sustaining principle, cf. 5=« 8'= 9^ (From the nat^re of the
subject - matter, there is not much cosmological teaching in the Gospel ; but what there is, is in full accordance with the Prologue). For mani- festations of the Logos before the Incarnation, by revelations and by His immanent presence, cf. 8=^ and 9^^, 'whenever I am in the world,' etc. There is thus chapter and verse in the Gospel, and in Christ's own words, for every statement in the Prologue ; and though Jesus never calls Himself the Logos, this sublime conception of His person- ality pervades the whole narrative. The stum- bling-block to Harnack and others has been what some critics (e.g. Beyschlag and Reville) have called the ' contradictory double theology ' of the Gospel. By the side of a conception of Christ's Person which seems to class the Evangelist as a speculative mystic or Gnostic, we have statements which seem to belong to the school of Christianity which was dondnated by Jewisli jjositivism. Such doctrines are the actual 'becoming flesh' of the Logos, as opposed to a theophany under human form ; and the repeated mention of ' the Last Day,' a conception with which, as Reuss says, ' mystical theology has no concern.' But the Evangelist does not write or think as a philosopher. The supreme merit of his book as a Gosjjel is that he does not write the life of Christ as a Christian Platonist might have been tempted to write it, but keeps a firm hold on the historical Jesus, and on the con- crete facts in His teaching. There is, undoubtedly, a double thread of the kind indicated. In some parts of the narrative we feel that 'tabernacled among us ' is a truer description of the character of the Johannine Christ than ' became flesh.' There is an aloofness, a solitary grandeur, about the central figure which prevents Him from seeming fully human ; while in other places there is an approxi- mation to tlie Synoptic portrait. But it is only to the minute critic that these difficulties become apparent. To the religious consciousness of Chris- tendom there has never been any hesitation in recognizing the profound agreement between the Synoptic and the Johannine presentations of Jesus Christ. See, further, art. LoGO-S.