The solution is aflorded by the doctrine of the Incarnate Word. Jesus Christ, as the eternal Logos, possessed ' life in himself,' and j-et assumed humanity and entered into our lower world. He therefore became the vehicle through which the life of God is imparted to men, or at least to those elect natures who are predisposed to receive it. He not only possesses, but is Himself the Life. To inipart His gift He must also impart Himself, since life is inalienable from the li\ing Person. This idea, which lies at the very centre of St. John's thinking, determines his theory of the communica- tion of Life through Christ.
The subjective condition, apart from which the gift cannot be bestowed, is belief in Jesus as the Son of God. This belief is jirimarily an act of intellectual assent to the c laim of Christ ; but such an act implies a religious experience which has led up to it and gives it value. It runs back in the last resort to the ' drawing by the Father' (6^^i. the work of God's S]nrit in the' heart. Through the act of belief a man is brought into such a relation to Christ that His power as Life-giver becomes operative.
Three means are indicated by which Christ im- parts the gift to those who iiave" believed. (1) It is conveyed through His word, regarded not simply
32
LIFE
LIGHT
as the medium of His message, but in the Hebrew sense as active and creative. Tlie words spoken by Jesus are of tlie same nature as the quickening word of God. They are ' spirit and life,' carrying with them some portion of His own being. He can say indifferently, ' My word shall abide in you ' and ' I shall abide in you ' (15'^). It is this impart- ing of Himself through His words that renders them 'words of eternal life.' (2) The gift is con- veyed likewise in the Sacraments, more especially ir the Lord's Supper. The Eucharistic refei'ence in the 6th chapter appears to the present writer unmistakable, and, while the Supper is interpreted in a spiritual sense, its real validity is also empha- sized. Ignatius, writing in the same age, describes the Eucharist as the <pdp/xaKov ddavaaias {Ephcs. 20), and St. John accepts this current belief, and harmonizes it with his omh doctrine of Life : ' Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of JNIan and drink his blood, ye have no life in you' (6^^). Since Jesus in His own Person is the Life, it can be given only through an actual incorporation of His 'flesh and blood,' and this is oflered in the mystery of the Eucharist. The idea of Life as a semi-physical essence here comes to its sharpest expression. (3) In this same chapter, however, Ave have the indication of another and still more mysterious means by which the Life is imparted. The Eucharist, while it possesses in itself a real validity, is typical of an abiding union of the be- liever with Christ. He is like the vine (IS^*"'-), out of which the several branches draw their nourish- ment. He is united with His disciples in a relation so profound and intimate that they feel themselves to be one with Him. They abide in Him and He in them, and the life which He possesses becomes their life, springing up within them like a per- ennial well (4'^). This doctrine of a mystical union with Christ in which He imparts His Divine life to the believer, contains the central and character- istic thought of the Fourth Gospel.
Thus far we have considered the Johannine idea of Life as it is determined by the Logos theory. It becomes apparent, however, the more we study the Gospel, that the writer is working throughout with two conceptions, essentially different from each other and never completely reconciled. The incarnate Logos is at the same time the historical Jesus, who revealed God and drew all men to Him- self by the moral grandeur of His personality and life. Doctrines which are presented theologically on the lines of the Logos hypothesis are also capable of a purely religious interpretation. They require to be so interpreted if we are not to miss their underlying and vital import.
Life regarded from this other side bears a mean- ing substantially the same as in the Synoptic Gospels. Jesus was the Living One, inasmuch as He realized in His own Person the love and good- ness and holiness which constitute the inmost nature of God. The life He sought to communi- cate was nothing else than His own Spirit, as it was revealed in the scene of the feet- washing ( Jn 13), and in tlie subseqvient discourse with His dis- ciples. Even in the Eucharistic chapter in which the theological view of Life is expressed most forcibly, we can discern this other view in the barkgro'uid. To partake of Christ's flesh and blood is to become wholly conformed to Him, absorbing into oneself the very spirit by which He lived. We cannot read the chapter attentively without feeling that St. John is always passing from the metaphysical conception to this moral and religious one. Both are present in his mind, and he endeavours to fuse them, though such a fusion is in the nature of things impossible.
The cai'dinal doctrine of union with Christ assumes a new meaning in the light of this other