This note is struck loudly and clearly at the
very outset, in the Prologue : ' And the Logos
became flesh and dwelt among us. And we beheld
his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the
VOL. II. — 49
Father, full of grace and truth. . . . For of his fulness we have all received, even grace upon grace. For the law was given tlirougli Moses : grace and truth came through Jesus Christ' (Jn p'*- 1«- "j Here, just as the conception of the Truth is sub- ordinated to that of the Way in M'^-^, the asjject of grace controls that of truth. Religion, in this definition, is not the arduous aspiration of man's soul, stretching up wistfully to communion with God, but the gracious revelation of God to men through the Person of Je.sus Christ ; the initiative is on God's side ; and the Divine nature, in its absolute reality, is mediated for the soul by Christ alone, not by any number of theosophic aeons. All that either the OT economy or contemporary Gnosticism could ofler the soul was a partial dis- closure of God's inner being. Time-honoured and plausible as rival methods might be, they were at best imperfect. The full revelation Avas in Christ as the Logos or Son of God par excellence, the Truth of God, and therefore of man, amid shadows and appearances. He is the revealer, or rather the revelation Himself. His personality is the sum and substance of that Divine essence which He alone can communicate in all its fulness to believing men, and through Avhich men realize themselves fully. He is the true way to life. The author emphasizes this central and primary conception on two lines. Not only does he change the ' mercy ' of the Gr. OT into ' grace,' — a change which is all the more significant that this great Pauline term never recurs in the Gospel, — but the companion idea of truth (cf. Ex 34^) is expanded from faithfulness or veracity to what a modern might describe as the absolute character of the Divine Being, an inner, heavenly reality, or rather the Reality, Avhich Clirist alone (P"*) could disclose. The 'truth' of God is thus neither information to be gained, nor dogmas to be supernaturally revealed, but is at once personal and full of initiative. It is God Himself manifesting His essential life to the faith and need of man. As Maurice once put it, ' Truth must be a person seeking us, if we are to seek him.'
While this mission and ministry of the truth have reached their climax in the brief earthly life of Jesus, the latter phase was only its final, not its first manifestation. Like the Light, the Truth has been in the world prior to its absolute revela- tion and embodiment in Christ the Logos (3^**- 2'). In all ages, and from all quarters (cf. 18^''), Christ draws to Himself those y^ho practise the truth. In the OT and elsewhere (Jos 2" [LXX], Ps-Sol 17" with ^Xeos, cf. Ps 83'^) this phrase means simply to deal truly or to act sincerely, according to the context. The author of this Gospel, however, follows his usual method of putting into such phrases a deeper and specific content, so that here it denotes rather the active exercise and practical manifestation by good people of what corresponds to God's real character. To practise the truth is a synonym for doing works in God (3^'). This is independent of nationality. It is also evidently intended to cover the pre-Christian era ; or rather, according to this Gospel, the history of humanity, prior to the coming of Christ, was not wholly out of touch with the true Spirit and Life of God (P- "). The present passage, talven along with a remark like that of IS'*^ ('everyone that is of the truth heareth my voice '), suggests a view of paganism similar to that of Ro 2'-'- Furthermore, it implies that men grasp this ' truth ' of God by the exercise of their entire moral nature. The reality of God, as Spirit and as Personal Life, cannot be kiiown excejjt by real men, by those whose character is real to the core. The conditions of that personal knowledge are singleness of mind, purity of con- science, and openness of heart. It is the exercise
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TRUTH
TRUTH
of these that brings a man into permanent touch with the reality of the Divine nature as manifested in Christ. The locus classicus for this profound conception is 7" ; although the term ' trutli ' does not occur there, the identification of disinterested- ness and candour with the genuine spirit of truth (cf. 7^^) shows that the idea was in the writer's mind.
This inwardness, with its corollary of freedom from national or local cults, is brought out with especial clearness in the well-known definition of Christian worship (4-^ ^^), where truth is associated with spirit. In contrast to external and ritual worship, the genuine worshipper must approach God inwardly ; it is like to like, as in 3^'- The spiritual is the inward, the real. As God's nature is such. His worshippers must correspond to Him ; and if worship is ottered in the spirit, it is thereby genuine. A similar antithesis to the symbolic ami unsubstantial worship of the OT underlies 17^'"^**, where truth, in a certain abstract sense, denotes the eternal reality of the Divine nature as revealed to men, tlie ideal or truth of life realized in Christ, and, through Him, in His people. By His con- secration or devotion of Himself to the fulfilment of this purpose of revelation, Christ makes it poss- ible for His disciples to be consecrated to God's service — a consecration which, as the double mean- ing of the term allows, implies personal purification from sin. Negatively, the vocation is equivalent to a deliverance from the stains and illusions of the transient world, which is superior to the OT ritual. Positively, it denotes an adherence to the cause of God. His name and His truth are the same. They represent the reality of the Divine revelation in Christ, with the twofold antithesis, running through the entire Gospel, between this final revelation and the inadequate OT religion on the one hand, and contemporary philosophic or theo- sophic speculations about truth on the other.