of the hope are retained, while the particular Jewish colouring and schemes of thought are quietly dropped, with a few exceptions.
In this Gosj^el 'eternal life' is the principal category under which the subject of immortality falls to be considered. The most important group of passages is in the 6th chapter. Here our Lord, after the miracle of the loaves, and evidently, in the mind of the author of the Gospel, explaining the significance of the miracle, claims that He is the living bread come down from heaven. Those who eat of this bread live for ever. Continuing to explain the saying, our liord adds that the bread is His flesh and His blood, and that he who eats the flesh and drinks the blood of tiie Son of Man has eternal life, and will be raised by Christ at the last day. Again, ' he that eateth this bread shall live for ever.' It is possible that we must accept the predestinarianism of vv.^*^"^' as part of the older eschatological colouring. But evidently a difficult point is involved here. Schweitzer would explain the passage as the expression of ' a speculative religious materialism which concerns itself with the problem of matter and spirit, and the per- meation of matter by Sjiirit, and endeavours to interpret the manifestation and the personality of Jesus, the action of the sacraments and the possi- bility of the resurrection of the elect, all on the basis of one and the same fundamental conception' (Paul and his Interpreters, p. 202 f.). That is, broadly speaking, the immortality described in the Fourth Gospel is sacramental, conditioned entirely by participation in the sacraments which, through the communication to them of the Spirit of the Risen Christ, have received this potency.
Like so much of Schweitzer's exegesis, this is brilliant and stimulating, but not wholly sound. Throughout the Gospel the possession of eternal life is independent of sacraments and connected simply with faith in Christ: 'he that believeth on me hath everlasting life,' 'he that believeth on me, though he were dead, yet shall he live, and he that liveth and believeth on me shall never die.' The charge of 'unintelligent spiritualizing' is hasty and unfounded. As in the Synoptic Gospels, so also in the Fourth Gospel, Schweitzer has not recognized the peculiar ethical element which is the real basis of the primitive Church's view of the Resurrection of Christ, and of the resurrection and future state of believers.
So in the Fourth Gospel the immortality implied is at bottom etliical ; it is the life of God which Christ is in Himself and has come to earth to reveal, and in order to impart it in its fullness He must enter upon the sjiiritual state. It is expedient for them that He should go away. After His departure they Mill know that He is in the Father, they in Him, and He in them.
Hence, while in St. Paul we have the eager movement of the new life towards its glorious consummation, in the Fourth Gospel we have rather the steady contemplation of the fully revealed nature of the life of God in this world now. In both cases all the interest is centred on the purpose of God in its realization, rather than on the individual man and his ultimate fate. So that we have the appearance of the conditional immortality which is found in Athanasius, reallj' only apparent, because the nature of immortality as a dogma was not in question, but the wider issue of the coming in of the Kingdom of God. In the Fourth Gospel we have also the corporate nature of the life insisted on. In St. Paul, spirit, soul, and body are to he preserved to the day of Christ ; there is no immortality of the soul con- ceived of as a mere abstraction, but the eternal gain for the Kingdom of God of a person, whole and entire. In tlie Fourth Gosjjel there is not the
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same prominence given to the resurrection of the body, but ultimately the body of him who possesses the life of God must pass under the law of eternal life, although the author of the Fourth Gospel never states the expectation in the same way ; it is not ' your mortal bodies,' but ' I will raise him up.' The incident of the grave clothes also shows that the writers conception of the Resurrection was purely spiritual : the Lord had become a Spirit, although capable of revealing His continued personal existence to His disciples. So for the Fourth Gospel the ultimate thing also is the gain of the individual : ' no man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand.'
4. The Apostolic Fathers. — Here we have much less of vital importance. The creative impulse has died away, and we can trace the process, already mentioned, of the gradual abandonment of mucli that was most characteristic of the teaching of St. Paul. Ignatius ofiers the closest affinities with the point of view of the Fourth Gospel, as is well enough known. The following are the principal relevant passages :
(1) i Clement. — The principal passage in this Epistle is in chs. xxiv.-xxvi. The future resur- rection is based on the Resurrection of Christ, and the simile of the seed is used. Ch. xxvi, seems to limit the resurrection to the faithful, ' those who served Him in holiness, in the confidence of a good faith.' Those who have died as martyrs or in the faith are spoken of as having obtained the inherit- ance of glory and honour (cf. v. 3, 7, xlv. 7). In 1. 3 ' those who were perfected in love by the grace of God have a place among the pious who shall be made manifest at the visitation of the Kingdom of Christ.'