JOHN
948
JOHN
ings; indeed, if this had been the apostle's purpose, Jt cannot be said that he has in any adequate way fulfilled it. Nor is there any ground for believing that it was a polemical object which chiefly prompted hira to write this Gospel, though such a suggestion has often been made. Thus Irenajus (//fer. iii, 11,1) says that the Gos- pel was written against the errors of Cerinthus. Jerome (Z)e vir. Illust. 9) adds the Ebionites ; and later writers have maintained that the Gnostics or the Docetse are the parties against whom the polemic of the apostle is here directed. All this, however, is mere supposition. Doubtless in what John has written there is that which furnishes a full refutation of all Ebioiiitish, Gnostic, and Docetic heresy ; but that to confute these was the design of the apostlej as these writers affirm, cannot be proved. See Gnostics. At the same time, though he may have had no intention of formally confuting any existing her- crsy, it is more than probable that he was stimulated to seek by means of this record to counteract certain ten- dencies which he saw rising in the Chiach, and by which the followers of Christ might be seduced from that sim- ple faith in him hj which alone the true life could be enjoyed. Still this must be regarded, at the utmost, as furnishing only the occasion, not the design, of his \vrit- ing. The latter is to be sought in the effect which this Gospel is fitted to produce on the mind of the reader in regard to the claims of Jesus as the divine Redeemer, the source of light and life to darkened and perishing humanity. With this view John presents him to us as he tabernacled among men, and especially as he taught when occasion called forth the deeper revelations which he, as the Word who had come forth from the invisible God to reveal unto men the Father, had to communi- cate. John's main design is a theological one ; a con- viction of which doubtless led to his receiving in the primitive Church the title kcit t^ox'iv of OtnXoyoc. But the historical character of his writing must also be acknowledged. As one who had been privileged to " company" with Jesus, he seeks to present him to us as he really appeared among men, in very deed a partaker of their natiure, j-et, under that nature, veiling a higher, which ever and anon broke forth in manifestation, so tliat those around him " beheld his glory as the glory of the Only Uegotten of the Father" (i, 14). •• There is here no history of Jesus and his teaching after the man- ner of the other evangelists; but there is, in historical form, a representation of the Christian faith, in relation to the person of Christ, as its central point, and in this representation there is a picture, on the one hand, of the antagonism of the world to the truth revealed in him, and <m the other of the spiritual blessedness of the few who yield themselves to him as the Light of Life" (Keuss, Gesc/i. der lleil. Sch. d. N. T. p. 204). As John douljtlcss had the other Gospels before him, without for- mally designing to supplement them, he would naturallv enlarge more particulariy upon those portions which they had left untouched, or passed over more briefly.
IV. C()nteiits.~V\\c Gospel begins with a i)rologue, in which tiie author presents the great theme of wliich his subsequent narrative is to furnish the detailed illustra- tion—" the theological programme of his history," as one has caUed it, and which another has comjiared to the overture of a musical composition in which the lead- ing idea of the piece is expressed (i, 1-5). The histor- ical exposition begins with verse (!, and the rest of the book may be divided into two parts. Of these the for- mer (i, G-xii) contains the account of our Lord's public miiustr}' from his introduction to it by John the Haptist and his solemn consecration to it bv God, to its close in tlie 1 assion Week. In this imrtion we have the Saviour presented to us chiefly in his manifestation to the worid as a teacher sent from God, whose mission is authenti- cated l,y signs and wonders, and whose doctrines, truly divine, transcend in their spiritual import the narrow limits of human speculation, and can be comprehended only l,y a spiritual discernment. The second portion Cch. xui-xxi ) may be divided into two parts, tlie one