ship does not guarantee absolute accuracy in detail, and although we cannot determine the relation of the record tc the words actually spoken by Jesus until we have ascertained the object and point of view of the writer, yet apostolic authorship not only fixes the date within certain limits, but also determines to a considerable extent the probable spirit, attitude, means, and object of the writer.
Critics who find themselves unable to admit apostolic authorship lay stress upon the value of the Gospel as exhibiting the faith of the Church in the early part of the second century and the grounds on which that faith rested. Thus Weizsacker declares that the debates regarding the divinity of Christ are a mere reflex of the time in which the evangelist lived—a time when, according to Pliny, Christians were accustomed to sing hymns to Christ as God and were creating a fuller dogma of His divinity. The Johannine Christ occupies no relation to the Law, because for the Church of the evangelist’s day the Law was no longer of present interest as it had been in a former generation. The strife exhibited in the Gospel did not belong to the life of Christ, but is a strife of the Ἐρίσοπί.
Holtzmann is of the same opinion. The Gospel has value as a mirror of the times in which the writer lived and of the experiences through which the Church had reached that period ; but when we proceed to use the Gospel as a record of our Lord’s life we must bear in mind that the author meant to portray the image of Christ as that image lived in his own soul and in the Church for which he wrote ; and as, in his view, it should live in the Church of all times as the image of the Godhead. Oscar Holtzmann (Das Fohannes- evangelium, 1887, p. 137) believes that the writer sought to write. a life of Jesus which should be in keeping with the thought of his time; and with this object he used the material furnished by the Synoptists and by the oral tradition of his day, correcting and amplifying to suit his purpose.
Schiirer (Vortrige d. theol. Konferenz zu Giessen, 1889, Uber d. gegenwartigen Stand d. Fohanneischen Frage) maintains that the worth of the fourth Gospel lies, not in its historical narrative, but in its expression of the conviction that in Jesus Christ God revealed Himself. This is the essence of Christianity ; and this is the funda- mental thought of the Gospel. Nowhere in the New Testament is it presented with such clearness, with such ardent faith, with such victorious confidence. Accordingly, though this Gospel as a source of history must take a lower place than the synoptic Gospels, it must always have its worth as a witness of the Christian faith.
Doubtless the Gospel has a value, whoever is its author, and